The Lighter Side of the Republican Party: Roger Stone

Roger Stone is a top Republican strategist. He costs some $20,000 per month. He is what Republicans love: a dirty fighter who (supposedly) leaves no fingerprints. He cut his teeth on Richard Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (or CREEP) and later was a partner of the legendary Lee Atwater.

New York State Republican legislators hired Roger near the end of the legislative session in June. As the N.Y. Times put it on 8/23/07 in their story, "Political Consultant Resigns After Allegations of Threatening Spitzer's Father":

Mr. Stone's reputation for hard-edged political tactics appeared to be a selling point for the Senate Republicans, who after Mr. Spitzer's election last fall were facing an aggressive Democratic governor eager to wipe out the state's last redoubt of Republican strength.

In a closed-door meeting last month, Mr. Stone presented a road map for agressively defending and rebuilding the party. Coinciding with Roger's emergence in Albany were web sites dotting the horizon with harsh accusations against Governor Spitzer. Reporters and others around the capital began receiving e-mail messages from addresses like SpitzerFile.com and NYFacts.net, most of them reprinting newspaper stories critical of Mr. Spitzer or containing political cartoons about him. Those two services are run by Michael Caputo, a Buffalo-area Republican who has worked for Mr. Stone in the past.

The mainstream media (if you called the New York Post "media") then featured stories about how Eliot Spitzer used the entire New York apparatus at his disposal to hound and stalk Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. Roger must have been pleased as punch. Then something strange happened, which can either be attributed to temporary insanity, being drunk with power or just plain being drunk: Roger decided to call up Eliot's father, an 83-year old man with Parkinson's Disease, and threaten him (anonymously). Just before 10 P.M. on August 6th, a message was left at Bernard Spitzer's Manhattan office that he would be "compelled by the Senate sergeant at arms" to testify about "shady campaign loans" he made to his son during Eliot Spitzer's unsuccessful campaign for attorney general in 1994.

"If you resist this subpoena, you will be arrested and brought to Albany," the message says, according to a transcript given to the New York Times. Bernard Spitzer hired Kroll Associates, the private investigative firm, to trace the message. They found that the number on Bernard's caller ID system linked it to listings under the name of Mr. Stone's wife, Nydia.

Has Roger Stone never heard of Caller ID? Even six-year-olds understand how Caller ID works and that everyone has it. The message continues in a rather uncouth vein: "There is not a goddamn thing your phony, psycho, piece-of-shit son can do about it. Bernie, your phony loans are about to catch up to you. You will be forced to tell the truth and the fact that your son's a pathological liar will be known to all."

Forget about the fact that the Times printed the phrase, "piece-of-shit". Just listen to how Roger tries to repair the damage. Caught with his pants down, he admitted yes it was his number and it was also shared by a Florida law firm for which he does public relations work, Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler. But he denied making the call. He says his apartment building is owned by a prominent Spitzer fundraiser, and suggests that allies of the governor may have given access to his apartment to someone who made the threatening call. As Roger says, "They have unfettered access to my apartment. I am on television constantly. As Gore Vidal said, never pass up the chance to have sex or be on television."

Actually, that part about sex is pretty funny and makes a lovely sidebar. Back in about 1996 Roger was working for Bob Dole as the presidential nominee. The National Enquirer published a salacious expose of Roger and his wife Nydia. It seems they are both swingers and advertise themselves in swingers' magazines and on the internet. Huge headline: "Top Dole Aide In Group Sex Ring". Even though a chunk of his expensive advice urges Republicans to emphasize family values and integrity, he and his ex-model wife Nydia, aka as Nikki, posted an ad on their Internet web site featuring a vavavoom picture of Nikki ("Hot insatiable babe, 40DD-24-36 seeks exceptional [threesomes] with her and her bodybuilder husband...Prefer athletes, bodybuilders, jocks and military.") The Stones solicited sex partners in as many as 70 swingers' magazines across the country. Nikki invited men in uniform to take part in sex games with her and Roger during the Republican convention in San Diego. The web site has been accessed thousands of times.

Nikki (I mean Nydia) was very helpful during the 2000 Florida recount. GWB enlisted her to rally support among Cuban exiles in Miami (she is of Cuban ancestry). During that jolly time, Roger was also instrumental in organizing the so-called Brooks Brothers Riot (according to Jeffrey Toobin's book "Too Close To Call", about the recount), when hundreds of Republican activist stormed a county election office in Miami and demanded that workers there cease recounting presidential ballots.

