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9-11
Meta Index September 11 2001
CLONING
NEWS
STEM
CELL NEWS
ENRON
NEWS
MICROSOFT
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Top
|
GOVERNMENT News:
20081224
 Karl
Rove - Federal
-  Christmas
-  Trade
-  Texas
"Top
Bush Aides to Linger on High-Profile Boards." ...
"The Christmas Eve appointments will allow them to serve far beyond [2009,
January] Jan. 20, the end of [Republican President] Mr. Bush’s term in
office." ... "Ms. [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice got a spot on the
John
F. Kennedy Center’s board of trustees until September 2014." ... "Mr.
Bush’s gift to Mr. [Commerce Secretary Carlos M.] Gutierrez: membership
on the board
of trustees of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,
a research institute in Washington. Joining Mr. Gutierrez as a trustee
is Barry Jackson, a former deputy to Karl Rove, who serves as assistant
to the president for strategic initiatives and external affairs." ... "Maria
Cino, a longtime ally of the president who was deputy secretary of the
Department of Transportation and helped run the 2008 Republican National
Convention, received a four-year term on the Advisory Committee for Trade
Policy and Negotiations. President Bush also extended the same courtesy
to Israel Hernandez, who was once
a personal aide to Mr. Bush in Texas and now serves as an assistant
secretary of commerce and director general of the United States Commercial
Service." ... "And the first lady, Laura Bush, appears to be taking care
of her own, too. The president appointed her chief of staff, Anita B. McBride,
to a three-year term on the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board."
-By Michael
Falcone with contributions by Sheryl Stolberg
-NYTimes
 Barack
Obama - Federal
- Stem
Cell -  Health
- Money
-  Legislation
-  Politics
-  Colo
"Scientists
eager for stem cell policy change." ... "Although
[Democratic] President-elect Obama’s pledge to change federal policy on
stem cell research is not likely to lead to new cures by the end of his
first year — or even first term — the scientific community is eager to
get moving." ... "Embryonic stem cell research is one area in which the
change that Obama has promised on the campaign trail will provoke an immediate
effect." ... "Once he has acted to ease the restriction on federal funding,
researchers across the United States will be free to request funding from
the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and to collaborate with colleagues
conducting experiments with private or state-government money and those
working abroad." ... "“Just with the stroke of a pen, the new president
could open up new avenues of research,” said [Colorado Democratic Representative]
Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.), the lead Democratic sponsor of legislation
that would broaden funding for embryonic stem cell research." ... "Researchers
believe embryonic stem cells can be made to replicate practically any human
cell or tissue, thus leading to treatments for countless ailments." -By
Jeffrey Young -TheHill.com
 Christopher
Cox - Corporate
- Government
-  Accounting
- Law
-  Investigation
- Politics
"SEC
Chair Asked If He Deserves Blame For Wall Street Crisis: ‘Absolutely Not,’
It ‘Wasn’t The SEC’s Job’." ... "In a new interview
with the Washington Post, embattled [Republican President Bush's] Securities
and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox stridently “defend[ed]
his restrained approach to the financial crisis.” He refused to accept
any blame for the Wall Street crisis or the Madoff Ponzi scheme, saying
that regulating Wall Street and protecting investors “wasn’t
the SEC’s job“:"
"Cox
argued that the agency has carefully defined responsibilities and that
it was unfair to blame it for every problem on Wall Street." ... "“The
public might not understand that that wasn’t the SEC’s job,” he said,
adding that the agency was not responsible for preventing investment banks
from collapsing but rather for sheltering their securities trading units
from problems in the broader corporation. “The SEC is not a safety and
soundness regulator,” he said. [..]"
"In
fact, the SEC’s mission statement clearly suggests that “safety”
is — or should be — a primary concern of the commission:"
"The
mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors,
maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation."
"A
review by the SEC inspector general “determined the
agency’s monitoring of the five biggest Wall Street firms, which included
Bear Stearns, was lacking.” (Just a few days before Bear Stearns collapsed,
Cox said he had “a good deal of comfort” in the bank’s capital levels.)
