KPK urged to question Central Jakarta District Court chief
Following the arrest of judge Syarifuddin, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) should also question the Central Jakarta District Court chief Syahrial Sidik, Syarifuddin’s close friend.
“Syahrial could explain the track record of Syarifuddin. Based on information we have, Syarifuddin is the man Syahrial really trusts,” House of Representatives commission III chairman Benny K. Harman said as quoted by tribunnews.com on Monday.
Syarifuddin was captured red-handed by KPK when he was about to receive a bribe at his house last week. He faces dismissal from the Supreme Court.
The Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) followed up the arrest by issuing a track record of Syarifuddin when presiding over graft cases. He acquitted 39 graft suspects.
Minggu, 05 Juni 2011
Artikel 7 Bahasa Inggris II
Bakrie cool on "Mr. A" allegations
Golkar Party chairman Aburizal "Ical" Bakrie says he is not worried about rumors naming him "Mr. A", the anonymous architect of the political turmoil currently engulfing the Democratic Party.
"It doesn't bother me. We don't know who it is, do we? There are lots of people with the initial A," Bakrie said on Sunday as quoted by kompas.com.
Ical said questions on the anonymous mastermind's identity should be directed to Ramadhan Pohan, the Democratic Party politician who first mentioned "Mr. A".
"There are many 'As'. There is [Democratic Party chairman] Anas Urbaningrum, [deputy chairman] Ahmad Mubarok, Aburizal Bakrie, [Golkar patron] Akbar Tanjung and others," Ical said. "They all have the initial 'A' so [Pohan] better just say who it is."
Ical declined to comment further. "It's an internal matter. I will not interfere with the Democrats' internal issues. I only hope one thing: that the Golkar Party wins the election," he said.
Democratic Party deputy secretary-general Ramadhan Pohan said on Wednesday that someone outside the party, who he identified only as "Mr. A", was using Democratic Party members to destroy the party from within.
Golkar Party chairman Aburizal "Ical" Bakrie says he is not worried about rumors naming him "Mr. A", the anonymous architect of the political turmoil currently engulfing the Democratic Party.
"It doesn't bother me. We don't know who it is, do we? There are lots of people with the initial A," Bakrie said on Sunday as quoted by kompas.com.
Ical said questions on the anonymous mastermind's identity should be directed to Ramadhan Pohan, the Democratic Party politician who first mentioned "Mr. A".
"There are many 'As'. There is [Democratic Party chairman] Anas Urbaningrum, [deputy chairman] Ahmad Mubarok, Aburizal Bakrie, [Golkar patron] Akbar Tanjung and others," Ical said. "They all have the initial 'A' so [Pohan] better just say who it is."
Ical declined to comment further. "It's an internal matter. I will not interfere with the Democrats' internal issues. I only hope one thing: that the Golkar Party wins the election," he said.
Democratic Party deputy secretary-general Ramadhan Pohan said on Wednesday that someone outside the party, who he identified only as "Mr. A", was using Democratic Party members to destroy the party from within.
Artikel 6 Bahasa Inggris II
India Health Costs a crisis Impoverishing Millions
ALIGARH, India (AP) — When Nasir Khan cried out at night from the searing pain of kidney stones, the entire slum could hear him.
A magic healer promised an inexpensive cure through chanting while pinching his side where the kidney stones were lodged, but it only made it worse. His condition became life-threatening, and doctors said he would need surgery for a fourth time.
The operation cost him — and his extended family — their home.
Without insurance and unable to get a loan, they sold the broken brick shack in the industrial north Indian city of Aligarh for 250,000 rupees, or about $5,500. It had been home to the 35-year-old Khan, his four brothers, three wives and 11 children.
"There is no choice. It is my life," Khan said in gasps, writhing atop a crude wooden cot as his relatives hovered helplessly nearby. He screamed for his mother. He screamed for Allah. He screamed for anyone to deliver him from the pain.
His story is repeated so often across India it evokes little sympathy, yet it represents one of the biggest threats to India's battle to lift its poor up from squalor.
Each year, the cost of health care pushes some 39 million people back into poverty, according to a study published in the Lancet medical journal. Patients shoulder up to 80 percent of India's medical costs. Their share averages about $66 (3,000 rupees) annually per person — a crippling sum for the 800 million or so Indians living on less than $2 a day.
A diagnosis of asthma, a broken leg or a complicated childbirth can mean having to choose between medicine or food, spending on treatment or relying on prayer.
"We are too poor," Khan's uncle Bhuere Khan said. His aunt Rafiquan Mohammed offered another justification for selling the house, as if one were needed: "He has to live. He has small children."
