Tag Archives: corruption

Here’s Why the Saudis Love Trump

by Clair9767hao Posted on May 21, 2017

Mother Jones

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Last year, President Obama offered Saudi Arabia an arms deal worth $115 billion. President Trump just closed a deal valued at only $110 billion. He’s also spoken viciously about Islam on the campaign trail and tried to ban the entry of visitors from seven Muslim countries. And yet the Saudis are thrilled to have Trump in office. Why? Molly Hennessy-Fiske explains:

The White House they see now is presided over by a strong leader — a model Gulf monarchs recognize from their own governing styles — and if Trump surrounds himself with business-friendly family members high in his administration, well, so do they.

….“The GCC countries are not only excited about Trump, but the people he’s chosen to have around him,” said Alibrahim, who dismissed Obama as “the worst president ever,” unwilling to confront Iran and its Shiite Muslim proxies in Syria and neighboring Yemen, whom the Sunni leaders of the Gulf see as rivals.

….“Trump is a welcome change from Barack Obama because he does not remind them, does not pressure them, about American values and ideas about human rights and democracy. This president is a hardcore realist: He just doesn’t care. This goes well with many leaders in this part of the world,” Gerges said.

Trump has already impressed Gulf Arab leaders by escalating the war against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria and supporting the Saudi fight against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

As far as Saudi Arabia is concerned, Trump’s anti-Muslim rabble-rousing is just red meat for the American rubes. They don’t take anything Trump says seriously, only what he does. And what’s clear is that (a) Trump’s personal brand of corruption is reassuringly Middle Eastern, (b) he hates Iran, (c) he’s not going to harass the Saudis over trivia like human rights, and (d) he doesn’t care how brutal they get in their war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

That’s it. That’s all they care about. Trump isn’t bringing in more business and he’s not selling them more arms. Nor is his actual policy toward Iran and Yemen more than a few degrees different from Obama’s. He’s just carrying it out with no strings attached. They like that.

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Here’s Why the Saudis Love Trump

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Banning Lobbyists Might Sound Like a Good Idea. But Here’s What Trump Is Missing.

by WilfordLockhart Posted on November 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s transition team announced one phase of the president-elect’s plan to “drain the swamp” of corruption—a prohibition on registered lobbyists serving in his administration and a five-year lobbying ban for Trump officials who return to the private sector. Trump’s plan effectively doubles down on a policy that the Obama administration already has in place—one that many good government groups and lobbyists alike believe may have created a new problem: un-lobbyists—that is, influence-peddlers who avoid registering as lobbyists to skirt the administration’s rules.

Obama, like Trump, campaigned on a platform of aggressively rooting out the influence of lobbyists. After taking office, he put in place several major good-government initiatives, including a ban on lobbyists serving in his administration and a two-year cooling-off period before ex-administration officials could register to lobby. Once Obama’s lobbying rules took effect, there was a sharp decline in the number of registered lobbyists. Industry insiders and watchdog groups that track the influence game noted that the decrease was not due to lobbyists hanging up their spurs as hired guns for corporations and special interests. Rather it appeared that lobbyists were finding creative ways to avoid officially registering as such. There was no less influence-peddling going on, but now there was less disclosure of the lobbying that was taking place.

The problem lies with the definition of who is a lobbyist. The federal government requires anyone who spends more than 20 percent of their time on behalf of a client while making “lobbying contacts”—an elaborate and specifically defined type of contact with certain types of federal officials—to register as a lobbyist and file quarterly paperwork disclosing their clients and the bills or agencies he or she sought to sway. But by avoiding too many official “lobbying contacts” and limiting how much income that kind of work accounts for, lobbyists can shed the scarlet L, describing themselves as government affairs consultants or experts in advocacy and public policy. In 2014, the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics examined the trend of the “un-lobbyist” and found that 45 percent of the lobbyists who had shed their designation in the previous year still worked for the same employer. In many cases, the lobbyists didn’t leave their jobs, CRP found, they just changed their titles.

The Trump plan, which just tacks three years on to the Obama administration’s existing ban, does stop short of the Obama rules in one area. Under Obama’s policy, people who had been registered lobbyists could not work for agencies they had previously lobbied, though he did offer “waivers” to certain officials. According to Trump aides, registered lobbyists will be eligible for administration jobs if they de-register as lobbyists. The Washington Post reports that Josh Pitcock, a close aide to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, took the step on Monday, sending the Senate Clerk’s office notice that he is no longer a lobbyist for the State of Indiana.

