By JUDY FAHYS

The Salt Lake Tribune

August 18, 2010 10:41AM

Federal regulators may well have the authority after all to decide how a Utah magnesium plant manages its hazardous waste, under a Denver appeals court’s ruling released Tuesday.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out an Oct. 17, 2007, decision by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson that US Magnesium in Tooele County is exempted from the nation’s cradle-to-grave hazardous waste law, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

In short, the appeals court said the Environmental Protection Agency can update its “tentative” interpretation of a regulation into a final one without additional public input. It ordered Benson to reconsider the case.

Is it any wonder we are in an environmental quagmire. Action began on this issue in 2001. The  case was eventually decided by Judge Benson in 2007. Three years later the Appeals Court overturns the decision and orders Benson to reconsider the case, thus it is still unresolved. This is a near total failure of the court system. All this delay has been worth millions to Mag Corp and to New York businessman Ira Rennert, and the public be damned.The corporate polluters are benefited by the slow moving court system and the earth and its inhabitants suffer irreparable damage.

The delay in this decision is far more devastating than the long and tedious process of the death penalty. This needs fixed, and who will fix it? Nobody. This is a horrible condemnation of our justice system.

“Even under the case law US Magnesium asks us to follow, the agency is at liberty to adopt without notice and comment a reasonable interpretation of that ambiguous regulation,” said the opinion written by Judge Neil M. Gorsuch and joined by the two other judges on the appeals panel.

Although neither side has said what it will do next, it is possible the ruling will finally settle the two-decade-old (more…)

What consumers should know about buying olive oil

By Kathy Stephenson

The Salt Lake Tribune

August 17, 2010 07:05PM

Two decades ago, the only place to buy a bottle of olive oil was a Greek or Italian specialty market.

Today, bottles of this healthy oil are sold everywhere, from local grocery stores to big-box warehouses. Each year, U.S. consumers spend $700 million on olive oil.

But with more choices has come an array of marketing terms such as “extra-virgin,” “cold-pressed,” “light” and “unfiltered.” Taken together, these labels can seem confusing and inconsistent, as in the past the product hasn’t been regulated by the federal government.

Why would we post an article on olive oil? This article is not only about olive oil, but also about the important role that government plays in labeling of food products. It is a prime example of what happens without government supervision.

Currently none of us know the true quality of olive oil. For years I’ve been buying ‘extra virgin’ because the nutritionists have indicated there is an important difference. Now I discover that ‘extra virgin’ may not be what it claims to be, and one thing is for sure, we cannot depend on the integrity of free enterprise corporations. That is the Law of the Jungle that so around here pray to every day.

From now we will all know to look for the USDA rating label before buying an olive oil.

For the average consumer, it can be difficult to figure out what these terms actually mean, as well as why one bottle of 100 percent extra-virgin olive costs $6, while another costs $20 or more.

The confusion could be ending soon, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently adopted a new set of standards. Companies are encouraged to adopt the USDA’s definitions to help consumers differentiate the best oils from the cheap imposters. The federal agency adopted the new regulations in April, and plans to start enforcing (more…)

Here is the full text of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s speech following a vote that clears most major hurdles for the construction of a planned mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero:

by Mayor Michael Bloomberg

“We have come here to Governors Island to stand where the earliest settlers first set foot in New Amsterdam, and where the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted. We’ve come here to see the inspiring symbol of liberty that, more than 250 years later, would greet millions of immigrants in the harbor, and we come here to state as strongly as ever – this is the freest City in the world. That’s what makes New York special and different and strong.

Score one for Mayor Bloomberg. On second thought—score TEN!

This speech was eloquent, fair, scholarly, and open minded. It was in the moderate,  inclusive and forthright style of Barack Obama. That these grand words of peace and brotherhood came from the mouth of a Republican is, in this day and age, almost beyond belief. The Republican Party, which has become the party of bigotry, will be disowning the mayor when they read or hear these remarks.

Hats off to Mayor Bloomberg. He got it right! It should go a long way in toning down the vitriolic rhetoric coming from the so-called Christian patriots who don’t have a clue about the rule of law and the constitution.

“Our doors are open to everyone – everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immigrants, and it is sustained by immigrants – by people from more than a hundred different countries speaking more than two hundred different languages and professing every faith. And whether your parents were born here, or you came yesterday, you are a New Yorker.

“We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That’s life and it’s part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11.
“On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn’t want us to enjoy the freedom to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams and to live our own lives.  ”Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that, even here in a City that is rooted in Dutch tolerance, was hard-won over many years. In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in Lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue – and they were turned down.

