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READER Charles Andrews points out that we miscalculated the number of projected newly insured in our analysis of the CBO healthcare report. For non-Medicaid/CHIP recipients there would be an increase of 16 million, not 7 million as we said._______________________________________________________

A little late in the news cycle but worth catching up on. . ._______________________________________________________

Excerpt from a letter sent from chief actuary of the Department of Health & Human Services to GOP Senator McConnell.
 
Dear Senator McConnell:

This letter is in preliminary response to your inquiry of March 19 requesting an updated analysis by the Office of the Actuary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (as passed by the Senate) as it would be modified by the "Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute to H.R. 4872, the Reconciliation Act of 2010" (as released by the House Committee on Rules on March 18). The request was made jointly by yourself and 10 other members of the House and Senate Republican Leadership.

In your letter, you requested that we provide the updated actuarial estimates in time for your review prior to the expected House debate and vote on this legislation on March 21,2010. I regret that my staff and I will not be able to prepare our analysis within this very tight time frame, due to the complexity of the legislation. We will, however, continue working to estimate the financial, coverage, and other impacts of the health reform package and will provide these results to you as quickly as possible._______________________________________________________

EURWEB - A number of Tiger Woods sex toys have been created in the wake of his cheating scandal, and the golfer's lawyers have apparently had enough. One of the companies, Pipedream Products, just got a letter from Tiger's attorney demanding that it stop using the golf star's image to sell its line of sex toys. . . including blow-up Tiger dolls, giant condoms and a number of other devices._______________________________________________________

NY TIMES - The Wachovia Bank, a unit of Wells Fargo, has agreed to pay $160 million to settle a federal criminal case accusing it of laundering Mexican drug money, Reuters reports.

Under the agreement, Wachovia will forfeit $110 million, representing the proceeds of illegal narcotics sales that were laundered through the bank, the United States attorney's office in the Southern District of Florida said. The bank will pay an additional $50 million fine to the Treasury Department.

REUTERS - "Wachovia's blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations by laundering at least $110 million in drug proceeds," the United States attorney, Jeffrey Sloman, said Wednesday._______________________________________________________

BOSTON GLOBE - Hyatt has sold the Hyatt Regency Boston, one of the three local Hyatt hotels that fired their entire housekeeping staffs last year and replaced them with lower-paid subcontracted workers. The Chesapeake Lodging Trust, a lodging real estate investment trust of which Hyatt has a 4.9 percent ownership stake, purchased the 498-room property for $112 million, but Hyatt will continue to manage the hotel under the Hyatt Regency flag.

The Boston property has been the focus of a boycott organized by Unite Here Local 26, the hospitality workers union that is supporting the 98 fired housekeepers, who were not part of the union. The union estimates that the boycott has pulled $1 million worth of business from the downtown hotel, as well as $1 million from the other two area Hyatts, in Cambridge and at Logan International Airport._______________________________________________________

METAFILTER - Cybersyn (or Synco, in Spanish) was computer network constructed in 1970 by an English/Chilean team headed by cyberneticist Stafford Beer (his papers). Cybersyn was an electronic nervous system for the Chilean economy, linking together mines, factories and so on, to better manage production and give workers a clear idea of what was in demand and where. The network was destroyed by the army after the 1973 coup. Later that year Stafford Beer drew upon the lessons of Cybersyn to write Fanfare for Effective Freedom, a eulogy for Allende and Cybersyn, and Designing Freedom, a series of six lectures he gave for CBC, outlining his ideas. Besides the first link in this post, the best place to start is this Guardian article from 2003. If you want to go more in-depth, read Eden Medina's Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile. And if nothing else, just take a look at the amazing Cybersyn control room.

GUARDIAN, 2003 -When the Allende administration was deposed in a military coup, the 30th anniversary of which falls this Thursday, exactly how far Beer and his British and Chilean collaborators had got in constructing their hi-tech utopia was soon forgotten. In the many histories of the endlessly debated, frequently mythologised Allende period, Project Cybersyn hardly gets a footnote. Yet the personalities involved, the amount they achieved, the scheme's optimism and ambition and perhaps, in the end, its impracticality, contain important truths about the most tantalising leftwing government of the late 20th century._______________________________________________________

BBC - A boat made of 12,000 plastic bottles has set sail on a voyage from San Francisco to Sydney to spread awareness about pollution in the world's oceans.

