Wednesday, July 30, 2008

More "America's for sale"

More on the thread of "America's for sale". It's the government we elect that is doing the selling and in fact selling themselves like whores.

Government-industry revolving door
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This article is part of the Nuclear spin analysis project of SpinWatch (UK) and the Center for Media and Democracy.

The government-industry revolving door puts industry-friendly experts in positions of decision-making power. Often individuals rotate between working for industry and working for the government in regulatory capacities, arrangements that are fraught with potential for conflicts of interest.

"Under current law, government officials who make contracting decisions must either wait a year before joining a military contractor or, if they want to switch immediately, must start in an affiliate or division unrelated to their government work. One big loophole is that these restrictions do not apply to many high-level policy makers..., who can join corporations or their boards without waiting."[1]
[edit]
Examples

* Edward C. (Pete) Aldridge, Jr. - In the month before he left the Pentagon to join the board of Lockheed Martin, Aldridge approved a $3 billion contract to build 20 Lockheed planes, "after having long criticized the program as overpriced and having threatened to cancel it."[2] While on the Lockheed board, Aldridge was named to head President Bush's commission on space exploration. "Lockheed is one of NASA's biggest contractors, and only Senator John McCain, ...objected and called for Mr. Aldridge's removal, complaining of conflict of interest."[3]

* David Bernhardt
o Government: Director of Congressional and Legislative Affairs, Department of the Interior
o Industry: Previously an attorney with Brownstein, Hyatt, and Farber, Bernhardt; lobbied Congress and federal administrative agencies on behalf of mining, oil, chemical companies and power plants

* Robin Batterham - Batterham worked as a senior executive for global mining company, Rio Tinto, three days a week and as Chief Scientist advising the Australian Prime Minister two days a week. In early 2005 he resigned as Chief Scientist to work full time for the mining company.

* Dale Bosworth

* Claude Burcky - "Two senior United States trade negotiators who sealed the trade deal with Australia have accepted plum jobs representing US medical and drug companies. ... Claude Burcky, who was [Ralph] Ives's [see below] head negotiator for intellectual property trade issues, is now director of global government affairs at the pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories. Mr Ives and Mr Burcky took their jobs after negotiating the trade deal." The U.S.-Australian Free Trade Agreement was criticized by U.S. health care reformers as "designed to undercut access to affordable medicines for Americans and Australians," while maintaining pharmaceutical company profits.[4]

* Nicholas E. Calio

* John T. Chain
o Government: Commander of the Strategic Air Command; retired in February 1991.
o Industry: Member of the board of Northrop Grumman Corporation since 1991; Executive Vice President for Burlington Northern Railroad from March 1991 to February 1996; President of Quarterdeck Equity Partners, Inc. since December 1996; Chairman of the Board of Thomas Group, Inc. since May 1998; director on the boards of RJ Reynolds, Inc., ConAgra Foods, Inc., and Kemper Insurance Company.

* Vice-president Dick Cheney - Cheney denied that he had any ties with Halliburton Company after he left his position as CEO of the company in 2000. An investigation by the Congressional Research Service revealed that while VP Cheney received deferred compensation from Halliburton to the tune of $500,000 to $1,000,000. While Cheney was Secretary of Defense for George Herbert Walker Bush, the Pentagon contracted infamous Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root "to study the cost effectiveness of outsourcing some military operations to private contractors. Based on the results of the study, the Pentagon hired Brown & Root to implement an outsourcing plan." Cheney became the CEO of Halliburton in 1995. Questions about "sweetheart deals" with Halliburton arose as the company was awarded no-bid contracts for reconstruction in Iraq. The contracts were estimated to be worth about $1.5 billion. Probes into Halliburton led to allegations of overcharging the military for importing oil from Kuwait into Iraq, $6 million in kickbacks for the awarding of contracts to a Kuwaiti company and $180 million in bribes to land a natural gas project contract in Nigeria while Cheney was CEO. Reported by MSNBC/AP on 9 April 2004 to be "making a pitch for Westinghouse's U.S. nuclear power technology" while in China on the taxpayer tab.

* Kathleen Clarke

* James L. Connaughton
o Government: Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (Senior environmental advisor to the President and Director of the White House Office of Environmental Policy)
o Industry: Previously a lobbyist for power industry and large electricity users. "A former lobbyist for utilities, mining, chemical, and other industrial polluters, Connaughton, represented the likes of General Electric and ARCO in their effort to escape responsibility for cleaning up toxic Superfund sites. Now he heads up pollution-policy development for the administration and coordinates its implementation. He has led the charge to weaken the standards of getting arsenic out of our drinking water, and he has steadily advised Bush to ignore, divert, stall, dismiss, and otherwise block out all calls for action against the industrial causes of global warming."[5]

* Richard Crowder - On Dec 20, 2005, Richard Crowder was confirmed by the US Senate as the US Trade Representative Chief Agricultural Negotiator. For three years prior to this appointment, Crowder was the CEO of the American Seed Trade Association - a lobby group for US agricultural corporations. Prior to 2002, from 1994 to 1999, Crowder was Senior Vice President, International, of DEKALB Genetics Corporation - an agricultural genetics and seed biotechnology corporation which is now part of Monsanto. From 1989-1992, he also occupied a government post, serving as Under Secretary of International Affairs & Commodity Programs for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. [6]

* Gordon R. England
o Government: Secretary of the Navy from May 2001 to January 2003; Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security from January 2003 to October 2003; Secretary of the Navy since October 2003.
o Industry: Executive vice president of General Dynamics Corporation from 1997 to 2001; executive vice president of the Combat Systems Group; president of General Dynamics Fort Worth aircraft company, which later became Lockheed Martin; president of General Dynamics Land Systems Company; principal of a mergers and acquisition consulting company.

