Undernews For January 7, 2009
Since 1964, the news while there's still time to do something about it
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NY Times - President Obama told House Democratic leaders at a meeting that they should include a tax on high-priced
insurance policies favored by the Senate in the final version of far-reaching health care legislation, aides said. The
White House has long expressed a preference for the excise tax on high-cost plans. . .
But House Democrats have resisted the idea, which is also strongly opposed by many organized labor groups - an important
part of the party's base - because the tax may hit a number of more generous union-sponsored health plans.
The Senate proposal would impose a 40 percent excise tax on the cost of individual insurance policies above $8,500 and
on family policies above $23,000, with higher thresholds for retirees and employees in high-risk fields like police
officers.
The tax would raise $149 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Senate bill would cost
$871 billion over 10 years, while the House bill would cost nearly $1.1 trillion."
NY Times, September 21 - Although cast as a tax on gold-plated insurance policies for the well-heeled, it has prompted anxiety among the middle
class.
As it turns out, though, many smaller fish would get caught in Mr. Baucus’s tax net. The supposedly Cadillac insurance
policies include ones that cover many of the nation’s firefighters and coal miners, older employees at small businesses
- a whole gamut that runs from union shops to Main Street entrepreneurs. . .
Nationwide, about one in 10 family insurance plans would be subject to the new excise tax, according to the Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning policy and research group.
The tax would be levied on insurers - or on employers that act as their own insurers. Either way, the tax would very
likely be passed along to workers in even higher premiums than they pay now. But if insurance premiums continue to rise
faster than inflation, as they have for years, many more people's policies could end up setting off the luxury tax in
coming years.
"It puts a bigger tax on middle-income Americans who are already paying enough,"said Harold A. Schaitberger, the general
president of the International Association of Fire Fighters.
Labels: HEALTH INSURANCE, OBAMA
Bloomberg - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc.
to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer's payments to banks during the depths of the financial
crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.
AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and
Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed
crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on
Dec. 24, 2008. The e-mails were obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee.
The New York Fed took over negotiations between AIG and the banks in November 2008 as losses on the swaps, which were
contracts tied to subprime home loans, threatened to swamp the insurer weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The
regulator decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid for $62.1 billion of the swaps,
prompting lawmakers to call the AIG rescue a "backdoor bailout" of financial firms.
"It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important
information," said Issa, a California Republican. Taxpayers "deserve full and complete disclosure under our nation's
securities laws, not the withholding of politically inconvenient information." President Barack Obama selected Geithner
as Treasury secretary, a post he took last year.
HOW FOUNDATIONS HARM JOURNALISM AND POLITICS
Sam Smith - In recent months there's been increasing talk of non-profit groups doing more investigative reporting. This
is a great idea. In fact, I wrote about it five years ago:
[][][] The nature of the corporatized press limits the desirability of investigative reporting. . . . A successful
investigation is a risky way to climb the media ladder for the reporter and a threat to the next quarterly return for
the boss.
But since you still need news, one way to make it seem as though you are doing something is to outsource your journalism
to groups like the Center for Public Integrity or the Project on Government Oversight. Gone is the day when every
reporter was meant to be a project on government oversight; now you let POGO do the investigation, you write it up, and
if the story's wrong it's not your fault but POGO's. Nice deniability, just the thing a corporation likes. On a single
day, for example, three reports by grantees [including POGO] of the Fund for Constitutional Government (on whose board I
sit) were featured in the NY Times. Such groups have become a timid media's secondhand nose.
Groups like the aforementioned, independent investigators on the Internet, and lonely holdouts from journalism's past
are all doing something much closer to what American journalism is meant to be about than the censored, spun, and
desiccated version you find daily in the same elite media that pompously patronizes those who refuse to be servile
sycophants like themselves. [][][]
Which is all well and good, except that all progress comes with a price as I was reminded the other day when I stumbled
upon a story about meeting held last summer by a group of non-profit news organization that resulted in a declaration
that "that preparations should be immediately made to form a collaboration, the Investigative News Network (working
title). Its mission is very simple: to aid and abet, in every conceivable way, individually and collectively, the work
and public reach of its member news organizations, including, to the fullest extent possible, their administrative,
editorial and financial wellbeing. And, more broadly, to foster the highest quality investigative journalism, and to
hold those in power accountable, at the local, national and international levels."
Still well and good until I looked up at the upper right hand corner and saw where the money was coming from for all
this: Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Surdna Foundation and the William Penn Foundation.
A bell rang and I recalled Joan Roelof's excellent book, "Foundations and Public Policy: The Mark of Pluralism." The Suny Press book promo sums up the problem:
"Documents how even progressive foundations serve to reinforce the political status quo. . . She shows how a vast number
of policy innovations have arisen from the most important foundations, lessening the destructive impact of global
"marketization." Conversely, groups and movements that might challenge the status quo are nudged into line with grants
and technical assistance, and foundations also have considerable power to shape such things as public opinion, higher
education, and elite ideology. The cumulative effect is that foundations, despite their progressive goals, have a
depoliticizing effect, one that preserves the hegemony of neo-liberal institutions."
Or as Frank Walsh put it, "Mr. Rockefeller could find no better insurance for his hundreds of millions than to invest
one of them in subsidizing all agencies that make for social change and progress."
Which is not to say that these groups don't do a great amount of good. But they also put a strong limit on the type of
good that can be done with their money. Everyone knows it; they just don't want to talk about it.
