Cronyism, Incompetence & Immorality

American Kleptocracy: How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide Naked Theft | CommonDreams.org

2010-04-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

American Kleptocracy: How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide Naked Theft | CommonDreams.org

by William J. Astore

Kleptocracy -- now, there's a word I was taught to associate with corrupt and exploitative governments that steal ruthlessly and relentlessly from the people. It's a word, in fact, that's usually applied to flawed or failed governments in Africa, Latin America, or the nether regions of Asia. Such governments are typically led by autocratic strong men who shower themselves and their cronies with all the fruits of extracted wealth, whether stolen from the people or squeezed from their country's natural resources. It's not a word you're likely to see associated with a mature republic like the United States led by disinterested public servants and regulated by more-or-less transparent principles and processes.

In fact, when Americans today wish to critique or condemn their government, the typical epithets used are "socialism" or "fascism." When my conservative friends are upset, they send me emails with links to material about "ObamaCare" and the like. These generally warn of a future socialist takeover of the private realm by an intrusive, power-hungry government. When my progressive friends are upset, they send me emails with links pointing to an incipient fascist takeover of our public and private realms, led by that same intrusive, power-hungry government (and, I admit it, I'm hardly innocent when it comes to such "what if" scenarios).

What if, however, instead of looking at where our government might be headed, we took a closer look at where we are -- at the power-brokers who run or influence our government, at those who are profiting and prospering from it? These are, after all, the "winners" in our American world in terms of the power they wield and the wealth they acquire. And shouldn't we be looking as well at those Americans who are losing -- their jobs, their money, their homes, their healthcare, their access to a better way of life -- and asking why?

If we were to take an honest look at America's blasted landscape of "losers" and the far shinier, spiffier world of "winners," we'd have to admit that it wasn't signs of onrushing socialism or fascism that stood out, but of staggeringly self-aggrandizing greed and theft right in the here and now. We'd notice our public coffers being emptied to benefit major corporations and financial institutions working in close alliance with, and passing onremarkable sums of money to, the representatives of "the people." We'd see, in a word, kleptocracy on a scale to dazzle. We would suddenly see an almost magical disappearing act being performed, largely without comment, right before our eyes.

Of Red Herrings and Missing Pallets of Money

Think of socialism and fascism as the red herrings of this moment or, if you're an old time movie fan, as Hitchcockian MacGuffins -- in other words, riveting distractions. Conservatives and tea partiers fear invasive government regulation and excessive taxation, while railing against government takeovers -- even as corporate lobbyists write our public healthcare bills to favor private interests. Similarly, progressives rail against an emergent proto-fascist corps of private guns-for-hire, warrantless wiretapping, and the potential government-approved assassination of U.S. citizens, all sanctioned by a perpetual, and apparently open-ended, state of war.

Yet, if this is socialism, why are private health insurers the government's go-to guys for healthcare coverage? If this is fascism, why haven't the secret police rounded up tea partiers and progressive critics as well and sent them to the lager or the gulag?

Consider this: America is not now, nor has it often been, a hotbed of political radicalism. We have no substantial socialist or workers' party. (Unless you're deluded, please don't count the corporate-friendly "Democrat" party here.) We have no substantial fascist party. (Unless you're deluded, please don't count the cartoonish "tea partiers" here; these predominantly white, graying, and fairly affluent Americans seem most worried that the jackbooted thugs will be coming for them.)

What drives America today is, in fact, business -- just as was true in the days of Calvin Coolidge. But it's not the fair-minded "free enterprise" system touted in those freshly revised Texas guidelines for American history textbooks; rather, it's a rigged system of crony capitalism that increasingly ends in what, if we were looking at some other country, we would recognize as an unabashed kleptocracy.

Recall, if you care to, those pallets stacked with hundreds of millions of dollars that the Bush administration sent to Iraq and which, Houdini-like, simply disappeared. Think of the ever-rising cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now in excess of a trillion dollars, and just whose pockets are full, thanks to them. ...

FEMA Flood Insurance Program Primarily Benefits The Wealthy: Study

2010-04-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

FEMA Flood Insurance Program Primarily Benefits The Wealthy: Study

A policy research group study has found that the National Flood Insurance Program, a division of FEMA, primarily benefits wealthy homeowners who build in high-risk coastal areas at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.

According to the Institute for Policy Integrity'sanalysis, "Flooding the Market", the flood insurance program's subsidies help wealthy Americans with large beachfront properties or vacation homes in a typical year, and low-income individuals only during severe catastrophes. According to the study, middle-income areas are the least likely to benefit from the program in any given year.

"NFIP sometimes works like a backwards Robin Hood -- using taxpayer dollars to provide subsidies for environmentally questionable development in high income areas," said Michael Livermore, executive director of Policy Integrity. "As currently structured, the program is not well-designed to target support to the people most in need."

The way the program currently works is that the federal government steps in and provides discounted flood insurance rates for people who build in areas that are too risky to be covered by the private insurance market. Then when disaster strikes, the government (and, ultimately, taxpayers) foots the bill, which effectively redistributes wealth across income groups in ways that may not have been intended.

"This program has built up a pretty significant deficit that's unlikely to be paid off, so taxpayers will have to come in and eat a significant portion of that," Livermore said. "The folks who are least likely to benefit are people in the middle of the country and [in the middle of] the income distribution." ...

A Coal Miner's Catastrophe: Big Coal--Big Lies | CommonDreams.org

2010-04-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

A Coal Miner's Catastrophe: Big Coal--Big Lies | CommonDreams.org

by Tom Turnipseed

The worship of money is the will of God according to Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy Company that owns and operates the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia where 29 miners were killed on April 5 in a mining explosion. Blankenship is a member of the US Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and a rabid, right-wing Republican. Blankenship calls public officials concerned about climate change "greeniacs", says "greeniacs are taking over the world," and that Al Gore, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are "crazy". He accuses his critics of communism and atheism.

President Barack Obama says the pattern of management and oversight failures led to the mining disaster and called the company's safety record troubling. He instructed Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) Chief Joe Main to immediately send more inspectors to check a number of mines the agency believes are dangerous to ensure against conditions that might cause another disaster. On April 15, Obama said, "We all understand that underground mining is by its very nature dangerous. But we know what can cause mine explosions and we know how to prevent them. I refuse to accept any number of miner deaths as simply a cost of doing business,'' he continued, vowing to step up scrutiny of coal-mine safety standards. Obama pointed out that mining regulations are riddled with loopholes that allow companies to continually put miners in harm's way. The president has demanded that MSHA "streamline the rules" for a pattern of violations orders and take steps to eliminate the backlog of appeals by mine operators.

Gov. Joe Manchin has ordered the immediate inspection of all underground coal mines in West Virginia. He also asked for the state's more than 200 underground coal mines to cease production to mourn the victims of the nation's worst coal mining disaster in 40 years. The order tells state regulators to check mines that have repeatedly had combustion risks over the last year which will be partially evacuated or closed. In the past 18 months the Upper Big Branch mine was cited for over 600 safety violations, with 124 this year. Several citations were for the two chief causes of mine explosions, inadequate ventilation of explosive methane gas and illegal concentrations of coal, according to Federal records. They reveal that up to 2 million cubic feet of methane gas enter the Upper Big Branch mine every 24 hours. The ventilation system circulates less than half the volume of air needed to keep levels of combustible coal dust and methane within a safe range.

Pat McGinley, of West Virginia University law school and coal industry expert, said, "When a mine's ventilation system isn't working properly or there is an unacceptable accumulation of coal dust even for an hour, miners' lives are put at risk." It appears the giant explosion was caused by a buildup of methane gas, with high levels of coal dust. MSHA ordered the mine to temporarily cease operations at least 60 times in the last 16 months. The mine was cited for 458 violations in 2008 and 50 were "unwarrantable failures to comply." ...

Ex-CIA boss OKd destroying interrogation tapes

2010-04-24T06:11:00.000-07:00

Ex-CIA boss OKd destroying interrogation tapes

Porter J. Goss, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 2005 approved of the decision by one of his top aides to destroy dozens of videotapes documenting the brutal interrogation of two detainees, according to an internal CIA document released Thursday.

Shortly after the tapes were destroyed at the order of Jose Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the CIA's clandestine service, Goss told Rodriguez that he "agreed" with the decision, according to the document. He even joked after Rodriguez offered to "take the heat" for destroying the tapes.

"PG laughed and said that actually, it would be he, PG, who would take the heat," according to the document, an internal CIA e-mail message.

According to current and former intelligence officials, Goss did not approve the destruction before it happened, and was displeased that Rodriguez did not consult him or the CIA's top lawyer before giving the order for the tapes to be destroyed.

It was previously known that Goss had been told by his aides in November 2005 that the tapes had been destroyed. But a number of documents released Thursday provide the most detailed glimpse yet of the deliberations inside the CIA surrounding the destroyed tapes, and of the concern that the decision might put the CIA in legal jeopardy.

The documents detailing those deliberations, including two e-mail messages from a CIA official whose name has been excised, were released as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

nashville_brook's Journal - It's the Corporate Feudalism, Stupid

2010-04-23T05:29:00.000-07:00

nashville_brook's Journal - It's the Corporate Feudalism, Stupid

What the teabaggers need to understand: we're all serfs under the new feudalism their beloved leaders have created.

One thing I'd like to ask a teabagger: How are things where you work, these days? My work fucking sucks right now. Compared to 5, 10, 15 years ago, the stress level is off the charts. On the best days there's just a mopey resignation wafting about our cubicles. On bad days it's like we're all suicidal gerbils running for our lives in sharp, rusty wheels, terrified that we'll be the next rat kicked out of the cage.

We're exhausted and the positive reinforcements (raises, bonuses, vacations) that used to mitigate burnout are vague memories. And the kicker is, as much as work sucks it really sucks to be unemployed right now.

...

The New Serfdom
Serfs have no "right" to work. Instead we serve at the pleasure of our lords who bestow certain protections upon us (such as living in a house, and seeing a doctor). We enjoy these "protections" only for as long as we please our lords. There is no check on the power that's exercised in the workplace. You either suck it up or get the hell out. Often you suck up as much as possible, and you still get shit-canned. Fail to impress the wrong person at work and you face Depression-era hardships that may include homelessness, and without insurance, dying from readily curable diseases. If there's a better description of the Shock Doctrine I'd like to hear it.

The economic crisis was engineered by the lords of finance who gamed our corrupt system with transactions opaque enough to hide their looting, and the fallout from this has changed the nature of employment. There's no "free market" of labor anymore. We used to have the illusion of a free market during the dot-com bubble when you could quit your job on Tuesday and have a couple of better offers by Thursday. When there's no option other than the grave conditions at your current workplace, then you don't have a choice -- your labor is coerced, and you'll accept longer hours and less pay because there's no alternative. I believe this is fueling much of the rank-and-file teabagger anger. And it's pissing me off too.

Corporate Klepto-Feudalism
Imagine you're a new feudal lord. How valuable do you think our serfdom is? They're balancing their books on our desperation and declining salaries because they know our fealty and productivity are proportional to our level of insecurity. Things aren't going to improve for us without a fight, and right now, the only people riled up are bruising for the wrong side. The elite haven't seen this kind of power since the beginning of the industrial revolution. In a declining economy, our enslavement is jealously guarded with obscene amounts of money thrown at swarms of lawyers and lobbyists...and teabaggers themselves.

So, this is modern feudalism: the tyranny of the quarterly report. The nihilism of free-for-all capitalism has finally trickled down to your cubicle like you always knew it would. Those 29 miners died because their feudal lord was long ago awarded his own Divine Right of Kings by the kleptocracy that protects only those who pay. The judges, lawmakers and regulators whose job it was to keep those miners alive are still more interested in begging for crumbs from Massey's table, and kissing his ring than they are in doing their stated job, which is supposed to be looking after us, their constituents, and the engine of the economy. Massey can do no wrong because lords are not subject to earthly laws, that's what the Divine Right of Kings means. Ironically, this was the fundamental outrage of the original tea party: pushback against King George's divine right to our wealth and labor. ...

Madfloridian's Journal - Teach for America. A way to replace experienced, higher-salaried teachers?

2010-04-19T21:47:00.000-07:00

Madfloridian's Journal - Teach for America. A way to replace experienced, higher-salaried teachers?

Mon Apr 19th 2010, 08:36 PM From the University of Oklahoma student paper, there is an interesting point of view.

Teach for America not as good an idea as some graduates believe

The article presents it from a point of view of a social consciousness.

Those who are thinking of participating in Teach for America with a social justice mission in mind should consider this. Although a far more daunting task for sure, those really interested in social justice should consider ways of solving problems like unavoidable unemployment and low-wage jobs.

On top of failing to make a dent in poverty, Teach for America actually detracts from social justice by hurting real teachers. Teach for America students take low, entrance-level pay while also receiving a government subsidy for their salary in the form of Americorps stipends. Schools lay off teachers and then hire Teach for America teachers to fill positions that real teachers would otherwise be filling. Teach for America teachers are undercutting the wage needs of real teachers and causing them to be laid off as a result.

Imagine this: a well-off college student takes a subsidized teaching position at an impossibly low wage and displaces actual teachers who might already be struggling to get by — all for social justice!

For anyone who has any concern for labor rights, this is extremely abusive. Not undercutting wage demands of often unionized workers is rule number one of how to be a serious social justice advocate.

From Rethinking Schools this paragraph about what is happening in St. Louis schools right now. Think about this. The district is paying $2000 to Teach for America for every new trainee they send to the district. They are sending that much money to a non-profit group whose trainees get government subsidies.

Peter Downs, president of the elected school board, summarizes TFA’s role in one word: “privatization.” He says that the mayor, not the district, first invited TFA to St. Louis, in line with reforms such as for-profit charters and the privatization of services in curriculum development, teacher recruitment, maintenance, and food service. As part of its contract with TFA, the district pays $2,000 a year to TFA for each of its recruits. ...

‘Irate’ Fox execs pull Hannity from Tea Party rally | Raw Story

2010-04-17T06:01:00.000-07:00

‘Irate’ Fox execs pull Hannity from Tea Party rally | Raw Story

After learning that Fox News anchor Sean Hannity was set to headline a Tea Party event that was raising money for its coffers by charging admission, angry executives cancelled his appearance Thursday.

Network execs claimed they weren't aware that Hannity was set to be the headliner of the Tea Party event. They told reporters that they'd nixed Hannity's plans to broadcast from the site of the event in Cincinnati when they heard about it Thursday morning.

“Fox News never agreed to allow the Cincinnati Tea Party organizers to use Sean Hannity’s television program to profit from broadcasting his show from the event," Bill Shine, the network’s executive vice president of programming, told a reporter. "When senior executives in New York were made aware of this, we changed our plans for tonight’s show.” ...

A Tax Trick That Forces Companies To Close Factories | OurFuture.org

2010-04-16T21:15:00.000-07:00

A Tax Trick That Forces Companies To Close Factories | OurFuture.org

Yesterday was April 15, so I wrote about Tax Tricks. Here's a tax trick to talk about:Offshore Tax Havens for corporations.

Here's one way that offshore tax havens work. You make an item in one country, and sell it at cost to a subsidiary that is based (post office box) in a tax haven country with no or low taxes. So there is no profit to report in the country that it was made in. Then, your company or another subsidiary buys it for import in the US, for a price near to the amount the product will be sold for here. So when it sells, there is no profit to be taxed here. All the profit occurs in the low-or-no tax country. We, the People collect no taxes with which to pay for the schools and roads that make our economy competitive.

This tax trick encourages companies to move offshore, closing factories, laying off workers, kill the local suppliers and force costs onto the community. So not only are we losing the tax base and suffering the loss of the jobs and factory, we're picking up many of the costs. When a company like Whirlpool says they have toclose a plant and destroy a community for competitive reasons, it's because theycan do it, and if they don't their competitors will. If their competitors do and they don't respond they lose out, even to the possible point of going out of business (and closing factories and destroying communities.)

Don't blame the companies. Companies do what we let them do. If you don't take advantage of this your competitors will. If your competitors gain enough advantage and you don't you even face going out of business -- and closing factories, destroying communities, putting the costs on the public etc. So by allowing this, Congress forces companies to do this. The word you hear is "encourages" but really, in a competitive environment, allowing it at all forces not encourages.

It is OUR job to set up the playing field on which these companies compete and to define the rules they will use. Zach Carter writes in 10 Ways to Force the Stinking Rich to Share Their Wealth,

According to the Government Accountability Office, 83 of the 100 largest American corporations (pdf) engage in this kind of tax evasion. All of those companies have lobbyists.

These companies do it because we let them, which means we make them do it.

Congress: FIX IT!

Madfloridian's Journal - Compilation of charter school scandals over the past year.

2010-04-16T21:08:00.000-07:00

Madfloridian's Journal - Compilation of charter school scandals over the past year.

Posted by madfloridian in General Discussion
Fri Apr 16th 2010, 12:53 AM

Courtesy of the blogger called The Perimeter Primate.

It is important to keep up with such things as this because these schools get public money while being privately run and mostly deregulated. Tax money is taken from the traditional public schools and sent to the charter school with no expectation it will ever be returned.

The post is quite long, so here are just a few.

COMPILATION OF CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS April 2009 to April 2010

Some of the more egregious:

April 2009: In Springfield, Massachusetts, the New Leadership Charter School made national news when one of its 11 year-old students killed himself after severe bullying. In the school's charter renewal, the state cited it for "inconsistent implementation of the character education and leadership elements of its mission.

..."February 2010: In Philadelphia, a former administrator at Community Academy Charter School has filed a whistle-blower suit alleging that she was improperly fired the day after federal agents raided the school in August. She claims that charter school officials retaliated against her because she had filed a complaint with federal investigators detailing "a pattern of criminal misuse of local, state, and federal funds." The charter founder and CEO had five relatives on the charter's payroll and his wife was a consultant to the school.

And more and more we are finding that real estate transactions and profits are involved.

March 2010: In Oakland, California, the Oakland Charter Academy’s executive director was denied confirmation to sit on the California State Board of Education because of financial questions relating to an interlocking series of real estate business arrangements involving him and a close associate, Ben Chavis of Oakland, the former director of the American Indian Public Charter School. These two operate five Oakland charter schools.

And another from New York City: ...

Mitch McConnell's Homestate Paper Thrashes Him For 'Unabashedly Courting Wall Street Bankers For Political Money'

2010-04-15T10:02:00.000-07:00

Mitch McConnell's Homestate Paper Thrashes Him For 'Unabashedly Courting Wall Street Bankers For Political Money'

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is "unabashedly courting Wall Street bankers for political money" and "happy to scratch their backs if they'll scratch his," opines McConnell's hometown newspaper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, in an unusually strong rebuke.

