| U.S. News: 2004's Swift Boat Vets One of ‘Dirtiest Campaigns Ever’
In the age of the 24-hour cable news cycle, "things got viral very quickly," says Allan Lichtman, a political history professor at American University. Fact check. Within weeks, news organizations, including the New York Times, said that the group's claims about Kerry's medals had little or no merit (his opposition to the war proved more problematic). "The allegations were bogus, but that didn't matter," says Lichtman. "The public isn't out there fact-checking." Here's what Knight does not explain. Professor Lichtman is not some nonpartisan professor. He ran as a Democrat for U.S. Senate in 2006. Knight is correct that the New York Times reported in its news pages that the charges against Kerry's combat stories were "unsubstantiated." (Clay Waters did extensive work on that at TimesWatch.) But is the New York Times any less partisan than the Senate candidate from Maryland? The first Times story was more focused on probing the connections between the anti-Kerry vets and the Republican establishment than it was on the veracity of Kerry's combat tales.
Law keeps public in dark on police hiring practices
But buried inside were provisions that ever since have kept taxpayers in the dark about some of the most important management practices of public institutions in Texas. The law forever closed to the public whole sections of city personnel files. Because of this change, known as Section 143.089 of the Local Government Code, most Texas taxpayers — with the exception of Dallas — never can know how their police departments carry out the vital functions of vetting and evaluating recruits. They also can't readily know how thoroughly officers accused of misconduct are investigated. Through the years, 143.089 has impeded the public from exploring these practices. Emblematic of the problem is the case of former Police Officer Joseph Anthony Evans who, the San Antonio Express-News has learned, was hired in 1994 despite a checkered past that disqualified him from being a cop.
Bayer Foundation Awards $150,000 Grant to Nationally Recognized Bay ...
Biotech Partners is the Bay Area's only non-profit organization providing a comprehensive, hands-on, bioscience education and job training program for populations underrepresented in the sciences - especially students of color (97 percent), young women (54 percent) and those from low-income households. This grant reaffirms Bayer Corporation's commitment to this exemplary biotechnology school-to-career program the company established with the City of Berkeley 13 years ago. "It is with great pride and pleasure that the Bayer Foundation awards this grant to a program that Bayer Corporation helped establish," said Yvonne Richardson who presented the check on behalf of the Foundation. Richardson is Vice President, Project Management, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Hematology/Cardiology. Richardson added, "Biotech Partners continues to be such a tremendous success, providing great hope and opportunity to our local students, developing our local bioscience workforce and contributing significantly to the vitality and vibrancy of the Bay Area's bioscience industry." The gift was bestowed at Posters2006, Biotech Partners' annual event that showcases and celebrates the achievements of students from Berkeley High School and Oakland's Life Academy of Health and Bioscience at the conclusion of their first summer internships in the biotechnology industry.
China: Due for a Reality Check
Waste disposal and pollution will grow into bigger and bigger problems, as the landscape sprouts more factories and industrial complexes. Some Beijing officials, as well as those at local levels—the country has 41,636 townships—have a stronger interest in winning business than they do in preserving the environment. A significant number are undoubtedly in bed with the factories seeking building permits and other privileges. Yes, the Chinese government is good about assuring its foreign trading partners of its ecologically sound policies, but enforcement ranges from tricky to impossible. Communist officials in localities have great power. A mayor who likes the idea of a new tool-and-die factory can make it happen with relatively few checks and balances. And no Chinese official at any level seems capable of stopping the intellectual-property theft.
Venezuela Part II: CAP's botched reform
Back in 1989, all you needed to do to realize how badly Venezuela needed reform was pick up a phone. On a bad day it could take 5 minutes or more to get a dial-tone. You'd unhook the phone, go make a sandwich, check for a dial town, eat the sandwich, check for a dial town again, wash your dishes and put away the mayonnaise, come back and check for a dial tone again…it was pretty ridiculous. But once you'd managed to place the call, your troubles had only started: more often than not you'd have to go through the delightful ritual of the "linked call." It was a queer little phenomenon where two totally separate conversations would become entwined somehow, and you'd end up sharing your conversation with two complete strangers. Sometimes, these absurd little four-way interchanges would develop, as each set of callers tried to convince the other set to hang up and try their call again: of course, you didn't't want to be the one to have to hang up, because then you'd have to wait who-knows-how-long for a new dial tone.
Ragsdale gets to keep rest of auto allowance
Knox County Chairman Scott Moore made the motion to cut what was once called an auto allowance of $20,000 to zero. The account now contains $8,806, and the mayor gets $769 every two weeks in his paycheck from the account. Moore grilled chief financial officer John Troyer on the account, asking him if it had been approved by commissioners in the last budget session. Troyer said it was approved as part of the mayor's budget. Moore noted that the mayor has a $50,000 expense account, a $20,000 auto allowance, a county credit card and a county vehicle. Richard Walls, the county auditor, said he and the state comptroller had determined that the accounting of the auto allowances was not “proper." But when it came time to vote, Moore did not have the votes. Four commissioners voted for the measure, five voted against and two abstained.
Sole Sourcing: Handing Out Tax Dollars at the Labor Department
Over the past year a good deal of attention has been paid to the explosion in federal sole-source contracting. According to reports issued by the Government Oversight and Reform Committee, non-competitive contracts totaled $206 billion last year, up from $145 billion in 2005 and only $67 billion in 2000. As troubling as that may seem, another practice was recently brought into question that seems, at least on the surface, to be even more problematic than sole-source contracting. That practice is something called “sole-source grants."
What, you may ask, is a sole-source grant? From the sound of it, one might presume that it means an official in control of federal funds can write checks to people based on whether or not he likes them. As outrageous as that sounds, a new report by the Department of Labor Inspector General indicates that is pretty much what Emily Stover DeRocco, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training and her underlings at the Employment and Training Administration have been doing with about a quarter of a billion dollars from the U.S.
IDF Expands Humanitarian Officers Program
It's 2 p.m. at the Kalandia checkpost on a boiling summer's day. A long, crowded line of Palestinians wait to enter Ramallah. Young Israeli combat soldiers are positioned in front of them, standing behind grey concrete barriers and above on dusty hilltops sweating inside armor plated guard towers. The 18-year-old troops appear ready for anything. They have been trained for terrorism and conventional warfare. These young high school graduates keep a watchful eye out for the unusual. It could be a car with a sniper, a young boy holding a package or a women suicide bomber just waiting to make tomorrow's headlines. Then you hear the cry of a baby coming from inside the shoulder-to-shoulder line. The combat troops are heard yelling: "stay in line, keep back and approach the check post one by one." A greying, middle-aged officer with a slight belly approaches the line.
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