Anyway, the day the story about the "anonymous" phone call came out, Bruno fired Roger. Roger continues to insist that H. Dale Hemmerdinger, who owns the building on Central Park South where Roger and "Nikki" live, let unauthorized persons into his apartment. Mr. Hemmerdinger responded, "Roger's off his rocker." No actually he issued a statement, "Stone's allegations about me are untrue."

Roger also said that he had attended a performance of the Broadway play "Frost/Nixon" on the night of the alleged call and could "highly recommend it to Governor Spitzer. It shows you what hubris and lying brings you."

However, a blogger for New York magazine pointed out that the play (like most plays) had no Monday night performances.

Roger's response? "Well, then, I'm mistaken. My wife already reminded me I actually saw the play on a Wednesday. I still recommend the play to the governor."

Although he fired him, Bruno still pays homage to Roger's elaborations: "Roger's statement is that he didn't do it and that somebody got into his apartment and that someone who owns his apartment is a big contributor to Eliot Spitzer."

Case closed!

The Private Equity Industry--Billionaire Vultures Strip Your Bones

Some of you may have read my post on how Wall Street is destroying the value of pension funds by investing their money in mortgage-backed securities based on subprime mortgages, which are mortgages granted to people with lousy or no credit. To make a long story short, many pension funds for middle class workers such as teachers and policemen invested in these securities, which are now looking like the German mark during the Weimar Republic, where 1 million marks couldn't buy you a loaf of bread.

Private equity firms use these kinds of bonds to buy public companies, strip them to the bone by firing everyone, then resell the companies at a handsome profit. These deals are known as leveraged buyouts, leverage meaning debt. In other words, in order for a private equity firm such as Blackstone or Kravis Kohlberg to buy, for instance, Chrysler for $65 billion dollars, they borrow $2000 for every $100 they put in, then use the combined $2100 to buy Chrysler. (Not all of Chrysler. Just giving this as an example of how they operate.) Private equity firms don't risk any of their own money, they use Other People's Money (OPM) to make these deals, collect the profits, and pay capital gains tax rates on them (15%). Everyone else including the secretaries at their firms pay 35% on their income.

Why is this important? Because Congress is trying to bring the private equity tax rate in line with ordinary income and tax it at 35% instead of 15%. This makes the private equity firms very upset. Right now, Henry R. Kravis, billionaire founder of the corporate buyout movement, is roaming the halls of Congress, hoping to kill the legislation that would raise his taxes and those of other investment firm executives.

He sees private equity enterprises as good for the little guy, citing examples of how his firm produced many jobs by turning around troubled businesses. The lower tax rate benefits all Americans, he insists, and the increase in tax rates would harm American competitiveness abroad. When asked if the higher tax rates would affect pension fund returns, first he said no, then an adviser to KK said he believed the legislation could have an adverse effect on pension fund returns.

$15 billion per month of tax payer money goes to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Democrats are looking for additional revenue to help finance educational tax credits, broaden health programs for lower-income families and other initiatives to improve the lot of the American people.

The Big Moment for this tax legislation will come when the Joint Committe on Taxation in Congress estimates how much money the proposals would raise if they became law.

Henry Kravis has some good connections, though.

Kravis' ties to the Bush family go back decades, to the time when his father was friends with Senator Prescott Bush, the president's grandfather.

The private equity firms have hired an army of lobbyists to fight this legislation. They call it unpatriotic. Wayne Berman, managing director at Ogilvy Government Relations and a major Republican fundraiser, said, "It will be ...a fight about the fairness of capital gains having a lower tax rate. It will be about rewarding risk and recognizing when you reward risk you create economic growth." Then he growses about capital's enemy, labor. "This is about politics. This is about the AFL-CIO's longstanding policy objectives of ending the beneficial tax treatment of risk versus the treatment of wages from work. It is not about Steve Schwarzman's birthday party."

Who the hell is Steve Schwarzman and what about his birthday party? As reported in the Times and on Page Six of the Post on 2/14/07, glittering guests such as John Thain, the Chief Executive of the New York Stock Exchange Group which operates the NYSE, Donald & Melania Trump, Barbara Walters and Vernon Jordan were there. It was held at the Seventh Regiment Armory, which is a huge space on Park Avenue, decorated like the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. There were non-stop gourmet meals, free flowing wine and a $1,000,000 concert by Rod Stewart. The party was estimated to cost $3 million.

Steve Schwarzman, is the Chairman of Blackstone, a prominent private equity firm. The party celebrated his 60th birthday like a coronation. He is an active Republican donor with tentacles into the worlds of finance, politics and the arts. Maybe he's not too much like the little guy. As Damon Silvers, associate general counsel at the AFL-CIO, which has been lobbying in support of increasing the tax rates, said:

The tax subsidy to the wealthiest Americans created by these lower rates on equity funds is a significant drain on the ability to do important things for the good of the country. The top 25 individuals in the industry got paid over $10 billion taxed at 15%. These 25 people got paid 3 times the amount that was paid to all 80,000 people who teach in the New York City schools, and they paid roughly one-half to one-third taxes on a percentage basis.

