position:lobbyist

  • Lyft and Other Gig-Economy Giants Cash In With IPOs Before Labor Laws Catch Up With Them
    https://theintercept.com/2019/04/01/lyft-ipo-gig-economy-labor-law

    Gig-economy companies Lyft, Uber, and Postmates are racing to file IPOs this year, a mad dash replete with ever-increasing multibillion-dollar valuations. But is the rush to start trading on the public markets also a sprint to evade compliance with current labor law ? Recent financial and lobbyist filings suggest that the gig-economy giants are hoping to get ahead of a wave of enforcement actions, new legislation, regulatory requirements, and lawsuits that could force these companies to (...)

    #Lyft #Uber #bénéfices #travail #Postmates

  • Bucking Unconscious Demotions and Sacrosanct Hiring Processes, plus Other Actions for Allies
    https://hackernoon.com/bucking-unconscious-demotions-and-sacrosanct-hiring-processes-plus-other

    Each week, we share five simple actions to create a more inclusive workplace and be a better ally.Image of man with arms folded, courtesy of The Jopwell Collection1. Buck unconscious demotionsThis week, we saw another glaring example of an unconscious demotion. It’s what happens when, upon meeting someone new, one might assume they’re in a lower role or position because of their gender. Or skin color. Or other visible indication that they’re a member of a marginalized group.Massachusetts State Representative Tram Nguyen was on the receiving end of one of these demotions, which she shared on Twitter:body[data-twttr-rendered="true"] background-color: transparent;.twitter-tweet margin: auto !important;Lobbyist: Are you Rep X’s aide? Me (in full suit): No. Lobbyist: Are you Rep Y’s (...)

    #inclusion #black-history-month #diversity #diversity-in-tech #allyship

  • How Voting-Machine Lobbyists Undermine the Democratic Process | The New Yorker
    https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-voting-machine-lobbyists-undermine-the-democratic-process

    Earlier this month, Georgia’s Secure, Accessible & Fair Elections Commission voted to recommend that the state replace its touch-screen voting machines with newer, similarly vulnerable machines, which will be produced by E.S. & S. at an estimated cost of a hundred million dollars. In doing so, the panel rejected the advice of computer scientists and election-integrity advocates, who consider hand-marked ballots to be the “most reliable record of voter intent,” and also the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which recommended that all states adopt paper ballots and conduct post-election audits. The practice of democracy begins with casting votes; its integrity depends on the inclusivity of the franchise and the accurate recording of its will. Georgia turns out to be a prime example of how voting-system venders, in partnership with elected officials, can jeopardize the democratic process by influencing municipalities to buy proprietary, inscrutable voting devices that are infinitely less secure than paper-ballot systems that cost three times less.

    The influence-peddling that has beset Georgia’s voting-system procurement began years earlier, in 2002, when the legislature eliminated a requirement that the state’s voting machines produce an independent audit trail of each vote cast. That same year, the secretary of state, Cathy Cox, signed a fifty-four-million-dollar contract with the election-machine vender Diebold. The lobbyist for Diebold, the former Georgia secretary of state Lewis Massey, then joined the lobbying firm of Bruce Bowers. The revolving door between the Georgia state government and the election venders was just beginning to spin.

    Something similar happened last fall in Delaware, where the Voting Equipment Selection Task Force also voted to replace its aging touch-screen machines with a variant of the ExpressVote system. When Jennifer Hill, at Common Cause Delaware, a government-accountability group, obtained all the bids from a public-records request, she found that “the Department of Elections had pretty much tailored the request for proposal in a way that eliminated venders whose primary business was to sell paper-ballot systems.” Hill also noted that a lobbyist for E.S. & S., who was “well-connected in the state,” helped “to shepherd this whole thing through.” Elaine Manlove, the Delaware elections director, told me that the twelve members of the election task force each independently concluded that ExpressVote was the best system for the state. “It’s not a big change for Delaware voters,” she said. “They’re voting on the screen, just like they do now.” (A representative from E.S. & S. told me that the the company “follows all state and federal guidelines for procurement of government contracts.”)

