CRIMINAL Probe Opened in Pet Food Scare: YOUR Food Affected

Friday, 20 April 2007

Keep An Eye on Pet Food Recall Stories

UPDATE: "Criminal Probe Opened in Pet Food Scare: FDA Says Charges Possible; Tainted Pork Confirmed in Calif.," Washington Post, April 22: "The Food and Drug Administration has opened a criminal investigation in the widening pet food contamination scandal, officials said yesterday, as it was confirmed that tainted pork might have made its way onto human dinner plates in California." (I'm feeling prescient. This is just the TIP of the iceberg since labs still haven't gotten to the bottom of what's sickening pets and could sicken people. I suspect the Chinese add melamine (and more?) to cheaply boost protein numbers in glutens, and also that their factories are filthy cesspools of cross-contamination.)

ORIGINAL: Even if you don't have a pet, you'll be concerned by growing evidence that human foods could be contaminated. Further, the FDA is being barred by the Chinese government from investigating the Chinese plants that produced the tainted wheat gluten. This is KEY because the same Chinese plant that sold tainted wheat gluten (an additive in countless processed foods) also exports "carrots, garlic, ginger, corn protein powder, vegetables and feed." And now we've learned that rice and corn glutens are contaminated. Here's more new information:

• "Humans at risk from tainted pet food?," Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Federal officials confirmed Thursday they are investigating whether pork products intended for humans are contaminated with the same industrial chemical that prompted a massive pet food recall and sickened cats and dogs nationwide. Researchers also have identified three other contaminants in the urine and kidneys of animals sickened or killed after eating the recalled foods, including cyanuric acid, a chemical commonly used in pool chlorination, three researchers told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Cyanuric acid is what most likely sickened pets, one researcher said.

Melamine previously was found in the recalled pet food and two ingredients -- wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate -- as well as in the urine, blood, kidneys and tissues of infected animals. [...]

The Trib learned yesterday that melamine-contaminated feed was fed to hogs.The FDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the California Department of Food and Agriculture are investigating. [...]

[Some hogs] were slaughtered and sold as food before authorities learned their feed had been contaminated. ...

[T]he urine of some pigs at the 1,500-animal American Hog Farm in Ceres, Calif., tested positive for melamine, ...

The contaminated feed was bought April 3 and 13 as salvage pet food from Diamond Pet Foods Inc., which received contaminated rice protein concentrate. ...

Diamond Pet Foods Inc. is a large mass-producer of pet foods like Menu Foods. Diamond makes the Kirkland family of pet foods sold to Costco.

Melamine has been "found in South African Royal Canin products containing corn gluten from Chinese source." Via Itchmo blog, from SouthAfrica.com about the 30 pet deaths reported so far in South Africa:

An independent pathologist, Professor Fred Reyers said the outbreak may not be an isolated incident. He believed there was sufficient evidence to suggest a link between this outbreak and a similar one in Cape Town as well as one in the United States.

Itchmo blog's Ben adds:

We were tracking cases of the South African pet deaths before and have heard rumors of corn gluten contamination.

At this point, we believe that all corn gluten should be considered at risk for contamination and should be tested by every pet food manufacturer and the FDA.

The FDA "has yet to test corn gluten after South Africa’s findings of melamine in corn gluten from China," agency representatives conceded at yesterday's press conference.

The specific product recalls -- with more daily -- are too numerous to list here. The best thing to do is check Itchmo's site frequently because Ben has reliably and quickly posted all significant news. You can also sign up for Ben's safety alerts.

Howl911 is also doing a great job tracking recall news, and its staff has created a list of recalled products that is more accurate, and easier to follow, than the FDA's.

The Pittsburgh Tribune Review also has this report on the recalcitrance of the Chinese, "Chinese criticized in pet food probe."

The Chinese government and the company that supplied a contaminated ingredient are slowing the federal investigation into the nationwide recall of pet food, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration official said Tuesday.

[...]

Michael Rogers, director of the FDA's field investigations division, told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review the agency has asked the Chinese government for help investigating the gluten and the supplier, Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. Ltd., based in Jiangsu province.

The FDA is disappointed with slow and incomplete Chinese responses, Rogers said.

"I usually don't speak in terms of cooperative or not cooperative," he said.

Federal investigators haven't determined whether Xuzhou Anying shipped other food products to the United States, or what other Chinese companies it sold wheat gluten to that, in turn, might have been shipped here, Rogers said.

Xuzhou Anying's Web site said it also exports carrots, garlic, ginger, corn protein powder, vegetables and feed. Rogers said Chinese officials have not responded to the U.S. government's question about whether any products other than wheat gluten were shipped here.

"We're certainly reviewing all products from this source," he said. Since the recall, the company has shipped only wheat gluten to the United States, but U.S. officials still are unsure what might have been shipped prior to the recall, Rogers said.

"From an operational standpoint, we still have questions about this company," he said.

The FDA is screening all wheat gluten imported from China and the Netherlands at U.S. ports and seizing all wheat gluten from Xuzhou Anying.

[...]

The FDA, Cornell and other researchers found melamine in high concentrations in the gluten -- up to 6.6 percent of the product.

Even so, they do not believe the melamine made the animals sick, although they said it is a marker for tracking the outbreak, because the crystal found in the melamine and in animals' urine and tissue is distinctive to this outbreak.

In other words, nobody knows yet what is killing cats and dogs, or may be harming humans.

The best advice I've seen, from reading many articles and blog posts, is to buy locally and organically.

Even reading labels isn't a guarantee because there is little oversight over what companies list in their labels.

Sen. Dick Durbin has been a leader in calling for greater oversight by the FDA over imported foods. From his Web site:

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) met with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 in Durbin's Capitol office to discuss the latest recall of pet food, this time caused by contaminated rice protein imported from China.

In his press release on the meeting, Durbin says:

In the meeting, Durbin and DeLauro learned that the Chinese Government has blocked requests from the FDA to send personnel to China to inspect the facilities suspected of producing the contaminated products. The FDA first contacted the Chinese Government on April 4, 2007, but have not been granted permission to send food inspectors into the country. In response, Durbin and DeLauro sent a letter to the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Zhou Wenzong, urging the Chinese Government to issue visas to U.S. food inspectors as quickly as possible.

"It is unacceptable that the Chinese government is blocking our food safety inspectors from entering their country and examining facilities that are suspected of providing contaminated pet food to American consumers," said Durbin. "We have asked for two things in our letter today -- that the Chinese government allow our inspectors in and that the Chinese ambassador to the United States meet with Congresswoman DeLauro and me to discuss the larger issue of contaminated food being sent to the U.S. These are reasonable requests and we hope that we can find a level of cooperation with the Chinese."

"At time when China is exporting more foods into the U.S., the Chinese are refusing to allow our inspectors in to the country to investigate the source of the pet food contamination. The FDA needs to be allowed to investigate this so we can better protect our pets and identify the source of the source of the problem. While we have a significant trade relationship with the Chinese, the investigation of the contaminated product comes first," said DeLauro.

Durbin calls for a single agency to oversee food safety:

Durbin and DeLauro have been actively engaged on food safety issues for over a decade. This Congress they introduced legislation that calls for the development of a single food safety agency and the implementation of a food safety program to standardize American food safety activities (The Safe Food Act - S. 654 and H.R. 1148 in the Senate and House respectively). The Illinois senator said legislation he has introduced to consolidate all federal food safety responsibilities into a single, independent agency has taken on new urgency because of a possibly heightened need to respond quickly and effectively to any acts of bioterrorism or agroterrorism. Currently, there are at least 12 different federal agencies and 35 different laws governing food safety. With overlapping jurisdictions, federal agencies often lack accountability on food safety-related issues.

The non-partisan U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) has been unequivocal in its recommendation for consolidation of federal food safety programs. In February of this year, the GAO deemed federal oversight of food safety as "high risk" to the economy and public health and safety. Over the past two decades, GAO has also issued numerous reports on topics such as food recalls, food safety inspections and the transport of animal feeds. Each of these reports highlights the current fragmentation and inconsistent organization of the various agencies involved in food safety oversight.

Posted by SusanUnPC, SusanUnPC@gmail.com, on Friday, 20 April 2007 at 13:16 | Permalink

Fired Worker Claims Wal-Mart Spy Operation

Updated:2007-04-04 23:59:08

By MARCUS KABEL

Reuters

BENTONVILLE, Arkansas (April 5) - A fired Wal-Mart technician alleged the world's largest retailer has been spying on its workers, critics, vendors and consultants. The company defended its security practices.

Retail Intrigue

Talk About It: Post Thoughts
Wal-Mart declined to comment on specific allegations made by 19-year veteran Bruce Gabbard to the Wall Street Journal in a report published Wednesday. Wal-Mart reiterated that it had fired Gabbard, 44, and his supervisor last month for violating company policy by recording phone calls and intercepting pager messages.

"Like most major corporations, it is our corporate responsibility to have systems in place, including software systems, to monitor threats to our network, intellectual property and our people," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark said.

Gabbard was fired after recording phone calls to and from a New York Times reporter and intercepting pager messages.