___
While India boasts an economic growth rate near 9 percent, the wealth has done little to help millions burdened by poverty and disease. The poor, aside from struggling to afford care, also face extreme shortages of doctors and medicines.
The situation is particularly dire in rural areas, where more than 70 percent of the country's 1.2 billion people live. Some desperate patients resort to seeing quacks. Others pay bribes. Many simply don't seek help until it is too late.
The World Bank and other experts have warned that failure to address the country's health care woes could take a toll on long-term growth — especially as two-thirds of the population is under 35 and would form the backbone of India's work force for decades.
Yet India's government spends comparatively little on health care: just 1.1 percent of the country's GDP, a figure that hasn't changed much since 2006 when China was spending 1.9 percent; Russia, 3.3 percent and Brazil, 3.5 percent, according to World Health Organization figures.
"The political will is simply not there yet. We have to help realign the country's priorities," said Dr. K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India and part of a government-commissioned committee recommending reforms.
Statistics that might highlight areas of need are scarce, thanks to erratic case reporting, few autopsies and a tradition of quick cremation that destroys evidence of disease. WHO reports often leave India out for lack of data. A recent study in the Lancet suggests malaria deaths could be 10 times higher than estimated.
India, which says hospital costs impoverish a quarter of all patients, has vowed to raise spending on health to 3 percent of GDP by 2015 and provide universal primary health care — but it's an unfilled promise that's been made before.
The Lancet, in a series on India in January, urged the government to double its pledge to 6 percent by 2020 or jeopardize its ability to shake off poverty.
"What is the point of economic success if there is nothing in it for the population?" Lancet editor Richard Horton said. "In a short amount of time you can do a lot — if you have the right leadership, the right administration and the public will. India has the people and it has the funds. We'll see if they can do it."
Meanwhile, India boasts a thriving medical tourism industry with shiny private clinics luring tens of thousands of foreigners for everything from bargain tummy tucks to experimental stem-cell treatments in an industry estimated to be worth nearly 100 billion rupees ($2.3 billion). The pharmaceutical industry is making lifesaving drugs at cut-rate costs, private hospitals are pioneering advances in open-heart surgery and medical schools are churning out physicians eager to work in the West.
For most Indians, however, this is happening in another world.
___
Uttar Pradesh, one of India's poorest states and home to the padlock-manufacturing city of Aligarh, is a land of barren rural landscapes pocked by crumbling mud huts, wandering cattle and roadside shacks selling potato chips and curry.
Its infant mortality rate — 96 of every 1,000 newborns die — makes it one of the worst places on Earth to be born. The average Indian rate is better at 63 but still grim compared with China's 15 deaths out of every 1,000 births.
The state's leader, Mayawati, who uses only one name, rose from India's lowest caste to power and prominence. She calls health care a top priority. Yet since taking office in 2007 she has spent just $224 million on medicines for the state's 195 million people, while spending $569 million to build memorial parks and statues of leading dalits — also known as untouchables — such as herself.
In rural India, the poor often have to walk kilometers (miles) to reach a clinic, with no guarantee of finding a doctor or the medicine they need. On any given day, at least 40 percent of government doctors are absent — often busy moonlighting for higher pay at private clinics. Drug supplies are also erratic; last year, India was short 35 million vaccine doses for diphtheria and 30 million for tetanus, a Health Ministry report said.
Many patients simply rely on traditional holistic medicine approaches such as ayurveda, or seek help from quacks, who have become so common the government uses them as information sources on everything from environmental contamination to polio outbreaks.
They advertise in graffiti scrawled across roadside buildings in rural Uttar Pradesh, promising treatments for venereal disease, erectile dysfunction, urinary tract infections — and charging according to what patients can pay.
Cities such as Aligarh, a three-hour drive east of New Delhi over potholed roads, are somewhat better off. They have hospitals, doctors and drugs — though often in short supply. The government says the nation needs tens of thousands of clinics and 700,000 more doctors.
At Aligarh's Mohan Lal Gautam District Women's Hospital, dozens of women line up each day for a free sterilization procedure that will spare them the risk and cost of having and raising another child.
"It is too much," said 32-year-old Pinky Devi, the frail wife of a rice farmer who said she paid about 20,000 rupees ($450) to have her second daughter in a hospital. "I want to educate my children well. I want a good life. That is why I am here."
The state hospital has only three doctors, who race each day through seeing some 500 patients giving birth, needing operations or seeking treatment for pelvic inflammatory disease and other conditions at subsidized costs. There are 10 vacancies for doctors, but it is all but impossible to find practitioners who will work for 20,000 rupees (about $450) a month when they can make at least double at a private clinic, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Poonam Sharma said.
