U.S. Opens New Shooting Inquiry, as Italian Findings Are Presented

By EDWARD WONG

“The reconstruction we have made from the direct testimony of another agent doesn't coincide completely with what the U.S. authorities have said,’ Mr. Fini said. ‘We demand that there be truth and justice.’ ”

“The American military said today that it was opening a high-level investigation into an episode last Friday in which American soldiers fired on a car carrying an Italian hostage who had just been freed. The hostage was wounded, and an Italian intelligence agent who had negotiated her release was killed.

The American announcement came as the Italian foreign minister, Gianfranco Fini, went before Parliament in Rome to say that be believed the event had been "an accident caused by a series of circumstances and coincidences." But he also demanded that the United States conduct a full investigation, especially considering that portions of the American version of the episode differed from Italian accounts.

‘It was certainly an accident,’ Mr. Fini said. ‘This does not prevent, in fact it makes it a duty for, the government to demand that light be shed on the murky issues, that responsibilities be pinpointed and, where found, the culprits be punished.’

‘The reconstruction we have made from the direct testimony of another agent doesn't coincide completely with what the U.S. authorities have said,’ Mr. Fini said. ‘We demand that there be truth and justice.’

The freed hostage, Giuliana Sgrena, 56, a journalist for the leftist Italian newspaper Manifesto, has said the soldiers may have deliberately opened fire on her car because Washington opposes efforts to negotiate with kidnappers in Iraq - a scenario the White House dismissed on Monday as ‘absurd.’ Mr. Fini also said today that there was no evidence to support such suspicion.

The American military said that it had assembled a team led by Brig. Gen. Peter Vangjel to follow up the investigation already conducted at the division level. The new investigation will take three to four weeks, the military said. ‘The command is working closely with the U.S. Embassy, and Italian officials have been invited to participate,’ it said in a written statement.

The American military also said that officials of the First Corps Support Command were investigating last Friday's shooting of a Bulgarian soldier, Jr. Sgt. Gardi Gardev. The Bulgarian defense minister, Nikolai Svinarov, said on Monday that the soldier appeared to have been killed in southern Iraq by gunfire that came from the direction of American troops.

The two shootings under investigation have raised questions about the rules of engagement under which American soldiers operate in Iraq, especially at checkpoints and in convoys in areas frequented by civilians. Many innocent Iraqis have been wounded or killed by soldiers opening fire on cars they felt were approaching too close or too fast. The proliferation of suicide car bombs has set soldiers on edge, and commanders say soldiers are generally instructed to warn approaching vehicles with hand signals or shots into the air before opening fire on the vehicle itself.”

The shooting involving Ms. Sgrena took place at 8:55 p.m. last Friday, as a car carrying her and a small group of Italian intelligence agents headed toward the main Baghdad airport and Camp Victory, the headquarters of the American command here. Ms. Sgrena had been delivered by her captors to the Italian agents just 35 minutes earlier. The lead negotiator, Nicola Calipari, threw himself across Ms. Sgrena to protect her as the American troops opened fire, and was mortally wounded, Italian officials said.

Hours after the shooting, the Third Infantry Division, which is charged with securing Baghdad, issued a statement saying that soldiers at a checkpoint had first tried "to warn the driver to stop by hand-and-arm signals, flashing white lights, and firing warning shots in front of the car."

Today, Mr. Fini, citing an Italian agent who was driving the car, said that the American military command had authorized the Calipari-Sgrena party to travel to the airport, and that until it was fired on, Mr. Calipari's car had not encountered any American-run checkpoints on the road.

The car, he said, was traveling about 25 miles per hour with its interior lights on to allow people to make phone calls. As the vehicle rounded a curve, Mr. Fini continued in his recounting of the Italian investigation, a bright light shined on it and more than one automatic weapon opened fire for about 15 seconds.

The intelligence officer who survived the attack was forced to kneel in the road until the soldiers realized who he was, Mr. Fini said.

"Two young Americans approached our officer and, demoralized, they repeatedly apologized for what had happened," Mr. Fini said. …

Ms. Sgrena has said she does not believe there was an actual checkpoint because she saw no military vehicles in the road. But a senior Defense Department official said on Monday that two Humvees had been parked off to the side and that two barriers of an indeterminate size had been erected on the road.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/international/
middleeast/08cnd-iraq.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Huge Pro-Syrian Protest Fills Square and Streets in Beirut

By LEENA SAIDI
and JAD MOUAWAD

Today's crowds vastly outnumbered
those at recent rallies demanding that Syrian
forces leave Lebanon.

“Hundreds of thousands of pro-Syrian protesters poured into a central Beirut square this afternoon in a demonstration called for by the militant group Hezbollah that vastly outnumbered recent rallies demanding that Syrian forces leave Lebanon.

Thousands in the vast crowds waved Lebanese flags, as called for by the head of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who made a surprise appearance and reiterated his opposition to a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate pullout by Syria and Hezbollah's disarmament .

Others held up banners proclaiming in English, "Thanks to Syria" and "No to Foreign Interference," as well as pictures of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, his ally, President Émile Lahoud of Lebanon, and Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister.

It was Mr. Hariri's assassination on Feb. 14, with many in the opposition accusing the Syrians of being responsible for the killing, that set off huge opposition protests in Beirut, leading to today's protest.

… enthusiastic, cheering crowds filled the square in central Beirut and spilled over into streets to the north and the south.

Loudspeakers blared out endlessly over a public address system, carrying the message that Syrian troops should maintain a presence in Lebanon. Calls for no foreign intervention referred to the United States and Israel.

Hezbollah guards handled security, and dogs sniffed for bombs. Organizers handed out … a sea of Lebanese flags and directed men and women to separate sections of the square.

This is just a few blocks from another downtown square where opposition protesters have been staging protests for days, demanding that Syria withdraw the 14,000 troops it maintains in Lebanon.

Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group, has been mobilizing its followers from across the country for the protest, also designed to denounce a United Nations resolution that, in addition to its demand for Syrian withdrawal, called for dismantling militias - a point Hezbollah sees as aimed at its military wing.”

In the outlying heavily Shiite regions of the Bekaa Valley and the south, loudspeakers urged followers to travel to Beirut for the protest.

Hezbollah, founded by Iran and backed by Syria, has emerged as a key element during the latest political instability.…

The eclectic opposition - composed of Christian, Druse and Sunni Muslim politicians, although notably lacking in Shiite Muslims - believes that it has already scored precious points against Syria and is eager to press its advantage before parliamentary elections, to be held in May.

The Monday announcement increases the likelihood that Syrian troops will still be in the country when Lebanese go to the polls.

But the opposition protesters became emboldened by the resignation last week of the pro-Syrian government of Prime Minister Omar Karami, who quit in the face of street demonstrations. The opposition, which has camped out on Beirut's main square for three weeks, is already gearing up for another rally next Monday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/08/international/
middleeast/08cnd-beirut.html?pagewanted=all&position=

A Tax Net That Catches Only Minnows

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

“Last week in Washington, the government indicted a man it said was the biggest known tax cheat in history: Walter Anderson, 51, a long-distance telephone entrepreneur and promoter of private space travel. Mr. Anderson entered a not-guilty plea.

