Secret paper reveals Labour's lies over ID cards

By JASON LEWIS

Last updated at 21:45pm on 7th April 2007

The Government faces damaging claims of misleading voters over ID cards after documents revealed it always planned to make the controversial scheme compulsory.

Whitehall papers, which the Government has fought for two years to suppress, disclose that Labour intended to force the public to sign up to the programme.

They appear to contradict commitments given by Labour in its 2005 Election manifesto, which pledged that the cards, and the national identity register containing people's names, addresses, fingerprints and other information, would be 'on a voluntary basis'.

The briefing notes, released under the Freedom Of Information Act, show that civil servants had already been told ID cards would be compulsory for everyone by 2014.

Opposition MPs said the papers proved the Government had 'purposely set out to mislead the public and politicians about their plans'.

The Department For Work And Pension's (DWP) 'ID Fraud Benefit Profile' was produced in October 2004 and was designed to show how the project would cut benefit fraud.

In a table illustrating the predicted yearly savings expected by the department it states that from 2014 - Year 7 of the project - 'The identity card scheme is now compulsory'.

But 18 months later, the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke insisted the scheme was voluntary. He told MPs: "In accordance with the Labour party's Election manifesto...we will introduce ID cards...initially on a voluntary basis."

The papers also undermine claims by Ministers that the scheme would halve the £50million lost to benefit cheats. The internal briefing reveals that the much-quoted savings were purely guesswork by officials.

It says: "NOTE: DWP perceive losses to identity fraud to be between £25-£50million per annum, due to the nature of our business processes and recording of monetary value of fraud and error the figures are unreliable therefore DWP can only sign up to a maximum saving in the area of £25million per annum."

The first ID cards are due to be issued in 2009 to anybody who applies for a passport. Britons will be required to give fingerprints, biometric details such as a facial scan and a wealth of personal details - including second homes, driving licence and insurance numbers.

While the ID Cards Bill was going through Parliament, peers and Ministers agreed an 'opt-out' for people who needed a passport but did not want to join the ID cards scheme. But to get a passport, ID card objectors will now still have to hand over all personal details to the ID cards register.

Former Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten, who successfully fought to get the internal documents published, said: "They show Ministers had no basis to claim the cards would combat benefit fraud, that from the very beginning the cards were going to be compulsory and that Ministers were consistently not telling the truth about their true intentions."

The DWP said the details in the papers 'are no longer valid'.

A Home Office spokesman said the documents were 'incredibly out of date'.

Is George's Bush's Secretary Of Labor A Crook Too?

Did Elaine Chao Let An Influential Right Wing Group Steal Taxpayer Money?

by PaulVA

phpimen@comcast.net

Feb 08, 2007

Elaine Chao, wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and George's Bush's Secretary of Labor has been ignoring requests to investigate 19 chapters of the Associated Builders and Contractors for tax fraud.

Of course, this same group, the Associated Builders and Contractors just happens to be a major donor not only to Republican campaigns but also to Chao's husband, Mitch McConnell. This group quite possibly used taxpayer money from state apprenticeship and training grants to help finance local chapter activities which include lobbying for its conservative, anti-worker free market causes.

(This research was not collected by me. it is the result of a two year crusade by Allen Smith, a researcher formerly with the Building and Construction Trades Department. Though it was released earlier to the press, it never really was widely covered by the "liberal media.")

Before beginning, it might be a good idea to get some background on just who this group is and what they represent.

Just Who Is The Associated Builders and Contractors?
The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) is a virulently anti-worker business group whose mission statement leaves little to the imagination:

ABC's mission is the advancement of the merit shop construction philosophy, which encourages open competition and a free-enterprise approach that awards contracts based solely on merit, regardless of labor affiliation.

From the Associated Builders and Contractors website

You probably never heard of it, but the group's influence in the halls of Washington is powerful. Bolstered by members such as Halliburton's Kellog Brown and Root, this group of free market enthusiasts is ranked by Fortune Magazine as one of the 50 most influential groups in the nation.

This group currently stands as one of the leading opponents of the minimum wage increase, Employee Free Choice Act, Project Labor Agreements, Best Value Construction Contracting, and overtime pay, amongst other things.

Fraud With Taxpayer Dollars
While the Associated Builders and Contractors tout their free market philosophy, they seem to have no problem with relying upon taxpayer dollars to fund their "so-called" training programs which have come to serves as nothing but a means of perpetuating a potentially illegal bait and switch scheme.

The fraud stems from an examination made of the annual financial reports filed by the ABC's individual chapters and their local apprenticeship and training entities. Each of these reports, known as a Form 990, is required by the IRS of almost all non-profit organizations.

These 990 forms require the disclosure of all compensation payments to officers, key staff and board members of these groups - even if the payments are made indirectly through a third party firm. Groups operating as non-profits under these guidelines must also report all transactions made with other related non-profit groups.

The related non-profits in this case are each chapter's Apprenticeship Trust which are a separate training organization administered under seaparate funds to provide training for workers looking to train for a career in the construction industry.

