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The government may have opened a can of worms for itself with its review petition in the 2G case, arguing that the Supreme Court judgment cancelling 122 telecom licenses erred in holding that the policy [under which the licenses were issued] was contrary to the decision of the Council of Ministers on 31.10.2003, without pointing to what part of the said decision it was contrary to.

The 2003 Cabinet decision required the Department of Telecom and Ministry of Finance to discuss and agree on spectrum pricing.

Contrary to the review petition's claim, the Supreme Court judgment specifically discusses that decision, stating: The DoT did not get in touch with the Ministry of Finance to discuss and finalize the spectrum pricing formula.

But the deeper pitfall for the government is that any discussion on this front runs the risk of highlighting the contradictory positions Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Home Minister P Chidambaram - who was the Finance Minister at the time the 2G scam took place and the CBI have taken on the matter.

On November 11, 2010, in an affidavit relating to the CBI's supervision of the 2G scam investigation, the government, citing correspondence between the Finance and DoT secretaries of November 2007, claimed that both Ministries were in agreement.

Three months later, immediately after ex-Telecom Minister A. Raja's arrest, the Prime Minister, on February 16, 2011 at a TV Editors' conference, explained the circumstances in further detail.

This was also discussed with the FinMin because in terms of the Cabinet decision of 2003 the pricing and allocation of spectrum was to be settled between the Ministry of Finance and the Telecom Department, the Prime Minister said. Initially, of course, the Finance Ministry did ask for a high price of spectrum but after many discussions, the two Ministries agreed that as far as 2G is concerned, we have to live with the present system particularly with regard to the amount of spectrum that is billed and embedded into a licence agreement. So this is the background why I did not proceed further in this matter of pricing of spectrum, because if the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Telecom both agreed and they have the obligation of the Cabinet decision of 2003 to decide on the matter I did not feel I was in a position to insist that auctions must be insisted.

On February 24, 2011, the Prime Minister broadly reiterated the same position in the Rajya Sabha:The government policy on pricing of spectrum was taken on basis of the Cabinet decision of 2003, which specifically left the issue to be determined by the MoF and the Ministry of Telecommunications. Elaborating on Mr. Chidambaram and Mr. Raja's role, he said: The two ministers had agreed because of legacy considerations and I accepted the recommendation.

Till March 2011, the government's position in the Supreme Court, to the media and in Parliament, was cohesive in its claim that consistent with the Cabinet decision of 2003, Mr. Chidambaram and Mr. Raja had agreed to keep the entry fee for pan-India 2G start up spectrum in 2008 at a 2001 price of Rs. 1,658 crore.

On 2 April, 2011, the CBI filed a charge sheet, accusing Mr. Raja of rejecting suggestions to revise the entry fee from several government sources, especially the Finance Ministry. In one stroke, the CBI overturned the position taken in the government's affidavit in the Supreme Court, the Finance Ministry OM, indeed by the Prime Minister, himself.

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News Analysis - 2G review petition pits PM's word against Chidambaram's

Kansas City, MO - infoZine - Philip Stephens is the author of a novel, Miss Me When I'm Gone (Penguin/Plume, 2011); a collection of poems, The Determined Days (The Overlook Press, 2000), which was a finalist for the PEN Center USA West Award; and a chapbook, The Signalmen, the recipient of the Hanks Chapbook Award from the St. Louis Poetry Center. His poems are included in American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000), Phoenix Rising: The Next Generation of Expansive Poetry (Word Press, 2005), and Blank Verse (Ohio University Press, 2007), and they have appeared in The North American Review, The Oxford American, and The Southwest Review, as well as other publications. His prose has been published in The Oxford American, Bomb, and Best Music Writing 2004 (Da Capo Press, 2004). His most recent poem appeared in Mead, and a short story, "You Don't Belong Here," is forthcoming in Kansas City Noir (Akashic, November 2012). He lives with his wife and two sons in Kansas City, Missouri. Tasha Haas writes fiction and teaches English, creative writing and children's literature at Kansas City Kansas Community College. She has more than twelve years experience teaching at the university level, and has also conducted workshops in fiction, poetry, and experimental writing at local arts centers, public libraries, and elsewhere. She taught fiction writing as an adjunct instructor at the University of Kansas for eight years, and has also worked free-lance as an editor and writing consultant on novel, memoir, non-fiction, and poetry manuscripts. In addition to her new book, Certain Dawn, Inevitable Dawn, published by Woodley Press in December 2010, Tasha's writing has been published in several literary magazines including Conjunctions, Coal City Review, Flint Hills Review, South Dakota Review, Stickman Review, and elsewhere. She earned her M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Bowling Green State.

