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Saudi Arabia may be hatching an October surprise to benefit President Bush by lowering crude oil prices before the November election, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward said in an interview aired yesterday.
Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan - the longtime ambassador to the U.S. and a close Bush family friend - told the President that oil production will get a boost to strengthen the U.S. economy, said Woodward, author of a new book on White House war planning for Iraq.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, will raise production from 9.5 million barrels a day to 11 million barrels, an oil ministry official said today in an attempt to rein in crude prices that topped $50 a barrel for the first time.
The increase would go into effect within weeks, according to the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. No further details were provided.
Former Enron executive Michael Kopper spent much of Monday telling a jury about how he and others systematically looted Enron, concocting scheme after scheme to line their pockets with millions of dollars stolen from shareholders.
Kopper, 39, calmly and thoughtfully explained that in 1997 he and ex-Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow started to divert funds to themselves, family and friends by breaking laws, breaking internal rules, lying, manipulating and standing in the middle of deals.
Though 14 people have pleaded guilty to crimes in connection with Enron's demise, this is the first time any one of them has publicly discussed the rampant greed and multimillion-dollar plundering in their own words.
[...]
The barge case is based on the government's contention that Enron pretended to sell three electricity-generating barges to Merrill Lynch just so it could claim the earnings from the sale to boost its bottom line and meet Wall Street expectations. Prosecutors contend that the sale was a sham because of an oral promise that Enron would take the bankers out of the deal within six months.
Kopper said Fastow wanted his off-the-books partnership, LJM2, to take the barges off Merrill Lynch's hands. Kopper said it wasn't done like a normal deal, as there was a set 15 percent return and a $350,000 fee LJM2 was guaranteed. Kopper said he felt the partnership had no risk because of Fastow's promises they too would be bought out, as they soon were.
Kopper, who has pleaded guilty in 2002 to two counts of conspiracy, admitted he and his partner William Dodson stole about $16.5 million from Enron between 1997 and 2001.
He said he helped loot about $45 million for Fastow and his family as well. And other friends got anywhere from $60,000 to $1 million, some after investing, others just because Fastow and Kopper wanted to pay them something.
Answering questions from prosecutors or defense attorneys, Kopper remained even and responsive. He agreed his mentor Fastow is brilliant and "very greedy." He noted Fastow sometimes lied to Kopper, once even about Kopper's share of the booty.
In late 2001, when it was clear authorities were looking at Enron, Kopper said he spoke to Fastow about their exposure and then destroyed both his home computer and his laptop by putting them in dumpsters.
[...]
The former executive has clearly done well financially even while a cooperating witness. He forfeited $8 million to the government as well as his disputed rights to another $4 million. His domestic partner William Dodson did not have to forfeit any of the $9 million pre-tax that he benefited from the frauds.
Kopper said he now has a job at a health clinic, is living in a house worth up to $2 million owned by his partner Dodson, just bought a new home worth $380,000, has a 401(k) worth about $300,000, $100,000 in other assets and could possibly get back some of the $500,000 he has on account with his lawyers.
On cross-examination by defense attorney Richard Schaeffer, Kopper described how he and Fastow were able to turn relatively small personal investments into larger payoffs through their inside knowledge of Enron.
Through a partnership they formed called Southampton they were able to get a British Bank, NatWest, to sell its share in an Enron-related partnership for much less than it was worth. Kopper said he and Fastow knew how much the bank was willing to pay and how much Enron would pay for the stake in the partnership.
"We stood between the two parties in order to be able to skim money off of them," Kopper said. He said the group stole $19 million from Enron in this deal alone.
In February 2000, he and Fastow each invested $25,000 into the partnership and got a return of $4.5 million each just a few months later. A number of other former Enron employees invested as little as $5,000 in Swap Sub and received up to $500,000 in return.
"This is what you did when you went to work every day, is you thought up schemes to steal money from people?" asked Schaeffer, attorney for Merrill defendant Daniel Bayly.