From 1995 to 1999, the government said, he failed to pay taxes on at least $450 million in income - a figure almost as large as the $550 million Congress gives the Internal Revenue Service each year to conduct all criminal tax investigations.…

Charles O. Rossotti, says that the I.R.S.'s enforcement strategy winds up scrutinizing ordinary taxpayers much more than the rich and powerful, who do not depend on wage income. In a new book, "Many Unhappy Returns" (Harvard Business School Press), Mr. Rossotti says the agency is "like a police department that was giving out lots of parking tickets while organized crime was running rampant."

Mr. Rossotti, a founder of the information-technology consulting firm American Management Systems whose skill at understanding effective organizations made him wealthy, writes that the I.R.S. "picks on the little guy" over small sums, while "largely overlooking an ocean of money hidden in business entities for which the owners, rather than the businesses themselves, were supposed to pay taxes."

For most taxpayers, there is little opportunity to cheat significantly without detection, because their wages and salaries, interest and dividends are reported independently to the I.R.S. by their employers, banks and brokers, making it possible for the agency's computers to spot discrepancies. So, too, with their biggest deduction, home mortgage interest.

But Mr. Rossotti notes that business owners like Mr. Anderson are largely in control of what the I.R.S. knows about their finances. Congress has not imposed an independent reporting regime on them, as it has on wage earners, in part because of concerns about burdening businesses with paperwork and compliance costs.”

Apparently, it was a tip from the public that put the I.R.S. on Mr. Anderson's trail. Many such tips fail to pan out, but even when one does, prosecuting a criminal tax-evasion case is costly and time-consuming. The investigation that led to Mr. Anderson's indictment took five years and required cooperation among at least seven governments.

Publicly available information about Mr. Anderson - announcements by the companies he owns, filings with securities regulators, news reports quoting him - suggests that he received several times the $450 million of untaxed income cited in the indictment. But the I.R.S.'s computers would never have noticed it on their own, because no other party is required to report that business income to the agency. And they won't notice others doing the same thing.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/weekinreview/06john.html

F.E.C. to Consider Internet Politicking

By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
“Anyone who decides to "set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet" could be subject to Federal Election Commission regulation, Bradley A. Smith, a Republican commissioner, said in an interview posted Thursday on the technology news site Cnet.com.

"It becomes a really complex issue that would strike deep into the heart of the Internet and the bloggers who are writing out there today," said Mr. Smith, who opposed regulating Internet activity when the commission originally addressed it in 2002.

But it is unclear how much appetite the F.E.C., criticized in the past by advocates for election reform as being dysfunctional and ineffective, really has for trying to govern Internet activity. In interviews on Thursday, several commissioners warned about the complexities of trying to assign a dollar value to online campaign activity and said they hoped any new regulations would not stifle personal political involvement.

"People should not be alarmed," said Ellen L. Weintraub, a Democratic commissioner.

"Given the impact of the Internet," Ms. Weintraub said, "I think we have to take a look at whether there are aspects of that that ought to be subject to the regulations. But again, I don't want this issue to get overblown. Because I really don't think, at the end of the day, this commission is going to do anything that affects what somebody sitting at home, on their home computer, does."

After the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law was passed in March 2002, the F.E.C., which is in charge of its enforcement, issued extensive rules to accommodate the law's provisions, including a blanket exemption for all Internet activity. But a federal judge ruled last year that many of the F.E.C. rules were too lax and specifically asked it to address the question of Internet activity.

Although the F.E.C. appealed several elements of the judge's ruling, the Internet provision was not among them, which means it must now address it.

"I don't know how we get out of it at this point," said David M. Mason, a Republican commissioner. "‘We have a ruling ordering us to go back and define a rule.’”

The six-member commission is divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans; their vote not to appeal the part of the judge's ruling dealing with Internet activity broke along party lines, with Democrats voting not to appeal.

Commissioners said they could consider several questions, including whether political Web sites are technically coordinating with official campaigns by posting links to a candidate's Web site, and whether partisan bloggers are making in-kind contributions by donating their expertise and computer equipment to a campaign.

By law, contributions over $1,000 or services of an equivalent value must be made public. Individuals are permitted to volunteer their time, and there is an exemption for newspapers, broadcast networks, magazines and other periodicals. It is unclear whether political news sites would meet the exemption requirements for the news media, or whether the F.E.C. would go beyond regulating simple Internet advertisements bought by the campaigns.

In an interview, Mr. Smith said he did not believe that the judge's ruling limited the F.E.C. to regulating only paid advertising on the Internet.

"In theory, there's no reason why everything that goes on a blog advocating a candidate wouldn't be an independent expenditure and subject to regulation," Mr. Smith said.

But Ms. Weintraub cautioned against jumping to conclusions, saying the goal was simply to address the Internet in some way. "We are looking at whether there is something short of a complete exemption for Internet activity," she said.…http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/politics/06blog.html

Rule Change Lets C.I.A. Freely Send Suspects Abroad to Jails

By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON

“The Bush administration's secret program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation has been carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency under broad authority that has allowed it to act without case-by-case approval from the White House or the State or Justice Departments, according to current and former government officials.

The unusually expansive authority for the C.I.A. to operate independently was provided by the White House under a still-classified directive signed by President Bush within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the officials said.

The process, known as rendition, has been central in the government's efforts to disrupt terrorism, but has been bitterly criticized by human rights groups on grounds that the practice has violated the Bush administration's public pledge to provide safeguards against torture.

In providing a detailed description of the program, a senior United States official said that it had been aimed only at those suspected of knowing about terrorist operations, and emphasized that the C.I.A. had gone to great lengths to ensure that they were detained under humane conditions and not tortured.

The official would not discuss any legal directive under which the agency operated, but said that the "C.I.A. has existing authorities to lawfully conduct these operations."

The official declined to be named but agreed to discuss the program to rebut the assertions that the United States used the program to secretly send people to other countries for the purpose of torture. The transfers were portrayed as an alternative to what American officials have said is the costly, manpower-intensive process of housing them in the United States or in American-run facilities in other countries.…”

Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, who was detained at Kennedy Airport two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks and transported to Syria, where he said he was subjected to beatings. A year later he was released without being charged with any crime.

Before Sept. 11, the C.I.A. had been authorized by presidential directives to carry out renditions, but under much more restrictive rules. In most instances in the past, the transfers of individual prisoners required review and approval by interagency groups led by the White House, and were usually authorized to bring prisoners to the United States or to other countries to face criminal charges.

As part of its broad new latitude, current and former government officials say, the C.I.A. has been authorized to transfer prisoners to other countries solely for the purpose of detention and interrogation.

The covert transfers by the C.I.A. have faced sharp criticism, in part because of the accounts provided by former prisoners who say they were beaten, shackled, humiliated, subjected to electric shocks, and otherwise mistreated during their long detention in foreign prisons before being released without being charged. Those accounts include cases like the following:

¶Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, who was detained at Kennedy Airport two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks and transported to Syria, where he said he was subjected to beatings. A year later he was released without being charged with any crime.

¶Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German who was pulled from a bus on the Serbia-Macedonia border in December 2003 and flown to Afghanistan, where he said he was beaten and drugged. He was released five months later without being charged with a crime.