I have some familiarity with this problem having been a journalistic wild card most of my life. And I can assure you
that ending the war on drugs, criticizing Bill Clinton when he was president, helping to start the Green Party, or
telling some basic facts about Barack Obama are not among the goals of these big foundations and of those funded by
them. Also, one shouldn't expect to see any investigative reporting from their recipients of major foundations and their
role in American society.
Further, if you compare these contemporary non-profits news media with the underground press that helped change America
in the 1960s, you find a mainstream convergence that offers one good reason why so little is changing in America during
this century.
This is a problem that should be faced and discussed more openly than it is at present.
What follows is just a taste of the situation, as outlined by Bob Feldman:
Bob Feldman - In her groundbreaking Foundations and Public Policy book, Joan Roelofs begins a chapter that examines foundation
influence on social change organizations by asserting that "philanthropy suggests yet another explanation for the
decline of the 1960s and 1970s protest movements." In Roelofs' view, "radical activism often was transformed by grants
and technical assistance from liberal foundations into fragmented and local organizations subject to elite control" and
"energies were channeled into safe, legalistic, bureaucratic activities."
Left media and left think tank staff people generally deny that the acceptance by their organizations of grants from
liberal foundations has "transformed" their organizational priorities, made them "subject to elite control" or channeled
their energies into "safe, legalistic, bureaucratic" activities. In 2001, for instance, the former executive director of
the left media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, Jeff Cohen, told German journalist Anja Einfeldt of the German magazine Message: "There have
never been strings attached to any grants. We have never been asked to tone down our criticism. If anyone tried, we
would refuse the money." Another FAIR staff person also insisted that "the charitable foundations which we do accept
funding from have no oversight or control over our work."
Yet in a 1998 article in The Nation (which the former FAIR executive director was credited with helping to frame), the
executive director of the Institute for Policy Studies between 1992 and 1998, Michael Shuman, wrote:
"A number of program officers at progressive foundations are former activists who decided to move from the demand to the
supply side to enjoy better salaries, benefits and working hours. Yet they still want to live like activists
vicariously. . . by exercising influence over grantees through innumerable meetings, reports, conferences and
`suggestions.'. . Many progressive funders treat their grantees like disobedient children who need to be constantly
watched and disciplined." . . .
In a September, 2002 e-mail, the executive director of the www.tompaine.com left media web site, John Moyers (a former executive with the Schumann Foundation, as well), also stated: "Like any
other grantee, I must report fully my activities and finances to all of my funders, including Schumann, on an annual
basis…If they don't like what we're doing, we don't get funded for the next year."
According to the San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper, "The foundation money has engendered a climate of secrecy at IAJ
[Institute for Alternative Journalism n/k/a Independent Media Institute that's in direct conflict with IAJ's role as a
progressive media organization." The same newspaper also asserted in 1997 that "the only money nonprofits can get these
days is from private foundations--and those foundations want to control the political agenda.". . .
In an interview with Message magazine, I also argued that: "The acceptance by media watchdog groups of large sums of
money from U.S. establishment foundations may raise legitimate conflict-of-interest issues. They may tend to avoid
providing readers, listeners or viewers with much critical alternative news coverage of the global business and
political activities of their multi-billion dollar foundation funders."
Whether or not you agree that left media organizations and think tanks have been channeled into a more mainstream and
politically ineffectual direction--or are specially-influenced-- by their liberal foundation funders, the evidence is
overwhelming that large amounts of liberal foundation grant money have been thrown towards left media groups and think
tanks since the early 1990s. . .
Like the left media, left think tanks have also been receiving large amounts of money from liberal foundations since the
1990s. As Roelofs observes:
"There are some think tanks considered left wing or progressive. They do important work, especially in documenting the
activities, and consequences of corporate and government policies. Nevertheless, almost all are funded by the liberal
foundations; their challenges to the system are muted. . . There are several possible explanations for the mellowing
that has occurred, including foundation funding and, sometimes, foundation staff joining the boards of funded
institutes." . . .
Left media groups and think tanks which finance their journalistic activity and political work by soliciting grants from
liberal power elite foundations like the Ford Foundation generally deny that they are acting in either a politically or
morally compromising way. Some supporters of acceptance of foundation grants by left media groups, for instance,
asserted (on the Free Pacifica e-mail list in the late 1990s) that it's not important where the left media gets its
money from, as long as they use the foundation grant money for anti-corporate, progressive purposes.
But left sociologist James Petras, in an article entitled "The Ford Foundation and the CIA: A documented case of
philanthropic collaboration with the Secret Police", argues that "the Ford Foundation has in some ways refined their
style of collaboration with Washington's attempt to produce world cultural domination, but retained the substance of
that policy."
. . According to Petras, "the ties between the top officials of the Ford Foundation and the U.S. government are explicit
and continuing." Petras also claims that the Ford Foundation "has never funded any major project that contravenes U.S.
policy."
In her Foundations and Public Policy chapter on "Social Change Organizations," Roelofs indicates the various ways that
foundation funding of U.S. left groups appear to have exercised a special influence over the political direction of the
U.S. left since the 1970s. Foundation grants to one left group rather than another enables liberal power elite
foundations to steer the U.S. left's agenda so that "threatening alternatives" don't appear on the serious political
agenda. More militant left groups which the elite foundation boards or program managers regard as "irresponsible" or
"unrealistic" are not funded: and, as a result, are more easily excluded from left political discourse than are the left
groups favored with foundation grants.