Another analysis showed that the SEC dramatically cut its oversight of
financial trades. “In one of its core areas — regulation of Wall Street
firms — its
case load was down significantly,” said Ben A. Indek, a securities
lawyer at the law firm that performed the analysis." ... "Cox also denied
any culpability in the Madoff scandal: “When Cox was asked whether he should
be blamed for a culture of lax enforcement that allowed multiple warnings
about the fraud to go undetected, he
said: ‘Absolutely not.’” However, a former SEC official slammed Cox
for failing to prevent the Ponzi scheme: “I
can’t comprehend how a well-run investigation would have missed a fraud
of this magnitude,” said Lynn Turner, a former SEC chief accountant." -By
Ali
Frick -ThinkProgress.org
20081221
Corporate
- Government
- Accounting
- Politics
-  New
York
"AP
study finds $1.6B went to bailed-out bank execs."
... "Banks that are getting taxpayer bailouts awarded their top executives
nearly $1.6 billion in salaries, bonuses, and other benefits last year,
an Associated Press analysis reveals." ... "The rewards came even at banks
where poor results last year foretold the economic crisis that sent them
to Washington for a government rescue. Some trimmed their executive compensation
due to lagging bank performance, but still forked over multimillion-dollar
executive pay packages." ... "Benefits included cash bonuses, stock options,
personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club
memberships and professional money management, the AP review of federal
securities documents found." ... "_The average paid to each of the banks'
top executives was $2.6 million in salary, bonuses and benefits." ... "_Lloyd
Blankfein, president and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, took
home nearly $54 million in compensation last year. The company's top five
executives received a total of $242 million." ... "The New York-based company
on Dec. 16 reported its first quarterly loss since it went public in 1999.
It received $10 billion in taxpayer money on Oct. 28." ... "_John A. Thain,
chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch, topped all corporate bank bosses
with $83 million in earnings last year." ... "Like Goldman, Merrill got
$10 billion from taxpayers on Oct. 28." -By Frank
Bass and Rita Beamish -AP
via -Yahoo
20081219
Christopher
Cox - Corporate
- Government
- Accounting
- Law
- Enforcement
- Politics
"Who's
Mess Is the S.E.C.? News Analysis:
In his extraordinary mea culpa over the Madoff scandal, [Republican President
Bush's Securities and Exchange Commission] S.E.C. chairman Christopher
Cox accepted full blame...on behalf of his staff. But isn't he in charge?"
... "When Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox made
an extraordinary apology for the agency having failed to follow up on clear
evidence of wrongdoing by suspected financial fraudster Bernard Madoff,
he excluded one key player from blame: himself." ... "In the public
statement on Tuesday, Cox laid out a blistering attack on his staff,
while appearing to exonerate himself from any responsibility." ... "He
said the agency's most senior officials learned only a week ago that "credible
and specific allegations regarding Mr. Madoff's financial wrongdoing, going
back to at least 1999, were repeatedly brought to the attention of S.E.C.
staff, but were never recommended to the Commission for action."" ... ""I
am gravely concerned," Cox added, "by the apparent multiple failures over
at least a decade to thoroughly investigate these allegations or at any
point to seek formal authority [from the commission] to pursue them.""
... "Cox's decision to distance himself from the staffs' performance has
rankled former senior S.E.C. officials who had nothing to do with the Madoff
inquiries." ... "The S.E.C. is structured so that the chairman personally
is in charge of the staff, these former agency officials said; he is in
effect the agency's C.E.O. [Chief Executive Officer], with division heads
reporting directly to him, and he makes decisions about staff appointments
and allocation of resources." ... "As Condé Nast Portfolio
magazine reported
in its October issue, Cox took steps to weaken and hamstring the enforcement
division." ... "He slowed down and delayed approval when staff members
did ask for formal authority to investigate, and pressed the agency to
focus more on penny-stock scams, boiler-room operations, and other relatively
petty crimes. S.E.C. veterans said this detracted from efforts to pursue
major Wall Street frauds." -By Scot Paltrow
-Portfolio.com
Chris
Cox - Corporate
- Government
- Accounting
- Law
- Enforcement
- Politics
-  California
- New
York
"Cox
"Worked to Dismantle The SEC," Says Commission Vet."