"Yes, that's part of what I did," Kopper replied.
The defendants in the barge case, who have pleaded innocent, are: Bayly, former chairman of investment banking for Merrill Lynch; Brown, former head of Merrill Lynch's asset lease and finance group; Robert Furst, former Enron relationship manager for Merrill Lynch; William Fuhs, former Merrill Lynch vice president who answered to Brown; Dan Boyle, a former Enron finance executive on Fastow's staff; and Kahanek, a former in-house Enron accountant.
Prosecutors wanted Kopper to solidify their contention the sale was a sham and verify how Enron arranged for LJM2 to get Merrill Lynch out as promised.
[...]
Kopper mentioned Skilling when he noted that Fastow considered LJM2 taking the barges in 1999, when Merrill Lynch did the deal instead. At that time Fastow said "if LJM could do this deal he would look like a hero to Jeff Skilling," Kopper recalled.
Kopper said Fastow giggled in May or June 2000 when he wanted Kopper to use LJM2 to now buy the barges from Merrill Lynch.
Kopper said the Fastow-controlled partnerships LJM and LJM2 were typically used to help Enron meet financial goals like managing cash flow, debt and earnings.
He said the barges being handed off was all about falsely bolstering Enron's bottom line. "Given that Enron was measured by its earnings, year-end became an important time," Kopper said.
How many Enron ex-employees get to live in a $2 million house owned by a "domestic partner," bought with funds stolen from other ex-employees? The answer is one.
Why do we still obsess about Enron? Because of its symbolic power — Enron perfectly represents the pyramid scheme of Republican power politics, sucking all money upward, leaving nothing but victims in its wake. These are the same people who want to privatize your retirement income to provide more fodder for the Fastows and Skilling and Lays, who will be happy to take your investments, falsify everything in sight, giggling all the while, and immediately shut the door behind them as they waltz into Cheney's office to make energy policy.
Cracker Barrel has doled out roughly half a million dollars in political contributions in the past decade, but a $25,000 donation two years ago has landed the restaurant chain in trouble with the law in Texas.
The Lebanon-based company was one of eight corporations indicted Tuesday by a grand jury on charges of illegal financial activity. The indictment cites a $25,000 contribution in September 2002 from Cracker Barrel to Texans for a Republican Majority, a political action committee with ties to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.
Cracker Barrel also has contributed $5,000 to DeLay's political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, which helped create the Texas committee.
The indictment alleges that Cracker Barrel was part of a scheme to funnel corporate money to political candidates in violation of Texas campaign law. Three of DeLay's closest aides also were indicted on charges of money laundering and accepting unlawful corporate donations. DeLay was not charged.
[...]
Cracker Barrel's political action committee, Citizens for Political Accountability, has been a major corporate backer of GOP politics at the state and national level. Since 1992, it has given $313,250 to Republican candidates compared with $14,250 to Democrats, according to an analysis of campaign finance records by PoliticalMoneyLine, the online arm of FECInfo, which tracks political financial activity.
The restaurant company also shelled out nearly $200,000 in soft-money donations before the large unregulated corporate contributions were outlawed in 2002. That total included more than $69,000 to the Republican National State Elections Committee, which allegedly steered $190,000 in corporate contributions to seven Texas House candidates in 2002.
In addition, Dan Evins, chairman of Cracker Barrel's parent company, has given $131,950 to Republican candidates and political committees, records show.
Here's a handy map of over 500 Cracker Barrel locations you can boycott.
Red State Welfare.TaxProf Blog cites a Tax Foundation study showing which states benefit from federal tax and spending policies, and which states foot the bill. The report shows that of the 32 states (and the District of Columbia) that are "winners" -- receiving more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes -- 76% are Red States that voted for George Bush in 2000. Indeed, 17 of the 20 (85%) states receiving the most federal spending per dollar of federal taxes paid are Red States.
