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Thursday, June 01, 2006

And the outrages just keep on a-comin'

If you feel like you're hitting outrage overload, maybe once of several times during this Bush administration, you'll still be able to get a second wind. Bush's remaining term as President is about as long as the entire time that Jack Kennedy served as President.

And if you think this crew has exhausted all the ways to let today's robber barons avoid obeying the law, all I can say is, "Oh ye of little faith".

Meanwhile, did you know that homeland security depends on defense contractors being exempted from securities laws? Bush was even willing to delegate that power to his Homeland Security chief John Negroponte: The Spy Chief's New Financial Power by Dawn Kopecki Business Week 06/05/06 issue; published 05/26/06 (link behind subscription). Kopecki reports:

The brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, was opaque to the untrained eye. But the bureaucratic verbiage added up to this: President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John D. Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from certain accounting and securities-disclosure obligations.

Hmm... What would those "certain obligations" be? Well, how about these?

... "with respect to matters concerning the national security of the United States," the President may exempt companies from certain critical legal obligations. These include keeping accurate "books, records, and accounts" and maintaining "a system of internal accounting controls sufficient" to ensure the propriety of transactions and the preparation of financial statements in compliance with "generally accepted accounting principles."

Kopecki also points to something fishy that may or may not have wider significance.

Unlike the lazy reporting that has become so common among what we generously call our "press corps", Kopecki actually made some effort to put two and two together, and comes up with something worth exploring more. That is, if our press grandees aren't so obsessed with David Broder's latest sex fantasies about Bill Clinton. She writes:

The timing of Bush's move is intriguing. On the same day the President signed the memo, Porter Goss resigned as director of the CIA amid criticism of ineffectiveness and poor morale at the agency. Only six days later, on May 11, USA Today reported that the National Security Agency had obtained millions of calling records of ordinary citizens provided by three major U.S. phone companies. Negroponte oversees both the CIA and NSA in his role as the Administration's top intelligence official.

At least there is actually a law passed by Congress defining this power.

Dick Cheney would probably prefer to do things like this illegally, though, just to widen the power of the Unilateral Executive. BW observes that the power is granted to the President in a 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which famously affected much more than foreign business practices. But:

Administration officials told BusinessWeek they believe this is the first time a President has delegated that power to someone outside the Oval Office.

And how forthcoming is the Bush-Cheney administration about how they are using it? Yes, I know it's a joke to ask:

In addition to refusing to explain why Bush delegated this authority to Negroponte, the White House declined to say if Bush or Negroponte has exercised the authority and let a company avoid securities rules. Negroponte spokesman Carl Kropf said: "The ability to protect the confidentiality of some of these relationships with companies is important," declining further comment.

We can't tell you mere citizens why we're waving the law for, say, Halliburton, because it's national security and we have to keep it secret from you for your own good. Otherwise The Terrorists would win. Remember 9/11? And by the way, this doesn't imply that Halliburton has been exempted. That's just an example. We can't tell you who's affected because, yadda, yadda, 9/11:

By invoking national security, the government can use a number of other legal tools to keep corporate activity secret. The Bush Administration has employed the so-called state-secret privilege to seek dismissal of a pending private lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco concerning the relationship between the NSA and major phone companies. The Administration separately has asserted that secrecy provisions in the National Security Act of 1959 preclude an investigation of the NSA's dealings with the telecom industry.

But no one at our great public corporations would use this to cut financial corners, would they? No, of course not! Why look at this:

A spokesman for Lockheed Martin Corp. wouldn't confirm or deny the company has ever gotten a waiver but said Lockheed is "fully compliant" with all financial-disclosure requirements. Boeing Co. and Raytheon Co. declined comment.

Yep, they just keep on a-comin'.

posted at 12:50:00 AM by Bruce Miller

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