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9-11
Meta Index September 11 2001
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ACCOUNTING News:
 John
McCain -  Government
-  Money
- Accounting
-  Arizona
"Despite McCain's Comments, Senate GOP Not Offering Detailed Budget." ... "On Thursday, House Republicans did wind up offering the frame of an alternative budget -- but then they were widely panned for not releasing a more detailed alternative to the Democratic proposals." ... "That’s what made an exchange Sunday with [Arizona Republican Senator] Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” intriguing." "DAVID GREGORY: “Do you think that Republicans should provide a detailed budget alternative?”""So -- are they?" ... "Actually, no." -By Rick Klein -ABCNEWS.com
Government
- Money
-  Politics
-Deficit
-  Social
Security
"A GOP [Republican] budget with no hard numbers." ... ""House Republicans release a 19-page document [PDF] that contains no hard spending numbers or deficit projections. Per the AP, "One of the few hard bits of information is a promise to simplify the tax code and cut income tax rates to 10 percent for people making $100,000 or less down. They also promise to cut domestic spending below current levels but don't say whether they are exempting Social Security. It's impossible to determine the projected deficit based on their offering."" ... "Not surprisingly, the Democratic National Committee pounced on the GOP's [GOP's=Grand Old Party's=Republican's] budget -- or lack thereof. "After 27 days, the best House Republicans could come up with is a 19-page pamphlet that does not include a single real budget proposal or estimate," said DNC [Democratic National Committee] spokesman Hari Sevugan. "While there had been talk that House Republicans were overriding their Senate counterparts to offer a budget alternative, it's clear after this announcement that neither of them have anything to offer but criticism."" -By Mark Murray -AP -MSNBC 
Government
- Money
- Accounting
- Politics
-  Jobs
- Deficit
-  Iowa
"Republican Budget Plan: ‘Undo’ The Stimulus, Cut Taxes For The Rich." ... "Today, House Republicans released their budget plan, entitled “The Republican Road To Recovery.” They claim the plan “curbs spending, creates jobs and lowers taxes, and controls the debt; and it will soon have our economy growing again.”" ... "For an “alternative budget,” however, it is very short on numbers, including no mention of deficit implications. And the plan for creating jobs and sparking economic growth is actually undoing the stimulus and then cutting additional spending[.]" ... "Of course, stimulus dollars are already on their way out the door, so it’s difficult to envision how one would “undo” the bill. But even if it could be done, it would be an act of neo-Hooverism that would make [Iowa Republican Senator] Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA [Republican-Iowa]) insane three-year spending freeze look wise and prudent." ... "As Matthew Yglesias noted, “It’s strange that the Republicans railing about long-term deficits seem to love long-term deficits when the point of the deficits is to further enrich the rich.”" -By Pat Garofalo -ThinkProgress.org/Wonk Room
 Barack
Obama - Federal
-  Enforcement
- Financial
- Accounting
- Politics
- American
International Group - Consumer
- Crises
-  History
-  US
-  International
"Geithner to Propose Vast Expansion Of U.S. Oversight of Financial System." ... "Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner plans to propose today a sweeping expansion of federal authority over the financial system, breaking from an era in which the government stood back from financial markets and allowed participants to decide how much risk to take in the pursuit of profit." ... "The [Democratic President] Obama administration's plan, described by several sources, would extend federal regulation for the first time to all trading in financial derivatives and to companies including large hedge funds and major insurers such as American International Group. The administration also will seek to impose uniform standards on all large financial firms, including banks, an unprecedented step that would place significant limits on the scope and risk of their activities." ... "Most of these initiatives would require legislation." ... "In coming months, the administration plans to detail its strategy in three other areas: protecting consumers, eliminating flaws in existing regulations and enhancing international coordination." ... "The nation's financial regulations are largely an accumulation of responses to financial crises. Federal bank regulation was a product of the Civil War. The Federal Reserve was created early in the 20th century to mitigate a long series of monetary crises. The Great Depression delivered deposit insurance and a federally sponsored mortgage market. In the midst of a modern economic upheaval, the Obama administration is pitching the most significant regulatory expansion since that time." ... "The administration's signature proposal is to vest a single federal agency with the power to police risk across the entire financial system." (1, 2, 3) -By Binyamin Appelbaum and David Cho with contributions by Zachary A. Goldfarb -WashingtonPost
Barack
Obama - Government
- Financial
-  Law
- Politics
- American
International Group - US
- Global
"Geithner to Outline Major Overhaul of Finance Rules." ... "The [Democratic President] Obama administration will detail on Thursday a wide-ranging plan to overhaul financial regulation by subjecting hedge funds and traders of exotic financial instruments, now among the biggest and most freewheeling players on Wall Street, to potentially strict new government supervision, officials said." ... "The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, will outline the broad revamping of the regulatory system, which goes further than expected, in a hearing on Thursday. He is expected to say that the new rules are necessary to prevent a repeat of the excesses that nearly wrecked the global financial system and plunged the economy into a recession." ... "The plan, which would require Congressional approval, would give the government vast new powers over “systemically important” banks and other financial institutions that are so big that their collapse would jeopardize the economy as a whole." ... "The government would have the power to peer into the inner workings of companies that currently escape most federal supervision — insurance companies like the American International Group, multibillion-dollar hedge funds like the Citadel Group and private equity firms like the Carlyle Group or Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts." ... "But the most striking new proposals, and the ones that may provoke the most heated opposition from the industry, would regulate so-called private pools of capital — hedge funds, private equity funds and venture capital funds — and the gigantic market in financial derivatives, including instruments like credit-default swaps, the insurancelike instruments that allow investors to hedge against bond defaults. " -By Edmund L. Andrews and Louise Story -NYTimes
Government
- Economic
- Accounting
- Job
- History
- Politics
"The New Deal and right-wing revisionism." ... "The best regarded data excluding public-works employees traces a steady decline in joblessness through the first five years of the New Deal, from 25 percent when [Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt] FDR took office to 14.3 percent in 1937. Then, however, joblessness rose, hitting 19.1 percent in 1938 before dropping back to 14.6 percent in 1940 and 9.9 percent in 1941." ... "Include work-relief employees, and unemployment declined more steeply, falling to 9.2 percent in 1937. It then rose to 12.5 percent in 1938 before dropping back to 6 percent in 1941." ... "Why did Roosevelt's recovery falter?" ... "Unfortunately for conservatives, the evidence cuts against their conclusions. The rise in unemployment followed FDR's cutback in government spending in 1937. The resulting spike in unemployment prompted him to shift courses and expand spending again, whereupon unemployment again fell." ... "Gross Domestic Product tracks the same way, notes economist Dean Baker, who has matched the increase in federal spending during each Depression year with the following year's growth in GDP. A 23.7 percent increase in federal spending in 1933 was followed by a 10.8 percent increase in GDP in 1934, for example, while a 34.2 percent increase in 1934 was followed by an 8.9 percent GDP increase in 1935. But when FDR retrenched and spending fell by 10 percent in 1937, the next year's GDP shrank by 3.4 percent." ... "There's virtually no disagreement that World War II gave the country the strong final tug out of the Depression. Yet that reality also argues for the efficacy of Keynesian remedies; economically, the war constituted a huge government stimulus, financed by massive deficit spending." -By Scott Lehigh -BostonGlobe 
 Mitch
McConnell - Economic
- Emergency
- Jobs
- Accounting
- Politics
-  Opinion
-  People
- Social
Security - Government
-  Reference
-  Book
-  Kentucky
"Revisionists' blind view of New Deal." ... "[N]early eight decades after [Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt] FDR launched the New Deal, amid possibly the greatest economic emergency since the 1930s, it’s important to understand that the most sophisticated arguments seeking to demolish the New Deal are based on a misreading of the bulk of the historical evidence. University of California, Davis historian Eric Rauchway, the author of “The Great Depression & The New Deal: A Very Short Introduction,” dismantled Shlaes’ argument in a 2007 review in Slate. He showed how [right wing writer Amity] Shlaes had tried to diminish the nation’s economic growth during the 1930s using the narrow gauge of the Dow Jones Industrial Average as opposed to the gross domestic product." ... "Shlaes cited unemployment figures that excluded Americans who had New Deal-generated jobs, and she virtually ignored what Rauchway calls “the authoritative reference work Historical Statistics of the United States.” That reference book shows that during FDR’s first term, the real GDP grew by some 9 percent annually; and after the 1937-38 recession, the economy grew at an annual clip of 11 percent. By the fall of 1934, another New Deal historian, William E. Leuchtenburg, explains, “the ranks of the unemployed had been reduced by over 2 million and national income stood almost a quarter higher than in 1933.”" ... "The Shlaes-[ Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch] McConnell anti-New Deal critics tend to minimize the enduring contribution of laws such as the Wagner Act, which established workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively, and the Social Security Act of 1935 that provided for unemployment as well as old-age insurance. They highlight, instead, the failure of the National Industrial Recovery Act to fuel economic growth, overlook the ways in which the New Deal alleviated people’s misery and rarely acknowledge that World War II lifted the economy and ultimately ended the Depression because the national government joined closely with the private sector to provide a massive stimulus in the form of federal wartime spending." ... "FDR’s New Deal had its share of failures, setbacks and problems. But to argue that it harmed the American people, “failed abysmally” (Shlaes’ words) to reduce unemployment, and retarded economic growth is to twist the historical evidence beyond all reasonable recognition. Such arguments are forms of revisionism that are misleading, polemical and riddled with distortions of the overwhelming facts at hand about the New Deal’s achievements as well as its real shortcomings. " -By Matthew Dallek -Politico.com
Barack
Obama - Working
-  Families
- Economic
- Government
- Accounting
- History
- Lawmakers
- Politics
"BIGGEST. TAX CUT. EVER." ... "A few weeks ago, when the House approved the economic stimulus bill without any Republican votes, David Weigel noted that he literally couldn't remember "a time when the entire Republican conference in either house voted against tax cuts."" ... "That's true, but let's go a little further. The compromise plan announced last night includes $282 billion in tax cuts over two years. With that in mind, Steven Waldman argues, persuasively, that when the vast majority of congressional Republicans oppose the package, they'll be voting against the biggest tax cut "in history."" "According to the Wall Street Journal, [Republican President] Bush's first two years of tax cuts amounted to $174 billion. A second batch in 2004 and 2005 cost $231. And those were thought to be bigger than the tax cuts offered by Reagan, Kennedy or others.""True. Waldman also notes that this is also an example of a liberal Democrat delivering early on a tax cut he promised during the campaign, a pledge "few Republican thought he'd keep."" ... "[Democratic President] Obama's tax cuts, meanwhile, are short-term refunds paid directly to working and middle class families (some of which Republicans have denounced as "welfare")." ... "As such, GOP [GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican] lawmakers are going to reject one of the largest, if not the largest, tax cut ever proposed by a president -- which just so happens to be targeted at the working and middle class families Obama vowed to look out for." -By Steve Benen -WashingtonMonthly.com
Barack
Obama - Money
- Politics
- Government
- Law
- History
- Peoples
- Jobs
"The Big Winners In Stimulus Compromise: The Upper-Middle Class." ... "When [Democratic] President Obama outlined on January 8 [2009] the rationale for the economic stimulus bill, "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," he clearly identified the men and women most in trouble:" "Nearly two million jobs have now been lost, and on Friday we are likely to learn that we lost more jobs last year than at any time since World War II. Just in the past year, another 2.8 million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs.""The House-Senate compromise, however, cuts funds for extended health care coverage for the unemployed; cuts $30 billion in aid to state governments to prevent reductions in social services to the poor and out-of-work; and also cuts a special "Making Work Pay" tax holiday from $500 to $400 for an individual, and from $1,000 to $800 for a couple, for low-to-middle-income workers still hanging on to their jobs[.]" ... "Amid all the cutting, however, one group emerged unscathed: the upper-middle class, the not-quite-super-rich, but certainly not on the ropes. Most of these folks, in terms of income and employment, are what could be called the un-needy, a group clearly distinct from those Obama identified as the core target of the legislation. The "compromise" legislation includes $70 billion, or just under 10 percent of the whole package, to be used expressly to take care of these affluent people." ... "In fact, these lucky men and women make so much money that they fall into the ever-expanding grasp of the alternative minimum tax (AMT). The AMT was originally designed in 1969 to prevent the nation's millionaires and billionaires from using tax loopholes to pay zero income tax. That year, 155 very wealthy taxpayers paid no federal tax whatsoever. This year, if the law remains as it is currently crafted, the AMT would, through bracket creep, apply to as many as 25 million taxpayers, including those making in the $85,000 to $250,000 range, depending on how many deductions they claim (the more deductions, the more likely the AMT comes into play)." -By Thomas B. Edsall -HuffingtonPost.com
Financial
- Crisis
- Government
- Accounting
- Politics
- History
- Author
-  Texas
"Economist James Galbraith: Bailed-Out Banks Should Be Declared Insolvent." ... "With estimates of the cost of addressing the financial crisis exceeding $9.7 trillion, we speak with economist and University of Texas professor James Galbraith, author of [the book] The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too. Galbraith says rather than pouring billions into propping up troubled giant banks, the government should declare them insolvent." ...  Watch
-  ListenAMY
GOODMAN: "Professor Galbraith, are you for nationalizing banks?"
