California Free Press

Ahmadinejad

It is fashionable among Americans to deride Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Columbia President Bollinger did in what I'm assuming was supposed to be an introduction. Instead he insulted Ahmadinejad by saying, "Mr President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." Some introduction!

Actually, Ahmadinejad is an intelligent man who came from a poor background and got his university education (including a PhD) and his start in the world from excelling on his university entrance exams. His rise to the top of Iranian society is a rags to riches story in which he got where he is due to innate talent and not political connections. He seems to truly want to engage in a dialog with the American people, but the American people, for the most part, are having none of it. They want to see the world in black and white terms. Everyone is either on our side or they're our enemies. This attitude can never bring about peace in the world or a resolution of the world's pressing problems.

Ahmadinejad has been widely criticized and reviled for making two statements: 1) that the holocaust never happened and 2) that the state of Israel should be wiped off the map. There is some doubt whether he made these statements in such stark terms. According to aljazeera.net what he said at Columbia was this:

Ahmadinejad rejected accusations that he has denied the Holocaust actually happened, but argued for more research to be conducted on the subject.     "I'm not saying that it didn't happen at all," he said. "I said, granted this happened, what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?"

Ahmadinejad has a point, but the real point is this: to deny something happened in the past or even to deny the earth is round, for example, is not something to be fought over. Everyone is free to believe what they want no matter how ridiculous unless their belief threatens an imminent negative action toward someone else. To believe the Holocaust never happened is not in and of itself a threat to the Jewish people or anyone else. One could quibble about the exact number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. Some might say it was seven million; some might say it was 5 million. But so what? Is this something to fight over? I don't think so.   

As for Ahmadinejad's other supposed quote - that Israel should be wiped off the map - there seems to be doubt he ever said that - at least in such stark terms. According to npr.org:

For instance, the view that the Holocaust either did not happen — or that it has been blown out of proportion — is not uncommon in Islamic countries. Many Islamic countries, including U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, do not recognize Israel. Ahmadinejad has been quoted as saying that Israel should be "wiped off the map," but some scholars say he was mistranslated while quoting the late Ayatollah Khomeini, who actually said "the regime that occupies Jerusalem should vanish from the pages of history."

Ahmadinejad claims not to be an anti-semite, but that the Jewish state of Israel has usurped Palestinian lands and is, therefore, illegal. It's certainly a debatable point, at least, to anyone who doesn't fervently believe that God gave the land in question to the Jews. What's holding up progress in resolving the situation is that too many people on both sides, including the Palestinians, fervently believe that God gave the land to them and no one else. This is the extremist position, one that will brook no compromise.

Here's what Ahmadinejad said at Columbia regarding the Jewish people:

We are friends of all the nations. We are also friends with the Jewish people. There are many Jews in Iran living peacefully with security ... in our constitution and our laws and the parliamentary elections for every 150,000 people we get one representative in the parliament. For the Jewish community one-fifth of this number they still get one independent representative in the parliament... What we say is that to solve this 60-year problem, we must allow the Palestinian people to decide about its future for itself.

So to clarify Ahmadinejad's position, I think it's fair to say that he doesn't hate the Jewish people. He just thinks the Jewish state was formed in such a way as to deprive the Palestinians of their legal rights, a common position among Muslims in the Middle East and one which should at least be understood and heard in a respectful manner. The disrespect shown to Ahmadinejad in his appearance at Columbia by President Bollinger and others served no useful purpose. It didn't help the cause of peace, resolution of the Israel-Palestine problem or reconciliation among peoples of the world with different views from our own.

Fractal Voting

Fractal Voting (FV) is a voting method I developed. It is one of a class of utilitarian methods similar to range voting (RV) in some respects. Other utilitarian methods are approval voting (AV) and Evaluative Voting (EV). RV, AV and EV are all special cases of FV. Utilitarian voting methods involve a ranking of candidates or alternatives from most preferred to least preferred. In general there are two types of rankings: ordinal and cardinal. Ordinal ranking involves a list such as ABCD where the position of the letter, for example, indicates its preference ranking in this case A is preferred to B is preferred to C etc. Cardinal ranking also indicates how much A is preferred to B and how much B is preferred to C etc. This "how much" is also referred to as preference intensity. With utilitarian methods  numbers are usually asssigned to the candidates and the differences between the numerical rankings of two candidates indicate the preference intensity. One of the differences between FV and RV is that voters don't assign numbers to the candidates but indicate  preference intensities graphically.

