BEIJING (Reuters) – Middle East countries should be left to themselves to resolve the problems they currently face without outside interference, a Chinese vice foreign minister said during a visit to the region.
While China supported a United Nations resolution for an arms embargo and other sanctions targeting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his inner circle, it has so far been cool to the idea of a no-fly zone over that country.
Arab countries appealed to the United Nations on Saturday to impose a no-fly zone on Libya as government troops backed by warplanes fought to drive rebels from remaining strongholds in western Libya.
Beijing has called for the situation in Libya to be resolved peacefully through dialogue, and demanded Libya's sovereignty and territorial integrity be respected, though added it would listen to the views of other Middle Eastern countries on the issue.
"The Middle East's stability is beneficial to the world's peace and development, and China respects the development path chosen by the Middle East's people," the Foreign Ministry cited Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun as saying during a visit to the region.
"Middle Eastern countries should handle their affairs themselves and should not be subject to outside interference," Zhai was paraphrased as saying.
"China is willing to work with the international community to maintain the peace and development of the Middle East region and to continue playing a constructive role to this end," he added.
Zhai visited Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia on his trip from March 6-12, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on its website (www.mfa.gov.cn) late on Saturday.
The four countries "approved of China's position," the statement said, without providing further details.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard, editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_china_middleeast
===================================================
China says Middle East should solve problems itself.
However painful this may sound, ultimately this is the correct approach for a lasting peace in the Middle East. Too often, we ignore a massive tradition of historical advancement and think WE ALONE CAN SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Where is the Arab League? There is at least 7000 years of civilization in the Middle East.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
State SAT Scores 2009
Here is the ranking of SAT Scores by State List:
Top SAT State Scores include Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Missouri. These States primarily have their students take the ACT test so their numbers may not be representative of the entire state.
The Worst States for SAT Scores include Maine, Hawaii, South Carolina, Georgia and New York. DC is also very low.
Here is the ranking of SAT Scores by State List:
Rate Reading Math Writing Total
1 Iowa 3% 610 615 588 1813
2 Wisconsin 5% 594 608 582 1784
3 Minnesota 7% 595 609 578 1782
4 Missouri 5% 595 600 584 1779
5 Illinois 6% 588 604 583 1775
6 Michigan 5% 584 603 575 1762
7 South Dakota 3% 589 600 569 1758
8 Nebraska 4% 587 594 572 1753
9 North Dakota 3% 590 593 566 1749
10 Kansas 7% 581 589 564 1734
11 Kentucky 7% 573 573 561 1707
12 Oklahoma 5% 575 571 557 1703
13 Tennessee 10% 571 565 565 1701
14 Arkansas 5% 572 572 556 1700
15 Colorado 20% 568 575 555 1698
16 Wyoming 5% 567 568 550 1685
17 Mississippi 4% 567 554 559 1680
18 Louisiana 7% 563 558 555 1676
19 Alabama 7% 557 552 549 1658
20 Utah 6% 559 558 540 1657
21 New Mexico 11% 553 546 534 1633
22 Ohio 22% 537 546 523 1606
23 Montana 22% 541 542 519 1602
24 Idaho 18% 541 540 520 1601
25 Washington 53% 524 531 507 1563
26 New Hampshire 75% 523 523 510 1557
27 Massachusetts 84% 514 526 510 1551
28 Oregon 52% 523 525 499 1548
29 Vermont 64% 518 518 506 1543
30 Connecticut 83% 509 513 512 1535
31 Arizona 26% 516 521 497 1534
32 Alaska 46% 520 516 492 1528
33 Virginia 68% 511 512 498 1522
34 California 49% 500 513 498 1511
35 West Virginia 18% 511 501 499 1511
36 New Jersey 76% 496 513 496 1506
37 Maryland 69% 500 502 495 1498
38 Rhode Island 66% 498 496 494 1489
39 North Carolina 63% 495 511 480 1487
40 Nevada 42% 501 505 479 1485
41 Indiana 63% 496 507 480 1484
42 Delaware 71% 495 498 484 1478
43 Pennsylvania 71% 493 501 483 1478
44 Florida 59% 497 498 480 1476
45 Texas 51% 486 506 475 1468
46 New York 85% 485 502 478 1466
47 Georgia 71% 490 491 479 1461
48 South Carolina 67% 486 496 470 1453
49 Hawaii 58% 479 502 469 1451
50 Maine 90% 468 467 455 1391
51 DC 79% 466 451 461 1379
All Students 46% 501 515 493 1509
http://blog.bestandworststates.com/2009/08/25/state-sat-scores-2009.aspx
Top SAT State Scores include Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Missouri. These States primarily have their students take the ACT test so their numbers may not be representative of the entire state.
The Worst States for SAT Scores include Maine, Hawaii, South Carolina, Georgia and New York. DC is also very low.
Here is the ranking of SAT Scores by State List:
Rate Reading Math Writing Total
1 Iowa 3% 610 615 588 1813
2 Wisconsin 5% 594 608 582 1784
3 Minnesota 7% 595 609 578 1782
4 Missouri 5% 595 600 584 1779
5 Illinois 6% 588 604 583 1775
6 Michigan 5% 584 603 575 1762
7 South Dakota 3% 589 600 569 1758
8 Nebraska 4% 587 594 572 1753
9 North Dakota 3% 590 593 566 1749
10 Kansas 7% 581 589 564 1734
11 Kentucky 7% 573 573 561 1707
12 Oklahoma 5% 575 571 557 1703
13 Tennessee 10% 571 565 565 1701
14 Arkansas 5% 572 572 556 1700
15 Colorado 20% 568 575 555 1698
16 Wyoming 5% 567 568 550 1685
17 Mississippi 4% 567 554 559 1680
18 Louisiana 7% 563 558 555 1676
19 Alabama 7% 557 552 549 1658
20 Utah 6% 559 558 540 1657
21 New Mexico 11% 553 546 534 1633
22 Ohio 22% 537 546 523 1606
23 Montana 22% 541 542 519 1602
24 Idaho 18% 541 540 520 1601
25 Washington 53% 524 531 507 1563
26 New Hampshire 75% 523 523 510 1557
27 Massachusetts 84% 514 526 510 1551
28 Oregon 52% 523 525 499 1548
29 Vermont 64% 518 518 506 1543
30 Connecticut 83% 509 513 512 1535
31 Arizona 26% 516 521 497 1534
32 Alaska 46% 520 516 492 1528
33 Virginia 68% 511 512 498 1522
34 California 49% 500 513 498 1511
35 West Virginia 18% 511 501 499 1511
36 New Jersey 76% 496 513 496 1506
37 Maryland 69% 500 502 495 1498
38 Rhode Island 66% 498 496 494 1489
39 North Carolina 63% 495 511 480 1487
40 Nevada 42% 501 505 479 1485
41 Indiana 63% 496 507 480 1484
42 Delaware 71% 495 498 484 1478
43 Pennsylvania 71% 493 501 483 1478
44 Florida 59% 497 498 480 1476
45 Texas 51% 486 506 475 1468
46 New York 85% 485 502 478 1466
47 Georgia 71% 490 491 479 1461
48 South Carolina 67% 486 496 470 1453
49 Hawaii 58% 479 502 469 1451
50 Maine 90% 468 467 455 1391
51 DC 79% 466 451 461 1379
All Students 46% 501 515 493 1509
http://blog.bestandworststates.com/2009/08/25/state-sat-scores-2009.aspx
The Republican Strategy by Robert Reich
Thursday, February 17, 2011
The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class – pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.
By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.
Republicans would rather no one notice their campaign to shrink the pie even further with additional tax cuts for the rich – making the Bush tax cuts permanent, further reducing the estate tax, and allowing the wealthy to shift ever more of their income into capital gains taxed at 15 percent.
The strategy has three parts.
The battle over the federal budget.
The first is being played out in the budget battle in Washington. As they raise the alarm over deficit spending and simultaneously squeeze popular middle-class programs, Republicans want the majority of the American public to view it all as a giant zero-sum game among average Americans that some will have to lose.
The President has already fallen into the trap by calling for budget cuts in programs the poor and working class depend on – assistance with home heating, community services, college loans, and the like.
In the coming showdown over Medicare and Social Security, House budget chair Paul Ryan will push a voucher system for Medicare and a partly-privatized plan for Social Security – both designed to attract younger middle-class voters.
The assault on public employees
The second part of the Republican strategy is being played out on the state level where public employees are being blamed for state budget crises. Unions didn’t cause these budget crises — state revenues dropped because of the Great Recession — but Republicans view them as opportunities to gut public employee unions, starting with teachers.
Wisconsin’s Republican governor Scott Walker and his GOP legislature are seeking to end almost all union rights for teachers. Ohio’s Republican governor John Kasich is pushing a similar plan in Ohio through a Republican-dominated legislature. New Jersey’s Republican governor Chris Christie is attempting the same, telling a conservative conference Wednesday, “I’m attacking the leadership of the union because they’re greedy, and they’re selfish and they’re self-interested.”
The demonizing of public employees is not only based on the lie that they’ve caused these budget crises, but it’s also premised on a second lie: that public employees earn more than private-sector workers. They don’t, when you take account of their education. In fact over the last fifteen years the pay of public-sector workers, including teachers, has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education – even including health and retirement benefits. Moreover, most public employees don’t have generous pensions. After a career with annual pay averaging less than $45,000, the typical newly-retired public employee receives a pension of $19,000 a year.
Bargaining rights for public employees haven’t caused state deficits to explode. Some states that deny their employees bargaining rights, such as Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona, are running big deficits of over 30 percent of spending. Many states that give employees bargaining rights — Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana — have small deficits of less than 10 percent.
Republicans would rather go after teachers and other public employees than have us look at the pay of Wall Street traders, private-equity managers, and heads of hedge funds – many of whom wouldn’t have their jobs today were it not for the giant taxpayer-supported bailout, and most of whose lending and investing practices were the proximate cause of the Great Depression to begin with.
Last year, America’s top thirteen hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion each. One of them took home $5 billion. Much of their income is taxed as capital gains – at 15 percent – due to a tax loophole that Republican members of Congress have steadfastly guarded.
If the earnings of those thirteen hedge-fund managers were taxed as ordinary income, the revenues generated would pay the salaries and benefits of 300,000 teachers. Who is more valuable to our society – thirteen hedge-fund managers or 300,000 teachers? Let’s make the question even simpler. Who is more valuable: One hedge fund manager or one teacher?