An article in the Times blog Dealbook from 3/11/07 mentions the pending legislation introduced by Charles Grassley (R-IA), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Comittee, which will tax the enormous fees that the private equity firms take on the profit of investments as ordinary income instead of as a capital gain. The question is, should the 20% fees that private equity firms collect from the profits of its investments be considered capital gains or as regular income? The writer says of course, no doubt about it:

The Internal Revenue Service should clearly be considering it regular income. After all, [the private equity firms'] own money is not at risk--it's a fee. (By contrast, when they invest their own money in the funds, the profit is obviously a capital gain.)

Let's be honest: it is a charade that private equity firms have claimed their 20% performance fees at the lower capital gains rate. To qualify, they invest a nominal amount of their own money to demonstrate that they have put something at risk, but it's a ruse. They are paying capital gains rates for doing their job, which should be taxed at the regular income rate.

You would think that all the buyout kings who wear American flags on their suit lapels would be proud to pay a big tax bill.

The reason I bring up this lengthy explanation is that I want this tax legislation passed. Unfortunately, private equity firms are swimming in cash. They have strong connections with both parties. They gave millions to presidential and Congressional campaigns. They are counting on the support of powerful Democratic lawmakers who rely on Wall Street as a major source of political contributions. They include Senators Chuck Shumer and Chris Dodd, and Representative Rahm Emanuel. The Congressmen have not taken a public position on the bills.

Let them know we know which way the wind blows. If Congress sells us out on this golden opportunity to fund our programs, then money does buy influence (duh!).

Irrational Exuberance Runs Amok

Alan Greenspan, the party-crossing Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve for 20 years, was very circumspect in his pronouncements, positively cryptic. As the Wall Street dot-com frenzy hit its peak in 1999, he actually ventured into straight talk. He called what was going on "irrational exuberance", as share prices of dot-coms grew higher and higher, unjustified by any existence of profits. Even dot-coms which were barely more than domain names managed to collect millions of dollars from eager investors, until the frenzy peaked and share prices collapsed.

Maybe Greenspan should have said something before that happened, but "irrational exuberance" caught on as an apt expression of a market bubble, that is, bidding up the price of something until it's all out of proportion and the next stage is a collapse of prices. Wall Street seems like a rollercoaster with each car filled with gamblers betting on the next big thing until they reach "irrational exuberance", irrational meaning "deprived of reason" and exuberance meaning "effusive and almost uninhibited enthusiasm". They're riding high and there's no end in sight. They refuse to believe despite all evidence to the contrary that reality will set in and prices without foundation will collapse.

That is what is happening in the housing market. It accelerated in value from (year) until (year), when the tipping point occurred and housing prices began their descent. It was inevitable that the housing boom would start to bust, or that the housing bubble would begin to burst (whichever metaphor you prefer). The boom was fueled by an atmosphere of low inflation and cheap, easy credit And Wall Street introduced some innovations to the previously staid practice of granting mortgages.

It used to be that you'd go to a bank for a home loan (mortgage) and the bank would determine whether you were creditworthy by assessing factors such as whether or not you were employed, whether you paid your bills on time, had a steady income and could make monthly mortgage payments. In exchange for giving you money, the bank wanted to know if it could be repaid. The quality of your creditworthiness would determine the interest rate on the mortgage. If your credit was good, you'd get a lower interest rate. If it wasn't so good, you'd get a higher interest rate. And if you were deemed a bad risk, you didn't get a mortgage, period, until you could build up your creditworthiness.

Then the lending structure changed. Wall Street smelled the opportunity to make a lot of money from so-called subprime mortgages--mortgages given to people who wouldn't normally be considered qualified buyers. Instead of banks granting mortgages, Wall Street investment firms would hire a lender who would in turn hire a mortgage broker who would grant the loans to unqualified buyers so they could become homeowners.

