The False Equation: Religion Equals Morality

Monday, December 19, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
by Gwynne Dyer

In the United States, where it is almost impossible to get elected unless you profess a strong religious faith, it would have passed completely unnoticed. Not one of the hundred US senators ticks the "No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic" box, for example, although 16 percent of the American population do. But it was quite remarkable in Britain.

Last Friday, UK Prime Minister David Cameron urged the Church of England to lead a revival of traditional Christian values to counter the country’s “moral collapse”. Last Friday, in Oxford, Prime Minister David Cameron declared that the United Kingdom is a Christian country “and we should not be afraid to say so.” He was speaking on the 400th anniversary of the King James translation of the Bible, so he had to say something positive about religion – but he went far beyond that.

“The Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today,” he said. “Values and morals we should actively stand up and defend.”

Where to start? The King James Bible was published at the start of a century in which millions of Europeans were killed in religious wars over minor differences of doctrine. Thousands of “witches” were burned at the stake during the 16th century, as were thousands of “heretics”. They have stopped doing that sort of thing in Britain now – but they’ve also stopped reading the Bible. Might there be a connection here?

Besides, what Cameron said is just not true. In last year’s British Social Attitudes Survey, conducted annually by the National Center for Social Research, only 43 percent of 4,000 British people interviewed said they were Christian, while 51 percent said they had “no religion.” Among young people, some two-thirds are non-believers.

Mind you, the official census numbers from 2001 say that 73 percent of British people identify themselves as “Christian”. However, this is probably due to a leading question on the census form. “What is your religion?” it asks, which seems to assume that you must have one – especially since it follows a section on ethnic origins, and we all have those.

So a lot of people put down Christian just because that is the ancestral religion of their family. Make the question more neutral – “Are you religious? If so, what is your religion?” –and the result would probably be very different. There were attempts to get that more neutral question onto the 2011 census form, but the churches lobbied frantically against it. They are feeling marginalized enough as it is.

Why would David Cameron proclaim the virtues of a Christian Britain that no longer exists? He is no religious fanatic; he describes himself as a “committed” but only “vaguely practicing” Christian.

You’d think that if he really believed in a God who scrutinizes his every thought and deed, and will condemn him to eternal torture in Hell if he doesn’t meet the standard of behavior required, he might be a little less vague about it all. But he doesn’t really believe that he needs religion HIMSELF; he thinks it is a necessary instrument of social control for keeping the lower orders in check.

This is a common belief among those who rule, because they confuse morality with religion. If the common folk do not fear some god (any old god will do), social discipline will collapse and the streets will run with blood. Our homes, our children, even our domestic animals will be violated. Thank god for God.

Just listen to Cameron: “The alternative of moral neutrality should not be an option. You can’t fight something with nothing. If we don’t stand for something, we can’t stand against anything.” The “alternative of moral neutrality”? What he means is that there cannot be moral behavior without religion – so you proles had better go on believing, or we privileged people will be in trouble.

But Cameron already lives in a post-religious country. Half its people say outright that they have no religion, two-thirds of them never attend a religious service, and a mere 8 percent go to church, mosque, synagogue or temple on a weekly basis. Yet the streets are not running with blood.

Indeed, religion may actually be bad for morality. In 2005 Paul Gregory made the case for this in a research paper in the Journal of Religion and Society entitled “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look.”

Sociological gobbledygook, but in a statistical survey of 18 developed democracies, Gregory showed that “In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, (venereal disease), teen pregnancy, and abortion.”

Even within the United States, Gregory reported, “the strongly theistic, anti-evolution South and Midwest" have markedly worse crime rates and social problems than the relatively secular North-East. Of course, the deeply religious areas are also poorer, so it might just be poverty making people behave so badly. On the other hand, maybe religion causes poverty.

Whatever. The point is that David Cameron, and thousands of other politicians, religious leaders and generals in every country, are effectively saying that my children, and those of all the other millions who have no religion, are morally inferior to those who do. It is insulting and untrue.

The Trouble With That Revolving Door...

Monday, December 19, 2011 by the New York Times

by Thomas Edsall

 

Last week, an inside-the-Beltway newsletter, First Street, published a unique top-ten list. It reveals which former members of Congress are among the most important Washington lobbyists.

The first four on the list — Senator John Breaux, of Louisiana (who served in Congress from 1972 to 2005), Representative Tom Downey, of New York (1974 to 1993), Representative Victor Fazio, of California (1979 to 1999), and former Democratic House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (1977 to 2005) – are all members of the Democratic Party, which historically has represented the bottom half of the income distribution.

These former Democratic members of the House and Senate are on the cutting edge of a revolution in the political culture of the nation’s capitol. Without attracting the attention of the general public, the career path of retired legislators has transformed the thinking of those still in Congress, Democrat and Republican alike.

When Washington politicians leave office, many, if not most, no longer return home. Instead, they head straight to the lucrative world of K Street, the nation’s lobbying corridor, which runs through the heart of Washington. A former member of the House or Senate with even modest seniority can now expect to walk into a job paying up to $1 million or more a year – and much more when bonuses are paid for bringing in new clients.

There are various estimates of the number of living former members of the House and Senate. The Association of Former Members of Congress has a listing of 592, and estimates there may be as many as 1,000, a large number of whom are no longer employed at all. The Congressional Research Service reported that as of Oct. 1, 2009, there were 455 former members receiving some form of federal pension.

The Center for Responsive Politics has found that 370 former members are in the influence-peddling business, including at least 285 who are now registered as federal lobbyists. The remaining 85 who are not formally registered as lobbyists are described by the center’s website, OpenSecrets.org, as providing “strategic advice” to corporate clients or as performing work classified as public relations.

For Obama and Democratic leaders who are trying to set an election agenda focused on income inequality, wage stagnation, and downward mobility for the middle and lower class, the prominence of Democratic lobbyists has become problematic.

President Obama, in his Dec. 6 speech in Osawatomie, Kan. sought to shift the 2012 election debate onto terrain favorable to Democrats. “Look at the statistics,” the president said. “In the last few decades, the average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent to $1.2 million per year.” Obama also pointed out that:

For the top one hundredth of 1 percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical C.E.O. who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6 percent.

Jeff Hauser, a spokesman for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said the role of former Democrats in representing corporate America is one of the reasons that the umbrella labor organization has recently broken its firm allegiance to the Democratic Party. “We can’t be positioned as attached to the Democratic Party because there are elements of the party that have contributed to the 99 percent versus 1 percent division in this country,” he said. Hauser cited a key speech by A.F.L.-C.I.O. president Richard Trumka on May 20 declaring organized labor’s independence from either party:

Our role is not to build the power of a political party or a candidate. It is to improve the lives of working families and strengthen our country. It doesn’t matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside — the outcome is the same either way.

A case in point is Richard Gephardt, who represented a working-class district in south St. Louis for 28 years. Gephardt served one year as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, six as Democratic majority leader, and eight as Democratic minority leader. Through much of his congressional career he was a staunch ally of organized labor (his father was a member of the Teamster’s Union) fighting for the interests of trade unions on issue after issue.

An unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and in 2004, Gephardt had substantial labor backing in the form of get-out-the-vote efforts and key endorsements from the Teamsters, the Machinists, the Steelworkers, and the Ironworkers. In 2003 John Sweeney, then president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said, ”Dick has been a real friend of working people and a powerful voice for working families on issue after issue.”

Upon leaving Congress in 2005, Gephardt joined the Washington offices of DLA Piper as senior counsel. Two years later, he founded his own lobbying firm, the Gephardt Government Affairs Group.

By 2010, annual firm billings had shot up from $625,000 in 2007 to $6.59 million. Gephardt’s client list was blue chip, Goldman Sachs (paid Gephardt $200,000 in 2010); Boeing Co. ($440,000); Visa Inc. ($200,000); Ameren Corp, the energy holding company ($200,000); and Waste Management Inc., the leading provider of trash and garbage removal ($320,000).

A normally voluble political strategist and committed liberal who has worked with Gephardt in past elections said about the former Congressman’s lobbying clientele, “I don’t want to talk on the record, it sucks. It’s a sad situation for us.”

For an ex-member of Congress of either party, the financial appeal of lobbying is hard to resist.

In 2010, former representative Billy Tauzin, Republican of Louisiana, set a record for ex-members, making just over $11.5 million running the drug industry’s major lobbying arm, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

In 2009, former representative James Greenwood, Republican of Pennsylvania, who became C.E.O. and president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization after retiring from Congress, made $1.16 million, along with fringe benefits of $60,000.

