`Rolling Stone' Magazine's Salon/Adobe/Oracle/Dell Connection

As the recent replacement of General McChrystal by General Petraeus as military leader of the Pentagon’s endless war in Afghanistan indicates, a news article that’s published by Rolling Stone magazine can sometimes affect U.S. politics during the current U.S. historical era of endless war abroad and endless economic recession at home. But it’s unlikely that Rolling Stone ( www.rollingstone.com ) will publish many news articles that are critical of either the Internet magazine Salon’s (www.salon.com ) lack of reporting about U.S. political prisoners or of the way Salon, Adobe Systems, Oracle or Dell Inc. executives obtain their wealth.

One reason might be because: (1) as of June 1, 2010 Rolling Stone Magazine Owner Jann Wenner and his Wenner Media LLC firm apparently owned 10.1 percent of the Salon Media Group’s common stock; (2) Adobe Systems Co-Chairman of the Board John Warnock is also Salon’s chairman of the board; (3) former Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen sits on Oracle’s corporate board; and (4) and current Adobe president and CEO, Shantanu Narayen, sits next to Texas Billionaire Michael Dell on the Dell Inc. board of directors.

Between 2004 and February 2006, Wenner also sat on Salon’s board of directors, after investing $200,000 in the Salon Media Group in December 2003. According to a Jan. 15, 2004 Salon press release, after Rolling Stone invested in Salon, the Salon founder and then-CEO, David Talbot, stated:

“I look forward to working with Jann Wenner on the Salon board of directors…Everyone at Salon is also very excited about collaborating with Rolling Stone…Salon’s partnership with Rolling Stone is full of great promise.”

The same press release also reported that Wenner said: “I’m excited about this collaboration between Rolling Stone and Salon.”

Ironically, a few years before Wenner joined its corporate board, Salon had posted an article by Sean Elder on June 28, 2002, titled “The death of Rolling Stone,” which observed:

“…The truth is that Rolling Stone has been such an undistinguished hybrid—part ‘70s-style journalism (investigative reporting, distinct voices and rambling interviews), and part any other entertainment magazine you can name for so long that most of its subscribers are probably unaware that they still get it…

“As Rolling Stone has slowly morphed into a magazine just like dozens of others, it has lost its reason for being…Rolling Stone seems like an anachronism, the Ladies’ Home Journal of rock journalism…”

Salon’s Website attracts about 5.4 million unique visitors per month and “ultimately, Salon charges advertisers for a set number of ad impressions viewed by a Website visitor,” according to the Salon Media Group’s June 2010 10K S.E.C. financial filing. Between March 2009 and March 2010, for example, Salon collected over $2.9 million from its corporate advertisers and $701,000 from its 15,800 paid subscribers (who pay Salon between $29 and $45 each year). In addition, none of Salon’s 45 full-time and 2 part-time employees are unionized or subject to a collective bargaining agreement.

Yet, according to its June 2010 10 K financial filing:

“Salon has been relying on cash infusions primarily from related parties to fund operations. The related parties are generally John Warnock, Chairman of the Board of Salon, and William Hambrecht. William Hambrecht is the father of Salon’s former President and Chief Executive Officer, Elizabeth Hambrecht, a Director of the Company. During the year ended March 31, 2010, related parties provided approximately $2.6 million in new loans.

“Curtailment of cash investments and borrowing guarantees by related parties could detrimentally impact Salon’s cash availability and its ability to fund its operations.”

Warnock (a founder and former CEO of Adobe Systems, as well as an Adobe board co-chairman since 1989) has sat on the Salon corporate board since 2001 and been Salon’s chairman of the board since December 2006. As of June 1, 2010, Adobe board chairman Warnock owned 41 percent of Salon’s Series D Preferred Stock, 52.8 percent of Salon’s Series C Preferred Stock, and 18.5 percent of Salon’s Series A Preferred Stock; while his Adobe Systems firm owned 100 percent of Salon’s Series B Preferred Stock.