AMY
GOODMAN: "Professor Galbraith, I hate to ask you this last question
with just about thirty seconds to go, but it’s about the title of your
book and what it means, The Predator State."
Barack
Obama -  Judd
Gregg - Corporate
- Government
- Seniors
-  Health
- People
- Accounting
- History
-  NH
"Gregg Voted to Kill Commerce Before He Agreed to Lead It." ... "[Democratic] President Obama’s new candidate to run the Commerce Department voted in favor of abolishing the agency as a member of the Budget Committee and on the Senate floor in 1995." ... "[New Hampshire Republican Senator] Sen. Judd Gregg , R-N.H. [Republican-New Hampshire], whose nomination was expected to be announced Tuesday, also worked in the Senate to trim the department’s budget as head of the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee." ... "The Senate version of the controversial measure envisioned spending cuts of more than $960 billion, almost half of it from Medicare and Medicaid. Democratic efforts to amend it were uniformly rebuked by a united GOP [GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican] majority on the Budget Committee." ... "Gregg also fought [Democratic] President Bill Clinton’s efforts to increase funding for the Commerce Department to administer the 2000 census. Indeed, Gregg’s commitment to basic functions of the department has been questioned at times." ... "“I guess if you can’t destroy it, go be in charge of it,” said a Senate Republican aide." -By Jonathan Allen -CQPolitics.com
Accounting
- Politics
- Government
- Law
-  New
York - Jobs
"What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses." ... "By almost any measure, 2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street — except, that is, when the bonuses arrived." ... "Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year." ... "That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller." ... "It excludes stock option awards that could push the figures even higher." ... "The state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, said it was unclear if banks had used taxpayer money for the bonuses, a possibility that strikes corporate governance experts, and indeed many ordinary Americans, as outrageous." ... "“The issue of transparency is a significant one, and there needs to be an accounting about whether there was any taxpayer money used to pay bonuses or to pay for corporate jets or dividends or anything else,” Mr. DiNapoli said in an interview." ... "According to Mr. DiNapoli, the brokerage units of New York financial companies lost more than $35 billion in 2008, triple their losses in 2007." ... "Outside the financial industry, many corporate executives received fatter bonuses in 2008, even as the economy lost 2.6 million jobs." -By Ben White with contributions by Paul J. Sullivan -NYTimes
Criminal
-  Home
- Financing
- Accounting
- Law
-  Intelligence
- History
-  Terrorism
- Politics
"FBI saw mortgage fraud early." ... "The FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] was aware for years of "pervasive and growing" fraud in the mortgage industry that eventually contributed to America's financial meltdown, but did not take definitive action to stop it." ... ""It is clear that we had good intelligence on the mortgage-fraud schemes, the corrupt attorneys, the corrupt appraisers, the insider schemes," said a recently retired, high FBI official. Another retired top FBI official confirmed that such intelligence went back to 2002." ... "The problem, according to the two FBI retirees and several other current and former bureau colleagues, is that the bureau was stretched so thin that no one noticed when those lenders began packaging bad mortgages into bad securities." ... ""We knew that the mortgage-brokerage industry was corrupt," the first of the retired FBI officials told the Seattle P-I. "Where we would have gotten a sense of what was really going on was the point where the mortgage was sold knowing that it was a piece of dung and it would be turned into a security. But the agents with the expertise had been diverted to counterterrorism."" ... "Both retired FBI officials asserted that the [Republican President] Bush administration was thoroughly briefed on the mortgage fraud crisis and its potential to cascade out of control with devastating financial consequences, but made the decision not to give back to the FBI the agents it needed to address the problem. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, about 2,400 agents were reassigned to counterterrorism duties." ... "This mass reassignment was first chronicled by the Seattle P-I in the Terrorism Tradeoff, a series of investigative reports beginning in 2007 and stretching into 2008. That administration policy, the P-I reported, resulted in a dramatic plunge in FBI criminal investigations and referrals for prosecution. And recent data from Syracuse University researchers shows the problem has worsened." ... "Public statements by one high FBI executive shows that the bureau was well aware of the potentially devastating impact of rampant mortgage fraud at least five years ago. The executive ominously foretold the crisis in testimony before Congress." ... ""Based on various industry reports and FBI analysis, mortgage fraud is pervasive and growing," Chris Swecker, then assistant director of the criminal investigation division, said in October 2004 before the House subcommittee on housing and community opportunity." ... "Then Swecker made a chillingly accurate prediction of the coming mortgage meltdown and financial collapse:" ... ""The potential impact of mortgage fraud on financial institutions in the stock market is clear. If fraudulent practices become systemic within the mortgage industry and mortgage fraud is allowed to become unrestrained, it will ultimately place financial institutions at risk and have adverse effects on the stock market."" ... "Swecker went on to describe the scenario that ultimately wrecked financial havoc around the world: "Often mortgage loans sold in secondary markets are used by financial institutions as collateral for other investments. ... When loans sold in the secondary market default and have fraudulent or material misrepresentation ... these loans become a nonperforming asset, and in extreme fraud cases, the mortgage-backed security is worthless. Mortgage fraud losses adversely affect loan-loss reserves, profits, liquidity levels and capitalization ratios, ultimately affecting the soundness of the financial institution itself."" -By Paul Shukovsky with contributions by Daniel Lathrop -SeattlePI.NWsource
Financial
- Accounting
-Federal
- Enforcement
-  Florida
- NY
-  Pennsylvania
-  Idaho
"In Echoes Of Madoff, Ponzi Cases Proliferate." ... "Federal and state authorities are reporting a growing number of financial scams that echo the alleged Madoff fraud, as strapped investors seek access to their cash amid increasingly hard times." ... "At least six suspected multimillion-dollar fraud cases have emerged this month alone, many of them alleged Ponzi schemes, in which investors are lured by promises of lofty returns but are actually paid off from new victims' funds." ... "On Tuesday, authorities arrested Arthur Nadel, the missing Florida hedge-fund adviser, who was accused by federal authorities of defrauding clients of millions of dollars." ... "In the latest case to emerge, Nicholas Cosmo, a Long Island, N.Y. [New York], investment-firm owner, surrendered to federal authorities Monday." ... "The [Securities and Exchange Commission] agency, which doesn't keep an official count, brought at least 23 Ponzi cases last year, up from 15 in 2007. It has already filed four in 2009. That tally doesn't include actions on the state level, where allegations of securities fraud are routinely pursued." ... "Three weeks ago, the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] accused a Philadelphia[ Pennsylvania]-area investment fund manager, Joseph S. Forte, with running a Ponzi scheme since at least 1995 that claimed returns as high as 38% and raised $50 million." ... "Meanwhile, Idaho's securities regulators are investigating allegations by investors in Idaho Falls [Idaho] that they lost up to $100 million in an alleged Ponzi scheme by Daren Palmer, a local money manager." -By Steve Stecklow with contributions by Philip Shishkin and William M. Bulkeley -WSJ.com
Barack
Obama - Government
- Economics
- Legislation
- Poor
- Unemployed
- Consumer
-  Construction
- Politics
"GOP [Republicans] may vote no, but economists back Obama stimulus." ... "Economists think the stimulus plan that the House of Representatives will vote on Wednesday, while far from perfect, will help stimulate the moribund U.S. [United States] economy." ... "There's no panacea for what ails the economy. A stimulus plan will work only in combination with other actions, such as more aid to the banking system to spark lending and boost consumer confidence, and the implementation of any plan will be as important as what's in it." ... "However, most leading economists who are experienced in public policy generally favor the stimulus plan that the House is considering because through it the government will step up spending at a time when private-sector spending has fallen off sharply." ... "The House legislation would erect four pillars of economic stimulus. It would provide income support to the poor and recently unemployed, distribute aid to state governments, seek relatively quick employment gains through public works spending and aim to spark consumer and business spending through targeted tax cuts." ... "Private-sector economists who support the stimulus plan say that it could be made better, and, yes, bigger." ... ""I would make the package bigger . . . increase the package to over $1 trillion," [Moody's chief economist Mark] Zandi said." -By Kevin G. Hall -McClatchyDC.com
Corporate
- Government
- Accounting
- Politics
- History
-  Military
- Reconstruction
-  Gas
-  Alberto
Gonzales - Torture
- Law
- Intelligence
- Pat
Tillman - US
-  Afghanistan
- Guantánamo
-  Iraq
"Eight Years of Madoffs." ... "Three days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of [2008 December] Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized [Republican President] Bush management at home and abroad." ... "The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a “new” Iraq." ... "The report quotes no less an authority than Colin Powell on how the scam worked. Back in 2003, Powell said, the Defense Department just “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.’ ” Those of us who questioned these astonishing numbers were dismissed as fools, much like those who begged in vain to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to challenge Madoff’s math." ... "What’s most remarkable about the Times article, however, is how little stir it caused. When, in 1971, The Times got its hands on the Pentagon Papers, the internal federal history of the Vietnam disaster, the revelations caused a national uproar. But after eight years of battering by Bush, the nation has been rendered half-catatonic. The Iraq Pentagon Papers sank with barely a trace." ... "After all, next to big-ticket administration horrors like Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and the politicized hiring and firing at Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department, the wreckage of Iraq reconstruction is what Ralph Kramden of “The Honeymooners” would dismiss as “a mere bag of shells.” The $50 billion also pales next to other sums that remain unaccounted for in the Bush era, from the $345 billion in lost tax revenue due to unpoliced offshore corporate tax havens to the far-from-transparent disposition of some $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money. In the old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have “defined deviancy down” in terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials." ... "Not even a good old-fashioned sex scandal could get our outrage going again. Indeed, a juicy one erupted last year in the Interior Department, where the inspector general found that officials “had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives." ... "Back in the day, an oil-fueled scandal in that one department alone could mesmerize a nation and earn [Republican President] Warren Harding a permanent ranking among our all-time worst presidents. But while the scandals at Bush’s Interior resemble Teapot Dome — and also encompass millions of dollars in lost federal oil and gas royalties — they barely registered beyond the Beltway. Even late-night comics yawned when The Washington Post administered a coup de grâce last week, reporting that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne spent $235,000 from taxpayers to redo his office bathroom (monogrammed towels included)." ... "It took 110 pages for the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan research organization, to compile the CliffsNotes inventory of the Bush wreckage last month. It found “125 systematic failures across the breadth of the federal government.” That accounting is conservative. There are still too many unanswered questions. " ... "Just a short list is staggering. Who put that bogus “uranium from Africa” into the crucial prewar State of the Union address after the C.I.A. [Central Intelligence Agency] removed it from previous Bush speeches? How high up were the authorities who ordered and condoned torture and then let the “rotten apples” at the bottom of the military heap take the fall? Who orchestrated the Pentagon’s elaborate P.R. [Public Relations] efforts to cover up Pat Tillman’s death by “friendly fire” in Afghanistan? " -By Frank Rich -NYTimes