In a staff editorial headlined "McConnell to big banks' rescue," the Herald-Leader decries McConnell's pandering to Wall Street executivesand repeated use of the catch phrases outlined in an anti-financial reform memo written by pollster Frank Luntz. Here's a sample of the Herald-Leader's outrage:

McConnell's statements are perfectly calibrated to inflame the public. He insists the bill would "allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks."
Their resemblance to the truth is another matter.
...
McConnell, it should be remembered, voted for the bailout of the big investment banks in the fall of 2008, when it was the only alternative to global economic meltdown.
We have read that the Republicans have a plan for financial reform, but McConnell isn't talking up any solutions, just trashing the other side's ideas with no respect for the truth.
While the intricacies of financial regulation are complicated, McConnell's calculus is pretty obvious.

Wonk Room � Rush Ignorantly Wonders ‘Where Was The Union’ At Non-Union Mine Disaster

2010-04-14T11:00:00.000-07:00

Wonk Room � Rush Ignorantly Wonders ‘Where Was The Union’ At Non-Union Mine Disaster

Last Friday, Rush Limbaugh asked why a coal miner union didn’t protect the 29 miners who were killed when Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, WV, exploded under unsafe conditions:

Was there no union responsibility for improving mine safety? Where was the union here? Where was the union? The union is generally holding these companies up demanding all kinds of safety. Why were these miners continuing to work in what apparently was an unsafe atmosphere?

Listen here:

There’s a simple reason the union didn’t protect the miners: the Upper Big Branch Mine, like nearly all of the mines under Massey CEO Don Blankenship’s control, is non-union. In fact, the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) “tried three times to organize the Upper Big Branch mine, but even with getting nearly 70 percent of workers to sign cards saying they wanted to vote for a union, Blankenship personally met with workers to threaten them with closing down the mine and losing their jobs if they voted for a union.”

Blankenship rose in Massey’s ranks by breaking its union mines in the 1980s. Blankenship said then that busting unions is “invaluable” to profits, as non-union companies can “sell coal cheaper and drive union coal out of business.”

Union mines have a significantly better safety record than non-union mines especially for major disasters, as union miners can refuse unsafe work and report dangerous conditions without fear of retaliation. In addition to preventing Blankenship-style intimidation, the proposed Employee Free Choice Act would increase whistleblower protections for non-union and union workers alike. Under Blankenship’s direction, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association have spent millions tooppose passage of such legislation for worker rights, comparing it to a “firestorm bordering on Armageddon.”

Immediately following the tragedy, the UMW sent trained support personnel to the disaster site. “We are all brothers and sisters in the coalfields at times like this,” UMW President Cecil Roberts said in a statement offering the assistance, which was refused by Massey company officials.

Was Lack Of Government Transparency A Factor In Mine Deaths?

2010-04-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

Was Lack Of Government Transparency A Factor In Mine Deaths?

Back in January, three months before the massive explosion that killed 29 miners at a Massey Energy mine in West Virginia, a federal mine safety inspector got an up-close look at both the mine's flawed ventilation system -- and Massey's cavalier approach to a potentially deadly problem.

The inspector found that the Upper Big Branch Mine's airflow -- key to keeping deadly gases and coal dust from rising to explosive levels -- was going in the wrong direction. And everyone had simply been told not to worry about it.

The mine foreman asked the superintendent "and he was told not to worry about it," the inspector wrote in his official notebook.

Miners, who the inspector pulled aside to talk to privately, "informed me that they questioned management about this condition and they were told it was fine, not to worry about it."

The Charleston Gazette's award-winning mining beat reporter Ken Ward Jr. first reported about the inspector's notes late Tuesday, describing them as being among a "dribble" of documents that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA, pronounced em-sha) is finally releasing to the public "as federal and state officials begin a long and complex effort to figure out what caused the worst U.S. coal-mining disaster in 40 years."

The violation the inspector described in his notes was fixed later that same day; the company was cited for "unwarrantable failure" to follow safety rules and fined a hefty $70,000.

But the inspector's notes -- a particularly valuable source of information that the government used to routinely make available on request -- weren't released to members of the public or to journalists until more than a week after the mine exploded. ...

Obstruction: Mine safety hindered� - Editorials - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -

2010-04-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

Obstruction: Mine safety hindered�- Editorials - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -

What caused last week's Massey Energy coal tragedy, West Virginia's worst disaster since 1968? A possible explanation seems to be emerging:

Federal safety inspectors cited the Raleigh County operation thousands of times for dangerous law violations, including buildup of explosive methane and coal dust. But Massey avoided closure of the profitable mine by snarling the U.S. bureaucracy with endless legal appeals. Lifesaving enforcement apparently was obstructed.

As reporter Ken Ward Jr. outlined Monday, stiffer federal fines were mandated after West Virginia's Sago mine tragedy in 2006. But various coal firms used their high-priced corporate lawyers to dispute two-thirds of new fines. Massey exceeded the industry average by appealing three-fourths of them. Thus many safety actions were stalled.

In February 2008, former mine safety chief Richard Stickler complained that coal owners were clogging the appeals process. In June 2008, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., protested in a Senate hearing that energy firms had dramatically increased their appeal rate. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., provided more money "to help shorten the amount of time to litigate these fines."

In June 2009, David Akrush of Public Citizen warned the White House: "Every day that these safety violations go unresolved, the chance that this nation will see another tragic mining accident grows." It was a prediction worthy of Nostradamus.

In February of this year, new U.S. mine safety director Joe Main told a House Labor Committee hearing that skyrocketing company appeals still blocked federal safety efforts. ...

Encountering Peace: The disposal of myths

2010-04-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

Encountering Peace: The disposal of myths

By GERSHON BASKIN
13/04/2010 04:44

We have been repeating the same truisms that fit appropriately with our justifications for our positions in this conflict.

Too much of what is commonly known about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is generated by the constant repetition of truisms that fit the justifications of one side’s explanations. Too few of us bother to weigh the possibility that there might be another interpretation of reality. If so, it might also suggest that our own may not be the exclusive version of truth.

I am writing this article on the basis of two pieces that appeared in this newspaper. The first, the article entitled “Proximity? It’s a start” from March 4, and a more recent article by Ben Dror Yemini – “A Fatal Blow to peace” on April 7. Both are filled with peace process truisms that have become cornerstones of Israeli popular thought. I will challenge them.

The March 4 piece states: “...that this time the Palestinians will reconcile themselves to Israel’s existence and negotiate for a viable settlement accordingly...” It is a well-known fact that the Palestinians have never really recognized Israel. Correct? Actually, no. Even in the Palestinian National Conference in November 1988 the PLO accepted the two-state solution as their strategic choice, reconciling themselves to the fact that Palestine would be established on only 22 percent of the land between the river and the sea. In September 13, 1993 Yasser Arafat exchanged letters of mutual recognition with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Arafat stated: “The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.”

In return Rabin wrote to Arafat that “the government of Israel has decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and commence negotiations with the PLO within the Middle East peace process” (hardly a balanced act of mutuality – we received recognition of our state and they received recognition of their leadership).

Surely the editors of The Jerusalem Post and Yemini would claim that the Palestinians never recognized Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, but only the existence of Israel. This is perhaps true, but until the Annapolis summit of November 2007 there was never an Israeli demand that the Palestinians recognize the Jewishness of Israel. Nor has Israel made that demand from any other state that we have diplomatic relations with – not even from Egypt or Jordan.

Most Palestinians view this demand as a new hurdle they are being forced to jump over when they have never received any Israeli assurance regarding their own national rights. They also see it as a trick to remove the refugee issue from the negotiating table, and as a means to facilitate plans from the likes of Avigdor Lieberman to expel the Palestinian citizens of Israel who are living on their own land for generations.

Of course it would be nice if the Palestinians recognized that the State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. It would please me personally, especially if we could say that it is the national-state of the Jewish people and of all of its citizens, but I can also live and make peace with the Palestinian people sufficing with their state-to-state recognition of Israel as neighbors seeking to live side by side in peace. The Jewishness of Israel will be decided by the Jews who are Israelis and not by the Palestinians. ...

Arianna Huffington: The West Virginia Mining Disaster and the Financial Crisis Have the Same Root Cause

2010-04-13T10:57:00.000-07:00

Arianna Huffington: The West Virginia Mining Disaster and the Financial Crisis Have the Same Root Cause

Officials say it's too soon to pinpoint the exact cause of the tragic explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that took the lives of 29 miners, but we certainly know enough to identify the root cause. It's the same cause that led to the 2007 Crandall Canyon mine disaster in Utah that killed six miners and three rescue workers. It's the same cause that led to the 2006 Sago mine disaster in West Virginia that killed 12 miners. And it's also the same cause that led to the Lehman Brothers disaster, the Citigroup disaster, the bursting of the housing bubble, and the implosion of our financial system: a badly broken regulatory system.

The loss of life at Upper Big Branch happened in one horrific instant. The economic collapse has not killed people, but it has gradually destroyed millions of lives. Both calamities occurred because elected officials who should have been creating a regulatory system that protects working families instead created a system that protects the corporations it was meant to watch over.

Just look at the ways in which the New York Times describes the regulatory agency that so atrociously failed the Upper Big Branch miners:

The agency "remains fundamentally weak in several areas, and it does not always use the powers it has."
"The fines it levies are relatively small, and many go uncollected for years."
"It lacks subpoena power, a basic investigatory tool."
"Its investigators are not technically law enforcement officers."
"Its criminal sanctions are weak."
"Fines remain so low that they are mere rounding errors on the bottom lines" of the companies being regulated.
It shows a "reluctance to flex all of its powers."

Sound familiar? Most of these conditions were the same ones that led to the housing bubble, credit default swaps, toxic derivatives -- and, by extension, the bank bailout, long-term unemployment with no end in sight, and the rapid acceleration of the decline of America's middle class.

The "fundamentally weak" state of America's watchdogs is the deliberate end product of massive amounts of corporate lobbying. In the case of the mining industry, the amount spent by mine owners on lobbyists intent on weakening regulations and widening loopholes hasskyrocketed from under $2.5 million in 2003 to $14 million today, with predictable results: profits up; dead miners up. ...

Congress Slashed Earmarks In 2009: White House Analysis

2010-04-12T15:22:00.000-07:00

Congress Slashed Earmarks In 2009: White House Analysis

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress obtained about 2,000 fewer pet projects for their home states last year, according to a White House analysis released Monday.

Lawmakers stuffed 9,192 so-called earmarks into spending bills last year, at a cost to taxpayers of more than $11 billion, the analysis found. By White House calculations, that's a 17 percent drop in the number of earmarks and a 27 percent reduction in cost.

...

House Republicans have sworn them off this year as they seek an edge in the November elections.

"Abuse of the earmark process is a symbol of how Washington is broken, and Washington Democrats have done far too little to fix it," said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Still, budget watchdog groups and the White House itself said the drop in earmarks is not quite that dramatic because accounting for some water projects has changed.

White House budget office spokesman Tom Gavin said that even when those projects are excluded, the cost of last year's earmarks went down by about 14 percent from the year before.

...

Once inserted by the most senior and powerful lawmakers and those on the appropriations and transportation committees, earmarks mushroomed after Republicans took over Congress in 1995.

Then, GOP leaders like Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas, saw earmarks as a way to help endangered Republicans keep their seats and to reward lawmakers loyal to GOP leaders.

When the Bush White House first counted up earmarks for 2005, with Republicans in control of the House and Senate, it discovered about 13,500 earmarks totaling about $19 billion. That's about one-third more than last year, at a 41 percent higher cost.

Excite News - AP IMPACT: In Toyota cases, evasion becomes tactic

2010-04-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

Excite News - AP IMPACT: In Toyota cases, evasion becomes tactic

Apr 11, 1:38 PM (ET)

By CURT ANDERSON and DANNY ROBBINS

MIAMI (AP) - Toyota has routinely engaged in questionable, evasive and deceptive legal tactics when sued, frequently claiming it does not have information it is required to turn over and sometimes even ignoring court orders to produce key documents, an Associated Press investigation shows.

In a review of lawsuits filed around the country involving a wide range of complaints - not just the sudden acceleration problems that have led to millions of Toyotas being recalled - the automaker has hidden the existence of tests that would be harmful to its legal position and claimed key material was difficult to get at its headquarters in Japan. It has withheld potentially damaging documents and refused to release data stored electronically in its vehicles.

For example, in a Colorado product liability lawsuit filed by a man whose young daughter was killed in a 4Runner rollover crash, Toyota withheld documents about internal roof strength tests despite a federal judge's order that such information be produced, according to court records. The attorneys for Jon Kurylowicz now say such documents might have changed the outcome of the case, which ended in a 2005 jury verdict for Toyota.

"Mr. Kurylowicz went to trial without having been given all the relevant evidence and all the evidence the court ordered Toyota to produce," attorney Stuart Ollanik wrote in a new federal lawsuit accusing Toyota of fraud in the earlier case. "The Kurylowicz trial was not a fair trial."

"Automobile manufacturers, in my practice, have been the toughest to deal with when it comes to sharing information, but Toyota has no peer," said attorney Ernest Cannon, who represented the family of 35-year-old Lisa Evans, who died in 2002 in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land.

The AP reviewed numerous cases around the country in which Toyota's actions were evasive, and sometimes even deceptive, in providing answers to questions posed by plaintiffs. Court rules generally allow a person or company who is sued to object to turning over requested information; it's permitted and even expected that defense attorneys play hardball, but it's a violation to claim evidence does not exist when it does.

Similar claims have been lodged by Dimitrios Biller, a former Toyota attorney who sued the company in August, contending it withheld evidence in considerably older rollover cases.

Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has subpoenaed some of Biller's still-undisclosed records, says they show possible violations of discovery orders.

...

Additional related lawsuits examined in the AP review found:

_Toyota hid the existence of its roof strength tests in numerous cases. A new potential class-action lawsuit filed in California on behalf of two women left paralyzed by separate Toyota rollover crashes contends that recently uncovered company documents contradict sworn testimony by Toyota officials that the company had no written standard for how far vehicle roofs could be crushed. The long-hidden documents indicate Toyota did have such a standard: roofs could come no closer than a half-millimeter from test dummies' heads in a rollover crash.

"This type of conduct by the Toyota defendants is illegal, immoral and unprofessional," said attorney E. Todd Tracy in a similar recent lawsuit accusing Toyota of fraud in older cases. "The Toyota defendants' cloak and dagger games must be terminated."

_Toyota claimed in court documents that a 2000 Camry had "no component" to record its speed at the time of a crash. A Texas woman suing the automaker asserted she was injured when the air bag failed to deploy. The case went to trial last September and ended with a jury ruling in Toyota's favor.

The attorney, Stephen Van Gaasbeck of San Antonio, later found documents showing the Camry did record such information and that Toyota had the ability to download it from vehicles as early as 1997, circumstances that now cause him to question the company's honesty.

"If we had the data, and the data said the speed was above what their air bag would have deployed at, then yes, it would have been a different case," said Van Gaasbeck. He added that an appeal based on the new information is unlikely because Texas appellate courts would likely favor Toyota based on previous rulings.

_The attorney for 76-year-old retiree Robert Elmes - hospitalized for five weeks after a 2006 crash in Pennsylvania in which he says his 2002 Camry surged forward unexpectedly - has sought repeatedly and unsuccessfully in federal court to obtain Toyota documents concerning the car's electronic throttle control.

Amnesty International: Hurricane Katrina Victims Had Human Rights Violated

2010-04-11T15:18:00.000-07:00

Amnesty International: Hurricane Katrina Victims Had Human Rights Violated

NEW ORLEANS — Amnesty International says the U.S. government and Gulf Coast states have consistently violated the human rights of hurricane victims since Hurricane Katrina killed about 1,800 people and caused widespread devastation after striking in August 2005.

Amnesty's report entitled "Un-Natural Disaster" says government actions in housing, health care and policing prevented poor minority communities from rebuilding and returning to their homes.

The White House and Louisiana and Mississippi officials said they had gone to great lengths to help people recover from Katrina.

Amnesty urged Congress to amend the nation's main disaster response legislation, the Stafford Act, to guarantee the humane and fair treatment of all disaster victims.

U.S. Steps Up Probe of Tech Hiring - WSJ.com

2010-04-11T14:25:00.000-07:00

U.S. Steps Up Probe of Tech Hiring - WSJ.com
By THOMAS CATAN And BRENT KENDALL

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department is stepping up its investigation into hiring practices at some of America's biggest companies, including Google Inc., Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Apple Inc. and IAC/InterActiveCorp., people familiar with the matter said.

The inquiry is focused on whether companies, particularly in the technology sector, have agreed not to recruit each others' employees in ways that violate antitrust law. Specifically, the probe is looking into whether the companies' hiring practices are costing skilled computer engineers and other workers opportunities to change jobs for higher pay or better benefits.

After a probe that began more than a year ago, Justice Department investigators have concluded that such agreements do raise significant competitive concerns, according to the people familiar with the matter.

But the leadership of the antitrust division hasn't yet decided whether—or how—to challenge the hiring practices, these people said. About a dozen companies are meeting with top antitrust officials at the Justice Department this week and next, some to defend their practices, others to provide information.

Antitrust experts say the Justice Department could argue that an agreement between competitors that holds down labor costs is as much a violation of antitrust laws as an agreement to fix prices.

Such agreements are "very close to the line," said Melissa Maxman, an antitrust lawyer at the law firm Cozen O'Connor. "They're not agreeing on price, but they're kind of agreeing on costs." Skilled computer scientists with some management responsibilities, for instance, often make base salaries of $180,000 to $210,000. Compensation for the most sought-after workers typically soars far above that and includes bundles of stock options and bonuses.

...

Some tech companies also say the agreements under investigation only stop them from cold calling each other's employees, not from hiring them.

The technology industry makes the case that it would be harder to enter into collaborative ventures with other companies if they fear losing valuable employees.

But Justice Department lawyers could respond that such agreements distort the labor market, theoretically harming the economy by cutting incentives for other people to enter such fields.

"In the long run, this is going to distort and depress the incentives for people to actually develop the talents and skills that are useful in this market," said Salil Mehra, a Temple University law professor who formerly worked in the Justice Department's antitrust division.

Policing the labor markets hasn't been a central focus of antitrust enforcers in recent years. But the Justice Department did act against what it saw as efforts to manipulate the labor market. It brought a civil case against a group of hospitals in Utah in 1994, alleging that they had illegally conspired to hold down nurses' wages by exchanging information about their pay.

A year later, it took action against the American Bar Association for allegedly using its accreditation process to force universities to raise law-school salaries. Both cases were settled.

The current investigation is the latest by antitrust enforcers to take aim at the often close-knit relations between tech companies, particularly in Silicon Valley.

The Federal Trade Commission's ongoing investigation into interlocking boards of tech companies forced Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, to resign from the board of Apple.

Another casualty of the FTC probe was Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson, who stepped down from Google's board. He had been doing double duty as a director for Apple and Google until the FTC started asking questions.

