Fold/Spindle/Mutilate 2.1

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

“USING these instruments in a way that intentionally destabilizes a company or a country is — is counterproductive, and I’m sure the S.E.C. will be looking into that.”

That’s what Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, said last week when lawmakers asked him about credit default swaps during his Congressional testimony. Concerns are growing about such swaps — securities that offer insurance-like protection and helped tip over the American International Group in 2008 when it couldn’t pay mounting claims on the contracts.

Now, there are fears that the use of these swaps may also help propel entire countries — think Greece — to the precipice.

First, Greece employed swaps to mask its true debt picture, with the help of Wall Street bankers, of course. And now it appears that some traders are using swaps to bet that Greece won’t be able to meet its debt payments and will face a possible default.

Mr. Bernanke is undoubtedly an intelligent man. But his view that it’s “counterproductive” to use credit default swaps to crash an institution or a nation exhibits a certain naïveté about how the titans of finance operate now.

High-octane trading may be counterproductive to taxpayers, for sure. But not to the speculators who win big when such transactions pay off. And in the case of A.I.G., the speculators got their winnings from the taxpayers.

The certainty that Mr. Bernanke expressed about the S.E.C.’s inquiry into credit default swaps is quaint as well. If the past is prologue, we might see a case or two emerge from that inquiry five years from now. The fact is that credit default swaps and other complex derivatives that have proved to be instruments of mass destruction still remain entrenched in our financial system three years after our economy was almost brought to its knees.

DERIVATIVES are responsible for much of the interconnectedness between banks and other institutions that made the financial collapse accelerate in the way that it did, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions in bailouts. Yet credit default swaps have been largely untouched by financial reform efforts.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

By FRANK RICH

No one knows what history will make of the present — least of all journalists, who can at best write history’s sloppy first draft. But if I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010, I wouldn’t choose the kabuki health care summit that generated all the ink and 24/7 cable chatter in Washington. I’d put my money instead on the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the tax protester who flew a plane into an office building housing Internal Revenue Service employees in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18. It was a flare with the dark afterlife of an omen.

What made that kamikaze mission eventful was less the deranged act itself than the curious reaction of politicians on the right who gave it a pass — or, worse, flirted with condoning it. Stack was a lone madman, and it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a “Tea Party terrorist.” But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner. That rant inspired like-minded Americans to create instant Facebook shrines to his martyrdom. Soon enough, some cowed politicians, including the newly minted Tea Party hero Scott Brown, were publicly empathizing with Stack’s credo — rather than risk crossing the most unforgiving brigade in their base.

Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, even rationalized Stack’s crime. “It’s sad the incident in Texas happened,” he said, “but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary. And when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the I.R.S., it’s going to be a happy day for America.” No one in King’s caucus condemned these remarks. Then again, what King euphemized as “the incident” took out just 1 of the 200 workers in the Austin building: Vernon Hunter, a 68-year-old Vietnam veteran nearing his I.R.S. retirement. Had Stack the devastating weaponry and timing to match the death toll of 168 inflicted by Timothy McVeigh on a federal building in Oklahoma in 1995, maybe a few of the congressman’s peers would have cried foul.

It is not glib or inaccurate to invoke Oklahoma City in this context, because the acrid stench of 1995 is back in the air. Two days before Stack’s suicide mission, The Times published David Barstow’s chilling, months-long investigation of the Tea Party movement. Anyone who was cognizant during the McVeigh firestorm would recognize the old warning signs re-emerging from the mists of history. The Patriot movement. “The New World Order,” with its shadowy conspiracies hatched by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. Sandpoint, Idaho. White supremacists. Militias.

Barstow confirmed what the Southern Poverty Law Center had found in its report last year: the unhinged and sometimes armed anti-government right that was thought to have vaporized after its Oklahoma apotheosis is making a comeback. And now it is finding common cause with some elements of the diverse, far-flung and still inchoate Tea Party movement. All it takes is a few self-styled “patriots” to sow havoc.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

Technology multinational Apple has admitted that child labour was used at the factories that build its computers, iPods and mobile phones.

Malcolm Moore

Apple has said child labour was used at factories where iPods and other electronic items were made

Technology multinational Apple has admitted that child labour was used at the factories that build its computers, iPods and mobile phones.