Foundations can influence unfunded left groups to change the design of their projects and structure in accordance with a
foundation board's special agenda, in order to qualify for grants from a particular foundation. Foundations can
influence a left groups' choice of leaders by only giving grants to left groups whose leaders they regard as politically
unthreatening. Foundations can promote "the fragmentation of protest" on the U.S. Left by using their grants to create
and sustain "a universe of overlapping and competing social change organizations" and discouraging the unification of
U.S. left dissident groups. As Roelofs notes:
"It is to the elite's advantage to be countered by a 'mass movement' consisting of fragmented, segmented, local, and
non-ideological bureaucracies doing good works and, furthermore, being dependent on foundations for support. Diverse
organizations emphasize differences among the disadvantaged: ethnic, racial, sexual, rural-urban, or age, and they
discourage a broad left recognizing common interests."
Labels: FOUNDATIONS, JOURNALISM
John Zogby, in a Forbes article, suggests that the Democrats are using the wrong words. The public doesn't like the term
"stimulus" but does support job creating programs. The GOP can attack a phrase like "stimulus" in a way that's much
harder when you're talking about "creating jobs."
But Zogby puts too much emphasis on the semantics. For example, he cities there issues that got majority approval:
--Tax breaks for employers who must use the money to add employees, 81%
--Federal aid to states and localities used to retain jobs in education, public safety and other public functions, 58%
--Public employment programs such as those created during the Depression, 56%.
Says Zogby: "The three approaches that voters liked were all, to some extent, part of the stimulus bill. But when they
were lumped under the popular title of 'stimulus bill,' support plummeted.
It's true that the above approaches were minor parts of the stimulus bill, but they were far from the top of the list.
Thus it wasn't just the words that were wrong; it was the DemoCrats' priorities.
Joseph Brownstein, ABC News - A new analysis, using H1N1 deaths in the United States in the spring and projecting likely
outcomes for this fall, shows that a typical -- or possibly even a milder flu season than average -- should have been
expected. . .
The new study, done by researchers at Harvard University and the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit in the
U.K., says swine flu cases in the spring indicated a flu season that might be, at worst, slightly worse than normal.
"It would have been great to have that back in June," said Philip Alcabes, an associate professor in the program in
urban public health at Hunter College's School of Health Sciences. "There would have been one more bit of evidence
behind my assertion six months ago" that people were overreacting to H1N1.
. . Around the time that swine flu first started making headlines, Alcabes' book, "Dread: How Fear and Fantasy Have
Fueled Epidemics From the Black Death to Avian Flu," was published, and he said the circumstances surrounding H1N1
provide an apt case study.
"I think that it was, from the very beginning, created as a crisis and overstated as a real threat," he said, adding
that he did not want to understate the seriousness of influenza.
"Flu is a serious illness, it kills people," he said. But, he added, "It does a disservice to public health when, in the
name of a preparedness crusade, people create a narrative of crisis or catastrophe before we have enough data that this
is happening."
Alcabes said that while public officials, in the early going, admitted to having little data on the virus and resisted
calls to close the borders. But as time went on, he said, officials took many steps he feels were unnecessary, including
mass, rather than targeted vaccination.
While the new paper suggests swine flu was unlikely to create a severe epidemic, the researchers, disagreeing with
Alcabes, say they do not think public health officials overreacted.
"In the early on, we would not have been able to estimate severity. We were going with what was known at the time," said
Anne Presanis, a statistician with the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit.
Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said he did not believe
public health officials were overreacting.
"I don't think it's been oversold," he said. "I think you have to prepare for the worst and then be gratified that it
wasn't as bad as it was."
While H1N1 affected different age groups from a typical flu, the intensity of that difference was not yet known in the
spring.
"When it first hit, nobody knew how severe it could be or that population aged 60 and over would be relatively spared,"
said Schaffner. "Had this virus had an impact in the age 60 or over, it would have been vastly more injurious than
seasonal influenza. We were fortunate in that regard, but we didn't know that at the time."
Public health officials faced a tough choice in May and June, said Robert Field, a professor of health management and
policy at the Drexel University School of Public Health. Had they done little and an epidemic occurred, they would have
been blamed for doing nothing. If they did a lot and there had been no major outbreak -- or even if their efforts
stopped a potential outbreak -- they would have been blamed for wasting money.
"The attitude of public health is better to be safe than sorry, and to some extent, we may be seeing a milder epidemic
than we feared because of the vaccine and other measures people are taking," Field said. "It's so easy to be a victim of
your own success -- no one ever sees the disease that's being prevented, you just see the one that appeared and then got
cured. It's a consequence of any disease that you develop a vaccine for and more broadly, of any disease that you're
able to prevent."
Bruce Dixon, Op Ed News - The day before being sworn in, Atlanta's new mayor Kasim Reed pledged to the Chamber of
Commerce he'd deal with downtown panhandlers in what he called a more "muscular" fashion. The hopes and predictions of
white pundits that black political life would come to look like the rest of America have come true. But not because the
inequalities in health, wealth, incarceration rates and other indices of disparity have narrowed. Black politics are
looking a lot more like white politics because the black political elite no longer believes its mission is to fight for
peace and justice. The newer, more cynical black elite are unmoored from their peace-and-justice-loving base. They are
focused on their own careers, and the corporate largesse that makes those careers possible. Make no mistake about it,
the black politics of a previous generation, in which black candidates and public officials were expected to stand for
something beside their own careers, is over. There was a time not so long ago, when black politics, both in the minds of
black voters, and in the public aims of black politicians, differed from the politics of white America.
