Mayor Ford votes against every community grants program

Returning briefly to his old role as council's lonely contrarian, Mayor Rob Ford reprised an annual tradition and voted on Tuesday against every one of Toronto’s six widely popular community grants programs.

The community development and recreation committee, chaired by Ford ally Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, recommended that the city give dozens of community groups a total of about $7.2 million. The allocations were about to sail through council without a discussion or vote when Ford rose to say he wanted to be recorded as opposing all of them — as he did every year as a councillor.

Council then voted on the programs individually. Despite Ford’s newfound power, the results were nearly identical to votes on the programs under mayor David Miller: Ford lost 43-1 in votes on four of the programs, 42-2 on the fifth, and 41-3 on the sixth.

Ford was the lone councillor to oppose the Access, Equity and Human Rights program, which will provide $767,000 to 38 groups working on issues related to “race relations, gender equity, literacy, disability, sexual orientation, and Aboriginal affairs”; the Community Safety program, which will provide $666,000 to 22 groups working to prevent violence in priority neighbourhoods; the Community Recreation program, which will provide $594,000 to 80 groups for “activities that address gaps in available services provided by city recreation services”; and the Community Festivals and Special Events program, which will provide $98,000 to 30 groups.

Councillor Doug Ford joined his brother in opposing $4.7 million in Community Service Partnership grants to 78 groups that will “advance council's strategic goals and priorities by working to improve social outcomes for vulnerable, marginalized and high-risk communities.”

Councillor Frank Di Giorgio joined both Fords in opposing $408,000 in grants from the Services Development Investment Program, which helps 11 community organizations improve their capacity to respond to local needs.

Rob Ford did not respond to a question on his votes as he left the podium at the end of a brief press conference.

As a councillor under the left-leaning administration of Miller, Ford regularly voted alone against spending he believed was unnecessary or wasteful, including the grants programs. As mayor, he was the sole vote against accepting provincial money for an effort to combat HIV and syphilis.

Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday, a staunch fiscal conservative who voted in favour of the grants, said he thinks Ford believes the city spends too much on grants.

“I think it’s the overall amount that he’s opposed to. I guess we have to look for cutbacks,” Holyday said. “The trouble with the list is there's some very, very good recipients, and then there might be some that are questionable. Without picking the list apart, it's difficult to say no to them all. That's why I did what I did.”

Councillor Janet Davis, chair of the community development committee under Miller, called Ford's votes “embarrassing.”

“At first I just shook my head. He still thinks he's the Ward 2 councillor. He's the mayor, and he's supposed to provide leadership,” Davis said. “To turn around and be the sole vote opposing grants that support communities across Toronto? It's just shameful, and it's pretty astounding: he has not adjusted to his new role. It's like it was 2001.”

Origin
Source: Toronto Star 

Stephen Harper's Actions Against Immigration Are Different Than His Words

Stephen Harper now has a stronger mandate with a majority government, so what is Harper's agenda with his new mandate? The answer is that there are two agendas at play. The first is to chart Canada on a fundamentally right-wing course; the second is to establish the Conservatives as the new "natural governing party," taking this mantle from the Liberals who previously claimed this title.

These agendas seem contradictory -- one involves a radical right-wing agenda while the other is a more centrist project -- trying to occupy ground previously claimed by the Liberals, ground that is harder for the left-wing NDP to capture. For Harper, however, accomplishing these agendas will not necessarily be mutually contradictory.

The Harper government is likely to use the language of political moderation, to not take an "in-your-face" ideological approach like, for example, Mike Harris did. However the actual policies, while taking on an incremental nature, are likely to belie this language of moderation.

The Harper government has already prioritized spending on fighter jets and prisons and championed corporate tax reductions, a course that will most likely necessitate social program reductions.

A clear example of where Conservatives use moderate language, but pursue an immoderate course, is immigration. Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney heavily courted immigrants and visible minorities, so-called "ethnic" voters, in the run-up to the last election.

According to the Canadian Election Study, Conservative gains among immigrant voters were overstated -- vote splitting between Liberals and New Democrats in suburban Toronto facilitated Conservative gains in large part. Nonetheless, the Harper government was able to claim the language of moderation on immigration and multiculturalism.

However, during the election, a group of immigration lawyers warned that while Conservatives were stating they would improve the immigration system, their policies contradicted these statements.