Originally developed by early craft unions, every modern construction union has one, paid for by a mix of employer and employee donations that pay for training equipment, instructors, and a battery of refresher courses to assist union members in updating their training to meet new technological demands. These have worked successfully over the years resulting in a high retention rate without the reliance on taxpayer funds.

The ABC, through its local programs, however, reveals a different story that is being ignored by the very people appointed to oversea fraud in the construction industry and in training.

The report written by Allen Smith from the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department details a history of potential fraud which the Department of Labor has failed to investigate. This fraud has been running rampant within individual chapters across the country:

Where Did Payments From the ABC's Alabama Training Arm Go To?

Between 1998 and 2002, the ABC of Alabama Apprenticeship Trust paid $304,984 to the Chapter for "reimbursement of expenses." However, the Chapter failed to report receiving any such money as income between 1999 and 2002
Source: Building And Construction Trades Department

Which insider received a loan from the Southern California Chapter and what were the terms?

In 2001, the Chapter listed a $54,102 receivable from an officer, director, trustee, orkey employee. In 2002, the amount had increased to $57,870. The terms of anyinsider loan must be disclosed in a schedule, but no schedule was included in theforms provided by the IRS for either year.Source: Building and Construction Trades department

Why did the Indiana Apprenticeship Trust make false statements about its salaries and contractor payments?

All five reports filed by the Trust for the period between 7/1/97 and 6/30/02 claimedthat the Trust made no payments to any key employees. All five stated that no staffmade over $50,000 a year. All five stated there were no payments of over $50,000 toany contractors for professional services. All five stated the Trust made no paymentsto any related non-profit. All five stated that no related non-profits even existed.In the five years, the Trust made the following payments without disclosing whoreceived the money, even when they were above the $50,000 IRS disclosure limit.• $889,465 for "purchased staff time."• $376,542 in "rent" with increases from $12,466 in 1997 to $146,795 in 2001.• $261,268 to a "training facility."

Disappearing Funds In Michigan
According to the Department of Labor, the Michigan ABC's Training Trust received state funding for training 294 students in 2002. Trust filings show that the group only trained 155 students between 1995 and 2002 - with 102 dropping out. So where did all the state funding for this program go? Perhaps to the local ABC Chapter for lobbying and political activities?

In 2002, the Chapter spent $87,457 on salaries and wages. In the same year, theTrust spent $265,909 on salaries and wages. The large difference in salary and smallnumber of apprentices reported by the Department of Labor raises the question ofwhat the staff paid for by the Trust were actually doing. In addition, bothorganizations failed to provide required information on the compensation provided tokey employees. Among the people whose names, titles, and salaries should havebeen disclosed are the Chapter’s Executive Director and the Trust’s Director of Education.
Source: Building and Construction Trades Department

Funneling State Work Training Money Back To A Black Hole or Maybe to the GOP?
An August 8, 2003 issue of the National ABC's Newsline boasts that the Nevada apprenticeship program received a $202,403 grant under the Workforce Investment Act to train plumbers. However, the program only enrolled only 380 apprentices and graduated 92 while in 2000, the apprenticeship training program sent $130,141 for expenses while the chapter reported on only $48,000. Where did the other $82,000 go?

Did the Ohio Valley Apprenticeship Trust Private Foundation Funnel Tax Exempt Donations to the Group's Lobbying Arm?
It seems so. Between 1999 and 2002, the Apprenticeship Trust's Foundation raised $441,820 in public donations. Because the apprenticeship program's charity foundation is a 501(c)(3), contributors can take a tax deduction for their contributions.

During that same time, $779,650 in "administration fees" were sent to a series of undisclosed outside contractors. At the same time, the local ABC Chapter, which lobbies on political issues, recieved contributions similar to that amount in the total of $695,000 listed as "educational trust fees." And you though the mafia was good at money laundering.

The cold, plain hard truth is that the ABC apprenticeship programs seem to operate as a sham to divert taxpayer money into political, lobbying, and organization-building efforts.

The graduation rates for those apprentices unlucky enough to have been ennrolled is these programs is miserable, as noted in the chart below.

What are the chances of a response from Elaine Chao? Probably not good, but who knows with the rise a new Democratic Congress.

When searching for a response from, Elaine Chao, the best I could find was this article about it from a union electrical contractors' website:

A DOL spokesman April 20 said the petition has been received by the department where it "is being reviewed to see if it has any merit."

The Building Trades petition was filed one month after U.S. Senators Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) and Patricia Murray (D-WA) asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the performance of the nation’s construction apprenticeship programs, including graduation rates, the duration of training, and wage levels for apprentices during their training and upon their graduations.

DOL and GAO have remained silent on that request, as well.

From the National Electrical Contractor's Association

It is sad that the people charged with enforcing our labor and tax laws remain silent over an apparant rip-off of taxpayer funds. Even worst, they do this in support of a group that has virulently opposed worker protections in the workplace, including the freedom of an employee to choose a union of their own.

Somebody needs to make them accountable.

