Ron Paul to Hold Major Rally in Tampa Ahead of RNC
Ron Paul to Hold Major Rally in Tampa Ahead of RNC
Saturday, June 30, 2012
RON PAUL TO HOLD MAJOR RALLY IN TAMPA AHEAD OF RNC ---- WILL PAUL ANNOUNCE PALIN VICE PRESIDENCY?
Ron Paul to Hold Major Rally in Tampa Ahead of RNC
Ron Paul to Hold Major Rally in Tampa Ahead of RNC
AFTER ROBERT'S TRANS-GENDER MAN-DATING PIPELINE: FREEDOMWORK'S FIVE-POINT PLAN TO ACHIEVE FULL REPEAL OF OSAM-NEY-HACK CARE
AFTER ROBERT'S TRANS-GENDER MAN-DATING PIPELINE: FREEDOMWORK'S FIVE-POINT PLAN TO ACHIEVE FULL REPEAL OF OSAM-NEY-HACK CARE
This week, Chief Justice John Roberts tragically provided the 5th vote and the strained logic that enabled the Supreme Court to uphold ObamaCare.
But We the People can still repeal it.
Here's our five-point plan for doing so.
1) Stop your state from setting up an ObamaCare exchange.*
Due to a drafting error in the president's health care law, the new system can't operate in those states that don't set up an exchange. This is true even if the federal government comes in and sets up an exchange.
So far, 31 states have declined or failed to set up an exchange.
Let's make it 50.
(Note on state Health Care Freedom Acts: Fourteen states have passed a Health Care Freedom Act (HCFA). A HCFA is a state law that protects two rights: 1) the right to choose not to participate in any health care system or plan under pain of law; and 2) the right to spend your own money to get access to any lawful health care service. Among other things, this effectively prohibits state officials from cooperating in the setting up of ObamaCare exchanges. We need a HCFA in every state.)
2) Get your state to opt out of the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion.
Half of ObamaCare's "coverage gains" come from a huge and costly expansion of the federal-state Medicaid program.
The expansion would bankrupt many state governments, and 26 states sued to have that expansion struck down or made optional.
Chief Justice Roberts's ruling effectively makes the Medicaid expansion optional for states.
We already have 26 states determined to opt out. A few states have said they will opt in. Let's get as many states to opt out as we can.
3) Elect 4 additional pro-repeal Senators, which would give us a pro-repeal majority.
Currently, the 47 Senate Republicans are all committed to full repeal. The 53 Senate Democrats all oppose full repeal. Thus, we need to elect 4 more pro-repeal senators to give us a pro-repeal majority.
(Note on "budget reconciliation": Ordinarily, it takes 60 votes (a three-fifths majority) to pass legislation through the Senate. But a special parliamentary procedure known as "budget reconciliation" enables deficit reduction bills to pass the Senate with only a simple majority (51 votes) instead of 60. (And incidentally, debate is limited on a reconciliation bill, which means it cannot be filibustered to death.) Many bills that deal with spending and taxes have been deemed to qualify for "reconciliation protection" and been passed using this procedure. Infamously, Democrats used reconciliation to ram through ObamaCare in early 2010, and we can use this same procedure to repeal the bill in early 2013. Incidentally, Chief Justice Roberts has helped ensure reconciliation protection for the full repeal bill, by effectively rewriting the ObamaCare statute to declare the individual mandate (the linchpin of the statute) to be a tax.)
4) Retain and if possible enlarge the existing House majority, which is committed to full repeal.
Critical to succeeding with steps 3 and 4 is getting candidates to sign onto the Repeal Pledge.
5) Elect a president who will sign the full repeal bill.
If we achieve steps 3 through 5, full repeal will be assured. If we can at least achieve steps 1 and 3, repeal will remain possible.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
What are we wating for? Let's get to work!
TAKE ACTION: Declare your independence from ObamaCare
Dean Clancy is FreedomWorks' Legislative Counsel and Vice President, Health Care Policy. He leads our efforts to replace the government takeover with a patient-centered system.
AMERICANS & MUSLIMS "JUST SAY NO" TO THE STRAIT OF WHORE-MUTH BLOCKAIDERS --- MAIDEN GAY CRUISE TO MUSLIM LAND HITS SNAGS
MAIDEN GAY CRUISE TO MUSLIM LAND HITS SNAGS
By Souhail Karam RABAT | Sat Jun 30, 2012 6:07pm EDT
(Reuters) - Organizers of an all-gay cruise on Saturday blamed Moroccan officials for the cancellation of what would have been the first visit of its kind to a Muslim country, but the tourism minister denied the ship was banned and said its passengers were welcome.
Cruise liner Holland America Line and trip organizer RSVP Vacations told the 2,100 holiday-makers aboard the MS Nieuw Amsterdam ship that the July 1 visit to Casablanca had been cancelled.
"Our port agent in Casablanca has advised us that authorities in Morocco have -- despite previous confirmations -- now denied our scheduled visit," the two companies said in a letter tweeted to news organizations by passengers of the ship.
"For all of us, this is a very disappointing development," they added. "It was ultimately the decision by local authorities in Morocco that has necessitated us to adjust our plans."
The Casablanca visit was supposed to be the first and the only non-European leg of a week-long journey for the cruise liner, which sailed from Barcelona on Friday with mostly American and European passengers.
Morocco's Tourism Minister Lahcen Haddad said no official decision had been made to prevent the ship from stopping in Morocco.
"We don't ban cruise ships here and we never ask our visitors about their sexual preferences," he told Reuters. Asked if the MS Nieuw Amsterdam could still visit Morocco, he said: "They can if the organizers want to".
Haddad is from the secular Popular Movement Party, a junior partner in Morocco's ruling coalition led by moderate Islamists of the Justice and Development Party (PJD).
PJD came to power in December, riding a regional wave of support for Islamist movements amid Arab revolts but saying it would not impose a strict moral code. The tourism sector accounts for 10 percent of Morocco's GDP and 450,000 jobs.
The cruise ship's visit had caught the attention of local media in this generally conservative society where the law deems same-gender sexual relationships "lewd or unnatural" and punishes them with six months to three years in jail. No political parties call for ending laws against homosexuality.
Morocco has an Islamic-inspired penal code that bans sex outside marriage and Moroccans buying alcohol, but authorities favor a tolerant brand of Islam in which young urban couples display affection in the street and locals often outnumber tourists in bars and night clubs.
That has partly helped Morocco to attract large numbers of tourists, especially from western Europe, providing much-needed foreign currency and jobs to an economy that lacks the oil riches of neighboring states.
(Reporting By Souhail Karam; Editing by Roger Atwood)
US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES APPEAL GILL/MASSACHUSETTS DOMA CASE TO THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT
US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES APPEAL GILL/MASSACHUSETTS DOMA CASE TO THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT
Scottie Thomaston + FRI JUN 29, 2012
Earlier this month, the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) who is defending DOMA in court challenges, noted in a filing that they would be petitioning the Supreme Court for certiorari, or review, by the end of the month. Today BLAG filed its petition. A petition for certiorari is the first attempt to frame the issues the Supreme Court will decide. Petitions have a list of "Questions Presented" that the Supreme Court may or may not decide to hear. (The Supreme Court can also add its own question(s) and possibly ask for briefing on any additional issues.) The questions presented here are:
(1) Whether Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act violates the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment; and
(2) Whether the court below erred by inventing and applying to Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act a previously unknown standard of equal protection review
The "previously unknown" standard of review the petition cites refers to the First Circuit's rational basis review that included both a more searching form of review that regarded laws which might be based on animus toward a particular group as suspicious, as well as a stronger focus on DOMA's impact on federalism.
The petitioners ask the Court to take the case because:
As the First Circuit recognized, this case calls out for this Court’s review. The court of appeals has invalidated a duly-enacted Act of Congress and done so even though it acknowledged both that DOMA satisfies ordinary rational basis review and does not implicate heightened scrutiny. In the establishedworld of equal protection law that result should have been impossible.
The petition also suggests that the issue of separation of powers should lead the Court to grant cert:
Separation of powers considerations strongly counsel in favor of this Court’s review. The executive branch has not only abdicated its traditional role of defending the constitutionality of duly-enacted statutes, but has simultaneously announced that it will continue to enforce DOMA. App. 127a. As a result, the House has been forced into the position of defending numerous lawsuits challenging DOMA across the Nation. That is a role for which the Justice Department—not the House—is institutionally designed.
Only this Court can settle this matter definitively. Unless and until this Court decides thequestion, the executive branch will continue toattack DOMA in the courts, while continuing to enforce it, thus creating more potential litigation for the House to defend.
The petitioners once again invoke Baker v. Nelson, the 1972 case in which the Supreme Court summarily dismissed "for want of a substantial federal question" a challenge alleging that the Equal Protection Clause requires same-sex marriage. They claim that case conflicts with the First Circuit's overturning of DOMA.
A response to the petition by the respondents (the plaintiffs at the First Circuit) is due within 30 days.
GLAD (the attorneys for the plaintiffs) has issued a press release:
Congressional Leadership Seeks Supreme Court Review of GLAD’s DOMA Case Gill Case Could be Decided in 2012-2013 SCOTUS Term
Congressional leadership in the form of the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) today filed a petition for certiorari in the case Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, a challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
The petition is in response to a unanimous May 31st ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional with respect to claims brought by seven married same-sex couples and three widowers from Massachusetts. Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) represents the plaintiffs.
Mary Bonauto, GLAD’s Civil Rights Project Director and lead attorney in the case, said, “We will look closely at the petition and will consider our options. We remain convinced that our clients deserve to be treated equally under the law and have their marriages respected by their government. Two federal courts have agreed with us so far.”
GLAD filed Gill v. Office of Personnel Management on March 3, 2009. Prior to the appellate court decision, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph L. Tauro found DOMA unconstitutional on July 8, 2010.
Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders is New England’s leading legal organization dedicated to ending discrimination based on sexual orientation, HIV status, and gender identity and expression.
'RADICAL DISGUSTINGLY IMMORAL LESBIAN & TRANSEXUAL HUMAN & SEX TRAFFICKING GROUP' ATTEMPT TO OVERTHROW THE U.S. GOVERNMENT & ARIZONA JAN BREWER
'RADICAL DISGUSTINGLY IMMORAL LESBIAN & TRANSEXUAL HUMAN & SEX TRAFFICKING GROUP' ATTEMPT TO OVERTHROW THE U.S. GOVERNMENT & ARIZONA JAN BREWER
By KATE TAYLOR Published: March 22, 2012
Zoning. School overcrowding. The design of New York’s transportation system.