Annual visa quotas for sponsored parents and grandparents dropped dramatically between 2005 and 2011 from 20,005 to 11,200, with actual sponsorship applications taking nine to 30 months longer depending on location of visa application. While the rationale may be that sponsored elderly immigrants use social services and do not contribute to tax revenue, this raises a fundamental question of why members of immigrant communities cannot have their elderly parents and grandparents nearby to look after, a privilege which non-immigrants enjoy.

In Middle Eastern, Asian, and South Asian cultures, it is customary for families to look after elderly parents, to have them in the same house. Furthermore, many immigrants benefit from having their extended families come with them in helping to settle down in a new society.

Something else to note, when the Maengs, a family of landed South Korean immigrants in Moncton, New Brunswick, faced deportation because of the costs of caring for their autistic son, it was the provincial government of New Brunswick -- in stepping up to cover related healthcare costs -- and not the federal government which acted to ensure this family could stay in Canada.

For refugees, the Conservatives cancelled the only program that allowed refugees to apply in their own country and have re-introduced a bill from the last Parliament which targets refugees. Under this bill, for refugees there is mandatory detention for one year without judicial review, denial of permanent residency for five years, and increased barriers being reunited with families through denial of sponsorship for five years. Many legal experts have stated that this bill contravenes the Charter.

This bill was spurred on, in part, through an earlier incident where a ship off the shores of British Columbia, carrying Tamil refugees from war-torn Sri Lanka, became a source of controversy.

While Conservative gains among immigrant voters are overstated, looking at Greater Toronto it is interesting to note that Conservatives made limited seat gains in Scarborough, where there is a relatively large Tamil population, while sweeping ridings in Mississauga and Brampton, where there are relatively large Indian and Pakistani populations (although at this point the exact demographic breakdown among different groups in these ridings is uncertain).

Could Conservatives be targeting certain groups, Indian and Pakistani -- misleading them on facilitating a swifter immigration process -- while writing off others such as Tamils who came as refugees?

On immigration the Conservatives are using the language of moderation and inclusiveness, but their actual policies tell a different story.

Full Article
Source: Huffington 

When Negotiators Take Themselves Hostage

The GOP is threatening to shut down government over problems it could easily solve.

What if there were a group of terrorists holding your family hostage, and pointing a gun, not at your family, but at themselves, demanding the account number to your pension fund? Would you negotiate with the terrorists by allowing them access to your savings, or would you let them shoot themselves, thus keeping your retirement money intact?

Congressional Republicans are threatening to default on the debt unless U.S. President Barack Obama caves to their demands to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security spending. Regardless of the market-crashing consequences of a debt default, actually doing so would be unconstitutional. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment clearly states that "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions ... shall not be questioned." Republicans are violating the constitution by threatening a debt default. End of discussion.

Credible economists and lawmakers on both sides generally agree that raising the debt ceiling is an essential part of governing, and that a large deficit can pose a danger to economic security. But if Speaker John Boehner genuinely cares about deficit reduction, he need only look to ending his own party's policies and shifting the tax burden. Swearing allegiance to Grover Norquist's no-new-taxes pledge, the GOP will only allow room for $4 trillion in cuts, arguing that this is a spending problem, not a revenue problem. However, the GOP’s budget would collect exactly $4 trillion less over the next decade through even more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.

Contrary to Republican claims, the United States is one of the lowest-tax countries in the world – U.S. corporations and wealthy citizens pay far less in taxes than other developed nations. Capital-gains taxes have dropped 10 per cent since 1950, tax rates for million-dollar households have decreased 10 per cent since the mid-90s, and the estate tax has virtually disappeared for those with the largest fortunes since the onset of the Bush presidency. Four simple solutions would close that $4 trillion budget gap in the next decade, without even touching Social Security or Medicare.

Full Article
Source: The Mark 

Phone Hacking: Rupert Murdoch Summoned By UK Parliament As BSkyB Bid Implodes

Rupert Murdoch was summoned by the British Parliament committee investigating his hacking scandal to give evidence next Tuesday, and he has agreed to come, along with his son James and top deputy Rebekah Brooks. The summons came on a day when Murdoch's bid to take over satellite company BSkyB looked to be in more serious peril than ever, with members on all sides of the House of Commons calling for it to be scrapped.

Louise Mensch, a Conservative member of Parliament, announced on Twitter that Murdoch, his son James and News International chief Rebekah Brooks have all been summoned to appear before the Select Committee of the Department of Media, Culture and Sport (the government cabinet department responsible for the press.)