Environmentalist and banking heir David De Rothschild and a crew set out on the appropriately named Plastiki catamaran.

Their 11,000-nautical mile journey will go past the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a sea of waste about five times the size of the UK or twice that of Texas.

Four out of five plastic bottles end up in a landfill, according to the UN.

"It is time we beat waste and this is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind issue that needs to be addressed," Mr De Rothschild told the BBC earlier this month.

The 31-year-old adventurer, who has completed expeditions to both poles and various jungles, was already tweeting on Saturday, hours after the boat set sail on its three-month voyage.

"Traveling 2.0 Knots ummm! That's a lot of ocean ahead!" he said on his Twitter page. "Just saw our first bit marine debris - a plastic cup!"

FROM THE TWITTER LOG

Travelling 2.0 Knots ummm! That's a lot of ocean ahead! Big trawler not far ahead of us! just saw our first bit marine debris a plastic cup!

Little drama got caught up on a crab pot had to get under the boat to free up the rudder! First night action! Hard to see em until they onya_______________________________________________________

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USA TDOAY - The basic math and reading skills of USA students have slowly, surely improved over the past 30 to 40 years, new findings show, with sharp increases among many of the nation's lowest-performing students - especially in the past four years.

The bad news? Scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, find that the stubborn, decades-long achievement gap between white and minority students shrank between the 1970s and the first part of this decade, but has barely budged since 2002, when the federal government compelled public schools to address it through No Child Left Behind .

In a few cases the gap has actually grown since 2002, according to NAEP.

Overall scores have risen across the board since then, with an average three-point gain on a 500-point scale - and 10 points since the 1970s.

But the results also show that gaps in reading between white and black 17-year-olds, which shrank 26 points from 1971 to 2004, actually grew by two points in 2008. In math, the black-white gap shrank 13 points between 1978 and 2004, but was essentially unchanged in 2008.

Results were equally flat on the Hispanic-white achievement gap, the findings show.

For more than a decade, states have focused on shrinking skills gaps between ethnic and socio-economic groups. In 2002, Washington explicitly pushed schools to address the problem, requiring them to improve scores in annual math and reading tests through No Child Left Behind, the congressionally mandated school reform law that is now up for reauthorization._______________________________________________________

WASHINGTON POST - Getting people to pay for news online at this point would be "like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons," a new consumer survey suggests.

That was one of several bleak headlines in the Project for Excellence in Journalism's annual assessment of the state of the news industry, released Sunday.

The project's report contained an extensive look at habits of the estimated six in 10 Americans who say they get at least some news online during a typical day. On average, each person spends three minutes and four seconds per visit to a news site.

About 35 percent of online news consumers said they have a favorite site that they check each day. The others are essentially free agents, the project said. Even among those who have their favorites, only 19 percent said they would be willing to pay for news online - including those who already do.

There's little brand loyalty: 82 percent of people with preferred news sites said they'd look elsewhere if their favorites start demanding payment.

"If we move to some pay system, that shift is going to have to surmount significant consumer resistance," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the project, part of the Pew Research Center.

Last year, online advertising saw its first decline since 2002, according to the research firm eMarketer. Four of five Americans surveyed told the project that they never or hardly ever click on ads.

Despite a lot of choices, traffic on news sites tends to be concentrated on the biggest - Yahoo, MSNBC, CNN, AOL and The New York Times.

"There was this view that we're retreating into our own world of niche sites and that's not true," Rosenstiel said._______________________________________________________

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ALTERNET - The devastating earthquake in Haiti last January claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people, making it one of the biggest single natural disasters this year.

But in contrast, some 3.6 million people - including 1.5 million children - are estimated to die each year from water-related diseases, including diarrhea, typhoid, cholera and dysentery. . .

A study by the Joint Monitoring Programme of the World Health Organisation and the U.N. children's agency UNICEF provided current trends on water and sanitation in 209 countries and territories worldwide._______________________________________________________

NY TIMES - The curvy mannequin piqued the interest of a couple of lanky teenage boys. Little did they know that as they groped its tight maroon shirt in the clothing store that day, video cameras were rolling.

At a mall, a father emerged from a store dragging his unruly young son by the scruff of the neck, as if he were the family cat. The man had no idea his parenting skills were being immortalized.

At an office supply store, a mother decided to get an item from a high shelf by balancing her small child on her shoulders, unaware that she, too, was being recorded.