The Distortion of the Constitution
The third part of the Republican strategy is being played out in the Supreme Court. It has politicized the Court more than at any time in recent memory.
Last year a majority of the justices determined that corporations have a right under the First Amendment to provide unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission is among the most patently political and legally grotesque decisions of our highest court – ranking right up there with Bush vs. Gore and Dred Scott.
Among those who voted in the affirmative were Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Both have become active strategists in the Republican party.
A month ago, for example, Antonin Scalia met in a closed-door session with Michele Bachman’s Tea Party caucus – something no justice concerned about maintaining the appearance of impartiality would ever have done.
Both Thomas and Scalia have participated in political retreats organized and hosted by multi-billionaire financier Charles Koch, a major contributor to the Tea Party and other conservative organizations, and a crusader for ending all limits on money in politics. (Not incidentally, Thomas’s wife is the founder of Liberty Central, a Tea Party organization that has been receiving unlimited corporate contributions due to the Citizens United decision. On his obligatory financial disclosure filings, Thomas has repeatedly failed to list her sources of income over the last twenty years, nor even to include his own four-day retreats courtesy of Charles Koch.)
Some time this year or next, the Supreme Court will be asked to consider whether the nation’s new healthcare law is constitutional. Watch your wallets.
The strategy as a whole
These three aspects of the Republican strategy – a federal budget battle to shrink government, focused on programs the vast middle class depends on; state efforts to undermine public employees, whom the middle class depends on; and a Supreme Court dedicated to bending the Constitution to enlarge and entrench the political power of the wealthy – fit perfectly together.
They pit average working Americans against one another, distract attention from the almost unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the top, and conceal Republican plans to further enlarge and entrench that wealth and power.
What is the Democratic strategy to counter this and reclaim America for the rest of us?
http://robertreich.org/post/3353591266
The Republican strategy is to split the vast middle and working class – pitting unionized workers against non-unionized, public-sector workers against non-public, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don’t believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class.
By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish.
Republicans would rather no one notice their campaign to shrink the pie even further with additional tax cuts for the rich – making the Bush tax cuts permanent, further reducing the estate tax, and allowing the wealthy to shift ever more of their income into capital gains taxed at 15 percent.
The strategy has three parts.
The battle over the federal budget.
The first is being played out in the budget battle in Washington. As they raise the alarm over deficit spending and simultaneously squeeze popular middle-class programs, Republicans want the majority of the American public to view it all as a giant zero-sum game among average Americans that some will have to lose.
The President has already fallen into the trap by calling for budget cuts in programs the poor and working class depend on – assistance with home heating, community services, college loans, and the like.
In the coming showdown over Medicare and Social Security, House budget chair Paul Ryan will push a voucher system for Medicare and a partly-privatized plan for Social Security – both designed to attract younger middle-class voters.
The assault on public employees
The second part of the Republican strategy is being played out on the state level where public employees are being blamed for state budget crises. Unions didn’t cause these budget crises — state revenues dropped because of the Great Recession — but Republicans view them as opportunities to gut public employee unions, starting with teachers.
Wisconsin’s Republican governor Scott Walker and his GOP legislature are seeking to end almost all union rights for teachers. Ohio’s Republican governor John Kasich is pushing a similar plan in Ohio through a Republican-dominated legislature. New Jersey’s Republican governor Chris Christie is attempting the same, telling a conservative conference Wednesday, “I’m attacking the leadership of the union because they’re greedy, and they’re selfish and they’re self-interested.”
The demonizing of public employees is not only based on the lie that they’ve caused these budget crises, but it’s also premised on a second lie: that public employees earn more than private-sector workers. They don’t, when you take account of their education. In fact over the last fifteen years the pay of public-sector workers, including teachers, has dropped relative to private-sector employees with the same level of education – even including health and retirement benefits. Moreover, most public employees don’t have generous pensions. After a career with annual pay averaging less than $45,000, the typical newly-retired public employee receives a pension of $19,000 a year.
Bargaining rights for public employees haven’t caused state deficits to explode. Some states that deny their employees bargaining rights, such as Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona, are running big deficits of over 30 percent of spending. Many states that give employees bargaining rights — Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana — have small deficits of less than 10 percent.
Republicans would rather go after teachers and other public employees than have us look at the pay of Wall Street traders, private-equity managers, and heads of hedge funds – many of whom wouldn’t have their jobs today were it not for the giant taxpayer-supported bailout, and most of whose lending and investing practices were the proximate cause of the Great Depression to begin with.
Last year, America’s top thirteen hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion each. One of them took home $5 billion. Much of their income is taxed as capital gains – at 15 percent – due to a tax loophole that Republican members of Congress have steadfastly guarded.
If the earnings of those thirteen hedge-fund managers were taxed as ordinary income, the revenues generated would pay the salaries and benefits of 300,000 teachers. Who is more valuable to our society – thirteen hedge-fund managers or 300,000 teachers? Let’s make the question even simpler. Who is more valuable: One hedge fund manager or one teacher?
The Distortion of the Constitution
The third part of the Republican strategy is being played out in the Supreme Court. It has politicized the Court more than at any time in recent memory.
Last year a majority of the justices determined that corporations have a right under the First Amendment to provide unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission is among the most patently political and legally grotesque decisions of our highest court – ranking right up there with Bush vs. Gore and Dred Scott.
Among those who voted in the affirmative were Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Both have become active strategists in the Republican party.
A month ago, for example, Antonin Scalia met in a closed-door session with Michele Bachman’s Tea Party caucus – something no justice concerned about maintaining the appearance of impartiality would ever have done.
Both Thomas and Scalia have participated in political retreats organized and hosted by multi-billionaire financier Charles Koch, a major contributor to the Tea Party and other conservative organizations, and a crusader for ending all limits on money in politics. (Not incidentally, Thomas’s wife is the founder of Liberty Central, a Tea Party organization that has been receiving unlimited corporate contributions due to the Citizens United decision. On his obligatory financial disclosure filings, Thomas has repeatedly failed to list her sources of income over the last twenty years, nor even to include his own four-day retreats courtesy of Charles Koch.)
Some time this year or next, the Supreme Court will be asked to consider whether the nation’s new healthcare law is constitutional. Watch your wallets.
The strategy as a whole
These three aspects of the Republican strategy – a federal budget battle to shrink government, focused on programs the vast middle class depends on; state efforts to undermine public employees, whom the middle class depends on; and a Supreme Court dedicated to bending the Constitution to enlarge and entrench the political power of the wealthy – fit perfectly together.
They pit average working Americans against one another, distract attention from the almost unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the top, and conceal Republican plans to further enlarge and entrench that wealth and power.
What is the Democratic strategy to counter this and reclaim America for the rest of us?
http://robertreich.org/post/3353591266
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Mubarak won't seek new term
By SARAH EL DEEB and HADEEL AL-SHALCHI, Associated Press Sarah El Deeb And Hadeel Al-shalchi, Associated Press
CAIRO – President Hosni Mubarak announced Tuesday he will not run for a new term in September elections but rejected protesters' demands he step down immediately and leave the country, vowing to die on Egypt's soil, after a dramatic day in which a quarter-million Egyptians staged their biggest protest yet calling on him to go.
Soon after his speech, clashes erupted between protesters and government supporters in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, and gunshots were heard, according to footage by Al-Jazeera television.
Muabrak's half-way concession — an end to his rule seven months down the road — threatened to inflame frustration and anger among protesters, who have been peaceful in recent days but have made clear they will not end their unprecedented week-old wave of demonstrations until he is out.
The speech was immediately derided by protesters massed in Cairo's central Tahrir Square. Watching his speech on a giant TV, protesters booed and waved their shoes over their heads at his image in a sign of contempt. "Go, go, go! We are not leaving until he leaves," they chanted. One man screamed, "He doesn't want to say it, he doesn't want to say it."
In the 10-minute address, Mubarak appeared somber but spoke firmly without an air of defeat. The president who has ruled the country for nearly three decades — and during that time has rarely if ever admitted to making a mistake or reversing himself under pressure — insisted that his decision not to run for a new six-year term had nothing to do with the protests.
"I tell you in all sincerity, regardless of the current circumstances, I never intended to be a candidate for another term," he said. "I will work for the final remaining months of the current term to accomplish the necessary steps for the peaceful transfer of power."
Mubarak, a former air force commander, resolutely vowed not to flee the country. "This is my dear homeland ... I have lived in it, I fought for it and defended its soil, sovereignty and interests. On its soil I will die. History will judge me and all of us."
The United States has been struggling to find a way to ease Mubarak out of office while maintaining stability in Egypt, a key ally in the Mideast that has a 30-year-old peace treaty with Israel and has been a bullwark against Islamic militantcy. An envoy sent by President Barack Obama to work out a transition — former U.S. ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner, a friend of the Egyptian president — told Mubarak directly that that the U.S "view that his tenure as president is coming to close," according to an administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the ongoing diplomacy.
The U.S. ambassador in Cairo, Margaret Scobey, spoke by telephone Tuesday with Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, one of the most prominent leaders of the opposition, the embassy said. The pro-democracy advocate has taken a key role with other opposition groups in formulating the movement's demands for Mubarak to step down and allow a transitional government paving the way for free elections. There was no immediate word on what they discussed.
Only a month ago, Mubarak's announcement could have been seen as a formula for a stable handover and would certainly have been a stunning development greeted with joy by reform activists — many Egyptians have assumed he was certain to run again despite health issues. But after the past week of unheaval, it struck many of those in the streets as too little and as an infuriating stubbornness.
Tuesday's protest marked a dramatic escalation that organizers said aims to drive Mubarak out by Friday. In a single day, the protesters' numbers multiplied more than tenfold, with more than a quarter-million people flooding into Tahrir, or Liberation, Square.
Protesters jammed in shoulder-to-shoulder, with schoolteachers, farmers, unemployed university graduates, women in conservative headscarves and women in high heels, men in suits and working-class men in scuffed shoes. Joining the crowds were significant numbers who defied a government transportation shutdown and roadblocks on intercity highways to make their way from rural provinces.
They sang nationalist songs, danced, beat drums and chanted the anti-Mubarak slogan "Leave! Leave! Leave!" as military helicopters buzzed overhead. Organizers said the aim was to intensify marches to get the president out of power by Friday, and similar demonstrations erupted in at least five other cities around Egypt.
Soldiers at checkpoints set up at the entrances of the square did nothing to stop the crowds from entering. The military promised on state TV Monday night that it would not fire on protesters answering a call for a million to demonstrate, a sign that army support for Mubarak may be unraveling.