In the end, said Richard Painter, the chief ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, the Trump plan may only perpetuate the problem of un-lobbyists.

“People are going to react to the Trump thing in the same way,” Painter notes, “by saying, ‘I’ll figure out a way to not be a lobbyist.'”

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Banning Lobbyists Might Sound Like a Good Idea. But Here’s What Trump Is Missing.

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Fossil fuel darling Ted Cruz demands the feds stop investigating Exxon

by GeraldineLandor Posted on May 27, 2016

Fossil fuel darling Ted Cruz demands the feds stop investigating Exxon

By on May 27, 2016Share

He’s baaaack!

Just a few weeks after Ted Cruz tucked his three-pronged tail between his legs and headed back to D.C., the Texas senator and one-time presidential hopeful has gone right back to advocating for his real constituents in Congress: Big Oil.

The Guardian reports that Cruz, along with four other senators, has demanded that the Department of Justice cease any investigation into whether oil companies lied to the public about climate change. Exxon, which wasn’t specifically mentioned in the senators’ letter, is at the heart of a probe by the DOJ and over a dozen states looking into the company’s attempts to cover up evidence linking fossil fuels and climate change.

“We write today to demand that the Department of Justice (DoJ) immediately cease its ongoing use of law enforcement resources to stifle private debate on one of the most controversial public issues of our time,” wrote Cruz and his compatriots, who apparently need a refresher on the word “controversial.” The only thing controversial about climate change — an issue that 97 percent of scientists agree on — is why Ted Cruz and his pals refuse to accept it.

Cruz, who received more donations from fossil fuel companies than any other presidential hopeful, has a history of advocating for the industry in Congress. At a Senate hearing earlier this year, Cruz called on a bevy of climate change deniers to testify that it isn’t happening, including a retired doctor who thinks the planet could use a little more carbon dioxide, a scientist convicted of corruption, and a Canadian singer who recorded an album about cats, as the Guardian noted.

Welcome back, Ted! We wish we could say we missed you.

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Fossil fuel darling Ted Cruz demands the feds stop investigating Exxon

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Cops Raid the Former Offices of FIFA’s Brand-New President

by ErnestiRosenber Posted on April 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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Global soccer may be embroiled in yet another corruption crisis after Swiss police raided the offices of UEFA, the sport’s European governing body, on Wednesday. The raid came days after Gianni Infantino, UEFA’s former chief and the newly installed president of FIFA, appeared in the massive Panama Papers leak, which exposed the complex offshore banking arrangements of some of the world’s most powerful people.

According to the Guardian, those documents show that Infantino co-signed a UEFA broadcast rights deal in 2006 with two Argentinian businessmen, Hugo and Marino Jinkis, who are now under indictment as part of the United States’ global soccer corruption investigation. The men immediately resold the rights to Ecuador’s TV station Teleamazonas at a steep markup, and the documents potentially tie Infantino to both that deal and other illicit acts by the Jinkis’.

Infantino was UEFA’s director of legal services at the time, and he said in a statement yesterday that the contract was awarded properly and that he had no direct dealings with either of the two men or their company. “There is no indication whatsoever for any wrongdoings from neither UEFA nor myself in this matter,” he said.

Infantino was only elected FIFA president in February, following months of scandal during which the US and Swiss authorities arrested a string of FIFA officials and the organization banned its former president, Sepp Blatter, from any soccer-related activities for six years.

At the time, Infantino promised to turn the page on FIFA’s corruption problems and implement badly needed reforms. “We will restore the image of FIFA and the respect of FIFA, and everyone in the world will applaud us,” he said after his election.

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Cops Raid the Former Offices of FIFA’s Brand-New President

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The New "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" Trailer Was Just Released—and It’s Pretty Great.

by CiaraVandegrift Posted on October 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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The New "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" Trailer Was Just Released—and It’s Pretty Great.

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Watch Sepp Blatter Lash Out Against FIFA’s Critics in 2013

by Jill Tsai Posted on May 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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In October 2013, at the Oxford Union, FIFA president Sepp Blatter took aim at critics who viewed soccer’s international governing body as “a faceless machine printing money at the expense of the beautiful game.” (He also mocked Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo for how much he spends on his hair.) Blatter told the crowd:

There are those who will tell you that football is just a heartless, money-spinning game or just a pointless kick about on the grass. There are those who will tell you that FIFA is just a conspiracy, a scam, accountable to nobody and too powerful for anyone to resist. There are those who will tell you of the supposed sordid secrets that lie deep in our Bond villain headquarters in the hills above Zurich, where we apparently plot to exploit the unfortunate and the weak. They would have you believe that I sit in my office with a sinister grin, gently stroking the chin of an expensive, white Persian cat as my terrible sidekicks scour the earth to force countries to host the World Cup and to hand over all of their money. You might laugh. It is strange how fantasy so easily becomes confused with fact. And it feels almost absurd to have to say this. But that is not who we are. Not FIFA. Not me.