A southwest Houston man shot and killed his 18-year-old son late Saturday after apparently mistaking him for a burglar, police said.
Eli Johnson, 18, was shot shortly before 10:30 p.m. inside his family's home in the 3900 block of Westhampton. His death comes about six weeks after Alejandra Hernandez, 5, was fatally shot by her stepfather inside their northeast Houston home after he mistook her for an intruder.
[...]
In that incident, Agun Ortega Pina told Houston police he went for his gun Aug. 15 when he heard suspicious noises about 1 a.m. inside the family's home in the 2800 block of Kentucky.
Pina told detectives that he and his wife shared a bed with their three daughters because the only other bedroom in their small home was being rented to a family friend.
Police said Hernandez may have gotten up to use the bathroom and was returning to her parents' bed when she was mistaken for a burglar.
The noise roused Pina from his sleep. He grabbed a pistol from the closet and fired when the girl opened the bedroom door.
She was struck in the chest and taken to LBJ Hospital where she later died.
Texas is such a delightful model for America.
I actually don't object to gun ownership. It's the paranoia behind it, the fear-mongering characteristic of the Gee Dubya Bee era, that is so reprehensible.
These Texans at the shallow end of the gene pool are more concerned with not being burgled than they are about the actual safety of their own children. One has nothing to do with the other.
Just like people in Ohio are more concerned about not being attacked by terrorists than they are about the actual safety of the children they sent to Iraq. One has nothing to do with the other.
Handwriting experts hired by many media organizations as well as other critics contend the document, and possibly all four, are forgeries. However, Killian’s order is confirmed by two documents that were not part of the CBS papers. The first is a White House-released letter from the commander of the 147th Fighter Group, Col. Bobby W. Hodges, to its Texas higher command dated Sept. 5, 1972, with a subject line of “Suspension From Flying Status.”
The letter documents the missed flight physical and the suspension, “effective 1 Aug 1972.” A Sept. 29 order from the National Guard Bureau further confirms the missed physical and the suspension.
[...]
Two months earlier, on June 30, Bush signed a statement promising that if he left his Texas Ready Reserve unit, “it is my responsibility to locate and be assigned to another Reserve Forces unit or mobilization augmentation position. If I fail to do so, I am subject to involuntary order to active duty for up to 24 months.”
There is no record of Bush ever having signed on with a Massachusetts Reserve unit. In 1999, Dan Bartlett, working for the Bush campaign, told The Washington Post that Bush had completed his six-year commitment with a Boston unit. That didn’t happen, Bartlett recently told The Boston Globe. “I must have misspoke,” he said.
[...]
Killian’s former secretary, Marian Carr Knox, 86, of Houston, has said she believed the memos were fake but their content accurately reflected Killian’s opinions.
“I know that I didn’t type them,” she said in an interview with CBS. “However, the information in those is correct.”
This is not new. But considering the source — the Air Force of which he is nominal Commander-in-Chief — this is quite damning to George W Bush. The questions of his suitability as CiC still stand.
...NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.
In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.
The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.
“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,” said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.
Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.
The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.
“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.
Why is it you can find more context for this sort of story on The Daily Show than you can on CNN? Why aren't the editorial directors at the mainstream network news organizations bothered by the fact that Jon Stewart's credibility eclipses theirs?
We're proud to be part of the listing for the solid-blue state of Illinois, home of two of the nation's greatest senators: Dick Durbin and Barack Obama.
Oddly enough, just like other multibillion dollar CEO criminals Ken "Kenny Boy" and Linda "Jus' Stuff" Lay of Enron fame, Sanjay and Sylvia Kumar are contributors to the campaign of a certain George W Bush.
White collar crime somehow escaped the Republican mania for mandatory sentences. Why would that be? I guess multibillion dollar fraudsters are sort of a not-so-secret club that happens to include the GOP.
Eighty-two of the country's largest profitable corporations paid no federal income tax for at least one year of the Bush administration's first three years, a study found.