View Comments | 14 comments| 14 comments

UK government asks employees to work for free

4.30pm update

---

Campaigners condemn plea for nurses to work unpaid

Staff and agencies
Friday January 26, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Health campaigners today condemned an NHS trust for asking its staff to resign, work for no pay or take unpaid leave in order to reduce its multimillion-pound deficit.

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, which reported a £16.7m deficit last year, has sent staff a letter asking them to work unpaid for a day, take six months unpaid leave, take voluntary redundancy or defer taking five days of their holiday until next year to help balance its books.

The trust says "just one extra day of work without additional pay as a voluntary contribution" would help to avoid "significant job losses". The trust is predicted to be £5m at the end of the financial year in March.

The move has further angered health campaigners because it would also enable the trust to sign a deal under the controversial private finance initiative (PFI).

Under the initiative, private firms raise the money to design and build a hospital, which NHS trusts must then pay back with interest over 20 to 30 years. The Conservatives say the eventual repayments for the existing 83 PFI hospital building projects - worth £8bn - would total £53bn.

A spokeswoman for the UK's largest public sector union, Unison, said the trust's request was "disgraceful".

She said: "It is unbelievable to expect nurses and other low-paid health professionals to work for nothing. Why should they be penalised for providing a good service when the deficits are the fault of mismanagement?

"It's particularly galling when the trust wants to finance a PFI deal that will end up costing taxpayers more money." The leaked memo, issued to all staff by the director of human resources Terry Coode, said the trust was "facing a very significant challenge this year".

It added: "To be unsuccessful in our target will have serious consequences for the trust that will affect us all. It will jeopardise our investment and development plans, including our ability to build the PFI."

The letter sets out how job losses can be avoided, including "inviting enquiries about the possibility of voluntary redundancy". It also offers staff the chance to take a six-month unpaid break "to pursue a personal ambition or just to take a well-earned break".

Staff would be able to return to their original jobs or one in a similar position, it added. The letter also encouraged staff to carry forward five days' holiday to the next year to "help avoid additional costs this year".

It said: "We are also asking staff to contribute just one extra day without additional pay as a voluntary contribution to year-end.

"This would further help displace some bank and agency (costs) and increase our opportunity to have additional income."

Geoff Martin, head of campaigns at the group Health Emergency, said: "This slaps the nut on the government's health care policy.

"Nurses and other members of the healthcare team are called on to work for nothing so that speculators and banks can cream off another fat profit from an NHS PFI scheme.

"This is Robin Hood in reverse, robbing the poor to fill the pockets of the rich. And it's happening right under the noses of a Labour government who are ripping the heart out of the NHS."

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said staff were being asked to work a day unpaid on an entirely voluntary basis.

In a statement, it said: "Our staff have suggested this idea to help reduce agency use as part of plans to stay within our budgets. This informal request was extended to all staff, and we've had doctors offering to work extra hours for free. This is not about saving our PFI, but getting our finances right."

Senators Highjack Minimum Wage Increase

Posted on Jan 18, 2007

By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON—The first unsettling embarrassment of the new Democratic Congress is about to unfold.

Senate Democrats are about to turn an overdue, utterly necessary and enormously popular proposal to increase the federal minimum wage into a monumental duel among tax lobbyists.

This spectacle, as minimum-wage legislation begins moving through the Senate, is being staged by Democrats who deposed the ruling Republicans last November. The Republicans lost in good part because they had seized every chance to take legislation meant to do a public good, and turned it into a trough for special interests. When they held the levers of power, Republicans tried to tie an increase in the $5.15 minimum wage—under which a full-time worker earns $10,700 a year—with a cut in the estate tax paid only by heirs who inherit $3.5 million or more.

Now comes a bipartisan coupling of the minimum wage hike with billions in tax breaks for business owners who are quite a bit better off than the janitors who empty their trash. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the new chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, its ranking Republican, want to give ``small businesses’’ about $8.3 billion in new tax breaks, ostensibly to cushion the hardship businesses will incur if they have to increase the pay of their workers from sub-poverty levels to an amount that would still leave a full-time, minimum wage worker struggling near the poverty line. Contrary to popular political fiction, minimum-wage workers aren’t just suburban teenagers scooping ice cream. About half are the chief breadwinners in their households, according to Census Bureau data analyzed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning think tank.

So many inconvenient truths lie behind this forced marriage. Little, if any, job loss occurred after the last minimum-wage hike in 1997, according to several economic studies. Nor was small business damaged: A 2004 study by the Fiscal Policy Institute that compared 10 states that had raised their minimum wage with states that had not, showed that small businesses in the higher-wage states fared better. They added more employees, boosted payrolls and the number of small businesses grew.

If there were some link between strained, small enterprises and an increase in the wage floor, none of the tax breaks in the Baucus-Grassley package would address it. The breaks would not require businesses to have minimum-wage workers on the payroll. None would be targeted only at companies in the 21 states that would be affected by a hike in the federal minimum—the rest of the states already have raised the wage.

