Category: Corruption

Just in Case You Were Wondering

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yes, Virginia, the drug companies do have a policy of secret payoffs to researchers.

A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators.

At some point, we need to start throwing both the people who took, and the people who made, the payments in jail.

New Gitmo Revalation: Pentagon Directed Destruction of Evidence

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The operation manual that the Pentagon gave interrogators directed them to, “destroy their written notes in case of being summoned to testify regarding alleged ill-treatment of detainees”, seehere, here, and here.

In an affidavit signed by [Omar Khadr Defense Attorney] Kuebler, the manual is quoted as saying, “The mission has legal and political issues that may lead to interrogators being called to testify, keeping the number of documents with interrogation information to a minimum can minimize certain legal issues.”

This flies in the face of every tenet of modern law and jurisprudence.

Ignoring the fact that Khadr was a 15 year old child at the time of the event, and should therefore be treated for trauma as a child soldier, the idea that the operations manual calls for destruction of evidence on the theory that it might prove inconvenient is outrageous.

The person who wrote this manual should be jailed, not just fired.

Zimbabwe Seems to Be Getting Worst

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Tsvangirai was detained again, the currency crash inflation problem is accelerating, the Mugabe government has banned opposition rallies, and the so called “war veterans” threatened to burn diplomats alive.

Helen Zille, leader of South Africa’s opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, has called for President Thabo Mbeki to speak out over what is going on in Zimbabwe.

Won’t happen. Mbeki won’t ever say a word against Mugabe, for reasons that are not clear to me.

UBS Under Pressure to Turn Over US Client Data, and Phil Gramm’s Name Pops Up

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It appears that about 20,000 wealthy Americans have accounts at the Swiss Bank UBS, and US regulators are now turning the screws to get this information out of them.

Under pressure from the authorities, UBS is considering whether to divulge the names of 20,000 of its well-heeled U.S. clients, according to people close to the probe, a step that would have once been unthinkable to Swiss bankers, whose practice of secrecy dates back to the Middle Ages.

U.S. investigators believe some of these clients may have used offshore accounts at UBS to illegally hide as much as $20 billion from the Internal Revenue Service. Doing so may have enabled these people to dodge $300 million or more in U.S. taxes, according to a government official connected with the investigation.

….

New revelations are likely to come Monday, when a former UBS banker is expected to testify in a Florida court about how he helped Olenicoff and other clients evade taxes. …..

The case could turn into an embarrassment for Marcel Rohner, the chief executive at UBS and the former head of its private bank, as well as for Phil Gramm, the former Republican senator from Texas who is now the vice chairman of UBS Securities, the Swiss bank’s investment-banking arm. It also comes at a difficult time for UBS, which is reeling from $37 billion in soured investments, many of them linked to risky U.S. subprime mortgages.

…

As the authorities zeroed in on UBS last January, the bank abruptly shut its three Swiss offices that sold undeclared offshore banking services to U.S. clients. Those offices catered to thousands of wealthy Americans, some of whom may now have their tax secrets put on public display.

(emphasis mine)

They are guilty as hell, and 90% of Americans know what it means to have a, “Swiss Bank Account”, and if Obama’s people don’t use this for Phil “Offshore Account” Gramm, John McCain’s economic guru, they are idiots.

Prosecutors Back off Siegelman and Scrushy Sentence Appeal

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After Siegelman and Scrushy were convicted in what increasingly appears to be a politically motivated trial, prosecutors appealed the original sentences of around 7 years (already unprecedentedly harsh), asking for 30 and 25 years respectively.

They have now now withdrawn their appeals of the sentences.

Obviously, the coverage scared off the prosecutors, because it has become increasingly obvious that this trial would give one of Stalin’s show trials a run for its money.

Texas Observer Takes Down Phill Gramm

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It’s a very good article, which places Gramm foursquare at the center of every major financial meltdown of the past decade.

My favorite quote:

Says Greenberger, “I am quite confident Phil Gramm didn’t understand what his legislation did. It was written by the banks and hedge funds.”

Note that Gramm was originally an economics professor.

It’s a good, and frightening, read on McCain’s economics guru.

Geoff Fieger Acquitted in Politically Motivated Trial

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It appears that the US attorney scandal is bearing bitter fruit, and that the defense’s suggestions that this was a politically motivated prosecution found favor with the jury as a result. Feiger was found not guilty of felony campaign finance violations.

Unfortunately, once destroyed, faith in the Department of Justice will not come back simply through regime change, so public corruption charges will be difficult to prosecute for many years to come.

Political Kangaroo Court

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Col. Peter Brownback, the judge on the Omar Khadr case, has been dismissed by the Pentagon:

U.S. Army Col. Peter Brownback, 60, a Vietnam veteran who once admitted he was under pressure from Washington concerning Khadr’s case, was relieved of his duties yesterday and replaced by another military judge.

There was no comment from the Pentagon or the U.S. Office of Military Commissions last night concerning the short email announcing Brownback’s departure.

There had been speculation that Brownback had wanted to return to retirement, but most observers had assumed it would be at the end of Khadr’s trial.

Khadr’s military lawyer, U.S. navy Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, said the announcement took him by surprise and suggested that the motive for the military judge’s removal was political. Brownback had refused to set a trial date for Khadr, which Kuebler said angered those eager to have his case wrapped up before a change in the U.S. administration.

“The timing is certainly suspicious,” Kuebler said yesterday. “They’re trying to get to trial as quickly as possible. The one thing you can say in (Brownback’s) favour was that he was holding the government’s feet to the fire.”

If you recall, he was 14 at the time of his alleged crimes, and as a child soldier, in civilized worlds, though apparently not in the US military tribunal system, he would be adjudged a victim, not a criminal.

In related news, It appears that the government is pulling out all the stops to make sure that the trials of the alleged 911 conspirators are a part of the presidential campaign:

The U.S. military attorneys included the claim in a 20-page brief asking the military judge to dismiss the capital charges against alleged al Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other Guantánamo detainees.

The document includes an e-mail from a civilian member of the prosecution team proposing to set the trial date for Sept. 15, the Monday after the seventh anniversary of the suicide attacks.

”Not coincidentally,” the defense attorneys say, “that would force the trial of this case in mid-September, some seven weeks before the general elections.”

This means that the defense will be given about 3 months to prepare for 5 death penalty cases where much of the evidence is classified, which is clearly inadequate.

Bankers Starting to Use LIBOR Alternatives

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As a result of concerns about the accuracy of the London Interbank Offered Rate, it appears that a number of financial institutions are casting about for an alternative metrid.

This is big, because it reflects the fact that even the most mundane, and until recently rock solid, standards of the financial industry are no longer reliable, which is why money is not flowing, and is unlikely to flow.

This appears to be a slow motion car wreck that we are watching in the financial markets.