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	Something Stinks in America by Will Hutton The Observer/ Bloomberg UK / USA   Published: October 2, 2005   The most important political event last week for Britain did not take place at the Labour party conference in Brighton, but in Travis County, Texas. District Attorney Ronnie Earle charged the second most powerful man in the United States, Tom DeLay, with criminal conspiracy. DeLay resigned as the majority leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives while he fights the case, a stunning political setback.   American conservatism that has shaped American and British politics for 20 years has been holed below the waterline. It will take a lot more to sink it, but DeLay"s indictment is symptomatic of a conservative over-reach and endemic corruption that will trigger, at the very least, a retreat and maybe even more. One-Nation Tories and honest-to-God Labour politicians can take some succor; the right-wing wind that has blown across the Atlantic for nearly a generation is about to ease. Hypocrisies have been exposed. The discourse in British politics is set to change.   The story begins in the murky world of campaign finance and the gray area of quasi-corruption, kickbacks and personal favors that now define the American political system. American politicians need ever more cash to fight their political campaigns and gerrymander their constituencies, so creating the political truth that incumbents rarely lose. US corporations are the consistent suppliers of the necessary dollars and Republican politicians increasingly are the principal beneficiaries. Complicated rules exist to try to ensure the relationship between companies and politicians is as much at arm"s length as possible; the charge against DeLay is that he drove a coach and horses through the rules.   If DeLay were another Republican politician or even a typical majority leader of the House, the political world could shrug its shoulders. Somebody got caught, but little will change. But DeLay is very different. He is the Republican paymaster, one of the authors of the K Street Project and the driving force behind a vicious, organized demonization and attempted marginalization of Democrats that for sheer, unabashed political animus is unlike anything else witnessed in an advanced democracy. Politicians fight their political foes by fair means or foul, but trying to exterminate them is new territory.   The K Street Project is little known outside the Washington beltway and its effectiveness as a political stratagem is only possible because of the unique importance of campaign finance to American politics. DeLay, together with Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and some conservative activists, notably the ubiquitous Grover Norquist who runs the anti-state, anti-tax lobby group "Americans for Tax Reform", conceived the notion 10 years ago that they should use the Republican majority in the House as a lever to ensure that the lobbyists, law firms and trade associations that inhabit Washington"s K Street, heart of the industry, should only employ Republicans or sympathizers. To be a Democrat was to bear the mark of Cain; K Street was to be a Democrat-free zone.   This, if it could be pulled off, would have multiple pay-backs. Special-interest groups and companies have always greased the palms of American law-makers and because of lack of party discipline, they have had to grease Democrat and Republican palms alike to get the legislation they wanted. DeLay"s ambition was to construct such a disciplined Republican party that lobbyists would not need Democrats, and so create an inside track in which the only greased palms from legislators to lobbyists would be Republican.   Lobbyists, law firms and trade associations should be told not to employ Democrats, so progressively excluding them from access to the lucrative channels of campaign finance. Democrats would become both poorer and politically diminished at a stroke and the Republicans would become richer and politically hegemonic.   It has worked. The most influential Washington lobbyist is Barbour, Griffiths and Rogers; it employs not a single Democrat. Last year, in a classic operation, House Republicans let the Motion Picture Association of America (the film industry lobby group) know that appointing a Democrat, Dan Glickman, as its head would mean $1.5 billion of tax relief for the film industry was now in peril. Glickman staffed up the MPAA with Republicans, but the threat remains. In 2003, the Republican National Committee could claim that 33 of the top 36 top-level K Street positions were in Republican hands. Today, it"s even closer to a clean sweep.   Corporations get their rewards. The oil and gas industry now gives 80 per cent of its campaign cash to Republicans (20 years ago, the split was roughly 50-50), and influence on this year"s energy bill was a classic sting. American petrol can now contain a suspected carcinogen; operators of US natural-gas wells can contaminate water aquifers to improve the yields from the wells; the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is open to oil exploration - concessions all created by DeLay"s inside track. And to provide ideological juice, there"s a bevy of think-tanks, paid for from the same web of contributions, cranking out the justification that the "state" and "regulation" are everywhere and always wrong.   But central to the operation is DeLay"s mastery of the party in the House. To get two more Republican votes in his pocket, he organized a gerrymander in Texas to create two more seats in the 2004 election and gave the Republican campaign there some extra campaign money. The trouble was, alleges the DA, the cash from Washington originally came from Texan companies, which are forbidden directly to back individual candidates and that DeLay devised the illegal scheme.   DeLay vigorously insists he"s the victim of a partisan stitch-up, surely a case of the biter bit? Yet the scope for misdirection of political funds is huge. Michael Scanlon, DeLay"s director of communications for six years, is under criminal investigation together with partner Jack Abramoff for the way they used $66 million, paid by 11 casino-owning native American tribes over three years into their K Street operation, and which seems to have financed, among other extraordinary expenditures, a DeLay golf trip to Scotland. Nobody checks too much on how their money is deployed as long as it brings results - access, tax breaks and legislative concessions. DeLay, Scanlon and Abramoff belong to the same culture.   In Congress, moderate Republicans don"t want guilt by association and companies value their reputation. The K Street Project stinks, along with all those associated with it. So far, the US media have been supine. DeLay"s tentacles, and those of Karl Rove, Bush"s top political adviser, have cowed media owners into the same compliance; if they want favors, best advance the Republican cause like Murdoch"s Fox News. American newsrooms are fearful places.   But DeLay"s indictment breaks back the dam. US politics moves in cycles. Once it was Republicans who were going to clean up corrupt Democrat Washington; now Democrats can champion the same cause. Nor can the media afford to be on the side of the Old Corruption; it"s bad for business. The wheel is turning, an important moment both sides of the Atlantic.   30 September 2005   “Bush Cronyism weakens Government Agencies”. (Bloomberg)   The ranks of political appointees in the US government have surged under President George W. Bush after falling during the Clinton administration, sparking concern - especially since Hurricane Katrina - that career professionals are being crowded out of key jobs.   