Undernews For January 7, 2009

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OBAMA WANTS TO PUNISH MIDDLE CLASS AND UNION MEMBERS FOR GOOD QUALITY HEALTH COVERAGE

NY Times - President Obama told House Democratic leaders at a meeting that they should include a tax on high-priced insurance policies favored by the Senate in the final version of far-reaching health care legislation, aides said. The White House has long expressed a preference for the excise tax on high-cost plans. . .

But House Democrats have resisted the idea, which is also strongly opposed by many organized labor groups - an important part of the party's base - because the tax may hit a number of more generous union-sponsored health plans.

The Senate proposal would impose a 40 percent excise tax on the cost of individual insurance policies above $8,500 and on family policies above $23,000, with higher thresholds for retirees and employees in high-risk fields like police officers.

The tax would raise $149 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Senate bill would cost $871 billion over 10 years, while the House bill would cost nearly $1.1 trillion."

NY Times, September 21 - Although cast as a tax on gold-plated insurance policies for the well-heeled, it has prompted anxiety among the middle class.

As it turns out, though, many smaller fish would get caught in Mr. Baucus’s tax net. The supposedly Cadillac insurance policies include ones that cover many of the nation’s firefighters and coal miners, older employees at small businesses - a whole gamut that runs from union shops to Main Street entrepreneurs. . .

Nationwide, about one in 10 family insurance plans would be subject to the new excise tax, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning policy and research group.

The tax would be levied on insurers - or on employers that act as their own insurers. Either way, the tax would very likely be passed along to workers in even higher premiums than they pay now. But if insurance premiums continue to rise faster than inflation, as they have for years, many more people's policies could end up setting off the luxury tax in coming years.

"It puts a bigger tax on middle-income Americans who are already paying enough,"said Harold A. Schaitberger, the general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters.

Labels: HEALTH INSURANCE, OBAMA

1/07/2010 | Comments

GEITHNER'S NY FEDERAL RESERVE BANK FIDDLED WITH AIG'S GOVERNMENT REPORT TO MAKE IT LOOK BETTER

Bloomberg - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer's payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.

AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008. The e-mails were obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The New York Fed took over negotiations between AIG and the banks in November 2008 as losses on the swaps, which were contracts tied to subprime home loans, threatened to swamp the insurer weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The regulator decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid for $62.1 billion of the swaps, prompting lawmakers to call the AIG rescue a "backdoor bailout" of financial firms.

"It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information," said Issa, a California Republican. Taxpayers "deserve full and complete disclosure under our nation's securities laws, not the withholding of politically inconvenient information." President Barack Obama selected Geithner as Treasury secretary, a post he took last year.

Labels: AIG, BANKS, GEITHNER TIM

1/07/2010 | Comments

HOW FOUNDATIONS HARM JOURNALISM AND POLITICS

Sam Smith - In recent months there's been increasing talk of non-profit groups doing more investigative reporting. This is a great idea. In fact, I wrote about it five years ago:
[][][] The nature of the corporatized press limits the desirability of investigative reporting. . . . A successful investigation is a risky way to climb the media ladder for the reporter and a threat to the next quarterly return for the boss.

But since you still need news, one way to make it seem as though you are doing something is to outsource your journalism to groups like the Center for Public Integrity or the Project on Government Oversight. Gone is the day when every reporter was meant to be a project on government oversight; now you let POGO do the investigation, you write it up, and if the story's wrong it's not your fault but POGO's. Nice deniability, just the thing a corporation likes. On a single day, for example, three reports by grantees [including POGO] of the Fund for Constitutional Government (on whose board I sit) were featured in the NY Times. Such groups have become a timid media's secondhand nose.

Groups like the aforementioned, independent investigators on the Internet, and lonely holdouts from journalism's past are all doing something much closer to what American journalism is meant to be about than the censored, spun, and desiccated version you find daily in the same elite media that pompously patronizes those who refuse to be servile sycophants like themselves. [][][]

Which is all well and good, except that all progress comes with a price as I was reminded the other day when I stumbled upon a story about meeting held last summer by a group of non-profit news organization that resulted in a declaration that "that preparations should be immediately made to form a collaboration, the Investigative News Network (working title). Its mission is very simple: to aid and abet, in every conceivable way, individually and collectively, the work and public reach of its member news organizations, including, to the fullest extent possible, their administrative, editorial and financial wellbeing. And, more broadly, to foster the highest quality investigative journalism, and to hold those in power accountable, at the local, national and international levels."

Still well and good until I looked up at the upper right hand corner and saw where the money was coming from for all this: Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Surdna Foundation and the William Penn Foundation.

A bell rang and I recalled Joan Roelof's excellent book, "Foundations and Public Policy: The Mark of Pluralism." The Suny Press book promo sums up the problem:

"Documents how even progressive foundations serve to reinforce the political status quo. . . She shows how a vast number of policy innovations have arisen from the most important foundations, lessening the destructive impact of global "marketization." Conversely, groups and movements that might challenge the status quo are nudged into line with grants and technical assistance, and foundations also have considerable power to shape such things as public opinion, higher education, and elite ideology. The cumulative effect is that foundations, despite their progressive goals, have a depoliticizing effect, one that preserves the hegemony of neo-liberal institutions."

Or as Frank Walsh put it, "Mr. Rockefeller could find no better insurance for his hundreds of millions than to invest one of them in subsidizing all agencies that make for social change and progress."

Which is not to say that these groups don't do a great amount of good. But they also put a strong limit on the type of good that can be done with their money. Everyone knows it; they just don't want to talk about it.

