HUGE BOEING LAYOFFS: Why so soon and so massive? For the same reason the company’s top execs split town for Chicago—the Almighty Stock Price. (It’s the same reason the airlines moved so swiftly for their own massive layoffs.)

Boeing boss Phil Condit has now made his statement to the investment community that Boeing is no longer a “Seattle company” or even a manufacturing company, but an investment portfolio that moves swiftly to cut potential losses.

At one time, even during the previous massive layoffs of the early ’70s, Boeing was a company that Made Stuff. In bad times, it made sure to hold on to at least its key personnel and its design-engineering infrastructure. Now, who knows?

THE RADIO MEGA-CHAIN that’s rapidly becoming the Microsoft of music (that’s not a compliment) wants its umpteen-hundred stations to ban over 150 individual songs, plus anything by Rage Against the Machine.

Why business executives don’t make the best government leaders.

Scott Kennedy, a software engineer who started the (lovely) BitStar Internet Cafe on Capitol Hill, launched his independent mayoral campaign Sunday evening with a short rally outside the former Denny Way car-rental office where he’s installed his campaign HQ. The 50 or so supporters did little to fill the huge parking lot in front of the office.

The advertised highlight was a gig by a Beatles cover band, the Nowhere Men, playing on the building’s roof. (The real Beatles, as you assuredly know, played on a London rooftop as their final joint public performance–not the right symbolism when you want to be starting something, such as a political career.) The arrangement of the band on the roof and the audience down below kept the audience from getting within 30 feet of the campaign building, except for one dancing fool of a four-year-old boy.

Kennedy’s speech at the event, also performed on the roof, showed inadequate preparation and the lack of seasoned campaign handlers on his team to coach him. He interrupted himself twice, to take some gum out of his mouth and to take an earpiece out of his ear. He didn’t have anyone introduce him (you know, someone who could give endearing personal remarks about a candidate which the candidate himself would pseudo-modestly then demure from).

I personally like many of Kennedy’s stated platforms and ideas, which you can read about on his own site. I just want him to become more effective at stating them, and at the basic nuts-‘n’-bolts of campaigning. After all, voters have always, at least partly, judged a candidate’s potential adeptness as an office-holder by his/her adeptness as an office-seeker.

Some local activists had a great idea, to hold a “Reclaim the Streets” party Saturday afternoon, along the lines of similar events in England and across the U.S.

The premise: A party, a celebration, an outdoor rave of sorts (albeit without a DJ booth) in a big public place, unauthorized and unofficial.

The justification: The streets, and the city, belong to the citizens, not to politicians or cops or retail chains.

The organizers wanted the event to be a celebration, not a protest. Instead of complaining about society, attendees were asked to make positive statements about creating a new world without cars or malls or dumb laws.

But that was enough of a premise to draw the usual protest infiltrators from the Revolutionary Communist Party and other bands; plus individual marchers who believed in taking any opportunity to call attention to fervently believed-in causes (Mumia Abu-Jamal, police brutality).

And, natch, it was enough to draw great phalanxes of cops (who, at one point near the event’s end, may have outnumbered the participants).

There were cops in riot gear, cops on bicycles, cops on horses, cops in cars, and cops in a big van. There were lines of cops guarding the Convention Center, a Starbucks, the new Hyatt Hotel, and Pacific Place.

There were pepper-sprayings; there were cop horses sticking their heads out at protesters. There were an estimated 18 arrests (almost 10 percent of the marchers).

“Rioting” on the protesters’ side, meanwhile, was limited to just a couple of hammered-at windows at the Gap and Banana Republic, which attracted the extended gazes of the TV news crews, which were apparently out to tell a violent-assault-and-righteous-retribution story no matter what the real situation was.

So why the heavy police over-reaction?

It’s been pretty obvious these past few weeks that Mayor Paul Schell, heavily trailing in the polls for his re-election bid, has been staging silly PR stunts to make him look better in the public eye. The amassing of all those cops (clearly instructed to protect private property above all other priorities, just as they were at Mardi Gras) may have been, at least partly, a show intended to make weekend downtown shoppers believe Schell’s finally got his act together.

