Out of town..

I'm outta here. Graduation is over and now I'm off to see friends and family. I'm taking a little work with me, for sure, and hopefully I'll blog a little too.

See you June 21.

This is the best link of the day...

How to lose your country in 7 easy steps: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7954027/#050526

Corporations and War and Profits

Halliburton is under investigation in at least 12 different areas according to Corpwatch:

• The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating allegations by an Army official claiming that the Army Corp of Engineers illegally excluded Halliburton’s competitors from bidding on Iraq contracts.Bunnatine Greenhouse, an Army whistleblower, says the line between government officials and Halliburton had become so blurred that a conflict of interest exists.The conduct appears to have violated specific federal contract-related regulations and calls into question the independence of the contracting process.

• The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is conducting a criminal investigation into Halliburton’s admission that it “may have paid” $180 million in bribes to officials in the Nigerian government to win a multibillion dollar construction con-tract. Some of the bribes were paid during Dick Cheney’s tenure as chief executive officer. Halliburton terminated its relationship with former KBR chief Albert Jack Stanley after discovering that $5 million of the bribe money was allegedly deposited into his Swiss bank account.

• 
  The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investi-gating a second bribery case involving Nigeria. Halliburton admitted that its employees paid a $2.4 million bribe to a Nigerian government official for the pur-pose of receiving favorable tax treat-ment. As the Houston Chronicle points out, “left unanswered is how a ‘low-level employee’ could channel that much money from the company to the pockets of a corrupt official.”

• 
  The DOJ has opened a criminal investigating of Halliburton’s business dealings in Iran.The company sells goods and services to Iran through a Cayman Islands sub-sidiary. The sales appear to have violated the U.S. trade embargo against Iran.

• 
  The criminal division of the DOJ has issued a subpoena to a former employee of KBR to determine whether the company criminally over-charged for fuels imported into Iraq.Meanwhile Pentagon auditors investigating the same matter found that KBR and its Kuwaiti subcontractor, Altanmia Commercial Marketing Company, had overcharged the military by $174 million for importing fuel into Iraq under the Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO) infrastructure contract. Other alleged over-charges under the same contract (not fuel imports) add up to another $38 million, bringing the total overcharges to at least $212 million. The Kuwaiti government, which has also been investigating the fuel overcharging, recently com-plained about the “lack of cooperation” by KBR and the U.S. military.

• The DOJ indicted Jeff Alex Mazon, a former KBR manager, and a Kuwaiti businessman on charges of defrauding the U.S. government of $3.5 million over a fuel supply con-tract. The two men are charged with rigging bids to favor KBR subcontractor LaNouvelle over other subcontractors and then with overcharging the U.S. military for fuel trans-port services at a Kuwait airport. The alleged fraud cost the U.S. military $5.5 million for services KBR initially estimated would cost only $685,000.

• The Pentagon’s Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) has issued several audit reports related to task orders under KBR’s RIO contract that reported $212 million in questioned and unsupported costs. The Pentagon fired Halliburton from its gasoline importation con-tract and assigned it to an office within the Pentagon known as the Defense Energy Support Center (DESC). The result was a 50 percent reduction in gasoline prices charged to U.S. taxpayers.

• The DOJ is investigating possible over-billing for government service work done in the Balkans between 1996 and 2000. The charges stem from a General Accounting Office (GAO) report that found Halliburton billed the Army for questionable expenses for work in the Balkans, including charges of $85.98 per sheet of plywood that cost them $14.06. A follow-up report by the GAO in 2000 also found inflated costs, including charges for clean-ing some offices up to four times a day.

• 
  The International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB), a watchdog established by the United Nations, is investigating the management of Iraqi finances by the now-disbanded U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The Bush administration refused numerous IAMB requests for U.S. government audits about the payment of approximately $1.66 billion in Iraqi funds to Halliburton, which is the single largest private recipient of Iraqi oil proceeds. In October 2004, after failing to cooperate for months, the Pentagon finally sent the IAMB six of its audits. It was later found that portions of the audit were withheld from the IAMB to conceal damning evidence about KBR, including $212 million in overcharges and “unreasonable costs” associated with importing fuel into Iraq. The evidence was concealed from the public at KBR’s request.

