|
Today's
Stories
June 12, 2008
Judith Levine
As Cranes Fall and People Die
Patrick Cockburn
Amid Iraqi Fury, U.S. Offers Concessions on Military Bases
June 11, 2008
Paul Craig Roberts
Why Oil Prices Are So High
Ralph Nader
Wall Street Gamblers
Joshua Frank
Why I Can't Support Barack Obama
Clifton Ross
Conversation in Miami: the Neoliberal Left and Socialism
Muhammad Idrees Ahmad
Whatever Happened to "Democracy Now?"
Stephen Lendman
Exposing Pentagon and CIA Corruption
Diane Farsetta
Talking Back to Bill O'Reilly
Ron Jacobs
The Sixties Painted Black
Deborah Rich
Hay Belly Nation: the FDA and the O-Word
Hop Wechsler
A Friend of Women?
My Bill Clinton ... and Ours
Website of the Day
A New Path to the Waterfall
June 10, 2008
Alan Farago
John McCain and the Company He Keeps
James G. Abourezk
Deadly Fallout From Obama's Groveling Before Israel Lobby
Saree Makdisi
Banned in the U.S.A. (Almost)
Malini Johar Schueller
A Picture From Beirut
John Ross
Killing Foods, Killing People
Wajahat Ali
Rumi and Sufism
Peter Morici
Bernanke Aggravates Recession Risks
Jordan Flaherty
Inside Angola Prison, Louisiana's Last Slave Plantation
Gary Macfarlane
Collaboration on the Clearwater: Is It Legitimate?
Joanne Mariner
The Gitmo Trials: an Inglorious Start
Website of the Day
The End of the Clinton Machine?
June 9, 2008
Uri Avnery
No, I Can't: Obama, Israel and AIPAC
Nikolas Kozloff
McCain & the Republican Insitute: Promoting Iraqi Occupation for "a Million Years"
Allan Nairn
Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry
Dennis Loo
Threats on Iran and the "Batterer's Defense"
Harry Browne
Irish Euro Vote Comes Down to the Wire
C. Hand
U. S. Bid to Hike Iran's Gas Prices Seems Doomed
Peter Morici
An Unsustainable Trade Deficit
Kenneth Couesbouc
A Ripe Time for Inflation
Martha Rosenberg
The Inconvenient Senator Grassley
James L. Secor
Chinese Superstition or Unconscious Oracle?
Website of the Day
Pay Bo Diddley!
June 7 / 8, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
Obama Goes Over the Top
Ishmael Reed
How Miles Davis Changed My Life
Jeffrey St. Clair
What a Miner's Life is Worth
Nikolas Kozloff
Meet the King the Beers: John McCain and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
The High Cost of a Single War-Like Remark: Oil Prices, Israel, Iran and the U.S.
Robert Fantina
When Truth is the Casualty
Conn Hallinan
Iran and Rumors of War
Neve Gordon
The Occupation and the Politics of Death
Tom Barry
The Deterrence Strategy of Homeland Security
Patrick Irelan
Raiding the Packing House
Tim Wise
Your Whiteness is Showing
David Ker Thomson
The Hard Question
Joshua Frank
"Socialist" Wins Republican Nomination in Montana
David Yearsley
Disaster Music
James T. Phillips
1968: Year of the Rat
Joe Allen
The Real Bobby Kennedy
P. Sainath
Making Life Brighter in Kondapur
David Macaray
Should Unions be More Democratic?
B.R. Gowani
Experience and the Two-for-One
Fred Gardner
What Happened (at the DA's Office)
Peter Harley
Technology to the Rescue? Kurzweil and the Human Machines
Michael Dickinson
Surrender the Bones of Geronimo!
Jen Roesch
Where are the Real Women in Sex and the City?
Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Landau, and Buknatski
Website of the Day
Partying with the Waltons
June 6, 2008
Frank Barat
An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky on the Future of Israel / Palestine
Patrick Cockburn
U.S. Extorts Iraq to Approve Military Deal
Gary Leupp
Cheney Enrages Iraqis Over Security Deal
James Abourezk
Name That Terrorist
Peter Morici
Recession Grips the Jobs Market
Faheem Hussain
What is NATO Doing in Afghanistan?
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo's Britons Go on Hunger Strike
Ayesha Ijaz Khan
How Will Musharraf Go? Impeachment or Safe Exit?
