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Today's Stories January 24, 2008 JoAnn Wypijewski Obama as Anthologist of Uplift January 23, 2008 David Rosen The Great Disappearing Act: the Presidential Candidates and the Politics of Sex David Isenberg Is It Really So Hard to Believe That Iran Stopped Its Nuclear Weapons Program? Farzana Versey Hillary's Harem Paul Craig Roberts The Empire That Must Be Obeyed Alan Farago Where Did All the Good Times Go? Allan Nairn Indonesian Intelligence Service Threatens to Kill Human Rights Activist Kenneth Couesbouc Another Turn of the Screw Niranjan Ramakrishnan How the West was Re-Sold Michael Donnelly Obama Strikes Back Norman Solomon The Power of Love Website of the Day Rafah Today   January 22, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Farewell to Old Economic Nostrums JoAnn Wypijewski King Day in Columbia, South Carolina Al Giordano Divide and Conquer Politics: How the Clinton Campaign Armed a Black-Latino Time Bomb in Nevada Felice Pace Power Politics in the Klamath: Water, Dams and Salmon Paul Wolf Bolívar's Sword Robert Weissman Deregulation and the Financial Crisis Dave Lindorff The Bush Dollar Trap Marjorie Cohn Cheney Impeachment Gains Traction Richard Neville Keeping Shakespeare in a Box Don Fitz / Zaki Baruti St. Louis Mayor Booed Off MLK Platform Ben Terrall Cindy Sheehan and the Virtues of Divisiveness Sam Husseini Stoning Martin Luther King, Jr. Website of the Day Defend the Mapuche!     January 21, 2008 Kevin Alexander Gray Playing the Race Card Linn Washington, Jr. Deferring Dreams, Delusions of Democracy Pam Martens How Wall Street Blew Itself Up David Macaray Labor's Grim Dilemma: Do We Need a Labor Party? Uri Avnery Look Who's Talking Omar Barghouti Europe's Collusion in Israel's Slow Genocide Joe DeRaymond Protest and Trial in D.C. B.R. Gowani Why Islam Should Tolerate Images Shepherd Bliss The False U.S. Economy Jean-Guy Allard Philip Agee Versus the CIA Dan Bacher Leaping Steelhead! Website of the Day Destroyed By a Rising Flood January 19 / 20, 2008 Alexander Cockburn The Campaign in Black and White Saul Landau Good Time Charlie's War China Hand Endgame for Pakistan? Conn Hallinan Desert Mirage: What Was the Bombing of Syria Really About? Ron Jacobs No Retreat Dave Lindorff A Tax Rebate Won't Fix This Mess Andy Worthington Canada's Humiliating Double Standard on Torture Paul Armentano What's the Going Price for a Joint? More Than You Might Think Seth Sandronsky High Crimes and Economics Michael Donnelly Dodging Ecocide Patrick Irelan The Ordeal of Dr. Safdar Sarki Martha Rosenberg The Drug Industry Takes Another Hit Sherwood Ross Making the World Safe for Despots: Bush's Global Arms Trade David Michael Green So You Want to be My President, Eh? James Rothenberg Unimpeachable: Under House Protection Daniel Gross Starbucks Shortchanges Dr. King Peter N. Carroll In Memory of Milton Wolff Susie Day Croakin' on Hudson Paul Krassner Woody Allen Meets Tongue Fu Poets' Basement Wolff, Buknatski and Orloski Website of the Day Rocky Mountain Blues   January 18, 2008 Allan Nairn Killing Civilians, Carefully Ralph Nader When the Big Boys Get in Trouble, Who Pays the Ultimate Bill? Joanne Mariner Terrorism and Preventative Detention Alan Farago The Stimulus and the Meltdown P. Sainath Pity the Brahmins R.F. Blader Beyond Steinem's Feminism Andy Worthington A Letter from Guantánamo John Jonik Private Insurance is Bad for Your Health Brian McKenna Where Even Sharing is Prohibited: Notes from Inside a Michigan Women's Prison Daoud Kuttab This Time Next Year? Website of the Day Those South Carolina Voting Machines   January 17, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts Leader and Vassal Christopher Brauchli The FBI's Bills Come Due Robert Fantina Leadership, Bush and the New York Times Patrick Irelan Eternal War Paul A. Moore When the Rich Pay No Taxes Stephen Lendman Institutionalized Spying on Americans Beena Sarwar Bhutto and the "State Within a State" Walter Brasch Buzzwords in the Echo Chamber: Change and the Establishment Brenda Norrell Bush Legacy in Texas Sours Adam Federman End of the Left? Website of the Day Democrats for Romney   January 16, 2008 Jeffrey St. Clair Return of the Native Franklin Lamb The Bombing at Qarantina Julian Sanchez David Weigel Who Wrote Ron Paul's Newsletters? Sharon Smith Ron Paul and the Left: a Slippery Slope? Allan Nairn Economic Indicator: No Free Lunch, No Free Market Ayesha Ijaz Khan How the American Media Enables Bush's Iran Fixation Andy Worthington A Strategic Call to Close Guantánamo Richard Behan Nancy Pelosi, You Must Impeach! Website of the Day Obama the New JFK? He's Not That Bad!   