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Today's Quote:
"Back in the days when I was a Marxist, my primary concern was
that ordinary people deserved better and that elites were walking
all over them. That is still my primary concern, but the passing
decades have taught me that political elites and cultural elites are
doing far more damage than the market elites could ever get away
with doing."
-- Thomas Sowell.
'TOON of the DAY
http://www.WashTimes.com/politics/garner.html
http://www.ardemgaz.com/today/edi/
=============================================
[01]
NATO admits air campaign failed
By Tim Butcher and Patrick Bishop
ET
[Editors Note: Only after everyone has known it for months. And
particularly after all the lies they told at the daily briefings, how
can they ever face anyone again. The PR guy should come work
for Clinton, he lies with the best.]
[02]
Found money creates maelstrom of worries
JAY MEISEL
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
[Editors Note: Folks this gets stranger and stranger all the time.]
[03]
Liberalism Called Inherent in TV Programs
By Paul McNamara
CNS Intern
21 July, 1999
[04]
Pentagon Defied Laws and Misused Funds, Panel Reports
By TIM WEINER
NYT
[05]
Are asset forfeitures penalty -- or piracy?
By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
[Editors Note: This is a law that should be repealed immediately!]
[06]
Drug Bust
WSJ
[07]
Price Controls Are A Prescription for Disaster
By John E. Calfee, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute.
WSJ
[08]
IRS buries file in political audit Justice Department complicit In
cover-up, charges attorney
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
[09]
Burton delays Trie sentencing
USA TODAY
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[01]
NATO admits air campaign failed
By Tim Butcher and Patrick Bishop
ET
[Editors Note: Only after everyone has known it for months. And
particularly after all the lies they told at the daily briefings, how
can they ever face anyone again. The PR guy should come work
for Clinton, he lies with the best.]
NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia had almost no
military effect on the regime of President Milosevic, which gave in
only after Russia withdrew its diplomatic backing.
This is the gloomy assessment of a private, preliminary review by
Nato experts of the alliance's 78-day Operation Allied Force
bombing campaign against Yugoslavia over Kosovo.
At the same time, British diplomats have concluded that Milosevic
had no intention of honouring any diplomatic agreement which
reduced his hold on Kosovo - despite his vaunted willingness to
enter the negotiations at Rambouillet and the peace talks in Paris
which preceded the bombing campaign. The experts nevertheless
judge that, diplomatically and politically, the operation was a
success because the 19-member alliance remained united
throughout and left Belgrade so isolated that it was forced to
submit to Nato's terms.
Despite the outcome, preliminary inquiries into the war are
revealing some uncomfortable truths for soldiers and politicians
seeking lessons from the Kosovo operation. Their findings will
shape new military and diplomatic approaches as to how the West
deals with maverick leaders and rogue states which confront them
in future.
The main finding of the Nato inquiry is that despite the thousands
of bombing sorties, they failed to damage the Yugoslav field army
tactically in Kosovo while the strategic bombing of targets such as
bridges and factories was poorly planned and executed. Changes
are being considered within Nato, including the radical overhaul of
how strategic targets are identified and considered for attack.
Any future operation by Nato is likely to involve heavier, more
ruthless attacks on civilian targets such as power stations and water
treatment plants at an earlier stage of the campaign. There is also
an urgent operational requirement for more sophisticated
surveillance equipment including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(UAVs) to find small hidden tactical targets such as tanks and
artillery pieces. As it was, by parking a tank, for example, in the
ruins of an old house, the Serbs made it invisible from the air.
A team of Nato bomb damage experts is yet to complete its work
on the ground, but so far the assessment is that only a handful of
tanks, guns and armoured personnel carriers were damaged.
Military sources said that it was likely that the damage would have
been greater had the Serb forces been actively engaged on the
ground by the Kosovo Liberation Army and forced into the open.
Without adequate surveillance assets, including low-level UAVs
such as the British Phoenix system which only arrived in the
Balkans in June, Nato was simply unable to spot well-hidden Serb
military units in Kosovo. A wave of new air-launched missiles,
including the RAF's Brimstone, will give Nato jets a more
sophisticated missile for destroying targets on the ground.
The second part of the campaign was the strategic bombing of
military targets, including air defence systems, as well as the
civilian infrastructure of Yugoslavia and the Milosevic regime.
Military experts now concede that by breaking down this part of
the campaign into phases, the alliance made a serious error.
The political leaders of Nato wanted to threaten Belgrade with
bombing and believed that a series of steps would be most
effective, because it would gradually increase the pressure on
Milosevic to negotiate. The Yugoslav leader was told at the outset
of the bombing that Phase I targets such as command bunkers
would be hit and that, if he did not comply, he could expect
Phases II and III - which would be wider bombing.
Nato sources now concede that this was an error as Phase I did not
cause any significant military pain to the regime - all the main
military assets and personnel had long been evacuated from
obvious targets. Furthermore, Milosevic was able to use the state-
controlled media to prepare the wider Yugoslav public for a long
campaign, kindling a sort of Blitz spirit that reduced public
opposition to his rule.
Nato believes that the bombing in the latter weeks of Operation
Allied Force against bridges, factories and other civilian targets
was more effective but it could have been much more so had it
been done earlier.
On the diplomatic front, Foreign Office officials have concluded
that Milosevic never had any intention of co-operating with the
outside world to find a solution to the Kosovo problem that would
reduce Serb control of the province. The undertakings he gave to
the American special envoy Richard Holbrooke last autumn which
averted an earlier threat of Nato punishment were worthless.