That same year, former representative Daniel Glickman, Democrat of Kansas, received $1.33 million and $23,398 in fringe benefits as C.E.O. of the Motion Picture Association of America, according to I.R.S. filings.

With examples like this before them, most incumbent members, as they go about their daily routine of casting votes and attending committee meetings, must have in the back of their minds an awareness that they are likely to go into the influence-peddling business in the future. This knowledge inevitably influences – and arguably corrupts – their votes on legislation crucial to the interests most likely to hire them after they leave the halls of Congress.

The corruption inherent in the open revolving door between Congress and K Street is well described by Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Harvard, in his new book Republic, Lost.

Both Fazio and Downey defend their decisions to become lobbyists. Each contends he remains committed to advancing and defending the interests of the less well off.
“When I had options, I made some decisions, one thing led to another, and here I am,” Fazio, who is a member of the Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld law firm, said in an interview. “Clearly when you’ve been in the public sector, you know the system, you know the arguments that are most effective. You can be a very effective advocate.”

“What matters is what the Senate is doing on the payroll tax, not whether some old members of Congress do lobbying,” Downey argued. Downey noted that he has a number of pro bono clients, including advocates of AIDS research, homeless organizations and groups seeking to stop trafficking in women. “At the end of the day, I feel quite satisfied having spent at least half my time on projects for which I am not paid,” he said. In 2010, his firm, Downey McGrath Group, reported lobbying income of $3.32 million from such clients as Time Warner Cable, FedEx, the National Association of Chain Drugstores and the investment bank Lazard Ltd.

Of the four top lobbying Democrats, Breaux — who served as chairman of both the Democratic Leadership Council and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — fits most comfortably into his lobbying role. Breaux won fame in 1981 when, after getting huge sugar subsidies inserted into Republican-sponsored tax-cut legislation, he told reporters, “My vote can’t be bought, but it can be rented.” In 2010, his firm, the Breaux Lott Leadership Group, a subsidiary of the Patton Boggs LLP law firm, had billings of $11.83 million from such clients as Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, General Electric, AT&T, Tyson Foods and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Gephardt, in turn, has posted on his firm’s web site a link to an article about the release of First Street’s newsletter, under the headline “Dick Gephardt Named To 2011 List of Top Lobbyists.”

Battlefield America: Is Gitmo in Your Future?

A retired top CIA analyst ponders if he could be arrested and held under the Senate's new military detention policy. 

By Ray McGovern, Consortium News

Ambiguous but alarming new wording, which is tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and was passed by the Senate, is reminiscent of the “extraordinary measures” introduced by the Nazis after they took power in 1933.

And the relative lack of reaction so far calls to mind the oddly calm indifference with which most Germans watched the erosion of the rights that had been guaranteed by their own Constitution. As one German writer observed, “With sheepish submissiveness we watched it unfold, as if from a box at the theater.”

The writer was Sebastian Haffner (real name Raimond Pretzel), a young German lawyer worried at what he saw in 1933 in Berlin, but helpless to stop it since, as he put it, the German people “collectively and limply collapsed, yielded and capitulated.”

“The result of this millionfold nervous breakdown,” wrote Haffner at the time, “is the unified nation, ready for anything, that is today the nightmare of the rest of the world.” Not a happy analogy.

The Senate bill, in effect, revokes an 1878 law known as the Posse Comitatus Act, which banned the Army from domestic law enforcement after the military had been used —and often abused — in that role during Reconstruction. Ever since then, that law has been taken very seriously — until now. Military officers have had their careers brought to an abrupt halt by involving federal military assets in purely civilian criminal matters.

But that was before 9/11 and the mantra, “9/11 changed everything.” In this case of the Senate-passed NDAA – more than a decade after the terror attacks and even as U.S. intelligence agencies say al-Qaeda is on the brink of defeat – Congress continues to carve away constitutional and legal protections in the name of fighting “terrorism.”

The Senate approved the expanded military authority despite opposition from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI Director Robert Mueller -- and a fake veto threat from President Obama.

The Senate voted to authorize – and generally to require – “the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons” indefinitely. And such “covered persons” are defined not just as someone implicated in the 9/11 attacks but anyone who “substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

Though the wording is itself torturous – and there is a provision for a waiver from the Defense Secretary regarding mandatory military detentions – the elasticity of words like “associated forces” and “supported” have left some civil libertarians worried that the U.S. military could be deployed domestically against people opposing future American wars against alleged “terrorists” or “terrorist states.”

The Senate clearly wished for the military’s “law and order” powers to extend beyond the territory of military bases on the theory that there may be “terrorsymps” (short for “terrorist sympathizers”) lurking everywhere.

Is the all-consuming ten-year-old struggle against terrorism rushing headlong to consume what’s left of our constitutional rights? Do I need to worry that the Army in which I was proud to serve during the 1960s may now kick down my front door and lead me off to indefinite detention — or worse?

My neighbors have noticed, after all, that I now wear a longish beard and, sometimes, even a hat like Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. And everyone knows what a terrorsymp he was.

“If you see something, say something!”

Worse still, a few of my neighbors overheard me telling my grandchildren that President Obama should be ashamed to be bragging about having Awlaki, an American citizen, and later his 16 year-old son murdered without a whiff of due process. “If you hear something, say something!”

A Lost Respect

Citizens of powerful countries used to have their rights widely respected — at home and abroad. “I am a Roman citizen”—“Civis Romanus Sum” – once counted for something. Even more respect tended to greet “I am an American” — because of our power abroad and our once famous adherence to a written Constitution at home.

Adherence? Lately not so much. Not since power-hungry politicians set out to exploit 9/11 so that “everything changed,” including even the rights formerly guaranteed us by the Bill of Rights and the habeas corpus protection in the Constitution itself.

Awlaki’s is an interesting case in point. A Muslim whose moderating influence was sought after by the Washington Establishment in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he became “radicalized” by our warring on his fellow Muslims. By noting that little-known fact, am I showing “support” for “al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces”? Will the U.S. military be obliged to target me, too?

“Not you, Grandpa,” my grandchildren reassured me at Thanksgiving. “Even with the beard and the hat, you don’t really look very much like Awlaki, or like any kind of terrorsymp. You look different; and your light skin and American citizenship should suffice to keep you safe.”

I agreed that I would probably be okay, even if I kept up my vocal criticism of what is happening. But, truth be told, I harbored doubts even on Thanksgiving. And that was before the Senate version of the defense appropriation bill passed last Thursday.

Civis Americanus Sum. Yes, I am. But does that really count for much today? It certainly offered no protection to Awlaki, or to his son. What’s to prevent one of my former colleagues at the military or the CIA — those I have roundly criticized for endorsing and cheering on the kidnappers, torturers and assassins in their employ — from adding me to the “kill-or-capture-but-preferably-kill list”?

What has been happening in this continuation of a seemingly endless “war on terror” – amid widespread public indifference – makes Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List” look like a board game. At least, the Nixon White House had a modicum of good sense not to flaunt its skirting the law and violating constitutional rights.

It is a safe bet that functionaries at the National Security Council are updating the kill-or-capture list even now that President Obama has signed the Senate version of the bill into law after it was predictably endorsed by the Republican-controlled House.

Then, what is to prevent NSC “counterterrorist” functionaries from summoning the go-to lawyers still ensconced in the Justice Department and asking them for help in navigating what appear to be deliberate ambiguities in the new bill’s language.

Backed by a John Yoo-style “legal justification,” an order could be issued to “terminate” me, while reassuring my neighbors that, yes, just as you suspected, he was a terrorsymp. Or maybe they’ll simply order some troops from the 82^nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, where I was stationed a half-century ago, to apprehend me and give me a free one-way ticket to Guantanamo.

After all, how bad could that be? Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld explained to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in June 2005 that the detainees at Guantanamo were “living in the tropics. They’re well fed. They’ve got everything they could possibly want.” And would Rumsfeld lie?

Early Obfuscation

From my erstwhile colleagues at CIA, there has been more mumbo-jumbo aimed at disguising what is really afoot. According to press reports, the CIA general counsel has already said, disingenuously:  “American citizens are not immune from being treated like an enemy if they take up arms against the United States.”