Mubarak would be the second Arab leader pushed from office by a popular uprising in the history of the modern Middle East, following the ouster last month of the president of Tunisia — another North African nation.
The movement to drive Mubarak out has been built on the work of online activists and fueled by deep frustration with an autocratic regime blamed for ignoring the needs of the poor and allowing corruption and official abuse to run rampant. After years of tight state control, protesters emboldened by the Tunisia unrest took to the streets on Jan. 25 and mounted a once-unimaginable series of protests across this nation of 80 million.
The repercussions were being felt around the Mideast, as other authoritarian governments fearing popular discontent pre-emptively tried to burnish their democratic image.
Jordan's King Abdullah II fired his government Tuesday in the face of smaller street protests, named an ex-prime minister to form a new Cabinet and ordered him to launch political reforms. The Palestinian Cabinet in the West Bank said it would hold long-promised municipal elections "as soon as possible."
So far, Egypt's protesters have rejected earlier concessions by Mubarak, including the dissolution of his government, the naming of a new one and the appointment of a vice president, Omar Suleiman, who offered a dialogue with "political forces" over constitutional and legislative reforms.
In an interview with Al-Arabiya television Tuesdsay, ElBaradei dismissed Suleiman's offer, saying there could be no negotiations until Mubarak leaves. In his speech, Mubarak said the offer still stands and promised to change constitutional articles that allow the president unlimited terms and limit those who can run for the office.
Egypt's state TV on Tuesday ran a statement by the new prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, pleading with the public to "give a chance" to his government.
The United States ordered non-essential U.S. government personnel and their families to leave Egypt. They join a wave of people rushing to flee the country — over 18,000 overwhelmed Cairo's international airport and threw it into chaos. EgyptAir staff scuffled with frantic passengers, food supplies were dwindling and some policemen even demanded substantial bribes before allowing foreigners to board their planes.
Banks, schools and the stock market in Cairo were closed for the third working day, making cash tight. Bread prices spiraled. An unprecedented shutdown of the Internet was in its fifth day.
The official death toll from the crisis stood at 97, with thousands injured, though reports from witnesses across the country indicated the actual toll was far higher.
But perhaps most startling was how peaceful the protests have been in recent days, after the military replaced the police around Tahrir Square and made no move to try to suppress the demonstrations. No clashes between the military and protesters have been reported since Friday night, after pitched street battles with the police throughout the day Friday.
Egypt's military leadership has reassured the U.S. that they do not intend to crack down on demonstrators, but instead they are allowing the protesters to "wear themselves out," according to a former U.S. official in contact with several top Egyptian army officers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Troops alongside Soviet-era and newer U.S.-made Abrams tanks stood guard at roads leading into Tahrir Square, a plaza overlooked by the headquarters of the Arab League, the campus of the American University in Cairo, the famed Egyptian Museum and the Mugammma, an enormous building housing departments of the notoriously corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy.
Protester volunteers wearing tags reading "the People's Security" circulated through the crowds in the square, saying they were watching for government infiltrators who might try to instigate violence. Organizers said the protest would remain in the square and not attempt to march to the presidential palace to avoid frictions with the military.
Two effigies of Mubarak dangled from traffic lights. On their chests was written: "We want to put the murderous president on trial." Their faces were scrawled with the Star of David, an allusion to many protesters' feeling that Mubarak is a friend of Israel, still seen by most Egyptians as their country's archenemy more than 30 years after the two nations signed a peace treaty.
Every protester had their own story of why they came — with a shared theme of frustration with a life pinned in by corruption, low wages, crushed opportunities and abuse by authorities. Under Mubarak, Egypt has seen a widening gap between rich and poor, with 40 percent of the population living under or just above the poverty line set by the World Bank at $2 a day.
Sahar Ahmad, a 41-year-old school teacher and mother of one, said she has taught for 22 years and still only makes about $70 a month.
"There are 120 students in my classroom. That's more than any teacher can handle," said Ahmad. "Change would mean a better education system I can teach in and one that guarantees my students a good life after school. If there is democracy in my country, then I can ask for democracy in my own home."
Tamer Adly, a driver of one of the thousands of minibuses that ferry commuters around Cairo, said he was sick of the daily humiliation he felt from police who demand free rides and send him on petty errands, reflecting the widespread public anger at police high-handedness.
"They would force me to share my breakfast with them ... force me to go fetch them a newspaper. This country should not just be about one person," the 30-year-old lamented, referring to Mubarak.
Among the older protesters, there was also a sense of amazement after three decades of unquestioned control by Mubarak's security forces over the streets.
"We could never say no to Mubarak when we were young, but our young people today proved that they can say no, and I'm here to support them," said Yusra Mahmoud, a 46-year-old school principal who said she had been sleeping in the square alongside other protesters for the past two nights.
Tens of thousands rallied in the cities of Alexandria, Suez and Mansoura, north of Cairo, as well as in the southern province of Assiut and the southern city of Luxor.
Authorities shut down all roads and public transportation to Cairo and in and out of other main cities, security officials said. Train services nationwide were suspended for a second day and all bus services between cities were halted.
Still, many from the provinces managed to make it to the square. Hamada Massoud, a 32-year-old a lawyer, said he and 50 others came in cars and minibuses from the impoverished province of Beni Sweif south of Cairo.
"Cairo today is all of Egypt," he said. "I want my son to have a better life and not suffer as much as I did ... I want to feel like I chose my president."
AP correspondents Maggie Michael, Maggie Hyde, Lee Keath and Michael Weissenstein in Cairo and Kimberly Dozier in Washington contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_egypt
CAIRO – President Hosni Mubarak announced Tuesday he will not run for a new term in September elections but rejected protesters' demands he step down immediately and leave the country, vowing to die on Egypt's soil, after a dramatic day in which a quarter-million Egyptians staged their biggest protest yet calling on him to go.
Soon after his speech, clashes erupted between protesters and government supporters in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, and gunshots were heard, according to footage by Al-Jazeera television.
Muabrak's half-way concession — an end to his rule seven months down the road — threatened to inflame frustration and anger among protesters, who have been peaceful in recent days but have made clear they will not end their unprecedented week-old wave of demonstrations until he is out.
The speech was immediately derided by protesters massed in Cairo's central Tahrir Square. Watching his speech on a giant TV, protesters booed and waved their shoes over their heads at his image in a sign of contempt. "Go, go, go! We are not leaving until he leaves," they chanted. One man screamed, "He doesn't want to say it, he doesn't want to say it."
In the 10-minute address, Mubarak appeared somber but spoke firmly without an air of defeat. The president who has ruled the country for nearly three decades — and during that time has rarely if ever admitted to making a mistake or reversing himself under pressure — insisted that his decision not to run for a new six-year term had nothing to do with the protests.
"I tell you in all sincerity, regardless of the current circumstances, I never intended to be a candidate for another term," he said. "I will work for the final remaining months of the current term to accomplish the necessary steps for the peaceful transfer of power."
Mubarak, a former air force commander, resolutely vowed not to flee the country. "This is my dear homeland ... I have lived in it, I fought for it and defended its soil, sovereignty and interests. On its soil I will die. History will judge me and all of us."
The United States has been struggling to find a way to ease Mubarak out of office while maintaining stability in Egypt, a key ally in the Mideast that has a 30-year-old peace treaty with Israel and has been a bullwark against Islamic militantcy. An envoy sent by President Barack Obama to work out a transition — former U.S. ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner, a friend of the Egyptian president — told Mubarak directly that that the U.S "view that his tenure as president is coming to close," according to an administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the ongoing diplomacy.
The U.S. ambassador in Cairo, Margaret Scobey, spoke by telephone Tuesday with Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, one of the most prominent leaders of the opposition, the embassy said. The pro-democracy advocate has taken a key role with other opposition groups in formulating the movement's demands for Mubarak to step down and allow a transitional government paving the way for free elections. There was no immediate word on what they discussed.
Only a month ago, Mubarak's announcement could have been seen as a formula for a stable handover and would certainly have been a stunning development greeted with joy by reform activists — many Egyptians have assumed he was certain to run again despite health issues. But after the past week of unheaval, it struck many of those in the streets as too little and as an infuriating stubbornness.
Tuesday's protest marked a dramatic escalation that organizers said aims to drive Mubarak out by Friday. In a single day, the protesters' numbers multiplied more than tenfold, with more than a quarter-million people flooding into Tahrir, or Liberation, Square.
Protesters jammed in shoulder-to-shoulder, with schoolteachers, farmers, unemployed university graduates, women in conservative headscarves and women in high heels, men in suits and working-class men in scuffed shoes. Joining the crowds were significant numbers who defied a government transportation shutdown and roadblocks on intercity highways to make their way from rural provinces.
They sang nationalist songs, danced, beat drums and chanted the anti-Mubarak slogan "Leave! Leave! Leave!" as military helicopters buzzed overhead. Organizers said the aim was to intensify marches to get the president out of power by Friday, and similar demonstrations erupted in at least five other cities around Egypt.
Soldiers at checkpoints set up at the entrances of the square did nothing to stop the crowds from entering. The military promised on state TV Monday night that it would not fire on protesters answering a call for a million to demonstrate, a sign that army support for Mubarak may be unraveling.
Mubarak would be the second Arab leader pushed from office by a popular uprising in the history of the modern Middle East, following the ouster last month of the president of Tunisia — another North African nation.
The movement to drive Mubarak out has been built on the work of online activists and fueled by deep frustration with an autocratic regime blamed for ignoring the needs of the poor and allowing corruption and official abuse to run rampant. After years of tight state control, protesters emboldened by the Tunisia unrest took to the streets on Jan. 25 and mounted a once-unimaginable series of protests across this nation of 80 million.
The repercussions were being felt around the Mideast, as other authoritarian governments fearing popular discontent pre-emptively tried to burnish their democratic image.
Jordan's King Abdullah II fired his government Tuesday in the face of smaller street protests, named an ex-prime minister to form a new Cabinet and ordered him to launch political reforms. The Palestinian Cabinet in the West Bank said it would hold long-promised municipal elections "as soon as possible."
So far, Egypt's protesters have rejected earlier concessions by Mubarak, including the dissolution of his government, the naming of a new one and the appointment of a vice president, Omar Suleiman, who offered a dialogue with "political forces" over constitutional and legislative reforms.
In an interview with Al-Arabiya television Tuesdsay, ElBaradei dismissed Suleiman's offer, saying there could be no negotiations until Mubarak leaves. In his speech, Mubarak said the offer still stands and promised to change constitutional articles that allow the president unlimited terms and limit those who can run for the office.