Besides providing “cash infusions” for the media firm whose former president and former CEO is his daughter, William Hambrecht currently sits next to Salon board member Elizabeth Hambrecht on the WR Hambrecht & Co. investment firm’s corporate board, is a member of the Motorola and AOL corporate boards, and co-founded the United Football League in December 2009. The Hambrecht family’s tax-exempt Sarah & William Hambrecht Foundation also owns stock in Salon.

Sitting next to Salon Chairman of the Board Warnock on Adobe’s corporate board between December 2000 and April 2008 was an Adobe executive named Bruce Chizen who “has served as a strategic advisor to Adobe Systems Incorporated…since November 2007,” according to the website of the Oracle computer software company—on whose corporate board former Adobe board member (and Adobe’s CEO between April 2000 and January 2005) Chizen currently sits. Coincidentally, on June 16, 2010, Bloomberg News reported the following:

“Oracle Corp., the world’s second- biggest software maker, faces a lawsuit brought by a whistleblower and the U.S. Justice Department claiming it overcharged the government by tens of millions of dollars.

“Oracle failed to disclose discounts that it gave its most favored commercial customers, according to a complaint in federal court in Alexandria , Virginia . Under General Services Administration contracts, the government must get the company’s best prices, according to the complaint.

“`Oracle knowingly and recklessly employed these techniques to offer commercial customers deeper discounts without offering those deeper discounts to the U.S. government,’ it said….

“The complaint alleges `various schemes Oracle used to give commercial customers deeper discounts than the GSA schedule provided.’

“Taxpayers `overpaid for each Oracle software product by the amount of discounts and reductions from other commercial pricing practices that should applied to each such purchase,’ according to the complaint…”

When Oracle board member Chizen was an executive at Salon board chairman Warnock’s Adobe firm, he apparently was not reluctant to eliminate the jobs of a lot of Adobe workers in order to enrich Adobe’s already wealthy top executives and stockholders. As the San Francisco Chronicle, for example, observed on June 3, 1999:

“Adobe Systems Inc. yesterday announced it will slash 250 jobs by the end of the year, the second round of layoffs to hit the San Jose graphics software maker in the past nine months.

“Adobe officials said savings from the layoffs, which will cut about 9 percent of Adobe's workforce...

“Yet in the same breath, Adobe executives said revenues for its second quarter, which ends tomorrow, should be better than expected. Adobe expects as much as $246 million in revenues for the quarter, which would touch the high end of analysts' estimates.

"`The business is doing well and we are certainly excited by that,’ said Bruce Chizen, Adobe executive vice president for worldwide products.

"`But we have an obligation to…our stockholders…to grow this company aggressively’" he said….

“Adobe dominates the market for graphics and document software used by publishers with programs like Illustrator, Photoshop and PageMaker…

“Last August, Adobe announced a restructuring that eventually pared 350 positions, or 12 percent, of its workforce…

“…Chizen said the company's goal is to save about $25 million to $30 million in administrative costs annually.”

And in 2005, Chizen and Salon board chairman Warnock’s profitable Adobe firm was also not reluctant to lay off more U.S. workers, despite generating “record profits” in 2005. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (12/16/05) noted:

“Adobe Systems Inc. posted higher fourth-quarter earnings Thursday but said it expects to cut 650 to 700 jobs as it folds recently acquired rival Macromedia Inc. into its operations…

“At Thursday's earnings announcement, Chief Executive Bruce Chizen said 2005 was `another remarkable year for Adobe.’ He added, `We grew our business 18 percent, generated record profits, and for the third consecutive year achieved record revenue for the fourth quarter and year.’…

“The 11 percent to 12 percent companywide work force reduction will…help the company…achieve its 2006 financial targets, said Murray Demo, Adobe's chief financial officer…”

Salon Chairman of the Board Warnock founded his then-privately-owned Adobe Systems firm with his current co-chairman of the Adobe corporate board, Charles Geschke, in 1982; but, ironically, “their original product called PostScript was derived from technology…developed at the University of Utah,” a publicly-funded state university, according to A History of the Personal Computer by Roy Allan. The same book also noted that “shortly after the founding of Adobe, Apple Computer made a significant financial investment in the company.”