More recently, the decision by legendary venture-capital investor John Doerr to resign from Amazon.com's board was influenced by the FTC investigation, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Doerr—who recently declined to comment — is also on the board of Google.

—Don Clark and Jessica E. Vascellaro contributed to this article

Study: Wage Theft Rampant In Cook County | Progress Illinois

2010-04-09T21:33:00.000-07:00

Study: Wage Theft Rampant In Cook County | Progress Illinois
A new and unprecedented study of the low-wage labor market in Cook County highlights just how much abuse local workers face each and every day.

In the past year, the problem of wage theft inspired a book by Chicagoan Kim Bobo and, more recently, garnered the attention of the U.S. Labor Secretary. The Illinois Labor Department is doing all it can to protect workers, too. But a new and unprecedented study (PDF) of the low-wage labor market in Cook County highlights just how much abuse local workers face each and every day.

The comprehensive survey, conducted by Center for Urban Economic Development of the University of Illinois-Chicago, updates and localizes a study conducted last year of workers in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Having collected data on 1,140 workers from Cook County (which boasts a low-wage workforce of 310,205), the study found that 47 percent toil in offices, restaurants, or work sites where core employment laws are routinely ignored or exploited. Below are more details:

- Twenty-six percent were paid less than the minimum wage, 60 percent by more than $ 1 per hour. Another 15 percent were not paid the tipped worker minimum wage, which is lower than that for other jobs.
- For workers who worked more than 40 hours in a given week, 67 percent did not receive overtime time.
- Of the workers who experienced a serious injury while on the job, only 9 percent filed for workers compensation, forcing nearly half to pay medical bills out-of-pocket.
- Forty-three percent of workers who worked enough hours to qualify for a meal break did not receive one.
- Almost half of employees were not provided a pay stub, which is required by state law.

The workers surveyed made $322 per week on average, but lost an average of $50 due to these forms of theft. Add that up across the region and you're talking about $7 million that isn't making its way into workers wallets (or the local economy.)

The Illinois Department of Labor tells WBEZ that they were able to recover $3.1 million in unpaid wages and overtime payments last year. While that figure is encouraging, it represents just a tiny step when compared to the rampant violations the UIC researchers estimate are taking place. ...

Toyota to hand off pension bill to U.S. | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

2010-04-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

Toyota to hand off pension bill to U.S. | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

Toyota is leaving a $131-million pension shortfall to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. as it closes the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant in Fremont, Calif., April 1, said Sergio Santos, president of UAW Local 2244.

But the PBGC, a federal corporation charged with protecting pension benefits of 44 million Americans, wants to discuss ways Toyota can reduce the gap.

The agency has taken legal action to gain control of the NUMMI pension plan. PBGC spokesman Gary Pastorius said the agency wants to talk to Toyota about alternatives to a takeover, "but it just hasn't happened yet. We still have questions."

NUMMI said it had met its obligations regarding the plan when the PBGC began court action, according to a memo issued by Tracy Wakefield, a human resources manager.

Toyota operated NUMMI jointly with General Motors from 1983 until GM's withdrawal last summer.

Santos said NUMMI and Toyota imposed a "gag order that I believe violates our First Amendment rights," preventing workers from commenting on the plant closure.

NUMMI spokesman Lance Tomasu said the union voluntarily pledged not to denigrate NUMMI or Toyota as part of the shutdown agreement.

In recent days, Toyota sweetened the severance offer from $253 million to $281 million for the about 4,500 NUMMI workers, Santos said. Each hourly worker will receive a base severance of $21,175, plus supplements that vary based on years of service, the union president said. ...

Michael Hunter, Former New Orleans Cop, Admits Coverup In Post-Katrina Danziger Bridge Murders

2010-04-07T21:10:00.000-07:00

Michael Hunter, Former New Orleans Cop, Admits Coverup In Post-Katrina Danziger Bridge Murders

NEW ORLEANS — A former New Orleans police officer told federal authorities he saw a fellow officer shoot and kick unarmed, wounded civilians in a deadly incident on a bridge in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, marking the first time an officer has provided federal authorities with an eyewitness account of the events.

The former officer, Michael Hunter, pleaded guilty Wednesday to helping cover up the shootings on the Danziger Bridge less than a week after the August 2005 storm.

A court filing Wednesday that describes Hunter's account of the shootings contradicts a police report that said civilians shot at officers before the police opened fire, killing two people and wounding four others.

Seeing no danger to officers, Hunter says he shouted "Cease fire!" after an unidentified sergeant with an assault rifle and other officers opened fire on a group of unarmed civilians who took cover behind a concrete barrier on the bridge.

After they stopped firing, Hunter says he saw several civilians who appeared to be unarmed, injured and subdued.

"(The sergeant) suddenly leaned over the concrete barrier, held out his assault rifle, and, in a sweeping motion, fired repeatedly at the civilians lying wounded on the ground," the filing says. "The civilians were not trying to escape and were not doing anything that could be perceived as a threat."

Moments later, Hunter saw two men later identified as Lance Madison and his 40-year-old mentally disabled brother, Ronald, running away near the bottom of the bridge....

Excite News - Scientist: FDA suppressed imaging safety concerns

2010-04-01T05:57:00.000-07:00

Excite News - Scientist: FDA suppressed imaging safety concerns

By MATTHEW PERRONE

WASHINGTON (AP) - A former Food and Drug Administration scientist said Tuesday his job was eliminated after he raised concerns about the risks of radiation exposure from high-grade medical scanning.

Dr. Julian Nicholas said at a public hearing that he and other FDA staffers "were pressured to change their scientific opinion," after they opposed the approval of a CT scanner for routine colon cancer screening. Nicholas said that he objected to exposing otherwise healthy patients to the cancer risks of radiation.

After FDA officials pushed ahead with plans to clear the device, Nicholas, now a physician at the Scripps Clinic in San Diego, said he and eight other staffers raised their concerns with the division's top director Dr. Jeffrey Shuren last September. The device apparently is still under review.

"Scientific and regulatory review process for medical devices was being distorted by managers who were not following the laws," Nicholas said. A month later Nicholas' position was terminated, he said.

...

Hundreds of studies have linked certain types of radiation, including the type used in medical imaging, to cancer that can surface decades later.

FDA medical reviewer Dr. Robert Smith, a colleague of Nicholas who also presented at Tuesday's public meeting, said he hoped the FDA would learn a lesson from Nicholas' testimony.

"Science must not be ignored, suppressed or distorted as that endangers the public," Smith told the audience.

Smith, who still works for the agency, supported Nicholas' conclusion that CT scanning for colon cancer should be rejected on safety grounds. ...

CREW, VoteVets File IRS, FTC Complaints Against Sean Hannity Charity Freedom Concerts

2010-03-31T09:47:00.000-07:00

CREW, VoteVets File IRS, FTC Complaints Against Sean Hannity Charity Freedom Concerts

Freedom Concerts, Sean Hannity's scholarship charity for the children of fallen soldiers, has violated its charitable tax status, according to a Washington advocacy group.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington alleges that Hannity's Freedom Concerts has "engaged in deceptive and illegal marketing practices by suggesting that all concert ticket sale revenue goes directly to scholarships for children of killed and wounded service members." CREW and veterans groupVoteVets have filed complaints with the IRS and the Federal Trade Commission about Freedom Concerts, Freedom Alliance, and Lt. Col. Oliver North.

The two groups hosted a joint press conferenceMonday to discuss their complaints. VoteVets Chair Jon Soltz questioned Freedom Concert's priorities. "It's appalling and absurd that... 80-90% of the money [raised] is going toward overhead, not scholarships," Soltz said.

"They've made statements that 100% of [all] funds go toward scholarships," said Melanie Sloan, the executive director of CREW. "This is the kind of deceptive marketing the FTC looks poorly upon."

Freedom Concerts events have been organized by Premier Marketing, according to conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel and CREW. Premier Marketing is operated by Duane Ward, the speaking engagement agent for both Sean Hannity and Oliver North, according to Schlussel.

According to CREW, Freedom Concerts donates some money to Freedom Alliance, an organization founded by North. He is now the group's honorary chairman.

A little more than a week ago, Schlussel called out Hannity's charity for what she described as a "huge scam":

...less than 20%-and in two recent years, less than 7% and 4%, respectively-of the money raised by Freedom Alliance went to these causes, while millions of dollars went to expenses, including consultants and apparently to ferry the Hannity posse of family and friends in high style. And, despite Hannity's statements to the contrary on his nationally syndicated radio show, few of the children of fallen soldiers got more than $1,000-$2,000, with apparently none getting more than $6,000, while Freedom Alliance appears to have spent tens of thousands of dollars for private planes. ...

OpEdNews - Article: Brutal Prisons Are Hurting Us All

2010-03-22T07:19:00.000-07:00

OpEdNews - Article: Brutal Prisons Are Hurting Us All

For OpEdNews: Stephen Unger - Writer

Get caught stealing a lamb in 18th century England and you wound up dancing in the air at the end of a rope. Recidivism was not a problem. But the "hang 'em high" approach did not work all that well due to corruption and soft-hearted juries.

If we give up the idea of executing all convicted criminals, what should we do with them? Transporting them to Australia was another British solution, but that probably isn't an option today. Rejecting other old England ideas such as branding and the pillory, the principal solution of choice today in the US is, of course, the prison. But, since it would be far too expensive to imprison all convicts for life, nearly all of them have to be released at some point.

Unfortunately, rather than deter people from committing crimes, our system seems to have the reverse effect, as a lot of inmates are brutalized by their prison experience and come out worse than when they went in. The overall effect is to train and motivate criminals. Most of those released wind up back inside within a few years. The cost of this failure to all of us is enormous, both in human and in monetary terms [1]. Before considering possible solutions, let's take a look at what exists today.

...

Inmates are often assaulted by both prison guards and by other prisoners. Many violent inmates belong to prison gangs, who exercise considerable control over life within the walls. Prison authorities often find it convenient to tolerate gangs.

A substantial number of convicts are uneducated to the point of illiteracy. Many suffer from mental or physical illnesses that directly or indirectly got them into trouble. These factors add substantially to their difficulty in fitting into normal life after release.

If our prison system were truly serious about reducing recidivism, then major efforts would be made to educate prisoners and to treat their physical and mental problems. Addiction to drugs and alcohol would also be addressed. Few prison systems make more than token efforts along these lines. The result is that most convicts are back in -prison within three years after release. ...

If we could improve the system so as to reduce recidivism from over 50% to say, less than 30%, the number of criminals. both on the street and behind bars, would be greatly reduced. The number of people hurt by criminals in various ways would fall dramatically, and the costs of the system would eventually go down sharply. The beneficiaries would also include those currently committing the crimes, and their families.

Another, more idealistic, reason for concern is well captured in the quote below, from an unexpected source:

The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country. A calm and dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused against the state and even of convicted criminals against the state, a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment, a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry of all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment, tireless efforts towards the discovery of curative and regenerating processes and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if only you can find it in the heart of every person.

I'll bet you didn't guess that these words were written by that well known bleeding heart liberal, Winston Churchill. This is part of a statement he made a century ago when, as Home Secretary in the British cabinet, he proposed major reforms in the British penal system [6].

When thinking about convicted criminals it is natural to picture vicious hoodlums gunning down gas station attendants or raping 16 year olds. Sadly, such people do exist, and need to be dealt with appropriately. I'll get back to them shortly. First, let's understand that they constitute a small fraction of the prison population, The majority of prison inmates are there because they were caught with 6 ounces of marijuana or crack cocaine, or stole a car, or forged a check, or stole a jacket from a department store, or a DVD player from someone's house. Many of the violent crimes committed by other inmates were of the nature of bar room brawls. The point is that the great majority of those in prison, especially the younger people, are far from being beyond redemption. ...

Who Gets Locked Up?

Note first that the US leads the world in the incarceration race. We have more prisoners, roughly 2.3 million, and more prisoners per capita than any other country. Think of it! The land of the free jails more people than China or Russia!

...

Right Plays the Race Card | People For the American Way

2010-03-21T20:56:00.000-07:00

Right Plays the Race Card | People For the American Way

RIGHT WING LEADERS FOMENT RACIAL RESENTMENT AND POINT FINGERS TO AVOID ACCOUNTABILITY

Introduction

Right-wing pundits and political leaders committed to the destruction of the Obama presidency have been openly fomenting racial resentment or tolerating those who do. In one breath, they accuse President Obama of being racist and in the next they and their media allies howl with indignation if their own racial rhetoric is challenged. Among their charges: that President Obama hates "white culture" and that his health care reform efforts are a backdoor means to reparations for slavery that will "enslave" doctors and put the "racial grievance industry" in charge of emergency rooms.

Race-baiting pundits try to insulate themselves by falsely claiming that liberals play the "race card" to equate any criticism of the Obama administration with racism. In fact, this charge is itself an example of inflaming racial resentments for political gain. In other words, crying "You can't even criticize Obama without being called a racist" is just one more way to suggest that white conservatives are being oppressed.

At the same time, Religious Right leaders insist that Obama's election has put the nation under a "curse" and ask Black Christians to repent for putting "race over God."

It is imperative that political, media, and cultural leaders be willing to hold public figures accountable for destructive rhetoric while not allowing right-wing racial arsonists to divert energy and focus from the administration's legislative agenda. The most important question is not whether a particular pundit or politician harbors racist feelings; it is whether they are fomenting and inflaming racial resentment as a political strategy without concern for the destructive and dangerous consequences. That political behavior can and must be challenged without getting stuck in "is he or isn't he" arguments. ...

The BRAD BLOG : Feds Finds Massive Fraud in Bush's $150 Billion Iraq Reconstruction; Also Looking at Afghanistan

2010-03-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

The BRAD BLOG : Feds Finds Massive Fraud in Bush's $150 Billion Iraq Reconstruction; Also Looking at Afghanistan

...

Investigators looking into corruption involving reconstruction in Iraq say they have opened more than 50 new cases in six months by scrutinizing large cash transactions - involving banks, land deals, loan payments, casinos and even plastic surgery - made by some of the Americans involved in the nearly $150 billion program.

Some of the cases involve people who are suspected of having mailed tens of thousands of dollars to themselves from Iraq, or of having stuffed the money into duffel bags and suitcases when leaving the country, the federal investigators said. In other cases, millions of dollars were moved through wire transfers. Suspects then used cash to buy BMWs, Humvees and expensive jewelry, or to pay off enormous casino debts.

Some suspects also tried to conceal foreign bank accounts in Ghana, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Britain, the investigators said, while in other cases, cash was simply found stacked in home safes.

There have already been dozens of indictments and convictions for corruption since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But the new cases seem to confirm what investigators have long speculated: that the chaos, weak oversight and wide use of cash payments in the reconstruction program in Iraq allowed many more Americans who took bribes or stole money to get off scot-free.

But by all means, let's focus instead on ACORN, which helps some 400,000 low-income families in 75 cities with basic needs, because they've received an average of $3.5 million in federal dollars to help with their efforts for each of the last 15 years.

That's "million" (with an m), as opposed to the "billions" as still misreported by James O'Keefe and the other journalistic malpracticers at "Andrew Breitbart Presents...Big Government." Six months ago, in a still-uncorrected item at Breitbart's website --- their first one on the phony ACORN "pimp" hoax videos --- O'Keefe mis-reported that ACORN "receive[s] billions in tax money."

Whiff of Eugenics: Ginsburg Tells NYT Roe Was About 'Populations That We Don't Want .... Too Many Of' | NewsBusters.org

2010-03-20T06:18:00.000-07:00

Whiff of Eugenics: Ginsburg Tells NYT Roe Was About 'Populations That We Don't Want .... Too Many Of' | NewsBusters.org

In a July 7 New York Times Magazine article ("The Place of Women on the Court"; HT to an e-mailer) apparently scheduled to appear in its July 12 print edition (based on its URL), Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the Times's Emily Bazelon that "at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of."

Who is this "we" Ginsburg refers to?

Alleged reporter Bazelon did not follow up on this astounding admission.

...

Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.

Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

Q: When you say that reproductive rights need to be straightened out, what do you mean?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: The basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman.

OpEdNews - Article: Tax Records Show Hannity Freedom Concerts Mostly Fund White Collar Write-Offs

2010-03-20T06:08:00.000-07:00

OpEdNews - Article: Tax Records Show Hannity Freedom Concerts Mostly Fund White Collar Write-Offs

For OpEdNews: Gustav Wynn - Writer

Top-rated talk host Sean Hannity is incessant in plugging his Freedom Concert tours on the radio, advertised as fundraisers for a great cause: college tuition money earmarked for the children of slain US troops. His disclaimers always included the usual mumbo-jumbo if you listen closely, 100% of the profits would be going to the families of our heros.

But where creative accounting can make almost anything look like an "expense", many have wondered what kind of money is going to the families and how much is being used for all the paper-pushing, marketing, consulting or direct mail jobs, bureaucratic overhead, patronage contracts or worse.

A nasty donnybrook recently begun by ultra-right wing blogger Debbie Schlussel asked some of these questions, accusing Hannity and the Freedom Alliance of exploiting public trust. Schlussel described lavish travel expenses and favored treatment for Hannity's pals, interspersed with descriptions of paltrey donations given to soldiers with grotesque injuries.

But the official tax returns filed by the Freedom Alliance did indeed show that the foundation's overhead was far greater than it's charitable payouts for the last three years. Just 7-12% of funds were directed towards "grants and allocations" meaning they give far less percentage-wise than other scholarship funds such as the United Negro College Fund's average rate of approximately 50%.

Because the Freedom Alliance writes off expenses of up to ten million dollars per year before funds are allocated for these families, it seems the operation is far more efficient at creating white-collar jobs for right-wing foundation staffers and third party consultants, air travel, "caging services" or mailing list providers than it is at raising money for military families....

Ground Zero workers settlement unfair: judge | Raw Story

2010-03-20T05:51:00.000-07:00

Ground Zero workers settlement unfair: judge | Raw Story

NEW YORK (AFP) – A proposed 657-million-dollar health settlement for some 10,000 people who worked at Ground Zero after the September 11 attacks was too low and must be renegotiated, a judge ruled Friday.

"In my judgment, this settlement is not enough," federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein said in New York after hearing two hours of testimony from plaintiffs in the huge case.

"There are some questions that have to be addressed," he added, calling for "additional negotiations to come up with a fair deal."

Last week, a preliminary deal was announced in which a government-funded insurance company would compensate more than 10,000 people claiming health problems from their work in the toxic debris of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the 2001 attacks.

The deal needs the court's approval to go ahead, as well as the backing of 95 percent of plaintiffs. They would have 90 days to review the proposal before making a decision.

Hellerstein singled out payment of lawyers' fees, which are expected to amount to some 200 million dollars or more -- about a third of the compensation package.

The judge said the insurance company, not the plaintiffs should foot the attorneys' bill. "The fees should be paid by the Captive Insurance" company, he said. ...