¶Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian who was arrested in Pakistan several weeks after the 2001 attacks. He was moved to Egypt, Afghanistan and finally Guantánamo. During his detention, Mr. Habib said he was beaten, humiliated and subjected to electric shocks. He was released after 40 months without being charged.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/politics/06intel.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Italian Journalist Shot in Iraq Rejects U.S. Account

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
“The Italian journalist wounded by American troops in Iraq after her release by insurgents rejected the U.S. military's account of the shooting and declined Sunday to rule out the possibility she was deliberately targeted. The White House said it was a ``horrific accident'' and promised a full investigation.

Meanwhile, an autopsy performed on the agent who died trying to save Giuliana Sgrena reportedly showed he was struck in the temple by a single round and died instantly as the car carrying Sgrena sped to the Baghdad airport.

Friday's shooting that wounded the 56-year-old journalist and killed Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari as they were celebrating her freedom has fueled anti-American sentiment in a country where people are deeply opposed to U.S. policy in Iraq.

But government officials indicated the shootings would not affect the decision by Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi -- a strong U.S. ally -- to maintain 3,000 troops in Iraq to help secure peace in the country.

``The military mission must carry on because it consolidates democracy and liberty in Iraq,'' Communications Minister Maurizio Gasparri was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency. ``On the other hand, we must control -- but not block -- the presence of civilians and journalists, who must observe rules and behavior to reduce the risks.''

Sgrena, who works for the communist daily Il Manifesto, did not rule out that she was targeted, saying the United States likely disapproved of Italy's methods to secure her release, although she did not elaborate.

``The fact that the Americans don't want negotiations to free the hostages is known,'' Sgrena told Sky TG24 television by telephone, her voice hoarse and shaky. ``The fact that they do everything to prevent the adoption of this practice to save the lives of people held hostages, everybody knows that. So I don't see why I should rule out that I could have been the target.''

Italian officials have not provided details about the negotiations leading to Sgrena's release Friday after a month in captivity, but Agriculture Minister Giovanni Alemanno was quoted as saying it was ``very likely'' a ransom was paid. U.S. officials object to ransoms, saying it encourages further kidnappings.…”

The U.S. military has said the car Sgrena was riding in was speeding, and Americans used hand and arm signals, flashing white lights and warning shots to get it to stop at the roadblock.

But in an interview with Italian La 7 TV, Sgrena said, ``There was no bright light, no signal.'' She also said the car was traveling at ``regular speed.''

Sgrena also recalled how Calipari, who led negotiations for her release, died after throwing himself over her when the shooting broke out as they were celebrating her freedom on the way to the airport.

``I remember only fire,'' she wrote in Il Manifesto, which fiercely opposed the war in Iraq. ``At that point a rain of fire and bullets came at us, forever silencing the happy voices from a few minutes earlier.''

Sgrena said the driver began shouting that they were Italian, then ``Nicola Calipari dove on top of me to protect me and immediately, and I mean immediately, I felt his last breath as he died on me.''

Suddenly, she said, she remembered her captors' words, when they warned her ``to be careful because the Americans don't want you to return.''

Sgrena wrote that her captors warned her as she was about to be released not to signal her presence to anyone, because ``the Americans might intervene.'' She said her captors blindfolded her and drove her to a location where she was turned over to agents and they set off for the airport.

Calipari's body was returned to Italy late Saturday, and Berlusconi and President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi joined Calipari's wife, mother and two children at Rome's Ciampino Airport to receive it.…

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Italy-Iraq-Hostage.html?ex=1110776400&en=ba44efbab59287d1&ei=5070

Gonzo Gone, Rather Going, Watergate Still Here

FRANK RICH
“What's missing from News is the news. On ABC, Peter Jennings devotes two hours of prime time to playing peek-a-boo with U.F.O. fanatics, a whorish stunt crafted to deliver ratings, not information. On NBC, Brian Williams is busy as all get-out, as every promo reminds us, "Reporting America's Story." That story just happens to be the relentless branding of Brian Williams as America's anchorman - a guy just too in love with Folks Like Us to waste his time looking closely at, say, anything happening in Washington.

In this environment, it's hard to know whom to root for. After the "60 Minutes" fiasco, Mr. Williams's boss, the NBC president Jeff Zucker, piously derided CBS for its screw-up, bragging of the reforms NBC News instituted after a producer staged a truck explosion for a "Dateline NBC" segment in 1992. "Nothing like that could have gotten through, at any level," Mr. Zucker said of the CBS National Guard story, "because of the safeguards we instituted more than a decade ago." Good for him, but it's not as if a lot else has gotten through either. When was the last time Stone Phillips delivered a scoop, with real or even fake documents, on "Dateline"? Or that NBC News pulled off an investigative coup as stunning as the "60 Minutes II" report on Abu Ghraib? That, poignantly enough, was Mr. Rather's last hurrah before he, too, and through every fault of his own, became a neutered newsman.… ”

But even Thompson might have been shocked by what's going on now. "The death of Thompson represents the passing from the Age of Gonzo to the Age of Gannon," wrote Russell Cobb in a column in The Daily Texan at the University of Texas. As he argues, today's White House press corps is less likely to be invaded by maverick talents like a drug-addled reporter from a renegade start-up magazine than by a paid propagandist like Jeff Gannon, a fake reporter for a fake news organization (Talon News) run by a bona fide Texas Republican operative who was a delegate to the 2000 Bush convention.

Though a few remain on the case - Eric Boehlert of Salon, mediamatters.org, Joe Strupp of Editor and Publisher - the Gannon story is fast receding. In some major news venues, including ABC and CBS, it never surfaced at all. Yet even as Mr. Gannon has quit his "job" as a reporter and his "news organization" has closed up shop, the plot thickens. His own Web site - which only recently shut down with the self-martyring message "The voice goes silent" - has now restarted as a blog with Gonzo pretensions. The title alone of his first entry, "Fear and Loathing in the Press Room," would send Thompson spinning in his grave had he not asked that his remains be shot out of a cannon.

As a blogger, Mr. Gannon's new tactic is to encourage fellow right-wing bloggers to portray him as the victim of a homophobic left-wing witch hunt that destroyed his privacy. Given that it was Mr. Gannon himself who voluntarily exhibited his own private life by appearing on Web sites advertising his services as a $200-per-hour escort, that's a hard case to make. But it is a clever way to deflect attention from an actual sexual witch hunt conducted by his own fake news organization in early 2004. It was none other than Talon News that advanced the fictional story that a young woman "taped an interview with one of the major television networks" substantiating a rumor on the Drudge Report that John F. Kerry had had an extramarital affair with an intern. (Mr. Kerry had to publicly deny the story just as his campaign came out of the gate.) This is the kind of dirty trick only G. Gordon Liddy could dream up. Or maybe did. Mr. Gannon's Texan boss, Bobby Eberle, posted effusive thanks (for "their assistance, guidance and friendship") to both Mr. Liddy and Karl Rove on Talon News's sister site, GOPUSA, last Christmas.

Mr. Gannon, a self-promoting airhead, may well be a pawn of larger forces as the vainglorious Mr. Liddy once was. But to what end? That Kerry "intern" wasn't the only "news" Mr. Gannon helped stuff in the pipeline during an election year. A close reading of the transcripts of televised White House press conferences reveals that at uncannily crucial moments he was called on by the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, to stanch tough questioning on such topics as Abu Ghraib and Mr. Rove's possible involvement in the outing of the C.I.A. spy Valerie Plame. We still don't know how this Zelig, using a false name, was given a daily White House pass every day for two years. Last weekend, Jim Pinkerton, a former official in the Reagan and Bush I White Houses, said on "Fox News Watch," no less, that such a feat "takes an incredible amount of intervention from somebody high up in the White House," that it had to be "conscious" and that "some investigation should proceed and they should find that out."

