Stephan: Here is some good news. The story I ran yesterday about the House hiding their junketing was too much corruption, or too obvious, to go unchallenged, and today that decision has been reversed.
The House Ethics Committee plans to reverse its decision to eliminate the disclosure of all-expense-trips on annual finance reports, after a report on the change by the National Journal sparked widespread outrage.
The Journal reported that committee chair Michael Conaway (R-TX) said Thursday that the panel would reinstate the disclosure requirement.
“We will reverse that decision,” Conaway said on a local radio show, according to the Journal.
The original decision, made without public announcement, had eliminated the requirement that House members disclose trips paid for by private groups on their annual financial disclosure forms. The Journal called that form the “chief document” used by journalists and watchdogs.
The trips would have still been disclosed to the House clerk’s office, but a top watchdog called the change “an obvious effort to avoid responsibility.”
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BEATRICE EDWARDS, - Berrett-Koehler Publishers/Truthout
Stephan: This is an extract from Beatrice Edwards' new book, The Rise of the American Corporate Security State. It is another tale of the corruption that has become the leitmotif of America in the 21st century.
Reason to be afraid #6:
Systemic corruption and a fundamental conflict of interest are driving us toward the precipice of new economic crises.
In the early spring of 2010, my phone rang, and the caller ID read “Unknown.” On the other end of the line was an AIG whistleblower. Until the 2008 financial crisis, AIG was a rogue elephant in the zoo of the US financial world, unknown to most Americans. After that, though, everyone who read a newspaper knew what AIG was. AIG Financial Products Division (AIG-FP), the London-based unit that took on the risk for the Wall Street banks, became a familiar villain in the developing story of fraud and corruption underlying the Great Recession of 2008-2009.
My caller spoke tentatively at first, without specifics, as cautious whistleblowers do, but she was concerned about the way in which the AIG compliance office at corporate headquarters worked. This was the office responsible for ensuring that the huge insurer did not break the law in any one of the 145 or so countries where it operated.
According to the caller that morning, the mainstay of AIG’s compliance program was “a joke,” and it had been for a long time. For years the program consisted […]
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TRAVIS GETTYS, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Exactly as happened when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, and within days Republican controlled corrupt states of the Old South were trying to limit voting to conservative Whites, so within hours of the Hobby Lobby case, exactly as predicted by Justice Ginsburg, the religious loop hole that decision created is being exploited. It is so obvious this would be the case that one has to conclude the five Theocratic Rightist Justices deliberately did this as part of an attempt to reconfigure the United States more to their liking. I see this as just another measure of the corruption that is eating away at America. They have an agenda and they are pursuing it.
The 5-4 majority in the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Hobby Lobby case claimed the decision was narrowly focused on closely held corporations that objected to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate on religious grounds.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned in a scathing, 35-page dissent that her colleagues had ‘ventured into a minefield” with their ruling, arguing that the majority had invited ‘for-profit entities to seek religion-based exemptions from regulations they deem offensive to their faith.”
It took only one day to prove her predictions accurate.
The court on Tuesday, the day after its ruling, ordered three appeals courts to reconsider challenges by corporations that objected to providing insurance that covers any contraceptive services – not just the four contraception methods covered in the Hobby Lobby case.
The plaintiffs in all three of those cases are Catholic business owners, including the Michigan-based organic food company Eden Foods.
‘I don’t care if the federal government is telling me to buy my employees Jack Daniel’s or birth control,” said Michael Potter, founder of Eden Foods. ‘What gives them the right to tell me that I have to do that?”
The appeals court that rejected Potter’s motion argued the business owner’s claims more closely resembled ‘a laissez-faire, anti-government screed” […]
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DANIEL WALLIS, - Reuters/The Raw Story
Stephan: Here is some excellent news. What is going on in Colorado is completely discrediting the Prohibitionist's arguments. It is getting only a fraction of the attention it should, which is an interesting trend in itself. But what is happening in Colorado I think is going to change the Blue value states. This is going to become the model.
Washington, I am afraid, is making a much more muddled job of it. And greed and a desire to sabotage on the part of some combined and resulted in over-taxing, which may price legal cannabis out of the market, and perpetuate a grey market. But legalization itself has become a kind of non-issue.
DENVER — At the Native Roots Apothecary, a discreet marijuana shop in a grand old building in Denver’s busy 16th street shopping mall, business is so brisk that customers are given a number before taking a seat to wait their turn.
There are young men in ball caps, nervous-looking professionals in suits, and the frail and elderly. Staff say customers have been flocking to their outlets since Colorado voted to allow recreational pot use for adults from January.
Six months on, Colorado’s marijuana shops are mushrooming, with support from local consumers, weed tourists and federal government taking a wait-and-see attitude.
Tax dollars are pouring in, crime is down in Denver, and few of the early concerns about social breakdown have materialized – at least so far.
‘The sky hasn’t fallen, but we’re a long way from knowing the unintended consequences,” said Andrew Freeman, director of marijuana coordination for Colorado. ‘This is a huge social and economic question.”
Denver, dubbed the ‘Mile High” city, now has about 340 recreational and medicinal pot shops. They tout the relaxing, powerful or introspective attributes of the crystal-encased buds with names like Jilly Bean, Sour Diesel and Silverback Kush.
In the first four months, marijuana sales amounted to more than $202 […]
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Chris Matthews, - Fortune
Stephan: Corruption not only pervades the Federal government, it is also rampant, particularly in Red value states. Please note that everyone of the most corrupt states have Republican governments.
New research takes a look at decades of corruption convictions to find the crookedest states in the union.
When we think of government corruption (as one tends to do), our biased minds often gravitate to thoughts of military juntas and third world governments. But, of course, corruption is everywhere, in one form or another. And it’s costing U.S. citizens big time.
A new study from researchers at the University of Hong Kong and Indiana University estimates that corruption on the state level is costing Americans in the 10 most corrupt states an average of $1,308 per year, or 5.2% of those states’ average expenditures per year.
The researchers studied more than 25,000 convictions of public officials for violation of federal corruption laws between 1976 and 2008 as well as patterns in state spending to develop a corruption index that estimates the most and least corrupt states in the union. Based on this method, the the most corrupt states are:
1. Mississippi
2. Louisiana
3. Tennessee
4. Illinois
5. Pennsylvania
6. Alabama
7. Alaska
8. South Dakota
9. Kentucky
10. Florida
That these places landed on the list isn’t exactly surprising. Illinois, which has gain notoriety for its high-profile corruption cases in recent years, is […]
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