Leaders in House Block Earmarks to Corporations - NYTimes.com

2010-03-11T05:31:00.000-08:00

Leaders in House Block Earmarks to Corporations - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — House Democratic leaders on Wednesday banned budget earmarks to private industry, ending a practice that has steered billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to companies and set off corruption scandals.

The ban is the most forceful step yet in a three-year effort in Congress to curb abuses in the use of earmarks, which allow individual lawmakers to award financing for pet projects to groups and businesses, many of them campaign donors.

But House Republicans, in a quick round of political one-upmanship, tried to outmaneuver Democrats by calling for a ban on earmarks across the board, not just to for-profit companies. Republicans, who expect an intra-party vote on the issue Thursday, called earmarks “a symbol of a broken Washington.”

...

The House ban came less than two weeks after the public release of an investigation by theOffice of Congressional Ethics laid bare the pay-to-play culture on Capitol Hill, particularly on the defense appropriations subcommittee. The report found that there was a “widespread perception” among the private-sector recipients of earmarks that giving political contributions to lawmakers on the panel helped secure the grants.

Even so, the House ethics committee on Feb. 26 cleared seven members of the defense panel — five Democrats and two Republicans — of accusations that they had improperly tied earmarks to contributions. The decision prompted protests from government watchdog groups, who said the standard the committee had set for ethical wrongdoing would open the way to further abuse of the earmark process.

The practice of inserting earmarks into spending bills, once used fairly sparingly by Congress as a way of imposing its budget priorities on the executive branch, has mushroomed, with lobbyists competing for the attention of committee members who control the money. Congress, which can award no-bid contracts at its discretion, doled out nearly $16 billion in awards last fiscal year.

Banks step up spending on lobbying to fight proposed stiffer regulations - latimes.com

2010-03-08T20:12:00.000-08:00

Banks step up spending on lobbying to fight proposed stiffer regulations - latimes.com

WALL STREET

Banks step up spending on lobbying to fight proposed stiffer regulations

Expenditures jumped 12% to $29.8 million last year among the eight financial firms that spent the most to influence legislation.

By Nathaniel Popper

February 16, 2010

Even as the financial industry has sought to keep a low public profile, some of the country's largest banks have ramped up their spending on lobbying to fight off some of the stiffest regulatory proposals pending in Congress.

Lobbying expenditures jumped 12% from 2008 to $29.8 million last year among the eight banks and private equity firms that spent the most to influence legislation, according to data compiled from disclosure forms filed with Congress.

The biggest spender was JPMorgan Chase & Co., whose lobbying budget rose 12% to $6.2 million, enough for the firm to have more than 30 lobbyists working for it. Among other banks, spending on lobbying rose 27% at Wells Fargo & Co. and 16% at Morgan Stanley.

"I have never seen such a scrum of bank lobbyists as I have in the last year -- and I've worked on quite a few bank issues over the years," said Ed Mierzwinski, a lobbyist for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a coalition of state consumer organizations. "It seems like everybody is out of work except for bank lobbyists."

Much of the increase in spending on lobbying in 2009 came in the final three months of the year as Congress voted on financial reform bills. Many Washington observers say industry lobbying has been even more intense this year, as President Obama has proposed a new tax on big banks, caps on their size, and curbs on their investment in often lucrative but risky hedge funds and private equity funds.

"This is a watershed moment," said Scott Talbott, a lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, which represents about 100 of the largest financial firms. "The industry will be changed forever after this year."

Bank lobbyists, however, are trying to limit just how much the industry has to change. They are fighting some provisions in the Obama administration's broad industry-overhaul proposal, especially a plan to create a consumer protection agency to oversee financial services.

The House passed its version of the legislation in December. But its prospects are uncertain in the Senate, where talks between Republicans and Democrats on a compromise version recently broke down.

At a hearing this month, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who has had a generally warm relationship with the financial community, lashed out at the "refusal of large firms to work constructively with Congress."

"Too many people in the industry have decided to invest in an army of lobbyists, whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms that we are working so hard up here to try to achieve," Dodd said. ...

Ethics panel clears 7 on earmarks - washingtonpost.com

2010-02-27T06:18:00.000-08:00

Ethics panel clears 7 on earmarks - washingtonpost.com

By Paul Kane and Carol D. Leonnig

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 27, 2010

The House ethics committee ruled Friday that seven lawmakers who steered hundreds of millions of dollars in largely no-bid contracts to clients of a lobbying firm had not violated any rules or laws by also collecting large campaign donations from those contractors.

In a 305-page report, the ethics committee declared that lawmakers are free to raise campaign money from the very companies they are benefiting so long as the deciding factors in granting those "earmarks" are "criteria independent" of the contributions. The report served as a blunt rejection of ethics watchdogs and a different group of congressional investigators, who have contended that in some instances the connection between donations and earmarks was so close that it had to be inappropriate.

"Simply because a member sponsors an earmark for an entity that also happens to be a campaign contributor does not, on these two facts alone, support a claim that a member's actions are being influenced by campaign contributions," the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct said in a unanimous statement.

Ethics watchdogs issued sharp denunciations, citing portions of the report that showed that the private companies thought their donations helped them win earmarks. The lawmakers -- Reps. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), Peter J. Visclosky (D-Ind.) and C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.) -- claimed vindication.

...

... In fiscal 2008 alone, the seven lawmakers sponsored $112 million worth of earmarks for clients of the PMA Group while accepting more than $350,000 in contributions from the firm's lobbyists and its clients, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group.

The final word on this practice may come from the Justice Department. The PMA Group folded a year ago after an FBI raid on its Arlington offices, part of an investigation into whether its founder and staff directed illegal campaign contributions to lawmakers who helped clients obtain earmarks. Last spring, a federal grand jury issued subpoenas to Visclosky, a former aide and his political committees.

Congress subpoenas thousands of allegedly damaging Toyota documents | Raw Story

2010-02-26T05:09:00.000-08:00

Congress subpoenas thousands of allegedly damaging Toyota documents | Raw Story

The head of embattled Toyota has bowed to calls to testify in US Congress as lawmakers demand a whistleblower lawyer hand over potentially damning internal company documents on alleged safety defects.

A key congressional committee has subpoenaed former Toyota lawyer Dimitrios Biller, who has accused the world's biggest car maker of hiding and destroying evidence of safety problems and of "a culture of hypocrisy and deception".

Toyota is recalling more than eight million cars worldwide for defects linked to more than 30 deaths in the United States that have sparked a host of US lawsuits which could cost the company billions of dollars in damages. ...

Payments in question - baltimoresun.com

2010-02-21T07:05:00.000-08:00

Payments in question - baltimoresun.com

WASHINGTON — - Former Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele's personal political accounts were billed at least $188,000 by Washington law firms during his first year as chairman of the Republican National Committee, according to state and federal disclosure reports.

Steele used state campaign funds to pay the law firms, but the specific purpose for most of the expenditures wasn't disclosed, in apparent violation of Maryland reporting guidelines.

Some of the costs appear to involve activity that predated his tenure as Republican national chairman. An RNC spokesman declined comment, on grounds that the payments didn't involve national party business.

...

According to elections board guidance, campaign finance reports "are supposed to inform the public on how the campaign funds are being used. Simply recording a large expenditure for 'consultant services' is not sufficiently descriptive."

...

Last summer, the Republican State Central Committee agreed to return $77,500 to Steele's state campaign committee, which improperly spent leftover campaign funds to help settle an old legal bill dating from Steele's service as Maryland Republican chairman.

...

Over the years, Steele has been dogged by questions involving finances.

His decision to continue giving paid speeches while serving as party chairman drew criticism recently from some former RNC chairmen, who said that he should treat the position as a full-time job.

Steele, who is paid $223,500 a year plus benefits, also received undisclosed royalties for a book published last month. His defenders have pointed out that some of his predecessors as Republican chairman also received outside income in addition to their party salary. ...

Washington Times - Stimulus foes see value in seeking cash

2010-02-14T19:57:00.000-08:00

Washington Times - Stimulus foes see value in seeking cash
...

Sen. Christopher S. Bond regularly railed against President Obama's economic stimulus plan as irresponsible spending that would drive up the national debt. But behind the scenes, the Missouri Republican quietly sought more than $50 million from a federal agency for two projects in his state.

Mr. Bond was not alone. More than a dozen Republican lawmakers, while denouncing the stimulus to the media and their constituents, privately sent letters to just one of the federal government's many agencies seeking stimulus money for home-state pork projects.

The letters to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, expose the gulf between lawmakers' public criticism of the overall stimulus package and their private lobbying for projects close to home.

"It's not illegal to talk out of both sides of your mouth, but it does seem to be a level of dishonesty troubling to the American public," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

In a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Mr. Bond noted that one project applying to the USDA for stimulus money would "create jobs and ultimately spur economic opportunities."

He and other lawmakers make no apologies for privately seeking stimulus money after they voted against it and continue to criticize the plan: "I strongly opposed the stimulus, but the only thing that could make it worse would be if none of it returned to the taxpayers of Missouri," said Mr. Bond, who is retiring.

But watchdog groups say the lawmakers' public talk and private letters don't square, highlighting a side of government spending largely overshadowed by the "earmarking" process. While members of Congress must disclose their earmarks — or pet projects they slip into broader spending bills — the private funding requests they make in letters to agencies fall outside of the public's view.

"There is a definite disconnect between the public statements and the private letters," said Thomas A. Schatz, president of the nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste. "It does seem inconsistent to say you're against the bill but then you want some little piece of it." ...

Rep. Joe Wilson, South Carolina Republican who became famous after yelling, "You lie," during Mr. Obama's addresses to Congress in September, voted against the stimulus. Nonetheless, Mr. Wilson elbowed his way into the rush for federal stimulus cash in a letter he sent to Mr. Vilsack on behalf of a foundation seeking funding.

"We know their endeavor will provide jobs and investment in one of the poorer sections of the Congressional District," he wrote to Mr. Vilsack in the Aug. 26, 2009, letter.

...

Also facing a competitive race, Rep. Pat Tiberi, Ohio Republican, in October called the final Democratic stimulus bill "loaded with [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi's grab bag of big spending wishes" and that it "saddles future generations with mountains of debt."

He struck a different tone in a letter to Mr. Vilsack.

"While this project is intended to expand rural broadband in Alaska, I understand that the project could support businesses and jobs in communities across the country," Mr. Tiberi wrote, citing one such company in his district.

...

Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican, who easily won re-election in 2008, said of the stimulus, "This is spending, not stimulus."

In a letter to Mr. Vilsack for a project applying for stimulus money, Mr. Alexander noted, "It is anticipated that the project will create over 200 jobs in the first year and at least another 40 new jobs in the following years." ...

Daily Kos: Shelby holds Senate hostage to win military contract for European firm

2010-02-05T09:10:00.000-08:00

Daily Kos: Shelby holds Senate hostage to win military contract for European firm

by Jed Lewison

Fri Feb 05, 2010

As you may have heard, U.S. Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL) has placed a hold on all Obama Administration nominees, effectively holding every Obama appointment hostage to the Senate's filibuster rule.

So what's Shelby's ransom? Basically, he wants the Pentagon contract for aerial refueling tankers to be awarded to Airbus, the European aerospace firm, instead of Boeing, the domestic aerospace giant. Why does Shelby want to award a key military contract to a foreign company? Because portions of the Airbus-built tankers would be assembled in Alabama.

Marcy Wheeler explains:

The key issue is that Shelby wants the Air Force to tweak an RFP for refueling tankers so that Airbus (partnered with Northrup Grumman) would win the bid again over Boeing. The contract had been awarded in 2008, but the GAO found that the Air Force had erred in calculating the award. After the Air Force wrote a new RFP in preparation to rebid the contract, Airbus calculated that it would not win the new bid, and started complaining. Now, Airbus is threatening to withdraw from the competition unless the specs in the RFP are revised.
Essentially, then, Shelby’s threat is primarily about gaming this bidding process to make sure Airbus–and not Boeing–wins the contract (there’s a smaller program he’s complaining about, too, but this is the truly huge potential bounty for his state). ...

Josh Silver: Senator Franken Rips Into Comcast CEO Brian Roberts

2010-02-05T08:53:00.000-08:00

Josh Silver: Senator Franken Rips Into Comcast CEO Brian Roberts

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and NBC President Jeff Zucker testified in front of House and Senate subcommittees Thursday as regulators decide whether to allow the proposed merger of the two media giants. Comcast is the largest cable TV and residential high-speed Internet company in the nation. NBC is one of the largest content providers.

...

"You'll have to excuse me if I don't trust these promises, and that is from experience in this business," Franken said. "It matters who runs our media companies....the media are our source of entertainment, but they're also the way we get our information about the world. So when the same company produces the programs and runs the pipes that bring us those programs, we have a reason to be nervous."

We sure do. Here are 10 more reasons to be very afraid of the proposed Comcast/NBC merger:

1) Comcast Buys Influence
The communications industry is, after all, second only to Big Pharma in Washington influence-peddling. Comcast spent more than $5.5 million in campaign contributions since 2006 alone to have their way in Washington. That's not counting more than $50 million they've spent on lobbying in the past three years!

2) How Much Is Enough?
Comcast earned more than $3.6 billion in profits in 2009 while claiming they didn't have enough money to invest in faster Internet networks ... and while raising rates as much as 50 percent over the past five years in some markets.

3) Fat Cat CEO
In 2008, CEO Brian Roberts was ranked as one of five "Highest Paid Worst Performers" in America. 2008 income: $40.8 million. Sitting on Capitol Hill yesterday, he raked in more than $100,000.

4) Bad Customer Service
Comcast ranked second only to AOL in poor customer service, according to a 2009Zogby/MSM Money poll. Comcast service is so bad they drove a 75-year-old woman named Mona Shaw to wreck one of their stores with a hammer.

5) Comcast Lies and Plays Dirty
In official 2006 testimony, Comcast Vice President David L. Cohen said: "If Comcast were to try to 'deny, delay, or degrade' the Internet experience that our more than 9 million cable Internet customers have paid for, how can we possibly expect to keep them as customers. ... Any provider that does not meet the needs of users will suffer from a serious backlash from consumers and policymakers."

In 2008, after being caught illegally blocking content Cohen admitted: "Comcast may on a limited basis temporarily delay certain P2P traffic." That's the same year Comcast was caught paying for seat fillers at a public FCC hearing into their illegal Internet blocking. Only this year, after being censured by the FCC, did Roberts admit to the company's "mistake."

6) Comcast Censors Political Speech
Comcast prevents ads from running that criticize the company's political friends. They evenfired a newscaster who dared to question an award they were bestowing on Bill O'Reilly.

7) Comcast Blocks Independent Voices
Despite digging up our city streets and enjoying a near-monopoly for decades, Comcast has consistently tried to shirk its community responsibilities - including trying to kick public, educational and government channels into the cable-tier equivalent of Siberia. ...

Sen. Conrad, Deficit Hawk, Brings U.S. Dollars Home to North Dakota - WSJ.com

2010-02-05T08:29:00.000-08:00

Sen. Conrad, Deficit Hawk, Brings U.S. Dollars Home to North Dakota - WSJ.com

...

Mr. Conrad has long pushed to curb deficit spending. As a freshman senator, he had a hand in a bruising 1990 budget deal that raised taxes and restrained spending. In 1993 and 1997, he backed legislation that trimmed Medicare and required Congress to pay for all spending hikes or tax cuts.

Those steps helped pave the way for surpluses beginning in 1998. With increased taxes, a booming economy and strict spending restraints, Congress racked up surpluses until 2001, the longest such stretch since the 1920s.

"Those balanced budgets got us to stop borrowing from the Social Security trust fund," Mr. Conrad says. "That was our high-water mark, if you will."

While advocating fiscal responsibility at the national level, the senator has ministered adroitly to one of the most government-dependent states in the country: a vast swath of parched prairie that is home to needy military air bases, Indian reservations, an aging population of 639,000 and thousands of farmers who, over the last decade, have collectively gobbled up an average of $715 million a year in crop subsidies and disaster payments.

"His heart is in the right place," says Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office who now advises Republican campaigns. "But when your party, your colleagues, and even your constituents are all pressuring you to give in to the dark side, it's tough to make real progress." ...

Study: Charter schools promote segregation, perform worse than traditional schools | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

2010-02-05T08:24:00.000-08:00

Study: Charter schools promote segregation, perform worse than traditional schools | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

by Tom Weber, Minnesota Public Radio

November 26, 2008

Nearly 20 years after Minnesota passed the nation's first charter school law, charters in the Twin Cities continue to perform worse, are more segregated than traditional public schools and are forcing those traditional public schools to become more segregated.

Those are the findings of a new report called "Failed Promises" -- from the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota.

But the conclusions are not necessarily swaying those who run charters.

...

Orfield's research team gathered test scores and other data from all traditional public and charter schools in the Twin Cities. That other data included poverty measurements, as a way of lining up schools in similar economic situations.

What they found was charter schools performed worse than traditional public schools.

To read the entire report, click here.

The report also looks at schools' racial make-up, and includes a map that plots all metro area charter schools. It shows segregated schools far outnumber integrated - and in some cases, predominately white schools are surrounded by predominately non-white schools.

To see a map of Twin Cities charter schools, click here.

This is the result of charters locating in poor neighborhoods where kids are having bad experiences in the public schools, Orfield says.

"Parents that have had a bad experience with the public schools will take almost any choice, and they will move to the charter school. This will pull enrollment out of the public school, so you have two schools racing towards more segregated schools - and both types of schools are doing badly," he says. ...

Charter schools' growth promoting segregation, studies say - latimes.com

2010-02-05T08:22:00.000-08:00

Charter schools' growth promoting segregation, studies say - latimes.com

A UCLA study is one of two finding that the increasingly popular campuses skew toward racially separate student bodies. Charter advocates criticize the reports.

The growth of charter schools has promoted segregation both in California and nationwide, increasing the odds that black, Latino and white students will attend class with fewer children who look different from themselves, according to two new studies.

Charter school advocates contend that the researchers' presumptions about racial separation are out of date. They said parents -- including low-income minority parents -- are turning to charters for a quality education that traditional schools have not provided.

...

The trend toward segregation was especially notable for African American students. Nationally, 70% of black charter students attend schools where at least 90% of students are minorities. That's double the figure for traditional public schools. The typical black charter-school student attends a campus where nearly three in four students also are black, researchers with the Civil Rights Project at UCLA said Thursday.

The other researchers also focused on economic segregation, looking at private companies that manage schools, in most cases charters. The enrollments at most of these campuses exacerbated income extremes, they concluded. Charters tended to serve higher-income students or lower-income students. Charters also were likely to serve fewer disabled students and fewer English learners. This report, soon to be officially released, was developed by education policy centers at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Arizona State University.