They now accept that the numerous ultimatums issued to
Milosevic during the course of the Kosovo crisis should have been
backed up with the credible threat of force. Like Nato, they judge
that Russia's withdrawal of support played a significant part in
Milosevic's capitulation, along with other factors including the
realisation that invasion was a real possibility if he remained
defiant.
Nato plans for ground war options which included a full-scale
occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia were drawn up a year ago
and updated throughout the crisis. Diplomats now say that with
Nato's credibility at stake, a ground war was inevitable if Milosevic
had not caved in. They believe that pressure from his cronies in
the demi-monde that controls Serbia's disintegrating economy also
played a part in his decision.
British officials concede that the Kosovo problem should have
been dealt with at the 1995 Dayton talks which ended the Bosnian
war. One said: "Unfortunately, it got put in the 'Too Difficult and
Not Absolutely Pressing' in-tray." They are now hoping that the
alliance's ultimate willingness to go to war in Kosovo will convince
future troublemakers that it does not pay to defy international
opinion.
But despite the talk of the need for urgent pre-emptive action in
future crises, they conclude that the innate reluctance of
democracies to project power means that history is likely to repeat
itself.
[02]
Found money creates maelstrom of worries
JAY MEISEL
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
[Editors Note: Folks this gets stranger and stranger all the time.]
CONWAY -- The question of who owns the $38,300 found in a
box on top of an air duct over a motel room in February has
grown more complicated. Attorney Boyd Tackett Jr. claims in
court filings that he is entitled to $25,000 for legal services
provided to the carpenters who found the money. Tackett also
contends that the carpenters, Joey Terry and David Lee Stocks,
stole his case file. Steve Kirk, the attorney who now represents the
pair, declined comment Monday. Terry and Stocks were
renovating the Best Western Motel in Conway when Terry spotted
a dusty box large enough to contain a pair of boots on top of an air
duct above a room that was once the living quarters for the owners
of the motel. Terry said he opened the box and found $10, $20
and $100 bills totaling $38,300. How the money got there remains
a mystery. A.D. Lock, owner of the motel, took the money from
the carpenters, claimed it was his and then fired them, Terry said
earlier. Stocks and Terry filed a lawsuit in Faulkner County
Chancery Court against Lock, claiming ownership of the money.
Circuit Chancery Judge Ed Clawson ordered that the money be
given to Circuit Court Clerk Sharon Rimmer until the lawsuit is
resolved. In the latest development in the case, Tackett states in
court filings that he and the carpenters entered a legal agreement.
But "on June 29, 1999, plaintiff, David Lee Stocks, entered
counsel's outer office and inquired of counsel's secretary if counsel
was in," the court filing states. "Upon being told that counsel was
out of the office, plaintiff, David Lee Stocks, entered counsel's
private office and took possession of the entire case file, without
counsel's permission, express or implied. "The aforementioned file
contained all of the work product produced by plaintiff's counsel
on plaintiff's behalf as well as copies of all pleadings,
correspondence and research produced by counsel, other matters
pertaining to plaintiff, Joey Terry, and the original of the
aforementioned written agreement entered by the plaintiffs and
counsel," the filing states. Stocks "advised counsel's secretary that
he had heard that counsel had referred to him as a 'bum' and that
he did not desire to be represented by a lawyer that spoke of him
in that fashion," the filing states. Stocks has refused to return the
file, Tackett wrote. Tackett is requesting that Clawson place a lien
against any money paid to Stocks. He also asked that the court
hold Stocks in contempt and put him in jail until he returns the file.
Tackett also wants the court "to direct the prosecuting attorney to
investigate counsel's claim and take appropriate action should he
deem the matter worthy of criminal charges." In their lawsuit,
Terry and Stocks are seeking damages from Lock, contending he
violated their contract to renovate the motel by firing them.
[03]
Liberalism Called Inherent in TV Programs
By Paul McNamara
CNS Intern
21 July, 1999
(CNS) - Many cultural conservatives have lamented the liberal
slant of television, but one Hollywood expert says it's inherent with
the medium and any effort to remedy the bias "is not going to
work."
The visual communication of television relies almost exclusively on
emotion rather than objective thought and maturity, according to
author and syndicated radio talk show host Michael Medved,
creating an inherent liberalism in the medium.
Medved also warned that TV's reliance on emotion ensures the
medium's bias for years to come, running against the grain of
conservative philosophy. "A fundamental result of visual culture is
the triumph of emotion, the triumph of superficiality," Medved
said. "The essence of the conservative movement is exactly
opposite TV; feelings don't matter, results do. It doesn't matter
what you feel, it's what you do."
In a speech before the Young America's Foundation convention in
Washington, D.C Tuesday, Medved said that television stirs
emotions in people that are what he called the "essence of the
liberal agenda." The former New York Post film critic also said
that television incorporates other elements of "liberal thought,"
including superficial or emotional behavior, self-pity and disdain of
deferred gratification.
"Americans see problems resolved time after time in 30 minutes or
an hour, and when that doesn't occur in their life, they begin to
feel sorry for themselves," Medved noted. "They're absolutely
convinced we're all victims." Medved said this feeling of crisis
cements television's liberal bias, observing that "liberalism would
be nothing without a crisis to exploit."
Medved parted ways with some conservatives regarding the
cultural impact of television violence, saying that it's not the
violence on television that's a problem but the amount of time
people spend watching TV, particularly young people.
