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Whistle While You Purge
By Ari Berman
It's been an inauspicious start for Scott Bloch, head of the government's Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the agency charged with protecting federal whistleblowers. After moving from the Justice Department's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives in January 2004, Bloch suggested that federal employees could essentially be fired for being gay. Then, directly contradicting his organization's purpose, Bloch complained of "leakers" within the OSC and issued a gag order for employees. In a speech last fall Bloch admitted he knew little about the Counsel's work before Bush nominated him. Now he's pushing forward a controversial agency "reorganization" plan that watchdogs liken to a purge.
Under Bloch's orders, 20 percent of the Counsel's legal and investigative team will be fired or relocated. With no prior consultation, Bloch ordered twelve employees to transfer from Washington to Oakland, Dallas or the newly-opened Detroit field office. Senior staff were given only ten days to agree to the transfer and sixty days to move. As a result, seven employees quit, one retired and four agreed to relocate. The Project on Government Oversight labeled the decision "a purge to stifle dissent and re-staff the agency with handpicked loyalists."
"The irony is overwhelming," says POGO's Danielle Brian. "How could the federal protector of whistleblowers make a bigger mockery of the agency's mission that this?" The Office of Special Counsel was created in 1976 to protect whistleblowers in the wake of Watergate. In 1989, George Bush--at Congress' unanimous urging--passed the Whistleblower Protection Act. Congress extended safeguards for informers of corporate fraud in 2002.
(0) CommentsFebruary 28, 2005
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Outrageous Outtakes
By Ari Berman
** Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, detailed his party's strategy for attacking DNC chair Howard Dean in a fundraising pitch to supporters this week. "The leadership of the other party are no longer Democrats," Reynolds wrote. "They are 'Deanocrats.' And that's what I'm going to start calling them. And you should too...Make them say publicly they are not 'Deanocrats.' If they won't, then you know where they stand, and that they don't deserve to be in office." Reynolds & Co fit a slightly different, retro moniker: Plutocrats.
** Senator Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum this week kicked off a ten-city tour to sell Pennsylvania on Social Security privatization. Outside of the Philly event, local Democrats began changing "Hey-hey, ho-ho, Rick Santorum has got to go!" To which local college Republicans tactfully responded, "Hey-hey, ho-ho, Social Security has got to go!" Fittingly, Santorum titled the talk "A Conversation about the Future of Social Security."
** Senator to some, evangelist to others: Time magazine continued the Santorum-spree by naming Pennsylvania's junior senator one of the "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America." His qualifications? "[Santorum] is the standard bearer of social conservatives on the Hill, regularly and vocally taking the point position against gay marriage, abortion rights and judges who defend either." Gone are the days when actual religious leaders dominated the profession. Now bigoted right-wing legislators with presidential ambitions suffice.
(0) CommentsFebruary 25, 2005
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Abandoning Afghanistan
By Ari Berman
The visit of Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain, plus the release of an alarming UN report, put Afghanistan back in the news this week, at least temporarily. According to the UN report--the first examination of Afghanistan's development in more than thirty years--the country ranks near the bottom of virtually every social development indicator, behind only a few war-torn countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Progress has not replaced peril. New schools are opening, but Afghanistan still has the world's worst education system. Life expectancy, at 44.5 years, is at least twenty years lower than in neighboring countries. One out of two Afghans is classified as poor. "The fragile nation could easily tumble back into chaos," the UN report observed. "The price the international community would pay to protect itself from Afghanistan would be far greater than what it will pay to develop the country."
Four years ago, the world recognized this objective. "To overcome evil, the great goodness of America must come forth and shine," President Bush said in October 2001, a few weeks after launching Operation Enduring Freedom. "And one way to do so is to help the poor souls in Afghanistan." Dick Cheney reaffirmed US support a month later. "We've made it clear that we have no interest in abandoning the country."
(0) CommentsFebruary 24, 2005
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Shipped in Secret
By Ari Berman
Amidst the tough talk and sanctions, it's easy to forget that Syria was very recently a useful ally in Washington's war on terror. So useful that US officials sent suspected terrorists to Syria for interrogation, including Canadian citizen Maher Arar, who was tortured by Syrian intelligence officials for ten months. Released to Canadian authorities in October 2003 after Syria found no links to terrorism, Arar and the Center for Constitutional Rights are suing the US government for transferring Arar to a country where they knew he would be tortured. In an unprecedented countermove, the Department of Justice is trying to dismiss the motion on national security grounds, while the Bush Administration insists it has stopped transporting suspects to Syria.