These scenes may seem like random shopping bloopers, but they are meaningful to stores that are striving to engineer a better experience for the consumer, and ultimately, higher sales for themselves. Such clips, retailers say, can help them find solutions to problems in their stores - by installing seating and activity areas to mollify children, for instance, or by lowering shelves so merchandise is within easy reach.

Privacy advocates, though, are troubled by the array of video cameras, motion detectors and other sensors monitoring the nation's shopping aisles.

Many stores and the consultants they hire are using the gear not to catch shoplifters but to analyze and to manipulate consumer behavior. And while taping shoppers is legal, critics say it is unethical to observe people as if they were lab rats. They are concerned that the practices will lead to an even greater invasion of privacy, particularly facial recognition technology, which is already in the early stages of deployment.

Companies that employ this technology say it is used strictly to determine characteristics like age and gender, which help them discover how different people respond to various products. But privacy advocates fear that as the technology becomes more sophisticated, it will eventually cross the line and be used to identify individual consumers and gather more detailed information on them._______________________________________________________

FAIR - On his weekend NBC show, Chris Matthews regularly posts a question to 12 regular pundit/journalists--what he calls "The Matthews Meter." This Sunday the question was: "Should Obama Move to the Center Instead of the Left as a Reelection Strategy?"

Matthews explained it on the show: "Let's go to the bottom line. We took it to The Matthews Meter, 12 of our regulars. What's the smartest political route for Obama right now, play to the center or to the left? Well, no contest here. Eleven say play to the center; just one says go left."

That's about as clear a statement of the political bias of the corporate press corps as you're likely to see. The advice for Democrats is always the same-- move to the right.

FAIR - Broadcasting & Cable spoke with the head of PBS's flagship New York station about the recent hire of Newsweek editor Jon Meacham and former MTV and NPR host Alison Stewart for PBS's forthcoming program Need to Know, which is replacing Now and the Bill Moyers Journal:

WNET president Neal Shapiro . . . said he is not concerned that Stewart and Meacham, who has been a frequent guest on Charlie Rose as well as MSNBC's Morning Joe, will bring ideological baggage to the program.

"They are both are incredibly smart. And I think, given their intellect, neither are people you can pigeonhole left or right. I think they have a history of asking probing questions on all sides."

"Given their intellect" they can't be placed on the left or the right? Yeah, smart people are all centrists. . ._______________________________________________________

NY TIMES - Some Democratic senators and state and local air regulators are concerned that the latest draft of a Senate climate and energy bill would unduly strip authority from U.S. EPA and states.

Details emerged earlier this week that draft legislation from Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) would curb EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and would limit states' climate laws and regulations. But that decision is not sitting well with some Democrats. . .

An industry official who met Wednesday in a closed-door session with architects of the bill said the legislation would block EPA from requiring New Source Review and Title V operating permits from stationary sources based on their greenhouse gas emissions. The draft would also block the agency from regulating greenhouse gases as air toxics and from setting nationwide emission limits -- known as National Ambient Air Quality Standards -- based on the emissions' effects on climate change, that person said. Additionally, it would pre-empt state and regional cap-and-trade programs.

Industries are eager to streamline any forthcoming climate rules under a consistent federal program.

"We believe there should be one uniform congressional policy on greenhouse gases -- not state by state, not overlapping with other environmental requirements -- one program," the industry official said.

But state regulators are wary that the draft bill could overly restrict their authority.

"I hope the sponsors, in pursuing support from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other industrial groups, have not crossed the line on pre-emption," said Bill Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. Becker's group represents state and local air pollution control agencies nationwide.

"Climate change is such a monumental problem that action at all levels -- local, state and federal -- is essential if we are serious about achieving our ultimate goals," Becker added. "Future climate legislation should build upon this successful partnership, not supplant it, and preserve the rights of state and local governments to take more stringent actions where needed."

Bill Snape, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, said his group would oppose Clean Air Act limitations. "I think if there are Clean Air Act pre-emptions in it, it's a deal-killer," Snape said. "We're going to go after it as hard as we know how."