Besides owing 19 percent of Adobe’s stock until 1989, Apple Computer was apparently, simultaneously, the biggest “customer” of the same Adobe firm that it partially owned until 1989. As the 1997 book Apple by Jim Carlton revealed:

“[Apple Computer Founder] Steve Jobs…got Apple to invest $2.5 million in a 15 percent stake in Adobe…

“By 1989, Adobe had grown to a minibehemoth selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Postscript and related programs per year…Adobe licensed PostScript for use on Apple’s Macintosh, with Adobe receiving royalty payments as well as money for the use of PostScript-related Type 1 fonts…It had mushroomed in size in tandem with Apple’s growth…

“…Apple paid Adobe royalties on PostScript sold in Laser-Writers, as well as an extra $300 for each Type 1 font needed to print characters…”

In 1986, for example, Apple accounted for 80 percent of Adobe’s sales, according to the International Directory of Company Histories.

The current Adobe CEO and president (who both sits next to Salon board chairman Warnock on Adobe’s corporate board and next to Texas Billionaire Dell on Dell Inc.’s corporate board), Shantanu Narayen, also has not been reluctant to lay-off a lot of Adobe workers. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, for example, on December 4, 2008:

“Adobe Systems in San Jose is laying off 600 employees…

“The layoffs…represent 8 percent of Adobe's global workforce…

“`The global economic crisis significantly impacted our revenue during the fourth quarter,’ Adobe's president and chief executive officer, Shantanu Narayen, said in a statement. `We have taken action to reduce our operating costs and fine-tune the focus of our resources on key strategic priorities.’

Yet the AFL-CIO website indicates that “in 2009 Shantanu Narayen received $6,663,781 in total compensation”—after the Adobe CEO and Dell Inc. board member eliminated the jobs of 8 percent of Adobe’s workers in 2008. And although Adobe’s 2009 revenues still exceeded $2.9 billion, in November 2009 the Tech Crunch website confirmed that Adobe executives were going to lay off 680 more Adobe workers--representing 9 percent of Adobe’s remaining work force--in 2010.

According to the TechAmerica Foundation’s recently-released annual Cyberstates report, Cyberstates 2010: The Definitive State-by-State Analysis of the High-Technology Industry, the U.S. high-tech industry lost 245,600 jobs in 2009--including 112,600 jobs eliminated by high-tech manufacturing firm executives and 20,700 jobs eliminated by software services company executives.

But at Adobe board Co-Chairman Warnock’s Salon Media Group, Salon executives still seem to earn a lot more money than the average U.S. worker. According to Salon’s December 2009 10K financial filing, for example, Salon Editor-in-Chief Joan Walsh “received cash compensation of $219,000 during fiscal year 2009” and “Richard Gingras, who became” Salon's “CEO effective May 1, 2009, earns a base salary of $230,000.” Coincidentally, in a July 10, 1999 Salon article, Salon Editor-in-Chief Walsh wrote the following in reference to U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and his U.S. left supporters:

“…The Mumia cult sickens me like little else in American politics today. For the white left, it's Black Panther worship all over again, with even less to worship….Abu-Jamal has done little but run a one-man self-promotion machine from prison.

“…Mumia's minions are content with marching in the streets and signing petitions on behalf of their cuddly convict. `He is just beautiful,’ says author Alice Walker. `He has a lot of light. He reminds me of Nelson Mandela.’ What an insult to Mandela…

“Mumia madness pushed me over the edge earlier this year, when Oakland teachers demanded to stage a teach-in on his behalf throughout the Oakland schools…. “

Besides owning both stock in Adobe Co-Chairman Warnock’s Salon Media Group and Rolling Stone magazine, Wenner’s media firm also owns both Us Weekly magazine (www.usmagazine.com) and Men’s Journal magazine (www.mensjournal.com). According to New York Magazine (3/27/00) in at the turn of the century, Wenner Media was still a private company “worth somewhere between $500 million and $750 million, with earnings in the $40 million-to-$60 million range.”