Wal-Mart made the case public last month and denied Gabbard's claims that his actions were the result of pressure from Kenneth Senser, a former senior CIA and FBI official who has headed Wal-Mart's office of global security since 2003. Another FBI veteran, Joseph Lewis, is head of corporate investigations under Senser.

Gabbard did not work for Senser's department, although the company and others familiar with the case said Senser has the authority to work with staff from other divisions in carrying out investigations. Gabbard has said he felt pressured by Senser to find information leaks, while Wal-Mart has denied that those conversations alleged by Gabbard took place.

Gabbard and his former supervisor, Jason Hamilton, who was also fired, have declined repeated requests from The Associated Press to talk about their security activities.

But in a text message to The Associated Press Wednesday, Gabbard confirmed the allegations that he was part of a broader surveillance operation approved by the company. The team, the Threat Research and Analysis Group, was a unit of Wal-Mart's Information Systems Division.

"I can confirm everything in the WSJ story is correct except the glass wall comment which I didn't make," Gabbard wrote, referring to a description of the Threat Group's glass-enclosed work area at Wal-Mart's Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters.

Wal-Mart's Clark noted that the company had self-reported the issue to federal prosecutors to determine if any laws had been broken.

Wal-Mart's union-backed critics, whom Gabbard identified as among the surveillance targets, accused the retailer of being "paranoid, childish and desperate."

"They should stop playing with spy toys and take the criticism of their business model seriously. The success of the company depends on it," said Nu Wexler, spokesman for Wal-Mart Watch. According to the Wall Street Journal report, the company found personal photos of Wexler and tracked his plans to attend Wal-Mart's annual meeting.

Gabbard told the newspaper that Wal-Mart sent an employee to infiltrate an anti-Wal-Mart group to learn if it was going to protest at the annual shareholders' meeting and investigated McKinsey & Co. employees it believed leaked a memo about Wal-Mart's health care plans.

The company also used software programs to read e-mails sent by workers using private e-mail accounts whenever they were hooked up to the Wal-Mart computer network, he said.

Gabbard told the Journal he recorded the calls to the New York Times reporter on his own, but added many of his activities were approved by Wal-Mart. The Journal said other employees and security firms confirmed parts of his account.

Clark said she could not comment on Gabbard's claim of blanket approval because "that's a pretty broad statement. We wouldn't be able to comment on that without knowing the details he's referring to."

Clark said the Threat Research group is no longer operating in the same manner that it did prior to the discovery of the unauthorized recording of telephone conversations.

AP Business Writer Anne D'Innocenzio in New York contributed to this report.

ITT to plead guilty to illegal export of military data: DOJ

By Katherine Hunt

Last Update: 12:05 PM ET Mar 27, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Defense contractor ITT Corp. (ITTITT Corp

ITT ) agreed to plead guilty to sending classified military data overseas and will pay a $100 million penalty, the Department of Justice said on Tuesday. ITT, which makes military night vision equipment for the U.S. Armed Forces, plans to plead guilty to one count each of export of defense articles without a license, and omission of statements of material facts in arms exports reports, the government said. According to information to be filed in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, ITT exported defense-related technical data to the People's Republic of China, Singapore, and the United Kingdom between March 2001 and August 2001, without first obtaining a license or written authorization from the State Department, the DOJ said.

A Chance For Fair Elections

David Donnelly and Joan Mandle

March 26, 2007

David Donnelly is the National Campaigns Director of Public Campaign Action Fund. Joan Mandle is the Executive Director of Democracy Matters, and is the chair of the Public Campaign board of directors.

Last November, voters delivered an unmistakable mandate to Congress: Deal with the corruption and ethics scandals. The House and Senate both passed ethics and lobbying reforms as good first steps, but left untouched the broken campaign finance system that shuts out ordinary voters.

Into this vacuum stepped Senators Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Reps. John Tierney, D-Mass., Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., and Todd Platts, R-Pa.

On Tuesday, Senators Durbin and Specter introduced the bipartisan Fair Elections Now Act to level the financial playing field for all Senate candidates, and to get candidates off the never-ending fundraising treadmill. (At the same time, the House members filed similar legislation—the Clean Money, Clean Elections Act.)

The importance of this bipartisan legislation is underscored by the number of organizations that immediately got behind it. In addition to reform organizations, endorsers of the Fair Elections Now Act ranged from unions to business leaders, environmental groups to church-based organizations. With a combined membership of 60 million Americans, the coalition assembled is unlike any other federal effort on campaign finance reform. This reform effort is fundamentally different from those of the past.

Today, there is broad recognition that the current funding system is both unfair and unsustainable. Unfair because the few people in the country who can make sizable campaign donations get to influence our politicians and the political agenda in ways that ordinary citizens can’t hope to do. Unsustainable because campaign costs continue to soar. In 2002, the average winning candidate for Senate spent $5.4 million. Last fall, the average winner spent $9.7 million, an 80 percent increase. As the price tag on campaigns goes up, so does the time spent by members of Congress raising that money as well as the number of citizens who can no longer afford to run for office.

Furthermore, the scandals of Abramoff, DeLay, Cunningham and related outrages reveal that the system of private funding amounts to money scandals just waiting to happen. It adds up to a public that is shut out and turned off from politics awash with money.

This reform effort is also different because of the Fair Elections policy itself. Based on successful laws in Arizona, Maine, North Carolina and elsewhere, the proposal turns the current system on its head. Recent analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics reveals that a tiny fraction of Americans truly matter in financing elections: just one-quarter of one percent of all Americans make a donation of $200 or more to a federal candidate. Instead of depending on the narrow slice of America who can afford to make a large donation, the bill requires that participating candidates raise a large number of small donations from people back home. Importantly, after qualifying through these small donations, candidates agree to limit their spending to what they receive from a public fund.

In Arizona and Maine, similar clean elections laws have breathed new life into politics. Eighty-four percent of Maine state legislators were elected under the system. In Arizona, nine of the 11 statewide elected officials—including the governor—were elected without raising special-interest money. Candidates are no longer dependent on private money from wealthy special interests. Instead, they can focus on the needs of their constituents.

A broad and diverse set of groups and individuals support fair elections because it expands who can actively participate in politics, and deepens democracy by offering a workable alternative to the current unfair funding system. For a full list of endorsers of the Senate bill, visit Senator Durbin’s website.

We know that it will take a huge outpouring of citizen pressure to pass this legislation. Only organized, sustained citizen pressure can successfully make the case that the time has come for real change in campaign funding. National organizations and individuals are gearing up to tell their elected officials that they want to take back democracy from the special interests. Public Campaign has already launched a “Citizen Co-Sponsor” petition. Democracy Matters is organizing students on campuses to build support for fair elections. And many of the endorsing groups are planning a national day of action in the fall.

Because our democracy belongs to all of us—not just to elected officials, wealthy donors and lobbyists—it is all of America that must fight for it.

Business-Spending Slowdown May Sap Job Growth, Surprising Fed

By Joe Richter, Simon Kennedy and Rich Miller

March 26 (Bloomberg) -- A slowdown in business investment that the Federal Reserve expects to end without much damage to the economy may instead linger long enough to hurt job growth.

Business spending may be a significant overlooked risk to the Fed's forecast of moderate economic growth this year, economists say. When spending growth tapers off, a slowdown in hiring almost always follows, according to researchers at Commerzbank AG.

``The weakness in capital spending is alarming,'' says Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. in New York. ``If capital spending is weak and getting weaker, the next thing companies will do is slow hiring.''

Fewer new jobs would mean less consumer spending, deepening the malaise in a U.S. economy already burdened by slumping housing demand. The combination might force the Fed to shift its focus more toward shoring up growth.

Fed policy makers, led by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, last week stuck to their view that the economy will keep expanding ``at a moderate pace.'' Their most recently published minutes, from the January meeting, indicated that while business investment had proven weaker than anticipated, they still expect improvement before year's end.

Private economists may not be so sanguine. They have cut their forecasts of business spending three times since December, and now expect it will grow this year at the slowest pace since 2003, according to surveys by Blue Chip Economic Indicators. That's after expenditures on equipment and software fell last quarter by the most in four years.

`Under the Radar'

``With so much attention on the housing market, this is perhaps a serious risk that's flying under the radar,'' says Brian Sack, a former Fed economist and now vice president of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC in Washington. ``We still think business spending will grow at a solid pace this year, but recent data has alerted us to the risks.''

The Fed's statement last week said inflation remains the main risk to the economy, even as policy makers dropped their bias toward raising interest rates. The change gives them room to maneuver in case the economy slows more than they expect.

Some suppliers of business equipment say the Fed's optimism about investment may yet be borne out.

Optimism

``I've seen a significant change in optimism recently,'' says Roland Chalons-Browne, chief executive officer of Iselin, New Jersey-based Siemens Financial Services Inc., the commercial- finance unit of German engineering company Siemens AG. ``The hesitancy that has been in the marketplace is disappearing.''

U.S. businesses have no shortage of funds to invest, thanks to a five-year surge in earnings that took profit margins at non- financial corporations to the highest level in 37 years in the third quarter of 2006, according to the Commerce Department.

