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usual suspects d'plutarch Bush "tax reform" budget 4.17.01 A. Huffington Contra Costa Times |
corporate welfare institutional hence legitimate corruption |
Private-sector military :
Auctioning soldiers'
pay more re mercenaries & PMCs
The AIDS crisis came late to South Africa, but when it hit, it hit hard. The standard 2 & 3 drug therapies used
in the West, which can cost more than $12,000 a year at market prices, are not an option for the vast majority of
South Africans, whose annual income averages less than $3,000. And so in 1997, faced with a rapidly growing
emergency, the South African government passed an amendment to its Medicines and Related Substances Act,
under which the Ministry of Health could begin compulsory licensing and "parallel importation" of affordable drugs.
And that's when the pharmaceutical industry sprang into action.
But in fact, the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, supervised by the World Trade
Organization, allows both parallel importing and compulsory licensing by countries faced with a national
emergency. Such a country must simply pay a reasonable royalty to the holder of the patent or marketing rights.
And S. Africa's health minister had said repeatedly that South Africa would abide by international law. "What drug
companies are concerned about," James Love, executive director of the Consumer Project on Technology,
testified before Congress, "is the embarrassment of seeing a drug like fluconazole selling for
$23.50 in Italy but only 95 cents in India. In this sense, it is a public relations issue. But how many millions
should literally die of this embarrassment?"
Yet that's not all. Bristol-Myers Squibb, which earned more than $1 billion in 1998 from
Taxol sales, doesn't hold the patent for the drug. Nor did BMS pay to develop Taxol. The drug was
developed by the National Institutes of Health, which then gave BMS an exclusive marketing
agreement. The same is true of ddI, ddC, and many other AIDS drugs. They were developed with taxpayer
dollars, but the marketing rights were assigned to private firms, allowing the fortunate recipients to make
large sums of money from medications they did not invent.
According to 2.5.99 report to Congress from the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, "All relevant
agencies of the U.S. government have been engaged in an assiduous, concerted campaign" to get South Africa to
capitulate.
Anthony Podesta, who is the brother of White House Chief of Staff John Podesta and is reportedly close to Gore,
was a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical giant Genentech. In 1997/98, his lobbying firm received $360,000 from
Genentech and another $220,000 from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA),
the industry's principal trade organization. For his work for PhRMA, Podesta listed one of his specialties
as "Copyright/Patent/Trademark." As recently as 1998, David Beier, now Gore's chief domestic-policy
adviser, had been Genentech's in-house lobbyist, with copyright and patent issues also among
his specialties.
Former Congressman Tom Downey, another close Gore friend, was a lobbyist for Merck, which paid
his firm $80,000 in 1997-98. Peter Knight, a longtime Gore aide and an adviser to his presidential
campaign, was yet another lobbyist with drug industry clients; his firm took home $180,000 from Schering-
Plough in 1998. Gore spokesman Rosshirt insists that any link between Gore's actions and
his advisers' connections to the pharmaceutical industry is "absurdly circumstantial. Absurd and
irrelevant."
Gore had already ignored a pointed letter on the subject from Ralph Nader and criticism from Nader's
Consumer Project on Technology. "It's the triumph of corporatism," says Nader of the vice president's
position on South Africa. "Gore's not the man he was when he was senator." The
criticism continued as Gore officially began his run for the nomination. When he announced his candidacy on
June 16, AIDS activists disrupted his speech, and they showed up at successive campaign events. Stories and
commentary began to appear in the mainstream press, describing the trade dispute and Gore's role in it. The
problem clearly was not going away.
NoLogo Naomi Klein Village Voice book review
A Deadly Dearth of Drugs L.J. Davis Jan/Feb
2000
S.Africa is a multiracial, multiparty parliamentary democracy, one of only two on the
African continent. It also, like other nations of sub-Saharan Africa, happens to be caught
in the grips of an epidemic. More than 13 percent of its population is infected with HIV;
among some select population groups, such as army troops, the infection rate
approaches 50 percent. And South Africa has already suffered an estimated one million
AIDS deaths, nearly double the number of people who have died in the United
States.