Even the sweetest-sounding proposal, an expansion of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit—meant to boost hiring of welfare recipients, the disabled and other disadvantaged laborers—isn’t a small-business break. ``It’s absolutely any company and most of the companies who take it are huge,’’ says Sarah Hamersma, a University of Florida economist who has studied the credit’s use. Among those urging Congress to renew the credit are such mega-corporations as Verizon Communications, Hilton Hotels, Georgia-Pacific Corp. and JP Morgan Chase. It is hardly a coalition of the struggling.

Hamersma’s research showed that only a quarter of those hired with the credit started work for less than $6 an hour; the rest earned more. ``In the same way it’s not restricted to small business it’s not restricted to minimum-wage workers,’’ she says.

Now the false premise of tying the wage hike to tax breaks is to become ensnared in more legislative finagling. Under new budget rules set by the Democrats, lawmakers must come up with ways to offset the $8.3 billion revenue drain. So Baucus and Grassley have a companion package of tax hikes to soak the rich and the reliably unsympathetic. That is, they would tighten up on maneuvers that now allow rich corporate chieftains to defer taxes on huge sums of money, and constrain wealthy expatriates in their endless pursuit of offshore havens. Who could be against that?

No one—except the lawyers and lobbyists for the chieftains and expatriates. They will now choke the Capitol’s corridors along with the lawyers and lobbyists for allegedly suffering small businesses who do not necessarily employ minimum-wage workers.

An African proverb applies: When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. The unnecessary linkage of a raise in the minimum wage with tax changes that excite armies of lobbyists is ominous. The nation’s poorest workers—again—risk being trampled.

Marie Cocco’s e-mail address is mariecocco@washpost.com.

(c) 2007, Washington Post Writers Group

Nancy 'Oops, I did it again!' Pelosi and a special exemption to the Minimum Wage Bill

By James Risser

james.risser@gmail.com

Fri Jan 12, 2007

Madam Speaker Pelosi has once again hypocritically exempted one of her precious pets from her legislation. As previously mentioned, in HR1 the lobbying reform bill she allowed an exemption for AIPAC and the Aspen group. The very next day, in HR2, she provided an exemption to the Minimum Wage Bill to two companies based in her district, doing business in America Samoa.

If the main function of this site is to pursue electoral victories of Democrats, then, it ought to be a great concern to this community to see that the Democrats currently leading the Party do not turn their backs on the principles that led to their becoming the majority in 2006. The phrase 'culture of corruption' was coined by Ms Pelosi, and several Democrats ran on that premise and won. People do not want corruption and special-interests setting the agenda, and one hoped that those days died when that ridiculous excuse for a Speaker was sent packing.

It appears that Ms Pelosi either did not believe those words when she said them, or, her newly-derived power has changed her definition of 'corruption'.

Madam Pelosi is losing any legitimacy as a leader of a Democratic Party that won in November promising to halt the 'culture of corruption' in Congress. Her hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed by the enemy party:

I am shocked," said Rep. Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican and his party's chief deputy whip, noting that Mrs. Pelosi campaigned heavily on promises of honest government. "Now we find out that she is exempting hometown companies from minimum wage. This is exactly the hypocrisy and double talk that we have come to expect from the Democrats.

The article continues to explain the exemption:

The bill also extends for the first time the federal minimum wage to the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. However, it exempts American Samoa, another Pacific island territory that would become the only U.S. territory not subject to federal minimum-wage laws.

One of the biggest opponents of the federal minimum wage in Samoa is StarKist Tuna, which owns one of the two packing plants that together employ more than 5,000 Samoans, or nearly 75 percent of the island's work force. StarKist's parent company, Del Monte Corp., has headquarters in San Francisco, which is represented by Mrs. Pelosi. The other plant belongs to California-based Chicken of the Sea.

"There's something fishy going on here," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, North Carolina Republican.

Yes there is indeed something 'fishy' about Ms Pelosi's first 100 hours. And the fact that the enemy party has been given ammunition to say: 'This is exactly the hypocrisy and double talk that we have come to expect from the Democrats' is not what this Party needs.

Although the Democrats have been silent about this recent pair of exemptions as they were about the first set of exemptions, the fishiness is not lost on the enemy party who openly mocked Ms Pelosi's exemption during the stem-cell research debate:

During the House debate yesterday on stem-cell research, Mr. McHenry raised a parliamentary inquiry as to whether an amendment could be offered that would exempt American Samoa from stem-cell research, "just as it was for the minimum-wage bill."

A clearly perturbed Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who was presiding, cut off Mr. McHenry and shouted, "No, it would not be."

"So, the chair is saying I may not offer an amendment exempting American Samoa?" Mr. McHenry pressed.

"The gentleman is making a speech and will sustain," Mr. Frank shouted as he slammed his large wooden gavel against the rostrum.

Further embarrassment was heaped onto the exemption and is now part of the Congressional Record in a floor-speech titled, The Democratic Agenda:

The only territory, the only location in the jurisdiction of the United States of America exempted from Federal minimum wage law would be American Samoans.

This loophole pleases the tuna corporations that employ thousands of Samoans in canneries at a rate of $3.26 an hour. It is an industry-specific rate that is set by the U.S. Department of Labor.

But the tuna industry has lobbied Congress for years arguing that imposing the Federal minimum wage on Samoa would cripple the economy by driving the canneries to poor countries that don't require a minimum wage.