Fractal Voting consists of a graphical user interface (GUI) or we could call it a graphical voter (GVI) interface (we will use the terms voter and user interchangably) and underlying software which translates the voter's preferences into numerical values which can then be used to sum up the votes for  each candidate and  determine the winner. Range Voting involves a system defined scale such as 0-99, 0-9 etc. The voter assigns a number contained in this scale to each candidate, and then the numbers are summed for each candidate to determine the winner. With Fractal the voter determines the scale and the scale can be more finely determined or less finely determined in different segments as the voter wishes. For example, if the voter wants to differentiate among candidates near the top of the scale more finely, he or she can subdivide that portion of the scale more finely in order to make these distinctions. The fineness of the scale is called the sensitivity level.  The sensitivity level, in general, will differ for each voter depending on how finely a voter can distinguish between two candidates or alternatives. This concept can be generalized to include fine distinctions between tastes or smells for example. A person might be asked to distinguish and rank several wines. Some people would be able to distinguish them very finely and others would only be able to make rough distinctions, say between good and bad. With RV, the system defines the sensitivity level which is the same for all voters. RV with a scale 0-99 has a higher sensitivity level than RV with a scale 0-9 and allows finer distinctions among candidates to be made. For example, candidates A and B might each be given ratings of 5 with RV (0-9) but given ratings of 51 and 57 with range (0-99). So finer distinctions can be made the more levels are available. 

With Fractal, the user or voter has complete control over the sensitivity which is variable over the whole scale. For instance, at the beginning of the voting process, the first thing a voter would do is to choose the number of levels he or she would like to start out with. This might be just two - good and bad. So there would be two "buckets" if you will, the good bucket and the bad bucket. All candidates in the good bucket would be indistinguishable from or indifferent to each other. However, before choosing the number of levels or buckets, the voter would first choose their most preferred or favorite candidate or candidates and least preferred candidate or candidates. Then all others would be relative to those. So initially a screen would be presented to the voters with two buckets - one for most preferred and one for least preferred. The voter would drag appropriate candidates onto these buckets from a list arbitrarily located on the right side of the screen. Then the voter would choose how many buckets or levels to start with. Please note that, if the voter chose 100 buckets and didn't go any deeper or finer than that in terms of sensitivity level, the voting method would be the same as RV. After the initial choice of number of buckets, that number of buckets appears on the screen as well as the buckets at either end denoting most preferred and least preferred. Now the voter drags other candidates from the list onto the buckets. Then the voter has the option of clicking on any one of the buckets and further subdividing this segment of the  scale. Let's say that the voter started with 10 buckets, and, in all but one bucket, there is only one candidate. In one bucket there are 4 candidates. The voter may choose to click on that bucket and then choose to subdivide that bucket alone into, for instance, 4 finer levels. These buckets then appear on the screen along with the list of the candidates who were in the original bucket. The voter then drags candidates from this list onto one of the buckets that represent subdividions of the original bucket. This process can be repeated indefinitely leading to finer and finer distinctions. When the voter is satisfied he or she can terminate the process and submit his or her vote.

The final vote can be printed out as a paper ballot showing an overall scale subdivided as the voter has indicated and all candidates listed in order of preference, preference intensity and fineness of distinction or sensitivity. The underlying software can be implemented in terms of a push down stack where the first word in the stack contains the number of words in the stack. Initially, this would be 2 for most preferred and least preferred. These words might contain the numbers 1 and 0, respectively. As the voter adds levels or buckets, words are added to the stack.  The stack would be popped up to the level where the voter indicates that he or she wishes to add levels, and then the number of levels added that the voter has indicated. For instance, if the voter initially wants to order candidates just in terms of good and bad (a binary decision), two words would be added to the stack between the words corresponding to least preferred and most preferred. One might contain the number 1/4 (corresponding to the mid-point of the "bad" bucket) and one might contain 3/4 (corresponding to the mid-point of the "good" bucket). Continuing on in this way, the buckets are each defined in terms of a numerical value in a process that is totally transparent to the voter who just has to deal with a simple GUI and repeat the same process over and over to as many levels as he or she wishes. Then each candidate is associated with a pointer that points to the appropriate numerical value in the stack.

Since the process is the same for the voter no matter how deeply he wishes to proceed in terms of sensitivity level, we call this method Fractal Voting. Think of it as branches on a tree some of which are subdivided into smaller branches which are further subdivided and so on. At each stage the voter performs the same steps so the process is simple and intuitive for the voter.  This is the essence of the fractal process: no matter what the depth, the procedure is the same. At completion each candidate will be asssociated with a pointer which represents his numerical rank. The pointer will point to a word in the stack which will contain a value between 0 and 1 which represents the intensity  of that rank. Note that, unlike RV, the voter never has to assign numerical values to candidates making the provess simpler and more intuitive akin to punching a hole on a ballot or putting a check mark next to a candidate. When all voters have submitted their ballots, the numerical values associated with each candidate are summed and the one(s) with the highest value win(s).

The advantages of Fractal over Range are the following:

1) There are no "partial strength" votes. A partial strength vote is submitted in Range when a voter does not pin his most (least) preferred candidates to the limits of the range.

2) The voter has a simpler and more intuitive while at the same time more sophisticated interface which allows him or her more options in the voting procedure.

3) The voter can choose his or her own sensitivity level and can continue to refine this as the voting process continues.

4) The voter can go into detail selectively in those parts of the overall ranking that concern him or her while doing a rough ranking in other parts of the overall scale.

5) The voter need not be concerned with numbers at all, but only with a visual on-screen representation of the preference rankings and intensities.