At least 11 15-year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories which supply Apple.

The company did not name the offending factories, or say where they were based, but the majority of its goods are assembled in China.

Apple also has factories working for it in Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, the Czech Republic and the US.

Apple said the child workers are now no longer being used, or are no longer under-age. “In each of the three facilities, we required a review of all employment records for the year as well as a complete analysis of the hiring process to clarify how under-age people had been able to gain employment,” Apple said, in an annual report on its suppliers.

Apple has been repeatedly criticised for using factories that abuse workers and where conditions are poor. Last week, it emerged that 62 workers at a factory that manufactures products for Apple and Nokia had been poisoned by n-hexane, a toxic chemical that can cause muscular degeneration and blur eyesight.

Apple has not commented on the problems at the plant, which is run by Wintek, in the Chinese city of Suzhou.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

By John Byrne

United States military intelligence spied on Planned Parenthood and other domestic groups as part of US security preparations for the 2002 winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, according to a recently declassified military document obtained by a civil liberties group Thursday.

The document (PDF – page 98), drafted by a Pentagon Deputy Inspector General whose name is redacted, was included in more than 800 pages released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation as part of a Freedom of Information Act Request. They include reports from the Pentagon’s Intelligence Oversight Board that were submitted to the Defense Secretary from 2001 to 2007.

Referring to an incident where military intelligence personnel distributed information about FBI spying on the 2002 Olympics, the inspector general’s office tersely remarked that an “intelligence oversight violation occurred.”

“The document… contained US Persons data in referring to an reporting on organizations (Planned Parenthood, the white supremacist group National Alliance) and their involvement in protests and literature distribution,” the inspector’s office wrote. “Also noted was the report contained a large section labeled “GENERAL CRIMINAL ACTIVITY.” Collection and dissemination of US Persons information by military intelligence assets is not allowed unless this information constitutes “Foreign Intelligence.”

“The inclusion of these two sections in this intelligence product is clearly outside the purview of military intelligence assets and should be handled through law enforcement or Anti-Terrorism/Force Protection channels,” the inspector’s office added. “An inquiry into the circumstances of this violation was conducted and the result will be forwarded via separate correspondence.”

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

By Agence France-Presse

A top US lawmaker has attacked Toyota for allegedly withholding documents it was legally required to hand over in lawsuits by people injured in accidents in the Japanese auto giant’s vehicles.

Toyota immediately denied the charge from Democratic Representative Edolphus Towns, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, that its actions betrayed “a systematic disregard for the law.”

On Friday, Towns cited documents obtained from a former Toyota in-house lawyer, Dimitrios Biller, as giving “evidence” of improper behavior including “routine violation of court discovery orders in litigation.”

“People injured in crashes involving Toyota vehicles may have been injured a second time when Toyota failed to produce relevant evidence in court,” Towns said in a blunt letter to Toyota Motor North America president and chief executive Yoshimi Inaba.

“Moreover, this also raises very serious questions as to whether Toyota has also withheld substantial, relevant information from NHTSA,” said Towns, referring to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Toyota has been under fire since January over a rash of defects that have prompted the recall of millions of vehicles and plunged the world’s largest carmaker into crisis.

In particular, the sudden acceleration problem found in some Toyota cars has gone unchecked for years, ultimately leading Toyota to issue nearly 10 million recall notices and temporarily halt sales of eight models.

At least 34 deaths have been blamed on sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles, according to complaints filed with NHTSA, which the agency said is more than all other automakers combined.

Toyota spokeswoman Cindy Knight said in a statement that “it is not uncommon” for corporations in litigation “to object to certain demands for documents made in litigation.”

“Consistent with that philosophy, we take appropriate steps to maintain the confidentiality of competitive business information and trade secrets. We are confident that we have acted appropriately,” she said.

Towns cited internal memoranda by Biller, especially one dated September 1, 2005, in which the attorney warns that Toyota has withheld electronic documents it should have provided, or “produced”, to plaintiffs’ attorneys.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

By PAUL KRUGMAN

If we’re lucky, Thursday’s summit will turn out to have been the last act in the great health reform debate, the prologue to passage of an imperfect but nonetheless history-making bill. If so, the debate will have ended as it began: with Democrats offering moderate plans that draw heavily on past Republican ideas, and Republicans responding with slander and misdirection.