Then one of the biggest opponents, though, of the U.S. minimum wage there is StarKist tuna, which owns one of the two packing plants that together employ more than 5,000 Samoans. Yet StarKist is about 75 percent of that, about 3,750 employees perhaps at StarKist. Chicken of the Sea would be the other 1,250 employees, totaling the 5,000. Chicken of the Sea is also California based.

But what is interesting, and I think what inspired the gentleman's inquiry this afternoon, was that StarKist's parent company, this company that has now an exemption from minimum wage law, their parent company is Del Monte Corporation, Del Monte Corporation, headquartered in San Francisco, which is the hometown, of course, of our new Speaker.

Now, a spokeswoman for the Speaker said yesterday that the Speaker had not been lobbied in any way by StarKist or Del Monte. That is interesting. I don't know that I could say that about any single company in my district, small company, large company. Trade associations represent multiple interests that might come into that. I am lobbied by individuals, I am lobbied by trade associations, I am lobbied by individual companies over and over again, hundreds and thousands of voices coming into my office.

I welcome them all, but I could not take an oath that there is a single company in my district that has not lobbied me in any way, or, let me expand that, even if that were true, there is no way I could take the oath that not a single company has lobbied any of my staff. There are decisions made by my staff that I take responsibility for. That reflects upon me.

So one could impute from this statement that the Speaker has not been lobbied in any way by StarKist or Del Monte. One can impute to that that also includes the Speaker's staff. I couldn't make that statement about a single company in my district, but this large company, larger than any company in my district, and domiciled in and headquartered in San Francisco, has had no contact with the Speaker's office or staff over any period of time, over, not just within the last week, but over the last 2 years, 4 years, 6 years or more? I think that deserves a little bit of scrutiny.

The time has come for Democrats to stop this sort of nonsense from harming their chances at maintaining their majority. You can rest assured that if this behavior continues, the elections in 2008 will be about what the Democrats didn't do and how they lied to their supporters by not changing the 'culture of corruption' but, it will be claimed, they merely switched from one set of lobbyists and special-interests to another. Democrats were not born in the shit-filled swamp of the enemy party, and we should stop acting as they do when they have power.

Stop the bullshit, Madam Speaker; Democrats are better than that!

Poll

Do you agree with Speaker Pelosi's exemptions to HR1 and HR2?

	Yes
11%	13 votes
	No
88%	103 votes

| 116 votes | Vote | Results

Tags: Nancy Pelosi (all tags)

View Comments | 218 comments

None Dare Call It Imperialism

Dec 12, 2006

The other day I had one of those moments of clarity that resulted from recognizing an obvious, but rarely perceived, connection. It wasn't more than two or three days later that thereisnospoon posted an article on the vain hope for an apology from the neocons regarding their collosal blunder in Iraq. That article consisted of a rundown of the far right's response to the ISG's report. They universally dubbed it the work of "surrender monkeys."

<>Who were these reactionaries? The usual suspects, namely Limbaugh, Coulter, Frank Gaffney in the Washington Times, the editors of the New York Post, "Every. Single. Front. Page. Editor" at Red State, and of course, the knuckle draggers over at Free Republic. So what's the obvious connection? Simple. Every conservative who is an unreconstructed supporter of continuing the war in Iraq, is also an unreconstructed cheap labor conservative.

These same people have a near religious belief in the "war on terror" -- and Iraq's position as its "central front." They are also the people -- see for example, Coulter's famous "convert them all the Christianity" remark -- who want to frame the "war on terror" as a "clash of civilizations," which means a war on the religion of Islam. Go look here and here for a couple of representative examples. That site, American Thinker, is most interesting in that it includes representatives specimens of "stay the course," "clash of civilizations," and free market fundamentalism, all in one convenient location. While we're at it, throw in universal contempt for the scientific consensus regarding global warming.

You wouldn't think the war in Iraq, and cheap labor ideology would have much to do with each other. One can be hawkish on national security abroad, and still believe in what's left of New Deal liberalism at home. Indeed, many blue collar American union members have supported examples of aggressive US foreign policy. Jack Murtha would be a prime example of a "strong defense" Democrat in the tradition of Scoop Jackson -- whose change of heart regarding Iraq ought to tell you something. It has told the flying monkeys nothing. Your credentials as a "patriotic American" are defined by agreement with them.

So what is the relationship between the war in Iraq and cheap labor "minimalist government" McKinley-era-without-protectionism ideology?

Consider how Iraq was bungled -- or wasn't "bungled," as the case may be. It turns out that the neoconservative policies regarding the post invasion occupation created the mess. Paul Bremer's first official act in Baghdad in May, 2003, was to fire a half million Iraqi government employees. He then began selling off state owned industries, which led to massive "downsizing" of those industries, and shunned contracting with local Iraqi firms that were, once again, state owned. One would think that putting people to work in the new "democratic" Iraq would be a high priority. Administration ideologues were intent on imposing "market discipline" on Iraqi's. "Market discipline" of course means the starvation induced willingness of wage earners to work cheap. What they got was the starvation induced willingness to join the insurgency.

