Stratfor--The Private U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

Wikileaks released more that five million emails from the private U.S. intelligence gathering company Stratfor today:


WikiWorld

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The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor.

LONDON—Today, Monday 27 February, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods, for example :

"[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase" – CEO George Friedman to Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla on 6 December 2011, on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant providing information on the medical condition of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez.

The material contains privileged information about the US government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. There are more than 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange. The emails also expose the revolving door that operates in private intelligence companies in the United States. Government and diplomatic sources from around the world give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money. The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.

The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients. For example, Stratfor monitored and analysed the online activities of Bhopal activists, including the "Yes Men", for the US chemical giant Dow Chemical. The activists seek redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. The disaster led to thousands of deaths, injuries in more than half a million people, and lasting environmental damage.

Stratfor has realised that its routine use of secret cash bribes to get information from insiders is risky. In August 2011, Stratfor CEO George Friedman confidentially told his employees : "We are retaining a law firm to create a policy for Stratfor on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. I don’t plan to do the perp walk and I don’t want anyone here doing it either."

Stratfor’s use of insiders for intelligence soon turned into a money-making scheme of questionable legality. The emails show that in 2009 then-Goldman Sachs Managing Director Shea Morenz and Stratfor CEO George Friedman hatched an idea to "utilise the intelligence" it was pulling in from its insider network to start up a captive strategic investment fund. CEO George Friedman explained in a confidential August 2011 document, marked DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS : "What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor’s intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like". The emails show that in 2011 Goldman Sach’s Morenz invested "substantially" more than $4million and joined Stratfor’s board of directors. Throughout 2011, a complex offshore share structure extending as far as South Africa was erected, designed to make StratCap appear to be legally independent. But, confidentially, Friedman told StratFor staff : "Do not think of StratCap as an outside organisation. It will be integral... It will be useful to you if, for the sake of convenience, you think of it as another aspect of Stratfor and Shea as another executive in Stratfor... we are already working on mock portfolios and trades". StratCap is due to launch in 2012.

The Stratfor emails reveal a company that cultivates close ties with US government agencies and employs former US government staff. It is preparing the 3-year Forecast for the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, and it trains US marines and "other government intelligence agencies" in "becoming government Stratfors". Stratfor’s Vice-President for Intelligence, Fred Burton, was formerly a special agent with the US State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and was their Deputy Chief of the counterterrorism division. Despite the governmental ties, Stratfor and similar companies operate in complete secrecy with no political oversight or accountability. Stratfor claims that it operates "without ideology, agenda or national bias", yet the emails reveal private intelligence staff who align themselves closely with US government policies and channel tips to the Mossad – including through an information mule in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yossi Melman, who conspired with Guardian journalist David Leigh to secretly, and in violation of WikiLeaks’ contract with the Guardian, move WikiLeaks US diplomatic cables to Israel.

Ironically, considering the present circumstances, Stratfor was trying to get into what it called the leak-focused "gravy train" that sprung up after WikiLeaks’ Afghanistan disclosures :

"[Is it] possible for us to get some of that ’leak-focused’ gravy train ? This is an obvious fear sale, so that’s a good thing. And we have something to offer that the IT security companies don’t, mainly our focus on counter-intelligence and surveillance that Fred and Stick know better than anyone on the planet... Could we develop some ideas and procedures on the idea of ´leak-focused’ network security that focuses on preventing one’s own employees from leaking sensitive information... In fact, I’m not so sure this is an IT problem that requires an IT solution."

Like WikiLeaks’ diplomatic cables, much of the significance of the emails will be revealed over the coming weeks, as our coalition and the public search through them and discover connections. Readers will find that whereas large numbers of Stratfor’s subscribers and clients work in the US military and intelligence agencies, Stratfor gave a complimentary membership to the controversial Pakistan general Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service, who, according to US diplomatic cables, planned an IED attack on international forces in Afghanistan in 2006. Readers will discover Stratfor’s internal email classification system that codes correspondence according to categories such as ’alpha’, ’tactical’ and ’secure’. The correspondence also contains code names for people of particular interest such as ’Hizzies’ (members of Hezbollah), or ’Adogg’ (Mahmoud Ahmedinejad).

Stratfor did secret deals with dozens of media organisations and journalists – from Reuters to the Kiev Post. The list of Stratfor’s "Confederation Partners", whom Stratfor internally referred to as its "Confed Fuck House" are included in the release. While it is acceptable for journalists to swap information or be paid by other media organisations, because Stratfor is a private intelligence organisation that services governments and private clients these relationships are corrupt or corrupting.

WikiLeaks has also obtained Stratfor’s list of informants and, in many cases, records of its payoffs, including $1,200 a month paid to the informant "Geronimo" , handled by Stratfor’s Former State Department agent Fred Burton.

WikiLeaks has built an investigative partnership with more than 25 media organisations and activists to inform the public about this huge body of documents. The organisations were provided access to a sophisticated investigative database developed by WikiLeaks and together with WikiLeaks are conducting journalistic evaluations of these emails. Important revelations discovered using this system will appear in the media in the coming weeks, together with the gradual release of the source documents.

END

[See http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html for the following information:]
Public partners in the investigation
Comment
Current WikiLeaks status
How to read the data [including glossary]

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Monday's WikiLeaks London press conference

The sound doesn't start until a few minutes in.



Video streaming by Ustream
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WikiLeaks Publishes 5 Million 'Shadow CIA' E-Mails
Published on Monday, February 27, 2012 by Common Dreams

"Admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations”

WikiLeaks announced tonight that it is publishing documents it is calling "The Global Intelligence Files" which includes over 5 million e-mails from the US-based "Global Intelligence" company Stratfor, the Global Intelligence Company described by Barons as the Shadow CIA, according to a statement the organization released Sunday night.

WikiLeaks has partnered with 25 media organizations to publish the documents including the McClatchy newspapers and Rolling Stone.

"The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods."

WikiLeaks will hold a noon-time press conference in London on Monday to explain the files. The full press release is available here.

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UPDATE: Monday's WikiLeaks London press conference has ended. The New York Times reports:

“The material contains privileged information about the U.S. government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks,” the group said. “There are more than 4,000 e-mails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.”

At the London news conference, Mr. Assange said the Stratfor statement seemed to confirm the advice offered by a senior figure in the company in one of the exposed e-mails which he quoted a senior Stratfor executive as saying: “admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations.”Mr. Assange appeared Monday at a streamed news conference from the journalists’ Frontline Club in London.

Stratfor said in a statement that some of the e-mails being published “may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic,” the company said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

“We will not validate either. Nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them,” the statement said.

At the London news conference, Mr. Assange said the Stratfor statement seemed to confirm the advice offered by a senior figure in the company in one of the exposed e-mails which he quoted a senior Stratfor executive as saying: “admit nothing, deny everything, make counteraccusations.”

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Technorati reports:

Wikileaks has begun publishing 5 million e-mails from Stratfor, the Global Intelligence Company described by Barons as the Shadow CIA.

At 00:01 GMT on 27 February 2011, Wikileaks started publishing the confidential e-mail communications between Stratfor and its informants which includes government employees, government agencies and corporations.

In a press release, the inner workings of Stratfor are described, painting a world where the government, corporations and Stratfor are intertwined.

Anti-Sec, part of Anonymous, proclaimed late in December 2011 that they had hacked into Stratfor and had managed to gain access to subscriber data. In a press release, Anti-Sec stated that the main reason they hacked into Stratfor was not for the subscriber data, but the trove of 5 million e-mail data, which would reveal the inner working of Stratfor and government agencies. It seems that it is these e-mails that are now being leaked by Wikileaks.