Some companies would rather use their cash to purchase their own shares than invest it in new plants or expanding payrolls. Last year, non-financial companies retired a record $602.1 billion of equity through buybacks and other means, according to Fed statistics. That's up 66 percent from $363.4 billion retired in 2005.

Houston-based ConocoPhillips, the third-largest U.S. oil company, plans to quadruple share buybacks this year to $4 billion while cutting its capital budget 25 percent.

This year, profit growth is slowing as margins shrink. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News see per-share earnings growth among S&P 500 companies slowing to 6.8 percent this year from 16.6 percent in 2006.

Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc., the world's biggest online retailer, announced this month that it will slow spending on technology after its profit margin fell to the lowest since 1999.

Defending the Economy

``When earnings growth slows and margins narrow, American business is very quick to cut back on expenses,'' says Allen Sinai, chief global economist at New York-based Decision Economics Inc. ``If this turns out to be a case of business- sector-initiated weakness, the Fed will be late in defending the economy.''

Interest-rate futures show a 28 percent chance the Fed will lower its target lending rate a quarter percentage point to 5 percent by June 28, compared with 10 percent odds a month ago.

Deutsche Bank's LaVorgna says the Fed's latest statement shows policy makers are ``acknowledging risks to the economy. But they're still not going to leap to cut rates.''

The Blue Chip survey shows business fixed investment may rise 4.3 percent this year, the slowest pace since 2003. That forecast is down from a 6.2 percent rise estimated in December.

Job Growth

``Once investment spending slows, job growth tends to follow,'' says Patrick Franke, an economist at Commerzbank in Frankfurt. He says capital spending is ``decisive'' in any change in direction for the economy ``because it is closely connected with trends in the labor market.''

LaVorgna says he expects monthly payroll growth to slow to an average 50,000 to 75,000 by year-end, from 189,000 in 2006, pushing the unemployment rate up to 5 percent from 4.5 percent now. A Manpower Inc. survey of 14,000 companies this month showed employers plan to slow hiring next quarter. Construction companies and makers of durable goods plan to trim hiring the most, according to Milwaukee-based Manpower, the world's second- largest provider of temporary workers.

The U.S. economy will probably avoid a collapse in capital spending like the ones that occurred in 1982, 1991 and 2001, says Franke. Still, ``a significant flattening'' is likely, with investment growth of around 4 percent this year, he says.

Offsetting the Slowdown

For the global economy, increasing business investment in Europe and Japan may offset the slowdown in the U.S.

Japan's largest manufacturers, encouraged by the lowest interest rates in the industrial world, plan to spend the most this quarter since 1991, according to the Bank of Japan. Sharp Corp., the country's largest maker of liquid-crystal displays and mobile phones, is spending 200 billion yen ($1.66 billion) to triple output of the panels.

``Companies have yet to spend as much as they want,'' says Yasuo Yamamoto, an economist at Mizuho Research Institute in Tokyo. ``Business investment will remain solid.

European companies are also spending more amid signs the economy of the 13 euro nations will sustain its best expansion since the single currency began trading in 1999. The European Central Bank reported in January that business demand for fixed investment loans was the strongest since it began surveying banks in April 2003.

``The business investment cycle has been slow to get going, but is now firmly positive,'' says James Nixon, an economist at Societe Generale SA in London and a former ECB forecaster. ``We're pretty upbeat about the outlook.''

Even some U.S. companies that have cut spending at home are still investing abroad. Rajiv Gupta, chief executive officer of Philadelphia-based Rohm & Haas Co., the world's biggest maker of acrylic paint ingredients, says half the company's capital spending will be overseas, and it will boost its global workforce while cutting U.S. jobs.

``Demand has been very robust in Asia and we have been positively surprised by the turn in Europe,'' he says. ``We have seen a slowdown in the U.S.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Richter in Washington at Jrichter1@bloomberg.net ; Simon Kennedy in Paris at skennedy4@bloomberg.net ; Rich Miller in Washington at rmiller28@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: March 25, 2007 19:07 EDT

Corporate Muzzling Of Politics

The Commission on Presidential Debates effectively keeps any real politics out of the debates.
---
George Farah

March 22, 2007

George Farah is the author of No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates and the founder of Open Debates (www.OpenDebates.org).

The major parties cannot police themselves. For a decade, the House Ethics Committee, comprised of Republicans and Democrats, has refused to punish blatant acts of corruption so that both parties can continue to rake in corporate contributions. Similarly, since its inception, the bipartisan Federal Election Commission has failed to enforce election laws because the appointed Commissioners rebuff efforts to investigate members of their own parties. And unbeknownst to the public, for the last 20 years, through a private corporation called the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Republican and Democratic parties have worked together to ruin our most sacred political forums in order to protect their candidates from genuine debate.

Despite its purported commitment to "providing the best possible information to viewers and listeners," the Commission on Presidential Debates exists to secretly award control of the presidential debates to the Democratic and Republican candidates.

The commission, which claims to "have no relationship with any political party or candidate," was actually created by the Republican and Democratic parties. In 1986, the two parties' national committees ratified an agreement "to take over the presidential debates." Fifteen months later, then-Republican Party chair Frank Fahrenkopf and then-Democratic Party chair Paul Kirk incorporated the commission, and they have co-chaired the organization ever since.

Every four years, negotiators for the major party nominees meet behind closed doors and jointly draft secret debate contracts called memoranda of understanding. These contracts dictate precisely how the debates will be structured—from who gets to participate, to who will ask the questions, to the temperature in the auditoriums. The commission merely implements and conceals the contracts, shielding the major party candidates from public criticism.

In 1996, for example, Republican nominee Bob Dole and Democratic nominee Bill Clinton spoiled the presidential debates before they started. During debate negotiations, Dole demanded the exclusion of Reform Party nominee Ross Perot, despite the fact that Perot had received $29 million in taxpayers' funds for his campaign and that over three-quarters of eligible voters wanted him included. Clinton, meanwhile, desired the smallest possible audience for the debates—what George Stephanopoulos called a "nonevent"—because he was comfortably leading in the polls.

Dole and Clinton struck a deal; Perot would be excluded, one debate would be canceled, and the remaining two debates would be deliberately scheduled opposite the World Series, producing the smallest audience in presidential debate history.

The American people never knew why a candidate they wanted to see was excluded, or why the debates were held on the same night as the World Series. Dole and Clinton were able to conceal their manipulation of the debates because of the complicity of the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Moreover, under the commission's tenure, debate formats have become stilted and unrevealing. The Republican and Democratic nominees handpick compliant moderators, artificially limit response times, require the screening of town-hall questions, and even prohibit themselves from talking to each other. The final product amounts to little more than a series of glorified bipartisan press conferences.

Walter Cronkite called the commission-sponsored debates an "unconscionable fraud" and accused the candidates of "sabotaging the electoral process."

To top it off, Anheuser-Busch, US Airways, and other corporations foot most of the bill for these candidate-controlled pseudo-debates through tax-deductible contributions to the commission. Debate sites have become corporate carnivals, with Anheuser-Busch girls in skimpy outfits passing out pamphlets denouncing beer taxes. The corporate connection is not surprising; Mr. Fahrenkopf is the nation's leading gambling lobbyist, and Mr. Kirk has lobbied on behalf of pharmaceutical companies.

The presidential debates weren’t always controlled by the major parties and promoted by business interests. For three election cycles, the League of Women Voters nobly served as a nonpartisan debate sponsor that championed the public interest. In 1980, the league invited independent candidate John B. Anderson to participate in a presidential debate, even though President Jimmy Carter adamantly refused to debate him.

Four years later, when the Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale campaigns vetoed 68 proposed panelists in order to eliminate difficult questions, the league held a press conference and lambasted the candidates for "abusing the process." The ensuing public outcry persuaded the candidates to accept the league's selected panelists.

And in 1988, when the George Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns drafted the first secret "memorandum of understanding" that dictated who would participate and under what conditions, the league declined to implement it. Instead, the league withdrew its sponsorship and issued a blistering press release, claiming that "the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter."

We need another nonpartisan debate sponsor—a Citizens’ Debate Commission—to retake control of the presidential debates and follow in the League’s footsteps. Just as an independent ethics prosecutor is needed to combat congressional corruption, and just as an apolitical regulatory agency is needed to enforce election laws, a genuinely nonpartisan debate sponsor is needed to ensure that our most important public forums serve the voters' interests.

Step Away from the Banana: Chiquita to Pay $25M Fine in Terror Case

Chiquita to Pay $25M Fine in Terror Case

Thursday March 15, 2007 9:46 AM

By MATT APUZZO

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Banana company Chiquita Brands International said Wednesday it has agreed to a $25 million fine after admitting it paid terrorists for protection in a volatile farming region of Colombia.

The settlement resolves a lengthy Justice Department investigation into the company's financial dealings with right-wing paramilitaries and leftist rebels the U.S. government deems terrorist groups.

In court documents filed Wednesday, federal prosecutors said the Cincinnati-based company and several unnamed high-ranking corporate officers paid about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004 to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC for its Spanish initials.

The AUC has been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country's cocaine exports. The U.S. government designated the right-wing militia a terrorist organization in September 2001.