    The ExpressVote machines use what are known as ballot-marking devices. Once a vote is cast on the touch screen, the machine prints out a card that summarizes the voter’s choice, in both plain English and in the form of a bar code. After the voter reviews the card, it is returned to the machine, which records the information symbolized by the bar code. It’s a paper trail, but one that a voter can’t actually verify, because the bar codes can’t be read. “If you’re tallying based on bar codes, you could conceivably have software that [flips] the voter’s choices,” Buell said. “If you’re in a target state using these devices and the computer security isn’t very good, this becomes more likely.” This is less of a concern in states that require manual post-election audits. But neither Georgia nor Delaware do.

    #Voting_machine #Elections #Démocratie

  • Why the Khashoggi murder is a disaster for Israel -
    The grisly hit-job on Khashoggi has implications far beyond its exposure of the Saudi Crown Prince as brutal and reckless. In Jerusalem and D.C., they’re mourning their whole strategic concept for the Mideast - not least, for countering Iran

    Daniel B. Shapiro
    Oct 17, 2018

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-why-the-khashoggi-murder-is-a-disaster-for-israel-1.6569996

    For Israel, this sordid episode raises the prospects that the anchor of the new Middle East realities it has sought to promote - an Israeli-Sunni Arab coalition, under a U.S. umbrella, to check Iran and Sunni jihadists - cannot be counted upon.
    And Israel must be careful how it plays its hand. There will, without question, be a U.S. response to Khashoggi’s murder, even if it is resisted by the Trump administration. It will not lead to a total dismantlement of the U.S.-Saudi alliance, but Congressional and public revulsion will have its price. 

    President Hassan Rouhani giving a speech on Iranian TV in Tehran on May 8, 2018.HO/AFP
    The price could include significant restrictions on arms sales that had been contemplated. It is already leading key U.S. investors to distance themselves from the major development projects MBS has promoted. At a minimum, there will be no replay of the warm, PR-friendly visit by MBS to multiple U.S. cities last March, no more lionizing of him in the American press as a reformer who will reshape the Middle East.
    Israel, which has a clear interest in keeping Saudi Arabia in the fold of U.S. allies to maximize the strategic alignment on Iran, will need to avoid becoming MBS’s lobbyist in Washington. Israel’s coordination with its partners in the region is still necessary and desirable. Simple realpolitik requires it. But there is a new risk of reputational damage from a close association with Saudi Arabia. 
    It won’t be easy for Israel to navigate these waters, as the Washington foreign policy establishment has quickly splintered into anti-Iran and anti-Saudi camps. The idea that the United States should equally oppose Iranian and Saudi brutality toward their peoples, and not let MBS’s crimes lead to a lessening of pressure on Iran over its malign regional activities, is in danger of being lost.
    For Israelis, that may be the biggest blow in the fallout of Khashoggi’s murder. MBS, in his obsession with silencing his critics, has actually undermined the attempt to build an international consensus to pressure Iran.
    The damage is broad. Trump may be an outlier. But what Member of Congress, what European leader, would be willing to sit with MBS for a consultation on Iran now?
    That is the greatest evidence of MBS’s strategic blindness, and the damage will likely persist as long as he rules the kingdom.
    Daniel B. Shapiro is Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel, and Senior Director for the Middle East and North Africa in the Obama Administration. Twitter: @DanielBShapiro

  • Reality Winner Has Been in Jail for a Year. Her Prosecution Is Unfair and Unprecedented.

    https://theintercept.com/2018/06/03/reality-winner-nsa-paul-manafort

    THIS IS A tale of two defendants and two systems of justice.

    Christmas was coming, and Paul Manafort wanted to spend the holiday with his extended family in the Hamptons, where he owns a four-acre estate that has 10 bedrooms, a pool, a tennis court, a basketball court, a putting green, and a guest cottage. But Manafort was under house arrest in northern Virginia. Suspected of colluding with the Russian government, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump had been indicted on a dozen charges involving conspiracy, money laundering, bank fraud, and lying to federal investigators.