On Tuesday afternoon, the head of the committee, John Whittingdale, announced that Rupert and James Murdoch and Brooks will indeed appear before Parliament next Tuesday.

James Murdoch has already apologized for issuing misleading statements to Parliament in previous testimony. The Select Committee has also been a frequent critic of News International's conduct during the five-year hacking scandal.

The summons is just the latest in a string of bad news for Rupert Murdoch. On Tuesday, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an extraordinary attack on News International for hacking, "blagging" and conning its way into obtaining his legal and financial records, as well as for allegedly uncovering the news of his son's cystic fibrosis through illegal means.

Full Article
Source: Huffington  

A Glimpse into the Shady World of Romas/COIN

Even Disney/Pixar may be involved in an alleged global electronic surveillance ring.

In February, the hacktivist group Anonymous released 70,000 emails from security firm HBGary Federal, revealing that the firm had been part of an effort to sell its information-warfare services to companies seeking to attack WikiLeaks. Barrett Brown combed through the emails and found evidence of what he says is a massive surveillance effort involving numerous security firms. According to Brown, this effort is primarily targeting the Arab world, and is evidently run for the U.S. government. Even Disney/Pixar appears to have been caught up in the effort, at least peripherally. The HBGary Federal emails suggest the alleged program, known as Romas/COIN, is about to be upgraded to a new program known as Odyssey.

THE MARK: Can you tell us what you discovered about Romas/COIN in the 70,000 HBGary Federal emails that were released in February?

BARRETT BROWN: Northrop Grumman has held the contract for Romas/COIN for at least three years now – possibly longer. The picture we have of what Romas/COIN is is not based on anything from the client, whichever military intelligence agency the client is, but is rather based on what these companies were trying to provide to that client as a means of winning that contract away from Northrop Grumman.

To be more specific, [former Northrop Grumman CEO] Aaron Barr, having left Northrop Grumman, was put in charge of HBGary Federal, and he began talking to the CEO of Mantech, another contractor, and some of the principals at TASC, which is a much larger contractor. Barr said, "We should compete for this contract when it comes up for renewal. Let's get a bunch of companies together and be in a position to offer a better product."

By the end of 2010, they had obtained not just TASC, HBGary Federal, Mantech, and a few others, but also companies like SocialEyez, which is a United Arab Emirates-based firm that provides natural language processing. By its own admission on its main website, SocialEyez can monitor millions of multilingual conversations a day and assess them.

At some point, Aaron Barr asked a contact at the Office of the Secretary of Defense to put him in touch with a contact at Pixar. The OSD contact arranged to get him in touch with [an individual] who is a former National Security Agency (NSA) technology director, and who, for some reason, now works at Pixar/Disney. So that raises the questions of what Pixar/Disney is doing, why it has former NSA people working for it, and why the OSD is able to recommend someone at Pixar/Disney.

You see, all the capabilities they're looking for in terms of translation, natural language processing, expert systems, the use of websites, and Aaron Barr's own program called MAGPII (which is short for Magnifying Personal Information), are the basis for Romas/COIN, which appears to be a very complex apparatus that provides an unprecedented picture of what's being said and communicated within a large spectrum. It involves surveillance, and it seems to involve putting out some degree of misinformation.

On the whole, the problem with this is that, even though we have all these capabilities written down – their communication with Apple and Google, and the fact that they were seeking out AT&T and looking at online game companies – it never gets to the point where we really know what the specific goal is, beyond the fact that there is surveillance incorporated into it. That's why I'm hoping that others with better familiarity with these procedures might add to the existing dataset.

THE MARK: So, just to clarify, we know that there's a very big, complex, multifaceted apparatus, but we don't know what it does.

BROWN: Right. And I think the fact that all these companies are more than ready to provide things via this system is very problematic. Between this large industry that's growing very quickly, and the increasing pressure on intelligence agencies in terms of intent and mentality, I think the recipe here is for more and more sophisticated surveillance and information-manipulation capabilities.

One of the things that was stressed in our research was the sort of weird, close network you see among all these companies. I mean, just looking at HBGary, you see emails between it and TASC, SAIC, Booz Allen Hamilton, Mantech, Archimedes Global, and tons of other companies. There's a whole lot of collaboration within the industry. Having looked at the interactions for so long, my view is that what you have here is a budding technocratic class. I really think it bears more scrutiny than it's getting.