"We cannot give the patients good treatment," she said. "They won't get the quality time, most maybe just three minutes." More than half of Aligarh's babies are still born at home, often in unsanitary conditions, Sharma said.
The medical community, eager to increase its numbers, has debated ideas such as training ayurveda or yoga practitioners to give basic care, offering bonuses for working in remote areas and recruiting from Africa.
In the meantime, private health care is booming, with clinics and insurance schemes multiplying and driving up costs.
There are piecemeal efforts to help: a national mission launched in 2005 to improve rural care, and some states offering to cover hospital bills for the poorest.
But patients like Ibne Hasan, diagnosed with HIV two years ago, say they have seen no such benefits.
Once employed in the packaging department at Aligarh's lock factory, 35-year-old Hasan has had to sell his two slum plots and all of his belongings save a threadbare armchair, a few tin pots, a worn mattress and a tiny room he shares with his wife and two children. The money has long been spent.
They are shunned by friends and neighbors. With no electricity or stove, they survive on food Hasan's wife brings from her housekeeping work, and use her monthly 1,100 rupee ($25) wage on AIDS drugs for Hasan and asthma medication for their 5-year-old son, who is far too small for his age and may also have HIV.
"When we can, we buy medicine. I haven't gotten one rupee in treatment," Hasan said, as the listless little boy huddled in the room. Laughing children threw pebbles at the shack from outside. "They make all these promises, but they are only promises. I have seen nothing."
ALIGARH, India (AP) — When Nasir Khan cried out at night from the searing pain of kidney stones, the entire slum could hear him.
A magic healer promised an inexpensive cure through chanting while pinching his side where the kidney stones were lodged, but it only made it worse. His condition became life-threatening, and doctors said he would need surgery for a fourth time.
The operation cost him — and his extended family — their home.
Without insurance and unable to get a loan, they sold the broken brick shack in the industrial north Indian city of Aligarh for 250,000 rupees, or about $5,500. It had been home to the 35-year-old Khan, his four brothers, three wives and 11 children.
"There is no choice. It is my life," Khan said in gasps, writhing atop a crude wooden cot as his relatives hovered helplessly nearby. He screamed for his mother. He screamed for Allah. He screamed for anyone to deliver him from the pain.
His story is repeated so often across India it evokes little sympathy, yet it represents one of the biggest threats to India's battle to lift its poor up from squalor.
Each year, the cost of health care pushes some 39 million people back into poverty, according to a study published in the Lancet medical journal. Patients shoulder up to 80 percent of India's medical costs. Their share averages about $66 (3,000 rupees) annually per person — a crippling sum for the 800 million or so Indians living on less than $2 a day.
A diagnosis of asthma, a broken leg or a complicated childbirth can mean having to choose between medicine or food, spending on treatment or relying on prayer.
"We are too poor," Khan's uncle Bhuere Khan said. His aunt Rafiquan Mohammed offered another justification for selling the house, as if one were needed: "He has to live. He has small children."
___
While India boasts an economic growth rate near 9 percent, the wealth has done little to help millions burdened by poverty and disease. The poor, aside from struggling to afford care, also face extreme shortages of doctors and medicines.
The situation is particularly dire in rural areas, where more than 70 percent of the country's 1.2 billion people live. Some desperate patients resort to seeing quacks. Others pay bribes. Many simply don't seek help until it is too late.
The World Bank and other experts have warned that failure to address the country's health care woes could take a toll on long-term growth — especially as two-thirds of the population is under 35 and would form the backbone of India's work force for decades.
Yet India's government spends comparatively little on health care: just 1.1 percent of the country's GDP, a figure that hasn't changed much since 2006 when China was spending 1.9 percent; Russia, 3.3 percent and Brazil, 3.5 percent, according to World Health Organization figures.
"The political will is simply not there yet. We have to help realign the country's priorities," said Dr. K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India and part of a government-commissioned committee recommending reforms.
Statistics that might highlight areas of need are scarce, thanks to erratic case reporting, few autopsies and a tradition of quick cremation that destroys evidence of disease. WHO reports often leave India out for lack of data. A recent study in the Lancet suggests malaria deaths could be 10 times higher than estimated.
India, which says hospital costs impoverish a quarter of all patients, has vowed to raise spending on health to 3 percent of GDP by 2015 and provide universal primary health care — but it's an unfilled promise that's been made before.
The Lancet, in a series on India in January, urged the government to double its pledge to 6 percent by 2020 or jeopardize its ability to shake off poverty.
"What is the point of economic success if there is nothing in it for the population?" Lancet editor Richard Horton said. "In a short amount of time you can do a lot — if you have the right leadership, the right administration and the public will. India has the people and it has the funds. We'll see if they can do it."