January 15, 2008 Andrea Peacock Breach of Trust in America's Most Toxic Town: How the EPA is Rubbing Poison Into Libby's Wounds Wajahat Ali An Interview with Seymour Hersh on Iraq, Bush Foreign Policy and the Prospects of War with Iran Joe Bageant Getting Out the Bling Vote Ralph Nader The Candidate Taboos John Ross Zero Hour: NAFTA and Mexico's Agrarian Apocalypse Elaine Cassel Jose Padilla vs. John Yoo: Can a National Disgrace be Rectified? Peter Morici The Fed Needs More Than a New Communications Strategy Beena Sarwar Pakistan's Dirty Tricks Brigade Robert Weissman Big Business is Even More Unpopular Than You Thought Binoy Kampmark Going Tata in India Dave Zirin Dennis Brutus Smacks Down the Hall of Fame Website of the Day David Lynch on the iPhone   January 14, 2008 Ishmael Reed Ma and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man Roger Morris Burials in the Sind Uri Avnery The Hands of Esau Mike Whitney Bush's Voodoo Stimulus Package Allan Nairn General Suharto of Indonesia: One Small Man Leaves a Million Corpses William Blum Oh, By the Way, the Iraqis Don't Really Want Us Alan Farago A Subprime Wake Up Call David Macaray Are Labor Unions Ready for Prime Time? Eva Liddell Getting Drunk with Obama Zoe Blunt Road Kill: New Highway Blocked by Protesting Raccoons Website of the Day Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies   January 12 / 13, 2008 Andrew Cockburn How the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi Civilian Deaths Saul Landau 60 Years of Empire Corey D. B. Walker Barack Obama and the Crisis of the White Intellectual Col. Dan Smith Bush, Iran and the Magician of the Tarot Eric Toussaint The US Subprime Crisis Goes Global Ron Jacobs Television, Murder and Vietnam Fred Gardner The People vs. Christopher James Chakos Stan Cox Don't Take That Pill! Jacob G. Hornberger The Warfare State Ramzy Baroud The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Joseph Grosso The Anglosphere: a Special Relationship of Elites David Díaz-Arias Imagining An/Other Latin American Left Stacey Warde Before We Move On ... Dan Bacher Pumped to Extinction: the Decline of the Delta Smelt Michael Dickinson Georgie in Jesusland Website of Weekend CounterPunchers Protest Outside NYT Offices   January 11, 2008 Dave Lindorff Did Hillary Really Win New Hampshire? More Questions About Diebold Voting Machines Paul Craig Roberts No Escape from War and Unemployment Andy Worthington Six Years of Guantánamo Kenneth Couesbouc Banking on Thin Ice Jeff Ballinger Inside the Vienna Consensus Christopher Brauchli Lethal Injection, the Supremes and China Manuel Garcia, Jr. Paying No Attention to the Presidential Campaigns Andrew Silverstein Bush's Weepy Visit to Jerasulem Marwan Bishara Bush in the Middle East Robert Weissman The First Amendment Gone Wild Patrick Irelan Damn the Small Boats! Website of the Day Hillary and the Superdelegates: Or Why She Wins Even When She Loses     January 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Now Nader Claims He Didn't Endorse Edwards Bob Wing Marqueece Harris-Dawson Race Within the Race: Obama, the NH Vote and the Specter of Tom Bradley Michael Donnelly White Women Gone Wild? David Macaray Three Big Reasons for the Decline of Labor Unions China Hand Bush's Delusional Policy Pushes Pakistan to Brink of Catastrophe Ayesha Ijaz Khan Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: Brotherly, Friendly Countries? Rannie Amiri Obama, Man of Kansas or Kenya? Website of the Day Iranian Video of the Hormuz Incident   January 9, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair The Empire Strikes Back Dave Lindorff The Bad News from New Hampshire: Death By Triangulation John Chuckman Pardon My Laughter: Watching the US Primaries from Canada James Bovard Stomping Freedom: Inside the Martial Law Act of 2006 Alan Farago As Florida Sinks: the View from the Titanic Russell Mokhiber Why Picket the New York Times in DC on Friday? William S. Lind Kicking the Can Down the Road in Iraq Peter Morici Beyond the Sophistry: Why the Trade Deficit Matters Josh Reubner Sudan vs. Israel: Double Standard on Divestment Mike Roselle The Pursuit of Happiness Website of the Day Bottles of Tears on the Wall: Steve Perry on NH   January 8, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts No Jobs for the New Economy (or the Old) Russell Mokhiber The Black Hillary: Obama is Just Another Political Sedative Robert Fantina The Gulf of Tonkin and the Strait of Hormuz Dave Zirin Butts on Parade Shamako Nobel I Am an Emcee: the Politics of Hip Hop John Ross Zapatista Women Encounter Themselves Brenda Norrell Apaches Defend Homeland from Homeland Security Laura Carlsen Why Bolivia Matters Patrick Irelan Remember the Maine! Evelyn J. Pringle The Holes in Bush's FDA Jonathan M. Feldman After Iowa and New Hampshire: a Strategy for Rebuilding the Peace Movement Michael Dickinson Playing Soldier Website of the Day Sean Hannity on the Run!   