Nobody really expected anything different. But what was nonetheless revealing about the meeting was the fact that Republicans — who had weeks to prepare for this particular event, and have been campaigning against reform for a year — didn’t bother making a case that could withstand even minimal fact-checking.

It was obvious how things would go as soon as the first Republican speaker, Senator Lamar Alexander, delivered his remarks. He was presumably chosen because he’s folksy and likable and could make his party’s position sound reasonable. But right off the bat he delivered a whopper, asserting that under the Democratic plan, “for millions of Americans, premiums will go up.”

Wow. I guess you could say that he wasn’t technically lying, since the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Senate Democrats’ plan does say that average payments for insurance would go up. But it also makes it clear that this would happen only because people would buy more and better coverage. The “price of a given amount of insurance coverage” would fall, not rise — and the actual cost to many Americans would fall sharply thanks to federal aid.

His fib on premiums was quickly followed by a fib on process. Democrats, having already passed a health bill with 60 votes in the Senate, now plan to use a simple majority vote to modify some of the numbers, a process known as reconciliation. Mr. Alexander declared that reconciliation has “never been used for something like this.” Well, I don’t know what “like this” means, but reconciliation has, in fact, been used for previous health reforms — and was used to push through both of the Bush tax cuts at a budget cost of $1.8 trillion, twice the bill for health reform.

What really struck me about the meeting, however, was the inability of Republicans to explain how they propose dealing with the issue that, rightly, is at the emotional center of much health care debate: the plight of Americans who suffer from pre-existing medical conditions. In other advanced countries, everyone gets essential care whatever their medical history. But in America, a bout of cancer, an inherited genetic disorder, or even, in some states, having been a victim of domestic violence can make you uninsurable, and thus make adequate health care unaffordable.

One of the great virtues of the Democratic plan is that it would finally put an end to this unacceptable case of American exceptionalism. But what’s the Republican answer? Mr. Alexander was strangely inarticulate on the matter, saying only that “House Republicans have some ideas about how my friend in Tullahoma can continue to afford insurance for his wife who has had breast cancer.” He offered no clue about what those ideas might be.

In reality, House Republicans don’t have anything to offer to Americans with troubled medical histories. On the contrary, their big idea — allowing unrestricted competition across state lines — would lead to a race to the bottom. The states with the weakest regulations — for example, those that allow insurance companies to deny coverage to victims of domestic violence — would set the standards for the nation as a whole. The result would be to afflict the afflicted, to make the lives of Americans with pre-existing conditions even harder.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

by Leslie H. Gelb

Leslie H. Gelb’s call for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to be reassigned spurred a circle-the-wagons reaction from pro- (or perhaps even anti-) Rahm forces. Gelb sifts the fallout for clues.

When you write that the president of the United States should replace his chief of staff, someone will fire back. So it was that Rahm Emanuel apparently struck back at my piece last week on The Daily Beast through a column in Sunday’s Washington Post. Only this time, the return fire had a rare twist, one that could produce Washington convulsions. It was seemingly aimed at me (and others who published suggestions of Emanuel’s limitations as chief). But whether it was intentional or not, the volley actually struck the president himself.

Here is the story, a very Washington tale of stretching permissible criticism of power holders, of pungent media leaks, of labyrinthine speculation as to who is doing what to whom.

Maybe the leaker thought the way to get rid of Rahm completely was to brand him as a “traitor” to the boss.

With a headline “Replace Rahm,” I wrote last Tuesday that Emanuel lacked the managerial skills, discipline, and strategic ability to get things done as chief of staff. I argued he should be moved over to a political adviser slot, where his considerable, can-do talents would better serve his boss. I targeted others as well, mostly in Mr. Obama’s Chicago crowd. Several writers also blasted this crowd, mostly with unsigned bullets, but never crossed the red line calling for their removal. I wrote the piece because it essentially reflected the waves of anti-White House staff critiques breaking over Washington, but rarely heard outside its drawing rooms. I did it because I believed the president was running out of chances to succeed and needed better and tougher staffers. I did it because if he failed, the nation failed.