    Paul Manafort’s Hamptons estate, left, and the jail in Lincolnton, right.

    A lobbyist who became mysteriously wealthy over the years, Manafort avoided jail by posting $10 million in bond, though he was confined to his luxury condo in Alexandria, Virginia. That’s why, in mid-December, his lawyers asked the judge to make an exception. Manafort’s $2.7 million Virginia home could not provide “adequate accommodations” for his holiday guests, some of whom would have difficulty traveling because of health problems, the lawyers stated. A day later, the judge agreed to the request. Manafort could have his Christmas getaway in the Hamptons.

    Hundreds of miles away, another defendant in an eerily related case was not so blessed. Reality Winner, an Air Force veteran and former contractor for the National Security Agency, was sitting in a small-town jail in Lincolnton, Georgia. Arrested a year ago today, on June 3, 2017, Winner was accused of leaking an NSA document that showed how Russians tried to hack American voting systems in 2016.

    The bail system plays to the advantage of wealthy defendants like Paul Manafort and Harvey Weinstein (who paid his $1 million bond with a cashier’s check), because they can provide the government with fantastic sums; freedom is quite literally for sale, as in a story Anton Chekhov might have written about czarist Russia. The poor and the unlucky are stuck behind bars, punished before their guilt is determined. Defendants who are unable to pay bail have sometimes been held for years without a trial.

    IMAGINE THAT YOU are facing trial but are forbidden from searching for evidence to prove you are innocent. It is a scenario from a totalitarian “Alice in Wonderland” – you may do anything you want to defend yourself except the one thing that might actually help.

    That’s a rough approximation of the situation Winner’s lawyers have faced due to a strange twist in her case. She is accused of potentially causing “exceptionally grave damage” to national security by leaking a classified document that, the government claims, contains “national defense information.”

    Winner’s lawyers have stated in public filings that they needed to search on the internet to determine whether information in the document was known to a large number of government officials or was in the public domain. This was crucial to their effort to prove that the document did not merit NDI status. But because the document is classified, and because researching its contents on the internet could disclose search queries to hackers who theoretically could compromise the lawyers’ computers or access their routers, they were prohibited from Googling key phrases, according to court filings. In essence, Winner’s lawyers were forbidden from finding out if the document was as sensitive as the government claimed.

  • Can Washington Be Automated ?
    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/05/washington-automation-congress-politics-lobbying-policy-216216

    An algorithmic lobbyist sounds like a joke. But it’s already here. Here’s who the robots are coming for next. It’s a brisk late November afternoon in an 8th-floor office overlooking downtown Washington’s Thomas Circle. The White House is an easy five block walk ; the Hart Senate Office Building, a 15-minute cab ride. Outside, the streets are filled with people bustling about, protected against the chill in dark suits and authoritative shoes, moving between power centers with the confidence of (...)

    #algorithme #prédictif #lobbying

  • LobbyFacts Database
    https://lobbyfacts.eu

    Who are the biggest spenders on lobbying? Is there a balance between corporate and public interest lobbying? Are lobbyists spending more or less than last year? Which organisations have the most meetings with the Commission elite? Which organisations have the most EU parliament lobbyist passes? LobbyFacts can help you answer these kinds of questions.

    #datasource #lobbying #UE #API

  • Paying Professors: Inside Google’s Academic Influence Campaign - WSJ
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/paying-professors-inside-googles-academic-influence-campaign-1499785286

    #Google operates a little-known program to harness the brain power of university researchers to help sway opinion and public policy, cultivating financial relationships with professors at campuses from #Harvard University to the University of California, #Berkeley.

    Over the past decade, Google has helped finance hundreds of research papers to defend against regulatory challenges of its market dominance, paying stipends of $5,000 to $400,000, The Wall Street Journal found.