There were plenty of incentives to sell these loans: brokers and lenders could charge exorbitant fees (much more than with prime loans) to grant these loans and Wall Street could turn around, repackage the loan into something called a "collateralized debt obligation" and sell it to investors on the premise that even though these CDOs were based on bad credit, the interest rates were higher than junk bonds and housing prices kept going up. In turn, they wouldn't look very deeply into the creditworthiness of the borrowers. In fact, in Wall Street circles these subprime loans were known as "liar loans" because the borrowers often lied about their income. Wall Street wasn't too concerned as to whether or not the borrowers could pay them back; housing prices kept escalating so the value of their homes kept increasing. If a borrower couldn't meet his obligations, he would just borrow some more money (refinance) based on the higher equity he could extract from his home. Everything was jake until housing prices stabilized and buyers began withdrawing from the housing market because they couldn't automatically "flip" the house (resell it for more money). Sellers began outnumbering the buyers and prices went down. So did the equity in these sub-prime financed homes. Borrowers in over their heads with these subprime loans couldn't refinance and became delinquent in their mortgage payments. Foreclosures multiplied. Soon whole neighborhoods were dotted with empty, boarded-up houses, which had the effect of driving down the value of the perfectly nice borrower next door who did have a prime mortgage. So even those with good credit began being affected. The inventory of unsold existing homes increased. There are still construction contracts requiring builders to build new homes in the face of an oversupply of existing homes.

Most subprime mortgages are ARMs (adjustable rate mortages). An ARM is a mortgage with an interest rate that may change, usually in response to the Treasury Bill rate or the prime rate. The purpose of the interest rate adjustment is primarily to bring the interest rate on the mortgage in line with market rates. ARMs usually start with better rates than fixed rate mortgages in order to compensate the borrower for the added risk that future interest rate fluctuations will create. So far the subprime borrowers have been paying the lower rates; soon the mortgages will adjust and monthly mortgage rates will increase, leading to more foreclosures. And around and around it goes, the roller coaster turning into the ferris wheel, an endless loop of cause and effect with no end yet in sight.

"Made In China" Means "May Be Hazardous To Your Health"

China is importing dangerous, sometimes toxic products to the United States. The American people are just finding out about this practice, although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has known about it and does little to protect us. There is no oversight either in China or here in the U.S.

The problem rose to the surface when dogs and cats began dying of kidney failure after eating pet food. The pet food was analyzed and melamine, an industrial product, was found in the wheat gluten used to bind pet food ingredients, making the "gravy" in wet pet food. Melamine is normally used to make plastic kitchen utensils and fertilizers. It was traced to a Chinese manufacturer who was not certified to make agricultural products. Menu Foods, the leading North American manufacturer of wet pet food products, had to recall more than 100 brands consisting of millions of cans of pet food. Some were sold under well-known brand names (i.e. Mighty Dog). Menu Foods currently produces more than 1 billion cans of pet food per year.

Then came the problem with diethylene glycol (DEG). DEG is a chemical cousin of anti-freeze that causes kidney and neurological damage if ingested. An industrial solvent, it is an odorless, colorless, sweet tasting syrup, used by unscrupulous manufacturers as a substitute for the more expensive product glycerin.

In 1937 more than 100 people died in the U.S. after ingesting a DEG-contaminated drug used to treat infections. That led to the enactment of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, the nation's primary statute on the regulation of drugs.

In September 2006, dozens of Panamanian citizens were hospitalized and at least 40 were dead from ingesting cough syrup laced with DEG. Investigators from 4 countries identified the manufacturer of the "glycerin" ingredient in the cough syrup as the Taixing Glycerin Company in Hengxiang, China. The factory is not certified to sell any medical ingredients.

When the investigators examined the records for the shipment, they found that the names of the suppliers were removed from the shipping documents as they passed from one place to another. The manufacturer's certificate of analysis showed the batch of "glycerin" to be 99.5% pure.

At the end of May 2007, federal officials found Chinese-made toothpaste loaded with DEG in U.S. stores. They said it was only in discount stores. In fact, the toothpaste was distributed much more widely. 900,000 tubes containing DEG have turned up in hospitals for the mentally ill, prisons, juvenile detention centers and some hospitals serving the general public. Four states (Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida) reported receiving Chinese-made toothpaste tainted with DEG. A major national pharmaceutical distributor said it was recalling the toxic toothpaste.

In response, the FDA has advised Americans to discard all Chinese-made toothpaste. As Dough Arbesfeld, spokesman for the FDA, said, "This stuff doesn't belong in toothpaste, period."

The Case of the Chinese Tires: According to Cnn.com, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has ordered Foreign Tire Sales (FTS), a tire importer based in New Jersey, to recall 450,000 light truck tires that are at risk for tire tread separation because they lack a gum strip (which costs a few cents) that holds the tread together. Tread separation is the same defect that led to the recall of millions of Firestone tires in 2000.