I have some familiarity with this problem having been a journalistic wild card most of my life. And I can assure you that ending the war on drugs, criticizing Bill Clinton when he was president, helping to start the Green Party, or telling some basic facts about Barack Obama are not among the goals of these big foundations and of those funded by them. Also, one shouldn't expect to see any investigative reporting from their recipients of major foundations and their role in American society.

Further, if you compare these contemporary non-profits news media with the underground press that helped change America in the 1960s, you find a mainstream convergence that offers one good reason why so little is changing in America during this century.

This is a problem that should be faced and discussed more openly than it is at present.

What follows is just a taste of the situation, as outlined by Bob Feldman:

Bob Feldman - In her groundbreaking Foundations and Public Policy book, Joan Roelofs begins a chapter that examines foundation influence on social change organizations by asserting that "philanthropy suggests yet another explanation for the decline of the 1960s and 1970s protest movements." In Roelofs' view, "radical activism often was transformed by grants and technical assistance from liberal foundations into fragmented and local organizations subject to elite control" and "energies were channeled into safe, legalistic, bureaucratic activities."

Left media and left think tank staff people generally deny that the acceptance by their organizations of grants from liberal foundations has "transformed" their organizational priorities, made them "subject to elite control" or channeled their energies into "safe, legalistic, bureaucratic" activities. In 2001, for instance, the former executive director of the left media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, Jeff Cohen, told German journalist Anja Einfeldt of the German magazine Message: "There have never been strings attached to any grants. We have never been asked to tone down our criticism. If anyone tried, we would refuse the money." Another FAIR staff person also insisted that "the charitable foundations which we do accept funding from have no oversight or control over our work."

Yet in a 1998 article in The Nation (which the former FAIR executive director was credited with helping to frame), the executive director of the Institute for Policy Studies between 1992 and 1998, Michael Shuman, wrote:

"A number of program officers at progressive foundations are former activists who decided to move from the demand to the supply side to enjoy better salaries, benefits and working hours. Yet they still want to live like activists vicariously. . . by exercising influence over grantees through innumerable meetings, reports, conferences and `suggestions.'. . Many progressive funders treat their grantees like disobedient children who need to be constantly watched and disciplined." . . .

In a September, 2002 e-mail, the executive director of the www.tompaine.com left media web site, John Moyers (a former executive with the Schumann Foundation, as well), also stated: "Like any other grantee, I must report fully my activities and finances to all of my funders, including Schumann, on an annual basis…If they don't like what we're doing, we don't get funded for the next year."

According to the San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper, "The foundation money has engendered a climate of secrecy at IAJ [Institute for Alternative Journalism n/k/a Independent Media Institute that's in direct conflict with IAJ's role as a progressive media organization." The same newspaper also asserted in 1997 that "the only money nonprofits can get these days is from private foundations--and those foundations want to control the political agenda.". . .

In an interview with Message magazine, I also argued that: "The acceptance by media watchdog groups of large sums of money from U.S. establishment foundations may raise legitimate conflict-of-interest issues. They may tend to avoid providing readers, listeners or viewers with much critical alternative news coverage of the global business and political activities of their multi-billion dollar foundation funders."

Whether or not you agree that left media organizations and think tanks have been channeled into a more mainstream and politically ineffectual direction--or are specially-influenced-- by their liberal foundation funders, the evidence is overwhelming that large amounts of liberal foundation grant money have been thrown towards left media groups and think tanks since the early 1990s. . .

Like the left media, left think tanks have also been receiving large amounts of money from liberal foundations since the 1990s. As Roelofs observes:

"There are some think tanks considered left wing or progressive. They do important work, especially in documenting the activities, and consequences of corporate and government policies. Nevertheless, almost all are funded by the liberal foundations; their challenges to the system are muted. . . There are several possible explanations for the mellowing that has occurred, including foundation funding and, sometimes, foundation staff joining the boards of funded institutes." . . .

Left media groups and think tanks which finance their journalistic activity and political work by soliciting grants from liberal power elite foundations like the Ford Foundation generally deny that they are acting in either a politically or morally compromising way. Some supporters of acceptance of foundation grants by left media groups, for instance, asserted (on the Free Pacifica e-mail list in the late 1990s) that it's not important where the left media gets its money from, as long as they use the foundation grant money for anti-corporate, progressive purposes.

But left sociologist James Petras, in an article entitled "The Ford Foundation and the CIA: A documented case of philanthropic collaboration with the Secret Police", argues that "the Ford Foundation has in some ways refined their style of collaboration with Washington's attempt to produce world cultural domination, but retained the substance of that policy."

. . According to Petras, "the ties between the top officials of the Ford Foundation and the U.S. government are explicit and continuing." Petras also claims that the Ford Foundation "has never funded any major project that contravenes U.S. policy."

In her Foundations and Public Policy chapter on "Social Change Organizations," Roelofs indicates the various ways that foundation funding of U.S. left groups appear to have exercised a special influence over the political direction of the U.S. left since the 1970s. Foundation grants to one left group rather than another enables liberal power elite foundations to steer the U.S. left's agenda so that "threatening alternatives" don't appear on the serious political agenda. More militant left groups which the elite foundation boards or program managers regard as "irresponsible" or "unrealistic" are not funded: and, as a result, are more easily excluded from left political discourse than are the left groups favored with foundation grants.