    Some researchers share their papers before publication and let Google give suggestions, according to thousands of pages of emails obtained by the Journal in public-records requests of more than a dozen university professors. The professors don’t always reveal Google’s backing in their research, and few disclosed the financial ties in subsequent articles on the same or similar topics, the Journal found.

    [...]

    In some years, Google officials in Washington compiled wish lists of academic papers that included working titles, abstracts and budgets for each proposed paper—then they searched for willing authors, according to a former employee and a former Google lobbyist.

    Google promotes the research papers to government officials, and sometimes pays travel expenses for professors to meet with congressional aides and administration officials, according to the former lobbyist. The research has been used, for instance, to deflect antitrust accusations against Google by the Federal Trade Commission in 2012, according to a letter Google attorneys sent to the FTC chairman and viewed by the Journal.

    #corruption #conflit_d'intérêt #dissimulation #lobbying

  • Washington Post didn’t disclose that writer who penned positive piece about Trump’s Saudi trip is paid by Saudi government - Salon.com
    http://www.salon.com/2017/05/27/wash-post-didnt-disclose-that-writer-who-penned-positive-piece-about-trumps-s

    The Washington Post allowed contributor Ed Rogers to praise Donald Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia without disclosing that he’s a lobbyist for the Saudi Royal Court. The Post has repeatedly allowed Rogers to promote his lobbying clients’ interests without disclosure.

    Rogers is the chairman of the BGR Group, a leading Washington, D.C., lobbying group. BGR is part of a vast network of American lobbying and public relations firms that work for the Saudi government. The Post itself has reported on Rogers’ role in promoting Saudi interests. An April 2016 article stated that Rogers “did not immediately return a request for comment” about his lobbying work for the Saudi government and that “Rogers is a contributor to the Washington Post’s PostPartisan blog.”

    Rogers and BGR signed an agreement letter with the Saudi Royal Court on August 24, 2015, to “provide public relations and media management services for The Center [for Studies and Media Affairs at The Saudi Royal Court], which includes both traditional and social media forums.” The contract is worth $500,000 per year.

  • Wash. Post Doesn’t Disclose Writer Supporting Syria Strike Is A Lobbyist For Tomahawk Missile Manufacturer
    https://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/04/11/wash-post-doesn-t-disclose-writer-supporting-syria-strike-lobbyist-tomahawk-missile-manufacturer/215976

    The Washington Post is allowing writer Ed Rogers to push for and praise military action against Syria without disclosing that he’s a lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon, which makes the Tomahawk missiles used in the recent strike.

    Rogers is a contributor to The Washington Post’s PostPartisan blog, where he wrote an April 8 piece praising President Donald Trump for authorizing the launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase that reportedly housed warplanes that carried out chemical attacks against civilians.

  • First State Legalizes Taser Drones for Cops, Thanks to a Lobbyist
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/26/first-state-legalizes-armed-drones-for-cops-thanks-to-a-lobbyist.html

    It is now legal for law enforcement in North Dakota to fly drones armed with everything from Tasers to tear gas thanks to a last-minute push by a pro-police lobbyist. With all the concern over the militarization of police in the past year, no one noticed that the state became the first in the union to allow police to equip drones with “less than lethal” weapons. House Bill 1328 wasn’t drafted that way, but then a lobbyist representing law enforcement—tight with a booming drone industry—got his (...)

    #CCTV #drone #vidéo-surveillance #surveillance

  • Gulf Lobbyist Fails to Disclose Ties to Qatar in Media Appearances « LobeLog
    http://lobelog.com/gulf-lobbyist-fails-to-disclose-ties-to-qatar-in-media-appearances

    On Monday, MapLight’s Andrew Perez published an excellent investigation into Ed Rogers’ advocacy against the Iran nuclear agreement while working as an undisclosed lobbyist for Saud Arabia. Rogers’ behavior is particularly troubling since he registered as a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) seven months after signing a contract with the Saudis. In the time period between signing the contract and registering under FARA, Rogers published two columns in The Washington Post criticizing the Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran, neither of which identified him as a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia.