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See Also:
Glenn Greenwald
SATURDAY, DEC 24, 2011
The intellectual cowardice of Bradley Manning’s critics

And:

FEBRUARY 5, 2012 2:23PM
An Open Letter about Pfc. Bradley Manning (Updated)

Occupy Wall Street, Herman Cain, Iran "Terror Plot" & Media Complicity in Libya

Just a few articles to consider:

- Occupy Wall Street: Hit Bankers Where it Hurts--Taibbi

- Herman Cain Hoping for Big Financial Campaign Stimulus from the Rich

- More on Iran "Terror Plot"

- Media Bias in Libya Reporting: "media’s complicity in the human rights violations"

- Extras
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Occupy Wall Street: Hit Bankers Where it Hurts--Taibbi

My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters: 
Hit Bankers Where it Hurts


By Matt Taibbi 


October 13, 2011

"Rolling Stone" - - I've been down to "Occupy Wall Street" twice now, and I love it. The protests building at Liberty Square and spreading over Lower Manhattan are a great thing, the logical answer to the Tea Party and a long-overdue middle finger to the financial elite. The protesters picked the right target and, through their refusal to disband after just one day, the right tactic, showing the public at large that the movement against Wall Street has stamina, resolve and growing popular appeal.

But... there's a but. And for me this is a deeply personal thing, because this issue of how to combat Wall Street corruption has consumed my life for years now, and it's hard for me not to see where Occupy Wall Street could be better and more dangerous. I'm guessing, for instance, that the banks were secretly thrilled in the early going of the protests, sure they'd won round one of the messaging war.

Why? Because after a decade of unparalleled thievery and corruption, with tens of millions entering the ranks of the hungry thanks to artificially inflated commodity prices, and millions more displaced from their homes by corruption in the mortgage markets, the headline from the first week of protests against the financial-services sector was an old cop macing a quartet of college girls.

That, to me, speaks volumes about the primary challenge of opposing the 50-headed hydra of Wall Street corruption, which is that it's extremely difficult to explain the crimes of the modern financial elite in a simple visual. The essence of this particular sort of oligarchic power is its complexity and day-to-day invisibility: Its worst crimes, from bribery and insider trading and market manipulation, to backroom dominance of government and the usurping of the regulatory structure from within, simply can't be seen by the public or put on TV. There just isn't going to be an iconic "Running Girl" photo with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup or Bank of America – just 62 million Americans with zero or negative net worth, scratching their heads and wondering where the hell all their money went and why their votes seem to count less and less each and every year.

No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement's basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. There are thousands one could make, but I'd suggest focusing on five:

1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.

2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.

3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.

4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.

5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.

To quote the immortal political philosopher Matt Damon from Rounders, "The key to No Limit poker is to put a man to a decision for all his chips." The only reason the Lloyd Blankfeins and Jamie Dimons of the world survive is that they're never forced, by the media or anyone else, to put all their cards on the table. If Occupy Wall Street can do that – if it can speak to the millions of people the banks have driven into foreclosure and joblessness – it has a chance to build a massive grassroots movement. All it has to do is light a match in the right place, and the overwhelming public support for real reform – not later, but right now – will be there in an instant.

© 2011 Rolling Stone
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Herman Cain Hoping for Big Financial Campaign Stimulus from the Rich

[Cain recently blamed the jobless and the poor for their problems]

Why Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan Is a Disaster for the Middle Class

RS Politics Daily
by: Tim Dickinson

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain wants to increase your taxes so that the very rich pay less.

If you were trying to formulate a tax proposal to enrage and energize the Occupy Wall Street movement, it would be hard to improve on Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan.

The Republican frontrunner is proposing a 9 percent tax on wages, a 9 percent tax on business income and a new 9 percent federal sales tax. This cleverly marketed flat-tax plan would "drastically increase taxes on the working poor and middle class, and reduce taxes going forward on the rich, " Edward Kleinbard, a professor of tax law at USC, writes for Tax Notes.

Kleinbard estimates that 90 percent of tax payers would end up with a "vastly increased tax bill," under the 9-9-9 plan. That's because the "business flat tax" is effectively structured as a payroll tax, so with each 9 in Cain's plan, workers take the hit. "The combination of the three actually operates as the economic equivalent of a 27 percent uncapped payroll tax," writes Kleinbard. A middle class family of four with an income of $50,000, he tells Rolling Stone, would see its tax burden soar by nearly $5,000 a year to $13,500. "Its staggering!" For a family just to break even under Cain's scheme, it would need to take home in excess of $120,000 a year.

If Cain were being honest, he would sell his tax scheme as the 9-0-9-0-9 plan. That's because two taxes vital to the fairness of the current tax code simply disappear: Taxes on capital gains and inheritance. That is to say, taxes on the rich.

Who earns capital gains? The top 0.3 percent of tax payers take home more than 60 percent of America's investment income. Perversely, the Cain plan would liberate more than 23,000 millionaires from federal income taxes altogether. Those who make money soley from investing wouldn't pay nine percent – they'd pay a zero percent. That's an average annual tax cut of nearly half a million dollars for some of the fattest cats in the land.

Repealing the estate tax, currently up to 35 percent for estates in excess of $5 million, would create another trillion-dollar windfall for the richest of the rich. The two tax breaks dovetail nicely. Under Cain's plan, a billionaire hedge fund manager could pay nothing in income tax and then pass that wealth on to his heirs completely tax free. 

The net effect of the Cain plan, says Kleinbard, would be to shift the tax burden from capital to labor, and — within labor income — to shift the burden of taxes down the ladder from the CEO class to workers struggling to make ends meet. 
Worse, Cain's plan would not raise any more revenue than the current system. Cain would destroy the fairness of the tax code and still leave America's fiscal house, Kleinbard says, "in exactly the same mess we're in now." 

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More on Iran "Terror Plot"
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FBI Account of "Terror Plot" Suggests Sting Operation

Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Oct 13 (IPS) - While the administration of Barack Obama vows to hold the Iranian government "accountable" for the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, the legal document describing evidence in the case provides multiple indications that it was mainly the result of an FBI "sting" operation.

Although the legal document, called an amended criminal complaint, implicates Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar and his cousin Ali Gholam Shakuri, an officer in the Iranian Quds Force, in a plan to assassinate Saudi Arabian Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir, it also suggests that the idea originated with and was strongly pushed by a undercover DEA informant, at the direction of the FBI.

On May 24, when Arbabsiar first met with the DEA informant he thought was part of a Mexican drug cartel, it was not to hire a hit squad to kill the ambassador. Rather, there is reason to believe that the main purpose was to arrange a deal to sell large amounts of opium from Afghanistan.

In the complaint, the closest to a semblance of evidence that Arbabsiar sought help during that first meeting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is the allegation, attributed to the DEA informant, that Arbabsiar said he was "interested in, among other things, attacking an embassy of Saudi Arabia".

Among the "other things" was almost certainly a deal on heroin controlled by officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Three Bloomberg reporters, citing a "federal law enforcement official", wrote that Arbabsiar told the DEA informant he represented Iranians who "controlled drug smuggling and could provide tons of opium".

Because of opium entering Iran from Afghanistan, Iranian authorities hold 85 percent of the world's opium seizures, according to Iran's Fars News Agency. Iranian security personnel, including those in the IRGC and its Quds Force, then have the opportunity to sell the opium to traffickers in the Middle East, Europe and now Mexico.

Mexican drug cartels have begun connecting with Middle Eastern drug traffickers, in many cases stationing operatives in Middle East locations to facilitate heroin production and sales, according to a report last January in Borderland Beat.

But the FBI account of the contacts between Arbabsiar and the DEA informant does not reference any discussions of drugs.
. . . .

[More]
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Petraeus’s CIA Fuels Iran Murder Plot

Ray McGovern
October 13, 2011

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, in his accustomed role as unofficial surrogate CIA spokesman, has thrown light on how the CIA under its new director, David Petraeus, helped craft the screenplay for this week’s White House spy feature: the Iranian-American-used-car-salesman-Mexican-drug-cartel plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.

In Thursday’s column, Ignatius notes that, initially, White House and Justice Department officials found the story "implausible." It was. But the Petraeus team soon leapt to the rescue, reflecting the four-star-general-turned-intelligence-chief’s deep-seated animus toward Iran.