Snape's group has been a vocal proponent of preserving EPA's Clean Air Act authorities under any climate legislation. The organization was also among 26 environmental groups that sent a letter (pdf) to senators this week urging them to oppose a bill sponsored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) that seeks to postpone EPA climate rules for stationary sources for two years._______________________________________________________

Sam Smith

As noted here before, the healthcare bill is a horrible mixture of the good and the bad. Because, in the end, it will improve healthcare for many people, it is probably best to pass it and deal with its problems later, but it still remains in large part a god awful measure. Here's a rundown on some of the good and the bad:

HOW MANY ARE BEING HELPED?

The Obamites brag about the bill providing new health care for 32 million people.

- In addition nine million of these, according to the CBO study, are presumed to be people moving to a another form of health care - i.e. from their employer based insurance (4 million) or presently non-group insured (5 million) moving to exchanges.

- Half of the improvement (16 million) would be due to improvements in Medicaid and CHIP. You don't need a 2000 page bill to do that.

- Subtract the Medicaid and policy shifters from the calculation and you end up with 16 million new people getting insurance. And this is not, for the most part, because the Democrats are providing it (although there will be tax credits to help some). A big reason will be a hidden tax known as the individual mandate. Thus Obama and the Democrats are claiming credit for giving people something when they are instead requiring them to do it with their own funds. This would be like claiming credit for increasing millions of people's incomes by reinstituting the draft.

- In sum, about 16 million people are being substantially helped and about the same number are being manipulated into thinking they are getting more than they are.For example, private insurance costs can be expected to soar, but tax credits are unlikely to rise at the same rate.

THE MANDATE

The individual mandate is unconstitutional. As constitutional attorney David Rivkin has explained, it goes far beyond the standard judicial excuse of regulating interstate commerce: "What's unique is the mandate [is] imposed on individuals merely because they live - not connected with any economic activity, not because they grow something, make something, compose something. Merely because they live. And this is absolutely unprecedented." Even when the government decided to ban drinking during Prohibition, it at least had the decency to pass a constitutional amendment.

Although the Democrats and the media don't want to talk about it, it's worth noting that even the Congressional Research Service would only go as far as to say that Congress "may have" the power to impose mandates but also called it the "most challenging question" of the measure.

If this provision is upheld in the courts, nothing would prevent the government from, for example, ordering people above a cetain BMI to buy memberships in private health clubs and to attend them at least three times a week.

THE INDUSTRY SUBSIDY

By requiring new insurance from inefficient private providers instead of through a government program, the administration is subsidizing the insurance cabal by billions of dollars. Further, even though the public option provision fell far short of what it should have been, Obama's back room deal with the industry to knife it is one of the strongest reasons why he should not be encouraged to run again for president.

THE STALL

An amazing number of provisions won't go into effect for four to nine years. One of the problems with this is that if, during this period, the GOP gains control of the Congress, there is nothing to stop them from stalling these programs further. In addition, the Democrats are playing an extraordinarily dangerous political game - taking immediate credit for things that may not happen for years to come. In fact, the first significant benefits to anyone will not occur for four years according to the CBO calculations.

For example, not until 2014 would employers be banned from denying coverage or providing higher premiums for women or older people. What if our civil rights laws had been written that way, say, giving restaurants four more years to ban blacks?

MEDICARE DRUG FUNDING

The reconciliation bill includes additional Medicare drug funding, closing the so-called doughnut hole in coverage.

NEW MEDICARE TAX

Business Week: "Already in the Senate bill, a higher Medicare payroll tax will be assessed on individuals who make more than $200,000 a year or families with income of more than $250,000. The reconciliation bill includes an additional 3.8 percent Medicare tax on unearned income such as dividends on these high earners."

EMPLOYER MANDATE

Business Week: "Under the Senate bill, if an employer with more than 50 employees doesn't offer coverage and has just one employee who qualifies for a new tax credit, the company must pay a fee for every full-time employee on its roster. The reconciliation bill raises the penalty to $2,000 from $750, though it subtracts the first 30 employees from the calculation.

ABORTION FUNDING

Not currently addressed in the bill.

THE MEDICARE-MEDICAID METAPHOR

The liberal Center for Budget Policy & Priorities claims that "this legislation [will] produce the greatest gains in health coverage since the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid 45 years ago." This is an insult to Medicare and Medicaid, which were, after all, public programs and not regulations. There is a huge difference between providing someone with something and ordering them to buy it.

WHO NEEDS A CONSTITUTION IF THE BUDGET IS BALANCED?