These are just a few of the subjects that Mel Wymore, a candidate for City Council on the Upper West Side, brought up in an interview before addressing the elephant in the room: that, if elected, he would be the first transgender member of the Council.
“I’m not running because I’m transgender,” said Mr. Wymore, 50, who was born female but now, after testosterone therapy and top surgery, identifies as transgender. But, he said, that “doesn’t mean that being transgender doesn’t bring a certain perspective.”
Although gay men and lesbians have broken many electoral barriers — serving as mayors, state legislators and members of Congress — the same is not true of the transgender community. Only a few, including a Democratic district leader in Westchester County and a former member of the Hawaii Board of Education, have been elected to office around the country.
“I think there is a feeling that there is too much difference there,” Mr. Wymore said. But he said he believed: “This is the seat. This is the community that’s ready to go forward.”
The race, for the Sixth District seat occupied by Gale A. Brewer, who is term-limited, is competitive and has drawn a number of candidates, including Marc Landis, a district leader; Helen Rosenthal, a former chairwoman of Community Board 7; and Ken Biberaj, a vice president of the Russian Tea Room.
Melissa Sklarz, a transgender woman, said that the race was full of worthy candidates, and that as president of the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City, she could not make an endorsement. But she described Mr. Wymore’s candidacy as “an opportunity for transgender people everywhere.”
“He’s a great representative,” Ms. Sklarz said. “Many people only know of transgender, I guess, from watching Chaz Bono on ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ Mel Wymore brings a much different, broader experience.”
Mr. Wymore’s story is, naturally, complicated. As a child, growing up in Arizona, he recalled, he was always a tomboy and extremely happy. But in puberty, he said, “that started to fade.”
He had difficulty adjusting to playing the role of a young woman, and over the years — through falling in love and marrying a man, moving to New York and having two children — he felt ill at ease. Fifteen years ago, he became attracted to a woman and decided that he was a lesbian, so he came out and divorced. But relationships with women foundered.
Then, five years ago, a group called the Yes Institute, which teaches students about gender identity and sexual orientation in an effort to prevent suicide, came to his children’s school, and he observed. He was fascinated; still searching for clues to his unhappiness, he flew to the institute, in Miami. There, watching a clip of Oprah Winfrey interviewing an 8-year-old who was born a girl but had decided to live as a boy, he had a revelation.
“My jaw dropped, because I could have been that child,” he said.
At first, he was daunted by the prospect of confronting his family with another drastic change. But within a few months, he said, he knew that he wanted to begin exploring a more masculine identity.
“This was an opportunity to take off the gorilla suit I felt I’d been wearing all my life and really be myself,” he said.
Shortly after he made his decision in 2009, he was elected chairman of Community Board 7. At his first meeting, he told the board about his transition and received support, he said.
Much harder were the conversations with his son and daughter, now 18 and 15, although he said that they, too, had been understanding.
“We have had very deep conversations and some negotiations around what makes them comfortable,” he said, adding that they could still always call him “Mom.”
Among the things Mr. Wymore said he was proudest of from his term as community board chairman, which ended in 2011, were the negotiations over the coming Riverside Center, a major mixed-use development on the Upper West Side. As a result of pressure from the board and Ms. Brewer, the developer, Extell, agreed to build a 100,000-square-foot school and contribute $17.5 million toward renovating an adjacent park.
Mr. Wymore, a systems engineer and entrepreneur, also worked on new zoning rules proposed by the city’s planning department that would limit the ground-floor width of new stores on Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, a change he said would help create a more lively array of business along those avenues.
While Mr. Wymore wants to focus his candidacy on these kinds of issues, rather than gender identity, he is also happy to talk about his story, and often has a sense of humor about it.
One challenge of making the transition, he said, was being unsure whether to use the men’s or women’s restroom.
Asked how he handled it, he smiled and said, “I know where every gender-neutral bathroom is on the Upper West Side.”
OBAMA IS FORCING US TAXPAYERS TO FUND TRANSGENDER OPERATIONS FOR ILLEGALS ALIENS & FUND ABORTIONS
OBAMA IS FORCING US TAXPAYERS TO FUND TRANSGENDER OPERATIONS FOR ILLEGALS ALIENS & FUND ABORTIONS
WASHINGTON, D.C., March 2, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) –
Under new guidelines issued by the Obama administration, immigration agents must provide taxpayer-funded abortion services, transportation to the abortion clinic, and transgender hormone therapy for illegal aliens awaiting deportation.
The policy overhaul is contained in the Performance-Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS) of 2011, issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a part of the Department of Homeland Security.
The new rules, the first issued since 2008, state, “A pregnant detainee in custody shall have access to pregnancy services including…abortion services.” The government must also furnish “counseling and assistance for pregnant women in keeping with their express desires in planning for their pregnancy, whether they desire abortion, adoptive services, or to keep the child.”
If the detainee says her pregnancy was the result of rape or incest, or if her life would be endangered, “ICE will assume the costs associated with a female detainee’s decision to terminate a pregnancy.” ICE agents must “arrange for transportation at no cost to the detainee for the medical appointment,” even for elective abortions.
While the policy will pay for and transport pregnant illegals to an abortion appointment, the new regulations may block female detainees’ access to crisis pregnancy centers by mandating that they have access to “non-directive” counselling.
ICE agents are told illegals must have “access to religious counseling, and non-directive (impartial) medical resources and social counseling, to include outside social services or women’s community resource groups.” (Emphasis added.)
LifeSiteNews.com asked the Department of Homeland Security to clarify whether this provision would block access to emergency pregnancy centers or other facilities that do not refer women for abortion. The DHS has not responded to our questions.
The PBNDS also pay for transgender illegal immigrants to continue receiving hormone treatments to “transition” to their new sex.
When new arrivals show up, ICE must “inquire into a transgender detainee’s gender self-identification and history of transition-related care.” Transgender detainees will get to choose who does their body search “whenever possible,” and the search must be conducted in private. Housing for transgender detainees “shall consider the detainee’s gender self-identification and an assessment of placement on the detainee’s mental health and well-being.”
“Placement decisions should not be based solely” on the “physical anatomy of the detainee,” the PBNDS states.
“Transgender detainees who were already receiving hormone therapy when taken into ICE custody shall have continued access. All transgender detainees shall have access to mental health care, and other transgender-related health care and medication based on medical need. Treatment shall follow accepted guidelines regarding medically necessary transition-related care.”
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told LifeSiteNews.com that the new policy “changes the whole concept behind medical care for people in detention.”
“The reason you have medical care for illegal immigrants in detention is that you make sure they are healthy enough to be deported…not to be a full-service medical provider,” Kirkorian told LifeSiteNews. “It’s temporary, transitional, and the idea that you’re supposed to be dental care and hormone treatments is just ridiculous.”
Krikorian, the author of How Obama is Transforming America Through Immigration, said the Obama administration received negative feedback when it first proposed the sex-change treatments months ago.
“It’s almost like it’s from The Onion,” Krikorian told LifeSiteNews. “It’s clearly not the best use of our taxpayer dollars.”
One of the people outraged by the new policy is Congressman Lamar Smith, R-TX, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “The Obama administration’s new detention manual is more like a hospitality guideline for illegal immigrants,” he said in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com. “The administration goes beyond common sense to accommodate illegal immigrants and treats them better than citizens in federal custody.”
Congressman Smith’s Immigration Subcommittee will hold a detention oversight hearing to address the latest PBNDS at the end of March.
WILL OUR FREEDOMS & MORALS BE "LOST" AT SEA?
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/item/11824-will-our-freedoms-be-lost-at-sea
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/item/11824-will-our-freedoms-be-lost-at-sea
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/item/11824-will-our-freedoms-be-lost-at-sea
E-MAILS REVEAL CRIMINAL RETALIATION, SAME-SEX HARASSMENT, & CRIMINAL VIOLATIONS OF MORAL CONSCIENCES, COVER-UP AT ATF & DOJ FOLLOWING FAST & FURIOUS EXPOSURE
E-MAILS REVEAL CRIMINAL RETALIATION, SAME-SEX HARASSMENT, & CRIMINAL VIOLATIONS OF MORAL CONSCIENCES, COVER-UP AT ATF & DOJ FOLLOWING FAST & FURIOUS EXPOSURE
POSTED AT 10:01 AM ON JUNE 30, 2012 BY ED MORRISSEY
I recall a time when Democrats regularly lionized whistleblowers … during the Bush administration, of course. The media hailed them as heroes; Time Magazine even made them the collective Person of the Year for 2002. Democrats loved them so much that they ran one of the whistleblowers on that cover in my Congressional district in 2006 against Rep. John Kline, a former Marine colonel that Colleen Rowley’s campaign photoshopped into a Nazi uniform for their campaign website. Needless to say, Rowley has disappeared back into well-deserved obscurity, while Kline still represents my district.
These days, in the Obama era, Democrats and the media seem a lot less admiring of whistleblowers, oddly enough. Imagine for a moment that Rowley had been assigned a new boss at the FBI after her whistleblowing, one that had told others that the agency needed to “get whatever dirt we can” on her to “take her down,” and especially if that boss had previously said in the presence of at least one witness that the FBI needed to “f**k” said whistleblower. Can you imagine the media meltdown that would have occurred? Well, you’re going to have to be satisfied with imagining it, but Senator Charles Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa want answers as to why two Operation Fast and Furious whistleblowers got assigned to work for a man who said exactly that about them:
In a Friday letter to the DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Grassley and Issa said they’re now concerned retaliation is much more likely following Thursday’s votes to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal and civil contempt of Congress.
“We just learned that ATF senior management placed two of the main whistleblowers who have testified before Congress about Fast and Furious under the supervision of someone who vowed to retaliate against them,” they wrote before describing how senior political figures have made dangerous threats before.
Grassley and Issa said that in early 2011, right around the time Grassley first made public the whistleblowers’ allegations about Fast and Furious, Scot Thomasson – then the chief of the ATF’s Public Affairs Division – said, according to an eyewitness account: “We need to get whatever dirt we can on these guys [the whistleblowers] and take them down.”
Thomasson also allegedly said that: “All these whistleblowers have axes to grind. ATF needs to f—k these guys.”
According to Grassley and Issa, when Thomasson was asked about whistleblowers’ allegations that guns were allowed to walk, Thomasson said he “didn’t know and didn’t care.”