Before Ignatius’s article, I had seen no one allude to the fact that much about this crime-stopper tale had come from the CIA. In public, the FBI had taken the lead role, presumably because the key informant inside a Mexican drug cartel worked for U.S. law enforcement via the Drug Enforcement Administration.

However, according to Ignatius, "One big reason [top U.S. officials became convinced the plot was real] is that CIA and other intelligence agencies gathered information corroborating the informant’s juicy allegations and showing that the plot had support from the top leadership of the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the covert action arm of the Iranian government."

Ignatius adds that, "It was this intelligence collected in Iran" that swung the balance, but he offers no example of what that intelligence was. He only mentions a recorded telephone call on Oct. 4 between Iranian-American cars salesman Mansour Arbabsiar and his supposed contact in Iran, Gholam Shakuri, allegedly an official in Iran’s Quds spy agency.

The call is recounted in the FBI affidavit submitted in support of the criminal charges against Arbabsiar, who is now in U.S. custody, and Shakuri, who is not. But the snippets of that conversation are unclear, discussing what on the surface appears to be a "Chevrolet" car purchase, but which the FBI asserts is code for killing the Saudi ambassador.

Without explaining what other evidence the CIA might have, Ignatius tries to further strengthen the case by knocking down some of the obvious problems with the allegations, such as "why the Iranians would undertake such a risky operation, and with such embarrassingly poor tradecraft."

"But why the use of Mexican drug cartels?" asks Ignatius rhetorically, before adding dutifully: "U.S. officials say that isn’t as implausible as it sounds."

But it IS as implausible as it sounds, says every professional intelligence officer I have talked with since the "plot" was somberly announced on Tuesday.

The Old CIA Pros . . . .

[More]
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Media Bias in Libya Reporting: "media’s complicity in the human rights violations"

Mainstream Media’s Coverage of Libya Disturbing

INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY STUDIES
Published 14 Oct 2011

The mainstream media’s conspicuous silence about the racially motivated human rights abuses perpetrated against black Libyans and immigrants, by the NATO-backed Transitional National Council (TNC) forces in Libya, is disturbing. Similarly, the high civilian casualties of the current intense fighting in the city of Sirte seems, to a large extent, to be underplayed. Yet organisations such as Human Rights Watch have acknowledged that civilian abuses have continued and called on forces on both sides that are fighting in Sirte to minimize harm to civilians and treat all prisoners humanely.

This biased media coverage raises questions about the credibility of media organisations and their agenda. Is it because the presence of widespread evidence of racially motivated human rights abuses committed by the TNC forces raises moral and ethical questions that challenge the validity of the notion of a “humanitarian war”? The responsibility assumed by NATO and the TNC forces to protect civilian lives from abuse by Gaddafi forces is also questionable, as it appears this mandate does not seem to extend to the protection of black Libyans and African immigrants.
. . . .
It in interesting to note that despite widespread evidence of such racial abuses perpetrated by the TNC forces, it appears mainstream media organisations have not been willing to represent a narrative that does not conform to its set ideological position and agenda. What has become evident where the reports of racial abuses have reached mainstream media is the framing of a narrative that portrays the victims as “African mercenaries,” despite the availability of adequate evidence to prove that many of the victims were not mercenaries. Amnesty International reports that, “the allegations about the use of mercenaries proved to be largely unfounded” but this has remained an unknown fact to the public. This revelation demonstrates the media’s complicity in the human rights violations. Therefore, mainstream media organisations have concealed gross abuses that could have been exposed and stopped by not representing and speaking against such human rights violations.

The lack of adequate exposure and coverage of the rebels’ racial violations by mainstream media corroborate the assertion that the media is not serving the public but it is serving power and in the process it has abandoned professional media ethics and standards.

ISS Pretoria Office

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Extra-

Patty Griffin-Cold As It Gets

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Jim Rogers- Let the Banks Fail!!- CNBC

Obama Tax & Unemployment "Deal" and The War On WikiLeaks

In This Issue:

- What is known about Obama's tax cut for the rich deal-making?
- The "War On WikiLeaks"
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What is known about Obama's tax cut for the rich deal-making?

I was in a local business establishment this afternoon and was talking with the proprietor and a customer, who I have become acquainted with there. When the conversation turned to the issue of unemployment benefits being extended, the acquaintance, who is really fun to talk with, said something about giving more unemployment benefits to people who haven't found a job in two years was something like ill-advised to absurd. Anyone should be able to find a job in a little less than two years, even at McDonald's, right? In reading the article below about the details [I didn't] of the most recent Obama capitulation, I find that he probably didn't understand the details. According to these Congress watchers, "99 weeks would still be the maximum amount of time that anybody could receive benefits" which is a little less than two years of allowable unemployment benefits. That's it. So regardless of whether the economy is producing enough jobs to keep people gainfully employed, which it is not, if you can't find a job in 99 weeks, you can just fall through the "safety net" into sone sort of hell, perhaps on the street or worse.

The most recent Employment Situation Summary from the BLS reported that 39,000 jobs were created in November. Some spinmeisters saw this as a positive sign, but a report from an economist on NPR this last weekend noted that we need 115,000 to 120,000 jobs created every month just to keep up with population growth. [Nice of NPR to let this factoid through to their audience, as the are constantly labeling people opposed to mass-immigration as "anti-immigrant, even though mass-immigration (immigrants and children of immigrants) is responsible for between 75 to 90+% of US population growth.] Some commentators put the numbers higher, with one saying the number of new jobs needed to keep up with population growth is around 150,000, and even he uses what is probably a low estimate of actual population growth.

So the point is how are people supposed to find jobs when we can't create enough jobs to even keep up with new entries to the job market?

Another positive part of the article below is that the writer actually referred to the Tea Party folks as Republican. While many are in fact independents and Libertarians, it is clear that the press and Republican spin on their political ideology clearly favors the Republican leadership.

At the end of the day, when push came to shove this week, Obama didn't make the effort to offer a continued case to show that the Republican's were holding the unemployed hostage in order to enrich millionaires and billionaires. He has capitulated once again, and has given away his veto power. Now the deficit, that the Republicans say they hate, only gets worse. So-called compromise, even when it is self-defeating, destructive and idiotic, takes the day.
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What Exactly Is In Obama's Tax Cut/Unemployment Extension Compromise?
Open Congress : Congress Gossip Blog
December 7, 2010 - by Donny Shaw

President Obama on Monday announced the “framework” of a deal with congressional Republicans for dealing with the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts. It’s a two-year deal, and it includes a bunch of other stuff, all at a cost about $900 billion. None of it is offset, so this will be a direct increase in the deficit. Let’s take a look at the specifics of what’s included:

1. Two-year extension of all Bush tax cuts — Income taxes will stay right where they are at least until January 2013, even for the wealthiest Americans. Obama seems to think that having this tax debate again in 2012 will be good politics for his re-election.

2. Two-year estate tax cut — Bush’s 2001 tax bill gradually scaled back the estate tax, a federal assessment on inherited wealth, to 0% in 2010. But because it was done using budget reconciliation, the bill sunsets after ten years (just like the income taxes) and the rate is scheduled to go back up on January 1st to the pre-Bush rate — 55%, with the first $675,000 being exempt. Obama’s proposal would lower this significantly for 2011 and 2012 — the first $5 million would be exempt and the rest would be taxed at 35%. This compromise is taken directly from a Sen. Blanche Lincoln [D, AR] amendment that was added to the 2010 budget resolution by a vote of 51-48.

3. 13-month extension of federal unemployment programs — The filing deadline for federal unemployment insurance that provides benefits for people who run out of their 26 weeks of state-provided benefits without finding a job would be extended until January 2012. Essentially, this will make it possible for people who became unemployed in the past 99 weeks and still haven’t found a job to collect benefits for the same length of time as people who lost their job more than 99 weeks ago. This would not add additional weeks of benefits — 99 weeks would still be the maximum amount of time that anybody could receive benefits.