Foundations can influence unfunded left groups to change the design of their projects and structure in accordance with a foundation board's special agenda, in order to qualify for grants from a particular foundation. Foundations can influence a left groups' choice of leaders by only giving grants to left groups whose leaders they regard as politically unthreatening. Foundations can promote "the fragmentation of protest" on the U.S. Left by using their grants to create and sustain "a universe of overlapping and competing social change organizations" and discouraging the unification of U.S. left dissident groups. As Roelofs notes:

"It is to the elite's advantage to be countered by a 'mass movement' consisting of fragmented, segmented, local, and non-ideological bureaucracies doing good works and, furthermore, being dependent on foundations for support. Diverse organizations emphasize differences among the disadvantaged: ethnic, racial, sexual, rural-urban, or age, and they discourage a broad left recognizing common interests."

Labels: FOUNDATIONS, JOURNALISM

1/07/2010 | Comments

HOW THE DEMOCRATS MISSED OUT WITH THE STIMULUS BILL

John Zogby, in a Forbes article, suggests that the Democrats are using the wrong words. The public doesn't like the term "stimulus" but does support job creating programs. The GOP can attack a phrase like "stimulus" in a way that's much harder when you're talking about "creating jobs."

But Zogby puts too much emphasis on the semantics. For example, he cities there issues that got majority approval:

--Tax breaks for employers who must use the money to add employees, 81%

--Federal aid to states and localities used to retain jobs in education, public safety and other public functions, 58%

--Public employment programs such as those created during the Depression, 56%.

Says Zogby: "The three approaches that voters liked were all, to some extent, part of the stimulus bill. But when they were lumped under the popular title of 'stimulus bill,' support plummeted.

It's true that the above approaches were minor parts of the stimulus bill, but they were far from the top of the list. Thus it wasn't just the words that were wrong; it was the DemoCrats' priorities.

Labels: JOBS, MONEY, STIMULUS

1/07/2010 | Comments

MILDER SWINE FLU THAN PREDICTED RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT WARNINGS

Joseph Brownstein, ABC News - A new analysis, using H1N1 deaths in the United States in the spring and projecting likely outcomes for this fall, shows that a typical -- or possibly even a milder flu season than average -- should have been expected. . .

The new study, done by researchers at Harvard University and the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit in the U.K., says swine flu cases in the spring indicated a flu season that might be, at worst, slightly worse than normal.

"It would have been great to have that back in June," said Philip Alcabes, an associate professor in the program in urban public health at Hunter College's School of Health Sciences. "There would have been one more bit of evidence behind my assertion six months ago" that people were overreacting to H1N1.

. . Around the time that swine flu first started making headlines, Alcabes' book, "Dread: How Fear and Fantasy Have Fueled Epidemics From the Black Death to Avian Flu," was published, and he said the circumstances surrounding H1N1 provide an apt case study.

"I think that it was, from the very beginning, created as a crisis and overstated as a real threat," he said, adding that he did not want to understate the seriousness of influenza.

"Flu is a serious illness, it kills people," he said. But, he added, "It does a disservice to public health when, in the name of a preparedness crusade, people create a narrative of crisis or catastrophe before we have enough data that this is happening."
Alcabes said that while public officials, in the early going, admitted to having little data on the virus and resisted calls to close the borders. But as time went on, he said, officials took many steps he feels were unnecessary, including mass, rather than targeted vaccination.

While the new paper suggests swine flu was unlikely to create a severe epidemic, the researchers, disagreeing with Alcabes, say they do not think public health officials overreacted.

"In the early on, we would not have been able to estimate severity. We were going with what was known at the time," said Anne Presanis, a statistician with the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit.

Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said he did not believe public health officials were overreacting.

"I don't think it's been oversold," he said. "I think you have to prepare for the worst and then be gratified that it wasn't as bad as it was."

While H1N1 affected different age groups from a typical flu, the intensity of that difference was not yet known in the spring.

"When it first hit, nobody knew how severe it could be or that population aged 60 and over would be relatively spared," said Schaffner. "Had this virus had an impact in the age 60 or over, it would have been vastly more injurious than seasonal influenza. We were fortunate in that regard, but we didn't know that at the time."

Public health officials faced a tough choice in May and June, said Robert Field, a professor of health management and policy at the Drexel University School of Public Health. Had they done little and an epidemic occurred, they would have been blamed for doing nothing. If they did a lot and there had been no major outbreak -- or even if their efforts stopped a potential outbreak -- they would have been blamed for wasting money.

"The attitude of public health is better to be safe than sorry, and to some extent, we may be seeing a milder epidemic than we feared because of the vaccine and other measures people are taking," Field said. "It's so easy to be a victim of your own success -- no one ever sees the disease that's being prevented, you just see the one that appeared and then got cured. It's a consequence of any disease that you develop a vaccine for and more broadly, of any disease that you're able to prevent."

Labels: HEALTH, SWINE FLU

1/07/2010 | Comments

THE END OF BLACK POLITICS

Bruce Dixon, Op Ed News - The day before being sworn in, Atlanta's new mayor Kasim Reed pledged to the Chamber of Commerce he'd deal with downtown panhandlers in what he called a more "muscular" fashion. The hopes and predictions of white pundits that black political life would come to look like the rest of America have come true. But not because the inequalities in health, wealth, incarceration rates and other indices of disparity have narrowed. Black politics are looking a lot more like white politics because the black political elite no longer believes its mission is to fight for peace and justice. The newer, more cynical black elite are unmoored from their peace-and-justice-loving base. They are focused on their own careers, and the corporate largesse that makes those careers possible. Make no mistake about it, the black politics of a previous generation, in which black candidates and public officials were expected to stand for something beside their own careers, is over. There was a time not so long ago, when black politics, both in the minds of black voters, and in the public aims of black politicians, differed from the politics of white America.