Both research teams, using somewhat different methods and data, questioned the direction of the Obama administration, which has pushed states to authorize more charter schools as a condition for receiving funding through "Race to the Top" grants. That position has proved to be powerful leverage as states struggle with decreased funding.

"We don't want the Race to the Top to become a race to the past," said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project, alluding to the era of enforced segregation.

Orfield's UCLA team previously documented how court decisions since 1991 had gradually eroded the halting progress in integration. Segregation remains a marker for inequality, just as it was in the 1950s, he said. ...

McConnell Raised Big Bucks From Foreign Defense Contractor Probed For Bribery | TPMMuckraker

2010-02-04T08:24:00.000-08:00

McConnell Raised Big Bucks From Foreign Defense Contractor Probed For Bribery | TPMMuckraker

In the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has been quick to denounce a bid by Democrats to stop foreign corporations from pouring money into U.S. elections, claiming current law already bars such spending. As we've reported before, it's not nearly as simple as that -- but McConnell should know: The GOP Senate leader has raked in campaign cash from a subsidiary of a major foreign defense contractor that's currently being investigated by the Justice Department for bribery.

As we reported yesterday, McConnell, a longtime foe of efforts to get money out of politics, last week took to the Senate floor to pooh-pooh the notion that the court's decision could allow a flood of foreign money to sway our elections, citing an existing law that prevents foreign nationals, including corporations, from spending on U.S. elections. But that ban doesn't cover the U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies, or to foreign-owned corporations that incorporate in the U.S.

...

Since 2005, McConnell has received $21,000 -- spread between his campaign and his leadership PAC -- from a PAC run by BAE Systems Inc., according to federal campaign disclosure records examined by TPMmuckraker. BAE Systems Inc. is the American subsidiary of BAE Systems, the world's second largest defense contractor, headquartered in Britain.

In addition, United Defense Industries, another defense contractor bought by BAE in 2005, reportedlypledged half a million dollars to the McConnell Center at the University of Louisville, a political science foundation that the senator created.

McConnell has been good to BAE, which owns a facility in Louisville, Kentucky. For fiscal year 2010, the senator requested earmarks for the company worth a combined $17 million.

BAE is hardly a squeaky clean corporate citizen, either. The Justice Department is conducting an ongoing investigation (pdf) into allegations that the company bribed members of the Saudi Royal family, including the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, in support of a mulit-billion dollar, decades-long deal to barter arms for oil.

To be sure, as election lawyer Kenneth Gross points out, the existing law does make it illegal for foreign corporations to "funnel foreign corporate funds through domestic entities or to have foreign officers, directors, or employees direct foreign or domestic funds with regards to federal, state, or local elections."

But in practice, reform advocates argue, this prohibition doesn't get to the root of the issue. Even if a U.S. subsidiary uses its own funds to contribute, and the decision to contribute is made only by Americans, the money nonetheless comes from a subsidiary of a foreign corporation, whose officers can hardly be expected not to act with that interest in mind.

Haitians receive little help despite promises - Mail & Guardian Online: The smart news source

2010-01-19T08:04:00.000-08:00

Haitians receive little help despite promises - Mail & Guardian Online: The smart news source

World leaders pledged massive aid programmes to rebuild Haiti but desperate earthquake survivors were still waiting on Sunday for food, water and medicine.

View the Mail & Guardian Online's photo gallery.

Five days after a 7.0 magnitude quake killed up to 200 000 people, international rescue teams clawed away at the rubble of collapsed buildings in the wrecked capital, Port-au-Prince, in a race against time to find more survivors.

But logistical logjams kept major relief from reaching the hundreds of thousands of hungry Haitians waiting for help, many of them sheltering in makeshift camps on streets strewn with debris and decomposing bodies.

"I'm going there with a very heavy heart. This is one of the worst humanitarian crises in decades. The damage, destruction, loss of life is just overwhelming," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said as he boarded a flight for Haiti on Sunday.

The United Nations was feeding 40 000 people a day and hoped to increase that to one million within two weeks, he said. "The challenge at this time is how to coordinate all of this outpouring of assistance." ...

After Haiti's earthquake: Growing deadlier | The Economist

2010-01-18T09:02:00.000-08:00

After Haiti's earthquake: Growing deadlier | The Economist

SIX days after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, the extent of the damage and suffering is becoming clearer. The misery exceeds even the most pessimistic expectations. There are no reliable estimates of the death toll, but according to Jean-Max Bellerive, the prime minister, the government disposed of 20,000 bodies in the first four days after the tremor, most of them dumped into mass graves without any attempt to determine their identities. Despite these efforts, Port-au-Prince, the capital, is still littered with corpses and survivors have resorted to placing toothpaste or orange peel under their noses to fight the stench. On Sunday January 17th, Mr Bellerive guessed that 70,000 people had died in Port-au-Prince and Leogane (the city closest to the epicentre), before counting those killed in the country’s heavily affected south-western peninsula.

Both Haiti’s endemic misery and the obstacles for rescue workers are in the spotlight. Earthquakes of similar magnitude have struck bigger cities in richer countries and claimed just a few dozen lives. But the absence of building codes in Haiti, as well as a severe wood shortage because of mass deforestation, mean that many structures in urban areas are made of thin, low-quality concrete. Such concrete is both prone to collapse and dangerous for those who are hit by it or buried beneath it. Ironically, some of the country’s poorest benefited from living in tin-roofed shacks, which were much easier to escape from.

US waves white flag in disastrous 'war on drugs' - Americas, World - The Independent

2010-01-17T08:28:00.000-08:00

US waves white flag in disastrous 'war on drugs' - Americas, World - The Independent

After 40 years of defeat and failure, America's "war on drugs" is being buried in the same fashion as it was born – amid bloodshed, confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under review, and a newly confident region is no longer prepared to swallow its fatal Prohibition error. Indeed, after the expenditure of billions of dollars and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of people, a suitable epitaph for America's longest "war" may well be the plan, in Bolivia, for every family to be given the right to grow coca in its own backyard.

The "war", declared unilaterally throughout the world by Richard Nixon in 1969, is expiring as its strategists start discarding plans that have proved futile over four decades: they are preparing to withdraw their agents from narcotics battlefields from Colombia to Afghanistan and beginning to coach them in the art of trumpeting victory and melting away into anonymous defeat. Not surprisingly, the new strategy is being gingerly aired in the media of the US establishment, from The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald.

Prospects in the new decade are thus opening up for vast amounts of useless government expenditure being reassigned to the treatment of addicts instead of their capture and imprisonment. And, no less important, the ever-expanding balloon of corruption that the "war" has brought to heads of government, armies and police forces wherever it has been waged may slowly start to deflate.

Prepare to shed a tear over the loss of revenue that eventual decriminalisation of narcotics could bring to the traffickers, large and small, and to the contractors who have been making good money building and running the new prisons that help to bankrupt governments – in the US in particular, where drug offenders – principally small retailers and seldom the rich and important wholesalers – have helped to push the prison population to 1,600,000; their imprisonment is already straining federal and state budgets. In Mississippi, where drug offenders once had to serve 85 per cent of their sentences, they are now being required to serve less than a quarter. California has been ordered to release 40,000 inmates because its prisons are hugely overcrowded.

At the same time, some in the US are confused and fear that the new commission proposed by Congressman Eliot Engel, a man with a record of hostility to the Cuban and Venezuelan governments, may prove to be a broken reed. As he brought in his bill he added timidly: "Let me be absolutely clear that this bill has not been introduced to support the legalisation of illegal drugs. That is not something that I would like to see."

Part of the reason for the slow US retreat from the "war" is that the strategy of fighting it in foreign lands and not at home has proved valueless. Along the already sensitive frontier with Mexico the effect of US attempts to enforce a hard line by blasting drug dealers away has been bloody. Anxious to keep in check the flood of illegal immigrants into territory that once belonged to Mexico, Washington is building a wall and fence comparable to that which once cut through Berlin and that which is today causing havoc between Israelis and Palestinians.

In the areas of Mexico closest to the US frontier the toll of deaths in drug-related violence exceeded 7,000 people in 2009 (1,000 of them dying in January and February). This takes the death toll over three years to above 16,000, figures far in excess of US fatalities in Afghanistan. The bloodshed has continued despite – or perhaps because of – the intense US pressure on President Felipe Calderon to station a large part of the Mexican army in the region. It is deploying 49,000 men on its own soil in the campaign against drugs, a larger force than the 46,000 Britain sent to take part in the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. But still the blood flows.

As in Colombia, where a multibillion-dollar US subsidy maintains that country's armed forces, there are well-founded suspicions that military operations are often rendered futile because the miserably paid local commanders and individual soldiers are easily bought off by drug dealers.

The quiet expiry of the "war" has dawned slowly on a world focused on the US's more palpable conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last month, the US House of Representatives gave unanimous approval to a bill creating an independent commission to reconsider domestic and international drug policies and suggest better ones. Congressman Engel, a Democrat from the Bronx and the sponsor of the bill, declared: "Billions upon billions of US taxpayer dollars have been spent over the years to combat the drug trade in Latin America and the Caribbean. In spite of our efforts, the positive results are few and far between." ...

GOP, Warning Of A 'New EPA', Oppose Independent CFPA

2010-01-07T05:30:00.000-08:00

GOP, Warning Of A 'New EPA', Oppose Independent CFPA

Senate Republicans are determined to prevent the creation of an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency because they consider it as threatening as their current arch-nemesis regulator: the Environmental Protection Agency.

Consumer advocates, meanwhile, say the CFPA must have strong, independent authority to craft and enforce rules. Anything less, they argue, would be too much of a concession to banks that have gotten enough already.

"From the Republican point of view, the idea of a separate agency is still anathema," said Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah, a senior Republican on the banking committee. An independent agency, he said, can go too far in the direction of tight regulation without taking into account the effect of the rules it creates on business and the economy. He said he's seen it happen before.

"Can you say EPA?" he asked, lifting his eyebrows. The Republican Party has regretted for years that President Richard Nixon made the EPA independent. ...

RebelReports - Stunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know

2010-01-04T05:10:00.000-08:00

RebelReports - Stunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know

Contrary to popular belief, the US actually has 189,000 personnel on the ground in Afghanistan right now—and that number is quickly rising.

By Jeremy Scahill

A hearing in Sen. Claire McCaskill’s Contract Oversight subcommittee on contracting in Afghanistan has highlighted some important statistics that provide a window into the extent to which the Obama administration has picked up the Bush-era war privatization baton and sprinted with it. Overall, contractors now comprise a whopping 69% of the Department of Defense’s total workforce, “the highest ratio of contractors to military personnel in US history.” That’s not in one war zone—that’s the Pentagon in its entirety.

In Afghanistan, the Obama administration blows the Bush administration out of the privatized water. According to a memo [PDF] released by McCaskill’s staff, “From June 2009 to September 2009, there was a 40% increase in Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan. During the same period, the number of armed private security contractors working for the Defense Department in Afghanistan doubled, increasing from approximately 5,000 to more than 10,000.”

At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of contractors that often goes unmentioned: 3,600 State Department contractors and 14,000 USAID contractors. That means that the current total US force in Afghanistan is approximately 189,000 personnel (68,000 US troops and 121,000 contractors). And remember, that’s right now. And that, according to McCaskill, is a conservative estimate. A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan.

The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts.

...

As for waste and abuse, the subcommittee says that the Defense Contract Audit Agency identified more than $950 million in questioned and unsupported costs submitted by Defense Department contracts for work in Afghanistan. That’s 16% of the total contract dollars reviewed.

The Washington Monthly

2009-12-30T10:55:00.000-08:00

The Washington Monthly

December 29, 2009

ABSTAINING FROM MAKING SENSE.... If there's one thing conservatives claim to hate, it's wasteful federal spending on programs that have been proven not to work.

Unless we're talking about funding for abstinence programs, in which case conservatives lovewasteful federal spending on programs that have been proven not to work.

Proponents of sex education classes that focus on encouraging teenagers to remain virgins until marriage are hoping that the rescue plan for the nation's health-care system will also save their programs, which are facing extinction because of a cutoff of federal funding.
The health-care reform legislation pending in the Senate includes $50 million for programs that states could use to try to reduce pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease among adolescents by teaching to them to delay when they start having sex.
Under the federal budget signed by President Obama, such programs would no longer have funds targeted for them.
"We're optimistic," said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association, which is lobbying to maintain funding for the programs. "Nothing is certain, but we're hopeful."

Bush/Cheney spent about $150 million a year on abstinence programs that failed miserably. Obama's budget directs funds to "teenage pregnancy prevention" for programs that have been "proven effective through rigorous evaluation." The right objected, arguing that limiting funding to effective programs would exclude their preferred initiatives. Obama didn't budge.

But abstinence proponents believe health care reform might offer new opportunities, in large part because Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) pushed a measure to provide $50 million to states to use for abstinence programs. It was approved in committee thanks to the support of a couple of conservative Democrats, and for some reason, the provision ended up as part of the legislation passed by the Senate. (Hatch described himself as being "as surprised as anyone" to see the provision remain in the bill.)

Reality has been stubborn on the question of abstinence effectiveness, and policymakers shaping the final health care bill would be wise to acknowledge it. The nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy found that abstinence programs do not affect teenager sexual behavior. A congressionally-mandated study, which was not only comprehensive but also included long-term follow-up, found the exact same thing. Researchers keep conducting studies, and the results are always the same.

This isn't complicated. Simply telling teenagers not to have sex doesn't affect behavior, doesn't prevent unwanted pregnancies, and doesn't stop the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases. Teens who receive comprehensive lessons of sexual health, with reliable, accurate information, are more likely to engage in safer, more responsible behavior. ...

Sandy Rosenthal: Recent Ruling Shows True Tragedy of Katrina was Federal Government's Creation of the Disaster Itself

2009-12-28T09:08:00.000-08:00

Sandy Rosenthal: Recent Ruling Shows True Tragedy of Katrina was Federal Government's Creation of the Disaster Itself

Few paid attention two years ago when U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval found the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Government squarely responsible for the flooding destruction in New Orleans during Katrina.

Even though the judge thundered over how the Corps squandered millions on building a levee system "... known to be inadequate by the Corps' own calculations..," few people paid much attention.

  Because the judge had to dismiss the case. 

Though judged responsible for the failure of its flood control structures, the Corps, nonetheless, was protected from any financial liability due to the Flood Control Act of 1928.

The American people, conditioned to believe that if there is no financial liability then the case has no merit, went on with their lives. 

Even though over 600 died directly due to the floodwall collapses, and billions upon billions of dollars damage were documented, most Americans ignored the ruling and its significance.

 But on November 18, 2009, Judge Duval ruled again, this time finding the Corps directly and financially responsible for the destruction of most of New Orleans and wrote, "...the Corps' lassitude and failure to fulfill its duties resulted in a catastrophic loss of human life and property in unprecedented proportions...."

This time the issue was the failure of a navigation structure, not a flood control structure.   And now, the American people are sitting up and taking note.

The media is reporting and focusing on how the ruling would "open the floodgates" to more than 100,000 claims pending against the Army for its defective engineering and poor planning.

Americans are now paying attention, and so it's important that they receive accurate information before they become distracted again.

The last time the nation's people were listening they were handed a great deal of disinformation.

When the Corps-built levees broke on August 29, 2005, retired spokespersons for the Corps quickly fanned out to talk to national reporters about why New Orleans flooded so horrifically.

Using a technique documented by Georgianne Nienaber, these spokespersons gave out crafted misinformation with help from the Corps' public relations companies designed to shift responsibility for the flooding away from the federal agency. The myths and misinformation was then pedaled by an often understaffed news media satisfying an American public thirsting for details.  

  By the time the media attention abated, household opinion was that the people of south Louisiana were reckless for living in their own homes and stupid for rebuilding, even though many lived in family homes that have been in place for generations, even centuries.  

The single most common diffusion technique the Corps used to shift responsibility for its broken levees away from itself was in claiming that New Orleans locals blocked the Corps' grand plans for perimeter barrier structures that would have kept water out of the city. This implied that the locals were to blame for the catastrophic flooding during Katrina four years ago. ...

.....

Here is what really happened according to the Decision-Making Chronology for the Lake Pontchartrain & Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project by Douglas Woolley and Leonard Shabman, both water resources planning and policy experts.

...

Conclusion:
The issue with changing of the law was a matter of cost share. Furthermore, this 70-30 cost share is the same in all fifty states for USACE built water protects, and is not unique to New Orleans. For the Corps to blame the locals for the Lakeview flooding because they successfully changed the cost share arrangement is disingenuous.

......

And there is no evidence of the Corps being coerced to do anything outside its will.

The literature and internet are filled with verbal statements from Corps of Engineers spokespersons during the years 2005 and 2006 saying that they were "forced" to abandon their grand plans for peripheral barrier structures for both the outfall canals and the barrier structures. But none of this literature contains references to the necessary documentation or other evidence. And all of it is refuted in 2007 and later.  

....

And hopefully, it will lead to a re-examinination of an archaic law, the Flood Control Act of 1928, that provides no incentive to the Army Corps of Engineers to build flood protection properly nor mete out professional consequences should it fail.

Former head of CDC lands lucrative job as president of Merck vaccine division (opinion)

2009-12-27T18:28:00.000-08:00

Former head of CDC lands lucrative job as president of Merck vaccine division (opinion)

You've heard it before, how the pharmaceutical industry has a giant "revolving door" through which corporations and government agencies frequently exchange key employees. That reality was driven home in a huge way today when news broke that Dr. Julie Gerberding, who headed the CDC from 2002 through 2009, landed a top job with Merck, one of the largest drug companies in the world. Her job there? She's the new president of the vaccine division.

How convenient. That means the former head of the CDC was very likely cultivating a relationship with Merck all these years, and now comes the big payoff: Heading up a $5 billion division that sells cervical cancer vaccines (like Gardasil), chickenpox vaccines and of course H1N1 swine flu vaccines, too.

So what's the problem with all this? The problem is that private industry and government health offices such as the CDC or FDA should never be so cozy. When they are, it creates an environment of collusion between Big Government and Big Pharma. We've already seen this with the government-led push for swine flu vaccines that are manufactured (and sold) by drug companies like Merck.

You might even say that the CDC already functions as the marketing division of the pharmaceutical industry. It was the CDC that pushed so hard for swine flu vaccines, even amid the obvious realization that swine flu was no more dangerous than seasonal flu. To this day, the CDC still hasn't bothered to recommend vitamin D for the prevention of either seasonal flu or swine flu. It remains heavily invested in the lucrative vaccine approach -- an approach that just happens to financially benefit the very corporations that are hiring ex-CDC employees like Dr. Gerberding.

How to triple your salary ...

Getting a job offer from Big Pharma, by the way, is one of the most-desired career paths for many CDC employees (and FDA workers, for that matter). It's easy to accomplish it, too: Just operate in your government position as if you were a Big Pharma lackey. If you produce enough good business for the drug industry, sooner or later they'll offer you a lucrative position that doubles or triples your government salary (or even better).