Fractal Voting lends itself to delegable proxies since various parts of the tree could be designated and filled in by trusted parties who have pre-voted and whose results are only a mouse click away. For instance, the voter could select certain candidates, indicate he wished to make a proxy vote and then select Ted Kennedy from a list of proxies. Then these candidates would be added to the screen in exactly the way that Ted Kennedy had previously indicated he would vote. This method would lend itself either to touch screen or computer screen voting. Security of the vote could be guaranteed by different methods, but this is really a separate issue. Issuance of a paper ballot and receipt would be a start.

In summary Fractal Voting is a generalization of AV, EV and RV and a voter could choose to vote in any of these styles if so desired. It is a utilitarian voting method since the placing of each candidate on a line in order of preference ranking and intensity reveals the voter's utility for each candidate in some sense. Social utility could be measured for each candidate by simply adding up the numerical values asssociated with that candidate in the stack over all voters. This would not represent a social utility in an absolute sense but in a relative sense. The voter is allowed to make either fine or rough distinctions among the candidates according to his or her sensitivity levels and/or knowledge of the candidates, and also to rely on the advice of trusted experts who have studied the issues and/or candidates more closely. Both the GUI and the underlying software are easily implemented.

What Congress Should Do: Fund the Troops; Defund the Contractors

A new appro- priations bill for $50 billion to fight the war in Iraq will soon be before Congress. Bush will charac- terize it as support for our troops. If you don't vote for it, you will be accused of not supporting the troops. But wait a minute. This appropriations bill, like the others before it, if you read the fine print, will be about minimal support for the troops and maximal support for the contractors who are as numerous in Iraq as the troops themselves, and they earn 10 times as much as the troops. Couple this with the enormous profits that go to the companies that employ them, and you start to realize that the bulk of the money goes not to the troops but to the contractors. Why has Congress not realized this and made an issue of it? They should submit a bill that defunds the contractors but supports the troops. Bush's propaganda machine will go to work saying they're not supporting the troops. Let's have a pitched battle if necessary. If Bush keeps vetoing similar bills, who is not supporting the  troops?

The contractors in Iraq are a thorn in Iraq's side. They  are accountable to no one by fiats imposed by the US on Iraq. Recently, a Blackwater PSD (personal security detail) shot, killed and wounded a large number of innocent Iraqi  civilians. It's not the first time. The Iraqi government proceeded to kick Blackwater out of the country. However, after "consultations" with the US, they rescinded that order. This goes to show that they are a US puppet government not a sovereign state and besides they are totally corrupt. Who would want to serve in the Iraqi government unless they were getting their pockets copiously lined?

Congress should submit and then resubmit essen- tially the same bill. Stand up for what you believe, Congress- men and women. If it means that the whole war then becomes defunded because Bush keeps vetoing a bill that would provide funding for the troops (but not the  contractors), so be it. The war and US involvement in Iraq would be over. If Bush, as Commmander-in-Chief, wants to leave his own troops there to fend for themselves without adequate funding to get out of Iraq gracefully, let it be on his shoulders that he wouldn't accept funding that would have either allowed the troops to continue on their mission or be redeployed with a minimum of hassle. If the Dems don't stand up to this guy and end this stupid war which is costing several American lives and $300 million per day not to mention numerous innocent Iraqi lives and millions of internal and external Iraqi refugees, they will become political nonentities. They will be irrelevant. Why play for time? For what? To win the Presidency? Show the American people they have some cajones and do the right thing. Stand up to Bush and the Publican neocons. They're total f---ups!

Oh, and by the way, Bush has finally admitted that he plans for the US to have an "enduring relationship" with Iraq. How prescient of him to have started building the "enduring bases" as soon as the US invaded and took over. That and the enormous US Embassy. Why they thought they were going to be leaving as soon as the nasty business was done. At least that was what the American people were led to believe. But no, as it turns out, the best thing is to have an "enduring relationship." Finally, the neocons are owning the intentions they had in the first place: an American power base in the middle east and easy access to huge oil deposits. And Alan Greenspan admits in his book, "The Age of Turbulence," that the US is in it for the oil. Surprise. Surprise! Jeez, I thought it was only to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. They sure had me fooled. They were there for the oil and permanent (some say "enduring") military bases from day 1!

The  Democrats are disappointing because they have done nothing since they gained control of Congress except to wimp out. Why did Harry Reid even allow a vote on that stupid bill to censure MoveOn.org? If the  Republicans controlled the Senate, would they even let a Democrat sponsored bill come to the floor for a vote. You bet not!  The Dems have good ideas, but they need to play hardball as long as the Publicans are playing hardball. They're being too nice to them. And where has it gotten them? You can go back through the history of a lot of nice, well-intentioned, intelligent men who've gone down to defeat at  Publican hands simply because they were too nice, starting with Adlai Stevenson, an extremely capable man who was labeled an "egghead," dismissed and dispatched by the Pubs. And then there was "Happy Warrior"  Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Walter Mondale, George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry. Even successsful Democratic Presidential candidates with extraordinary achievements like Franklin D Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were and are still being mocked, castigated, demonized, vilified, derided and otherwise ridiculed. I don't have to go through the whole litany of how these gentlemen were  mischaracterized from being "soft" on communism", the Willie Horton ads, Dukakis in the tank, Swift Boating etc. etc.