Black politics were different because black unemployment was chronically twice as high as white unemployment, because black infant mortalities were much greater and life expectancies shorter than in white America. Black politics were different because African Americans were more likely to live in segregated, inferior housing, attend segregated, inferior schools, and due to the enormous gap in family wealth between white and black America. Black politics were different too because even though many African Americans were in the military, black communities were far less supportive of America's imperial wars around the world than their white neighbors. And most of all, black politics were different because black voters expected black politicians to use their political careers to advance social and economic justice. Dr. King's last projects hadn't been about affirmative action. They were about a strike of sanitation workers for decent wages and benefits, and a Poor Peoples Campaign. . .

Black unemployment is still double that of whites, and the white-black wealth divide is something like eleven to one. Black infant mortality is still higher than that of whites, and life expectancies are lower. Tens of millions of African Americans still live in segregated communities with tax structures rigged to prevent them from adequately funding roads, schools, and public services, and most black children still attend segregated, inferior schools. Black America remains the most solidly antiwar and pro-peace constituency in the nation.

What's different is that black voters no longer demand, no longer imagine that black politicians can or want to make a difference. What's different is that black politicians, and African Americans in public life, in government at all levels no longer feel the obligation to stand and fight for economic justice.

Labels: BLACKS, POLITICS

1/07/2010 | Comments

MAJOR FOREIGN CROOK PAL OF CLINTONS ALLOWED BACK IN UNITED STATES

Andrew Higgins, Washington Post - In March 2004, James Riady, an Indonesian tycoon and devout Christian, received an honorary doctorate from Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas. The university -- which has a scholarship program funded by the Indonesian -- didn't announce the honor. Nor did Riady pick up the diploma in person: He'd been barred from America after pleading guilty in 2001 to a "conspiracy to defraud the United States" through illegal contributions to the campaigns of Bill Clinton and other Democrats.

Last year, however, the Indonesian mogul finally made it to Arkansas. He traveled there during the first of two previously unreported trips he made in 2009 to the United States. He was allowed in only after receiving a waiver from a rule that forbids entry to foreigners guilty of "a crime involving moral turpitude," a term that government lawyers generally interpret to include fraud.

Riady's return to the United States poses a prickly question for Hillary Clinton's State Department: How and why did a foreign billionaire stained by Clinton-era scandals get a U.S. visa after being kept out for so long under the Bush administration?

The ethnic Chinese magnate's ties to the Clintons have been a source of heated controversy since the late 1990s, when Riady became embroiled in one of the murkiest episodes of the Clinton presidency -- a campaign fundraising scandal that caused a big political ruckus in Washington amid Republican Party allegations, never proved, of meddling by China's intelligence services in American politics.

The saga brought Riady and his family-run conglomerate, Lippo Group, an $8.6 million fine, the biggest penalty in the history of U.S. campaign finance violations.

THE BACK STORY

1976

Two Indonesian billionaires come to Arkansas. Mochtar Riady and Liem Sioe Liong are close to Suharto. Riady is looking for an American bank to buy. Finds Jackson Stephens with whom he forms Stephens Finance. Stephens will broker the arrival of BCCI to this country and steer BCCI's founder, Hassan Abedi, to Bert Lance. Riady's teen-age son is taken on as an intern by Stephens Inc. He later says he was "sponsored" by Bill Clinton.

1977

Apparently because of pressure from Indonesia, Riady withdraws his bid to buy Lance's 30% share of the National Bank of Georgia. Instead, a BCCI front man buys the shares and Abedi moves to secretly take over Financial General - later First American Bankshares -- later the subject of the only BCCI-connected scandal to be prosecuted in the US.

1983

Mochtar Riady forms Lippo Finance & Investment in Little Rock. A non-citizen, Riady hires Carter's former SBA director, Vernon Weaver, to chair the firm. The launch is accomplished with the aid of a $2 million loan guaranteed by the SBA. Weaver uses Governor Clinton as a character reference to help get the loan guarantee. First loan goes to Little Rock Chinese restaurant owner Charlie Trie.

Jackson Stephens forms United Pacific Trading with Mochtar Riady to do business in the U.S. and Asia.

1984

Stevens and Riady buy a banking firm and change its name to Worthern Bank with Riady's 28-year-old son James as president. Other Worthen co-owners will eventually include BCCI investor Abdullah Taha Bakhish.

1985

Arkansas state pension funds -- deposited in Worthen by Governor Bill Clinton -- suddenly lose 15% of their value because of the failure of high risk, short-term investments and the brokerage firm that bought them. The $52 million loss is covered by a Worthen check written by Jack Stephens in the middle of the night, an insurance policy and the subsequent purchase over the next few months of 40% of the bank by Mochtar Riady. Clinton and Worthen escape a major scandal.

Mochtar and James Riady engineer the takeover of the First National Bank of Mena in a town of 5,000 with few major assets beyond a Contra supply base, drug running and money-laundering operations.
1986

James Riady resigns as president of Worthen Bank.

1990

James Riady takes over operations of a new branch of the Lippo Bank, working with Hong Kong Lippo executive, John Huang. China Resources Company Ltd begins buying stock in the branch, Hong Kong Chinese Bank, at 15% below market value. Intelligence sources later report that the firm is really a front for Chinese military intelligence.

1992

James Riady, his family, and employees give $700,000 to Clinton and the Democratic campaign.