Research cited by Medved indicated that the average American
teenager spends an estimated 33 hours talking with parents each
year, 700 hours a year in a classroom and 1500 hours watching
television, prompting Medved to recommend less television
viewing. "The real problem is not low quality, it's high quantity,"
said Medved. "We suffer from too much TV, period."
He also drew a distinction between the impact of television and
cinema, noting the wide disparity in the amount of time spent
engaged in the two activities.
"The average American sees two movies in the theater each year,"
said Medved. "Compare that with 1500 hours of TV and you'll see
that movies aren't as big of a problem."
Medved also took aim at television news, calling it America's "bad
news business." He criticized the lack of positive news reported on
network newscasts and blamed the establishment media for
contributing to a nation of people whom he said "don't appreciate
the blessings we receive."
The news media's tendency to sensationalize certain stories also
plays a role in creating a crisis environment, according to Medved,
and he used recent concerns over school violence as an example.
"This idea that we have a national crisis with school shootings is
nonsense," Medved said. "You're more likely to be struck by
lightening than to be shot at school."
[04]
Pentagon Defied Laws and Misused Funds, Panel Reports
By TIM WEINER
NYT
WASHINGTON -- Congress says in a new report that the
Pentagon defied the law and the Constitution by spending
hundreds of millions of dollars on military projects that lawmakers
never approved, including a super-secret Air Force program. The
Pentagon acknowledged some of the accusations Wednesday
night, saying honest mistakes led to its failure to notify Congress
about the way it was spending money.
The House Appropriations Committee, expressing anger and
astonishment in a report that accompanied this year's military
spending bill, which is scheduled to be debated by the House on
Thursday, said the practice had eroded trust between the nation's
lawmakers and military commanders.
Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California and
chairman of the committee's defense spending panel, said the
Pentagon's actions showed its belief "that it can even move money
to a program Congress has closed down, maybe presuming, 'Oh,
well, nobody will know.' "
"What do we have to do to make them understand what we mean
when we say no?" Lewis asked.
The Pentagon spokesman, Kenneth H. Bacon, said Wednesday
night that the failure to notify Congress about the military's
redirecting of appropriated funds had taken place. "We work very
hard to respond to the directives Congress gives us," Bacon said.
"Do we get it right 100 percent of the time? Of course not."
He acknowledged that the Air Force wrongfully started and
financed a highly classified, still-secret project, known as a "black
program," without informing Congress last year. The committee
said that act was illegal. It also raises questions about civilian
control of black programs, whose costs and nature are the most
highly classified secrets in the Pentagon. Military officials refused
to discuss any details of the black program.
The committee's 313-page report says the Air Force tried to buy
an $800 million military communications satellite without lawful
authority, and illegally diverted from an unspecified program
hundreds of millions of dollars to update its C-5 transport plane. It
also says the Pentagon spent millions of dollars on a "Star Wars"
missile defense program that was previously canceled by Congress.
The report cited three other examples involving military trucks,
missiles and tanks. It did not provide specific cost figures, but
committee staff members said these practices were a chronic and
worsening problem adding up to billions of dollars spent
improperly and illegally over the past decade, particularly in the
last year or so as military officials have tried to finance more and
more expensive programs.
Addressing the specific charges other than the Air Force black
program, Bacon said the military had on occasion failed to notify
lawmakers about the way it spent money on these and other
military projects. But he said these were honest errors, and not
open defiance.
As for the military satellite, he said there were legitimate disputes
over whether caches of research money should be segregated from
money to the satellite. Bacon said the several hundred million
dollars transferred to the C-5 program involved a
misunderstanding between the Pentagon and Congress, and the
"Star Wars" program was a controversy over whether the program
had been completely canceled.
The law and Pentagon procedures allow military officials to shift
funds from one account to another, but not without telling
Congress. They cannot finance programs Congress never
approved, or use money for a purpose that lawmakers never
intended. But they have done so for years, the committee's report
and its staff members said.
"The Constitution is pretty clear on this," Lewis said. It says: "No
money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in Consequence of
Appropriations made by law." That means the Pentagon cannot
spend money unless Congress authorizes it for specific programs.
Congress struggles every year over the military's budget and the
costs of weapons. But the Pentagon now consumes half of the
available funds in the Federal budget, and some senior Republican
lawmakers, mindful that their party is cutting billions of dollars
from domestic programs, are trying to be more vigilant about
military spending.
The Pentagon spending battle has been joined this year in the
House on two fronts: the accountability of Pentagon officials and
the cost of weapons, including the $70 billion F-22 fighter jet
program.
The committee has withheld $1.8 billion sought to produce the
first six F-22's, saying the money would be better spent on pilots
and present-day planes. The F-22 is supposed to be the flagship of
the 21st century Air Force. The decision has produced howls of
protest from the Pentagon.
"We can fund the F-22," President Clinton said today. "It would
be a mistake to abandon the project."
The Senate's defense bill finances the first six F-22's. But Senator
John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the
Armed Services Committee, told Defense Secretary William S.
Cohen this week that "we can't be giving you a blank check."
The House Appropriations Committee report noted that the Air
Force was trying to write its own checks for the F-22. It said the
Air Force requested hundreds of millions of dollars that was
supposed to help buy the first F-22's, but Air Force officials, "in
violation of specific Congressional direction," earmarked the
money for additional research and development.
The Air Force, in a statement, said it "had not misled Congress or
misused appropriated funds." It called the committee's report a
product of "misunderstanding or misinterpretation," and said it
would "work with Congress to clear this up."