A company called Endgame Systems is mentioned several times in the context of being actively opposed to its name getting out. The company actually says to Aaron Barr that it doesn't want to appear in a press release. It’s a smaller company, run by a former NSA fellow, and it’s providing a couple of services involving botnets, but also something else. The fact is, Endgame Systems is actively opposed to being scrutinized, and its federal clients don't want it to be scrutinized.

To the extent that policy can be put into action by way of informational capabilities, policy is being decided not by congressional oversight, or by any elected officials, but rather by the intelligence community itself within the military. It gets voted a great deal of money, which it can use any way it wants; it can write up what it wants and give it to these companies, which are inclined to provide whatever these agencies want – without much thought for how it might affect democratic institutions or how it might corrode the information stream.

THE MARK: In the wiki, you discuss the possibility that this apparatus might be used to disseminate information as well as survey social networks. That sounds very foreboding.

BROWN: That's based on a couple of discussions in the emails where they talk about the translators having to produce content. There are also a few other reasons to believe that, based on a couple of websites they're putting up, mobile phone apps, and that kind of thing.

I'm not saying this is a giant propaganda organ. Misinformation is being put out to some degree, but that may just be in terms of providing what appears to be a commercial product (which it really is not). So when I say putting out information, I don't necessarily mean that this is something that's putting out misinformation on a grand scale. You have to remember that what we're working with here is little bits and pieces of discussions over a year-long period.

THE MARK: What kind of effect do you think exposing information on the intelligence-contracting community will have?

BROWN: It seems to me that if they don't want scrutiny, more scrutiny should be directed at them. If the media's role is to serve as a watchdog, then you would think the fact that this large group is hiding its actions would set off an alarm for them.

At this point, the New York Times is more interested in asking me about LulzSec. For the most part, the media industry in this country is so broken that I could reveal anything, and without enough luck – or without some component that happens to strike the fancy of some editor somewhere – it's just not going to make it into public consciousness. It's never going to prompt an investigation by the media or by Congress without a hook. Now, if there were some kind of sex involved, or if Charlie Sheen were somehow a client, then that would be wonderful.

Things being the way they are, I would recommend that anyone who wants to get away with something should just go ahead and do it. Go ahead and join the intelligence-contracting industry; go spy on civilians; go do the bidding of the Bank of America; and be responsible for illegal attacks against WikiLeaks. You'll get away with it.

Origin
Source: The Mark 

Pride funding likely safe — for now, says Mammoliti

Toronto Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti is conceding that hundreds of thousands of dollars of Pride funding already promised to organizers for 2011 will likely be delivered.

Mammoliti sent a release to media outlets Monday detailing his stance on publicly funded parades and marches. He had been expected to put forward a motion Tuesday to withhold the nearly $130,000 in grant money already committed to Pride organizers.

A video shot by Mammoliti on July 2, showing Dyke March participants carrying anti-Israeli apartheid signage, caused some concern about whether the City would make good on its promise to fund this year’s Pride events.

Earlier this year, Mammoliti demanded a written guarantee from festival organizers that the controversial group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid be banned from participating in Pride events.

QuAIA voluntarily agreed to stay away and in May, council approved funding on the condition that organizers ensure all participants adhere to the city’s anti-discrimination policy.

Mammoliti believes the presence of anti-Israeli apartheid signage constitutes a breach of the commitment organizers made, whether or not the signs belonged to members of QuAIA specifically. He also noted that some participants chanted, “We’re queer, we’re hot, Israeli apartheid is not.”

This year’s Pride funding “shouldn’t be safe,” he said, “but . . . it’ll probably be paid out because it’s deemed to be within policy by our bureaucrats. And while I still believe they’ve broken their commitment to the City of Toronto there’ll probably be nothing I can do to take this funding away this year.”

But Mammoliti’s watchful eyes are not resting solely on Pride.

“I have to congratulate the Pride Parade and the organizers because what they’ve done is they’ve opened up the eyes of City Hall to the larger picture. City taxpayers’ dollars should not be going towards any venue, including marches and parades, that have a political message slant to them.”

Mammoliti confirmed that if it were up to him, this would include funding for any artistic endeavour with a political message.

He denied that withdrawing public funding from anything considered “political messaging” might be fraught with problems.

“There’s no slippery slope here. It’s either we want tax dollars to go toward political messaging or we don’t. This councillor believes that we shouldn’t.”

