Progress Report: Democracy Hypocrisy

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Wed, 18 May 2005 08:39:05 -0700

Progress Report: Democracy Hypocrisy

" American Progress Action Fund "

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The Progress Report

by Christy Harvey and Judd Legum with Nico Pitney and Mipe Okunseinde

www.progressreport.org

5/18/2005

 

For news and updates throughout the day, check out our blog at

ThinkProgress.org.

 

UZBEKISTAN

 

Democracy Hypocrisy

 

In his second inaugural address, President Bush said the " ultimate

goal " of his administration would be " ending tyranny in our world, "

adding, " the difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it. "

Sometimes, however, the world is not as black and white as the

president believes. Fighting the global terrorist networks and

promoting democracy are not fundamentally incompatible. There are

times when our long-term goal of promoting democracy has to take a

back seat. But that's no excuse for going soft on dictators. Last

week, hundreds of people were viciously massacred in Uzbekistan, which

is ruled by a brutally repressive regime that also is a U.S. ally in

the region. The Uzbek president, iron-fisted Islam Karimov, sent

military troops to fire on a crowd of protestors. It's not the first

time Karimov has trampled human rights. Uzbekistan has a brutal track

record of human rights abuses. There are reportedly as many as 6,000

political prisoners in Uzbekistan. Torture is rampant. There is no

free press. Religious worship is severely restricted. Yet, it took the

Bush administration three days to criticize the slaughter. Worse, the

Bush White House – for all of its talk of spreading freedom and

democracy in the world – has supported the repressive Karimov.

 

WHAT HAPPENED: For weeks, Uzbeks have protested the incarceration of

23 businessmen Karimov said supported an obscure Islamic extremist

group. Last week, tensions boiled over as militants broke into the

prison and freed the prisoners. Thousands then joined the throng of

demonstrators to protest the region's crushing poverty, Karimov's

increasingly autocratic rule and the government's unfair treatment of

Muslims. Karimov's answer? Send in the troops. Witnesses report the

military opened fire on the crowd, killing anywhere from 300 to 750

people. (Karimov lowballs the number of people killed at about 169

and maintains he did nothing wrong because " only terrorists were

liquidated by government forces. " Witnesses tell a different story,

saying the soldiers murdered hundreds of ordinary citizens and

innocent bystanders, including women and children, many at close range.)

 

THE MUTED RESPONSE: The U.S. response to the massacre has been

strangely muted. White House spokesman Scott McClellan initially

seemed to blame the dead protestors, saying, " The people of Uzbekistan

want to see a more representative and democratic government, but that

should come through peaceful means, not through violence. " He also

parroted Karimov's line, blaming the violence on " some members of a

terrorist organization that were freed from prison. " State Department

spokesman Richard Boucher concurred, saying while " everywhere people

have the right to express their grievances … but grievances should be

pursued through a peaceful process. " Even Secretary of State

Condoleezza Rice, who held a press conference to stress U.S. concern

with the situation, qualified, " Nobody is asking any government to

deal with terrorists. " They seem unconcerned with the fact that this

directly contradicts the White House rationale for the bloody invasion

of Iraq.

 

LOVING KARIMOV: The administration forged close ties to Karimov. Bush

met with the repressive leader in March 2002; after that meeting,

then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice reported, " I was

recently in a meeting with the President, with a central Asian leader,

with Karimov, in which he said to him, yes, I appreciate what you've

done in the war on terrorism, this is terrific. " Secretary of Defense

Donald Rumsfeld took grinning photographs with him. Even former

Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill gushed, " It's a great pleasure to have

an opportunity to spend time with someone with both a very keen

intellect and a deep passion about the improvement of the life of the

people of this country. "

 

KARIMOV LISTENS TO WHAT WE DO, NOT WHAT WE SAY: Rice did call on

Karimov to institute reform. Karimov, however, has openly ignored any

admonishments of his behavior, secure in the knowledge that he has

near-unconditional support from the Pentagon. Last summer, for

example, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to cut off $18

million in aid for Uzbek soldiers, charging the country had not

improved its brutal human rights record. Weeks later, head of the

Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers publicly called the cut " very

shortsighted " and promptly announced the U.S. would give $21 million

for bioterrorism defense. The State Department, under pressure, then

restored $7 million of the suspended aid.

