| Cut out corruption, US vice president tells Caribbean leaders | |
| Published on January 28, 2015- By Caribbean News Now contributor | |
US Vice President Joe Biden (front, 4th right) with Caribbean leaders at the Caribbean Energy Security Summit in Washington on Jan 26,2015 Otherwise, he said, while the United States was ready to help with aid and other financing, it would not do so with its eyes closed. “I guarantee you we will do our part,” he said. “And we can afford it. But we’re not going to waste money. We’re going to insist on considerably more transparency, greater coordination and changes in regulations. We’re not here to replace one flawed financing scheme with another.” Caribbean Community (CARICOM) chairman, Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie, spoke about how small nations in the Caribbean are heavily reliant on imported oil and petroleum products. “This makes us extremely vulnerable to the vagaries of the international oil markets,” Christie said. The recent dramatic drop in oil prices – while seen as a net positive to the US and other economies – was just another indication of how volatile the market is, he said. While the US Department of Justice has actively pursued allegations of foreign corruption, notably in a recent case involving the state-owned Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC), Biden’s admonition rings hollow to some observers when the US government itself has endorsed the controversial involvement of a US public company called PowerSecure International, Inc. in bidding for a management contract in relation to BEC. In May of last year, Louisiana law firm Kahn Swick & Foti announced that it had commenced an investigation into PowerSecure focusing on whether the company and/or its officers and directors had violated state or federal securities laws. Such claims did not, however, prevent US Commerce Secretary, billionaire Penny Pritzker, from attempting to influence the Bahamian government to select two US-based groups, one of which was PowerSecure, to reform BEC and the energy sector, describing them as the “superior choice”. In a direct lobbying effort directed at deputy prime minister, Philip ‘Brave’ Davis, Pritzker promoted the “cutting edge” proposal” submitted by PowerSecure. Pritzker, in a June 27, 2014, letter to Davis, said that PowerSecure is a company “with years of experience in the realm of power generation and distribution, and bring to the table cutting-edge proposals to meet today’s energy needs.” According to Pritzker, PowerSecure had “the full support of the United States government.” However, according to local media on Tuesday, Christie claimed to have received backing for two American firms from top US Embassy officials in Nassau. This had reportedly dealt with the integrity of one US firm, in particular. While not identifying the US firms he was referring to, Christie reportedly said on Monday: “I have received written support from the Embassy in Nassau, from the deputy secretary of state and the Secretary of State of the US government [John Kerry] with respect to a particular applicant, certifying their integrity.” Requests for clarification and/or comment concerning such a “warranty” by the US government sent to the Departments of State, Justice and Commerce in Washington were not responded to substantively by press time. Of particular interest are answers to the following questions in this respect: 1. Is the report true? 2. If so, how can the US government confirm with absolute certainty the integrity of any commercial business, especially one that was last year claimed by a Louisiana law firm to have possibly violated state or federal securities laws? 3. If the US government “warranty” in this respect is later found to be flawed, will the US government make good any financial loss suffered by any person as a result of reliance on such “warranty”? 4. Similarly, if the US government “warranty” is found to be flawed, would this “warranty” then operate as an effective estoppel of criminal and/or civil proceedings against any party initiated by the US government? |
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Comments
My opinion is that corrupt practices are too deep seated and widespread.
Mr. Biden’s is a voice “crying in the wilderness”.
In the case of Guyana you might be 100% correct. Some months ago my friend visiting Guyana, drove past a stop sign in a rented car. A police patrol car with an inspector in the back seat stopped him. Without shame they requested payment for three, or else car and driver to the station etc.
If the man a top a thief wha dee man ah bottom guh do. It is now part of the culture. How do they change that.
Somebody once said something about living in a glass house ….?? Apparently, the Inspector General is supposed to inform the politicians and the public of the status of the spending and oversight …. I suppose you could read it all here. Actually, you will find out less effective this year because they have classified the information that was previously available to the public, but, check it out … http://www.sigar.mil/
January 30, 2015
Imagine the moment you pull into the parking lot at a gun show, your license plate goes into a federal database.
This week, the ACLU released a trove of documents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents are incomplete and heavily redacted… but they reveal the feds have been building a database tracking the real-time movement of vehicles nationwide.
The documents reveal the DEA launched the tracking program in 2008, using automated license plate readers.
The following year, the DEA’s Phoenix office began planning a project with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to track the comings and goings from public gun shows using the tracking technology.
The DEA says it never followed through on the plan… although right now, we have only their word. And the documents raise more questions than they answer. “We just happened to get that tidbit about the gun shows,” the ACLU’s Jay Stanley tells The Guardian. “Whether they targeted other groups we just don’t know. That’s the problem. We’re like archaeologists trying to read a scrap of bone and build a picture of the whole organism.”
We’ll pause here in case you need a moment to wrap your mind around the ACLU sticking up for the rights of law-abiding gun owners.
[Pause…]
While many details remain murky, we know hundreds of millions of records have been uploaded to the database. “It’s deeply disconcerting and creepy,” says Clark Neily from the Institute for Justice. “We’re Americans. We drive a lot.”
The tracking program is not about drugs or guns; it’s about revenue. Specifically, the revenue from civil asset forfeiture.