Judd
Gregg - Corporate
- Accounting
- Politics
-Federal
- History
- New
Hampshire
"Republican Judd Gregg (R-NH) Is a Liar." ... "So Justin Fox says:" "The Curious Capitalist: Judd Gregg’s dubious tax math: Republican New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg (or one of his staffers) writes:"-By Brad DeLong"The growth in tax revenues from 2002 through 2007 were some of the largest in history. The tax system became much more progressive, with the top 20% of income earners paying 85% of the taxes -- a rate much higher than during the Clinton years -- all while keeping capital-gains rates low.""I'll blame the WSJ [Wall Street Journal] opinion editors for the verb-subject disagreement in the first sentence. But I'm assuming the facts came from Gregg. Except they're not quite facts—and since this sort of tax disinformation is pretty common, I couldn't resist wasting an hour digging up the data to refute them." |
 
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Christopher
Cox - Corporate
- Government
- Accounting
- Law
- Investigation
- Politics
"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
Corporate
- Government
- Accounting
- Politics
- New
York
Christopher
Cox - Corporate
- Government
- Accounting
- Law
- Enforcement
- Politics
Chris
Cox -Corporate
- Government
- Accounting
- Law
- Enforcement
- Politics
- 
California
- New
York
Chris
Cox - Money
- Accounting
- Politics
- New
York
Corporate
- Government
- Investigators
- Politics
- Accounting
- Consumer
Corporate
- Government
- 
Christmas
- Debt
- History
- Accounting
- Politics
- Homeowners
- 
Auto
- Military
- 
Space
US
- Iraq
- Reconstruction
- Money
- Politics
- Foreign
- 
Production
- Accounting
- Investigations
- Federal
- History
- Military
- Law
Audit
- Law
- Foreign
- History
- 
Argentina
Kevin
Martin - Corporate
- Government
- Politics
- 
Telecommunications
- Accounting
- Investigation
- Consumers
- 
Video
- 
Media
Washington
-Political
- Financing
- Accounting
- Investigation
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Obama
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- 
Enron
- Eliot
Spitzer - New
York - US
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Henry
Paulson
- Corporate
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-Investigation
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Corporate
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- Investigations
- 
Massachusetts
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York
AIG
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Reporter
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Security - Accounting
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Election
Financial
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US
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Henry
Paulson
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Money
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Corporate
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Drugs
Sarah
Palin - John
McCain - Money
- Politics
- Accounting
- 
Alaska
- 
Wisconsin
- 2008
Election
John
McCain - 
Carl
H Lindner Jr - BobPerry
- - Money
- Politics
- Accounting
- Marketing
- 2004
Election - 2008
Election - Texas
- 
Ohio
- Arizona
-
Illinois
- Obama
John
McCain - 
Tom
Loeffler - Susan
E Nelson - 
Gordon
England - 
EADS
- 
European
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- 
Aircraft
- Manufacturing
- Politics
- Government
- Auditors
-US
-2008
Election
Military
- 
Tech
- Safety
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- US
- 
Taiwan
John
McCain - Barack
Obama - Economists
- Accounting
- 2008
Election
Barack
Obama - John
McCain - Corporate
- Politics
- History
- 
Missouri
- 2008
Election
Barack
Obama - John
McCain - Money- Politics
- Workers
- Retirees
- Homeowners
- 
Students
- 
Farmers
- Families
- US_Debt
- Law
- Illinois
- Arizona
- 2008
Election
John
McCain - Tom
Loeffler - Susan
E Nelson - 
Rick
Davis - Illegal
- 2008
Election - Accounting
- Politics
- Federal
- Investigation
Money
- Accounting- Politics
- Investigation
- 
Maryland
- Home
- Construction
Hillary
Clinton - Accounting
- Politics
- Florida
- 
Michigan
- Iowa
-
Puerto
Rico - 
Nevada
- Washington
- 
Maine
- Barack
Obama - 2008
Election - "Hillary:
Peddling pop vote canards to the end." ... "The facts,
which must be repeated:" ... "[2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate]
Hillary [Clinton] does not lead in the popular vote by any measure other
than her own idiosyncratic belief that Florida should count even though
it didn't and hundreds of thousands of Floridians didn't vote because they
were told it wouldn't; that Puerto Rico should count even though Puerto
Ricans can't vote in the general election ("lead us to victory in November"???);
that Michigan should also count even though it didn't and thousands of
Michiganders didn't vote because they were told it wouldn't and she was
the only person on the ballot; that Obama should get zero votes -- Zero!!!
-- from Michigan ["Uncommited" received 238,168 votes, Clinton received
328,309 votes]; and that Obama also should get no votes from four states
that he won [Iowa, Nevada, Washington, and Maine], because they held caucuses
and didn't count the popular vote." -By John Riley
-Newsday.com
Barack
Obama - John
McCain - Accounting
- People
- Families
- US- Iraq
- Military
- Book
- 
MT
- Arizona
- Wisconsin
- 2008
Election - "Obama
slams McCain on Iraq facts." ... "[2008 Election
Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack] Obama isn't expected to
speak until 7:45 pm ET at a rally in Great Falls, MT [Montana]. But his
campaign has released excerpts of his remarks, which go right after [2008
Election Republican Presidential Candidate John] McCain's "pre-surge
levels" misstatement yesterday. They also invoke Scott McClellan's
new book." ... "[Barack Obama:] "There are honest differences about how
to move forward in Iraq, just like there were honest differences about
whether or not we should go to war," Obama is supposed to say. "John McCain
was for the invasion of Iraq; I opposed it. John McCain wants to continue
George
Bush’s war in Iraq indefinitely; I want to end it. So there’s going
to be a clear choice for the American people this November."" ... ""But
that’s not what John McCain’s been talking about the last few days. He’s
been proposing a joint trip to Iraq that’s nothing more than a political
stunt. He’s even been using it to raise a few dollars for his campaign.
But it seems like [Arizona Senator] Sen. McCain’s a lot more interested
in my travel plans than the facts, because yesterday – in his continued
effort to put the best light on a failed policy – he stood up in Wisconsin
and said, 'We have drawn down to pre-surge levels' in Iraq."" ... ""That’s
not true, and anyone running for commander-in-chief should know better.
As the saying goes, you’re entitled to your own view, but not your own
facts. We’ve got around 150,000 troops in Iraq -- 20,000 more than we had
before the surge. We have plans to get down to around 140,000 later this
summer -- that’s still more troops than we had in Iraq before the surge.
And today, Sen. McCain refused to correct his mistake. Just like George
Bush, when he was presented with the truth, he just dug in and refused
to admit his mistake. His campaign said it amounts to 'nitpicking.'"" ...
""Well, I don’t think tens of thousands of American troops amounts to nitpicking.
Tell that to the young men and women who are serving bravely and brilliantly
under our flag. Tell that to the families who have seen their loved ones
fight tour after tour after tour of duty in a war that should’ve never
been authorized and never been waged."" ... ""It’s time for a debate that’s
based on the truth, and I can’t think of anything more important than how
many Americans are in harm’s way. It’s time for a debate that’s based on
how we’re going to end this war -- not a debate that’s based on raising
a few dollars for John McCain’s campaign."" ... ""The American people have
had enough spin. Just this week, we were reminded by President Bush’s own
former spokesman of how it was deception -- not straight talk -- that misled
the American people into war. It’s time to cut through the tough talk so
that we can be straight with the American people about a war that’s cost
us thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars without making
us safer. It’s time to end the political game-playing so that we can finally
end this war. That’s what I’ll do in this campaign. And that’s what I’ll
do when I’m President of the United States."" -From
Mark Murray and Athena Jones -MSNBC
John
McCain - 
Randy
Scheunemann - Political
- Semantics
- People
- Accounting
- US- Iraq
- Military
- Terrorism
- 2008
Election - "McCain,
the Surge, and 'verb tenses'." ... "[2008 Election
Republican Presidential Candidate] John McCain got ahead of events this
week in claiming that the United States military has gone down to "pre-surge
levels" in Iraq. That will not happen until later this year, even by the
most optimistic scenario. He is also wrong about the city of Mosul [Iraq]
being "quiet", unless you exclude car bombs and other mayhem. His advisers
attempted to spin his remarks as a simple matter of "verb tense." But there
is a big difference between "Mission Accomplished" and "We expect the mission
to be accomplished soon."" ... "The Facts:"
... "The McCain campaign organized a rapid-response conference call with
reporters in an attempt to limit the fallout from the senator's erroneous
claim that "we have drawn down to pre-surge levels" in Iraq. The Obama
folks pointed out that there are at present around 155,000 troops in Iraq,
compared to a January
2007 force level of 128,569. The Pentagon is planning
to get down to 140,000 by the end of July." ... "In a conference call
with reporters, McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann said the
issue was a "question of semantics," and that McCain would have been right
if he had said that the Pentagon had "taken a decision" to draw down the
troops or was in the process of drawing them down." ... "But verb tenses
matter, particularly in the case of Iraq, where it is very difficult to
predict what is going to happen next week, let alone next month. By the
Scheunemann standard of linguistic analysis, there was absolutely nothing
wrong with the Bush administration's claim of "Mission Accomplished" back
in May 2003. As we now know, a few things happened after that date to make
the claim somewhat premature." ... "Taking a decision to do something and
actually implementing it are two very different matters. To claim the contrary
reminds me of the motto from the Ministry of Information in George Orwell's
1984: "He who controls the past controls the future; and he who controls
the present controls the past."" ... "Similarly Orwellian is McCain's claim
that all is "quiet" in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul, despite two car
bomb attacks yesterday in the Mosul area that killed at least 20 people.
News reports depict the town as the "last
urban bastion of al-Qaeda" in Iraq. In the conference call, Scheunemann
acknowledged that al Qaeda was still active in the area." [The Washington
Post gives McCain's accounting numbers three Pinochio's out of a possible
four, calling the statements by Candidate McCain "Significant factual error[s]
and/or obvious contradictions."] -By Michael
Dobbs with contributions by Alice Crites
-WashingtonPost
WATCH
"John McCain Misrepresents The Facts On The Ground," where he made the
false assertion: "I can tell you that it [the Surge] is succeeding. I can
look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to
pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet." --John McCain,
Town Hall meeting, May 28, 2008.