The legislation includes a flagrantly anti-constitutional provision, as described by the CBPP:

[] The legislation would establish an Independent Payment Advisory Board to develop and submit proposals to slow the growth of Medicare and private health care spending and improve the quality of care. The President would nominate the board's 15 members, who would require Senate confirmation, for staggered six-year terms.
If the projected growth in Medicare costs per beneficiary in 2015 and thereafter exceeded a specified target level which it almost certainly would do in many years the board would be required to produce a proposal to eliminate the difference. The board could not propose increases in Medicare premiums or cost-sharing or cuts in Medicare benefits or eligibility criteria; it would focus on proposals for savings in the payment and delivery of health care services.
The board's recommendations would go into effect automatically unless both houses of Congress passed, and the President signed, legislation to modify or overturn them. If the board recommended changes that the President supported, the President could veto any congressional attempt to block them, and a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate would be required to override the veto.[]
This provision is contemptuous of the basic concept of our constitutional government.

CUTTING MEDICARE COSTS

One of the big sleepers in the bill is the plan to "institute efficiencies" in Medicare programs. In fact, Medicare is far more efficient than any private insurance plan in the country.

Consider this snippet from CBPP: "The legislation would reduce annual payment updates to hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, hospices, ambulatory surgical centers, and certain other providers to account for improvements in economy-wide productivity. It would also reduce payments to home health agencies, skilled nursing facilities, and inpatient rehabilitation facilities." And just what will happen to service and its availability?

Remember: one person's efficiency is another's lack of service.

OTHER PROVISIONS

CBPP - Within months, insurers that offer coverage of policyholders' children (including in existing plans) would be required to allow adult dependents younger than 26 to be added to such coverage. In addition, new insurance plans would be barred from excluding children's pre-existing conditions from coverage and would have to cover certain preventive services at no charge to enrollees.

EXPANDED MEDICAID ELIGIBILITY

Saving the best until last. As the CBPP puts it:

"The plan would expand Medicaid up to 133 percent of the poverty line for all children and adults younger than 65 who are lawfully residing in the United States and not eligible for Medicare. This would mean that millions of low-income parents, as well non-disabled low-income adults who do not have dependent children (and who are generally ineligible for Medicaid today except in a small number of states with waivers), would become newly eligible for health coverage through Medicaid. Medicaid is the most cost-effective way to provide comprehensive and affordable coverage to people with very low incomes and thereby ensure that the low-income uninsured gain coverage. "

IN SUM

The bill will provide about 16 million poor people with significantly better health care. It will force millions more to buy health insurance, softened by tax credits that will not keep up with rising policy costs. 

It will put some restrictions on the insurance companies in return for providing them a multi-billion dollar annual subsidy.

It will declare the right of the government to order you to buy something whether you want it or not, and will it establish a budget commission with supra-constitutional powers. Both these provisions would be struck down by a rational Supreme Court (such as we haven't seen in some time) or the Constitutional shall have to be "deemed" substantially amended._______________________________________________________

REUTERS - A wealthy businessman who raised money for leading Democratic Party politicians, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, pleaded guilty on Thursday to defrauding three major banks out of $292 million in loan transactions.
Hassan Nemazee, 60, who once ran a private equity firm, admitted in Manhattan federal court to defrauding Bank of America Corp of more than $142 million, Citigroup Inc of $75 million and HSBC Holdings Plc of $75 million to pay his debt to Citigroup. . .
Nemazee admitted to three charges of bank fraud and one charge of wire fraud. Prosecutors said he had obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from the banks and used fake documents to show supposed ownership of collateral.
Nemazee was listed as one of the top bundlers of contributions to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org, a website run by the Center for Responsive Politics.
He typically donated more than $100,000 annually to Democratic Party political candidates, including Obama and now-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The judge allowed Nemazee to remain free on $25 million bail but under house arrest with electronic monitoring in his Manhattan apartment.
The office of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and the FBI said Nemazee had used proceeds from his scheme to make donations to election campaigns of federal, state and local candidates, political action committees and charities.
The Democratic National Committee declined to comment, but an official said it had been previously announced that the affected donations would go to charity.
REAL NEWS PROJECT, OCTOBER 2007 - The engineer of George W. Bush's rescue from financial disaster-a man who would propel Bush on the path to elective office-has quietly moved into Hillary Clinton's inner circle of key financial backers. The engineer is longtime GOP backer Alan Quasha. His mysterious Harken Energy drew intense scrutiny from investigators and the media in the early 90's and again during Bush's first term because of its dubious financial practices and board members connected to the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Along with a business partner, Quasha has been forging new links with Clinton and her associates for several years. Among other things, they have raised substantial sums for her, and in 2005 they discreetly hired Clinton confidant and longtime Democratic Party money man Terry McAuliffe, providing him with a lucrative temporary perch until the Clinton campaign formally launched with McAuliffe as its chairman.