Prosecutors said the company made the payments in exchange for protection for its workers. In addition to paying the AUC, prosecutors said, Chiquita made payments to the National Liberation Army, or ELN, and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, as control of the company's banana-growing area shifted.

Leftist rebels and far-right paramilitaries have fought viciously over Colombia's banana-growing region, though the victims are most often noncombatants. Most companies in the area have extensive security operations to protect employees.

In Colombia, authorities reported Wednesday that nine geologists searching for gold were captured by the FARC. In addition, the army confirmed that four contractors hired by Colombian oil giant Ecopetrol were missing near Colombia's border with Venezuela.

Colombia has one of the highest kidnappings rates in the world. Arrangements between companies and either guerrillas or paramilitaries are not uncommon, but it is impossible to know how much money is paid each year.

``The information filed today is part of a plea agreement, which we view as a reasoned solution to the dilemma the company faced several years ago,'' Chiquita's chief executive, Fernando Aguirre, said in a statement. ``The payments made by the company were always motivated by our good faith concern for the safety of our employees.''

Chiquita sold its Colombian banana operations in June 2004.

Details of the settlement were not included in court documents, but Aguirre said Chiquita would pay $25 million in fines, which it set aside this year. The company reported the deal to the Securities and Exchange Commission. A plea hearing was scheduled for Monday.

The payments were approved by senior executives at Chiquita, prosecutors wrote in court documents. Prosecutors said Chiquita began paying the right-wing AUC after a meeting in 1997 and disguised the payments in company books.

``No later than in or about September 2000, defendant Chiquita's senior executives knew that the corporation was paying AUC and that the AUC was a violent paramilitary organization,'' prosecutors wrote in Wednesday's court filing.

Company attorneys made it clear the payments were improper, prosecutors said.

``Bottom line: CANNOT MAKE THE PAYMENT,'' the company's outside counsel advised in February 2003, according to an excerpt of a memo included in court documents.

In April 2003, company officials and lawyers approached the Justice Department and told prosecutors they had been making the payments. According to court documents, the payments continued for months.

The document filed by federal prosecutors is known as an information. Unlike an indictment, it is normally worked out through discussions with prosecutors and is followed by a guilty plea.

---

Associated Press writer Toby Muse in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.

---

On the Net:

Chiquita: http://www.chiquita.com

Global Realignment and the Decline of the Superpower

March 10, 2007

By Mike Whitney

The United States has been defeated in Iraq. That doesn’t mean that there’ll be a troop withdrawal anytime soon, but it does mean that there’s no chance of achieving the mission’s political objectives. Iraq will not be a democracy, reconstruction will be minimal, and the security situation will continue to deteriorate into the foreseeable future.

The real goals of the invasion are equally unachievable. While the US has established a number of military bases at the heart of the world’s energy-center; oil output has dwindled to 1.6 million barrels per day, nearly half of post-war production. More importantly, the administration has no clear strategy for protecting pipelines, oil tankers and major facilities. Oil production will be spotty for years to come even if security improves. This will have grave effects on oil futures; triggering erratic spikes in prices and roiling the world energy markets. If the contagion spreads to the other Gulf States, as many political analysts now expect, many of the world’s oil-dependent countries will go through an agonizing cycle of recession/depression.

America’s failure in Iraq is not merely a defeat for the Bush administration. It is also a defeat for the “unipolar-model” of world order. Iraq proves that that the superpower model cannot provide the stability, security or guarantee of human rights that are essential for garnering the support of the 6 billion people who now occupy the planet. The mushrooming of armed groups in Iraq, Afghanistan and, now, Somalia foreshadows a broader and more violent confrontation between the over-stretched American legions and their increasingly adaptable and lethal enemies. Resistance to the imperial order is on the rise everywhere.

The United States does not have the resources or the public support to prevail in such a conflict. Nor does it have the moral authority to persuade the world of the merit of its cause. The Bush administration’s extra-legal actions have galvanized the majority of people against the United States. America has become a threat to the very human rights and civil liberties with which it used to be identified. There’s little popular support for imprisoning enemies without charges, for torturing suspects with impunity, for kidnapping people off the streets of foreign capitals, or for invading unarmed sovereign nations without the approval of the United Nations. These are fundamental violations to international law as well as commonly held principles of human decency.

The Bush administration defends its illegal activities as an essential part of the new world order; a model of global governance which allows Washington to police the world according to its own discretion. The vast majority of people have rejected this model and polls clearly indicate declining support for US policies nearly everywhere. As former Jimmy Carter National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski noted:

“American power may be greater in 2006 than in 1991, (but) the country’s capacity to mobilize, inspire, point in a shared direction and thus shape global realities has significantly declined. Fifteen years after its coronation as global leader, America is becoming a fearful and lonely democracy in a politically antagonistic world.”

The United States is a nation in a state of irreversible decline; its foundational principles have been abandoned and its center of political power is a moral swamp. The Bush presidency represents the ethical low point in American history.

The U.S. now faces a decades-long struggle which will engulf the Middle East and Central Asia leading to the steady and predictable erosion of America’s military, political and economic power.

This is not the “new century” that Bush and his fellows envisioned.

There are still dead-enders within the Bush administration who believe that we are winning the war. Vice President Dick Cheney has celebrated the “enormous success” of the Iraqi occupation, but he finds himself increasingly isolated in his views. Reasonable people agree that the war has been a strategic and moral catastrophe. The US has paid a heavy price for its recklessness; losing over 3,000 servicemen while seriously undermining its standing in the world. A small cadre of Iraqi guerillas has demonstrated that it can frustrate the efforts of best-equipped, best-trained, high-tech military in the world. They have made Iraq an ungovernable quagmire which, by the standards of asymmetrical warfare, is the very definition of success.

But what if Bush’s plans had succeeded? What if his dark vision of “victory” had been realized and the US was able to subjugate the Iraqi people, control their resources, and create an “Arab façade” through which the administration could carry out its policies?

Is there any doubt that Bush would quickly march on Tehran and Damascus? Is there any doubt that Guantanamo and other CIA “black sites” around the world would increase in number and size? Is there any doubt that global warming, peak oil, nuclear non proliferation, poverty, hunger and AIDS would continue to be brushed aside by Washington’s corporatists and banking elites?

Is there any doubt that success in Iraq would further strengthen a tyrannical system that limits the decision-making on all the issues of global importance, even the very survival of the planet, to a small fraternity of well-heeled plutocrats and gangsters?

The “new world order” promises despotism not democracy.

Many people believe that America has undergone a silent coup and has been taken over by a cabal of political fantasists and war-mongers. But this is only partially true. The US has a long history of covert activity, black-ops, and other clear violations to international law. Perhaps, we are reluctant to accept the truth because it’s easier to stick our heads in the sand and let the marauding continue.

The truth is there’s a straight line from the founding of this country to the killing fields of Baghdad. That line may be interrupted by periods of enlightenment and peace, but it is still an unbroken stripe from the Continental Congress to Abu Ghraib, from Bunker Hill to Falluja, from Valley Forge to Guantanamo Bay. It all grows from the same root.

The United States now faces mounting resistance from all corners of the earth. Russia, China, and the Central Asian countries have joined together in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to fend off US-NATO influence in the region. And in Latin America, an alliance of leftist governments has formed (Mercosur) under the leadership of Hugo Chavez. Africa still remains politically fragmented and open to western exploitation, although ham-fisted interventions in Somalia, Nigeria and Sudan suggest that the empire will face escalating resistance there as well.

These new coalitions are an indication of the massive geopolitical changes that are already underway. The world is realigning in reaction to Washington’s aggression. We can expect to see these groups continue to strengthen as the administration pursues its resource war through force of arms. That means that the “old order”--the United Nations, NATO and the transatlantic Alliance--will come under greater and greater strain until relations are eventually cut off.

The UN has already become irrelevant through its blind support of US policy in the Middle East. Its silence during Israel’s destructive rampage through Lebanon, as well as its failure to acknowledge Iran’s “inalienable rights” under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) has exposed the UN as a “rubber stamp” for US-Israeli belligerence. An attack on Iran will be the end of the UN, an institution that held great promise for the world, but now merely provides cover for an elite-western agenda. On balance, the UN facilitates more wars than it stops. It won’t be missed.

Afghanistan holds the key for understanding what’s in store for the EU, NATO and the transatlantic Alliance. There is no possibility of success in Afghanistan. If the men who planned the invasion had a grasp of the country’s history they would have known how the war would progress. They would have realized that Afghanis traditionally take their time to fight back; (Eric Margolis predicted that the real war would not take place until 4 to5 years after the initial invasion) measuring the strength of their enemy and garnering greater public support. Then they proceed with deliberate steps to rid their country of the invaders. These are fiercely nationalistic and independent people who have fought occupation before and know what it takes to win.

We are mistaken to think that the war in Afghanistan is merely a Taliban (or worse still) “terrorist” insurgency. The present conflict represents a general uprising of Pushtun nationals who seek to end foreign occupation. They know first-hand that US-NATO policy has strengthened the warlords, expanded the drug trade, reduced security, and increased terrorism. According to the Senlis Council Report, the occupation has triggered “a humanitarian crisis of starvation and poverty… US policies in Afghanistan have re-created a safe-haven for terrorism that the 2001 invasion aimed to destroy.”