January 7, 2008 Chris Floyd There Will Be Blood: But No Justice for Iraq Atrocities John Blair Remove That Man! Creeping Fascism in Indiana Uri Avnery The Case of the White Bird Andy Worthington Who Are the Gitmo Saudis? Binoy Kampmark Needling the Convict: Lethal Injection and the Supreme Court David Macaray Women on Strike Ralph Nader Obamarama: the Politics of the Smooth Mood Michael Donnelly It's the War Vote(s), Stupid! Ron Jacobs Ron Paul's Run: Is Being Against the War Enough? Gideon Levy The Hostile President Dave Lindorff A Real 9/11 Cover-Up? Sibel Edmonds, Turkey and the Bomb Website of the Day Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea   January 5 / 6, 2008 Douglas Valentine Good Guys in Black Hoods Kevin Young The US Occupation and Popular Opinion in Iraq Richard Rhames Saddam Who? Saul Landau Bush Snatches Defeat from Victory Marc Lynch Why Bush's Iran Strategy is Failing Robert Fantina Iowa, Democrats and the Iraq War Donna Volatile Antiwar Soldier: an Interview with Jonathan Hutto, Sr. Jelle Bruinsma Norman Finkelstein in The Netherlands Bob Sutcliffe Remembering Andrew Glyn, Rebel Economist Harvey Wasserman Anti-Nuclear Renaissance Missy Beattie Why Obama Can't Save Us David Swanson Remembering the Separation of Powers Jacob Hornberger The Importance of the Padilla Case Shepherd Bliss Survival Tools from Kokopelli Farms Ron Jacobs Bleeding Kansas Poets' Basement Patti Smith, B.R. Gowani and Peter Buknatski Website of the Weekend Jimmy Dean Sausage Call Complaint   January 4, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair A Good Night in Iowa Jonathan Cook War Crimes Airbrushed from History Paul Craig Roberts Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime Stan Goff Ron Paul's Monkeywrench Dave Lindorff Clinton's Iowa Flop Exposes DLC Myths as Frauds Niranjan Ramakrishnan To Pindi Station Allan Nairn U.S. Elections Over Before They Began Joshua Frank The Failures of Sectarianism Peter Morici Economy on the Skids Mary McInnis Iowa Cocky-Us: How to be a Caucus Tease Website of the Day The Return of Obama Girl   January 3, 2008 Fatima Bhutto Farewell to Wadi Bua Pam Martens The Free Market Myth Dissolves into Chaos Joanne Mariner The Presidential Candidates and Torture Zoltan Grossman Remember the '80s: Social Movements Between Woodstock and the Web David Domke The Echoing Press and Huckabee Norman Solomon Edwards Reconsidered Nikolas Kozloff Return of the Faux Liberal Jacob G. Hornberger The Padilla Case and the Future of Habeas Corpus Martha Rosenberg Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son, Michael Vick Russell Means This Property is Condemned: a Notice to Those Occupying Lakotah Lands Website of the Day WolfQuest   January 2, 2008 Jeff Taylor The Left and Ron Paul M. Shahid Alam The Life and Death of Benazir Bhutto: a Pakistani Tragedy Gary Leupp Madness Compounding Madness: Calls for Intervention in Pakistan Paul Craig Roberts Criminals with Badges Heather Gray Georgia's Racist Death Penalty Fred Gardner and Shobhit Arora Dr. Strangelove's Nemesis David Macaray Labor Unions and Taft-Hartley Benjamin Dangl Fear and Loathing in Bolivia     January 1, 2008 Iain A. Boal City of Disappearances B. R. Gowani Benazir's Death in Crisistan Shahid Mahmood Bhutto and the Press Linn Washington, Jr. Old Injustices Endure: From Crack Sentences to Racial Profiling Harvey Wasserman Taking Leonard Peltier to Iowa: the Moral Low Point of the Clinton Era John Ross 2008, Already a Year to Forget Website of the Day The Thrill is Gone: BB and Gladys   December 31, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Goodbye 2007 and Good Riddance! Tariq Ali Pakistan, the Aftermath Liaquat Ali Khan The Perfidy of Pakistan's Rulers Wajahat Ali After Bhutto, a Nuclear Pakistan? Robert Fisk Who Killed Bhutto? Ajai Sahni Myths and Realities About Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's Dark Future Marwan Bishara You Say Talk, I Say Attack: The Middle East and the US Presidential Election Campaigns Uri Avnery The Beilin Syndrome Mark T. Harris Does This Happen in Canada? Brenda Norrell Resistance and Censorship Website of the Day A People United Will Never Be Defeated   