    Rogers’ actions may have violated the law due to the gap between the contract’s signing date and his registration under FARA. But other lobbyists for Sunni-Arab Gulf states have been slow to identify their paid roles when quoted as experts criticizing the White House’s Iran diplomacy.

    One of the most prominent examples of this trend is J. Adam Ereli, U.S. ambassador to Bahrain from 2007 to 2011, a lobbyist for Qatar since January 2015, and an outspoken critic of the Obama administration’s efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.

    "#experts" et #incurie des #MSM

  • The Information Sage by Joshua Yaffa | The Washington Monthly
    http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/mayjune_2011/features/the_information_sage029137.php?page=all

    Alors : un long portrait de celui qu’on appelle le gourou de la visualisation, Edward Tufte. A lire et à discuter.

    One day in the spring of 2009, Edward Tufte, the statistician and graphic design theorist, took the train from his home in Cheshire, Connecticut, to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with a few members of the Obama administration. A few weeks earlier, he had received a phone call from Earl Devaney, a former inspector general in the Department of the Interior, who is best known for leading that agency’s investigation of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Devaney had recently been appointed head of the Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board, the body created by the Obama administration to keep track of the $780 billion in federal stimulus money that has spread out across the country.

    Whereas Devaney once led a team of professional investigators responsible for sniffing out waste, fraud, and abuse, he was now faced with a rather different, but related, task: designing a Web site. In the stimulus bill, Congress had called for the creation of “user-friendly visual presentations” of data that would allow the American public to watch over the disbursement of the giant funding package. This wasn’t exactly familiar territory for Devaney, a career lawman. Perhaps Tufte could offer some advice?

    #tufte #visualisation #cartographie

  • Exposed: The chemical industry’s fake grass-roots lobbying for fire retardants - LA Times
    http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-a-look-inside-the-chemical-industry-20150515-column.html

    Former chemistry industry lobbyist Grant D. Gillham testifies at a hearing last month that he was misled about the safety of the products he was promoting.

    #lobbying #menteurs #chimie #cancer

  • The Saudi #Lobbying Complex Adds a New Member: GOP Super PAC Chair Norm Coleman
    http://m.thenation.com/article/181674-saudi-lobbying-complex-adds-new-member-gop-super-pac-chair-norm-

    For Coleman, who also serves on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy, the job of Saudi lobbyist comes as somewhat of a role reversal from the senator’s work a decade ago. In 2005, Coleman signed onto a congressional letter condemning the Saudi government for distributing publications that preach a “Nazi-like hatred for Jews” and for spreading extremist ideology throughout the world."

    #Saoud

  • We are rate limiting the FCC to dialup modem speeds until they pay us for bandwidth
    https://neocities.org/blog/the-fcc-is-now-rate-limited

    The Federal Communications Commission is planning to vote for a proposal on May 15th to scrap Net Neutrality. Instead of all sites being given fair and equal access to consumers, this proposal will allow for your ISP to create special internet speed lanes for ultra-rich corporations, and force their own customers wanting to access your site into an internet traffic jam lane that’s slower. The bonehead responsible for this idiotic and insane proposal is no less than the chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, a cable industry hand-picked lobbyist.

    #neutrality #fcc

    • The Ferengi plan is a special FCC-only plan that costs $1000 per year, and removes the 28.8kbps modem throttle to the FCC. We will happily take Credit Cards, Bitcoin, and Dogecoin from crooked FCC executives that probably have plenty of money from bribes on our Donations page (sorry, we don’t accept Latinum yet).

      If it bothers you that I’m doing this, I want to point out that everyone is going to be doing crap like this after the FCC rips apart Net Neutrality. It’s time for the web to organize and stand up against these thugs before they ruin everything that the web stands for.

      Update 8:19PM PST - want to make your own FCC Ferengi Plan? Here’s the code we’re using on our nginx server.

