Rear Admiral’s affair included sex at Bush 41’s White House

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A Navy admiral engaged in sexual relations in the White House in 1990 with a federal employee whom he falsely told he was a widower, according to a report released Friday by the Defense Department.

In March, when the report was submitted to Pentagon officials, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem was demoted and fired from his post as director of the Navy staff.

Stufflebeem told investigators he couldn’t remember the name of the woman he had an affair with. He also lied when he told investigators he did not engage in sexual relations with the woman, identified as “Jane Doe,” the Defense Department’s inspector general’s report said.

Jane Doe, who was then unmarried and working for a federal agency, told the investigators the allegations were true, the report said. Her supervisor and Stufflebeem’s superiors supported her testimony.

Stufflebeem was convicted April 18 of making false official statements to investigators. After the hearing, called an admiral’s mast, he requested retirement.

Jane Doe told investigators that she and Stufflebeem began their affair on an overseas trip in 1989, that the married admiral told her he was a widower who was raising his children as a single parent and that they had sexual relations several times, including once in a White House room reserved for “military aides with overnight duties.”

She also told investigators that Stufflebeem came to her home on the day in August 1990 when she learned he was married and that she called him “scum,” shut the door in his face and never spoke to him again.

At issue was Stufflebeem’s removal from his post as a presidential aide in 1990. Stufflebeem testified that he initiated the request to leave his White House post because of “close family personal problems.” But his superiors testified that he was removed from the post because of his relationship with the woman — and that he admitted the affair.

Doe also said Stufflebeem told her that his wife had died of breast cancer, that a woman who answered the phone when she called his home was the children’s nanny and that he continued to wear his wedding ring “for his daughters who missed their late mother.”

Stufflebeem became well known in the initial months of the war in Afghanistan, when he often conducted on-camera television briefings as a Pentagon spokesman. He was then deputy director for global operations on the Joint Staff. More

Your Chance To Ask George Bush Anything!

I rarely pay attention to ads that accompany news stories, but one ad in particular, caught my eye this morning. 

Apparently, Yahoo News and Politico.com are teaming up to interview Bush on May 13th, and would like you to submit your questions.

Here is what the ad looked like. When I clicked on it, an email in my default email program opened up. And surprisingly, the subject line was left blank. So, you can do the same thing! Here’s the address: 
gwbquestions@yahoo-inc.com

Know it, click it, use it!

The interview occurs on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008, so there’s still plenty of time to get your questions in! Be sure to leave your comments below, and tell us what your question was. When the transcript of the interview is made available, I’ll post it as a follow-up article on the HORN’s news blog.

Happy e-mailing!

-Sue, and the ranting keyboard

Nat’l Guardsman Charged With Selling Metal From Border Fence

By CARLI BROSSEAU, Tucson Citizen

An Air National Guardsman was arrested Wednesday in Phoenix on suspicion of stealing metal from the border fence and selling it, a U.S. Attorney’s Office spokeswoman said.

Master Sgt. Robert J. Kelley, 48, of the Wyoming Air National Guard was charged in Phoenix with theft of government property, Sandy Raynor said.

He sold at least five loads of metal for more than $8,000, which he later spent on a pistol, a garage door opener, cowboy boots and tools, she said.

If convicted, he could face up to 10 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine or both, she said. More

Plame seeks to resurrect lawsuit in CIA leak case

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Former CIA operative Valerie Plame is trying to resurrect a lawsuit against those in the Bush administration she says illegally disclosed her identity.

A federal judge dismissed Plame’s lawsuit last year, saying there was no basis to bring a case. Plame’s lawyers asked a federal appeals court Friday to send the case back before the judge and force him to consider its merits.

Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, sued Vice President Dick Cheney; his former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby; former White House political adviser Karl Rove and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

Plame’s CIA position was revealed in a syndicated newspaper column in 2003, during a time when her husband was criticizing the march to war in Iraq. Armitage and Rove were the original sources for that story, which Plame believes was retribution for Wilson’s criticism. More

Bob Kincaid on ‘The For-Profit Media’

Because of what I do (talk radio or, as we like to call it at The H.O.R.N., America’s Liberal Voice, “Conversation Radio”), I spend a good deal of time (probably more than is healthy, really) thinking about the media in our country.

We liberals/progressives/decent human beings have been mostly disgusted with the media’s behavior for almost my entire adult life (N.B.: I’m 45). It’s worsened to a degree almost unimaginable in the last eight years and, since March of 2007 has managed to inflame both the partisans of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as the rest of us liberals/progressives/decent human beings.

With the rise of the internets and particularly blogging, a new phrase entered the lexicon: “Mainstream Media.” It has hung on like white on rice, like a dog on a bone-wagon, like a duck on a junebug, like stink on, well, never mind. You get the point.