That’s not all that Issa and Grassley want to know, either. Departing Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote the now-infamous letter of February 2011 to Grassley that asserted the DoJ had no knowledge of gunwalking in OF&F. Newly released e-mails now show Weich and former acting ATF head Ken Melson cc’ed on e-mails discussing how to respond to Congressional inquiries on just this point. A January 12, 2011 memo from ATF circulated within the agency briefs officials about how to respond to this question:
"Some media reports, referencing an anonymous ATF official, claim that ATF knowingly “walked” about 1,900 firearms across the US-Mexico border as part of this operation. What can you tell me about that?” — Or — “The news release/indictment indicates that A TF waited until nearly 2,000 guns were illegally purchased before arresting the straw buyers in this case. Why did ATF wait so long?”
ANSWER: It’s not against the law for an individual to purchase 10,20 or 50 or even 100 guns at one time. It’s not illegal to own or possess hundreds of guns; however, it is illegal to straw purchase firearms for those who cannot possess them legally. Operation Fast and Furious became a long-term investigation because of the amount of time it took to gather enough evidence against those who were supplying these violent criminals with the tools of their trade. We needed to ensure that when we did arrest these individuals, justice would be served.
ANSWER: Knowing what it takes to prosecute these types of federal violations is the best way to understand why this investigation took as long as it did and utilized so many resources. Investigations of this type are often long and complicated due to the fact that firearms are a legal commodity being diverted for illegal use. When conducting these investigations we have found that the end user of often shrouded by many layers of straw purchasers and middlemen whose sole purpose is to hide the connection between the first retail purchaser and the violent criminal. Determining when the firearm leaves legal commerce can be extremely difficult and therefore hard to prove.
In other words, the gunwalking was common enough knowledge that the ATF prepared a formal memo (see attachment 2) to instruct officials how to respond to questions about it on January 11, 2011. Yet when Congress asked Weich to inform them, Weich prepared a response three weeks after that ATF briefing memo was published that outright denied it ever happened, and the DoJ did not correct that testimony for another ten months. Either Weich is one of the most incompetent bureaucrats in recent history, or he and the ATF were trying to cover up their gunwalking from Congress. Intimidating whistleblowers had to be part of that strategy; Weich’s position would have been — and turned out to be —untenable while whistleblowers kept tipping off Congress.
So when will the media fall back in love with whistleblowers? I’ll go out on a limb and predict it will be when a Republican gets elected President. May that day come soon.
POSTED AT 10:01 AM ON JUNE 30, 2012 BY ED MORRISSEY
I recall a time when Democrats regularly lionized whistleblowers … during the Bush administration, of course. The media hailed them as heroes; Time Magazine even made them the collective Person of the Year for 2002. Democrats loved them so much that they ran one of the whistleblowers on that cover in my Congressional district in 2006 against Rep. John Kline, a former Marine colonel that Colleen Rowley’s campaign photoshopped into a Nazi uniform for their campaign website. Needless to say, Rowley has disappeared back into well-deserved obscurity, while Kline still represents my district.
These days, in the Obama era, Democrats and the media seem a lot less admiring of whistleblowers, oddly enough. Imagine for a moment that Rowley had been assigned a new boss at the FBI after her whistleblowing, one that had told others that the agency needed to “get whatever dirt we can” on her to “take her down,” and especially if that boss had previously said in the presence of at least one witness that the FBI needed to “f**k” said whistleblower. Can you imagine the media meltdown that would have occurred? Well, you’re going to have to be satisfied with imagining it, but Senator Charles Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa want answers as to why two Operation Fast and Furious whistleblowers got assigned to work for a man who said exactly that about them:
In a Friday letter to the DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Grassley and Issa said they’re now concerned retaliation is much more likely following Thursday’s votes to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal and civil contempt of Congress.
“We just learned that ATF senior management placed two of the main whistleblowers who have testified before Congress about Fast and Furious under the supervision of someone who vowed to retaliate against them,” they wrote before describing how senior political figures have made dangerous threats before.
Grassley and Issa said that in early 2011, right around the time Grassley first made public the whistleblowers’ allegations about Fast and Furious, Scot Thomasson – then the chief of the ATF’s Public Affairs Division – said, according to an eyewitness account: “We need to get whatever dirt we can on these guys [the whistleblowers] and take them down.”
Thomasson also allegedly said that: “All these whistleblowers have axes to grind. ATF needs to f—k these guys.”
According to Grassley and Issa, when Thomasson was asked about whistleblowers’ allegations that guns were allowed to walk, Thomasson said he “didn’t know and didn’t care.”
That’s not all that Issa and Grassley want to know, either. Departing Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote the now-infamous letter of February 2011 to Grassley that asserted the DoJ had no knowledge of gunwalking in OF&F. Newly released e-mails now show Weich and former acting ATF head Ken Melson cc’ed on e-mails discussing how to respond to Congressional inquiries on just this point. A January 12, 2011 memo from ATF circulated within the agency briefs officials about how to respond to this question:
"Some media reports, referencing an anonymous ATF official, claim that ATF knowingly “walked” about 1,900 firearms across the US-Mexico border as part of this operation. What can you tell me about that?” — Or — “The news release/indictment indicates that A TF waited until nearly 2,000 guns were illegally purchased before arresting the straw buyers in this case. Why did ATF wait so long?”
ANSWER: It’s not against the law for an individual to purchase 10,20 or 50 or even 100 guns at one time. It’s not illegal to own or possess hundreds of guns; however, it is illegal to straw purchase firearms for those who cannot possess them legally. Operation Fast and Furious became a long-term investigation because of the amount of time it took to gather enough evidence against those who were supplying these violent criminals with the tools of their trade. We needed to ensure that when we did arrest these individuals, justice would be served.
ANSWER: Knowing what it takes to prosecute these types of federal violations is the best way to understand why this investigation took as long as it did and utilized so many resources. Investigations of this type are often long and complicated due to the fact that firearms are a legal commodity being diverted for illegal use. When conducting these investigations we have found that the end user of often shrouded by many layers of straw purchasers and middlemen whose sole purpose is to hide the connection between the first retail purchaser and the violent criminal. Determining when the firearm leaves legal commerce can be extremely difficult and therefore hard to prove.
In other words, the gunwalking was common enough knowledge that the ATF prepared a formal memo (see attachment 2) to instruct officials how to respond to questions about it on January 11, 2011. Yet when Congress asked Weich to inform them, Weich prepared a response three weeks after that ATF briefing memo was published that outright denied it ever happened, and the DoJ did not correct that testimony for another ten months. Either Weich is one of the most incompetent bureaucrats in recent history, or he and the ATF were trying to cover up their gunwalking from Congress. Intimidating whistleblowers had to be part of that strategy; Weich’s position would have been — and turned out to be —untenable while whistleblowers kept tipping off Congress.
So when will the media fall back in love with whistleblowers? I’ll go out on a limb and predict it will be when a Republican gets elected President. May that day come soon.
BREAKING NEWS FROM BLAGO FILES & THE DISGUSTING VIAGRA SHARE-HOLDERS IN THE STRAITS OF WHORE-MUTH --- HOUSE GOP LEADERS ASK UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT TO REVIEW DOMA CASE
BREAKING NEWS FROM BLAGO FILES & THE DISGUSTING VIAGRA SHARE-HOLDERS IN THE STRAITS OF WHORE-MUTH --- HOUSE GOP LEADERS ASK UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT TO REVIEW DOMA CASE
Posted by Chris Geidner | June 29, 2012 6:25 PM
The Republican-led House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group today mailed its petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to review the May 31 ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that the federal definition of marriage contained in the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.
In a filing obtained by Metro Weekly, BLAG asks the Supreme Court, which must agree to consider the case, to take the appeal for three reasons: (1) the constitutionality of DOMA Section 3 is "an issue of great national importance" and raises separation-of-powers questions; (2) the First Circuit decision conflicts with the Supreme Court's 1972 decision in Baker v. Nelson and other appellate decisions; and (3) the First Circuit "invented a new standard of equal protection review."
In the course of the filing, called a petition for a writ of certiorari, BLAG states that "[t]he executive branch has ... abdicated its traditional role of defending the constitutionality of duly-enacted statutes."
BLAG, which voted 3-2 to defend DOMA in court challenges, is made up of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). Pelosi and Hoyer have objected to the filings.
Paul Clement, of Bancroft PLLC, is the counsel of record in the filing. Clement argued on BLAG's behalf in front of the First Circuit's three-judge panel, which held unanimously that DOMA's definition of "marriage" and "spouse" as only including one man and one woman was unconstitutional.
Judge Michael Boudin, appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush, wrote for the court: "Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress' denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest."
Writing that "Supreme Court review of DOMA is highly likely," the appeals court stayed, or put on hold, the implementation of its decision pending any appeal.
BLAG is asking the Supreme Court to consider two questions: (1) Whether Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act violates the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment; and (2) Whether the court below erred by inventing and applying to Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act a previously unknown standard of equal protection review.
BLAG has intervened in several court challenges to DOMA following the Feb. 23, 2011, decision by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder not to continue defending Section 3 of the 1996 law after concluding that laws that classify people based on sexual orientation, like DOMA, should be subjected to a "heightened" form of court scrutiny.
As of 5 p.m. today, the filing was not on the Supreme Court's docket, but the House General Counsel's office confirmed to Metro Weekly that the filing had been "deposited" today. Metro Weekly reported earlier this month that BLAG's lawyers told a court in another DOMA case in Connecticut that it would be filing the Supreme Court petition by the end of June.
In a statement, Pelosi criticized the filing, saying, "Democrats have rejected the Republican assault on equal rights, in the courts and in Congress. We believe there is no federal interest in denying LGBT couples the same rights and responsibilities afforded to all couples married under state law. And we are confident that the Supreme Court, if it considers the case, will declare DOMA unconstitutional and relegate it to the dustbin of history once and for all."
Other parties have 30 days from the date the petition is received to file their view of whether the Supreme Court should take the case. The cases, which were decided jointly by the First Circuit, involve a challenge to the law brought by Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, and a challenge brought by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley (D), Massachusetts v. Department of Health and Human Services.
The GLAD plaintiffs, Massachusetts, the Department of Justice and other interested individuals and organizations will be able to give their input as to whether the court should take the case. The court then will consider whether it wants to take the case, a question most scholars expect it to answer in the affirmative as the constitutionality of a federal statute is at issue. It could, however, hold the case in order to await a decision on one of the further DOMA challenges.
THE 'REAL' IRANIAN THREAT TO AMERICA'S BORDERS & THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
TRANSSEXUAL IN IRAN
Be Like Others (also known as Transsexual in Iran) is a 2008 documentary film written and directed by Tanaz Eshaghian about transsexuals in Iran. It explores issues of gender and sexuality while following the personal stories of some of the patients at a Tehran clinic.