Egypt's state TV on Tuesday ran a statement by the new prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, pleading with the public to "give a chance" to his government.
The United States ordered non-essential U.S. government personnel and their families to leave Egypt. They join a wave of people rushing to flee the country — over 18,000 overwhelmed Cairo's international airport and threw it into chaos. EgyptAir staff scuffled with frantic passengers, food supplies were dwindling and some policemen even demanded substantial bribes before allowing foreigners to board their planes.
Banks, schools and the stock market in Cairo were closed for the third working day, making cash tight. Bread prices spiraled. An unprecedented shutdown of the Internet was in its fifth day.
The official death toll from the crisis stood at 97, with thousands injured, though reports from witnesses across the country indicated the actual toll was far higher.
But perhaps most startling was how peaceful the protests have been in recent days, after the military replaced the police around Tahrir Square and made no move to try to suppress the demonstrations. No clashes between the military and protesters have been reported since Friday night, after pitched street battles with the police throughout the day Friday.
Egypt's military leadership has reassured the U.S. that they do not intend to crack down on demonstrators, but instead they are allowing the protesters to "wear themselves out," according to a former U.S. official in contact with several top Egyptian army officers. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Troops alongside Soviet-era and newer U.S.-made Abrams tanks stood guard at roads leading into Tahrir Square, a plaza overlooked by the headquarters of the Arab League, the campus of the American University in Cairo, the famed Egyptian Museum and the Mugammma, an enormous building housing departments of the notoriously corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy.
Protester volunteers wearing tags reading "the People's Security" circulated through the crowds in the square, saying they were watching for government infiltrators who might try to instigate violence. Organizers said the protest would remain in the square and not attempt to march to the presidential palace to avoid frictions with the military.
Two effigies of Mubarak dangled from traffic lights. On their chests was written: "We want to put the murderous president on trial." Their faces were scrawled with the Star of David, an allusion to many protesters' feeling that Mubarak is a friend of Israel, still seen by most Egyptians as their country's archenemy more than 30 years after the two nations signed a peace treaty.
Every protester had their own story of why they came — with a shared theme of frustration with a life pinned in by corruption, low wages, crushed opportunities and abuse by authorities. Under Mubarak, Egypt has seen a widening gap between rich and poor, with 40 percent of the population living under or just above the poverty line set by the World Bank at $2 a day.
Sahar Ahmad, a 41-year-old school teacher and mother of one, said she has taught for 22 years and still only makes about $70 a month.
"There are 120 students in my classroom. That's more than any teacher can handle," said Ahmad. "Change would mean a better education system I can teach in and one that guarantees my students a good life after school. If there is democracy in my country, then I can ask for democracy in my own home."
Tamer Adly, a driver of one of the thousands of minibuses that ferry commuters around Cairo, said he was sick of the daily humiliation he felt from police who demand free rides and send him on petty errands, reflecting the widespread public anger at police high-handedness.
"They would force me to share my breakfast with them ... force me to go fetch them a newspaper. This country should not just be about one person," the 30-year-old lamented, referring to Mubarak.
Among the older protesters, there was also a sense of amazement after three decades of unquestioned control by Mubarak's security forces over the streets.
"We could never say no to Mubarak when we were young, but our young people today proved that they can say no, and I'm here to support them," said Yusra Mahmoud, a 46-year-old school principal who said she had been sleeping in the square alongside other protesters for the past two nights.
Tens of thousands rallied in the cities of Alexandria, Suez and Mansoura, north of Cairo, as well as in the southern province of Assiut and the southern city of Luxor.
Authorities shut down all roads and public transportation to Cairo and in and out of other main cities, security officials said. Train services nationwide were suspended for a second day and all bus services between cities were halted.
Still, many from the provinces managed to make it to the square. Hamada Massoud, a 32-year-old a lawyer, said he and 50 others came in cars and minibuses from the impoverished province of Beni Sweif south of Cairo.
"Cairo today is all of Egypt," he said. "I want my son to have a better life and not suffer as much as I did ... I want to feel like I chose my president."
AP correspondents Maggie Michael, Maggie Hyde, Lee Keath and Michael Weissenstein in Cairo and Kimberly Dozier in Washington contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_egypt
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law by Laura Sullivan
Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal.
Glenn Nichols, the Benson city manager, remembers the pitch.
"The gentleman that's the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger," Nichols said. "He's a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman."
What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.
"They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community," Nichols said, "the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate."
But Nichols wasn't buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants?
"They talked like they didn't have any doubt they could fill it," Nichols said.
That's because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona's immigration law.
Behind-The-Scenes Effort To Draft, Pass The Law
The law is being challenged in the courts. But if it's upheld, it requires police to lock up anyone they stop who cannot show proof they entered the country legally.
When it was passed in April, it ignited a fire storm. Protesters chanted about racial profiling. Businesses threatened to boycott the state.
Supporters were equally passionate, calling it a bold positive step to curb illegal immigration.
But while the debate raged, few people were aware of how the law came about.
NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.
Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, pictured here at Tea Party rally on Oct. 22, was instrumental in drafting the state's immigration law. He also sits on a American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) task force, a group that helped shape the law.Joshua Lott/Getty Images Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, pictured here at Tea Party rally on Oct. 22, was instrumental in drafting the state's immigration law. He also sits on a American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) task force, a group that helped shape the law.
The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.
Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce says the bill was his idea. He says it's not about prisons. It's about what's best for the country.
"Enough is enough," Pearce said in his office, sitting under a banner reading "Let Freedom Reign." "People need to focus on the cost of not enforcing our laws and securing our border. It is the Trojan horse destroying our country and a republic cannot survive as a lawless nation."
But instead of taking his idea to the Arizona statehouse floor, Pearce first took it to a hotel conference room.
It was last December at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. Inside, there was a meeting of a secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Insiders call it ALEC.
It's a membership organization of state legislators and powerful corporations and associations, such as the tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., ExxonMobil and the National Rifle Association. Another member is the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America — the largest private prison company in the country.
It was there that Pearce's idea took shape.
"I did a presentation," Pearce said. "I went through the facts. I went through the impacts and they said, 'Yeah.'"
Drafting The Bill
The 50 or so people in the room included officials of the Corrections Corporation of America, according to two sources who were there.
Pearce and the Corrections Corporation of America have been coming to these meetings for years. Both have seats on one of several of ALEC's boards.
Credit: Stephanie D'Otreppe/NPR
And this bill was an important one for the company. According to Correctio
And this bill was an important one for the company. According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in "a significant portion of our revenues" from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants.
In the conference room, the group decided they would turn the immigration idea into a model bill. They discussed and debated language. Then, they voted on it.
"There were no 'no' votes," Pearce said. "I never had one person speak up in objection to this model legislation."
Four months later, that model legislation became, almost word for word, Arizona's immigration law.
They even named it. They called it the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act."
"ALEC is the conservative, free-market orientated, limited-government group," said Michael Hough, who was staff director of the meeting.
Hough works for ALEC, but he's also running for state delegate in Maryland, and if elected says he plans to support a similar bill to Arizona's law.
Asked if the private companies usually get to write model bills for the legislators, Hough said, "Yeah, that's the way it's set up. It's a public-private partnership. We believe both sides, businesses and lawmakers should be at the same table, together."
Nothing about this is illegal. Pearce's immigration plan became a prospective bill and Pearce took it home to Arizona.
Campaign Donations
Pearce said he is not concerned that it could appear private prison companies have an opportunity to lobby for legislation at the ALEC meetings.
"I don't go there to meet with them," he said. "I go there to meet with other legislators."
Pearce may go there to meet with other legislators, but 200 private companies pay tens of thousands of dollars to meet with legislators like him.
As soon as Pearce's bill hit the Arizona statehouse floor in January, there were signs of ALEC's influence. Thirty-six co-sponsors jumped on, a number almost unheard of in the capitol. According to records obtained by NPR, two-thirds of them either went to that December meeting or are ALEC members.
That same week, the Corrections Corporation of America hired a powerful new lobbyist to work the capitol.
The prison company declined requests for an interview. In a statement, a spokesman said the Corrections Corporation of America, "unequivocally has not at any time lobbied — nor have we had any outside consultants lobby – on immigration law."
At the state Capitol, campaign donations started to appear.
Thirty of the 36 co-sponsors received donations over the next six months, from prison lobbyists or prison companies — Corrections Corporation of America, Management and Training Corporation and The Geo Group.
By April, the bill was on Gov. Jan Brewer's desk.
Brewer has her own connections to private prison companies. State lobbying records show two of her top advisers — her spokesman Paul Senseman and her campaign manager Chuck Coughlin — are former lobbyists for private prison companies. Brewer signed the bill — with the name of the legislation Pearce, the Corrections Corporation of America and the others in the Hyatt conference room came up with — in four days.
Brewer and her spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
In May, The Geo Group had a conference call with investors. When asked about the bill, company executives made light of it, asking, "Did they have some legislation on immigration?"
After company officials laughed, the company's president, Wayne Calabrese, cut in.
"This is Wayne," he said. "I can only believe the opportunities at the federal level are going to continue apace as a result of what's happening. Those people coming across the border and getting caught are going to have to be detained and that for me, at least I think, there's going to be enhanced opportunities for what we do."
Opportunities that prison companies helped create.
Produced by NPR's Anne Hawke.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130833741+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Glenn Nichols, the Benson city manager, remembers the pitch.
"The gentleman that's the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger," Nichols said. "He's a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman."
What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.
"They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community," Nichols said, "the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate."
But Nichols wasn't buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants?
"They talked like they didn't have any doubt they could fill it," Nichols said.
That's because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona's immigration law.
Behind-The-Scenes Effort To Draft, Pass The Law
The law is being challenged in the courts. But if it's upheld, it requires police to lock up anyone they stop who cannot show proof they entered the country legally.
When it was passed in April, it ignited a fire storm. Protesters chanted about racial profiling. Businesses threatened to boycott the state.
Supporters were equally passionate, calling it a bold positive step to curb illegal immigration.
But while the debate raged, few people were aware of how the law came about.
NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.
Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, pictured here at Tea Party rally on Oct. 22, was instrumental in drafting the state's immigration law. He also sits on a American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) task force, a group that helped shape the law.Joshua Lott/Getty Images Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce, pictured here at Tea Party rally on Oct. 22, was instrumental in drafting the state's immigration law. He also sits on a American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) task force, a group that helped shape the law.