  • How much lobbying is there in Washington? It’s DOUBLE what you think
    http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/11/25/how-much-lobbying-is-there-in-washington-its-double-what-you-thi

    The reason for the lack of transparency is clear: the LDA [Lobbying Disclosure Act] definition of “lobbyist” is too narrow. If lobbyists want, they can fully comply with the law and do virtually the same influence-for-pay as strategic policy consultants or historical advisers, and choose not to disclose. Even lobbyists themselves seem to find little meaning in the term “lobbyist.” The American League of Lobbyists even dropped the word “lobbyist” from their name to officially become the Association of Government Relations Professionals.

    (...)

    If we assume that the cost of reported and stealth lobbying is the same—that every one person accounts for an unweighted average of about $270,000 in lobbying influence per year—then we estimate that in the calendar year 2012, organized interests spent about $6.7 billion “relating” with the government.

    Let’s put that number in perspective: For every one member of Congress, the influence industry produces about $12.5 million in lobbying. By comparison, the average 2012 budget for member of the House of Representative’s office was only $1.3 million. So, in 2012—a presidential election year, in a down economy, during arguably the least productive Congress ever—“government relaters” accounted for more than nine times the typical House member’s official operating expenses.

    #Etats-Unis #lobbying #corruption

  • Does the Treasury Secretary Have to Be a Lobbyist for Wall Street in Europe ?
    http://truth-out.org/news/item/17295-does-the-treasury-secretary-have-to-be-a-lobbyist-for-wall-street-i

    Le Département du trésor étasunien va essayer de convaincre l’Europe de dispenser Wall Street de la taxe sur les transactions financières.

    Apparently, the Treasury Department is expected to lobby on their behalf in other countries. This is what we are seeing now as 11 countries in the European Union attempt to jointly implement a financial speculation tax. This is part of a popular European effort to raise revenue by cracking down on speculative trading by their major banks.

    The tax enjoys overwhelming support from the public in countries like Germany, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe. This is what has pushed their political leadership to support the tax. However, the U.S. Treasury Department seems determined to obstruct the path.
    The immediate issue is that U.S. banks want to be exempted from having to pay the tax, and the Treasury Department is pushing their case. First, it is important to understand that no one is trying to single out U.S. banks for punishment under the proposed European tax. The argument by the Europeans is that U.S. banks should be subject to the trading tax in the same way that U.S. citizens are subject to taxes on restaurants and hotels when they eat at a restaurant or stay at a hotel in Europe.

    This is important not just because the Europeans are worried about losing a slice of the revenue if the U.S. banks are exempted; they are worried that the tax would be completely undermined. If active speculators in stock or derivatives know that they can evade Europe’s tax simply by doing their trades through a subsidiary of a U.S. bank, then all the active traders will conduct their trades through U.S. subsidiaries. The result would be that the frequent traders who were the primary target of the tax would be largely able to escape the tax.

  • QUI a financé le show médiatique de Peres ?

    Arms dealers, major capitalists fund Peres’ 90th birthday bash | +972 Magazine
    http://972mag.com/arms-dealers-major-capitalists-fund-peres-90th-birthday-bash/73987

    It was an 11-million shekel production dubbed by many as a “North Korea-style event” for the man who brought ‘The Bomb’ to Israel, tried to offer it to Apartheid South Africa when the rest of the world was already boycotting it, was an active partner in promoting some of Israel’s more aggressive wars and one of the architects of the Israeli neo-liberal economy of privatization. In a film made in honor of the event, Peres was shown accepting the Nobel Prize for Peace – but Yasser Arafat and any mention of Oslo was edited out.

    Celebrities of all sorts attended, including former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who the very next day began meetings with Israeli officials in order to protect Nobel Energy’s interests in Israel’s natural gas finds – in his capacity as a lobbyist for the company.