Now, I don't want to lump all CDC employees in this same pathetic group, because there are indeed a great many bright, honest scientists working at the CDC who do excellent work tracking pandemics and trying to save lives. They are overshadowed, however, by those ambitious profit seekers who see their CDC job as merely a stepping stone for a far better-paying job at a major drug companies. And by any measure, Dr. Gerberding just cashed in big. ...

Feds investigating Stanford ties to lawmakers: report | Reuters

2009-12-27T13:24:00.000-08:00

Feds investigating Stanford ties to lawmakers: report | Reuters

MIAMI (Reuters) - U.S. federal authorities are investigating millions of dollars contributed by accused fraudster Allen Stanford and his staff to U.S. lawmakers over the past decade, the Miami Herald reported on Sunday.

U.S.

The newspaper said the Justice Department investigation aimed to determine whether the banker received special favors from politicians while he was operating his alleged $7 billion Ponzi scheme centered on fraudulent certificates of deposit issued by his offshore bank in Antigua and Barbuda.

The Miami Herald said an email sent to Stanford by Texas Republican Representative Pete Sessions on the day authorities announced fraud charges against the billionaire financier, as well as $2.3 million in contributions he made to Sessions and other U.S. lawmakers, were "part of the government's inquiry."

It said Stanford, who has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting a trial set for January 2011, also spent $5 million on lobbying since 2001, and successfully lobbied in 2001 to kill a bill that would have exposed the flow of millions into his secretive offshore bank on the Caribbean island of Antigua.

The following year he helped block legislation that would have led to more government scrutiny of his now disgraced Antigua bank, the newspaper said. ...

...

It said Stanford also funded Caribbean trips for a group of U.S. lawmakers known as the Caribbean Caucus, including Sessions and Democrats Gregory Meeks of New York and Donald Payne of New Jersey.

The newspaper said most of the members of Congress contacted it contacted about their ties to Stanford declined to discuss them, other than to say they had returned the contributions.

Prosecutors say Stanford paid tens of thousands of dollars in bribes for years to a top financial regulator in Antigua and Barbuda to shield his Ponzi scheme from U.S. investigators. ...

A Whistle-Blower at Deutsche Bank Building Is Now an Outcast - NYTimes.com

2009-12-07T20:39:00.000-08:00

A Whistle-Blower at Deutsche Bank Building Is Now an Outcast - NYTimes.com

Marshal Greenberg is an odd, unlikely whistle-blower.The son of an accused organized crime associate, he earned more than $100,000 a year operating the elevator that ferried workers and supplies up and down the exterior of the former Deutsche Bank building during its troubled demolition.

He was hefty and heavily tattooed, a middle-aged man with a cushy job, a powerful father and a host of compelling reasons to keep his head down and his mouth shut.

Instead Mr. Greenberg embraced his job with a Barney Fife kind of zeal. He photographed unsafe conditions at the Manhattan building. He reported dangerous practices to supervisors and safety inspectors.

Smoking near compressors. Shot glasses left behind at a work station. Drug use. Stealing.

“Everybody has a right to work in a safe environment,” Mr. Greenberg said. “I was careful. That’s my job.”

For his efforts, Mr. Greenberg says, union co-workers and construction supervisors threatened and abused him, ridiculed his size, his skin condition and his chatty way with government regulators.

And after a fire at the building in 2007 killed two firefighters, someone even fingered him as an arsonist. For days, investigators treated him like the prime suspect.

Actually, the blaze was caused by careless smoking, like the kind Mr. Greenberg had reported, investigators concluded, and the firefighters’ deaths were blamed on unsafe conditions, like a standpipe that was dismantled. Two construction supervisors have been accused of criminal negligence in the deaths.

But Mr. Greenberg says he does not feel vindicated, only shunned.

Long a member of the Operating Engineers Local 14, who is credited with saving a woman on the day of the fire, Mr. Greenberg says he is now an outcast: unwelcome at his old job, unable to find work at any other.

“I’m treated like public enemy No. 1, all because I did the right thing,” Mr. Greenberg, 39, said.

He is suing the contractors who employed him, Bovis Lend Lease and the John Galt Corporation, accusing them of retaliating against him for telling the truth. Bovis, in court papers, has denied his claims. Galt has yet to file its court papers, and declined comment. ...

Baucus Nominated Melodee Hanes, His Girlfriend, For U.S. Attorney

2009-12-06T05:45:00.000-08:00

Baucus Nominated Melodee Hanes, His Girlfriend, For U.S. Attorney

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus was romantically involved with a former staffer when he recommended her earlier this year to become the next U.S. attorney for Montana, a spokesman said.

The Montana Democrat and his former state office director Melodee Hanes began their relationship in the summer of 2008 after Baucus separated from his wife, Ty Matsdorf told The Associated Press late Friday.

Baucus nominated Hanes for the U.S. attorney post in March. But she later withdrew, saying she had been presented with other opportunities she couldn't pass up.

,,,

Most recently Baucus has been at the center of an effort to move sweeping health care legislation through the Senate with a bill aimed at meeting Obama's goal of overhauling the nation's health care system to cover 30 million more Americans over the next decade.

On Friday, Baucus went against his party and backed a Republican effort to eliminate a long-term care insurance program to help seniors and the disabled. Republicans argued that the new plan would be a drain on the federal budget.

The Democrat has also been in the middle of other congressional battles: He played a key role in 2003 legislation adding a prescription-drug benefit to the Medicare program and enactment of President George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001.

Senator Ben Nelson and His Connections to the Health Care Industry | Public Campaign Action Fund

2009-11-29T21:52:00.000-08:00

Senator Ben Nelson and His Connections to the Health Care Industry | Public Campaign Action Fund

On May 1, 2009 Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson came out against including a public health insurance plan option as part of this year’s health care reform legislation. Sen. Nelson called the inclusion of a public plan a “deal-breaker,” according to Congressional Quarterly.1
...

Before entering politics, Ben Nelson spent his career as an insurance executive, insurance company lawyer and, early in his career, Nebraska’s state insurance regulator. He was chief executive officer of an insurance company and has sided with and received political support from business groups opposed to a public health plan as part of health reform.

“Nelson enjoyed a successful career in insurance law,” says his Senate website. “He has served as CEO of the Central National Insurance Group, as chief of staff and executive vice president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and as director of the Nebraska Department of Insurance.”3
In his 2006 re-election campaign, Nelson received endorsements from the National Federation of Independent Business, the Business-Industry Political Action Committee, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. According to the Lincoln Journal Star, “NFIB jointed BIPAC (Business-Industry Political Action Committee) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in handing the Democratic senator strong business support.”4 These lobbies are either publicly opposed to a public insurance option, or are expected to be.

CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

Sen. Nelson has depended on the insurance and health care industries to pay for his campaigns for public office.5

According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Sen. Nelson has raised more than $2 million from insurance and health care interests in his three campaigns for federal office.
Sen. Nelson has received $1,195,299 from insurance interests, $399,345 from health professionals, $258,483 from the pharmaceutical industry, and $195,138 from hospital and nursing home interests.
Of Sen. Nelson’s campaign contributions from the insurance and health care industries, 83.4% have come from out of state sources, according to our analysis of data downloaded from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Lehman, Bear Stearns Execs Cashed In As Their Firms Failed: Study

2009-11-23T17:41:00.000-08:00

Lehman, Bear Stearns Execs Cashed In As Their Firms Failed: Study

If you thought that the executives at Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns paid dearly in when their firms famously imploded last year, think again.

A new study by three professors at the Program for Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School reexamines the "standard narrative" of the loss of wealth suffered by top leaders at Bear and Lehman. The top five executives at Bear and Lehman were able to sell billions in stock holdings from 200-2008, the study notes, while most shareholders saw their investments in the two firms decimated.

During the same period, the study notes, "the shareholder payoffs these teams produced were indisputably poor." From the study:

Overall, we estimate that the top executive teams of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers derived cash flows of about $1.4 billion and $1 billion respectively from cash bonuses and equity sales during 2000-2008. These cash flows substantially exceeded the value of the executives' initial holdings in the beginning of the period, and the executives' net payoffs for the period were thus decidedly positive. The divergence between how the top executives and their shareholders fared implies that it is not possible to rule out, as standard narratives suggest, that the executives' pay arrangements provided them with excessive risk-taking incentives.

...

The study arrives a conclusion long-held by critics of the financial industry. In short, Wall Street pay was specifically structured to encourage short-term gains:
"...the executives were the able to obtain large amounts of bonus compensation based on high earnings in the years preceding the financial crisis, but did not have to return any of those bonuses when the earnings subsequently evaporated and turned into massive losses. Such a design of bonus compensation provides executives with incentives to seek improvements in short-term earnings figures even at the cost of maintaining an excessively high risk of large losses down the road."
Interestingly, the study suggests that Wall Street's bonus culture may not be the largest cause of the excessive risks taken by the industry. Fixing compensation isn't merely an issue of increasing stock awards and limiting bonuses; in fact, the study steers clear of suggestions that pay should be capped. Instead, the study argues that the failure of Bear and Lehman suggest that compensation clawbacks should be considered.
READ the report here: ...
BCS-Wages-of-Failure-Nov09 -

Sanford Faces 37 Charges by State Ethics Board - NYTimes.com

2009-11-23T14:42:00.000-08:00

Sanford Faces 37 Charges by State Ethics Board - NYTimes.com

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina will face formal ethics charges on 37 counts of using his office for personal financial gain, according to a list of allegations issued by the state ethics commission on Monday.

The charges on the list include spending state money on business-class plane tickets, instead of flying coach; using state aircraft to attend political and personal events, like the birthday party of a campaign contributor; and using his campaign fund for noncampaign expenses, like a ticket to President Obama’s inauguration.

The list provides the first details of the accusations that the ethics commission will pursue after a wide-ranging review of Mr. Sanford’s travel and financial records, citing incidents from September 2005 to April 2009. ...

Judge: Hurricane Katrina Flooding Was Caused By Army Corps Of Engineers' Negligence

2009-11-23T14:00:00.000-08:00

Judge: Hurricane Katrina Flooding Was Caused By Army Corps Of Engineers' Negligence

NEW ORLEANS — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers' failure to properly maintain a navigation channel led to massive flooding in Hurricane Katrina, a decision that could make the federal government vulnerable to billions of dollars in claims.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval sided with six residents and one business who argued the Army Corps' shoddy oversight of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet led to the flooding of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. He said, however, the corps couldn't be held liable for the flooding of eastern New Orleans, where two of the plaintiffs lived.

Duval awarded the plaintiffs $720,000, but the government could eventually be forced to pay much more in damages. The ruling should give more than 100,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.

The ruling is also emotionally resonant for south Louisiana. Many in New Orleans have argued that Katrina, which struck the region Aug. 29, 2005, was a manmade disaster caused by the Army Corps' failure to maintain the levee system protecting the city.

"Total devastation could possibly have been avoided if something had been done," said Tanya Smith, one of the plaintiffs. "A lot of this stuff was preventable and they turned a deaf ear to it."

...
Duval referred to the corps' approach to maintaining the channel as "monumental negligence."
...

In his 156-page ruling, Duval said he was "utterly convinced" that the corps' failure to shore up the channel "doomed the channel to grow to two to three times its design width" and that "created a more forceful frontal wave attack on the levee" that protected St. Bernard and the Lower 9th Ward.

"The Corps had an opportunity to take a myriad of actions to alleviate this deterioration or rehabilitate this deterioration and failed to do so," Duval said. "Clearly the expression 'talk is cheap' applies here." ...

Gretchen Morgenson: Lobbyists Win Again In Securing Tax Break For Home Builders

2009-11-15T15:13:00.000-08:00

Gretchen Morgenson: Lobbyists Win Again In Securing Tax Break For Home Builders

The New York Times's Gretchen Morgensonpoints out that lobbyists have won another victory that will lead to billions in taxpayer dollars being handed over to firms that helped spur the economic crisis.

The Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009, which President Obama just signed into law, contains "a tax break that lets big companies offset losses incurred in 2008 and 2009 against profits booked as far back as 2004," Morgenson reports. (Read the full storyhere.)

The administration estimates that the tax breaks will be worth some $33 billion, and home builders -- who analysts say were key players in the financial crisis by building and financing too many homes -- stand to benefit enormously.

One of the more shocking elements of Morgenson's piece is just how large a rate of return these home builders got for the money they spent on lobbying for this tax break:

Securing this tax break was a top priority for home builders, lobbying records show. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that through Oct. 26 of this year, home builders paid $6 million to their lobbyists. Last year, the industry spent $8.2 million lobbying...

...Among individual companies, Lennar spent $240,000 lobbying while companies affiliated with Hovnanian Enterprises spent $222,000. Pulte Homes spent $210,000 this year.
That's some return on investment. After spending its $210,000, Pulte will receive $450 million in refunds. And Hovnanian, after spending its $222,000, will get as much as $275 million.

Even as unemployment continues to rise and the Obama administration's foreclosure plan appears to be failing, Congress and the White House are signing off on tax breaks that reward those who are partly responsible for our financial predicament.

To follow more lobbying shenanigans, check out HuffPost's LobbyBlog.

The Board Of The ‘Voice Of Business’ Is A Republican Money Machine ... [best government money can buy]

2009-11-14T20:35:00.000-08:00

Think Progress � The Board Of The ‘Voice Of Business’ Is A Republican Money Machine

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which purports to be “the voice of business,” is run by a Republican money machine. As the nation’s largest lobbying shop, the Chamber is spending millions of dollars from its corporate members against President Obama’s progressive agenda of health care, energy, and financial reform. The Chamber claims that the “board’s membership is as diverse as the nation’s business community itself,” but this is false. A ThinkProgress analysis of federal election contribution data compiled by the LittleSis project has found that the Chamber’s 116-member board of directorshas given more than six times as much money to Republican candidates and committees ($4,741,747) as it has to Democrats ($778,282), with $1,074,697 flowing to corporate political action committees:

Source: Center for American Progress Action Fund, from Federal Election Commission data compiled by the LittleSis project of the Public Accountability Initiative.

The top beneficiary of this outpouring of conservative cash is the Republican National Committee, which has received over ten times as much money from the Chamber’s board as the Democratic National Committee — $1,257,201 versus $102,950. Contributions went 4.5 to 1 for John McCain ($373,150) versus Barack Obama ($82,150).

Source: Center for American Progress Action Fund, from Federal Election Commission data compiled by the LittleSis project of the Public Accountability Initiative.

Of the board’s 116 members, 96 have made major political contributions. Sixty-eight directly contributed to the campaigns of George W. Bush or John McCain. In contrast, only 27 gave to the campaigns of Al Gore, John Kerry, or Barack Obama. Forty-seven board members, including Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue, have contributed more than 90 percent to Republicans, averaging $74,634 in GOP contributions. Only seven members have contributed more than 90 percent to Democrats, averaging $3,529 to Democrats. ...

Conflicts of interest? Dr. Mehmet Oz owns 150,000 option shares in vaccine technology company

2009-11-10T20:56:00.000-08:00

Conflicts of interest? Dr. Mehmet Oz owns 150,000 option shares in vaccine technology company

Dr. Mehmet Oz is a huge promoter of vaccines. He's been on television reinforcing fear about H1N1 swine flu and telling everyone to get vaccinated. But what he didn't tell his viewing audience is that he holds 150,000 option shares in a vaccine company that could earn him millions of dollars in profits as the stock price rises. It is in Dr. Oz's own financial interest, in other words, to hype up vaccines and get more people taking them so that his own financial investments rise in value.

Evidence describing these facts was delivered to NaturalNews by a private investigator named Joseph Culligan (http://webofdeception.com/oprah.html#oz). That evidence includes an SEC document detailing how Dr. Oz. bought options on stocks for SIGA Technologies in 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009. SIGA Technologies (stock symbol SIGA) is a vaccine technology company with many advanced developments whose success depends on the widespread adoption of vaccines. According to SEC documents, Dr. Mehmet Oz. currently holds 150,000 option shares on SIGA Technologies, purchased for as little as $1.35 back in 2005. ...

The Center for Public Integrity | PaperTrail Blog - MONEY & POLITICS: Blue Dogs’ Fundraising Totals Plummet in Third Quarter | Status: open

2009-10-27T17:49:00.000-07:00

The Center for Public Integrity | PaperTrail Blog - MONEY & POLITICS: Blue Dogs’ Fundraising Totals Plummet in Third Quarter | Status: open
...

Our analysis of the fiscally conservative and increasingly influential Blue Dog Coalition and its funding noted that the group’s political action committee had averaged more than $176,000 in receipts from other PACs over the first half of 2009. Their monthly haul dropped to a surprisingly low $27,000 in July, rebounded somewhat in August, and but then dropped again to just $12,500 in September.

That September money came from just three donations — $5,000 from accounting and professional services giant Ernst & Young’s PAC, $2,500 from the Food Marketing Institute PAC, and $5,000 from the National Rifle Association of America Political Victory Fund.

After raising $1.1 million from January to June, the committee raised less than $87,000 between July and September — less than it brought in during any one of the preceding five months. And in just three months, the Blue Dog PAC’s monthly fundraising average dropped by more than $50,000 — probably not the sort of fiscal conservatism the 52-member coalition was hoping for. ....

The CIA ‘misled Congress five times since 2001’ | Raw Story

2009-10-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

The CIA ‘misled Congress five times since 2001’ | Raw Story

The CIA misled Congress at least five times since 2001, according to Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee.
..
The ongoing probe found the practice of incomplete briefings or outright lying was part of a "large disease" of misinforming even the chairmen of the select intelligence committees, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said at a Tuesday press briefing that highlighted the early findings. ...

�� : Information Clearing House - ICH

2009-10-26T19:20:00.000-07:00

Oligarchic Senate Still ‘Treasonous’ After All These Years : Information Clearing House - ICH

Where are gutsy muckrakers of yesteryear? In a stunning 1906 Cosmopolitan expose, journalist David Graham Phillips made history with his headline, “The Treason of the Senate.” He then justified his condemnation of mercenary senators, then cherrypicked by states and owned by nefarious Trusts:

Treason is a strong word, but not too strong, rather too weak, to characterize the
situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, indefatigable agent of
interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be.

By 1914, the 17th Amendment mandated senators be popularly elected but, judging by today’s unevolved results, we have not yet salvaged one of the Founders' worst blunders. This American replica of the House of Lords, our least democratic, least representative organ, lives on, still the blockage after all these years.