Full Article
Source: Toronto Star 

Rob Ford’s gravy train running on fumes

Not with a bang, but a whimper.

That’s how Mayor Rob Ford seems to have started his much heralded attempt to tame the city’s behemoth of a budget.

As citizens tuned in to hear how the mayor intends to reduce the size and scope of government — his winning mantra in last fall’s municipal election — Ford was absent from the parade, sending his minions to a city hall news conference.

As on many other files, the civic leader was missing in action. So, too, was the anticipated list of huge savings to be found in bloated departments. And the hit list of waste and gravy.

It turns out that if Ford is going to find “savings” from the city’s water, garbage and transportation departments he will have to convince city council to keep the blue box out of apartments and condos, reduce snow clearing, cut the grass and sweep the streets less often, and end fluoridation of Toronto’s drinking water — all politically explosive issues.

For that — and a list of nickel-and-dime, nip-and-tuck manoeuvres — Toronto could potentially, possibly, save up to $10 million to $15 million in departments that spend $1 billion, one-third of which comes from taxes.

City councillors didn’t need to pay a consultant $350,000 to tell them where to find those “savings.” Council considers them every year — and often recoils from implementing them.

The mayor has fed the general expectation that the consultants from KPMG would use their fresh eyes to uncover bushels of low-hanging fruit that nobody had identified before — the “gravy.”

They haven’t.

And if this trend continues through reports on the other cluster of services — eight in all, continuing with economic development Tuesday — then the mayor has disappointed his followers who are bullish on a brutish wielding of the axe.

The consultants begin their report on the public works and infrastructure department with this: “The vast majority, 96 per cent . . . are core municipal services.”

Economic development reports are out Tuesday, and again, about 96 per cent is considered core, essential, mandatory. Do away with core services and you close down the city, in effect. Other departments will reflect a similar theme. The mayor and politicians won’t be able to run roughshod through departments, cutting indiscriminately. Citizens will notice the damage because there isn’t so much waste that Ford can save a couple billion dollars without cutting service.

That was the campaign and post-campaign rhetoric. The claim is exposed as a canard, a massive con job.

Still, Ford’s opponents may want to hold the celebration.

While the consultants found little, if anything, new — pending future reports — even the short list of tiny adjustments is often in areas that citizens value. They may not be core services; they may not be available in other jurisdictions; they may be costlier than the standard service, but citizens treasure them. And what is considered a frill by one citizen is often essential to another.

Waste diversion costs three times what it does to simply dump the trash in a landfill site. So the bean counters look at this and suggest council may want to stop being green. Single-family homes divert 60 per cent of their waste, while highrise dwellers divert only 18 per cent. Cut the plans to extend the blue box program to more condos and apartments and savings accrue, they argue.

Do you see city council agreeing to that?

KPMG maintains it is not recommending any of the “inventory of opportunities” identified in the report. That’s for council to decide in September.

Getting there will be ugly, not the cakewalk the mayor promised.

Origin
Source: Toronto Star 

Benefits at risk, Geithner warns

WASHINGTON - As the nation inched closer yesterday to what the White House says would be a catastrophic default on its massive debt, President Obama’s administration ratcheted up the pressure on Republicans by suggesting Social Security checks for some 55 million Americans could be in jeopardy if no deal is reached in the next three weeks.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said his agency must borrow 40 cents of every dollar it spends and suggested that without the ability to borrow, it may not be able to deliver crucial benefits to Americans who rely on them to pay for food and other necessities.

“On August 2d, we’re left running on fumes,’’ Geithner said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.’’ “We have no capacity to borrow… . We have to act; Congress has to act ahead of that point. If they don’t act, then we face catastrophic damage to the American economy.’’

President Obama met with congressional leaders from both parties at the White House last night in an effort to reach a compromise to avert default on the debt. Obama and the lawmakers made no statements immediately after the meeting, but they are scheduled to meet again today.

The nation is set to surpass the legal cap on its borrowing on Aug. 2, accumulating debt of more than $14.2 trillion, and Congress must pass legislation to raise that cap to prevent default.

Despite House Speaker John Boehner’s announcement Saturday night that he favors a $2 trillion plan for debt reduction rather than the $4 trillion sought by Democrats, Geithner and other administration officials said yesterday that they still are hoping for a larger deal.

The two sides have been mired in negotiations for months, stymied in a political and ideological standoff over taxes and the size of the federal government.