But one does not need to “take up arms” in order to be labeled a “combatant,” as the government is defining such terms. Awlaki didn’t take up arms; he was said to have provided “material support to terrorism” by his alleged – but unproven – encouragement of terrorist attacks on the United States. (Under the new NDAA, a similar fate could befall someone who advocates resistance to “coalition partners,” like NATO countries or some corrupt governments that are U.S. allies, such as the Karzai regime in Afghanistan or the terror-linked government of Pakistan).

In the broad strokes of defining American “partners” and al-Qaeda/Taliban “associated forces,” will Israel fall into the first group and Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah get lumped into the second?

Could material support be nothing more than providing financial support for the U.S. Boat to Gaza, which challenged the  Israeli embargo of Hamas-ruled Gaza? If creative lawyers for this or some future administration get busy, would the new NDAA provide authority for the military to detain such a U.S. citizen under the Law of War and transfer him or her to Guantanamo or elsewhere?

Conflicting legal interpretations of the bill are now more about whether military detentions would be mandatory or would the president still retain some discretion.

In sum, the wording appears to create a parallel military justice system that, theoretically, we are all subject to. All that would be needed is an allegation by someone that we assisted someone who in some way assisted someone else in some way. An actual terrorist act would not be needed – and neither would a trial by one’s peers as guaranteed by the Constitution to determine actual “guilt.”

Should you be tempted to dismiss this as “liberal fear-mongering,” take a look at this item from FoxNews.com with its gleeful headline: “Democrat-Controlled Senate Passes Constitution-Shredding Defense Authorization Bill”:

“The bill would require military custody of a suspect deemed to be a member of Al Qaeda or its affiliates and involved in plotting or committing attacks on the United States. … The legislation also would give the government the authority to have the military hold an individual suspected of terrorism indefinitely, without a trial.

“‘Since the bill puts military detention authority on steroids and makes it permanent, American citizens and others are at greater risk of being locked away by the military without charge or trial if this bill becomes law,’ said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.”

A key element in the Senate bill, like the House version, is to expand the original Authorization of the Use of Military Force Act (AUMF) of September 2001 so it no longer links exclusively to 9/11. This creates the kind of ambiguity that allows Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, to claim that the bill’s stringent provisions do apply to U.S. citizens, as well as non-citizens.

In addition, the new wording adds “associated forces” (whatever that means) to the previous AUMF’s list of targets. The language of the AUMF of September 2001 was limited to “those nations, organizations, or persons he [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”

Burning the Midnight Oil

It is a safe guess that the legal pharisees were burning the midnight oil, dissecting how the draft bill can say, on the one hand, that this or that provision does not apply to American citizens — but, oops, this other provision seems to allow them to be shipped off to Guantanamo, too.

Not being expert enough to do so, I happily leave it to them to parse the language, diagram the sentences, and do surgery on each jot and tittle. There will be a veritable feast for the legal beagles.

What speaks loudest to me is the fact that two key amendments did not pass. Senate Amendment 1125 would have limited the mandatory detention provision to persons captured abroad. And Amendment 1126 would have provided that the authority of the military to detain persons without trial until the end of hostilities would not apply to American citizens. Both amendments were voted down 45 to 55.

Though President Obama has objected to the Senate bill as going too far even by his “death-to-Awlaki” standard, a more troubling question is what might these new powers mean if, say, another terrorist attack hits the United States or if a more hard-line president comes to power.

Take, for example, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, one of the Republican presidential hopefuls. Before a stump speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, Perry gave us a hint of what his policies, and maybe even his Cabinet, would look like.

Perry flew in none other than racial profiler par excellence, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio. No, I’m not kidding; Perry apparently saw this as a way to strengthen his “law and order” credentials (accent, of course, on “order”).

As I sat in the audience, Arpaio’s arrival took me by surprise, so perhaps I can be forgiven for reflexively bellowing a prolonged boo, as Arpaio made his way slowly and carefully up to the lectern to warm up the crowd. Later it occurred to me that booing may be something that gets you on the chain gang in Maricopa County; Arpaio did not seem at all used to it, and he did not take it well.

Reaching the podium, he turned and demanded to know who was booing, so I stood up from my second-row-center seat and raised my hand high. Fortunately for me, he had none of his deputies along, and booing is apparently not yet banned at Town Hall meetings in New Hampshire. Only Arpaio seemed to pay much heed.

Although I knew enough about Arpaio to consider him fully deserving of a loud boo or two, I did not know the half of it. Let me treat you to some encomia from the sheriff’s own official Web site:

“Arpaio knows what the public wants, [and] has served them well by establishing several unique programs. Arpaio …  started the nation’s largest Tent City for convicted inmates. Two thousand convicted men and women serve their sentences in a canvas incarceration compound. It is a remarkable success story. …

“Of equal success and notoriety are his chain gangs, which contribute thousands of dollars of free labor to the community. The male chain gang, and the world’s first-ever female and juvenile chain gangs, clean streets, paint over graffiti, and bury the indigent in the county cemetery.

“Also impressive are the Sheriff’s get tough policies. For example, he banned smoking, coffee, movies, pornographic magazines, and unrestricted TV in all jails. He has the cheapest meals in the U.S. too. The average meal costs between 15 and 40 cents, and inmates are fed only twice daily, to cut the labor costs of meal delivery. He even stopped serving them salt and pepper to save tax payers $20,000 a year.

“Another program Arpaio is very well known for is the pink underwear he makes all inmates wear. Years ago, when the Sheriff learned that inmates were stealing jailhouse white boxers, Arpaio had all inmate underwear dyed pink for better inventory control. … Arpaio looks forward to many more years as Sheriff of Maricopa County.”

Again, I am not making this up. You can check out the sheriff’s Web site for yourself for still more.

I have to concede that I find the last sentence about Arpaio’s future plans somewhat reassuring because if he plans to stay in Maricopa County, it means his policing policies would stay limited to a fairly small geographic area (although perhaps that’s not good news for the people of Maricopa County).

But things could be worse if a President Perry picked Arpaio to take over the Department of Justice and Attorney General Arpaio had a chance to incarcerate more of us in tent prisons. But Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder hasn’t exactly shown himself to be a great defender of constitutional rights either.

Perry Strutting His Stuff

Back in New Hampshire, after Arpaio provided a lackluster introduction, Perry took the stage, offering unctuous thank yous to Sheriff Joe. Perry then reminded us forcefully that he is a “law and order guy.”

That resonated with me in an unusually personal way — so much so, that I missed some of his other by now notorious remarks, like his appeal for all those 21 or over (sic) to vote for him in the New Hampshire primary and those from 18 to 21 to work hard and look toward the day when they too can vote. (sic)

Still, the words “law and order” stuck in my mind. I thought under what law did Perry several months ago call on Attorney General Holder to prosecute me and the other passengers on the Audacity of Hope, the U.S. Boat to Gaza as it challenged Israel’s blockade?

Because Perry had been busy glad-handing folks off to the side when I rose to plead guilty to booing Arpaio, the governor didn’t see who it was. And, as luck would have it, he called on me for the first question of the Q & A:

“I’m Ray McGovern, and I thank you for coming here, Governor Perry. My question pertains to a letter that you wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder on the 28th of June of this year, and I quote: ‘As governor of one of the largest states, I write to encourage you to aggressively prosecute those on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, who plan to interfere with Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza.’

“You may not have been aware that, three days previous, the State Department spokeswoman was asked three times whether Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza was legal and she refused to say the blockade was legal. I was one of those passengers on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, and with my co-passengers we were wondering what you, as the governor of Texas, a ‘law and order’ person … under what law did you wish to prosecute my co-passengers and me?”

Perry turned his response into a commentary on how much he supports Israel — no matter what. Like all of his rivals for the Republican nomination (except Ron Paul, who generally refuses to play this craven game), Perry is not about to let anyone outdistance him in expressing unqualified support for Israel.  And so, he began:

“The issue was that … a … I am a very strong supporter of Israel. … I’ve made my point; I must stand with Israel. … I’m going to stand with Israel. … And you’re free to go stand with who you want to, Sir, … but I will be standing with Israel.”

“No matter what?” I asked.  “No matter what” was his emphatic response that can be heard beneath a crescendo of applause from Perry supporters. [To watch the video of this encounter, click here.]

How Far Will It Go?

With the new language in the NDAA, it would appear that Gov. Perry and others might soon have all the law they need to stifle acts or words that give support to Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or any other perceived threat to Israel, at least after Obama signs the legislation and some smart lawyers get to work on the definition of “associated forces.”