FTS had a contract with the Chinese company Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Company to manufacture tires according to FTS' specifications. Initially, there were no problems. Gradually, however, customer complaints rose in volume. Then in August 2006 two men died and another sustained permanent brain damage when their Chevrolet van rolled over after the tire tread separated. When FTS was named as a defendant in a suit against them regarding this accident, it performed tests on the tires and found that they had an insufficient gum strip or no gum strip. A gum strip is a rubber feature that helps prevent the tire from separation or from damaging the rubber. FTS also found that the tire treads begin to come apart after 25,000 miles.

Originally the tires were exclusively imported to FTS, but now they are sold to several other importers.

Hangzhou Zhongce told the Wall Street Journal on 6/25/07 that in its own testing, there were no defects. They said the recall may be an effort by foreign competitors to hamper the company's exports to the United States. Quoting from The New York Times 6/27/07 article, "Chinese Company Denies Tire Defect", Xu Yourning, manager of legal affairs at Hangzhou Zhongce, said that, "This is concocted out of thin air. The structure of a tire cannot be decided by an individual. Any change in the tire requires technical assistance. Zhongce couldn't possibly leave out the gum strip on purpose."

NO RECALL is actually taking place. FTS claims in documents filed with the NHTSA that it simply cannot afford the expense of recall. The NHTSA is threatening FTS with retaliatory action if it doesn't comply. Meanwhile, millions of people are driving around on dangerous, possibly deadly, tires.

The case of the tainted seafood: On June 28, 2007, the FDA blocked the sale of 5 types of farm-raised seafood from China. It was contaminated with carcinogens and other banned additives. The FDA had been aware of tainted Chinese seafood for at least 6 years. It warned the Chinese about it and even visited Chinese fish ponds. Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection, stressed that the seafood posed no immediate health threat, though long-term consumption could result in health problems.

China is the world's largest producer of farm-raised fish. It is the biggest foreign supplier of seafood to the United States.

The FDA issued an "import alert" covering the following seafood: shrimp, catfish, eel, basa (similar to catfish) and dace (similar to carp). Some of the contaminants have been known to cause cancer in laboratory animals, and others increase resistance to antiobiotics that are used to fight anthrax poisoning. The FDA asserts that the seafood can only be sold in the United States if importers provide independent testing that it doesn't contain contaminants.

Chinese seafood farmers often use the banned contaminants to prevent disease caused by pond overcrowding. "You may have 10-20 times the density of fish that you have in a natural environment," said Robert Romaire, professor of aquaculture at Louisiana State University.

Shipments of imported Chinese seafood were valued at $1.9 billion in 2006, a 193% increase since 2001.

The Food and Water Watch, a Washington-based nonprofit group, found that more than 60% of the seafood rejected at the border by the FDA came from China.

The percentage of seafood shipments pulled out for laboratory analysis has declined from 0.88% in 2003 to 0.59% in 2006.

One of the most serious problems in China is that the government lacks the power to control the nation's businessmen. Bribery and government corruption are rampant.

"China effectively has no oversight over anything," said Oded Shenkar, a business professor at Ohio State University and the author of "The Chinese Century: The Rising Chinese Economy and Its Impact on the Global Economy, The Balance of Power and Your Job." "People have this idea that they are Big Brother and everyone's under watch," Mr. Shenkar said. But that's entirely false. "In China, local authories often turn a blind eye to problems because maybe they're invested in it."

How can the United States allow its citizens to be endangered? Keep in mind several factors: 1) The Chinese government doesn't want to scare off foreign investors; 2) Multinational corporations want to set up shop in China (they're probably already there) and take advantage of its cheap labor force and billions of consumers; 3) Chinese businessmen can be as unscrupulous as any American businessman: In some of these cases, a Chinese businessman gets a big contract from a United States importer (like FTS), promises to deliver the product according to specifications, then substitutes cheaper, sometimes toxic and/or dangerous ingredients or leaves out an item entirely; 4) It can be extremely difficult to trace a dangerous shipment. It could come with forged documents or it could have been transshipped. Transshipping refers to the practice of "trade laundering", whereby products are transferred and shipped out through another country to avoid detection of their origin. So far the Chinese have denied there is a problem and the FDA is, at best, ineffectual at protecting us.

Home Health Aides: Who Takes Care of Them?

A basic rule of thumb is that supply and demand sets prices. If there's a large supply of something, say, plasma TVs and less demand, prices for plasma TVs go down (check out any electronics store). Conversely, if there's a huge demand for something and smaller supply (gasoline), prices go up. Supply and demand rules cover salaries as well as widgets. Salaries are driven up when the labor market tightens. Salaries go down when there are too many applicants for too few slots.