Public funding of private gain pays double for international enforcement of prescription
extortion
While pharmaceutical industry & VP Gore played politics, South African AIDS
patients paid with their lives
South African officials know that the drugs now prevalent in the West could slow the
epidemic. The United States could have made those drugs available several years ago, but that would
have upset the pharmaceutical industry, which has been a generous contributor to both Clinton-Gore
campaigns, as well as to Al Gore's own presidential bid.
Parallel importing would allow South Africa to import desperately needed medicines from countries where they
were available for less, sometimes far less, than a drug company would charge in S. Africa. With parallel importing,
South Africa could go abroad and buy Western-made drugs in bulk at great savings.
Under compulsory licensing, South Africa could compel a drug company to authorize local manufacturers to
produce generic versions of drugs. Compulsory licensing can reduce the price of drugs by as much as 90 percent.
Among the first drugs South Africa tried to manufacture was Taxol, a cancer fighter also sold by Bristol-Myers
Squibb (BMS) to treat the AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma. The reaction to South Africa's effort to bring lifesaving
drugs to its people was swift. More than 40 major drug companies jointly filed suit in South Africa's Constitutional
Court, barring the amendment from taking effect by claiming it infringed on their rights. "Compulsory licensing and
parallel imports expropriate our patent rights," David Warr, associate director of tax and trade policy at
BMS, told one newspaper.
American law is clear on the subject of government-developed drugs: The U.S. government is permitted to share
with other countries the drugs it invents. In other words, in the case of AIDS-related drugs and South Africa, the
issue of intellectual property rights was moot. At any time, the Clinton administration could have made generic
AIDS drugs available in South Africa swiftly and easily. It did not. Instead, the administration did what it could to
prevent South Africa from exercising its rights under TRIPS.
In October 1998, Congress temporarily cut off foreign aid to South Africa in an effort to precipitate action from
that country. Charlene Barshefsky, the U.S. trade representative, denied South Africa certain tariff breaks and
placed the country on a "watch list," pending review and possible further action. Commerce Secretary William
Daley pushed the American position in Pretoria, the U.S. Embassy lobbied the South African parliament, and the
Clinton administration tried to kill a World Health Organization resolution that urged member nations to "ensure
that public health interests are paramount in pharmaceutical and health policies."
Since 1994, Al Gore has been co-chairman of the U.S./South Africa Binational Commission, a body that
discusses trade issues of mutual concern. On at least two occasions, in 1998 and again in early 1999, Gore made
the Medicines Act amendment the focus of his talks with Thabo Mbeki, now South Africa's president. According
to Gore spokesman Tom Rosshirt, Gore was attempting to mediate between the two governments "because the
governments were not able to resolve [the issue] at the cabinet level." Gore's position, Rosshirt says, was that
South Africa should assure the United States that it would not violate international law.
It was predictable that Gore would weigh in on the issue. It was far less predictable that he would take the side of
the drug industry. But the explanation may lie in the connections that the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), a
Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, discovered between the pharmaceutical industry and several people
close to the vice president.
The pharmaceutical industry, it should be noted, has traditionally made its biggest donations to
Republicans. As a senator, Gore got only crumbs from the industry. Still, lobbyists are nothing if
not smart enough to spot a winner.
So Glaxo-Wellcome, BMS, Pfizer, and PhRMA gave $582,945 to the Clinton-Gore campaigns of 1992 and 1996,
according to figures compiled by CRP, and big drug companies gave or lent another $250,000 to pay for the 1993
inaugural. The generosity has continued in recent years. In 1997 and 1998, the industry gave $51,000 to
Leadership '98, Gore's launching-pad PAC, and contributed another $276,850 to the Democratic Party. In early
1999, lobbyists for PhRMA, Pfizer, BMS, Genentech, and Glaxo-Wellcome kicked in an additional $11,000 to
Gore 2000. According to the watchdog group Public Campaign, most of the money arrived in late March, after
"consumer and AIDS activists began putting pressure on Gore's office to change his South Africa trade
policies."