The study by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal-leaning think tank in Washington, and the affiliated Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, examined 275 Fortune 500 corporations with total cumulative profits of $1.1 trillion in 2001, 2002 and 2003. One-third paid no federal income taxes in at least one of those years, and many received refunds of taxes paid in prior years.
The think tank's 1988 survey of large corporations found the overall effective tax rate was 26.5%; a survey of companies in 1996-98 found the rate dropped to 21.7%. The latest survey showed the effective rate fell to 17.2% in 2001-03.
Under President Bush, several corporate-tax breaks have been expanded temporarily. That, with sagging profits and improper tax shelters, has driven down corporate-tax receipts as a share of the economy, to 1.2% in 2003, the second-lowest rate recorded in the post-World War II era.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has sought to exploit the issue. An economic adviser, Jason Furman, said the study shows Mr. Bush is "utterly hypocritical" when he talks about advancing a tax overhaul in a second term. The administration has failed to back many needed loophole closers, Mr. Furman said, while it pushed through the expansions of corporate-tax breaks in 2002 and 2003 that are a focus of the study's criticism.
[...]
General Electric Co. topped the list of companies with the largest total tax breaks, at $9.5 billion duringthe three-year period. It was followed by SBC Communications Inc. with $9 billion, Citigroup Inc., $4.6 billion, and International Business Machines Corp., $4.6 billion.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has launched another flurry of television advertisements attacking Democrat John Kerry, and Houston homebuilder Bob Perry is providing most of the money.
In a report available to the public on Monday, the organization disclosed that it spent $326,210 on ads aired earlier this month in New Mexico and Nevada — states considered key to winning the White House this year.
Of that amount, $250,000 was donated by Perry, a longtime support of President Bush and other Republican candidates.
Perry, 71, earlier this year gave the Swift Boat Veterans $100,000 in start-up money at the urging of Houston attorney John O'Neill, co-author of a book critical of Kerry's military record.
According to the group's most recent report to the Federal Election Commission, seven other Houston residents chipped in smaller donations totaling $8,500 to the 527 political organization, so-called because of its designation under the federal tax code.
The $250,000 donated by Perry on Sept. 13 is the latest in a string of large donations from major Texas businessmen. Texas oilmen and longtime Bush family supporters Boone Pickens and Albert Huddleston previously gave $500,000 and $100,000, respectively, to the "Swifties."
There are an awful lot of rich Bush family supporters in that list. And there's no coordination between the Swifties and the Bush campaign, right?
Q: Let's segue into the issue you raised of political stability. A: Bush is taking the country in a direction that is very different than it had been going in for the last 50 years. The notion of pre-emptive wars and the pre-emptive war that we have in Iraq is a failed strategy. If [Deputy Defense Secretary] Paul Wolfowitz were a money manager, and he made the forecast about weapons of mass destruction and the Iraqis greeting the American forces with flowers, and then declared "mission accomplished," when in fact we were totally unprepared for the uprising we face there, he would have been fired for incompetence. No one responsible for these decisions has been fired. If you had a big money-management company with bad research and bad portfolio managers making bad judgments, that would be the end of that company.
Q: Yes, and I believe there's been a few examples of that. A: These people are delusional. They are deluded by the apparent military power of the United States. There are three levels of military power, and we have a great advantage in one: the middle level. The top level is the ability to produce atomic weapons and missiles. Now the Chinese can do it. The Russians can do it. The Israelis can do it. The Indians can do it. The Pakistanis can do it. The British can do it. Nobody has an advantage, and these weapons cannot be used without blowing the world to smithereens. In that sense, they are useless. The middle level is about projecting force, and that's what we're good at. We have airplanes. We have aircraft carriers. We have guided missiles. We have electronics. We have all that in profusion. There we have an advantage. However, at the third level, we have no advantage at all, and that's in guerrilla warfare and in controlling territory. That's the problem in Iraq. We needed a multiple of the number of troops that we have there to control that country. Unlike the Russians and the Chinese and many of the European countries, we don't have a conscript army.