Black politics were different because black unemployment was chronically twice as high as white unemployment, because
black infant mortalities were much greater and life expectancies shorter than in white America. Black politics were
different because African Americans were more likely to live in segregated, inferior housing, attend segregated,
inferior schools, and due to the enormous gap in family wealth between white and black America. Black politics were
different too because even though many African Americans were in the military, black communities were far less
supportive of America's imperial wars around the world than their white neighbors. And most of all, black politics were
different because black voters expected black politicians to use their political careers to advance social and economic
justice. Dr. King's last projects hadn't been about affirmative action. They were about a strike of sanitation workers
for decent wages and benefits, and a Poor Peoples Campaign. . .
Black unemployment is still double that of whites, and the white-black wealth divide is something like eleven to one.
Black infant mortality is still higher than that of whites, and life expectancies are lower. Tens of millions of African
Americans still live in segregated communities with tax structures rigged to prevent them from adequately funding roads,
schools, and public services, and most black children still attend segregated, inferior schools. Black America remains
the most solidly antiwar and pro-peace constituency in the nation.
What's different is that black voters no longer demand, no longer imagine that black politicians can or want to make a
difference. What's different is that black politicians, and African Americans in public life, in government at all
levels no longer feel the obligation to stand and fight for economic justice.
MAJOR FOREIGN CROOK PAL OF CLINTONS ALLOWED BACK IN UNITED STATES
Andrew Higgins, Washington Post - In March 2004, James Riady, an Indonesian tycoon and devout Christian, received an
honorary doctorate from Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas. The university -- which has a scholarship program
funded by the Indonesian -- didn't announce the honor. Nor did Riady pick up the diploma in person: He'd been barred
from America after pleading guilty in 2001 to a "conspiracy to defraud the United States" through illegal contributions
to the campaigns of Bill Clinton and other Democrats.
Last year, however, the Indonesian mogul finally made it to Arkansas. He traveled there during the first of two
previously unreported trips he made in 2009 to the United States. He was allowed in only after receiving a waiver from a
rule that forbids entry to foreigners guilty of "a crime involving moral turpitude," a term that government lawyers
generally interpret to include fraud.
Riady's return to the United States poses a prickly question for Hillary Clinton's State Department: How and why did a
foreign billionaire stained by Clinton-era scandals get a U.S. visa after being kept out for so long under the Bush
administration?
The ethnic Chinese magnate's ties to the Clintons have been a source of heated controversy since the late 1990s, when
Riady became embroiled in one of the murkiest episodes of the Clinton presidency -- a campaign fundraising scandal that
caused a big political ruckus in Washington amid Republican Party allegations, never proved, of meddling by China's
intelligence services in American politics.
The saga brought Riady and his family-run conglomerate, Lippo Group, an $8.6 million fine, the biggest penalty in the
history of U.S. campaign finance violations.
THE BACK STORY
1976
Two Indonesian billionaires come to Arkansas. Mochtar Riady and Liem Sioe Liong are close to Suharto. Riady is looking
for an American bank to buy. Finds Jackson Stephens with whom he forms Stephens Finance. Stephens will broker the
arrival of BCCI to this country and steer BCCI's founder, Hassan Abedi, to Bert Lance. Riady's teen-age son is taken on
as an intern by Stephens Inc. He later says he was "sponsored" by Bill Clinton.
1977
Apparently because of pressure from Indonesia, Riady withdraws his bid to buy Lance's 30% share of the National Bank of
Georgia. Instead, a BCCI front man buys the shares and Abedi moves to secretly take over Financial General - later First
American Bankshares -- later the subject of the only BCCI-connected scandal to be prosecuted in the US.
1983
Mochtar Riady forms Lippo Finance & Investment in Little Rock. A non-citizen, Riady hires Carter's former SBA director, Vernon Weaver, to chair the firm.
The launch is accomplished with the aid of a $2 million loan guaranteed by the SBA. Weaver uses Governor Clinton as a
character reference to help get the loan guarantee. First loan goes to Little Rock Chinese restaurant owner Charlie
Trie.
Jackson Stephens forms United Pacific Trading with Mochtar Riady to do business in the U.S. and Asia.
1984
Stevens and Riady buy a banking firm and change its name to Worthern Bank with Riady's 28-year-old son James as
president. Other Worthen co-owners will eventually include BCCI investor Abdullah Taha Bakhish.
1985
Arkansas state pension funds -- deposited in Worthen by Governor Bill Clinton -- suddenly lose 15% of their value
because of the failure of high risk, short-term investments and the brokerage firm that bought them. The $52 million
loss is covered by a Worthen check written by Jack Stephens in the middle of the night, an insurance policy and the
subsequent purchase over the next few months of 40% of the bank by Mochtar Riady. Clinton and Worthen escape a major
scandal.
Mochtar and James Riady engineer the takeover of the First National Bank of Mena in a town of 5,000 with few major
assets beyond a Contra supply base, drug running and money-laundering operations.
1986
James Riady resigns as president of Worthen Bank.
1990
James Riady takes over operations of a new branch of the Lippo Bank, working with Hong Kong Lippo executive, John Huang.
China Resources Company Ltd begins buying stock in the branch, Hong Kong Chinese Bank, at 15% below market value.
Intelligence sources later report that the firm is really a front for Chinese military intelligence.
1992
James Riady, his family, and employees give $700,000 to Clinton and the Democratic campaign.