In the early 1990s, Wenner spent about four months out of the year at his three-story country manor in East Hampton, Long Island, employed servants there, and also owned both a five-story Manhattan townhouse and a Mercedes limousine, according to the book Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History by Robert Draper. And in October 2009, Wenner apparently purchased an eight-room, three-story waterfront home on 1 ½ acres in Montauk, Long Island for $11.9 million--after previously purchasing a 62.9 acre upstate estate in Tivoli, New York for $5.8 million in 2007, according to the NY Post (10/22/09).

So if you’re a U.S. music fan who’s been suffering economically during the current U.S. historical era of endless war abroad and endless economic recession at home (or been laid-off recently by corporations like Adobe, Oracle and Dell), don’t expect Rolling Stone or Salon to be that eager to promote a more equitable redistribution of the U.S. celebrity music world and U.S. high-technology computer industry’s surplus wealth in 2010.

(This article originally appeared in the Austin, Texas-based Rag Blog alternative news blog)

Did Dell & Intel Violate U.S. & Texas Anti-Trust Laws?

“A new era of antitrust regulation in Texas began with the enactment of the Texas Free Enterprise and Antitrust Act of 1983 (Texas Business & Commerce Code, ch. 15), which is based on federal antitrust law. Unlawful practices, defined as in the federal statutes, include: "every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce;" to monopolize, or to attempt or conspire to monopolize, "any part of trade or commerce;" and tying arrangements and acquisition of stock or assets that lessen competition substantially…

“The legislature…made it clear that the act would apply to Texas activities and conduct even if they also affect interstate commerce….The attorney general may sue for civil fines of up to $1,000,000 against a corporation…District attorneys may bring felony prosecutions against persons who enter into a contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce, or who monopolize, or attempt or conspire to monopolize, any part of trade or commerce. …The attorney general also was authorized to bring civil suits under federal antitrust laws.” (from the Handbook on Texas Online website)

In recent years, Dell Inc. Chairman of the Board Michael Dell has been among the richest of the Texas Rich. Personally worth around $13.5 billion, Dell was ranked by Forbes magazine in 2010 as the 37th-wealthiest billionaire on earth.

Coincidentally, in his Nov. 3, 2009 legal complaint against Intel, which alleges that U.S. anti-trust laws were violated by Intel, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo also makes some interesting observations about how executives at Texas Billionaire Dell’s firm have allegedly been doing business in recent years. According to the New York Attorney General’s complaint:

“…Intel for years paid Dell lump-sum rebates…

“…As Dell’s lead negotiator with Intel put it in a Dec. 7, 2004 email to his Intel counterpart, explaining that Michael Dell wanted an additional $400 million rebate payment from Intel. `This is really easy…MSD [Michael Dell] wants $400 M [million] more. I’ve been trying to figure out the structure.’

“Dell’s profitability…came to depend on Intel rebate payments. This was dramatically illustrated by internal Intel emails in April 2004, arriving from Dell’s need to finalize its earnings forecast for the coming quarter. Essentially Dell asked Intel for an additional $100 million…

“Absent Intel’s anticompetitive acts, prices to consumers would have been lower…

“As AMD [Advanced Micro Devices] was beginning to threaten Intel’s dominance, Dell and Intel formed a partnership in which, in exchange for exclusivity, Intel paid Dell billions of dollars, assured it of a preferred supply of chips over its competitors, and collaborated with Dell to submit below-cost bids in strategic contests against AMD’s products…

“This arrangement lasted for at least five years, from 2001 to 2006…As Intel’s payments increased, Dell became more and more dependent on Intel for its reported profits…