4. One-year payroll tax holiday — Social security payroll taxes, which, under current law, are split equally between employees and employers, would be reduced from 6.2% to 4.2% with all of the benefits of the reduction going to the employees. For the average U.S. salary of $50,000, this would mean tax savings of about $1,000 next year. Obama originally wanted to include an extension of his “Making Work Pay” tax credit, which provides workers up to $400 annually for all workers, but Republicans objected and the payroll tax holiday was included instead. Reducing payroll taxes is generally considered the most stimulative form of supply-side policy.

5. Two years of 100% business expensing — Businesses will be able to immediately write off 100% of the costs of new equipment purchases until 2013. Typically, the costs of equipment purchases are deducted over the life of their use. This proposal is designed to free up now money for businesses that would normally be spread over multiples years in order to encourage more hiring and investing.

6. Miscellaneous stimulus bill tax cut extensions — The lower earning threshold for the child tax credit would be extended for two years. The expanded earned income tax credit would be extended. And the American opportunity tax credit, which provides college students with a $4,000 credit in exchange for community service, would be extended.

Now, this is far from a done deal. This package is designed to get 60 votes in the Senate, but it may not pass muster in the House. The House Democratic caucus, which is generally more progressive than their Senate counterpart, is reserving the option to revolt. And Tea Party Republicans are threatening to vote “no” because of the unemployment insurance extension that is attached.

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The Baseline Scenario
What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it
Tax Cut Ironies

By James Kwak

From The New York Times:

“Congressional Republicans in recent days have blocked efforts by Democrats to extend the jobless aid, saying they would insist on offsetting the $56 billion cost with spending cuts elsewhere.”

Instead, as it turns out, they agreed to offset the cost with tax cuts elsewhere.

Still, though, I place the blame for this one squarely on the White House. The Republicans are just doing what Republicans do: arguing for lower government spending and lower taxes. The fact that they justify the former by saying it will cut the deficit and the latter by saying it will stimulate the economy (when you could just as easily switch the arguments and make them point the other way) is just a detail.

As I’ve said before, the Bush tax cuts were always bad policy.* After the last election, President Obama will be able to accomplish precious little. But he could easily have killed the Bush tax cuts and thereby done more good for our nation’s fiscal situation than anyone will be in a position to do for many years to come. Killing the tax cuts would alone reduce the national debt by roughly as much as the deficit commission’s entire proposal. And killing the tax cuts was the path of least resistance. Obama could have done it by doing nothing. Or he could have done it by taking a strong negotiating position and being willing to walk away from the table.

(Note to Barack: If you want to win a negotiation, you have to be willing to walk away. Take my daughter. If I threaten her with a three-minute timeout, she says, “I want a timeout for eight hours!” If I threaten to take away an episode of Dinosaur Train, she says, “I don’t want to watch Dinosaur Train ever again!” You have two daughters, right?)

Instead, we got a two-year extension as part of an overall package that adds $900 billion to the debt.

Now, Ezra Klein, whom I agree with more often than not, says, “the White House and Congress are right to make the deficit less of a priority than economic recovery.” Well, sure, in principle. But this deal isn’t justified by that principle for two reasons. First, as Paul Krugman pointed out, a two-year extension will reduce the unemployment rate by 0.2 to 0.6 percentage points. Yes, that’s hundreds of thousands of jobs, but it’s at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. And at the current course and speed, those hundreds of billions of dollars will, in the long term, get taken away from the middle class in lower Social Security and Medicare benefits. The reason it’s just 0.2-0.6 percent is that tax cuts, once again, are a lousy form of stimulus. According to Mark Zandi (via Menzie Chinn), the multiplier for the Bush income tax cuts is 0.29 and the multiplier for accelerated depreciation is 0.27.

Second, this can no longer be considered a two-year tax cut. This year, the Democrats gave in to the framing that letting the cuts expire would be a tax increase. President Obama has already nailed himself to the cross of “stop[ping] middle-class taxes from going up.” With that on his resume, how is he going to flip-flop and let those taxes go up in 2012? He won’t win a vote to cut taxes just for the middle class with fewer Democrats in Congress than he has now. So if he wants to preserve the middle-class tax cuts, he’ll have to compromise again.

And Obama will no longer be able to say the tax cuts were a mistake made by President Bush that he was letting expire. Now he owns the mistake. This is a long way of saying that this isn’t a two-year tax cut to stimulate the economy (with a 0.29 multiplier, remember) in a recession. It’s a wedge of about 2 percent of GDP that is part of the structural deficit for the foreseeable future, just like the AMT patch that magically keeps getting extended.

Sure, they might not be extended in 2012. But I fail to see how the politics will be any different. “I protected you from a tax increase in 2010, but I’m raising your taxes now because . . . because . . . suddenly I care about the deficit . . . and we’re not in a recession anymore.” Yeah, right. By comparison, the message this time would have been easy: “I and the Democrats in Congress supported a bill to keep your taxes low. The Republicans blocked it because they insisted on tax cuts for the rich. Blame them.” So the tax cuts might not be extended, but you could also say that Congress will vote to raise taxes. Not likely in either case.

So finally, you have to ask, what does Barack Obama want? Does he really like most of the Bush tax cuts? Does he really think the bulk of the tax cuts are good for the country, and that going along with the tax cuts in the top brackets is a reasonable price to pay to keep them?

* How bad? Here’s one example. In order to pass the bill using reconciliation–the first time reconciliation was ever used to pass a deficit-increasing bill–they had to limit the ten-year cost of the bill. One way they did that was by adding a provision that allows upper-income taxpayers, in 2010, to convert their traditional IRAs to Roth IRAs. This is unambiguously good for upper-income taxpayers, because it’s optional, so you can decide if you want to do it. So in the long term, it will result in lower tax revenues. But it artificially juices tax revenues in 2010, because when you convert you have to pay tax on the conversion amount now. That increased the amount by which they could cut taxes elsewhere in the bill. So, as my tax casebook puts it, the bill uses tax cuts for the rich to fund more tax cuts for the rich.

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President Obama: FIGHT, don't cave on Bush tax cuts for millionaires!
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The War On WikiLeaks: WikiLeaks and the Arrest of Julian Assange
One of the hallmarks of Fascism is the cooperation and collusion of corporations with governments to their mutual benefit, which is not, unfortunately, the same as benefiting those they have power over, the people. The behavior of US multinational corporations (eg. Amazon terminating it's WikiLeaks hosting, and PayPal preventing contributions to Assange's defense) and several of the world's governments, especially our's, in their attempts to destroy Julian Assange for informing people about the true nature of their governments is a case in point.

Assange, who turned himself into British authorities today was denied bail. He was alleged to have conducted "rape" and not worn a condom during consensual sex [later reports say the condom broke and he continued to engage, and in one case was reported to have unprotected sex with a "sleeping" woman he woke up with 12/10/10], with adult women who were proud of their association with him afterwards, with one even hosting a party for him the next day (she had also worked for a CIA funded anti-Castro group). Mysteriously (or not), Assange has not actually been charged with any crime (Glenn Greenwald on the Arrest of Julian Assange and the U.S. "War on WikiLeaks"), and he is only wanted for questioning about possible charges of "rape" and abuse for not wearing a condom. Interesting that a person who turns himself in for questioning under a warrant without charge, would be arrested and denied bail, don't you think?

My own thoughts on the situation are that an internationally lawless US government has arranged for his arrest on trumped-up charges in order to get him extradited to Sweden, who will then extradite him to the US, or that he will be directly extradited to the US, so that the your government can charge him, and perhaps imprison him indefinitely, on even more spurious charges related to espionage, even though he only reported information that was provided to him, and even though that same information is being reported by the New York Times, the Guardian of London, and other mainstream media outlets.
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Don't Shoot Messenger for Revealing Uncomfortable Truths

WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks.

By Julian Assange

December 07, 2010 "The Australian" --IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."

His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.

I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.

WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.

WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain's The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Julia Gillard and her government. The powers of the Australian government appear to be fully at the disposal of the US as to whether to cancel my Australian passport, or to spy on or harass WikiLeaks supporters. The Australian Attorney-General is doing everything he can to help a US investigation clearly directed at framing Australian citizens and shipping them to the US.

Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.

We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.

Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.

Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security! You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?

