#porte_tournante

Lobbyists, Bearing Gifts, Pursue Attorneys General - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/us/lobbyists-bearing-gifts-pursue-attorneys-general.html

Attorneys general are now the object of aggressive pursuit by lobbyists and lawyers who use campaign contributions, personal appeals at lavish corporate-sponsored conferences and other means to push them to drop investigations, change policies, negotiate favorable settlements or pressure federal regulators, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

A robust industry of lobbyists and lawyers has blossomed as attorneys general have joined to conduct multistate investigations and pushed into areas as diverse as securities fraud and Internet crimes.

But unlike the #lobbying rules covering other elected officials, there are few revolving-door restrictions or disclosure requirements governing state attorneys general, who serve as “the people’s lawyers” by protecting consumers and individual citizens.

A result is that the routine lobbying and deal-making occur largely out of view. But the extent of the cause and effect is laid bare in The Times’s review of more than 6,000 emails obtained through open records laws in more than two dozen states, interviews with dozens of participants in cases and attendance at several conferences where corporate representatives had easy access to attorneys general.

(...)

It is a self-perpetuating network that includes a group of former attorneys general called SAGE, or the Society of Attorneys General Emeritus, most of whom are now on retainer to corporate clients.

#porte_tournante #corruption #justice #leadership #Etats-Unis

Are human rights activists today’s #warmongers ? - Opinion - The Boston Globe
By Stephen Kinzer | MAY 25, 2014
▻http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/24/are-human-rights-activists-today-warmongers/gef04rpPxgEdCEdx4DQ87J/story.html

ALMOST EVERYONE likes the idea of human rights. The phrase itself is freighted with goodness. Supporting human rights is like supporting world peace.

The modern human rights movement began as a band of outsiders, fighting governments on behalf of the faceless and voiceless. President Jimmy Carter brought it into the American foreign policy establishment by naming an outspoken assistant secretary of state for human rights. This meant that concern for the poor, the brutalized, and the imprisoned would be heard in the highest councils of government.

Now, several decades after the human rights movement traded its outsider status for influence in Washington, it is clear that this has produced negative as well as positive results. The movement has become a global behemoth. Sometimes it functions as a handmaiden to the power it was once dedicated to combating.

The most appalling result of this process in the United States is that some human rights activists now regularly call for using force to resolve the world’s problems. At one time, “human rights” implied opposition to war. Now some of the most outspoken warmongers in Washington are self-proclaimed human rights advocates.

(...)

This is a radical development in the history of the human rights movement. Once it was generals, defense contractors, and chest-thumping politicians who saw war as the best solution to global problems. Now human rights activists play that role. Some seem to have given up on diplomacy and statecraft. Instead they promote the steady militarization of American foreign policy.

These trigger-happy human rights activists rotate in and out of government jobs. This month more than 100 scholars, activists, and Nobel Peace Prize winners protested against this revolving door in an open letter to #Human_Rights_Watch, which, thanks to an astonishing $100 million gift from the financier George Soros, has become king of the human rights hill.

Their letter says that, although Human Rights Watch claims to defend and protect human rights, its ties to the American military and security establishments “call into question its independence.” It names prominent Human Rights Watch figures who have served in the State Department and #CIA; condemns the group for supporting “the illegal practice of kidnapping and transferring terrorism suspects around the planet”; and asserts that it produces biased reports exaggerating human rights abuses in countries the United States dislikes, like #Venezuela, while being gentler to American allies like #Honduras.

“#HRW ’s close relationships with the US government suffuse such instances with the appearance of a conflict of interest,” the letter says.

(...)

The world needs fearless truth-tellers. Some human rights advocates are. Others have succumbed to the temptations of power. Their movement is in danger of losing its way.

#droits_humains #va-t-en_guerre #porte_tournante #pouvoir #caution_morale

The revolving door between #Google and the Department of Defense
▻http://pando.com/2014/04/23/the-revolving-door-between-google-and-the-department-of-defense

Many of Google Federal’s top managers come from the biggest and baddest military and intel outfits: US Army, Air Force Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Director of National Intelligence, USAID, SAIC, Lockheed… the list keeps going on and on.