Given an all-Republican government, the only investigation possible will have to come from the press. Which takes us back to 1972, the year of Thompson's fear and loathing on the campaign trail. That was no golden age for news either. As Thompson's Rolling Stone colleague, Timothy Crouse, wrote in his own chronicle of that year, "The Boys on the Bus," months of stories by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein failed to "sink in" and only 48 percent of those polled by Gallup had heard of Watergate by Election Day.

Some news organizations had simply ignored The Post's scoops "out of petty rivalry," wrote Mr. Crouse. Others did so because they "feared the administration or favored Nixon in the presidential race." Others didn't initially recognize the story's importance. (The New York Times played the Watergate break-in on page 30.) The White House's pathological secrecy and penchant for threatening to use the Federal Communications Commission as a battering ram on its broadcast critics took care of the rest. According to a superb new history of the Washington press corps, "Reporting from Washington," by Donald A. Ritchie, even Mr. Rather, then CBS's combative man in the Nixon White House, "left the Watergate story alone at first, sure that it would fade like 'a puff of talcum powder.' "

For similar if not identical reasons, journalistic investigations into the current administration rarely "sink in" either. Early stories in The Boston Globe and Washington Post on what Jeff Gannon himself (on his blog) now calls "Gannongate" faded like that puff of powder. So did Eric Lichtblau's recent Times report on the White House's suppression of the 9/11 commission finding that federal aviation officials ignored dozens of advance warnings of Al Qaeda airline hijackings and suicide missions. But we've now entered a new twilight zone: in 1972, at least, the press may have been stacked with jokers but not with counterfeit newsmen.

Today you can't tell the phonies without a scorecard. Besides the six "journalists" we know to have been paid by the administration or its backers, bloggers were on the campaign payrolls of both a Republican office-seeker (South Dakota's Senator John Thune) and a Democrat (Howard Dean) during last year's campaign. This week The Los Angeles Times reported that Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration, "taking a cue from President Bush's administration," had distributed fake news videos starring a former TV reporter to extol the governor's slant on a legislative proposal. Back in Washington, the Social Security Administration is refusing to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests for information about its use of public relations firms - such as those that funneled taxpayers' money to the likes of Armstrong Williams. Don't expect news organizations dedicated to easy-listening news to get to the bottom of it.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/arts/06rich.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Two months after tsunami only some UN agencies have received full funding

“Two months after a devastating tsunami wrought havoc on a dozen Indian Ocean countries and sparked an unprecedented outpouring of global relief aid, the United Nations reported today that while some of its agencies have received 100 per cent of their immediate flash appeal requirements, others still remain under-funded.

Overall aid pledged so far from or through governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), business and private sources totals $6.28 billion, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA ...), which has overall responsibility for supervising relief for the disaster. The deadly waves killed more than 200,000 people and left up to 5 million more in need of basic services....”

Read the Full Article at UN News Centre

As far as the UN's own Flash Appeal for the first six months after the 26 December tsunami, governments have paid or committed themselves to pay $721 million out of the $979 million sought.

But while the World Food Programme (WFP) has received all it sought in the appeal and is now feeding 455,000 people in the Aceh region of Indonesia, the worst-hit area, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which is distributing 10,000 tents in Aceh, remains under-funded.

Likewise, while the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), facing an unprecedented devastation in Aceh's education system where one in 10 staff is dead or missing, has received all it sought, the same is not so for the UN Development Programme (UNDP), which is seeking to bring hospitals back on line and provide work, among other tasks.

http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/#110953501895343323

today's blogs The latest chatter in cyberspace.

GOP Master Plan Revealed!
By Bidisha Banerjee
“The Anarchist Cookbook, GOP edition: Republican spin doctor Frank Luntz examines the lessons learned from last year's GOP victory in a playbook that the "non-partisan research and educational institute" Center for American Progress is dissecting in a series of blog posts. (You can download the entire 160-page book as a Zip file here.) "It's probably the only thing that couldn't be found on the internet...until now," gushes a commentator at liberal blog Political Strategy. Another outraged left-wing blogger calls the book "How to Lie and Win," while yet another says "[I]t's like reading 1984. He literally tells you how to use words to manipulate people into being in favor of stuff that does them harm!" (As of late this afternoon(Posted Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005, at 5:12 PM PT) , conservative bloggers haven't started to respond.)… ”

-

Luntz’s playbook is full of things people should never say if they don’t want to undermine the right-wing agenda. Here’s how you can be Frank Luntz’s worst nightmare:

Economy

• Talk about the economy using “facts and figures.”

• Talk about the overall size of Bush’s proposed tax cut.

• Describe how repealing the estate tax protects America’s wealthiest families.

• Talk about the economy without bringing up 9/11.

• Recall how Bill Clinton produced balanced budgets in the late 1990s.

Budget

• Remind people that conservatives want to make painful cuts in vital government services.

• Talk about the deficit without bringing up 9/11.

Social Security

• Remind people that the financial services industry has been embroiled in scandal and corruption.

• Note that money contributed to private accounts will “go into the hands of greedy Wall Street fat cats.”

• Point out that proponents of Social Security privatization “lack factual discipline.”

• Tell people that the push to privatize Social Security is about partisan politics.

Energy

• Tell people what ANWR stands for.

• Say, “We should rely on American ingenuity and not the Saudi Royal Family.”

• Talk about how drilling for oil harms the environment.

• Always say “Drilling for oil"; Never say “Exploring for energy.”

• Give specific examples of safety and security problems at nuclear power plants.

Patients’ Rights

• When talking about trial lawyers don’t use words like “creeps, bottom-feeds, overpaid and evil.”

• Say, “When innocent people who are injured seek compensation from those who cause their injuries it’s anything but frivolous. When a preventable careless medical error forces a child into a wheelchair for the rest of his life, it’s anything but frivolous. And when someone close to you suffers due to doctor negligence, their right to a day in court is anything but frivolous.”

Posted by Judd February 24th, 2005 11:19 amPermalink http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=319

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113945/

When identity thieves strike data warehouses

By Robert Vamosi
“ChoicePoint was not hacked
Several media accounts described the data breach at ChoicePoint as a computer hack. It wasn't. At this time, details are still emerging on what really happened at ChoicePoint, but the customer data was obtained through fraudulent accounts, and the practice appears to have spanned more than one year. There was no database compromise involved. Instead, it appears that an individual or group of individuals fraudulently created accounts with ChoicePoint, then obtained personal data from those accounts and used it to defraud people whose profiles are stored in ChoicePoint's data warehouse by changing billing addresses, then opening up credit accounts under a victim's name. So far, only one person has been charged in the fraud, a 41-year-old Nigerian man living in Los Angeles named Olatunji Oluwatosin, who now faces six felony counts including identity theft.

Ironically, ChoicePoint is a business that provides identification and credential verification for others, yet initial reports suggest a breakdown in ChoicePoint's own client-authentication process that allowed this fraud to occur.