(You can watch the whole speech below—It’s very long! He talks very slowly!—but the key bits are in the video up top.)

These words resonate now, as Blatter sets his sights on a fifth term at the head of the organization amid pressure and criticism following a series of corruption-related charges on senior FIFA officials that have roiled the sport.

But remember that “Bond villain headquarters in the hills above Zurich” Blatter was talking about? Well, Swiss photographer Luca Zanier snapped a photo of FIFA executive committee’s boardroom in Zurich, and it looks villain-esque. John Oliver even likened it to the war room in Dr. Strangelove.

Here is Blatter’s full speech, courtesy of the Oxford Union:

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Watch Sepp Blatter Lash Out Against FIFA’s Critics in 2013

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I Want to Hear the Republican Plan For Fighting ISIS

by TobiasKethel Posted on February 25, 2015

Mother Jones

The drumbeat for President Obama to “do something” to fight ISIS is growing louder every day among prospective Republican presidential candidates. It’s all a bit weird, since Obama rather plainly is doing something, as interviewers repeatedly point out whenever the subject comes up. But no matter. It’s a good sound bite, and in any case, whatever Obama is doing, Republicans insist they want to do more. Today, Paul Waldman points out that all these presidential wannabes are just reflecting what the Republican base wants to hear:

Four months ago, 57 percent of Republicans thought we should use ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria; that number has now gone up to 67 percent. Among the conservative Republicans who will dominate the primary contests, it’s even higher, at 71 percent. When Pew asked respondents to choose between “using overwhelming military force is the best way to defeat terrorism around the world” and “relying too much on military force to defeat terrorism creates hatred that leads to more terrorism,” last October 57 percent of Republicans chose the overwhelming military force option; that number is now 74 percent.

I don’t suppose that most voters have really thought this through in much detail, but I wonder just how far they really want to go. The ISIS stronghold of Mosul, for example, is about five times the size of Fallujah, and probably has about 3-4 times as many ISIS defenders as Fallujah had Sunni insurgents back in 2004. And Fallujah was a huge battle. It took more than a year to retake the city; required something like 15,000 coalition troops in all; and resulted in more than a hundred coalition deaths.

At a first guess, a full-scale assault on Mosul would likely require at least 2-3 times as many troops and result in several hundred American deaths. And Mosul is only a fraction of the territory ISIS controls. It’s a big fraction, but still a fraction.

So this is what I want to hear from Republican critics of Obama’s ISIS strategy. I agree with them that training Iraqi troops and relying on them to fight ISIS isn’t all that promising. But the alternative is likely to be something like 30-50,000 troops committed to a battle that will result in hundreds of American casualties. Are Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz willing to own up to that? If they are, then good for them and we’ll let the American public decide who’s got the better strategy. But if they’re not, then it’s all just a con job for the rubes. The GOP candidates are screaming for “more,” but not willing to acknowledge what “more” really means.

Let’s hear it, folks. When you say “more,” what do you really have in mind? Candidates for president shouldn’t be allowed to get away with nothing more than vague grumbles and hazy bellicosity any longer. Let’s hear the plan.

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I Want to Hear the Republican Plan For Fighting ISIS

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SIM Card Manufacturer Says Its Encryption Keys Are Safe From NSA Hacking

by Aaron Stone Posted on February 25, 2015

Mother Jones

I’m passing this along without comment since I don’t have anything substantive to add. I just wanted to keep everyone up to date on the Intercept story about the NSA stealing cell phone encryption data stored on SIM chips:

Security-chip maker Gemalto NV said Wednesday that American and British intelligence services could be responsible for a “particularly sophisticated intrusion” of its networks several years ago, but denied that the alleged hack could have widely compromised encryption it builds into chips used in billions of cellphones world-wide.

….Company executives also asserted that the interceptions wouldn’t have compromised the security of its newer SIM cards for 3G and 4G cellular networks, only older 2G networks. The reason: Gemalto says the new technology no longer require it to send telecom companies the keys to decrypt individuals’ communications—so they couldn’t have been intercepted.

