Re: [spam] Re: [soac-newgtldapsup-wg] Milestone report update

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tijani,

My participation in ICANN-40 was via remote, and the available 
bandwidth and name resolution* was not as condusive to remote 
participation as it was during the Nairobi meeting, for reasons 
unrelated to the venue network provider, or the venue regional network 
infrastructure. I did not participate in the meeting of those 
physically present at ICANN-40, and so the basis for the exchange of 
views between you and co-chair Rafik is not directly known to me.
I write because in reading your note one phrase caught my attention. 
It is this:
> I am personally against specific treatment for governmental para-statal 
> applications as they have more channels and possibilities to get funding from 
> several sources compared to NGO for example.
I've been reading the literature on the abilities of Tribal 
Governments (in the United States) to issue bonds, and the conclusion 
I'm coming to is that there is a qualitative difference between the 
abilities of governments inferior to the federal government, from 
sewer districts to municipalities to states and trans-state regions, 
and Federally Recognized Indian Tribes (a term of art in US law), and 
that this difference is quantitatively sufficient to support the 
thesis that Federally Recognized Indian Tribes generally, though 
situated interior to a highly developed national economy, which 
includes highly developed tax exempt public and non-exempt private 
means of financing the normal activities of government, lack, by the 
express intent of the surrounding national government, meaningful 
access to those means of financing the normal activities of government.
Sorry for the long sentence. In short form, tribal governments are 
barred from issuing tax exempt bonds, for the range of activities that 
non-tribal governments are allowed, and so have fewer means of 
financing a .tribe than any city has of financing a .city. Again, this 
is all US specific, and I'll post a paper on the subject in April.
I've no idea if a similar situation exists in Canada, or Mexico, or 
elsewhere in the Americas, or if similar tax constructs or more 
general rights and privileges available to polities arising from the 
colonial enterprise are not available to surviving pre-existing polities.
My point I suppose is that on average, surviving pre-colonial 
governments are likely to have lesser, rather than greater, access to 
capital, than post-colonial NGOs.
Eric

* The TimeWarner nameservers for central New York failed several times 
during the week of ICANN-40, on two occasions for several hours. This 
had the effect of making the web interface for remote participation 
unreachable, leaving only the skype (doesn't use DNS) communications 
channels as reliable means of communication.
TimeWarner nameservice and routing in central New York also failed 
during the composition of this note.