That may take some doing. The committee called the Air Force's
"lack of accountability astonishing."
Its report said the Air Force broke the law with a new program to
update electronics and software on the C-5 transport plane. This
program, "which the Congress never formally approved," cost
several hundred million dollars. The money was obtained "by
diverting funds specifically provided by the Congress for another
program," the report said.
The committee said the Air Force has been taking money out of
research funds to help finance a new $800 million Milstar military
communications satellite. One of the satellites was lost in space this
spring, but because appropriated money was diverted, the Air
Force cannot say how much a replacement will cost taxpayers, the
report said.
"This committee is little short of amazed," the report said in
accusing Pentagon and missile-defense officials of illegally
financing a "Star Wars" system known as the Medium Altitude Air
Defense program.
The system has cost $100 million but produced nothing, the
committee said. It was canceled last year by Congress. But it
received at least $2 million diverted by Pentagon and missile-
defense officials from another missile-defense program to help
keep it alive, the report said.
[05]
Are asset forfeitures penalty -- or piracy?
By Frank J. Murray
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
[Editors Note: This is a law that should be repealed immediately!]
Cops and prosecutors call it punishing the crooks when and where
they'll feel it most.
Lots of other people, honest and law-abiding, call it police piracy.
What they're talking about is assets forfeiture, and the practice has
left so many horror stories in its wake that dedicated anti-crime
lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and
conservatives, are joining a growing movement to clean up the
official abuses.
Most forfeitures -- by which the government seizes property that
officers merely suspect was used in a crime or bought with the loot
--never reach the point of criminal charges. Up to 80 percent never
go to court.
Seized properties range from a doctor's savings to a private prison
in Louisiana with all 400 inmates, a Houston hotel, a 4,346-acre
Florida ranch, a church's Spanish-language radio station and
Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss' $550,000 Beverly Hills mansion.
Rep. Henry J. Hyde of Illinois, chairman of the House Judiciary
Committee, a Republican and a conservative, cited these and other
abuses in his testimony to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on
criminal justice and oversight in behalf of modifying a 1974 law.
Mr. Hyde told the senators it's difficult for him to accept that a law
that permits and in fact encourages violations of the rights of
innocent citizens could go unchallenged. He entreated the senators
to accept the tough reform legislation he steered to overwhelming
bipartisan acceptance in the House last month.
The attentive subcommittee members agreed with Mr. Hyde's
contention the law needs reforming. But they seemed to agree with
Deputy Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and other witnesses
who testified yesterday that Mr. Hyde's reforms would cripple the
cops.
The law was designed as a weapon in the war on drugs to collect
fancy cars, yachts, airplanes, houses and huge caches of cash. An
owner trying to get back property must prove his innocence
instead of the government proving guilt, which to many Americans
seems to turn the constitutional guarantee of due process on its
head. Fewer than 2,500 of the 30,000 property seizures each year
are even challenged in court.
When the more common civil seizures are challenged, courts
routinely acknowledge that constitutional "due process" clauses
forbid inordinate delay and demand advance notice and a hearing,
except when immediate or "exigent" circumstances apply. This
usually means taking on faith the word of the prosecutors.
A few such seizures have been overturned on "due process"
grounds, but, more commonly, appeals courts accept a
government claim of emergency or rule prosecutors' omissions
aren't serious enough to require returning seized property.
On other constitutional grounds federal courts have ruled:
Forfeiture is not "double jeopardy" because it is not
"punishment." The Supreme Court said in a different
case, however, that seizures of property out of
proportion to the offense violate Eighth Amendment
guarantees against "excessive fines [or] punishment."
The Sixth Amendment right to counsel does not bar
seizure of an attorney fee.
The Fifth Amendment right to compensation for
"takings" doesn't require paying interest when property
wrongfully seized is returned after a long court fight.
A search and seizure that violates the Fourth
Amendment on criminal matters doesn't negate civil
seizure of criminal profits.
The Hyde legislation, passed overwhelmingly by the House, would
drastically shift the balance by requiring return of property without
the victim's having to post a bond, appoint lawyers for those who
can't pay and place the burden of proof on the government.
The Justice Department concedes it should accept the burden of
proof if the law is rewritten, but the department doesn't want the
law touched because it will make the job of Justice Department
lawyers more difficult.
Critics of the present system say it is rife with conflicts of
interest,
including millions of dollars in rewards for tipsters, and gives local
and federal officials a motive to split property among themselves.
The value of 24,903 seized assets now held by the federal
government exceeds $1 billion, including $349 million in cash.
State and local seizures often wind up in federal hands to be
divvied up with local officials.
The Kafka-like stories that impressed the House came from such
unlikely people as Nashville gardener Willie Jones, a Malibu
millionaire named Donald Scott, and Detroit housewife Tina
Bennis:
Mrs. Bennis lost title to her 1977 Pontiac, a $300
clunker, seized in Detroit when her husband patronized a
prostitute on his way home from work. Michigan law
that condemns the location of such offenses as "public
nuisances" was upheld by the Supreme Court.
Mr. Scott was mistakenly shot to death in his California
home by 30 state and federal agents during a futile
search for marijuana plants in a raid that investigators
later concluded was motivated by the goal of
confiscating his ranch.
Mr. Jones, 50, who has become the leading poster child
for the anti-forfeiture cause, lost $9,600 to police at the
Nashville airport after he paid cash for a round-trip
ticket to Houston and found himself "profiled." He
testified he carried the suspicious cash because he could
make better deals for his landscaping business with cash
payments. Police dogs sniffed traces of cocaine on the
money. No surprise, says one police expert, because
traces of cocaine are on 97 percent of all U.S. currency.