* Alan K. Fitzsimmons
o Government: Wildlands Fuels Coordinator, Department of the Interior
o Industry: Founder, 1992, consulting firm Balanced Resource Solutions, writing extensively for conservative think-tanks and free-market groups; claimed “ecosystems are not real”
o Government: Previously assistant to the Deputy Director of the National Park Service (1983-1985), the Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks (1985-1989), and the Deputy Under Secretary for Policy, Planning and Development at the Department of Energy (1989-1992)

* Ronald Fogleman: While serving on the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Secretary of Defense (Donald H. Rumsfeld at the time) on military strategy, was hired by Boeing Company as a consultant while it was seeking Pentagon approval for a $20 billion contract for aerial refueling tankers. "An internal Boeing e-mail message indicated that the men, Adm. David Jeremiah, a retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a member of five corporate boards, and Gen. Ronald Fogleman, who retired from the Air Force, were to lobby Mr. Rumsfeld's office."[7]

* Ed Gillespie - Gillespie, a prominent Republican party leader and campaign advisor to George W. Bush, also owns his own lobbying and PR firm, Quinn Gillespie & Associates. Shortly after Bush took office, Gillespie went to work for a few days for the U.S. Commerce Department, where he arranged for the department to hire as its press secretary one of his own employees at Quinn Gillespie, Jim Dyke. Gillespie finished his work at the Commerce Department on February 15, 2001, and the following day he was back at work at his own office at Quinn Gillespie.

* John D. Graham
o Government: Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Office of Management and Budget
o Industry: Is on leave from position as Professor of Policy and Decision Sciences in the Faculty of Public Health at Harvard University, financed by corporate polluters
o "Graham is the de facto boss of all regulatory programs for the entire government -- any change in enviro rules must pass through his strangling hands. An avowed enemy of pollution regulations, he previously headed a quasi-academic front group that consistently issued reports claiming that environmental protections are too costly for industry -- not a surprising stance since he and his 'risk-assessment' center were financed by more than 100 corporate entities, including the American Petroleum Institute, Dow, Dupont, Exxon, Monsanto, and 3M."[8]

* Julie Goon
o Government: Special Assistant for Medicare Outreach, Department of Health and Human Services
o Industry: Previously worked as health industry lobbyist as Senior Vice President, Government Affairs, American Association of Health Plans.

* J. Steven Griles
o Government: Deputy Secretary, Department of the Interior, where he worked closely with the industries he is supposed to regulate on polluting and exploitive policies like the Clear Skies initiative. (2001-)
o Industry: Lobbyist for coal, energy, oil, gas, mining and manufacturing industries (1989-2001)
o Government: In a variety of positions, primarily in the Department of the Interior, Griles worked on policies such as pushing for oil drilling off the coast of California and selling land contracts for oil and shale extraction at give-away prices. (1970-1989)
o "A disciple of the infamous James Lee Watt, for whom he worked in the Reagan years, Griles went on to be a lobbyist for the National Mining Association, Edison Electric, Chevron, Occidental Petroleum, and other energy giants. Appointed the overseer of America's 500 million acres of public lands, Griles was hailed by the NMA as 'an ally of the industry,' and the mining association welcomed him as 'a breath of fresh air' -- for polluters, of course, not for us air breathers! Even though he is a public official now, he still draws $284,000 a year from his former lobbying firm, which represents corporations he supposedly regulates. Also, he has continued to meet behind closed doors with his former (and perhaps future) industry clients. The inspector general is investigating him for the blatant conflicts of interest posed by these meetings, which he had pledged to avoid in a 'recusal agreement' he signed to get his government job."[9]

* Jeffrey Holmstead - "assistant EPA administrator for air quality. Previously a lobbyist with the firm of Latham & Watkins, Holmstead represented electric utilities trying to fight air pollution restrictions, and he represented the Farm Bureau conglomerate in its fights against pesticide controls. Now inside, he's a key player pushing Bush's Clear Skies initiative, which will allow a 520 percent increase in toxic mercury pollution, a 225 percent jump in carbon dioxide pollution (a global warming contaminant), and a delay in the enforcement of smog and soot pollution until 2016. In charge of writing a new rule to limit mercury poisoning of children by electric power plants, Holmstead embraced a watered-down rule that essentially was written by his old lobbying firm of Latham & Watkins."[10]