The Afghan armed resistance is resourceful and intractable and has a growing number of recruits to swell its ranks. Eventually, they will prevail. It’s their country and they’ll be there long after we’ve gone.

An America defeat in Afghanistan could be the straw that breaks NATO’s back. The administrations’ global schema depends heavily on support from Europe; persuading the predominantly white, western nations to join the battle and secure pipeline corridors and landlocked energy supplies throughout Central Asia. Failure in Afghanistan would send tremors through Europe’s political landscape and give rise to a generation of anti-American politicians who will seek to dissolve relations between the two traditional allies. But a breakup seems inevitable. After all, Europe has no imperial aspirations and its economies are thriving. They don’t need to invade and occupy countries to get access to vital resources. They can simply buy them on the open market.

As Europeans begin to see that their national interests are better served through dialogue and friendship, (with suppliers of resources in Central Asia and Russia) then the ties that bind Europe to America will loosen and the continents will drift further apart.

The end of NATO is the end of America as a global power. The present adventurism is not sustainable “unilaterally” and without the fig-leaf of UN cover. America needs Europe, but the chasm between the two is progressively growing.

It is impossible to predict the future with any degree of certainty, but the appearance of these coalitions strongly suggests a new world order is emerging. It is not the one, however, that Bush and the neoconservatives anticipated. America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue to prevent it from addressing brush-fires in Latin America and Russia, further strengthening US rivals and precipitating macroeconomic changes that could crush the American middle class. The likelihood of a major economic retrenchment has never been greater as the administrations’ reckless defense spending, lavish tax cuts, and trade deficit have set the stage for the US dollar to be dethroned as the world’s “reserve currency”. The three pillars of American imperial power--political, economic and military--rest on the crumbling foundation of the US greenback. If the dollar falls, as many currency traders now expect, then foreign (baskets of) currencies will rise, and America will slip into a deep recession/depression.

America’s military and economic unraveling is likely to take a decade or more depending on the situation in Iraq. If the Bush administration is able to exert control over Middle East oil, then the dollar will continue to be linked to vital resources and American supremacy will persist. If, however, conditions on the ground deteriorate, then Central Banks around the world will decrease their dollar holdings, Americans will face hyper-inflation at home, and the US will lose its grip on the global economic system. The Bush administration must, therefore, ensure that oil continues to be denominated in USDs and that the world economy remains in the hands of western elites, banking giants and corporatists.

The chances for success in Iraq are gradually diminishing. The US has shown that it is incapable of establishing security, providing basic social services, or keeping the peace. The guerilla war continues to intensify while the over-extended US military has been pushed to the breaking point. We expect the occupation of Iraq to be untenable within 5 years if present trends continue.

America’s military and economic unraveling will undoubtedly be painful, but it may generate greater parity among the nations, which would be a positive development. The superpower model has been an abysmal failure. It has wreaked havoc on civil liberties at home and spread war and instability across the world. The present system needs a major shakeup so that power can be more evenly distributed according to traditional democratic standards. America’s decline presents a unique opportunity to restore the Republic, restructure the existing global-paradigm, and begin to build consensus on the species-threatening challenges which face us all.

Wall Street's next scandal

The SEC is investigating whether some of Wall Street's top investment banks are using inside information. Fortune's Shawn Tully explores the potentially explosive scandal.

February 19 2007: 7:20 AM EST

(Fortune Magazine) -- In early February, the SEC confirmed that it was investigating whether the major brokerage houses were tipping off hedge funds to the trades the brokers handle for big clients like mutual funds. If that's happening, it would be a scandal.

The SEC is also likely to scour trading records to see if the brokers are using info about clients' moves to invest their own capital. If the SEC finds evidence that they are, the scandal would be enormous - and go to the heart of Wall Street's profit machine.

By Shawn Tully, Fortune editor-at-large

--MORE--

NY Times Editorial: Powerful parties have more rights than regular people

February 21, 2007

Editorial

Shielding the Powerful

The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday overturning a nearly $80 million punitive damage award against Philip Morris is a win for corporate wrongdoers. It stretches the Constitution’s guarantee of due process in a way that will make it easier for companies that act reprehensibly to sidestep serious punishments.

It also provides unsettling new evidence that the court is more concerned about — and more willing to protect — the powerful than the powerless.

An Oregon jury awarded Mayola Williams, the widow of a cigarette smoker, about $821,000 in compensatory damages and $79.5 million in punitive damages. Ms. Williams argued that Philip Morris had spent 40 years denying the connection between smoking and cancer, even though it knew cigarettes were deadly. The Oregon Supreme Court upheld the punitive damages award, saying that Philip Morris’s actions had been “extraordinarily reprehensible.” By keeping Oregonians smoking longer than they otherwise would have, the court said, the company’s actions would, “naturally and inevitably, lead to significant injury or death.”

By a 5-to-4 vote that did not follow the usual ideological lines, the court ruled that the award was improper because it punished Philip Morris for harm done to people who were not part of the lawsuit. There is nothing unusual, or wrong, about courts considering the broader impact of a wrongdoer’s misdeeds. As Justice John Paul Stevens noted in dissent, “A murderer who kills his victim by throwing a bomb that injures dozens of bystanders should be punished more severely than one who harms no one other than his intended victim.” The fact that Philip Morris hurt so many other smokers along with Jesse Williams is surely relevant to its punishment.

The court in recent years has become increasingly activist when it comes to defending the rights of corporations by striking down punitive damage awards. And yesterday’s ruling continues that trend. It expands the notion of due process. And it overturns the decisions of a jury and a state supreme court.

--MORE--

Rawstory runs CCNWON Correction! "Terror Free Oil"?

My following note is now in the comments section to the RS article," Filler up with freedom! Activist opens 'terror-free' gas station.
---
I am pleased to see Rawstory cover this issue.

This venue is ideal for getting the story out about 'possible'(lawyer code word to avoid legal hassles) deception by this 'activist'.

I offer two articles for your consideration that may convince you we've been had.

On first seeing the company's television commercial, I felt disgusted that all Middle Easterners were being painted with the same brush as terrorists.

I first came across this story, "Media fall for pro-Israel hate group's "Terror Free Oil""
http://tinyurl.com/2vpcek

The second story,"Is "Terror-Free Oil" Really Snake Oil?", clearly indicates a scam may be taking place.
http://tinyurl.com/2wak8x

A comprehensive investigation of this company is called for.

Best.
Marc Parent |Homepage | 02.16.07 - 9:29 am
Direct link to this comment
---

Now that I am at it ,Josh at TalkingPointsMemo ran an incorrect story yesterday and has refused to fix it after I notified him. I may provide the story on this later. Time to move on to the daily news. Enjoy.

Alcatel-Lucent to axe 12,500 jobs

While our friends and neighbors continue to die, fighting and killing in the name of a freedom that hardly exists anymore, corporate extremists around the world continue to pillage and plunder our economies unopposed, robbing us of what little freedom we have left.

Alcatel-Lucent, the world's second-largest telecoms equipment maker, said today it would axe 12,500 jobs or 15% of its workforce after posting severe net losses and a steep decline in sales in the fourth quarter.

The Franco-American group, merged late last year, faces the immediate threat of industrial action over the redundancies, with French unions calling a strike for Thursday next week.

Alcatel-Lucent issued a profits warning last month and initially said it would axe 9,000 jobs, prompting a series of downgrades on its shares.

It made a net loss of €618m (£413m) in the final quarter of 2006 compared with a profit of €381m in 2005, with sales down 16% to €4.4bn from €5.25bn.

Pat Russo, the US chief executive, said the results were "clearly disappointing" after declaring operating earnings of €1bn for the full year compared with €1.4bn in 2005.

She said revenues this year would be up about 5% -in line with the sector.

Oh, boo-hoo - only 5% profit - what's a poor corporate terrorist to do?

Why - cut thousands of jobs, of course! Let the plebians eat the loss!

The group, whose US business almost went under during the 2001 dot-com collapse, said the new restructuring would save €1.7bn over the next three years - and cost as much to implement.

Am I the only one who sees something grotesquely perverse in this statement?

But some analysts believe the costs will be higher, especially as the job cuts may be even higher.

Of course, all these declared 'costs' are measured in their filthy, fraudulent, and corrupt dollars - not in the sweat, blood, and tears of all the families that will be destroyed in the process.

Alcatel-Lucent, which began life on December 1, also has unfunded pension and healthcare liabilities of around €5bn.

ARRGGHH!!!!

This is precisely the kind of corporate fundamentalism that is destroying our planet!!!

CORPORATIONS ARE NOT ALIVE!!!!!

THEY DO NOT LIVE!

THEY DO NOT EAT!

THEY DO NOT BREATHE!

Corporations are just corrupt figments of our collective imagination!

But, who's listening, right?

Analysts said funding could be hard, with a capital-raising exercice [sic] the most likely option.

Read: bond and interest orgy for moneylenders.