... "In recent years, particularly under [Republican President Bush's Securities
and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris] Cox, a former California GOP [GOP=Grand
Old Party=Republican] congressman, the SEC has pursued a policy of de-emphasizing
enforcement, part of the broader anti-regulatory philosophy of the Bush
years -- helping to make Madoff, and perhaps others like him, possible."
... ""[Cox] in many ways worked to dismantle the SEC," Ed Nordlinger, a
former longtime enforcement director in the commission's New York office,
told TPMmuckraker. "He slowed everything down. I don't think he believed
in heavy regulation."" ... "That view has been echoed by several others
in a position to know. Ross Albert told TPMmuckraker for a post
published yesterday: "Under Cox, SEC had de-emphasized the enforcement
program. Cox worshipped at the same altar of de-regulation that the rest
of the Bush administration worshipped at."" ... "And a former enforcement
division supervisor told Portfolio for a lengthy
October story about the SEC under Cox: "It was like someone poured
molasses on the enforcement division."" ... "The commission also appears
to have passed over for promotion staff members who were too aggressive
in their approach to enforcement. Veteran S.E.C. lawyer James Coffman told
Portfolio
that he was told he didn't get a promotion because he was "too tough."
He left the SEC soon after." -By Zachary Roth
-TPMMuckracker
.TalkingPointsMemo
20081218
Corporate
- Government
- Investigators
- Politics
- Accounting
- Consumer
"Madoff
misled SEC in '06, got off." ... "Securities and
Exchange Commission investigators discovered in 2006 that Bernard Madoff
had misled the agency about how he managed customer money, according to
documents, yet the SEC missed an opportunity to uncover an alleged Ponzi
scheme." ... "The documents indicate the agency had Madoff in its sights
amid multiple violations that, if pursued, could have blown open his alleged
multibillion-dollar scam. Instead, his firm registered as an investment
adviser, at the agency's request, and the public got no word of the violations."
... "Harry Markopolos - who once worked for a Madoff rival - sparked the
probe with his nearly decadelong campaign to persuade the SEC that Madoff's
returns were too good to be true. In recent days, The Wall Street Journal
reviewed emails, letters and other documents that Markopolos shared with
the SEC over the years." ... "When he first began studying Madoff's investment
performance a decade ago, Markopolos told a colleague at the time, "It
doesn't make any damn sense," he and the colleague recall. "This has to
be a Ponzi scheme."" -By Gregory Zuckerman
-WSJ.com via -GreenwichTime.com
20081217
 Poll
- Financial
- Consumer
-  Job
-  Rent
- Federal
- Debt
-  History
"New
Poll Shows 63% Are Already Hurt by Downturn." ...
"The deepening recession has eroded the financial standing and optimism
of a broad swath of Americans, nearly two-thirds of whom say that they
have been hurt by the downturn and that the country has slipped into long-term
economic decline." ... "A new Washington Post-ABC News poll also found
that a rapidly increasing share of Americans -- 66 percent, up from just
over half a year ago -- are worried about maintaining their standard of
living. Nearly two in 10 said they or someone living in their household
had lost a job in the past few months, and more than a quarter said they
had their pay or hours reduced. And 15 percent said that at some point
in the past year they fell behind on their rent or mortgage." ... "The
poll captures the widening fallout from the faltering economy that policymakers
are struggling to contain. The Federal Reserve yesterday cut its target
for the federal funds rate to a range of zero to 0.25 percent, the lowest
on record." ... "The poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans support
new federal spending to stimulate the economy, and majorities of both Democrats
and Republicans back the idea." ... "Twenty-four percent approve of the
way [Republican] President Bush is handling the economy, and a similarly
paltry 23 percent approve of the broader federal response to the crisis."