The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.
Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce says the bill was his idea. He says it's not about prisons. It's about what's best for the country.
"Enough is enough," Pearce said in his office, sitting under a banner reading "Let Freedom Reign." "People need to focus on the cost of not enforcing our laws and securing our border. It is the Trojan horse destroying our country and a republic cannot survive as a lawless nation."
But instead of taking his idea to the Arizona statehouse floor, Pearce first took it to a hotel conference room.
It was last December at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. Inside, there was a meeting of a secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Insiders call it ALEC.
It's a membership organization of state legislators and powerful corporations and associations, such as the tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., ExxonMobil and the National Rifle Association. Another member is the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America — the largest private prison company in the country.
It was there that Pearce's idea took shape.
"I did a presentation," Pearce said. "I went through the facts. I went through the impacts and they said, 'Yeah.'"
Drafting The Bill
The 50 or so people in the room included officials of the Corrections Corporation of America, according to two sources who were there.
Pearce and the Corrections Corporation of America have been coming to these meetings for years. Both have seats on one of several of ALEC's boards.
Credit: Stephanie D'Otreppe/NPR
And this bill was an important one for the company. According to Correctio
And this bill was an important one for the company. According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in "a significant portion of our revenues" from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants.
In the conference room, the group decided they would turn the immigration idea into a model bill. They discussed and debated language. Then, they voted on it.
"There were no 'no' votes," Pearce said. "I never had one person speak up in objection to this model legislation."
Four months later, that model legislation became, almost word for word, Arizona's immigration law.
They even named it. They called it the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act."
"ALEC is the conservative, free-market orientated, limited-government group," said Michael Hough, who was staff director of the meeting.
Hough works for ALEC, but he's also running for state delegate in Maryland, and if elected says he plans to support a similar bill to Arizona's law.
Asked if the private companies usually get to write model bills for the legislators, Hough said, "Yeah, that's the way it's set up. It's a public-private partnership. We believe both sides, businesses and lawmakers should be at the same table, together."
Nothing about this is illegal. Pearce's immigration plan became a prospective bill and Pearce took it home to Arizona.
Campaign Donations
Pearce said he is not concerned that it could appear private prison companies have an opportunity to lobby for legislation at the ALEC meetings.
"I don't go there to meet with them," he said. "I go there to meet with other legislators."
Pearce may go there to meet with other legislators, but 200 private companies pay tens of thousands of dollars to meet with legislators like him.
As soon as Pearce's bill hit the Arizona statehouse floor in January, there were signs of ALEC's influence. Thirty-six co-sponsors jumped on, a number almost unheard of in the capitol. According to records obtained by NPR, two-thirds of them either went to that December meeting or are ALEC members.
That same week, the Corrections Corporation of America hired a powerful new lobbyist to work the capitol.
The prison company declined requests for an interview. In a statement, a spokesman said the Corrections Corporation of America, "unequivocally has not at any time lobbied — nor have we had any outside consultants lobby – on immigration law."
At the state Capitol, campaign donations started to appear.
Thirty of the 36 co-sponsors received donations over the next six months, from prison lobbyists or prison companies — Corrections Corporation of America, Management and Training Corporation and The Geo Group.
By April, the bill was on Gov. Jan Brewer's desk.
Brewer has her own connections to private prison companies. State lobbying records show two of her top advisers — her spokesman Paul Senseman and her campaign manager Chuck Coughlin — are former lobbyists for private prison companies. Brewer signed the bill — with the name of the legislation Pearce, the Corrections Corporation of America and the others in the Hyatt conference room came up with — in four days.
Brewer and her spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
In May, The Geo Group had a conference call with investors. When asked about the bill, company executives made light of it, asking, "Did they have some legislation on immigration?"
After company officials laughed, the company's president, Wayne Calabrese, cut in.
"This is Wayne," he said. "I can only believe the opportunities at the federal level are going to continue apace as a result of what's happening. Those people coming across the border and getting caught are going to have to be detained and that for me, at least I think, there's going to be enhanced opportunities for what we do."
Opportunities that prison companies helped create.
Produced by NPR's Anne Hawke.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130833741+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Beware the Puppet Masters
One day not long enough ago, I got an e-mail from someone; dressed up like Benedict Arnold, purporting to be Patrick Henry and the Tea Party. Remembering the Tea Party dumped tea in Boston Harbor before the Revolutionary War in 1776, I thought this was probably not him. Then I remembered that politics is often about money and looked for the Puppet Master of the Tea Party and found three: Rupert Murdock of Fox & News Corp and the Koch brothers of Koch Industries, the wealthiest private company in the United States.
Now, go back and remember that Barack Obama promised to undo the Bush tax cuts that give $1 billion dollars to the upper 2% of America’s income bracket over 10 years. The other 98% of us share $3 billion dollars over 10 years. I wonder how much one of the 400 billionaires in America would give to maintain a potential $100-million-dollar tax break on a 10-year return. The answer may be $100 million dollars this year by Mr. Murdock and the Koch brothers. The Koch brothers are worth at least $35 billion dollars and have paid multiple environmental related fines in the past. One brother ran as a Vice-Presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party in 1980 because Ronald Regan was not conservative enough for him. He gives the most. In fact, the Puppet Masters had given 91% of Republican funds to Karl Rove’s political action group that operates outside regular and regulated Republican coffers at last accounting.
Taxed enough already sounds good those that that are most ideologically overtaxed; but what about those that care about local issues and local control over their daily lives? Do they not give fire and police protection because they are “taxed enough already”? Do sewer treatment plants get repaired by themselves? Are roads built and bridges repaired by men; in triangular-shaped hats, who had not even determined what the Declaration of Independence would say, much less the Constitution? That, in its Preamble, it talks about providing the general welfare of the United States, and its posterity?
No, this was a rebellion against taxes to pay for the war between England and France. But these Tea Party people seem to want to be taxed for war, but not for peace. Therein is the problem.
We need a modern-day FDR to cure financial problems worse than any time since the Great Depression, not men in funny hats and Puppet Masters screaming about taxes and likely to cut our Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and raise retirement age for the 98% that the Puppet Masters are not part of. Their same old sad song was proven wrong once before in the 1930’s.
Men in funny hats did nothing to create Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits. A study concluded that, of thirteen ways to create jobs and grow the economy, tax breaks for the upper 2% was thirteenth and dead last. If you get a check for $100 million dollars, why risk it? Just put it in the bank. That is what the Puppet Masters really want. Don’t let their joke be at your expense this Election Day 2010.
-Tom Love
Now, go back and remember that Barack Obama promised to undo the Bush tax cuts that give $1 billion dollars to the upper 2% of America’s income bracket over 10 years. The other 98% of us share $3 billion dollars over 10 years. I wonder how much one of the 400 billionaires in America would give to maintain a potential $100-million-dollar tax break on a 10-year return. The answer may be $100 million dollars this year by Mr. Murdock and the Koch brothers. The Koch brothers are worth at least $35 billion dollars and have paid multiple environmental related fines in the past. One brother ran as a Vice-Presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party in 1980 because Ronald Regan was not conservative enough for him. He gives the most. In fact, the Puppet Masters had given 91% of Republican funds to Karl Rove’s political action group that operates outside regular and regulated Republican coffers at last accounting.
Taxed enough already sounds good those that that are most ideologically overtaxed; but what about those that care about local issues and local control over their daily lives? Do they not give fire and police protection because they are “taxed enough already”? Do sewer treatment plants get repaired by themselves? Are roads built and bridges repaired by men; in triangular-shaped hats, who had not even determined what the Declaration of Independence would say, much less the Constitution? That, in its Preamble, it talks about providing the general welfare of the United States, and its posterity?
No, this was a rebellion against taxes to pay for the war between England and France. But these Tea Party people seem to want to be taxed for war, but not for peace. Therein is the problem.
We need a modern-day FDR to cure financial problems worse than any time since the Great Depression, not men in funny hats and Puppet Masters screaming about taxes and likely to cut our Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and raise retirement age for the 98% that the Puppet Masters are not part of. Their same old sad song was proven wrong once before in the 1930’s.
Men in funny hats did nothing to create Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits. A study concluded that, of thirteen ways to create jobs and grow the economy, tax breaks for the upper 2% was thirteenth and dead last. If you get a check for $100 million dollars, why risk it? Just put it in the bank. That is what the Puppet Masters really want. Don’t let their joke be at your expense this Election Day 2010.
-Tom Love
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Perry's tech fund aided firms with ties to his donors
By JAMES DREW, STEVE McGONIGLE and RYAN McNEILL / The Dallas Morning News
When Gov. Rick Perry announces that a company will get money from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, he often describes it as an important investment in the state's future.
Link: Emerging Technology Fund
Behind the scenes, some of the governor's biggest political supporters have been making investments of their own – in Perry and in companies getting money from the tech fund.
An investigation by The Dallas Morning News found that more than $16 million from the Emerging Technology Fund has been awarded to companies with investors or officers who are large campaign donors to Perry.
The governor denied that politics influence his decisions on tech fund awards.
The fund gives taxpayers' dollars to promising high-tech startups. It is a key part of Perry's economic development program, which he has touted in his re-election campaign against Democrat Bill White.
The governor's office administers the tech fund, and the governor must approve each award – a system that most other states with tech funds avoid to guard against political influence.
The News found that tech fund money has been awarded to companies with which at least eight significant Perry donors are affiliated. Among them:
•$2.75 million to Terrabon Inc., a Houston company. Its backers have included Phil Adams, a college friend of Perry's who has given his campaign at least $314,000.
•$1.75 million to Gradalis Inc., a Carrollton firm. Among its investors has been Dr. James R. Leininger, who has contributed more than $264,000 to Perry's campaigns.
•$1.5 million to ThromboVision Inc., a Houston company. One of its investors was Charles W. Tate, who has donated more than $424,000 to Perry.
•$4.5 million to Convergen Lifesciences Inc. of Austin. The company was founded by David G. Nance, a former Perry appointee who has given the governor $80,000.
•$2 million to Seno Medical Instruments Inc. of San Antonio. Its investors have included Southwest Business Corp. and its subsidiaries, whose chairman, Charles Amato, gave Perry more than $32,000.
•$975,000 to Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc. of Houston. At the time of the award, one investor was William A. McMinn, who has contributed $152,000 to Perry.
In an interview with The News, Perry said he usually does not know if his campaign supporters have financial interests in the companies that get tech fund money. "From time to time, I may know someone who has an interest in a project. That is a pretty rare occurrence," he said.
However, Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said in an e-mail that applicants for technology funding must provide full financial disclosure to the governor's staff, including the names of investors.
The governor said he does not look at these disclosures when deciding whether to approve an award. He added: "Whether they contribute to my campaign or not has nothing to do with whether or not the project is appropriate" for funding.
Mark Ellison, a former director of the tech fund, called the involvement of Perry's contributors incidental. "Decisions were based on the quality of the deal, the market and character of the people running the company or the project," he said.
SEC documents
The News reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents, personal financial disclosures, court filings, contracts and other public records to determine who has invested in companies that were tech fund recipients. Campaign contribution amounts were taken from Texas Ethics Commission filings.
Gauging the degree to which Perry contributors benefit from the tech fund is difficult because most of the applicants are privately held companies, and the fund's proceedings are shrouded in secrecy.
Perry said confidentiality protects companies that "really aren't interested in opening up their books so their competitors can stroll in and write down all of the different business practices, their cash on hand, or even more detailed descriptions of their technology."
Not every state's program is as closed. In Pennsylvania, meetings of the decision-making boards are open and proprietary information is still protected, said Walter Plosila, an architect of that state's Ben Franklin Partnership.
"You can keep intellectual property issues confidential and proprietary while still providing information on what the partnership projects are about and what the public money is being used for," said Plosila, a former Pennsylvania deputy secretary of commerce.
The Texas approach is not the best public policy, he said. "How are citizens supposed to make sure their elected officials are accountable, not just for ideas but their implementation, if they don't know what's going on?"
The lack of transparency fuels the perception among some applicants that politics affects decisions, said the head of a nonprofit group that works with companies seeking tech fund money.
"There's a lot of suspicion that there's more political influence than meets the eye," said Russ Peterman, executive director for the Texas Life-Sciences Collaboration Center in Georgetown. "The process leaves the state open to some cynicism about how it is working."
State Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, chairs the House committee that has oversight of the tech fund. If money is going to companies backed by political donors, he said, "it certainly is something that should be investigated."
The Legislature created the Emerging Technology Fund in 2005 at Perry's urging. Since then, the state has awarded $173 million under the tech fund to 120 companies, according to the governor's office. An additional $161 million has gone to Texas universities, primarily for research.
At a time when private investment capital is tight, the tech fund has helped many companies get their ideas off the ground, supporters say.
"It's been a real game-changer," said Thomas Kowalski, president of the Texas Healthcare & Bioscience Institute, a nonprofit group in Austin.
There have been about 1,600 applications for funding since 2005, according to testimony at a state Senate hearing in July. Only about 7 percent receive funding.
Under the law, companies that receive tech fund money must have approval from the governor, the lieutenant governor and the House speaker. However, the speaker and lieutenant governor don't act until Perry decides to back an applicant or gives them detailed information prepared by his staff about the recommended firms, aides said.
Max Sherman, former dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, said such decisions should be in the hands of an independent body, not the state's three top elected officials.
"If you were advising those three people that make that ultimate decision," he said, "you would almost say you ought to try to distance yourself from any kind of flak you might get that might be perceived as an improper relationship."
State Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, was the Senate sponsor of the bill the created the tech fund. She said last week that she would be willing to eliminate the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker from the decision-making process if politics has infected the tech fund.
"It would be preferable to getting rid of the program as a result of what is being uncovered," she said.
Perry makes his decision on tech fund awards after receiving recommendations from a 17-member advisory committee that he appoints. The advisory committee meets in sessions closed to the public and does not take minutes of its meetings. Its recommendations to Perry are not made public, either.
Before the advisory committee considers applications, seven regional boards and one statewide life science board conduct their own reviews. The boards are private, nonprofit groups, and their meetings also are closed to the public.
Texas is one of more than 20 states that have established economic development funds to nurture start-up technology companies.
Dan Berglund, head of an Ohio-based nonprofit group that promotes technology development, said Texas is distinctive in its tech fund's organization.
Most states, he said, do not have their top political leaders as decision makers. Technical review, he said, is normally done by out-of-state experts.
"It's a safeguard against politics coming into play, and it's a safeguard against conflicts of interest," said Berglund, president and chief executive officer of the State Science & Technology Institute.
The tech fund's advisory committee is a mixture of private investors, entrepreneurs, scientists and academics. Some are also Perry donors.
Because their opinions are advisory and not binding, committee members are not required to file financial disclosures with the ethics commission.
On Friday afternoon, the governor's office gave The News an undated, sixpage "ethics code" for the advisory committee.
The policy says a conflict of interest exists when a committee member has a business relationship that could "reasonably be expected to diminish" his judgment or objectivity.
If a member wants to invest in a company that has applied for tech fund money, he is required to disclose this. A separate committee that includes a member of the governor's staff is then formed to resolve the issue.
Bill Sproull of Richardson, an advisory committee member since the panel's inception, said the governor's staff has often given oral instructions about conflict of interest policies. He said he did not recall a written policy.
"The very first thing we talk about are those recusal policies and other things [related to conflicts of interest]," said Sproull, who was recently named chairman of the tech fund committee. "So that's pretty well engrained."
The regional boards also have conflict of interest policies.
Houston financier
Charles W. Tate, a noted Houston financier, is the head of one of those boards.
Tate was a partner in the investment firm led by Dallas businessman Tom Hicks, former owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team.
In 2006, Tate started the Texas Life Science Center for Innovation and Commercialization. It functions like a regional board, but it has statewide responsibilities for tech fund applicants involved in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
ThromboVision brought its tech fund application before the board. The firm was developing technology to measure the effectiveness of anti-clotting drugs.
In November 2006, the life science board recommended that ThromboVision get money from the tech fund. Tate said he voted for it. The endorsement was forwarded to the advisory committee in Austin.
Four months later, ThromboVision's CEO, Edward Teitel, approached Tate with an "investment opportunity," Tate wrote in a letter to The News.
"At the time," he wrote, "the [state advisory committee] had already approved the ThromboVision application contingent upon the company's ability to raise matching funds from the private sector."
Tate made two investments in the company, he wrote, in May and August of 2007.
Perry announced in October 2007 that ThromboVision would get $1.5 million in tech fund money.
Tate said his vote to recommend funding was proper. "There was no need to recuse myself from [life science board] discussions on ThromboVision as I was not an investor on the date of that meeting," Tate wrote.
Nothing in the rules of the tech fund's state advisory committee, he said, barred him from investing in companies receiving tech fund awards.
"Furthermore," he wrote, "the [life science] board received oral advice from legal counsel at Vinson & Elkins at its first board meeting that there was nothing to prohibit ... directors from investing in ETF-funded companies."
That soon changed, Tate said. "However," he wrote, "in the fall of 2007, Vinson & Elkins reversed its prior opinion and orally advised the ... Board that under federal IRS tax guidelines, [life science] directors should avoid investing in ETF-funded companies."
An attorney who advises the Internal Revenue Service on tax-exempt matters told The News he would counsel board members not to make investments in companies they review.
"You're benefiting from confidential information," said James P. Joseph, who heads the tax-exempt practice at Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, D.C. "It's just a classic conflict of interest."
The ThromboVision investment was Tate's second in a company that received a tech fund award. In January 2007, Tate bought shares in OrthoAccel Technologies Inc., another Houston-based firm.
Five months later, the life science board recommended that OrthoAccel get money. This time, Tate said he did not vote.
Perry's office announced in early 2008 that OrthoAccel would receive $750,000 from the tech fund.
Records used by the state to monitor the award show that the governor's office was informed that Tate was an investor in OrthoAccel.
Tate said that ThromboVision and OrthoAccel were treated the same as other tech fund applicants.
"My campaign contributions [to Perry] had absolutely no effect on OrthoAccel or ThromboVision receiving funds," he wrote. "Both of these companies were subjected to the same rigorous review and approval process" as other applicants.
Tate's more than $424,000 in donations to Perry's campaigns since 2000 includes travel on Tate's private airplane, he said.
In May, he wrote a $100,000 check to Perry, and is a member of the governor's statewide re-election committee.
Despite support from the state, Tate and other investors, ThromboVision filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 2. Court filings show that Tate owned 200,000 shares of the company's preferred stock.
The filings also revealed that the company had an investment from another Perry supporter: Houston investor Charles Miller, who gave the governor $125,000.
Miller said he's had "virtually no contact" with Perry since resigning from the University of Texas System Board of Regents.
"I didn't support him in the primary," he said. "I supported Kay Hutchison. I don't have an argument or fight with him, but I don't have an ongoing relationship with him."
Multiple donors
Some other companies that have received tech fund awards have multiple investors who are big Perry donors.
The News obtained a capitalization table for Gradalis that showed James R. Leininger owning 390,000 shares.
Leininger, a former Army doctor in San Antonio who became one of the wealthiest Texans by developing specialty medical beds, has been a major contributor to Republican candidates for years.
The documents also showed that John McHale, an Austin high-tech millionaire who for several years has contributed to Democratic candidates, agreed to invest $2 million for 200,000 shares in Gradalis.
Perry announced a $1.75 million tech fund award to Gradalis on March 5, 2009. Four days later, McHale signed the stock purchase agreement. McHale made a $50,000 contribution to Perry's re-election campaign later that year.
Neither McHale nor Leininger returned messages seeking comment.
Terrabon is another with multiple Perry donors as investors. In 2008, Texas A&M System regent Adams made a $100,000 loan to the company. It was later converted to equity, Adams said.
Perry announced in July that Terrabon, which is trying to convert landfill waste into fuel, would receive $2.75 million from the tech fund.
One of its founders is Emil Ogden, father of state Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan. The younger Ogden, chairman of the senate finance committee, said he has "no interest and no involvement with Terrabon."
Another of the company's founders is David S. Carrabba. The Carrabba family and their company have donated $23,000 to Perry.
"I never talked to the governor about the company [Terrabon]," Carrabba said. "The [tech fund] process is designed to take politics out of it."
The tech fund is structured so that the state gets the right to buy stock in each company that receives an award. The state can cash in when a company is sold or goes public.
That has happened at least once. CardioSpectra Inc., which was $1.35 million in 2006, was bought by Volcano Corp. in 2007. Perry spokeswoman Cesinger placed the return on the state's investment at $2.2 million.
The governor's office would not reveal how many shares the state owns in any other companies, how many shares the state can buy in each company, and the current value of its portfolio.
In response to a question from The News about a 2009 financial report from the governor's office, a Perry spokeswoman said it referred to the state's right to buy 87,412 shares of Gradalis stock.