Dave Lindorff
Congress Needs to Defend Itself
Website of the Day
Backstage with Bo Diddley
June 5, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq
Sharon Smith
Hillary's Wreckage
Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Electoral Dilemma: Latinos or Reagan Democrats?
Linn Washington, Jr.
Police Brutality and Cover-Up in Philly
Omar Barghouti
60 Years of Nakba, 41 Years of Occupation ...
Scott Pellegrino
Jim Crow Radio: Bob Grant's Lifetime Achievement Award
John Walsh
Obama Woos AIPAC
Dan Bacher
The Parching of California
DC Larson
Nazi Rockers ... F-Off
Robert Jensen
Masculine, Feminine or Human?
Website of the Day
Ohio Cops Attack Long Walkers
June 4, 2008
Eric Walberg
Princess Patricia and the Taliban
Gary Leupp
Iran and EFPs: Chronology of a Lie
Ralph Nader
Disenfranchised Youth
Dave Lindorff
Of Whiners and Poor Losers
George Wuerthner
Farm Economics
Victor M. Rodriguez
The Puzzle of Race and Politics
Remi Kanazi
Why a Cultural Boycott of Israel is Needed
Stephane Luçon
Renault's Romanian Fairyland Suspended
Farzana Versey
The Tablighi Jamaat Movement
Laray Polk
The Militarization of Space
Website of the Day
Red State Rebels
June 3, 2008
Paul Craig Roberts /
Lawrence M. Stratton
Legislating Tyranny
Mike Whitney
The Withering Economy
Steve Early
San Juan Showdown
Manuel Otero
Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico: the View from the Colony
George Bisharat
The Hope of a Victimized People
Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's VP Quandry
Dan Bacher
Death on the Salmon Highway
Website of the Day
Censoring Bill Knott?
June 2, 2008
Uri Avnery
The Olmert Scandal
Nikolas Kozloff
Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse
Allan J. Lichtman
Revisionist History: Bush, Borah and Hitler
Malini Johar Schueller
The Color of Randomness: Returning to the US From Beirut Via Syria
Robert Weissman
What's Driving Skyrocketing Oil Prices?
Peter Morici
Bailing Out Wall Street
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Don't Get Burned: How to Protect Yourself From Raytheon's Pain Gun
John Ross
Celebrating Catholic Fanaticism in Mexico
Ahmad Al-Akhras
Encounters with the Watch List
Website of the Day
Man on Earth
May 31 / June 1, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
The Worst is Yet to Come
Jeffrey St. Clair
Arkansas Bloodsuckers
Gary Leupp
How McClellan Prettifies Bush
Stan Cox
Broken Agriculture
Rannie Amiri
Lebanon: the Domino That Wouldn't Fall
P. Sainath
A Guaranteed Day's Work--in the Fields, at 110 Degrees, for $2 a Day
Binoy Kampmark
Going Bankrupt in Vallejo
Robert Fantina
Bush, Rice and McClellan
Seth Sandronsky
Will There be Water Riots, as Sacramento Goes Dry?
Corporate Crime Reporter
Death Penalty for Bush?
Anthony DiMaggio
Gaming the Ghetto: Grand Theft Auto IV, Racist Media and the Concrete Jungle
Karl Grossman
A Half-Trillion for Nukes
Matt Reichel
From Vegas to the Heartland and Back Again
Paul Myron Hillier
Of Gas and God
Andy Worthington
Suicide at Guantánamo
David Yearsley
And the Winner is ... Wayne Shorter
Daniel Cassidy
Free Lunch
Charles Thomson
If Hitler Had Been a Hippy ...