Dozens of stories similar to Arar's have surfaced recently, with innocent suspects secretly abducted, transferred to notorious human rights abusers, and then imprisoned and beaten before they are secretly tried, held indefinitely or released. The process, known as "extraordinary rendition," began in 1996 as a means to grab top-level Al-Qaeda operatives. After 9/11, in the words of then-CIA counter-terrorism chief Cofer Black, "the gloves came off."
The New York Bar Association estimates that 150 people have been covertly rendered since 9/11. "Let someone else do the dirty work," was the program's original motto, says former CIA counter-terrorism officer Michael Scheuer. "All we've done is create a nightmare," Scheuer now says of his brainchild.
(0) CommentsFebruary 23, 2005
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Inhofe's Idiocy
By Ari Berman
Labeling global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and comparing the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo apparently wasn't enough for Senator James Inhofe. Unable to ram Bush's polluter-friendly Clear Skies Act through the Senate, the Chairman of the Environmental and Public Works Committee (EPW) ordered two national organizations opposing Bush's plan to turn over their financial and tax records.
The two groups attacked by Inhofe collectively represent 48 state and 165 local air pollution control agencies. Executive Director William Becker denounced Inhofe's order as "retaliation against some very legitimate criticism of 'Clear Skies,'" and said his groups have not accepted money from environmental activists or other private interests.
The same purity can't be applied to Inhofe, a long-time magnet for pro-polluter special interests. Since joining the Congress in 1994, Inhofe has accepted over a million dollars from the energy and natural resource sector, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In the 2002 election, Inhofe received more money from big oil and gas companies than any other senator except Texas' John Cornyn. In return, big energy received a senator who's earned a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters on six different occasions.
(0) CommentsFebruary 22, 2005
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Bounty Hunted
By Ari Berman
House Republicans finally found a solution to America's illegal immigrant problem: bounty hunters. As part of a bill to ban states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, Rep. Pete Sessions inserted an amendment less than 24 hours before the vote establishing ten state-sponsored bounty hunter centers. Though bounty hunters are currently legal--more than 3,900 operate in Sessions' home state of Texas--the new plan allows bail bondsmen to nab suspected illegals even before a final deportation order has been issued.
The plan also evokes a number of uncomfortable precedents, including the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Part of the Compromise of 1850, the law allowed authorities to track down runaway slaves in any region of the country, including free states. Any person who failed to cooperate with the slave-hunters or assisted the slaves drew a $1,000 fine. As a result, 20,000 blacks fled to Canada via the underground railroad. Fourteen years later, after countless protests, Congress repealed the law.
"It illustrates the extremism of the House," Jeanne Butterfield of the American Immigration Lawyers Association said of the Slave law's 21st century counterpart. "We have law enforcement officers to enforce the law, not vigilantes," added Rep. Zoe Lofgren. (Global factoid: a recent row emerged between the governments of Colombia and Venezuela when bounty hunters snatched a Columbian rebel off the streets of Caracas.)
(0) CommentsFebruary 21, 2005
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Outrageous Outtakes
By Ari Berman
** Last fall, Cameroonian dictator Paul Biya, ruler since 1982, was re-elected with 71 percent of the vote. An American lobbyist for the Cameroon government organized a monitoring mission of six-former US Congressmen which Biya bankrolled to the tune of $80,000. As international observers, including the former Canadian prime minister, complained of widespread fraud and harassment, Mississippi's Ronnie Shows confidently defended the elections as reflecting, "What democracy is about." DC lobby firm Patton Boggs earned $400,000 for the rubber-stamping. Ex-Rep. Richard Shulze signed a $150,000 contract with Biya a month later.
** Unfortunately, Myanmar (nee Burma) has no oil, valuable trade goods or Islamic militants. It does, however, have the world's third-worst dictator, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader under house arrest and US sanctions that cost 60,000 Burmese textile workers their jobs last year. Condi Rice's addition of Myanmar to the "outpost of tyranny" club was rhetorically impressive, but practically insignificant. The US won't lift sanctions or pressure China to stop arming the military junta. Geopolitical realities transcend democratic goals.
** In the face of rising US aggression, Syria and Iran this week announced a "united front" defense pact against "common threats." Washington wants Syria to pull out of Lebanon, Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program and both countries to stop supporting radical Islamist groups, including Hezbollah. New sanctions against both countries may soon come before the UN Security Council. For now, the US blocks exports to Syria and bans US companies from doing business in Iran. Except Halliburton!