The governor's office also did not provide any figures on job creation, one of the stated goals of the tech fund.
"The information is simply not yet available," Perry spokeswoman Cesinger said. "If we had it, we would provide it." Those figures will be included in a report to the Legislature next year, she said.
Perry's office would not allow the tech fund's director, Jonathan Taylor, to be interviewed.
Legislators concerned
The tech fund has the same disclosure weaknesses as many other government programs that try to mirror the private sector, said James Nolen, a distinguished senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin business school.
"Transparency, accountability, measurement: that is what most of these programs lack," said Nolen. "They don't want transparency. People might figure out what is going on."
Strama, the Democratic state representative from Austin, said he questions whether the tech fund is being properly run from the governor's office.
"I think they weren't doing a good job of managing it from the beginning," he said. "They didn't have systems in place to monitor and measure the health of the companies they had invested in and the health of the overall portfolio."
Strama said budget shortfalls may force a cut in the tech fund when the legislature convenes next year. "I can't see any way it's not going to be downsized," he said.
And Republican Shapiro said some lawmakers remain incensed that Perry granted $50 million in tech fund money last year to his alma mater, Texas A&M. The governor transferred the money from the state's Enterprise Fund and largely bypassed the tech fund's advisory process.
"There were many in the legislature following that act that wanted to get rid of the whole program," Shapiro said.
Shapiro said she remains a supporter of the tech fund. But because of continuing resentment, budget shortfalls and the possibility of involvement by Perry donors, she said, the fund could be fighting for its survival next year.
"I would hope that if it is of value we will find a way to cure the ills that have transpired and continue the program at some level," she said.
jdrew@dallasnews.com; smcgonigle@dallasnews.com; rmcneill@dallasnews.com
TIMELINE: THROMBOVISION INVESTMENT July 18, 2005: ThromboVision Inc. is incorporated by Edward Teitel. It is based in Houston.
January 25, 2006: Houston investor Charles W. Tate starts Texas Life Science Center for Innovation and Commercialization. It vets applicants for the Texas Emerging Technology Fund.
Nov. 9, 2006: The life science center board recommends ThromboVision to the tech fund's state advisory board. Tate, who is chairman of the life science center's board, votes yes.
March 15, 2007: Teitel makes an investment presentation to Tate.
April 20, 2007: A letter from Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and then-House Speaker Tom Craddick tells Teitel that ThromboVision is the recipient of a $1.5 million award from the tech fund.
May 8, 2007: Tate makes his first investment in ThromboVision.
June 13, 2007: Teitel signs a contract with the governor's office to receive the ETF money.
July 5, 2007: Perry chief of staff Brian C. Newby signs the ETF contract.
Aug. 31, 2007: Tate makes his second investment in ThromboVision.
Oct. 9, 2007: Perry's office announces the ThromboVision award to the public.
Sept. 2, 2010: ThromboVision declares bankruptcy. It reveals that major Perry donors Tate and Houston investor Charles Miller own 200,000 and 250,000 preferred shares, respectively.
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research
AT A GLANCE: ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEMBERS A statewide advisory committee of 17 members, appointed by the governor, must decide whether to recommend a company for Emerging Technology Fund money. The committee passes its recommendations to the governor.
Here are the current members. Two positions are vacant.
•Bill Sproull, Richardson Chamber of Commerce and advisory committee chair
•Aruna Viswanathan, Clear Spring Capital Group and advisory committee vice chair
•Bob Pearson, WeissComm Group
•C. Mauli Agrawal, dean of Engineering, University of Texas at San Antonio.
•Michael Bleyzer, president & CEO, SigmaBleyzer Investment Group LLC
•T. Randall Cain, managing partner, Ernst & Young
•Brett Gilbert, Texas A&M University
•Judy Hawley, Advanced Acoustic Concepts
•Bill Holmes, Datamark
•Rick Ledesma, DataLogic Software, Inc
•William E. Morrow, chairman & CEO, CSIdentity Corp.
•John Schrock Sr., Lifetime Industries
•Max Talbott, principal consultant and owner, Max Talbott LLC
•Richard Williams, head of renewable energy, Energy Future Holdings
•Enrique "Henry" R. Venta, Lamar University College of Business
SOURCE: Governor's office
http://cache.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/100310dntexetfmain.2981294.html
When Gov. Rick Perry announces that a company will get money from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, he often describes it as an important investment in the state's future.
Link: Emerging Technology Fund
Behind the scenes, some of the governor's biggest political supporters have been making investments of their own – in Perry and in companies getting money from the tech fund.
An investigation by The Dallas Morning News found that more than $16 million from the Emerging Technology Fund has been awarded to companies with investors or officers who are large campaign donors to Perry.
The governor denied that politics influence his decisions on tech fund awards.
The fund gives taxpayers' dollars to promising high-tech startups. It is a key part of Perry's economic development program, which he has touted in his re-election campaign against Democrat Bill White.
The governor's office administers the tech fund, and the governor must approve each award – a system that most other states with tech funds avoid to guard against political influence.
The News found that tech fund money has been awarded to companies with which at least eight significant Perry donors are affiliated. Among them:
•$2.75 million to Terrabon Inc., a Houston company. Its backers have included Phil Adams, a college friend of Perry's who has given his campaign at least $314,000.
•$1.75 million to Gradalis Inc., a Carrollton firm. Among its investors has been Dr. James R. Leininger, who has contributed more than $264,000 to Perry's campaigns.
•$1.5 million to ThromboVision Inc., a Houston company. One of its investors was Charles W. Tate, who has donated more than $424,000 to Perry.
•$4.5 million to Convergen Lifesciences Inc. of Austin. The company was founded by David G. Nance, a former Perry appointee who has given the governor $80,000.
•$2 million to Seno Medical Instruments Inc. of San Antonio. Its investors have included Southwest Business Corp. and its subsidiaries, whose chairman, Charles Amato, gave Perry more than $32,000.
•$975,000 to Carbon Nanotechnologies Inc. of Houston. At the time of the award, one investor was William A. McMinn, who has contributed $152,000 to Perry.
In an interview with The News, Perry said he usually does not know if his campaign supporters have financial interests in the companies that get tech fund money. "From time to time, I may know someone who has an interest in a project. That is a pretty rare occurrence," he said.
However, Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said in an e-mail that applicants for technology funding must provide full financial disclosure to the governor's staff, including the names of investors.
The governor said he does not look at these disclosures when deciding whether to approve an award. He added: "Whether they contribute to my campaign or not has nothing to do with whether or not the project is appropriate" for funding.
Mark Ellison, a former director of the tech fund, called the involvement of Perry's contributors incidental. "Decisions were based on the quality of the deal, the market and character of the people running the company or the project," he said.
SEC documents
The News reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents, personal financial disclosures, court filings, contracts and other public records to determine who has invested in companies that were tech fund recipients. Campaign contribution amounts were taken from Texas Ethics Commission filings.
Gauging the degree to which Perry contributors benefit from the tech fund is difficult because most of the applicants are privately held companies, and the fund's proceedings are shrouded in secrecy.
Perry said confidentiality protects companies that "really aren't interested in opening up their books so their competitors can stroll in and write down all of the different business practices, their cash on hand, or even more detailed descriptions of their technology."
Not every state's program is as closed. In Pennsylvania, meetings of the decision-making boards are open and proprietary information is still protected, said Walter Plosila, an architect of that state's Ben Franklin Partnership.
"You can keep intellectual property issues confidential and proprietary while still providing information on what the partnership projects are about and what the public money is being used for," said Plosila, a former Pennsylvania deputy secretary of commerce.
The Texas approach is not the best public policy, he said. "How are citizens supposed to make sure their elected officials are accountable, not just for ideas but their implementation, if they don't know what's going on?"
The lack of transparency fuels the perception among some applicants that politics affects decisions, said the head of a nonprofit group that works with companies seeking tech fund money.
"There's a lot of suspicion that there's more political influence than meets the eye," said Russ Peterman, executive director for the Texas Life-Sciences Collaboration Center in Georgetown. "The process leaves the state open to some cynicism about how it is working."
State Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, chairs the House committee that has oversight of the tech fund. If money is going to companies backed by political donors, he said, "it certainly is something that should be investigated."
The Legislature created the Emerging Technology Fund in 2005 at Perry's urging. Since then, the state has awarded $173 million under the tech fund to 120 companies, according to the governor's office. An additional $161 million has gone to Texas universities, primarily for research.
At a time when private investment capital is tight, the tech fund has helped many companies get their ideas off the ground, supporters say.
"It's been a real game-changer," said Thomas Kowalski, president of the Texas Healthcare & Bioscience Institute, a nonprofit group in Austin.
There have been about 1,600 applications for funding since 2005, according to testimony at a state Senate hearing in July. Only about 7 percent receive funding.
Under the law, companies that receive tech fund money must have approval from the governor, the lieutenant governor and the House speaker. However, the speaker and lieutenant governor don't act until Perry decides to back an applicant or gives them detailed information prepared by his staff about the recommended firms, aides said.
Max Sherman, former dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, said such decisions should be in the hands of an independent body, not the state's three top elected officials.
"If you were advising those three people that make that ultimate decision," he said, "you would almost say you ought to try to distance yourself from any kind of flak you might get that might be perceived as an improper relationship."
State Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, was the Senate sponsor of the bill the created the tech fund. She said last week that she would be willing to eliminate the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker from the decision-making process if politics has infected the tech fund.
"It would be preferable to getting rid of the program as a result of what is being uncovered," she said.
Perry makes his decision on tech fund awards after receiving recommendations from a 17-member advisory committee that he appoints. The advisory committee meets in sessions closed to the public and does not take minutes of its meetings. Its recommendations to Perry are not made public, either.
Before the advisory committee considers applications, seven regional boards and one statewide life science board conduct their own reviews. The boards are private, nonprofit groups, and their meetings also are closed to the public.
Texas is one of more than 20 states that have established economic development funds to nurture start-up technology companies.
Dan Berglund, head of an Ohio-based nonprofit group that promotes technology development, said Texas is distinctive in its tech fund's organization.
Most states, he said, do not have their top political leaders as decision makers. Technical review, he said, is normally done by out-of-state experts.
"It's a safeguard against politics coming into play, and it's a safeguard against conflicts of interest," said Berglund, president and chief executive officer of the State Science & Technology Institute.
The tech fund's advisory committee is a mixture of private investors, entrepreneurs, scientists and academics. Some are also Perry donors.
