After Haiti's earthquake: Growing deadlier | The Economist

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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]

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

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

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

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.
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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

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.
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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.
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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

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

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

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

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

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. ...