And what of the event itself? How could it have more effectively communicated its message and attracted a larger, more diverse set of supporters?

The “Reclaim the Streets” ideology, borrowed whole from out-of-town and out-of-country events (the first was a protest against a British highway project), wasn’t specific to the particular situation of downtown Seattle (or even of U.S. big-city downtowns in general). There are already lotsa Northwesterners who like to live and play where there aren’t malls or cars; these people are sometimes called exurbanites or backpackers. People who’ve chosen to live in town have often done so because they enjoy the bustle and the excitement. A New-New Left celebration in Seattle ought to welcome those who actually like city life, inviting them to help try and take charge of how their city develops.

(Of course, that means it would also have to be inviting toward older people, nonwhite people, non-vegans, and people who don’t necessarily enjoy wearing face bandanas.)

Apparently without telling almost anybody here in town, a national “Web Design World” conference was held in Seattle last week. Yes, there are still organizations that hire web designers and even pay to send them to out-of-town conferences. Many of these organizations, I learned from some gals ‘n’ guys who’d been to the conference, are governmental agencies, or companies making sites under contract to governmental agencies. And from what I’ve seen of bureaucrats’ attempts to put important citizen/consumer info online, these outfits can sure use the advice.

PRINT-OUTS: The new print MISC magazine is a hit. Many of the 125 outlets we dropped it off at last week are already out. You really oughta consider taking out a subscription.

Yr. ob’d’t c’r’s’p’n’d’t recently saw the classic 1960 film Elmer Gantry, based on the even-more-classic 1927 Sinclair Lewis novel of corruption and hypocrisy in the heartland.

I was struck by the film’s remarkable willingness, for a Hollywood product of its time, to maturely handle its topic (though it was still considerably toned down from the novel’s even harsher anti-hypocrisy message.) And, yes, I was pleasantly shocked to see Shirley Jones, Mom Partridge herself, as a hooker w/a heart-O-gold.

But I was even more astounded at the story’s lessons for today’s Netculture.

In the film, Jean Simmons’s revival-preacher character is wowed by Burt Lancaster’s smooth-salesman title character into turning her ministry into a cash-generating circus, only to lose everything as his snake-oil ways catch up with him and destroy her life’s work.

So must the online community (those of us, that is, who’ve worked to make a real community out of online communication) must now work to rebuild our battered tents and broken pews after the invasion by, and subsequent comeuppance of, the IPO gang.

In the movie, Simmons’s character is destroyed in a church fire (caused indirectly by Elmer’s having convinced town leaders to let him ignore building codes), while Elmer soldiers on to new scams. Can the human-scale Internet avoid such a metaphorical fate?

Commentator Dave Winer, whom we’ve mentioned here previously, likes to use the acronym “FUD” (for “fear, uncertainty, and doubt”) to describe the rhetorical hype mechanisms by which certain big companies try to control the medium’s future.

Companies accomplish FUD by convincing other companies and end users that, for instance, the Microsoft agenda will inevitably prevail, and hence that any technology or business model contadicting the MS agenda (Java, Linux, Macintosh, Netscape, RealAudio, open-source software, or cross-platform Net-based applications), and anyone attempting to use it, is doomed to the eternal damnation of techno-obscelescence.

But FUD doesn’t have to be deliberately spread by someone with an unterior motive. It can thrive on its own power. Folks in the tech-biz can get caught up into it on their own.

Companies can be be-FUD-dled into believing they’ll never make it unless they Get Big Fast, or that they’ll lose the “mindshare” wars unless they spend megabucks on hi-profile brand advertising, or that they won’t get or keep an A-list staff unless they pour more megabucks into perks for executives and other “key” personnel.

Hundreds of companies were so be-FUD-dled in these ways that they put everything they had and more into business practices any sane person could see were faulty. Many of these companies are no longer with us, burned up in fiscal disasters of their own making.

Those of us who have, thus far, survived the tech-biz equivalent of a trial by fire should consider ourselves duly chastized and inspired to follow the true faith of changing the world.

A critic lists the “Top 50 Cliches of the Art World.”