December 29 / 30, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Options in America: Kill Yourself or Have a Baby Tariq Ali Indignation and Fear Stalk Pakistan Fawzia Afzal-Khan My Encounter with Benazir Bhutto Gary Leupp The U.S. and Pakistan After 9/11: Blowback from an Unholy Alliance China Hand Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss Jacob Hornberger Stop Medddling in Pakistan John Chuckman Pakistan and the Failure of Quick-Fix Politics Missy Beattie Evaluating Bush with the Bhutto Corruption Standard Ralph Nader Who Will Take the Next Step? Fidel Castro There Hasn't Been a Day in My Life When I Haven't Learned Something Robert Fantina The Sham of Homeland Security Greg Moses Beauty from the Heart of Texas Catherine Lutz What We Can Not See: Art and Bombing Kristin Van Tassel Seeing in the Dark Kim Nicolini Redacted: Brian DePalma's Scream of Outrage Phyllis Pollack Keith Richards Runs With Rudolph Once More Poets' Basement Landau, Gibbons and Davies Website of the Weekend Driving Karachi in Search of the Perfect Naan   December 28, 2007 Farzana Versey The Complex Electra Wajahat Ali A Pakistani Requiem Binoy Kampmark Death in Rawalpindi: Bhutto and Her Legacy Ayesha Ijaz Khan Not Dead Yet: The Pakistan People's Party Still Survives Anthony DiMaggio Turkey's Bombing of Iraq Ray McGovern Creeping Fascism Jim Goodman Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going Ron Jacobs Transcending the Colonizer's History: Iran, a People Interrupted Russell Hoffman Mini-Nukes by Toshiba John Murphy Greens Gone Wild Website of the Day Guiliani Campaign Official: "Only Rudy Can Defeat the Muslims"   December 27, 2007 Dilip Hiro A Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party? Murtaza Shibli Who Killed Bhutto? Stephen Soldz Fallujah, the Information War and U.S. Propaganda Bill Quigley Locked Outside the Gates Paul Craig Roberts The Great American Lock-Up Omer Subhani Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan? Marjorie Cohn The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go? Allan Nairn Cataclysm By Money Whim Jacob G. Hornberger Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT Norman Solomon Channeling Suze Orman Patrick Irelan Rumsfeld Spills the Ink Ben Tripp Pass the Razor Blades Website of the Day Quagmire, For What It's Worth   December 26, 2007 Charles Tripp From One Saddam to Fifty Paul Armentano No-Knock, You're Dead Rannie Amiri Lebanon in Search of a Government Stanley Heller Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War John Walsh Two Unreasonable Men Martha Rosenberg The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb Norman Madarasz Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within Website of the Day Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas   December 25, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Conscience and Empire December 24, 2007 Andrea Peacock A Dark Ride on the Border Tariq Ali Thinking of Edward Said Uri Avnery Help! A Ceasefire! Jill Jameson Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot Steve Melendez Russell Means Goes to Washington Mike Whitney The Big Fix Chuck Munson Not Getting It About New Orleans John Walsh Clueless Crusaders Farzana Versey Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion Richard Neville Dreaming of a White House Christmas Website of the Day Back in the USSR December 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Mike Huckabee's Ascending Chariot Ralph Nader Politics and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way Andy Worthington Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons in Afghanistan Ahmad Faruqui The Comedian of Pakistan Bill Moyers Society on Steroids Rev. William E. Alberts Blessed are the Peacemakers Timothy J. Freeman From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over? Anthony DiMaggio Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq Fred Gardner Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol Paul Krassner Enhanced Hazing Techniques Seth Sandronsky 17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law William Loren Katz Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake Okeechobee Michael Dickinson In the Dungeon of the Zabita Ron Jacobs Why Leon Russell Still Matters David Vest Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?" Poets' Basement Orloski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend George W. Hates Santa   December 21, 2007 John Ross New Massacres Loom in Mexico Jacob Hornberger Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq Dick J. Reavis A Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes Peter Morici Business as Usual as Recession Looms Jack McCarthy Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie Kerik) Raúl Zibechi Sex and Revolution Steve Early How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist David Macaray Union Aftermath Patrick Bond Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa Lakota Freedom Delegation A Declaration of Independence from the USA Website of the Day Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape   December 20, 2007 David Rosen Mitt Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer Alan Farago The Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis Laura Carlsen Standing Up to NAFTA Ashley Dawson The Return of the Bread Riot Wayne Smith and Jennifer Schuett Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates Website of the Day How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter   December 19, 2007 Saul Landau Is the NIE Bush's Watergate? Paul W. Lovinger Hillary the Hawk Norman Solomon The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck Dave Zirin George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice Marjorie Cohn Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes Sen. Russell Feingold The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation Sonja Karkar A Christmas Reflection on Palestine Anthony Papa Open the Drug Gulags Christopher Ketcham Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions Davey D Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop? Website of the Day When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV   December 18, 2007 R. F. Blader The Politics of Teen Pregnancy George Wuerthner Gunning for Wolves in Idaho Steven Higgs Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped? Vijay Prashad Encounters with Ghadar David Macaray The Free Rider Problem Ralph Nader Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays Eva Liddell Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home Martha Rosenberg While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters Dave Lindorff When Impeachment is Out of Print Peter Morici The Consequences the Trade Deficit Website of the Day Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America   December 17, 2007 Mike Whitney Staring Into the Abyss Tom Barry Planning the War on Immigrants Uri Avnery A Gaza Masada? Greg Moses Crossing the Line in Texas Allan Nairn Terrorism; Counter- Terrorism: Excuses for Murder Patrick Bond South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers Stephen Lendman Police State America Charles Jonkel Grizzly Right of Way Laray Polk An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza Stephen Fleischman Pawns in Their Game December 15 / 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh A People's Penny for the Magna Carta Howard Zinn Bomb After Bomb Standard Schaefer The Greening of Big Tobacco Raymond J. Lawrence Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas Alan Farago Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine Saul Landau Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists Jenna Orkin Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up Ahmad Samih Khalidi Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct Robert Fantina Politics By Photo-Op Missy Comley Beattie Resistance Amid the Ruins Ramzy Baroud Of Mormons and Muslims James L. Secor A Vision for China's Future Elijah Wald Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten Website of the Weekend The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support   December 14, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski The Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him John Ross Iraqi Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax Jacob Hornberger Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court Andy Worthington Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened? Allan Nairn "Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes Dave Zirin The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners Dave Lindorff The First Cut is the Deepest Misty MacDuffee Toxic Grizzlies Ben Terrall What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine? Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi Prerequisites for Peace Website of the Day Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"   December 13, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Shrinking the Dollar from the Inside-Out Mike Whitney Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding Ron Jacobs Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy Norman Solomon The USA's Human Rights Daze Peter Morici The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch Sandy Mayes Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia Franklin Lamb The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling? Jacob Hornberger Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It Nadim Rouhana An Interloper in My Own Land Dave Zirin On Pigskin and Petrol Website of the Day Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support! December 12, 2007 Allan Nairn US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian Phones Alan Farago How Sprawl Eats Its Young Ray McGovern Torture, Lies and Videotape Winslow T. Wheeler The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts Evan Jones The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell Doom for the US Farm Belt James Petras An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers Joel Hirschorn The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine Joshua Frank Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention Sherry Wolf Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul Dan Bacher Survey of a Fish Graveyard Website of the Day Men Eating Bugs                 Subscribe Online

January 24, 2008 Hillary's Archives She Wants to Talk About Dirty Legal Dealings? Remember the Nursing Home Scam? By ALEXANDER COCKBURN In their last debate in South Carolina Hillary Clinton questioned Barack Obama about his ties to a real estate developer As the Washington Post reports it earlier this week, In 1993, he [Obama] became an associate lawyer with a small Chicago firm, Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Galland. It was during this time that he first became involved with a real estate developer named Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who was subsequently indicted on charges of fraud, extortion and money laundering and will go on trial on Feb. 25. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Obama received $168,000 in campaign contributions from Rezko and his associates after 1995. Obama has denied doing any legal work directly for Rezko or his companies. During Monday night's debate, he said that he had done "about five hours' worth of work" on a joint real estate development project involving Rezko and a Chicago church group. investigations by Chicago newspapers have not produced evidence that he represented Rezko in a slum landlord business. What has been demonstrated so far is that he did some due diligence legal work for a joint venture between Rezko and a Chicago nonprofit. Two Pinocchios for Clinton. (*ONE PINOCCHIO: Some shading of the facts. TWO PINOCCHIOS: Significant omissions or exaggerations.) If Hillary Clinton wants to start excavating legal work and slimy clients, she will soon be buried in the vast mountain of manure in the archives of her old Arkansas firm, Rose Law, a very powerful institution in the state of Arkansas, where corporate and political axes of power met, to the great profit of the firm's partners, including Hillary Clinton. Here's just one case, which I wrote about in The Nation in 1994. where Mrs Clinton and her firm were central to a vast and methodical scheme of profiteering-gouging tax- payers and, above all, the defenseless residents of nursing homes in four states, including Arkansas. JoAnn Wypijewski and I reconstructed the story here with the help of Roy Drew, a private stock analyst working in Little Rock, who unearthed the scandal. Nursing home ripoffs and the Rose Law Firm led us not only to Hillary Clinton but to other familiar White House names, most prominently associate White House counsel William Kennedy; also to the moneyma- chine set up by Bill Clinton when he was still ,Governor of Arkansas-the Arkansas Develop- ment Finance Authority, whose former chief is now ensconced in the US. Agriculture Depart- ment, having informed us often enough in 1992 that he was a man totally independent of the Governor. Bill sat in the Governor's mansion in Little Rock, ultimate arbiter of the pools of money that could be dispensed'by ADFA in the form of long-term loans financed through the sale of tax-exempt bonds. A few blocks away sat his wife, in the law firm setting up deals, that called on that money. The world of Bill and Hill , disclosed by.the saga of Bever- ly Enterprises, one of the largest owners bf nursing homes in America and until January of this year part of the vast invest- ment portfolio of Arkansas's Stephens Inc., offers us impor- tant truths about the present incumbents of the White House. These days, questioned