Then came the inevitable blast back, a devastating leak, in a piece by Dana Milbank, a respected Washington journalist. Interesting that the leaker selected Milbank. He’s sort of a half-reporter, half-columnist who roams the entire capital city, not just the White House. The leaker must have felt safe because Milbank has so many sources all over town, making the leakers harder to trace.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

An alleged hacker has been hailed as a latter-day Robin Hood for leaking data about the finances of banks and state-owned firms to Latvian TV.

Using the alias “Neo” – a reference to The Matrix films – the hacker claims he wants to expose those cashing in on the recession in Latvia.

He is slowly passing details of leading Latvian firms via Twitter to the TV station and has its audiences hooked.

The Latvian government and police are investigating the security breach.

Data leaked so far includes pay details of managers from a Latvian bank that received a bail-out.

It reveals that many did not take the salary cuts they promised.

Other data shows that state-owned companies secretly awarded bonuses while publicly asking the government for help.

‘Cult status’

The anonymous hacker claims to be part of a group – called the Fourth Awakening People’s Army – that downloaded more than seven million confidential tax documents from the State Revenue Service. He is thought to be based in Britain.

Over a three month period they downloaded the private data of up to 1,000 companies.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

By David Sirota

Let’s pause and give thanks to Glenn Beck.

No, seriously—because that’s what he’s due.

We owe this talk-show-host-turned-political-leader gratitude for using his televised keynote address to the Conservative Political Action Conference to so frankly outline what the conservative movement has become—and why it repulses so many Americans.

Coming days after an anti-tax terrorist kamikaze attacked a government facility in Texas, and following Republicans like Sen. Scott Brown and Rep. Steve King expressing sympathy for that terrorist’s grievances, Beck’s homily stands as the moment’s most forthright manifesto on the right’s authoritarian objectives.

Beck began his speech posing as a libertarian against “big government.” Notice that most Republican icons are now saying this, though not all resemble Beck—not all of them previously pushed the big-government Patriot Act or the even-bigger-government bank bailout.

From there, Beck worked up a drenching sweat, criticizing Theodore Roosevelt’s notion that we should make sure the accumulation of wealth is “honorably obtained” and “represents benefit to the community.”

His porcine complexion verging on crimson, Beck called that concept of “community” a “cancer” that “is not our founders’ idea of America”—somehow forgetting the notions of community and solidarity inherent in the founders’ “Join or Die” motto.

But ignorance, no matter how embarrassing, doesn’t get in Beck’s way. To wild applause, he labeled this alleged tumor of “community” the supposedly evil “progressivism”—and he told disciples to “eradicate it” from the nation.

The lesson was eminently clear, coming in no less than the keynote address to one of America’s most important political conventions. Beck taught us that a once-principled conservative movement of reasoned activists has turned into a mob—one that does not engage in civilized battles of ideas. Instead, these torch-carriers, gun-brandishers and tea partyers follow an anti-government terrorist attack by cheering a demagogue’s demand for the physical annihilation of those with whom he disagrees—namely anyone, but particularly progressives, who value “community.”

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

by Leonard Pitts Jr.

We the people.

Those are, of course, the first words of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. “We the people of the United States . . .”

It doesn’t say anything about corporations.

So count me among those mystified by January’s Supreme Court decision to sweep away decades of established law limiting the amount of money corporations can inject into political campaigns. The court ruled, 5-4, that corporations enjoy the same right to free speech as persons do. Speech being defined as writing large checks to political candidates.

The ruling raised the very real specter that our next president will be sponsored, not elected — a chilling prospect to those of us who already wondered how a legislator beholden to a corporation for his office can be truly expected to put the people first.

This week’s congressional hearings only heighten the concern. Lawmakers are investigating the recent recalls over safety defects that have besmirched the reputation of the Toyota company. We are indebted to The Washington Post for publishing an analysis of legislators’ financial ties to the automaker. It turns out, according to The Post, that of the 125 members of Congress on the committees investigating Toyota, over 40 percent have accepted campaign donations totaling $135,673 from the company in the last 10 years.

That’s on top of a million dollars funneled to lawmakers by Toyota through state parties and PACs. Which is, in turn, on top of yet another million, just since 2008, donated by Toyota to nonprofit groups with, as The Post put it, “strong ties” to members of Congress.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but yours truly is not a guy who can — or would if he could — give millions to politicians. How can I be assured that, for all the posturing they do for the benefit of television cameras and reporters’ notebooks, those politicians will have my interests at heart?