On June 25, Gore wrote a letter to Rep. James Clyburn, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. In it,
the vice president wrote, "I support South Africa's efforts to provide AIDS drugs" through parallel importation and
compulsory licensing "so long as they are carried out in a way that is consistent with international agreements."
Overlooked in Gore's statement was the fact that South Africa had given repeated assurances that it would do
just that.
And then a curious sequence of events ensued. On September 9, drug industry leaders suddenly announced they
had suspended their suit against South Africa. "We acknowledge that there is a procedure for compulsory
licensing," says Jeff Trewhitt, a spokesman for PhRMA. Eight days later, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene
Barshefsky announced that all was now well between the United States and South Africa because Pretoria had
agreed to abide by international law.
In essence, the drug industry, the Clinton administration, and Al Gore had declared that two years of pressure on
South Africa had all been about nothing. During those two years, an estimated 300,000 South Africans died of
AIDS.
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Companies convicted of
fraud still get federal contracts 7.24.00 J. Solomon & K. Pflegler AP from AJC Atlanta
|
Fraud For Lunch at Redstone Arsenal Al Martin |
The computer analysis by The Associated Press found many companies with a history of fraud got new
federal contracts, even though there were multiple court cases against them.
102 yr old Saybolt Inc. ( convict #61), a petroleum products inspection company based in Houston, pleaded guilty in 1998 to submitting false lab analyses to the
Environmental Protection Agency. The company also admitted arranging a $50,000 bribe to Panama's government. At the time of the plea,
government officials spared few words for a company they said "betrayed the public's trust and cheated all of us."
But the agency did not ban the company from future
business, even though the judge who fined the company $4.9 million suggested that as a possible punishment.
EPA and company officials said Saybolt was given another chance because it was taken over by new management and implemented state-of-the-art
technology to make sure future tests are not rigged. "The govt does set a high standard when they don't debar a
company, and that is rightfully so," Saybolt general counsel John Denson said. "We were fortunate as new management of Saybolt to demonstrate our commitment to those high
standards."
The AP identified 1,020 companies that were sued or prosecuted on fraud charges over the past 5 years. The
companies were identified using court records, news stories, govt documents obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act and reports by the inspector general. AP checked those companies against a master list of
contractors barred from federal business. The analysis found 737 companies out of the 1,020 remained eligible
for future contracts.
"There is a continuing pattern of fraud and abuse in some of our largest contractors. The American people have
every right to be outraged at this," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D Iowa), who has fought the problem for a decade. The govt's list of banned contractors: epls.arnet.gov/
from Bergen County Record OnLine New Jersey 3/21/99 12/14/97
"This is a dysfunctional system," said D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3),
who this
year led her own investigation of city contract failures. "If city lawyers are telling you the
contract
isn't
legally sufficient, you should take that seriously." Top aides to Mayor Anthony A.
Williams (D) said
the administration has been handicapped by District employees who fail to write specific
contracts
that
ensure the best deal for taxpayers. Deputy Mayor Norman S. Dong said the Williams
administration
has sometimes opted for an imperfect contract to deliver results, and he cited the $50
million in
welfare-to-work contracts.
The audit, which looks at contracts in the three agencies from spring 1998 to spring
1999,
highlights a
web of unresolved problems in how the District purchases about $1 billion a year in
goods and
services--from garbage trucks to pencils, from computer consultants to nursing aides.
Agency
employees write vague requests for services or submit them late, according to city
leaders. Then
the
D.C. Office of Contracting and Procurement often rejects flawed requests, which means
grass isn't
cut
in the parks until June and instructors aren't hired on time for summer job training.