Jean-Pascal Beaufret, finance director, said that "the fourth-quarter does not reflect the benefits of the tie-up between Alcatel and Lucent and the growth potential of our company today".

"We have suffered from tough trading conditions, namely in North America as many of our clients there are consolidating ... so when they merge they delay certain investments."

They're waiting for everything to become dirt cheap when they pull the financial rug from underneath US.

Submitted by qrswave on Fri, 2007-02-09 04:31.

Probe Amplifies Conflict-of-Interest Questions for Chamber of Commerce Chief

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Tuesday, February 6, 2007; A15

As president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Thomas J. Donohue has long been obliged to talk tough against federal regulation, especially by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But now, it's personal.

For 12 years, Donohue has been a board member (including serving on the audit committee) of Sunrise Senior Living, a publicly traded company being probed by the SEC.

Sunrise co-founder Paul Klaassen started as Donohue's driver while still in college and later was a Chamber speechwriter. Donohue, 68, believed in Klaassen so strongly that he allowed Klaassen and his wife to live in his house while they started Sunrise more than two decades ago. He then helped finance the firm's prototype facility by taking out a second mortgage and becoming one of the company's first big investors.

Recently, the SEC opened an inquiry into allegations that the Klaassens and other insiders, including Donohue, may have improperly cashed $32 million in stock options before Sunrise in May announced an accounting problem that caused its stock to drop. Donohue calls the allegations meritless and says they were drummed up by labor unions that want to organize the company. He said that he has not been contacted by the SEC and that its inquiry will amount to nothing.

Nonetheless, the controversy adds fuel to complaints that investor activists have leveled at Donohue ever since he took over and revived the Chamber, the nation's largest business lobby, in 1997.

They have questioned how Donohue could serve on boards at all. After all, they point out, an independent director is supposed to represent stockholders, not management, which is Donohue's constituency. They have also worried that Donohue might tilt the Chamber's potent lobbying to favor the companies he serves. Donohue is a director of Union Pacific, the country's biggest railroad, and XM Satellite Radio as well as Sunrise.

And now that Sunrise is being scrutinized by the SEC, critics are adding a new complaint. They say Donohue has diminished the value of his own arguments against certain regulations because he has a personal stake in curtailing them.

"It undercuts his credibility as a critic of SEC enforcement and regulation," said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America. "He undermines any claim he might have to objectivity."

Donohue disagrees. He said the Chamber's board encourages him to serve as a director because it allows him to see firsthand the harm that overregulation causes.

"That I serve on corporate boards gives me a better understanding of what goes on in a boardroom," he said. "The better you understand something, the better you can figure out how to deal with it."

The Chamber Fights Back

The Chamber faces a far more hostile Congress with Democrats in charge. But it is not retreating.

"We refuse to wring our hands and say, 'Oh, we have new chairmen, we have a president who's not as strong as we'd like. Oh, woe is me, what are we going to do?' " Donohue said. "We're going to saddle up the horse and get going."

The Chamber will soon launch its third anti-trial-lawyer newspaper. It already owns two legal periodicals, the Madison County Record in Illinois and the West Virginia Record in Charleston, which publish stories that highlight what it considers trial lawyers' abuse of lawsuits against businesses. It will shortly open a yet-unnamed newspaper in southeastern Texas, which it calls a hotbed of anti-business legal actions.

In addition, the Chamber plans a huge new effort to "manage" government's reaction to global warming. The tentatively named Institute for Energy Security, Competitiveness and American Jobs will raise about $20 million from oil companies, electric utilities and automakers to try to temper Washington's regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

Donohue vs. Airlines

A travel industry coalition called the Discover America Partnership unveiled a proposal last week to ease the entry of foreign visitors into this country and to promote tourism in the United States abroad. To pay the plan's $300 million tab, the group suggested that a modest fee could be imposed on airplane travelers leaving this country -- an option that the Air Transport Association opposed.

Donohue ridiculed the airlines' position. Nobody cares "about a $2 fee on the ticket or something, they just don't want to get in another line to pay it," he said. "Would your El Salvadoran maid, legitimately in the United States, who is going home to see her family, care about a $2 fee? If she does, she shouldn't go."

People will be miffed at that statement, he added, "but I don't care."

Winners and Losers

Low-income people and small-business owners were the big winners in legislation the Senate passed last week that would boost the minimum wage and expand tax breaks for small businesses that would be hurt most by the change.

Yet buried in the bill were write-offs not just for small firms but also for restaurants and retailers of any size. Score victories for the National Restaurant Association and the National Retail Federation, which lobbied hard for the measure.

The legislation's losers include the Chamber and the National Association of Manufacturers, which tried and failed to block the bill's elimination of tax-free deferred compensation for highly paid executives.

A major thumbs down also goes to the AFL-CIO, which called the Senate's action "disgraceful" because of the business benefits, even though it has fought for a minimum-wage increase for years.

Hires of the Week

African Americans are vastly underrepresented among lobbyists. The Washington Government Relations Group, a trade association of black lobbyists, has about 100 members and a database of black federal lobbyists that tops 200 names. That compares with 31,000 registered lobbyists overall.

But the Democratic takeover on Capitol Hill has thickened the ranks of black lobbyists quickly, thanks in part to the new prominence of the Congressional Black Caucus. African American staffers who have recently joined the lobbying ranks include: Paul Brathwaite, former executive director of the caucus, now with Podesta Group; Joyce Brayboy, former chief of staff to Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.), now with Glover Park Group; Richard R. Boykin, former chief of staff to Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.), now with Barnes & Thornburg; Jennifer Fisher, ex-aide to Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), now at the American Dental Association; and ex-caucus aide Myra Dandridge, now at the National Association of Broadcasters.

Send e-mail tokstreet@washpost.com.

Railroad Firms Bringing Aboard Lawmakers' Lobbyist Relatives

By Elizabeth Williamson

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 8, 2007; A01

The railroad industry is hiring relatives of Capitol Hill lawmakers and staff members as it faces tighter federal safety legislation, employing a tactic untouched by the Democrats' new ethics proposals: lobbying by congressional family members.

The new Democratic Congress is working on the first overhaul of railroad-safety laws in 13 years. Long attuned to Republican control, railroad companies are now working to keep their GOP allies but also hiring Democratic lobbyists.

Days after Jennifer Esposito became majority staff director of the House transportation panel's subcommittee on railroads, her father, Sante Esposito, and brother Michael Esposito signed up as railway lobbyists. Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-Ill.) has just taken a seat on the subcommittee, and in the coming weeks, the railroad industry trade association said, his father and predecessor in Congress, William O. Lipinski (D-Ill.), will register as a railroad lobbyist, too.

The new lobbyists join Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), a former congressman and chairman of the transportation committee who lobbies for railroads and whose son, Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), also has just joined the railroads subcommittee.

The lobbyists said they would not directly advocate for clients through family members. The hirings are legal, experts on lobbying law said, but point to a topic left unaddressed in the new ethics proposals before Congress. While the Senate has voted to ban lobbying by some lawmakers' spouses, neither chamber has moved to limit lobbying by other family members.

"Like every other industry, we felt it was important to have representatives from both the Democratic and Republican side," said Peggy Nasir, spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads, which hired Shuster, Lipinski, and Sante and Michael Esposito. "We are meeting all the standards we need to meet for lobbying."

The stakes are high for the railroads. Last week, Congress began debate on a reauthorization of the Federal Railroad Safety Program, which has not been updated since 1994. With government figures showing an increase in railroad accidents and fatalities over the past decade, watchdog agencies, accident victims and many Democratic lawmakers want improved track and crossing inspections, better accident investigations, and heavy fines for companies that break the rules.

It is against this backdrop that the railroads association turned to Sante Esposito.

The Esposito family has a long history with the House transportation committee. Sante Esposito served for nearly two decades as its Democratic chief counsel. Michael and Jennifer Esposito were committee interns and Jennifer joined the railroads subcommittee as staff director in 2004, when Democrats were in the minority.

Sante and Michael Esposito are partners in Federal Advocates Inc. in Sterling, Va., which advertises its transport policy influence on its Web site. Sante Esposito, it says, "enjoys long-standing working relationships with numerous decision-makers in the Congress and Executive Branch."

Sante Esposito said that he told the railroads association, "I can advise you on the best strategy for dealing with the new majority in Congress," and he added that "it was clear right from the beginning that I was not to lobby my daughter."

"I don't think relatives should lobby relatives, but I don't think relatives of members or staff should be precluded from lobbying the Congress."

Jennifer Esposito said that her family's work will not keep her from representing the interests of her boss and the transportation committee's chairman, Rep. James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.), who favors stronger safety laws. She said she considers the railroad companies her "adversaries."

When they were hired, she said, she consulted her supervisors and House ethics advisers who she said told her to create a "wall" to prevent them from lobbying her. Her father, she decided, "can't lobby me, he can't meet with me, I can't discuss any issues with him."

Lobbying experts said such precautions are not required by law. "The rules do not prohibit hiring a family member such as this to lobby on an issue," Kenneth Gross, an ethics lawyer at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, said about the Espositos. "It's up to the judgment of the individual."