Federal Judge Thomas Wiseman denounced the Jones episode as
"a forfeiture proceeding started in bad faith with wild allegations
based on the hope that something would turn up to justify the
suit." He ordered Mr. Jones' money returned.
Roger Pilon, vice president for legal affairs and chief opponent of
forfeiture at the libertarian Cato Institute, agrees. "You can't use
the thumbscrew and the rack, no matter how worthy your aims
are," he says. "Prosecutors have this simple-minded view that
you're either guilty or not guilty."
Rep. Asa Hutchinson, Arkansas Republican, a Hyde ally on
impeachment, is a former U.S. district attorney in Arkansas. He
has put away a lot of bad guys. He led the fight to make the Hyde
bill less restrictive of the behavior of cops and prosecutors, but Mr.
Hyde's side won by a vote of 375 to 48.
"I believe it tilts too far against law enforcement and takes away
one of their most valuable tools in fighting drug traffic," Mr.
Hutchinson says, professing anguish over opposing Mr. Hyde.
"This was such a gut issue for him it really made it difficult for
anyone to go against him. It made it difficult for me. But it's a gut
issue for me, too. I am for the reform, it's just you've got to have
balance. You don't want to hurt our legitimate crime-fighting
efforts in the process."
Mr. Hyde's co-sponsors are an unusual array of bedfellows: the
committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. John Conyers Jr. of
Michigan; Rep. Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts; and
Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, a Republican and a former U.S.
attorney. On the other side are New York Mayor Rudolph W.
Giuliani, a Republican, for seizure of drunk drivers' cars, and San
Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a Democrat, who backs taking the
cars of those arrested -- though not necessarily convicted -- for
soliciting drugs or prostitutes.
Many incidents cited by Mr. Hyde, including the Nashville
gardener's ordeal, are credited to a 10-month investigation by
Scripps Howard News Service. Since then, the Orlando Sentinel
won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing a Daytona Beach sheriff who
policed Interstate 95 so aggressively that Florida rewrote its
forfeiture law.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette found that authorities in Ouachita
County in southern Arkansas had offered drug runners freedom in
exchange for land, cash or fancy cars worth thousands of dollars.
In another Arkansas county, the sheriff distributed seized cars to
his deputies and their families. Similar scandals sent Arkansas
prosecutor Dan Harmon to jail for 11 years for extortion and set
off a federal investigation. Somerset County, N.J., prosecutor
Nicholas L. Bissell Jr. killed himself in 1997 after conviction of
corruption for spending $1.5 million in seized money.
The owners of a Red Carpet Motel in Houston pleaded with police
for months to deal aggressively with the drug traffic in and around
the motel. Federal authorities told the motel to raise its room rates
to discourage the activity, and when the motel owners declined,
the feds seized the motel.
In ordering the government to return to Sam and Frank Lombardo
$506,641 found hidden at their Congress Pizzeria in Chicago, the
7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said, with judicial
understatement, "the government's conduct in forfeiture cases
leaves much to be desired." The three-judge panel said:
"Government may not seize money, even half a million dollars,
based on its bare assumption that most people do not have huge
sums of money lying about, and if they do, they must be involved
in narcotics trafficking or some other sinister activity."
Prosecutors and members of Congress agree that Mr. Hyde's long
campaign to rein in forfeiture programs was helped this year by
"increasing public clamor" over scandals involving seized assets
and deal-making with accused criminals who surrender property to
escape prosecution.
"It's wrong to deal away a prosecution in exchange for a
forfeiture," a Justice Department official says. Such scandals
undermine public opinion for a key prosecutorial weapon, a point
seconded by Rep. Ed Bryant, Tennessee Republican and a former
U.S. attorney who voted against Mr. Hyde's bill. "A lot of the bad
rap are cases that come from the state forfeiture laws," Mr. Bryant
says in an interview, citing federal prosecutors' objections to the
bill.
"We're all kind of torn between the property-rights issue, and the
other side of the coin, which is the law-enforcement need."
Drugs and airplanes mix so often that authorities often assume the
worst, as they did with Las Vegas charter pilot Billy Munnerlyn,
whose plane was confiscated when he landed at Ontario, Calif.,
with a paying passenger who boarded at Little Rock, Ark. The
passenger, one Albert Wright, turned out to be a convicted cocaine
dealer with $2.7 million in his carry-on luggage. DEA agents
seized the money, the men and the airplane.
No one ever was charged, and officials concluded that Mr.
Munnerlyn knew nothing about the contraband cash. Several years
later, the House Judiciary Committee noted, Mr. Munnerlyn is
bankrupt and working as a truck driver. Critics of forfeiture abuse
cite the Munnerlyn case as zealotry run amok, and note that
government lawyers have never seized a Delta Air Lines Boeing
747 or a United Air Lines Boeing 777, even though drug dealers
often use commercial airlines for their travel.
In Lancaster, Pa., the Rev. Roberto Figueroa saw his Spanish-
language broadcast station "Radio Vida" hauled away from a
Pentecostal church because the station's FM signal, limited by law
to 1,000 feet, was heard 20 miles away.
Such citations of abuse irritate police and prosecutors, who argue
that these are isolated cases and Congress and state legislatures are
being steamrollered to rescind a key weapon against the most
elusive criminals.