    It is no wonder, therefore, that the funders of this celebration were, among others, big-time arms dealers and local capitalists. Hebrew-language website News1 looked into 10 of the funders listed on the Israeli Presidential Conference’s official website. This is what they found (translation is mine, partly edited based on information from The Real Economy website):

    1. Aaron Frenkel – Honorary chair of the conference. An arms dealer and international business man. Israel’s State Comptroller found suspicions of criminal activity in a deal by the Israeli Aerospace Industries to buy a Russian airplane, but the case was closed. 2. Marcos Katz – Arms dealer residing in Mexico. Brokered sales to dictatorships, amongst other things. 3. Michael Federmann – Major shareholder in Elbit (weapons manufacturer, H.M.). 4. Alfred Akirov – Shareholder in Leumi Bank, one of the most prominent men in Israeli real estate. 5. Ronald Cohen – Founder of Apax Partners. If you don’t know them, they’re behind Tnuva’s cottage cheese prices (one of the symbols of the #J14 social justice protests, H.M.) 6. Marc Rich – In the years 1983-2001, he was wanted in the U.S. after fleeing the country following an indictment for dealing with Iran during a time of sanctions and a $48-million tax evasion scheme. At the Presidential Conference, he’ll meet Bill Clinton, who on his last day of office pardoned Rich at the request of Ehud Barak. 7. David Weisman – Owner of the Alon Group, which includes the Ribua Kakhol and AM:PM supermarket chains. 8. Raya Strauss – One of the owners of the Strauss-Elite group (one of the biggest food producers in Israel, H.M). 9. Hapoalim Bank (the largest bank in Israel).

    • Je viens de recevoir un mail demandant « kindly » à corriger la mention concernant Aaron Frenkel, qui serait erronée. En tout cas, la version de 972mag est désormais la suivante :

      First on the list is local capitalist Ahron Frenkel. Honorary chair of the conference. An international businessman who has brokered military deals for Israel Aerospace Industries and who now owns a company producing military drones and which employs several former IDF officers. Frenkel is a close friend to Peres and other prominent figures in Israeli politics. [Updated December 19, 2019]

  • 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

  • ’NYT’ runs op-ed by Israel lobbyist in human rights garb, saying Palestinians are too corrupt to deserve a state
    http://mondoweiss.net/2013/02/lobbyist-palestinians-corrupt.html

    And who is this David Keyes who presumes to speak on behalf of beleaguered Palestinians? He’s the Executive Director of Advancing Human Rights, a relatively new organization started by Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein. Bernstein abandoned HRW because of its criticism of Israel, which he could no longer tolerate. The problem apparently was that HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Division (MENA) was devoting a full 28% of its attention to Israel/Palestine. Shocking! The work done by HRW’s other divisions – Africa, Asia, The Americas, the U.S., and Europe/Central Asia – and the other 72% of MENA was not enough to make up for this unfair “singling out” of Israel. So Bernstein started AHR, apparently deciding against the more accurate but cumbersome title “Advancing Human Rights For All Except Palestinians”. And it’s a good thing, because AHR’s present executive director has found a way to feign concern for Palestinians while absolving Israel of any blame.

  • Sacramento Developer with Ties to UC Davis MIND Institute Embroiled in New Controversy

    In the midst of the growing controversy over the alleged embezzlement of public funds by California Democratic Party operatives associated with OBAMA FOR AMERICA, a Sacramento real estate developer once accused of defrauding an Indian tribe out of millions of dollars while conspiring with the tribe’s attorney (Howard Dickstein), is now embroiled in a separate controversy dealing with the alleged embezzlement of public funds through and by means of fraud while conspiring with the wife of Howard Dickstein — Sacramento-based lobbyist Jeannine English.

    Specifically, Mark Friedman of Sacramento-based Fulcrum Property Group — an Electoral for Barack Obama — has recently been identified as a potential player in the financial scheme known as CaliforniaALL following the fortuitous discovery of evidence relating to his accountant, Alison Turner of Alison Turner & Associates.