Why do the American people fall for such garbage? Why did the German people fall for Hitler?  It is for similar reasons in  both cases. Emotional appeals to fear, hatred, egotism and selfishness seem to trump appeals to logic, reason, understanding, caring and compasssion. The headline in a British newspaper after George W Bush won the Presidency the  second time was "How can 159 million people be so dumb?" In a democracy you're stuck with the average mentality of the average voter, and, as long as the average voter is a son of a bitch, the average President will be a son of a bitch. Unfortunately, human nature is much more susceptible to being appealed to by negative attack ads than by ideas for making the US and the world a better place. Unfortunately, because one would like to believe than human nature is basically good, but history belies that assertion. It is indeed unfortunate. Perhaps we're an evolutionary dead end and another more loving species will evolve some day. But hope springs eternal. Another Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, did the most positive thing of the 20th century for the American people by enacting the Civil Rights act and ending Jim Crow discrimination in public places. And he and the Democratic Party paid dearly for it. They lost the South to the Republicans who have no problem with exclusion and prejudice. Now at least my grandchildren will not have to put up with the crap that Billie Holliday, Miles Davis and other black people had to endure. That's at least a smidgeon of progress for the 20th century. But the US is still a "money talks, shit walks" society and always will be if the Publicans have anything to do with it.

Some think Hillary has the balls, the cajones, to take these scoundrels on. I tend to agree. She's been through it once. The Publicans lost no opportunity to villify and castigate Bill and Hillary from Whitewater to Travelgate to Vince Foster to Monica Lewinsky. I think Hillary knows what's in store for her if she's the Democratic nominee for President, and I think she's a tough enough cookie to back the Publicans off and put them in their place. If someone stands up to them, they, like most bullies, will back down. They're already attacking "Hillarycare."I hope Hillary has her attack ads ready!

The Iraqi Central Government is Corrupt

According to a draft of a secret document prepared by the US Embassy in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is presiding over a corrupt government and is even impeding efforts to fight the corruption. Apparently, it serves the Iraqi government's interests to keep stealing money in order to line their own pockets. A lot of the stolen money is even going to fund the insurgents. Maliki's government is "not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws," the report says, and, perhaps worse, the report notes that Maliki's office has impeded investigations of fraud and crime within the government. The draft reviews the work of the Commission on Public Integrity (CPI), an Iraqi institution that has had little success in stemming the tide of fraud, waste and abuse by Iraqi government ministries which, in many cases, are being run by criminal gangs, thugs and thieves.

According to AlterNet:

The Ministry of Health, according to the report, "is a sore point; corruption is actually affecting its ability to deliver services and threatens the support of the government." Investigations involving the Ministry of Oil have been manipulated, the study says, and the "CPI and the [Inspector General of the ministry] are completely ill-equipped to handle oil theft cases." There is no accurate accounting of oil production and transportation within the ministry, the report explains, because organized crime groups are stealing oil "for the benefit of militias/insurgents, corrupt public officials and foreign buyers."

Several ministries are controlled by Shiite militias including the one of Muqtada al-Sadr. The Ministry of the Interior (MOI) is especially corrupt. According to the report, "CPI investigators assigned to MOI investigations have unanimously expressed their fear of being assassinated should they aggressively pursue their duties at MOI. Thus when the head of MOI intelligence recently personally visited the Commissioner of CPI…to end investigations of [an] MOI contract, there was a clear sense of concern within the agency."

Over at the Defense Ministry, the report notes, there has been a "shocking lack of concern" about the apparent theft of $850 million from the Iraqi military's procurement budget. "In some cases," the report says, "American advisors working for US [Department of Defense] have interceded to remove [Iraqi] suspects from investigations or custody." Of 455 corruption investigations at the Defense Ministry, only 15 have reached the trial stage. A mere four investigators are assigned to investigating corruption in the department. And at the Ministry of Trade, "criminal gangs" divide the spoils, with one handling grain theft, another stealing transportation assets. Part of the problem, according to the report, is Maliki's office: "The Prime Minister's Office has demonstrated an open hostility" to independent corruption investigations. His government has withheld resources from the CPI, the report says, and "there have been a number of identified cases where government and political pressure has been applied to change the outcome of investigations and prosecutions in favor of members of the Shia Alliance" -- which includes Maliki's Dawa party.

CPI staffers have been routinely threatened by armed gangs, and snipers have fired into CPI headquarters. Twelve CPI personnel have been murdered while pursuing their duties.