This event features music by Run Little Rabbit.

What: Riverfront Readings featuring Philip Stephens and Tasha Haas When: Friday, March 9th, 8:00 PM Where: The Writers Place, 3607 Pennsylvania, KCMO

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March 2012 Riverfront Readings at The Writers Place

In an about-face, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh said Saturday that he was sorry for lambasting as a "prostitute" a Georgetown University law student who spoke publicly in favor of the Obama administration's policy on contraception coverage.

Limbaugh published the apology on his website, a day after President Barack Obama telephoned the student, Sandra Fluke, to say he stood by her in the face of personal attacks on right-wing radio. The apology came as several advertisers said they were leaving the program.

"For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke," he wrote. He then reiterated his opposition to the Obama administration policy, which requires health insurance plans to cover contraceptives for women.

On the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday editions of his show, Limbaugh attacked Fluke, alleging she was sexually promiscuous, politically motivated and "an anti-Catholic plant."

Fluke had testified to congressional Democrats in support of their national health care policy that would compel her college to offer health plans that cover her birth control.

"My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir," Limbaugh said on his website. "I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices."

Attempts to reach

Fluke had been invited to testify to a House committee about her school's health care plan, which does not include contraception. Republican lawmakers barred her from testifying during that hearing, but Democrats invited her back and she spoke to the Democratic lawmakers at an unofficial session.

The issue has been debated in the presidential race, with Republican candidates in particular criticizing the Obama plan's requirements for employers such as Catholic hospitals. Democrats - and many Republican leaders, too - have suggested the issue could energize women to vote for Obama and other Democrats in November.

Limbaugh was not swayed by Fluke's statements before the House panel.

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Limbaugh apologizes for string of 'insulting word choices'

CFOs are a pretty conservative lot, when it comes to the march of investor relations toward social media. In the case of one relatively new type of dissemination --- video --- to get out the word about that most sensitive of disclosures --- an earnings restatement --- it seems it may pay to stick with the good old press release.

"Announcing a restatement online via video is likely to benefit firms only when top management apologizes for the restatement and accepts responsibility by making an internal attribution for the error," according to a study in the March/April issue of The Accounting Review. "When management apologizes but denies responsibility by making an external attribution," the study goes on, "announcing a restatement online via video is likely to have unintended negative effects on investors."

The results in the magazine, published by the American Accounting Association, may not be too surprising. After all, as the AAA says in a press release, that "for all its vaunted powers, video can present special hazards for a company when those powers are most needed -- namely when there is bad news to report."

Digging Into the Details

But the degree of work that went into the research, and some of the details with in the findings, are worth considering.

"Managing the response of investors to events as negative as restatements is a formidable undertaking. Doing so via video over the Internet makes it all the more formidable," according to Frank D. Hodge of the University of Washington's Foster School of Business, who carried out the study with W. Brooke Elliott of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Lisa M. Sedor of DePaul University.

The study -- titled "Using Online Video to Announce a Restatement: Influences on Investment Decisions and the Mediating Role of Trust" -- note that the General Accountability Office has estimated that restatements reduced market capitalization of companies by $36 billion over a three-year period.

Restatements have a long tradition of causing difficulties for investors -- a tradition that grew along with the number of restatements in the years after Sarbanes-Oxley took effect a decade ago.

The study in The Accounting Review, however, makes a start at quantifying the damage, both in cases of the company taking responsibility, and cases of it placing responsibility elsewhere. Asked to gauge the trustworthiness of CEOs accepting responsibility via video for their companies' flawed financial statements, for example, professional managers gave the CEOs an average rating of 6.15 on a one-to-seven scale (with seven being highest.) Asked to rate a chief who blames external accountants, the managers bestowed an average of 4.0.

Admitting Versus Ducking

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YouTube No Substitute to Press Release to Restate Earnings

02-03-2012 23:15 Shows how to install WordPress using Xampp on Windows.

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Installing WordPress - Video