Finally, the
audit
noted, agencies don't follow up to ensure that vendors have done the job.
The District provided G&S Associates with a $550,000 advance for its work. In February
1999,
when
the company had performed less than 3 percent of the job, the district provided an
additional
$449,000.
The city terminated the contract late last year, citing lack of performance. "The District
stands to
lose
nearly the entire $999,999 advance," the audit said.
The inspector general recommended that the District put its proposed contract tracking
system in
place,
certify that contracts of more than $1 million are legally sufficient before sending them for
approval,
and better train staff in procurement regulations. The audit report also recommended
that agencies
check up on contractors' work and recover excessive advance payments.
CEO Louie started video game company Nexa while a SFSU student which, renamed as
Microprose, sold to Hasbro in 1998.
District Audit Finds Illegal, Wasteful Contracting
The District awarded $50 million in welfare-to-work job training contracts last year that
were illegal,
paid hundreds of thousands of dollars more than necessary for school security and trash
collection, and
gave $4 million in advance payments to companies that failed to finish jobs, a just-
released audit
found. A review by D.C. Inspector General Charles C. Maddox of a sampling of District
contracts
found that the agencies purchasing some of the most expensive and crucial human
services, the
D.C.
public schools and the Departments of Health and Human Services, do not always strive
for the best deal for taxpayers. Officials have sometimes neglected to seek the lowest
price,
skirted
contract rules and failed to check whether contractors did the work.
Carol D. Leonnig Washington Post 7/29/2000 pA1
In the city's effort to find jobs for women leaving welfare, the mayor's top aides and the
D.C.
financial
control board met in February 1999 and knowingly pushed through six contracts despite
their legal
problems, according to the audit.
"It was the early days of this administration, and we accept responsibility if anything was
done
incorrectly. . . . But we erred on the side of getting services to the people," Dong said.
"We're not
going
to intentionally break the law, but we're not going to let perfect be the enemy of good."
D.C.
schools
spokeswoman Devonya Smith said yesterday that the Superintendent's office had not
received a
copy
of the report and could not comment.
The costs of bad contracts add up. The audit found:
In some of the cases reviewed, the Department of Health skirted city contracting rules
and split
million-dollar contracts to house the mentally retarded into smaller contracts. That meant
that the
smaller contracts avoided review by the council and control board, which must approve
contracts of more than $1 million.
Former chief procurement officer Richard P. Fite said in an interview that he forbade
such
"parceled"
contracts but that some slipped through. He said agencies often submitted requests for
crucial
contracts
too late and tried to break up the contract amount because they didn't have several
weeks to wait
for
council approval. In the welfare job-placement contracts, city lawyers ruled that the
contracts didn't
comply with the law, in large part because they didn't require vendors to compete on
price. Fite
said he
also had objected to the contracts, raising concerns that G&S Associates, a company
run by
dentist
Arthur Stubbs, had no experience in job placement or working with welfare clients. But
District
leaders
moved ahead, fearful of losing federal grants for helping women find jobs before their
benefits ran
out.
"The difficulty was we had a ticking clock," said Francis S. Smith, executive director of
the D.C.
financial control board. "It was a judgment call." The audit also questioned why the
District
continued
giving contractors advance payments totaling $3.9 million when they had completed only
$507,000
worth of work. That included a $1 million advance to Lockheed Martin, a multibillion-
dollar
corporation, for job-placement services. "This was tantamount to giving the corporation
an interest-
free
million-dollar loan," the audit said.
Fite said he didn't think the contracts were "egregious," but he said his worries about
G&S were
borne
out. City officials acknowledge that the results of the placement contracts are
disappointing and
have
sought new vendors to do the work. "Taxpayers get short shrift when we're not spending
money
wisely," Patterson said. "The women who need the training are the real victims here
when we don't
have good contracts in place and they're not carefully monitored."