D'oh.

But wait, there's more. From Year Zero linked above, comes this quote:

[G]reed is good. Not good just for them and their friends but good for humanity, and certainly good for Iraqis. Greed creates profit, which creates growth, which creates jobs and products and services and everything else anyone could possibly need or want. The role of good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue their bottomless greed, so that they in turn can meet the needs of the society. The problem is that governments, even neoconservative governments, rarely get the chance to prove their sacred theory right: despite their enormous ideological advances, even George Bush's Republicans are, in their own minds, perennially sabotaged by meddling Democrats, intractable unions, and alarmist environmentalists.

Iraq was going to change all that. In one place on Earth, the theory would finally be put into practice in its most perfect and uncompromised form. A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen. Every policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their quest for profit would be put into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open borders, minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions. The people of Iraq would, of course, have to endure some short-term pain: assets, previously owned by the state, would have to be given up to create new opportunities for growth and investment. Jobs would have to be lost and, as foreign products flooded across the border, local businesses and family farms would, unfortunately, be unable to compete. But to the authors of this plan, these would be small prices to pay for the economic boom that would surely explode once the proper conditions were in place, a boom so powerful the country would practically rebuild itself.

Cheap labor conservatives support the Iraq debacle for one simple reason. Their cheap labor ideology is on trial there -- and so far, it has come up wanting. Minimalist government paradise was the object of the exercise -- conveniently implemented on top of what Wolfowitz once referred to as a "sea of oil."

Let's put this in perspective. You see, what they sought to create "in its most perfect and uncompromised form" is in fact what US government policy has been to create everywhere in the third world. It has been our policy for over fifty years. Iran is a good example. The "thinkers," such as they are, over at American Thinker are also all worried about Iran. From that article:

All one has to do is examine the motivations of Iran and Syria in fomenting the violence in Iraq. Iran, quite reasonably, sees Iraq as fertile ground for growing the Shiite Islamic Revolution as both countries are included in the small group of nations with a majority Shi’a population. Securing Iraq as a strong ally would provide the benefits of a secure border with a former enemy, economic benefits such as influence on Iraq’s oil sales, and the realistic chance of dealing the United States a humiliating blow on the world stage. On the other hand, Iran can keep the US busy fighting sectarian violence in Iraq which can also lead to humiliating failure that might evoke a new policy of disengagement in the Middle East (not unlike the US strategy of supporting the Mujihadeen in Afghanistan against the USSR one might note). In other words, Iran is in a win-win position unless there is a radical US strategy shift.

I wonder what this author would think about the prospect of a democratic Iran. In fact, Iran had a democracy until 1953. That's when they started talking about nationalizing their oil fields -- presumably so that their oil wealth could benefit the people of Iran, instead of western oil company investors. Eisenhower sent the CIA to bring that government down in favor of the Shah. We have paid for that little caper ever since.

It didn't stop there. The next year a democratic government in Guatemala was toppled, in favor of a rightwing military goverment. Why? To stop land reform, and protect the assets of a US corporation known as the United Fruit Company. The list of these adventures is long, and includes intervention in places like Indonesia, the Congo, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Nicaraqua [multiple times since the 1930's], El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, and of course, Vietnam. The pattern is the same everywhere. Rightwing authoritarian governments -- though agreeably authoritarian, according to the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick -- have supported US business interests around the world. What are those interests? Cheap labor and control of raw materials, including oil.

The means of intervention aren't limited to military intervention and paramilitary subversion. IMF "austerity" policies have sought to establish the very same minimalist government paradise that Iraq was supposed to be. The results have been uniform, as exemplified by Argentina's economic collapse a few years ago. Now, after a generation of IMF austerity -- following on the heals of the US sanctioned "dirty war" -- the people of Argentina are shaking off the influence of the IMF and US ideologues dictating their internal economic policies. They are helped by a new Latin American bogeyman in the person of Hugo Chavez. Dubya and his band of neocons would no doubt topple his regime -- in fact, they tried in 2002 -- but they're a little busy in the middle east right now.

Here's the bottom line. Iraq is nothing new. It is just a continuation of US policy toward third world governments. The policy supports "democracy" in those countries, but they don't mean democracy like you mean it. They mean cheap labor paradise. They mean governments willing to open their doors to American corporate plunder. If you aren't willing to let American corporations chain your citizens to the oars, and haul off you nation's mineral wealth, don't think being popularly elected will save you. It didn't save Salvador Allende.

It is the war in Iraq about oil? Of course it is -- and that is no minimal concern. Oil fuels our corporate industrial economy. But so does chromium, rubber, timber, and cheap labor. Corporate capitalism demands these inputs, and further demands access to markets for what it produces. This is the essential nature of the American corporate empire. Only now that empire has overreached itself, and has found itself in crisis. The corporate power structure can't stay in Iraq. Neither can it leave. Make no mistake, leaving will spell disaster for the corporate investor class, as they lose control over middle eastern oil, and as other regions of the third world slip away from their domination -- see, Venezuela. Indeed, this crisis of the American corporate empire may be the end of that empire -- and it may not be pretty.