* Marianne L. Horinko

* William Horn - "chairman of the fish and wildlife commission. In charge of charting policies governing America's priceless National Wildlife Refuge System, Horn's background is not as wildlife protector, but as a corporate lobbyist representing interests wanting to exploit our public refuges for their profit. He has lobbied for Florida Power & Light, Yukon Pacific Corporation (which wants to build a gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope to the port of Valdez, then export the gas to Asia), and the Nuclear Energy Institute. For a hint about his attitude toward preserving pristine wildlife areas, note that he has been the lead attorney for such outfits as the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association, New Jersey Beach Buggy Association, and Sun Valley HeliSki company."[11]

* Ralph Ives - "Ralph Ives was promoted in April [2004] to assistant US trade representative for pharmaceutical policy after leading the trade negotiations with Australia. Next month he becomes vice-president for global strategy at AdvaMed, an industry group that says its members produce half of the world's medical technology products."[12]

* David E. Jeremiah: While serving on the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Secretary of Defense (Donald H. Rumsfeld at the time) on military strategy, was hired by Boeing Company as a consultant while it was seeking Pentagon approval for a $20 billion contract for aerial refueling tankers. "An internal Boeing e-mail message indicated that the men, Adm. David Jeremiah, a retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a member of five corporate boards, and Gen. Ronald Fogleman, who retired from the Air Force, were to lobby Mr. Rumsfeld's office."[13]

* Michael Johns
o Government: White House speechwriter to President of the United States George H.W. Bush
o Industry: Vice president, Gentiva Health Services

* Paul G. Kaminski
o Government: Under Secretary of U.S. Department of Defense for Acquisition and Technology from 1994 to 1997.
o Industry: Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Technovation, Inc. since 1997; Senior Partner, Global Technology Partners, LLC, since 1998; director of Anteon International Corporation; director of General Dynamics since 1997.

* Andrew D. Lundquist
o Executive director of the National Energy Policy Development Group, a Cabinet-level task force chosen by President George W. Bush and headed by Vice President Dick Cheney
o Later became a registered lobbyist for clients that stood to benefit from the energy policy he helped formulate, including Toshiba Corp., BP, Kennecott Energy Co., and Duke Energy Corp.

* Deborah Platt Majoras - left her government post as U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair to become vice president and general counsel for Procter & Gamble, the largest U.S. consumer products company. [14]

* Jack W. Martin

* Jeffery S. Merrifield - Twelve days after leaving his position as Commissioner for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Merrifield joined the The Shaw Group, Inc. as vice-president of the company's power group. The watchdog group Project on Governmental Oversight noted that, in his last few months at the NRC, "Merrifield vigorously championed several major policy initiatives that directly benefited his future employer," including a change that reduced government and public oversight of new nuclear power plant construction, [15] and changes to the approval process for new nuclear plant construction that scaled back public hearings and public comment periods. [16]

* Margaret Miller

* William G. Myers - "solicitor of the Interior Department. The government's top lawyer for cases involving exploitation of our public lands by mining and agribusiness corporations, Myers previously was a lawyer and lobbyist representing mining and agribusiness corporations. At interior, he has pushed for new rules to allow more cattle grazing, to limit endangered species protections, to require fewer environmental impact statements for the lands under his stewardship, and to open public lands in five Western States to oil drilling. Myers is under investigation by ethics officials for meeting with his former corporate clients, despite having signed a conflict-of-interest agreement to avoid such contacts. Meanwhile, George W has nominated this possible law violator to be a federal appeals judge."[17]

* Catherine A. Novelli

* Theodore B. Olson

* Harvey L. Pitt - Pitt, Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from August 3, 2001 until his forced resignation in November 2003, served a tumultuous tenure amid multiple accusations of conflict of interest. His problems worsened with exposure of major corporate scandals such as those of Enron and WorldCom. Pitt’s appointment of William Webster to head the accounting board led to his resignation after it was determined that Pitt withheld information from other SEC commissioners about Webster's involvement with a company facing fraud charges. Prior to his appointment as SEC Chairman, Pitt was an attorney for the accounting industry.[18] [19]

* Peter Pitts
o Former associate commissioner for external affairs of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "Pitts served as the senior communications adviser to the FDA Commissioner. He provided strategic policy and program direction for the agency’s entire range of communications and interaction with stakeholders and other external audiences, including media. He oversaw the office of public affairs, office of the ombudsman, office of special health issues, and the advisory committee oversight and management staff."
o Joined Manning Selvage & Lee in June 2004 as senior vice president of health affairs. "Pitts will focus on three areas: counseling pharmaceutical, biotech and food companies on integrated marketing communications in a highly regulated environment; driving thought leadership on food and health issues facing the industry, including new drug development, drug importation, direct-to-consumer advertising, obesity and food labeling; and creating innovative consumer wellness programs for health and food companies."
o Pitts worked in marketing for the Lifetime Network, Reader's Digest, McCall's, the New York Post, the Washington Times, Insight Magazine, and the Hudson Institute before working at the FDA.[20]