Hmmm. On the one hand, many of the Snowden documents are indeed fairly old, dating back to 2010 or 2011. So they could be out of date. On the other hand, the NSA didn’t necessarily have to “intercept” anything here. A sufficiently sophisticated hack could presumably have given them direct access to the Gemalto database that contains the encryption keys. And needless to say, Gemalto has a vested interest in assuring everyone that their current products are safe.

So….who knows what really happened here. We’ll likely hear more about it as Gemalto’s internal investigation continues.

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SIM Card Manufacturer Says Its Encryption Keys Are Safe From NSA Hacking

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DHS Funding Fight Is Going Down to the Wire

by GemmaMcMinn Posted on February 25, 2015

Mother Jones

We’re getting down to the wire in the funding fight over the Department of Homeland Security: DHS will shut down this weekend if funding isn’t approved by Friday. In the Senate, Mitch McConnell wants to simply hold two separate votes: one to fund DHS and another to repeal President Obama’s recent immigration actions. But tea partiers in the House are adamantly opposed to that: they want to keep the two things together in one bill, which they hope will force Democrats to cave in and kill the immigration plan. In reality, it will only produce deadlock in the Senate and a shutdown of DHS that Republicans will be blamed for. So what’s John Boehner to do? Greg Sargent comments:

We’ve seen this particular thriller a number of times already. Here’s how it always goes: We are told there’s no way Boehner would ever dare move must-pass legislation with a lot of Democrats. He’s stuck! Then pressure builds and builds, and Boehner does end up passing something with a lot of Democrats. Last I checked, he’s still Speaker.

….The fact that Boehner has the mere option of passing clean funding with the help of a lot of Democrats is rarely even mentioned. You can read article after article about this whole showdown and not be informed of that basic fact. Thus, the actual reason we’re stuck in this crisis — Boehner is delaying the moment where he does pass something with Dems for as long as possible — goes oddly unmentioned. Yet recent history suggests that Boehner himself knows this is how it will end, and that all of this drama won’t change the outcome.

Probably so. After all, the only thing that changed in the last election was control of the Senate, and Senate Republicans are willing to compromise. The House is probably going to have to go down that road eventually too.

But my guess is that they’re going to shut down DHS for a while first. Boehner has made it pretty clear that he feels like he needs to demonstrate his conservative bona fides at the beginning of this new session of Congress, and that means holding out as long as he can. It’s a waste of time, and it’s going to hurt Republican efforts to work on other legislation, but that’s life. Symbols are important, and Boehner needs to show whose side he’s on. There’s a good chance this will last a couple of weeks before it gets resolved.

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DHS Funding Fight Is Going Down to the Wire

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What the Broadband Industry Really Needs Isn’t Net Neutrality. It Needs Competition.

by QJYBerthafcqn Posted on February 24, 2015

Mother Jones

Will strong net neutrality rules reduce the incentive for cable companies to invest in high-speed network infrastructure? Maybe, though similar rules certainly haven’t had that effect in the cell phone market. Of course, the cell phone market is intensely competitive, and that’s probably the real difference between the two. As Tim Lee notes today, Comcast’s cable division is immensely profitable—certainly profitable enough to fund plenty of new high-speed infrastructure. But why should they bother?

Comcast’s high profits are evidence of high barriers to entry in the broadband industry. Ordinarily, a company that consistently made billions of dollars in profits would attract new competitors seeking to capture a piece of the market.

But with a few exceptions — such as Google’s projects in Kansas City and elsewhere — this hasn’t really happened. In most parts of Comcast’s service territory, consumers’ only alternative for broadband service is the local phone company.

Conversely, Comcast doesn’t seem interested in trying to steal market share from rivals. Comcast could expand into the service territory of neighboring cable companies or it could spend money building a next-generation fiber optic network the way Verizon and Google have done. Instead, they’ve chosen to spend more money rewarding shareholders than investing in their networks.

Given current political realities, strong net neutrality rules are a good idea. But an even better idea would be to forget about net neutrality and open up local markets to real competition. I think we’d find out pretty quickly that broadband suppliers have plenty of money for infrastructure upgrades if the alternative is a steadily shrinking market share as competitors start eating their lunch.

Competition is good. Big companies don’t like it, and our approach to antitrust enforcement has unfortunately lost sight of competition as a sufficient raison d’être. That’s too bad. It’s the cure for a lot of ills and a way to keep the rest of the regulatory state relatively light. It’s well past time for us to rediscover this.

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What the Broadband Industry Really Needs Isn’t Net Neutrality. It Needs Competition.

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