It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US, with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.

But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

► The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.

► King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US to attack Iran.

► Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran's nuclear program stopped by any means available.

► Britain's Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect "US interests".

► Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.

► The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.

In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government". The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.
Copyright 2010 News Limited
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Glenn Greenwald on the Arrest of Julian Assange and the U.S. "War on WikiLeaks"

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested in London on an international warrant to face sex crime allegations in Sweden. Assange is expected to face a hasty extradition process to Sweden. We speak with Glenn Greenwald, constitutional attorney and blogger at Salon.com. Greenwald says: "Whatever you think of WikiLeaks, they have not been charged with a crime, let alone indicted or convicted. Yet look what has happened to them. They have been removed from Internet … their funds have been frozen … media figures and politicians have called for their assassination and to be labeled a terrorist organization. What is really going on here is a war over control of the Internet, and whether or not the Internet can actually serve its ultimate purpose—which is to allow citizens to band together and democratize the checks on the world’s most powerful factions."

Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney and political/legal blogger at Salon.com.

Related stories:

With Rumored Manhunt for Wikileaks Founder and Arrest of Alleged Leaker of Video Showing Iraq Killings, Obama Admin Escalates Crackdown on Whistleblowers of Classified Information

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Cancún, Mexico, at the U.N. Climate Change Conference. In a moment, we’ll turn to the talks here in Cancún, but first our top story. Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks website, was arrested in London earlier today on an international warrant to face sexual assault allegations in Sweden. Assange is appearing in court today after surrendering to British police. The case reportedly centers on accusations from two women who say Assange refused to use a condom during consensual sex. Assange and WikiLeaks have denounced the case as a political witch-hunt that’s intensified with the group’s release of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is carrying out a separate criminal probe focused on WikiLeaks’s decision to release secret U.S. documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghan and U.S. diplomatic cables. U.S. Defense Secretary Gates said earlier today Assange’s arrest, quote, "sounds like good news to me."

The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has said it will keep operating as normal despite the arrest of its founder, Julian Assange, in Britain. A spokesperson said, quote, "WikiLeaks is operational. We are continuing on the same track as laid out before. Any development with regards to Julian Assange will not change the plans we have with regards to the releases today and in the coming days." WikiLeaks has released less than one percent of the more than 250,000 secret diplomatic cables in its possession.

For more on the arrest of Julian Assange, I’m joined by Democracy Now! video stream by Glenn Greenwald, constitutional attorney and blogger at Salon.com.

Glenn, if you could just respond to this latest news on the arrest of Julian Assange in Britain.

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, what’s interesting is it’s being depicted in the media as some kind of an international manhunt that finally concluded. That’s what Matt Lauer announced this morning on NBC News, the international manhunt is over. The reality is that although this case has been around for quite some time, there was really only a valid arrest warrant for the first time in England, the country where he’s been located, as of yesterday, and last night his attorneys negotiated his turning himself in with the police department in London. So it was entirely voluntary. There was never any manhunt of any kind, nor has he been actually charged with a crime. The arrest warrant has been issued by the Swedish authorities in order to question him about the accusations that have been made. There’s no judgment that he’s guilty or that there should be a prosecution at all. They’re simply seeking to interrogate him.

And one of the most—the strangest and most interesting aspects of all of this is that it’s extremely unusual for Interpol, the international police agency used in Europe and other places, to be used in this manner. I mean, he was put on the, quote, "most wanted" list, even though, as I just said, he’s not charged with any crime. They’re simply seeking to interrogate him. And for months now, his attorneys have offered to the Swedish police and to prosecutors to make him available for questioning, whether it be by telephone or by Skype or by appearing in some other technologically suitable means, and yet they’ve been extremely insistent, very oddly so, that that isn’t good enough, that he actually make himself physically available in the jurisdiction of Sweden in order to be detained and interrogated.

And, of course, the real concern is—and it’s the concern that Assange and his lawyers have—is that what this really is is just a ploy to get him into custody in a country, which is Sweden, that is very subservient to the United States, that is willing to extradite him to the United States or turn him over with the slightest request. And any person who has followed the United States, quote-unquote, "justice system" over the last decade knows that there’s good reason to fear that, that anybody who’s accused of national security crimes, especially if they’re not an American citizen, is treated in violation of virtually every Western norm of justice, without almost any due process.

So I think the responsible thing to do for any person is to wait and see with regard to the allegations themselves that these women have made, whether there’s evidence to support it. We should all wait and see one way or the other, and hopefully the case will play itself out. But there’s lots of reasons, in terms of how it’s been treated by Swedish authorities, to find it very questionable indeed whether what’s really going on is a politically motivated effort to get him out of WikiLeaks, stop what he’s doing in terms of exposing and bringing transparency to governments around the world, and ultimately hand him over to the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange has appeared on Democracy Now! several times this year. On October 26th, he detailed some of the international pressure facing WikiLeaks.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Oh, there’s no doubt that this organization is under siege. There was a direct demand made by the Pentagon that we destroy all previous publications, all upcoming publications—an incredible demand for prior restraint on a media organization by a military—and that we cease dealing with U.S. military whistleblowers.

My Swedish residency application was denied for reasons that still remain secret.

One week after the release of the Afghan war diaries, our donation credit card processing company Moneybookers, the second biggest on the internet after Paypal, terminated our accounts, and we were forwarded an email by the security department explaining the situation to the account manager, which was that we were on a U.S. watchlist and an Australian government blacklist and to see the current controversy in relation to Afghanistan. Fortunately, we have just now managed to get up an Icelandic-based credit card processing scheme, so donors can once again donate there.

The Australian attorney general stated that he would assist any country anywhere in the world to prosecute us over these disclosures and that, when asked the question, had he provided intelligence assistance, something that we have evidence of, said, "Well, yes, we help countries from time to time, but I won’t comment directly on that matter."

And we know the Icelandic government has been publicly pressured to not be a safe haven for our publishing activities or for me personally.

The Swedish government has been pressured at the intelligence agency level to its body SAPO. When I left Sweden on the 27th of September, my—to a flight to Berlin on SAS, one of the world’s most—if not the world’s most reputable airline—my luggage disappeared. That was the—I was the only case in that plane.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Julian Assange speaking on Democracy Now! just a few weeks ago.

By the way, a correction to an earlier headline, a Swiss bank has frozen Julian Assange’s account, not a Swedish bank.

Also, the newspaper called The Australian is preparing to run an op-ed by Julian Assange that was written before his arrest. The newspaper reports, quote, "Mr Assange begins by saying: 'in 1958, a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's the News, wrote: 'In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.' It goes on to say a few more things about freedom of speech; the 'dark days' of corrupt government in Queensland (where Assange was raised); and it says much about his upbringing in a country town, 'where people spoke their minds bluntly'. It says that Australian politicians are chanting a 'provably false chorus' with the US State Department of ’You’ll risk lives! You’ll endanger troops!’ by releasing information, and 'then they say there is nothing of importance in what Wikileaks publishes. It can't be both.’" Those are a few of the quotes that will appear in Julian Assange’s op-ed piece. The Australian newspaper is releasing it at midnight Australian time. Final comments, Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I just want to underscore how alarming everything is that you just described, both in that report and in your earlier one, which is, whatever you think of WikiLeaks, they’ve never been charged with a crime, let alone indicted or convicted. And yet, look at what has happened to them. They’ve been essentially removed from the internet, not just through a denial of service attacks that are very sophisticated, but through political pressure applied to numerous countries. Their funds have been frozen, including funds donated by people around the world for his—for Julian Assange’s defense fund and for WikiLeaks’s defense fund. They’ve had their access to all kinds of accounts cut off. Leading politicians and media figures have called for their assassination, their murder, to be labeled a terrorist organization. What’s really going on here is a war over control of the internet and whether or not the internet can actually serve what a lot of people hoped its ultimate purpose was, which was to allow citizens to band together and democratize the checks on the world’s most powerful factions. That’s what this really is about. It’s why you see Western government, totally lawlessly, waging what can only be described as a war on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange outside the bounds of any constraints, because that’s what really is at stake here. If they want to prosecute them, they should go to court and do it through legal means. But this extralegal persecution ought to be very alarming to every citizen in every one of these countries, because it essentially is pure authoritarianism and is designed to prevent the internet from being used as its ultimate promise, which is providing a check on unconstrained political power.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, I want to thank you very much for being with us, constitutional lawyer and blogger at Salon.com. He’s speaking to us from Brazil. We’re in Cancún covering the U.N. climate change talks. And we’re going to go to that after break. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. You can go to our website at [democracynow.org] to see all our interviews with Julian Assange, as well as with Daniel Ellsberg, perhaps the premier whistleblower in the United States.