Federal jobs available to political appointees rose 15 percent to 4,496 last year from 2000, according to the 2004 edition of the "Plum Book," which is published by Congress after each presidential election to list positions up for grabs. Those jobs declined 5 percent during President Bill Clinton"s second term, a comparison of the 2000 and 1996 Plum Books shows.   As the Bush administration draws increased scrutiny over the credentials of top-level employees after the hurricane, a review of the record shows the issue goes far beyond the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has borne the brunt of criticism for its fumbling response to the disaster.   "The larger that number becomes, the more likely you"re going to have someone come up with a problem," said Terry Sullivan, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, who studies how the White House works.   "It is quite surprising that Bush turned out to be more politicizing than Clinton," Sullivan said. "The Bush campaign was built around how they were the governors, not the politicians."   Under Bush, political appointees have penetrated deeper into agencies, creating more levels of bureaucracy. The biggest growth has been in jobs that don"t require Senate confirmation, which rose by almost one-quarter between 2000 and 2004.   Focus on FEMA   Michael Brown, 50, a former commissioner of an Arabian horse association, stepped down this month as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under pressure from lawmakers who criticized his lack of emergency-management credentials.   Under Bush, the job of heading FEMA"s recovery division went to a former lobbyist, after previously being reserved for career employees. The chief of staff position was given to a presidential advance man, Patrick Rhode; his Clinton-era counterpart was a career official with more than two decades of experience.   From the Food and Drug Administration to the Energy Department, positions for career officials at top levels have been eliminated. The FDA"s top lawyer until the Bush administration had been a career official. In 2001, that job went to an appointee, who wasn"t subject to Senate confirmation. Daniel Troy, who got the job, once represented drug and tobacco companies. He left the FDA in 2004 and is now a partner at a Washington law firm.   "Calling the Shots"   "Normally, the chief counsel of the FDA is someone who comes up through the ranks," said Representative Maurice Hinchey, a New York Democrat, who pushed to have Troy removed. "He has a background of interests that are contrary to the interests he"s supposed to have as the chief counsel of the FDA. Essentially, the pharmaceutical industry was calling the shots."   Troy said his post was traditionally a political position that was switched to a career job in the administration of President George H.W. Bush. "General counsels of major agencies are generally political appointees, which promotes accountability," Troy said. "I know of no one responsible who has ever questioned my qualifications."   Under Clinton, the senior policy adviser for science and technology at the Energy Department was a career official who reported directly to the secretary. Under Bush, the 2004 Plum Book shows the secretary"s office entirely made up of political appointees.   Abramoff Link   The Bush administration has also come under fire for its appointments of David Safavian as the White House"s top procurement official and Julie Myers to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.   Safavian, 38, quit his White House post on Sept. 16 and was arrested three days later in connection with a land deal involving Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist under indictment who continues to be investigated by a Justice Department task force. Safavian"s procurement experience consisted of a 20-month stint as chief of staff of the General Services Administration, which maintains federal property and buys supplies. The last Clinton-era appointee to the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, Deidre Lee, was previously top procurement official at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and had two decades of experience in the field.   Replacing a Veteran   Myers, 36, the niece of General Richard Myers, the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is married to the chief of staff of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, to whom she would report, the Washington Post reported. She would replace acting agency head John Clark, a 25-year veteran of the field.   Myers has served as assistant commerce secretary and chief of staff to an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, among other positions. From 1999 to 2001, she was a federal prosecutor in New York. In an interview with CBS News, Chertoff said Myers was a "superbly qualified former prosecutor."   The White House doesn"t plan to review the way it fills jobs, said Clay Johnson III, who oversaw presidential appointments when Brown, who then held FEMA"s No. 2 job, was named director in 2003.   "The appointments work done by this president is as fine as has ever been done," said Johnson, who was Bush"s roommate at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and is now deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. "And I believe that Mike Brown was properly selected to be the head of FEMA. He had served really well as the general counsel of FEMA. He served unbelievably well for two years as the head of FEMA."   "Most Qualified"   Johnson, who hired Safavian, said he was the "most qualified person" he interviewed for the procurement job. US Comptroller General David Walker, who heads the Government Accountability Office, Congress"s investigative arm, said "there needs to be more emphasis on the qualifications of individuals that have key positions."   A 2003 commission led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker recommended the president cut the number of jobs available in the Plum Book, which was first published in 1952 to help people find "plum" jobs in the incoming administration of President Dwight Eisenhower.   "Talented and experienced senior career managers find themselves forced further and further away from the centers of decision-making," the commission, a project of the Washington- based Brookings Institution, wrote in its report.   Drilling Down   That"s because the Bush administration increasingly tends to "drill down into government," making ever-lower-ranking officials political appointees, said Paul Light, a commission adviser and professor of organizational studies at New York University.   That layering "slows information coming up from the bottom, creates vacancies in the chain of command at key points in time and, contrary to their hopes, actually weakens the president"s control of government," Light said.   Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a Washington-based group that seeks to bring talented people into government, commended Bush for working to build a government-wide evaluation system for senior executives.   Still, Stier said, "The political positions are infiltrating deep into the system." Carol Bonosaro, president of the Senior Executives Association, a professional group that represents top government executives, calls it "political creep."   The universe of federal political appointees goes beyond Cabinet secretaries and their deputies and principal assistants. Lower-level "Schedule C" and other appointed jobs pay at the civil service scale and don"t need to be confirmed by the Senate. Their numbers grew 24 percent from 2000 to 2004 and are included in the Plum Book, which is formally known as "United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions." "We could do twice as good a job with half as many appointees," Light said.