1993
John Huang and James Riady give $100,000 to Clinton's inaugural fund . . Huang arranges private meeting between Mochtar
Riady and Clinton at which Riady presses for renewal of China's 'most favored nation" status and a relaxation of
economic sanctions . . . China's 'most favored nation' status is renewed. Price being paid by China Resources Company
Ltd. for Lippo's Hong Kong Chinese Bank jumps to 50% above market value. The Riadys make $163 million.
1994
Ron Brown goes to China with an unprecedented $5.5 billion in deals ready to be signed. Included is a $1 billion contact
for the Clinton-friendly Arkansas firm, Entergy Corporation, to manage and expand Lippo's power plant in northern China.
Entergy will also get contracts to build power plants in Indonesia. James Riady tells the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: "I
think the idea of having President Clinton from Arkansas in the White House shouldn't be underestimated."
Webster Hubbell is convicted of tax evasion and mail fraud involving the theft of nearly a half million dollars from his
partners at the Rose firm and failing to pay nearly $150,000 in taxes.
After quitting the Justice Department and before going to jail, Hubbell is a busy man. He meets with Hillary Clinton,
and follows up by getting together with major scandal figures John Huang, James Riady, and Ng Lapseng. Riady and Huang
go to the White House every day from June 21 to June 25, 1994 according to White House records. Hubbell had breakfast
and lunch with Riady on June 23. Four days later -- and one week after Hubbell's meeting with Hillary -- the Hong Kong
Chinese Bank, jointly owed by Lippo and the Chinese intelligence services, sends $100,000 to Hubbell. Huang,
incidentally, formerly worked for the Hong Kong Chinese Bank. Hubbell also receives $400,000 from other sources.
1995
Operating with an interim top secret clearance (but without FBI investigation or foreign security check) new Commerce
official Huang requests several top secret files on China just before a meeting with the Chinese ambassador.
Huang and the Riadys hold a meeting with Clinton. Not long after, Huang goes to work as a Democratic fundraiser, but
remains on Commerce's payroll as a $10,000 a month consultant. Huang raises $5 million for the campaign. About a third
of that is returned as having come from illegal sources. Among the problem contributions: $250,000 to the DNC from five
Chinese businessmen for a brief meeting with Clinton at a fundraiser.
Webster Hubbell, a former Rose law firm partner -- although not known for skill in Asian trade matters -- goes to work
for a Lippo Group affiliate after being forced out of the Clinton administration and before going to jail. Is asked at a
Senate hearing by the majority counsel: "I guess the question is really this, it is whether, in connection with this
representation, you received a large amount of money and that may have had an impact on the degree of your cooperation
with the independent counsel or with us?" Hubbell responds, "That's pretty rotten" and chair Al D'Amato changes the
subject.
Hubbell had represented both Worthen and James Riady during the 1980s.
1998
Department of Justice announcement: "James Tjahaja Riady will pay a record $8.6 million in criminal fines and plead
guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to defraud the United States by unlawfully reimbursing campaign donors with
foreign corporate funds in violation of federal election law, the Justice Department's Campaign Financing Task Force and
the United States Attorney in Los Angeles announced today.
"In addition, LippoBank California, a California state-chartered bank affiliated with Lippo Group, will plead guilty to
86 misdemeanor counts charging its agents, Riady and John Huang, with making illegal foreign campaign contributions from
1988 through 1994.
"Riady is one of 26 people and two corporations charged by the Campaign Financing Task Force, which was established four
years ago by Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate allegations of campaign financing abuses in the 1996 election
cycle. . . The $8.6 million fine represents the largest sanction imposed in a campaign finance matter in the history of
the United States . . .
"During the period of August 1992 through October 1992, shortly after Riady pledged $1 million in support of Arkansas
Governor Bill Clinton's campaign for the Presidency of the United States, contributions made by Huang were reimbursed
with funds wired from a foreign Lippo Group entity into an account Riady maintained at Lippo Bank and then distributed
to Huang in cash. . .
"The purpose of the contributions was to obtain various benefits from various campaign committees and candidates for
Lippo Group and LippoBank, including: access, meetings, and time with politicians, elected officials, and other
high-level government officials; contacts and status for Lippo Group and LippoBank with business and government leaders
in the United States and abroad; business opportunities for Lippo Group and defendant LippoBank; government policies
which would inure to the benefit of Lippo Group and defendant LippoBank, including Most Favored Nation status for China,
open trade policies with Indonesia, normalization of relations with Vietnam, Community Reinvestment Act exemptions for
LippoBank, a repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act which limited business opportunities for LippoBank, and a relaxation of
Taiwanese restrictions on investment by foreign banks; the deposit of funds into LippoBank by political campaign
committees and government agencies; and local government support for Lippo Group's California property development
projects which would in turn benefit LippoBank's plans for expansion."
STOP BANKING WITH THE BAD GUYS
You don't have to keep your checking account with one of the big bad guys. You can switch to a community bank or a
credit union. Here's some good advice from Move Your Money:
Not all community banks are risk free. Some of them got involved in the same risky behavior that took down some of the
biggest banks. We suggest two options for looking into the small and community banks in your area:
1. Thanks to the volunteer services of a group called Institutional Risk Analytics, you can get a listing of the most
sound community banks near you. IRA lists only banks that, according to its rating system, which is based on government
data, get a grade of "B" or better.
Like the FDIC for banks and thrifts, the National Credit Union Administration insures the deposits of credit unions and
is a good resource for financial data on specific institutions. Credit unions do not disclose financial data in the same
way as FDIC-insured banks. As a result, credit unions are not presently included in the IRA ratings database, which
covers over 8,000 federally insured banks and thrifts. IRA is developing a method to rate credit unions in a way that is
comparable to the IRA bank stress ratings.