The answer is painfully obvious. I can’t.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

The police in Greece pushed back against demonstrators on Wednesday as unions staged a one-day general strike to protest austerity measures by the government to reduce its deficit.

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and ERIC DASH

Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually now be pushing the nation closer to the brink of financial ruin.

Echoing the kind of trades that nearly toppled the American International Group, the increasingly popular insurance against the risk of a Greek default is making it harder for Athens to raise the money it needs to pay its bills, according to traders and money managers.

These contracts, known as credit-default swaps, effectively let banks and hedge funds wager on the financial equivalent of a four-alarm fire: a default by a company or, in the case of Greece, an entire country. If Greece reneges on its debts, traders who own these swaps stand to profit.

“It’s like buying fire insurance on your neighbor’s house — you create an incentive to burn down the house,” said Philip Gisdakis, head of credit strategy at UniCredit in Munich.

As Greece’s financial condition has worsened, undermining the euro, the role of Goldman Sachs and other major banks in masking the true extent of the country’s problems has drawn criticism from European leaders. But even before that issue became apparent, a little-known company backed by Goldman, JP Morgan Chase and about a dozen other banks had created an index that enabled market players to bet on whether Greece and other European nations would go bust.

Last September, the company, the Markit Group of London, introduced the iTraxx SovX Western Europe index, which is based on such swaps and let traders gamble on Greece shortly before the crisis. Such derivatives have assumed an outsize role in Europe’s debt crisis, as traders focus on their daily gyrations.

A result, some traders say, is a vicious circle. As banks and others rush into these swaps, the cost of insuring Greece’s debt rises. Alarmed by that bearish signal, bond investors then shun Greek bonds, making it harder for the country to borrow. That, in turn, adds to the anxiety — and the whole thing starts over again.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

The president needs to learn an important lesson, says historian Sean Wilentz: Sometimes the most loyal staffers are the most destructive to a commander in chief’s agenda.

by Sean Wilentz

Now that President Obama has confronted some harsh political realities over health-care reform and has seen his public-approval ratings fall down to earth, he can do many things to set his administration on a fresh course. He might begin, though, by heeding some lessons of history. Like too many unsuccessful presidents, he has surrounded himself in the Oval Office with a select coterie of campaign loyalists from Chicago politics and his former Senate office. As Politico editor John Harris reported Jan. 22, this inner circle consists of “romantics” who are enveloped by pettiness, grandiosity, and hero worship left over from the 2008 primaries and general election.

Successful presidents understand cardinal rules about running the White House that unsuccessful presidents do not. It is almost always important for the president to leave behind many from the inner circle.

• Leslie H. Gelb: Rumbling Over Rahm Emanuel

Unable to shift out of campaign mode, Harris writes, the president’s confidants are driven by “a basic attitude toward Clinton-style governance [that] is hostile,” even though one member of the Cabinet is named Clinton and an array of veterans of the Bill Clinton administration are on Obama’s staff—including White House Chief of Staff and former Chicago Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who, according to a recent Financial Times report, “treats Cabinet principals like minions.” By seeing their own world starkly, as the stage for a dramatic struggle of world-historic, “transformational” proportions, these would-be saints close to the president have embraced fantasies of transcendence that have yielded to needless factionalism within the Democratic Party and inside Obama’s administration: Blue Dogs versus liberals, idealists versus pragmatists, as well as, evidently, dueling bands of White House insiders.

History, alas, is filled with examples of insular White House palace guards undermining presidents’ political survival as they seek to shield him from influences other than themselves. The resulting problems are far more serious than a couple of gatecrashers at a State Dinner. Invariably, true believers fall to fighting among themselves. In an obviously well-sourced column on Feb. 21 in response to The Daily Beast’s Leslie H. Gelb, Dana Milbank of The Washington Post defended Emanuel while urging the firing of others. “Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter,” Milbank wrote. “…Obama’s problem is that his other confidants—particularly Valerie Jarrett and Robert Gibbs, and, to a lesser extent, David Axelrod—are part of the Cult of Obama.”

