[June 13, 2004] Not since the 1990 Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations has Houston hosted such a wealth of dignitaries as the flock that winged through town over the weekend for 41's 80th birthday. And that made for some very interesting beneath-the-radar partying.
Five former heads of state, the sitting president and vice president all popped in at one time or another to honor former President George H.W. Bush.
Vice President Dick Cheney, secretary of defense under 41, and his wife, Lynne, all but sneaked into town for the Saturday afternoon reunion of the former president's cabinet. Mica and Bob Mosbacher, Bush's secretary of commerce, hosted the powerful get-together that included the former president and Barbara Bush, Brent Scowcroft, James A. Baker III, C. Boyden Gray and others.
Texas A&M University cadets sang Happy Birthday, and Max Fisher of Franklin, Mich., a Republican stalwart who at 95 is the oldest person on Forbes' 400 wealthiest list, was there to offer many happy returns.
The previous night, the congenial Mosbachers hosted the more intimate after-party that followed the 41@80 VIP reception for 400 that had been held across the street in the home of Nancy and Rich Kinder.
Billionaires Nancy and Rich Kinder, former president of Enron, are Dubya’s top career patrons, with over $400,000 in contributions through July 2000 alone (not including the last four years).
The House voted 251 to 178 yesterday to replace an export subsidy with a major tax cut for domestic manufacturers and multinational corporations, setting up difficult negotiations with the Senate on one of the most significant corporate tax bills in 20 years.
Passing a corporate tax measure has become imperative. Since the World Trade Organization ruled existing export subsidies illegal, retaliatory sanctions by the European Union have tacked 8 percent onto the price of a variety of U.S. exports, from leather and jewelry to timber and thoroughbreds. The penalty will rise by 1 percentage point a month until the subsidy is lifted.
But the push to repeal a $5 billion-a-year subsidy has allowed lobbyists and lawmakers to dust off tax favors that have languished for years. The centerpiece of both the House bill and the Senate's version would cut the top tax rate for domestic manufacturers from 35 percent to 32 percent, but other provisions have pushed the final House bill to 496 pages and the Senate-passed bill to 930.
[...]
The House bill would cut business taxes by more than $143 billion over the next decade, although a series of revenue raisers and tax-loophole closures would reduce the cost to the Treasury to $34.4 billion. The measure must be reconciled with a broader Senate version that would hand out $167 billion in tax cuts but more than offset that cost with tax increases and loophole closures.
Critics of both bills say the true costs will be significantly higher, since both phase in some tax cuts over 10 years while Congress is likely to extend other tax breaks set to expire after a short time as the legislation is currently written. If all those temporary provisions were implemented immediately and extended over 10 years, the bipartisan Joint Tax Committee estimated, the cost of the House bill would reach $260 billion.
But the main criticism focused on the special-interest provisions secured by business lobbyists or added in the past few days to secure votes. The House bill includes measures tailored to help restaurant owners, makers of private jets, bank directors, timberland owners, liquor distillers, Native American whalers, commodity traders and shipping conglomerates, to name a few. One last-minute provision, pushed in part by Home Depot, temporarily lifts customs duties on Chinese-made ceiling fans.
"Christmas has come on the 17th of June," said Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.).
House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) declared it the worst tax bill he has seen in his 24 years in the House and "an orgy of self-indulgence."
Although House Republicans are chiefly accountable for this blatant irresponsibility, Democrats are not blameless: "...House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) secured the votes of 48 Democrats, largely with a $9.6 billion bailout for tobacco farmers and a temporary $3.6 billion measure to allow residents of states with no income tax to deduct state and local sales taxes from their federal income taxes. Those Democrats more than offset the 23 Republicans who voted against the bill."
In a Republican orgy, which is always behind closed doors, there is no sex — only the unseemly transmission of vast amounts of money.
Under Republican leadership the US Treasury has become a corporate ATM, but at least our president's God in His infinite mercy has seen to it that Home Depot has a duty-free supply of Chinese ceiling fans.
When Darleen Druyun talked, chief executives of the world's largest defense companies listened.
She held a somewhat obscure post, as the Air Force's principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisitions, and turned it into one of the Pentagon's most powerful civilian jobs. She controlled a $30-billion-a-year procurement budget and could make or kill a military project.
In August, she could be sentenced to as many as five years in prison.
Druyun pleaded guilty two months ago to one federal count of criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice, admitting that she tried to cover up that she had brokered a $250,000-a-year executive position with Boeing Co. at the same time that she was signing off on multibillion-dollar contracts with the company.
Now she is cooperating with federal prosecutors looking into a $23-billion Air Force pact to lease aerial refueling tankers from Boeing, which hired the 56-year-old after she retired from her federal job.
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In August of that year [2002], Druyun told the assistant secretary of the Air Force that she planned to retire and was talking to Lockheed Martin Corp. and Raytheon Co. about possible jobs. She recused herself from handling any Pentagon matters involving those two companies but not, at the time, Boeing.
The next month, her daughter, Heather McKee, "acting as Druyun's agent," sent an e-mail to Boeing CFO [Michael] Sears, according to an Air Force memo. McKee — still working for Boeing in St. Louis — said Druyun was planning to leave the Pentagon and was discussing a job with Lockheed.
