Politics Now

Ambulance problem at the border

A couple of ugly episodes on the Canadian border in the past few weeks prompts questions about whether U.S. inspectors at the Canadian border are properly trained and supervised, and whether the Bush administration is pushing for needlessly harsh measures -- even in emergency situations.

Last week, American inspectors at the Detroit border forced an ambulance with lights flashing and sirens blaring, which was carrying a critically ill man, to pull over. The patient was headed from Windsor, Ont., to a Detroit hospital. Canadians and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., charged that the behavior of the inspectors was a violation of clearly established procedures for emergency situations.

U.S. officers reportedly sent the ambulance to secondary inspection, told the driver to get out and go inside an office and produce identification. Other American officers told the paramedics in the ambulance to get out, open the back door of the ambulance, and make the patient, who was in need of  emergency angioplasty, to identify himself. He did, and later underwent surgery in the Detroit hospital where he was listed in serious condition.

A Canadian police escort was with the ambulance when it was stopped.         

Thompson reacted angrily last week to the Detroit border incident.

It follows a similar incident the previous week when a Quebec fire truck, responding to an emergency request for assistance in upstate New York, was delayed at the U.S. border despite having lights and sirens activated.

Thompson said he will demand a full explanation for the New York and Detroit incidents from the Department of Homeland Security, which supervises the border inspectors.

In Canada, Stockwell Day, the minister of public safety, voiced concern in a statement that noted that the two countries "have a long-standing tradition of helping one another in times of emergency."

Separately, officials of the Travel Industry Association on Monday questioned why candidates for public office in the U.S. weren't paying more attention to the delays that security arrangements are imposing on travelers.

Politicians, fearful of being crticized for being soft on terrorism, rarely complain about heavy-handed American security procedures. So far only Thompson and Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., criticized border procedures in either in these incidents.

--- Douglas Turner

                  

Is U.S. headed toward economic crisis?

  President Bush has signed a law increasing the nation's debt limit to $9 trillion, mainly to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The debt limit figure is nine times what it was 25 years ago.

The Federal Reserve last week infused $45 billion of paper money into a banking system stressed because of bad housing loans. That figure is about the same as the Fed put into the system just after the al Qaeda attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

    Europe's basic currency, the Euro, is now worth a third more than the U.S. dollar; and the Canadian "Loonie" continues to strengthen against American dollar.

At a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., the panel's chairman, told Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, "I think we are at a moment of economic crisis stemming from four key areas: Falling housing prices, lack of confidence in creditworthiness, the weak dollar and high oil prices.

"None of the regulators," Schumer told Bernanke, "including the Federal Reserve, are acting quickly or boldly enough to deal with the risks we're facing."

At the same hearing, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a long-shot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said the Federal Reserve's policy of lowering interest rates in order to increase the money supply was little more than stealing from retirees whose savings are being threatened by inflation.

Bernanke ducked questions about whether the country is dipping into a recession.

Meanwhile, finance officials of China's Communist regime threatened to unload the hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars it has accumulated since the Clinton administration gave China most favored nation trading status. China, the officials are warning, will henceforth invest in "stronger" currencies like the Euro.

Peter Morici, University of Maryland economist, said that America's soaring trade deficit, mainly with China, is at the heart of the nation's credit crunch and the devaluation of its dollar, which increases the threat of inflation. Some estimate that China's deliberate undervaluation of its currency gives it a price advantage over American goods of more than 40 percent.

-- Douglas Turner

Should U.S. aid to Pakistan be stopped?

Congress and President Bush send $150 million a month to Pakistan, now held under martial law declared by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who has been tpresident since he took over in a military junta in 1999.

      In all, Washington has sent Musharraf about $11 billion, mostly in military hardware, which Musharraf has used to suppress dissent since early November. Pakistan, like its neighbor India, has nuclear weapons.

U.S. aid is supposed to be used in fighting terrorism, al-Qaeda Leader Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban. Musharraf's forces have failed to restrain any of these forces and instead has turned on his civilian detractors, who have been clamoring for a return to democracy for seven years.

In the course of Musharraf's crackdown, hundreds of political dissidents, lawyers, journalist and others have been jailed, some beaten. Judges are among those who have been rounded up under martial law.

  The declaration of martial law reportedly took place only days before Pakistan's Supreme Court was going to declare Musharraf ineligible to continue to serve as president. He fired the chief judge last week as part of his military takeover.

  On Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said U.S. aid to Pakistan is "under review." However, Bush praised Musharraf as a strong ally and terrorism fighter and declined to say what the government would do about the money, much of which has been unaccounted for.