It seems when poor, minority women are involved, the rules of supply and demand fly out the window. As the population ages, demand for home health aides is exploding. There are an estimated 250,000 home health aides currently employed, mostly by private, for-profit agencies that charge their clients around $25 per hour (or more). The home health aides that work for these agencies earn a median hourly wage of $8.81, generally without benefits like paid vacations and health insurance, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2006-07 Edition

Some backstory: Overall employment of home health aides is the fastest growing occupation as a result of both growing demand for home services for an aging population and efforts to contain costs by moving patients out of hospitals and nusing care facilities as quickly as possible.

Recently the Supreme Court refused to do anything about a 1975 Labor Department regulation that excluded home health aides from basic labor protections like the minimum wage and time-and-a-half for overtime. Evelyn Coke, 73 and in poor health herself, made her argument and there was no dispute about the facts.

Employed for 20 years by the agency Long Island Care at Home, she was often on duty for more than 8 hours a day, including many 24-hour stretches in the homes of elderly people she was assigned to care for. Care included such things as: lifting an elderly person out of bed, taking him to the bath, bathing him, changing his diapers, going shopping and cooking for him, making sure he takes his medicine and turning him over in bed if he's immobilized, and many, many other tasks. Because people are living so long due to better medical care and nutrition, many more get Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, so they require all the care I mentioned before and then some. Alzheimer's patients can be very unpredictable, hostile to the point of physical violence, and often require close 24-hour a day monitoring.

All 9 Supreme Court Justices rejected Ms. Coke's argument the Congress intended to include home health employees in the labor law and to exclude only certain domestic workers, like baby sitters and companions from the elderly who are paid by the families they work for.

The Supremes are strict when the mood strikes them. They ruled that Congress authorized the Labor Department to write the regulation on who was to be covered under the law and that the Labor Department properly did that. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that, given those circumstances, deferring to the Department's rule "is what the law requires."

"Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1974 exempted from the minimum wage and maximum hours rule of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) persons "employed in domestic employment to provide companionship services for individuals...unable to care for themselves." 29 U.S.C. Sec.213(a)(15) Under a Labor Department regulation...the exemption includes those "companionship" workers "employed by an...agency other than the family or household using their services." 29 C.F.R. Sec.552.109(a)

The fact that the use of home health aides can cut costs flies in the face of powerful forces opposing reregulating home health aides, such as the Bush administration and the Bloomberg administration. They opposed Ms. Coke's claim to overtime pay by arguing that federal labor law protections for home health aide workers would drive up the cost of Medicaid and Medicare which cover many home health care bills.

As The New York Times wrote in their editorial, "Congress and the Caregivers" on 6/15/07, "Refusing to pay employees fairly for the word they do is not an acceptable way to keep costs down."

Promising Developments in Alzheimer's Research

A change of scenery from politics: There are signs of hope in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. [I work at a non-profit that deals with Alzheimer's disease.] As you may or may not know, Alzheimer's is a dreadful disease which robs the afflicted of their minds and eventually their lives. Though we know that many people over 85 will get Alzheimer's disease, we don't know the cause or have a treatment for the disease.

I will share what little I know about the disease. It causes memory loss, physical loss, and loss of reasoning and judgment. Through autopsies of the brains of people with Alzheimer's, we see plaque and tangles in their brains rather than neurons. Their brains have shrunk to a much smaller size. It's as though the disease consumes the brain.

There are different explanations for the tangles and plaque. One source blames something called an amyloid protein for AD. Amyloid is one of various complex proteins that occur in a number of diseases. Scientists heatedly disagree as to whether amyloid causes Alzheimer's or is simply a sign of the disease apart from its source. Many proponents of the amyloid-as-cause theory believe that the depositing of beta-amyloid protein kills neurons and thus causes Alzheimer's. Others believe that the accumulation of the protein tau is a defining feature of Alzheimer's. Tau lives in the cell and holds the cellular structure in shape. According to this theory , tau collapses on itself and becomes tangled. Meanwhile, the amyloid protein, which in a healthy brain is usually a clear liquid, gets gooey and forms plaque between cells, interfering with neural communication. The tau tangles and the amyloid plaque cause brain cell death.

The plaque and tangles start in the hippocampus, which is the central brain area that takes short term memory and converts it to long-term memory. By the time an AD sufferer dies, 50% of the hippocampus is destroyed.

You may well ask, if scientists know that amyloid and tau cause problems in the brain, why can't we stop them? The problem is, we're not sure that's what's causing the Alzheimer's. Even the diagnosis of AD is subjective. You go to an Alzheimer's Research Center and have physical, neurological, cognitive functioning and memory tests. In NYC these centers are located at Mt. Sinai, NYU and Columbia hospitals.