According to an NBC report, "'Untouchable' corruption in Iraqi agencies:"

Supplies and medicine in strife-torn Baghdad's overcrowded hospitals have been siphoned off and sold elsewhere for profit because of corruption in the Iraqi Ministry of Health, according to a draft U.S. government report obtained by NBC News. The report, written by U.S. advisers to Iraq's anti-corruption agency, analyzes corruption in 12 ministries and finds devastating and grim problems. "Corruption protected by senior members of the Iraqi government," the report said, "remains untouchable." One potential problem is in the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to the report. The report said that "the prime minister’s office has on a number of occasions intervened on cases involving political supporters." An al-Maliki adviser acknowledged to NBC that the problem of corruption in Iraq is "huge," but denied that al-Maliki's office has intervened in investigations. He said the prime minister is working hard to minimize the problem. The draft report obtained by NBC said the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which oversees the country's hospitals, is in the "grip" of the Mahdi Army, the anti-American militia run by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. "Contract fraud and employee theft of medicines, food, vehicles are viewed by investi- gators as the greatest problems," the report said, adding that "military sources have reported that the Mehdi Army [sic] finances operations from diverted medicines." Corruption 'widespread' In the Ministry of Oil — the most important agency for Iraq’s economy — the report said "corruption is a major problem" when it comes to refined oil products, such as gasoline and kerosene. The report said corruption in the oil ministry is partly to blame for lines of cars stretching for miles as Iraqis wait hours to fill up their tanks. An entire battalion of Iraqi police "was found to be nonexistent" and corruption in the army is "widespread," with ghost employees and a shortage of supplies, according to the report. The report also cites alleged favoritism and selective prosecution.

It seems that the US is stuck not only with an endless war in which American lives and treasure are being lost with each passing day but also is stuck supporting a corrupt, notwithstanding democratically elected, Iraqi government. Not much has changed since Saddam's day!

The NBC report continues:

The top Iraqi anti-corruption investigator, Judge Rahdi al Rahdi, told NBC that "in many important cases, ministers did not give us the permission to take their employees to court, the prime minister's office did not give us permission to take ministers to court." Rahdi said the total amount of missing money involved in his investigations into government misconduct is $11 billion. Corruption is so serious that it is difficult for the government to function, according to Ali Allawi, a former Iraqi government minister. "There's a serious problem in the Ministry of Oil," Allawi said, "There's a serious problem in the Ministry of Health. There's a serious problem in the Ministry of Trade, and really, there's a serious problem in every government department." Americans 'must grin and bear it' Allawi, who has written a book called “The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace,” said corruption has shattered any faith in government. "In some cases there is ... despair that ... corruption has destroyed the ability of the government to provide services," he said. The draft report obtained by NBC outlines some devastating cases in Iraq, like a "guns for cash scheme with the Mehdi Army" involving a candidate for the head of Iraqi intelligence. On top of the troubles of the current oil minister, the report said a former acting minister of oil was indicted — a case blocked by high-ranking officials. In another case a former minister of transportation was indicted. Last week Bowen issued a report finding the U.S. Embassy had not done enough to combat corruption. Allawi argues that U.S. authorities can do little because of the Iraqi officials with whom they are dealing. "The Americans who are supporting this political class, I believe really have no choice. This is a group they have been saddled with, or supported in power, and must grin and bear it," he said.

More on the endemic graft, fraud, waste and corruption in Iraq can be found here, here, here and here. It seems that the Bush Administration is not even interested in investigating corruption in Iraq. It just wants to continue its propaganda games of smoke and mirrors and empty promises. After all Iraqis are just following a long tradition of corruption in their country and following the example of the Bush Administration which has given cost-plus contracts to American corporartions like Halliburton and Parsons for shoddy workmanship or in some cases for producing nothing of value at all. The Iraqi government, just like the Bush regime, is being run based on private profit for those in power and to hell with the common people. Profits to the rich who happen to be thugs and thieves. It seems the Iraqis have learned their lessons well at the knees of their US patrons. And who has ultimately to pay for this folly of supporting a corrupt government in the name of bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq? The American people who pay with their lives, the Iraqi people who pay with their lives and the American people again whose government treasury is being plundered on a daily basis and thrown down a rat hole.

More on Outrageous CEO Pay

Larry Ellison, who dropped out of two colleges, is CEO of Oracle Systems and is worth $16 billlion. As the 11th richest man in the world he does not even need to earn a huge annual compensation package. A CEO like Ellison literally cannot spend enough on personal consumption to stop his fortune from growing. According to Corp Watch, Ellison would have to spend over $183,000. an hour on things that cannot be resold, like parties or meals, just to avoid increasing his wealth.

Last year the eight most highly paid CEOs each took home more than $100 million. Activist investors are introducing resolutions at annual shareholder meetings challenging such obscene levels of executive pay but so far without much success.

In May, at the annual meeting of the Denver-based telecom Qwest, high school teacher Linda Baggus — annual salary: $55,000 — wanted to know how CEO Dick Notebaert could justify his annual earnings, estimated at $33 million by one Midwest daily newspaper. “How is the service that you render so much more valuable than the service I render?” she asked. Notebaert gave the standard corporate defense for American CEO pay levels. His pay, he explained, depends on his “performance” and reflects the realities of a “very competitive market” for executive talent. His defense carried the day. Four shareholder resolutions designed to clamp down on CEO pay excess failed to win majorities at the Qwest meeting.

Some activists think that corporate employess should share in the wealth of the corporate executives. Margaret Covert coordinates shareholder activism for NorthStar Asset Management, a Boston-based wealth management company. “It comes down to having a company share its bounty with all its workers,” she told CorpWatch. “All workers have contributed to company success. They should all share in the rewards, not just the top tier.”