John
McCain - US_Debt
- Money
- Politics
- Legislator
- Military
- Families
- Housing
- Construction
- Iraq
- 
Israel
- 
Egypt
- 
Jordan
- Arizona
- US
- 2008
Election - Noteworthy
- "McCain's
Fantasy War on Earmarks." ... "[2008 Election Republican
Presidential Candidate] John McCain boasts that he can save $100 billion
a year "immediately" by eliminating the so-called earmarks that legislators
attach to spending bills to finance pet projects, usually in their home
state. But he has refused to say exactly which projects he would cut, and
his estimates of the amount of money that is being spent on earmarks have
been challenged by independent experts." ... "The Facts:" ... "The
Arizona senator is promising to balance the budget by the end of his first
term, while simultaneously extending the [Republican] George W. Bush tax
cuts, introducing billions of dollars of new tax cuts of his own, and remaining
in Iraq as long as is necessary to stabilize that country. Asked how this
miracle will be accomplished, McCain told George Stephanopoulos of ABC
News This Week on April 20 that he could come up with $100 billion
"tomorrow" by vetoing pork-barrel spending bills." ... "There are a number
of problems with this magical budgetary balancing act. First of all, the
suspiciously round $100 billion figure is largely a figment of the McCain
campaign's imagination. I have not been able to find a single independent
budget expert to vouch for it. McCain's economics adviser, Doug Holtz-Eakin,
will not say how the campaign arrived at the figure, other than that it
is an extrapolation from various studies, including a 2006 study by the
Congressional Research Service available
here [PDF]." ... "However, much of this money is tied to items such
as foreign aid to countries like Israel, Egypt, and Jordan, that McCain
says he will not touch." ... "By most definitions of the term, the amount
of money spent on earmarks is much lower than the CRS study. The Office
for Management and the Budget came up with a figure for $16.9 billion
in the 2008 appropriation bills. Taxpayers
for Commonsense, an independent watchdog group that focuses on wasteful
spending, identified $18.3 billion worth of earmarks in the 2008 bills,
a 23 per cent cut from a record $23.6 billion set in 2005 [when Republicans
controlled Congress]." ... "The figure includes such items as $4 billion
for the [United States] U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which could not be
eliminated without halting hundreds of construction projects around the
country. Another big chunk goes to military construction, including housing
for servicemen and their families, which McCain has also promised not to
touch." ... "McCain's talk about eliminating $100 billion a year in earmarks
is largely fantasy." ... "To use a phrase coined by [Republican] George
H.W. Bush, this is "voodoo economics," based more on wishful thinking than
on hard data or carefully considered policy proposals." [The Washington
Post gives McCain's accounting numbers four Pinochio's out of a possible
four, calling the statements by Candidate McCain "Whoppers."]
-WashingtonPost
Barack
Obama - Hillary
Clinton - Accounting
- 
Indiana
- 
North
Carolina - Illinois
- New
York
- 
Colorado
- 2008
Election - "Obama
Heads for Superdelegate Edge." ... "The 795 superdelegates,
who can vote for any nominee, fall into one of two groups -- the elected
and the unelected." ... "The elected are the party's 28 governors, 234
House members, 49 senators and assorted big-city mayors and state officeholders."
... "The nonelected superdelegates are the more than 400 national and state
party officers of the Democratic National Committee." ... "Among elected
officials, [2008 Election Democratic Presidential Candidate and Illinois
Senator Barack] Sen. Obama leads in endorsements from governors and senators.
He is behind among House members by one, but both camps expect him to pull
ahead unless he does badly in next Tuesday's Indiana and North Carolina
primaries. If he doesn't stumble, enough elected Democrats are expected
to back Sen. Obama after the last primaries June 3 to give him the delegate
majority needed for nomination." ... "[2008 Election Democratic Presidential
Candidate and New York Senator Hillary] Sen. Clinton still leads in endorsements
from nonelected officials. Many have known her and former [Democratic]
President Clinton since the couple's White House years, or worked for them
then." ... "About 300 of the 795 superdelegates remain uncommitted; they
don't have to endorse anyone until [August] Aug. 27 at the Democrats' Denver
[Colorado] convention." -By Jackie Calmes
-WSJ.com
KBR
- Accounting
- Politics
- Government
- Investigation
- US
- Military
- Housing
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- World
- "Ex-KBR
Workers to Testify on Contract Fraud." ... "Two former
KBR employees, Frank Cassaday and Linda Warren, are slated to testify before
the Senate Democratic Policy Committee next Monday, according to the panel."
... "The two reportedly sued their former employer on behalf of the U.S.
[United States] government, claiming KBR fraudulently boosted the number
of soldiers using KBR-managed recreation facilities in an effort to inflate
the fees it was paid." ... "Under a massive new Army logistics contract,
KBR will be one of three firms to compete for as much as $150 billion in
contracts to provide housing, laundry and other basic services in Iraq,
Afghanistan and around the world, the Army announced April 17."
-ABCNEWS.com
John
McCain - Accounting
- Politics
- Economics
- History
- 2008
Election - Arizona
- "Stephanopoulos
left unchallenged McCain's assertion that "every time you have cut capital
gains taxes, revenues have increased"." ... "Summary:
[DISNEY/ABC's] This Week's George Stephanopoulos did not
challenge [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate and Arizona
Senator] Sen. John McCain's assertion that "history shows every time you
have cut capital gains taxes, revenues have increased -- going back to
Jack Kennedy." Stephanopoulos did not note that, notwithstanding a potential
short-term revenue increase, many economists have challenged the claim
that revenue goes up over the long term as a result of capital gains tax
rates being cut." ... "On the April 20 edition of ABC's
This
Week, host George
Stephanopoulos did not challenge Sen. John McCain's assertion that
"history shows every time you have cut capital gains taxes, revenues have
increased -- going back to Jack Kennedy." McCain's claim echoed ABC World
News anchor Charles Gibson's assertion,
during the April 16 Democratic presidential debate,
that "history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues
go up." Additionally, during a panel discussion later on This Week,
Washington Post columnist George F. Will asserted, "[I]t's true that
when you raise capital gains taxes -- rates, you lower revenues from that."
However, as Media Matters for America documented,
notwithstanding a potential short-term revenue increase, many economists
have challenged the claim that revenue goes up over the long term as a
result of capital gains tax rates being cut. Indeed, the nonpartisan Joint
Committee on Taxation estimated in June 2006 that the 2006 extension of
the 2003 cuts on capital gains taxes would result in decreased
revenues of $20 billion over 10 years." ... "In a 2006 letter to Congress,
the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stated,
"In analyzing the relationship between capital gains tax rates and capital
gains realizations, it is important to distinguish between the temporary
and permanent effects of tax rate changes. Investors can generally choose
when to realize their gains; if they believe that tax rates will change
in the future, they may try to time their realizations to occur during
a period with lower tax rates."" -By Eric H. Hananoki
and Jenny Hoffman -MediaMatters.org
John
McCain - Money
- Accounting
- Politics
-
- Arizona
- Illinois
- New
York - Obama
- Clinton
- 2008
Election - "CNN
chart purporting to compare candidates' "wealth" omitted Cindy McCain,
who is reportedly worth $100 million." ... "Summary:
On [TIME WARNER/CNN TV show] The Situation Room, an on-screen chart
showed [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate and Arizona Senator]
Sen. John McCain's income to be significantly lower than that of [2008
Election Democratic Presidential Candidates and Senators from Illinois
and New York] Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton when combined with
the income of their spouses. However, the chart did not include any income
earned by McCain's wife, Cindy. As Dana Bash reported moments earlier of
Cindy McCain, "Some estimates actually put her worth at about $100 million.""
... "Earlier in the program, Bash compared the portion of McCain's income
that he gave to charity with the portion given by the Clintons and Obamas
-- without noting that McCain presumably benefits from his wife's wealth
and from her income from her separate property, a figure that she has not
released." -MediaMatters.org
John
McCain - Media
- Accounting
- Politics
- Arizona
- Massachusetts
- 2004
Election - 2008
Election - "Several
media outlets advanced comparison between Cindy McCain's and Teresa Heinz
Kerry's release of tax info, ignoring key distinction."
... "Summary: Several media outlets have reported that [2008 Election Republican
Presidential Candidate and Arizona Senator] Sen. John McCain's campaign
justified refusing to release Cindy McCain's tax returns by citing [2004
Election Democratic Presidential Candidate and Massachusetts Senator] Sen.
John Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, as "precedent." But they did
not report that, in contrast with Cindy McCain, Heinz Kerry did release
a part of her 2003 income tax return that showed "total income," which
enabled The New York Times to analyze how she benefited from the
[Republican President] Bush tax cuts. Such an analysis of how the McCains
have benefited from the tax cuts -- which Sen. McCain supports extending
permanently
-- is not possible, based on the information his campaign has released
on Cindy McCain's income." ... "These media reports, therefore, have advanced
the McCain campaign's comparison between Cindy McCain's limited release
of financial information and Heinz Kerry's, and in doing so, ignored a
key distinction in the information they released: Unlike Heinz Kerry, Cindy
McCain did not release sufficient information for the public to determine
the extent to which she benefited from the tax cuts her husband supports
extending." -MediaMatters.org
John
McCain - DEBT
- Accounting
- Politics
- Government
- Military
- US
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- 2008
Election - "McCain's
$3.3 Trillion Tax Cut, Budget Pledge at Odds (Update3)."
... "[2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] John McCain's plan
to cut taxes and balance the budget wins praise from fellow Republicans.
Economists and nonpartisan analysts say his numbers don't add up." ...
"McCain's proposal, outlined April 15, would extend [Republican] President
George W. Bush's tax cuts, reduce the top corporate rate, repeal the alternative
minimum tax and double exemptions for dependents. Price: $3.3 trillion
by the end of a President McCain's second term in 2017, according to figures
from his campaign and the Treasury." ... "Robert Bixby, executive director
of the Washington-based Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates
budget restraint, said ``the huge imbalance'' in McCain's plan ``is that
the tax cuts are specific and large and the spending cuts are small and
vague.''" ... "Once, McCain was a deficit hawk, Bixby said, but ``strange
things happen when people run for president.''" ... "McCain's spending
cuts, combined with increased revenue from economic growth, total $1.5
trillion over eight years, leaving a $1.8 trillion net increase to the
national debt." ... "Two Washington research groups said McCain's plan
would cost more. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated his
tax cuts would total $5 trillion over a two-term presidency. The Tax Policy
Center , run jointly by the Brookings Institution and Urban Institute,
said they would cost at least $5.7 trillion." ... "McCain's plan doesn't
address the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which now total more
than $12 billion a month. [$144 billion per year over eight years is potentially
$1.152 trillion of additional US debt.]" -By Ryan
J. Donmoyer and Indira Lakshmanan -Bloomberg
Families
- Jobs
- Consumer
- Economic
- History
- Accounting
- "For
Many, a Boom That Wasn’t." ... "The bigger problem
is that the now-finished boom was, for most Americans, nothing of the sort.
In 2000, at the end of the previous economic expansion, the median American
family made about $61,000, according to the Census Bureau’s inflation-adjusted
numbers. In 2007, in what looks to have been the final year of the most
recent expansion, the median family, amazingly, seems to have made less
— about $60,500." ... "This has never happened before, at least not for
as long as the government has been keeping records. In every other expansion
since World War II, the buying power of most American families grew while
the economy did. You can think of this as the most basic test of an economy’s
health: does it produce ever-rising living standards for its citizens?"
... "“We have had expansions before where the bottom end didn’t do well,”
said Lawrence F. Katz, a Harvard economist who studies the job market.
“But we’ve never had an expansion in which the middle of income distribution
had no wage growth.”" ... "But the larger point is still crucial: the modern
American economy distributes the fruits of its growth to a relatively narrow
slice of the population." -By David
Leonhardt -NYTimes
US
- Iraq
- Oil
- Accounting
- Politics- Reconstruction
- Military
- Michigan
- "Blitzer:
Iraqis playing U.S. taxpayers for 'suckers'?" ...
