FC: White House releases self-congratulatory ecommerce report

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

With just two full days left in office, President Clinton and his
aides are keeping the presses rolling with self-congratulatory reports
and other random bureaucratelia.

It's legacy time -- or not -- and with the Achievements of Bill
hanging in the balance, the White House is busy providing fodder,
however bland, to the journalists who are writing updated summaries of
the past eight years.

The latest report is a 108-page document, called in all seriousness
"Leadership for the New Millennium, Delivering on Digital Progress and
Prosperity," something that might have aptly called by that name a
year or two ago but now seems remarkably off-tone nowadays when the
buzz is of recession, not boom.

Taking credit for positive social trends, and avoiding blame when they
dip the other way, is such a popular sport in Washington that it's
usually not worth noting. But the report waxes positively Goreish when
it says the Clinton administration "has helped guide and accelerate"
the development of the Internet, and offers up as as proof positive
such items as:

* "The number of unique Internet addresses has ballooned from 1.3
million in 1993 to more than 93 million today"
* "Today more than two-thirds of all households earning more than $50,000
have Internet connections."
* "When the Clinton-Gore Administration began there was no appreciable
business activity online"

As any freshman statistics student can tell you, correlation and
causation are two appreciably differet phenomena. Put another way,
some of the choices the Clinton administration has made -- crypto
regulations, increased antitrust activity, tax increases, support for
the capital gains tax, a calculated silence on Internet taxes --
arguably slowed what would have been greater economic gains.

The Clinton administration does deserve some credit in e-commerce
areas. It has not been as activist as it could have been -- and
attracted the ire of left-wing groups -- and did a commendable job
standing up to European demands over data regulation and FBI demands
on additional encryption rules. And it will certainly prove to be much
more tolerant of free speech online than a Justice Department under
the leadership of the pornophobic John Ashcroft.

You can find the document, the final act of the Electronic Commerce
Working Group, at:
http://www.ecommerce.gov/ecomnews/ecommerce2000annual.pdf

Clinton's statement:
http://www.ecommerce.gov/ecomnews/01-16-POTUS-STATEMENT.html

Chief of Staff John Podesta's fact sheet:
http://www.ecommerce.gov/ecomnews/3RDANNUALREPORTROLLOUT--FACTSHEET1-16-00.html

-Declan



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