I will explore the full dimensions of that crisis in the next installment.

--By mail@conceptualguerilla.com

Nancy Pelosi is EVIL!

Dec 4, 2006
By Phoenix Woman
womanphoenix@yahoo.com

No, she's not. But to judge from a recent diary that's been posted, you'd think she was Satan's personal love slave, #1 concubine to Corporate America and all that.

Ahem.

Some folk with an actual knowledge of Nancy Pelosi (see also here), and of how Congressional events are set up and scheduled, have tried to stem the Lord of the Flies-like hate frenzy with fact injections (such as here and here), but the problem is that the left in this country has been so tainted with an unthinkingly reflexive, corrosive cynicism that even the weakest imputations of corruption, Money Party membership and corporate whoredom are automatically believed by a non-trivial portion of Americans.

DemHillStaffer gives us some facts:

1. This isn't an orientation session for Freshmen - its part of an ongoing series of caucus meetings for all Members of Congress with leading thinkers on issues. For example, there's also one this week with military leaders on Iraq.

2. Labor wasn't banned from this session. It's for Members of Congress only and a special guest. To be banned implies that its open to people other than members of Congress. According to that logic, everyone who's not Bob Rubin is "banned." A better title would be "Pelosi Invites Rubin, not Labor, to Discuss Fiscal Responsibility."

3. Whatever you think of his trade policy, Rubin knows how to make the case for fiscal responsibility, which is the subject of his talk.

4. Labor has a friend in Nancy Pelosi, whose top lieutenant - George Miller, the author of the Employee Free Choice Act - is going to chair the Education and Labor Committee.

5. Why are we assuming the worst about Democratic leaders before she's even said one word opposing a pro-working family agenda?

And Deaniac83 chimes in:

Do I have to remind everyone here that it was Nancy Pelosi who ably lead the tooth-and-nail fight against CAFTA just less than a year and a half ago? Here, read Pelosi's statement on the House floor on CAFTA. She garnered 217 votes against it, that's more than there were then Democrats in the House. Pelosi has made it very very clear that when she is in charge, agreements like CAFTA will likely not pass. So yes, while we can disagree with her decision here, let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Yes, she voted for NAFTA, but she's obviously not an all-out free-trade ga ga.

I think what she should do is schedule a separate seminar altogether on Labor issues. I am going to write her to do exactly that. But she feels that this particular seminar is about fiscal sanity and a balanced budget. Anyone familiar with the terminologies understand that fiscal policy and economic policy, which intertwined, are not one and the same. Fiscal policy focuses on how Congress spends money, interest rates on federal loans, issuance of federal bonds, etc. Economic policy focuses on trade deals, regulations of labor and other markets, minimum wage, tax policy (including reductions and increases in taxes, tax incentives, etc.) and so on.

So yes, write your letters. But please, people, Nancy Pelosi is not an enemy of organized labor.

I, too am not an enemy of organized labor. But if I see people going around sticking shivs in the backs of fellow progressives for no good reason, I'll call 'em on it, labor backers or not.

http://phoenixwoman.blogspot.com

Pelosi Bars Labor from Meeting with Freshman Reps.

Dec 4, 2006

By ManfromMiddletown
manfrommiddletown@lycos.com

There's a war on for the heart of our party, and it seems that Speaker Pelosi has chosen sides. In a story that lamentably hasn't recieved the coverage that it deserves, Speaker Pelosi shows that she clearly didn't get the message of last month's election. The base of people power is populism, the sovereignty of the people.

Speaker Pelosi has a arranged a series of seminars for freshman representatives. On Wednesday, December 5, freshman representatives will be subjected to indoctrination in economics of fucking the people who sent you to Washington over by Robert Rubin, a free trade fanatic from the Clinton administration. It gets worse, Speaker Pelosi banned Labor from sending representatives to offer an opposing view. Never in my life did I think that I would see a Democratic speaker of the House ban Labor from talking to the people's representatives.

From William Greider writing for the Nation. Greider write about the response of Labor leaders when told that Rubin would have the stage to himself.

When labor officials heard about this, they asked to be included since they have very different ideas about what Democrats need to do in behalf of struggling workers and middle-class families. Pelosi decided against it. This session, her spokesman explains, is only about "fiscal responsibility," not globalization and trade, not the deterioration of wages and disappearing jobs. Yet those subjects are sure to come up for discussion. Rubin gets to preach his "free trade" dogma with no one present to rebut his facts and theories.

A fundamental debate is growing within the party around these economic issues and Pelosi knows this. It is seriously unwise for this new Speaker to leave an impression she has already chosen sides. The interpretation by Washington insiders will be: Pelosi is "safe;" she is not going to threaten Rubin's Wall Street orthodoxy. Far-flung voters will begin to conclude Democrats are the same-old, same-old money party. This is the sort of party "unity" that can earn Pelosi a very short honeymoon.