Meanwhile, India boasts a thriving medical tourism industry with shiny private clinics luring tens of thousands of foreigners for everything from bargain tummy tucks to experimental stem-cell treatments in an industry estimated to be worth nearly 100 billion rupees ($2.3 billion). The pharmaceutical industry is making lifesaving drugs at cut-rate costs, private hospitals are pioneering advances in open-heart surgery and medical schools are churning out physicians eager to work in the West.
For most Indians, however, this is happening in another world.
___
Uttar Pradesh, one of India's poorest states and home to the padlock-manufacturing city of Aligarh, is a land of barren rural landscapes pocked by crumbling mud huts, wandering cattle and roadside shacks selling potato chips and curry.
Its infant mortality rate — 96 of every 1,000 newborns die — makes it one of the worst places on Earth to be born. The average Indian rate is better at 63 but still grim compared with China's 15 deaths out of every 1,000 births.
The state's leader, Mayawati, who uses only one name, rose from India's lowest caste to power and prominence. She calls health care a top priority. Yet since taking office in 2007 she has spent just $224 million on medicines for the state's 195 million people, while spending $569 million to build memorial parks and statues of leading dalits — also known as untouchables — such as herself.
In rural India, the poor often have to walk kilometers (miles) to reach a clinic, with no guarantee of finding a doctor or the medicine they need. On any given day, at least 40 percent of government doctors are absent — often busy moonlighting for higher pay at private clinics. Drug supplies are also erratic; last year, India was short 35 million vaccine doses for diphtheria and 30 million for tetanus, a Health Ministry report said.
Many patients simply rely on traditional holistic medicine approaches such as ayurveda, or seek help from quacks, who have become so common the government uses them as information sources on everything from environmental contamination to polio outbreaks.
They advertise in graffiti scrawled across roadside buildings in rural Uttar Pradesh, promising treatments for venereal disease, erectile dysfunction, urinary tract infections — and charging according to what patients can pay.
Cities such as Aligarh, a three-hour drive east of New Delhi over potholed roads, are somewhat better off. They have hospitals, doctors and drugs — though often in short supply. The government says the nation needs tens of thousands of clinics and 700,000 more doctors.
At Aligarh's Mohan Lal Gautam District Women's Hospital, dozens of women line up each day for a free sterilization procedure that will spare them the risk and cost of having and raising another child.
"It is too much," said 32-year-old Pinky Devi, the frail wife of a rice farmer who said she paid about 20,000 rupees ($450) to have her second daughter in a hospital. "I want to educate my children well. I want a good life. That is why I am here."
The state hospital has only three doctors, who race each day through seeing some 500 patients giving birth, needing operations or seeking treatment for pelvic inflammatory disease and other conditions at subsidized costs. There are 10 vacancies for doctors, but it is all but impossible to find practitioners who will work for 20,000 rupees (about $450) a month when they can make at least double at a private clinic, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Poonam Sharma said.
"We cannot give the patients good treatment," she said. "They won't get the quality time, most maybe just three minutes." More than half of Aligarh's babies are still born at home, often in unsanitary conditions, Sharma said.
The medical community, eager to increase its numbers, has debated ideas such as training ayurveda or yoga practitioners to give basic care, offering bonuses for working in remote areas and recruiting from Africa.
In the meantime, private health care is booming, with clinics and insurance schemes multiplying and driving up costs.
There are piecemeal efforts to help: a national mission launched in 2005 to improve rural care, and some states offering to cover hospital bills for the poorest.
But patients like Ibne Hasan, diagnosed with HIV two years ago, say they have seen no such benefits.
Once employed in the packaging department at Aligarh's lock factory, 35-year-old Hasan has had to sell his two slum plots and all of his belongings save a threadbare armchair, a few tin pots, a worn mattress and a tiny room he shares with his wife and two children. The money has long been spent.
They are shunned by friends and neighbors. With no electricity or stove, they survive on food Hasan's wife brings from her housekeeping work, and use her monthly 1,100 rupee ($25) wage on AIDS drugs for Hasan and asthma medication for their 5-year-old son, who is far too small for his age and may also have HIV.
"When we can, we buy medicine. I haven't gotten one rupee in treatment," Hasan said, as the listless little boy huddled in the room. Laughing children threw pebbles at the shack from outside. "They make all these promises, but they are only promises. I have seen nothing."