Then, will the 82^nd Airborne be sent to fetch me if I continue to write and speak what I believe to be the truth on issues like these? What will I be risking if I keep hammering home little known facts like the following, which seldom, if ever, find their way into the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM)?

• Israel itself helped to create Hamas in 1987 as a Muslim fundamentalist, divide-and-conquer counterweight to the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

• The bulk of Hamas’s popular appeal — like that enjoyed by Hezbollah in Lebanon — stems not from the crude rockets fired toward Israel, but rather from the tangible help Hamas provides to oppressed Palestinians.

Is James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, now treading on thin ice? This is what Clapper included as a sort of afterthought at the end of his 34-page “Worldwide Threat Assessment” before the House Intelligence Committee on Feb. 10, 2011. (You guessed right; the FCM, for some reason, missed it):

“We see a growing proliferation of state and non-state actors providing medical assistance to reduce foreign disease threats to their own populations, garner influence with affected local populations, and project power regionally. … In some cases, countries use health to overtly counter Western influence, presenting challenges to allies and our policy interests abroad over the long run.

“In last year’s threat assessment, the Intelligence Community noted that extremists may take advantage of a government’s inability to meet the health needs of its population, highlighting that HAMAS’s and Hizballah’s provision of health and social services in the Palestinian Territories and Lebanon helped to legitimize those organizations as a political force.  This also has been the case with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.”

This, most assuredly, is not the Official Washington party line. Could the Director of National Intelligence himself be prosecuted by those who believe that any good word for those that Israel considers enemies — like Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran — is tantamount to “material support” for terrorism?

(I do hope readers were not shocked by the diabolically clever way these “terrorist” movements garner public support — by providing life-saving medical care, for example.)

• It was on that public-service record (and also because of wide awareness of flagrant corruption in the PLO), that Hamas won a key parliamentary election in January 2006, defeating the PLO-affiliated Fatah party. While the election results were not disputed, they were not what the U.S., Israel and Europe wanted. So the U.S. and the EU cut off financial assistance to Gaza.

• Confidential documents, corroborated by former U.S. officials, show that thereupon the White House had the CIA try in 2007, with the help of Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, to defeat Hamas in a bloody civil war. That, too, did not go as expected. Hamas won handily, leaving it stronger than ever. [See “The Gaza Bombshell” by David Rose, in Vanity Fair, April 2008, for the entire sad story.]

• Israel and Egypt then imposed an economic blockade on Gaza eventually reducing virtually all Gazans to a bare subsistence level, with 45 percent unemployment.

• From Dec. 27, 2008, to Jan. 18, 2009, while President George W. Bush was a lame duck, Israel launched an armed attack on Gaza, killing about 1,400 Gazans compared to an Israeli death toll of 13. Israel’s stated aim was to stop rocket fire into Israel and block any arms deliveries to Gaza.

President-elect Barack Obama said nothing. His unconscionable silence at the slaughter should have told us at that early juncture that he, too, would feel so politically intimidated that he would mute any objections to Israeli behavior. Since then, he has retreated from even his mild objections to Israel’s expanded settlements on Palestinian lands.

Guilt by Association

The United States is widely seen as responsible for Israel’s aggressive behavior, which is hardly surprising. It is no secret that Israel enjoys financial assistance ($3 billion per year), military backing, and virtually unquestioned political support from Washington.

What is surprising, in the words of Salon.com commentator Glenn Greenwald, is “how our blind, endless enabling of Israeli actions fuels terrorism directed at the U.S.,” and how it is taboo to point this out.

Take for example former CIA specialist on al-Qaeda, Michael Scheuer, who had the audacity to state on C-SPAN: “For anyone to say that our support for Israel doesn’t hurt us in the Muslim world … is to just defy reality.”

The Likud Lobby got Scheuer fired from his job at the Jamestown Foundation think tank for his forthrightness, and the Israeli media condemned his C-SPAN remarks as “blatantly anti-Semitic.” There can be a high price to pay for candor on this issue.

That is what those behind the noxious language in the NDAA seem to intend. Sens. Carl Levin and John McCain were the driving force behind the new language. No one in the Senate or House has received more funding from donor institutions related to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) than Levin, a Michigan Democrat.

For his part, McCain loves to demonstrate his unquestioning support for Israel — no matter what. He has even called for the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who is currently serving a life sentence for passing highly sensitive, highly damaging U.S. secrets to Israel.

A few weeks ago, McCain parroted Tel Aviv’s line on Iran alleged drive to acquire a nuclear weapon (for which U.S. intelligence sees no concrete evidence) and how that creates a “direct existential threat to the state of Israel.” McCain added that Israel “may feel compelled to neutralize this threat.”

Would it be risking running afoul of the language in the defense authorization bill to expose this rhetoric for what it is — rubbish — noxious rubbish that makes it easier for Israel to believe it will enjoy full U.S. support, no matter what, should Israeli leaders decide to attack Iran?

The supreme irony is that such an attack would probably bring on a major war, global economic collapse, and possibly the destruction of Israel itself. Oops, what was that sound at the door? What do you mean — the 82nd is on the front porch?

Sorry; gotta go. Send cards and letters. My wife will probably be told, in due course, where they’ve put me. My only hope now is that Rumsfeld, for once, was telling the truth about detainees having “everything they could possibly want” in that tropical resort named Guantanamo?
 

The Fracking Industry Has Bought Off Congress: Here Are the Worst Offenders

Thanks to our morally bankrupt political system and the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United, the fracking lobby's power of the purse is huge. 

By Scott Thill, AlterNet
Posted on December 16, 2011

Environmentalists and other well-adjusted citizens of Earth, I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that, thanks to illuminating documentaries like Josh Fox's Gasland and determined pressure from activists in and out of the mainstream, the toxic ravages of hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, are no longer the shale gas sector's dirty secret. The bad news is that, thanks to the United States' morally bankrupt political system and its Supreme Court's reality-defying ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the fracking lobby's power of the purse is greater than it has ever been.

That power was depressingly dissected in Common Cause's recent report, Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets, which explained that earnings junkies like Exxon, Koch and more have paid House and Senate politicians on select energy and commerce committees nearly $750 million over the last decade to smother regulatory oversight of the expanding fracking practice, whose complete chemical components still remain a relative mystery. It was evidently money well spent. During that lobbying stretch, the Environmental Protection Agency scientifically linked fracking with water poisoning in Wyoming, and probably isn't far from siding with the increasing ranks of those who blame fracking for earthquakes from Oklahoma to Ohio to England. And yet beyond manageable fines and stock devaluations, no one from the industry has yet to seriously face the music for groundwater contamination and worse.

For that, you can thank the industry's "Halliburton loophole," so named for former Vice-President Dick Cheney's insistence that his former company's fracking be stripped of EPA regulation. Years and billions later, money still talks and safety still walks in our peak oil century tapping, like veins, what fossil fuel deposits we have left, from natural gas to tar sands. And they do so in a decidedly nonpartisan fashion.

"The natural gas industry has spent billions on lobbying and advertising to convince Americans that natural gas is a cleaner, cheaper alternative to oil," Common Cause regional director James Browning, co-author with Alex Kaplan of Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets, told AlterNet. "They've also tried to rebut environmental concerns by pitching natural gas as a 'transition fuel' that will help America move from fossil fuels to primarily clean forms of energy by the next century.

"But while fracking's exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act is rightly called the 'Halliburton loophole' and the vast majority of our top 100 recipients of fracking money are Republicans, it's important to note the extent of the industry's influence among Democrats," he added. "In Pennsylvania, the only state without a severance tax on natural gas extraction, previous Democratic governor Ed Rendell only made an issue of imposing a tax during his last year in office, too late to make it a reality. President Obama is very pro-fracking and it's important to note that the FRAC Act languished in the Democratic 111th Congress."

Currently, the FRAC Act, which would repeal fracking's exemption from the Safe Water Drinking Act, also languishes in the 112th Congress, where it is still taking its first legislative steps while sponsored by Colorado's Democratic congresswoman Diana DeGette. DeGette and Delaware Republican Michael N. Castle coauthored the 2005 Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, an opportunity that provided former president George W. Bush with his first veto. Yet it is respective Bush Republicans like Joe Barton ($514,945) and John Cornyn ($417,556) who crown Common Cause's top 100 congressional hoarders of campaign cash from the fracking industry. As Browning explained, they're followed in fourth by Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu ($328,300), who's accompanied by House Democrats Dan Boren ($328,300), Jim Matheson ($223,79), and even Gene Green ($186,300).

