DASH 2013-2014 APGovt & Economics

40-foot-high gold-plated statue of himself

buys himself a $30 million mansion in Malibu, California

bought an €18 million art collection

fabulous sports cars

Gulfstream jet

Dan Etete. Well, he was the former oil minister of Nigeria

Teodorín Obiang

daddy is president for life

a $1 billion — oil deal that he was involved with

So it's easy to think that corruption happens somewhere over there, carried out by a bunch of greedy despots and individuals up to no good in countries that we, personally, may know very little about and feel really unconnected to and unaffected by what might be going on. But does it just happen over there?

Well, at 22,

set up an organization called Global Witness

first campaign was investigating the role of illegal logging in funding the war in Cambodia

1997, and I'm in Angola undercover investigating blood diamonds.

the Hollywood film "Blood Diamond," the one with Leonardo DiCaprio

I'd been speaking to lots of people there who, well, they talked about a different problem: that of a massive web of corruption on a global scale and millions of oil dollars going missing.

I've repeatedly seen that what makes corruption on a global, massive scale possible, well it isn't just greed or the misuse of power or that nebulous phrase "weak governance." I mean, yes, it's all of those, but corruption, it's made possible by the actions of global facilitators

Obiang junior.

He did business with global banks. A bank in Paris held accounts of companies controlled by him, one of which was used to buy the art, and American banks, well, they funneled 73 million dollars into the States, some of which was used to buy that California mansion. And he didn't do all of this in his own name either. He used shell companies. He used one to buy the property, and another, which was in somebody else's name, to pay the huge bills it cost to run the place.

Dan Etete

he awarded an oil block now worth over a billion dollars to a company that, guess what, yeah, he was the hidden owner of

with the kind assistance of the Nigerian government

to subsidiaries of Shell and the Italian Eni, two of the biggest oil companies around

the reality is, is that the engine of corruption

our international banking system

anonymous shell companies

secrecy

failure of our politicians to back up their rhetoric and do something really meaningful and systemic to tackle this stuff

take the banks first

banks accept dirty money

And then there's the problem of anonymous shell companies

they're used quite a bit by people and companies who are trying to avoid paying their proper dues to society, also known as taxes

shell companies are used to steal huge sums of money, transformational sums of money, from poor countries

A recent study by the World Bank looked at 200 cases of corruption. It found that over 70 percent of those cases had used anonymous shell companies, totaling almost 56 billion dollars

shell companies, they're central to the secret deals which may benefit wealthy elites rather than ordinary citizens

there are typica

in 1992, the combined wealth of the people on the Forbes 400 list -- and this is the list of the 400 richest Americans -- was 300 billion dollars. Just think about it. You didn't even need to be a billionaire to get on that list in 1992. Well, today, that figure has more than quintupled to 1.7 trillion

global plutocracy

worry about structural unemployment

all of us here are richer, healthier, taller

before we learned how to share the fruits of the Industrial Revolution with the broad swathes of society, we had to go through two depressions, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Long Depression of the 1870s, two world wars, communist revolutions in Russia and in China, and an era of tremendous social and political upheaval in the West

We need a new New Deal

There is this deliberate veil, this curtain, that's dropped between us and where our food is coming from. The industry doesn't want you to know the truth about what you're eating, because if you knew, you might not want to eat it.

The reality is a factory. It's not a farm.

enormous assembly lines

animals and the workers are being abused

a small group of multinational corporations who control the entire food system. From seed to the supermarket, they're gaining control of food

The whole industrial food system really began with fast food

The McDonald brothers had a very successful drive-in, but they decided to cut costs and simplify. So they fired all their carhops, they got rid of most of the things on the menu and they created a revolutionary idea to how to run a restaurant. They basically brought the factory system to the back of the restaurant kitchen. They trained each worker to just do one thing again and again and again. By having workers who only had to do one thing, they could pay them a low wage and it was very easy to find someone to replace them. It was inexpensive food, it tasted good and this McDonald's fast food restaurant was a huge huge success.

When McDonald's is the largest purchaser of ground beef in the United States and they want their hamburgers to taste, everywhere, exactly the same, they change how ground beef is produced.

largest purchaser of potatoes

pork, chicken, tomatoes, lettuce, even apples

big big fast food chains want big suppliers

a handful of companies controlling our food system.