“In pure dollar terms, Dell was far and away the leader in receiving Intel’s largess. For example, over the four year period from February 2002 to January 2007, it received approximately $6 billion in `rebates.’ Most of this money was furnished to Dell under programs initially titled `MOAP’ and then `MCP.’ `MOAP’ was an acronym standing for `Mother of all Programs.’ The term MOAP was later replaced in the lexicon by another acronym `MCP’ which purportedly (and misleadingly) stood for `Meet Competition Payments.’ Both generally referred both to Dell’s global percentage based rebates and to lump-sum payments made by Intel to Dell during the relevant period…

“Intel also assured Dell of `preferred’ supply…Internal Intel emails show that satisfying 100% of Dell’s demand was a top priority for Intel…

“In return for exclusivity, Dell sought terms from Intel that were more favorable than those Intel extended to its other largest and most favored customers…

“Intel did in fact grant Dell significant financial advantages…

“…Intel encouraged Dell to make below-cost bids, with Intel subsidies, when competing against AMD-based server products…

“Over the coming years, Intel and Dell fell into a pattern of negotiating the amount of Intel’s subsidies to Dell on a nearly continuous basis…In each successive round of negotiations, the groundwork was usually laid by mid-level executives at both companies tasked with conveying messages and `positioning’ to and from the other so that top executives at both firms would know what to expect when they met…

“After the meeting on July 9, 2002, [former Dell Inc. Chief Operating Officer] Kevin Rollins reported to Michael Dell that the result of the meeting was that Intel was willing to increase payments to Dell and seemed willing to do “whatever it takes” to keep Dell from purchasing from AMD.’ Rollins wrote `They got the message that we were very serious…and seem to want to do whatever it takes to persuade us…Initial word is that our MOAP should increase from $70 M this qtr to $100 mm.’…

“In September 2003, Intel’s then Chairman and CEO Craig Barrett met with Michael Dell to address the basic relationship between the companies. He reported back to his Intel colleagues that he and Michael Dell `shook hands on the deal. MD [Michael Dell] agreed to quarterly mtgs…to make sure we are aligned in our strategic issues and coordinated in spending the monies. He had no issue with the win/win nature of the agreement. I clearly committed our long range support regardless of competition…Nice work you guys!’…

“An internal Dell email reported that under the new arrangement, Intel was making a $40 million lump sum payment in order to maintain Dell’s status as an Intel-only CPU [Central Processing Unit] buyer…

“…A Dell executive wrote on January 19, 2004: `This is very scary…HP (and IBM) can bracket our server business by using AMD to beat us on price…’ Another Dell executive agreed, writing that Intel had `better be down here sucking up with a bag-o-money.’…

“Top Dell and Intel executives met and Intel again agreed on substantial increases in rebate levels; Dell would now receive a `base’ rebate of 11% of its processor purchases from Intel, up form 7%, for not switching to AMD. In addition, they also agreed on another 3% in `incremental’ or `variable’ rebates, for a total of up to 14%. Dell’s lead negotiator estimated that the `new MCP’ would be worth $400 million to Dell over the twelve month period from April 1, 2004 to March 31, 2005. Indeed, around that time, Intel’s payments to Dell started to reach figures of $100 million per quarter or more.

“…Dell’s quarterly profit margins had become dependent on Intel’s payments. A comparison of Dell’s reported net income with the rebates it received from Intel for some quarterly periods show that, by 2004, the rebate payments amounted to more than a third of Dell’s earnings. For the 3 month period between August and October of 2004, Dell received approximately $304 million in rebates from Intel and reported income of $846 million, so that the rebates amounted to 36% of net income. Thereafter, the proportion of rebates to net income rose steeply. In 2006, Dell received approximately $1.9 billion in rebates from Intel, and in two quarterly periods of that year, rebate payments exceeded reported net income. From February to April of 2006, rebates ($805 million) amounted to 104% of net income. The following 3 months, between May and July of 2006, the proportion was even higher, 116% ($554 million of rebates and $480 million in net income).