"I have never been so inundated . . . on any issue as much as in
opposition to [this bill] than by those in the law-enforcement
community," says Rep. John L. Mica, Florida Republican, who
chairs a subcommittee on criminal justice.
The Justice Department vigorously disputes the measure in a
written policy statement, saying the bill "fails to address the most
pressing needs of victims and law-enforcement."
Setting a tougher standard of proof for the government will "give
drug dealers more protection than bankers, doctors and defense
contractors," the government statement says.
Not so, says the Cato Institute's Mr. Pilon. "This [Hyde] bill will
not prevent law enforcement from pursuing those forfeitures that
are legitimate. What it will prevent is the forfeitures that should
never take place in the first place, especially those seizures of
property from innocent people simply because the property may or
may not have been 'involved' in a crime."
[06]
Drug Bust
WSJ
Whatever we've thought about President Clinton's ethics, at least
his policy agenda hasn't mattered much since 1994. But not any
more: Bill Clinton's proposal to begin regulating prescription-drug
prices is his worst idea since HillaryCare--phone sex with Monica
included. Yes, it's that bad.
This proposal plants the seeds of ruin for one of the wonders of
our age, American pharmaceutical research. In recent years U.S.
drug companies have discovered therapies for conditions that once
killed or debilitated millions--beta blockers for heart attacks, pain
killers that ease arthritis but spare the stomach, anti-AIDs
cocktails,
and so on. In the name of making these miracle drugs more
affordable for seniors, Mr. Clinton would now deny enough profit
to create future miracles. (See John Calfee's elaboration nearby.)
Naturally, the White House claims its proposal doesn't inhale price
controls. But any plan that lets the Health Care Financing
Administration regulate drug-insurance coverage makes controls
inevitable. HCFA combines the compassion of the IRS with the
efficiency of the Post Office. It already dictates prices for medical
services covered by Medicare, down to how much a doctor can
charge for knee surgery in, say, Spokane.
HCFA price-controllers will follow Medicare drug coverage like
night follows day. The White House dodge that its plan calls for
hiring private "pharmaceutical benefit managers" is meaningless. In
the private sector, insurers use benefit managers to negotiate prices
and coverage with other private companies. But under the Clinton
plan they'd all report to HCFA, which would become the largest
single purchaser of prescription drugs in the world.
HCFA wouldn't "compete" with private plans to win senior
business, as the White House claims. As a government entity with
monopoly power it would dictate prices to those private plans. All
the more so because the plan is sure to cost more than Mr. Clinton
predicts--more than double, or $111 billion, according to the
Congressional Budget Office. The history of Medicare shows that
when costs explode, the politicians call in the bureaucrats to
squeeze prices.
In return for this new bureaucracy, moreover, the Clinton plan
doesn't even offer a decent free lunch. What scares most seniors is
a "catastrophic" drug expense due to some chronic illness. But the
Clinton bill won't help that: It caps annual benefits at $2,000 to
start, rising to $5,000 by 2008.
It also charges a premium of $288 a year and pays only 50% of
costs. That means a senior would have to have a drug bill of $576
the first year before he saw a single dollar of the Clinton benefit.
Yet in 1998 half of all Medicare beneficiaries had drug bills of
$500 or less. This is the government equivalent of a beer
commercial: Sounds great, less filling.
The political cynicism motivating all of this is almost as bad as the
substance. Democrats lost the senior vote in 1998, even among
women, and are desperate to get it back. As liberal pollster Celinda
Lake put it recently, "It is hard to imagine Democrats winning back
the House without holding senior women." And to do that, she
adds, "Democrats need a fight with Republicans on Social Security
and, to an even greater extent, on Medicare."
As we've written, drug insurance should be part of most health
plans given the changes in medical care since Medicare was
founded in 1965. But the private sector has already adapted to
these changes. Medicare hasn't adapted precisely because it is a
bureaucratic-political dinosaur.
The answer should be to introduce free market incentives into
Medicare, not to add more benefits and bureaucratic layers to the
same inefficient system. Democrat John Breaux and Republican
Bill Thomas proposed just this kind of reform as part of Bill
Clinton's own Medicare Commission, but the President rejected it
to cover his left flank.
All of which should be enough to give even Republicans the
courage to fight this Clinton gambit. Yet we hear they might give
Mr. Clinton what he wants, if only he'll sign their tax cut. Leave it
to the GOP to commit long-term suicide by passing another open-
ended entitlement in return for a short-term smooch from the
Beltway gentry .
Our advice would be to attack the Clinton plan as dangerous to the
very senior patients it purports to help. The Breaux-Thomas plan
is a serious alternative to stand on, both politically and on
substance. Republicans could also change the rules for Medigap
insurance so companies can offer drug-only coverage.
If Americans want the last decade's breakthroughs in drug research
and treatment to continue, the Clinton prescription plan must be
defeated.
[07]
Price Controls Are A Prescription for Disaster
By John E. Calfee, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute.
WSJ
The Clinton administration's new Medicare drug-benefit plan is
one of many proposals to do something about pharmaceutical
expenditures for the elderly. But before Congress passes anything
like the Clinton plan, it should get a better fix on what is and is
not
a problem. It would be too easy, in an effort to cut costs, to
constrict the pipeline that is producing one new wonder drug after
another.