Because their opinions are advisory and not binding, committee members are not required to file financial disclosures with the ethics commission.
On Friday afternoon, the governor's office gave The News an undated, sixpage "ethics code" for the advisory committee.
The policy says a conflict of interest exists when a committee member has a business relationship that could "reasonably be expected to diminish" his judgment or objectivity.
If a member wants to invest in a company that has applied for tech fund money, he is required to disclose this. A separate committee that includes a member of the governor's staff is then formed to resolve the issue.
Bill Sproull of Richardson, an advisory committee member since the panel's inception, said the governor's staff has often given oral instructions about conflict of interest policies. He said he did not recall a written policy.
"The very first thing we talk about are those recusal policies and other things [related to conflicts of interest]," said Sproull, who was recently named chairman of the tech fund committee. "So that's pretty well engrained."
The regional boards also have conflict of interest policies.
Houston financier
Charles W. Tate, a noted Houston financier, is the head of one of those boards.
Tate was a partner in the investment firm led by Dallas businessman Tom Hicks, former owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team.
In 2006, Tate started the Texas Life Science Center for Innovation and Commercialization. It functions like a regional board, but it has statewide responsibilities for tech fund applicants involved in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
ThromboVision brought its tech fund application before the board. The firm was developing technology to measure the effectiveness of anti-clotting drugs.
In November 2006, the life science board recommended that ThromboVision get money from the tech fund. Tate said he voted for it. The endorsement was forwarded to the advisory committee in Austin.
Four months later, ThromboVision's CEO, Edward Teitel, approached Tate with an "investment opportunity," Tate wrote in a letter to The News.
"At the time," he wrote, "the [state advisory committee] had already approved the ThromboVision application contingent upon the company's ability to raise matching funds from the private sector."
Tate made two investments in the company, he wrote, in May and August of 2007.
Perry announced in October 2007 that ThromboVision would get $1.5 million in tech fund money.
Tate said his vote to recommend funding was proper. "There was no need to recuse myself from [life science board] discussions on ThromboVision as I was not an investor on the date of that meeting," Tate wrote.
Nothing in the rules of the tech fund's state advisory committee, he said, barred him from investing in companies receiving tech fund awards.
"Furthermore," he wrote, "the [life science] board received oral advice from legal counsel at Vinson & Elkins at its first board meeting that there was nothing to prohibit ... directors from investing in ETF-funded companies."
That soon changed, Tate said. "However," he wrote, "in the fall of 2007, Vinson & Elkins reversed its prior opinion and orally advised the ... Board that under federal IRS tax guidelines, [life science] directors should avoid investing in ETF-funded companies."
An attorney who advises the Internal Revenue Service on tax-exempt matters told The News he would counsel board members not to make investments in companies they review.
"You're benefiting from confidential information," said James P. Joseph, who heads the tax-exempt practice at Arnold & Porter LLP in Washington, D.C. "It's just a classic conflict of interest."
The ThromboVision investment was Tate's second in a company that received a tech fund award. In January 2007, Tate bought shares in OrthoAccel Technologies Inc., another Houston-based firm.
Five months later, the life science board recommended that OrthoAccel get money. This time, Tate said he did not vote.
Perry's office announced in early 2008 that OrthoAccel would receive $750,000 from the tech fund.
Records used by the state to monitor the award show that the governor's office was informed that Tate was an investor in OrthoAccel.
Tate said that ThromboVision and OrthoAccel were treated the same as other tech fund applicants.
"My campaign contributions [to Perry] had absolutely no effect on OrthoAccel or ThromboVision receiving funds," he wrote. "Both of these companies were subjected to the same rigorous review and approval process" as other applicants.
Tate's more than $424,000 in donations to Perry's campaigns since 2000 includes travel on Tate's private airplane, he said.
In May, he wrote a $100,000 check to Perry, and is a member of the governor's statewide re-election committee.
Despite support from the state, Tate and other investors, ThromboVision filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 2. Court filings show that Tate owned 200,000 shares of the company's preferred stock.
The filings also revealed that the company had an investment from another Perry supporter: Houston investor Charles Miller, who gave the governor $125,000.
Miller said he's had "virtually no contact" with Perry since resigning from the University of Texas System Board of Regents.
"I didn't support him in the primary," he said. "I supported Kay Hutchison. I don't have an argument or fight with him, but I don't have an ongoing relationship with him."
Multiple donors
Some other companies that have received tech fund awards have multiple investors who are big Perry donors.
The News obtained a capitalization table for Gradalis that showed James R. Leininger owning 390,000 shares.
Leininger, a former Army doctor in San Antonio who became one of the wealthiest Texans by developing specialty medical beds, has been a major contributor to Republican candidates for years.
The documents also showed that John McHale, an Austin high-tech millionaire who for several years has contributed to Democratic candidates, agreed to invest $2 million for 200,000 shares in Gradalis.
Perry announced a $1.75 million tech fund award to Gradalis on March 5, 2009. Four days later, McHale signed the stock purchase agreement. McHale made a $50,000 contribution to Perry's re-election campaign later that year.
Neither McHale nor Leininger returned messages seeking comment.
Terrabon is another with multiple Perry donors as investors. In 2008, Texas A&M System regent Adams made a $100,000 loan to the company. It was later converted to equity, Adams said.
Perry announced in July that Terrabon, which is trying to convert landfill waste into fuel, would receive $2.75 million from the tech fund.
One of its founders is Emil Ogden, father of state Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan. The younger Ogden, chairman of the senate finance committee, said he has "no interest and no involvement with Terrabon."
Another of the company's founders is David S. Carrabba. The Carrabba family and their company have donated $23,000 to Perry.
"I never talked to the governor about the company [Terrabon]," Carrabba said. "The [tech fund] process is designed to take politics out of it."
The tech fund is structured so that the state gets the right to buy stock in each company that receives an award. The state can cash in when a company is sold or goes public.
That has happened at least once. CardioSpectra Inc., which was $1.35 million in 2006, was bought by Volcano Corp. in 2007. Perry spokeswoman Cesinger placed the return on the state's investment at $2.2 million.
The governor's office would not reveal how many shares the state owns in any other companies, how many shares the state can buy in each company, and the current value of its portfolio.
In response to a question from The News about a 2009 financial report from the governor's office, a Perry spokeswoman said it referred to the state's right to buy 87,412 shares of Gradalis stock.
The governor's office also did not provide any figures on job creation, one of the stated goals of the tech fund.
"The information is simply not yet available," Perry spokeswoman Cesinger said. "If we had it, we would provide it." Those figures will be included in a report to the Legislature next year, she said.
Perry's office would not allow the tech fund's director, Jonathan Taylor, to be interviewed.
Legislators concerned
The tech fund has the same disclosure weaknesses as many other government programs that try to mirror the private sector, said James Nolen, a distinguished senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin business school.
"Transparency, accountability, measurement: that is what most of these programs lack," said Nolen. "They don't want transparency. People might figure out what is going on."
Strama, the Democratic state representative from Austin, said he questions whether the tech fund is being properly run from the governor's office.
"I think they weren't doing a good job of managing it from the beginning," he said. "They didn't have systems in place to monitor and measure the health of the companies they had invested in and the health of the overall portfolio."
Strama said budget shortfalls may force a cut in the tech fund when the legislature convenes next year. "I can't see any way it's not going to be downsized," he said.
And Republican Shapiro said some lawmakers remain incensed that Perry granted $50 million in tech fund money last year to his alma mater, Texas A&M. The governor transferred the money from the state's Enterprise Fund and largely bypassed the tech fund's advisory process.
"There were many in the legislature following that act that wanted to get rid of the whole program," Shapiro said.
Shapiro said she remains a supporter of the tech fund. But because of continuing resentment, budget shortfalls and the possibility of involvement by Perry donors, she said, the fund could be fighting for its survival next year.
"I would hope that if it is of value we will find a way to cure the ills that have transpired and continue the program at some level," she said.
jdrew@dallasnews.com; smcgonigle@dallasnews.com; rmcneill@dallasnews.com
TIMELINE: THROMBOVISION INVESTMENT July 18, 2005: ThromboVision Inc. is incorporated by Edward Teitel. It is based in Houston.
January 25, 2006: Houston investor Charles W. Tate starts Texas Life Science Center for Innovation and Commercialization. It vets applicants for the Texas Emerging Technology Fund.
Nov. 9, 2006: The life science center board recommends ThromboVision to the tech fund's state advisory board. Tate, who is chairman of the life science center's board, votes yes.
March 15, 2007: Teitel makes an investment presentation to Tate.
April 20, 2007: A letter from Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and then-House Speaker Tom Craddick tells Teitel that ThromboVision is the recipient of a $1.5 million award from the tech fund.
May 8, 2007: Tate makes his first investment in ThromboVision.
June 13, 2007: Teitel signs a contract with the governor's office to receive the ETF money.
July 5, 2007: Perry chief of staff Brian C. Newby signs the ETF contract.
Aug. 31, 2007: Tate makes his second investment in ThromboVision.
Oct. 9, 2007: Perry's office announces the ThromboVision award to the public.
Sept. 2, 2010: ThromboVision declares bankruptcy. It reveals that major Perry donors Tate and Houston investor Charles Miller own 200,000 and 250,000 preferred shares, respectively.
SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research
AT A GLANCE: ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEMBERS A statewide advisory committee of 17 members, appointed by the governor, must decide whether to recommend a company for Emerging Technology Fund money. The committee passes its recommendations to the governor.
Here are the current members. Two positions are vacant.
•Bill Sproull, Richardson Chamber of Commerce and advisory committee chair
•Aruna Viswanathan, Clear Spring Capital Group and advisory committee vice chair
•Bob Pearson, WeissComm Group
•C. Mauli Agrawal, dean of Engineering, University of Texas at San Antonio.
•Michael Bleyzer, president & CEO, SigmaBleyzer Investment Group LLC
•T. Randall Cain, managing partner, Ernst & Young
•Brett Gilbert, Texas A&M University
•Judy Hawley, Advanced Acoustic Concepts
•Bill Holmes, Datamark
•Rick Ledesma, DataLogic Software, Inc
•William E. Morrow, chairman & CEO, CSIdentity Corp.
•John Schrock Sr., Lifetime Industries
•Max Talbott, principal consultant and owner, Max Talbott LLC
•Richard Williams, head of renewable energy, Energy Future Holdings
•Enrique "Henry" R. Venta, Lamar University College of Business
SOURCE: Governor's office
http://cache.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/100310dntexetfmain.2981294.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)