2. Go to the Independent Community Bankers of America site and do a zip-code search. Or, if you're interested in credit
unions, go to Credit Unions National Association and do a zip-code search. Then go to BankRate.com and see how it rates
the banks or credit unions you're interested in.
Joint Statement by 58 of the World's Scientific Academies, 1994 - The world is in the midst of an unprecedented
expansion of human numbers. It took hundreds of thousands of years for our species to reach a population level of 10
million, only 10,000 years ago. This number grew to 100 million people about 2,000 years ago and to 2.5 billion by 1950.
Within less than the span of a single lifetime, it has more than doubled to 5.5 billion in 1993. . .
Over the last 30 years, many regions of the world have also dramatically reduced birth rates. Some have already achieved
family sizes small enough, if maintained, to result eventually in a halt to population growth. These successes have led
to a slowing of the world's rate of population increase.
Consider three hypothetical scenarios for the levels of human population in the century ahead:
- Fertility declines within sixty years from the current rate of 3.3 to a global replacement average of 2.1 children per
woman. The current population momentum would lead to at least 11 billion people before leveling off at the end of the
21st century.
- Fertility reduces to an average of 1.7 children per woman early in the next century. Human population growth would
peak at 7.8 billion persons in the middle of the 21st century and decline slowly thereafter.
- Fertility declines to no lower than 2.5 children per woman. Global population would grow to 19 billion by the year
2100, and to 28 billion by 2150.
High fertility rates have historically been strongly correlated with poverty, high childhood mortality rates, low status
and educational levels of women, deficiencies in reproductive health services, and inadequate availability and
acceptance of contraceptives. Falling fertility rates and the demographic transition are generally associated with
improved standards of living, such as increased per capita incomes, increased life expectancy, lowered infant mortality,
increased adult literacy, and higher rates of female education and employment.
Even with improved economic conditions, nations, regions, and societies will experience different demographic patterns
due to varying cultural influences. The value placed upon large families (especially among underprivileged rural
populations in less developed countries who benefit least from the process of development), the assurance of security
for the elderly, the ability of women to control reproduction, and the status and rights of women within families and
within societies are significant cultural factors affecting family size and the demand for family planning services. . .
Throughout history and especially during the twentieth century, environmental degradation has primarily been a product
of our efforts to secure improved standards of food, clothing, shelter, comfort, and recreation for growing numbers of
people. The magnitude of the threat to the ecosystem is linked to human population size and resource use per person.
Resource use, waste production and environmental degradation are accelerated by population growth. They are further
exacerbated by consumption habits, certain technological developments, and particular patterns of social organization
and resource management.
As human numbers further increase, the potential for irreversible changes of far reaching magnitude also increases.
Indicators of severe environmental stress include the growing loss of biodiversity, increasing greenhouse gas emissions,
increasing deforestation worldwide, stratospheric ozone depletion, acid rain, loss of topsoil, and shortages of water,
food, and fuel-wood in many parts of the world. . .
The timing and spacing of pregnancies are important for the health of the mother, her children, and her family. Most
maternal deaths are due to unsafe practices in terminating pregnancies, a lack of readily available services for
high-risk pregnancies, and women having too many children or having them too early and too late in life.
Millions of people still do not have adequate access to family planning services and suitable contraceptives. Only about
one-half of married women of reproductive age are currently practicing contraception. Yet as the director-general of
UNICEF put it, ''Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology
now available to the human race." Existing contraceptive methods could go far toward alleviating the unmet need if they
were available and used in sufficient numbers, through a variety of channels and distribution, sensitively adapted to
local needs. . .
Reducing fertility rates, however, cannot be achieved merely by providing more contraceptives. The demand for these
services has to be addressed. Even when family planning and other reproductive health services are widely available, the
social and economic status of women affects individual decisions to use them. The ability of women to make decisions
about family size is greatly affected by gender roles within society and in sexual relationships. Ensuring equal
opportunity for women in all aspects of society is crucial.
Thus all reproductive health services must be implemented as a part of broader strategies to raise the quality of human
life. They must include the following:
- Efforts to reduce and eliminate gender-based inequalities. Women and men should have equal opportunities and
responsibilities in sexual, social, and economic life.
- Provision of convenient family planning and other reproductive health services with a wide variety of safe
contraceptive options. irrespective of an individual's ability to pay.
- Encouragement of voluntary approaches to family planning and elimination of unsafe and coercive practices.
- Development policies that address basic needs such as clean water, sanitation, broad primary health care measures and
education; and that foster empowerment of the poor and women.
Labels: POPULATION
FEDERAL APPEALS COURT GIVES STATE'S FELONS RIGHT TO VOTE
Legal Defense Fund - The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that Washington State's law denying the vote to people with felony
convictions is racially discriminatory and violates the Voting Rights Act. . .
The Court found "compelling" evidence that "in the total population of potential 'felons' . . . minorities are more
likely than whites to be searched, arrested, detained, and ultimately prosecuted. If those decision points are infected
with racial bias, resulting in some people becoming felons not just because they have committed a crime, but because of
their race, then that felon status cannot, under section 2 of the VRA, disqualify felons from voting." The state did not
dispute this compelling evidence.
As a result of Washington's law, 24 percent of black men and 15 percent of the entire black population in Washington
have lost their voting rights because of a felony conviction. Collectively, African Americans, Latinos and Native
Americans represent only 12% of Washington's population, but comprise 36% of the State's incarcerated population.