 

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF TORTURE: The United States has not only overlooked

the atrocities that regularly occur in Uzbekistan; the White House has

also tried to use the country to do its dirty work. The New York Times

recently reported the government has regularly sent terror suspects to

Uzbekistan, even knowing the country's reputation for beating and

asphyxiating prisoners, boiling body parts, using electroshock on

genitals and " plucking off fingernails and toenails with pliers. "

 

CORPORATE POWER

 

Caveat Consumer: The War on Sarbanes-Oxley

 

As images of CEOs being escorted away in handcuffs begin to fade from

public memory, unscrupulous members of the business community are

putting on gloves to fight their greatest nemesis: the Sarbanes-Oxley

Act of 2002. Enacted after the financial meltdowns of Enron, WorldCom

and a slew of other companies, Sarbanes-Oxley requires corporations to

adopt more responsible accounting practices, publicly disclose more

details about their finances, and improve corporate governance and

accountability. More than just good for shareholders, Sarbanes-Oxley

is " worth the trouble " for business as well. As one top executive put

it, " many public companies should be looking at the new Sarbanes-Oxley

financial disclosure the same way most of us should view spinach –

it's just plain good for you. " Yet corporate America continues to

refuse to eat its vegetables. (Attorney General Eliot Spitzer will

speak on this at a policy address at the Center for American Progress

today at 10:30. We'll have the transcript later this week for those of

you who can't attend.)

 

IMPLEMENTATION COSTS: For the first time in 14 years, American workers

saw an across the board pay cut that certainly didn't extend to our

nation's multi-millionaire CEOs. Yet, corporate America continues to

bemoan the implementation costs of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The high

initial implementation costs of Sarbanes-Oxley are not terribly

surprising as the law " required the most far-reaching changes in

corporate accountability since the Depression. " According to SEC

Chairman William Donaldson, it is " important to note that a

substantial portion of the cost may reflect initial start-up expenses

as many companies, for the first time, conducted a systematic review

and documentation of their internal controls. " Furthermore, " some

costs may have been unnecessary … [as] some participants in the

initial implementation phase may have taken an approach that resulted

in excessive or duplicative effort. " The SEC recently released

guidelines on how companies could cut costs while still complying with

the Act.

 

THE GREENSPAN SEAL OF APPROVAL: A staunch " proponent of the free

market, " Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is famous for

" [denouncing] government regulation. " He is also a quite public

defender of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In a commencement address at the

University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, Greenspan

expressed his surprise that " the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, so rapidly

developed and enacted, has functioned as well as it has. " He continued

on to assert that " merely certifying that generally accepted

accounting principles were being followed is no longer enough " and so

the law " importantly reinforced the principle that … corporate

managers should be working on behalf of shareholders to allocate

business resources to their optimum use. "

 

THE SYMPATHETIC EAR OF A PRO-BUSINESS CONGRESS: With an increasingly

conservative Congress, the business community is having no problem

finding allies on the Hill to fight back against Sarbanes-Oxley. The

most vocal congressional opponents of the Act are Rep. Jeff Flake

(R-AZ) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), two of only three representatives who

voted against the initial Act, who have called the Act a " hasty

mistake " that was " rushed into law in a hysterical atmosphere. " Now

both are floating legislation to either undermine or repeal completely

Section 404, one of the most investor-protecting elements of the Act.

Aimed to protect company shareholders from the financial gutting

experienced after the collapse of Enron and WorldCom, Section 404

requires " top management and outside auditors [to verify]

internal-control systems and to identify financial problems. "

 

GOING AFTER CONSUMERS' BEST DEFENDERS, SPITZER…: The president of the

Chamber of Commerce described the implementation of Sarbanes-Oxley as

a " runaway system of corporate destruction being run by [New York

Attorney General] Eliot Spitzer and the people who work at the SEC. "

Instead of being in the pocket of big business as expected, both

Spitzer and the SEC have been fighting fiercely on behalf of consumers

and investors. As New York attorney general, Spitzer stepped into the

vacuum left by a then inept SEC and " transformed a sleepy office into

the nation's dominant regulator and re-engineer of the financial

services industry – all in the name of protecting consumers. "

 

…AND DONALDSON: Finally freed of years of feckless leadership by

Harvey Pitt, the SEC is now chaired by William Donaldson, who quickly

earned the ire of corporate America for being " a tougher regulator

than expected. " Under Donaldson, the SEC has " turned the corner as far

as letting people know we're going to have integrity in the capital

markets and accounting. " Interestingly, Donaldson is a former Wall

Street executive, while Spitzer comes from a real estate empire

family. Originally said about Spitzer, there is an observation that

applies to both individuals: " If he's waging class warfare, it's

against his own class. "

 