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

Report for the UN into the activities of the world’s 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment

• Andrew Simms: Putting a price tag on nature is meaningless
• Pavan Sukhdev: Paying for the value of nature could set scene for true green economy

Juliette Jowit
guardian.co.uk

Black clouds over the central business district, Jakarta. The report into the activities of the world’s 3,000 biggest public companies has estimated the cost of use, loss and damage of the environment. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world’s biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.

The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.

Later this year, another huge UN study – dubbed the “Stern for nature” after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern – will attempt to put a price on such global environmental damage, and suggest ways to prevent it. The report, led by economist Pavan Sukhdev, is likely to argue for abolition of billions of dollars of subsidies to harmful industries like agriculture, energy and transport, tougher regulations and more taxes on companies that cause the damage.

Ahead of changes which would have a profound effect – not just on companies’ profits but also their customers and pension funds and other investors – the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment initiative and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly ordered a report into the activities of the 3,000 biggest public companies in the world, which includes household names from the UK’s FTSE 100 and other major stockmarkets.

The study, conducted by London-based consultancy Trucost and due to be published this summer, found the estimated combined damage was worth US$2.2 trillion (£1.4tn) in 2008 – a figure bigger than the national economies of all but seven countries in the world that year.

The figure equates to 6-7% of the companies’ combined turnover, or an average of one-third of their profits, though some businesses would be much harder hit than others.

“What we’re talking about is a completely new paradigm,” said Richard Mattison, Trucost’s chief operating officer and leader of the report team. “Externalities of this scale and nature pose a major risk to the global economy and markets are not fully aware of these risks, nor do they know how to deal with them.”

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

By Raw Story

President Obama will meet with 22 high-ranking lawmakers Thursday to discuss health care reform and how to accomplish it.

But if newly released information about lobbying in 2009 is any indication, the private sector and its interests may already be secured.

For every member of Congress, there were eight lobbyists working to influence health care reform last year, according to research by The Center for Public Integrity.

That’s about 4,525 total lobbyists from 1,750 companies that include 207 hospitals, 105 insurance companies and 85 manufacturing companies.

The biggest group by far were the trade and advocacy organizations, which accounted for a whopping 745 companies lobbying for their own vision of health care in the US.

One of the most powerful political groups in the capital, the AARP deployed no less than 58 lobbyists to fight for their cause.

The Center has also created a database that allows users to search by company and lobbyist and includes the amount each organization spent, the lobbying firms they hired, and the names of individual lobbyists who took the message to Congress.

One of the Center’s interactive databases is available below.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

In a discussion of the Health Insurance Industry Fair Competition Act, apparently speaking on Rep. Peter DeFazio’s (D.-OR) time, Weiner laughs and says, “You know, you gotta love these Republicans. You guys have chutzpah.”

Then Weiner yells that the Republican Party “are a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry.” Some discussion is heard offscreen, which we thought was Republicans asking for the Yiddish to be translated, but after Weiner bounces around yelling for a while and then repeats the subsidiary charge, Rep. Daniel Lundgren (R.-CA) demands he withdraw the remarks.

Weiner says, “You really don’t want to go here, Mr. Lundgren,” The chair sends Weiner to the penalty box.

This all happens in the first minute. Much fumf-fumf as Weiner prepares to revise his remarks. Then, around 2:30, he does so: “Every single Republican I have ever met in my entire life is a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry!” Then he gets challenged and has to revise again.

Weiner, who maintains a combative Arnold Stang tone throughout, gets a lot of bravos for this at YouTube. He’s turning into New York’s Congressional performance artist.

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

The statue of Alexander Hamilton, the first treasury secretary, stands in front of the Treasury Department in Washington.

By Robert Scheer

They do have a license to steal. There is no other way to read Tuesday’s report from the New York state comptroller that bonuses for Wall Street financiers rose 17 percent to $20.3 billion in 2009. Of course that is less than the $32.9 billion for bonus rewards back in 2007, when those hotshots could still pretend that they were running sound businesses.

The economy is anything but sound, but you would hardly know that from looking at the balance sheets of the big investment banks. The broker-dealer firms on Wall Street made a record profit, estimated at greater than $55 billion by the comptroller, and the only thing holding back even more grotesque bonuses was concern over criticism from a public that was hardly doing as well.