“In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal, political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies – and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.

“In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion – and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, (more…)

A bad same-sex ruling

Deseret News

Published: Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2010 12:15 a.m. MDT

Proponents of gay marriage have managed to frame the issue as one of equal treatment under the law, often asking opponents to demonstrate how the marriage of two men or two women could cause harm to anyone else’s heterosexual marriage.

This is an entirely wrong and misleading framework and question. The more relevant question ought to be why governments have an interest in sanctioning marriages at all.

This editorial, The Deseret News, and the LDS Church are willfully skirting the issues that faced the court in a continuing attempt to rationalize their opposition to same-sex marriage.

Repeat the same old saw enough times, and offer enough smokescreens, and it’s amazing how many brain waves can be shut down.

The issue is a constitutional issue of equal protection under the law. The courts have continually told opponents of same-sex marriage that it is unconstitutional to deny homosexuals equal protection under the law. In America we don’t hold elections to determine our right to equal protection. In order to deny equal protection to anyone we would have to change the constitution. Proposition 8 was a blatant unconstitutional effort to deny equal protection of the laws to gays and lesbians. The courts have ruled on this subject time and again and still the opponents haven’t gotten the message. It is not just Justice Vaughn Walker. It began in 1993 when the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to deny equal protection under the law to gays and lesbians. Judges are bound by the law to uphold equal protection of the laws.  Judges have never had a compelling reason to deny equal protection of the law to gays and lesbians. Bigotry simply isn’t a compelling reason and it is the basis of all the arguments offered in opposition to same-sex marriage. Opponents just can’t muster up any other defense and while bigotry can cut it at the ballot box, it can’t cut it in the courts.

The answer to that one is clear. Because of their concern for the general welfare, governments have a compelling interest in sanctioning behaviors designed to perpetuate order and progress. With that in mind, they have an interest in sanctioning the only kind of sexual relations best designed to lead to healthy children being raised in a way that gives them the greatest chance for success as adults. That is through the marriage of one man and one woman.

The fact that some married people can’t have children is irrelevant. The fact that many marriages break up or that some children of marriages are abused does not change the argument. People are inherently flawed. There also are extraordinary citizens who were raised in single-parent or nontraditional homes. But the man-woman marriage template remains the best chance for children and the only type of relationship the state ought to have an interest in sanctioning. Governments typically don’t sanction every man-woman union, either. First cousins, for example, often are forbidden to marry, again because of the possible effects on children such a union might produce.

Most Americans, it seems, understand all this. Certainly, most Californians did when they passed Proposition 8. So did voters in 30 other states, most recently Maine. Same-sex marriage has lost every time it has been put to a vote in this country. Even state legislatures in some typically liberal states, such as New York, have defeated the idea.

But now Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco has (more…)

The AIG Bailout Scandal

William Greider | August 6, 2010

The Nation Magazine

The government’s $182 billion bailout of insurance giant AIG should be seen as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the financial crisis and its costly aftermath. The story of American International Group explains the larger catastrophe not because this was the biggest corporate bailout in history but because AIG’s collapse and subsequent rescue involved nearly all the critical elements, including delusion and deception. These financial dealings are monstrously complicated, but this account focuses on something mere mortals can understand—moral confusion in high places, and the failure of governing institutions to fulfill their obligations to the public.

Three governmental investigative bodies have now pored through the AIG wreckage and turned up disturbing facts—the House Committee on Oversight and Reform; the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which will make its report at year’s end; and the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP), which issued its report on AIG in June.

The five-member COP, chaired by Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, has produced the most devastating and comprehensive account so far. Unanimously adopted by its bipartisan members, it provides alarming insights that should be fodder for the larger debate many citizens long to hear—why Washington rushed to forgive the very interests that produced this mess, while innocent others were made to suffer the consequences. The Congressional panel’s critique helps explain why bankers and their Washington allies do not want Elizabeth Warren to chair the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The report concludes that the Federal Reserve Board’s intimate relations with the leading powers of Wall Street—the same banks that benefited most from the government’s massive bailout—influenced its strategic decisions on AIG. The panel accuses the Fed and the Treasury Department of brushing aside alternative approaches that would have saved tens of billions in public funds by making these same banks “share the pain.”

Bailing out AIG effectively meant rescuing Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch (as well as a dozens of European banks) from huge losses. Those financial institutions played the derivatives game with AIG, the esoteric practice of placing financial bets on future events. AIG lost its bets, which led to its collapse. But other gamblers—the counterparties in AIG’s derivative deals—were made whole on their bets, paid off 100 cents on the dollar. Taxpayers got stuck with the bill.