1993

John Huang and James Riady give $100,000 to Clinton's inaugural fund . . Huang arranges private meeting between Mochtar Riady and Clinton at which Riady presses for renewal of China's 'most favored nation" status and a relaxation of economic sanctions . . . China's 'most favored nation' status is renewed. Price being paid by China Resources Company Ltd. for Lippo's Hong Kong Chinese Bank jumps to 50% above market value. The Riadys make $163 million.

1994

Ron Brown goes to China with an unprecedented $5.5 billion in deals ready to be signed. Included is a $1 billion contact for the Clinton-friendly Arkansas firm, Entergy Corporation, to manage and expand Lippo's power plant in northern China. Entergy will also get contracts to build power plants in Indonesia. James Riady tells the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: "I think the idea of having President Clinton from Arkansas in the White House shouldn't be underestimated."

Webster Hubbell is convicted of tax evasion and mail fraud involving the theft of nearly a half million dollars from his partners at the Rose firm and failing to pay nearly $150,000 in taxes.

After quitting the Justice Department and before going to jail, Hubbell is a busy man. He meets with Hillary Clinton, and follows up by getting together with major scandal figures John Huang, James Riady, and Ng Lapseng. Riady and Huang go to the White House every day from June 21 to June 25, 1994 according to White House records. Hubbell had breakfast and lunch with Riady on June 23. Four days later -- and one week after Hubbell's meeting with Hillary -- the Hong Kong Chinese Bank, jointly owed by Lippo and the Chinese intelligence services, sends $100,000 to Hubbell. Huang, incidentally, formerly worked for the Hong Kong Chinese Bank. Hubbell also receives $400,000 from other sources.

1995

Operating with an interim top secret clearance (but without FBI investigation or foreign security check) new Commerce official Huang requests several top secret files on China just before a meeting with the Chinese ambassador.

Huang and the Riadys hold a meeting with Clinton. Not long after, Huang goes to work as a Democratic fundraiser, but remains on Commerce's payroll as a $10,000 a month consultant. Huang raises $5 million for the campaign. About a third of that is returned as having come from illegal sources. Among the problem contributions: $250,000 to the DNC from five Chinese businessmen for a brief meeting with Clinton at a fundraiser.

Webster Hubbell, a former Rose law firm partner -- although not known for skill in Asian trade matters -- goes to work for a Lippo Group affiliate after being forced out of the Clinton administration and before going to jail. Is asked at a Senate hearing by the majority counsel: "I guess the question is really this, it is whether, in connection with this representation, you received a large amount of money and that may have had an impact on the degree of your cooperation with the independent counsel or with us?" Hubbell responds, "That's pretty rotten" and chair Al D'Amato changes the subject.

Hubbell had represented both Worthen and James Riady during the 1980s.

1998

Department of Justice announcement: "James Tjahaja Riady will pay a record $8.6 million in criminal fines and plead guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to defraud the United States by unlawfully reimbursing campaign donors with foreign corporate funds in violation of federal election law, the Justice Department's Campaign Financing Task Force and the United States Attorney in Los Angeles announced today.

"In addition, LippoBank California, a California state-chartered bank affiliated with Lippo Group, will plead guilty to 86 misdemeanor counts charging its agents, Riady and John Huang, with making illegal foreign campaign contributions from 1988 through 1994.

"Riady is one of 26 people and two corporations charged by the Campaign Financing Task Force, which was established four years ago by Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate allegations of campaign financing abuses in the 1996 election cycle. . . The $8.6 million fine represents the largest sanction imposed in a campaign finance matter in the history of the United States . . .

"During the period of August 1992 through October 1992, shortly after Riady pledged $1 million in support of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton's campaign for the Presidency of the United States, contributions made by Huang were reimbursed with funds wired from a foreign Lippo Group entity into an account Riady maintained at Lippo Bank and then distributed to Huang in cash. . .

"The purpose of the contributions was to obtain various benefits from various campaign committees and candidates for Lippo Group and LippoBank, including: access, meetings, and time with politicians, elected officials, and other high-level government officials; contacts and status for Lippo Group and LippoBank with business and government leaders in the United States and abroad; business opportunities for Lippo Group and defendant LippoBank; government policies which would inure to the benefit of Lippo Group and defendant LippoBank, including Most Favored Nation status for China, open trade policies with Indonesia, normalization of relations with Vietnam, Community Reinvestment Act exemptions for LippoBank, a repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act which limited business opportunities for LippoBank, and a relaxation of Taiwanese restrictions on investment by foreign banks; the deposit of funds into LippoBank by political campaign committees and government agencies; and local government support for Lippo Group's California property development projects which would in turn benefit LippoBank's plans for expansion."

MORE ARKANSAS CONNECTIONS

Labels: ARKANSAS, CLINTON, RIADY

1/05/2010 | Comments

STOP BANKING WITH THE BAD GUYS

You don't have to keep your checking account with one of the big bad guys. You can switch to a community bank or a credit union. Here's some good advice from Move Your Money:

Not all community banks are risk free. Some of them got involved in the same risky behavior that took down some of the biggest banks. We suggest two options for looking into the small and community banks in your area:

1. Thanks to the volunteer services of a group called Institutional Risk Analytics, you can get a listing of the most sound community banks near you. IRA lists only banks that, according to its rating system, which is based on government data, get a grade of "B" or better.

Find top rated community banks near you

Like the FDIC for banks and thrifts, the National Credit Union Administration insures the deposits of credit unions and is a good resource for financial data on specific institutions. Credit unions do not disclose financial data in the same way as FDIC-insured banks. As a result, credit unions are not presently included in the IRA ratings database, which covers over 8,000 federally insured banks and thrifts. IRA is developing a method to rate credit unions in a way that is comparable to the IRA bank stress ratings.