Nevertheless, public-interest groups say such family relationships beg for oversight.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said: "Congressional staffers should be recused from dealing with matters their immediate family members lobby on."

Such recusals rarely happen, watchdog groups say.

Before he left Congress, William Lipinski championed the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency program (CREATE), a railroad improvement project for the nation's biggest freight-rail hub. The $1.5 billion project is funded by taxpayers, and $212 million of it by the nation's six big railroads. When CREATE began in mid-2003, Lipinski complained that the railroads were not picking up more of the tab.

"These improvements are worth more to the railroads than $212 million," he said at the time.

In 2004, Lipinski left Congress and joined the Association of American Railroads as a CREATE consultant. Daniel Lipinski won his father's seat, and last year his office issued a news release announcing a new funding agreement for CREATE, but the railroads' share of its cost has stayed the same.

After the November midterm elections, Daniel Lipinski was named to the transportation committee and its railroads subcommittee. And this month, William Lipinski will register as a lobbyist for the railroads but said he will not "lobby my son in regards to any of my clients."

Asked how father and son avoid the appearance of impropriety while working on the same railway project, Daniel Lipinski said: "CREATE is a very important project, not just for the Chicago area. . . . The more people working on this, the better."

In a 2001 special election, Bill Shuster won the congressional seat and the transportation committee slot vacated by his father that year. Shuster is now the new ranking Republican on the railroads subcommittee.

His father "doesn't need to lobby a junior member of Congress," Shuster said, adding that "he's got an extremely close relationship with the chairman" of the transportation panel, Oberstar.

He added: "How are you going to stop somebody who spent 28 years of their life being an expert on something from going to the private sector? It's discrimination."

Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), chairman of the railroads subcommittee, hopes to ready a rail-safety bill before June. Since 1994, train use has risen 17 percent, according to government figures, while accidents have increased by one-third. There are 421 federal inspectors checking tracks and equipment nationwide, leaving safety monitoring largely to the industry.

Nasir of the Association of American Railroads said that train accident rates have decreased sharply since 1980. She said that when complete figures are compiled, they probably will show last year to be the industry's safest.

The regulations, association chief Edward R. Hamberger told the subcommittee last week, cost railroads money and hamper innovation.

The industry prefers "performance standards," that "would rely on the superior knowledge of railroads," he testified. Except in special cases, federal regulators "would no longer specify how a railroad would achieve its safety goals," as they do now.

Jennifer Esposito disagrees with that proposal. "Train accidents are going up, and it's something that we feel needs to be addressed," she said. "I don't think that just because they hired my father, somehow there will be some conversation that will change my boss's mind."

Her father and brother, she said, "are working for my adversaries."

Staff writer Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

The American Way of Life

February 06th 2007 Posted to General

While most Americans have no difficulty reciting the flattering components of the “American way” – the routine stuff of political speeches such as life, liberty, justice – far fewer seem willing to identify as “American” unflattering, complementary components of our national ethos.

For instance, George W. Bush claims we are a peaceful nation. He says it a lot. On military bases, to the VFW, at West Point. Of course, we are not now, nor were we ever, peaceful. Pacifists have never had an easy time with the American government, and in point, the term itself is used as pejorative. Not far behind is “passive”.

We behold the world not as a habitat suited for peaceful coexistence but as a bad neighborhood in need of control. Recent Pentagon figures (DoD Base Structure Report, FY 2006) list 2,965 military bases in all 50 states and 7 territories. In addition, it lists 766 bases in 40 foreign countries. Beyond that, we have active duty military personnel (some of it quite small) in about 150 foreign countries (DoD Personnel and Procurement Statistics, June 30, 2006). That’s not all the countries in the world. We missed some.

The DoD describes itself as one of the world’s largest “landlords”, with a physical plant consisting of more than 571,200 facilities (buildings, structures, and utilities) located on nearly 30 million acres. To give that acres figure perspective, DoD bases would fill, in entirety, the states of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Hawaii.

And it’s not just land. There’s the United States Space Command. Positioning themselves as “stewards” for military space they stake out a vision to exploit the advantages of the space medium featuring this bold headline: “US Space Command – dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment . Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict.” (Vision for 2020 Report). The term “investment” is used without apparent embarrassment. Noticeably absent are the platitudes about life, liberty, and justice.

All this has grown out of a past that ravaged red, brown, and black skin. This past century has been a rolling of imperialism and state violence to secure resources and markets to feed our economy, while at the same time snuffing out independence movements around the world before they had a chance to set a “good example”, that is, by making it on their own. Our military has won for us great national wealth and, now, unrivalled and unchallenged power.

Our “peaceful” president has taken perhaps a million Iraqi lives and limbs (counting closely is not in the national interest), and thousands of the same for Americans, and no amount of yellow ribbons will bring back a single one of them, or make a single loss worthwhile. This, we must recognize, is part of the American way. In particular, we must first recognize it if we are ever going to change it.

What about rugged individualism? Is that a distinctive American trademark? If so, it doesn’t extend to independence of mind. We are a people steeped in orthodoxy – religious, governmental, military, educational – and orthodoxy must always be followed. We can be sold anything and we don’t know it. We can be lied to repeatedly and we don’t know it. Services can be stripped away from us and we don’t know that either because it’s in order to serve us better. Our privacy is suddenly important to large businesses in the public trust now that it is lost. Gullibility is American.

So is tolerance, seemingly without limit when it comes to our quasi-permanent political class. No amount of puffery and hypocrisy from the get-elected-and-stay-elected can completely alienate us. We submissively watch their political fortunes rise from “God bless this District”, to “God bless this State”, to “God bless this Nation” as they ascend, with God, in humble service to this republic.

Do Americans root for the underdog? Not if by “Americans” we mean national domestic and foreign policy. At a time when income inequality has reached unheard of levels in this country, bankruptcy law was “reformed” making it more difficult for individuals to file. It may be noted that poor individuals are more likely to find themselves in this position than rich individuals.

Corporations have double rights – those of corporations and those of individuals – including the rights to entice the poor into bankruptcy by questionable and deceptive lending schemes. Or eliminating 500 jobs at the bottom, instead of a single one at the top, and transferring the “savings” to the bottom line of the statement of income. Yes, the stock market is at an all-time high, thanks in part to the 500 here and the 500 there sacrificed on the alter of economic “progress”.

The President’s tax cuts, campaigned on in 2000, were widely criticized as a giveaway to the rich, but this did not seem to trouble the electorate. Protecting the minority of the opulent from the tyranny of the majority continues as long-standing tradition.

Since we can count scores of interventions into the affairs of foreign countries in this past half-century, we should be able to find some examples where we just happened to take the side of the underdogs – the peasants, the croppers, the indigenous, those most in need. But, of course, it’s not their needs that concern us when we intervene. It’s our needs, and the underclass can offer us nothing because they control nothing.

Maybe our love for the underdog is manifested in policies that guarantee their number will never decrease. Or could it be that we just find repressive dictators and autocrats impossible to resist? That’s meant to sound funny, but it’s true. We do find them impossible to resist because they’re good for business and that’s what we do with them. We do business.

The “American way of life” of popular understanding first came in our mother’s milk, and has since been drip-fed to us by those whose successes depend upon telling us what we wish to hear. We are susceptible to this propaganda because the inoculation (denying it) seems to deprive us of some of our exceptionality. Expectedly, though, the basic features of American life differ little from human life in other parts of the world, as there is no appreciable difference within the species.

All forms of governance rely on at least an implicit message to the people it means to control. Do as you are told and accept all compliments. Perhaps the President is not far off when he says we are peaceful. Considering his difficulties with language, he may have meant docile.


James Rothenberg, writer/activist - jrothenberg@taconic.net

US farming watchdog accuses Wal-Mart of mis-selling

By Stephen Foley in New York

Published: 21 January 2007

Wal-Mart, the controversial retailing giant, is under investigation in the US over allegations it is trying to pass off non-organic foods as organic.

It has been accused of using misleading labelling that is "tantamount to consumer fraud" by an organic farming watchdog, the Cornucopia Institute. The body has handed its complaints to the US Department of Agriculture (Usda).

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection is also conducting an investigation into whether Wal-Mart is placing "natural" produce on shelf space labelled as containing organic items.

The Cornucopia Institute claimed to have found dozens of examples of Wal-Mart's mislabelling products - from "all- natural yogurt" to soya milk "made from organic soybeans".

Usda is examining the watchdog's claims, while the Wisconsin authorities are examining Wal-Mart's practices and those of other supermarkets within the state.

Wal-Mart said it had written to store managers to ask them to be careful, but added that consumers could tell whether a product was organic by looking for the Usda label.

The Cornucopia Institute first raised the issue with Wal-Mart last autumn, but found fresh examples of mislabelling on return visits to stores this month.

"The vast majority of organic farmers and food marketers operate with a high degree of organic integrity," said Tom Willey of T&D Willey Farms of California, an organic producer of fresh market vegetables. "These abuses endanger the credibility of the organic label for all of us."

Wal-Mart, which owns Asda in the UK, is trying to build a green reputation and attract more affluent consumers.