“The AIG rescue demonstrated that Treasury and the Federal Reserve would commit taxpayers to pay any price and bear any burden to prevent the collapse of America’s largest financial institutions,” the COP report said. This could have been avoided, the report argues, if the Fed had listened to disinterested advisers with a less parochial understanding of the public interest.

Fed and Treasury officials dismiss this critique as second-guessing of tough decisions they had to make in the fall of 2008, amid the fast-moving global crisis. Yet two years later, those controversial decisions remain highly relevant. Public anger has not abated. It fuels the election turmoil that this year threatens to bring down incumbents in both parties who voted for bank bailouts.

Although the AIG bailout was carried out in the waning days of George W. Bush’s presidency, the popular sense of injustice has deeply scarred Barack Obama, since he too adopted a forgiving approach toward culpable financial interests. Obama came to office intent on restoring public trust in government. His indulgence of the mega-banks led to the opposite result.

More to the point, the AIG story raises real doubts and suspicions (more…)

Dear Cardinal Mahony,

I saw your recent blog post entitled Judge Vaughn Walker Got it Wrong, in which you wrote:

[Walker's] decision fails to deal with the basic, underlying issue–rather he focused solely upon individual testimony on how Prop 8 affected them personally. Wrong focus.

There is only one issue before each of us Californians: Is Marriage of Divine or of Human Origin?

Judge Walker pays no attention to this fundamental issue, and relies solely upon how Prop 8 made certain members of society “feel” about themselves.

Those of us who supported Prop 8 and worked for its passage did so for one reason: We truly believe that Marriage was instituted by God for the specific purpose of carrying out God’s plan for the world and human society. Period.

That may be what you and many others believe about marriage, but that belief has no standing in court. Judge Walker was not placed on the bench to decide whether laws and conduct in the United States match up to the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, or other religious writings. His job is to measure the disputes that come to his courtroom against the laws and constitution of the United States of America.

Period.

Maybe even Exclamation Point.

The sacred text for Judge Walker is the US Constitution, and nowhere in the Constitution and its twenty seven amendments is (more…)

Editorial: Immigration is about us

Mark H. Willes

Deseret Media Companies

Published: Saturday, Aug. 7, 2010 9:15 p.m. MDT

Over the last few weeks, we have run a series of special reports on immigration in print, on television and radio, and on our multiple websites. We have tried hard to fairly represent all points of view. We have also tried to separate fact from fiction, hyperbole from reality.

This is a nice start on a very difficult and complex issue. The editorial serves one important purpose; to slow down the hot heads and put rational thinking on the front burner. The editorial offers few concrete suggestions—except a thoughtful and caring approach to all decisions. While some will be bothered by its lack of specific solutions it does bring us back to the proper starting place—-rational thinking.

We are pleased that many have told us they are now thinking more deeply about the complex issues involved. We, too, have found ourselves struggling to know exactly what to do. Lives, jobs, safety and much more are at stake. In fact, the very core of what kind of people we are, and what kind of state we want to have, will be reflected in and strongly influenced by how we deal with immigration.

Common threads

Several common threads have emerged from our reporting on immigration:

People on all sides of the issue have uncommon courage. The debate has become so heated, the rancor so great, that anyone who takes a strong stand has been subject to withering criticism. We greatly admire all those who have added to the public dialogue by sharing their views, no matter the personal cost.

Virtually everyone agrees that current circumstances surrounding immigration must be fixed. While areas of emphasis differ, almost no one is happy with the way things are.

Almost everyone also agrees that illegal immigrants who are felons should be caught, prosecuted and sent out of the country.

There is also consensus that to be effective, there must be a national solution to the challenges of immigration. Utahns of all points of view eagerly seek national leadership to find effective, workable solutions, sooner rather than later.

Finally, there seems to be a broadly held view that Utah, like Arizona, should do something, if only to help speed up federal action.

No easy solutions

The problem, of course, is that complex problems do not lend themselves to easy solutions: (more…)

Audit: U.S. cannot account for $8.7B in Iraqi funds

Audit accuses Pentagon of lax oversight, weak controls over spending

By Tarek El-Tablawy

Associated Press

Published: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 12:32 a.m. MDT

BAGHDAD — A U.S. audit has found that the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.

The $8.7 billion in question was Iraqi money managed by the Pentagon, not part of the $53 billion that Congress has allocated for rebuilding. It’s cash that Iraq, which relies on volatile oil revenues to fuel its spending, can ill afford to lose.