Also, despite spending $14 million since 1998, the Office of Contracting and
Procurement does not
have a workable tracking system to monitor thousands of city contracts. Elliott B.
Branch, acting
director of contracting and procurement, said he is reviewing the proposed system and
will decide
in
September whether to proceed in deploying it.
In-Q-Tel
Privatizing the Secret Police
In Fall 1999, the CIA publicly launched In-Q-Tel, a private nonprofit group that works
under contract to the CIA, meaning it is free from federal bureaucracy despite being
annually funded by Congress, "$28 million to get going and $35 million in the new fiscal
cycle" per CEO Gilman Louie, as a strategic corporate venture fund & high-tech
incubator collaborating with organizations from seed-stage companies to corporate
research arms to build commercially promising tools the CIA can use for spying and to
prevent others from spying. In-Q-Tel can pursue all sorts of creative partnerships &
financing arrangements the CIA can't … so the CIA can quickly get ahold of a
prototype for a test run.
7.00 & Eileen Gunn UPSIDE magazine p126
Although the CIA's use for these technologies is classified, the products will become
public knowledge when commercialized. When they should become public is something
In-Q-Tel hasn't quite figured out yet. The company was funding a SAIC software product
for seven months before it issued a press release. So far the CEO is mum about other
projects & co-investors.
"The concept was to create what we're calling a solutions house which would cultivate
relationships with technology organizations, companies, and universities so they will help
solve some of the CIA's toughest information-technology
problems. In exchange, the companies get to use the resulting intellectual
properties for commercial applications." "There are 3 parties involved:
the CIA, In-Q-Tel, and the company or university. The CIA gets to look at technology and
gets use rights. In-Q-Tel is the liason between the agency & the companies.
Working with us doesn't require a security clearance." If these companies want to sell
their technologies abroad, "they can. There are no restrictions on that."
Self-funding "is not a requirement for our success." "We don't have to worry about
investors, as a traditional fund does."
"My first experience with the federal government was on a DARPA contract I was given
to convert one of my flight-simulator video games."
Carlucci
2/14/01 notes Carlucci was a CIA Clandestine Services officer in
S.Africa, the Congo, Zanzibar, Tanganyika, and Brazil between 1957 &
1969. As
Second Secretary in the U.S. Embassy in Stanleyville, Congo, Carlucci was alleged to
have
supervised the implementation of the CIA plot to assassinate Patrice Lumumba
in 1961. He was a widely disliked figure in the Congo and was once stabbed in the
back of his
neck after his involvement in a traffic accident. Five months after the assassination of
Lumumba,
Carlucci was arrested & expelled from the Congo. The CIA then posted him to
Tanzania from
where too he was expelled in 1965, after being accused of plotting the assassination of
the
Burundi Prime Minister, Mr.Pierre Ngendandumwe. In 1975 Carlucci became
ambassador to
Portugal until 1978, when he went to the CIA deputy director, staying until
January
1981. The next month he joined Weinberger as Defense Dept deputy
secretary.
Strongly supported by Weinberger, Carlucci was selected for the post even though
some of
President Reagan's advisers opposed him because he had served in the Carter
administration.
After he left the Pentagon, Carlucci joined the Carlyle
Group, a Washington investment partnership, as vice president & managing
director; he later became chairman. Carlyle acquired BDM which owns the private
military company Vinnell, currently embroiled in a controversy in Saudi Arabia where
one of its employees who was training Saudi National Guard was implicated in the
deadly car bombing of a British couple. Serving as a Carlyle adviser is Karl Otto Pohl,
former German Central Bank President who also serves as an adviser on Barrick Gold's
board along with former President Bush. James Baker serves as Carlyle's Legal
Adviser. In addition, Carlyle Realty Partners have major investments in four of the
eight major Network Access Points in the United States, including MAE-West, Lakeside
Technology Center in Chicago, and the new Atlantic Technology Center in Brooklyn.