"Just before and immediately after the U.S. [United States] launched its
invasion of Iraq, [Republican President] Bush administration officials
optimistically predicted that Iraqi oil exports would soon finance the
reconstruction of the country. That didn’t happen. U.S. taxpayers were
stuck with the literally tens of billions of dollars in bills." ... "Now,
five years later and with the price of oil reaching more than $100 a barrel,
Iraqi oil exports are generating huge sums — $56.4 billion this year alone,
according to the Government Accountability Office. [Michigan Democratic]
Senator Carl Levin, the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, says
Iraq now has tens of billions of dollars in surplus funds in their banks
and in other accounts around the world, including about $30 billion in
U.S. banks right now." ... "But Levin notes that the Iraqis by and large
are still not using their money to build new roads, bridges, schools and
hospitals. Why should they? Uncle Sam is still doing that for them." ...
"“The result is that far from financing its own reconstruction, as the
administration promised five years ago, the Iraqi government has left the
U.S. to make most of the capital expenditures needed to provide essential
services and improve the quality of life of the Iraqi citizens,” Levin
said in his opening remarks before the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus
and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. “As of last Thursday,” Levin added, “the United
States is paying the salaries of almost 100,000 Iraqis who are working
on reconstruction.”" -By Wolf Blitzer
-CNN
John
Ashcroft - Criminal
- Corporate
- Government
- Secret
- Accounting
- Politics
- Medical
- Home
- "Leniency
for big corporations in the U.S.." ... "Instead,
many companies, from boutique outfits to immense corporations like American
Express, have avoided the cost and stigma of defending themselves against
criminal charges with a so-called deferred prosecution agreement, which
allows the government to collect fines and appoint an outside monitor to
impose internal reforms without going through a trial. In many cases, the
name of the monitor and the details of the agreement are kept secret."
... "Deferred prosecutions have become a favorite tool of the [Republican
President] Bush administration. But some legal experts now wonder if the
policy shift has led companies, in particular financial institutions now
under investigation for their roles in the subprime [home] mortgage debacle,
to test the limits of corporate anti-fraud laws." ... "Some lawyers suggest
that companies may be willing to take more risks because they know that,
if they are caught, the chances of getting a deferred prosecution are good."
... "Deferred prosecution agreements, or DPAs, have become controversial
because of a medical supply company's agreement to pay up to $52 million
to the consulting firm of John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, as
an outside monitor to avoid criminal prosecution." ... "Beyond financial
crimes, deferred agreements have been used in lieu of prosecuting companies
- though not individuals - for export control violations, obscenity violations,
Medicare and Medicaid fraud, kickbacks and environmental violations." (1,
2)
-By Eric Lichtblau -NYTimes
via -IHT.com
John
McCain - 
Chuck
Hagel - Military
- Money
- Account
- Law
- Politics
- 
Virginia
- 
Nebraska
- US
- Iraq
- Op-Ed
- 2008
Election - "McCain
Is AWOL On New GI Bill." ... "In November 2007, Sens.
[Virginia Democratic Senator] Jim Webb and [Nebraska Republican Senator]
Chuck Hagel penned an op-ed in the New York Times advocating a reformed
G.I. Bill that would provide Iraq war veterans with greater educational
opportunities." ... "The idea, which was first introduced in January 2007,
was at once ambitious and benign. Adjust the current landmark law -- which
requires members of the armed services to pay $1,200 in order to participate
-- to better account for spikes in tuition and living expenses. Not only
would there be a greater incentive for those considering enlistment, but
the American economy would be bolstered by an influx of educated veterans."
... ""We must put together the right formula that will demonstrate our
respect for those who have stepped forward to serve in these difficult
times," wrote Webb and Hagel. "First-class service to country deserves
first-class appreciation."" ... "Flash-forward several months and Webb
and Hagel's vision (after months of consideration) is on the cusp of codification.
The 21st Century G.I. Bill may be included in the language of the next
Iraq war supplemental. And while, if considered separately, it could require
60 votes for passage, more than 50 Senators -- including many Republicans
-- have already signed on as co-sponsors." ... "And yet, surprisingly,
one of those Senators who has not yet offered his support is [2008 Election
Republican Presidential Candidate] John McCain." -By
Sam
Stein -HuffingtonPost.com
Corporate
- Government
- Aviation
- Safety
- Audit
- Transportation
- Law
- Texas
- "FAA
Whistleblower Says He Was Threatened: Tells Congress
Agency Viewed Airlines More Like "Customers" Than Companies To Be Regulated."
... "The FAA [Federal Aviation Agency] last month took the rare step of
ordering the audit of maintenance records at all domestic carriers following
reports of missed safety inspections at Dallas[Texas]-based Southwest.
The airline was hit with a record $10.2 million fine for continuing to
fly dozens of Boeing 737s that hadn't been inspected for cracks in their
fuselages." ... "Both FAA whistleblowers - Charalambe Boutris and [Douglas]
Peters - said the agency views the airlines as its "customers" instead
of companies to be regulated. They said the FAA's chief maintenance inspector
at Southwest, Douglas T. Gawadzinski, knowingly allowed Southwest to keep
planes flying that put passengers at risk, and that another inspector knew
of the problem and did nothing." ... "Gawadzinski is still employed by
the FAA, but has no responsibility for safety decisions, said Nicholas
Sabatini, the agency's associate administrator for aviation safety. The
FAA will "take whatever action the law will allow" when the investigation
into the Southwest episode is complete, he added." ... "Gawadzinski was
not asked to testify at Thursday's hearing because he was considered to
be a hostile witness who would most likely refuse to answer questions that
could have incriminated himself, according to a spokesman for the House
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee."
-AP via -CBSNews
Iraq
- US
- Military
- Politics
- History
- Money
- Accounting
- Investigators
- "After
years of effort, Iraqi army still can't 'stand up'."
... "Iraq's new army is "developing steadily," with "strong Iraqi leaders
out front," the chief U.S. [United States] trainer said." ... "That was
three-plus years ago, and the trainer was David H. Petraeus, now the top
American commander in Iraq. Some of those Iraqi officials at the time were
busy embezzling more than $1 billion allotted for the new army's weapons,
according to investigators." ... "The 2004-05 Defense Ministry scandal
was just one in a long series of setbacks in the five-year struggle to
"stand up" an Iraqi military as [Republican] President Bush has promised
and allow hard-pressed U.S. forces to "stand down." The latest discouraging
episode was unfolding this weekend in bloody Basra, the southern city where
Iraqi government forces -- in their toughest test yet -- were struggling
to gain the upper hand in a battle with Shiite Muslim militias." ... "Year
by year, the goal of deploying a capable, free-standing Iraqi army has
seemed to always slip further into the future." ... "How not to build
an army:" ... "Early 2003: The first reversal came even before
the March U.S. invasion, when the Pentagon discarded prewar plans that
called for restructuring the 400,000-man Saddam Hussein-era army into a
postwar force of 150,000 to 200,000." ... "Mid-2003: U.S. occupation
chief L. Paul Bremer III unilaterally ordered Saddam's army disbanded,
and the Bush administration opted for a token military force to guard Iraq's
borders. Bremer said the army had already fallen apart after Saddam's fall.
The controversial move helped prompt many Sunni officers to eventually
join the insurgency." ... "Iraqi view: [Lt. Gen. [Lieutenant General]
James] Dubik says Iraqi defense officials don't expect to take over internal
security until as late as 2012 and won't be able to defend Iraq's borders
until 2018." -By Charles J. Hanley
-AP via -Star-Telegram.com
Illegal
- Corporate
- Government
- 
Surveillance
- Terrorism
- Investigation
- Consumer
- Finances
- Telephone
- 
Internet- Data
- Intelligence
- Politics
- Rights
- History- Audit
- 
Vt
- "More
FBI Privacy Violations Confirmed." ... "The FBI [Federal
Bureau of Investigation] acknowledged it improperly accessed Americans'
telephone records, credit reports and Internet traffic in 2006, the fourth
straight year of privacy abuses resulting from investigations aimed at
tracking terrorists and spies." ... "Testifying at a Senate Judiciary Committee
hearing, [FBI Director Robert] Mueller raised the issue of the FBI's controversial
use of so-called national security letters [NSLs] in reference to an upcoming
report on the topic by the Justice Department's inspector general." ...
"An audit by the inspector general last year found the FBI demanded personal
records without official authorization or otherwise collected more data
than allowed in dozens of cases between 2003 and 2005. Additionally, last
year's audit found that the FBI had underreported to Congress how many
national security letters were requested by more than 4,600." ... "National
security letters, as outlined in the USA Patriot Act, are administrative
subpoenas used in suspected terrorism and espionage cases. They allow the
FBI to require telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks,
credit bureaus and other businesses to produce highly personal records
about their customers or subscribers without a judge's approval." ... "Speaking
before the FBI chief, [Vermont Democratic Senator and] Senate Judiciary
Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. [Democratic-Vermont], urged Mueller to be
more vigilant in correcting what he called "widespread illegal and improper
use of national security letters."" ... ""Everybody wants to stop terrorists.
But we also, though, as Americans, we believe in our privacy rights and
we want those protected," Leahy said. "There has to be a better chain of
command for this. You cannot just have an FBI agent who decides he'd like
to obtain Americans' records, bank records or anything else and do it just
because they want to."" -By Lara Jakes Jordan
-AP via -SFGate.com
Dennis
Hastert - Money
- Accounting
- Oil
- Iraq
- Military
- US
- Ill
- 
Ark
- Va
- "Republicans
See Storm Clouds Gathering: Week of Bad News Highlights
Difficult Challenges for GOP in Fall Elections." ... "It started with the
loss last weekend of the seat held for two decades by [Illinois Republican
Representative and] former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill. [Republican-Illinois]).
It got worse when Republicans lost potentially strong challengers to Democratic
senators in South Dakota and New Jersey, and failed to field anyone to
oppose the reelection bid of [Arkansas Democratic Senator] Sen. Mark Pryor
(D-Ark. [Democratic-Arkansas])." ... "The latest blow came with the revelation
that the former treasurer of the National Republican Congressional Committee
(NRCC) had allegedly diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars -- and possibly
as much as $1 million -- from the organization's depleted coffers to his
own bank accounts." ... ""It's no mystery," said [Virginia Republican Representative]
Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va. [Republican-Virginia]). "You have a very
unhappy electorate, which is no surprise, with oil at $108 a barrel, stocks
down a few thousand points, a war in Iraq with no end in sight and a president
who is still very, very unpopular. He's just killed the Republican brand.""
(1, 2)
-By Jonathan Weisman with contributions by Paul Kane
-WashingtonPost
Homeowner
- Equity
- Accounting
- "Homeowner
equity is lowest since 1945." ... "Americans' percentage
of equity in their homes fell below 50 percent for the first time on record
since 1945, the Federal Reserve said Thursday." ... "Homeowners' portion
of equity slipped to downwardly revised 49.6 percent in the second quarter
of 2007, the central bank reported in its quarterly U.S. [United States]
Flow of Funds Accounts, and declined further to 47.9 percent in the fourth
quarter — the third straight quarter it was under 50 percent." ... "That
marks the first time homeowners' debt on their houses exceeds their equity
since the Fed started tracking the data in 1945." ... "Home equity, which
is equal to the percentage of a home's market value minus mortgage-related
debt, has steadily decreased even as home prices jumped earlier this decade
due to a surge in cash-out refinances, home equity loans and lines of credit
and an increase in 100 percent or more home financing." -By
J.W. Elphinstone -AP
via -SFGate.com
Consumer
- Accounting
- History
- Labor
- Food
- Health
- Gasoline
- Politics
- "New
inflation data explain middle-class squeeze." ...