about the Whitewater/Madison Guar- anty imbroglio, the First Couple seek to give the impression of a pair of babes, venturing a modest investment and left with nothing to show but red ink. This is nonsense. Far from being hayseeds in a Southern bacliwater, Bill and Hillary were players in the politico-financial fast lane. Sometimes the advocates of single-payer health in- surahce wonder why self-styled populists like Bill and Hillary opted for "managed care," a honeypot for insurance compa- nies and law firms. The story of Beverly Enterprises opens a window to understanding. In 1989, with debts of $850 million, Beverly Enterprises was facing bankruptcy. Its strategy for survival was to sell off some of its 845 nursing homes throughout the country as quickly as possible for as much as possible. Forty-five of those homes were in Iowa, and in August of 1989 Beverly sold them to Ventana Investments, a company owned by a man named Bruce Whitehead, an entrepreneur/hustler from Amarillo, Texas. But Whitehead didn't make a straight deal. He also set up a charity called Mercy Health Initiatives, whose nonprofit status he used to wheedle $86 million in tax-exempt bonds out of the Iowa Finance Authority. When Whitehead approached the authority for the money, he insinuated that if the state did not comply he would pulI out of the deal and the nursing homes would most likely close, tossing some 3,000 old folks out of their beds. The state came through with the money. Whitehead said he needed to buy the homes, and Mercy Health threw in $6 million in promissory notes for fees to Whitehead and the underwriters, bringing the tab for the deal to $92 mil- lion. This transaction gave Beverly an immediate cash infusion of $10 million. It landed Whitehead a profit of $6.5 million, personal ownership of four homes worth $1.8 million and a $5 million contract for a construction company he owned. As an Iowa District Court later determined, Whitehead had grossly inflated the value of the homes; which were actually worth $47 million. And while he and Beverly skipped off with their profits (Whitehead no longer has any tie to the homes), Mercy Health was burdened with debt that added as much as $6 million a year to the cost of health care at the homes. This in turn was shouldered by the old people, who saw their daily charges go up by as much as 14 percent. Mercy Health was itself less a charity than a shell, an entity that Iowa Judge Gene Needles said "served no legitimate pur- pose and was used primarily to obtain tax-exempt financing, shield the parties using the facilities from liability and obliga- tions as owners and evade the payment of property taxes." He also called Beverly and Whitehead "unconscionable" profiteers. Judge Needles made that statement on September 13,1991, in a ruling favoring Iowa state tax assessors who had cha- lenged Mercy Health's tax-exempt status. He was upheld in that opinion by the Iowa Supreme ,Court on May 19, 1993, two months before Vince Foster died and around the time Hillary Clinton was blasting sectors of the health care industry for their "unconscionable profiteering." Foster and H.R.C. are not incidental to the story. Rose Law was up to its neck in the Iowa deal, and was contriving exact- ly the same outrageous piracy in Little Rock itself in 1989. In fact, Rose Law was responsible for putting together Beverly four-state bid to dump nursing homes, each case involving Whitehead and all similarly designed to get fast cash to the ailing company. If all four deals had gone through, the total transaction would have been worth $300 million, according to internal company documents disclosed in the discovery process for the court action in Iowa. Perhaps $3 million of that would have gone to Rose, with a sizable portion distrib- uted among its partners: Foster, Kennedy, Web Hubbell and Hillary Clin- ton among them. The company documents provide a projected schedule of how the deals were to have happened: in July of 1989, Arkan- sas; in August, Iowa; in September, Nebraska; and in October, South Dakota. Arkansas was to have been the first because, as Drew reasons, "that's where the political juice was." But all of Rose Law's manipulations in this arena were a secret in Arkansas in 1989. An election year was coming up, and newspapers there had long been in the habit of swiping at Hillary and her Rose colleagues for profiting from their association with the Governor. Sheffield Nelson, already an- nounced as an opponent of Clinton for the governorship, would have had rich sport pointing out that the Governor's wife and