But this isn't just about one seminar for freshman Representatives, it's about a war for the heart of the party.
While I think that the dichotomy between what Sirota termed the People Party vs. the Money Party is oversimplified, what he's trying to capture is very real and very threatening to the interests of working people. My operating theory is that Sirota's suffering from a subdermal hematoma after hearing about Pelosi banning Labor from the seminar this Wednesday. At this point, and after having detailed the numerous things ways that that the party leadership is betraying working people, I think all he can see is red.

Sirota's not alone though. In chronicling the election of populist candidates in Ohio, Virginia, and Montana, the New York Times identified the players in the battle going in the party between the Clintonites and the representatives of Labor. That article is now behind a subscription wall, but from that article.

Just as the populists have organized, tentatively calling their group Shared Prosperity, so has the Democratic establishment. Its counterpart is "the Hamilton Project," formed last spring to elaborate policies in anticipation of a Democratic Congress and, in 2008, a Democratic victor in the presidential election. Mr. Orszag, who was a senior economist in the Clinton administration, directs the project. The financing comes from wealthy Democrats, among them Mr. Rubin.

Labor isn't content to sit by idly and allow the new Congress to pursue the same failed economic policies that have seen America divide economically. Bloomberg details the division in greater detail noting that while there are multiple cleavages at work the principal divide is over free trade deal.

Labor leaders and the nascent "Shared Prosperity" group want to see the new Congress put new trade deals on hold until labor protections can be guaranteed. The group of Wall Street backed economists organized as the "Hamilton Project" and financed in large party by Rubin want to push further trade deals, and limit personal injury lawsuits.

While Labor leaders and Rubin have been meeting on a regular basis the hostility in the air is palpable.

Speaking on Rubin's proposed economic agenda, AFL-CIO Treasurer Richard Trumka and other leaders had little good to say.

``The strategy you propose offers little, in my view, to either bolster economic growth or address the stagnating wages and living standards of American working families,'' Trumka wrote in a Feb. 7 letter to Rubin. ``I am simply astonished that you would suggest such a politically toxic agenda for the Democratic Party.''

``When the wizards of Wall Street start dictating Democratic policy, the first to be forgotten are the Democratic voters who made these election successes possible,'' said Rick Sloan, a spokesman for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. ``We get screwed every time these guys grab the handles of power. They forget the need to create jobs. They are much more interested in Chinese growth than Cleveland's growth.''

For their part the principals in the Hamilton Project have not been above deriding the concerns of labor as extremist and implying that Labor just might be Communist.

Steven Rattner, co-founder of New York investment firm Quadrangle Group LLC and a member of the Hamilton Project's advisory council, gave voice to those differences in a July Wall Street Journal guest editorial.

Rattner criticized ``more extreme factions'' of the party who ``argue that the centrism of the Clinton administration doesn't adequately address 21st-century fears.'' He said they ``offer in its place statist visions of organizing economic policy around belittling American capitalism'' while trumpeting ``unionization and protection.''

While the "Shared Prosperity" group has no web page at this time, the Economic Policy Insititute is perceived to be the think tank wing of the group. The Hamilton Project already has a page up at which you can view some of their ideas for the country.

While both groups have tried to maintain cordial relations, the issues that divide aren't going away, and the perception by the Pelosi-Rubin wing of the party that this year's election was a mandate for the return of Clitonite economic policies is bound to create conflict. What makes the self-entitlement of the "Hamilton Project" group all the more enfuriating is that without the $40 Million from Labor the victory of Democrat's in November's election would likely not have occurred. The impression is that before she's even sworn in as Speaker, Pelosi deigned to stab Labor in the back.

And all this has implication for 2008 and beyond. Hillary Clinton is the most likely heir to power for the group of interests behind the "Hamilton Project", while with the withdrawl of Russ Feingold from consideration, John Edwards is the most likely standard-bearer for Labor and the "Shared Prosperity" group. This is not the first time that the Democratic Party had this fight.

During the New Deal, Roosevelt faced considerable opposition from the DLC of that day led by Al Smith the 1928 Democratic presidential nominee, who would endorse Republicans in 1936 and 1940 to epress his oppositon the New Deal. Searching for a fitting description of the Republicans and Demcratic traitors who fought him so vigorously on the New Deal, Roosevelt speaking to the 1936 Democratic Convention coined the term "economic royalists."

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital - all undreamed of by the Fathers - the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

And so it is again. The 1930 election saw Democrats pick up 52 House seats and 8 Senate seats. But it was only during the 1932 Democratic primary when Roosevlt beat out Al Smith for the nomination the the New Deal and the Democratic consensus that dominated the country during the fifth party system from 1932 to 1968.

We have a decision to make. Will the Demomcratic party fall prey to the economic royalists of the "Hamilton Project" or will the party get the message the people sent last month and adopt the policy stances of the new ecnomomic populists of the "Shared Prosperity" group? This is the fight for 2008.

UPDATE

I want to ask you all a favor.

Write a note explaining they'd like Labor leaders to be included in the seminar on Wednesday.

The form is here.

Pelosi can also be reached at her Congressional email:

sf.nancy@mail.house.gov

Maybe we can make Pelosi change her mind about the importance of labor.