* Bennett Raley
o Government: Assistant Secretary of Water and Science, Department of the Interior
o Industry: Previously a water and property rights lawyer; member of Wise Use Movement front groups.
o "A longtime, extremist 'corporate rights' advocate who previously lobbied to kill our nation's Clean Water Act, Raley now is the top official in charge of water issues at the interior department. In 2002, he teamed up with Karl Rove in a flagrant political maneuver to provide extra water for agribusiness from a federal water project in eastern Washington, even though agency scientists warned that this would be disastrous for wild salmon under federal protections in the Klamath River. Career agency professionals were forced to bow to White House political pressure, and thousands of fish died. When responsible officials tried to divert some of the Klamath basin water back to the endangered salmon populations, Raley again waved in Rove to apply top-heavy political pressure and back them off."[21]

* Joseph W. Ralston
o Government: Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from March 1996 to April 2000; Commander, U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO, from May 2000 to January 2003; retired from active duty on March 1, 2003.
o Industry: Vice Chairman of The Cohen Group since March 2003 when he retired from active duty; director on the board of Lockheed Martin since April 2003; director of The Timken Company since 2003; director on the board of URS Corporation since October 2003.

* Mark Rey
o Government: Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment, Department of Agriculture
o Industry: Previously a timber industry lobbyist
o "Rey, who now is caretaker of America's 156 national forests, has spent his entire career as a timber industry lobbyist and congressional staffer hell-bent on fattening industry profits by letting corporations clear-cut the public's trees. He headed the American Forest and Paper Association, the leading proponent of logging our national forests, prior to becoming a senate staffer and authoring an infamous 1995 act that suspended all environmental laws to give the green light for corporations to clear cut old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. He also wrote a bill that would have eliminated local citizen committees that oversee timber harvests. As forest chief, Rey has been the key force behind Bush's 'Healthy Forests' scam that would allow nearly unlimited clear-cutting in pristine national forests."[22]

* Jessie Roberson

* James G. Roche
o Government: Secretary of the Air Force since 2001.
o Industry: Various positions at Northrop Grumman from 1984 to 2001.

* Colin Roskey
o Government: Senate Finance Committee counsel
o Industry: Lobbyist with the law firm Alston & Bird, with clients including Jerome Stevens Pharmaceuticals of Bohemia, New York; Adams Laboratories of Chester, New Jersey; Mylan Laboratories of Morgantown, West Virginia; HealthSouth, a healthcare services company; and the American Clinical Laboratory Association, a trade group.[23]

* Thomas Sansonetti - "assistant attorney general for environment and natural resources. Now the public's lead lawyer for defending our environmental protection programs in court, Sansonetti is a Republican Party political operative and a lobbyist from Wyoming who represented coal companies and other energy corporations in their efforts to undermine these same environmental protections. He previously was chief lawyer for the Republican National Committee, and, as a lobbyist, he pushed in Washington to let each coal company increase its mining on federal lands by one-third. Another of the far-right corporatists that Bush has put in charge of the machinery of government, Sansonetti, is a proud member of the government-hating, laissez-faire Federalist Society, which is amply funded by ultra-conservative, corporate foundations."[24]

* Eugene Scalia - An anti-labor lawyer with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP who became Solicitor of Labor in January 2002 through a George W. Bush recess appointment after the Senate refused to confirm the nomination. He resigned in January 2003, shortly after the appointment expired, in order to avoid what would have been a bruising Senate confirmation hearing.

* Patricia Lynn Scarlett
o Government: Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget, Department of the Interior
o Industry: President and CEO Reason Foundation, funded by a variety of industry groups; senior fellow at the anti-public interest, pro-business Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment
o "This overseer of overall policy affecting our nation's public resources is no fan of the public even holding resources and doesn't like regulation of private efforts to exploit the public's resources. She has written that 'environmentalism is a coherent philosophy that rivals Marxism.' Most of Scarlett's career has been spent with the Reason Foundation, a think tank that vigorously opposes government regulations and is funded by such corporations as Chevron, Dow, Enron, ExxonMobil, Phillip Morris, and Shell Oil, as well as by the American Petroleum Institute, American Plastics Council, and American Chemistry Council."[25]

* Matt Schlapp
o Government: Head of the White House’s Office of Political Affairs
o Industry: Executive Director of Federal Affairs, directing lobbying in "the Washington office of oil-and-gas conglomerate Koch Industries, the latest example of high-level administration and congressional staffers making post-election leaps to the lobbying world." [26]

* Thomas Scully
o Controversy arose over the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Bill after the revelation that Thomas Scully, the former Medicare and Medicaid Services chief received an ethics waiver from the Department of Health and Human Services so he could "negotiate jobs with private companies while ... shaping federal policies important to the potential employers." Industry offered Scully several lucrative job offers, and after leaving Medicare, he accepted positions with an investment company that profits from health care and as a healthcare lobbyist with the law firm of Alston & Bird. Immediately after Scully went through the revolving door, the Bush administration changed the rule for ethics waivers, decreeing only the White House can issue them.[27][28]
o As a lobbyist for Alston & Bird, Scully's clients include Jerome Stevens Pharmaceuticals of Bohemia, New York; Adams Laboratories of Chester, New Jersey; Mylan Laboratories of Morgantown, West Virginia; HealthSouth, a healthcare services company; and the American Clinical Laboratory Association, a trade group.[29]

* John M. Shalikashvili

* Mike Smith

* Simon Stevens: former health advisor to British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who in May 2004 is set to head up the UK office of the Minneapolis-headquartered United Health Group (UHG). UHG is seeking contracts from the government funded National Healthcare Service. [30]

* Billy Tauzin: Former chair of the the Energy and Commerce Committee, which had oversight of the drug industry, who after retiring from Congress in late 2004 started as head of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in January 2005.