friends stood to gain handsomely from brokering an $82 million ADFA bond deal over Beverly's nursing homes. The Arkansas deal alone represented perhaps $SOO,OOO to Rose Law. So on paper in Arkansas, Beverly was not represented by Rose Law but by Joe Giroir, formerly a managing partner of the firm but at the time in his own practice. In all the papers for the ADFA deal, Rose Law is never mentioned as Beverly's attorney, even thoughthe documents discovered through legal action in Iowa clearly show Rose Law, and William Kennedy specifically, as handling both deals. The deal in Arkansas was structured just as it was in Iowa: Beverly was to sell its nursing homes via Ventana to Pride House Health Care, a charity created by Whitehead with no employees, no working assets and an appointed board of three people. To finance the deal, Whitehead went to ADFA for the $82 million in tax-exempt bonds. ADFA had been set up by Clinton in 1985 ostensibly to stimulate development and in- vestment in Arkansas. A prototypical piece of "remaking gov- ernment," it was a private corporation that operated within the state structure. Clinton appointed the board, which served at his pleasure-but without accountability to the taxpayers and without oversight by the Federal Reserve, F.D.I.C. or any out- side government authority. On the ADFA board in 1989 was James Stobaugh, who was then the president of Worthen Bank in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Also on the board was Bobby Ste- phens, no relation to the scion of Stephens Inc., Jackson Ste- phens, but nicely positioned as an executive vice president of Beverly Enterprises. Neither Stobaugh nor Stephens recused himself from the vote to issue the bonds to Pride House, a vote that was unanimous. As Drew says, "The whole thing had to be wired for a guy from Amarillo to walk into Arkansas and get them to vote unanimously on an $82 million bond deal." As it happened, the Arkansas deal that should have gone so smoothly hit the skids. First, there was a shift in under- writers, throwing off the deal's timing and extending its proc- ess. Second, Drew discovered Beverly's prospectus to ADFA and started asking questions about why a middleman who had nothing to recommend him and who had set up 'a company that was clearly a shell should be the beneficiary of state lar- gesse. Drew didn't know at the time that Rose was represent- ing Beverly, but he knew that the conflicts of interest in the Stephens-Beverly-ADFA nexus were thick, and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette started pounding away at the story. Through it all, Bill Clinton said nothing. It was not until the state's attorney general accused Beverly of offering him a $100,000 bribe that the deal fell through. In December of 1989, Clinton was forced to nix the ADFA loan and made a statement about how Beverly et al. "tried to milk us like an old, full cow." Of course, back in '89 when Clinton was using his home- spun rhetoric io present himself as the state's guardian against corporate exploitation, he never let on that Rose Law was the forward guard for those exploiters. Since then, he and HiUary and anyone else who's asked from the firm have stonewalled questions about the case. Drew makes an apt observation: "The Rose Law Firm put this thing together, and if they were proud of what they were doing, why did they hide behind Joe Giroir?" Just how much money Rose Law and its partners like Hil- lary stood to gain from these various deals affecting the health care of thousands of old people is a matter of speculation; as noted above, it might have been $3 million on the $300 mil- lion deal as originally envisaged. Drew says, "If you need money and I'm a money finder and I'm working for you, I'm going to take a point-that's 1 percent-at !east, for finding you the money. Rose worked in Arkansas for a long, long time on these deals. They had to work on all four simultaneously, learn the law in all the states and figure out their strategies for each; and they weren't working for free. For some point of comparison, think of this. When Rose was working for the F.D.I.C. against Frost & Co., which had put together inaccurate audits on Madison Guaranty, they obtained a settlement of $1 million for the government. Their fee on that was $400,OOO. My understanding is that they separate these fees among the partners. If Hillary Clinton made a buck-if she made even one dollar on those nursing home deals-she shouldn't be on the stump talking about unconscionable profits."   Your Ad Here

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