Republicans who control the House do not want to raise the debt ceiling un less Democrats agree to significant spending cuts to offset the increased borrowing potential. Democrats have said they will not agree to significant cuts without tax increases on wealthier Americans and big business to help offset the cuts, something the GOP has scoffed at.

Full Article
Source: Boston Globe 

Murdoch Goes From Darling to Pariah

At the News International party last month, Rupert Murdoch got the reception he’s used to in London, with political figures of every stripe and from the prime minister down paying court at the Kensington Palace event.

When he returned to the city two days ago, the 80-year-old was jostled by camera crews and faced shouted questions. Asked if David Cameron was likely to speak to Murdoch during this week’s visit, an official in the prime minister’s office struggled to answer over laughter at the idea.

Allegations last week that News Corp. staff hacked into the phones of murdered schoolgirls and terror victims and paid police for stories prompted Murdoch to close the 168-year-old News of the World tabloid on which his U.K. media empire was founded. Politicians from all parties have called for his planned purchase of British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc (BSY) to be scrapped and some question whether his company is fit to own a broadcasting license at all.

“The days of Rupert Murdoch as a man that people will fly halfway around the world to see, whose phone calls get taken, are over,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Sussex University and the author of “The Conservative Party From Thatcher to Cameron.” “All the party leaders have been distancing themselves.”

Thatcher Backer

U.K. prime ministers have felt the need to curry favor with Murdoch since he was allowed by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1981 to add the Times and Sunday Times to his stable of newspapers, which already included the Sun and the News of the World. He was the only newspaper owner invited to a lunch to celebrate Thatcher’s decade in power in 1989 and was more than once invited to spend Christmas with her family, according to John Campbell’s biography of Thatcher.

Cameron’s predecessor, Gordon Brown, also courted Murdoch and is now the victim of the latest twist of the phone-hacking scandal. Brown today accused News Corp. newspapers of using criminals to get stories about him whilst he was in office and said he was reduced to tears when the Sun tabloid phoned him to say it was going to report his son Fraser’s diagnosis of cystic fibrosis.

Brown Allegations

“The level of criminality involved, which is going to be exposed, meant that there were links between that newspaper, and that group of newspapers, and well-known criminals in this country,” Brown said in an interview with BBC television broadcast today. “This is an issue and will become an issue about the abuse of political power as well as the abuse of civil liberties.”

News International said in a statement today it is satisfied that the Sun obtained the story from a legitimate source and pledged to look into the allegations made by Brown.

Despite his upset over the reporting, Brown still invited Murdoch to a dinner for historians during U.S. President George Bush’s last visit to the U.K. Brown’s wife, Sarah, had Murdoch’s wife, Wendi Deng, for a “sleepover party” at their Chequers official country residence, the Telegraph reported in 2008.

Also entertained by the Browns at Chequers was Rebekah Brooks, the former editor of the Sun and News of the World, now chief executive officer of News International, the publisher of Murdoch’s British papers. Cameron, whose house in his Oxfordshire electoral district is close to Brooks’s, has followed suit, attending a drinks party she held at Christmas.

Courted by Cameron

It was Tony Blair who did fly halfway around the world, visiting Australia when he became Labour Party leader in 1995, two years before he became Prime Minister. After the vilification Murdoch papers, especially the tabloid Sun, had poured on his predecessor as Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, the decision was controversial within his party.

“People would be horrified,” Blair wrote in his memoir “A Journey,” explaining the decision. “Not to go was to say carry on and do your worst, and we knew their worst was very bad indeed,” he wrote. “No, you sat down to sup; or not. So we did.”

Cameron has been assiduous in courting Murdoch, hiring former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his press adviser. Coulson took the fall for the original phone-hacking scandal, resigning in 2007 after one of his reporters was jailed for intercepting voicemails of members of the royal household.

Coulson Connection

At the time, he insisted it had been the work of a single rogue reporter and that he had known nothing. Even when News Corp. executives in 2009 said James Murdoch, Rupert’s son, had approved payments to other phone-hacking victims, both the company and Cameron stuck to the line that the activity hadn’t been widespread.

That line broke at the start of the year, when, under a weight of lawsuits, News International said illegal behavior had been more widespread. Shortly before that announcement, Coulson quit his post in Cameron’s office.

Since then, the government and News Corp. have followed diverging paths, culminating last week in Cameron insisting nothing had been proved against Coulson. James Murdoch had put out a statement the day before saying that, during Coulson’s time at the News of the World, “wrongdoers had turned a good newsroom bad,” and closing the paper. Coulson was arrested and questioned on July 8.