... "Democrats, Republicans and independents alike are highly critical
of the federal action to address the crisis -- among each group, more than
seven in 10 disapprove. In part, the criticisms stem from skepticism that
the government has put in place adequate controls to avoid waste and fraud
in the use of federal money in the economic recovery effort." (1, 2)
-By Michael A. Fletcher and Jon Cohen with contributions
by Jennifer Agiesta -WashingtonPost
Corporate
- Government
- Law
- Politics
"U.S.
Congress to probe SEC role in Madoff affair." ...
"A U.S. [United States] House of Representatives panel plans to convene
an inquiry in January into the failure of securities regulators to unearth
an alleged $50 billion securities fraud by Wall Street veteran Bernard
Madoff, a key lawmaker said on Wednesday." ... "The Securities and Exchange
Commission has come under fire for not uncovering the scandal until senior
employees of Madoff went to authorities." ... "The agency, chaired by [Republican
President Bush's Securities and Exchange Commission chairman] Christopher
Cox, has been accused of missing a number of red flags about the way Madoff
operated his investment business." ... "Cox, a Republican, said he was
gravely concerned about the SEC's failure to examine Madoff's activities,
which were flagged going back to at least 1999 and repeatedly brought to
the attention of SEC staff but never recommended for commission action."
... "Madoff's niece, Shana Madoff, a compliance lawyer at Madoff's firm,
is married to a former SEC lawyer, Eric Swanson, who was the agency's assistant
director in the office of compliance inspections and examinations." ...
"SEC compliance chief Lori Richards said Swanson was a member of an examination
team that looked into Madoff's broker-dealer business in 1999 and 2004."
-By John Poirier and Rachelle Younglai with contributions
by Kevin Drawbaugh, Karey Wutkowski, Andre Grenon and John Wallace -Reuters
via -Guardian.co.uk
Government
- Market
- Politics
- US_Debt
-  Technology
- Housing
"Fed
unleashes greatest bubble of all." ... "Like the
sorcerer’s apprentice, [Republican President Bush's] Federal Reserve Chairman
Ben Bernanke and his predecessor Alan Greenspan have unleashed a series
of ever-larger asset bubbles they cannot control." ... "Now the Fed’s decision
to cut interest rates to between zero and 0.25 percent, coupled with a
promise to keep them there for an extended period, and the threat to conduct
even more unconventional operations in the longer-dated Treasury market
risks the biggest bubble of all, this time in U.S. government debt." ...
"THE ASYMMETRIC EXPERIMENT" ... "Bubble mania is no accident. It
is the direct consequence of the Fed’s asymmetric response to shifts in
asset prices. Pressed to “lean against the wind” and adopt counter-cyclical
interest rate and credit policies in the asset market, senior Fed policymakers
have repeatedly demurred." ... "Led by Bernanke and Greenspan, officials
have argued it is too hard and subjective to identify bubbles until afterwards,
and not the Fed’s job to second-guess asset allocation decisions of professional
investors." ... "Even if bubbles could be identified, they argue, pricking
them would require swingeing rate rises that would inflict widespread damage
on the rest of the economy." ... "Far less damaging to allow asset markets
to follow their natural cycle and stand by to cut interest rates sharply,
supply liquidity and contain the fallout when the bubble bursts." ... "But
the Fed’s asymmetric policy response to rising and falling asset prices
(colloquially known as the “Greenspan/Bernanke put”) directly led to much
of the excessive risk-taking which has humbled the financial system over
the last eighteen months." ... "More importantly, the Fed’s decision to
respond to the collapse of the technology and stock market bubble by lowering
rates to 1 percent and holding them there for an extended period is now
widely accepted as a mistake that contributed to the bond bubble and subsequent
housing market boom in the middle of the decade." ... "If the low-rate
strategy was a mistake, it was a conscious one." -By
John
Kemp-Reuters
20081216
 Jim
DeMint -  Bob
Corker -  Richard
Shelby -  Mitch
McConnell -  Foreign
- Money
- Politics
-  Construction
-  Auto
-  Makers
- Government
- Emergency
- Legislation
- Labor
-  Michigan
- California
-  South
Carolina -  Alabama
-  Tennessee
-  Kentucky
-  German
-  Japanese
-  South
Korean
"Foreign
Auto Makers Won Billions in Government Subsidies:
Southern States Gave [Foreign] Auto Companies Tax-breaks and Cash for Training."