"New data from the Labor Department confirm what most middle-class Americans
already know: Inflation is squeezing them." ... "As consumer prices rose
by 4.1 percent last year, the highest rate since 1990, the prices of basic
essentials such as food, gasoline and health insurance climbed far more
steeply, explaining why so many Americans are telling pollsters that the
economy is their chief concern." ... "The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported
Wednesday that the price of food and beverages rose 4.8 percent. At the
same time, real weekly earnings failed to keep pace, rising 0.9 percent
for the year. In the simplest of terms, a dollar earned bought less." ...
"Digging deeper into the data reveals, for example, that the price of bread
rose 7.4 percent last year, almost twice the rate of inflation." ... "The
price of eggs rose 29.2 percent in 2007, while the price of fresh whole
milk was up 13.1 percent. Since July, when milk prices first soared, the
price of fresh whole milk has risen by almost 23 percent." ... "The price
of health insurance, another major political-campaign theme, rose by 10.1
percent last year." ... "Gasoline prices rose 8.2 percent on average last
year, the slowest rate of growth since 2002. But pump prices began climbing
anew in October and for the last quarter of 2007 average prices rose by
just more than 30 percent." -By
Kevin
G. Hall -McClatchyDC.com
Secretive
- Criminal
- Government
- Telephone
- Surveillance
- Intelligence
- Law
- Accounting
- US
- Foreign
- Terrorism
- Politics
- "FBI
Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills." ... "Telephone
companies have cut off FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] wiretaps used
to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures
to pay phone bills on time." ... "A Justice Department audit released Thursday
blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in
undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed
one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said." ... "In at least one case,
a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation
"was halted due to untimely payment," the audit found. FISA [Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act] wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive
and secretive criminal investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected
terrorists or spies." ... ""We also found that late payments have resulted
in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established
to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence,"
according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine." -By
Lara Jakes Jordan -SFGate.com
US
- Iraq
- Military
- 
- World
- Health
- Science
- Accounting
- "Study:
151,000 Iraqis died in 3 years after U.S. invasion."
... "About 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years after the
United States invaded, concludes the best effort yet to count deaths —
one that still may not settle the fierce debate over the war's true toll
on civilians and others." ... "The estimate comes from projections by the
World Health Organization and the Iraqi government, based on door-to-door
surveys of nearly 10,000 households. Experts called it the largest and
most scientific study of the Iraqi death toll since the war began." ...
"Its bottom line is far lower than the 600,000 deaths reported in an earlier
study but higher than numbers from other groups tracking the count." ...
"The new estimate covers a period from the start of the war in March 2003
through June 2006. It closely mirrors the tally Iraq's health minister
gave in late 2006, based on 100 bodies a day arriving at morgues and hospitals."
... "Les Roberts, a Columbia University epidemiologist involved in an even
earlier survey in 2004 when he was at Johns Hopkins, believes the new toll
is too low." ... ""This is consistent with family members not wanting to
tell the government about violent deaths," he said."
-AP via -USATODAY
John
Edwards
- Military
- Homeless
- Poverty
- Accounting
- Language
- 2008
Election - Politics
- "Edwards
on Veterans: It Checks Out." ... "Several readers
have asked us to check this surprising statistic, often used by [2008 Election
Democratid Presidential Candidate John] Edwards. The language may be overly
dramatic, but the figure is an official one, from the Department of Veterans
Affairs. The department believes that one-third of the adult homeless population
of the United States "have served their country in the Armed Services."
A posting on the department Web site says that about 195,000 veterans are
"homeless on any given night" and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness
at some point during the course of a year."
-WashingtonPost
Hillary
Clinton
- Barack
Obama
- John
Edwards
- Iowa- New
York
- Illinois
- North
Carolina - 2008
Election - Opinion
- History
- Accounting
- "The
Tyranny of Super-Delegates." ... "And now that Iowans
have spoken – the first citizens in the nation to do so – here's the Democratic
delegate count for the top three candidates (2,025 delegates are needed
to secure the nomination):" ... "[2008 Election Democratic Presidential
Candidate Hillary] Clinton – 169" ... "[2008 Election Democratic Presidential
Candidate Barack] Obama – 66" ... "[2008 Election Democratic Presidential
Candidate John] Edwards – 47" ... ""Huh?" you say. "vanden Heuvel, you
made a MAJOR typo."" ... "In fact, those
numbers are correct: the third-place finishing [New York Senator] Sen.
Hillary Clinton now has over twice as many delegates as [IllinoisSenator]
Sen. Obama, and more than three times as many delegates as the second-place
candidate, [North Carolina Senator] Sen. John Edwards. Why? Because the
Democratic Party uses an antiquated and anti-democratic nominating system
that includes 842 "super-delegates" – un-pledged party leaders not chosen
by the voters, free to support the candidate of their choice, and who comprise
more than forty percent of the delegates needed to win the nomination.
Many have already announced the candidate they will support." ... "In a
clear attempt to protect the party establishment, this undemocratic infrastructure
was created following George McGovern's landslide defeat in 1972." -By
Katrina vanden Heuvel -TheNation.com
US
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Worldwide
- Military
- Government
- Accounting
- Terrorism
- Politics
- History
- Alaska
- 
Ted
Stevens - "Wars
Cost $15 Billion a Month, GOP Senator Says." ...
"The latest estimate of the growing costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
and the worldwide battle against terrorism -- nearly $15 billion a month
-- came last week from one of the Senate's leading proponents of a continued
U.S. [United States] military presence in Iraq." ... ""This cost of this
war is approaching $15 billion a month, with the Army spending $4.2 billion
of that every month," [Alaska GOP=Grand Old Party=Republican Senator] Sen.
Ted Stevens (Alaska), the ranking Republican on the Appropriations defense
subcommittee, said in a little-noticed floor speech Dec. [December] 18."
... "While most of the public focus has been on the political fight over
troop levels, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported this month
that the [Republican President] Bush administration's request for the 2008
fiscal year of $189.3 billion [$189.3/12=$15.775 billion per month] for
Defense Department operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and worldwide counterterrorism
activities was 20 percent higher than for fiscal 2007 and 60 percent higher
than for fiscal 2006." (1, 2)
-By Walter Pincus -WashingtonPost
Noteworthy
- Industrial
- Government
- Accounting
- 
Environmental
- Health
- Safety
- Politics- 
Air
- 
Water
- 
Ground
- "EPA
was pressured to weaken toxic report rules." ...
"The [Republican President Bush] White House pressured the Environmental
Protection Agency [EPA] to weaken requirements that companies annually
disclose releases of toxic chemicals, congressional auditors say." ...
"In a study scheduled to be released next week, the Government Accountability
Office says the changes mean that industry will have to file 22,000 fewer
reports each year, reducing an important public monitoring tool on industrial
emissions." ... "The EPA rushed to complete the changes because of "pressure"
from the White House Office of Management and Budget to reduce the regulatory
burdens on industry, says the report obtained by The Associated Press.
The White House overstated the cost-savings to industry of making the changes,
it added." ... "For more than two decades, industries and businesses have
had to disclose to the EPA the amount of toxic chemicals they produce,
store and discharge into the air, water and ground." ... "Last December,
the EPA reduced the amount of information that needed to be disclosed in
the Toxic Release Inventory Report, or TRI, process." -By
H. Josef Hebert -AP
via -Chron
United
States - Debt
- Government
- Fiscal
- Politics
- People
- Parents- Accounting
- History
- Homeowners
- 
Japan
- 
China
- 
Britain
- 
Saudi
Arabia - Oil
- Countries
- "National
Debt Grows $1 Million a Minute." ... "Like a ticking
time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding
by about $1.4 billion a day -- or nearly $1 million a minute." ... "What's
that mean to you?" ... "It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman,
child and infant in the United States." ... "Even if you've escaped the
recent housing and credit crunches and are coping with rising fuel prices,
you may still be headed for economic misery, along with the rest of the
country. That's because the government is fast straining resources needed
to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing
$9.13 trillion." ... "And like homeowners who took out adjustable-rate
mortgages, the government faces the prospect of seeing this debt -- now
at relatively low interest rates -- rolling over to higher rates, multiplying
the financial pain." ... "The national debt -- the total accumulation of
annual budget deficits -- is up from $5.7 trillion when [Republican] President
Bush took office in January 2001 and it will top $10 trillion [$10,000,000,000,000.00]
sometime right before or right after he leaves in January 2009." ... "Foreign
governments and investors now hold some $2.23 trillion -- or about 44 percent
-- of all publicly held U.S. debt. That's up 9.5 percent from a year earlier."
... "Japan is first with $586 billion, followed by China ($400 billion)
and Britain ($244 billion). Saudi Arabia and other oil-exporting countries
account for $123 billion, according to the Treasury." ... "Democrats are
blaming the runup in deficit spending on [Republican President] Bush and
his Republican allies who controlled Congress for the first six years of
his presidency." (1, 2,
3)
-By Tom Raum -AP
via -ChicagoTribune
Secret
- 
Rudy
Giuliani
- Cops
- Car
- Family
- Travel
- Gas
- Account
- New
York
- Pennsylvania
- Christmas
- 2008
Election - "City
taxpayers picked up tab for Judith Giuliani's visit to kin in Pennsylvania."
... "In the fall of 2001, [New York City, New York] city cops chauffeured
[2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] Rudy Giuliani's then-mistress,
Judith Nathan, to her parents' Pennsylvania home 130 miles away on the
taxpayers' dime." ... "Records show that city cops refueled at an ExxonMobil
station down the road from Nathan's childhood home in Hazleton on Oct.
20, 2001, while Giuliani stayed behind in New York attending 9/11 funerals."
... "A similar receipt pops up at a different Hazleton gas station two
months later, when Nathan apparently went home for a pre-Christmas visit
with her parents." ... "The records show that - in addition to using [New
York] City Hall funds to take Giuliani and Nathan to 11 secret trysts in
the Hamptons, as has been previously reported - taxpayers were paying to
ferry Nathan on long-distance trips without Giuliani, now a Republican
contender for President." ... "The expenses were all paid with a City Hall
American Express card funded with money from mayoral office units that
had nothing to do with travel or security." -By Michael
Saul and David Saltonstall -NYDailyNews.com
Money
- Accounting
- Politics
- Florida
- "Where
Was Jeb?" ... "A government money market debacle
unfolding in Florida is raising questions about former [Florida Republican]
governor and presidential brother Jeb Bush's possible involvement in the
mess." ... "Florida froze withdrawals from a state investment fund earlier
this week when local governments withdrew billions of dollars out of concern
for the fund's financial stability." ... "In the past few days, municipalities
have withdrawn roughly $9 billion, nearly a third of the $28 billion fund
(which is similar to a money market fund) controlled by the Florida's State
Board of Administration (SBA). The run on the fund was triggered by worries
that a percentage of the portfolio contained debt that had defaulted."
... "A majority of this paper was sold to SBA by Lehman Brothers (nyse:
LEH
- news
- people
). Bush, as the state's top elected official, served on a three-member
board that oversaw the SBA until he retired as governor in January. In
August, Bush was hired as a consultant to the bank." -By
Megha Bahree -Forbes
Secret
- Rudy
Giuliani
- Accounting
- History
- New
York
- Police
- 2008
Election - "Rudy
Giuliani campaign team backtracks on tryst talk."