“Iraq should take legal action to get back this huge amount of money,” said Sabah al-Saedi, chairman of the Parliamentary Integrity Committee. The money “should be spent for rebuilding the country and providing services for this poor nation.”

The report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction accused the Defense Department of lax oversight and weak controls, though not fraud.

The only surprise is that the public is being made vaguely aware of it. The Defense Department is managed just like Wall Street.

“The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss,” the audit said.

The Pentagon has repeatedly come under fire for apparent mismanagement of the reconstruction effort — as have Iraqi officials themselves.

Seven years after the U.S.-led invasion, electricity service is spotty, with generation capacity falling far short of demand. Fuel shortages are common and unemployment remains high, a testament to the country’s inability to create new jobs or attract foreign investors.

Complaints surfaced from the start of the war in 2003, when soldiers failed (more…)

Indianapolis » Indiana Rep. Mark Souder, an eight-term Republican who promoted abstinence education, said Tuesday he’ll resign from Congress after admitting an extramarital affair with a part-time staff member.

Souder won a bruising primary just two weeks ago, and the resignation effective Friday could hurt the GOP’s chances of holding onto the Republican-leaning district in November in a year that many expect will favor the party.

Souder, an evangelical Christian who has championed family values and traditional marriage, apologized for his actions but provided no details during an emotional news conference at his Fort Wayne office.

“I am so ashamed to have hurt the ones I love,” he said as he battled tears. “I am sorry to have let so many friends down, people who have worked so hard for me.”

The announcement stunned many in political circles.

It’s too bad we haven’t kept a list of these pious finger-pointing, condemning adulterers who are so judgmental of others, but maybe it’s for the best—-we w0uldn’t have the space. Nevertheless, the number truly is amazing!

What have we learned from all this? That (more…)

Desert Derangement Syndrome

PHOENIX – Driving south from the high, age-worn plateau of northern Arizona, where the earth seems to have turned itself inside-out, I pulled over to take in the full sweep and wonder of this place during one of its better moments. The infinity of sky, the open gallery of sandstone masterpieces – it never fails to amaze.

Arizona is full of ancient communities – the Hopi, the Papago, the Havasupai, the Navajo – and outsized geology, with the Painted Desert, the Superstition Mountains and the big slit of the Grand Canyon .

From Show Low to Tombstone , from Snowflake to Casa Grande, from the tiny Indian village at the bottom of the canyon to the Colorado River town that reassembled the old London Bridge on its desert edge, this is the American West of singular scenery and goofy glory.

But for all its diversity of land and people, Arizona is also a lunatic magnet. As I drove, I listened to the radio blather of a state in mob-rule frenzy of cranky old men. Once in Phoenix , I saw on television that sign in a car’s rear window, the new image of Arizona to the rest of the world: “I’m Mexican. Pull me over.”

Thank you Arizona—for taking Utah out of the spotlight, but don’t let up. Our guys and gal (Ruzicka) don’t like to be upstaged. We’ve got the loosest gun laws in the country and other states are starting to boycott us too.  Remember, Evan Mecham was more ours that yours, and we’ve adopted Glenn Beck and he’s adopted us. So don’t get too fancy pants  with us, and Sean Hannity is on our church owned radio station three hours a day, six days a week, and on Sunday we go to church to get the message validated from the pulpit, and furthermore we’re going to condemn federal property and take it for our own use. Try that one on for size.

This week, Jon Stewart called Arizona the “the meth lab of democracy.” A few days ago, the governor signed the instantly infamous “show me your papers” law, allowing authorities to stop and question anyone who looks Hispanic. Another new measure lets people carry concealed weapons without a permit, following on the heels of the new-found freedom to pack heat in bars and restaurants, something that was outlawed in much of the Old West and the state house has just approved a bill that would require candidates for high office to show a birth certificate.

The birther bill is a sop to the flat-earthers (more…)

A bar too high

Time to ease initiative requirements.

Tribune Editorial

Updated: 04/19/2010 06:03:58 PM MDT

It’s the political equivalent of pole vaulting over the Wasatch Front. The Legislature has set the bar way too high for citizen ballot initiatives, making it nearly impossible for the people to exercise their constitutional right to make laws.

This year, three determined efforts by energized citizen groups failed to pass muster. Utahns for Ethical Government, proponents of comprehensive legislative ethics reform, believes it fell just short of acquiring the book-load of signatures needed to place its proposal on the 2010 ballot. Fair Boundaries, which espoused an independent commission to assist with legislative redistricting and limit gerrymandering, and The Peoples Right LLC, which proposed campaign finance and spending reforms, didn’t even come close.