Thank goodness for California laws
Fortunately, California has an identity theft law on the books, SB 1386. Because ChoicePoint retains information about residents in California, ChoicePoint is required by law to disclose any breach of information, which the company did. In fact, we might not have known about the ChoicePoint breach without SB 1386. Soon after the media learned of the initial breach, ChoicePoint felt compelled to notify as many affected individuals as it could, opening a tidal wave of disclosures that now includes more than 140,000 people in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and at least one class-action lawsuit.

So why don't more states have these laws? Some state houses across the country are considering identity-theft disclosure laws similar to California's. Then why isn't there a federal law? Good question.…”

After the success of the California law, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) introduced national legislation, SB 115, modeled after the California law, requiring all companies doing business in the United States to notify their customers whenever there's a breach of customer data including first and last names, date of birth, social security number, and address. Unfortunately, the Feinstein bill has no cosponsors in Congress.…

As I write, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlan Spector (R-Pennsylvania) has announced plans to hold Senate hearings to examine the privacy, security, and civil liberty implications involved with the sale of personal information. And Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) has started studying additional legislation. Nelson should be familiar with ChoicePoint: In 2000, a subsidiary of ChoicePoint, DBT, was hired by the state of Florida to remove felons from the voter registration lists, but the company ended up deleting legitimate voters as well.

Which gets us to next problem: accuracy
If you live in the western United States, you can now request once-a-year free access to your credit history via the big three credit agencies (the Midwest and East Coast will follow suit shortly). The idea is to spot identity theft and also to give you the ability to clarify any errors (yes, the credit agencies sometimes make costly errors). But how do you spot and correct inaccurate information contained by ChoicePoint and others? At the moment, you can't.…

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3513_7-5690533-1.html?tag=nl.e501

Bush's Next Target: Malpractice Lawyers

By STEVE LOHR
“The work, time, risk and potential rewards in complex malpractice suits are illustrated by a $20 million settlement Mr. Smith won last June. The origins of the case go back to 1997, when Huong Nguyen, then a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was experiencing shortness of breath doing ordinary things like climbing stairs. She was diagnosed as having a faulty mitral valve, a pair of triangular flaps that regulate blood flow between two of the heart's chambers. The valve had to be repaired or replaced.

The surgery lasted more than eight hours, though the procedure usually takes about half that long, Mr. Smith said. The next morning, Ms. Nguyen could squeeze her right hand, but she was otherwise paralyzed and could not speak. She had suffered severe brain damage.

A lawyer referred the family to Mr. Smith, who began investigating. After an initial screening by Mr. Smith's firm, the family filed suit against the surgeon, Dr. Bradley S. Allen. Over the next several years, in preparation for trial, the law firm spent $375,000, much of it for the work of specialists like a cardiothoracic surgeon, neurologists, economists and a forensic videographer.

Mr. Smith contended that Dr. Allen did not properly remove air from the patient's heart during the procedure and that the resulting air embolus caused brain damage. Dr. Allen's lawyer, Kevin T. Martin, said Ms. Nguyen's resulting disability was a risk in this kind of surgery and "very unfortunate, but not a medical error."

The surgery had been videotaped, but when a court ordered Dr. Allen to produce the tape, there was a lengthy gap that included brief segments of television commercials. Had the case gone to trial, Mr. Smith would have contended that the defendant tampered with evidence, an assertion denied by Mr. Martin, who said the gap in the tape had resulted from a mechanical malfunction.

Ms. Nguyen is unable to move her arms or legs and cannot sit up or speak on her own. She communicates by tapping her right forefinger on a special keyboard. She suffers from depression and seizures but is cognitively intact. “She is totally aware of her desperate straits,” Mr. Smith said. “This is as bad as it gets and she knows it.”

Mr. Smith's economists estimated that lifetime care for her would cost up to $20 million. The settlement talks, Mr. Smith said, began a few months before the trial was scheduled to start, with the defense offers starting at $5 million and the Nguyen family deciding to settle at $20 million. ‘It was entirely the family's decision,’ Mr. Smith said. ‘I think we could have gotten more in trial.’ ”

THE medical liability system, health care analysts agree, is deeply flawed. But they also generally agree that the solution offered by the administration and the Republican Congress - putting a ceiling on damages - addresses only one aspect of the problem.

Medical liability policy, said Dr. William M. Sage, a physician and a law professor at Columbia University, should seek three goals: restraining overall costs, compensating the victims of medical mistakes and providing incentives for doctors and hospitals to reduce medical errors.

"There is a strong consensus among people who have really studied the issue that caps on damages would tend to keep costs down and make liability insurance more affordable for doctors," Dr. Sage said. "And there is a universal consensus that caps would do absolutely nothing to reduce medical errors or to compensate injured patients. If anything, caps on damages would make those problems worse."

Medical malpractice laws vary state by state. But California offers a glimpse of a future preferred by the administration and many Republicans in Congress. In 1975, California passed the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, which included a cap of $250,000 for damages like pain and suffering in malpractice cases. It did not limit economic damages for things like the cost of continuing care for a person disabled or wages lost because of medical errors. The law also curbed attorneys' fees on a sliding scale that prohibited them from collecting more than 15 percent on award amounts over $600,000, with higher percentages for the amounts below that sum. (In states without limits on fees, contingency payments to malpractice lawyers are typically about one-third of awards.)

Research varies on the likely impact of curbs on awards and fees, but a RAND Corporation study last year concluded that the California law had reduced the net recoveries for plaintiffs by 15 percent and had cut attorneys' fees by far more, an estimated 60 percent. Defendant liabilities, it calculated, were trimmed 30 percent because of the law.

California malpractice lawyers say the law also discourages them from taking wrongful-death cases if the victims are children or retirees. Those groups have no economic value by the cold logic of the courtroom because they are not earning salaries, so the maximum award would be $250,000. Complex cases, which often require many expert witnesses and years of research, can cost that much to bring to trial.

Linda Fermoyle Rice, a medical malpractice lawyer in Woodland Hills, Calif., said she recently told the family of a 14-year-old boy who died unexpectedly in a hospital - apparently from medical negligence, Ms. Rice said - that she could not afford to pursue the case. "The law has made it impossible for many victims to get access to the court," she said.

Even plaintiffs who get to court often come away empty-handed. Nationally, defendants prevail in nearly 80 percent of the medical malpractice cases that go to trial. Many malpractice suits, legal analysts say, are filed by personal-injury lawyers, accustomed to handling simpler cases like those involving auto accidents, but not as experienced in medical negligence work. In a 2002 survey by the trial lawyers association, only 11 percent of its 60,000 members said medical malpractice was their primary area of practice; 40 percent replied that medical negligence cases were some part of their practice....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/business/yourmoney/27mal.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Utah May Be Future for Medicaid

By KIRK JOHNSON and REED ABELSON

Mr. Leavitt asked in a speech this month. "Wouldn't it be better to give Chevies to everyone rather than Cadillacs to a few?"

The truth is that everyone gets a bicyle, including the folks with one leg. A.I.

“Anyone looking for clues as to how the Bush administration might overhaul the Medicaid system should come to Utah and read the fine print of Tony Martinez's health insurance plan.

Mr. Martinez, 56, was homeless and without any health coverage a year ago. Now, under an experimental plan of partial insurance devised under Michael O. Leavitt when he was governor of Utah, Mr. Martinez can see a doctor or go to the emergency room for only a small fee.

But he and his wife, Lisa, are not covered at all for the potentially catastrophic costs of extended hospitalization or specialty medical treatment, from dermatology to oncology. For those services, they must rely, as they did when they were homeless, on charity.