This may be part of an attempt by Carlyle (which looks like a CIA venture capital front
company like IN-Q-TEL in Silicon Valley) to expand US intelligence
snooping capabilities on the Internet.
Spying for free trade with Echelon, first brought to public attention in 1980s by British investigative journalist Duncan Campbell.
Many of the lawmakers seemed just as concerned with the actions of the law
enforcement officials. "The potential for abuse here is tremendous," said Rep. Spencer
Bachus (R-AL). "What you're saying is 'Trust us.'"
Carnivore is a modified version of a common network-maintenance program known as a
"packet sniffer." Carnivore offers great specificity – the ability to quickly collect just
the "to" and "from" information in e-mail messages, for example, and not online banking
transactions. That gives law enforcement the equivalent of the telephone world's "pen
register" and "trap and trace" data – the origin and destination of all calls related
to the subject.
Civil liberties groups and Internet service providers say the system raises troubling
questions about what constitutes a reasonable search and seizure of electronic data. In
sniffing out potential criminal conduct, they note, the new technology also could scan
private information about legal activities, taking in vast amounts of information from
innocent people as well as the suspect.
The critics also note that past experience has shown that law enforcement has
overstepped its wiretap authority numerous times in the past. Barry Steinhardt,
associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in his testimony,
"Carnivore is roughly equivalent to a wiretap capable of accessing the contents of the
conversations of all the phone company's customers, with the 'assurance' that the FBI
will record only conversations of the specified target."
Officials of Internet service providers who oppose the technology say they are wary of
putting equipment designed by others on their networks. They want the FBI to publish
information on the software used so that ISPs can be sure that it does what the agency
says. The law enforcement officials pledged to present the system to a neutral third
party for review but said they cannot release so much information about the system that
it will become a target for evasion and hacking.
They insisted the Carnivore system actually provides greater privacy than previous
methods of gathering electronic information because it can fine-tune what the machine
hands over to investigators. The FBI's Kerr also argued that agents won't "risk their
integrity, their jobs and their futures" by abusing the law.
The toughest questioning came from Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Robert L. Barr
Jr. (R-Ga.), 2 congressmen rarely on the same side of an issue. Nadler peppered the
officials with a series of questions that underscored the point that Carnivore, under the
laws that govern pen-register surveillance, could be used without the difficult showing of
"probable cause" required in a telephone wiretap. Barr cited the investigation of missing
White House e-mail and scornfully said the Clinton administration asserts that "we don't
even know how to keep track of our own e-mail" while "now we see a very
sophisticated system for keeping track of other people's e-mails!"
After the hearing, House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey issued a statement saying
members of both parties showed "strong concerns that the administration is infringing on
Americans' basic constitutional protection against unwarranted search and seizure.
"Until these concerns are addressed," he concluded, "Carnivore should be shut down."
local more
linx
Reclaim Democracy Boulder CO Through
corruption of govt & courts, corporations subverted their intended role and
acquired the legal status of "natural persons." This subversion was institutionalized in an
1886 Supreme Court decision of which Justice William O. Douglas would later write,
"There was no history, logic, or reason given to support that view." Thus corporations
gained Bill of Rights protections and more, even before women and minorities.
Essential Information founded 1982 by
Ralph Nader. Monthly magazine, books & reports, sponsors investigative
journalism conferences, provides writers with grants to pursue investigations &
operate clearing houses which disseminate information.
Corporate Window information for
investors
Progressive Review contra "false
consensus created by the
Corp.Acctbility
Corporate Predators by Mokhiber
& Weissman from Common Courage Press. Chomsky
fodder
Eat the State from
Seattle Community Network
Environmental Issues from Capitol Reports
Environmental Health & Safety Online for
public & environmental health & safety professionals
1995 Fed. Acquisition Reform Act would eliminate foreign arms sales fee
req. by law to recover tax funded R&D.
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