Once again the Tribune brings our attention to a major flaw in our Utah democracy that demands correction. The Utah legislature has deliberately set the bar too high for citizen initiatives. The Utah Constitution provides for the citizens to be able to petition its government, but the legislature has set the requirement so high as to make that authorization almost impossible to meet.

WC will address this issue later tonight.

It’s hard to believe that the failures resulted from citizens refusing to sign the petitions. Public opinion polls have shown that Utahns, as a rule, support ethics reform, campaign finance reform and nonpartisan redistricting. It’s more likely that logistical problems — the need to hold seven public hearings and canvass residents across the entire state — led to the downfall of the petition drives.

The number of signatures required from registered voters to place an initiative on the ballot — an amount equal to 10 percent of the votes cast statewide in the most recent gubernatorial election — is onerous. This year, that worked out to 95,000 John Hancocks, a nearly insurmountable goal.

While a high standard should serve to winnow out frivolous proposals, 10 percent is too high. Five percent — in this case 47,500 signatures — seems sufficient.

Even worse is the signature distribution mandate. Not only are 95,000 signatures required, initiative supporters must meet the 10 percent mark in at least 26 of Utah’s 29 state Senate districts. That’s absurd, not to mention (more…)

By Jesse Holland, Associated Press

Washington » The Supreme Court seemed to split sharply Monday on whether a law school can deny recognition to a Christian student group that won’t let gays join, a case that could determine whether nondiscrimination policies trump the rights of private organizations to determine who can — and cannot — belong.

In arguments tinged with questions of religious, racial and sexual discrimination, the court heard from the Christian Legal Society, which wants recognition from the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law as an official campus organization with school financing and benefits.

This is a historic case. It is the center of the storm in the battle between gay rights and religious rights. WC will seek input from others on this important matter. Watch for continual updates.

Hastings, in San Francisco, turned down the society, saying recognized campus groups may not exclude people because of religious belief or sexual orientation.

The Christian group requires that voting members sign a statement of faith. The group also regards “unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle” as being inconsistent with the statement of faith.

“CLS has all of its activities entirely open to everyone,” lawyer Michael McConnell said. “What it objects to is being run by non-Christians.”

A federal judge threw out the Christian group’s lawsuit claiming its First Amendment rights of association, free speech and free exercise had been violated, a decision that was upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a two-sentence opinion in 2004.

The case could clarify nationwide whether religious-based and other private organizations that want federal funding have the right to discriminate against people who do not hold their core beliefs. The court is expected to rule this summer.

“If Hastings is correct, a student who does not even believe in the Bible is (more…)

By Marcy Gordon

The Associated Press

Updated: 04/16/2010 10:41:01 AM MDT

Washington » The government has accused Goldman Sachs & Co. of defrauding investors by failing to disclose conflicts of interest in mortgage investments it sold as the housing market was faltering.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Friday civil fraud charges against the Wall Street powerhouse and one of its vice presidents. The agency alleges Goldman failed to disclose that one of its clients helped create — and then bet against — subprime mortgage securities that Goldman sold to investors.

This is good news—and bad news.  It’s about time that someone felt the sting of the corruptness on Wall Street and so it’s nice to see the SEC (dormant during the Bush years) returning to some form of enforcement. The bad news—-it’s business as usual in that no criminal charges have been filed. The SEC still doesn’t have the guts to bring criminal charges against the ‘biggies.’ This kind of conduct on Main Street would result in criminal charges and jail time—but not on Wall Street. This is a huge problem on Wall Street, and until the big bank presidents spend time in prison there will be no justice.

Who trusts anyone on Wall Street? Nobody. Zippo! No credibility. They don’t even trust themselves. However, they are all dealing with one another knowing full that all their profits come from the same source—-the impotent public, which is totally helpless because of a government that has been purchased lock, stock, and barrel by Wall Street and the insurance companies.

Investors in the mortgage securities are alleged to have lost more than $1 billion, the SEC noted. The agency is seeking to recoup profits reaped on the deal.

The Goldman client implicated in the fraud is one of the world’s largest hedge funds, Paulson & Co., which paid Goldman roughly $15 million for structuring the deals in 2007.

Goldman Sachs shares fell more than 12 percent after the SEC announcement, which also caused shares of other financial companies to sink. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 120 points in midday trading.

The civil lawsuit filed by the SEC in federal court in Manhattan was the government’s most significant legal action related to the mortgage meltdown that ignited the financial crisis and helped plunge the country into recession. The SEC’s enforcement chief said the agency is investigating a wide range of practices related to the crisis.