* Michael Taylor - Taylor, a former attorney for Monsanto, went to work for the United States Food and Drug Administration, where he helped draft FDA's policy declaring that genetically modified foods are "generally regarded as safe" (GRAS). While at the FDA, Taylor also wrote the policy that exempted biotech foods from labeling. His former law firm, which still represented Monsanto, then began suing dairies that labeled their milk rBGH-free (Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone to increase milk production). After these policies were written, Taylor left the FDA and eventually went back to work for Monsanto.

* Carmen Toohey - "special interior assistant for Alaska. Cam, as he is known, is Gale Norton's handpicked aid to oversee environmental policies affecting the vast federal landholdings in our nation's largest state. For the Bushites, policy priority Number One in Alaska is, of course, to turn loose their oil buddies to build roads, move in drilling rigs, and extend pipelines across the majestic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Cam is well-versed on this priority and completely in tune with it, for he comes to his government job from having led Arctic Power, a lobbying group supporting corporate interests that want to open our public refuge to their private profit schemes."[31]

* Daniel E. Troy - Marking a dramatic shift in U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) policy, Troy, formerly a representative of U.S. pharmaceutical firms and now lead counsel for the FDA, informed drug companies that he would provide aid in torpedoing certain lawsuits, especially those with claims of medications causing unexpected or harmful side effects.[32]. As of Septmeber 2, 2008, Troy will be lead counsel for the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline according tot he Wall Street Journal [33]

* Ann M. Veneman
o Government: U. S. Secretary of Agriculture (2001-2004)
o Industry: Private law practice; provided legal representation to the Sierra Nevada Access and Multiple Use Stewardship Coalition, a place-based consensus-building program for a section of California's forested areas (1999-2001)
o Industry: Served on the International Policy Council on Agriculture, Food and Trade, a group funded by Cargill, Nestle, Kraft, and Archer Daniels Midland; member of the Bennett Agriculture Round Table, and Food Foresight
o Government: Named head of California’s Department of Food and Agriculture (1995-1999)
o Industry: Served on the board of directors for Calgene Inc (makers of genetically-engineered Flavr Savr tomato, bought by Monsanto in 1997)
o Government: U.S. Department of Agriculture under George Herbert Walker Bush (1986-1993)

* Rebecca Watson - "assistant interior secretary for land and minerals. Directing the Bureau of Land Management, Watson is responsible for the rules and fees for gold mining companies, drillers, and other corporations wanting to profit on the wealth of minerals and other public resources within our federal lands. Her qualifications for the job are not as a public defender, but as a Montana lawyer representing mining and logging corporations that either wanted unfettered access to these public treasures or that didn't want to pay for the environmental damage done by their exploitative procedures. Watson has represented Golden Sunlight Mines, Fidelity Exploration, Plum Creek Timber, and other companies regulated by the agency she now heads. She also worked on the litigation committee of the right-wing Mountain States Legal Foundation, a litigious, corporate-funded group of legal activists that tries to run over any environmental protection that pinches even a dime's worth of ill-gotten corporate profits."[34]

* Thomas E. White
o Government: Secretary of the Army from May, 2001 until forced to resign April, 2003
o Industry: Senior executive at Enron Corporation, 1990-2001
o Government: Retired as Army brigadier general in 1990

* Christine Todd Whitman - After resigning as Secretary of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (a post she held from January 2001 to May 2003), Whitman formed the Whitman Strategies Group consulting firm. The firm's first client was FMC Corporation, "a chemical company negotiating with the EPA over the cleanup of arsenic-contaminated soil at a factory near Buffalo, N.Y." In a May 2005 interview, Whitman said she had not worked directly with FMC, but would likely advise them on "how to improve their image" and gain "access to the people they need to speak to." FMC "is responsible for 136 Superfund sites across the country ... and has been subject to 47 EPA enforcement actions." [35]

* Donald C. Winter - To serve as Secretary of the Navy, President Bush Jr. nominated Donald Winter, currently the Vice President of Northrop Grumman, which builds many of the Navy's warships and receives billions of dollars to build other weapons. [36]

* Michael W. Wynne - Bush Jr. also nominated Michael Wynne as Secretary of the Air Force. Wynne was one of several people who were blamed by a Pentagon inspector general for a failed 23.5 billion dollar deal with Boeing, which many lawmakers call the most significant case of contract abuse in decades. [37]

Why medicine is so expensive

Most of us have heard that you can by the same medications we get here for much less in other countries. Why is that? Because America is for sale and the pharmaceutical industry is the highest bidder. Who pays??? You and I do along with every other American. Tell me, how does it feel to be raped? It's up to us, the voters who's vote is also bought and sold by those who tell us what to believe and keep the truth quiet.