Although homosexual relationships are illegal (punishable by death) in Iran, sex reassignment operations are permitted. In 1983, spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini passed a fatwa allowing sex-change operations as a cure for “diagnosed transsexuals”. Be Like Others shows the experiences of male and female patients at Dr. Bahram Mir-Jalali’s Mirdamad Surgical Centre, a sex-reassignment clinic in Tehran.
One of them is Ali Askar, a 24 year-old man who faces harassment from other men due to his feminine appearance and behaviour. He does not want to become a woman but sees no other options for him in Iranian society.
He decides to go ahead with the surgery despite death threats from his father and finds support from Vida, a post-operative transsexual he meets at the clinic. By the end of the film, Ali has become a woman named Negar. She has been disowned by her family, experienced depression and has had to work as a prostitute. 20 year-old Anoosh is another young man who has been ostracised due to his femininity.
His boyfriend feels more comfortable when Anoosh dresses as a woman, and in contrast to Ali, Anoosh’s mother is supportive of his desire to change sex. The end of the film shows Anoosh — now Anahita —happy and engaged to her boyfriend.
STOPPED THE TRANS-SEXUAL PIPELINE, BUT ARIZONA CONTINUES PERVERSION OF TRANS-GENDER SURGERIES AT TAXPAYERS' EXPENSE --- YUCCA, YUCCA...THEY'RE ONLY UPSET THAT GOOD MEXICAN CATHOLICS MIGHT ACTUALLY STOP THE SEXUAL OFFENDERS & CASTRATED MOLESTERS
GOOD POLITICAL THEATRE & THE LIFE OF BRIAN TERRY
Posted by Repair_Man_Jack (Diary) Friday, June 29th at 1:00PM EDT
Rest In Peace
NANCY PELOSI: I think we all also agree, I think we all very, very much agree that we are very sad and seek justice for the family of border patrol agent Brian Tay, Tay, Terry. His loss is a tragedy for all who knew him, for all of us who care about him, and we offer our condolences to his family. So sad.
(HT: Newsbusters.org)
Everyone enjoys an occasional bout of good political theatre. As The House of Representatives pressed on with Contempt of Congress citations against Attorney General, Eric Holder, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi took her best stab at Shakespeare’s “Alas, Poor Yorick!” Soliloquy. She was saddened. We all were saddened. “Alas, poor Tarelli! I kinda-sorta knew his name, Horatio:” For a second there, it almost worked. And then, it blessedly didn’t.
the House voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress for his role in the investigation into the “Fast and Furious” program. The final vote was 255-67, with two Republicans voting nay. Those votes were from Rep. Scott Rigell (R-VA) and Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH). 17 Democrats voted in favor of the resolution. Later, the House voted 258-95, with five lawmakers voting “present,” in favor of the second contempt of Congress resolution against Holder.
Few in the current administration are better at professional indignation and victimhood than our current Attorney General. He spoke to reporters from Disney World and made it clear that he lives much of his life in a magical kingdom of make-believe.
In response to the “indescribable pain” of the Terry family culminating in the contempt charge, the top law man in the nation called out Republicans for their “truly absurd — truly absurd — conspiracy theories.” Holder also stated that “today’s vote makes for good political theater.”
(HT: American Thinker)
As Attorney General Holder takes care of more important things (over at Space Mountain perhaps) the family of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry still deals with the pain of having their loved one slain in a botched operation. The details follow below.
In December 2010, Brian Terry — a former Marine and police officer turned Border Patrol agent — was working in Arizona, 11 miles from the Mexican border. He was killed in a gunfight with Mexican drug runners, and two of the AK-47s found at the scene were linked to a then-unknown program of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms called “Operation Fast and Furious.”
(HT: Boston Herald)
So a decent Civil Servant dies a grim and honorable death fighting rapacious, drug-pedaling scum. It sure would suck if that interrupted our Attorney general’s well-earned vacay off at Disney World. As The Terry family mourns their loss and searches for closure, The Gentlelady From California, feels sorry for poor, poor Brian Tay-Tay, Terry. What a tragedy, what a farce. Would squeezing a little lemon into her eyes to gin up a few contrite tears chemically interact with her latest Botox injection?
The whole thing was political theatre. Too bad the production was such a God-Awful tragedy. The Inferno will have to be remodeled and add a new level of perdition for detestable people like Nancy Pelosi and Eric Holder. Their political theatre has run for far too long.
Friday, June 29, 2012
"AMBASSADOR" SMITH'S FINAL EMPLOYMENT DATE SET FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS --- HE WILL "NEVER WORK THERE AGAIN"
ILLINOIS HOUSE DISCIPLINE COMMITTEE SETS FINAL DERRICK SMITH HEARING FOR JULY 19, 2012
June 29, 2012 + By Jayette Bolinski | Illinois Statehouse News
SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois House Select Committee on Discipline will have its final hearing on possible punishment for indicted state Rep. Derrick Smith on July 19, according to a schedule posted Friday.
Much of the committee’s business – which is not a court proceeding but has the tone of one – between now and then will occur by email, the schedule indicates, but the committee chair, Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, can call additional hearings as needed.
The committee and Smith are to disclose to each other by July 6 all evidence they intend to introduce at the final hearing. By July 13 each side can object to the other’s evidence. By July 16, each side must respond to the objections raised by the opposing party.
The chairwoman may rule on the objections in a written order or may issue her rulings at the final hearing, which will occur in Chicago.
Members of the Select Committee on Discipline, a bipartisan body charged with deliberating possible professional punishment for Smith, want to move forward as quickly as possible, they said at their first hearing Wednesday.
However, Smith’s attorney, Victor Henderson, said the committee should hold off because Smith’s case still is pending in federal court, and he still is receiving discovery information from federal prosecutors about their evidence.
Smith was indicted in April on a federal bribery charge, after authorities recorded him allegedly accepting a $7,000 bribe. The case is pending in federal court in the Northern District of Illinois.
The 12-member Select Committee on Discipline will act as jurors who hear Smith’s case and will determine if he should be exonerated, reprimanded, censured or expelled from the House of Representatives.
Jayette Bolinski can be reached at jayette.bolinski@franklincenterhq.org.
U.N. PUBLISHES REPORT ON NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS VIOLATIONS & THOSE WHO WILL "NEVER WORK THERE AGAIN"
U.N. PUBLISHES REPORT ON NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS VIOLATIONS
By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS | Fri Jun 29, 2012 1:57pm EDT
(Reuters) - After more than a month's delay due to Chinese objections, the United Nations on Friday published a report on North Korea that says a panel of independent experts is investigating reports of possible North Korean arms deals with Syria and Myanmar.
The 74-page report, which was seen by Reuters last month, says North Korea "continues actively to defy the measures in the (U.N. sanctions) resolutions." The so-called Panel of Experts submitted the report to the U.N. Security Council's North Korea sanctions committee last month.
U.N. panel of experts' sanctions reports are highly sensitive. China, which is named in the report as a transit hub for illicit North Korean arms-related breaches, has prevented the 15-nation Security Council from publishing past reports, U.N. envoys have told Reuters.
Last year's report has never been published, although Reuters saw and reported on it at the time.
"The Chinese finally agreed to let the report reach the public," a council diplomat told Reuters. "We're pleased that people will be able to study and analyze it."
The report says that Pyongyang continues to defy the U.N. sanctions, though the panel received no new reports of "violations involving transfer of nuclear, other (weapons of mass-destruction)-related or ballistic missile items."
"Although the (sanctions) have not caused the DPRK (North Korea) to halt its banned activities, they appear to have slowed them and made illicit transactions significantly more difficult and expensive," the panel's report said.
One of the cases involving suspected illicit arms trade with Syria was reported to the council's sanctions committee earlier this year.
Another case cited in the report involved a 2007 shipment of propellant usable for SCUD missiles and other items that could be used for ballistic missiles. The panel had referred to it in last year's report but added details about a Syria connection and confirmed that it had been transported via China.
The panel also said it was looking at the possibility North Korea has a deal with Myanmar on conventional weapons cooperation in violation of Security Council sanctions passed in 2006 and 2009 after Pyongyang's nuclear test in those years. Those sanctions include a ban on North Korean arms exports.
Ten thousand rolls of tobacco, 12 bottles of Sake, and some second-hand Mercedes Benz cars are among the latest breaches by North Korea of the luxury goods ban described in the report.
A similar panel of experts report on Iran has yet to be made public, though diplomats said they expect it will be soon.
(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Jackie Frank)
CITI TAPS BOND MARKET AFTER TWO-NOTCH DOWNGRADE
CITI TAPS BOND MARKET AFTER TWO-NOTCH DOWNGRADE
Published June 29, 2012 Dow Jones Newswires
itigroup Inc. (C) sold $750 million of 10-year bonds Friday, its first new issue since Moody's Investors Service unleashed a wave of downgrades on global financial institutions earlier this month.
The bonds carry provisional ratings of Baa2 by Moody's, reflecting the two-notch downgrade on June 21, A-minus by Standard & Poor's, and A by Fitch Ratings.
The planned sale is an add-on to an earlier sale of 4.50% coupon, 10-year notes maturing in January 2022. Those bonds, issued in October, have rallied in recent months despite heightened fears in Europe and the looming downgrades, thanks largely to falling interest rates on Treasurys.
Investor demand for higher yields has also pushed prices of bank debt higher this year, causing spreads--the extra yield corporate bonds offer over Treasurys--to fall significantly.
The bonds were priced to yield 4.147%, reflecting a 2.50 percentage point spread over Treasurys. When Citi did a similar, $250 million add-on to this deal in December, it had to pay 4.95%, a spread of 2.90 points over Treasurys.
Citi's 10-year bond traded Thursday at $103.526 per $100 of face value, yielding 4.05%, according to MarketAxess. This suggests Citi offered just less than 0.10 percentage point of extra yield, or "concession" in market jargon, to investors.
The risk premium on the outstanding bond is 2.47 percentage points over Treasurys, versus 2.40 points on Feb. 14, a day before Moody's first announced it was likely to downgrade major banks.
Citi shares have fallen more than 16% in the same period, underscoring the stability of fixed-income assets.
The deal follows Wednesday's 10-year add-on from Goldman Sachs Group (GS), which also suffered a two-notch downgrade from Moody's, to A3. Goldman sold $250 million of 5.75% notes at a yield of 5.069%, or 3.45 points over Treasurys, according to Standard & Poor's LCD.
Year-to-date issuance from highly rated U.S. banks, at just $116.9 billion, is 39% less than year-to-date 2011 figures, according to Dealogic. It is the lowest year-to-date volume in at least five years.