NorthStar asked shareholders of ExxonMobil, the world’s most profitable corporation, to call on the company to prepare a study that compares the “total compensation package of our CEO and our company’s lowest paid U.S. workers in September 1995 and September 2005. “As shareholders,” the proposed NorthStar resolution read, “we are concerned that the over-compensation of top executives has a negative effect on employee morale and customer trust.” NorthStar president Julie Goodridge carried the resolution to the May 30 ExxonMobil annual meeting at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, reminding the thousand or so shareholders present that CEO Rex Tillerson took home just over $22 million in 2006. “Our resolution asks shareholders to join us in questioning why it takes our lowest-paid employees a full year to earn what Mr. Tillerson earns for an hour on the job,” Goodridge said, “… because we believe it is fiscally irresponsible for a company to put so much of its resources into a single individual. “High company profits do not justify outrageous CEO compensation.” No shareholders spoke in favor of Goodridge’s resolution.

The same thing was tried at Wal-Mart. “If options are a good incentive to get people to do a good job,” says Mike Lapham, director of Responsible Wealth, a national group that links affluent individuals from across the U.S. and which introduced the resolution, “why not use them for employees on the store floor, too, and help the women and people of color who work at Wal-Mart build their assets?” They didn't have any luck with their resolution either.

Other countries have laws that allow unions to have a say in their executives' pay packages.

U.S. trade unions pushed particularly hard this spring for “say on pay” resolutions designed to give shareholders the right to take annual advisory votes on executive pay packages. This right is now enshrined in law in Australia, Sweden and the UK. In the Netherlands and Norway, shareholders have the right to take a binding executive pay vote.

Current US corpoprate law encourages companies to pay their CEOs outlandish salaries and stock options. They are allowed to deduct from their taxes far more money than the options cost them. Since 1993, Occidental Petroleum has claimed $353 million in tax deductions for stock options that went to the company’s CEO. The total that would have been deducted if reforms initiated by Michigan Senator Carl Levin had been law: $29 million. There are a few CEOs who think $3 or $4 million is enough annual compensation. “There's only so much crap you can buy,” Peter Rose, a Seattle-based corporate CEO who took home $4.7 million last year, told his hometown newspaper. But the attitude of most CEOs is proof that human greed has no bounds, and that sharing does not come naturally to the human spirit.

Why the Surge is Working ... for Osama

Finally, after we've been waiting with bated breath for three months for General Petraeus' report (he's supposed to tell us if the surge worked or not), we will soon find out if we are supposed to continue the Iraq War or if a withdrawal is in order. What? Does anyone really believe that Bush will do anything but continue the Iraq War regardless of what Petraeus or anyone else says? And does anyone really believe the Democrats will do anything other than go along with him? Bush has built his Presidency and his legacy around this war. He may not be able to win it in the time remaining to him, but, at least, he doesn't want to lose it. He'll leave that to the next occupant of the White House. Then he'll proceed to build his library where right under "George W Bush, President of the United States" in large letters will be the motto (in slightly smaller letters), "He Stayed the Course in the War Against Terrorism." So you think he'll go down as the worst President of the United States? Don't bet on it. His spinmeisters will be better funded than yours, and the spinning won't stop once he's out of the White House and some sober minded historians logically dissect his Presidency. No, his historians will go on spinning ad infinitum and in perpetuity. Don't think the spin and the propaganda will stop January 1, 2008.

In "Why the Surge is Not Working," by former CIA analyst Larry Johnson, he says:

Ignore for a moment that many in the media are misrepresenting the actual casualties–US and Iraqi–in Iraq. The real goal of the surge was to create enough security so that the political process could move forward and the sectarian rift be bridged. So how is that going? Not well. Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times are front and center in doing what good journalists do. They report the facts. The Newsweek piece, Baghdad’s New Owners, confirms my earlier prediction that we would see a decline in civilian casualties in Baghdad because of the “success” of the ethnic cleansing. As you drive the Sunnis out of their neighborhoods there are fewer Sunnis to kill. Babak Dehghanpisheh and Larry Kaplow write: Thousands of other Sunnis like Kamal have been cleared out of the western half of Baghdad, which they once dominated, in recent months. The surge of U.S. troops—meant in part to halt the sectarian cleansing of the Iraqi capital—has hardly stemmed the problem. The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July was slightly higher than in February, when the surge began. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has more than doubled to 1.1 million since the beginning of the year, nearly 200,000 of those in Baghdad governorate alone. Rafiq Tschannen, chief of the Iraq mission for the International Organization for Migration, says that the fighting that accompanied the influx of U.S. troops actually “has increased the IDPs to some extent.” Also worth your time is Tina Susman’s piece in today’s Los Angeles Times. The so-called success in Al Anbar does nothing to address the fundamental issue of reconciling Shias and Sunnis. In fact, the arming of the Sunnis and their willingness to cooperate in protecting their home turf is simply self-preservation. The Sunni tribes recognize that they will be fighting the Shias and must be armed and ready to do so. According to Susman: Despite the plan, which has brought an additional 28,500 U.S. troops to Iraq since February, none of the major legislation that Washington had expected the Iraqi parliament to pass into law has been approved. The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has increased, not decreased, according to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration and Iraq’s Ministry for Displacement and Migration. Military officials say sectarian killings in Baghdad are down more than 51% and attacks on civilians and security forces across Iraq have decreased. But this has not translated into a substantial drop in civilian deaths as insurgents take their lethal trade to more remote regions. Last month, as many as 400 people were killed in a bombing in a village near the Syrian border, the worst bombing since the war began in March 2003. In July, 150 people were reported killed in a village about 100 miles north of Baghdad.