The Clinton proposal would cover half of a Medicare patient's first
$2,000 in drug purchases starting in 2002, rising to half of the first
$5,000 in 2008. Premiums would cover only half the cost of this
plan, which is why the administration thinks almost all Medicare
recipients would join. The administration also seems to think its
plan will cover the bulk of Medicare drug spending; recent surveys
show that 87% of drug spending by the elderly is for patients who
consume less than $2,000 of pharmaceuticals a year.
A close look at the administration's numbers shows why its plan is
dangerous. The program is projected to cost $228 billion for the
10 years beginning in 2002, or just under $23 billion a year on
average. Because exactly half of that will be covered by premiums
paid by Medicare recipients, the administration's estimated
premiums tell us how fast officials expect expenditures to grow.
Those premiums are predicted to start at $288 a year, increase to
$528 by 2008 and rise at the rate of inflation thereafter. This
works out to planned Medicare expenditures of about $15 billion
in 2002, increasing thereafter at about 5% a year. This
corresponds with total expected pharmaceutical expenditures by
senior citizens of a bit more than $30 billion in 2002 (when the
$2,000 limit is in effect), increasing thereafter by 5% a year.
If the Clinton plan becomes law, Medicare officials will do
everything they can to make sure costs don't rise faster than this.
But compare the projections with what is happening today.
Prescription-drug expenditures for the elderly were about $30
billion in 1998, and are growing at an annual rate of roughly 15%,
which works out to about $35 billion this year, perhaps $40 billion
in 2000 and $45 billion in 2001. Whatever one thinks the number
will be in 2002 and beyond, it is a lot more than the $30 billion
plus 5% a year the administration foresees. So the administration
plans to downsize elderly Americans' pharmaceutical budget. To
do that, it will assign a single management firm to negotiate prices
and specify drug choices for each geographical region of the
country.
The very idea of specifying how much should be spent on
pharmaceuticals in the next five or 10 years is dangerously
wrongheaded. We are in the middle of a revolution in
pharmaceutical research and development. Researchers can
identify and test potential cures several times as quickly as just a
few years ago. One might guess that this fast-moving innovation
would make drugs cheaper, as it does with computers. And it does
make drugs cheaper, all else being equal, but that misses the point.
What the revolution has done is open up entire new possibilities.
Problems that had defied medical science for centuries are giving
way to new treatments. Most of the recent increases in drug
expenditures have been for new therapies, not higher prices. It
would be foolish to pretend that anyone--even the smartest White
House analyst--could predict how much of our money any of us
will want to spend on pharmaceuticals years from now.
Consider just one disease: arthritis, a painful and debilitating
condition that affects almost half of those over 65. The effort
simply to find a good pain reliever has occupied considerable
medical intelligence for more than a century. It was in 1897 in
Germany that a Bayer chemist seeking relief for his arthritic father
first isolated aspirin. But aspirin and most of its kin, the
nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs, are hard on the
stomach. As a result, some 15% of arthritis sufferers end up with
stomach ulcers. The gastrointestinal effects of NSAIDs caused
some 16,500 deaths among arthritis victims in 1997. And it's often
impossible to know before treatment who will incur those side
effects.
The pharmaceutical research revolution is changing all this. Aspirin
and similar drugs treat arthritis pain by suppressing an enzyme
called cyclo-oxygenase, or Cox for short. But Cox comes in two
variants. Cox-1 suppresses the inflammation (and therefore the
pain) of arthritis. Cox-2 suppresses another enzyme that protects
the stomach. The solution was to develop a Cox-2 inhibitor that
would let Cox-1 do its work. But as the Journal of the American
Medical Association pointed out in November 1995, progress on
that front was "still about five years away."
Three years and a month later, the first Cox-2 inhibitor, Celebrex,
had traversed the onerous Food and Drug Administration approval
requirements, including efficacy trials with more than 10,000
patients. Monsanto and Pfizer introduced Celebrex in January of
this year. It matches aspirin in relieving pain, and physicians are
persuaded that it is far safer--hence the drug's nickname,
"superaspirin." Those physicians have made Celebrex one of the
most prescribed new drugs in history.
Celebrex is also expensive, with a month's supply running about
$100, although that is comparable to the prices of the prescription
NSAIDs it replaces. The mammoth sales of Celebrex testifies to its
benefits in comparison to its cost. And--an essential part of the
story--Celebrex already faces a competing Cox-2 inhibitor,
Merck's Vioxx, with more on the way.
This story makes clear why the Clinton administration's idea of
downsizing the pharmaceutical budget is dangerous. NSAID
expenditures for arthritis had been stable because there had been
little progress. Now that there is something worth spending more
money on, this expense category is rapidly escalating. That is
exactly what should be happening.
It's also notable that Celebrex provides value chiefly by reducing
side effects. The next time you hear complaints about too many
"me too" drugs, remember that they are usually filling niches in
terms of better efficacy or fewer side effects. Arthritis is not the
only illness whose treatments can kill the patient.
We should hope for more of the same. With an aging population,
the battle against arthritis is just getting started. We need even
better pain relievers, even fewer side effects and full-scale
preventatives and cures. The same could be said of cancer, heart
disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's and a raft of other illnesses. Those
who suffer from these conditions should hope that Congress
doesn't pass a law to control drug prices or limit pharmaceutical
budgets for the elderly. If Congress had enacted such a law five or
10 years ago, there might been no Celebrex, and if such a law is
passed now, there will be no . . . well, we don't know what the
blockbuster of 2003 or 2006 would be.
And let's not forget the real bottom line. Pharmaceuticals aren't for
managed-care administrators or government functionaries. What
really counts is whether they are worth their cost to patients.