More importantly, and across party lines, the fracking industry has lavished millions on crucial members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Yet it was only DeGette who continued to beat the lonely regulation drum after the EPA's report on Wyoming.

"The fact that we have a proven case of a connection between hydraulic fracturing and the contamination of an aquifer underscores just how important it is that we take cautionary steps to protect our communities' water supply," said DeGette in December, after Colorado implemented a new fracking disclosure rule. "That is why I continue to encourage members of Congress to pass my FRAC Act, so communities across the country will have transparency in the drilling process as well."

Transparency is the enemy of industry, which is why steps to stem its ubiquity in fracking have continued support from well-paid politicians at the state and federal levels, despite the disturbing facts. As Browning and Kaplan explained in Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets, different states host different loopholes for perpetuating the industry's extraordinary influence. Pennsylvania currently has no limit on campaign contributions, while Ohio's lobbying law fails to require disclosure of lobbyists' salaries, complicating the effort to get hard numbers on their political spending.

"There is a direct and frightening parallel between the failure to get better disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking, and the failure to get better disclosure of the industry's political expenditures," Browning told AlterNet. "As noted in our report, the industry has been ramping up its independent political expenditures since Citizens United. Three ways to give the public more of a fighting chance are requiring disclosure of all independent political expenditures, requiring disclosure of political expenditures to corporate shareholders, and giving corporate shareholders the power to approve or disapprove such expenditures in advance."

According to Browning, some strange developments have arisen on the latter front, from parties to our current economic and environmental misery. Fracking's indignant bedfellows have been getting stranger.

"As the potential dangers of fracking become harder to ignore, two of the most interesting developments are the hard questions being asked by banks and mortgage brokers, who don't want to be left with a lot of potentially permanently polluted property, and by the shareholders at oil and gas companies," Browning explained. "Last May, shareholders at ExxonMobil and Chevron both introduced resolutions to force better disclosure of the potential risks and costs of fracking. The Chevron resolution got more than 40 percent, a very high figure for a controversial, first-year resolution."

It's hard to look at budding shareholder revolts in both repeat offenders without noticing that, like most polluters and parasites, they've soiled their own nests. ("You never miss your water, until your well runs dry," is how Peter Tosh put it in the song "Till Your Well Runs Dry.") From the Deepwater Horizon spill in Landrieu's Louisiana to fracking messes in predominately Republican territories, citizens and shareholders alike are starting to realize that fossil fuel's base is, pun intended, fracturing.

"Fracking is an unusual example of an environmental issue that, for now, is playing out in areas that routinely support Republicans," said Browning. "In Pennsylvania, the threat not only of water and air pollution but also of stripping local governments' abilities to regulate fracking in their communities is creating common cause between rural Republicans and urban and suburban environmentalists."

"We need to take this momentary victory in the Delaware River and move across Pennsylvania and the United States to stop fracking," Gasland director Fox tweeted in November, after the Northeast's Delaware River Basin Commission -- which includes the governors of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware and an official from the Army Corp of Engineers -- postponed further meetings about regulating fracking in the region.

"We have the momentum."

But do we have the money? Until we bring Citizens United to heel, we will be hard-pressed to compete with the current billions, and future trillions, that last century's climate-killing energy sector throws at politicians like party favors. If the past is prologue, then we're likely to change, like Rendell, too late. In slow-motion, we could annihilate what aquifers and other sensitive resources we have left to us, as climate change ramps up to freakout levels later this century. Plus, we've already reached the realm of the ludicrous: When a nation of drill junkies forces its planet to return fire with earthquakes, in hopes of changing our distracted minds and dirty habits, then it's time to move onto the green economy, no matter the capital costs. But until anything substantive changes, we'll likely need to marry Fox's momentum to Citizens United's money to make the drop-deadline.

Top 100 Corporate Crime Stories of 2011

Saturday, December 17, 2011 by Corporate Crime Reporter

by Russell Mokhiber

 

Here’s the other difference between the one percent and the rest of us –

The crimes of the one percent inflict far more damage on society than those of the 99 percent.

And they tend to get away with their crimes.

While we tend to get nailed.

The big multinational corporations, which are the primary delivery systems of wealth to the 1 percent, have rigged the justice system so that when they get in trouble with the law, they either aren’t prosecuted for their crimes, of if they are, they get special treatment – non prosecution or deferred prosecution agreements.

If they end up in the civil courts, they also get special deals – like neither admit nor deny consent decrees.

True, they pay fines, often in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, but this is pocket change to them – the equivalent of a parking ticket for serious wrongdoing.

They marinate the halls of power with campaign cash, flood them with lobbyists, and lubricate the revolving door – all to undermine our system of justice.

Out of the more than 500 stories we’ve written for Corporate Crime Reporter this year, here are the Top 100 – selected by our crack editorial team.

Just scan the the headlines, and you’ll get a sense of the enormity of the corporate crime wave.

And remember – Corporate Crime Reporter is only a weekly newsletter. We publish 48 times a year.

We’re considering making it a daily – just to keep up.