Write to Patrick McGee at patrick.mcgee@dowjones.com
Copyright © 2012 Dow Jones Newswires
Published June 29, 2012 Dow Jones Newswires
itigroup Inc. (C) sold $750 million of 10-year bonds Friday, its first new issue since Moody's Investors Service unleashed a wave of downgrades on global financial institutions earlier this month.
The bonds carry provisional ratings of Baa2 by Moody's, reflecting the two-notch downgrade on June 21, A-minus by Standard & Poor's, and A by Fitch Ratings.
The planned sale is an add-on to an earlier sale of 4.50% coupon, 10-year notes maturing in January 2022. Those bonds, issued in October, have rallied in recent months despite heightened fears in Europe and the looming downgrades, thanks largely to falling interest rates on Treasurys.
Investor demand for higher yields has also pushed prices of bank debt higher this year, causing spreads--the extra yield corporate bonds offer over Treasurys--to fall significantly.
The bonds were priced to yield 4.147%, reflecting a 2.50 percentage point spread over Treasurys. When Citi did a similar, $250 million add-on to this deal in December, it had to pay 4.95%, a spread of 2.90 points over Treasurys.
Citi's 10-year bond traded Thursday at $103.526 per $100 of face value, yielding 4.05%, according to MarketAxess. This suggests Citi offered just less than 0.10 percentage point of extra yield, or "concession" in market jargon, to investors.
The risk premium on the outstanding bond is 2.47 percentage points over Treasurys, versus 2.40 points on Feb. 14, a day before Moody's first announced it was likely to downgrade major banks.
Citi shares have fallen more than 16% in the same period, underscoring the stability of fixed-income assets.
The deal follows Wednesday's 10-year add-on from Goldman Sachs Group (GS), which also suffered a two-notch downgrade from Moody's, to A3. Goldman sold $250 million of 5.75% notes at a yield of 5.069%, or 3.45 points over Treasurys, according to Standard & Poor's LCD.
Year-to-date issuance from highly rated U.S. banks, at just $116.9 billion, is 39% less than year-to-date 2011 figures, according to Dealogic. It is the lowest year-to-date volume in at least five years.
Write to Patrick McGee at patrick.mcgee@dowjones.com
Copyright © 2012 Dow Jones Newswires
EX-CITIBANK EXECUTIVE GARY FOSTER GETS EIGHT-YEAR TERM FOR FRAUD
EX-CITIBANK EXECUTIVE GARY FOSTER GETS EIGHT-YEAR TERM FOR FRAUD
By Christie Smythe June 29, 2012 3:53 PM EDT
Former Citigroup Inc. Vice President Gary Foster was sentenced to 97 months in prison for embezzling $22 million from the company, according to Brooklyn, New York federal prosecutors.
To contact the reporter on this story: Christie Smythe in New York at csmythe1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David E. Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.net
HONG KONG PROTESTS DRAW HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS AS HU COMES FOR ANNIVERSARY
HONG KONG PROTESTS DRAW HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS AS HU COMES FOR ANNIVERSARY
By Simon Lee June 29, 2012 1:58 AM EDT
Protesters will march through Hong Kong on the 15th anniversary of the city’s return to China this July 1, as Chinese President Hu Jintao presides over the inauguration of the city’s new leader Leung Chun-ying.
As many as 100,000 people may join the march through the city’s Central district to the government headquarters as Hu attends the swearing in of former property surveyor Leung, according to James Sung, a political scientist at the City University of Hong Kong.
The worst income gap since records were kept in 1971, along with close ties between government officials and tycoons, have stoked public anger in the run-up to Hong Kong’s leadership transition. Beijing’s effort to integrate the city’s economy more closely with the mainland’s has also raised fears that Hong Kong is losing its independence.
“People believe that the government hasn’t been able to do anything” to help improve their lives, said Joseph Cheng , a professor of political science at the City University of Hong Kong . “That the government refuses to act because it has been too eager to please the big businesses. This distrust has spilled over to the new administration.”
Hu arrived in Hong Kong today and lauded the “major achievements” since the former British colony was returned to China in 1997. The Chinese president said he wants to tour the city to understand residents’ lives and expectations.
Full Democracy The annual protest is a gauge of public opinion in city, which is governed by a chief executive picked by a panel comprisig billionaires, lawmakers and professionals. Protesters will call on Leung to introduce plans for full democracy in 2017, and seek an end to interference in Hong Kong ’s domestic affairs by the Chinese government, Eric Lai, a member of the Civil Human Rights Front, said in an interview.
Distrust of the Chinese government by the Hong Kong public rose to the highest level since May 1997, according to a poll conducted between June 4 and 12 by the University of Hong Kong. The survey of 1,003 adults showed that 37 percent said they didn’t trust Beijing.
“Leung has never made any promises on when will he start reforms on democratization,” Lai said.
The demonstration highlights the challenges Leung faces in balancing demands for greater economic integration with China and maintaining independence for the city’s 7.1 million residents. While China has promised universal suffrage for the city by the end of Leung’s term in 2017, a detailed road map hasn’t been drawn.
Human Rights Concerns for human rights in China, stoked by the death of dissident Li Wangyang and the treatment of blind activist Chen Guangcheng , may spur more people to take part in the march, said Lee Cheuk-yan, chairman of the Hong Kong-based Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.
“As the relationship between China and Hong Kong gets closer, if China’s political situation deteriorates, it is hard to expect there will be improvements in Hong Kong,” Lee said.
Leung, 57, will be sworn in at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center as the last leader picked by the panel after a flag raising ceremony at 8 a.m., with Hu a guest of honor. Protesters will start their march at 3 p.m.
The city will mark the handover anniversary with fireworks, a performance by paratroopers from the People’s Liberation Army , and a show with performances by celebrities including actor Jackie Chan .
Public Trust Public trust in Hong Kong government officials has also taken a knock this year with a corruption probe under way involving former chief secretary Rafael Hui. Leung’s predecessor Donald Tsang is under investigation for taking rides on planes and yachts with tycoon friends.
Leung also faces criticism from some lawmakers after it was found that a basement, a gate and other structures were built at his house without permits. Leung has apologized and started removing the illegal additions.
“Normally people have a bit of a honeymoon period after their election,” said Michael DeGolyer , a political scientist at the Hong Kong Baptist University. “If this is the honeymoon, wow, I think we’re going have a rocky marriage here.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Lee in Hong Kong at slee936@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Hwee Ann Tan at hatan@bloomberg.net
ASSAD'S EXIT FOCUS OF GENEVA MEETING AS RUSSIA OBJECTS
ASSAD'S EXIT FOCUS OF GENEVA MEETING AS RUSSIA OBJECTS
By Flavia Krause-Jackson and Henry Meyer June 29, 2012 12:45 PM EDT
Russia heads to tomorrow’s Geneva meeting on United Nations envoy Kofi Annan ’s plan for a handover of power in Syria amid conflicting accounts about its willingness to cut ties to President Bashar al-Assad.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday that there is no agreement yet on Assad’s fate. Leaks to the press suggesting otherwise were an “unscrupulous approach to diplomacy,” he told reporters in Moscow.
Persuading Assad to step aside and not be part of a transitional government paving the way for elections is at the core of Annan’s plan to be discussed at the foreign ministers’ meeting. The outlook for action may depend on whether, as some diplomats said on condition of anonymity, Russia is prepared to break with its long-time ally Assad, who is battling a growing uprising that began in March last year.
“The Russians do not like to have deals they are cutting in private to be exposed in public” before what they view is the right time, said Jeff Laurenti, a UN analyst at the Century Foundation in New York , in a telephone interview. “They are very concerned that their so-called partners on the other side may be leaking it to force their hands to do more than what they have signaled they were ready to do.”
The Annan document says the interim government may include members of Assad’s government and opposition and other groups, although it “would exclude from government those whose continued presence and participation would undermine the transition and jeopardize stability and reconciliation.”
The document, obtained today by Bloomberg News, was cited earlier on a blog by Nabil Abi Saab of Alhurra TV.
Russia Denial All of the conference invitees, including Russia , signed off on the contents of the paper, according to three UN officials who asked not to be identified because the talks are being conducted in private.
Russia denied such an understanding. It has made a different proposal and won’t support any imposed power handover, according to a Russian Foreign Ministry official, who also asked not to be identified discussing confidential talks.
Assad said this week that his country is in a state of war. Syria’s official broadcaster said today that scores of “terrorists” were killed and many more injured in clashes in Douma, near Damascus.
The Syrian army bombed cities including Douma, Deir El Zour and Harasta, and there were protests throughout the country after Friday prayers, Rami Abdel Rahman of the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mail.
Death Toll More than 10,000 people have died in the conflict, according to UN estimates. At least 30 people were killed today, according to the Local Coordination Committees, an activist group. The group issued an appeal for members of the Syrian army to defect, saying that more than 15,000 people have been killed since the start of the uprising against the Assad regime.
Tensions also have risen with neighboring Turkey , a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, after Syria shot down a Turkish warplane that it said violated its territory and Turkey said was in international airspace, on June 22.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week that Turkey had changed its military rules of engagement after the incident and that any military element approaching the Turkish border from Syria could be viewed as a threat and treated as a military target.
Geneva Agenda Turkey sent anti-aircraft guns and vehicles equipped with Stinger surface-to-air missiles to the border, Hurriyet newspaper said today.
Scheduled to attend the Geneva conference are the foreign ministers of the five permanent UN Security Council members -- China , France , Russia, the U.K., and the U.S. -- as well as Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq .
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said countries attending the meeting on Syria were doing so on the basis of the plan proposed by Annan.
Clinton said during a visit to Latvia yesterday that it was clear from the invitations to the conference that “people were coming on the basis of the transition plan.” She will discuss the issue with Lavrov today in St. Petersburg .
“A pre-agreed project doesn’t exist,” Lavrov said yesterday at a news conference with Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem in Moscow. “The work on the document continues.”
Russian Shift While Russians will stick to their public statements that foreign powers can’t impose regime change, there has been a shift in private, according to two UN diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity. They said Russia is keen to raise its standing in the region by acting as a peace broker.
“Russians have seen the outcome of just letting Assad handle this the old-fashioned way and the facts on the ground speak for themselves,” Laurenti said. They have come to a realization “he won’t be able to ride it out,” he said.
