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Hewlett-Packard Loses Top Lobbyist
by Heather Greenfield
John Hassell, the director of federal government affairs and head of Hewlett-Packard's Washington office, is leaving his job this week after more than six years with HP.
Gary Fazzino, HP's vice president of government affairs, credits Hassell with transforming the company's government affairs department and enhancing its advocacy skills.
Fazzino said Hassell "positioned HP as a leader in major international tax legislation in the U.S. Congress, allowing HP to repatriate $14.5 billion; deftly handled challenging trade matters vis-a-vis the U.S. economic relationship with China; and developed a lasting business development program for HP's federal and state public-sector sales teams."
David Isaacs will take on federal government affairs until a replacement for Hassell can be found. Fazzino, who has known Hassell for 20 years, wished him well in his "new endeavors." There is no word yet on what those will be.
Telecom Expert Takes Job At CCIA
Catherine Sloan is adding computers to her 20 years of experience in telecommunications law. Sloan is leaving her post as vice president of government relations for LDDS WorldCom, which became MCI WorldCom, after nine years. She is taking the same job at the Computer and Communications Industry Association.
CCIA President and CEO, Ed Black called Sloan "a great addition to CCIA."
"As the computer, communications and Internet worlds continue to converge and become evermore important to our economy and society, it is inevitable that government's involvement will increase," Black said. "CCIA's goal is to ensure that government attention enhances innovation, openness and freedom in appropriate, helpful and restrained ways. The addition of Cathy Sloan reflects our strong commitment to working with the government to get it right."
Cathy was vice president of congressional relations for the telecom trade group Comptel for five years before switching to what is now MCI. She helped with negotiations leading to the passage of the 1996 Telecom Act and its implementation by the FCC. She was a member of the board of the Competitive Long Distance Coalition and of Comptel.
As an intern at Shooshan and Jackson, which became Strategic Policy Research, Sloan worked on the antitrust case that divided AT&T. She also handled various broadcast policy issues, cable-television franchising and the original round of cellular telephone system applications.
PFF Hires Scholar For Telecom Issues
Economist and scholar Scott Wallsten will join the Progress and Freedom Foundation next month as a senior fellow and director of communications policy studies.
Wallsten has 14 years of experience studying communications policy, most recently as a senior fellow with the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Wallsten will focus on a number of policy issues at PFF, including high-speed Internet development and international communications issues such as European Union regulations and reforms in developing countries. His recent articles cover issues like how the Internet may increase trade, the economics of high-speed Internet policy, and the effects of telecom liberalization in developing countries.
PFF President Daniel Caprio said Wallsten "brings not just his recent background in think tank scholarship but also strong credentials in academia and as an economist with prestigious institutions." Caprio said he expects "outstanding entrepreneurial leadership" from Wallsten.
"I'm very excited about coming over to the Progress and Freedom Foundation," Wallsten said. "I look forward to continuing rigorous analyses and research, with the hope that they contribute to good policymaking."
Before joining the joint center and AEI, Wallsten had been an economist at The World Bank, a scholar at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and a staff economist at the U.S. President's Council of Economic Advisers.
Stephen King Tries To Scare Up The Vote
Horror author Stephen King made a pre-Halloween online appeal, asking members of the liberal group MoveOn to organize Halloween parties this past weekend in order to call voters in key districts and remind them to vote next week.
"If I know anything, I know scary," King said in an e-mail to MoveOn's 3.2 million online members. "And giving this president and this out-of-control Congress two more years to screw up our future is downright terrifying. Thankfully, this national nightmare is one we can end with -- literally -- a wake-up call."
In the e-mail, King noted that the calls actually do get voters to the polls and that the calling party will be fun. Each person was to bring his or her own cellular telephone to a nearby MoveOn member's home and make a dozen calls during the evening.
King said voter turnout may be the Democrats' best chance yet to win a majority in Congress. "The failure in Iraq and the recent string of scandals have put a bunch of new districts into play," he wrote. "That means there are more voters to call than anyone planned, and every call we make at a party this weekend will reach a key voter who otherwise would have been missed."
President Bush And 'The Google'
In an MSNBC interview last week, President Bush described what he liked to do on "the Google," and Web logs jumped on the commander-in-chief's latest technical slip of the tongue. They have not had this much fun since Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, described the Internet as a series of tubes.
"I think it's funny how he refers to it as 'the Google,'" Crooks and Liars wrote. "Remember the classic 'Internets' line [by Bush] in the second 2004 Presidential debate? This guy is almost as out of touch with technology as Senator Ted 'Tubes' Stevens."
Bush told MSNBC's Maria Bartiromo: "One of the things I've used on the Google is to pull up maps. It's very interesting to see that. I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite and you can -- like, I kind of like to look at the ranch [he owns in Texas] on Google. Reminds me of where I want to be sometimes. Yeah, I do it some."
Paul Trotter of PC Advisor found that comment by Bush amusing. "Rather than using the tool to search for nuclear weapons in North Korea," Trotter wrote, "the first place Bush centers on after he's fires up Google Earth is his home."
Quote Of The Week
"I tend not to e-mail. Not only tend not to e-mail, I don't email because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don't want to receive e-mails because, you know, there's no telling what somebody's e-mail may -- it would show up as ... a part of some kind of a story."
-- President Bush in an interview with MSNBC.
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