“In one instance, Dell asked Intel to retroactively increase the size of its payment to stabilize Dell’s forecasted earnings. In several early Sunday morning emails in April 2004, Intel’s Austin-based Dell lead negotiator alerted top Intel executives to an urgent Dell request regarding `our meet comp response for Dell considering new data from msd [Michael Dell] on Friday.’ Dell needed to finalize its margin forecast for the coming quarter, but needed `direction’ from Intel: `dell is finalizing their call the qtr today. They need direction from us. They are asking for $100 upside to old MC deal…’…

“Later the same day, another Intel executive clarified Dell’s request in an email directed to [current Intel Chairman of the Board] Paul Otellini who was Intel’s chief operating officer at the time. He informed Otellini that Dell had assumed that its new agreement with Intel for increased subsidies would be retroactive to the beginning of the current fiscal year in February…

“In an April 8 email to Michael Dell and Kevin Rollins, Dell’s lead negotiator with Intel described the outcome of Dell’s request to Intel as follows: `…We got what we needed to meet expectations ($60M) in the form of increased MCP and programs…I think we got all we could in one 30 day period.’

“As this episode shows, Intel’s payments to Dell did not benefit consumers through better products…or lower prices…

“By September 2004, Dell’s tone was becoming strident…

“On December 6, 2006, Intel’s Otellini emailed Intel’s Dell account representative about his concern that Dell would defect to AMD…The next day, the Intel executive promptly forwarded this email on to Dell’s lead negotiator with a plea for help in securing `incremental support’ for Dell…

“…Dell’s lead negotiator emailed back: `This is really easy. MSD [Michael Dell] wants $400 M more. I’ve been trying to figure out the structure…’

“…What the payment bought was Dell’s commitment to `maintain’ exclusivity…

“In fact, Intel’s payments to Dell shot upward, roughly doubling in less than one year…

“…Intel subsidized below-cost bids by Dell when it was bidding against competitors selling AMD-based computers and servers to large businesses or other `enterprise’ customers…

“…Over a period of approximately two years, from approximately mid-2004 to mid-2006, the reports show tens of thousands of bids…

“In the summer of 2005, Intel and Dell held another round or rebate negotiations…

“…Intel increased its payments to Dell to an unprecedented level. According to figures provided by Dell, Intel’s payments ($471 million) amounted to 78% of Dell’s reported net income ($606 million) for the period August to October of 2005.

“…In May [2006], Intel sought a deal with Dell…Under that deal, Intel was to make further payments to Dell in return for continued exclusivity outside the multi-processor server segment. Dell’s Rollins wrote in a June 1, 2006 email that he was trying to get $250 million still from Intel…

“Despite this agreement, by September of 2006, Dell…announced further AMD products…

“…For February, March and April 2006, Intel had paid Dell approximately $800 million in rebates…”

Besides allegedly accepting around $6 billion in secret rebates from Intel between 2002 and 2007 (in apparent violation of U.S. and Texas anti-trust and anti-monopolization laws), Texas Billionaire Dell’s firm also was the target of a lawsuit by New York Attorney General a few years ago, on charges of having violated New York State’s consumer protection laws. As a September 15, 2009 press release of the Office of New York’s Attorney General noted:

“Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that Dell and its subsidiary, Dell Financial Services (DFS), have agreed to pay the Attorney General’s Office $4 million in restitution, penalties and costs to resolve charges of fraudulent and deceptive business practices that scammed consumers across New York State.

“The settlement follows a decision of the New York Supreme Court, Albany County , which sustained Attorney General Cuomo’s claims that Dell had engaged in fraud, false advertising, deceptive business practices, and abusive debt collection practices. The court’s decision came as a result of the original lawsuit filed by Cuomo’s Office, which charged that Dell engaged in bait and switch advertising with respect to its `no interest’ financing promotions, misled consumers to believe they had qualified for promotional financing, failed to adequately disclose the terms of its `next day’ service contracts and failed to provide consumers with warranty service and promised rebates…

“According to the Court’s decision upholding the Attorney General’s lawsuit, Dell deprived consumers of the technical support to which they were entitled under their warranty or service contract by: (1) repeatedly failing to provide timely on site repair to consumers who purchased service contracts promising “on site” and expedited service; (2) pressuring consumers, including those who purchased service contracts promising “on site” repair, to remove the external cover of their computer and remove, reinstall, and manipulate hardware components; and (3) discouraging consumers from seeking technical support: those who called Dell’s toll free number were subjected to long wait times, repeated transfers, and frequent disconnections.