Often people worry that they have Alzheimer's if they forget where they put their keys or forget a name attached to a familiar face. But there are benchmarks that are specific to Alzheimer's. In the early stage, the person starts to lose his or her executive functioning (not being able to manage a checkbook; hard time going grocery shopping; can't come up with a plan and implement it to solve problems; Forgets to pay bills; Starts losing ability to communicate ("searching for words"); Forgets appointments and doesn't recall he or she has one; Loses initiative to organize activity; Grooming changes (not so meticulous).

In the middle stage, the person is: Asking the same question over and over; disinhibited (forgetting social niceties and says what they're thinking without interior censor; Reason and judgment severely impaired; Communication losses continue; Very frustrated; May hallucinate and become paranoid; Can remember more long-term memories as opposed to short-term memories.

In the late stage, all language is lost (maybe retains 1-3 words). Can utter sounds and syllables. Loses ability to walk. Incontinent. Can't feed themselves. Needs 24-hour, around-the-clock care.

It is a sobering list, especially disquieting in light of our ignorance about the cause and treatment for the disease, let alone a cure. There are several FDA-approved drugs on the market that treat the symptoms of the disease. Aricept and Excelon keep acetycoline from being destroyed. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter found in the central nervous system. It is a chemical that allows neurons to communicate with each other. Acetylcholine's role in learning and memory is unclear but Deutsch in 1970 believed that because most of the acetylcholine in the neocortex originates in the basal forebrain, that cholingeric synapses themselves were the site for memory storage. These drugs also replace the depleted levels of acetylcholine. Rasidine stimulates brain cells to produce more acetylcholine (it inhibits a naturally-occurring anti-acetylcholine chemical). Other drugs are used to enhance the brain's cholingeric system. The drug Namenda acts like glutamate, another neurotransmitter like acetylcholine. These drugs do not reverse disfunctionality, or even arrest progressive deterioration, but they do extend some functionality over a short time.

However, there are discoveries all the time about possible cures and treatments for Alzheimer's. We mustn't give up hope. I mean, it's true that Alzheimer's is a progressive, degenerative and irreversible neurological disease with no cure, but there are hopeful signs on the horizon. There was an article in the 6/10/07 New York Times on the first page of the Business Section, headlined, "Taking on Alzheimer's". Wyeth Laboratories used a vaccine to attack the amyloid plaque in the brain. (It did have mixed results in human testing, but some patients responded very well.) To prevent any more side effects, Wyeth decided against continuing to use a vaccine to induce natural antibodies in the participant. They developed passive immunization, infusing participants with the antibody product bapineuzumab.

At Wyeth's research laboratory, scientists tested this product on mice that had been genetically altered to induce Alzheimer's. Normal mice could remember where a raised platform was in a pool after they found it once, but the genetically altered mice couldn't. They kept swimming around in circles, unable to find dry ground. After they were treated with bapineuzumab, they were able to remember better where the platform was, and in scan pictures their brains improved. They had less plaque and tangles than they did before they were given bapineuzumab.

In a more recent article in the 6/11/07 New York Times, patients in a drug trial treated with the antihistamine Dimebon did better than those receiving a placebo on all five measures of cognition and behavior. As with the other drugs mentioned, Dimebon treats the symptoms, not the underlying disease.

The results of the drug trial after 12 months showed that patients on the drug were better or the same as at the start of the trial. This suggests that the drug improves functionality, not merely slowing decline.

People affected by Alzheimer's disease, whether they are caregivers, persons with Alzheimer's or in the family of someone with Alzheimer's, are organizing and becoming politically active, increasingly advocating for more funds for the disease. As the population ages and more become ill, research on Alzheimer's is more urgent than ever.

We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us

We truly live in Orwellian times.

Orwell was heavily influenced by the tactics of Joseph Stalin when he wrote 1984. During the late 1930s, Stalin orchestrated the Great Purge, the name given to campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union. It was a period marked by omnipresent police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment and killings. During the Great Purge, there were the Moscow trials, a series of trials of political opponents of Joseph Stalin. Today the Moscow trials are universally acknowledged as "show" trials, in which the verdicts were predetermined using extorted confessions. The defendants were accused of conspiring with the Western powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union and restore capitalism.

In 1984, the party with its figurehead, Big Brother, holds absolute power. The physical descriptions of Big Brother mirror that of Joseph Stalin with his omnipresent pictures everywhere. The party's slogans are, "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength". The meanings of words are turned against themselves. Bush constantly asserts that America represents the beacon of democracy and freedom in the world, and that our goal in the Mideast was to allow democracy and freedom to flourish. As Bush mouths these words, turned hollow and meaningless by his actions and the events that followed, America adopts totalitarian tactics similar to those under Stalin.