Some folks have periodically noted that the media are anything BUT “mainstream.” The media in this country are largely owned by a consortium or perhaps sextumvirate of some six major corporations. That gave rise to the term “corporate media,” which is accurate as far as it goes.

What it doesn’t do, however, is go all the way to the vile, bilious, throbbing heart of the problem.

Now, I think I’ve found the moniker many of us have been looking for. It dawned on me last night during “The H.O.R.N. Section,” when Peter Godbold, Jon Fox and I get together for an hour on the air and sort of free-form ideas, stories and even occasional outright silliness. You can hear the archives of the H.O.R.N. Section and every other H.O.R.N. program at http://www.whiterosesociety.org/ . The live streams are always available at http://www.headonradionetwork.com , among other places.

This idea, however, struck me as anything but silly. It came from my thoughts about Dennis Kucinich’s entirely accurate description of our healthcare crisis stemming from what he called “For-profit healthcare.”

And there it was: jiggling like an overburdened toxic waste dump glistening under a blistering sun: “The For-profit Media.”

It really encapsulates everything that’s wrong with the Timmehs and Tweetys and Becks and O’Reillys and Humes and Scarboroughs and Phlegmballs and SavageWeiners and “BUYGOLDNOW and spend it on our herbal erection concocktion! Use it while sleeping on a Swedish mattress developed by NASA and clean up the mess with a vacuum cleaner that picks up bowling balls” ads that litter the Fourth Estate. At the end of the day, in the final analysis, it’s the profit motive that drives everything we loathe about American media behavior. It’s behind Fox’s incessant, obsessive use of titillating imagery. It’s what drove CBS to hire Katie Couric for FIFTEEN MILLION DOLLARS a year (anybody know what Murrow made at the height of his career?). It’s what jams BritneyLindsayParis Shark Attacks on Missing White Girls onto our screens nightafternightafternightafternightafternight. It’s what keeps America dumbed-down and hyped-up.

So there you have it. Make free use of it. Beat ‘em over the head with it.

The For-Profit Media.

With any luck, we can make Timmeh and Tweety start hallucinating it in their AlphaBits.

*Bob Kincaid is the host of “Head-On with Bob Kincaid“, which is heard Monday through Friday, 6pm to 9pm eastern, on The Head On Radio Network. For streaming information, please visit http://www.headonradionetwork.com .

Criminal Probe Ordered In Crandall Canyon Mine Disaster

By Thomas Burr, The Salt Lake Tribune

WASHINGTON - Crandall Canyon Mine operators may have “willfully misled” federal officials about deteriorating conditions inside the mine, and the Justice Department should launch a criminal probe against the mine’s general manager, a congressional committee report says.

House Education and Labor Chairman George Miller said Thursday he has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether mine general manager Laine Adair, “individually or in conspiracy with others, willfully concealed or covered up” or made “false representations” to federal officials about the conditions in the mine, a violation of federal law.

A Justice Department spokesman says the request has been turned over to Brett Tolman, the U.S. Attorney for Utah.

Adair’s attorney, Gregory L. Poe, said in a statement that Adair finds the call for a criminal investigation “deeply disappointing and utterly unjustified.”

Adair, along with mine co-owner Bob Murray and several other Murray Energy officials declined to be deposed by committee investigators, asserting their constitutional right against self-incrimination, the report says.

The president and a former principal of Agapito Associates, the engineering firm that advised Murray Energy on the mine plan, also were subpoenaed to testify but invoked their Fifth Amendment right as well, according to the report.

The report also says that mine officials did not properly notify federal authorities about a March collapse, called a bump, and that Adair may have “significantly downplayed” the extent of the damage. Six miners were trapped - and ultimately entombed - in the mine after a collapse on Aug. 6, and three would-be rescuers were killed and six others injured 10 days later.

An independent engineering consultant hired by the House committee says the mining plan submitted by Murray Energy subsidiary UtahAmerican Energy would have been successful if the pillars in the area were in pristine condition. However, the analysis shows it was “unlikely” the pillars were strong enough to hold up the ceiling, and notes from the Bureau of Land Management indicated deterioration in the pillars as far back as 2004.

The House committee is the third scathing report about the operations at the Crandall Canyon Mine. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee also called for a criminal probe and the Labor Department’s independent Inspector General said the Mine Safety and Health Administration was negligent in its responsibility to oversee safety of miners there. More

Gee, not one mention about toilet paper violations. Must suck to be you, Bob Murray! Kudos again to The Salt Lake Tribune, for their wonderful, in depth coverage! -Sue

Dorgan to introduce supplement funding amendment prohibiting offshore contractors

By ELISE CASTELLI, Federal Times

A top Senate Democrat wants government contractors to stop dodging U.S. tax laws by setting up offshore firms in known tax havens.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said May 7 he will offer an amendment to the fiscal 2008 emergency Defense Department supplemental to restrict any of the supplemental funds from going to firms that set up offshore subsidiaries to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