Source: Center for Public Integrity, June 24, 2008

"Washington's largest lobby, the pharmaceutical industry, racked up another banner year on Capitol Hill in 2007, backed by a record $168 million lobbying effort," reports M. Asif Ismail. The spending, from companies and trade associations including Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the Biotechnology Industry Organization, jumped 36 percent over the previous year. Much of the increase went to Democrats, after they became the majority party in Congress. "In the current election cycle so far, for the first time on record, the pharmaceutical and health products industry has given slightly more money to Democrats than Republicans," Ismail notes. Just two years earlier, "Democrats received only 31 percent of the contributions from the industry, while the Republicans received 67 percent." The industry's lobbying successes have included "thwarting congressional efforts to restrict media ads for prescription drugs," "blocking the importation of inexpensive drugs from other countries," and "ensuring greater market access for pharmaceutical companies in international free trade agreements."

Thursday, July 24, 2008

It's OUR country???

This Washington Post article again brings up one of my pet peeves. We are anxious to send our son's and daughters to war but not at all anxious to keep our promises to take care of the results of war. This I don't understand at all. Why should it even be an issue? Why is it still one after public scandal and heads rolling in the aftermath? And what we get is empty words with no actions to back them up with, or at least little action. This is OUR country, congress and the rest of the government is there to serve our needs and there because of our votes. We need to take control by our votes and bring this democracy back into the original balance our forefathers envisioned. Take it back from the lawmakers who have been serving their own selfish interests for decades, who have created a culture in congress and the senate that accepts and prolongs corruption and goes against the values this country and our constitution represents. Our country and it's lawmakers are for sale and have been bought by the highest bidders time and time again, and we (the public) are the ones who are sold and pay the prices big corporations and political special interests bind us into.

Oops! We Did It Again.

It's been more than a year since the Walter Reed scandal broke, but "some would say we're a step slow," acknowledged Maj. Gen. David Rubinstein, right. (By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)

By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, July 23, 2008; A03

The generals were nervous.

Lt. Gen. Robert Wilson moved his index finger across the page as he read his statement with a halting delivery. Maj. Gen. David Rubenstein, holding a discolored washcloth under the witness table to dry his perspiration, accidentally dropped the cloth and felt for it with his shoe.

The anxiety, even for men with two or three stars on each shoulder, was to be expected. They had come before a House Armed Services subcommittee to explain why, 16 months and at least eight fact-finding investigations after the Walter Reed scandal, the Army still hadn't fixed the health-care system for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wisely, however, the generals armed themselves with a highly sophisticated and unexpected weapon: contrition.

"It absolutely needs to work better," said Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, the Army's deputy chief of staff.

"We realize that we have much work to do," offered Wilson, of the Army's installation management command.

"Some would say that we're a step slow; I have no argument with that complaint," confessed Rubenstein, the Army's deputy surgeon general.

"Certainly, this program has been imperfect and execution uneven," said Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek, an assistant surgeon general for "warrior care."

It was a tactical retreat in the face of an overwhelming enemy: the facts.

Committee investigators had visited Army medical facilities and came back with ominous statistics. At Fort Hood, Tex., last month, they found that a "warrior transition unit" designed to support 649 had 1,342 soldiers, with 350 more on a waiting list. Instead of the promised 74 nurse case managers, there were 38. Other facilities "would shortly experience similar shortages" or already had.

The Army miscalculated the growth in the number of soldiers needing care (it's now at 12,000 and is expected to reach 20,000 next year), causing it to fall below "the required level of staffing" at most facilities -- despite the Army surgeon general's assertion in February that "we are entirely staffed at the point we need to be staffed."

"Why," inquired the panel's chairman, Susan Davis (D-Calif.), "did it take oversight visits from this subcommittee to identify and spur the Army to fix these issues?" She concluded: "We are very concerned that the Army took its eye off that ball, that you are not living up to the goals you set and the promises you made."

The ranking Republican member, John McHugh (N.Y.), was no less skeptical. "In many ways, this challenge isn't being met, and I find the current circumstances unacceptable," he said. "Do you gentlemen agree with that?" Rochelle nodded his head. "Anybody disagree with that?" Nobody moved.

But with the choreography of a Special Forces team, the four generals, each in dark olive with well-shined shoes, professed their devotion to the cause.

"Warrior care is our highest priority, second only to the global war on terror," Wilson said.

"We have no higher priority," added Rubenstein, "except for putting boots on the ground itself in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"Manning the warrior transition units is only second to manning those units preparing to deploy," affirmed Rochelle.

The officers were careful to avoid the sort of bluster that caused their predecessors to be fired in the immediate aftermath of the Walter Reed scandal -- although Rubenstein got close with his boast that "we're doing phenomenal work." Instead, they heaped flattery on their interrogators.