You’d think franchising ex-slave descendants, non-land-owning men and wise women would save us? Yet our pretend elections, especially when counting votes tests southern I.Q.’s, only obscure contemporary 1906-style corruption. We pay senators from, say, Oklahoma as dumb as posts, as willfully ignorant about science and economics as history, hence easy pickings for modern “trusts” run by smarter executives. Beyond the energy, mining, banking and endless war cartels, robber barons of health will spend $400 million fighting reform just this year, on top of $50 million channeled to Senate Finance committee members. None dare call that treason, just good business.
...
A Senate Unfit to Rule

Our decadent Senate epitomizes privilege and prerogative, seniority and senility (often rescued only by death) – guaranteed to be a generation in arrears. Over decades, elections (if fair) may displace uninformed, petty tyrants inconvenienced by majority rule. But do we have decades? That leaves only Constitutional redress: correcting outdated, dysfunctional institutions is why Jefferson endorsed political revolutions every generation. The majority must act by invoking the amendment process.

The urgency of now: in one regard, this country is worse off than in the 1930’s. The duration and severity of that depression empowered a strategic team of leaders – a progressive president and co-operative, post-medieval Congress. Together, this alliance achieved massive, historic advances: old-age pensions, serious regulations like Glass Stiegal, genuine pump-priming, and more – proving government the best cure to our worst excesses. Where's today's team or any urgency?

Instead of a first-rate starting team, we’re saddled by minor-league treachery by intellectual midgets. Today’s Senate may not be the most corrupt of all time, but the gap between its fitness and foresight vs. what must be done for survival has never been greater. The problems are global, complex and daunting, thus the small, partisan minds that clawed their way into power are wholly inadequate to the task.
...
Reality always works for someone. The status quo is just peachy for the 1% haves, especially when have-nots are manipulated to vote against their interests. Do we have another 225 years’ leeway before the second Constitutional Convention? If political gridlock is not reversed, then Gore Vidal’s ominous prophecy applies, leaving open only the kind of banana republic we’ll become. ....

Time for change's Journal - “Setting the Crown for a Corporate State”: The Monopolization of Democracy by Corporations

2009-10-26T19:17:00.000-07:00

Time for change's Journal - “Setting the Crown for a Corporate State”: The Monopolization of Democracy by Corporations
...
It’s now been a little over a year since Congress agreed to bailout our banks, despite substantial opposition from the American people. In March 2009 our new Secretary of the Treasury, Tim Geithner, revealed plans to continue the bank bailout, which largely went into effect shortly afterwards. So how has that gone?

That depends upon whom you ask. If you listen to the corporate media you’d think everything is just fine. Typical of their opinions on this is a TV talking head that I recently heard bubbling over with praise for our economy. She mainly talked about the recovery of the stock market, concluding that this has resulted in large gains for American “taxpayers”. Taxpayers? She didn’t voice the slightest awareness that there is not a one to one correspondence between investors and taxpayers.

Actually, the banks have done quite well. But what about the rest of us?

The effects on ordinary Americans

Home foreclosures
There were 106,007 home foreclosures during the second quarter of 2009 – up 17% from the first quarter of the year. When Geithner was asked why efforts to help home owners haven’t helped more of them, he responded that:
...
Unemployment
The official unemployment rate for September 2009 showed unemployment in the United States reaching 9.8%. However, it is widely accepted that the actual unemployment rate is far higher than that, when people who have given up looking for work are taken into account, or when under-employed persons are taken into account.

This graph puts the official unemployment rate into historical perspective:
...
Economic inequality
Speaking of economic inequality, Paul Krugman recently commented on the most recent income inequality statistics in the United States, saying that they “didn’t get much attention but they’re truly amazing”. The important points to observe in the graph that is contained in the link are:

Income inequality rose precipitously during the 1920s under three Republican presidents, reaching a high just prior to the Stock Market Crash of 1929, which led to the Great Depression. Numerous measures put in place during FDR’s New Deal led to declining income inequality, which reached record lows late in his presidency and remained at record lows for four decades, until they began to rise again shortly after Ronald Reagan became president. With the corporate friendly, deregulation policies of the “Reagan Revolution”, income inequality began a steady rise, ...
..
We were warned by non-corporatist economists

As the Obama administration was considering putting the Geithner plan into effect – which was largely a continuation of the Bush administration plan – several eminent non-corporate economists warned them and us of the consequences. They used different words, but the basic message was quite similar: a reverse Robin Hood scheme, conducted behind closed doors: ...
...
William Greider warns that we’re on the path to a corporate state

William Greider is a political journalist who has warned us many times in the past about the dire consequences of government becoming too cozy with the corporatocracy:

This will sound extreme to some people, but I came to it reluctantly. I fear what they're doing… in their design is setting the crown for a corporate state…. And by that I mean a rather small but very powerful circle of financial institutions the old Wall Street banks, famous names. But also some industrial corporations… Too big to fail. Yes, watched closely by the Federal Reserve and others in government, but also protected by them… The leading banks and corporations are sort of at the trough, ahead of everybody else in Washington, they will have the means to monopolize democracy. And I mean that literally. Some of my friends would say, hey, that already happened…. The corporate state is here…. ....

Surprise: McCain Biggest Beneficiary of Telco/ISP Lobby Money - PC World

2009-10-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

Surprise: McCain Biggest Beneficiary of Telco/ISP Lobby Money - PC World

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is the top recipient of campaign contributions from large Internet service providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast over the past two years, according to a new report from the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics. McCain has taken in a total of $894,379 (much of that money going to support his failed 2008 bid for the presidency), more than twice the amount taken by the next-largest beneficiary, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. ($341,089).

Meanwhile, McCain has emerged as the ISPs' biggest champion against new "network neutrality" rules from the Federal Communications Commission, which voted Thursday to move forward in the process to adopt such rules. Shortly after the FCC vote, McCain introduced a bill (the "Internet Freedom Act") that would block regulation of the nation's largest broadband networks.

Net neutrality rules would amount to a federal mandate that broadband providers cannot block or hinder the internet traffic of any web site or service, regardless of whether or not that site or service completes with a similar site or service offered by the ISP itself. In other words, a telco ISP could not limit bandwidth used for Skype VoIP traffic, while maximizing bandwidth available for its own VoIP service. ...

Medicare Drug Planners Now Lobbyists, With Billions at Stake - ProPublica

2009-10-20T19:53:00.000-07:00

Medicare Drug Planners Now Lobbyists, With Billions at Stake - ProPublica

Four years ago, a group of lawmakers and aides crafted Medicare Part D, the prescription drug program for seniors that has produced billions of dollars of profits for pharmaceutical companies.

Today, at least 25 of those key players are back, but this time they’re lobbyists, trying to persuade their former colleagues to protect the lucrative system during the health care reform negotiations.

The role of big players like Billy Tauzin — the former Republican representative from Louisiana who is now president of PhRMA, the drug industry’s lobbying group — has been long understood. But a ProPublica analysis shows that the drug industry’s position is also being promoted by other foot soldiers from the Part D legislative process, from committee aides to top Bush administration officials.

The most prominent members of this group include:

Tauzin, former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who was instrumental in ensuring Part D’s passage. As PhRMA’s president he reportedly earns more than 10 times what he was paid as a member of Congress
Former Sen. John Breaux, D-La., who fought against allowing drug prices to be negotiated in Medicare Part D. A year after the bill passed, he left the Senate to begin his lobbying career. He now has his own lobbying firm, Breaux Lott Leadership Group, which this year has received $300,000 to lobby for the pharmaceutical industry.
Former Sen. Don Nickles, R-Okla., who helped negotiate the final version of Part D, then left to form his own lobbying firm. Bristol Myers-Squibb paid the Nickles Group $120,000 this year to lobby for, among other things, “health care reform issues related to Medicaid and Medicare.”
Thomas Scully, the former Medicare chief who helped design Part D. Scully obtained a waiver allowing him to discuss job offers before he left his government post. Less than two weeks after the bill passed, he went to work for the lobbying firm Alston & Bird, where he works on behalf of drug companies.

Less familiar names also made the leap to lobbying for the pharmaceutical industry. ...

Raw Story � Rep. Mike Ross Raises Eyebrows With Healthy Haul

2009-09-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

Raw Story � Rep. Mike Ross Raises Eyebrows With Healthy Haul
...

Arkansas Rep. Mike Ross — a Blue Dog Democrat playing a key role in the health care debate — sold a piece of commercial property in 2007 for substantially more than a county assessment [2] (PDF) and an independent appraisal [3] (PDF) say it was worth.

The buyer: an Arkansas-based pharmacy chain with a keen interest in how the debate plays out.

Ross sold the real estate in Prescott, Ark., to USA Drug for $420,000 — an eye-popping number for real estate in the tiny train and lumber town about 100 miles southwest of Little Rock.

“You can buy half the town for $420,000,” said Adam Guthrie, chairman of the county Board of Equalization and the only licensed real estate appraiser in Prescott.

But the $420,000 was just the beginning of what Ross and his pharmacist wife, Holly, made from the sale of Holly’s Health Mart. The owner of USA Drug, Stephen L. LaFrance Sr., also paid the Rosses $500,000 to $1 million for the pharmacy’s assets and paid Holly Ross another $100,001 to $250,000 for signing a non-compete agreement. Those numbers, which Ross listed on the financial disclosure reports he files as a member of Congress, bring the total value of the transaction to between $1 million and $1.67 million. ...

Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is focus of corruption probe -- latimes.com

2009-09-17T05:34:00.000-07:00

Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is focus of corruption probe -- latimes.com

The Justice Department investigation centers on a 2006 decision to award oil shale leases in Colorado to a Royal Dutch Shell subsidiary. Months later, the oil giant hired Norton as a legal counsel.

... The criminal investigation centers on the Interior Department's 2006 decision to award three lucrative oil shale leases on federal land in Colorado to a Shell subsidiary. Over the years it would take to extract the oil, according to calculations from Shell and a Rand Corp. expert, the deal could net the company hundreds of billions of dollars.

The investigation's main focus is whether Norton violated a law that prohibits federal employees from discussing employment with a company if they are involved in dealings with the government that could benefit the firm, law enforcement and Interior officials said.

They said investigators also were trying to determine if Norton broke a broader federal "denial of honest services" law, which says a government official can be prosecuted for violating the public trust by, for example, steering government business to favored firms or friends.

The Interior Department's Office of Inspector General began the investigation during the waning months of the George W. Bush administration and more recently made a formal criminal referral to the Justice Department. Norton is the first Bush official at the Cabinet secretary level to be the subject of a formal political corruption investigation. ...

special interests quietly financing private groups that may take their side as respected, seemingly independent allies without obvious financial inter

2009-08-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

LobbyBlog

HOW THE BIOTECH WAR WAS WON If you're like me, you enjoy the opportunity to purchase inexpensive generic drugs instead of the pricey brand names that show up on most formularies. Naturally, the pharmaceutical industry does not like this, and they'll go to great lengths to limit those cost-saving opportunities:

With the nation's $46 billion biological drug market at stake, the war between makers of the pricey biotech medicines and their would-be generic competitors has involved millions of dollars in lobbying, thousands in campaign contributions and uncounted visits to members of Congress. And one noteworthy letter.

The note from the private National Health Council, sent to House leaders drafting health overhaul legislation, said the plea was on behalf of "the more than 133 million Americans living with chronic diseases and disabilities and their family caregivers." It urged lawmakers to protect the makers of high-technology biological medicines against early competition from lower-cost generic copycats.

The letter did not mention that nearly $1.2 million of the council's $2.3 million budget in 2007 came from the pharmaceutical industry's chief trade group and 16 companies that sell or are developing the brand-name biotech drugs.

The July 20 letter is an example of a favored lobbying tactic -- special interests quietly financing private groups that may take their side as respected, seemingly independent allies without obvious financial interests in the outcome. ,,,

Think Progress � Coal Lobbyists Now ‘Outraged’ By Fraud, But Kept Silent During Clean Energy Vote

2009-08-04T10:36:00.000-07:00

Think Progress � Coal Lobbyists Now ‘Outraged’ By Fraud, But Kept Silent During Clean Energy Vote

The top coal lobbying coalition in Washington, D.C. hid its knowledge of “fraudulent grassroots lobbying” while Congress voted against clean energy legislation on June 26, 2009. A background document from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) reveals that it learned two days before the vote on Waxman-Markey that Bonner & Associates had sent a dozen forged letters opposing the American Clean Energy and Security Act to at least three members of the House of Representatives:

Due to reported misconduct by a Bonner and Associates employee (who the firm states was subsequently fired), it appears that a total of twelve falsified letters were sent by that firm to the offices of Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper, Congressman Christopher Carney and Congressman Tom Perriello.

Based upon information ACCCE received from the Hawthorn Group, it was Bonner and Associates’ own internal process that identified these falsified letters and it was Mr. Bonner who first brought this to the attention of the Hawthorn Group. ACCCE was then made aware of the situation by Hawthorn on June 24, 2009.

Two of the three members targeted by ACCCE — Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA) and Rep. Chris Carney (D-PA) — voted against the bill on June 26th. However, despite its knowledge of this potentially criminal fraud, ACCCE said nothing until Rep. Perriello’s hometown paper, the Charlottesville Daily Progress, broke the story more than a month later on July 31st. On August 3rd, ACCCE released a statement that they were “outraged by the conduct of Bonner and Associates.” ...

Op-Ed Columnist - Health Care Realities - NYTimes.com

2009-08-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

Raw Story � Blue Dog opposition may be ‘underwritten’ by pharmaceutical giants

Typical “Blue Dog” Democrats — moderate members of Congress who have been the most ardent among Obama’s own party in thwarting ongoing national healthcare legislation — receive 25 percent more campaign cash from the healthcare and insurance industry than other Democrats, an investigation has found.

In fact, a Blue Dog’s average receipts from the medical industry was just $3,625 lessthan that of the average Republican. Republicans have worked to block plans to enact universal health insurance legislation, saying that it would restrict individual choice and lead to the rationing of medical care.

Blue Dog Democrats say they’re for moderate fiscal policy and aim to reduce the overall cost of a health insurance measure. It appears, however, that their ideological opposition is underwritten by the industry most affected by proposed changes.

Notably, the Blue Dog Political Action Committee has received lavish financial support from pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Novartis; insurers WellPoint and Northwestern Mutual and the trade group American’s Health Insurance Plans.

The average Blue Dog got more than half (54 percent) of total 2009 financial contributions from the medical care industry. Its PAC has more than doubled in size since 2005 — at a time when both national Republican and Democratic campaign committees reported double-digit drops in funding. ...

Who Rules America? The banks, Durbin said, “frankly own the place.” ...

2009-05-17T19:45:00.000-07:00

Who Rules America? | : Information Clearing House - ICH | By Paul Craig Roberts

May 14, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- -What do you suppose it is like to be elected president of the United States only to find that your power is restricted to the service of powerful interest groups?
...
Fighting the special interests doesn’t pay and doesn’t succeed. On April 30 the primacy of special over public interests was demonstrated yet again. The Democrats’ bill to prevent 1.7 million mortgage foreclosures and, thus, preserve $300 billion in home equity by permitting homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages, was defeated in the Senate, despite the 60-vote majority of the Democrats. The banksters were able to defeat the bill 51 to 45.

These are the same financial gangsters whose unbridled greed and utter irresponsibility have wiped out half of Americans’ retirement savings, sent the economy into a deep hole, and threatened the US dollar’s reserve currency role. It is difficult to imagine an interest group with a more damaged reputation. Yet, a majority of “the people’s representatives” voted as the discredited banksters instructed.

Hundreds of billions of public dollars have gone to bail out the banksters, but when some Democrats tried to get the Senate to do a mite for homeowners, the US Senate stuck with the banks. The Senate’s motto is: “Hundreds of billions for the banksters, not a dime for homeowners.”

If Obama was naive about well-intentioned change before the vote, he no longer has this political handicap.

Democratic Majority Whip Dick Durbin acknowledged the voters’ defeat by the discredited banksters. The banks, Durbin said, “frankly own the place.” ...

Exec says (MN Senator) Coleman donor ordered $100K payments (to insurance company where senator's wife worked)

2009-03-28T16:29:00.000-07:00

Exec says Coleman donor ordered $100K payments

Sworn statement backs allegation that Kazeminy directed fees to an insurance firm to benefit the Colemans.

By PAUL McENROE and TONY KENNEDY, Star Tribune staff writers

Last update: March 26, 2009 - 11:51 PM

The former finance chief of a Texas company controlled by Nasser Kazeminy, a close friend of former Sen. Norm Coleman, said in a deposition last week that Kazeminy ordered $100,000 in fees be paid to a Minneapolis insurance agency where Coleman's wife was employed.

...

In the two weeks before the November U.S. Senate election, two lawsuits were filed against Deep Marine -- one by McKim and one by a group of minority shareholders. In them, Kazeminy was accused of funneling payments to Hays to benefit the Colemans, as well as other alleged financial wrongdoing.

Enforcement Agency Is Failing Workers, Report Says - NYTimes.com

2009-03-25T19:18:00.000-07:00

Enforcement Agency Is Failing Workers, Report Says - NYTimes.com | By STEVEN GREENHOUSE|Published: March 24, 2009

The federal agency charged with enforcing minimum wage, overtime and many other labor laws is failing in that role, leaving millions of workers vulnerable, Congressional auditors have found.

In a report scheduled to be released Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office found that the agency, the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, had mishandled 9 of the 10 cases brought by a team of undercover agents posing as aggrieved workers.

In one case, the division failed to investigate a complaint that under-age children in Modesto, Calif., were working during school hours at a meatpacking plant with dangerous machinery, the G.A.O., the nonpartisan auditing arm of Congress, found.

When an undercover agent posing as a dishwasher called four times to complain about not being paid overtime for 19 weeks, the division’s office in Miami failed to return his calls for four months, and when it did, the report said, an official told him it would take 8 to 10 months to begin investigating his case.

“This investigation clearly shows that Labor has left thousands of actual victims of wage theft who sought federal government assistance with nowhere to turn,” the report said. “Unfortunately, far too often the result is unscrupulous employers’ taking advantage of our country’s low-wage workers.” ...

Federal investigators are still sorting through HUD contract awards to friends of Secretary Alphonso Jackson

2008-06-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

HUD Repeatedly Dismissed Staff Concerns About Contracts | By Carol D. Leonnig | Washington Post Staff Writer | Sunday, May 18, 2008; Page A10

The small Texas property-management company had no experience overseeing hundreds of defaulted homes across the country. It did have two former Reagan administration officials at the helm and warm relations with senior Republican appointees at the federal housing agency.

During a few weeks in 2004, the three-employee company, Harrington, Moran and Barksdale Inc. (HMBI), went from no government work to landing $71 million in contracts with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to oversee the upkeep and sale of defaulted homes. It had previously managed a handful of apartment buildings and development projects.
...
Federal investigators are still sorting through HUD contract awards to friends of Secretary Alphonso Jackson, who resigned last month amid a criminal probe. But some career staff members and agency observers say problems in the agency's contracting process run much deeper than Jackson and involve officials who promoted certain companies while rebuffing concerns about their performance and qualifications. ...