And that brings the story back to Mr. Leavitt, who as President Bush's new secretary of health and human services is now leading a drive to change how Medicaid works and often points to Utah as an illuminating example that other states might consider - although it is an innovation that policy experts, doctors and advocates for the poor are deeply ambivalent about.

In Utah, Mr. Leavitt's plan departs from the traditional Medicaid program on two main fronts. First, it spreads out a lower, more basic level of care to more people, and reduces coverage for some traditional beneficiaries by imposing co-payments for services. And second, it relies on the generosity of doctors and hospitals to provide specialty services free of charge.

In doing so, the state has in many ways reframed and reshaped the national debate over Medicaid and health care for the indigent, experts say, broadening the focus from the question of who does and does not have health insurance, to what constitutes basic health coverage.”

…substantial state-by-state Medicaid experiments could fracture and fragment a system that while never without its critics, has evolved into an anchor of health coverage for the poor since its introduction in the 1960's. Medicaid could create a landscape of winners and losers determined largely by whether they are lucky enough not to become seriously ill.

Mr. Martinez, for one, considers himself a winner. From no insurance, he now has some, and he considers that a victory. "We can go to sleep at night and not worry," Mr. Martinez said. "For me it's been great because I'm healthy and not on a lot of meds."

While Mr. Martinez sees the glass as half full, Wudeh Noba, a day care worker in the same Utah program, the Primary Care Network, sees the glass as half empty. The convoluted rules and co-payment schedules frighten her so much that she has ignored her doctor's advice to have a mammogram and find treatment for her migraine headaches because she is so worried about running up costs that she cannot afford on her $7-an-hour salary. Ms. Noba, a refugee from Senegal, might have insurance on paper, but she does not remotely receive the care her plan supposedly provides.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/national/24utah.html?pagewanted=all&position=

Instead of trying to destroy AARP…

Swifties Slime Again
By MAUREEN DOWD
“Instead of trying to destroy AARP, Republicans should be signing up the seniors' lobby to find Osama.

AARP's super-relentless intelligence network is certainly better than that doddering C.I.A's. Osama has to have turned 50, and AARP somehow knows where everyone who has turned 50 lives.”

But no. The same Republicans who used to love AARP when it helped them pass the president's prescription drug plan now hate AARP because it is against the president's plan to privatize Social Security.

"They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," said Charlie Jarvis, the president of USA Next, a conservative lobbying group. "We will be the dynamite that removes them." He sounded more like Wile E. Coyote than a former interior official in the Reagan and Bush I administrations. "They can run, but they can't hide," he said. But the walker-and-cane set is hard to picture in the Road Runner role.

The Washington Monthly called USA Next's United Seniors Association, a self-styled AARP rival, "a soft-money slush fund for a single G.O.P.-friendly industry: pharmaceuticals."

Certainly, AARP, the gigantic special interest flush with money, probably does wield undue influence and certainly can be an obstacle to public policy, sticking up too much for what their critics call "greedy geezers."

But AARP doesn't deserve this treatment from the "Swift Boat" political demolition team. As Glen Justice reported in The Times, USA Next, which has spent millions on Republican policy fights, has pledged to spend as much as $10 million on ads and other tactics to "dynamite" AARP and get Americans to rip up Social Security. It's hiring some of the same consultants who helped the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who dynamited John Kerry, a war hero, by sliming him as a war criminal.

Once again, just as W. runs into political trouble, he floats above the fray while the help takes out his opponents. Just as John McCain was smeared by Bush supporters in 2000, Swift Boat assassins can rid the president of any meddlesome adversaries now.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/opinion/24dowd.html

Chicago Tribune | A White House plant?

By Charlie Madigan
“What did the White House know and when did it know it on the question of the kinky bald guy with the stinky Web sites who got to pose as a 'daily pass' reporter in the White House press corps?

He got to help the White House wiggle out of unpleasant moments by asking questions worthy of a doofus, which drew the attention of the blogosphere, which shifted into 'high proctology' mode in a recent hot pursuit of the caper.

Bingo, another media incident explodes.

Well, good for the bloggers.

But there's one problem left, and that is the big question: Did the White House knowingly plant this lap doof in the press corps or, as indicated in many White House comments, was it just something that happened over time despite lots of scrutiny that led them to conclude he was legit, sort of?”

First, some history.

James Guckert was his name and Talon News was the game.

If this were the old TV Untouchables, Walter Winchell would be shouting, "Talon....a conservative front organization masquerading as an innocent news website...was water boy for the right people...if you get my drift...it was a plane with one wing...and it always turned to the right...."

And so on.

Talon was connected to a decidedly partisan something called GOPUSA. Letterheads went to the White House, the minions in the press office "checked it out" and concluded Talon was actually a news organization and it was legit, we have been told.

Anyhow, for a couple of years, this Guckert guy, masquerading as reporter Jeff Gannon, got to be in the White House press corps because the White House decided to let him in. Lots of Talon stories, we are told, looked a lot like White House and Republican Party handouts.…

During the campaign last year, I made an attempt to get a ticket as a normal person, not as a reporter writing the Gleaner, to a Bush rally in Holland, Mich. I made exactly one call to an old guy at the local Republican committee to cop a ticket.

Before you knew it, local Republicans, regional Republicans and National Republicans were all over me. No! You can't go as a normal person. You must go as a reporter and sit where the reporters sit.

You may not ramble around.

Well, what fun is that?

I made a half-hearted attempt to follow the rules, got my credentials and went to the event outside of Holland. Once I cleared security, I dashed off to freedom to ask a guy in a funny hat what he was up to.

It took less than two minutes for a woman in a nice blue suit to rush up to me with some "security" in tow and announce I couldn't do that, that I had to sit in the press section and stay there.

Since the "press" wasn't even going to arrive for another two hours, I thought that would be kind of limiting, so I respectfully said, "No @#$%#$ way in hell."

They held a meeting and affixed a tour guide to my side, a nice young woman who turned out to be a good interview because of the details of her life and why they made her think like a Republican.

Soon, she was withdrawn, probably for being too communicative, and was replaced by a fat guy who spent the entire event following me around and asking me if I was "getting what I needed."

That, I thought, was a very personal question.

Think about it this way. The Bush people were so efficient and focused they could reach all the way out to Holland, Mich. and try to put a choke collar on an innocent Rambling Gleaner.

Given that, can there be any doubt about what they knew about the ringer sitting in the middle of the press room for the briefings just about every day?…

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-gleaner,1,1375290.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Iraq: Winning the Unwinnable War

James Dobbins
“Summary: By losing the trust of the Iraqi people, the Bush administration has already lost the war. Moderate Iraqis can still win it, but only if they wean themselves from Washington and get support from elsewhere. To help them, the United States should reduce and ultimately eliminate its military presence, train Iraqis to beat the insurgency on their own, and rally Iran and European allies to the cause.

James Dobbins is Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at Rand. He was a U.S. Special Envoy in Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, and Afghanistan. ”

In the eyes of the Iraqi people and of all the neighboring populations, the U.S. mission in Iraq lacks legitimacy and credibility. Only by dramatically recasting the American role in the region can such perceptions begin to be changed. Until then, U.S. military operations in Iraq will continue to inspire local resistance, radicalize neighboring populations, and discourage international cooperation.