Take Michele R. Weslander Quaid, Google’s Chief Technology Officer of Public Sector and “Innovation Evangelist.”

Chances are you’ve never heard of her. Neither had I. But Weslander Quaid took the top spot in Entrepreneur Magazine’s list of the seven most powerful women to watch in 2014.

The reason?

She helped bring the Google mindset to federal intelligence agencies.

(...)

#porte_tournante

Here’s why Obama trade negotiators push the interests of Hollywood and drug companies
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/26/heres-why-obama-trade-negotiators-push-the-interests-of-hollywood-an

Two major factors contribute to the USTR’s strong pro-rightsholder slant. An obvious one is the revolving door between USTR and private industry. Since the turn of the century, at least a dozen USTR officials have taken jobs with pharmaceutical companies, filmmakers, record labels, and technology companies that favor stronger patent and copyright protection.

A more subtle factor is the structure and culture of USTR itself. In its role as a promoter of global trade, USTR has always worked closely with U.S. exporters. That exporter-focused culture isn’t a problem when USTR is merely seeking to remove barriers to selling U.S. goods overseas, but it becomes problematic on issues like copyright and patent law where exporters’ interests may run directly counter to those of American consumers.

USTR’s enthusiasm for stronger copyright and patent protections could become a liability for the Obama administration’s broader trade agenda. Last year, grassroots copyright activists blocked the ratification of one trade agreement by the European Union over its copyright provisions. There’s a risk that a similar fate could befall the TPP.

#porte_tournante #élite

Monsanto’s Friends in High Places
▻http://mises.org/daily/6580/Monsantos-Friends-in-High-Places

A look at some #Monsanto representatives and their positions in government:

Suzanne Sechen, worked on Monsanto-funded academic research/A primary reviewer for bovine growth hormone in #FDA

Linda J. Fisher, VP, lobbyist for Monsanto/Assistant Administrator at #EPA

Michael Friedman, MD, Sr. VP, GD Searle, subsidiary of Monsanto/Acting Commissioner of FDA

Marcia Hale, international lobbyist, Monsanto/Assistant to President under President Clinton

Michael (Mickey) Kantor, director/Secretary of Commerce and US Trade Representative under President Clinton

William D. Ruckelshaus, director/Head of EPA under both Presidents Nixon and Reagan

#porte_tournante

Pharmaceutical firms paid to attend meetings of panel that advises FDA
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pharmaceutical-firms-paid-to-attend-meetings-of-panel-that-advises-fda-e-mails-show/2013/10/06/a02a2548-2b80-11e3-b139-029811dbb57f_print.html

A scientific panel that shaped the federal government’s policy for testing the safety and effectiveness of painkillers was funded by major pharmaceutical companies that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the chance to affect the thinking of the Food and Drug Administration, according to hundreds of e-mails obtained by a public records request.

The e-mails show that the companies paid as much as $25,000 to attend any given meeting of the panel, which had been set up by two academics to provide advice to the FDA on how to weigh the evidence from clinical trials. A leading FDA official later called the group “an essential collaborative effort.”

Patient advocacy groups said the electronic communications suggest that the regulators had become too close to the companies trying to crack into the $9 billion painkiller market in the United States. FDA officials who regulate painkillers sat on the steering committee of the panel, which met in private, and co-wrote papers with employees of pharmaceutical companies.

The FDA has been criticized for failing to take precautions that might have averted the epidemic of addiction to prescription drugs including Oxycontin and other opioids.

“These e-mails help explain the disastrous decisions the FDA’s analgesic division has made over the last 10 years,” said Craig Mayton, the Columbus, Ohio, attorney who made the public records request to the University of Washington. “Instead of protecting the public health, the FDA has been allowing the drug companies to pay for a seat at a small table where all the rules were written.”

Even as the meetings were taking place, the idea of FDA officials meeting with firms that had paid big money for an invitation raised eyebrows for some. In an e-mail to organizers, an official from the National Institutes of Health worried whether the arrangements made it look as if the private meetings were a “pay to play process.”