The enormous rewards last year come not from their having righted the ship of finance by lowering the rate of mortgage foreclosures for ordinary folks, one of four who are now “underwater” on their loans. Consumer confidence this month is the lowest in 27 years, and unemployment is expected to hover near 10 percent for the next two years. No, they get bonuses because the Federal Reserve, backed by the Treasury, bought the toxic mortgage securitization packages that Wall Street banks were left holding. They, and they alone, were made whole.

The way the scam worked is that the Treasury deposited taxpayer dollars with the Federal Reserve, which in turn purchased a whopping $1.25 trillion in toxic mortgages. That’s the figure after the Treasury on Tuesday committed to depositing $200 billion more with the Fed to increase spending on this program—one that was ostensibly designed to increase credit availability to small businesses and others but has hardly accomplished that goal. Credit is still very tight because the big financiers have used the low-cost cash they received from those charitable government programs to solidify their own positions through acquisitions and the like.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

AFP

CHICAGO – THE US offices of three Toyota suppliers were raided by the FBI in what one company said was an antitrust investigation, officials said on Wednesday.

News of the raid came as Toyota president Akio Toyoda was being grilled by US lawmakers about auto defects which have led to accidents, deaths and the recall of some 8.5 million vehicles worldwide.

Warrants were served late Tuesday on the Detroit-area offices of three Japanese parts suppliers: Denso International America, Yazaki North America and Tokai Rika, also known as Tram, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.

‘This is not related to the investigation into Toyota recalls,’ Denso spokesman Bridgette LaRose Gollinger told AFP. The Detroit-area headquarters of Denso’s US subsidiary was ‘inspected’ by the FBI and the US Justice Department ‘in regard to US antitrust laws,’ Ms Gollinger wrote in an e-mail.

Denso ‘is cooperating with this investigation’, Ms Gollinger said, adding ‘we cannot comment on information related to the inspection’. Toyota said it had not been contacted by federal authorities about the case.

(Read the article)

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

MATTHEW LEE |

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton complained Wednesday that domestic political battles are hurting the president’s foreign policy goals and damaging America’s image abroad.

Testifying before a congressional committee, Clinton said fights between the White House and Congress have led to “gridlock” in appointing officials to critical positions, including those with key foreign policy and international assistance responsibilities. That has created confusion among friends and allies, she said.

“We’re now more than a year into a new administration and whether you agree or disagree with a particular policy, a president deserves to have the people that he nominates serving him,” Clinton told the Senate Appropriations Committee.

In response to questions from Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., she noted that delays and holds placed on the nominations of several ambassadorial and senior State Department positions had been problematic.

“It became harder and harder to explain to countries, particularly countries of significance, why we had nobody in position for them to interact with,” Clinton said.

She did not identify the positions to which she referred nor the lawmakers who delayed the confirmations but in one well-publicized case last year, Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., held up for months the appointments of both the new ambassador to Brazil and the incoming top diplomat for Western Hemisphere affairs over policy toward Honduras.

In another case, earlier this year several State Department appointees were among dozens caught in a blanket hold on Obama nominees by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who placed it over concerns about a Air Force refueling tanker contrac in his home state and a new FBI explosives center he wants built there.

Clinton said foreign governments have trouble understanding the way the U.S. process works when situations like that arise.

“People don’t understand the way our system operates, they just don’t get it,” she said. “And their view does color whether the United States … is in a position going forward to demonstrate the kind of unity and strength and effectiveness that I think we have to in this very complex and dangerous world.”

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

Chas Hallett
Editor autocar.co.uk

What a farce yesterday’s congressional  hearings over the Toyota recall were.

Just to recap, company boss Akio Toyoda was summoned to answer questions from a US Congressional Committee in Washington.

Did it answer any questions though? No. What we got was a load of blustering from congressmen trying to put Toyoda on the spot and, no doubt, trying to look tough to voters back in their home states.

Toyoda for his part gave rambling answers in corporate speak made painfully slower as they were going through a translator.

Basically, he’s sorry. Toyota is working hard to put it right and the boss will make sure it doesn’t happen again.

But the US government hardly needed to go to these lengths to get this response.

Toyota has 10 plants in the US and can rightly call itself an American car maker such are the numbers of cars it makes and the number of Americans it employs.

I wonder if any of the Big Three would have got this OTT treatment if they had been involved in a similar issue?

Comments(0) |  Print This Post

Comments(0) |  Print This Post