It’s right there in one of the DEA documents. “The primary goal of the license plate tracking program,” summarizes The Wall Street Journal, “is to seize cars, cash and other assets…”
The problem with asset forfeiture, as we’ve chronicled now and then, is you don’t need to be convicted or even accused of drug trafficking for the government to seize your property. It’s your property that’s judged guilty and confiscated, and your property doesn’t get any due process.
The place where you might be most vulnerable to forfeiture is in your car — where modern-day highwaymen in uniform can prey upon you.
William Davis and John Newmerzhycky know this all too well. In April 2013, they were driving through Iowa on their way home to California from a World Series of Poker tournament. They were pulled over for failure to signal a lane change. By the time the “routine traffic stop” was over, the cops seized the men’s winnings — $100,000 in cash.
Because large sums of cash are always guilty. Or something like that.
Bonus points: The dashcam video from the police cruiser reveals the driver did signal his lane change. That came out during the subsequent lawsuit. The men got $90,000 back… but a third of it was eaten up by legal fees.
Nor do you have to be hauling briefcases of cash to be vulnerable. The Institute for Justice — which litigates big-ticket forfeiture cases — says the typical seizure is for less than $500. Small enough to fit in your wallet… and not enough for most people to justify a court fight.
Law enforcement agencies that seize property via forfeiture can spend the loot on “just about anything under a law enforcement agency’s roof,” according to Roy Hain — a former sheriff’s deputy from Kane County, Illinois, writing under the pseudonym of Charles Haines.
Understand, Mr. Hain is not alerting you to the risk of forfeiture — he’s advising the modern-day highwaymen on how to seize more loot.
Hain is marketing director for a private firm called Desert Snow. As The Washington Post explained in a lengthy expose last fall, Desert Snow trains legions of lawmen in seizure techniques. The firm brags its graduates seized $427 million during traffic stops in a single five-year stretch.
With that kind of money at stake for them, you become a moving target.
Do not yield to the temptation to throw up your hands and feel helpless.
True, there’s only so much that’s within your control when it comes to the highwaymen in uniform. But with that in mind, we offer a few common-sense guidelines…
• First, know when you’re on the road that the cops consider nearly every Interstate highway a “regional drug transportation corridor.”
• Keep your car “clean.” Make sure all your taillights, brake lights, license plate lights, etc., are in working order. You might still get pulled over like the guys in Iowa, but you don’t want to give the police an excuse
• Maybe it’s unavoidable, but try not to carry more than $500 cash
• And once the trooper gives you your warning or ticket and sends you on your way, don’t fall for the Columbo trick. That’s what happened to Davis and Newmerzhycky: They were about to resume their journey when the trooper asked, “Do you have time for a couple of questions?” Everything went downhill from there.
Desert Snow trains officers in this very technique. See, once you’re free to go, the law considers any further interaction with law enforcement to be “consensual” — even if it doesn’t feel that way to you, seeing as the cop is the one with the badge and the gun.
Finally… You might be asked the ambiguous, “You don’t mind if I have a look in your car?” The unambiguous answer to give, according to the invaluable Flex Your Rights website, is: “I do not consent to any searches.”
“For a change,” a reader writes after we made an offhand remark yesterday, “I agree with Washington being worried about ethnic Russians in Ukraine wanting independence.
“If they get it, then it’s all the more likely that ethnic Russians in the Baltics will want the same. And that would be wrong not only for strategic reasons, but also because the only reason they’re even there is because Russia shipped them in when they invaded as a way to strengthen their power. It would mean Russia would continue this abhorrent behavior with the next land they want to invade.”
“Why,” writes another reader, “is Washington threatened by some Mexicans living in California and Texas demanding some measure of autonomy from the junta in D.C.? Or why didn’t Washington allow the South to secede? We don’t have to go clear across the Atlantic and then some to ponder this question. Perhaps, just perhaps, it has to do with non-Russians also living in those same areas?”
The 5: Tortured analogies for $1,000, Alex.
We get how the ethnic and religious groups in the former Soviet Union are intermixed. For sure, it’s a volatile stew. But so what?
Three successive presidents broke Bush the Elder’s promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand beyond its 1989 boundaries. Clinton brought in some of the Warsaw Pact countries, Bush the Younger expanded NATO up to Russia’s borders, and Obama is maneuvering to reel in Ukraine.
But Putin is the villain for feeling encircled and drawing the line at a NATO naval base in Crimea?
As we said on Wednesday, we’re staring down the prospect of war between the United States and Russia this year.
And there’s a “reality bubble” surrounding the Beltway and the elite media far worse than anything that preceded the Iraq War in 2003. The only establishment figure talking sense is the aging war criminal Henry Kissinger: “If the West is honest with itself, it has to admit that there were mistakes on its side,” he told Der Spiegel late last year. “The annexation of Crimea was not a move toward global conquest. It was not Hitler moving into Czechoslovakia.”
Alas, he was allowed to say that only in European media. Not in the USSA.
Best regards,
Dave Gonigam
The 5 Min. Forecast
And on the subject of “highwaymen in uniform,” another reader writes: “Canadian media are warning Canadians about not taking more than $200 and doing everything on credit cards when in the United States.
“I know a few people who will not go to the USA for a vacation anymore because of this. They hop over the States and go to Mexico. There, a cop only wants $5-10 — not everything!”
Inflation, Bwana! Inflation!!