Cheek voiced a desire to "thank Congress for the leadership and support you provide to the Army in the development and execution of this program." Rochelle thanked the half-dozen lawmakers at the hearing for their "continued support" for the "wounded warriors and families that we are all honored to serve." Wilson chimed in with praise for congressional funding. And Rubenstein managed to find gratitude that committee staff members were "very open with all of their findings."

The lawmakers were disarmed. Davis spoke of the "overall positive direction" and her confidence that the Army is "clearly providing better support" for the wounded.

Delicately, and with careful use of qualifiers, the generals argued that things had improved over 16 months. "We know we have come a long way," Rochelle said. "We also know that we still have a long way to go."

Rubenstein professed to be "working diligently at executing an outstanding Army Medical Action Plan," even if there are "challenges in its execution."

It didn't take much questioning for the "challenges" to trip up the generals. Asked whether the Army is offering competitive pay, Rubenstein boasted that "in some communities, we are too competitive" -- but a moment later complained about how he "can't compete" with the pay at civilian hospitals.

"But you told me you were overly competitive, General," McHugh said. "Which are you?"

After that, the generals mostly stuck with concession and contrition: "We had not sufficiently empowered our commanders. . . . We're going to review this. . . . We've had our challenges. . . . It simply wasn't nimble enough. . . . It is a logjam. . . . We are not meeting the standard. . . That's a valid concern."

Finding no argument, the lawmakers brought the hearing to a prompt close, but not before another round of mutual flattery. Cheek thanked the committee for its support. Wilson thanked McHugh for the pleasant hearing. Rubenstein praised the staff for its "amazing openness." The chairwoman found herself telling the generals: "Thank you for thanking our staff." Rubenstein, now dry, retrieved his perspiration cloth and hid it under his papers.

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(Emphasis added)

© 2008 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/22/AR2008072202857.html

Monday, July 21, 2008

Ashamed

In the history of our country there are times and actions that bring shame. This holds true, I am sure, for every country and for that matter every family in the world. The list of such events would be a long book and include things like our treatment of the American Indian. Right now we are in the midst of another one of those times, a time that makes me ashamed of this country. Don't get me wrong, I am proud to be an American and still think we are the best country in the world but just like sin in a Christian's life a darkness has crept into our government, a compromise of the values and morals this country stands for. This insidious decay has been growing like a cancer, it is a cultural change where good becomes evil and evil becomes accepted as something "not that bad" and justified in our minds as we are sold on it by our government.

So here is the shame. As a country America has been the bastion of morality, the defender of good and fighter of evils such as Nazism that threaten the world. We've fought against genocide, slavery, and every other terrible thing that fosters death and misery. We've signed agreements regarding the treatment of prisoners and the use of weapons of war that are unconscionable and terrible. We decry terrorism, torture, and many other things, all the while promoting the sanctity of life and the rights all humans on earth should have.

But now we are becoming like our enemies. But now we are becoming what we fight against. But now we do what we say others should not. But now we are hypocrites.In doing so we lose any credibility in the eyes of the entire world that watches.

So read this and tell me what you think.

July 2, 2008
China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo
By SCOTT SHANE

Correction Appended

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods.

Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed.

But committee investigators were not aware of the chart’s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.

In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that “every American would be shocked” by the origin of the training document.

“What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,” Mr. Levin said. “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”

A Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col Patrick Ryder, said he could not comment on the Guantánamo training chart. “I can’t speculate on previous decisions that may have been made prior to current D.O.D. policy on interrogations,” Colonel Ryder said. “I can tell you that current D.O.D. policy is clear — we treat all detainees humanely.”

Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article described “one form of torture” used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand “for exceedingly long periods,” sometimes in conditions of “extreme cold.” Such passive methods, he wrote, were more common than outright physical violence. Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and C.I.A. interrogators against terrorist suspects.

The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including “Semi-Starvation,” “Exploitation of Wounds,” and “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and with their effects: “Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator,” “Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist,” and “Reduces Prisoner to ‘Animal Level’ Concerns.”

The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”

The documents released last month include an e-mail message from two SERE trainers reporting on a trip to Guantánamo from Dec. 29, 2002, to Jan. 4, 2003. Their purpose, the message said, was to present to interrogators “the theory and application of the physical pressures utilized during our training.”

The sessions included “an in-depth class on Biderman’s Principles,” the message said, referring to the chart from Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article. Versions of the same chart, often identified as “Biderman’s Chart of Coercion,” have circulated on anti-cult sites on the Web, where the methods are used to describe how cults control their members.

Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who also studied the returning prisoners of war and wrote an accompanying article in the same 1957 issue of The Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, said in an interview that he was disturbed to learn that the Chinese methods had been recycled and taught at Guantánamo.

“It saddens me,” said Dr. Lifton, who wrote a 1961 book on what the Chinese called “thought reform” and became known in popular American parlance as brainwashing. He called the use of the Chinese techniques by American interrogators at Guantánamo a “180-degree turn.”

The harshest known interrogation at Guantánamo was that of Mohammed al-Qahtani, a member of Al Qaeda suspected of being the intended 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Qahtani’s interrogation involved sleep deprivation, stress positions, exposure to cold and other methods also used by the Chinese.