American military leaders have warned Musharraf that such repression would prompt the government to reconsider its aid package. The quandary takes place as Democratic leaders are considering changes to the 2008 defense policy bill. At the same time, Rep. Duncan Hunter, Calif., the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee and a dark horse candidate for president, warned against being "too hasty with rebukes" of Musharraf.

Where does all this place Bush's campaign for Mideast democracy, and why are we sending so much money to what many Pakistanis view as a weakened dictator, whose time in office is growing short?

  -- Douglas Turner

Should the 1969 hate crimes law be updated?

The willingness of white Southerners to lynch black people was so strong even into the 1930s that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was unwilling to lend his prestige to a bill making lynching a federal crime. FDR feared offending powerful white senators whose backing was needed to pass his economic reforms.

Between the end of the Civil War and the signing of federal civil rights laws in the 1960s, at least 3,000 black people were lynched - murdered - in the U.S.

In recent months, the hanging of nooses is making a menacing comeback. They are not pranks, as some would argue, but death threats. A Columbia University professor was menaced in this way.

Most notoriously, nooses were hung outside a school in Jena, Louisiana, after black students sat under a historic tree there. The incident prompted a confrontation between white and black students at the school. The local white district attorney prosecuted, and jailed one of the six black students, but allowed the whites to go free even though it was reported that one of the whites menaced a black juvenile with a gun.

"A noose today is a symbol of white supremacy and pure barbarism," Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree testified at a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing on unequal justice in America.

The federal prosecutor for the district, Donald Washington, a black man appointed by President Bush in 2001, declined to prosecute the whites, on grounds the government does not bring hate-crimes actions against juveniles.

A widening cross-section of the country sees this example of justice in Western Louisiana as biased against black people. Students from two Atlanta colleges are circulating a petition to have the local prosecutor, Reed Walter, removed and disbarred.

On Oct. 23, a group of news organizations brought suit to open up the Louisiana juvenile court proceedings that were the basis of the student's imprisonment.

In 1969, it became a federal crime to commit a hate-crime in one of six categories including voting or going to school.

But, does this law need strengthening? Or does its lack of enforcement provide an example of the Republican's so-called "Southern Strategy" of looking the other way when blacks are deprived of their civil rights?

--Douglas Turner

       

Price on MoveOn.org ad a "mistake?"

  The New York Times' public editor, Clark Hoyt, told readers in his Sunday column that the newspaper erred by giving MoveOn.org a preferential price on the organization's ad attacking the integrity of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq.

Hoyt said the advertisement also violated the newspaper's internal prohibitions against publishing personal attacks.

The full page ad, published Sept. 10, the week Petraeus appeared at congressional hearings, media briefings and interviews with talk show hosts, questioned whether he was "General Betray Us."

MoveOn.org paid $64,575, instead of the standard $142,083, for the ad, Hoyt wrote, echoing charges made by Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.

Giuliani and other Republicans indicated the cut price is evidence of the liberal bias of the Times. The ad's harsh wording embarrassed a number of anti-war Democrats, particularly in the Senate, and may have deprived war opponents of support on a number of key votes on limiting U.S. involvement last week. 

Eli Pariser, MoveOn's executive director, issued a statement Sunday in which he said he believed the lower figure was the Times' normal rate.

Hoyt said FreedomsWatch.org, asked him to investigate. FreedomsWatch is a right wing organization that pushes defense spending based on the war against terrorism. The group said it wasn't offered the rate that Moveon got.

Pariser said the Times has admitted it "made a mistake ... without the knowledge or consent of MoveOn."

"Now that the Times has revealed this mistake for the first time, and while we believe that the $142,083 figure is above the market rate paid by most organizations, out of an abundance of caution we have decided to pay that rate for this ad. We will therefore wire the $77,083 difference to the Times tomorrow, September 24. 

"We call on Mayor Giuliani, who received exactly the same ad deal for the same price, to pay the corrected fee also," Pariser said.

"MoveOn continues, of course, to stand by the content of the advertisement and to urge citizens and their elected representatives in the Congress to focus on the continued dishonesty of the Bush Administration and the American blood and treasure being lost in a war for which the Administration has no exit strategy. Certainly that issue is more worthy of the attention of the electorate and the media than the mistake of an advertising representative or the wording of an advertisement."

Read a report on the issue at this link.

-- Douglas Turner   

        

Senate panel to hear from State Police brass on Bruno probe

Now, it's the State Police's turn to tell its side of the story -- if senior officials decide to show up.

The state Senate investigations committee this morning said it is calling a hearing September 24 and has asked Acting State Police Superintentent Preston Felton to testify. For now, the panel is inviting him, not sending a subpoena for his appearance.