Simply put, there has been no political progress in Iraq, and the country has been drifting towards Joe Biden's solution: a Shiite province  in the south, a Sunni Al Anbar and a Kurdish province in the north, hardly a unified Iraq. Sure, the Sunnis in Al Anbar decided to kick Al Quaeda out because they got tired of the civilian casualties they were causing. So the Sunnis in Al Anbar allied themselves with the US. This is General Petraeus' "progress." Iraq is still a disaster with a huge refugee crisis. There are large numbers of both internal and external displaced persons as Iraqis move to Syria and Jordan to escape the violence. Sunnis are concentrating in Al Anbar and Shiites are concentrating in the south. Kurds are staying put in the north where they have practically formed a separate de facto Kurdish state already.

The General Accounting Office (GAO) report struck a pessimistic note as it said only 3 of the 18 benchmarks that the Iraqi government was supposed to accomplish on accouint of the surge had been met. So many Sunnis have dropped out of or have boycotted the Shiite dominated Iraq central government that it no longer has any pretense of representing Iraqis as a whole. And then the US has redefined what a civilian casualty is or isn't. Reportedly, if an Iraqi is shot in the front of the head, that does not represent sectarian violence whereas if he's shot in the back of the head it does. By twiddling with the statistics, the US can make any kind of a case it wants including that sectarian violence is decreasing. That doesn't square with most independent accounts. The Washington Post reports in an article entitled "[GAO] Report Finds Little Progress on Iraq Goals":

The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved." "Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies."

But whether or not Bush continues to fight the war in Iraq (my bet is he will ride it out until the end of his administration because the Democrats won't stand up against him), it is clear that al Quaeda is achieving it's goal of bankrupting the US. So Bush's vanity in not wanting to lose a war (as if there's anything to be won or lost except oil) is the driving force that is playing right into Osama bin Laden's hand. Bin Laden's latest video, which was derided, pooh-poohed and barely quoted from by US media, contains a message which does not represent the ramblings of a madman or a megalomaniac but instead a shrewd assessment of the geopolitics of the Iraq war. It outlines in stark terms the fact that for every dollar al Quaeda has spent in its struggle against the US, the US has spent a million in its fight against al Quaeda. The most important point to understand (and this is irrespective of bin Laden's comments) is that this war, like any war, is really won or lost not on the battlefield but in terms of economics. And in those terms the US invasion of Iraq is a total disaster.

Bin Laden cuts to the chase:

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing and nothing is too great for Allah. That being said, those who say that al Qaeda has won against the administration in the White House or that the administration has lost in this war have not been precise because when one scrutinizes the results, one cannot say that al Qaeda is the sole factor in achieving these spectacular gains. Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations -- whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction -- has helped al Qaeda to achieve these enormous results. And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the White House and us are playing as one team towards the economic goals of the United States even if the intentions differ. And it was to these sorts of notions and their like that the British diplomat and others were referring in their lectures at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (when they pointed out that) for example, al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event, while America in the incident and its aftermath lost-according to the lowest estimate-more than 500 billion dollars, meaning that every dollar of al-Qaeda defeated a million dollars [spent by the US] by the permission of Allah besides the loss of a huge number of jobs. As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record, astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the Mujahedin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan with Allah's permission. It is true that this shows that al Qaeda has gained, but on the other hand it shows that the Bush administration has also gained something of which anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-corporations, like Halliburton and its kind will be convinced.

Bush' egotistical pursuit of winning the Iraq war is playing right into bin Laden's hands!

Why Are CEOs Making Upwards of $100 Million? Answer: No Progressive Income Tax

CEOs and hedge fund managers have been taking home annual compensation packages (we don't say salaries because salary is only one component) of $100 million and up. Are they really worth that much? Couldn't you find well qualified people who would take the job for say $3 or $4 million? Couldn't that money be spent by the company in better ways, say, for instance, in increasing dividends to share holders or employee salaries? These super colossal annual earnings have driven income inequality to new heights. Let's say you earn a relatively modest salary of $50 K per year. Someone earning $100 million is earning 2000 times as much. It used to be that a person who took home annual earnings 3 or 4 times as much as a middle class income was considered comparatively wealthy. Now the wealthy are living a lifestyle that's a thousand times more expensive than the middle class! What's wrong with this picture?

According to Forbes:

The chief executives of America's 500 biggest companies got a collective 38% pay raise last year, to $7.5 billion. That's an average $15.2 million apiece. Exercised stock options again account for the main component of pay, 48%. The average stock gain was $7.3 million.