McCain economic policy shaped by lobbyist - representing Swiss bank UBS in mortgage crisis

2008-06-02T20:39:00.000-07:00

McCain economic policy shaped by lobbyist - Countdown with Keith Olbermann- msnbc.comBy Jonathan Larsen, producer,
with Keith Olbermann | MSNBC | May. 27, 2008

Swiss bank paid McCain co-chair to push agenda on U.S. mortgage crisis

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s national campaign general co-chair was being paid by a Swiss bank to lobby Congress about the U.S. mortgage crisis at the same time he was advising McCain about his economic policy, federal records show. [See sidebar.]

“Countdown with Keith Olbermann” reported Tuesday night that lobbying disclosure forms, filed by the giant Swiss bank UBS, list McCain’s campaign co-chair, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, as a lobbyist dealing specifically with legislation regarding the mortgage crisis as recently as Dec. 31, 2007.

Gramm joined the bank in 2002 and had registered as a lobbyist by 2004. UBS filed paperwork deregistering Gramm on April 18 of this year. Gramm continues to serve as a UBS vice chairman. ,,,

they fear she is among tens of thousands of youngsters who may face lifelong health problems [... from FEMA trailers]

2008-05-27T21:23:00.000-07:00

Children in Katrina trailers may face lifelong ailments | By JOHN MORENO GONZALES, Associated Press Writer | May 27, 2008
...
The girl, diagnosed with severe asthma, must inhale medicine from a breathing device.

Doctors cannot conclusively link her asthma to the trailer. But they fear she is among tens of thousands of youngsters who may face lifelong health problems because the temporary housing supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency contained formaldehyde fumes up to five times the safe level.

The chemical, used in interior glue, was detected in many of the 143,000 trailers sent to the Gulf Coast in 2006. But a push to get residents out of them, spearheaded by FEMA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not begin until this past February.

Members of Congress and CDC insiders say the agencies' delay in recognizing the danger is being compounded by studies that will be virtually useless and the lack of a plan to treat children as they grow.

"It's tragic that when people most need the protection, they are actually going from one disaster to a health disaster that might be considered worse," said Christopher De Rosa, assistant director for toxicology and risk assessment at the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, an arm of the CDC. "Given the longer-term implications of exposure that went on for a significant period of time, people should be followed through time for possible effects." ...

FCC wants to regulate fees charged to cell phone users who cancel their wireless contracts early [... blocking lawsuits and after 5 + years inaction?

2008-05-25T10:45:00.000-07:00

May 23, 5:29 PM EDT | FCC chief wants cell phone cancellation fees regulated | By JOHN DUNBAR | Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Friday he wants to regulate fees charged to cell phone users who cancel their wireless contracts early.

At a news conference, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin would not say whether he endorses an industry plan to help consumers avoid "early termination fees" as detailed by The Associated Press earlier this week.
...
Martin said industry and consumer groups were negotiating to reach an agreement to ease the fees, which have infuriated consumers. But so far, they have been unable to reach a consensus.
...
Verizon Wireless, the nation's No. 2 cell phone company, has offered a plan that would give consumers a break on fees charged when they quit their service early. But it also would let cell phone companies off the hook in state courts where they are being sued for hundreds of millions of dollars by angry customers.
...
Wireless companies say cancellation fees are necessary to recover the cost of cell phones, which they subsidize under long-term service contracts, and to defray their costs for signing up new customers. Consumer groups said the fees are unreasonable and intended to discourage customers from switching among providers. ...

[Bush Legacy] War Abroad and Poverty at Home : Information Clearing House -dollar down 60% in Euros, 80% in oil, Oil imports soar from $100B to $500B

2008-05-24T09:15:00.000-07:00

War Abroad and Poverty at Home : Information Clearing House - ICHBy Paul Craig Roberts | 23/05/08 "ICH"
...
The “world’s only superpower” is so broke it can’t even finance its own wars.

Each additional dollar that the irresponsible Bush Regime has to solicit from foreigners puts more downward pressure on the dollar’s value. During the eight wasted and extravagant years of the Bush Regime, the once mighty US dollar has lost about 60% of its value against the euro.

The dollar has lost even more of its value against gold and oil.

Before Bush began his wars of aggression, oil was $25 a barrel. Today it is $130 a barrel. Some of this rise may result from run-away speculation in the futures market. However, the main cause is the eroding value of the dollar. Oil is real, and unlike paper dollars is limited in supply. With US massive trade and budget deficits, the outpouring of dollar obligations mounts, thus driving down the value of the dollar.

Each time the dollar price of oil rises, the US trade deficit rises, requiring more foreign financing of US energy use. Bush has managed to drive the US oil import bill up from $106 billion in 2006 to approximately $500 billion 18 months later--every dollar of which has to be financed by foreigners.
...
The disappearing value of the US dollar, which pushes up oil prices and raises the trade deficit, then pushes up heating subsidies and raises the budget deficit.

If oil was the reason Bush invaded Iraq, the plan obviously backfired. Oil not merely doubled or tripled in price but quintupled.

America’s political leaders either have no awareness that Bush’s wars are destroying our country’s economic position and permanently lowering the living standards of Americans or they do not care. McCain says he can win the war in Iraq in five more years and in the meantime “challenge” Russia and China. Hillary says she will “obliterate” Iran. Obama can’t make up his mind if he is for war or against it.

The Bush Regime’s inability to pay the bills it is piling up for Americans means that future US governments will cut promised benefits and further impoverish the people. Over a year ago The Nation reported that the Bush Regime is shedding veteran costs by attributing consequences of serious war wounds to “personality disorders” in order to deny soldiers promised benefits.
...
The Republican Party is willing to fund war, but sees everything else as an extravagance. The neoconized war party is destroying the economic prospects of American citizens. Is “war abroad and poverty at home” the Republican campaign slogan for the November election?

Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was associate editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and contributing editor of National Review. ...

Big Oil's Ballot Bets ... [funding the Republican party]

2008-05-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Big Oil's Ballot Bets in the Presidential Race:

#1 Rudolph W. Giuliani Republican $678,258
#2 John McCain Republican $515,486
#3 Mitt Romney Republican $469,544
#4 Hillary Clinton Democrat $353,723
#5 Barack Obama Democrat $266,097

Congressional Contributions:

#1 Kay Bailey Hutchison Senate (R-TX) $300,161
#2 Joe Barton House (R-TX) $184,300
#3 John Cornyn Senate (R-TX) $180,000
#4 Bob Corker Senate (R-TN) $173,700
#5 Mary Fallin House (R-OK) $162,450
#6 Heather Wilson House (R-NM) $144,000
#7 Dennis Hastert House (R-IL) $134,600
#8 Jon Kyl Senate (R-AZ) $133,700
#9 Steve Pearce House (R-NM) $121,578
#10 Barbara Cubin House (R-WY) $119,150

Justice Dept appointed 30+ former prosecutors as well-paid monoitors so companies avoid criminal prosecution ...

2008-05-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

30 Former Officials Became Corporate Monitors | By ERIC LICHTBLAU and KITTY BENNETT | Published: May 23, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has appointed at least 30 former prosecutors and other government officials as well-paid corporate monitors in arrangements that allow companies to avoid criminal prosecution, according to government data released Thursday by Congress.

In the last few years, the Justice Department has turned more and more often to “deferred prosecutions” to get companies suspected of wrongdoing to pay fines and change their practices without being charged criminally. Often, a corporate monitor is brought in to check on the company’s progress and ensure compliance.

The practice drew attention this year after it was disclosed that John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, had been selected by Christopher J. Christie, the United States attorney for New Jersey, as a corporate monitor for a medical supply company. The job, assigned without competitive bidding, would pay Mr. Ashcroft’s consulting firm up to $52 million. Mr. Ashcroft said at a contentious Congressional hearing in March that there was nothing improper about the arrangement.

Since then, Democrats in Congress have been pressing for more information about the use of deferred prosecutions, and the Justice Department responded Thursday by releasing documents showing that it had turned to the corporate agreements 85 times in recent years. (Congressional investigators said they had identified 12 agreements that were not included in the Justice Department’s list, for a total of 97.) ...

... so-called “climate-ready” crops will be used to drive farmers and governments onto a proprietary biotech platform

2008-05-22T18:41:00.000-07:00

Corporations Grab Climate Genes - CommonDreams.org Tuesday, May 13, 2008 by Foreign Policy in Focus | by Hope Shand

First the biotech industry promised that its genetically engineered seeds would clean up the environment. Then they told us biotech crops would feed the world. Neither came to pass. Soon we’ll hear that genetically engineered climate-hardy seeds are the essential adaptation strategy for crops to withstand drought, heat, cold, saline soils and more.

After failing to convince an unwilling public to accept genetically engineered foods, biotech companies see a silver lining in climate change. They are now asserting that farmers cannot win the war against climate change without genetic engineering. According to a new report from ETC Group, the world’s largest seed and agrochemical corporations such as Monsanto, BASF, DuPont, Syngenta, Bayer, and Dow — along with biotech partners such as Mendel, Ceres, and Evogene — are stockpiling hundreds of patents and patent applications on crop genes related to environmental stress tolerance at patent offices around the world. They have acquired a total of 55 patent families corresponding to 532 patents and patent applications.

In the face of climate chaos and a deepening world food crisis, the Gene Giants are gearing up for a PR offensive to re-brand themselves as climate saviors. The companies hope to convince governments and reluctant consumers that genetic engineering is the essential adaptation strategy to insure agricultural productivity. In the words of Keith Jones of CropLife International, an industry-supported non-profit organization, “GM foods are exactly the technology that may be necessary to counter the effects of global warming.” But rather than an effective way to confront climate change, these so-called “climate-ready” crops will be used to drive farmers and governments onto a proprietary biotech platform. ...

[Three] Firms Seek Patents on 'Climate Ready' Altered Crops - to control two-thirds of climate-related controls ...

2008-05-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

Firms Seek Patents on 'Climate Ready' Altered Crops - washingtonpost.comBy Rick Weiss | Washington Post Staff Writer | Tuesday, May 13, 2008

A handful of the world's largest agricultural biotechnology companies are seeking hundreds of patents on gene-altered crops designed to withstand drought and other environmental stresses, part of a race for dominance in the potentially lucrative market for crops that can handle global warming, according to a report being released today.

Three companies -- BASF of Germany, Syngenta of Switzerland and Monsanto of St. Louis -- have filed applications to control nearly two-thirds of the climate-related gene families submitted to patent offices worldwide, according to the report by the Ottawa-based ETC Group, an activist organization that advocates for subsistence farmers.

The applications say that the new "climate ready" genes will help crops survive drought, flooding, saltwater incursions, high temperatures and increased ultraviolet radiation -- all of which are predicted to undermine food security in coming decades.

Company officials dismissed the report's contention that the applications amount to an intellectual-property "grab," countering that gene-altered plants will be crucial to solving world hunger but will never be developed without patent protections. ...

A tax break for horse owners was included by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky

2008-05-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

Think Progress » McConnell’s Farm Bill Priority: Tax Breaks For Thoroughbred Race Horse Owners May 14th, 2008

... the bill “contains something for everyone” — including the following important project tucked within the massive bill:

A tax break for horse owners was included by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Politico’s Crypt explains:

The measure would essentially allow race horse owners — who pay millions for Triple Crown contenders — to write down their investment over four years. … Senate aides say it will cost between $60 million and $70 million.

McConnell’s measure is a shameless ploy for votes in Kentucky. His spokesman claimed, “it’s the largest agricultural product in Kentucky.” But the tax break would most likely apply only to the very wealthy; after all, the average cost of training and racing one racehorse is $30,000 per year — which does not include purchase price of the horse, anywhere from $12,000 to millions.

The millionaire-only earmark is just McConnell’s latest attempt to have it both ways on pork barrel spending. After securing nearly $195 million in earmarks for FY2008, he voted in favor of a one-year earmark moratorium in March. Yet his “eleventh hour” decision earned him criticism that he was “playing both sides by not lobbying for the measure, which ensured that it failed, while voting for the amendment in order to insulate himself from attacks on the right.”

Lobbyists: This is our thanks? - Jeanne Cummings - Politico.com

2008-05-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

Lobbyists: This is our thanks? - Jeanne Cummings - Politico.com
By JEANNE CUMMINGS | 5/21/08 4:29 AM EST

More than a few Republican lobbyists in Washington are scratching their heads these days, asking: So this is the thanks we get?

It was a small band of loyal lobbyists who stood by presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain last August when his campaign went broke and his White House aspirations seemed doomed.

They raised money for him under impossible odds and kept him company in budget hotels during his darkest days.

Now they are under siege as McCain purges active lobbyists from his campaign team in a quest to wrest the reformist title from Democrat Barack Obama, his likely opponent in this fall’s general election. ...

Cronyism, Incompetence & Immorality

American Kleptocracy: How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide Naked Theft | CommonDreams.org

FEMA Flood Insurance Program Primarily Benefits The Wealthy: Study

A Coal Miner's Catastrophe: Big Coal--Big Lies | CommonDreams.org

Ex-CIA boss OKd destroying interrogation tapes

nashville_brook's Journal - It's the Corporate Feudalism, Stupid

Madfloridian's Journal - Teach for America. A way to replace experienced, higher-salaried teachers?

‘Irate’ Fox execs pull Hannity from Tea Party rally | Raw Story

A Tax Trick That Forces Companies To Close Factories | OurFuture.org

Madfloridian's Journal - Compilation of charter school scandals over the past year.

Mitch McConnell's Homestate Paper Thrashes Him For 'Unabashedly Courting Wall Street Bankers For Political Money'

Wonk Room � Rush Ignorantly Wonders ‘Where Was The Union’ At Non-Union Mine Disaster

Was Lack Of Government Transparency A Factor In Mine Deaths?

Obstruction: Mine safety hindered� - Editorials - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -

Encountering Peace: The disposal of myths

We have been repeating the same truisms that fit appropriately with our justifications for our positions in this conflict.

Arianna Huffington: The West Virginia Mining Disaster and the Financial Crisis Have the Same Root Cause

Congress Slashed Earmarks In 2009: White House Analysis

Excite News - AP IMPACT: In Toyota cases, evasion becomes tactic

Amnesty International: Hurricane Katrina Victims Had Human Rights Violated

U.S. Steps Up Probe of Tech Hiring - WSJ.com

Study: Wage Theft Rampant In Cook County | Progress Illinois

Toyota to hand off pension bill to U.S. | freep.com | Detroit Free Press

Michael Hunter, Former New Orleans Cop, Admits Coverup In Post-Katrina Danziger Bridge Murders

Excite News - Scientist: FDA suppressed imaging safety concerns

CREW, VoteVets File IRS, FTC Complaints Against Sean Hannity Charity Freedom Concerts

OpEdNews - Article: Brutal Prisons Are Hurting Us All

Right Plays the Race Card | People For the American Way

RIGHT WING LEADERS FOMENT RACIAL RESENTMENT AND POINT FINGERS TO AVOID ACCOUNTABILITY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

The BRAD BLOG : Feds Finds Massive Fraud in Bush's $150 Billion Iraq Reconstruction; Also Looking at Afghanistan

Whiff of Eugenics: Ginsburg Tells NYT Roe Was About 'Populations That We Don't Want .... Too Many Of' | NewsBusters.org

OpEdNews - Article: Tax Records Show Hannity Freedom Concerts Mostly Fund White Collar Write-Offs

Ground Zero workers settlement unfair: judge | Raw Story

Leaders in House Block Earmarks to Corporations - NYTimes.com

Banks step up spending on lobbying to fight proposed stiffer regulations - latimes.com

WALL STREET

Banks step up spending on lobbying to fight proposed stiffer regulations

Expenditures jumped 12% to $29.8 million last year among the eight financial firms that spent the most to influence legislation.

Ethics panel clears 7 on earmarks - washingtonpost.com

Congress subpoenas thousands of allegedly damaging Toyota documents | Raw Story

Payments in question - baltimoresun.com

Washington Times - Stimulus foes see value in seeking cash

Daily Kos: Shelby holds Senate hostage to win military contract for European firm

by Jed Lewison

Fri Feb 05, 2010

Josh Silver: Senator Franken Rips Into Comcast CEO Brian Roberts

Sen. Conrad, Deficit Hawk, Brings U.S. Dollars Home to North Dakota - WSJ.com

Study: Charter schools promote segregation, perform worse than traditional schools | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

Charter schools' growth promoting segregation, studies say - latimes.com

A UCLA study is one of two finding that the increasingly popular campuses skew toward racially separate student bodies. Charter advocates criticize the reports.

McConnell Raised Big Bucks From Foreign Defense Contractor Probed For Bribery | TPMMuckraker

Haitians receive little help despite promises - Mail & Guardian Online: The smart news source

After Haiti's earthquake: Growing deadlier | The Economist

US waves white flag in disastrous 'war on drugs' - Americas, World - The Independent

GOP, Warning Of A 'New EPA', Oppose Independent CFPA

RebelReports - Stunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know

The Washington Monthly

Sandy Rosenthal: Recent Ruling Shows True Tragedy of Katrina was Federal Government's Creation of the Disaster Itself

Former head of CDC lands lucrative job as president of Merck vaccine division (opinion)

Feds investigating Stanford ties to lawmakers: report | Reuters

A Whistle-Blower at Deutsche Bank Building Is Now an Outcast - NYTimes.com

Baucus Nominated Melodee Hanes, His Girlfriend, For U.S. Attorney

Senator Ben Nelson and His Connections to the Health Care Industry | Public Campaign Action Fund

CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

Lehman, Bear Stearns Execs Cashed In As Their Firms Failed: Study

Sanford Faces 37 Charges by State Ethics Board - NYTimes.com

Judge: Hurricane Katrina Flooding Was Caused By Army Corps Of Engineers' Negligence

Gretchen Morgenson: Lobbyists Win Again In Securing Tax Break For Home Builders

The Board Of The ‘Voice Of Business’ Is A Republican Money Machine ... [best government money can buy]

Conflicts of interest? Dr. Mehmet Oz owns 150,000 option shares in vaccine technology company

The Center for Public Integrity | PaperTrail Blog - MONEY & POLITICS: Blue Dogs’ Fundraising Totals Plummet in Third Quarter | Status: open

The CIA ‘misled Congress five times since 2001’ | Raw Story

��������� : Information Clearing House - ICH

Time for change's Journal - “Setting the Crown for a Corporate State”: The Monopolization of Democracy by Corporations

Surprise: McCain Biggest Beneficiary of Telco/ISP Lobby Money - PC World

Medicare Drug Planners Now Lobbyists, With Billions at Stake - ProPublica

Raw Story � Rep. Mike Ross Raises Eyebrows With Healthy Haul

Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton is focus of corruption probe -- latimes.com

�� : Information Clearing House - ICH