Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE

October 13, 2003

SPECIAL REPORT -- SMALL BUSINESS

Right Place, Right Time
Small businesses aren't just surviving. They're growing -- and hiring

... You wouldn't know it from reading the headlines about corporate downsizing, but across the U.S., small business is quietly holding its own -- and in some cases even thriving. Small businesses have several things going for them. First, they're concentrated in the service sector of the economy, which is healthier than manufacturing. Second, they have picked up work from big companies that are outsourcing peripheral functions in order to save money and focus on core businesses. Third, many of the Bush tax cuts benefit small biz. Fourth, easy money from the Federal Reserve has lowered the cost of 1- to 3-year bank loans, which many small businesses depend on. And finally, small business is benefiting from the growth acceleration of the overall U.S. economy.

The good news for small business is reflected in the optimism of owners. The National Federation of Independent Business says that in August, its Index of Small Business Optimism reached its highest level since monthly readings began in 1986. Fifteen percent of small businesses expected to add employees over the next three months; only 7% expected to cut them. By contrast, a July survey by the Business Roundtable of some of the nation's very largest companies found that only 16% planned to increase U.S. employment in the next six months, while 42% planned to cut jobs. Says William J. Dennis Jr., a senior research fellow at the independent business federation: "Things are clearly looking better. By the end of the year, we expect very good things to be happening."

AMBASSADOR JOSEPH C. WILSON, IV

Ambassador Wilson is CEO of JCWilson International Ventures, Corp., a firm specializing in Strategic Management and International Business Development.

Ambassador Wilson served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 1997 until July 1998 ...

(lots of standard boring bio stuff snipped by timber)

... He is married to the former Valerie Plame and has two sons and two daughters.



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The Middle East Institute
1761 N Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036-2882
(202) 785-1141



© Copyright 2002, The Middle East Institute. All Rights Reserved.

The Courier

Political probe White House leak story is full of holes


It's like a headline from the past: "FBI opens probe of Bush staff."

The word is, somebody at the White House "leaked" classified information -- the identity of a CIA undercover officer, the wife of Joseph C. Wilson, a former ambassador who, as a CIA consultant, traveled to Niger in 2002 to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq. Mrs. Wilson's maiden name was published in a July 14 column by Robert Novak, who was explaining how Wilson came to be hired for the Niger job when he had openly criticized the administration's policies on Iraq. Novak said his sources were from the administration.

We knew the Democrats were desperate, but if they have to have a scandal, couldn't they come up with a better one than this? This story simply does not hold water.

It's against the law to disclose the name of a covert agent, but according to Novak, Mrs. Wilson -- who uses her maiden name, Valerie Plame, in her work for the CIA -- did not fit into that category. In an Oct. 1 follow-up column, Novak wrote that "the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife's name would endanger her or anybody else." In fact, Novak wrote, an "unofficial" CIA source says she's an analyst, not in covert operations.

Wilson claims that reporters told him the White House leaked his wife's name, but he doesn't say who the reporters were. He also named Karl Rove, Bush's political strategist, as the source of the leaks, though he later admitted he "got carried away" when he said that, and that he can't link Rove directly to the alleged leak.

Novak says Mrs. Wilson's real identity "was not much of a secret," that "it was well known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA." He referred to a column by Clifford May in National Review Online, in which May said he had been told of her identity by a non-government source before Novak's July 14 column appeared.

In a Sept. 29 follow-up column, May wrote, "Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA? What also might be worth asking: 'Who didn't know?'"

Novak also pointed out that the name Valerie Plame is included in her husband's listing on "Who's Who in America." Her name also is on Wilson's bio at the Middle East Institute.

How can you leak a secret that's not a secret?

But the Democrats are making hay from this little episode. "This is not just a leak. This is a crime, plain and simple," says Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who has been fighting to decriminalize the leaking of such information for more than a decade.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says, "If there ever was a case for the appointment of a special counsel, this is it."

And Sen. Tom Daschle says "we know without a doubt that somebody broke the federal law."

In fact, there is plenty of doubt. This is politics at its worst, folks. Our prediction is that no leak will be uncovered and no criminal charges filed -- but the tarring of the Bush administration will have been accomplished. And that's all the Democrats are really after.