Felton produced the documents on the travels of Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno at the request of two top aides to Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The governor and Bruno had been at war most of the year when the monitoring began. The two aides, Darren Dopp and William Howard, were identified in a recent report by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo as being involved in the plot.

Questions have also been raised about the extent of knowledge Richard Baum, the governor's secretary, had of the matter. The governor has denied any wrongdoing, and insists he had only heard there had been media inquiries about the use of state aircraft. Both Baum and Dopp Thursday agreed not to contest subpoenas they received to produce e-mails and other documents to the state ethics commission, which is investigating the scandal.

The Senate Republicans are walking a bit of a political tightrope. On one hand, they note a whole series of major questions remain unanswered about the scandal -- especially since Dopp and Baum refused to answer questions to Cuomo's investigators and Spitzer himself has never been questioned. But, some Republicans have also expressed concerns that they have to be careful not to overplay their hand as they pursue the matter.

The September 24 hearing is being called to hear from witnesses to help the Senate decide the fate of legislation involving abuses uncovered in the scandal. One Senate bill, for instance, seeks to give a three-year term in office to the superintentent of the State Police, instead of the longstanding practice where the agency's leader serves at the pleasure of the governor. Lawmakers say it would better insulate the superintendent from the kinds of pressure he received by the governor's advisors to create documents on a political enemy of his boss.

Besides Felton, Senate Investigations Committee Chairman George Winner has invited the State Police's top counsel, Glenn Valle, to testify. Also on the invite list are three former superintendents -- Wayne Bennett, James McMahon and Thomas Constantine.

Next up, an October hearing to hear of the complaints raised by the trooper's PBA -- which wants an investigation of the State Police. The PBA has been sharply critical on a number of fronts, including the handling of the Ralph "Bucky'' Phillips manhunt.

No one knows where this is all heading. But one thing is certain from the Senate hearing schedule: the scandal of the summer will continue to have legs into the fall.

Lt. Glenn Miner, a State Police spokesman, said it is not yet known whether Felton or Valle will appear at the hearing.

--Tom Precious

Just one more thing...

If anything, Albany is a town of ironies. Consider the state lobbying commission, which this week held its last public meeting before the agency is merged into a new state department.

Led by the fiesty David Grandeau, who has won praise from government watchdog groups for his willingness to take on the lobbying community, the agency's board, as one of its last official acts, declared there was enough evidence against an Albany area businessman involving alleged illegal gift-giving to a state legislator to warrant a full-blown hearing. [Whether it happens depends on the new agency, the Commission on Public Integrity.]

The legislator Grandeau's investigation claims got the illegal gifts -- in the form of a half-dozen flights on private and chartered flights by his friend, Jared Abbruzzese -- is Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. [The FBI for a year has been looking into the business connections of Bruno and Abbruzzese.]

Who was instrumental a dozen years ago in helping get Grandeau into the position as head of a lobbying agency that became such a headache to lobbyists, special interests and legislators over the past decade? None other than Joe Bruno.

Indeed, Bruno, before a falling out in recent years, has boasted of being Grandeau's ally in helping him land a previous job as city manager of Troy. [Grandeau has pushed aside any suggestions that any of his investigations were motivated by personal feuds with Bruno or anyone else.]

If Grandeau this week was helping to keep open a thorny matter involving his old political mentor, he was ending one involving Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Bruno's chief nemesis in government.

Before the lobbying panel ended its last session, Grandeau brought up one other matter: whether Richard Fields, a casino developer, had violated any laws last year by providing flights on his private jet to Spitzer. On Grandeau's recommendation, the panel closed the case, saying the payments by the Spitzer campaign to Fields for the flights were made in a timely enough manner.

"It should be closed without further action,'' Grandeau told his board.

Today, Bruno was asked if he had any thoughts on the end of Grandeau's reign as the chief lobbying industry watchdog. He would only say he looked forward to the new agency taking over "and doing the right things for the people of this state.''

As for those flights by Abbruzzese? Did Bruno pay for them? "Yes. We did everything that we were supposed to do legally and appropriately. We know that and the people who should know that, the authorities that should know that, also know that,'' Bruno said.

--Tom Precious

And nothing but the truth

"Truth, that's all."

So went Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno Wednesday about what he hopes a Senate investigations committee will discover at its second hearing scheduled for tomorrow into the campaign by top aides to Gov. Eliot Spitzer to use the State Police to track Bruno's travels using state aircraft.

On tap to testify at Thursday's hearing is state Inspector General Kristine Hamann, a Spitzer appointee whose office earlier this summer sided with a report by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that found no laws were broken during the smear campaign. Senate Republicans have questioned how hard the inspector general's office handled its investigation, and were threatening to subpoena Hamann if she didn't agree to testify in public today.