Nationally, more than 5.3 million Americans are denied access to the fundamental right that is preservative of all other
rights. An estimated 2 million of the disfranchised, roughly 38%, are African Americans. Maine and Vermont permit
prisoners to vote by absentee ballot from prison.
Seattle Weekly [The] decision by the famously liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granting felons in Washington state the right to
vote--even while in prison--is sure to be further appealed. Attorney General Rob McKenna said as much this morning.
First stop will be a larger panel of 9th Circuit judges. But the case could eventually reach the U.S. Supreme
Court--where the newest member is already on record as supporting this decision.
Sonia Sotomayor was a judge on the 2nd Circuit in 2006 when a similar case came up in New York. There, too, the
plaintiffs argued that since felons are disproportionately people of color, denying them the right to vote was
effectively discriminatory. The plaintiffs lost that case, as a majority of 2nd Circuit judges went against them. But
Sotomayor dissented and seemed to support extending voting rights to all felons, in or out of prison.
James Ridgeway, Mother Jones - Within days or even hours of the [Detroit flight] bombing attempt, everyone was talking
about so-called whole-body imaging as the magic bullet that could stop this type of attack. In announcing hearings by
the Senate Homeland Security Commitee, Joe Lieberman approached the use of scanners as a foregone conclusion, saying one
of the "big, urgent questions that we are holding this hearing to answer" was "Why isn't whole-body-scanning technology
that can detect explosives in wider use?" Former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told the Washington Post,
"You've got to find some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren't easy to get at. It's either pat downs
or imaging, or otherwise hoping that bad guys haven't figured it out, and I guess bad guys have figured it out."
Since the alternative is being groped by airport screeners, the scanners might sound pretty good. The Transportation
Security Administration has claimed that the images "are friendly enough to post in a preschool," though the pictures
themselves tell another story, and numerous organizations have opposed them as a gross invasion of privacy. Beyond
privacy issues, however, are questions about whether these machines really work -- and about who stands to benefit most
from their use. When it comes to high-tech screening methods, the TSA has a dismal record of enriching private
corporations with failed technologies, and there are signs that the latest miracle device may just bring more of the
same.
Known by their opponents as "digital strip search" machines, the full-body scanners use one of two technologies --
millimeter wave sensors or backscatter x-rays -- to see through clothing, producing ghostly images of naked passengers.
Yet critics say that these, too, are highly fallible, and are incapable of revealing explosives hidden in body cavities
-- an age-old method for smuggling contraband. If that's the case, a terrorist could hide the entire bomb works within
his or her body, and breeze through the virtual strip search undetected. The London Independent reported on
"authoritative claims that officials at the [UK] Department for Transport and the Home Office have already tested the
scanners and were not persuaded that they would work comprehensively against terrorist threats to aviation." A British
defense-research firm reportedly found the machines unreliable in detecting "low-density" materials like plastics,
chemicals, and liquids -- precisely what the underwear bomber had stuffed in his briefs.
The manufacturers of Full Body Scanners, state that the radiation dose, is no more than that received from the
background radiation from flying and therefore they are safe.
This argument is nonsense. In order to gain a high quality image, that penetrates through clothes and skin, requires a
far more concentrated dose of radiation than would be received from the background. If that was not the case, the
scanners would not need to emit any X-Rays at all and would merely collect the reflections from the body present in the
background radiation, like a camera taking pictures with reflected light.
The use of X-Rays for scanning humans, should only be used extremely rarely for medical diagnosis. Many researchers are
convinced that using X-Rays to detect Breast Cancers is dangerous and actually causes a significant percentage of
cancers, rather than merely detecting them.
To implement such technology on a routine basis is criminal. Some people fly several times a week, as part of their job,
or work in airport security. The damage caused by X-Rays is cumulative, and even a single dose could result in a
mutation that causes DNA damage leading to cancer in you or gross deformity in your unborn child, even though you didn't
know you were pregnant at the time.
Yet the rush toward full-body scans already seems unstoppable. They were mandated today as part of the "enhanced"
screening for travelers from selected countries, and hundreds of the machines are already on order, at a cost of about
$150,000 apiece. Within days of the bombing attempt, Reuters was reporting that the "greater U.S. government shift
toward using the high-tech devices could create a boom for makers of security imaging products, and it has already
created a speculative spike in share prices in some companies."
Which brings us to the money shot. The body scanner is sure to get a go-ahead because of the illustrious personages
hawking them. Chief among them is former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff, who now heads the Chertoff Group, which
represents one of the leading manufacturers of whole-body-imaging machines, Rapiscan Systems. For days after the attack,
Chertoff made the rounds on the media promoting the scanners, calling the bombing attempt "a very vivid lesson in the
value of that machinery" -- all without disclosing his relationship to Rapiscan.
. . The Washington Examiner last week ran down an entire list of all the former Washington politicians and staff members
who are now part of what it calls the "full-body scanner lobby":
One manufacturer, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is American Science & Engineering, Inc. AS has retained the K Street firm Wexler & Walker to lobby for "federal deployment of security technology by DHS and DOD." Individual lobbyists on this account
include former TSA deputy administration Tom Blank, who also worked under House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Chad Wolf -- former assistant administrator for policy at TSA, and a former aide to Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Tex., a top
Senate appropriator and the ranking Republican on the transportation committee -- is also lobbying on AS's behalf.
Smiths Detection, another screening manufacturer, employs top transportation lobbying firm Van Scoyoc Associates,
including Kevin Patrick Kelly, a former top staffer to Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who sits on the Homeland Security
Appropriations subcommittee. Smiths also retains former congresswoman Helen Delich Bentley, R-Md.