... "The uproar grew Thursday over expenses for [2008 Election Republican
Presidential Candidate] Rudy Giuliani's protection during his trysts with
Judith Nathan as his campaign's initial defense - that its accounting methods
were the same as previous mayors' - unraveled." ... "Joe Lhota, a deputy
mayor in Giuliani's City Hall, told the Daily News Wednesday night that
the administration's practice of allocating security expenses to small
city offices that had nothing to do with mayoral protection has "gone on
for years" and "predates Giuliani."" ... "When told budget officials from
the administrations of Ed Koch and David Dinkins said they did no such
thing, Lhota caved Thursday, "I'm going to reverse myself on that. I'm
just going to talk about the Giuliani era," Lhota said. "I should only
talk about what I know about."" ... "The embarrassing backtrack comes as
Giuliani rushed to network airwaves to defend himself against allegations
his administration deliberately attempted to conceal the taxpayer cost
of his NYPD protection while he engaged in secret Hamptons liaisons with
Nathan, his then-mistress and current wife." (1, 2)
-By David Saltonstall and Michael Saul -NYDailyNews.com
Secret
- Rudy
Giuliani
- Police
- Car
- Accounting
- Politics
- New
York
- 2008
Election - "NYPD
Chief Casts Doubt on Giuliani Expense Story." ...
"New questions were raised today about [2008 Election Republican Presidential
Candidate] Rudy Giuliani's explanation for submitting police security
expenses to obscure city agencies while he was mayor of New York [City,
New York] and carried on a secret affair with his mistress, who also was
given use of a police driver and city car." ... "Giuliani said Thursday
the unusual billing practice was not intended to hide anything but instead
to speed payment of American Express credit card bills." ... "But the current
New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said today he knew of no problems
with the delay of payments before Giuliani was mayor, when Kelly served
under Mayor David Dinkins, or since." -By Brian Ross
and Richard Esposito -ABCNEWS.com
Rudolph
W Giuliani
- Crime- History
- Economy
- Housing
- Transit
- Law
- Politics
- New
York
- New
Hampshire - Illinois
- 2008
Election - "Citing
Statistics, Giuliani Misses Time and Again." ...
"Discussing his crime-fighting success as mayor, Mr. Giuliani [2008 Election
Republican Presidential Candidate Rudolph W. Giuliani, former Mayor of
New York City, New York] told a television interviewer that New York was
“the only city in America that has reduced crime every single year since
1994.” In New Hampshire this week, he told a public forum that when he
became mayor in 1994, New York “had been averaging like 1,800, 1,900 murders
for almost 30 years.” When a recent Republican debate turned to the question
of fiscal responsibility, he boasted that “under me, spending went down
by 7 percent.”" ... "All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated
or just plain wrong." ... "For instance, another major American city claims
to have reduced crime every year since 1994: Chicago [Illinois]. New York
[City, New York] averaged 1,514 murders a year during the three decades
before Mr. Giuliani took office; it did not record more than 1,800 homicides
until 1980. And Mr. Giuliani’s own memoir states that spending grew an
average of 3.7 percent for most of his tenure; an aide said Mr. Giuliani
had meant to say that he had proposed a 7 percent reduction in per capita
spending during his time as mayor." ... "Last weekend, speaking about his
belief in supply-side economics, Mr. Giuliani said, “I lowered, argued
for lowering, and got the hotel occupancy tax lowered by 33 percent. And
I was collecting $200 million more from the lower tax than the city had
been collecting from before I was mayor from the higher tax.”" ... "In
fact, the increase in revenues from the hotel occupancy tax was just over
a quarter of what Mr. Giuliani asserted — the city’s hotel tax revenues
grew by roughly $58 million during his term, according to the city’s Independent
Budget Office — and a booming economy, as well as the reduction in crime
Mr. Giuliani helped produce, probably played a part." ... "Factcheck.org
has reported that the Giuliani campaign exaggerated when it boasted on
its Web site that “Mayor Giuliani increased the police force from 28,000
to 40,000,” noting that most of that increase came from his merger of the
Transit and Housing Police Departments with the New York Police Department,
a transfer of more than 7,000 existing officers to the department." (1,
2)
-By Michael Cooper -NYTimes
US
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Military
- People
- Brain
- Science
- Accounting
- Politics
- 
NJ
- "20,000
vets' brain injuries not listed in Pentagon tally."
... "At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during
combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries,
according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY." ...
"The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs,
show that about five times as many troops sustained brain trauma as the
4,471 officially listed by the Pentagon through Sept. 30. These cases also
are not reflected in the Pentagon's official tally of wounded, which stands
at 30,327." ... "More than 150,000 troops may have suffered head injuries
in combat, says [New Jersey Democratic Representative] Rep. Bill Pascrell,
D-N.J., founder of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force." ... "About
1.5 million troops have served in Iraq, where traumatic brain injury can
occur despite heavy body armor worn by troops." -By
Gregg Zoroya -USATODAY
US
- Iraq
- Criminal
- Business
- Military
- Politics
- Accounting
- "Broken
Supply Channel Sent Weapons for Iraq Astray." ...
"As the insurgency in Iraq escalated in the spring of 2004, American officials
entrusted an Iraqi businessman with issuing weapons to Iraqi police cadets
training to help quell the violence." ... "By all accounts, the businessman,
Kassim al-Saffar, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, did well at distributing
the Pentagon-supplied weapons from the Baghdad Police Academy armory he
managed for a military contractor. But, co-workers say, he also turned
the armory into his own private arms bazaar with the seeming approval of
some American officials and executives, selling AK-47 assault rifles, Glock
pistols and heavy machine guns to anyone with cash in hand — Iraqi militias,
South African security guards and even American contractors." ... "“This
was the craziest thing in the world,” said John Tisdale, a retired Air
Force master sergeant who managed an adjacent warehouse. “They were taking
weapons away by the truckload.”" ... "Activities at that armory and other
warehouses help explain how the American military lost track of some 190,000
pistols and automatic rifles supplied by the United States to Iraq’s security
forces in 2004 and 2005, as auditors discovered in the past year." ...
"These discoveries prompted criminal inquiries by the Pentagon and the
Justice Department, and stoked fears that the arms could fall into enemy
hands and be used against American troops. So far, no missing weapons have
been linked to any American deaths, but investigators say that in a country
awash with weapons, it may be impossible to trace where some ended up."
... "While the Pentagon has yet to offer its own accounting of how the
weapons channel broke down, it is clear from interviews with two dozen
military and civilian investigators, contracting officers, warehouse managers
and others that military expediency sometimes ran amok, the lines between
legal and illegal were blurred and billions of dollars in arms were handed
over to shoestring commands without significant oversight." ... "Some investigators
said that because military suppliers to the war zone were not required
to record serial numbers, it was unlikely that the authorities would ever
be able to tell where the weapons went." ... "Many of those weapons were
issued when [General] Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the top American commander
in Iraq, was responsible for training and equipping Iraqi security forces
in 2004 and 2005. " (1, 2,
3)
-By Eric Schmitt and Ginger Thompson with contributions
by Margot Williams and James Glanz -NYTimes
Secret- 
Women
- Health
- Money
- People
- Accounting
- Consumer
- Law
- "Health
insurer tied bonuses to dropping sick policyholders."
... "One of the [California] state's largest health insurers set goals
and paid bonuses based in part on how many individual policyholders were
dropped and how much money was saved." ... "Woodland Hills [California]-based
Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in medical expenses by rescinding
about 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006. During that period, it paid
its senior analyst in charge of cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses
based in part on her meeting or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies,
documents disclosed Thursday showed." ... "The revelation that the health
plan had cancellation goals and bonuses comes amid a storm of controversy
over the industry-wide but long-hidden practice of rescinding coverage
after expensive medical treatments have been authorized." ... "These cancellations
have been the recent focus of intense scrutiny by lawmakers, state regulators
and consumer advocates. Although these "rescissions" are only a small portion
of the companies' overall business, they typically leave sick patients
with crushing medical bills and no way to obtain needed treatment." ...
"The bonuses were disclosed at an arbitration hearing in a lawsuit brought
by Patsy Bates, a Gardena [California] hairdresser whose coverage was rescinded
by Health Net in the middle of chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer."
... "Health Net had sought to keep the documents secret even after it was
forced to produce them for the hearing, arguing that they contained proprietary
information and could embarrass the company." (1, 2)
-By Lisa Girion -LAtimes
Drug
- Money
- Sales
- Politics
- Elderly
- Consumer
- Health
- Law
- Audits
- Michigan
- "Medicare
Audits Show Problems in Private Plans." ... "Tens
of thousands of Medicare recipients have been victims of deceptive sales
tactics and had claims improperly denied by private insurers that run the
system’s huge new drug benefit program and offer other private insurance
options encouraged by the [Republican President] Bush administration, a
review of scores of federal audits has found." ... "The problems, described
in 91 audit reports reviewed by The New York Times, include the improper
termination of coverage for people with H.I.V. and AIDS, huge backlogs
of claims and complaints, and a failure to answer telephone calls from
consumers, doctors and drugstores." ... "Since March, Medicare has imposed
fines of more than $770,000 on 11 companies for marketing violations and
failure to provide timely notice to beneficiaries about changes in costs
and benefits." ... "The companies include three of the largest participants
in the Medicare market, UnitedHealth, Humana and WellPoint." ... "The audits
document widespread violations of patients’ rights and consumer protection
standards. Some violations could directly affect the health of patients
— for example, by delaying access to urgently needed medications." ...
"Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the
investigations subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee,
said he had “verified countless stories of deceptive sales practices by
insurance agents who prey upon the elderly and disabled to sell them expensive
and inappropriate private Medicare plans.”" (1, 2)
-By Robert Pear -NYTimes
US
- Iraq
- Military
- Intelligence
- Accounting
- Politics
- Terrorism
- Crime
- Database
- "What
Defines a Killing as Sectarian? U.S. Military Teams
Analyze and Tally Each Civilian Death." ... "On Sept. 1, the bullet-riddled
bodies of four Iraqi men were found on a Baghdad [Iraq's capital] street.
Two days later, a single dead man, with one bullet in his head, was found
on a different street. According to the U.S. military in Iraq, the solitary
man was a victim of sectarian violence. The first four were not." ... "Such
determinations are the building blocks for what the [Republican President]
Bush administration has declared a downward trend in sectarian deaths and
a sign that its war strategy is working. They are made by a specialized
team of soldiers who spend their nights at computer terminals, sifting
through data on the day's civilian victims for clues to the motivations
of killers." ... "Apparent contradictions are relatively easy to find in
the flood of bar charts and trend lines the military produces. Civilian
casualty numbers in the Pentagon's latest quarterly report on Iraq last
week, for example, differ significantly from those presented by the top
commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his recent congressional
testimony. Petraeus's chart was limited to numbers of dead, while the Pentagon
combined the numbers of dead and wounded -- a figure that should be greater.
Yet Petraeus's numbers were higher than the Pentagon's for the months preceding
this year's increase of U.S. troops to Iraq, and lower since U.S. operations
escalated this summer." ... "The charts are difficult to compare: Petraeus
used monthly figures on a line graph, while the Pentagon computed "Average
Daily Casualties" on a bar chart, and neither included actual numbers."
... "In an Iraq assessment released this month, the Government Accountability
Office said it "could not determine if sectarian violence had declined"
since the U.S. troop buildup began in the spring and saw no decrease in
overall attacks against civilians as of the end of July." ... "The U.S.
intelligence community considers more than numbers in making its war assessments.