Artikel 5 Bahasa Inggris II
The Future of Money (Hint: It's Virtual)
The Internet, in its purest, truest form, empowers individuals over governments and large institutions. An imperfect example is peer-to-peer lending. With sites like Prosper and Lending Club, the Internet has removed large financial institutions from the lending process (at least in some small measure). Peer-to-peer lending is an imperfect example, however, because peer-to-peer websites still represent a middleman that defines the rules and takes its cut. But it's progress.
And that brings us to the ultimate Internet coup--digital currency. Also referred to as eCurrency or electronic money, digital money is created and controlled by all of us, not central banks. While the implications may not be clear at first, they are far-reaching. Today, a government exercises significant control over businesses and individuals through its control of money. When the government wanted to shut down Wikileaks, its primary attack came in the form of choking off donations to Wikileaks via the likes of PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard. And that says nothing of the Federal Reserve's immense power to control the value of the U.S. dollar, or a government's ability to fund wars by printing money.
While all of this may seem far-fetched, a digital currency called Bitcoin has brought us one step closer to a Jeffersonian revolution in money. Created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, Bitcoin is a computer program implementation of a concept called cryptocurrency. Bitcoins can be saved on a personal computer in what is called a Wallet File and used to buy products and services where Bitcoins are accepted.
Without going into the math behind the program, the Bitcoin software controls the number of Bitcoins in circulation. Currently there are about 6.2 million Bitcoins in circulation with a value of about $49 million U.S. dollars. And Bitcoins can be used to purchase everything from webhosting service to music.
Bitcoin is revolutionary in several respects. First, because the distribution is not controlled by a central bank, inflation is impossible. Second, the exchange of Bitcoins, much like paper currency, is completely anonymous. Unlike a PayPal account or credit card, the names of the businesses or individuals exchanging Bitcoins are not recorded. And because Bitcoins are exchanged directly from person to person without a middleman, there are no intermediaries for a government to regulate.
There are a couple of ways to get Bitcoins. First, you can "mine" for them using a free program available through Bitcoin.org. Second, if you sell goods or services, you can accept Bitcoins as payment. And finally, you can purchase Bitcoins on various exchanges. The current cost of a Bitcoin is just over $6.93.
Will Bitcoin bring an end to central banks? Hardly. But it may give us a glimpse of a future in which our currency is "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
The Internet, in its purest, truest form, empowers individuals over governments and large institutions. An imperfect example is peer-to-peer lending. With sites like Prosper and Lending Club, the Internet has removed large financial institutions from the lending process (at least in some small measure). Peer-to-peer lending is an imperfect example, however, because peer-to-peer websites still represent a middleman that defines the rules and takes its cut. But it's progress.
And that brings us to the ultimate Internet coup--digital currency. Also referred to as eCurrency or electronic money, digital money is created and controlled by all of us, not central banks. While the implications may not be clear at first, they are far-reaching. Today, a government exercises significant control over businesses and individuals through its control of money. When the government wanted to shut down Wikileaks, its primary attack came in the form of choking off donations to Wikileaks via the likes of PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard. And that says nothing of the Federal Reserve's immense power to control the value of the U.S. dollar, or a government's ability to fund wars by printing money.
While all of this may seem far-fetched, a digital currency called Bitcoin has brought us one step closer to a Jeffersonian revolution in money. Created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009, Bitcoin is a computer program implementation of a concept called cryptocurrency. Bitcoins can be saved on a personal computer in what is called a Wallet File and used to buy products and services where Bitcoins are accepted.
Without going into the math behind the program, the Bitcoin software controls the number of Bitcoins in circulation. Currently there are about 6.2 million Bitcoins in circulation with a value of about $49 million U.S. dollars. And Bitcoins can be used to purchase everything from webhosting service to music.
Bitcoin is revolutionary in several respects. First, because the distribution is not controlled by a central bank, inflation is impossible. Second, the exchange of Bitcoins, much like paper currency, is completely anonymous. Unlike a PayPal account or credit card, the names of the businesses or individuals exchanging Bitcoins are not recorded. And because Bitcoins are exchanged directly from person to person without a middleman, there are no intermediaries for a government to regulate.
There are a couple of ways to get Bitcoins. First, you can "mine" for them using a free program available through Bitcoin.org. Second, if you sell goods or services, you can accept Bitcoins as payment. And finally, you can purchase Bitcoins on various exchanges. The current cost of a Bitcoin is just over $6.93.
Will Bitcoin bring an end to central banks? Hardly. But it may give us a glimpse of a future in which our currency is "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
Artikel 4 Bahasa Inggris II
White House Seeks Executive Order to Expose Anonymous Political Spending
The Nation -- In an email blast to supporters this week, former Sen. Russ Feingold decried “legislators who are unwilling to stand up to corporate power,” including two prominent Democrats—House Whip Steny Hoyer and Sen. Claire McCaskill. “Some Democrats are joining Republicans in pressing to keep the cycle of political money and federal contracts hidden,” he wrote.
