Room for a View > Briefs
Up in Smoke
by Todd Paul

New York state is expecting some $11 billion in tobacco settlement funds in the next 23 years. But in order to help close next year’s anticipated $8 billion budget gap and keep taxes down, the Pataki administration may trade that settlement for a much smaller, immediate payout.

The process of selling a future settlement for immediate cash is called securitizing. Already, 29 New York counties have securitized their settlement funds, as have some other states. The problem is, the return for securitizing is only about 32 cents on the dollar. If New York securitizes now, it will trade an eventual $11 billion for an immediate $3 billion.

The trade-off also means less cash for municipal governments, since the state is supposed to split its settlement award with the counties and with New York City.

Some settlement funds have already been received, and more will come in as long as cigarettes are sold in the state. According to an article in the Albany Times-Union, The state attorney general’s office has estimated that New York should receive a total of $25 billion between 1999 and 2025 if it does not securitize.

Anti-smoking groups say that money from securitization can only be used to pay down debt or for capital projects. They say states that sell off their settlements often reduce or eliminate funding for tobacco prevention programs. And fiscal watchdogs say the trend is just another example of how states use one-time revenues to patch chronically out-of-balance budgets.

White House Welcomes Iran-Contra Criminals
by Todd Paul

Most people would consider subverting the Constitution, obstructing justice, lying to Congress, criminal conspiracy, and destruction of evidence to be marks of shame.

Not the Bush administration, which has been quietly hiring convicted criminals from the Reagan/Bush Sr. administration and posting them to powerful positions in the government.

Chief among these is John Poindexter. Formerly a national security adviser under Reagan, Poindexter, along with his aide Oliver North, was one of the masterminds of the Iran-Contra affair of the late 1980s. Poindexter was convicted of five felonies in 1990 after admitting that he conducted illegal arms deals with terrorists in Iran, funneled the proceeds to the Contras in contravention of Congress, and conspired to conceal his activities from the president. His conviction was overturned on appeal, not because he was found innocent, but because his trial had been tainted by use of his immunized congressional testimony.

In February, the Bush administration appointed Poindexter to head the new Information Awareness Office, making him, according to an article in the Guardian, one of the most powerful men in America.
The iao is a big-brotherish branch of darpa, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, itself the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense. According to the iao Web site, its mission is to achieve “total information awareness.”

What is total information awareness? Conservative columnist William Safire, writing in the New York Times, reports, “Poindexter is now realizing his 20-year dream: getting the ‘data-mining’ power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.” According to Safire, John Markoff of the New York Times, and Robert O’Harrow of the Washington Post, iao computer systems would search for terrorist activity by analyzing your banking transactions, medical care, e-mail and telephone conversations, magazine subscriptions, academic transcripts, credit card activity—in short, Poindexter wants access to every facet of your life, no search warrant required; and Bush’s proposed Homeland Security Act would give it to him. The iao program list also includes HumanID, a project to develop long-distance electronic identification of individuals using face, gait, and iris recognition technologies, so the government can keep track not only of your communications, but your physical whereabouts as well. According to O’Harrow, “it probably would be the largest data-surveillance system ever built.”

Poindexter isn’t the only Iran-Contra criminal who has found haven—and power—in the younger Bush administration. Elliott Abrams, Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for Latin America, who pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress and who downplayed reports of military massacres in Central America, now oversees human rights and democracy issues for the National Security Council. Otto Reich, who “engaged in prohibited covert propaganda,” according to a government inquiry, is now assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere. John Negroponte, who subverted Congress by aiding the Contras and suppressed information about human rights abuses of the Honduran military, is now ambassador to the United Nations.

Perhaps all this isn’t surprising, considering that George Bush, Sr. was the biggest Iran-Contra conspirator of them all. Despite his repeated insistence that he was “out of the loop” on Iran-Contra, the former president later admitted receiving regular briefings on the matter. His personal diary reveals the depth of his involvement. “I’m one of the few people that know fully the details,” he wrote in an entry dated November 5, 1986. “This is one operation that has been held very, very tight, and I hope it will not leak.”

Shop Before You Drop
by Lorna Tychostup

Shopping around for a nursing home? Last month the federal government released Nursing Home Compare—a comprehensive re-source tool to help people choose a local nursing home best suited to their needs. A toll-free phone call or search on their Web site puts detailed information about the past performance of every Medicaid and Medicare nursing home in the country—17,000 in total—at your fingertips.

A quick search shows New York state has 670 nursing homes; seven in Ulster, 14 in Dutchess, five in Columbia, two in Greene, and 10 in Orange. You can also search for the number of beds in each county, type of ownership (private for-profit corporations, nonprofit corporations, religious affiliated organizations, or government entities), the percentage of residents with bedsores or who are kept physically restrained, and the average number of hours worked by the nursing staff per resident per day.

Available in booklet form or downloadable pdf is Medicare’s Guide to Choosing a Nursing Home. This booklet contains information on how to choose the type of care needed; detailed steps to take in choosing a nursing home; a checklist of things to look for when visiting homes (and they recommend you visit as many as you can before making your choice); how to make arrangements to enter a facility; how to pay for nursing home and other health care costs; and tips on how to ease into home life, including a section on resident rights.

For more info, www.medicare.gov; (800) 633-4227; TTY users call (800) 486-2048.

Brits Fear Bush
by Todd Paul

It’s no surprise to anyone that the policies of presidential appointee George Bush are disliked in certain quarters. Germany, France, and Russia have been notably reticent about joining the Bush brigade’s anti-Saddam campaign. And leaders of many predominantly Muslim countries—such as Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, who survived recent assassination attempts by hard-line Islamist groups, and whose popular nickname is “Busharraf”—have been squirming since Bush’s post-9/11 “with us or agin’ us” declaration.

Now it appears that even Tony Blair, papa Bush’s strongest ally in the Gulf War, is out of step with his constituents when it comes to Iraq. According to a new poll, one-third of Britons view George Bush as a greater threat to world peace than Saddam Hussein.
The poll was conducted for Channel 4 by Robert Lunz, a senior US Republican strategist.

The poll found that one-third of the British public do not trust Bush, “and may actually fear him,” according to an article in the Guardian.
Asked which man poses a greater threat to world peace, 32 percent of the 3,200 respondents said Bush, while 49 percent said Saddam Hussein. Nearly two-thirds of those polled believe Bush has targeted Saddam only because he threatens US control of the Middle East, while only one-quarter believe it is because Saddam threatens world peace. And nearly half of all respondents see Tony Blair as “Mr. Bush’s lap dog.” Only 21 percent said they would blame Blair for Brits killed in a war with Iraq.

Despite the unfavorable reviews, Blair has continued his bellicose barking. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw recently announced, “If Saddam fails to cooperate fully [with UN inspectors], then he faces force.”