In the 1970s, the top five beef-packers controlled only about 25% of the market. Today, the top four control more than 80% of the market

We've never had food companies this big and this powerful in our history. Tyson, for example, is the biggest meat-packing company in the history of the world.

A company like Tyson owns the birds from the day they're dropped off until the day that they're slaughtered.

National Chicken Council

the integration of production, processing and marketing

It's all highly mechanized. So all the birds coming off those farms have to be almost exactly the same size. What the system of intensive production accomplishes is to produce a lot of food on a small amount of land at a very affordable price. Now somebody explain to me what's wrong with that.

When I wanted to understand the industrial food system, what I set about doing was very simple. I wanted to trace the source of my food.

What really surprised me most as I followed that food back to its source, I kept ending up in the same place, and that was a cornfield in Iowa

100 years ago, a farmer in America could grow maybe 20 bushels of corn on an acre. Today, 200 bushels is no problem. That's an astonishing achievement for which breeders deserve credit, for which fertilizer makers deserve credit, for which pesticide makers all deserve credit.

Corn is the great raw material.

starch and you can break that down and reassemble it. You can make high-fructose corn syrup. You can make maltodextrin and diglycerides and xanthan gum and ascorbic acid.

Corn is the main component in feed ingredients whether it's chicken, hogs, cattle-- you name it.

tilapia or the farmed salmon

the average American is eating over 200 lbs of meat per person per year. That wouldn't be possible had we not fed them this diet of cheap grain

the chief of staff at the USDA was the former chief lobbyist to the beef industry in Washington; the head of the F.D.A. was the former executive vice president of the National Food Processors Association. These regulatory agencies are being controlled by the very companies that they're supposed to be scrutinizing.

It's remarkable how toothless our regulatory agencies are when you look closely at it, and that's how the industry wants it.

After the first big push to establish food standards, people just got complacent. We reduced funding for the FDA. We've relied increasingly on self-policing for all of these industries. And now we just have, really, lost our system. You're really one of the champions on the hill for food safety and it's a very important cause.

relied increasingly on self-policing for all of these industries

When you genetically modify a crop, you own it. We've never had this in agriculture.

Used to be that your land-grant universities, they developed what was called public seed

BOUNDARY ISSUES

BASIC TRAINING

PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT

A PRIVATE CELEBRATION

TRIUMPH OF THE SHILL

congressional buy-in on the front end

former congressional insiders

Peter Orszag, was the head of the Congressional Budget Office

top aide to Ted Kennedy.

top staff guy for Henry Waxman.

Robert Gibbs, who worked in the Senate, who's now the press secretary.

the quintessential Washington insider, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle.

The once powerful Senate majority leader had made enemies. The Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana, was an old rival.

Baucus allowed Republicans on the committee to tear into Daschle's personal finances

Senate investigators found income tax problems. Daschle had left the government and cashed in, making millions at a Washington law firm. Along the way, a client had provided a limo for Daschle's personal use. Eventually, he paid more than $140,000 in taxes and penalties on the gift

It's a very bad cloud over this nomination

Does this really represent the kind of change that Mr. Obama said he would be bringing to his administration?

Obama quickly, calmly accepted the resignation offer, did not pause, did not look back

Obama's advisers had told him that many of the lobbyists in the room were prepared to cut a deal. Karen Ignagni is the chief lobbyist for the insurance industry.Pres. BARACK OBAMA: Why don't you wait for a mike, Karen, so that-KAREN IGNAGNI, Pres., America's Health Insurance Plans: We entered this year being committed to change, being committed to restructuring and committed to actually helping to get this done

Privately, Ignagni was playing hardball. She said she'd support the bill only if everyone was required to buy health insurance.

Obama had campaigned against the mandate. Ignagni was insisting he reverse himself.

They want to make sure that they get a requirement that all of us buy health insurance. They want to make sure that we are all forced by to buy products from them. And they want to make sure that there's no alternative other than the private insurance market. That's why they're so adamantly opposed to the public option.

Obama had also supported the public option, a government health plan, and Ignagni wanted him to walk away from that, too.