Russia has become too entrenched in the Syrian conflict to suddenly make a U-turn and embrace a full regime change, Lilit Gevorgyan, a London-based analyst at IHS Global Insight, said in an e-mail. Russia will push for a Yemen-style change that will seek to preserve the backbone of Assad’s government and even involve the Syrian president’s departure provided that he is not brought to trial, she said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson in United Nations at fjackson@bloomberg.net ; Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net ; John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
By Flavia Krause-Jackson and Henry Meyer June 29, 2012 12:45 PM EDT
Russia heads to tomorrow’s Geneva meeting on United Nations envoy Kofi Annan ’s plan for a handover of power in Syria amid conflicting accounts about its willingness to cut ties to President Bashar al-Assad.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said yesterday that there is no agreement yet on Assad’s fate. Leaks to the press suggesting otherwise were an “unscrupulous approach to diplomacy,” he told reporters in Moscow.
Persuading Assad to step aside and not be part of a transitional government paving the way for elections is at the core of Annan’s plan to be discussed at the foreign ministers’ meeting. The outlook for action may depend on whether, as some diplomats said on condition of anonymity, Russia is prepared to break with its long-time ally Assad, who is battling a growing uprising that began in March last year.
“The Russians do not like to have deals they are cutting in private to be exposed in public” before what they view is the right time, said Jeff Laurenti, a UN analyst at the Century Foundation in New York , in a telephone interview. “They are very concerned that their so-called partners on the other side may be leaking it to force their hands to do more than what they have signaled they were ready to do.”
The Annan document says the interim government may include members of Assad’s government and opposition and other groups, although it “would exclude from government those whose continued presence and participation would undermine the transition and jeopardize stability and reconciliation.”
The document, obtained today by Bloomberg News, was cited earlier on a blog by Nabil Abi Saab of Alhurra TV.
Russia Denial All of the conference invitees, including Russia , signed off on the contents of the paper, according to three UN officials who asked not to be identified because the talks are being conducted in private.
Russia denied such an understanding. It has made a different proposal and won’t support any imposed power handover, according to a Russian Foreign Ministry official, who also asked not to be identified discussing confidential talks.
Assad said this week that his country is in a state of war. Syria’s official broadcaster said today that scores of “terrorists” were killed and many more injured in clashes in Douma, near Damascus.
The Syrian army bombed cities including Douma, Deir El Zour and Harasta, and there were protests throughout the country after Friday prayers, Rami Abdel Rahman of the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mail.
Death Toll More than 10,000 people have died in the conflict, according to UN estimates. At least 30 people were killed today, according to the Local Coordination Committees, an activist group. The group issued an appeal for members of the Syrian army to defect, saying that more than 15,000 people have been killed since the start of the uprising against the Assad regime.
Tensions also have risen with neighboring Turkey , a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, after Syria shot down a Turkish warplane that it said violated its territory and Turkey said was in international airspace, on June 22.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week that Turkey had changed its military rules of engagement after the incident and that any military element approaching the Turkish border from Syria could be viewed as a threat and treated as a military target.
Geneva Agenda Turkey sent anti-aircraft guns and vehicles equipped with Stinger surface-to-air missiles to the border, Hurriyet newspaper said today.
Scheduled to attend the Geneva conference are the foreign ministers of the five permanent UN Security Council members -- China , France , Russia, the U.K., and the U.S. -- as well as Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq .
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said countries attending the meeting on Syria were doing so on the basis of the plan proposed by Annan.
Clinton said during a visit to Latvia yesterday that it was clear from the invitations to the conference that “people were coming on the basis of the transition plan.” She will discuss the issue with Lavrov today in St. Petersburg .
“A pre-agreed project doesn’t exist,” Lavrov said yesterday at a news conference with Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem in Moscow. “The work on the document continues.”
Russian Shift While Russians will stick to their public statements that foreign powers can’t impose regime change, there has been a shift in private, according to two UN diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity. They said Russia is keen to raise its standing in the region by acting as a peace broker.
“Russians have seen the outcome of just letting Assad handle this the old-fashioned way and the facts on the ground speak for themselves,” Laurenti said. They have come to a realization “he won’t be able to ride it out,” he said.
Russia has become too entrenched in the Syrian conflict to suddenly make a U-turn and embrace a full regime change, Lilit Gevorgyan, a London-based analyst at IHS Global Insight, said in an e-mail. Russia will push for a Yemen-style change that will seek to preserve the backbone of Assad’s government and even involve the Syrian president’s departure provided that he is not brought to trial, she said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson in United Nations at fjackson@bloomberg.net ; Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net ; John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
EGYPT CONFISCATES WEAPONS SMUGGLED FROM LIBYA
EGYPT CONFISCATES WEAPONS SMUGGLED FROM LIBYA
Published June 29, 2012 Associated Press
CAIRO – Egypt's interior minister says security forces have confiscated a large amount of weapons, including rockets and automatic machine guns, smuggled into the country from neighboring Libya.
Gen. Mohammed Ibrahim says security forces acting on a tip Friday stopped a car and truck packed with munitions on the highway near the Egyptian coastal city of Marsa Matrouh. He says one of the men was killed in an exchange of fire.
Ibrahim described the bust as "the biggest" in the history of Interior Ministry and said the weapons were smuggled from the Libyan city of Sirte.
He says one of the men arrested confessed that the weapons were being taken to the Sinai Peninsula to be smuggled to the Gaza Strip.
Weapons smuggling out of Libya surged after the country's 2011 revolution.
U.S. HOUSE HEARING EVALUATES PROTECTIONS FOR AMERICAN CONSUMERS MAKING MOBILE PAYMENTS
WATCH VIDEO HERE:
Hearing Evaluates Protections for Consumers Making Mobile Payments | C-SPAN
U.S. HOUSE HEARING EVALUATES PROTECTIONS FOR AMERICAN CONSUMERS MAKING MOBILE PAYMENTS
WASHINGTON, DC Friday, June 29, 2012
New mobile payment methods like digital wallets are changing the way consumers purchase goods and services. The House Financial Services Subcommittee on Consumer Credit, chaired by Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), looks at whether current regulations adequately protect consumers using these new payment methods.
Witnesses include James H. Freis Jr., Director of the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen). He speaks about FinCen's plans to apply anti-money laundering rules to "virtual" currency transactions and discuss FinCen's prepaid access rule that covers plastic cards, electronic serial numbers and other methods of storing funds that have attracted organized crime and terrorist groups.
Stephanie Martin, Associate General Counsel for the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors, discussed a report on consumer trends in the mobile market place, released in March of this year. The report indicates that consumer concerns about security and the usefulness of mobile financial services are holding back the emerging industry.
Congressmen asked about privacy protections and identity theft in mobile payments, asking about consumer protection for erroneous charges. Ms. Martin told them that the laws that protect customers making debit or credit purchases online also protect mobile charges, but that it is incumbent on the consumer to intiate the process.
Members also expressed concern that the rule-making procedure was too slow to keep up with the pace of change in the mobile technology arena, especially in the areas of consumer protection and international money laundering. Mr. Fries said that the threshold for policy and investigation of international payments was zero and that any transaction would be reviewed by his department.
U.S. TO DEPLOY 12 MV-22 OSPREY AIRCRAFT TO JAPAN AMID LOCAL PROTESTS AGAINST U.S. MILITARY BASES
U.S. TO DEPLOY 12 MV-22 OSPREY AIRCRAFT TO JAPAN AMID LOCAL PROTESTS AGAINST U.S. MILITARY BASES
By Isabel Reynolds June 29, 2012 4:57 AM EDT
The U.S. said it will go ahead with the deployment of 12 MV-22 Osprey aircraft to American bases in Japan in the face of protests sparked by recent crashes.
The Ospreys, which can fly like an airplane or like a helicopter, will be sent to the Marine air base in Iwakuni next month, the Pentagon said in a statement today. Japan asked the U.S. for information about a June crash of the aircraft in Florida that injured five as well as a fatal crash in Morocco in April, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura said last week.
About 5,000 opponents of the deployment rallied in Okinawa on June 17 and local assemblies in Iwakuni and the Okinawan city of Ginowan have both passed resolutions against the deployment this month.
The U.S. military “will refrain from any flight operations of the MV-22 in Japan until the results of the investigations are presented to the Japanese government and the safety of flight operations is confirmed,” according to the Pentagon statement. The aircraft will then be moved to Okinawa, site of 75 percent of the American bases in Japan. Another 12 Ospreys are due to be sent to Okinawa next year.
Tensions from the U.S. military presence in Okinawa have risen over an agreement to relocate a base from one part of the island to another over objections from residents who complain about noise, crime and pollution. The two countries reached a deal in April to relocate about 9,000 Marines from Okinawa.
‘Not Confident’ Japanese Defense Minister Satoshi Morimoto, a former university professor known for his support of the U.S. alliance, said today he would visit Iwakuni and Okinawa this weekend to explain to local officials the deployment plan and provide information the government has so far received about the two crashes.
“I want to listen to local people’s opinions in a very open way,” Morimoto told reporters in Tokyo . “If you ask me how sure I am that I can talk them around, my honest answer is that I’m not confident.”
The Okinawa branch of the ruling Democratic Party earlier this month called on Morimoto to resign after he said the Osprey deployment could take place before Japan receives a U.S. report on the Morocco crash. The mayor of the Okinawan capital of Naha announced this week he is planning a larger rally.
To contact the reporter on this story: Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo at ireynolds1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net
COMMUNIST CHINESE MILITARY BLOCKS THIS BLOOMBERG REPORT AS BARAK HUSSEIN OSAMA GRANTS THEM WAIVER FOR IRANIAN OIL --- XI JINPING MILLIONAIRE RELATIONS REVEAL FORTUNES OF ELITE
XI JINPING MILLIONAIRE RELATIONS REVEAL FORTUNES OF ELITE
By Bloomberg News June 29, 2012 3:32 AM EDT
Xi Jinping , the man in line to be China’s next president, warned officials on a 2004 anti-graft conference call: “Rein in your spouses, children, relatives, friends and staff, and vow not to use power for personal gain.”
As Xi climbed the Communist Party ranks, his extended family expanded their business interests to include minerals, real estate and mobile-phone equipment, according to public documents compiled by Bloomberg.
Those interests include investments in companies with total assets of $376 million; an 18 percent indirect stake in a rare- earths company with $1.73 billion in assets; and a $20.2 million holding in a publicly traded technology company. The figures don’t account for liabilities and thus don’t reflect the family’s net worth.
No assets were traced to Xi, who turns 59 this month; his wife Peng Liyuan, 49, a famous People’s Liberation Army singer; or their daughter, the documents show. There is no indication Xi intervened to advance his relatives’ business transactions, or of any wrongdoing by Xi or his extended family.