A Goldman Sachs spokesman didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.

The agency also charged a Goldman vice president, Fabrice Tourre, 31, who it said was principally responsible for devising the deal and marketing the securities.

The SEC is seeking unspecified fines and restitution from Goldman Sachs and Tourre.

Goldman told investors that a third party, ACA Management LLC, had selected the underlying mortgages in the investment. But, the SEC alleges, Goldman misled investors by failing (more…)

Washington » Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan defended his legacy Wednesday, telling a special panel that’s looking into the origins of the financial crisis that insufficient bank capital and poor business decisions brought the nation to the brink of ruin, and it wasn’t his fault.

Greenspan’s appearance before the congressionally created Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was much anticipated and didn’t disappoint. It included revelations that the Fed’s own internal reviews had found insufficient policing of Citigroup, which taxpayers later rescued. A regulator whom Greenspan had silenced also grilled him mercilessly.

A former regulator who had been previously silenced by Alan Greenspan got HER chance to speak at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearing and she didn’t mince any words. Good for her. It may take a woman to break up the ‘good ol’ boys network’ that continually lines their own pockets at the expense of the hard working American people who abide by the rules and get sheared.

“The Fed utterly failed to prevent the financial crisis,” Brooksley Born told Greenspan, after reeling off a litany of what she called failures by the central bank that helped bring about what Greenspan himself now labels the worst financial crisis ever.

Born was the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the late 1990s, and her unheeded warnings to Greenspan and other top Clinton administration officials came back to haunt the nation.

On Wednesday, she tried in vain to get Greenspan to acknowledge deregulating the markets in 2000 allowed for an explosion of complex insurance-like products called credit-default swaps, which helped spark the collapse and rescue of insurer American International Group.

Greenspan said those products weren’t an issue at the time of deregulation, but Born reminded him they became one of the principal causes of the financial meltdown in September 2008.

“Are you aware that the collapse of AIG was (more…)

By Robert Gehrke

Salt Lake Tribune

A former state legislator and health insurance lobbyist were behind an autodial call to Republican delegates in Utah County, accusing Rep. Francis Gibson of supporting “Obama-like health care mandates.”

Former Rep. Aaron Tilton, who Gibson beat at the party’s convention two years ago, sent a letter to delegates this week, admitting he helped organize the call, which purported to be backed by the Utah Health Insurance Association, even though the association had nothing to do with the call.

At the same time, Tilton again castigated Gibson for supporting health care mandates — specifically his support for a bill that would require health insurance companies to cover prosthetic limbs — demanding Gibson explain his vote.

Tilton said a member of the Utah Health Insurance Association had signed off on the call, but because of a miscommunication, the call indicated it had the full backing of UHIA. Jeff Hartley, a lobbyist for American Health Insurance Plans, approved the autodial, although AHIP is not a member of the Utah Health Insurance Association.

Kelly Atkinson, executive director of the Utah Health Insurance Association, has filed a complaint with the Lieutenant Governor’s and Attorney General’s offices and says the complaint should still be pursued, despite the admissions.

“[Hartley] is not in any way shape or form associated with UHIA. He doesn’t speak for UHIA,” Atkinson said. “The whole process is bothersome to us because it takes a legitimate organization and uses it against a legislator without our authority. It’s wrong. It’s not just wrong, it’s criminal. The law is clear on this.”

Under Utah law, the unauthorized use of an organization’s name for campaign activities is a Class B misdemeanor.

The Attorney General’s Office is still reviewing the complaint to decide (more…)

(Column by Marueen Dowd of the New York Times)

Washington » I’m a Catholic woman who makes a living being adversarial. We have a pope who has instructed Catholic women not to be adversarial.

It’s a conundrum.

I’ve been wondering, given the vitriolic reaction of the New York archbishop to my column defending nuns and the dismissive reaction of the Vatican to my column denouncing the church’s response to the pedophilia scandal, if they are able to take a woman’s voice seriously. Some, like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, seem to think women are trying to undermine the church because of abortion and women’s ordination.

I thought they might respond better to a male Dowd.

My brother Kevin is conservative and devout — his hobby is collecting creches — and has raised three good Catholic sons. When I asked him to share his thoughts on the scandal, I learned, shockingly, that we agreed on some things. This is what he wrote:

“In pedophilia, the church has unleashed upon itself a plague that threatens its very future, and yet it remains in a curious state of denial. The church I grew up in was black and white, no grays. That’s why my father, an Irish immigrant, liked it so much. The chaplain of the police and fire departments told me once, ‘Your father was a fierce Catholic, very fierce.’