The Beltway press was momentarily amused by the intraparty warfare, but the skirmish is actually part of a larger, crucial effort to force stronger disclosure of political contributions in a post-Citizens United world.
At issue was a draft executive order being circulated by the White House that would compel all federal government contractors, and those submitting bids for government contracts, to fully disclose information about their political contributions.
The proximate reason for the order is to strengthen transparency in the federal contracting process, through which billions of taxpayer dollars are spent based on the decisions of political appointees. The text of the draft order says the measure is needed to “[address] the perception that political campaign spending provides enhanced access to or favoritism in the contracting process.”
In context, however, the order is part of a larger White House effort to use executive branch powers to increase disclosure of political contributions as it approaches a presidential election in which hundreds of millions of dollars will surely be spent, much of it anonymously, to influence the outcome.
After the Senate failed to pass the DISCLOSE Act last year, which would have increased transparency of corporate and special-interest money, the White House began exploring its options to create disclosure rules on its own. In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a decree strengthening the rights of shareholders to find out what political activities the parent company is supporting.
Democratic members of the Federal Elections Commission, meanwhile, support rules that would make anonymous contributions to outside groups public, and that would limit political spending by US subsidiaries of foreign companies. At the Federal Communications Commission, two Democratic members are supporting a proposal that would require the funders of political advertisements to be identified on-air. (The Democratic chairman, Julius Genachowski, hasn’t voiced an opinion on the measure yet).
This proposed executive order on federal contracting is another part of this effort. It actually borrows provisions from the DISCLOSE Act, which would have also forced government contractors to disclose all political contributions. The order would require disclosure of contributions not only to candidates or parties, but “all contributions made to third parties with the intention or reasonable expectation that the recipient would use those contributions to make independent expenditures or electioneering communications.”
This would be a backdoor into finding out what interests are funding groups like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads or the US Chamber of Commerce, both of which spend massive amounts of money trying to influence elections but are not required to say who is paying the bill. The executive order would instead force the contributors to disclose the support, if they held or planned to bid on a federal contract—which many large corporations do. Thirty-three of the 41 companies listed as top 100 campaign contributors over the past twenty years hold federal contracts.
The executive order “would radically change the ability to follow the money during the upcoming elections,” the Sunlight Foundation told USA Today.
Naturally, groups like the US Chamber of Commerce oppose the executive order using the twisted logic that it would politicize the federal contracting process. A Chamber spokesperson told Politico that the order “lays the groundwork for a political litmus test for companies that wish to do business with the federal government” and is “less about disclosure than intimidation.”
Notably the Chamber isn’t opposing the fact that federal contractors spend money influencing the political process, but rather that they would have to disclose that spending—as if that’s where the politicization would come in.
Congressional Republicans are eagerly advancing that argument. Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, went on Fox News last week and agreed that the order could “absolutely” be “a way to punish the enemies of the White House.” He charged “This could be a Nixonian-type enemies list in the making by executive order.”
Issa then held a hearing last week titled “Politicizing Procurement: Would President Obama's Proposal Curb Free Speech and Hurt Small Business?” in which he further blasted the proposed executive order as something that would have “a chilling effect on political participation.” Another Republican on the committee fulminated that “I have not seen anything as outrageous and as much of an exercise of naked political power than this executive order. I think it’s shameful, I think it’s disgusting, I think it’s despicable, I think it’s outrageous.”
Feingold criticized Issa in his e-mail, but also some Democrats who have joined them. McCaskill and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) submitted a letter to Issa’s hearing opposing the executive order. Hoyer also criticized the order in comments to the Associated Press.
Ultimately, however, the executive order and similar actions by the FCC, FEC, and SEC don’t depend on the support of legislators—that’s the whole point. Legislatively Obama could do more to pass a Fair Elections Now Act and call once again for passage of the DISCLOSE Act, but in the meantime, these executive orders may end up shining a lot more sunlight onto anonymous corporate political spending.
The Nation -- In an email blast to supporters this week, former Sen. Russ Feingold decried “legislators who are unwilling to stand up to corporate power,” including two prominent Democrats—House Whip Steny Hoyer and Sen. Claire McCaskill. “Some Democrats are joining Republicans in pressing to keep the cycle of political money and federal contracts hidden,” he wrote.
The Beltway press was momentarily amused by the intraparty warfare, but the skirmish is actually part of a larger, crucial effort to force stronger disclosure of political contributions in a post-Citizens United world.