Q: Are you suggesting we'll reinstate the draft? A: If Bush gets elected for a second term, and he's faced with an army that is overextended, there's going to be a draft. That will divide this country further. That's where the political crisis comes in. Because of the military overextension, you have some terrible decisions that have to be made. The draft is one. The second involves the budget. The war costs are much greater than they should have been.
Q: Bring this back to your point that our power in the world is diminishing? A: The power diminishes because of this huge growth over the next 10-to-20 years of Asia. Also, our unilateral policies are angering the world, and it isn't unreasonable to consider Western Europe joining with the Russians and creating a huge power bloc against us.
Other capitalists who disapprove of Bush policies, explicitly or implicitly, include Seth Glickenhaus and Warren Buffett.
The military experience of the candidates thirty years ago is really of no consequence to anyone except the thousand-plus soldiers who have died, their grieving families, the tens of thousands of soldiers and Guardsmen who are now in Iraq, our allies and former allies around the world, and the millions of American middle- and lower-class taxpayers who will pay the half-trillion dollar bill for the cost of Bush's apprenticeship in the art of nation-building. Notably, George W Bush failed at keeping our soldiers out of harm's way and at "democratizing" and rebuilding Iraq, but did indeed succeed at settling his family vendetta. After all, Saddam Hussein did not try to kill Kerry's dad.
Actual Guardsmen, who are paying for Bush's on-the-job training with their own blood and tears, are not amused:
Retired Air Force Gen. Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak said in a statement, "Until we know the truth about President Bush's service -- how he got into the Guard, how and why he neglected his duty, how and why he was not disciplined -- this issue will hang around and smell up the place."
Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner, a former CIA director under the Carter administration, said, "The president dishonored the Guard decades ago, and he dishonors them today by the way he misuses and mistreats them. He's turned our Guard and Reserve forces into a backdoor draft. . . ."
Because of the increasingly desperate situation in Iraq, one that America is now forced to face regardless of who is president, the point comes back to the fundamental questions of leadership and character in a military setting: Were Bush's Air National Guard absences and the missed physical exam due to drug use, or a mandatory sentence of community service, or what? Kerry has no absences to explain — why does Bush?
Why is it that not one of the guys Bush supposedly served with has come forward to offer personal reminiscences about his service? Kerry's did — why not Bush's?
...the Securities and Exchange Commission declined to make public testimony provided by Vice President Dick Cheney during the agency's probe into Halliburton, which Mr. Cheney ran as chief executive from 1995 to 2000, when he resigned to join George W. Bush in a run for the White House.
[...]
Meanwhile, regarding Mr. Cheney's testimony, "Since the records were compiled for law-enforcement purposes, the release of which could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement activities undertaken or likely to be undertaken by the Commission, I am withholding them," wrote Valerie Lewis, the branch chief in the SEC's Freedom of Information Act Office.
The SEC had investigated the company's failure to disclose a 1998 accounting change made when Mr. Cheney was still running Halliburton. It found Halliburton's change in its accounting treatment for cost overruns on construction projects was appropriate, but that failing to disclose it for a year and a half misled investors. The agency said the then-new accounting treatment reduced losses on several large construction projects.
You can almost understand Cheney's eagerness to mislead voters, or Congress, or US soldiers -- but misleading Halliburton investors? That's downright unenthical, and it sends the wrong message to potential campaign contributors who expect something tangible from their investment in a Bush-Cheney administration. Fortunately, once in office, Cheney was able to focus his generosity on Halliburton investors after his initial apparent deception.
The SEC, four years after the reasonable onset of investigative action against Cheney/Halliburton, has suppressed its role as the voice of the small investor and instead is doing its part to insulate Cheney's reputation and its necessary shroud of secrecy.