RUSS BAKER & ADAM FEDERMAN, REAL NEWS PROJECT - Another strong link between Quasha and Clinton is Quasha's business partner, Hassan Nemazee, a top Hillary fundraiser who was trotted out to defend her during the Hsu episode--in which the clothing manufacturer was unmasked as a swindler who seemingly funneled illegal contributions through "donors" of modest means. . .
"That Hillary Clinton's campaign is involved with this particular cast of characters should give people pause," says John Moscow, a former Manhattan prosecutor. In the late 1980s and early '90s he led the investigation of the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) global financial empire--a bank whose prominent shareholders included members of the Harken board. "Too many of the same names from earlier troubling circumstances suggests a lack of control over who she is dealing with," says Moscow, "or a policy of dealing with anyone who can pay.". . .

Russ Baker, Who What Why, August 2009 - On August 25th, Hassan Nemazee, a top fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, was arrested and charged with forging loan documents in order to borrow $74 million from Citibank. . . Behind the Nemazee arrest lies a sprawling cautionary tale of presidents, would-be presidents, and the shadow world of wealthy operators who cozy up to them for their own gain. It reaches into the Bush operation as well as that of the Clintons, and is a microcosm of an influence bazaar that has gone global along with the economy.

Hassan Nemazee, who served as a finance director for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, began raising sizable sums for the Democratic National Committee in the mid-nineties. In 1998, in the midst of the Lewinsky affair, Nemazee collected $60,000 for Bill Clinton's legal defense fund in $10,000 increments from relatives and friends. . .

In 2005, Nemazee and his business partner, Alan Quasha, went deep into the Clinton circle to hire Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton confidante and former chairman of the Democratic Party, for Carret Asset Management, their newly acquired investment firm. During the interregnum between McAuliffe's party chairmanship and the time he officially joined Hillary Clinton's campaign as chairman, Nemazee and Quasha set McAuliffe up with a salary and opened a Washington office for him. . .

In March 2007, Nemazee, at the behest of McAuliffe, threw a dinner for Ms. Clinton at Manhattan's swank Cipriani restaurant, which featured Bill Clinton and raised more than $500,000. In 2008, after Barack Obama gained the nomination, Nemazee raised a comparable sum for him.

Before moving into the Democratic camp, Nemazee had backed such Republican senators as Jesse Helms, Sam Brownback and Alfonse D'Amato. . . Nemazee's business partner, Alan Quasha, who specializes in buying up troubled companies, has also played both sides of the partisan divide. Quasha gave to both Bush and Al Gore in 2000, and in the 2008 race gave to Republicans Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani as well as Democrats Barack Obama and Chris Dodd.

The strikingly trans-partisan and trans-national nature of this high-stakes influence game is best exemplified by the relationship between Quasha's oil company, Harken Energy, and George W. Bush. Harken provided a home for Bush in the 1980's when his own oil businesses failed, offering him handsome compensation and a solid financial base from which to enter politics. Bush was named to the Harken board and received a range of benefits from the company while devoting most of his time to his father's presidential campaign and then his own outside career efforts.

Harken is a curious outfit. Its early funding sources were opaque, and its investors and board members had a dizzying array of connections into global power centers - and ties to the Saudi leadership and the former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the Shah of Iran, as well as to the Swiss Bank, UBS, which has been charged by the US government with providing cover for Americans who were evading taxes.

Around the time George W. Bush joined its board, Harken received an unusual and sizable cash infusion from the Harvard Management Company, which handles Harvard University's endowment, the largest in the nation. . . Former employees of Harvard Management have recently made highly-publicized charges that the company engaged in Enron-style investment practices. . .

Nemazee's role as a foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton can be better understood through his own Iranian connections. His father was a shipping magnate who was close with the Shah of Iran and served as the Shah's commercial attache in Washington; Nemazee was a founding member of the Iranian-American Political Action Committee, a lobbying group.
For more on Harken, see Baker's 2009 book, Family of Secrets_______________________________________________________