“Why Whites Think Blacks Have No Problems.”

Longtime tech-biz observer Adam Engst has some inside insights about the Internet grocery biz in “Where Webvan Went Wrong.”

Webvan.com, which bought out the Kirkland-based HomeGrocer.com, is calling it quits. Like a lot of venture-capital-chompin’ dot-coms, it tried to “get big fast” by spending heavily on high-profile operations and advertising. Unlike other dot-coms, it had to also spend tons on warehouses, trucks, and merchandise in a notoriously low-margin industry.

The consumer-level “Internet revolution,” meanwhile, crawled as high-speed home connections remained costly and sparse. (Ever try to access HomeGrocer or Webvan on a 56K modem? Not pretty.) But Webvan couldn’t wait for the bugs to be worked out of the process. With its truckers and its conveyer belts in a half-dozen big metro areas, it had to immediately hit it big and stay there.

Why, many are now asking, did anybody (especially in the investment community) think that was sure to happen?

One possible answer: A mistaken comparison between the early WWW and the early cable TV.

Today’s 206-channel cable landscape is still largely dominated by the channels launched in the business’s 1976-84 infancy–CNN, ESPN, Nickelodeon, HBO, MTV, Discovery–and their latter-day subsidiary channels. But that’s because channel capacity was so limited all those years; would-be competitors couldn’t get on enough cable systems. In contrast, anybody can put up a web server, and anybody with an ad budget can get it promoted. Potential profitability in consumer e-commerce, if it comes, will come not from early “mind space” domination but by buildiing a service people want to use, offering products people want to buy.

In short, from doing the boring stuff and doing it properly.

A lesson the entirety of e-commerce should have learned from the pre-Webvan grocery business.

(on a package of Nestle’s Toll House cookie dough): “Bake cookie dough before consuming.”

ELSEWHERE: When a dot-com manages to stay in business and even attract new investors, it’s news, apparently.

For a freelance project, I’m after tales of wild living and financial/business excess during those wacky, never-to-be-forgotten days of the late ’90s. Insane real estate deals; folks blowing stock-option money they never tangibly had on cars, trips, or plastic surgery; bizarre tech-company office pranks and perks; cyber-libertarians and cyber-libertines. Send ’em all to clark@speakeasy.org.

‘PRESS’ CLIPPED: The North Seattle Press, “Seattle’s Bi-Weekly Urban Journal,” ran out of money and ceased publication after 16 years and at least three sets of owners. It was a feisty little rag that crammed its small editorial holes (as few as five non-ad tabloid pages) with personality and spunk.

ELSEWHERE:

Somebody who took that 1997 “bosom for a pillow” song lyric literally.

“Experts: Birds are imitating cell phones…”

UPDATE: Turns out others besides Dave Winer are interested in the idea of dissolving criminal corporations. Those wacky Vancouverites at Adbusters magazine are also proposing it.

THE FINE PRINT (on the back of a Spoon Size Shredded Wheat box): “POST is committed to nurturing and championing the well-being of families across America. Our families, like yours, have challenges and triumphs. We celebrate both the big and small events–the everyday joys and moments that sustain us. We’d love to hear from you about the things that help make a difference in your family.” [Then, in almost unreadably tiny type:] “Comments and materials submitted become the property of Kraft Foods and may be used by Kraft Foods without compensation to the submitter.”

TALES FROM THE INTELLECTUAL-PROPERTY INDUSTRY: Michael Jackson currently owes Sony Music $30 million! If the major-label system doesn’t work for even one of its (formerly) most lucrative artists, for whom the hell does it work?

Feed and Suck went on “indefinite hiatus” last Friday. I miss both of ’em, but particularly Feed.

Run by Steven Johnson, one of the early gurus and advocates of web publishing, Feed had a novel format combining a single online column by various contributors (“Feed Daily”) with feature-section packages taking longer and broader looks at meta-themes such as politics, the environment, and literature.

What’s more, Feed had the novelty of coming from NYC, not Frisco, which helped it maintain a healthy distance from the more annoying aspects of cyber-hype. (Suck sneered at the cyber-hype but still imagined it to be important enough to sneer at.)