The chairman of a House subcommittee that is investigating the sale of life insurance and mutual funds to young soldiers and other military members unleashed a scathing attack on Thursday on financial companies active on military bases. The chairman, Representative Richard H. Baker, Republican of Louisiana, challenged not only the sales practices of their agents but also the fundamental merits of their products.
Mr. Baker led a four-hour hearing through a review of how life insurance and mutual funds are sold on military bases, opening with testimony from Specialist Brandon Conger, a soldier who said he was misled into buying an expensive insurance policy he did not want or understand, and ending with promises of swift, bipartisan action to address the problems.
Mr. Baker questioned whether the life insurance industry had done enough to root out agents who prey on young soldiers and indicated that the Pentagon might have a future date with Congress to explain its failure to adequately police the agents it allows on bases.
But Mr. Baker's fiercest criticisms fell on the companies that package and sell the high-commission products. He singled out the complex form of insurance sold to Specialist Conger by the American Amicable Life Insurance Company in Waco, Tex., and a type of mutual fund marketed by First Command Financial Services, in Fort Worth.
The product combines an expensive insurance policy that provides a low death benefit with an interest-earning savings fund that can accumulate cash value over 20 years. The mutual fund, called a contractual plan, imposes sales charges that consume half of an investor's first-year contributions.
Because they protect both Democrats and Republicans, protecting the financial safety of soldiers really ought to be a bipartisan action. Fleecing soldiers with shady mutual funds and rigged life insurance cannot be construed as patriotic no matter how twisted your worldview.
It comes as no wonder that the two companies singled out for censure both hail from the cesspool of fraud and mendacity that we are currently trying to flush from federal influence... the state of Texas.
For more on First Command (and its CEO's campaign contributions to the 2004 campaign of a certain George W Bush), check this out as well as the links at the top of this page. See also Stars and Stripes.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- A startling pattern of violence and suicide by America's most elite soldiers has followed their use of a controversial anti-malaria drug, an investigation by United Press International and CNN has found.
The government already warns that the drug, called Lariam, might cause long-term mental problems -- including aggression and suicide.
Six Special Forces soldiers who took their lives are all believed to have taken the drug, according to the UPI-CNN investigation. The cable news network broadcast a segment on the joint investigation Tuesday.
[...]
The psychotic behavior and suicides are particularly jarring because Special Forces soldiers are highly trained and psychologically vetted. An Army study in 2000 showed Special Forces soldiers produce more of a chemical in the brain that helps them cope with and recover from extreme duress.
"It's just antithetical to their whole practice of their craft to suddenly lose control, become depressed, paranoid, hallucinate and become suicidal," said Dr. Paul Ragan, associate professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University and a former military psychiatrist. "You have to look for some exogenous factor, some outside factor, something new in the mix that will change how they've otherwise been able to operate."
Those deaths then raise concerns about the tens of thousands of soldiers who have taken Lariam during the war on terrorism -- and about dozens of suicides and a handful of murders among troops while overseas or after returning home.
The pattern also suggests that the Army might have missed the cause of three murder-suicides involving Special Forces soldiers at Fort Bragg, N.C., in the summer of 2002. A report by the Army surgeon general's office blamed marital problems for all the deaths and called Lariam an unlikely factor. But the report did not consider physical or mental problems among the three Special Forces soldiers, described by family and friends, that fit side effects from Lariam.
The UPI/CNN investigation found three more suicides by Special Forces soldiers -- all of them Green Berets believed to have taken Lariam. None appears to have had acute marital problems, combat stress or other personal issues that would help explain their sudden plunge into violence.
Are we creating a new pharmcological underclass of soldiers driven to murder or suicide?
I wrote about Lariam and the Fort Bragg murder-suicides before, due to my personal experience with the drug that completely supports "exogenous factor" theories of profound drug-induced psychological disturbance.
In other words, Lariam makes you crazy. And we're giving it to tens of thousands our troops. And they have weapons. And that's not good.
