Shane Harris
Microsoft chosen as exclusive Homeland Security contractor
Wed Oct 1 04:12:01 2003
64.140.158.63

Microsoft chosen as exclusive Homeland Security contractor

By Shane Harris
sharris@govexec.com

The Homeland Security Department has chosen Microsoft Corp. as its preferred supplier of desktop computer and server software, according to a statement issued late Tuesday. The move is a significant development in the government’s ongoing merger of 22 agencies and comes as officials are selecting various technology companies’ products as de facto standards for the department.

The contract “establishes a key partnership relationship” between the government and Microsoft, the world’s biggest software maker, the statement said. The department has purchased a license for about 140,000 desktop computers and is consolidating other Microsoft agreements held by Homeland Security agencies into the five-year contract. The deal is worth $90 million.

Homeland Security employees’ computers now will be outfitted with Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system, as well as the Microsoft Office Professional version of software products. And perhaps most important to Homeland Security’s mission to get agencies communicating more easily, Microsoft will provide the standard e-mail software for the entire department.

Months before the Homeland Security Department was established in March, officials labored over an inventory of the various software, hardware and network brands security agencies are using. Their ultimate goal has been to select one company as the sole supplier in each of several technology categories, such as e-mail or desktop computers. Microsoft’s selection for such a wide range of software products would seem to indicate that officials have found those brands are used and favored by the majority of security agencies.

Dell Marketing L.P, a division of Dell Computer Corp., also was chosen to provide “day-to-day management” of the license agreement, the department’s statement said. The statement didn’t disclose the value of that deal. The Microsoft contract was awarded June 27.

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0703/071503h2.htm

===================================================
Dear Citizen,

Since NAFTA was passed in 1994, 7.8 million jobs have been lost in the manufacturing sector. This onerous agreement should be renamed the Nothing About Free Trade Agreement because it severely curtails competitive free trade. It did hardly anything in just reducing tariffs, quotas, and streamlining procedures. The American worker(scientist-engineer to manual/menial laborer) is still the most productive in the world.Statements citing cheaper labor as the chief reason for this job exodus are merely cop-outs made by the status quo. France and Germany, two premier high-wage nations, greatly increased its trade with other less-developed European countries in 1985 since the formation of the Common Market. Their economies each have since doubled, with the standard of living increasing accordingly.

NAFTA is an 1800 page agreement which, while extremely fertile for U.S.corporate attorneys, bureaucrats, and financial capitalists, is a nightmare for U.S. businesses, investors, and employees. When Americans are burdened by such voluminous and vague regulations and other nations are not, it does not take a scholar to conclude who benefits and who do not. People are fed up with these games.

The greatness of American business icons such as Henry Ford and Bill Gates is they took something which is naturally very complex and incorporated their innovations to simplify it so that nearly everyone can access, utilize, and directly benefit from these scientific technologies. Because of them, driving and computer use is common. Yet our legal system does the reverse so that only the legal profession and their beneficiaries hold the keys to power. Why are tax laws, health- care laws, and laws governing finance so incomprehensible, written with inane jibberish and jargon? Because if laws were few and simple, Americans would not be forced to pay for the mammoth banking, healthcare, corporate, education, and government bureaucracies? If the laws were uniform and not subject to total metamorphisis and mutations by lawyer dominated governance, stock exchanges, boards of trade, the accounting profession, insurance companies, healthcare-providers, real estate, lending institutions, brokerage firms,"economic development organizations", and other marginalists could not command such the huge sum of wealth from the productive sectors of society. The bar associations, although cloaked as eagles by themselves, Hollywood, and our miseducation systems, are merely vultures. They have a vampiric effect in that they convert productivity into the forces of parasitism and regression. Unfortunately, as they continue to multiply, so do their feeder industries who rely on such needless formalities so they can carve a bigger share of the pie for themselves. All this does is increase the cost of living for all. 1.7 million more Americans dipped into poverty this past year. According to the P.B.S. McNeil/ Lehrer Report, real unemployment is 18.6%. The infrastucture is in dire need for reinvestment to at least 1.3 trillion dollars as cited by the AP over a year ago. Yet we have lawyers demanding 55 million dollars in the Credit Card suit and incredibly 60 million USD involving California energy companies and their customers for price-gouging and fixing during its brownouts. This at the very least is the kettle calling the pot black.

Americans need to quit watching trash tv shows and should be charged to focus its attention on this broad issue. That is purging the poisoners of our land by working individually and in unison for the emancipation of labor and wealth-creation from the oppression of the aristocracy.

Very Truly Yours,

Harsha Sankar - freedom@harshasankar.org

201 Interstate Drive

Covington,Virginia 24426