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JOHN PILGER CALLS ON AUSTRALIANS TO DEFEND WIKILEAKS EDITOR JULIAN ASSANGE
[These audios are from Australia and may be very slow in downloading at times.]

In two ABC Radio Australia interviews, John Pilger asks Australians to break their silence and rally round compatriot Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of Wikileaks. John Pilger's new film, 'The War You Don't See', due to be released in Australia in 2011, will feature an interview with Queensland born Assange.

First interview - Breakfast (3 Dec)


John Pilger in second interview:
"I think we have got to the stage where we have been deceived on such a scale about how wars begin, how governments deal with each other, ah, that in democratic societies we have a right to know, without that right to know we have no democracy-- that is basic. . . . . Jefferson said Information is the currency of democracy, and without it we don't have any. . . ."
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Billy Bragg and Wilco-- "The Unwelcome Guest"
By Woodie Guthrie

On WikiLeaks--An Article Whose Truths Cannot Be Denied

Excerpt From Article Below:

I want to believe that the Wikileaks documents will change America for the better. But what undoubtedly will happen is a repetition of the past: those who expose government crimes and cover-ups will be prosecuted or branded as criminals; new laws will be passed to silence dissent; new Liebermans will arise to intimidate the corporate-controlled media; and new ways will be found to conceal the truth.

What Wikileaks has done is make people understand why so many Americans are politically apathetic and content to lose themselves in one or more of the addictions American culture offers, be it drugs, alcohol, the Internet, video games, celebrity gossip, text-messaging-in essence anything that serves to divert attention from the harshness of reality.

After all, the evils committed by those in power can be suffocating, and the sense of powerlessness that erupts from being aware of these evils can be paralyzing, especially when accentuated by the knowledge that government evildoers almost always get away with their crimes. The prevalence of such evils can shatter faith in goodness and sometimes even in God. They can transform virtues like honesty, compassion, and hope into vices and make those who cling to them suffer in poverty, depression and sorrow.

So shame on Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and all those who spew platitudes about integrity, justice and accountability while allowing war criminals and torturers to walk freely upon the earth. And shame on Germany and Spain, and all those other guilty countries, for allowing their sense of justice to be distorted by a nation that doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word.

And damn the right-wing outrage over the Wikileaks revelations. It is the American people who should be outraged that its government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies.

So savor the Wikileaks documents while you can, because soon they'll be gone. And for the government criminals of the world, and for those who protect them, it will again be business as usual.

Valerie Plame, YES! Wikileaks, NO!
03.12.2010
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/03-12-2010/116041-valerie_plame_wikileaks-0/#
David R. Hoffman

In my recent article Ward Churchill: The Lie Lives On (Pravda.Ru, 11/29/2010), I discussed the following realities about America's legal "system": it is duplicitous and corrupt; it will go to any extremes to insulate from prosecution, and in many cases civil liability, persons whose crimes facilitate this duplicity and corruption; it has abdicated its responsibility to serve as a "check-and-balance" against the other two branches of government, and has instead been transformed into a weapon exploited by the wealthy, the corporations, and the politically connected to defend their criminality, conceal their corruption and promote their economic interests; and, finally, that the oft-quoted adage "Nobody is above the law" is a lie.

Some critics were quick to dismiss my article as politically motivated hyperbole. But with the recent revelations disclosed by Wikileaks, it appears that this article did not even scratch the surface, because it is now evident that Barack Obama, who entered the White House with optimistic messages of change and hope, is just as complicit in, and manipulative of, the legal "system's" duplicity and corruption as was his predecessor George W. Bush.

For example, as I stated in the aforementioned article, the Obama administration has refused to prosecute former Attorney General John Ashcroft for abusing the "material witness" statute; refused to prosecute Ashcroft's successor (and suspected perjurer) Alberto Gonzales for his role in the politically motivated firing of nine federal prosecutors; refused to prosecute Justice Department authors of the now infamous "torture memos," like John Yoo and Jay Bybee; and, more recently, refused to prosecute former CIA official Jose Rodriquez Jr. for destroying tapes that purportedly showed CIA agents torturing detainees.

Predictably, the official mantra supporting these refusals is that "exhaustive" investigations had been conducted. But now, thanks to Wikileaks, the world has been enlightened to the fact that the Obama administration not only refused to prosecute these individuals itself, it also exerted pressure on the governments of Germany and Spain not to prosecute, or even indict, any of the torturers or war criminals from the Bush dictatorship.

This revelation invariably leads to three inescapable conclusions: these so-called "exhaustive investigations" were a sham; the Obama administration never intended to prosecute such crimes and, in fact, went to inordinate lengths to cover them up; and the American government has the proven capacity to influence the legal systems of other countries.

And now, given the fact that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is facing criminal charges in Sweden, it is also evident that America even has the Swedish government and Interpol in its hip pocket.

Of course, I do not know if Assange committed the crime he is accused of. I do know that to the American legal "system" the truth is irrelevant. The minute Assange revealed the extent of America's criminality and cover-ups to the world, he became a marked man. And America is going to do anything it can to silence him.

Already we see the treacherous Joe Lieberman, the man who almost single-handedly killed the "public option" in the health care reform bill so insurance companies can continue to enjoy record profits, intimidate an American server into discontinuing its transmission of Wikileaks.

And we see many right-wing commentators demanding that Assange be hunted down, with some even calling for his murder, on the grounds that he may have endangered lives by releasing confidential government documents.

Yet, for the right-wing, this apparently was not a concern when the late columnist Robert Novak "outed" CIA agent Valerie Plame after her husband Joseph Wilson authored an OP-ED piece in The New York Times criticizing the motivations for waging war against Iraq. Even though there was evidence of involvement within the highest echelons of the Bush dictatorship, only one person, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted and convicted of "outing" Plame to Novak. And, despite the fact that this "outing" potentially endangered the lives of Plame's overseas contacts, Bush commuted Libby's thirty-month prison sentence, calling it "excessive."

Why the disparity? The answer is simple: The Plame "outing" served the interests of the military-industrial complex and helped to conceal the Bush dictatorship's lies, tortures and war crimes, while Wikileaks not only exposed such evils, but also revealed how Obama's administration, and Obama himself, are little more than "snake oil" merchants pontificating about government accountability while undermining it at every turn.

Of course, I realize that analogizing the Plame case to Wikileaks is imperfect, and I certainly do not support the release of documents that could endanger any lives. But it should be remembered that threats to murder Assange are just as reprehensible. In addition, they may serve to dissuade future whistleblowers from raising legitimate concerns about government corruption and criminality.

And I should also note that while I avidly support the prosecution of those who lied, tortured and committed war crimes during the Bush dictatorship, I certainly do not, unlike some critics of Assange, advocate or support any violence against them, or against any human being, regardless of his or her politics.

Now there is talk of charging Assange under America's so-called "espionage" statutes. But American history has shown how these statutes have been incessantly used to conceal government criminality.

When the United States Constitution was being created, a conflict emerged between delegates who wanted a strong federal government (the Federalists) and those who wanted a weak federal government (the anti-Federalists).

Although the Federalists won the day, one of the most distinguished anti-Federalists, George Mason, refused to sign the new Constitution, sacrificing in the process, some historians say, a revered place amongst America's founding fathers.

Two of Mason's concerns were that the Constitution did not contain a Bill of Rights, and that the presidential pardon powers would allow corrupt presidents to pardon people who had committed crimes on presidential orders.