It is not wiping out the private insurance industry, it's just creating a public insurance plan that would compete with private insurers. But they wanted no part of that.

Baucus received more than $2.5 million from special interest groups in the health industry.

What the campaign contributions often do is that they open doors. They give industries entree to important congressional staffers and lawmakers.

The Senate bill, you know, frankly, is just an insurance company bill. The insurance companies, actually, literally did write it. There were two senior staffers in Max Baucus's office, one who used to work for United Health Care and one who used to work for WellPoint, who wrote the bill. It's a great bill from the insurance companies' point of view. It doesn't happen to do a whole lot to change the system and to bring reform.

Liberal outrage arrived in Baucus's own hearing room, as health care activists, one after another, shouted him down.

There's millions for the insurance industry, the HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies, and you're denying the people a voice!

The activists were especially angry that Ignagni had a seat at the table but they did not.

Physicians for a Nat'l Health Prgm.: When we received the list of the dates of the hearings and who was being invited, and we saw who was invited, we requested that we have one person invited in the, you know, series of three hearings. They were inviting 41 people total to testify. And they said no

That spring, Baucus and the White House were also secretly negotiating another deal, this time with the pharmaceutical industry. Their top lobbyist was a classic Washington character.CECI CONNOLLY: Billy Tauzin is a New Orleans politician, a very colorful, lively figure who took over the pharmaceutical industry trade group, PhRMA.Rep. MICHAEL BURGESS (R), Texas: Billy Tauzin is a formidable negotiator. And Billy Tauzin knows how things work on the Hill, and he knows how things work in this town.NARRATOR: His most notorious act took place when then Congressman Tauzin and Senator Baucus pushed through a Medicare prescription drug bill.Rep. BILLY TAUZIN (R), Louisiana: We are about to pass a $400 billion insured drug account for these citizens who have no drug insurance today.NARRATOR: In 2003, in the middle of the night, Tauzin kept the House voting machine open until he could scrounge and wheedle just enough votes to pass the controversial measure.Sen. SHERROD BROWN (D-OH), Health Committee: It was a payoff to two industries, the drug industry and the insurance industry. There was no question about it. They did very, very well out of this bill.NARRATOR: It meant hundreds of billions of dollars for the pharmaceutical industry.Rep. DAN BURTON (R), Indiana: The comptroller general said when we passed the Medicare prescription drug bill that it was the worst piece of legislation, fiscally, that he had ever seen. And he said over time, it was going to be a disaster.

president pro tempore

calls the Senate to order

chaplain leads the chamber in prayer

one of the first actions in the new session, and it is done by Resolution

tradition and practice

"unanimous consent"

Making this request establishes acceptance by the Senate of the prerogative and responsibility of the Majority Leader

First, the Majority Leader rises (stands), is recognized, and speaks for up to 10 minutes Next, the Minority Leader rises, is recognized, and speaks for up to 10 minutes

Lack of party cohesion:

Little control over nomination process

Types of primary election: Closed—voting only by party members, no crossover voting Open—voting by all members of the electorate but must choose which primary if there is more than one Blanket/Wide Open (Alaska and Washington)—open to all members of electorate, all candidates for same office on same ballot

plurality of votes

some southern states runoff if no majority vote

Problems with primaries: Fragmentation of political parties Increase in costs for candidates Lengthening of campaign season

Appointment by President with Senate approval

Monitoring of campaign donations and spending

reports on spending and donations, fundraising by the candidate, payment of expenses by the candidate

contribute unlimited amounts to parties

Beyond that, however, the present legislation targets for prohibition certain categories of campaign speech that are particularly harmful to incumbents. Is it accidental, do you think, that incumbents raise about three times as much “hard money”–the sort of funding generally not restricted by this legislation–as do their challengers?

I wish to address three fallacious propositions

(a)  Money is Not Speech

(b)  Pooling Money is Not Speech

(c) Speech by Corporations Can Be Abridged

dissenting

concurring

"Pack journalism"—homogenization of reports

"Leaks" (also "trial balloons")

Official proceedings

Associated Press United Press International Reuters

Coverage of Nixon impeachment hearings

"agenda setting"

repetition

Selection

Allotment

Priority

"spin"