PICKING THE RIGHT BATTLE

American forces have lost the support of the Iraqi population and probably cannot regain it. The insurgency can be defeated only by Iraqi forces under Iraqi leadership, and only to the degree that those forces can dramatically reduce their dependence on the United States. Military operations should be governed by a counterinsurgency strategy emphasizing pacification--that is to say, priority should be given to securing the civilian population, not hunting down insurgents. In the end, insurgencies are defeated not by killing insurgents, but by winning the support of the population and thus denying the insurgents both refuge and recruits.

Counterinsurgency campaigns require the close integration of civil and military efforts, moreover, with primacy given to political objectives over military goals. They require detailed tactical intelligence, which can be developed only by Iraqis and is best gathered by a police force in daily contact with the population. Training the Iraqi police and building a counterterrorist "special branch" within it should take priority over all other capacity-building programs, including the creation of an Iraqi military. Given the United Kingdom's superior experience in domestic terrorism and counterinsurgency, Washington should ask London to take the lead in creating special units within the Iraqi police.

No population will support a force that cannot protect it, so enhancing the Iraqi people's security should take priority over other military and civil objectives. Doing so will require freeing the population from intimidation by the insurgents, and that will require military action. Yet if such action is U.S.-led, employs heavy ordinance, produces large-scale collateral damage, and inflicts numerous innocent casualties, it could be counterproductive. In the end, the success or failure of an offensive such as the November assault on Falluja must be measured not according to body counts or footage of liberated territory, but according to Iraqi public opinion. If the Iraqi public emerges less supportive of its government, and more supportive of the insurgents, then the battle, perhaps even the war, will have been lost.

Pulverizing cities to root out insurgents may restore some control to the Iraqi government, but the benefits are unlikely to last long if the damage also alienates the population. Sacrificing innocent Iraqi lives to save American ones is a difficult tradeoff. Using better-calibrated warfare tactics--manpower instead of firepower, snipers and special forces instead of tanks and artillery--could mean saving innocent Iraqi lives at the cost of more U.S. casualties. Of course, the U.S. government must concern itself with American as well as Iraqi public support for the war. But for now, Washington should be especially mindful of the losses it inflicts on Iraqi civilians, because today the lack of support for its efforts among them is a far more immediate threat than the lack of support at home.

Such caution is all the more warranted because, in one important respect, the Iraqi insurgency is very different from the communist and nationalist insurgencies of the Cold War: it lacks unity of command and an overarching ideology. The only factor that unites Muslim fundamentalist mujahideen, secular Baathist holdouts, and Shiite extremists is their desire to expel American forces--a goal that a majority of the Iraqi people seems to share, too. If that rallying cause can be weakened by diminishing Washington's involvement, the Iraqi government should be able to play on divisions among the rebels, steering some of them away from violence and toward the political mainstream, while marginalizing or dividing the rest. Washington should encourage the Iraqi regime in such efforts, including by offering amnesty to those prepared to renounce violence and enter the political process. The United States never sought to try German, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese soldiers for shooting at Americans. Washington is currently backing the Colombian government's plan to offer amnesty to right-wing paramilitaries and should encourage a similar effort in Iraq.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20050101faessay84102/
james-dobbins/iraq-winning-the-unwinnable-war.html

Audit Faults U.S. for Its Spending on Port Defense

By ERIC LIPTON

The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general has concluded that it has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to protect ports since Sept. 11 without sufficiently focusing on those that are most vulnerable, a policy that could compromise the nation's ability to better defend against terrorist attacks.

“Hundreds of thousands of dollars has been invested in redundant lighting systems and unnecessary technical equipment, the audit found, but ‘the program has not yet achieved its intended results in the form of actual improvement in port security.’

In addition, less than a quarter of the $517 million that the department distributed in grants between June 2002 and December 2003 had been spent as of September 2004, the inspector general found. The report also questioned whether grants allocated for small projects in resort areas and some remote locations should have been considered as critical to national security needs as larger projects at ports that are more vital to the national economy.

The findings, released earlier this week, were the latest to criticize the Homeland Security Department's antiterrorism grant program, which has come under attack by people who say it has set poor priorities. For example, Wyoming received four times as much antiterrorism money per capita as New York did last year, according to a Congressional report.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman, citing the department's defense of the port grants that was included in the audit, declined requests for further comment. In remarks included in the audit, a Homeland Security official said the department had taken the higher risk factor of larger ports into account.”

Ninety-five percent of all international commerce enters the United States through its roughly 360 public and private ports. But nearly 80 percent of that trade moves through only 10 ports, with the biggest loads passing through Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland in California and New York. That is why the nation's biggest ports are seen as particularly attractive as terrorist targets. Severely damaging one would not only cause deaths, injuries and property damage, but could also disrupt the flow of many basic goods into and out of the country, port officials say.

Part of the problem, the audit found, is that the annual grants were given out based on applications submitted by individual ports and then awarded even when department staff members found that many of the submissions lacked merit. Instead of withholding money because of a shortage of viable projects, the department disbursed the money to finance dubious security initiatives, many of which are detailed in the 70-page report. The grants are described in some detail, but the names of the winners and losers are not disclosed.

The grant program was intended to limit awards to what were considered strategic ports, meaning terminals that handle a large volume of cargo or a high number of passengers, are next to military facilities, or handle hazardous cargo.

After examining four separate rounds of port grants, the inspector general found that the department appeared to be intentionally distributing the money as widely as possible across the country, instead of focusing it on the biggest ports or on other locations that intelligence reports suggested were most likely to be future targets.

Major ports like New York, Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland received large allocations. But smaller grants went to ports in places like St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, Martha's Vineyard, Mass., Ludington, Mich., and six locations in Arkansas, none of which appeared to meet the grant eligibility requirements, the audit said. The department, as a result, "had no assurance that the program is protecting the nation's most critical and vulnerable port infrastructure and assets," the audit said.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/politics/20secure.html

Administration Is Warned About Its 'News' Videos

By ANNE E. KORNBLUT

It is illegal for the government to produce or distribute such publicity material domestically without disclosing its own role.

“The comptroller general has issued a blanket warning that reminds federal agencies they may not produce newscasts promoting administration policies without clearly stating that the government itself is the source.

Twice in the last two years, agencies of the federal government have been caught distributing prepackaged television programs that used paid spokesmen acting as newscasters and, in violation of federal law, failed to disclose the administration's role in developing and financing them.

And those were not isolated incidents, David M. Walker, the comptroller general, said in a letter dated Thursday that put all agency heads on notice about the practice.

In fact, it has become increasingly common for federal agencies to adopt the public relations tactic of producing "video news releases" that look indistinguishable from authentic newscasts and, as ready-made and cost-free reports, are sometimes picked up by local news programs. It is illegal for the government to produce or distribute such publicity material domestically without disclosing its own role.

"While agencies generally have the right to disseminate information about their policies and activities, agencies may not use appropriated funds to produce or distribute prepackaged news stories intended to be viewed by television audiences that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials."

‘It is not enough,’ he added, ‘that the contents of an agency's communication may be unobjectionable.’”

The two best-known cases of such video news releases - one concerning the new Medicare law, the other an antidrug campaign by the Bush administration - drew sharp rebukes from the G.A.O. after separate investigations last year found that the agencies involved had violated the law.