... "To hear Southern Republicans tell the story, the financial burdens
facing Detroit’s automakers are self-made troubles to be settled by the
laws of Adam-Smith capitalism." ... "“We don’t think it is the role of
government to intervene,” [South Carolina Republican Senator] Sen. Jim
DeMint (R-S.C. [Republican-South Carolina]) told the Fox Business Network
last week. “We need to let the market and the laws work the way they are
already in place.”" ... "Yet this argument — that the government has no
business interfering in free markets — ignores an increasingly frequent
tradition among Southern states, which have fronted billions in local taxpayer
dollars in the past two decades to attract foreign auto plants. Those incentives,
arriving in the form of tax breaks, training for new employees and even
land, have enticed [German automaker Bayerische Motoren Werke] BMW to South
Carolina, [German automaker] Mercedes to Alabama and [Japanese automaker]
Nissan to Tennessee. The result of the government subsidies has been the
steady emergence of the South as an auto-manufacturing powerhouse. Some
are dubbing it the “New Detroit” – a region where real estate is
cheap and the labor’s not unionized." ... "Not coincidentally, these Southern
states are represented by the same coalition of GOP [GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican]
senators who led the fight against the recent Detroit [Michigan] bailout
proposal. That legislation would have provided $14 billion in emergency
bridge loans to General Motors and Chrysler, both of which say they lack
the finances to survive the month. Rallying behind the animated opposition
of GOP [Republican Senators] Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.[Tennessee]), Richard
Shelby (Ala.[Alabama]), Mitch McConnell (Ky.[Kentucky) and South Carolina’s
DeMint, Senate Republicans killed the legislation." ... "On Friday, the
day following the Senate vote, Shelby told CNBC that if the Big Three had
only managed their business operations as well as the foreign companies,
known as transplants, they wouldn’t be scrambling now for a taxpayer-funded
bailout." ... "“You look at the South,” Shelby said. “You take — not just
Mercedes in my hometown — but BMW, Honda and all of them. These companies
are flourishing with American workers made in America.”" ... "But the flourishing
of the transplants didn’t come without significant taxpayer help. Shelby’s
Alabama, for example, secured construction of a [German automaker] Mercedes-Benz
plant in 1993 by
offering $253 million in state and local tax breaks, worker training
and land improvement. For [Japanese automaker] Honda, the state’s sweetener
surrounding a 1999 deal to build a mini-van plant was $158 million in similar
perks, adding
$90 million in enticements when the company expanded the plant
three years later. A 2001 deal with [Japanese automaker] Toyota left the
company with $29 million in taxpayer gifts." ... "Alabama is hardly alone.
Corker’s Tennessee recently lured [German automaker] Volkswagen to build
a manufacturing plant in Chattanooga [Tennessee], offering the German automaker
tax breaks, training and land preparation that could total
$577 million. In 2005, the state inspired Nissan to relocate its
headquarters from southern California by offering $197
million in incentives, including $20 million in utility savings."
... "In 1992, South Carolina snagged a BMW plant for $150
million in giveaways. In Mississippi in 2003, Nissan was lured
with $363
million. In Georgia, a still-under-construction [South Korean automaker]
Kia plant received breaks estimated to be $415
million. The list goes on." -By Mike
Lillis -WashingtonIndependent.com
Mitch
McConnell - Bob
Corker - Richard
Shelby - Foreign
- Money
- Government
- Politics
- Auto
- Makers
- Working
-  People
- Kentucky
- Tennessee
- Alabama
- Michigan
-  US
"Do
Southern Senators Really Want to Start a New War Between the States?"