	Iraq's Conflict is fueling a bitter Mideast Split by Amin Saikal International Herald Tribune   October 9, 2005   The wider consequences of the Iraq conflict are unfolding, but not in the way that the United States and its allies had expected. While stability, security and consolidated democracy continue to elude the Iraqis, an alarming outcome looming on the horizon is the sharpening of the historical division between the two main sects of Islam in the region: Sunnis and Shiites.   The traditional power equation in the Gulf is rapidly shifting in favor of Shiite Islam, which has a majority of followers in only three Middle Eastern countries - Iraq, Bahrain and Iran - and whose leadership is claimed by Iran. This has deeply concerned the regional Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, which champions the cause of Sunni Islam that is dominant in most Muslim countries.   If the present trend continues, the Iraq conflict could cause wider sectarian hostilities across the Muslim world, with a devastating impact on the region and beyond.   Historically, Iraq has had an Arab national identity but a majority Shiite population, ruled by a succession of minority Sunni-dominated elites. The U.S.-led invasion, and Washington's aim of installing a protégé government without affecting Iraq's Arab identity, changed all this.   The Sunnis' loss of political power drove many of their elements to join forces with Islamic extremists to mount a formidable resistance, preventing Washington from transforming Iraq and the region in the U.S. image. As result, the Bush administration has become increasingly dependent on its traditional minority Kurdish allies and responsive to the Shiite majority in Iraq as the best way of defeating the resistance.   In the process, however, America failed to see that its approach could also achieve what it had never intended: the empowerment of Iraq's Shiites and the diluting of Iraq's national identity, which had historically been forged within the Sunni-dominated Arab world.   The first development unquestionably strengthened the position of Iran, given the close sectarian ties between the two sides at both leadership and popular levels. This, together with Iran's support of the Lebanese Shiites in Hezbollah and its close political relationship with Damascus, has now given rise to a Shiite-dominated strategic entity, enabling Tehran to influence not only the course of events in Iraq but also the geostrategic situation in the region as a whole.   Given the traditional rivalry between Arabs and Iranians, the second development could only irritate the neighboring Arab states, all of whose governments have close links with the United States. Although most Iraqi Shiites are of Arab origin, Iraq's Arab neighbors fear that the sectarian affiliation of these Shiites could diminish Iraq's Arab identity by driving it more and more toward Iran.   This fear has lately prompted Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, to echo a common Arab concern in sharply criticizing what he alleges to be Iran's meddling in Iraqi affairs. Yet such criticism also had the effect of presenting the current government of Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, as an Iranian puppet. Further, it could make Iraq's Shiites turn even further away from the Arab world. The tragic outcome for Iraq and the region could be that both Arabs and Iranians might enhance their assistance to their respective sectarian allies in Iraq in what is shaping up as a fight by proxy.   These are the very developments that the Bush administration and its allies had wanted to avoid. But they are now confronted with them as a fait accompli. The occupying forces can no longer really trust either the Iraqi Sunni or Shiites. The only friends on whom they can count are the Kurds. No wonder President Jalal Talabani, the most prominent Kurd in the present Iraqi leadership, is desperately trying to persuade the United States and Britain against any early withdrawal of their troops.   The situation has become so tenuous that Washington and London feel that they need urgently to counterbalance the growing Shiite and Iranian influence in the region. Hence President George W. Bush's and Prime Minister Tony Blair's lambasting of the Iranian regime for helping the resistance in Iraq and for seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.   Unless Bush and Blair succeed in opening direct negotiations with the Iraqi resistance and enlist the support of Iraq's neighbors, especially Iran and Syria, as well as the Arab League, the Iraq conflict is set to grow into a bigger and longer-term regional crisis.   (Amin Saikal, a professor of political science, directs the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University.)
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