Top 100 Corporate Crime Stories of 2011

100. SEC Delivers First Non Pros Baby
99. Simon Johnson: Break Up the Big Banks
98. Grassley Asks: Why are Health Care Fraud Cases Stagnating?
97. Guidant to Pay $296 Million for FDA Crimes
96. Former Chase Bank Official Convicted of Taking Bribes
95. Oregon Sues Johnson & Johnson for Phatom Recall of Motrin
94. Grain Elevator Deaths Due to Lax OSHA Enforcement
93. Insider Trading Defendants Avoid Jail in 44 Percent of Cases
92. Lockheed to Pay $2 Million to Resolve False Claims Charge
91. Grossman Drafts Legislation to Criminalize the Corporate Form
90. Pentagon Spent Billions on Companies that Committed Fraud
89. Legal Challenge to Blanket Immunity in BAE Settlement
88. Maxwell Gets FCPA Prosecution Deferred, Pays $8 Million Criminal Fine
87. Nader Calls Jeep Grand Cherokee Modern Day Pinto for Soccer Moms
86. Oracle to Pay $46 Million To Settle False Claims Charge
85. Coalition: Negligent Doctors and Big Pharma Should Not Be Shielded
84. Chevron Found Guilty in Ecuador, Fined $9 Billion
83. Tyson Foods Gets Prosecution Deferred, Pays $4 Million FCPA Fine
82. Rolling Stone: Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?
81. Criminal Investigation Against Mozilo Closed
80. Horizon Lines to Plead Guilty, Pay $45 Million Criminal Fine
79. Walmart State and Local Tax Avoidance Exceeds $400 Million Annually
78. Wheelchair Fraud Results in $6 Million Fine
77. Feds Intervene in False Claims Case against KBR
76. Jack Abramoff, Whipping Boy
75. HHS Fines Cignet Health $4.3 Million
74. Arch Coal to Pay $4 Million
73. Forest Pharma Hit with $145 in Criminal Penalties
72. Goldman Sachs Board Member Charged with Insider Trading
71. CSPI Urges Feds to Ban Caramel Color from Sodas
70. Avaya and CIT Group Pay over $16.5 Million To Settle False Claims Case
69. Two NY York Lawmakers, Albany Lobbyist, Hospital CEOs Busted in Corruption Probe
68. USA Today: Fines Not Being Collected
67. The Dark Side of the Cruise Ship Industry and the Silence of The Nation Magazine
66. Audit Firms: Too Few to Fail?
65. Astrazeneca to Pay $68.5 to Settle Anti-Psychotic Drug Case
64. Japan Nuclear Reactor Design Caused GE Scientist to Quit in Protest
63. Chamber Hires Mukasey to Weaken FCPA
62. Consol to Pay $5.5 Pollution Fine
61. French Judge Charges Airbus with Manslaughter
60. Heart Association Endorses Stomach Surgery after $100K Gift from Lap-Band Maker
59. IBM to Pay $10 Million to Settle FCPA Action
58. Samsung SDI to Pay $32 Million Criminal Fine
57. PG&E to Pay $6 Million Criminal Fine
56. Occidental Oil to Pay $2 Million in False Claims Case
55. HHS Launches Health Care Fraud Fugitive List
54. How Milton Friedman and Chicago Economics Undermined America
53. Rakoff Rips Neither Admit Nor Deny SEC Settlements
52. Insider Trading Scandal Hits Congress
51. Antitrust Institute: T Mobile/AT&T Merger Anti-Competitive
50. Cell Phones, Brain Cancer and Devra Davis
49. JGC Gets FCPA Prosecution Deferred, Will Pay $218.8 Million Criminal Penalty
48. Verizon Pays $93.5 Million To Resolve False Claim Charge
47. Comverse Technology Gets Non Prosecution FCPA Agreement
46. Johnson & Johnson Gets FCPA Prosecution Deferred, to Pay $21.4 Million Criminal Penalty
45. Spitzer Calls on Holder to Prosecute Goldman Sachs or Resign
44. Stokes Sours on Obama’s Antitrust Effort
43. Honeywell Pleads Guilty, to Pay $11.8 Million
42. NPR, Electric Trolleys and Corporate Crime
41. Warren: Banks Want to Knife Consumer Bureau in the Ribs
40. DynCorp to Pay $8.7 Million to Settle False Claims Charge
39. Serono Pays $44 Million to Settle False Claims Charge
38. UBS Gets Non Pros Agreement, to Pay $160 Million
37. 29 Coal Miners Dead and Alpha Gets Non Prosecution Agreement
36. FedEx to Pay $8 Million to Settle False Claims Probe
35. Andy Cochran and the Coming War Between Constitutionalists and Corporatists
34. Quest Diagnostics in $241 Settlement
33. Wall Street Analyst: Goldman Too Big to Prosecute
32. Fresenius Ordered To Pay $82.6 Million
31. Friedrichs Baffled by NYT’s Claim That Major Crimes are in Decline (Answer: NYT Didn’t Look at Corporate Crime)
30. Novo Nordisk to Pay $25 Million to Settle False Claims Charge
29. Still No Criminal Charge in 2007 Utah Mine Disaster
28. Whistleblowers Call on Public Interest Groups to Rescind Obama Transparency Award
29. Fluor Corporation to Pay $4 Million to Settle False Claims Charge
28. Anadarko, Kerr-McGee To Pay $17 Million to Settle False Claims Charge
27. JP Morgan to Pay $153.6 Million To Settle SEC Probe
26. 60 Minutes: Why No Wall Street Prosecutions?
25. Boeing Overcharged Army Millions for Spare Helicopter Parts
24. MHSA: Massey Kept Two Sets of Books
23. State AGs Settle with Glaxo for $40 Million
22. Antitrust Activists Feel Sucker Punched as Varney Leaves to Cravath
21. JP Morgan Chase to Pay $92 Million in Bid Rigging Case
20. Armor Holdings Gets Non Pros FCPA Agreement, to Pay $10 Million Criminal Penalty
19. Kentucky Nursing Home Accused in Deaths of Five Residents
18. Richard Grossman 1943-2011
17. Dickie Scruggs, Huey Long and the Politics of Crime in Mississippi
16. SEC Charges Liquor Giant Diego with FCPA Violations
15. Pew Report Hits Water Pollution from Chicken Plants
14. Wachovia Gets Non Pros Agreement, to Pay $148 Million
13. Taibbi: Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes?
12. Jane Barrett on the Need for a Federal Workplace Homicide Statute
11. Gary Aguirre Says Shut Down the SEC, Start Over
10. Chevron to Pay $24 Million to Settle SEC Lawsuit
9. Maxim Healthcare Gets Prosecution Deferred, to Pay $150 Million
8. Accenture to Pay $68 Million to Settle False Claims Charge
7. Amoco to Pay $20 Million to Settle False Claims Charge
6. Oracle to Pay $199 Million to Resolve False Claims Charge
5. Activists Draft Law to Criminalize Fracking
4. Judge Rakoff Throws Out SEC/Citigroup Settlement
3. Pfizer to Pay $14 Million to Settle False Claims Charge
2. UMW Says UBB Mine Disaster Was Industrial Homicide
1. Glaxo to Pay $3 Billion to Settle False Claims Charge

Walker Enlists Karl Rove Protégé to Promote New Protest Policy

Saturday, December 17, 2011 by PR Watch

by Brendan Fischer

 

As Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s new policies restricting protest in the Wisconsin capitol take effect in advance of the anniversary of 2011's historic labor uprisings, the controversial governor has enlisted a new spokesperson to sell the rules, a 28-year old protégé of Karl Rove and new political appointee of the governor. 

Madison blogger Joe Vittie broke the story on WisconsinReporters.com about Jocelyn Webster, the person Walker hired as the public face defending the rules. Webster cut her teeth with Rove’s notorious Office of Political Affairs in the George W. Bush Administration. A congressional investigation of the activities of that office yielded allegations -- including specific allegations against Webster -- that Rove’s team was involved in partisan campaigning on the public dime, a claim also leveled at aides of her newest boss during his tenure as Milwaukee County Executive.

Webster’s Eye-Rolling Lead Some to Discover Her Karl Rove Roots 

 

On December 1, Walker's Department of Administration (DOA) released a twenty-three page policy announcing new limits on demonstrations in and around the state capitol, the site of massive protests earlier this year. The policy was clearly drafted with an eye towards landmark federal First Amendment cases, but legal observers have criticized the new rules, and the ACLU of Wisconsin is considering legal action. Walker opponents view the new rules as an effort to suppress dissent. For example, the definition of a "rally" as four people appears aimed at the Solidarity Singers, a group who gather every day at noon to sing popular songs altered with political lyrics criticizing the Walker administration.

DOA unveiled the policy December 1, but announced a two-week "educational period" (which some perceived as a public relations blitz) to help the public understand the new restrictions. The rules take effect December 16.

Just before the policy was announced, the Walker administration selected a new political appointee to serve as DOA Communications Director. The name of the appointee, Jocelyn Webster, was at the top of the December 1 press release announcing the new restrictions on capitol protests. Webster was also quoted in the press claiming that the “updated policy is meant to remove confusion and create consistency” for law enforcement officers and the public.

Webster caught the eye of citizens attending a recent public "information session" about the new restrictions on rallies in the capitol. Based on what some described as her petulant eye-rolling in response to citizens expressing concerns about restrictions on their freedom of speech, Vittie took a closer look at her experience and background.

From Washington to Wisconsin 

 

Webster is no local. She was most recently in Dallas, Texas, working government relations for the global convenience store chain 7-Eleven. Previously, she worked four months for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s PR shop. For nine months before that she pushed press inside the beltway on education policy in the 2008 election year. She also worked PR for New Yorker Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

But before those experiences, Webster worked for the federal government in Washington, D.C., and was cited in a major congressional investigation.

After graduating from college in California, Webster got a gig at the new Department of Homeland Security as a liaison to the George W. Bush White House. After six months, she moved to the White House and became a staffer in the Office of Political Affairs (OPA) in February, 2006.

OPA was overseen by Karl Rove and was reportedly tasked with tracking the political environment. A three-year investigation into Rove's OPA concluded in January of this year with a report showing the office routinely violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars on partisan political activities.

The report by the Office of Special Counsel found that the taxpayer-funded activities of OPA employees "were directed at the electoral success of Republican candidates and the Republican Party as a whole," and that "U.S. Treasury funds were unlawfully used to finance efforts to pursue Republican victories at the polls.”

"OPA was essentially an extension of the RNC in the White House,” the report stated.
Rove's OPA violated the Hatch Act throughout the Bush presidency, said the report, but particularly in the run-up to the 2006 mid-term elections, when Webster joined the OPA.

Webster's Ties to Bush White House Email Controversy 

 

The controversial role of the office in which Webster worked did not end after the 2006 mid-term elections.

In 2007, it was revealed that OPA staffers had been using partisan Republican National Committee (RNC) email accounts for official business, such as the controversial firings of federal prosecutors. This practice circumvented the requirements of federal sunshine and ethics laws, such as the Presidential Records Act, which required that employees preserve a record of all communications taking place at work. The National Journal wrote that Karl Rove sent ninety-five percent of his emails on his RNC account.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a letter to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman requesting an investigation. As a result of that congressional investigation, the Bush Administration claimed that 5 million emails had been lost or deleted. After a lawsuit, computer technicians were able to reconstruct some of the deleted messages and found that up to 22 million emails had been deleted.