• 
  In March 2005, the DOJ opened a criminal inquiry into possible bid-rigging on foreign contracts by Halliburton. The company admitted it “may have” criminally rigged contract bids and said “information has been uncovered” that former employees of KBR “may have engaged in coordinated bidding with one or more competitors on certain foreign construction projects and that such coordination possibly began as early as the mid-1980s....”
  

• “Coordinating” with competitors to secure contracts with foreign governments is anticompetitive and a violation of U.S. antitrust law. The practice, known as “bid rigging,” is punishable by criminal fines and denial of future contracts with the U.S. government.

The EPA is investigating complaints by Wes Wilson, one of its senior engineers, who said the agency distorts sci-ence in order to shield Halliburton from pollution laws. The engineer said the Bush administration purposely tam-pered with environmental science in order to shield a lucrative drilling technique, known as hydraulic fractur-ing, from all regulations. He believes the technique, pioneered by Halliburton, is harmful to drinking water sup-plies. Halliburton has spent years trying to get the federal government to exempt the technique from environmental regulations

Freedom, Fries, and Lies

French Fries Protester Regrets War Jibe
by Jamie Wilson in Washington
It was a culinary rebuke that echoed around the world, heightening the sense of tension between Washington and Paris in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. But now the US politician who led the campaign to change the name of french fries to "freedom fries" has turned against the war. Walter Jones, the Republican congressman for North Carolina who was also the brains behind french toast becoming freedom toast in Capitol Hill restaurants, told a local newspaper the US went to war "with no justification". Mr Jones, who in March 2003 circulated a letter demanding that the three cafeterias in the House of Representatives' office buildings ban the word french from menus, said it was meant as a "light-hearted gesture". But the name change, still in force, made headlines around the world, both for what it said about US-French relations and its pettiness. Now Mr Jones appears to agree. Asked by a reporter for the North Carolina News and Observer about the name-change campaign - an idea Mr Jones said at the time came to him by a combination of God's hand and a constituent's request - he replied: "I wish it had never happened." Although he voted for the war, he has since become one of its most vociferous opponents on Capitol Hill, where the hallway outside his office is lined with photographs of the "faces of the fallen". "If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong," he told the newspaper. "Congress must be told the truth."

We must burn them

The stem cells. We must burn them. They must not be used. Burn! Burn! Burn! Too dangerous! Too usefule to the people! Burn! Burn! Burn! Bad idea! Dangerous! Burn!

It's what's for dinner!!!!!

What is for dinner? Not the truth, anyway. Read this latest in corporate-owned government:

May 23, 2005 Beef Makers Can Be Forced to Pay for Ads By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 6:07 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government can make cattle ranchers pay for ads proclaiming ''Beef: It's what's for dinner,'' the Supreme Court ruled Monday. Some ranchers object to paying for the ad campaigns because they don't like the generic message that all beef -- American or foreign -- is good. But the court ruled in a 6-3 decision that the beef program amounts to government speech that is shielded from First Amendment challenge. The government is allowed to promote its own message and compel producers to pay fees, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote. ''The message of the promotional campaigns is effectively controlled by the Federal Government itself,'' Scalia wrote in an opinion joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas and Stephen G. Breyer. The agriculture secretary, a public official, controls the program, appoints and dismisses key personnel and has ''absolute veto power'' over the ads, even when it comes to their wording, Scalia wrote. At issue is a program passed by Congress in 1985 requiring cattle producers to pay $1 for every head of cattle sold in the United States for industry advertising and research. The Agriculture Department collects the ''checkoff'' fees, which total more than $80 million annually, and distributes the money to an industry group appointed by the department to run the program. The program is intended to boost demand for beef and boost profits for producers, said Monte Reese, chief operating officer of the Cattlemen's Beef Board, the group that runs the program. ''We have seen a 25 percent increase in our demand in just the last few years,'' Reese said Monday. ''We're enjoying record high prices. We've been able to make strides in beef safety. '' Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns called the ruling ''a win for the many producers who recognize the power of pooled resources.'' Similar programs run by federal and state authorities promote pork, milk, eggs, soybeans and cotton. Lower courts have struck down the ''Got Milk?'' dairy promotion and pork ads promoting ''the other white meat.'' An appeal of the pork decision is pending now before the Supreme Court. ''We'll be extremely surprised and disappointed if the judgment is not applied to the pork case as well as the beef case,'' said Dave Culbertson, president of the National Pork Board. Opponents of the fees argued the program is not government-run. The government speech defense is ''news to me,'' said Mabel Dobbs, an Idaho rancher and member of the Montana-based Western Organization of Resource Councils. ''We've long been told that the beef checkoff is producer-run, producer-driven and producer-funded,'' Dobbs said. In a dissenting opinion, Justice David H. Souter argued that the beef campaigns are not government speech. If the government wants to use targeted taxes to fund speech, it must be accountable for indicating the speech is a government message, he wrote. ''No one hearing a commercial for Pepsi or Levi's thinks Uncle Sam is the man talking behind the curtain. Why would a person reading a beef ad think Uncle Sam was trying to make him eat more steak?'' Souter wrote in a dissent joined by Justices John Paul Stevens and Anthony Kennedy. The government was sued by ranchers in South Dakota and Montana, and an appeals court ruled that the program violated the First Amendment. The government and Nebraska cattlemen appealed to the high court. The court has gone both ways in earlier cases, upholding advertising programs for California fruit in 1997 and striking down a campaign for the mushroom industry in 2001. But the court had never ruled on whether those programs were government speech. The cases are Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association, 03-1164, and Nebraska Cattlemen v. Livestock Marketing Association, 03-1165.