(0) CommentsFebruary 18, 2005
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Show Us The Bodies
By Ari Berman
Last October, the British medical journal Lancet published a study by a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers alleging that over 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed since the war began in March 2003. The study produced a wave of differing opinions. The right-wing press decried the figure as politically motivated. Confirmed press accounts placed the number at 15,000. The Iraqi Human Rights Organization calculated 30,000 deaths based on Iraqi press reports. One Johns Hopkins researcher retorted that 100,000 was a "conservative estimate."
Why the discrepancy? Chief among many reasons is that, in the words of embedded Newsday reporter Dionne Searcey, "Most shootings aren't publicized." The Pentagon keeps no comprehensive tally. US commanders don't usually report instances of "collateral damage." The Iraqi Health Ministry stopped releasing data due to American pressure. "We don't do body counts," General Tommy Franks once infamously opined.
Civilian casualties often get documented only when reporters are around. A month ago, Searcey spent several weeks with the 82nd Airborne Division in Mosul. During that time, she witnessed a half-dozen attacks against civilians, including troops mistakenly shooting and killing a dump truck driver, a mother and father, and a young girl. On two other occasions, passenger cars sped away after receiving fire. Another time, troops fired on a taxi, wounding a 5-year-old boy, his father and the driver. Similarly, from April to October, while embedded with a unit of Arkansas infantrymen, Amy Schlesing of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette saw at least eight shootings at roadblocks or in convoys leading to civilian casualties. Who knows how many similar tragedies have gone unreported?
(0) CommentsFebruary 17, 2005
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Here They Go Again
By Ari Berman
As RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman praised the election of his new counterpart Howard Dean, influential Republican front groups were already planning a mendacious offensive against the new DNC chair.
The first attack came courtesy of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), a big money pro-Israel lobby group linking Jewish-American neoconservatives to the Christian Right and Israel's Likud government. On Monday the RJC began running full-page ads in major Jewish newspapers across the country featuring a large photo of militants strapped with explosives coddling a young Palestinian boy. Above that arresting image is a quote by Dean: "It's not our place to take sides." Below the photo are quotes by Democrats critical of Dean. The ad effectively equates Dean's election with the appeasement of suicide bombers.
Such smears are to be expected from a group whose board of directors includes members of the Project for a New American Century, top fundraisers for the Bush campaign and former Bush officials, including press secretary Ari Fleischer. The RJC took Bush on his first tour of Israel in 1998. Evidently, Republicans hope to peel off a few more Jewish votes by distorting Dean's record.
(0) CommentsFebruary 16, 2005
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Fristing at the Mouth
By Ari Berman
Last year, Republicans lacked the votes to implement the so-called "nuclear option," which would exclude Democrats from the process of approving judicial nominees. Since the election, however, an expanded Republican majority has emboldened Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
In his opening remarks to the 109th Congress, Frist threatened the rule change. Then, in a much publicized speech before the right-wing Federalist Society, Frist denounced the filibuster as a "formula for tyranny by the majority." Now, Frist claims he has lined up the 51 votes necessary to prevent Democrats from having any say whatsoever in how the Senate confirms the next batch of socially conservative Bush judges. Just yesterday Bush renominated twenty failed judicial nominees, including seven of the ten that Democrats rejected in his first term.
Under the "nuclear option," Republicans would ask the chamber's presiding officer, who happens to be Vice President Dick Cheney, whether Democratic filibusters are unconstitutional. After Cheney rewrites history by declaring them so, only a simple majority of 51 votes is needed to uphold the ruling, as opposed to the 60 votes required to break a filibuster or the 67 votes required to change the rules under normal procedures. If invoked, the next Supreme Court opening could be filled without any Democrat support, even if four Republicans defect from the party line.
(0) CommentsFebruary 15, 2005
Ari Berman
The Daily Outrage aims to shine a spotlight on the forces that corrupt our democracy. The outrages come from all over these days: lobbyists stifling reformers in both parties, defense contractors profiting off pre-emptive war, the mainstream media echoing government deceptions, and a rightwing attack machine defending neo-imperialists and distorting progressive values. These stories rarely make the front-page, penetrate talk-radio, or appear on the evening news. So let The Daily Outrage guide you through the tangled web of media, money and politics at home and abroad. And click here to let us know of any outrages you think we should be covering.
Photo Credit: Michael Lorenzini
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