While the investments are obscured from public view by multiple holding companies, government restrictions on access to company documents and in some cases online censorship, they are identified in thousands of pages of regulatory filings.
The trail also leads to a hillside villa overlooking the South China Sea in Hong Kong , with an estimated value of $31.5 million. The doorbell ringer dangles from its wires, and neighbors say the house has been empty for years. The family owns at least six other Hong Kong properties with a combined estimated value of $24.1 million.
Standing Committee Xi has risen through the party over the past three decades, holding leadership positions in several provinces and joining the ruling Politburo Standing Committee in 2007. Along the way, he built a reputation for clean government.
He led an anti-graft campaign in the rich coastal province of Zhejiang, where he issued the “rein in” warning to officials in 2004, according to a People’s Daily publication. In Shanghai, he was brought in as party chief after a 3.7 billion- yuan ($582 million) scandal.
A 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing cited an acquaintance of Xi’s saying he wasn’t corrupt or driven by money. Xi was “repulsed by the all-encompassing commercialization of Chinese society, with its attendant nouveau riche, official corruption, loss of values, dignity, and self- respect,” the cable disclosed by Wikileaks said, citing the friend. Wikileaks publishes secret government documents online.
A U.S. government spokesman declined to comment on the document.
Carving Economy Increasing resentment over China’s most powerful families carving up the spoils of economic growth poses a challenge for the Communist Party. The income gap in urban China has widened more than in any other country in Asia over the past 20 years, according to the International Monetary Fund .
“The average Chinese person gets angry when he hears about deals where people make hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars, by trading on political influence,” said Barry Naughton, professor of Chinese economy at the University of California , San Diego, who wasn’t referring to the Xi family specifically.
Scrutiny of officials’ wealth is intensifying before a once-in-a-decade transition of power later this year, when Xi and the next generation of leaders are set to be promoted. The ouster in March of Bo Xilai as party chief of China’s biggest municipality in an alleged graft and murder scandal fueled public anger over cronyism and corruption. It also spurred demands that top officials disclose their wealth in editorials in two Chinese financial publications and from microbloggers. Bo’s family accumulated at least $136 million in assets, Bloomberg News reported in April.
Revolutionary Leader Xi and his siblings are the children of the late Xi Zhongxun, a revolutionary fighter who helped Mao Zedong win control of China in 1949 with a pledge to end centuries of inequality and abuse of power for personal gain. That makes them “princelings,” scions of top officials and party figures whose lineages can help them wield influence in politics and business.
Most of the extended Xi family’s assets traced by Bloomberg were owned by Xi’s older sister,Qi Qiaoqiao, 63; her husband Deng Jiagui, 61; and Qi’s daughter Zhang Yannan, 33, according to public records compiled by Bloomberg.
Deng held an indirect 18 percent stake as recently as June 8 in Jiangxi Rare Earth & Rare Metals Tungsten Group Corp. Prices of the minerals used in wind turbines and U.S. smart bombs have surged as China tightened supply.
Yuanwei Group Qi and Deng’s share of the assets of Shenzhen Yuanwei Investment Co., a real-estate and diversified holding company, totaled 1.83 billion yuan ($288 million), a December 2011 filing shows. Other companies in the Yuanwei group wholly owned by the couple have combined assets of at least 539.3 million yuan ($84.8 million).
A 3.17 million-yuan investment by Zhang in Beijing-based Hiconics Drive Technology Co. (300048) has increased 40-fold since 2009 to 128.4 million yuan ($20.2 million) as of yesterday’s close in Shenzhen.
Deng, reached on his mobile phone, said he was retired. When asked about his wife, Zhang and their businesses across the country, he said: “It’s not convenient for me to talk to you about this too much.” Attempts to reach Qi and Zhang directly or through their companies by phone and fax, as well as visits to addresses found on filings, were unsuccessful.
New Postcom Another brother-in-law of Xi Jinping, Wu Long, ran a telecommunications company named New Postcom Equipment Co. The company was owned as of May 28 by relatives three times removed from Wu -- the family of his younger brother’s wife, according to public documents and an interview with one of the company’s registered owners.
New Postcom won hundreds of millions of yuan in contracts from state-owned China Mobile Communications Corp., the world’s biggest phone company by number of users, according to analysts at BDA China Ltd., a Beijing-based consulting firm that advises technology companies.
Dozens of people contacted over the past two months wouldn’t comment about the Xi family on the record because of the sensitivity of the issue. Details from Web pages profiling one of Xi Jinping’s nieces and her British husband were deleted after the two people were contacted.
The total assets of companies owned by the Xi family gives the breadth of their businesses and isn’t an indication of profitability. Hong Kong property values were based on recent transactions involving comparable homes.
Identity Cards Bloomberg’s accounting included only assets, property and shareholdings in which there was documentation of ownership by a family member and an amount could be clearly assigned. Assets were traced using public and business records, interviews with acquaintances and Hong Kong and Chinese identity-card numbers.
In cases where family members use different names in mainland China and in Hong Kong, Bloomberg verified identities by speaking to people who had met them and through multiple company documents that show the same names together and shared addresses.
Bloomberg provided a list showing the Xi family’s holdings to China’s Foreign Ministry. The government declined to comment.
In October 2000, Xi Zhongxun’s family gathered on his 87th birthday for a photograph at a state guest house in Shenzhen, two years before the patriarch’s death. The southern metropolis bordering Hong Kong is now one of China’s richest, thanks in part to the elder Xi. He persuaded former leader Deng Xiaoping to pioneer China’s experiment with open markets in what was a fishing village.
Family Photo In the photo, Xi Zhongxun, dressed in a red sweater and holding a cane, is seated in an overstuffed armchair. To his left sits daughter Qi Qiaoqiao. On his right, a young grandson perches on doily-covered armrests next to the elder Xi’s wife, Qi Xin. Lined up behind are Qiaoqiao’s husband, Deng Jiagui; her brothers Xi Yuanping and presidential heir Xi Jinping; and sister Qi An’an alongside her husband Wu Long.
Xi Zhongxun worked to imbue his children with the revolutionary spirit, according to accounts in state media that portray him as a principled and moral leader. Family members have recounted in interviews how he dressed them in patched hand-me-downs.
He also made Qiaoqiao turn down her top-choice middle school in Beijing, which offered her a slot despite her falling half a point short of the required grade, according to a memorial book about him. Instead, she attended another school under her mother’s family name, Qi, so classmates wouldn’t know her background. Qiaoqiao and her sister An’an also sometimes use their father’s family name, Xi.
Party School In a speech on March 1 this year before about 2,200 cadres at the central party school in Beijing where members are trained, Xi Jinping said that some were joining because they believed it was a ticket to wealth. “It is more difficult, yet more vital than ever to keep the party pure,” he said, according to a transcript of his speech in an official magazine.
His daughter, Xi Mingze, has avoided the spotlight. She studies at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, under an assumed name.
Xi’s elevation to replace Hu Jintao as China’s top leader isn’t yet formalized. He must be picked as the Communist Party’s general secretary in a meeting later this year and then be selected by the country’s legislature as president next March.
Deng Xiaoping Disgruntlement over how members of the ruling elite translate political power into personal fortunes has existed since Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms began three decades ago, when he said some people could get rich first and help others get wealthy later.
The relatives of other top officials have forged business careers. Premier Wen Jiabao ’s son co-founded a private-equity company. The son of Wen’s predecessor, Zhu Rongji, heads a Chinese investment bank.
“What I’m really concerned about is the alliance between the rich and powerful,” said Wan Guanghua, principal economist at the Asian Development Bank . “It makes corruption and inequality self-reinforcing and persistent.”
Public criticism is mounting against ostentatious displays of wealth by officials. Microbloggers tracking designer labels sported by cadres expressed disgust last year at a gold Rolex watch worn by a former customs minister. They castigated the daughter of former Premier Li Peng for wearing a pink Emilio Pucci suit to the nation’s annual legislative meeting this March. Some complained that the 12,000 yuan they said it cost would pay for warm clothes for 200 poor children.
‘Unequal Access’ “People are angry because there’s unequal access to money- making, and the rewards that get reaped appear to the populace to be undeserved,” said Perry Link, a China scholar at the University of California, Riverside. “There’s no question in the Chinese public mind that this is wrong.”
Premier Wen told a meeting of China’s State Council on March 26 that power must be exercised “under the sun” to combat corruption.
While officials in China must report their income and assets to authorities, as well as personal information about their immediate family, the disclosures aren’t public.
The lack of transparency fuels a belief that the route to wealth depends on what Chinese call “guanxi,” a catch-all word for the connections considered crucial for doing business in the country. It helps explain why princelings with no official posts wield influence. Or, as a Chinese proverb puts it: When a man gets power, even his chickens and dogs rise to heaven.
‘Bigwig Relative’ “If you are a sibling of someone who is very important in China, automatically people will see you as a potential agent of influence and will treat you well in the hope of gaining guanxi with the bigwig relative,” said Roderick MacFarquhar, a professor of government at Harvard who focuses on Chinese elite politics.
The link between political power and wealth isn’t unique to China. Lyndon B. Johnson was so poor starting out in life that he borrowed $75 to enroll in Southwest Texas State Teachers College in 1927, according to his presidential library. After almost three decades of elective office, he and his family had media and real-estate holdings worth $14 million in 1964, his first full year as president, according to an August 1964 article in Life Magazine.
Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, said the nexus of power and wealth can be found in any country. “But there is no country where this is more true than China,” he said. “There’s a huge passive advantage to just being in one of these family trees.”
Unfair to Xi Yao Jianfu, a retired government researcher who has called for greater disclosure of assets by leaders, said it wouldn’t be right to tie Xi Jinping to the businesses of his family.
“If other members of the family are independent business representatives, I think it’s unfair to describe it as a family clan and count it as Xi Jinping’s,” Yao said in a telephone interview.
The lineage of Xi’s siblings hasn’t always been an advantage. Xi Zhongxun, the father, was purged by Mao in 1962. Like many other princelings, the children were scattered to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. The 5-yuan payment Qiaoqiao received for working in a corps with 500 other youths in Inner Mongolia made her feel rich, she recalled in an interview on the website of Beijing-based Tsinghua University.
After Mao’s death in 1976, the family was rehabilitated and Xi’s sister Qiaoqiao pursued a career with the military and as a director with the People’s Armed Police. She resigned to care for her father, who had retired in 1990, Qiaoqiao said in the Tsinghua interview.