While I cannot argue one way or the other as to the constitutionality of the decision, what I can say is what this means: large agribusiness firms (the "industry group" referred to in the article) will continue to make huge profits (look at the sidebar for campain contributions...), we will continue to have little testing compared to Europe for Mad Cow (BSE), the American consumer will not see any serious accross-the-board labeling campaign for organic or grass-fed beef, and the government will continue to promote (free speech?) a generic beef PRODUCT with dubious environmental and health consequences.

Now, before anybody hate-mails me, I eat beef. I love steak. I just think that a local rancher who raises high-quality beef should be able to identify his product and get promotion for it that distinguishes it from the sickly hormone infested meat we otherwise relish. But, you see, our government acquisitions this 1$ per head and gives it right back to an industry group controlled by the largest and most powerful ranchers and meatpackers.

Some places are getting smart (and making schools better):

Connecticut Nears Strict School Junk Food Ban

by Noreen Gillepsie

Lawmakers want to make sure Connecticut students aren't part of the Pepsi Generation. Connecticut is on the verge of adopting the most far-reaching ban in the country on soda and junk food in public schools, in an effort to curb rising rates of childhood obesity. Similar but weaker proposals have been introduced in at least 17 states this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Policies are on the books in a few states, such as Arkansas and California. Advocates say Connecticut's ban would be the strongest because it is so broad, applying to all grades and all school sites where food is sold. "Connecticut would be the first state to apply those standards to high schools," said Margo Wootan, director of nutritional policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "Most of the recently passed policies are limited in that they only apply to elementary and middle schools."

Genetically Modified Food = Bad.

Monsanto cries foul but...

Rats fed on a diet rich in genetically modified corn developed abnormalities to internal organs and changes to their blood, raising fears that human health could be affected by eating GM food.

The Independent on Sunday can today reveal details of secret research carried out by Monsanto, the GM food giant, which shows that rats fed the modified corn had smaller kidneys and variations in the composition of their blood.

According to the confidential 1,139-page report, these health problems were absent from another batch of rodents fed non-GM food as part of the research project.

Worker Victory

I heard about this a while ago, but it's worth mention because victory is so rare--and so sweet:

This from Common Dreams quoting the AP:

IMMOKALEE, Fla. - Tejano music bounced off the one-story buildings of this farming town and the smell of tamales filled the air as scores of revelers danced into the night outside the headquarters of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

The celebration marked a hard-fought, unlikely victory by the workers, a coalition of mostly Guatemalan and Mexican tomato pickers, over one of the nation's fast-food giants, Taco Bell.

They led a four-year boycott against the chain until it agreed in March to pay a penny more per pound for Florida tomatoes and to adopt a code of conduct that would allow Taco Bell to sever ties to suppliers who commit abuses against farmworkers.

With that triumph, the farmworkers group is turning to a larger target: the rest of the fast-food industry. The coalition has sent letters to executives at McDonald's, Subway and Burger King asking them to follow Taco Bell's lead.