FDA officials did not benefit financially from their participation in the meetings, the agency said. But two later went on to work as pharmaceutical consultants and more than this, the critics said, the e-mails portray an agency that, by allowing itself to get caught up in a panel that seemed to promise influence for money, had blurred the line between the regulators and the regulated.

In a statement, the FDA said “we take these concerns very seriously.” But, it said, “we are unaware of any improprieties” associated with the group.

The group was organized by two medical professors, Robert Dworkin of the University of Rochester and Dennis Turk of the University of Washington, and the e-mails for the most part describe their efforts at financing and organizing the group’s meetings.

The two professors received as much as $50,000 apiece for a meeting, money that went to their academic research accounts and paid for research assistants and expenses “or to cover a small percentage of faculty effort,” they said. At one point in the e-mails, they proposed that they receive honoraria of $5,000 apiece for a four-hour meeting at a hotel near the FDA offices.

#pharma #big_pharma #corruption #porte_tournante #fda

Booz Allen Grew Rich on Government Contracts - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/us/booz-allen-grew-rich-on-government-contracts.html

#privatisation #porte_tournante et #conflit_d’intérêt

Edward J. Snowden’s employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, has become one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the United States almost exclusively by serving a single client: the government of the United States.

...

As evidence of the company’s close relationship with government, the Obama administration’s chief intelligence official, James R. Clapper Jr., is a former Booz Allen executive. The official who held that post in the Bush administration, John M. McConnell, now works for Booz Allen.

“The national security apparatus has been more and more privatized and turned over to contractors,” said Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group that studies federal government contracting. “This is something the public is largely unaware of, how more than a million private contractors are cleared to handle highly sensitive matters.”

It has gone so far, Ms. Brian said, that even the process of granting security clearances is often handled by contractors, allowing companies to grant government security clearances to private sector employees.

#Fiscalité : un régulateur au service des fraudeurs ? | CNCD-11.11.11
▻http://www.cncd.be/Fiscalite-un-regulateur-au-service

La trop grande proximité entre un régulateur et ceux qu’il est censé réguler est source de soupçons. C’est le cas de l’#OCDE dont les relations avec les multinationales et l’industrie du conseil fiscal posent question.

Un article de l’agence de presse financière Bloomberg [1] permet d’y voir un peu plus clair sur la question des liens entre l’OCDE et les multinationales. On y découvre que ces multinationales, ainsi que les cabinets d’avocats et de consultance qui les conseillent dans leurs stratégies fiscales, sponsorisent et financent les conférences et autres réunions de l’OCDE sur les questions fiscales. C’est le cas notamment pour une conférence qui se prépare en juin de cette année à Washington, sponsorisée par Microsoft, le cabinet de consultance Ernst & Young et le cabinet d’avocat Bingham McCutchen LLP.

Plus grave encore, les trois fonctionnaires de l’OCDE les plus haut placés en matière fiscale ont quitté cette organisation pour rejoindre l’industrie du conseil fiscal. Ainsi, Caroline Silberztein, la fonctionnaire OCDE qui a coordonné la rédaction de nouvelles directives fiscales en 2010, a rejoint en 2011 le cabinet d’avocat Baker & McKenzie, qui défend notamment plusieurs multinationales contre le fisc états-unien. Sa supérieure hiérarchique Mary Bennett a suivi le même chemin, et a eu en plus la bonne idée de suggérer à la Chambre de commerce internationale de proposer des candidats pour son remplacement. Enfin, Jeffrey Owens, qui a dirigé le département fiscalité de l’OCDE pendant 11 ans, a rejoint Ernst & Young, qui conseille notamment Google et Hewlett Packard sur leurs stratégies fiscales.

#conflits_d'intérêts

FOCUS | Monsanto Has Taken Over the USDA
▻http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/448-farm-and-food-policy/17377-focus-monsanto-has-taken-over-the-usda

USDA = U.S. Department of Agriculture

The takeover has been thorough. Monsanto’s growth hormones for cows have been approved by Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto lobbyist turned USDA administrator and FDA deputy commissioner. This was after Margaret Miller, a former Monsanto employee, oversaw a report on the hormones’ safety and then took a job at the FDA where she approved her own report.

Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist, wrote the USDA’s food standards, allowing corporations to label irradiated and genetically engineered foods as “organic.”

The recently passed and signed law nicknamed the Monsanto Protection Act strips federal courts of the power to halt the sale and planting of genetically engineered crops during a legal appeals process. The origin of this act can be found in the USDA’s deregulation of Roundup Ready sugar beets in violation of a court order. The USDA argued that any delay would have caused a sugar shortage, since Monsanto holds 95% of the market.

The #revolving_door keeps revolving. Monsanto’s board members have worked for the EPA, advised the USDA, and served on President Obama’s Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations.

Clearly, an investigation of large-scale #government_corruption by this singularly destructive corporation is long overdue.

#porte_tournante #corruption_légale et même #corruption_illégale #qu'est_ce_qu'il_ne_faut_pas_écrire

IPS – New York Nuke Waste in Limbo as Concerns Rise | Inter Press Service
▻http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/04/new-york-nuke-waste-in-limbo-as-concerns-rise

Asked how the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) – an independent agency established by Congress in 1974 to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials – has approached Indian Point, Brancato said, “They’ve been in lockstep with Entergy and have taken on the same positions.”

....

The NRC – lauded internationally for its safety standards – has also been criticised for pandering to the interests of the commercial entities it is tasked to regulate.

Last month, Gregory Jaczko – a former chairman of the NRC – told Nuclear Intelligence Weekly (NIW) that the 103 nuclear plants currently operating across the U.S. should be phased out for health and safety reasons.

According to NIW, Jaczko – who regularly sparred with his four fellow commissioners while at the NRC – resigned from his post in 2012, claiming that he was a victim of a nuclear industry-backed effort to oust him from office.

Greene said, “These (nuclear) industries and NRC staff work on (legal) cases all over the country, and they get to know each other and develop a very cordial relationship.”

She added, “There’s a lot of familiarity… and somewhat of a revolving door between the industry and the oversight agency.”

#porte_tournante #nucléaire

This is how corporate ‘democracy’ works — War in Context
▻http://warincontext.org/2013/03/28/this-is-how-corporate-democracy-works

And perhaps when Breuer’s former boss Attorney General Eric Holder steps down, he too will return to his former employer, Covington, and there, along with servicing the interests of Wall Street, they can assist the law firm’s other famous clients like Xe Services (Blackwater), Phillip Morris, and Halliburton.

If you’re not familiar with Breuer, watch The Untouchables to learn about his role in letting Wall Street off the hook following the 2008 financial crisis:

#corruption_légale #porte_tournante #porte_tambour

L’Europe aux mains des lobbies, entretien avec Olivier Hoedeman | les coulisses de la corruption
▻http://ragemag.fr/leurop-aux-mains-des-lobbies-entretien-avec-olivier-hoedema

Les « revolving doors » (portes tournantes), est le principal canal permettant aux lobbies industriels de maîtriser les politiques publiques européennes : les lobbies et les grandes firmes recrutent leurs agents d’influence parmi les Commissaires européens et les officiels de l’UE. Quand l’actuelle Commission (Barroso-2) prit ses fonctions en 2010, 13 Commissaires furent remplacés ; plus de la moitié intégrèrent directement le monde des affaires en tant que lobbyistes. Ce fut l’occasion d’un scandale médiatique, mais la Commission répondit qu’elle ne voyait pas où était le problème. Il fallut plus d’un an pour qu’ils se décident à introduire quelques changement mineurs dans le code de conduite appliqué aux Commissaires.

Il y a aussi un problème majeur de conflits d’intérêts avec tous les officiels de la Commission qui pantouflent un jour ou l’autre dans le privé. Une investigation a été lancée sur ce sujet par le médiateur européen ; mais la Commission s’oppose à toute régulation concernant les « revolving doors » car ses liens avec le monde des affaires sont trop étroits.

« Lobbying » est-il devenu un euphémisme pour #corruption ?