President Bush may skip one of the three debates that have been proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates and accepted by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Republican officials said yesterday.
The officials said Bush's negotiating team plans to resist the middle debate, which was to be Oct. 8 in a town meeting format in the crucial state of Missouri.
The Bush-Cheney campaign announced that its debate negotiation team will be led by James A. Baker III, who was secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush. Baker headed the Bush campaign's Florida recount response in 2000 and is the current president's personal envoy on Iraqi debt resolution.
Baker negotiated debates in 1980, 1984, 1988 and 1992. As chief of staff to Bush's father in 1992, he took a cautious stance with the view that a sitting president has little to gain and much to lose in debates, according to accounts at the time.
Bush aides refused to discuss their opening position. Officials familiar with the issue said he plans to accept the commission's first debate, which is to focus on domestic policy, and the third one, which is to focus on foreign policy.
The audience for the second debate, to be at Washington University in St. Louis, was to be picked by the Gallup Organization. The commission said participants should be undecided voters from the St. Louis area.
A presidential adviser said campaign officials were concerned that people could pose as undecided when they actually are partisans.
You can hear Rove thinking: Actual citizens in our midst! That is so unRepublican!
And, once again, the water boy for Team Bush is there to do the family's janitorial work. James A. Baker III, the Florida recount mechanic, is back on the scene to do his lackey best in the Bush dynasty's meticulous disassembly of American democracy.
The Bush administration announced a record increase in next year's Medicare premium for doctor visits -- ahead of a holiday weekend and six weeks earlier than it is typically released.
The increase of $11.60 a month was the largest ever and, at 17.4%, was the biggest percentage rise since 1989*, when an earlier drug-coverage bill was passed and then repealed.
Much of next year's premium increase reflects changes made in the Medicare drug-benefit bill that passed with Mr. Bush's backing. The premium rose 13.5% this year and 8.7% last year.
[...]
In past years, premiums were announced in mid-October, along with changes in Social Security payments to the elderly and disabled. If the administration kept to that schedule this year, the increase would have been announced just ahead of the November election.
The elderly, the working poor, Enron employees, the environment, the Guard and the Reserves, Iraqi civilians, underfinanced schools... is there anybody that Republicans won't fuck over to remain in power?
*Bonus quiz: Who was president in 1989, when the last record Medicare increase took place?
The "war lobby," as it has been described, counts a number of important connections, including President Bush's brother Neil, who plays a little-known role at Houston-based Crest Investments. Crest is a financial partner with Newbridge Strategies, a group of former officials from both [!] Bush administrations who help U.S. companies seeking contracts in Iraq.
This week in New York, Neil Bush would not answer questions about his ties to Crest. "It's not my company," he said.
But in a videotaped deposition last year, obtained by ABC News, Neil Bush said he is paid $60,000 a year for the three to four hours of work he puts in weekly as co-chairman of Crest.
"Whether he does anything active or whether they just trade on his name, having the president's brother involved has got to be a huge asset," said William Hartung, a senior fellow at World Policy Institute, a policy research group at New School University.
Even for the runt of the Bush dynasty, there's plenty of profiteering to be had. Here's more about Crest and Newbridge and Neilsie's Hong Kong call girls.
"I've lost my trust and I've lost everything I have to the system," Parlak told The Associated Press this week through a telephone interview from the Calhoun County jail in Battle Creek, where he has been held since his July 29 arrest at the FBI office in St. Joseph.
He said he was treated better during his 18 months in a Turkish prison than he has been while in U.S. custody.
"It's worse than a Turkish prison," Parlak said. "It's sad, but it's true."
Halliburton Co. said an internal investigation has uncovered documents indicating officials of a consortium it now leads discussed bribing public officials in Nigeria in order to secure a multibillion-dollar contract there.