Find credit unions near you

2. Go to the Independent Community Bankers of America site and do a zip-code search. Or, if you're interested in credit unions, go to Credit Unions National Association and do a zip-code search. Then go to BankRate.com and see how it rates the banks or credit unions you're interested in.

Labels: BANKS, MONEY

1/07/2010 | Comments

JOBS: WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING

Labels: ECONOMY, WORK

1/06/2010 | Comments

EXCELLENT SUMMARY OF THE POPULATION CRISIS

Joint Statement by 58 of the World's Scientific Academies, 1994 - The world is in the midst of an unprecedented expansion of human numbers. It took hundreds of thousands of years for our species to reach a population level of 10 million, only 10,000 years ago. This number grew to 100 million people about 2,000 years ago and to 2.5 billion by 1950. Within less than the span of a single lifetime, it has more than doubled to 5.5 billion in 1993. . .

Over the last 30 years, many regions of the world have also dramatically reduced birth rates. Some have already achieved family sizes small enough, if maintained, to result eventually in a halt to population growth. These successes have led to a slowing of the world's rate of population increase.

Consider three hypothetical scenarios for the levels of human population in the century ahead:

- Fertility declines within sixty years from the current rate of 3.3 to a global replacement average of 2.1 children per woman. The current population momentum would lead to at least 11 billion people before leveling off at the end of the 21st century.

- Fertility reduces to an average of 1.7 children per woman early in the next century. Human population growth would peak at 7.8 billion persons in the middle of the 21st century and decline slowly thereafter.

- Fertility declines to no lower than 2.5 children per woman. Global population would grow to 19 billion by the year 2100, and to 28 billion by 2150.

High fertility rates have historically been strongly correlated with poverty, high childhood mortality rates, low status and educational levels of women, deficiencies in reproductive health services, and inadequate availability and acceptance of contraceptives. Falling fertility rates and the demographic transition are generally associated with improved standards of living, such as increased per capita incomes, increased life expectancy, lowered infant mortality, increased adult literacy, and higher rates of female education and employment.

Even with improved economic conditions, nations, regions, and societies will experience different demographic patterns due to varying cultural influences. The value placed upon large families (especially among underprivileged rural populations in less developed countries who benefit least from the process of development), the assurance of security for the elderly, the ability of women to control reproduction, and the status and rights of women within families and within societies are significant cultural factors affecting family size and the demand for family planning services. . .

Throughout history and especially during the twentieth century, environmental degradation has primarily been a product of our efforts to secure improved standards of food, clothing, shelter, comfort, and recreation for growing numbers of people. The magnitude of the threat to the ecosystem is linked to human population size and resource use per person. Resource use, waste production and environmental degradation are accelerated by population growth. They are further exacerbated by consumption habits, certain technological developments, and particular patterns of social organization and resource management.

As human numbers further increase, the potential for irreversible changes of far reaching magnitude also increases. Indicators of severe environmental stress include the growing loss of biodiversity, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing deforestation worldwide, stratospheric ozone depletion, acid rain, loss of topsoil, and shortages of water, food, and fuel-wood in many parts of the world. . .

The timing and spacing of pregnancies are important for the health of the mother, her children, and her family. Most maternal deaths are due to unsafe practices in terminating pregnancies, a lack of readily available services for high-risk pregnancies, and women having too many children or having them too early and too late in life.

Millions of people still do not have adequate access to family planning services and suitable contraceptives. Only about one-half of married women of reproductive age are currently practicing contraception. Yet as the director-general of UNICEF put it, ''Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race." Existing contraceptive methods could go far toward alleviating the unmet need if they were available and used in sufficient numbers, through a variety of channels and distribution, sensitively adapted to local needs. . .

Reducing fertility rates, however, cannot be achieved merely by providing more contraceptives. The demand for these services has to be addressed. Even when family planning and other reproductive health services are widely available, the social and economic status of women affects individual decisions to use them. The ability of women to make decisions about family size is greatly affected by gender roles within society and in sexual relationships. Ensuring equal opportunity for women in all aspects of society is crucial.

Thus all reproductive health services must be implemented as a part of broader strategies to raise the quality of human life. They must include the following:

- Efforts to reduce and eliminate gender-based inequalities. Women and men should have equal opportunities and responsibilities in sexual, social, and economic life.

- Provision of convenient family planning and other reproductive health services with a wide variety of safe contraceptive options. irrespective of an individual's ability to pay.

- Encouragement of voluntary approaches to family planning and elimination of unsafe and coercive practices.

- Development policies that address basic needs such as clean water, sanitation, broad primary health care measures and education; and that foster empowerment of the poor and women.

Labels: POPULATION

1/06/2010 | Comments

FEDERAL APPEALS COURT GIVES STATE'S FELONS RIGHT TO VOTE

Legal Defense Fund - The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that Washington State's law denying the vote to people with felony convictions is racially discriminatory and violates the Voting Rights Act. . .

The Court found "compelling" evidence that "in the total population of potential 'felons' . . . minorities are more likely than whites to be searched, arrested, detained, and ultimately prosecuted. If those decision points are infected with racial bias, resulting in some people becoming felons not just because they have committed a crime, but because of their race, then that felon status cannot, under section 2 of the VRA, disqualify felons from voting." The state did not dispute this compelling evidence.

As a result of Washington's law, 24 percent of black men and 15 percent of the entire black population in Washington have lost their voting rights because of a felony conviction. Collectively, African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans represent only 12% of Washington's population, but comprise 36% of the State's incarcerated population.