"We need to talk to her," McKee wrote. Two days later, she e-mailed Sears to say that Druyun was seeking a chief operating officer-level job, according to Pentagon and Justice Department documents.
In another e-mail, Druyun's daughter informed Sears that her mother was "VERY, VERY excited" about the prospects of a job at Boeing. McKee added that Druyun "leaves for Brussels Tues.," referring to a NATO meeting at which Druyun discussed the AWACS contract revision with Boeing executives.
Don't you think Druyun's daughter McKee should be investigated too? I must admit, I do. After all, "acting as her agent," Heather found her mom a sweet little job with one of the vendors who sought what she controlled: a mere $30 billion in payroll deductions from the American middle class.
Maybe somebody from the GAO or an oversight committee ought to call her up:
Heather McKee SM&P Resource Management Integrated Defense Systems The Boeing Company (314)233-3168 heather.l.mckee@boeing.com
UPDATE: On Friday, June 18, 2004, I found this (Susan Chandler, Chicago Tribune, April 23, 2004):
Darleen Druyun, a former senior Air Force official who was fired from Boeing Co. last year, has taken great pains to protect her daughter from the fallout of an ethics scandal involving a $23.5 billion Pentagon contract.
On Tuesday, Druyun pleaded guilty to a criminal conspiracy count for discussing a Boeing job while she was negotiating a lease for 100 Boeing tanker aircraft. As part of her plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to go after Druyun's daughter, Heather McKee, who has worked at Boeing for more than three years.
But federal court documents released this week show McKee played a central role in the secret negotiations that resulted in the hiring, and later firing, of her mother. Michael Sears, Boeing's chief financial officer and the executive who recruited Druyun, also was fired for violating Boeing's ethics policies.
Now, the dilemma for Boeing is what to do with McKee, a 27-year-old employee who works in St. Louis, the headquarters of Boeing's booming defense business, known as Integrated Defense Systems. A Boeing spokesman declined to discuss McKee's status, citing concerns about the privacy of employees.
Others argue McKee gave up her privacy when she participated in clandestine efforts to engage Boeing in a bidding war for her mother.
"I would fire her in a second. She is the center point for the unethical conduct between her mother and Mike Sears," said Keith Ashdown, a defense expert with Taxpayers for Common Sense, a government watchdog group.
When I google the numbers, I get this amazing page about fax.com, written by the kind of thorough investigators we would have on the FCC if Michael Powell weren't so dead-set on censoring Howard Stern and working on behalf of media consolidators instead of the people whose air he sells to the highest bidder.
A KPMG LLP tax shelter that the Internal Revenue Service last year declared abusive had attracted an array of prominent U.S. companies, a sign of how popular and widespread efforts to shave corporate-tax bills have become.
The IRS has said the shelter generated at least $1.7 billion in tax savings for more than two dozen companies. Previously undisclosed internal documents from KPMG, which marketed the shelter, list a host of brand-name companies that agreed to buy it.
Delta Air Lines, Whirlpool Corp., Clear Channel Communications Inc., WorldCom Inc., Tenet Healthcare Corp. and the U.S. units of AstraZeneca PLC and Fresenius Medical Care AG all used the shelter, according to the companies and the KPMG records, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The KPMG documents show that Qwest Communications International Inc., Washington Mutual Inc., Global Crossing Ltd., Lennar Corp. and the U.S. units of Cemex SA and Siemens AG signed agreements to buy the shelter, but those companies wouldn't say whether they implemented it.
The internal KPMG records, covering the years 1999 through 2001, offer a rare look at the inner workings of a highly aggressive shelter that KPMG sold under the name "contested liability acceleration strategy," or CLAS. The records also provide a look at what nearly all the past year's government investigations into KPMG and other tax-shelter promoters have kept a well-guarded secret: the identities of companies that bought so-called abusive tax shelters.
According to a July 2002 sworn statement filed by an IRS agent with a federal district court in Washington, 29 corporations bought CLAS from KPMG, realizing at least $1.7 billion in tax savings. The statement, based on information KPMG provided in response to an IRS summons, didn't name the companies.
By that measure, CLAS was more costly to the federal Treasury than any of the four KPMG tax shelters that were the subject of hearings held last November by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which focused mainly on shelters sold to wealthy individuals.
Flag-waving, tax-cheating Clear Channel is about as unpatriotic as it gets, rallying for a war that someone else pays for.
Former Halliburton Co. workers are raising new allegations about company waste and mismanagement in Iraq, including abandoning an $85,000 truck because of a flat tire, paying $45 for a case of soda and providing laundry service for a cost equivalent to $100 per 15-pound bag.
The Halliburton whistle-blowers accused the company of ruining expensive equipment by failing to provide basic maintenance, turning a blind eye to theft and retaliating against workers who tried to control costs.
"There are structural problems with the way Halliburton does business that must be fixed," Marie deYoung, who dealt with Halliburton subcontractors while working in Kuwait, told House staffers.
DeYoung is a former military officer and chaplain.
DeYoung is a chaplain, so he wouldn't lie, right?
It's about time real Christians realized that the Bushies aren't doing them any favors.