The investigation centers on the construction of a gargantuan natural-gas liquefaction plant on the Nigerian coast, beginning in January 1996 and continuing today. A consortium led by a company later acquired by Halliburton won the lucrative contract, which will be valued at a total of $8.1 billion when the project is completed.
In the past 10 days, Halliburton says, its lawyers discovered notes written between 1993 and 1998* that suggest consortium executives discussed bribes to Nigerian officials to win their support and ensure that the consortium won the contract. Halliburton says it has turned over the evidence to investigators in the U.S., France and Nigeria, who already had been investigating the consortium. Halliburton declined to reveal the names and positions of the people who discussed the bribery scheme.
This latest disclosure by the Houston oilfield-services company comes amid questions as to whether the consortium created a $140 million slush fund that was funneled through a British lawyer named Jeffrey Tesler, who was a consultant to the consortium. Mr. Tesler is under investigation by a French magistrate, though he hasn't been charged with any crime. Mr. Tesler declined to comment on his role and, through his lawyer, has denied any wrongdoing.
Halliburton said it is unclear from the newest documents whether money actually was distributed either to local leaders or high-ranking government officials. At the time the notes were written, Nigeria was ruled by the military dictator Sani Abacha, whose regime was marked by centralized control and human-right abuses.
The documents, described as contemporaneous notes of conversations and meetings, indicate "people may at the time have been planning or contemplating the necessity of money for the purpose of making bribes. There is no way to read these materials and not be concerned about that," says James Doty, an attorney with Baker Botts LLP**, an outside law firm brought in by Halliburton this year to examine the matter.
The notes end in 1998, shortly after Halliburton acquired Dresser Industries Inc., which led the consortium through its M.W. Kellogg Co. unit. The consortium, called TSKJ, also includes France's Technip SA, the Snamprogetti unit of Italy's ENI SpA, and JGC Corp. of Japan.
The merger was overseen by Halliburton's then-chief executive, Dick Cheney, now the nation's vice president.
*Cheney was Halliburton's CEO from 1995 until 2000.
**James Addison Baker III was the man chosen by Dick Cheney to oversee the Florida recount for the BC2000 campaign. Given the ties to Cheney, how objective can this "examination" possibly be?
They can throw as much "compassionate" folderol at us as they can, but the facts remain the same: the only way the hedonistic greed of the Republican Party will more vicious or sinful than it is today is if the American people are foolish enough to give the country to these charlatans.
The GOP's true political base is an all-white country club in a Texas suburb. In other words, hell.
The legal case against me, standing alone, is a flimsy, hollow shell and reeks of politics.
Actually, Kenny Boy, thanks to your steadfast guidance, it was Enron that was the flimsy, hollow shell reeking of politics.
The legal case against you didn't purloin the life savings of your employees while simultaneously giving so lavishly to Bush-Cheney 2000. The full responsibility for that sleight of hand falls to your leadership of Enron.
Speaking of politics, what exactly did you secretly talk about with Cheney in those energy policy-setting meetings in March 2001? Why don't you release that information instead of behaving like a big ol' self-pitying crybaby in the Washington Post?
Cheney, 63, served as chief executive officer of Houston-based Halliburton Co. (HAL) from 1995 to 2000. This year, Halliburton has been in the news repeatedly as the country comes under investigation amid questions about its Pentagon contracts and its accounting policies.
"We think it's becoming a real issue in the campaign," Kerry senior campaign adviser Tad Devine told reporters in August. "There is a vivid connection in the mind of voters between the enormous spending in Iraq and Halliburton," Devine said. "It is a very, very negative connection they are making."
[...]
While Cheney has officially left the firm, he continues to receive money in the form of deferred compensation. On his 2003 tax return, Cheney received $178,437 from Halliburton; Cheney elected to defer his compensation in 1999 to have it paid out in installments for five years.
Like a Bizarro King Midas, everything Cheney touches turns into a conflict of interest.
Let's not forget the close friendship of his golfing and barbecue partner, lying son of a bitch Ahmed Chalabi.