    As relevant to this matter, in 2007, various members of the State Bar of California Board of Governors with ties to the Democratic Party/OBAMA FOR AMERICA are accused of knowingly agreeing to establish a non-profit entity (known as CaliforniaALL) which was later misused as a vehicle to absorb funds from utility companies, as well as close to $800,000 from the California Bar Foundation (an entity controlled by the State Bar of California Board of Governors).

    As matters presently stand, suspicions exist that Morrison & Foerster attorneys James Brosnahan (the self-proclaimed “mastermind” behind the Democratic Party and member of OBAMA FOR AMERICA’s California Finance Committee), Tony West (OBAMA FOR AMERICA’s Chair of California’s Finance Committee), Chris Young (OBAMA FOR AMERICA’s Northern California Deputy Finance Director), Annette Carnegie (former director of the California Bar Foundation), Kamala Harris (Co-Chair, OBAMA FOR AMERICA and member of CaliforniaALL), Jeffrey Bleich of Munger Tolles (president of the State Bar of California, director of the California Bar Foundation, and founding member and Chair of OBAMA FOR AMERICA’s National Finance Committee), Brad Phillips of Munger Tolles (2007- 2008 Director of the California Bar Foundation which served as a “financial sponsor” to CaliforniaALL on behalf of Verizon Wireless and Southern California Edison, both clients of Munger Tolles & Olson), Mark Parnes of Wilson Sonsini (2007-2008 director and Secretary of the California Bar Foundation), John Roos of Wilson Sonsini (former CEO of Wilson Sonsini and member of OBAMA FOR AMERICA’s National Finance Committee), Steven Churchwell of DLA Piper in Sacramento (Treasurer, draft committee of OBAMA FOR AMERICA; firm where CaliforniaALL resided free of charge), Laura Chick (member of the State Bar of California Board of Governors and OBAMA FOR AMERICA), and Freada Klein Kapor (member of the board of directors of CaliforniaALL; OBAMA FOR AMERICA’s phone bank was located at The Kapor Center) all participated in a sophisticated financial scheme to misuse all or part of the “hush-hush” $780,000 originating from the California Bar Foundation to improperly benefit OBAMA FOR AMERICA via a separate foundation created ad hoc by Susan Mac Cormac and Eric Tate of Morrison & Foerster known as CaliforniaALL.

    In 2007, Ruthe Catolico Ashley served as member of the State Bar of California Board of Governors alongside Jeffrey Bleich, and came up with the idea to create CaliforniaALL during a meeting with Sarah Redfield and Peter Arth, (the assistant to CPUC President Michael Peevey).

    CaliforniaALL was conveniently housed free of charge at the offices of DLA Piper in Sacramento, alongside the draft committee of OBAMA FOR AMERICA, where Steve Churchwell of DLA Piper in Sacramento served as Treasurer of the draft committee of OBAMA FOR AMERICA.

    Subsequent to the election of Barack Obama, CaliforniaALL was dissolved.

    Other then collecting close to $2 million directly from utility companies (including the “hush-hush” transfer of $774,247, comprised of one installment of $5000 and another contribution of $769,247 from the Foundation which was never mentioned in the Foundation’s “newsroom” or by any other of its publications such as the California Bar Journal or by any of the newsletters and alerts published by CaliforniaALL), CaliforniaALL appears to have been be a sham, phantom entity from its inception in 2008 to the day it began to slowly be dissolved in approximately 2009, subsequent to the election of Barack Obama as president of the U.S. Its only alleged achievement was providing some money for the creation of the Saturday Academy of Law at UC Irvine ("SALUCI") in approximately 2008-2009. Here too vast and intense suspicious circumstances exist as the funds from CaliforniaALL actually went to the UC Irvine Foundation, where the present executive director of the State Bar of California (Senator Joe Dunn) serves as a member of the audit committee, and it turns out that the SALUCI was actually already created in 2005 and was fully operational before CaliforniaALL arrived on the scene. In addition, some records seem to indicate that Verizon Wireless funneled the money directly to SALUCI , while CaliforniaALL took the credit.