Chairman Waxman rejected demands by the RNC that the searches of the emails be limited. In an April 2007 letter (pdf), Waxman notes that accepting the RNC's request to limit the email search terms "would not have located a January 19, 2007, e-mail from an official in Karl Rove's office to an official at the General Services Administration transmitting a copy of Powerpoint slides prepared by the White House that list the top 20 Democratic targets in 2008. That e-mail read: 'Please do not email this out or let people see it. It is a close hold and we're not supposed to be emailing it around.'"

Waxman's citation?

"E-mail from Jocelyn Webster (pdf), Staff Assistant, Office of Political Affairs, White House,
to Tessa Truesdell, Confidential Assistant to the Administrator, General Services Administration (Jan. 19,2007)." Webster was not charged with any crime for her activities in Rove’s operations during her work for him from early 2006 until early 2007.

Webster Role in "Pentagon Pundits" Operation, which CMD Helped Expose 

In early 2007, with public support for the Iraq war declining, Webster moved to the Pentagon's public affairs division.

In 2008, David Barstow broke a story in the New York Times about the depth and breadth of the Defense Department’s public affairs operation using "surrogates" to promote Bush administration policies in the press, without disclosing the Pentagon's hidden hand. The Center for Media and Democracy’s founder John Stauber called the scandal “the Pentagon Papers of this war” in Iraq. CMD, which publishes PRWatch, made the documents Barstow obtained available to the public through its SourceWatch electronic library. Barstow and the Times won a Pulitzer for its investigation.

One part of that program was described in an earlier Harpers Magazine article by Ken Silverstein, who specifically identified Webster as working on the project. The so-called "Surrogates Program," according to Silverstein, "arrange[d] regular conference calls during which senior Pentagon officials brief retired military officials, civilian defense and national security analysts, pundits, and bloggers. A few moderates are invited to take part, but the list of participants skews far, far to the right. The Pentagon essentially feeds participants the talking points, bullet points, and stories it wants told."

Silverstein wrote, "it’s quite clear that the Pentagon views it as a propaganda program."
Neither Webster nor others involved were charged with any crime, even though watchdog groups like CMD noted how the so-called "surrogate operation" violated long-standing federal appropriations rules and other laws against military propaganda in the United States.

Webster Joins the Walker Administration, and Makes a Splash 

 

Throughout the 2011 Wisconsin protests, Governor Walker falsely claimed that most of the demonstrators were from out-of-state. But some are now questioning whether he recruited his own out-of-state agitator in Webster.

During last week's public information sessions on Wisconsin's new capitol access rules, citizens concerned about the policy's impact on their First Amendment rights were dismayed by Webster's dismissive attitude towards them, which she reportedly expressed by rolling her eyes and shaking her head at their comments. Many were also put off by Webster's misleading press release that had asserted the new rules, which require permits for groups as small as four persons, were simply restatements of existing policies.

Her first real public performance in her new taxpayer-funded job caused some, like bloggers at WisconsinReporters.com, to look into her actual track record. At a hearing this week, Paul Schmid of that website expressed concern about the background of the Department of Administration's new communications director.

"This is the state of Robert LaFollette, open government, transparent government," said Schmid, noting that citizens were unlikely to trust the administration considering Webster's past involvement in taxpayer-funded political activity.

In response to Schmidt's comments, Chris Schoenherr, DOA Deputy Secretary, replied:
"You'll decide whether, or not, you decide to trust the administration. Or not."

Growth of large private water companies brings higher water rates, little recourse for consumers

(Water is the essence of life...why shouldn't they charge us more for it, right?--jef)

By Jeremy Schwartz and Eric Dexheimer

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011

PFLUGERVILLE — When Robert White opened his water bill last month, his jaw dropped: $250 for a month's worth of water and sewer service. The 63-year-old construction contractor, who shares a three-bedroom home with his wife in the bucolic Springbrook Centre subdivision, said he likes to keep his lawn green and expects hefty water bills. "I just don't want to be hijacked," he said.

White's water service is provided by a private utility owned by California-based SouthWest Water Co. LLC. Just across the four-lane Pflugerville Parkway, where White's neighbors in the Springbrook Glen subdivision — a nearly identical grid of neatly arranged brick-faced homes — get their water from Pflugerville, rates are on average about 60 percent less.

And White's bill for water service may nearly double soon, if SouthWest Water gets the latest rate increase it has requested. "I have never felt so helpless," he said.

He's not alone. Across the state, a growing number of suburban Texans are getting their water from large, private corporations owned by investors seeking to profit off the sale of an essential resource. State figures show private companies are seeking more price increases every year, and many are substantial.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which regulates water and sewer rates for nonmunicipal customers, doesn't keep numbers, but "their rate increases tend to be 40 and 60 percent," said Doug Holcomb, who oversees the agency's water utilities division.

For years, small private companies have played a crucial role in Texas, providing water and sewer service in new developments outside of cities. Analysts say private companies will continue to fill an essential need in the future, when public money is projected to be insufficient to make the billions of dollars in costly upgrades needed in water and sewer systems.

Increasingly, however, the companies are neither small nor local. Over the past decade, multistate water utilities have expanded aggressively in Texas, drawn by the state's booming population and welcoming regulatory environment. A September report prepared by utility analysts for Robert W. Baird & Co., a financial management company, identified Texas water regulators as the most generous in the country for private water companies. Today, three out-of-state corporations own about 500 Texas water systems that serve more than 250,000 residents.

For residents living outside cities served by private utility companies, the state environmental commission is charged with setting "just and reasonable" water rates based on a company's cost of doing business plus a guaranteed profit. In exchange, the companies enjoy a monopoly on their service area.

Yet critics say the agency is unprepared to handle the recent influx of corporations that have exploited a regulatory system more accustomed to handling rural mom-and-pop operations. Meanwhile, Texas laws provide fewer consumer protections to residents facing water rate increases than electricity and gas ratepayers.

"We are in the midst of a transformation in this state, and the state is ill-prepared to move into that transition," said Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, who co-chairs a legislative subcommittee to investigate the rates charged by investor-owned water utilities. "It feels like it's happening at warp speed."

Industry officials say their rates reflect the true cost of rehabilitating and expanding older water systems, and that without their deep pockets, such systems would languish. The "larger Investor-Owned Utilities have invested in small, rural water and sewer systems that have gone decades without meaningful improvements in their infrastructure and often do not meet minimum environmental standards set by the state," SouthWest Water spokeswoman Janice Hayes said in an email, adding that the companies have poured millions of dollars into new equipment and upgrades.

But in some places, the rate increase s following those improvements have been so high as to inhibit economic growth. Just south of Austin, SouthWest Water seven years ago purchased rights to provide water on the eastern edge of Kyle. Today, officials say, its rates are about double those of the city.

As a result, the company's service area is one of the few desirable commercial locations — just off Interstate 35 — where fast-growing Kyle has remained underdeveloped, said Diana Blank, the city's director of economic development. "We've lost projects because of that," she said. Prospective employers "will look at the map and say, 'Who serves the area for water?'"

SouthWest's latest rate request, which would increase rates for some suburbanites to more than three times what Austin residents pay, has caught the attention of lawmakers. A half-dozen legislators said they will introduce changes to the law during the next session to provide more consumer protections.

"This may be the poster child for the kinds of reforms we need," Watson said. "Some utilities will stretch the law as far as they can stretch it."

'Shock and awe'

In Texas, state agencies oversee consumer rates charged by utility companies, which must persuade regulators that rate increases are necessary. But nonmunicipal private water companies enjoy an advantage over electric and natural gas companies: They can raise rates before they've been approved.

At the Public Utility Commission, which oversees electric companies, and the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates gas companies outside cities, agency accountants typically review applications and negotiate with the utilities over the proposed rates. Only after that process, which can take months or longer, do the charges go into effect. Other states do the same, with proposed rates negotiated before customers ever receive a higher bill.

By comparison, the Texas "file and use" system generally permits private water companies to impose new, higher rates as soon as they're filed. Protests are addressed later and can go on for years.

"It doesn't really matter how long the rate case takes if you're already earning what you think you're going to get," Heike Doerr, a national utility analyst, said in a recent speech in which he identified Texas as friendly to water companies.

"The people who want to oppose it are always on the defensive," added Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of the Texas office of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer and environmental advocacy organization.

If fewer than 10 percent of a utility's customers complain, the new rate typically becomes permanent. If customers do mount a campaign against the rate, they're on their own.