Maureen Dowd, prominent columnist for the New York Times, expresses dismay at the current status of her own Catholic Church. She has taken on the church and received no satisfactory responses, which she attributes to her being a woman.

In this article she makes a huge assumption by falsely insinuating that the priest pedophilia is because of a takeover of the seminaries by homosexuals. That assumption wrongly advances the idea that pedophilia is somehow a homosexual problem. The truth is that pedophilia is rampant among heterosexuals.

She also wrongly chides the church for agreeing to cover up the Catholic religious symbols at Georgetown University to get President Obama to speak there. The church should invite Obama to speak and Obama should not appear to be promoting Catholicism when he does so. It was appropriate for both sides to cover the religious symbols.

My brothers and I were sleepily at his side for the monthly 8 a.m. Holy Name Mass and the guarding of the Eucharist in the middle of the night during the 40-hour ritual at Easter. Once during a record snowstorm in 1958, we were marched single-file to church for Mass only to find out the priests next door couldn’t get out of the rectory.

The priest was always a revered figure, the embodiment of Christ changing water into wine. (Older parishioners took it literally.) The altar boys would drink the dregs.

When I was in the seventh grade, one of the new priests took four of us to the drive-in restaurant and suggested a game of ‘pink belly’ on (more…)

A few words about Christian terrorism. And I suppose the first words should be about “those” words: “Christian terrorism.” The term will seem jarring to those who have grown comfortable regarding terrorism as something exclusive to Islam.

Leonard Pitts, Jr. , who writes for the Miami Herald, is a marvelous journalist with the willingness to speak clearly on touchy subjects. This article refers to the terrorism incited by radical Christians. Religion seems to bring out the best and the worst in human behavior, and Christianity is no different. The death and destruction wrought by Christian zealots is well documented for nearly twenty centuries now. What began with The Word to often ends up with an s in front of it–The Sword.

Murder in the name of God is very common among most religions. It is promoted glamorously so in the Book of Mormon, and in fact is specifically encouraged and condoned.

That this is a self-deluding fallacy should have long since been apparent to anyone who’s been paying attention. From Eric Rudolph’s bombing of the Atlanta Olympics, a gay nightclub and two abortion clinics, to the so-called Phineas Priests who bombed banks, a newspaper and a Planned Parenthood Office in Spokane, Wash., from Matt Hale soliciting the murder of a federal judge in Chicago, to Scott Roeder’s assassination of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, from brothers Matthew and Tyler Williams murdering a gay couple near Redding, Calif., to Timothy McVeigh destroying a federal building and 168 lives in Oklahoma City, we have seen no shortage of “Christians” who believe Jesus requires — or at least allows — them to commit murder.

If federal officials are correct, we now have one more name to add to the dishonor roll. That name would be Hutaree, a self-styled Christian militia in Michigan, nine members of which have been arrested and accused of plotting to kill police officers in hopes of sparking an anti-government uprising.

Many of us would doubtless resist referring to plots like this as Christian terrorism, feeling it unfair to tar the great body of Christendom with the actions of its fringe radicals. And here, we will pause for Muslim readers to clear their throats loudly.

While they do, let the rest of us note that there is a larger moral to this story and it has less to do with terminologies than similarities.

We are conditioned to think of terror wrought by Islamic fundamentalists as something strange and alien and other. It is the violence of men with long beards who jabber in weird (more…)

(Opinion piece by Rep. Kay McIff in Salt Lake Tribune, April 10, 2010)

Advocates for forcing public access to streams, against the will of landowners, have advanced a raft of theories all designed to circumvent or trump the Utah Constitution’s prohibition against “taking or damaging private property for public use without just compensation.”

They have harkened back to the Magna Carta, the laws of England, Spain, the Roman Empire, Greece, the laws of the early American colonies and, most recently, Brigham Young. The exercise may be interesting and educational, but in the end the controlling document remains the Utah Constitution. It cannot be made subservient to other laws at other times and places.

If the effort to bypass the Utah Constitution were successful, what would be put in its place to protect private property rights listed by the framers as “inalienable” and second only to the rights of life and liberty? There is little comfort in the court-created easement in the Utah Supreme Court’s 2008 Conatser v. Johnson decision because it lacks constitutional side-boards and could be expanded by judicial or legislative fiat deemed necessary to make effective the public’s enjoyment of the easement.

Rep. McIff, Governor Herbert, and others, are taking considerable heat for this ill advised taking of public property and giving it to the adjacent land owners. The idea that the public doesn’t own the rivers and streams and reasonable access to them just doesn’t fly. Those who bought property alongside our rivers, streams, and lakes are just like those who bought property adjacent to our roads and sidewalks.

