The case of the missing billions. At least $4 billion of funding for Iraqi reconstruction is missing in action (Christian Aid, UK):

A staggering US$4 billion in oil revenues and other Iraqi funds earmarked for the reconstruction of the country has disappeared into opaque bank accounts administered by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the US-controlled body that rules Iraq. By the end of the year, if nothing changes in the way this cash is accounted for, that figure will double.

The financial black hole, uncovered by a Christian Aid investigation, is revealed as delegates gather for the donors' conference in Madrid. Before pledging money from their own countries' coffers to boost the reconstruction efforts, as requested by the US and UK governments, these delegates should first demand: 'What has happened to the missing billions?'

It is expected that a separate fund, managed by the UN and the World Bank, will be announced at the conference for donors' money, to allay fears of how this cash will be spent. But this should not stop donors from pushing for accountability of the original, massive reconstruction fund - most of it Iraqi oil money.

Which banks hold these "opaque" accounts? Are they foreign banks, or Americans banks that have financially supported Bush-Cheney 2004?

Link via an excellent overview in the Christian Science Monitor.

{ 9:59 AM }

.

Is there intelligent life on Texas school boards? Sure. Yesterday they managed to approve biology textbooks that include the theory of evolution — a major achievement by local standards.

But how can one board member, Don McLeroy of Bryan — a dentist with an electrical engineering degree from Texas A&M — argue that presenting biological evolution is "dogmatic"?

Given the depth of his scientific education, didn't anything rub off on him? The scientific method? The overwhelming geological evidence? Comparative interspecies DNA sequences? Anything? Hmm?

Texas Citizens for Science are not amused at the dentist's anti-science, pro-creationist agenda.

{ 9:22 AM }

.

Leave no governor behind. No More Mister Nice Blog examines why the House Ways and Means Committee is content to investigate child abuse in New Jersey but not in Florida.

Hint: it's political.

{ 11:56 AM }

.

Touchscreen voting a mess in Houston. Apparently our entire democracy is now beholden to the whoops factor inherent in all electronic blackbox voting (Houston Chronicle):

David Beirne, a spokesman for the Harris County Clerk's Office, said technicians quickly determined that there wasn't actually a problem with the eSlate voting machines and that election judges weren't following the correct steps to match voters with the right ballots. The repairmen also discovered, however, that the 12 machines at the hotel were improperly set up, with all linked to the one unit that seemed to be malfunctioning, instead of having half linked to another that would continue to operate in case of a glitch with one.

"...All linked to one unit that seemed to be malfunctioning" just about sums up what's wrong with electronic voting machines. They are dangerously centralized, and the mechanism behind how they work — regardless of what their pitchmen say — is totally opaque.

"Improperly set up" machines are, of course, the whole point behind electronic voting. It's so much easier to have the ability to fix an election that way.

Here's Travis County's FAQ on the eSlate system.

{ 9:13 AM }

.

Money is dirty paper, but dope is business. The business enterprises behind marijuana and hallucinogens are examined in next week's capitalist tool, Forbes. Among the tidbits you'll find in this large, multi-page report:

With prices reaching $2,700 a pound wholesale, the [cannabis] trade takes in somewhere between $4 billion (in U.S. dollars) nationwide and $7 billion just in the province of British Columbia.

[...]

Small growers like David bring in $900 a pound at the low end, with net margins of 55% to 90%, depending on quality, depreciation and labor costs. They produce half a pound to 30 pounds every ten weeks, selling their product to local users or peddling it to "accumulators," who then smuggle it over the border or sell it up the chain to larger brokers. Accumulators and brokers typically add $80 a pound to the cost, as do the high-volume smugglers who buy from them. Smugglers returning money to Canada for other dealers skim a 2% laundering fee.

"The first time somebody gives you a bag of money so heavy that you can't lift it, it's surreal. Pretty soon, it's just dirty paper," says Jeff, who recently retired from smuggling up to a ton of weed a week.

The only other quick way I know to make $100 million gross in a few years is to be a mutual fund CEO market timer, like Lawrence Lasser of Putnam.

In the United States, the game of centamillionaires is called "Choose your enemy": John Ashcroft or Eliot Spitzer.

{ 7:34 AM }

.

What's new in Bush's America? Poverty. Recovery without jobs is like dinner without food (Guardian):

George Bush's America is the wealthiest and most powerful nation the world has ever known, but at home it is being gnawed away from the inside by persistent and rising poverty. The three million Americans who have lost their jobs since Mr Bush took office in January 2001 have yet to find new work in a largely jobless recovery, and they are finding that the safety net they assumed was beneath them has long since unravelled. There is not much left to stop them falling.

Last year alone, another 1.7 million Americans slipped below the poverty line, bringing the total to 34.6 million, one in eight of the population. Over 13 million of them are children. In fact, the US has the worst child poverty rate and the worst life expectancy of all the world's industrialised countries, and the plight of its poor is worsening.

The ranks of the hungry are increasing in step. About 31 million Americans were deemed to be "food insecure" (they literally did not know where their next meal was coming from). Of those, more than nine million were categorised by the US department of agriculture as experiencing real hunger, defined by the US department of agriculture as an "uneasy or painful sensation caused by lack of food due to lack of resources to obtain food."

That was two years ago, before the recession really began to bite. Partial surveys suggest the problem has deepened considerably since then. In 25 major cities the need for emergency food rose an average of 19% last year.

Another indicator is the demand for food stamps, the government aid programme of last resort. The number of Americans on stamps has risen from 17 million to 22 million since Mr Bush took office.

In Ohio, hunger is an epidemic. Since George Bush won Ohio in the 2000 presidential elections, the state has lost one in six of its manufacturing jobs. Two million of the state's 11 million population resorted to food charities last year, an increase of more than 18% from 2001.

Three million Americans newly without jobs. An extra five million Americans on food stamps.

This is a recovery?

{ 11:09 AM }

.