At issue was a draft executive order being circulated by the White House that would compel all federal government contractors, and those submitting bids for government contracts, to fully disclose information about their political contributions.
The proximate reason for the order is to strengthen transparency in the federal contracting process, through which billions of taxpayer dollars are spent based on the decisions of political appointees. The text of the draft order says the measure is needed to “[address] the perception that political campaign spending provides enhanced access to or favoritism in the contracting process.”
In context, however, the order is part of a larger White House effort to use executive branch powers to increase disclosure of political contributions as it approaches a presidential election in which hundreds of millions of dollars will surely be spent, much of it anonymously, to influence the outcome.
After the Senate failed to pass the DISCLOSE Act last year, which would have increased transparency of corporate and special-interest money, the White House began exploring its options to create disclosure rules on its own. In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a decree strengthening the rights of shareholders to find out what political activities the parent company is supporting.
Democratic members of the Federal Elections Commission, meanwhile, support rules that would make anonymous contributions to outside groups public, and that would limit political spending by US subsidiaries of foreign companies. At the Federal Communications Commission, two Democratic members are supporting a proposal that would require the funders of political advertisements to be identified on-air. (The Democratic chairman, Julius Genachowski, hasn’t voiced an opinion on the measure yet).
This proposed executive order on federal contracting is another part of this effort. It actually borrows provisions from the DISCLOSE Act, which would have also forced government contractors to disclose all political contributions. The order would require disclosure of contributions not only to candidates or parties, but “all contributions made to third parties with the intention or reasonable expectation that the recipient would use those contributions to make independent expenditures or electioneering communications.”
This would be a backdoor into finding out what interests are funding groups like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads or the US Chamber of Commerce, both of which spend massive amounts of money trying to influence elections but are not required to say who is paying the bill. The executive order would instead force the contributors to disclose the support, if they held or planned to bid on a federal contract—which many large corporations do. Thirty-three of the 41 companies listed as top 100 campaign contributors over the past twenty years hold federal contracts.
The executive order “would radically change the ability to follow the money during the upcoming elections,” the Sunlight Foundation told USA Today.
Naturally, groups like the US Chamber of Commerce oppose the executive order using the twisted logic that it would politicize the federal contracting process. A Chamber spokesperson told Politico that the order “lays the groundwork for a political litmus test for companies that wish to do business with the federal government” and is “less about disclosure than intimidation.”
Notably the Chamber isn’t opposing the fact that federal contractors spend money influencing the political process, but rather that they would have to disclose that spending—as if that’s where the politicization would come in.
Congressional Republicans are eagerly advancing that argument. Rep. Darrell Issa, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, went on Fox News last week and agreed that the order could “absolutely” be “a way to punish the enemies of the White House.” He charged “This could be a Nixonian-type enemies list in the making by executive order.”
Issa then held a hearing last week titled “Politicizing Procurement: Would President Obama's Proposal Curb Free Speech and Hurt Small Business?” in which he further blasted the proposed executive order as something that would have “a chilling effect on political participation.” Another Republican on the committee fulminated that “I have not seen anything as outrageous and as much of an exercise of naked political power than this executive order. I think it’s shameful, I think it’s disgusting, I think it’s despicable, I think it’s outrageous.”
Feingold criticized Issa in his e-mail, but also some Democrats who have joined them. McCaskill and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) submitted a letter to Issa’s hearing opposing the executive order. Hoyer also criticized the order in comments to the Associated Press.
Ultimately, however, the executive order and similar actions by the FCC, FEC, and SEC don’t depend on the support of legislators—that’s the whole point. Legislatively Obama could do more to pass a Fair Elections Now Act and call once again for passage of the DISCLOSE Act, but in the meantime, these executive orders may end up shining a lot more sunlight onto anonymous corporate political spending.
Artikel 3 Bahasa Inggris II
`Taxi' star Jeff Conaway hospitalized in a coma
LOS ANGELES – Jeff Conaway's manager says the former star of "Taxi" and "Grease" is in a coma following a drug overdose, possibly from pain pills.
Manager Phil Brock says the 60-year-old actor was found unconscious on May 11. He is hospitalized in critical condition.
Brock says Conaway is in a coma in an Encino, Calif., hospital and his recovery is uncertain. The name of the hospital was not disclosed.
As part of the reality show "Celebrity Rehab" in 2008, Conaway discussed his addiction to drugs and alcohol.
His manager described Conaway as a "gentle soul" but one who has been unable to "exorcise his demons."
Conaway appeared in the 1978 movie musical "Grease" and starred in the TV series "Babylon 5."
LOS ANGELES – Jeff Conaway's manager says the former star of "Taxi" and "Grease" is in a coma following a drug overdose, possibly from pain pills.