OTHER VOICES (William Arnold, in his P-I review of the Tomb Raider movie): ” …It’s also scary to keep reading (even in my own newspaper) how Lara Croft is such a wonderful new feminist role model for young women. We’re talking here about a sadistic egotist who greedily vandalizes the cultural monuments of the Third World and embodies the spirit of Columbine. A role model? God help us all.”

ELSEWHERE:

Devo action figures! Every home should have a complete set! (found by Slumberland)….

What if they gave an Internet content creators’ convention and nobody came?…

Sympathy for the record industry?…

Dave Winer’s long-running (in Net-years) DaveNet column recently suggested a “corporate death penalty,” the government-mandated dissolving of companies found guilty of major offenses.

“For example,” Winer writes, “I would have put Exxon to death for the Valdez disaster, to set an example for other would-be rapers of the environment.”

Winer has yet to detail how this might be carried out (government seizure and auction of assets, perhaps?). But he has suggested it’d be the ideal answer to the Microsoft monopoly. Instead of splitting MS up into two firms, “after the death penalty, there would be zero Microsofts, not two.”

There’s a precedent for this in Britain, under the old tradition of crown-chartered corporations (such as the still-extant Hudson’s Bay Co.) existing on the government’s bidding and subject to periodic review and non-automatic renewal.

The modern-day example of this is Britain’s oldest commercial TV network, ITV. As I oh-so-briefly explained recently, ITV was devised as a loose consortium of local stations, with no central corporate management save for the heavy hand of their government regulator, originally known as the Independent Television Authority (ITA). The ITA built and ran the transmitters, then contracted out the programming and ad sales on these stations to 15 different companies. The contracts were for limited terms (four to eight years) and their renewal was not automatic. The ITA would re-hire, fire, or force mergers among contractor companies for any combination of reasons, from financial solvency to programming priorities. Thus major operators such as ATV/ITC (producers of The Prisoner and The Muppet Show), Associated British Corp. (The Avengers), Rediffusion (Ready Steady Go!), and Thames Television (The Benny Hill Show) have come and gone from the ITV airwaves over the years.

Of course the US has always had a more libertarian attitude toward the sacred rights of business than the pre-Thatcher UK. Today’s American regulatory system luuuvs gigantic media conglomerates and other global business giants. To even put teeth back into US business oversight (let alone fangs) would require a far bigger change in Congress than one centrist Republican turning into a centrist Democrat.

Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen has a job that typically dictates civic boosting, the hyping of his own city’s attractiveness as a place to live, work, and conduct trade. He’s now apparently shirking from his professional duties.

The newspaper trade journal Editor & Publisher quotes Blethen as threatening to move all the paper’s operations out to Bothell, except for a small news bureau and ad-sales office. Blethen blathered about the usual gripes corporate bosses itching for government subsidies gripe about, from zoning to traffic to insufficiently submissive politicians. He even invoked the right-wing buzzwords “ultra liberal” and “pro-labor” to bash Mayor Paul Schell.

Schell is no real liberal, let alone an “ultra” one (what is an “ultra liberal,” anyway? Someone who wants to smash the state but keep the Post Office?).

But Schell refused to be interviewed by Times scab reporters during last winter’s strike. This may be the real reason for Blethen’s blast.

Without specifically endorsing the candidacy of the much-hated Mark Sidran (who loves to use the “ultra liberal” expression himself), and by speaking for himself as a businessman rather than settling for his paper’s editorial pages, Blethen may be thinking he can do his part to oust Schell and bring Seattle’s city government even further into line with the corporate-boot-licking norm of so many governments across today’s western world.

Of course, all he may really end up doing is pissing off even more local citizens than he managed to piss off with his obstinate attitude during and after the strike.

…offers an amusing little piece speculating about the future advertising uses of today’s pop-song hits (Viagra jokes included, but of course). It’s at this permanent link.

IN THE WAKE of the dead-dot-com tracking site FuckedCompany, there’s now FuckedWeblog to track personal content sites whose creators have found better uses for their time.