Nationally, more than 5.3 million Americans are denied access to the fundamental right that is preservative of all other rights. An estimated 2 million of the disfranchised, roughly 38%, are African Americans. Maine and Vermont permit prisoners to vote by absentee ballot from prison.

Seattle Weekly [The] decision by the famously liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granting felons in Washington state the right to vote--even while in prison--is sure to be further appealed. Attorney General Rob McKenna said as much this morning.

First stop will be a larger panel of 9th Circuit judges. But the case could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court--where the newest member is already on record as supporting this decision.

Sonia Sotomayor was a judge on the 2nd Circuit in 2006 when a similar case came up in New York. There, too, the plaintiffs argued that since felons are disproportionately people of color, denying them the right to vote was effectively discriminatory. The plaintiffs lost that case, as a majority of 2nd Circuit judges went against them. But Sotomayor dissented and seemed to support extending voting rights to all felons, in or out of prison.

Labels: JUSTICE, PRISONS, VOTING

1/06/2010 | Comments

THE TSA SCAN SCAM

James Ridgeway, Mother Jones - Within days or even hours of the [Detroit flight] bombing attempt, everyone was talking about so-called whole-body imaging as the magic bullet that could stop this type of attack. In announcing hearings by the Senate Homeland Security Commitee, Joe Lieberman approached the use of scanners as a foregone conclusion, saying one of the "big, urgent questions that we are holding this hearing to answer" was "Why isn't whole-body-scanning technology that can detect explosives in wider use?" Former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told the Washington Post, "You've got to find some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren't easy to get at. It's either pat downs or imaging, or otherwise hoping that bad guys haven't figured it out, and I guess bad guys have figured it out."

Since the alternative is being groped by airport screeners, the scanners might sound pretty good. The Transportation Security Administration has claimed that the images "are friendly enough to post in a preschool," though the pictures themselves tell another story, and numerous organizations have opposed them as a gross invasion of privacy. Beyond privacy issues, however, are questions about whether these machines really work -- and about who stands to benefit most from their use. When it comes to high-tech screening methods, the TSA has a dismal record of enriching private corporations with failed technologies, and there are signs that the latest miracle device may just bring more of the same.

Known by their opponents as "digital strip search" machines, the full-body scanners use one of two technologies -- millimeter wave sensors or backscatter x-rays -- to see through clothing, producing ghostly images of naked passengers. Yet critics say that these, too, are highly fallible, and are incapable of revealing explosives hidden in body cavities -- an age-old method for smuggling contraband. If that's the case, a terrorist could hide the entire bomb works within his or her body, and breeze through the virtual strip search undetected. The London Independent reported on "authoritative claims that officials at the [UK] Department for Transport and the Home Office have already tested the scanners and were not persuaded that they would work comprehensively against terrorist threats to aviation." A British defense-research firm reportedly found the machines unreliable in detecting "low-density" materials like plastics, chemicals, and liquids -- precisely what the underwear bomber had stuffed in his briefs.

The manufacturers of Full Body Scanners, state that the radiation dose, is no more than that received from the background radiation from flying and therefore they are safe.

This argument is nonsense. In order to gain a high quality image, that penetrates through clothes and skin, requires a far more concentrated dose of radiation than would be received from the background. If that was not the case, the scanners would not need to emit any X-Rays at all and would merely collect the reflections from the body present in the background radiation, like a camera taking pictures with reflected light.

The use of X-Rays for scanning humans, should only be used extremely rarely for medical diagnosis. Many researchers are convinced that using X-Rays to detect Breast Cancers is dangerous and actually causes a significant percentage of cancers, rather than merely detecting them.

To implement such technology on a routine basis is criminal. Some people fly several times a week, as part of their job, or work in airport security. The damage caused by X-Rays is cumulative, and even a single dose could result in a mutation that causes DNA damage leading to cancer in you or gross deformity in your unborn child, even though you didn't know you were pregnant at the time.

Yet the rush toward full-body scans already seems unstoppable. They were mandated today as part of the "enhanced" screening for travelers from selected countries, and hundreds of the machines are already on order, at a cost of about $150,000 apiece. Within days of the bombing attempt, Reuters was reporting that the "greater U.S. government shift toward using the high-tech devices could create a boom for makers of security imaging products, and it has already created a speculative spike in share prices in some companies."

Which brings us to the money shot. The body scanner is sure to get a go-ahead because of the illustrious personages hawking them. Chief among them is former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff, who now heads the Chertoff Group, which represents one of the leading manufacturers of whole-body-imaging machines, Rapiscan Systems. For days after the attack, Chertoff made the rounds on the media promoting the scanners, calling the bombing attempt "a very vivid lesson in the value of that machinery" -- all without disclosing his relationship to Rapiscan.

. . The Washington Examiner last week ran down an entire list of all the former Washington politicians and staff members who are now part of what it calls the "full-body scanner lobby":

One manufacturer, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is American Science & Engineering, Inc. AS&E has retained the K Street firm Wexler & Walker to lobby for "federal deployment of security technology by DHS and DOD." Individual lobbyists on this account include former TSA deputy administration Tom Blank, who also worked under House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Chad Wolf -- former assistant administrator for policy at TSA, and a former aide to Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex., a top Senate appropriator and the ranking Republican on the transportation committee -- is also lobbying on AS&E's behalf.

Smiths Detection, another screening manufacturer, employs top transportation lobbying firm Van Scoyoc Associates, including Kevin Patrick Kelly, a former top staffer to Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who sits on the Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee. Smiths also retains former congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley, R-Md.