Mason's concerns about the abuse of the pardon powers were eventually proven right when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, when Ronald Reagan pardoned FBI agents convicted of authorizing illegal break-ins, and when George H.W. Bush pardoned six individuals involved in the Iran-Contra Affair.

Mason was also proven right after the Federalists realized that the States would not ratify the Constitution unless a Bill of Rights was added. But this was done begrudgingly, as demonstrated by America's second president, Federalist John Adams, who essentially destroyed the right to freedom of speech via the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to say, write or publish anything critical of the United States government.

Years later, Adams' precedent would resurface during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, this time via the Espionage and Sedition Acts. Although these laws were designed to prohibit criticism of America's involvement in World War One, mainstream religious leaders who criticized the war were rarely prosecuted, but persons and political organizations considered to be "radical," like Socialist leader Eugene Debs and members of the Industrial Workers of the World labor union (IWW), were imprisoned and their organizations decimated.

The McCarthy era of the 1950s brought forth the full power of the Smith Act, which was allegedly created to punish communists who advocated the violent overthrow of the United States government, but was ultimately used to blacklist and, in many cases, economically destroy members of the political left.

During the 1960s and 70s, after the courts diluted much of the power of the Sedition laws, government tactics used to "neutralize" persons and political organizations became more covert. Some, like actress Jean Seberg, had false rumors circulated about them in an attempt to destroy their careers. (Seberg ultimately committed suicide as a result of one of these rumors). Others, like Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, were framed and imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. And still others, like Chicago Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, were murdered outright.

The ironic thing about these so-called "espionage" acts is that they actually invert the concepts of crime and punishment. Most criminals break laws that others have created, and people who assist in exposing or apprehending them are usually lauded as heroes. But with the "espionage" acts, the criminals themselves have actually created laws to conceal their crimes, and exploit these laws to penalize people who expose them.

The problem with America's system of government is that it has become too easy, and too convenient, to simply stamp "classified" on documents that reveal acts of government corruption, cover-up, mendacity and malfeasance, or to withhold them "in the interest of national security." Given this web of secrecy, is it any wonder why so many Americans are still skeptical about the "official" versions of the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, or the events surrounding the attacks of September 11, 2001?

In the past, whenever I wrote about the evils of the Bush dictatorship, I often quoted a question folk singer Phil Ochs rhetorically asked during a 1968 concert in Vancouver, Canada: "What can you do when you're a helpless soul, a helpless piece of flesh, amid all this cruel, cruel machinery and terrible, heartless men?"

Ochs subsequently committed suicide in 1976, and while I am uncertain that this was the correct path to take, I can certainly understand his frustration. Although the election of Barack Obama gave rise to the "outrage" expressed by the so-called "tea party" movement, if there is any political group in America that has a right to be outraged, it is the Progressives. They bought into Obama's message of change and hope, believed that the criminals of the Bush dictatorship would have to answer for their crimes, and naively dreamed that America's respect for peace, justice and human rights would be restored.

But, as Wikileaks and the antics of Obama's "Justice" Department have shown, the Progressives were deceived. Yet, as in the past, they are forced to be supportive of Obama's duplicity because the alternative is worse.

I want to believe that the Wikileaks documents will change America for the better. But what undoubtedly will happen is a repetition of the past: those who expose government crimes and cover-ups will be prosecuted or branded as criminals; new laws will be passed to silence dissent; new Liebermans will arise to intimidate the corporate-controlled media; and new ways will be found to conceal the truth.

What Wikileaks has done is make people understand why so many Americans are politically apathetic and content to lose themselves in one or more of the addictions American culture offers, be it drugs, alcohol, the Internet, video games, celebrity gossip, text-messaging-in essence anything that serves to divert attention from the harshness of reality.

After all, the evils committed by those in power can be suffocating, and the sense of powerlessness that erupts from being aware of these evils can be paralyzing, especially when accentuated by the knowledge that government evildoers almost always get away with their crimes. The prevalence of such evils can shatter faith in goodness and sometimes even in God. They can transform virtues like honesty, compassion, and hope into vices and make those who cling to them suffer in poverty, depression and sorrow.

So shame on Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and all those who spew platitudes about integrity, justice and accountability while allowing war criminals and torturers to walk freely upon the earth. And shame on Germany and Spain, and all those other guilty countries, for allowing their sense of justice to be distorted by a nation that doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word.

And damn the right-wing outrage over the Wikileaks revelations. It is the American people who should be outraged that its government has transformed a nation with a reputation for freedom, justice, tolerance and respect for human rights into a backwater that revels in its criminality, cover-ups, injustices and hypocrisies.

So savor the Wikileaks documents while you can, because soon they'll be gone. And for the government criminals of the world, and for those who protect them, it will again be business as usual.

David R. Hoffman
Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru

Who's To Blame? Here Are a Few

I've had my fingers in the dirt of my garden recently, so still no time for spring birds. Here is some dirt of a different kind, the sort that has affected you, and the ones you love personally, unless you happen to be a lucky Wall Street gambler.

The second article concerns grazing management by the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, and their plans for expanding grazing damage on the forest..
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America's Ten Most Corrupt Capitalists
By Zach Carter, AlterNet
Posted on May 13, 2010, Printed on May 16, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146819/

The financial crisis has unveiled a new set of public villains—corrupt corporate capitalists who leveraged their connections in government for their own personal profit. During the Clinton and Bush administrations, many of these schemers were worshiped as geniuses, heroes or icons of American progress. But today we know these opportunists for what they are: Deregulatory hacks hellbent on making a profit at any cost. Without further ado, here are the 10 most corrupt capitalists in the U.S. economy.

1. Robert Rubin

Where to start with a man like Robert Rubin? A Goldman Sachs chairman who wormed his way into the Treasury Secretary post under President Bill Clinton, Rubin presided over one of the most radical deregulatory eras in the history of finance. Rubin's influence within the Democratic Party marked the final stage in the Democrats' transformation from the concerned citizens who fought Wall Street and won during the 1930s to a coalition of Republican-lite financial elites.

Rubin's most stunning deregulatory accomplishment in office was also his greatest act of corruption. Rubin helped repeal Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law that banned economically essential banks from gambling with taxpayer money in the securities markets. In 1998, Citibank inked a merger with the Travelers Insurance group. The deal was illegal under Glass-Steagall, but with Rubin's help, the law was repealed in 1999, and the Citi-Travelers merger approved, creating too-big-to-fail behemoth Citigroup.

That same year, Rubin left the government to work for Citi, where he made $120 million as the company piled up risk after crazy risk. In 2008, the company collapsed spectacularly, necessitating a $45 billion direct government bailout, and hundreds of billions more in other government guarantees. Rubin is now attempting to rebuild his disgraced public image by warning about the dangers of government spending and Social Security. Bob, if you're worried about the deficit, the problem isn't old people trying to get by, it's corrupt bankers running amok.

2. Alan Greenspan

The officially apolitical, independent Federal Reserve chairman backed all of Rubin's favorite deregulatory plans, and helped crush an effort by Brooksley Born to regulate derivatives in 1998, after the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management went bust. By the time Greenspan left office in 2006, the derivatives market had ballooned into a multi-trillion dollar casino, and Greenspan wanted his cut. He took a job with bond kings PIMCO and then with the hedge fund Paulson & Co.—yeah, that Paulson and Co., the one that colluded with Goldman Sachs to sabotage the company's own clients with unregulated derivatives.

Incidentally, this isn't the first time Greenspan has been a close associate of alleged fraudsters. Back in the 1980s, Greenspan went to bat for politically connected Savings & Loan titan Charles Keating, urging regulators to exempt his bank from a key rule. Keating later went to jail for fraud, after, among other things, putting out a hit on regulator William Black. ("Get Black – kill him dead.") Nice friends you've got, Alan.