Copyright © 2003 The Findlay Publishing Company

"In a recent press conference Donald Rumsfeld said that he had no idea that the U.S. was reorganizing the leadership structure in Iraq and that nobody had consulted him. Rumsfeld was furious and said, 'I'm tired of being treated like President Bush.'"

"As of yesterday, the Bush administration still hadn't found the source of the White House leak that outed the wife of former Iraq ambassador Joseph Wilson as a CIA operative. To recap, here are the things President Bush can't find: The source of the leak, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin laden, the link between Saddam and Osama bin laden, the guy who sent the anthrax through the mail, and his butt with both hands and a flashlight."

The possibility of flaws in the electoral process is not something that gets discussed much in the United States. The attitude seems to be: we are the greatest democracy in the world, so the system must be fair. That has certainly been the prevailing view in Georgia, where even leading Democrats - their prestige on the line for introducing touchscreen voting in the first place - have fought tooth-and-nail to defend the integrity of the system. In a phone interview, the head of the Georgia Technology Authority who brought Diebold machines to the state, Larry Singer, blamed the growing chorus of criticism on "fear of technology", despite the fact that many prominent critics are themselves computer scientists. He says: "Are these machines flawless? No. Would you have more confidence if they were completely flawless? Yes. Is there such a thing as a flawless system? No." Mr Singer, who left the GTA straight after the election and took a 50 per cent pay cut to work for Sun Microsystems, insists that voters are more likely to have their credit card information stolen by a busboy in a restaurant than to have their vote compromised by touchscreen technology.

Voting machines are sold in the United States in much the same way as other government contracts: through intensive lobbying, wining and dining. At a recent national conference of clerks, election officials and treasurers in Denver, attendees were treated to black-tie dinners and other perks, including free expensive briefcases stamped with Sequoia's company logo alongside the association's own symbol. Nobody in power seems to find this worrying, any more than they worried when Sequoia's southern regional sales manager, Phil Foster, was indicted in Louisiana a couple of years ago for "conspiracy to commit money laundering and malfeasance". The charges were dropped in exchange for his testimony against Louisiana's state commissioner of elections. Similarly, last year, the Arkansas secretary of state, Bill McCuen, pleaded guilty to taking bribes and kickbacks involving a precursor company to ES&S; the voting machine company executive who testified against him in exchange for immunity is now an ES&S vice-president.

If much of the worry about vote-tampering is directed at the Republicans, it is largely because the big three touchscreen companies are all big Republican donors, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into party coffers in the past few years. The ownership issue is, of course, compounded by the lack of transparency. Or, as Dr Mercuri puts it: "If the machines were independently verifiable, who would give a crap who owns them?" As it is, fears that US democracy is being hijacked by corporate interests are being fueled by links between the big three and broader business interests, as well as extremist organizations. Two of the early backers of American Information Systems, a company later merged into ES&S, are also prominent supporters of the Chalcedon Foundation, an organization that espouses theocratic governance according to a literal reading of the Bible and advocates capital punishment for blasphemy and homosexuality.

The chief executive of American Information Systems in the early Nineties was Chuck Hagel, who went on to run for elective office and became the first Republican in 24 years to be elected to the Senate from Nebraska, cheered on by the Omaha World-Herald newspaper which also happens to be a big investor in ES&S. In yet another clamorous conflict of interest, 80 per cent of Mr Hagel's winning votes - both in 1996 and again in 2002 - were counted, under the usual terms of confidentiality, by his own company.

In theory, the federal government should be monitoring the transition to computer technology and rooting out abuses. Under the Help America Vote Act, the Bush administration is supposed to establish a sizeable oversight committee, headed by two Democrats and two Republicans, as well as a technical panel to determine standards for new voting machinery. The four commission heads were supposed to have been in place by last February, but so far just one has been appointed. The technical panel also remains unconstituted, even though the new machines it is supposed to vet are already being sold in large quantities - a state of affairs Dr Mercuri denounces as "an abomination".