“The court concluded that Dell lured consumers to purchase its products with advertisements that offered attractive `no interest’ and/or `no payment’ financing promotions. In practice, however, the vast majority of consumers, even those with very good credit scores, were denied these deals. In a classic `bait and switch’ scheme, DFS instead offered consumers financing at high interest rates, which often exceeded 20 percent. Dell and DFS frequently failed to clearly inform these consumers that they had not qualified for the promotional terms, leaving many to unwittingly finance their purchase at high interest rates.

“The decision also held that DFS incorrectly billed consumers on cancelled orders, returned merchandise, or accounts they did not authorize Dell to open, and then continually harassed these consumers with illegal billing and collection activity. Although many consumers repeatedly contacted Dell and/or DFS to advise them of the errors, DFS did not suspend its collection activity and Dell failed to expeditiously credit consumers’ accounts, even after assuring consumers it would do so. As a result, many consumers have been subjected to harassing collection calls for months on end and have had their credit ratings harmed.”

In addition to allegedly accepting $6 billion in secret rebates from Intel (whose board of directors currently includes Harvard Business School Professor David Yoffie, University of California-Berkeley Vice-Chancellor Frank Yeary, Stanford University Professor James Plummer, Dartmouth College Trustee John Donahoe, former Yahoo President Susan Decker, former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, former U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, and members of the Berkshire Hathaway, Estee Lauder, American Express, McKesson corporate boards), Dell also accepted $853 million worth of U.S. War Machine contracts in 2009, making it the 51th-largest recipient of juicy Pentagon contracts these days.

One reason neither NBC News, MSNBC, CNN or Time magazine might not be that eager to broadcast or print many exposes about either Dell’s alleged acceptance of secret rebates from Intel or its violations of U.S. consumer protection laws might be because former U.S. Senator and current Dell Inc. board member Sam Nunn also sits on the board of GE-- the parent company of NBC News and MSNBC (in addition to also sitting on Chevron/Unocal’s corporate board); and a recent Dell Inc. board member named Michael Miles sits on the board of Time-Warner—the parent company of CNN and Time magazine. Yet in recent months the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission {S.E.C.] has also apparently begun to also look into the legality of the relationship between Texas Billionaire Dell’s firm and Intel. As the New York Times (6/10/10) recently observed, “the disclosure that the S.E.C. has been investigating aspects of the relationship between the two companies is new, as is its focus on Mr. Dell;” and “a person briefed on the case, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is confidential, said that the S.E.C.’s allegations related to how Dell accounted for payments and rebates that it had received from Intel.”

As long ago as 1998, Current Biography noted that Michael Dell owned “about 16 percent of his company’s stock” and was “thus a multibillionaire and the richest man in Texas .” So it’s not surprising that despite Dell Inc.’s alleged acceptance of rebates from Intel in apparent violation of U.S. anti-trust laws, many U.S. politicians have apparently been accepting a lot of money in campaign contributions from Texas Billionaire Dell during the last 16 years. Since 1994, for example, U.S. politicians have accepted nearly $900,000 in campaign contributions from Michael Dell( and $330,000 in campaign contributions from his wife, Susan), according to the Center for Responsive Politics website.

So it’s not likely that many U.S. politicians are going to ask the Texas Attorney General to look into whether or not Dell Inc.’s alleged acceptance of about $6 billion in secret rebates from Intel between 2002 and 2007 may have apparently violated state laws that prohibit white collar crimes from being committed in Texas.

(This article originally appeared in the Austin, Texas-based Rag Blog alternative news blog)