Houston-based KBR, which holds a multibillion-dollar Army logistics contract, lists its 10,500 employees working in Iraq as employees of two Cayman Island firms that don’t have phone numbers or offices, Dorgan’s statement said. Another logistics and construction firm, IAP Worldwide Services, hires Americans through offshore subsidiaries to avoid paying Social Security taxes, according to the statement. More

YAY!!!!! -Sue

Senate Democrats Seeking a Special Tax on Oil Profits

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats on Wednesday called for a temporary special tax on oil companies’ profits and a rollback of $17 billion in oil industry tax breaks as part of an energy package. The Democrats are also seeking federal penalties on energy price gouging and a suspension of oil deliveries into the government’s emergency reserve.

Senate Republicans strongly oppose any additional oil industry taxes, which are widely viewed as unlikely to be enacted and would almost certainly prompt a veto by President Bush.

The proposed 25 percent profits tax would apply just to oil company earnings above what would be considered “reasonable” and only if those profits are not reinvested in expanding refinery capacity or renewable energy sources, according to a summary of the proposals.

The tax would expire after two years.

The only section of the Democrats’ proposal that seems to have widespread bipartisan support is suspending deliveries into the government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve until oil prices drop to $75 a barrel. More

Housing aid bills face vetoes by pResident Bush

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Strapped homeowners could refinance into government-backed mortgages and states would get money to deal with foreclosed property under Democrats’ housing aid plan.

The measures, slated for votes Thursday, constitute the most significant action Congress has taken to date to address the housing crisis that’s at the center of the nation’s economic woes.

President Bush has threatened to veto both measures, which he says reward lenders and speculators. Democrats counter that the bills will head off hundreds of thousands of foreclosures, stabilize the shaky housing market, and prevent neighborhood blight.

The centerpiece of their plan is a bill by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the House Financial Services Committee chairman, to have the Federal Housing Administration relax its standards and back up to $300 billion in more affordable, fixed-rate loans for borrowers currently too financially strapped to qualify.

Those homeowners could refinance into new loans if their lenders agreed to take substantial losses on the original mortgages. Borrowers would have to show they could afford to make payments on the new loans. They would have to share with FHA at least half of their proceeds if they profited from selling or refinancing again.

The plan is projected to help roughly 500,000 borrowers at a cost of $2.7 billion over the next five years.

A separate bill by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., would send $15 billion in loans and grants to states for the purchase and rehabilitation of foreclosed properties. Proponents say it will prevent blight in neighborhoods plagued by abandoned, foreclosed homes. More

So, shrub said he’ll veto, because it “rewards” lenders. But the only way homeowners would qualify, is if lenders agreed to take a LOSS on the original note. Does anyone need anymore proof of how much this administration hates poor and working class people? -Sue

Monopsony: the basics, plus policy implications

Courtesy The G Spot- Politics, Economics, Feminism:

Be honest — are you skipping all these monopsony posts? Are your eyes glazing over at the mere sight of this odd and hard-to-pronounce word? Well, I hope not.

But in case you are — and in case the reason for this is that you don’t have a clear understanding of what it is in the first place, and why it might be important — I’ll try to remedy that by providing a (hopefully) coherent and straightforward explanation of the concept. Then maybe if you have a better grasp of what monopsony is, you can go back and read the other posts, and they might be a little more interesting to you. I’ll also go on to highlight some of the policy implications of monopsony, and why I think it’s important not only in an abstract theoretical sense, but in a concrete political sense as well.

The literal meaning of monopsony is “one buyer” (just as the literal meaning of monopoly is “one seller”). In the context of labor markets, monopsony means one buyer of labor, that is, one employer. But that’s confusing, because these days when economists use the term in the context of labor markets they usually don’t mean one employer.

Here’s what they do mean: in the standard labor market model, known as the perfect competition model, the market as a whole — that is, the supply of labor (all workers seeking a job) and the demand for labor (all jobs being offered by all firms) — determines the wage. The market-clearing wage occurs at that point where labor supply equals labor demand.

Moreover, in the perfect competition model, no single firm has the power to determine the wage; it simply accepts the wage that the market as a whole has determined, and that is what it offers to its workers. In this model, workers are extremely wage-sensitive, so much so that if any single firm cuts wages by even one cent, all the workers at that firm will immediately quit and find employment elsewhere.

In the monopsony model, however, the theory is that the employer has what is known as “market power,” and therefore is not a “wage-taker” (i.e., doesn’t have to offer the market wage). In this model, it is assumed that it’s the employer, not the market, which sets the wage. Therefore, in the monopsony case, the employer will offer below-market wages. And moreover, it’s assumed that the source of the firm’s market power are forces that bind an employee to an employer, so that if wages were cut, at least some of the employees would stay. 

 

Article Continues @ Sourced Site




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