Manager Phil Brock says the 60-year-old actor was found unconscious on May 11. He is hospitalized in critical condition.
Brock says Conaway is in a coma in an Encino, Calif., hospital and his recovery is uncertain. The name of the hospital was not disclosed.
As part of the reality show "Celebrity Rehab" in 2008, Conaway discussed his addiction to drugs and alcohol.
His manager described Conaway as a "gentle soul" but one who has been unable to "exorcise his demons."
Conaway appeared in the 1978 movie musical "Grease" and starred in the TV series "Babylon 5."
Artkel 2 Bahasa Inggris !!
Smoking Raises Odds for Cancer in Women Already at High Risk
WEDNESDAY, May 18 (HealthDay News) -- Long-term smoking significantly increases the risk of invasive breast, lung and colon cancers in women with a high risk of breast cancer, a new study finds.
Researchers analyzed how smoking, drinking and physical activity affected the risk of several common cancers in 13,388 women at increased risk of breast cancer because of family history of breast cancer, age and other factors. The women were participants in the U.S. National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) Breast Cancer Prevention Trial.
Compared to those who never smoked, women who smoked for at least 35 years had a 60 percent higher risk of invasive breast cancer and more than four times the risk of colon cancer, the investigators found.
Women who smoked for 15 to 35 years were 34 percent more likely to develop invasive breast cancer and 7 percent more likely to develop colon cancer than those who never smoked.
Women who smoked for fewer than 15 years had no increased risk of invasive breast cancer, according to the report.
Compared to those who never smoked, women who smoked more than one pack of cigarettes per day for more than 35 years were 30 times more likely to develop lung cancer, while the risk was 13 times higher for those who smoked less than one pack a day for more than 35 years.
Alcohol use was not associated with increased cancer risk, but the researchers did find that low levels of physical activity were associated with a 70 percent increased risk of endometrial cancer. This may be because women who don't exercise are more likely to be obese, a risk factor for endometrial cancer.
The study was posted online ahead of its presentation June 6 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, in Chicago.
"The NSABP study was the first large study to prospectively examine the impact of smoking in women at high risk of breast cancer," said study author Stephanie Land, a research associate professor in the department of biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health.
"Our results showed an even greater increase in risk than has been shown in previous studies, suggesting that for women who are at risk of breast cancer because of family history or other factors, smoking cigarettes is even more risky than for other women," Land said in an ASCO news release.
"It sends a very important message for women with family histories of breast cancer about the long-term risks of smoking, as well as the importance of staying physically active. We're seeing again that smoking cessation is one of the most effective tools we have for reducing risk of many cancers," she added.
Research presented at meetings is considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
WEDNESDAY, May 18 (HealthDay News) -- Long-term smoking significantly increases the risk of invasive breast, lung and colon cancers in women with a high risk of breast cancer, a new study finds.
Researchers analyzed how smoking, drinking and physical activity affected the risk of several common cancers in 13,388 women at increased risk of breast cancer because of family history of breast cancer, age and other factors. The women were participants in the U.S. National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) Breast Cancer Prevention Trial.
Compared to those who never smoked, women who smoked for at least 35 years had a 60 percent higher risk of invasive breast cancer and more than four times the risk of colon cancer, the investigators found.
Women who smoked for 15 to 35 years were 34 percent more likely to develop invasive breast cancer and 7 percent more likely to develop colon cancer than those who never smoked.
Women who smoked for fewer than 15 years had no increased risk of invasive breast cancer, according to the report.
Compared to those who never smoked, women who smoked more than one pack of cigarettes per day for more than 35 years were 30 times more likely to develop lung cancer, while the risk was 13 times higher for those who smoked less than one pack a day for more than 35 years.
Alcohol use was not associated with increased cancer risk, but the researchers did find that low levels of physical activity were associated with a 70 percent increased risk of endometrial cancer. This may be because women who don't exercise are more likely to be obese, a risk factor for endometrial cancer.
The study was posted online ahead of its presentation June 6 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, in Chicago.
"The NSABP study was the first large study to prospectively examine the impact of smoking in women at high risk of breast cancer," said study author Stephanie Land, a research associate professor in the department of biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health.
"Our results showed an even greater increase in risk than has been shown in previous studies, suggesting that for women who are at risk of breast cancer because of family history or other factors, smoking cigarettes is even more risky than for other women," Land said in an ASCO news release.
"It sends a very important message for women with family histories of breast cancer about the long-term risks of smoking, as well as the importance of staying physically active. We're seeing again that smoking cessation is one of the most effective tools we have for reducing risk of many cancers," she added.
Research presented at meetings is considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
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