People today expect to have a better and more active old age than
their parents and grandparents did. There is little doubt that they
are willing to save money to pay for whatever lifesaving and life-
enhancing drugs emerge from the next generation of
pharmaceutical research. No government agency should try to stop
them.
[08]
IRS buries file in political audit Justice Department complicit In
cover-up, charges attorney
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
The Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department are
withholding evidence crucial to a $10 million civil suit alleging the
tax agency audited the Western Journalism Center at the behest of
the White House in 1996, says Judicial Watch chairman Larry
Klayman.
Two years after the Western Journalism Center, parent company
of WorldNetDaily.com Inc., filed a Freedom of Information Act
request for its case file in a 1996 Internal Revenue Service audit
initiated in the White House, the IRS and Justice Department
claim they cannot find any more documents relevant to the case.
However, a Treasury Department report obtained by the center
through a separate FOIA request shows investigators found
documents in the case file not yet produced by the IRS or Justice
Department. Among those documents is a letter sent from the
White House to IRS officials suggesting an audit of the center was
in order. A Justice Department brief filed in a summary judgment
motion in a $10 million lawsuit against IRS and other government
officials by Judicial Watch on behalf of the center suggests these
documents are no longer part of the case file, though attorneys left
open the possibility that additional documents might be discovered.
"The Internal Revenue Service will accordingly release such
additional documents from such files as may be deemed
responsive," said the Justice Department brief filed with the U.S.
District Court in Washington July 12. "If documents subject to
exemption are located, the same will be identified and the Service
will move to amend its answers to assert any appropriate
affirmative defenses as soon as processing is completed."
No such document discoveries have yet been reported.
Klayman and Joseph Farah, founder of the center and editor of
WorldNetDaily.com, believe the government is simply stalling and
burying documents knowing they support the allegations of a
political audit orchestrated by the White House.
The Western Journalism Center is one of dozens of tax-exempt
organizations targeted for IRS audit after criticizing President
Clinton. Farah first exposed what appeared to be a pattern of
political audits three years ago. The revelations were followed
quickly by the resignation of IRS Commissioner Margaret Milner
Richardson, a close personal friend and political confidante of Bill
and Hillary Clinton, and the launching of a congressional probe by
Rep. Bill Archer, R-Texas, chairman of the House Ways and
Means Committee and co-chairman of the Joint Committee on
Taxation.
A heavily redacted 1997 Treasury Department report titled,
"Questionable Exempt Organization Examination Activity," was
released July 6 to Farah's news organization following three years
of FOIA filings and appeals for such information. Contradicting
IRS officials and their Justice Department lawyers in two suits
pending against the agency by the center and its legal counsel, the
Treasury report states unequivocally and repeatedly that the audit
began with a letter forwarded from the White House to the IRS.
"The audit originated from a taxpayer who faxed a letter to the
White House expressing his concern over a one-page
advertisement paid for by WCJ (Western Center for Journalism)
that asked for contributions to investigate (White House deputy
counsel Vincent) Foster's death," explained the official Treasury
Department report. "The fax was forwarded to the EO (Exempt
Organizations) National Office and then to the respective Key
District Office for appropriate actions."
Klayman believes criminal contempt citations may be in order after
reviewing the Treasury Department document.
"The Treasury report shows there was a direct chain of events
beginning with that fax in the White House -- just as I suspected all
along but could never conclusively prove until now," said Farah.
"This is why the IRS has steadfastly refused to provide us with our
own case file, as it is required to do under the law. Had officials
coughed up the file, they would have hanged themselves and
provided us with a winning case."
Long before the IRS audit of 1996, the White House had taken
critical notice of the activities of the center. A White House
counsel's memo, written by Jane Sherburne in December 1994,
lists the center as a major concern with regard to its coverage of
the Foster story. In 1995, the White House counsel's office, in
conjunction with the Democratic National Committee, produced
and distributed at taxpayer expense a 331-page report called,
"Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce," in which it
was alleged that the center was directing a vast, international media
plot to discredit President Clinton.
"This new evidence, clearly suppressed by the administration until
after a favorable ruling by a Superior Court judge, provides the
smoking gun we were hoping to find in the discovery process,"
said Klayman. "I am confident this new revelation demonstrating
the government systematically concealed the truth will persuade
the courts to permit this case to proceed to trial and give us the
opportunity to expose and punish these abuses of power."
Farah said he believes there may even be more documentation
embarrassing to the IRS and the White House that is being
systematically withheld from the center.
"We didn't know about this Treasury Department report," said
Farah. "We didn't know about the letter forwarded from the White
House to the IRS. There is a strong likelihood that there are more
documents we don't know about that would complete this picture.
We don't intend to stop demanding them until the full story of
White House and IRS complicity is told."
[09]
Burton delays Trie sentencing
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON - Rep. Dan Burton, leading an investigation of
campaign fund-raising abuses, asked two federal judges
Wednesday to delay sentencing of two former Democratic fund
raisers until Congress can obtain their testimony. Burton, R-Ind.,
chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform, said
that once Yah Lin ''Charlie'' Trie and John Huang are sentenced,
they would have no incentive to cooperate with Congress. Trie
pleaded guilty in May to campaign finance violations and agreed to
cooperate in a Justice Department investigation of illegal Asian
donations to the Democrats. Huang was arraigned in June on a
conspiracy charge as part of a plea bargain.
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"The American people are tired of liars and people who pretend
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-- Hillary Clinton - 1992 60 Minutes interview