... "When my Southern pals used to say "The South is gonna rise again,"
I doubt this is what they had in mind: A cadre
of Southern [Republican] Senators, heavily financed by foreign automakers
and special interests, declaring war on the American Dream of good wages
and decent benefits. When did they decide that hard-working people trying
to make a better life for themselves are the enemy?" ... "These Senators
may want to think twice. Southern states have been benefiting from Northern
taxes for years. If they start another War Between the States, the Federal
gravy train might suddenly stop at the Mason-Dixon line." ... "Studies
by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation have consistently shown that these Senators'
states receive far more from the Federal government than they pay back
in taxes. That's an irony that could lead to some Blue State bitterness:
They love to preach about fiscal responsibility and lower taxes, but they
keep dipping their beak into the Federal trough." ... "I believe the applicable
Southern phrase is "a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much obliged.""
... "The numbers in [PDF]
the Foundation's most recent study (warning: pdf) speak for themselves:
[Kentucky Republican Senator] Mitch McConnell's Kentucky took in $1.45
from the Feds for every dollar it paid in taxes. That's a 45 cent free
ride. [Tennessee Republican Senator] Bob Corker's Tennessee received at
30-cent Federal giveaway. And [Alabama Republican Senator] Richard Shelby's
Alabama extracted a whopping 71-cent subsidy from Northern taxpayers."
... "What about Michigan? They lost 31 cents for every dollar they paid.
In other words, McConnell, Shelby, and Corker have been skimming a percentage
off these autoworkers' taxes for years on behalf of their constituents.
Now, when the same Michigan taxpayers need help, these Senators are telling
them to get lost." -By RJ
Eskow -HuffingtonPost.com
Corporate
- Government
- Christmas
- Debt
- History
- Accounting
-Politics
- Homeowners
- Auto
-  Military
-  Space
"Bailout
payout tops $8 trillion." ... "As the holiday season
commences, it’s worth taking stock of the last gift that [Republican] President
George W. Bush and the 110th Congress have left for U.S. [United States]
taxpayers." ... "It’s a package of about $8.7 trillion dollars’ worth of
potential taxpayer commitments for loans, guarantees and other bailout
goodies for businesses and distressed homeowners." ... "Amid the tissue
paper:" ... "• More than $1.5 trillion in Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
[Corporation] loan guarantees, including a $139 billion assist to the lending
arm of General Electric Corp." ... "• $1.8 trillion in cash, tax breaks
and loan guarantees doled out from the Treasury Department to taxpayers,
financial institutions and credit companies." ... "• $300 billion for homeowners
from the Federal Housing Authority." ... "• $25 billion in assistance for
auto companies from a program overseen by the Energy Department, which
is separate from the bailout proposal that tanked last week in the Senate."
... "• And $5 trillion worth of new money, loan guarantees and loosened
lending requirements from the Federal Reserve Bank." ... "According to
Bianco Research President James Bianco, who crunched these numbers, that
amounts to more government aid and assistance than nine other historic
bailouts and big government outlays combined." ... "The New Deal, for instance,
cost an estimated $32 billion in its day, which would be about $500 billion
in today’s dollars. The Marshall Plan cost about $12.7 billion, which is
the equivalent of a paltry $115.3 billion. The Louisiana Purchase? The
French got $15 million, which would be worth about $217 billion today."
... "If you take those three items, add in the adjusted costs of the Race
to the Moon, the savings and loan crisis, the Korean War, the Iraq war,
the Vietnam War and assistance for NASA [National Aeronautics and Space
Administration ], you still get to just $3.92 trillion — not even half
of the taxpayers’ exposure today, according to Bianco." -By
Jeanne Cummings -Politico.com
via -AP
Corporate
- Employees
- New
York - Texas
- US
- Worldwide
"Goldman
Sachs’s Tax Rate Drops to 1%, or $14 Million (Update1) ."
... "Goldman
Sachs Group Inc. [Incorporated], which got $10 billion and debt
guarantees from the U.S. [United States] government in October, expects
to pay $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008 compared with $6 billion
in 2007." ... "The company’s effective income tax rate dropped to 1 percent
from 34.1 percent, New York-based Goldman Sachs said today in a statement.