From the Toronto Star:

CEO pay soars, average worker loses ground Aug 30, 2007 04:30 AM Top executives at major U.S. businesses last year made as much money in one day of work as the average American worker made over the entire year, according to a report released yesterday. Chief executive officers from the nation's biggest businesses averaged nearly $11 million (U.S.) in total compensation, according to the fourteenth-annual CEO compensation survey released jointly by the Institute for Policy Studies based in Washington and United for a Fair Economy, a national organization based in Boston. At the same time, workers at the bottom rung of the U.S. economy received the first federal minimum wage increase in a decade. But the new wage of $5.85 an hour, after being adjusted for inflation, stands 7 per cent below where the minimum wage stood a decade ago. "CEO pay, over that same decade, has increased by roughly 45 per cent," the study found. On average, CEOs at major American corporations saw $1.3 million in pension gains last year. By contrast, only 58.5 per cent of American households led by a 45-to-54 year olds even had a retirement account in 2004, the most recent year these figures were available. According to the report, between 2001 and 2004, retirement accounts of these average households gained only $3,775 in value a year. The top 386 CEOs in the study took in perks, such as housing allowances and travel benefits, worth on average $438,342 in 2006. It would take a minimum wage worker 36 years to earn the equivalent of what CEOs averaged in just perks alone. The 20 highest-paid individuals at publicly traded corporations last year took home, on average, $36.4 million.

Reagan Tax Cuts

"In 1981, Congress enacted the largest tax cut in U.S. history, approximately $750 billion over six years. The tax reduction, however, was partially offset by two tax acts, in 1982 and 1984, that attempted to raise approximately $265 billion.

"On Oct. 22, 1986, President Reagan signed into law the Tax Reform Act of 1986, one of the most far-reaching reforms of the United States tax system since the adoption of the income tax. The top tax rate on individual income was lowered from 50% to 28%, the lowest it had been since 1916. Tax preferences were eliminated to make up most of the revenue. In an attempt to remain revenue neutral, the act called for a $120 billion increase in business taxation and a corresponding decrease in individual taxation over a five-year period.

"Following what seemed to be a yearly tradition of new tax acts that began in 1986, the Revenue Reconciliation Act of 1990 was signed into law on Nov. 5, 1990. As with the '87, '88, and '89 acts, the 1990 act, while providing a number of substantive provisions, was small in comparison with the 1986 act. The emphasis of the 1990 act was increased taxes on the wealthy.

"On Aug. 10, 1993, President Clinton signed the Revenue Reconciliation Act of 1993 into law. The act's purpose was to reduce by approximately $496 billion the federal deficit that would otherwise accumulate in fiscal years 1994 through 1998. In 1997, Clinton signed another tax act. The act, which cut taxes by $152 billion, included a cut in capital-gains tax for individuals, a $500 per child tax credit, and tax incentives for education.

"President George W. Bush signed a series of tax cuts into law. The largest was the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. It was estimated to save taxpayers $1.3 trillion over ten years, making it the third largest tax cut since World War II. The Bush tax cut created a new lowest rate, 10% for the first several thousand dollars earned. It also established a slow schedule of incremental tax cuts that would eventually double the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000, adjust brackets so that middle-income couples owed the same tax as comparable singles, cut the top four tax rates (28% to 25%; 31% to 28%; 36% to 33%; and 39.6% to 35%).

The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief and Reconciliation Act of 2003 accelerated the tax rate cuts that had been enacted in 2001, and temporarily reduced the tax rate on capital gains and dividends to 15%. In 2004, the U.S. was forced to eliminate a corporate tax provision that had been ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization. Along with that tax hike, Congress passed a cornucopia of tax breaks, which for individuals included an option to deduct the payment of whichever state taxes were higher, sales or income taxes.

"Two tax bills signed in 2005 and 2006 extended through 2010 the favorable rates on capital gains and dividends that had been enacted in 2003, raised the exemption levels for the Alternative Minimum Tax, and enacted new tax incentives designed to persuade individuals to save more for retirement."

CEOs, who used to make 30 or 40 times as much as workers, now earn 300 to 400 times as much. So money that could be used for alternative purposes is going to CEO pay. If progressivity were reintroduced to the income tax structure, it wouldn't mean that government tax revenues would necessarily increase because no Board of Directors in their right mind would pay their CEOs anything in the range that would be subject to 90% taxation. Instead, they would redirect their resources to other purposes.

But the really destructive thing about such huge compensation packages is not so much the income inequality they engender, but the concentration of wealth, unneeded for a luxurious lifestyle, in a small number of hands. This wealth then translates into political power as it can be used to bring about political outcomes favorable to a small wealthy class of people. This in turn distorts democracy because it pays lobbyists to persuade Congress to pass laws favorable to them. The magnifying effect of wealth on the "one man, one vote" system insures that the super wealthy class will have many more votes than will the poor and middle class. Democracy is skewed toward plutocracy and is used to secure the interests of corporations and the super wealthy, namely those who can hire lobbyists. The average person has one vote but, since he isn't represented by a lobbyist, he, effectively, can't vote at all. Lobbyists get results; voters don't.