Former Sen. Al D'Amato, R-N.Y., represents L3 Systems, about which Bloomberg wrote today: "L-3 has ‘developed a more sophisticated system that could prevent smuggling of almost anything on the body,' said Howard Rubel, an analyst at Jefferies & Co., who has a ‘hold' rating on the stock."

In forecasting the fate of the full-body scanners, we can turn to recent history, which saw the rapid rise -- and decline -- of the previous "miracle" screening technology. In the years following 9/11, dozens of explosive trace portals were installed in airports across the country, at a cost of about $160,000 each. These "puffer" machines -- so called because they blow air on passengers to dislodge explosive particles -- were once celebrated as the "no-touch pat down." But in a Denver test by CBS in 2007, a network employee was sprayed with explosives and then walked through the airport's three puffers without any trouble. The machines also set off false alarms, and they frequently broke down, leading to sky-high maintenance costs.

After spending more than $30 million on the puffer machines -- most of them purchased from GE -- the TSA announced earlier this year that it was suspending their use. Only about 25 percent of the machines were ever even deployed at US airports. A report last month from the Government Accountability Office found that the TSA had not adequately tested the puffers before buying them.

What will happen if the full-body scanner goes the way of the puffer? Well, there's always the next generation of security equipment: the Body Orifice Security Scanner, or BOSS chair. This contraption, which has an uncomfortable resemblance to an electric chair, is used in prisons, mostly in the UK, for tracing cell phones, shivs, and other dangerous contraband that's been swallowed or inserted into body cavities by inmates. So far, it only detects metal, but you never know.

Give me a friendly German Shepherd any day.

Labels: HOMELAND SECURITY, TERRORISM, TSA

1/06/2010 | Comments

RECOVERED HISTORY: HOMELAND SECURITY'S FIRST TECHNO-TOY

Progressive Review, November 5, 1998 - The Progressive Review's editor, Sam Smith, was detained at Washington National Airport for a half hour on Wednesday Nov. 4 as five US Airways security officials, 3 police officers, and one bomb-sniffing dog attempted to determine if he was, as they suspected, a terrorist.

Total evidence for the suspicion came from a defective high tech security machine convinced that the Quaker-educated Smith's computer and power supply box contained nitroglycerine. Despite admitting that certain brands of computers had been falsely interpreted by the machine, the security officials required former Coast Guard officer Smith to empty everything from his backpack. They also called two passenger service shift managers to the scene who ordered the 60-year-old Smith's checked bags removed from the aircraft and inspected for traces of explosives. One of the bags carried clothes, the other contained copies of "Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual" (WW Norton, 1997, $14.95) for sale during appearances by Smith. The backpack contained considerable Carefree gum, various paperwork, as well as Richard Sennett's "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism." In his book, Sennett notes that in all forms of work, people identify with tasks that are difficult, tasks that challenge them. In the new workplace, however, the machine has become "the only real standard of order. . . By a terrible paradox, when we diminish difficulty and resistance, we create the very conditions for uncritical and indifferent activity on the part of the users."

By the time the computer had been tested by a second machine, which also thought the Fujitsu laptop might be a bomb, Smith, who has never received even a speeding ticket before, began having intimations of imminent mortality as well as feeling deep humiliation and shock as hundreds of his fellow US Airways passengers walked by observing his plight. Efforts to engage the security personnel in normal human discourse produced but a stream of bureaucratic bromides such as "I'm just doing my job," "There is nothing I can do," and "I don't make the rules." Efforts to stave off physical collapse by sitting on the table, however, brought a rebuke from one of the guards. At no time was any concern expressed for the needs or physical comfort of US Airways frequent flyer Smith.

Said longtime Washington journalist Smith, who was on his way to Kansas City to give several talks and interviews and take part in a conference of Green activists: "I was trapped in that post-Orwellian synergy of defective technology and incompetent bureaucracy. At a time when our highest public officials ignore the law with impunity, it appears that a citizen a few years shy of Medicare can no longer go about his business without being considered a terrorist. I was told that it was all being done for my own good, but I fail to see how being publicly terrified and humiliated by US Airways because it has bought some crummy techno-toy helps the war against terrorism. Any terrorist watching the incident would have been emboldened rather than chastened."

In the end, the bomb-sniffing dog happily nosed about the computer, licked the hard drive and quickly returned without complaint to K-9 officer Jim Cox. Smith, who covered his first Washington story in 1957, was permitted to restuff his backpack and board the plane. Said Vietnam era veteran Smith, "A half dozen living human beings surrendered their will to a dubious creation of the late 20th century marketplace of fear, but the dog was smart enough to trust his own judgment. Officer Cox, to his credit, trusted the dog as well. As Harry Truman said, if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."

Cox was the only one of those involved in the search who expressed more than perfunctory concern to Smith, visiting the plane before takeoff to do so. Flight attendant Brian M. Lindsay, who had observed the bizarre incident as he checked through security, also expressed dismay and checked on Smith's well-being several times during the flight.

Smith says any legal action will be held in abeyance pending a colloquy he hopes to have with US Airways officials.

PS: Your editor subsequently received an apology from an aide to the president uf US Airways. On returning from Kanas City, I mentioned that the machine in Washington had tested positive when checking my computer. It passed inspection without incident, however, and one of the security officials said that the crew in Washington must not have been feeding the dog inside their machine. - Sam

Labels: HOMELAND SECURITY, TERRORISM, TSA

1/06/2010 | Comments
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