‘We Are Afraid’

While standing by Coulson, whom he said remains a friend and has yet to be charged or convicted, Cameron said he had been wrong to focus on “courting support” from the press, turning a “blind eye” to claims of wrongdoing.

Tom Watson, the Labour party lawmaker who has pursued the phone-hacking scandal for two years, on Sept. 9 offered his fellow lawmakers an assessment of why it was being ignored.

“In this House we are all, in our own way, scared of the Rebekah Brookses of this world,” he said. “The barons of the media, with their red-topped assassins, are the biggest beasts in the modern jungle. Prime Ministers quail before them, and that is how they like it. We are afraid.”

The balance from fear to outrage shifted July 4, when the Guardian newspaper reported that a News of the World employee intercepted messages left on the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

Distress Signal

Cameron was in Afghanistan at the time. As they prepared for a press conference with President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, one of Cameron’s staff spotted that the union flag behind the prime minister was flying the wrong way up -- historically a distress signal.

It was appropriate. Aides traveling with the prime minister said the story had stopped being something of interest only to media-watchers and opposition politicians, and would arouse public fury. What one aide described as their hands-off attitude to the BSkyB deal would not help them to deal with what was to come.

Full Article
Source: Bloomberg 

Why We’re in the Budgetary Soup

Just in case you hadn’t noticed, no one has elected Grover Norquist to anything. Still, he looms as a major obstacle to Congress reaching a deficit-reduction agreement needed to raise the federal debt ceiling. Norquist heads Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative group that has persuaded 41 senators and 236 representatives (all but three of them Republicans) to sign its “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” opposing any tax increase. If Congress eliminates special-interest tax breaks, the pledge requires that they be “matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.”

To Norquist, a tax increase is not good even if it greases a deal to avoid a federal default. Norquist plugs relentlessly for smaller government. “We can reduce the size and scope of government at all levels to make all Americans freer, richer and more independent,” he wrote in his 2008 book “Leave Us Alone.” But what’s revealing about Norquist’s passionate advocacy is that it virtually ignores the main causes of bigger government: Social Security and Medicare.

Championing smaller government without coming to grips with these gigantic programs is like playing basketball without a ball. It’s make-believe. Norquist’s testimony last year before the Bowles-Simpson commission — the bipartisan budget-deficit panel — said almost nothing about these programs. The 360 pages of “Leave Us Alone” only briefly mention them. His recent op-ed in USA Today didn’t do even that.

How misleading is this? Well, all programs for the elderly (including much of Medicaid — health insurance for the poor — and other retirement programs) constitute almost half of non-interest federal spending: roughly $1.6 trillion in 2010 out of $3.3 trillion. Moreover, aging baby boomers and surging health costs account for most future spending growth. Without them, we’d have the smaller government that Norquist craves.

But let’s be fair. Deception is bipartisan. Liberal groups often misleadingly play down how much burgeoning spending on the elderly threatens higher taxes or deep cuts in other programs. You can’t understand how we got in the budgetary soup without seeing the parallel evasions of left and right.

A good example is the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. It has 25 federal budget experts and is a widely respected source of analysis, although it’s also openly liberal in advocating social spending for the poor and the elderly. But the center has never — despite its name — presented a fully balanced budget to show how it would choose among competing interests.

Asked about this, Bob Greenstein, the center’s longtime head, said in an e-mail that he’s been “reluctant to develop comprehensive budget plans,” arguing that “we do not have expertise in all parts of the budget” — defense, for instance. This is weak; no one has expertise in all parts of the budget. The real reason is political expediency. Social Security and Medicare are too popular to assail. By shunning budget balancing, Greenstein spares himself having to make major Social Security and Medicare cuts or supporting the stiff tax increases needed to pay for them.

Norquist and Greenstein both practice avoidance. Dealing with Social Security and Medicare’s vast costs would force Norquist to admit that smaller government would require savage (and implausible) benefit cuts. Greenstein would have to concede that spending for the elderly competes directly with social spending for the poor and that supporting both would require sizable tax increases well beyond the upper crust. For example: repealing the Bush tax cuts for higher-income Americans (couples exceeding $250,000; singles, $200,000) would raise about $700 billion from 2011 to 2020; projected deficits for those years total almost $10 trillion.

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Source: Newsweek