The Conatser decision necessarily relied upon a statute. The delegates to the Utah Constitutional Convention in 1895 had declined to declare public ownership of water, even though our neighboring states had done so. The reason may be found in the fact that Utah had been settled for almost 50 years and most of the water had already been appropriated. Delegates were uneasy about declaring public ownership, fearing it would compromise private vested rights. Hence, Article XVII, Section 1 of the Utah Constitution looked only through the rear-view mirror and protected only “existing rights.” It provided no guidance for the future.

Eight years later, the 1903 state Legislature adopted an extensive water code declaring public ownership of water, appointing a state engineer, fixing the procedure for acquiring the unappropriated water and authorizing the use of eminent domain to acquire rights of way for the beneficial use of water. All rights of way, even for the most basic uses of water, required payment of just compensation.

Beneficial uses identified in the debates and statutes related to irrigation, industrial, mining, milling, manufacturing, livestock watering, domestic and culinary. While the statutory scheme has been tweaked from time to time over the years, it remains largely intact. Noticeably absent for most of our (more…)

By Tom Harvey

Salt Lake Tribune

The Federal Trade Commission has obtained a preliminary injunction against several Utah payday loan operations that it accuses of violating federal law.

The agency, in a complaint in U.S. District Court for Utah, accuses the businesses and managers of using deceptive practices, including garnishing wages without a court order. To garnish wages in order to collect on bad debts, the companies sent letters implying they were acting under a law that allows the federal government to collect certain debts without going to court, the complaint says.

Named in the lawsuit are LoanPointe LLC, of Highland, and EastBrook LLC, of Provo, along with principals and managers Joe S. Strom, Benjamin J. Lonsdale, James C. Endicott and Mark S. Lofgren.

Nice to have the names of these guys. It would be nice to publish the names of all the owner, operators of payday loan businesses. It would be more embarrassing than having your name published as a john.

Those parties agreed to the injunction, signed last week by U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball, without admitting wrongdoing. Among other things, the injunction prohibits the companies and officials from violating loan laws and rules, requires them to provide the FTC with financial information about the companies and to preserve all relevant records.

Attorney John J.E. Markham II, of Boston, who represents LoanPointe and the other defendants, said Friday his clients agreed to the injunction because they already had stopped the activities in question after being notified by the Treasury Department in November that they were improper.

“When the company started doing this, it had some professionals on its staff, including a lawyer, who drafted the agreement they had with the people who borrowed money from them,” said Markham. “They thought it was fine.”

Markham, though, admitted the practice of garnishing wages without a court order was “technically” illegal.

Payday loans are commonly those that a person uses to tide them over between paychecks. They usually carry high rates of interest and penalties for missing payments.

The complaint says that since at least September 2008, the Utah companies conducted business as Ecash and GeteCash and through Internet sites such as www.getecash.com, offering loans of $1,000 or less.

Loan applicants filled out an online application that required them to check a box identified as an electronic signature that meant they had accepted the terms of the loan. One of the terms was “NOTICE: I agree to have my wages garnished to pay any delinquent amount (more…)

Published on Saturday, April 3, 2010 by The New York Times

by The New York Times

by Bob Herbert

The great man was moving with what seemed like great reluctance. He knew as he climbed from the car in Upper Manhattan that he was stepping into the maelstrom, that there were powerful people who would not react kindly to what he had to say.

“I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight,” said the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “because my conscience leaves me no other choice.”

This was on the evening of April 4, 1967, almost exactly 43 years ago. Dr. King told the more than 3,000 people who had crowded into Riverside Church that silence in the face of the horror that was taking place in Vietnam amounted to a “betrayal.”

Bob Herbert is one of the sensible voices in journalism who is usually a head of the pack. This column by him is an insightful observation of our inability to learn from history.

He spoke of both the carnage in the war zone and the toll the war was taking here in the United States. The speech comes to mind now for two reasons: A Tavis Smiley documentary currently airing on PBS revisits the controversy set off by Dr. King’s indictment of “the madness of Vietnam.” And recent news reports show ever-increasing evidence that we have ensnared ourselves in a mad and tragic venture in Afghanistan.

Dr. King spoke of how, in Vietnam, the United States increased its commitment of troops “in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support.”

It’s strange, indeed, to read those words more than four decades later as we are increasing our commitment of troops in Afghanistan to fight in support of Hamid Karzai, who remains in power after an election that the world knows was riddled with fraud and whose government is one of the most corrupt and inept on (more…)