Gary Corseri
A Dream Deferred: Activism and the Arts
Wajahat Ali
Sex and the City Through a Man's Eyes
Ron Jacobs
Robins Weep
Poets' Basement
McNeill and Davies
Website of the Day
Last Charge of the Light Horse
May 30, 2008
Bassam Aramin
Here's the Truth You've Been Running From
Andrew Cockburn
Petraeus' Iran Obsession
Saul Landau
How We Got Into This Mess
Nikolas Kozloff
Meet South America's New Secessionists
Robert Sandels
Turning Back the Clock on Cuba
Dave Lindorff
Talk is Cheap
Martha Rosenberg
Raiding Big Meat; Arresting the Wrong People
Harvey Wasserman
Lieberman & McCain: Linking Internet Censorship and Atomic Reactor Terror
Doug Giebel
A Plague on Both Your Houses (of Congress)
Shaun Harkin
The Trial of the Raytheon 9
Website of the Day
The Once and Future Environmental Movement
May 29, 2008
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bill Clinton and the Rich Women
Nikolas Kozloff
Puerto Rico, Obama and the Politics of Race
Col. Dan Smith
Deceiving the Dead
Karl Grossman
The Most Lucrative Incentive for Nuclear Power in the History of the United States
William S. Lind
Inside the Washington Game
Robert Weissman
What to do About the Price of Oil
Dave Lindorff
Why Puerto Rico Won't Matter
David Macaray
A Union Fable
Chris Genovali
Fear and Loathing in the Northern Rockies
Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Battle Over Oil
Website of the Day
Support Antiwar.com
May 28, 2008
Wajahat Ali
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul
Ralph Nader
What's Really Driving the High Price of Oil?
Brian McKenna
Why I Want to Teach Anthropology at the Army War College
Corporate Crime Reporter
Why Vincent Bugliosi Wants to Prosecute George W. Bush for Murder
Brian Cloughley
The Attack on Damadola
Eric Walberg
Opium for the Masses from Afghanistan
Michael Dickinson
Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You
Ijaz Khan
Opening Windows in Pakistan
Website of the Day
Older Than America
May 27, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
In Her Mind She's Killed Before: the Plot to Assassinate Ralph Nader
Greg Kafoury
Is Obama Turning (Further) Right?
Jean Bricmont
Western Delusions
Tim Wise
Farrakhan is not the Problem
Ricardo Alarcón
Puerto Rico's Turn
Stephen Soldz
APA Supports Psychologist Engagement in Bush Regime Interrogations
Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo 16
Alan Singer
Vapid, Stupid and Insulting:
Chuck Schumer Speaks to the Graduates
Richard Neville
Storm in an A-Cup
Susie Day
Gone with the W
May 26, 2008
Uri Avnery
The Syrian Option
Bill Quigley
War Immemorial Day
Col. Dan Smith
Retreating from Hell: a Different Memorial Day
Cindy Sheehan
Why Memorial Day is a Double-Whammy for Me
Marjorie Cohn
Hillary's Assassination Politics: Her Last Shot?
Fred Gardner
Does the VA Care?
Raymond J. Lawrence
Pain Pays: Getting Rich at NY Presbyterian Hospital
Harvey Wasserman
Mugging the Election System
Moncia Benderman
Truth Matters
David Rovics
In Praise of Utah Phillips
Website of the Day
Fox News Jokes About "Knocking Off" Osama and Obama
May 24 / 25, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate
Jeffrey St. Clair
Yellowstone: How Sununu Shrank the Ecosystem
Barbara Rose Johnston
Dam Legacies, Damned Futures
Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters
Adriana Kojeve
The Environment and the 2008 Elections
Robert Fantina
Justice Department's Revelations on Torture
Dave Lindorff
Bush's War on Children in Iraq
David Yearsley
The War on Kitsch
Nelson P. Valdés
The Buying of "Democracy" Agents in Cuba
Kathleen M. Barry
Celebrating Ethnic Cleansing
John Ross
Mexico's Narco Opera Reaches for High Point
Allison Kilkenny
Apathy Doesn't Live in Bronx
Fred Gardner
Orangeburg, 1968
Elizabeth Schulte
Can the Whole World be Fed?
Daniel Gross
Remembering the Wendy's Massacre: the Dangerous Side of Retail Work
Christopher Brauchli
The Search for a Token Right-winger
Richard Rhames
A Nation of Sheep
Daniel Cassidy
My Mother
Poets' Basement
Davies, Klipschutz and Willson
Website of the Weekend
Happy Birthday, Bob
May 23, 2008
Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home
Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry
Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia
Mark Engler
The World After Bush
George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America
Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism
Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan
Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq
Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle
Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment
Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign
May 22, 2008
Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar
Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet
Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid
Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China
Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq
Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard
Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman
Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement
Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard
Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel
May 21, 2008
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton
Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America
Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign
Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat
David Model
Genocide in Iraq?
Eric Walberg
Afghanistan:
Who is the Enemy?
Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President
Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny
Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay
May 20, 2008
Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google
Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These
Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet
Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are
David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle
Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water:
Skating Around the Tanker Issue
Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba
Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed
Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender
Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman
May 19, 2008
Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live
Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement
Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands
Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead:
Mosul on Lockdown
B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle
Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture:
If Not Now, When?
Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?
John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace
Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free
Robert Day
I Get a Horse
Website of the Day
Evolve or Die
Subscribe Online
|
June 12, 2008
The Bush Bling-Bling
Government by Crony
By
CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
It was a longer hill to climb than the one climbed by John Ashcroft, but Tommy Thompson has reason to be happy with the rewards he received upon arriving at the summit. So do the 9/11 responders who were feeling forgotten.
John Ashcroft’s entrée into the world of private enterprise was announced in January 2008. It was then we learned of the procedure that the Justice Department adopted when dealing with corporations that in a perfect world might be charged with criminal conduct but in a Bush world are permitted to avoid prosecution. Culpable corporations enter into deferred prosecution agreements pursuant to which they are not criminally indicted but instead agree to have their conduct monitored for a set period by the Justice Department or someone hired by the Justice Department. Corporations like this arrangement since they avoid trial on criminal charges and the Justice Department likes it because it is full of Bush appointees who like corporations and know that they are run by good people, many of whom paid good money to help Mr. Bush get elected and don’t deserve to have their reputations sullied by criminal charges. The price corporations pay for not being prosecuted (which is not the same thing as a bribe) is that the corporation that is not being prosecuted pays a fine and has to also pay the cost of the monitor. Here is one example of how that worked in practice.
In 2005 the Justice Department began investigating five companies that make almost all the replacement hips and knees used in the United States. They were accused of paying kickbacks to surgeons. Criminal complaints were filed charging the companies with conspiracy to violate the anti-kickback laws. One of the companies investigated was Zimmer Holdings, a medical supply company in Indiana. After completing its investigation the government agreed to defer prosecution of Zimmer in exchange for its agreeing to pay a fine of $169.5 million and agreeing to pay John Ashcroft for serving as monitor. Mr. Ashcroft was to be paid between $28 and $52 million for the 18 months of monitoring.
The latest crony to benefit from his friendship with George Bush is Tommy Thompson.
Tommy Thompson was the Health and Human Services Secretary from 2001 to 2005. During that time he was criticized for his failure to aggressively track and treat health problems arising out of the events of 9/11. Like Mr. Thompson, George Bush was criticized for refusing to adequately fund 9/11 notwithstanding repeated promises to the public and the victims of 9/11 that that was one of his first priorities. His 9/11-budget request for FY 2009 cut funding for those programs by 77 percent from what was appropriated in the FY 2008 budget. The 2008 budget appropriated $108 million and the 2009 budget $24 million. Commenting on the $24 million a White House spokesman said the reduced amount reflected Mr. Bush’s “continued commitment to World Trade Center Workers.” Hillary Clinton, by contrast, said: “With the announcement of his final budget, the President had one last opportunity to demonstrate that he would not forget the sacrifices made by those who responded to 9/11 and are now sick from the toxins released during those attacks. I am disappointed and saddened to see that the President chose not to acknowledge the clear health care needs of these heroes. " Estimates of the cost of monitoring and treating Ground Zero workers are about $218 million a year.
The disappointment Senator Clinton expressed has been ameliorated by the great news that notwithstanding the cuts in the budget, the administration has generously handed an $11 million contract to Logistics Health, Inc. of which Mr. Thompson is president. He didn’t have it as easy as Mr. Ashcroft since three other companies were considered and there was always the outside chance cronyism would not prevail. It did.
Under the contract the company will be paid $11 million. It will give annual physicals to World Trade Center responders, diagnose and treat their illnesses and provide a pharmacy benefit to the injured workers. It’s not the many hundreds of millions that a concerned president might have provided. But it’s a little something and, best of all, it helps out yet another one of George Bush’s old friends. As his administration winds down it is safe to say that lots of his friends will find lucrative employment in the private sector. That’s the least he can do for those who have willingly worked for a man described by some as the worst president in history. There have to be rewards other than the guilt by association with which they will be forever tainted.
Christopher Brauchli is a lawyer living in Boulder, Colorado. He can be reached at: Brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu
|