We talk about democracy and freedom while our government engages in the darkest sort of behavior. We emulate our Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, in how we mete out justice.

In The New York Times article of 6/3/07, "Soviet-style "Torture" Becomes "Interrogation", the reason for the striking similarities between America's recently adopted form of questioning prisoners and the Soviet Union's is starkly etched. In 2002, the C.I.A. and the Pentagon felt their usual tactics of interrogation were inadequate for suspected terrorists. They turned to a military training program called S.E.R.E., which stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. The purpose of the S.E.R.E. program was to expose soldiers at high risk of capture to Soviet-style interrogation techniques, including:

• Disrupted sleep
• Exposure to extreme hot and cold
• Hours in uncomfortable stress positions
• Waterboarding, where a prisoner's face is covered with cloth and water is poured from above to create a feeling of suffocation

Some of these techniques have been used on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Iraq and at the C.I.A.'s overseas jails for high-level operatives of al-Qaeda.

When S.E.R.E. trainers learned that the C.I.A. and the American military adopted the Soviet-style methods used in the S.E.R.E. program against captured al-Qaeda members, they were aghast. Charles A. Morgan III, a Yale psychiatrist who has woriked closely with S.E.R.E. trainers for a decade, asked, "How did something used as an example of what an unethical government would do become something we do?"

As discussed in the Times piece, a 1956 article, "Communist Interrogation" published in the Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry shows that methods embraced after 2001 were once considered torture that would produce false information. In other words, these Soviet-style techniques were ineffective in yielding usable information.

The 1956 report describes basic Soviet N.K.V.D. (later K.G.B.) methods:

• Isolation in a small cell
• Constant light
• Sleep deprivation
• Cold or hot
• Reduced food rations

The effects of these methods produced disturbances of mood, attitude and behavior in nearly all the prisoners.

Other techniques were not considered "torture" by either the interrogators or the prisoners even though they produced excruciating pain, such as requiring the prisoner to stand throughout the interrogation or maintain some other physical position until it becomes painful.

American and Soviet approaches to interrogation are eerily similar. In the Soviet system, closed trials and military tribunals were standard. Just as in American law, military tribunals were not public courts, they were held in secret, with only the interrogator, the state prosecutor, the prisoner and the judges present. In the American system, evidence derived under "torture" was admissible.

The Bush administration concluded that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al-Qaeda detainees; similarly, the Soviets argued that international law did not apply to foreign detainees.

Communist-style interrogation routinely produced false confessions.

"The cumulative effects of the entire experience may be almost intolerable. [The prisoner] becomes mentally dull and loses his capacity for discrimination. He becomes malleable and suggestible, and in some instances he may confabulate (to fill gaps in one's memory with fabrications that one believes to be facts). By suggesting that the prisoner accept half-truths and plausivel distortions of the truth, [the interrogator] makes it possible for the prisoner to rationalize and thus accept the interrogator's viewpoint as the only way out of an intolerable situation." (1956 Report)

A more recent Times article, "Rights Group Offers Grim View of C.I.A. Jails" (6/9/07), gives a bleak description of life in the secret prisons run by the C.I.A. in Eastern Europe. This description was given in a report prepared by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator investigating C.I.A. operations for the Council of Europe, a 46-nation rights group. According to the report, prisoners guarded by silent men in black masks and dark visors were held naked in cramped cells and shackled to walls. Ventilation holes in the cells released bursts of hot or freezing air, with temperatures used as a form of extreme pressure to wear down the prisoners. Prisoners were also subjected to waterboarding and relentless blasts of music and sound, from rap to cackling laughter and screams.

The report relies heavily on testimony from C.I.A. agents.

A spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "There were no secret C.I.A. detention centers on the territory of the Republic of Poland." But Mr. Marty said at a news conference that the anonymous testimony of the agents was backed by thousands of flight records showing prisoner transfers, including private jets linked to the C.I.A., that made 10 flights from Afghanistan and Dubai to the Szczytno-Szymany International Airport in Poland between 2002 to 2005. That was the closest airport to a Soviet-era military compound. The C.I.A. jails were set off from the country in which they were located by a buffer zone. The jails were run exclusively by Americans.

The details of prison life were given by retired and current American intelligence agents who were promised confidentiality. As Mr. Marty said, "For 15 years I have interviewed people as an investigating magistrate and I have always noticed that at a certain point, people with secrets need to talk."

According to the report, suspects were often held for months with no contact to the outside world except with masked, silent guards who would push meals of cheese, potatoes and bread through hatches.