Those cases were followed by disclosures that the government had paid at least one conservative commentator, Armstrong Williams, to promote the administration's No Child Left Behind education measure and had put two other conservative writers on the federal payroll to help develop programs. These episodes have prompted calls from Democrats for stricter oversight of the administration's publicity practices, which have cost millions of dollars of federal revenue.

In the Medicare case, a video made in the style of a newscast featured a spokeswoman named Karen Ryan who claimed to be reporting from Washington on Medicare law changes strongly backed by the administration but opposed by many Democrats, who consider them a windfall for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. In part of one script, she said that "all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending."

Often there is an intermediary in the process: a public relations firm hired by a government agency to produce a polished video and direct other aspects of a publicity drive.

One centrally involved firm is Ketchum, a giant in the public relations industry whose representatives arranged for both the Medicare video and the contract with Mr. Williams, a pact that is now under investigation by three government agencies. Ketchum has received $97 million in government public relations contracts since 2001.

The G.A.O. letter did not caution agencies to curtail their publicity practices, telling them simply to adhere to disclosure requirements.

"Prepackaged news stories," Mr. Walker wrote, "can be utilized without violating the law, so long as there is clear disclosure to the television viewing audience that this material was prepared by or in cooperation with the government department or agency."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/19/politics/19gao.html

We May Actually Begin Fighting For What We Believe

“The Republicans know the America they want, and they are not afraid to use any means to get there,” Howard Dean said in accepting the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. “But there is something that this administration and the Republican Party are very afraid of. It is that we may actually begin fighting for what we believe.”

Those words tell us what the selection of Mr. Dean means. It doesn't represent a turn to the left: Mr. Dean is squarely in the center of his party on issues like health care and national defense. Instead, Mr. Dean's political rejuvenation reflects the new ascendancy within the party of fighting moderates, the Democrats who believe that they must defend their principles aggressively against the right-wing radicals who have taken over Congress and the White House.

It was always absurd to call Mr. Dean a left-winger. Just ask the real left-wingers. During his presidential campaign, an article in the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch denounced him as a "Clintonesque Republicrat," someone who, as governor, tried "to balance the budget, even though Vermont is a state in which a balanced budget is not required."

Even on Iraq, many moderates, including moderate Republicans, quietly shared Mr. Dean's misgivings - which have been fully vindicated - about the march to war.

But Mr. Dean, of course, wasn't quiet. He frankly questioned the Bush administration's motives and honesty at a time when most Democrats believed that the prudent thing was to play along with the war partyvery afraid of. It is that we may actually begin fighting for what we believe.

We'll never know whether Democrats would have done better over the past four years if they had taken a stronger stand against the right. But it's clear that the time for that sort of caution is past.

For one thing, there's no more room for illusions. In 2001 it was possible for some Democrats to convince themselves that President Bush's tax cuts were consistent with an agenda that was only moderately conservative. In 2002 it was possible for some Democrats to convince themselves that the push for war with Iraq was really about eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

But in 2005 it takes an act of willful blindness not to see that the Bush plan for Social Security is intended, in essence, to dismantle the most important achievement of the New Deal. The Republicans themselves say so: the push for privatization is following the playbook laid out in a 1983 Cato Journal article titled "A 'Leninist' Strategy," and in a White House memo declaring that "for the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win - and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/opinion/15krugman.html

It's Not Exactly Class Warfare

by Alfred Ingram
“As much as I agree with Paul Krugman's assessment of Bush's motives. What's going on isn't exactly class warfare. Unfortunately, people have to be believed to be heard. You have to believe people have status. You have to see them as players in the game, before you can see them as an enemy. ”

Professor Yoshi Tsurami (as of last fall at C.U.N.Y) vividly remembers George Bush at Harvard business School in 1973, because he was always making statements denouncing the New Deal as socialist, calling the S.E.C. an impediment to business, calling the civil rights movement “socialist/communist” and declaring that “people are poor because they're lazy.” An aide (Dan Bartlett) denied he ever made those statements, but those type of statements were at one time surrounded him like the air he breathed. In the 1960's they were totally typical of the conservative wing of his social class.

How would I know? I got to hear it over and over again, not in the classrooms, but in the dorms, at meals in the commons, at YAF (Young Americans for Freedom) meetings, at Phillips Academy in Andover Massachusetts. What I don't know is if he picked up these ideas at Andover or, like other very well off conservative kids, brought them from home. I have a hard time believing that his father or mother taught anything close to this.

Can you imagine people who'd never labored in their lives being absolutely convinced that people who did back-breaking work were lazy? Can you seriously envision people who could call FDR a “traitor to his class,” with a straight face. Can you imagine a person who would tell an African-American that the basic problem of black people was their inability to handle hard work (present company exluded), then complain because a farmer who'd traded them firewood (the older dorms had fireplaces) had him working like a nigger.

How did I get in a position where they felt safe making statements like that in front of me? It was a position I took in a debate on the war. The war in Viet Nam. I was firmly anti-communist. I had a cousin flying missions in Viet Nam. There were, though there should have been, no questions about the validity of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The opposition argued an emotional position, I argued from history. The facts as we knew them favored my position and I demolished the antiwar proposition.

I think I was something of an anomaly to them. They never understood how I could agree on some things, and totally disagree with them on others. In fact, their positons were as emotionally based as the other sides. When the facts contradicted them, they ignored the facts. Confronted with anything that differed from their beliefs, they'd say “You're making that up.” The point is that the rest of us aren't quite real to Mr. Bush. Reality isn't quite real to Mr. Bush. He's fond of us, but he and people like him are going to fix America. They're goingto make us more self-reliant. Teach us not to go to the doctor so often. They know better after all, and if things don't work out, well they tried.

Study Looks at Local Political News

By JACQUES STEINBERG

“In the month leading up to last year's presidential election, local television stations in big cities devoted eight times as much air time to car crashes and other accidents than to campaigns for the House of Representatives, state senate, city hall and other local offices, according to a new study to be released tomorrow.

The study - which was carried out by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., and led by the Norman Lear Center at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California - analyzed more than 4,000 local newscasts that were broadcast in 11 major markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Miami, in the four weeks before the election.

It found that 8 percent of those broadcasts included a report about a local race. By contrast, more than half those broadcasts contained a report on the presidential race.

The apparent disparity between local and national political coverage at the local level is being added to the debate over how many television stations a company may own. Last week, the researchers filed their report with the Federal Communications Commission, which is in the midst of an inquiry into easing local ownership rules. ”

The study will be formally presented tomorrow at a news conference hosted by Senator John McCain of Arizona, a critic of efforts to ease restrictions on media ownership.

"I think most stations fear that covering politics is ratings poison," said Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the Annenberg School and one of the lead authors of the study. "Interestingly, they don't seem to fear that running a torrent of political ads hurts them with their audience."

Mr. Kaplan, who hosts a weekly program on "Air America," a liberal talk radio network, and his colleagues found that in the 11 markets studied, the hours of advertising by House candidates eclipsed actual coverage of those races by a ratio of 5 to 1.

Among the study's most jarring findings was in the Seattle market, where in the month before the gubernatorial election, which would turn out to be razor thin, 95 percent of the newscasts analyzed by the researchers had no reports on the race.

"Time spent on teasers, bumpers and intro music in Seattle outnumbered time covering the Washington gubernatorial race by 14 to 1," the researchers wrote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/business/media/14broadcast.html