Re: MCI, Sprint or bust ...

[Paco Xander Nathan <wixer!wixer.bga.com!pacoid@cactus.org>]

"Sent from the cyberdeck of: peter honeyman"
> 
> what makes more sense is to buy some at&t shares and force the issue
> at the next stockholders' meeting.  in fact, this might be a great
> consciousness-raising vehicle: we could get a statement included
> in the proxy booklet and force a stockholder vote.  as a stockholder
> (of about 20 shares, due to my previous life as a bell labs mts), i
> see cranks getting space in the booklet every year.  
> how do they do that?

Hear, hear from another former Bell Labbie MTS..  (of course, we
were in Network Support and used to have our _vendors_ call back
collect if we knew they used Sprint, because the sound was so
much better :-)

AT&T *does* have a lot of twisted stockholder proposals. They 
also have more "ma & pa" individual investors than most large 
firms, as opposed to VC & institutional votes, so the mgt feels 
VERY sensitive toward shareholder votes. That's the price a firm
must pay for cutting a regular dividend for N decades..  In fact,
the mgt is so sensitive that they even have a near-mandatory
payroll deduction program for employees to support their PAC.
Really fucked!

All it takes is just one share and you can propose an item for
vote, but I think you need many more shareholders to join in
before the vote will get anywhere near the proxy ballot. You 
can bet that AT&T mgt will do everything they can to discredit
and/or block any vote they haven't initiated themselves.

Even so, we researched this form of "protest" as a much more
effective alternative to "boycotts" (which are frankly impossible
in a post-industrial economy anyways) during the piss-test
conflict at <my prev employer>. Any brokers or VC's here, ie. 
field experts?

Twas part of my "12-Step Program To Kill Corporate Drug Testing" 
published recently in Urine Nation News. The other corporate
juggler vein to swat with a machete is to approach to a firm's
first/second tier customers and find a neato way to give them 
the shivers about the firm's offensive programs.. Like Apple 
wasn't exactly pleased when <my prev employer> started mumbling 
about insuring that all its biz partners enforced drug testing 
as well so that they could chalk up even more Malcum Balddick 
awards from the Republicans..

Mind you that AT&T earns its lunch money from corp & govt work
combined with legislative tax breaks, not so much from Jane R.
Consumer..  If there was anyway to make AT&T's corp/govt 
customers paranoid about the Wiretap chip (as they well should
be!) then AT&T might reconsider - quickly!!  It's happened
before..

Let's see, who among AT&T's bevy of cash cows might have a lil'
sumthin' to fear from having their secure comm tapped by the
Feds..  Let's see, how about mainland China?  Or possibly Mobile
Oil?  Let's apply the leverage where it will ouch the most..

pxn.