"What the Iraqis perceive" about their country and their daily lives "may
be more important than what the numbers are," said a senior intelligence
official, who discussed the subject on the condition of anonymity. Even
so, he said, intelligence officials found contradictions in the available
statistics as they wrote last month's National Intelligence Estimate on
Iraq, whose conclusions were somewhat less optimistic than the military's."
(1, 2)
-By Karen DeYoung -WashingtonPost
Howard
J Krongard - US
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
- Military
- Accounting
- Law
- Government
- Employees
- Blackwater
- Money
- Politics
- California
- "State
Dept. Official Accused of Blocking Inquiry." ...
"A top House Democrat began an inquiry on Tuesday into accusations that
the State Department's inspector general repeatedly interfered with investigations
into fraud and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, including security defects
at the new United States Embassy in Baghdad [Iraq's capital]." ... "[Democratic]
Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the chairman of the Committee
on Oversight and Government Reform, sent the inspector general, Howard
J. Krongard, a 14-page letter spelling out accusations made by several
current and former employees of Mr. Krongard's office who documented their
charges with e-mail messages." ... ""One consistent element in these allegations
is that you believe your foremost mission is to support the [Republican
President] Bush administration, especially with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan,
rather than act as an independent and objective check on waste, fraud and
abuse on behalf of U.S. taxpayers," Mr. Waxman wrote. He invited Mr. Krongard
to respond to the accusations at a committee hearing on Oct. 16." ... "Mr.
Waxman told Mr. Krongard that he had been accused of impeding an investigation
of a security company suspected of "illegally smuggling weapons into Iraq."
The Associated Press reported that the unnamed company was Blackwater."
-By David Stout with contributions by Brian Knowlton
-NYTimes
US
- Iraq
- Military
- Intelligence
- Accounting
- Politics
- "Numbers
cast doubt on U.S. claims: Analysts questioning military
counts of civilian casualties." ... "Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador
Ryan Crocker emphasized signs of progress in Iraq during their presentation
to Congress on Monday and frequently interpreted events in the most optimistic
light while downplaying more troubling signs." ... "A review of war statistics
provides a number of examples in which the officials' analysis seemed incomplete."
... "For example, Petraeus placed a heavy emphasis on U.S. military figures
showing a 45 percent drop in civilian deaths in Iraq since the peak of
sectarian violence in December 2006 and a 55 percent drop in killings that
the military judged "ethno-sectarian." But the December 2006 time frame
that Petraeus used for the comparison was a high point in sectarian violence
that predated the U.S. troop "surge."" ... "[Republican] President Bush
announced the surge in January and the first U.S. troops under the strategy
arrived in Iraq in late February. By then, violence already had subsided
somewhat from the unprecedented levels of sectarian strife that racked
Baghdad in 2006. Also, in previous years, there has been a surge of violence
in Iraq during Ramadan, the monthlong Islamic holiday that begins later
this week." ... "Analysts inside and outside the government, including
the General Accountability Office in a recent report, also have questioned
the military's counting of civilian casualties." ... "The Associated Press
counted 1,809 civilian deaths in August, its second-highest monthly total
this year." -By Mike Dorning with contributions by
Aamer Madhani -ChicagoTribune
US
- Iraq
- Military
- Accounting
- Politics
- "Iraq
debate is sea of statistics." ... "In vertical bars
of blue, green, gray and red, a briefing chart prepared by the Defense
Intelligence Agency says what Gen. David Petraeus won't." ... "Insurgent
attacks against Iraqi civilians, their security forces and U.S. troops
remain high, according to the document obtained by The Associated Press.
It is a conclusion that the well-regarded Army officer who is the top U.S.
commander in Iraq is expected to try to counter when he and Ryan Crocker,
the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad [Iraq's capital], testify before Congress
on Monday and Tuesday." ... "More than four years into a conflict initially
thought to be a cakewalk, the war has become a battle of statistics, graphs
and conflicting assessments of progress in a country of more than 27 million
people." ... "The defense intelligence chart makes the point, with figures
from Petraeus' command in Baghdad, the Multinational Force-Iraq. Congressional
auditors used the same numbers to conclude that Iraqis are as unsafe now
as they were six months ago; the [Republican President] Bush administration
and military officials also using those figures say that finding is flawed."
-By
Richard Lardner -AP
via -Yahoo
Noteworthy
- Government
- Debt
- Money
- Accounting
- Politics
- "Brother,
Can You Spare $9 Trillion? Mark Knoller On The Nation's
Historic, And Rising, Debt." ... "Few took notice, but for the first time
in U.S. history last Friday, the national debt hit an all-time high of
$9 trillion." ... "To be exact, the total liabilities of the U.S. Government
hit $9,005,648,561,262.70, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt at
the Treasury Department." ... "But Mr. [Republican President] Bush almost
never mentions the national debt. On the day he took office, the debt stood
at $5.727 trillion. That means it has increased by 57 percent on his watch.
So far." -By Mark Knoller
-CBSNews
US
- Iraq
- Military
- Construction
- Money
- Politics
- Government
- Accounting
- Investigations
- Texas
- Oil
- Water
- "Iraq
Contractors Tap Law Firms: A civil 'war zone' of
investigation." ... "The war in Iraq has an army of high-profile attorneys
working to steer defense contractors through a minefield of lawsuits and
federal investigations involving war profiteering and fraud." ... "During
the past year, several defense contractors hired to help rebuild Iraq have
come under federal investigation or faced litigation for allegedly defrauding
the government. Government officials estimate that $10 billion in Iraq-related
contracts are unaccounted for and may have been lost to fraud or other
misconduct." ... "Currently, about 80 federal investigations looking into
contract fraud are under way, and more than 20 cases have been referred
to the Department of Justice for prosecution, according to congressional
testimony offered by federal auditors. During the last three years, contract
fraud investigations have yielded 10 arrests, five indictments, five convictions
and two imprisonments." ... "High-caliber law firms have lined up to help
guide defense contractors through investigations and prosecutions and relieve
their fears of prosecution, not receiving payment or being banned from
doing business with the government." ... "Akin Gump Strauss Hauer &
Feld and Vinson & Elkins of Houston [Texas] are representing former
Halliburton subsidiary KBR Inc., which is facing scrutiny over a $25.7
billion contract to help rebuild oil services in Iraq." ... "Patton Boggs
of Washington has come to the aid of Halliburton, the largest private contractor
in Iraq, which is facing congressional scrutiny." ... "Washington's Brand
Law Group is advising Fluor, a U.S. engineering and construction firm that
is facing questions over its $1.1 billion water and sewage contract in
Iraq. " -By Tresa Baldas
-NLJ.com via -Law.com
US
- Iraq
- 
Kuwait
- Government
- Army
- Money
- Accounting
- Politics
- "U.S.
Says Company Bribed Officers for Work in Iraq." ...
"An American-owned company operating from Kuwait paid hundreds of thousands
of dollars in bribes to American contracting officers in efforts to win
more than $11 million in contracts, the government says in court documents."
... "The Army last month suspended the company, Lee Dynamics International,
from doing business with the government, and the case now appears to be
at the center of a contracting fraud scandal that prompted Defense Secretary
Robert M. Gates to dispatch the Pentagon inspector general to Iraq to investigate."
... "A lawyer for the company denied the accusations." ... "The company
has been known as American Logistics Services." ... "The case is now part
of a broader investigation in which the Army has a high-level team reviewing
18,000 contracts valued at more than $3 billion that the Kuwait office
has awarded over four years." ... "As the case expands, investigators are
looking at the possibility that it has connections to what had appeared
to be a separate major corruption scandal. Last week, Maj. John Cockerham,
a former Army contracting officer in Kuwait, and his wife and his sister
were indicted on charges that they accepted up to $9.6 million in bribes
for defense contracts in Iraq and Kuwait." (1, 2)
-By Eric Schmitt and James Glanz with contributions
by Margot Williams -NYTimes
US
- Iraq
- Military
- Intelligence
- Accounting
- Legislation
- Reconstruction
- Money
- "Report
Finds Little Progress On Iraq Goals: GAO Draft at
Odds With [Republican President Bush] White House." ... "Iraq has failed
to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political
and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability
Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive
assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range
of views the GAO found within the administration." ... "The strikingly
negative GAO draft, which will be delivered to Congress in final form on
Tuesday, comes as the White House prepares to deliver its own new benchmark
report in the second week of September, along with congressional testimony
from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador
Ryan C. Crocker. They are expected to describe significant security improvements
and offer at least some promise for political reconciliation in Iraq."
... "The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the
current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad
security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies
differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there
have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks
against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities
of Iraqi security forces have not improved."" ... ""Overall," the report
concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high,
and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in
reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy" ... "The
person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed
from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions
would be watered down in the final version -- as some officials have said
happened with security judgments in this month's National Intelligence
Estimate on Iraq." -By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E.
Ricks -WashingtonPost
US
- World
- 
Italy
- Iraq
- Terrorism
- Construction
- Money
- Accounting
- Politics
- "Construction
Woes Plague U.S. Embassies: Shoddy Work, Contract
Choices Cited." ... "The new air-conditioning system in the $66 million
U.S. Embassy in Mali broke down in June, sending office temperatures soaring
to 100 degrees. An electrical fire erupted in the rehabilitated annex to
the embassy in Rome [Italy's capital]. And the U.S. ambassador in Belize
had to personally help workers sand the floors for new housing." ... "As
the United States seeks to rapidly modernize and fortify its diplomatic
missions around the world because of terrorism and other security concerns,
the State Department's $5 billion construction efforts abroad have come
under increasing strain. In a series of cables sent to Washington this
summer, U.S. diplomats complained of building delays and shoddy workmanship,
underscoring problems with State's one-size-fits-all approach to building
that results in the same air-conditioning system being shipped to embassies
in Africa and in Europe." ... "Concerns have focused in particular on the
ongoing construction of the largest U.S. Embassy in the world -- the $592
million complex in Baghdad. The State Department inspector general is probing
the awarding of sole-source contracts in the sprawling project, including
whether they are unjustifiably expensive and whether top officials in State's
Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) short-circuited the process
to favor particular contractors, according to sources familiar with the
probe." ... "At the center of the controversy is the man who has run the
OBO since the start of the [Republican President] Bush administration --
Charles E. Williams, a retired major general in the Army Corps of Engineers,
who quit under fire as chief operating officer of the D.C. public schools
in 1998 when a botched roof repair project delayed the opening of District
schools by three weeks. State Department officials who have worked with
Williams assert that the serious construction problems now coming to light
flow directly from Williams's mercurial management style.-" -By
Glenn Kessler -WashingtonPost
US
- Iraqi
- Military
- Money
- Accounting
- "Weapons
Given to Iraq Are Missing: GAO Estimates 30% of Arms
Are Unaccounted For." ... "The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000
AK-47 assault rifles and pistols [110,000 AK-47s and 80,000 pistols] given
to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government
report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands
of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq." ... "The author of the report
from the Government Accountability Office says U.S. military officials
do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States
distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of
an effort to train and equip the troops." ... "The United States has spent
$19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, the GAO
said, including at least $2.8 billion to buy and deliver equipment. But
the GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to
follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005, when security
training was led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces
in Iraq." ... "One senior Pentagon official acknowledged that some of the
weapons probably are being used against U.S. forces." ... "[Center for
Defense Information senior analyst Rachel] Stohl noted that U.S. forces,
focused on a fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction after Baghdad
[Iraq's capital] fell, did not secure massive weapons caches." -By
Glenn Kessler -WashingtonPost
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