Terror charges against Mr. Qahtani were dropped unexpectedly in May. Officials said the charges could be reinstated later and declined to say whether the decision was influenced by concern about Mr. Qahtani’s treatment.

Mr. Bush has defended the use the interrogation methods, saying they helped provide critical intelligence and prevented new terrorist attacks. But the issue continues to complicate the long-delayed prosecutions now proceeding at Guantánamo.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Qaeda member accused of playing a major role in the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, was charged with murder and other crimes on Monday. In previous hearings, Mr. Nashiri, who was subjected to waterboarding, has said he confessed to participating in the bombing falsely only because he was tortured.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 3, 2008
An article on Wednesday about coercive interrogation methods taught at Guantánamo Bay that were copied from a 1957 journal article about Chinese techniques misstated the given name of the author of the article. He was Albert D. Biderman, not Alfred.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Veteran's issues and TBI

My son, Bruce, during one of his tours in Iraq

I've been neglecting this blog as my energy and attention have been focused on getting our farm started and just general living issues. I get so much information now regarding veteran issues and traumatic brain injuries that I would like to share but it would clutter my "walkedwithangels" blog so I think this will be a good place to post it.

Report: 8,763 vets died waiting for benefits

By William H. McMichael - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jul 15, 2008 16:10:19 EDT

The title of the House committee report sums up what happened: "Die or Give Up Trying: How Poor Contractor Performance, Government Mismanagement and the Erosion of Quality Controls Denied Thousands of Disabled Veterans Timely and Accurate Retroactive Retired Pay Awards."

The report by the majority staff of the House Oversight and Government Reform domestic policy panel, released Tuesday, concluded that at least 28,283 disabled retirees were denied retroactive pay awards because rushed efforts to clear a huge backlog of claims led program administrators to stop doing quality assurance checks on the claims decisions.

And of the original 133,057 potentially eligible veterans, 8,763 died before their cases could be reviewed for retroactive payments, according to the report.

At issue are the Concurrent Retirement and Disability Payments and Combat-Related Special Compensation programs, approved by Congress in 2003 and 2004 to allow large numbers of disabled retirees to receive full concurrent military retirement pay and veteran's disability compensation.

For more than a century before those programs were enacted, disabled retirees were forced to forfeit a dollar of military retirement pay for every dollar they received in veterans' disability payments.

About 223,180 disabled veterans receive monthly CRDP payments, while another 60,155 disabled veterans receive monthly payments under CRSC.

Under the programs, many disabled veterans also became eligible for a single retroactive payment due to changes in their disability status.

As of September 2006, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service determined that 133,057 veterans potentially were eligible for these so-called "VA Retro" payments. Over time, another 84,237 newly retired and other veterans were added to the list.

Yet as of March 1, more than 60,000 eligible veterans were still waiting for reviews of their cases under the two programs.

The claims processing shortfall was raised during a February defense budget hearing; Pentagon Comptroller Tina Jonas told the Senate Budget Committee that she had recently asked Zack Gaddy, the director of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, to triple the number of people working on the backlog.

In February, the backlog was said to be "more than 39,000" cases. Jonas said she had been assured that the backlog would be cleared by April.

That did not happen, according to the subcommittee report, because Lockheed Martin, the contractor hired in July 2006 to compute the complex retroactive pay awards, had difficulty making the computations fast enough to eliminate the backlog quickly. The complexity of the computations also hindered Lockheed Martin's ability to develop software to automate the process.

Two other factors played a role: The required databases did not exist, and the Department of Veterans Affairs and the military services "were slow to put the data in the necessary form for automation."

As a result, Lockheed Martin was forced to compute the cases manually. It did so, and with just under half the number of workers the government had previously used for the work — a relic of the original contract proposal, according to the report.

Lockheed Martin missed its original November 2007 deadline and every succeeding one, the report stated. The committee said Gaddy personally monitored the program and "frequently complained to Lockheed about low productivity and the high number of errors DFAS quality control auditors were detecting."

Gaddy also expressed concern that the delays were damaging the reputation of DFAS.

To ease congressional concerns and speed up the review process, DFAS chose several "questionable approaches" — assigning federal workers to duties covered by the contract with Lockheed Martin, and suspending independent quality checks on Lockheed's calculations.

After those measures went into effect on March 1, up to 60,051 payments were made to eligible veterans. But the subcommittee concluded that "serious questions" remain about the accuracy of these payments.

"While the subcommittee majority staff does not know how many erred payments were sent, we do not believe that DFAS knows either," the report said.

Under Lockheed's operating procedures, its quality assurance team also did not verify the accuracy of any "No Pay Due" determinations, which are sent directly to veterans without verification, the report added.

"Neither DFAS nor Lockheed knows how many 'No Pay Due' letters could be in error," the report states. Such letters were sent to at least 28,283 veterans.

DFAS and Lockheed Martin announced that the VA Retro backlog was finally eliminated by the end of June, seven months after the original deadline.

Lockheed Martin was paid $18.74 million for its work on the backlog.

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All content © 2008, Army Times Publishing Company

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/military_concurrent_receipt_071508/