That highlights another difference in the way in which water companies outside cities are regulated. When electric companies petition the Public Utility Commission for rate increases, ratepayers are represented by a separate taxpayer-funded office, the Public Utility Counsel, whose accountants and attorneys review the request and advocate for consumers. It can also hire consultants on their behalf.

Other states have a similar system for water customers. Arizona set up the taxpayer-funded Residential Utilities Consumer Office nearly 30 years ago to represent ratepayers in contested cases.

In Texas, however, private water customers who live outside cities must foot their own bill to fight rate increase s. Although the state environmental quality commission has an office called the Public Interest Counsel, it is prohibited from offering legal advice to customers, much less representing them.

One Henderson County community has hosted bake sales and chili suppers to raise money to fight SouthWest's proposed 50 percent water rate increase s. In Comal County, customers have been asked to donate money to protest SJW Corp.'s proposed 71 percent rate increase — its third in three years, said community leader Geoff Miller.

"If you don't have qualified professionals equal to those hired by the water company," he said, "then your chances of being successful are very small."

Texas law also entitles private water companies to recover the cost of the rate-making process through customer billings. In 2004, a multistate investor-owned water company called Aqua America requested a rate increase for several Texas developments and cities. It wrapped up in 2007 after more than three years of wrangling. Aqua's legal and consulting costs were more than $2.5 million, a figure the company tacked onto customer bills.

Even if they win, Texas ratepayers have no such recourse. Requiring residents to take on big companies on their own dime while paying the new higher rates pressures them to settle disputes as quickly as possible, critics say.

At the same time, they say it encourages private companies to use a strategy Watson termed "shock and awe" during a contentious Senate hearing on the subject over the summer: Hit customers with a large rate increase , then drag out the case.

"I believe your company does engage in that," Watson told SouthWest's vice president. "And I believe you and your company tend to be rather smug about that."

Agency overwhelmed

In 1986, when water rate-making authority was moved from the Public Utility Commission to the Texas Water Commission, now part of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the arrangement seemed to make sense: The private water landscape was overwhelmingly populated by small, local companies with few customers each. The agency's role, said Joe Freeland, an Austin attorney who represents water customers, was often more to assist the often-struggling companies than to police them aggressively.

But with more small companies being snapped up by large corporations, he and others say the environmental agency can be overwhelmed by corporate attorneys and accountants representing their clients. In 2007, an agency analyst evaluating an Aqua rate case testified it was "25 times larger" than any case he'd tackled previously.

Critics point to examples in which, given the same case, city and state regulators obtained much different results for consumers.

When private utility companies want to raise rates on customers in their service territory who also live within a city's limits, city officials — not the state's — consider the case. In 2002, a private company called Tall Timbers, which had customers in and outside the city of Tyler, filed to increase its sewer rates. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality signed off on the increase for the company's out-of-city ratepayers.

The City of Tyler, meanwhile, "conducted a more thorough review," recalled utilities and public works manager Greg Morgan, and concluded the rates should actually be lowered by $10 a month.

Tall Timbers objected, and the case went next to a state administrative law judge — who calculated the "just and reasonable" rate for the utility's Tyler customers was even lower than the city had found.

Since then, the environmental commission has signed off on another rate increase for the utility's customers outside the city. Today, Morgan said, those customers pay twice as much as their neighbors in Tyler, "so we've ended up with two classes of citizens."

In recent years, private water companies have asked for rate increases more frequently. In 2006, the environmental agency received 70 requests. Last year, it was 129 — an 84 percent jump. At the same time, the agency's water rate review division has seen its budget shrink over the past three years.

Earlier this year, the Sunset Advisory Commission, which reviews state agencies, recommended legislators move water rate regulation from the environmental quality commission to the Public Utility Commission, which has a larger staff experienced in fielding complex rate cases.

Representatives of the large water companies protested, contending the environmental agency was doing an adequate job. Legislators did not act on the advisory commission's recommendations, leaving rate reviews with the agency.

"TCEQ is not as sophisticated as some public utility commissions" in other states, SJW Corp. CEO W. Richard Roth told analysts in a December presentation. "That can be good, and that can be bad."

Numbers questioned

In Central Texas, no private water company has caused more of an uproar than SouthWest Water, which in 2000 purchased two water companies in Pflugerville and eastern Travis County, where population was projected to grow rapidly.

Over the next decade, SouthWest aggressively acquired other small companies, seeking to cluster them into regional water providers. State regulators and lawmakers have promoted such regionalization to encourage economies of scale within the state's patchwork of nearly 700 private water and sewer service areas.

In 2004, SouthWest made a key acquisition: Tecon Water Co., which served 21,000 water connections, including many along the eastern edges of Kyle and Buda. The $66 million purchase represented more than just a bet on a high-growth area; it also came with a special legislative exemption that Tecon had been granted a year earlier.

State law requires water companies to have separate rate schedules for each of their water utilities — unless they can prove the utilities are "substantially similar" (the idea being that ratepayers in one area shouldn't subsidize those in another). The Tecon clause allowed the company to bypass state law and consolidate various water companies under one entity with a single tariff. Seven years later, the exemption would become the basis for SouthWest Water's current rate increase proposal, affecting 46,000 water and sewer customers.

In 2010, private investors advised by J.P. Morgan bought publicly traded SouthWest for $430 million, a high price, according to some experts. "Observers are still scratching their heads trying to figure out how the investors will actually earn a return on the premium valuation that they paid for the company," Debra Coy, a leading water utility analyst, wrote in the trade magazine American Water Intelligence.

A year later, SouthWest Water began the process of raising rates so much they became the focal point of hearings at the Texas Senate.

Using the Tecon exemption, SouthWest Water first applied for permission to merge eight of its Texas water utilities under the Monarch Utilities banner, then asked for a single rate that would produce bills nearly three times the size of the average water bill for municipal customers in Texas.

SouthWest officials say the rate request isn't linked to the 2010 purchase that took the company private but is instead needed to pay for a $70 million upgrade to old water systems — much of which was mandated by state regulations. To encourage such upgrades, state regulators give private companies rates of return of up to 12 percent on the equity they invest.

Yet critics have questioned other numbers in Monarch's 1,700-page application for a higher rate, especially nearly $10 million in corporate management and utility group fees. "Our suspicion is that there must be some kind of corporate overhead price that others don't charge because they don't have a parent company owned by J.P. Morgan," said Simon Sequeira, president of Quadvest, a small investor-owned water company northwest of Houston. Sequeira and other small-utility owners have formed an association seeking to distance itself from what it calls the unreasonable rates sought by the larger newcomers.

TCEQ officials also have questioned $4.3 million in "public company costs" given that SouthWest is no longer publicly traded, and another $1.2 million for computer and IT services in California, where SouthWest is based. SouthWest officials said management fees go toward legal, financial, engineering and customer service-related work.

SouthWest Water ratepayers, including residents from Bulverde, near San Antonio, and Blue Mound, outside Fort Worth, have organized to protest the rates. Because they would also affect residents within cities, several municipalities, including Pflugerville and Kyle, have hired an attorney to fight the case.

Customers said they fear the proposed increase would deplete family budgets, make homes harder to sell and inhibit commercial development in their neighborhoods. Austin's Colony, a neighborhood of moderately priced homes in eastern Travis County served by Hornsby Bend — a small company that SouthWest bought in 2000 — has experienced one of Travis County's highest foreclosure rates. When the proposed rates temporarily went into effect over the summer, residents saw their water bills jump by about half.

Lucio Camarillo, a construction worker who lives in the neighborhood with his daughter, said he began paying water and sewer bills of about $150, in addition to the $130 a month he spends to pay for a water softener system, which he says was necessary because of the quality of the water. He said he had to cut his cable service and carefully ration water.

"If I had known it was going to be like this, I probably would have bought in the city," Camarillo said.

SouthWest Water also provides wholesale water to Kennedy Ridge, a nearby low-income subdivision where rates sparked an investigation by the state attorney general's office. After the company was charged with violating the Deceptive Trade Practices Consumer Protection Act, SouthWest this year agreed to credit Kennedy Ridge nearly $77,000 in restitution and to follow certain rules on increasing rates.

Last month, State Office of Administrative Hearings judges took the unusual step of setting an interim rate that rolled back rates in all eight SouthWest Water subsidiaries to their previous levels until the case is decided. They will next rule on whether SouthWest Water can merge and, if that effort is successful, will then take up the rate case again. A final decision is likely months or even years away.

Do As You're Told