The IG's office is charged with investigating public corruption.

Bruno on Wednesday declined to confirm or deny a report in the New York Post this week that the Senate would be looking into millions of dollars in loans by Bernard Spitzer, a wealthy Manhattan real estate developer, to his son, the governor, during his 1994 and 1998 campaigns for attorney general.

But Bruno said a whole slew of Senate committees are being activated to look into everything from the condition of state bridges to ethics laws. "We need daylight. That's what we're up to,'' Bruno told reporters after an event near Albany.

"Stay tuned,'' Bruno said when asked if the Senate would be investigating the campaign loans made by the elder Spitzer to the governor.

Before ending his session with reporters, the Legislature's top Republican sought to bring the whole matter into a sort of Big Brother perspective. "The danger for the citizens, for the 19 million citizens of this state, is that people in powerful positions are out to get you. They don't like what you're doing? They're going to get you. Not just beat you. Destroy you,'' he said.

Besides the Spitzer administration monitoring of his travels, Bruno has been under investigaiton for about a year by the FBI, which is looking into his private business dealings.

--Tom Precious

Spitzer Tours; lobbying agency going dark

Gov. Eliot Spitzer Thursday heads to a school in Cheektowaga, as he continues his back-to-school tour that began earlier this week in New York City.

Aides expect little in the way of breaking news. Instead, the governor is flying around the state with appearances timed to the start of the school year to discuss -- and take credit for -- a record hike in state spending on public schools this year.

The governor's trip to Western New York serves another benefit: it keeps him away from the Capitol press corps back in Albany. The governor has had few public appearances at the Capitol in recent weeks since revelations about his senior advisors using the State Police to monitor the travels of his major political nemesis, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

Meanwhile, back in Albany Thursday, the New York Temporary State Commission on Lobbying -- which has had the word "temporary'' in its title since 1977 -- holds its final public hearing as an agency. The commission, known for its aggressive investigations of the lobbying community under its executive director, David Grandeau, is going out of business. In its place will be a new agency that will combine the duties of the Ethics Commission and the lobbying agency. The new department will be controlled by appointees of Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

In their last gasp, agency investigators are expected to make public details about some of its ongoing investigations so the board can decide whether to refer the cases over to the new monitoring agency. A hearing involving former Attorney General Dennis Vacco -- who the lobbying agency accuses of entering into an illegal contingency fee arrangement between his lobbying agency and a casino developer -- has been put off following a court-ordered stay. Vacco has denied any such arrangement existed and that the work he did for the developer did not constitute lobbying.

For a rare glimpse into the doings of the lobbying world, the lobbying agency's last meeting will be broadcast over the internet. The 10:30 a.m. meeting can be found at www.nylobby.state.ny.us.

--Tom Precious

Marijuana pits Conservatives against Conservatives

     It’s not every day when the tiny but influential state Conservative Party attacks one of its own rank-and-file members, but the issue of legalizing marijuana for medical purposes has a way of dividing people along strong lines.

     With Buffalo’s Joel Peacock set to be featured in advertisements beginning today in the area urging the legalization of the drug for certain strict medical conditions, the Conservative Party Tuesday called his views “misguided."

     Peacock, a construction industry inspector, emerged as an overnight poster child for groups pushing the medical marijuana bill after a Buffalo News story earlier this summer featured the longtime Conservative Party member saying for a brief time he turned to marijuana to find relief from the debilitating pain that has been with him since a 2001 car accident on Elmwood Avenue. Peacock, who takes a daily regimen of high-dose prescription pain killers to deal with his condition, said physicians should be able to prescribe marijuna for patients suffering from life-threatening illnesses or chronic pain.

     Groups backing the medical marijuana bill, which has already passed the Assembly, are targeting eight Senate Republican districts with print and broadcast ads. Sen. Dale Volker, R-Depew, is the local target.

     "Today, a registered conservative, Joel Peacock, injured in a 2001 car accident, is calling upon the state Senate to pass 'medical' marijuana as the Assembly did in June of this year.  Unfortunately, Mr. Peacock is only looking at the situation through his belief that 'medical' marijuana will help him with his serious illness," the Conservative Party said in a statement issued Tuesday afternoon.
 

     “Despite his belief, and the urging of the Marijuana Policy Project, the organization making a concerted effort to legalize 'medical' marijuana throughout the United States, 'medical' marijuana will not offer the relief he seeks," the party said. It said it opposes adding “a known mind-altering drug" like marijuana to treatments for pain and other conditions.    

     The head of the Conservative Party, Michael Long, sought to distance his party from Peacock and to make clear that the Buffalo party member “does not speak for the Conservative Party."

--Tom Precious