Property Purchase A year later, she bought an apartment in what was then the British colony of Hong Kong for HK$3 million ($387,000) -- at the time, equivalent to almost 900 times the average Chinese worker’s annual salary. She still owns the property, in the Pacific Palisades complex in Braemar Hill on Hong Kong island, land registry records show.
By 1997, Qi and Deng had recorded an investment of 15.3 million yuan in a company that later became Shenzhen Yuanwei Industries Co., a holding group, documents show. The assets of that company aren’t publicly available. However, one of its subsidiaries, Shenzhen Yuanwei Investment, had assets of 1.85 billion yuan ($291 million) at the end of 2010. It is 99 percent owned by the couple, according to a December 2011 filing by a securities firm.
It was after her father’s death in 2002 that Qi said she decided to go into business, according to the Tsinghua interview. She graduated from Tsinghua’s executive master’s degree in business administration program in 2006 and founded its folk-drumming team. It plays in the style of Shaanxi province, where Xi Zhongxun was born.
Paper Trail The names Qi Qiaoqiao, Deng Jiagui or Zhang Yannan appear on the filings of at least 25 companies over the past two decades in China and Hong Kong, either as shareholders, directors or legal representatives -- a term that denotes the person responsible for a company, such as its chairman.
In some filings, Qi used the name Chai Lin-hing. The alias was linked to her because of biographical details in a Chinese company document that match those in two published interviews with Qi Qiaoqiao. Chai Lin-hing has owned multiple companies and a property in Hong Kong with Deng Jiagui.
In 2005, Zhang Yannan started appearing on Hong Kong documents, when Qi and Deng transferred to her 99.98 percent of a property-holding company that owns one apartment, a unit in the Regent on the Park development with an estimated value of HK$54 million ($6.96 million).
Repulse Bay Villa Land registry records show Zhang paid HK$150 million ($19 million) in 2009 for the villa on Belleview Drive in Repulse Bay, one of Hong Kong’s most exclusive neighborhoods. Property prices have since jumped about 60 percent in the area.
Her Hong Kong identity card number, written on one of the sale documents, matches that found on the company she owns with her mother and Deng Jiagui, Special Joy Investments Ltd. All three people share the same Hong Kong address in a May 12 filing.
Zhang owns four other luxury units in the Convention Plaza Apartments residential tower with panoramic harbor views adjoining the Grand Hyatt hotel.
Since its 1997 return by Britain to Chinese rule, Hong Kong has been governed autonomously, with its own legal and banking systems. About a third of all purchases of new luxury homes in the territory are by mainland Chinese buyers, according to Centaline Property Agency Ltd.
In mainland China, Qi and Deng’s marquee project is a luxury housing complex called Guanyuan near Beijing’s financial district, boasting manicured gardens and a gray-brick exterior reminiscent of the city’s historic courtyard homes. Financial details on the developer aren’t available because of restrictions on company searches in Beijing.
Beijing Complex To finance the development, the couple borrowed from friends and banks, and aimed to attract officials and executives at state-owned companies, they told V Marketing China magazine in a 2006 interview. Property prices in the capital rose 79 percent in the following four years, government data show.
The site’s developer -- 70 percent owned by Qi and Deng’s Yuanwei Investment -- acquired more than 10,000 square meters of land for 95.6 million yuan in 2004 to build Guanyuan, according to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Land and Resources.
A 189-square-meter (2,034-square-foot) three-bedroom apartment in Guanyuan listed online in June for 15 million yuan. One square meter sells for 79,365 yuan -- more than double China’s annual per capita gross domestic product.
Public anger at soaring housing costs has made real estate an especially sensitive issue for leaders in China. Property prices were “far from a reasonable level,” Premier Wen said in March.
‘Playing Field’ The lack of a level playing field and unaffordable home prices mean “you can be cut out of the China dream,” said Joseph Fewsmith, director of the Center for the Study of Asia at Boston University , who focuses on Chinese politics. “Is the rise of China going to last if you build it around these sorts of unequal opportunities?”
Those with the right connections are able to gain access to assets that are controlled by the government, according to Bo Zhiyue, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute.
“All they need is to get into the game one small step ahead of the others and they can make a huge gain,” he said. Bo wasn’t discussing the specific investments of Xi’s family members.
One of Deng’s well-timed acquisitions was in a state-owned company with investments in rare-earth metals.
Rare Earths Deng’s Shanghai Wangchao Investment Co. bought a 30 percent stake in Jiangxi Rare Earth for 450 million yuan ($71 million) in 2008, according to a bond prospectus.
Deng owned 60 percent of Shanghai Wangchao. A copy of Deng’s Chinese identity card found in company registry documents matches one found in filings of a Yuanwei subsidiary. Yuanwei group-linked executives held the posts of vice chairman and chief financial officer in Jiangxi Rare Earth, the filings show.
The investment came as China, which has a near monopoly on production of the metals, was tightening control over production and exports, a policy that led to a more than fourfold surge in prices for some rare earths in 2011.
A woman who answered the phone at Jiangxi Rare Earth’s head office in Nanchang said she was unable to provide financial information because the company wasn’t listed on the stock exchange. She declined to discuss Shanghai Wangchao’s investment, saying it was too sensitive.
Hiconics Drive Qi Qiaoqiao’s daughter Zhang made her 3.17 million-yuan investment in Hiconics in the three years before the Beijing- based manufacturer of electronic devices sold shares to the public in 2010. Hiconics founder Liu Jincheng was in the same executive MBA class as Qi Qiaoqiao, according to his profile on Tsinghua’s website.
Wang Dong, the company’s board secretary, didn’t respond to faxed questions or phone calls seeking comment.
The business interests of Qi and Deng may be more extensive still: The names appear as the legal representative of at least 11 companies in Beijing and Shenzhen, cities where restrictions on access to filings make it difficult to determine ownership of companies or asset values.
Dalian Wanda For example, Deng was the legal representative of a Beijing-based company that bought a 0.8 percent stake in one of China’s biggest developers, Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties Co., for 30 million yuan in a 2009 private placement. Dalian Wanda Commercial had sales of 95.3 billion yuan ($15 billion) last year.
Dalian Wanda Commercial “doesn’t comment on private transactions,” it said in an e-mailed statement.
Deng also served as legal representative of a company that won a government contract to help build a 1 billion-yuan ($157 million) bridge in central China’s Hubei province, according to an official website and corporate records.
Complex ownership structures are common in China, according to Victor Shih, a professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who studies the link between finance and politics in the country. Princelings engage people they trust, often members of their extended families, to open companies on their behalf that bid for contracts from state-owned enterprises, said Shih, who wasn’t referring specifically to Xi’s family.
New Postcom In the case of Xi Jinping’s brother-in-law, Wu Long, he’s identified as chairman of New Postcom in two reports on the website of the Guangzhou Development District, one in 2009 and the other a year later.
New Postcom doesn’t provide a list of management on its website. Searches in Chinese on Baidu Inc.’s search engine using the name “Wu Long” and “New Postcom” trigger a warning, also in Chinese: “The search results may not be in accordance with relevant laws, regulations and policies, and cannot display.”
New Postcom is owned by two people named Geng Minhua and Hua Feng, filings show. Their address in the company documents leads to the ninth floor of a decades-old concrete tower in Beijing where Geng’s elderly mother lives. Tacked to the wall of her living room was the mobile-phone number of her daughter.
When contacted by phone June 6, Geng confirmed she owned New Postcom with her son Hua Feng -- and that her daughter was married to Wu Ming, Wu Long’s younger brother. Geng said Wu Long headed the company and she wasn’t involved in the management.
Different Owners New Postcom identified two different people -- Hong Ying and Ma Wenbiao -- as its owners in a six-page, June 27 statement and said the head of the company was a person named Liu Ran. The company didn’t respond to repeated requests to explain the discrepancies. Wu Long and his wife, Qi An’an, couldn’t be reached for comment.
New Postcom was an upstart company that benefited from state contracts. It specialized in the government-mandated home- grown 3G mobile-phone standard deployed by China Mobile. In 2007, it won a share of a tender to supply handsets, beating out more established competitors such as Motorola Inc., according to BDA China.
“They were an unknown that suddenly appeared,” said Duncan Clark , chairman of BDA. “People were expecting Motorola to get a big part of that device contract, and then a no-name company just appeared at the top of the list.”
In 2007, the domestic mobile standard was still being developed, and many of the bigger players were sitting on the sidelines, allowing New Postcom a bigger share of the market, the company said in the statement.
Xi Yuanping William Moss, the Beijing-based spokesman of the Motorola Mobility unit that was split off from Motorola last year and purchased by Google Inc. (GOOG), declined to comment on details of any individual bids. China Mobile “has always insisted on the principle of open, fair, just and credible bidding” to select vendors, company spokesman Zhang Xuan said by e-mail.
Xi Jinping’s younger brother, Xi Yuanping, is the founding chairman of an energy advisory body called the International Energy Conservation Environmental Protection Association. He doesn’t play an active role in the organization, according to an employee who declined to be identified.
One of Xi’s nieces has a higher profile. Hiu Ng, the daughter of Qi An’an and Wu Long, and her husband Daniel Foa, 35, last year were listed as speakers at a networking symposium in the Maldives on sustainable tourism with the likes of the U.K. billionaire Richard Branson and the actress Daryl Hannah .
Hudson Clean Energy Ng recently began working with Hudson Clean Energy Partners LP, which manages a fund of more than $1 billion in the U.S., to help identify investments in China.
Details about the couple were removed from Internet profiles after Bloomberg reporters contacted them. Foa said by phone he couldn’t comment about FairKlima Capital, a clean- energy fund they set up in 2007. Ng didn’t respond to e-mails asking for an interview.
The two are no longer mentioned on the FairKlima website. A June 3 cache of the “Contact Us” webpage includes short biographies of Ng and Foa under the headline “Senior Management Team.”
A reference on Ng’s LinkedIn profile that said on June 8 that she worked at New Postcom has since been removed, along with her designation as “Vice Chair Hudson Clean Energy Partners China.”
Neil Auerbach, the Teaneck, New Jersey-based private-equity firm’s founder, said he was working with Ng because of her longstanding passion for sustainability.
“We are aware of her political connections, but her focus is on sustainable investing, and that’s the purpose,” he said in a June 13 interview. “We’re delighted to be working with her.”
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Michael Forsythe in Beijing at mforsythe@bloomberg.net ; Shai Oster in Hong Kong at soster@bloomberg.net ; Natasha Khan in Hong Kong at nkhan51@bloomberg.net ; Dune Lawrence in New York at dlawrence6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Amanda Bennett at abennett6@bloomberg.net ; Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net ; Ben Richardson at brichardson8@bloomberg.net
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