One of the conditions states have to fulfil to receive federal funding for the new voting machines, meanwhile, is a consolidation of voter rolls at state rather than county level. This provision sends a chill down the spine of anyone who has studied how Florida consolidated its own voter rolls just before the 2000 election, purging the names of tens of thousands of eligible voters, most of them African Americans and most of them Democrats, through misuse of an erroneous list of convicted felons commissioned by Katherine Harris, the secretary of state doubling as George Bush's Florida campaign manager. Despite a volley of lawsuits, the incorrect list was still in operation in last November's mid-terms, raising all sorts of questions about what other states might now do with their own voter rolls. It is not that the Act's consolidation provision is in itself evidence of a conspiracy to throw elections, but it does leave open that possibility.

Meanwhile, the administration has been pushing new voting technology of its own to help overseas citizens and military personnel, both natural Republican Party constituencies, to vote more easily over the internet. Internet voting is notoriously insecure and open to abuse by just about anyone with rudimentary hacking skills; just last January, an experiment in internet voting in Toronto was scuppered by a Slammer worm attack. Undeterred, the administration has gone ahead with its so-called SERVE project for overseas voting, via a private consortium made up of major defense contractors and a Saudi investment group. The contract for overseeing internet voting in the 2004 presidential election was recently awarded to Accenture, formerly part of the Arthur Andersen group (whose accountancy branch, a major campaign contributor to President Bush, imploded as a result of the Enron bankruptcy scandal).

Not everyone in the United States has fallen under the spell of the big computer voting companies, and there are signs of growing wariness. Oregon decided even before HAVA to conduct all its voting by mail. Wisconsin has decided it wants nothing to do with touchscreen machines without a verifiable paper trail, and New York is considering a similar injunction, at least for its state assembly races. In California, a Stanford computer science professor called David Dill is screaming from the rooftops on the need for a paper trail in his state, so far without result. And a New Jersey Congressman called Rush Holt has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act, asking for much the same thing. Not everyone is heeding the warnings, though. In Ohio, publication of the letter from Diebold's chief executive promising to deliver the state to President Bush in 2004 has not deterred the secretary of state - a Republican - from putting Diebold on a list of preferred voting-machine vendors. Similarly, in Maryland, officials have not taken the recent state-sponsored study identifying hundreds of flaws in the Diebold software as any reason to change their plans to use Diebold machines in March's presidential primary.

The question is whether the country will come to its senses before elections start getting distorted or tampered with on such a scale that the system becomes unmanageable. The sheer volume of money offered under HAVA is unlikely to be forthcoming again in a hurry, so if things aren't done right now it is doubtful the system can be fixed again for a long time. "This is frightening, really frightening," says Dr Mercuri, and a growing number of reasonable people are starting to agree with her. One such is John Zogby, arguably the most reliable pollster in the United States, who has freely admitted he "blew" last November's elections and does not exclude the possibility that foul play was one of the factors knocking his calculations off course. "We're plowing into a brave new world here," he says, "where there are so many variables aside from out-and-out corruption that can change elections, especially in situations where the races are close. We have machines that break down, or are tampered with, or are simply misunderstood. It's a cause for great concern."

Roxanne Jekot, who has put much of her professional and personal life on hold to work on the issue full time, puts it even more strongly. "Corporate America is very close to running this country. The only thing that is stopping them from taking total control are the pesky voters. That's why there's such a drive to control the vote. What we're seeing is the corporatization of the last shred of democracy.

"I feel that unless we stop it here and stop it now," she says, "my kids won't grow up to have a right to vote at all."

© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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hobitbob,

A onesided and distorted view from a very partisan source. Full of unsupported extrapolations, Luddite fantasy, innuendo, significant omissions, and bald misstatements of fact.

A good example is the canard about the elimination of African American, presumably Democrat votes by the State of Florida in its cleanup of voter rolls prior to the last election. In fact thousands of dead people, illegal immigrants, and convicted felons were properly deleted from the voter registry by the state. One can wonder how they came to be on the registry. However, because the class of convicted felons happens to include a proportion of African Americans greater than their proportion of the general population, the Democrat hacks and professional race baiters such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton declared this to be a deliberate conspiracy to eliminate Democrat voters.

In fact the voter registry in Florida was vastly more accurate after this process was completed than before.