3. Larry Summers

During the 1990s, Larry Summers was a top Treasury official tasked with overseeing the economic rehabilitation of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. This project, was, of course, a complete disaster that resulted in decades of horrific poverty. But that didn't stop top advisers to the program, notably Harvard economist Andrei Shleifer, from getting massively rich by investing his own money in Russian projects while advising both the Treasury and the Russian government. This is called "fraud," and a federal judge slapped both Shleifer and Harvard itself with hefty fines for their looting of the Russian economy. But somehow, after defrauding two governments while working for Summers, Shleifer managed to keep his job at Harvard, even after courts ruled against him.

That's because after the Clinton administration, Summers became president of Harvard, where he protected Shleifer. This wasn't the only crazy thing Summers did at Harvard—he also ran the school like a giant hedge fund, which went very well until markets crashed in 2008. By then, of course, Summers had left Harvard for a real hedge fund, D.E. Shaw, where he raked in $5.2 million working part-time. The next year, he joined the the Obama administration as the president's top economic adviser. Interestingly, the Wall Street reform bill currently circulating through Congress essentially leaves hedge funds untouched.

4. Phil and Wendy Gramm

Summers, Rubin and Greenspan weren't the only people who thought it was a good idea to let banks gamble in the derivatives casinos. In 2000, Republican Senator from Texas Phil Gramm pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which not only banned federal regulation of these toxic poker chips, it also banned states from enforcing anti-gambling laws against derivatives trading. The bill was lobbied for heavily by energy/finance hybrid Enron, which would later implode under fraudulent derivatives trades. In 2000, when Phil Gramm pushed the bill through, his wife Wendy Gramm was serving on Enron's board of directors, where she made millions before the company went belly-up.

When Phil Gramm left the Senate, he took a job peddling political influence at Swiss banking giant UBS as vice chairman. Since Gramm's arrival, UBS has been embroiled in just about every scandal you can think of, from securities fraud to tax fraud to diamond smuggling. Interestingly, both UBS shareholders and their executives have gotten off rather lightly for these acts. The only person jailed thus far has been the tax fraud whistleblower. Looks like Phil's earning his keep.

5. Jamie Dimon

J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has done a lot of scummy things as head of one of the world's most powerful banks, but his most grotesque act of corruption actually took place at the Federal Reserve. At each of the Fed's 12 regional offices, the board of directors is staffed by officials from the region's top banks. So while it's certainly galling that the CEO of J.P. Morgan would be on the board of the New York Fed, one of J.P. Morgan's regulators, it's not all that uncommon.

But it is quite uncommon for a banker to be negotiating a bailout package for his bank with the New York Fed, while simultaneously serving on the New York Fed board. That's what happened in March 2008, when J.P. Morgan agreed to buy up Bear Stearns, on the condition that the Fed kick in $29 billion to cushion the company from any losses. Dimon-- CEO of J.P. Morgan and board member of the New York Fed-- was negotiating with Timothy Geithner, who was president of the New York Fed-- about how much money the New York Fed was going to give J.P. Morgan. On Wall Street, that's called being a savvy businessman. Everywhere else, it's called a conflict of interest.

6. Stephen Friedman

The New York Fed is just full of corruption. Consider the case of Stephen Friedman (expertly presented by Greg Kaufmann for the Nation). As the financial crisis exploded in the fall of 2008, Friedman was serving both as chairman of the New York Fed and on the board of directors at Goldman Sachs. The Fed stepped in to prevent AIG from collapsing in September 2008, and by November, the New York Fed had decided to pay all of AIG's counterparties 100 cents on the dollar for AIG's bets—even though these companies would have taken dramatic losses in bankruptcy. The public wouldn't learn which banks received this money until March 2009, but Friedman bought 52,600 shares of Goldman stock in December 2008 and January 2009, more than doubling his holdings.

As it turns out, Goldman was the top beneficiary of the AIG bailout, to the tune of $12.9 billion. Friedman made millions on the Goldman stock purchase, and is yet to disclose what he knew about where the AIG money was going, or when he knew it. Either way, it's pretty bad—if he knew Goldman benefited from the bailout, then he belongs in jail. If he didn't know, then what exactly was he doing as chairman of the New York Fed, or on Goldman's board?

7. Robert Steel

Like better-known corruptocrats Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson, Steel joined the Treasury after spending several years as a top executive with Goldman Sachs. Steel joined the Treasury in 2006 as Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, and proceeded to do, well, nothing much until financial markets went into free-fall in 2008. When Wachovia ousted CEO Ken Thompson, the company named Steel as its new CEO. Steel promptly bought one million Wachovia shares to demonstrate his commitment to the firm, but by September, Wachovia was in dire straits. The FDIC wanted to put the company through receivership—shutting it down and wiping out its shareholders.

But Steel's buddies at Treasury and the Fed intervened, and instead of closing Wachovia, they arranged a merger with Wells Fargo at $7 a share—saving Steel himself $7 million. He now serves on Wells Fargo's board of directors.

8. Henry Paulson

His time at Goldman Sachs made Henry Paulson one of the richest men in the world. Under Paulson's leadership, Goldman transformed from a private company ruled by client relationships into a public company operating as a giant global casino. As Treasury Secretary during the height of the financial crisis, Paulson personally approved a direct $10 billion capital injection into his former firm.

But even before that bailout, Paulson had been playing fast and loose with ethics rules. In June 2008, Paulson held a secret meeting in Moscow with Goldman's board of directors, where they discussed economic prognostications, market conditions and Treasury rescue plans. Not okay, Hank.

9. Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett used to be a reasonable guy, blasting the rich for waging "class warfare" against the rest of us and deriding derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction." These days, he's just another financier crony, lobbying Congress against Wall Street reform, and demanding a light touch on—get this—derivatives! Buffet even went so far as to buy the support of Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska, for a filibuster on reform. Buffett has also been an outspoken defender of Goldman Sachs against the recent SEC fraud allegations, allegations that stem from fancy products called "synthetic collateralized debt obligations"—the financial weapons of mass destruction Buffett once criticized.

See, it just so happens that both Buffet's reputation and his bottom line are tied to an investment he made in Goldman Sachs in 2008, when he put $10 billion of his money into the bank. Buffett has acknowledged that he only made the deal because he believed Goldman would be bailed out by the U.S. government. Which, in fact, turned out to be the case, multiple times. When the government rescued AIG, the $12.9 billion it funneled to Goldman was to cover derivatives bets Goldman had placed with the mega-insurer. Buffett was right about derivatives—they are WMD so far as the real economy is concerned. But they've enabled Warren Buffett to get even richer with taxpayer help, and now he's fighting to make sure we don't shut down his own casino.

10. Goldman Sachs

No company exemplifies the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington more than Goldman Sachs. The four people on this list are some of the worst offenders, but Goldman's D.C. army has includes many other top officials in this administration and the last.

White House:

Joshua Bolton, chief of staff for George W. Bush, was a Goldman man

Regulators:

Current New York Fed President William Dudley is a Goldman man

Current Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler has been a responsible regulator under Obama, but he was a deregulatory hawk during the Clinton years, and worked at Goldman for nearly two decades before that.

A top aide to Timothy Geithner, Gene Sperling, is a Goldman man

Current Treasury Undersecretary Robert Hormats is a Goldman man

Current Treasury Chief of Staff Mark Patterson is a former Goldman lobbyist

Former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt is now a Goldman adviser

Neel Kashkari, Henry Paulson's deputy on TARP, was a Goldman man

COO of the SEC Enforcement Division Adam Storch is a Goldman man

Congress:

Former Sen. John Corzine, D-N.J., was Goldman's CEO before Henry Paulson

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., was a Goldman Vice President before he ran for Congress

Former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., now lobbies for Goldman

And the list goes on.

Zach Carter is an economics editor at AlterNet and a fellow at Campaign for America's Future. He writes a weekly blog on the economy for the Media Consortium and his work has appeared in the Nation, Mother Jones, the American Prospect and Salon.
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Here's another interesting article about how the Forest Service "manages" your public lands. HCPC Blog: From the Canyons BTW, Jennifer Schwartz is a friend of mine.

TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 2010
In Response to Comments re: Forest Service Aims to Reward Bad Behavior (posted 4/12/10)