The firm reported a $2.3 billion profit for the year after paying $10.9
billion in employee compensation and benefits." ... "U.S. [Texas Democratic]
Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who serves on the tax-writing
House Ways and Means Committee, said steps by Goldman Sachs and other banks
shifting income to countries with lower taxes is cause for concern." ...
"“This problem is larger than Goldman Sachs,” Doggett said. “With the right
hand out begging for bailout money, the left is hiding it offshore.”" -By
Christine Harper -Bloomberg
20081213
US
-  Iraq
- Reconstruction
- Money
- Politics
- Foreign
- Production
- Accounting
- Investigations
- Federal
- History
- Military
- Law
"Official
History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders." ...
"An unpublished, 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction
of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners
who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then
molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling
violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure."
... "The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating
in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical
reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that
when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area
of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated
measures of progress to cover up the failures." ... "In one passage, for
example, [Republican President Bush's] former Secretary of State Colin
L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion,
the Defense Department "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces
— the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have
100,000, we now have 120,000.'"" ... "Mr. Powell's assertion that the Pentagon
inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by
[Lieutenant General] Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander
of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator
until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004." ... "Among the overarching
conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest
foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after
World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies
and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed
to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale." ... "The
bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way
the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production
compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises
made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed
during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed." ... "By
mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction
of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money." ...
"Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the history concludes, "the government
as a whole has never developed a legislatively sanctioned doctrine or framework
for planning, preparing and executing contingency operations in which diplomacy,
development and military action all figure."" ... "Titled "Hard Lessons:
The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," the new history was compiled by the
Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by
Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who regularly travels to Iraq
and has a staff of engineers and auditors based here." ... "The manuscript
is based on approximately 500 new interviews, as well as more than 600
audits, inspections and investigations on which Mr. Bowen's office has
reported individually over the years. Laid out for the first time in a
connected history, the material forms the basis for broad judgments on
the entire rebuilding program." ... "In the preface, Mr. Bowen gives a
searing critique of what he calls the "blinkered and disjointed prewar
planning for Iraq's reconstruction" and the botched expansion of the program
from a modest initiative to improve Iraqi services to a multibillion-dollar
enterprise." -By T.
Christian Miller and James
Glanz -ProPublica.org
-NYTimes
""Hard
Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience."" ... "The draft of
a federal report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq
Reconstruction. Annotations are based on the review's findings." [(PDF)
Original Document] via -NYTimes
20081212
Secret
- Corporate
- Government
- Politics
- US_Debt
- Emergency
"Fed
Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion (Update2)."
... "The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose
the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers
and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral." ... "Bloomberg
filed suit [2008 November] Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information
Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most
created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression."
... "The Fed responded [2008 December] Dec. 8, saying it’s allowed to withhold
internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial
information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231
pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests." ... "“If they told
us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government
may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know,” said Carlos Mendez,
a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees
$22 billion in assets." ... "The Fed stepped into a rescue role that was
the original purpose of the Treasury’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief
Program. The central bank loans don’t have the oversight safeguards that
Congress imposed upon the TARP [Troubled Asset Relief Program]." ... "Total
Fed lending exceeded $2 trillion for the first time Nov. 6. It rose by
138 percent, or $1.23 trillion, in the 12 weeks since Sept. 14, when central
bank governors relaxed collateral standards to accept securities that weren’t
rated AAA." ... "The Bloomberg lawsuit is Bloomberg LP v. Board of Governors
of the Federal Reserve System, 08-CV-9595, U.S. District Court, Southern
District of New York (Manhattan)." -By Mark Pittman
-Bloomberg
Auto
- Makers
- Legislation
- Workers
- Emergency
- Government
- Politics
- Economy
- History
-  Cheney
- Michigan
"Senate
Republicans kill auto bailout bill." ... "Republican
opposition killed a $14-billion auto industry bailout plan in the Senate
on Thursday night, putting the future of [United States] U.S. automakers
in doubt and threatening to deliver another blow to the economy." ... "The
measure died after a last-ditch effort by Senate Democratic leaders to
strike a compromise that would have lured enough support to save the legislation,
which was crafted in consultation with the [Republican President Bush]
White House." ... "The bill's failure raises the possibility of bankruptcy
by one or more of [Michigan state's] Detroit's Big Three and puts new pressure
on [Republican] President Bush to authorize emergency loans for the automakers
from the $700-billion Wall Street rescue fund, a step he has adamantly
refused to take." ... "The collapse of General Motors, Chrysler or Ford
-- along with many of their suppliers and dealers -- could throw hundreds
of thousands more workers onto the growing unemployment rolls and further
cloud the closing days of the [Republican President] Bush administration."