A year ago the retailer announced that it would stock new ranges of organic food.

I.R.S. Is Spending Less Time Scrutinizing Big Businesses

December 21, 2006

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
The Internal Revenue Service has cut deeply the time that it spends auditing the nation’s largest corporations, according to data made public yesterday.

The figures, obtained by Syracuse University researchers, showed that the I.R.S. had reduced the time spent on each audit by 21 percent in the last five years, to 958 hours from 1,210 hours. At the same time, the number of actual audits, which had increased in the last two years, has fallen back to the level of 2002.

--MORE--

NASD: Morgan Stanley hid trove of e-mail

NASD: Morgan Stanley hid trove of e-mail

Posted 12/20/2006 2:13 AM ET

By Greg Farrell, USA TODAY

Once again, an old e-mail issue is coming back to haunt Morgan Stanley. For the second time this year, a national regulator has accused Morgan Stanley (MS) of stonewalling requests for documents and withholding crucial e-mails from investigators.

The NASD claimed Tuesday that Morgan Stanley hid the existence of millions of e-mails from customers of its Dean Witter brokerage. According to an NASD complaint, executives at Morgan Stanley used the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as an alibi for their inability to produce a massive trove of e-mails sought by customers who felt they'd been burned by bad advice from Dean Witter brokers.

The firm's e-mail servers were, in fact, destroyed in those attacks, the NASD acknowledged. But by Sept. 17, 2001, the company was able to use emergency backup tapes to restore all e-email through Aug. 30, 2001, to the Morgan Stanley internal database.

Nevertheless, from October 2001 through March 2005, Morgan Stanley executives rebuffed requests from customers and regulators for internal e-mails predating the attacks, claiming they had been destroyed. The NASD alleged Morgan Stanley compounded that error by allowing the pre-Sept. 11 e-mails to be gradually overwritten on the company's internal system and lost forever.

The Securities and Exchange Commission settled a similar matter with Morgan Stanley in May, extracting a $15 million fine. But the SEC settlement only involved the firm's failure to provide documents to regulators. It didn't address the alleged harm done to customers who had filed arbitration claims against Dean Witter.

The NASD action specifically charges that Morgan Stanley hurt retail investors who filed arbitration claims against the brokerage firm. By denying those investors access to e-mails in the years leading up to September 2001, Morgan Stanley made it nearly impossible for its customers to present evidence on their own behalf.

In March 2005, during a civil trial brought against it in Florida, Morgan Stanley admitted the existence of the pre-Sept. 11 e-mails. Since then, the firm has pledged to cooperate with regulators.

But in a statement Tuesday, Morgan Stanley said it would fight the NASD's action. "Current management has made extensive efforts to reach a fair and appropriate settlement of this matter, but the NASD's disproportionate and unprecedented demands leave us no choice but to litigate. We look forward to having this issue heard by an impartial hearing panel."

Morgan Stanley reported fiscal 2006 earnings up 44% to $7.5 billion on Tuesday.

Action Alert: Ask Veolia advisors to take a stand for Justice in Palestine!

December 16th, 2006 |

from the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign

Connex / Veolia and Alstom are the international investors in the Citypass consortium that will build and run a light rail project in Jerusalem that incorporates a number of Jewish settlements around East Jerusalem, built on stolen Palestinian land. It ensures the contiguity of these colonies with the central areas of the city and plays a key role in sustaining the settlements and ensuring they become a permanent fixture upon Palestinian land.

Veolia’s involvement in the tramline makes the company complicit in Israel’s violations of international law reaping significant profits over a 30 year period, money stained with the blood and misery of Palestinians under Occupation and currently being expelled from Jerusalem.

Veolia has rejected to heed the calls from Palestine and international organizations.

Thus international pressure is mounting on the corporation to stop their involvement in the Judaization of Jerusalem.

* Connex shuttles have been blockaded in Geneva.

* Following protests by trade unions and IPSC in August 2006, Veolia Transport Ireland had called off plans to train Israeli personnel to operate the tramline in Jerusalem.

* In November the Dutch ASN Bank decided to divest from Veolia until the company respects the relevant UN resolutions.

Support us in putting further pressure on Veolia!

Address the advisors of the Institut Veolia Environnement, the group’s prestige institute aiming to “propose a forum for dialogue and interchange with academia, institutions and the different actors in society.”

Ask the intellectuals associated with the institute to re-consider their support of Veolia as long as Veolia supports violations of Palestinian rights!

To:
Foresight committee Institut Veolia Environnement:
Amartya Sen: ree23@cam.ac.uk (cc weiner@fas.harvard.edu )
Philippe Kourilsky: caput@pasteur.fr
Pierre Marc Johnson: pjohnson@heenan.ca
Harvey Fineberg: fineberg@nas.edu
Mamphela Ramphele: aesmar@bremner.uct.ac.za
Helene Ahrweiler: (no email available)

cc: Georges Valentis: georges.valentis@institut.veolia.org
(Managing Director of Institut Veolia Environnement)

>From :
Name/Organization:
____________________
____________________

Date: ____________

Open letter to the Foresight Committee members of the Institut Veolia Environnement

Dear Foresight Committee members,

We are addressing you in your capacity as experts supporting the efforts of Institut Veolia Environnement.

We know that all of you have dedicated a great part of your life and expertise to the promotion of human rights and social, economic, cultural and political rights of people all over the world. We appreciate your commitment and are writing you now to urge you to continue your support for human rights for all.

We would like to inform you about the implications of your association with the Institut Veolia in terms of its’ violations of international law, UN resolutions, and Palestinian human rights and cultural heritage.

As you may know, Veolia, together with Alstom, are the international investors in the Citypass consortium that won a 2002 tender put out by Israeli authorities for a light rail transportation project in Jerusalem amounting to around 500 million euros. Citypass will be responsible for operation and maintenance of the system for the next thirty years.*

The path of the light rail incorporates a number of Jewish settlements around East Jerusalem, built on stolen Palestinian land. It ensures the contiguity of these colonies with the central areas of the city and provides them with a vital transport link. The project boasts that the “Ammunition Hill” station of the network will operate as the feeder station for settler traffic from Ma’aleh Adumim, a large Israeli settlement in the West Bank, and from settlements in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley. The light rail project plays a key role in sustaining the settlements and ensuring they become a permanent fixture upon Palestinian land.

In August 2005, the project got the go ahead from War Criminal Ariel Sharon who stated at a signing ceremony: “I believe that this should be done, and in any event, anything that can be done to strengthen Jerusalem, construct it, expand it and sustain it for eternity as the capital of the Jewish people and the united capital of the State of Israel, should be done.” The Occupation’s Mayor Uri Lupolianski described the light rail to be “the fulfillment of Psalm 122.” The tramline is clearly part of a larger plan to substitute Jerusalem’s historical and unique social fabric and its cultural heritage with a new brand of a “Judaized” version of Jerusalem.

According to international law, an occupying power is not allowed to annex or drastically change the infrastructure in the territories it occupies. The advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in July 2004 confirmed that Israel is an occupying power and that building the Wall and Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territories is illegal. However, the tramline project runs through the occupied Palestinian territories. Veolia’s involvement in the tramline will make the company complicit in Israel’s violations of international law.

The project, a private-public partnership (PPP) between the Israeli Occupation government and the consortium, is hinged upon the willingness of international business groupings to provide a huge injection of capital. In turn Veolia and Alstom will reap significant profits and dividends over a thirty-year period, money stained with the blood and misery of Palestinians under Occupation and currently being expelled from Jerusalem.

Veolia has received a lot of criticism since it first announced its intentions to become involved in the illegal project. Stop the Wall and other Palestinian civil society organizations have launched appeals against its participation in the tramway. President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas and French President Jacques Chirac already discussed Veolia’s partnership in the tramline project in the summer of 2005. Amnesty International France highlighted the unlawfulness of the construction of the tramline in East Jerusalem in a public statement on 1 March 2006.

The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) revealed in August 2006 that Veolia Transport Ireland had called off plans to train Israeli personnel to operate a similar tramline in East Jerusalem, following trade union protests inspired by the IPSC.

Then in November the Dutch ASN Bank ended its relationship with Veolia and wrote to Veolia:

“….We believe that Veolia’s involvement in the light rail project is not in line with the UN’s demand to stop all support for Israel’s settlement activities, and is therefore not in line with ASN Banks’ social criteria. Due to the direct nature of Veolia’s involvement (through a 5% stake in the consortium and as future operator), we are of the opinion that Veolia’s activities in Jerusalem are in conflict with UN Resolutions. Therefore, on this current information Veolia will be removed from our investment universe.”

In the light of the above, we urge you to take a stand for justice and international law and to join the international efforts to convince the Veolia group to consider the role human rights should play in investments.

We ask you to re-consider your support of Veolia as long as Veolia supports violations of our rights and international legality.

As Veolia has not heeded the calls from Palestine and various international organizations, ending your relationship with Veolia—just as the ASN Bank did—will allow you to truly “participate in defining the overall direction and contribute to the discussions led by the Institut Veolia Environnement.”

Regards,

Signature

Posted in Jerusalem Region, Action Alert