Under the Radar

 

CORRUPTION – OVER $30 MILLION AWARDED TO RESIDENTS WHO DID NOT

EXPERIENCE HURRICANE DAMAGE: In the aftermath of Hurricane Frances,

the Bush administration awarded $31 million in disaster relief to

12,000 Florida residents who may not have experienced any hurricane

damage. The Department of Homeland Security inspector general reports

that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) didn't adequately

inspect homes and used a system of aid payments " susceptible to

potential fraud, waste and abuse. " Among the questionable expenses

were $15,742 for three funerals that probably were not

disaster-related, $2.7 million to repair 2,180 homes that did not have

proper documentation, and $192,592 in reimbursements for chainsaws,

generators and other unverified expenses.

 

IRAQ – WHY THE LEAKED BRITISH MEMO HAS BEEN A 'DUD': The Christian

Science Monitor attempts to explain why the leaked British memo, which

contained the damaging assertion that the intelligence and facts about

Iraq were " being fixed around the policy, " has not gained more

attention. In its round-up of the media coverage on the memo, the

paper writes, " There may have been a point at which the US news media

would have been all over a story about a British official's report

that the Bush administration appeared intent on invading Iraq long

before it sought Congress' approval.… But May 2005 is apparently way

past that point. "

 

CIVIL LIBERTIES – INTERROGATION OF ANTIWAR PROTESTERS WERE 'PRETEXT

INTERVIEWS': The Washington Post reports that antiwar protesters who

were questioned in Denver last year as part of a coordinated FBI

crackdown on antiwar rallies were simply " pretext interviews. " " FBI

officials and then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said at the time

that the interviews were based on indications that radical protesters

may be planning violent disruptions…. But the new memos provide no

indication of specific threat information. Instead, one heavily

censored memo from the FBI's Denver field office, dated Aug. 2, 2004,

characterized the effort as 'pretext interviews to gain general

information concerning possible criminal activity at the upcoming

political conventions and presidential election.' "

 

TAXES – ANTI-TAX IDEOLOGUES WANT COLORADO TO SUFFER IN SILENCE: Meet

TABOR, a.k.a. the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, a hodgepodge of

" anti-tax " initiatives conceived in the bowels of the Heritage

Foundation and made law in Colorado in 1992. Similar legislation is

now being considered by at least sixteen other states, and residents

of those states are looking to see how Colorado's TABOR experience has

been. Here's a hint: the legislation has so badly devastated

Colorado's economy that both the conservative-dominated state

legislature and Gov. Bill Owens ® want Coloradans to approve a major

TABOR reform initiative. But according to the Rocky Mountain News,

anti-tax ideologues like Grover Norquist are fighting against it. In

their view, " even a symbolic hit to the flagship TABOR could sink the

fleet nationwide, " so Coloradans must suffer in silence. That's

conservatism with zero compassion.

 

DEFENSE – NUKES IN SPACE: Here's an unsettling thought: technically

unsound weapons of mass destruction hovering above our heads in outer

space. According to the New York Times, the Air Force is seeking

" President Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could

move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive

space weapons. " That means deploying nuclear weapons in space that

still " face major technical, budgetary and physical barriers, " and

amounts to a " substantial shift in American policy. " According to

defense analysts, it also means potentially triggering another arms

race. Hui Zhang, a Chinese scholar at Harvard University, told Reuters

that " China was already very concerned about U.S. plans in space, and

was likely to respond by building more warheads. "

 

GOOD NEWS

 

Senators began work on an energy bill yesterday. Unlike the House's,

the Senate's legislation includes stronger conservation measures and

excludes drilling in the Alaska wildlife refuge.

 

DON'T MISS

 

TALKING POINTS: DEFCON 2 in Congress: Right-Wing Out of Control.

 

HUMAN RIGHTS: The scapegoat of the torture scandal?

 

STEM CELL: How states are filling Bush's leadership vacuum.

 

JUDICIARY: Senator Frist steps up to the brink.

 

DAILY GRILL

 

" And there are a number of vacancies that the Senate has not moved

forward on. " – White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, 5/17/05

 

VERSUS

 

The year is " one-third complete and the president has sent only one

new nominee. Twenty-nine other vacancies sit without nominees. " – Sen.

Patrick Leahy (D-VT), 5/12/05

 

DAILY OUTRAGE

 

Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita – citing an anonymous, uncorroborated

source – suggested that Muslim detainees were desecrating their own

Qurans.

 

© Copyright 2005 by American Progress Action Fund. All rights reserved.