Former Sen. Al D'Amato, R-N.Y., represents L3 Systems, about which Bloomberg wrote today: "L-3 has ‘developed a more
sophisticated system that could prevent smuggling of almost anything on the body,' said Howard Rubel, an analyst at
Jefferies & Co., who has a ‘hold' rating on the stock."
In forecasting the fate of the full-body scanners, we can turn to recent history, which saw the rapid rise -- and
decline -- of the previous "miracle" screening technology. In the years following 9/11, dozens of explosive trace
portals were installed in airports across the country, at a cost of about $160,000 each. These "puffer" machines -- so
called because they blow air on passengers to dislodge explosive particles -- were once celebrated as the "no-touch pat
down." But in a Denver test by CBS in 2007, a network employee was sprayed with explosives and then walked through the
airport's three puffers without any trouble. The machines also set off false alarms, and they frequently broke down,
leading to sky-high maintenance costs.
After spending more than $30 million on the puffer machines -- most of them purchased from GE -- the TSA announced
earlier this year that it was suspending their use. Only about 25 percent of the machines were ever even deployed at US
airports. A report last month from the Government Accountability Office found that the TSA had not adequately tested the
puffers before buying them.
What will happen if the full-body scanner goes the way of the puffer? Well, there's always the next generation of
security equipment: the Body Orifice Security Scanner, or BOSS chair. This contraption, which has an uncomfortable
resemblance to an electric chair, is used in prisons, mostly in the UK, for tracing cell phones, shivs, and other
dangerous contraband that's been swallowed or inserted into body cavities by inmates. So far, it only detects metal, but
you never know.
Give me a friendly German Shepherd any day.
RECOVERED HISTORY: HOMELAND SECURITY'S FIRST TECHNO-TOY
Progressive Review, November 5, 1998 - The Progressive Review's editor, Sam Smith, was detained at Washington National
Airport for a half hour on Wednesday Nov. 4 as five US Airways security officials, 3 police officers, and one
bomb-sniffing dog attempted to determine if he was, as they suspected, a terrorist.
Total evidence for the suspicion came from a defective high tech security machine convinced that the Quaker-educated
Smith's computer and power supply box contained nitroglycerine. Despite admitting that certain brands of computers had
been falsely interpreted by the machine, the security officials required former Coast Guard officer Smith to empty
everything from his backpack. They also called two passenger service shift managers to the scene who ordered the
60-year-old Smith's checked bags removed from the aircraft and inspected for traces of explosives. One of the bags
carried clothes, the other contained copies of "Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual" (WW Norton, 1997,
$14.95) for sale during appearances by Smith. The backpack contained considerable Carefree gum, various paperwork, as
well as Richard Sennett's "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism." In his
book, Sennett notes that in all forms of work, people identify with tasks that are difficult, tasks that challenge them.
In the new workplace, however, the machine has become "the only real standard of order. . . By a terrible paradox, when
we diminish difficulty and resistance, we create the very conditions for uncritical and indifferent activity on the part
of the users."
By the time the computer had been tested by a second machine, which also thought the Fujitsu laptop might be a bomb,
Smith, who has never received even a speeding ticket before, began having intimations of imminent mortality as well as
feeling deep humiliation and shock as hundreds of his fellow US Airways passengers walked by observing his plight.
Efforts to engage the security personnel in normal human discourse produced but a stream of bureaucratic bromides such
as "I'm just doing my job," "There is nothing I can do," and "I don't make the rules." Efforts to stave off physical
collapse by sitting on the table, however, brought a rebuke from one of the guards. At no time was any concern expressed
for the needs or physical comfort of US Airways frequent flyer Smith.
Said longtime Washington journalist Smith, who was on his way to Kansas City to give several talks and interviews and
take part in a conference of Green activists: "I was trapped in that post-Orwellian synergy of defective technology and
incompetent bureaucracy. At a time when our highest public officials ignore the law with impunity, it appears that a
citizen a few years shy of Medicare can no longer go about his business without being considered a terrorist. I was told
that it was all being done for my own good, but I fail to see how being publicly terrified and humiliated by US Airways
because it has bought some crummy techno-toy helps the war against terrorism. Any terrorist watching the incident would
have been emboldened rather than chastened."
In the end, the bomb-sniffing dog happily nosed about the computer, licked the hard drive and quickly returned without
complaint to K-9 officer Jim Cox. Smith, who covered his first Washington story in 1957, was permitted to restuff his
backpack and board the plane. Said Vietnam era veteran Smith, "A half dozen living human beings surrendered their will
to a dubious creation of the late 20th century marketplace of fear, but the dog was smart enough to trust his own
judgment. Officer Cox, to his credit, trusted the dog as well. As Harry Truman said, if you want a friend in Washington,
get a dog."
Cox was the only one of those involved in the search who expressed more than perfunctory concern to Smith, visiting the
plane before takeoff to do so. Flight attendant Brian M. Lindsay, who had observed the bizarre incident as he checked
through security, also expressed dismay and checked on Smith's well-being several times during the flight.
Smith says any legal action will be held in abeyance pending a colloquy he hopes to have with US Airways officials.
PS: Your editor subsequently received an apology from an aide to the president uf US Airways. On returning from Kanas
City, I mentioned that the machine in Washington had tested positive when checking my computer. It passed inspection without incident,
however, and one of the security officials said that the crew in Washington must not have been feeding the dog inside
their machine. - Sam
ENDS