... ""If we don't do this, we will be known as the party of [Republican
President] Herbert Hoover forever," [Republican Vice President] Cheney
told them, according to a Senate Republican aide, evoking the president
whose inaction is widely blamed for helping trigger the Great Depression
in the early 1930s." (1, 2)
-By Jim Puzzanghera with contributions by Ken Bensinger
-LAtimes
20081211
Torture
- Prisons
-War
Crimes - Secret
- Military
- Government
-  Intelligence
- Law
- Investigation
- Human
Rights - Politics
- History
-  McCain
-  Ariz
- Mich
- US
- Guantanamo
-  Cuba
- Iraq
-  Afghanistan
-  China
-  Korea
"Bipartisan
Report: Rumsfeld Responsible for Detainee Abuse:
Senate Committee Finds Officials Made Decisions That Led to Offenses Against
Prisoners." ... "A bipartisan panel of senators has concluded that [Republican
President Bush's] former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other
top Bush administration officials bear direct responsibility for the harsh
treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay [Cuba], and that their decisions
led to more serious abuses in Iraq and elsewhere." ... "In the most comprehensive
critique by Congress of the military's interrogation practices, the Senate
Armed Services Committee issued a report yesterday that accuses Rumsfeld
and his deputies of being the authors and chief promoters of harsh interrogation
policies that disgraced the nation and undermined U.S. security. The report,
released by Sens. [ Senators] Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.[ Democratic-Michigan])
and John McCain (R-Ariz.[ Republican Arizona]), contends that Pentagon
officials later tried to create a false impression that the policies were
unrelated to acts of detainee abuse committed by members of the military."
... ""The abuse of detainees in U.S. [United States] custody cannot simply
be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own,"
the report states. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States
government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined
the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their
use against detainees."" ... "The report is the most direct refutation
to date of the administration's rationale for using aggressive interrogation
tactics -- that inflicting humiliation and pain on detainees was legal
and effective, and helped protect the country. The 25-member panel, without
one dissent among the 12 Republican members, declared the opposite to be
true." ... "The [Republican President Bush's] administration's policies
and the resulting controversies, the panel concluded, "damaged our ability
to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the
hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority."" ... "A Defense
Department spokesman noted that the Pentagon cooperated extensively with
the Senate investigation and has taken numerous steps in recent years to
ensure the humane treatment of detainees." ... "The panel's investigation
focused on the Defense Department's employment of controversial interrogation
practices, including forced nudity, painful stress positions, sleep deprivation,
extreme temperatures and the use of dogs. The practices, some of which
had already been adopted by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] at its
secret prisons, were adapted for interrogations at the detention center
at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and later migrated to U.S. detention camps in
Afghanistan and Iraq, including the infamous Abu Ghraib prison." ... "The
true genesis of the decision to use coercive techniques, the report said,
was a memo signed by [Republican] President Bush on [February] Feb. 7,
2002, declaring that the Geneva Convention's standards for humane treatment
did not apply to captured al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. As early as that
spring, the panel said, top administration officials, including National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, participated in meetings in which the
use of coercive measures was discussed. The panel drew on a written statement
by Rice, released earlier this year, to support that conclusion." ... "In
July 2002, Rumseld's senior staff began compiling information about techniques
used in military survival schools to simulate conditions that U.S. airmen
might face if captured by an enemy that did not follow the Geneva conditions.
Those techniques -- borrowed from a training program known as Survival,
Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE -- includ |
