**JP** AAJ K COLUMN 19 NOVEMBER'2011

ASSALAAM-O-ALAIKUM

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SUBAH BAKHAIR.

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GOP report: TSA hasn’t improved aviation security

GOP report: TSA hasn't improved aviation security
By Ashley Halsey III, Published: November 16

After a $56 billion federal investment in airline security, flying is no safer than it was before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the bare hands of passengers might be the best defense once a terrorist gets on board, two members of Congress said Wednesday.

Deriding the Transportation Security Administration as a bloated bureaucracy that recruits security personnel with ads on gas pumps and pizza boxes, the two House Republicans said it needed to undergo almost a dozen reforms.


"Americans have spent nearly $60 billion, and they are no safer today than they were before 9/11," said Rep. Paul C. Broun (R-Ga.). "We need to make travel safe in America, and right now it's not."

Broun joined House Transportation Committee Chairman John L. Mica (R-Fla.) at Reagan National Airport on Wednesday morning to present a harshly critical report on the TSA's performance.

Broun said a terrorist bomb could be put aboard an airliner "very easily" at his home airport in Atlanta. "TSA has not prevented any attacks," he said. "It's just been very fortunate that we've had no attacks."

TSA spokesman Greg Soule denounced the report.

"At a time when our country's aviation system is safer, stronger and more secure than it was 10 years ago, this report is an unfortunate disservice to the dedicated men and women of TSA who are on the front lines every day protecting the traveling public," Soule said. "TSA has developed a highly trained federal workforce that has safely screened over 5 billion passengers and established a multilayered security system reaching from curb to cockpit. "

Mica and Broun, both longtime critics of the agency, challenged the need for 3,986 employees at its Washington headquarters, saying they earned an average of $103,852 a year.

"We never intended to have TSA grow into this massive bureaucracy," Mica said.

Instead, the report said, the TSA should set standards for airport and airline security and be open to use of private contractors to carry them out. The TSA also should station more personnel abroad to intercept terrorists and to ensure that passenger screening and baggage inspections in foreign airports are up to U.S. standards.

The report cited data released this year showing that there had been 25,000 airport security breaches in the past decade. Given the leaky security network, it said, "passengers and crew offer our first and most effective line of defense."

The report said that the TSA has wasted money on ineffective equipment and programs, has been slow to install explosive-detection devices at the nation's largest airports and has deployed new high-tech body scanners in "a haphazard and easily thwarted manner."

"Our concern is that explosives continue to be the focus of terrorists," Mica said.

He said he was "not impressed" by the TSA's planned evolution to a more risk-based approach. The agency has been criticized for applying the same security standards to all passengers, including children and the elderly.

Soule responded that the risk-based approach was "designed to maintain a high level of security, while improving the overall travel experience, whenever possible."

"Each of these initiatives moves us away from a one-size-fits-all approach and enhances our ability to provide the most effective security, focusing on those who present the highest risk, in the most efficient way possible," Soule said.

The TSA faced a public outcry last year after it introduced the new scanners, which critics thought were overly revealing, and procedures for vigorous pat-downs of those who refused to use the scanners.

They are no longer the most significant issue for regular travelers, according to the U.S. Travel Association. A survey released Wednesday by the travel industry group said the biggest objection voiced by frequent fliers was that other passengers delay security lines with too much carry-on baggage. They said passengers also dislike requirements that they remove their shoes, belts and jackets.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/commuting/gop-report-tsa-hasnt-improved-aviation-security/2011/11/16/gIQAvqRQSN_story.html?wprss=rss_politics

Elites agree: Americans are too darn free

Elites agree: Americans are too darn free
By: A. Barton Hinkle
Published: November 18, 2011

To outward appearances, it might seem as though the left and right have never been more at odds. And for the average man in the street, drawn to the Tea Party on one side or the Occupy movement on the other, this might be true. But it is not so true for elite opinion. The nation's high and mighty may be divided about many things, but on one point they often agree: Americans are still too darn free.

For example: Not enough people exercise their right to vote. Problem, right? Well, William Galston of the Brookings Institution has a solution: Force them to. The other day he took to the pages of The New York Times to explain why we should be "Telling Americans to Vote, or Else." (It doesn't seem to have occurred to Galston that making people exercise a right takes that right away, by turning it into an obligation.)

Galston is hardly alone. Mitt Romney considers it a problem that many foreign nationals enter America without a government permission slip. His solution: Force every U.S. resident to carry a biometric ID card. (Just the thing to present at the polls when meeting your mandatory-voting requirement, eh? Great minds think alike.)

One of Romney's GOP primary opponents, Michele Bachmann, laments that many Americans ­ 53 percent of them ­ pay no federal income tax. So she proposed forcing everyone to do so, even if they don't have any income to pay taxes on. That'll show'em.

Time magazine proposed forcing every American into national service. A federal advisory board has decided, to much applause, that we should force boys as well as girls to receive the HPV vaccine. Proponents of Obamacare believe the government should force everyone to buy health insurance.

The Obama administration also has lots of other bright ideas about how to bend the American people to its will. Last year Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told those at a National Press Club that the administration's "livability" initiative "is a way to coerce people out of their cars." The administration also wants to force insurers to pay for birth control and abortifacients, and to force consumers to buy more fuel-efficient cars.

Voices outside the administration, however, fret that it is not being forceful enough. In a recent Washington Post column, Dana Milbank advised the president to emulate the ruthless tactics of JFK. Milbank recounts how Roger Blough, chairman of U.S. Steel, raised prices in defiance of the president's wishes. "'You have made a terrible mistake,' Kennedy told him. Subpoenas flew, FBI agents marched into steel executives' offices, and Kennedy spoke about IRS agents examining 'hotel bills and nightclub expenses [that] would be hard to get by the weekly wives' bridge group out at the country club.'"

Ahh, the good old days. When J. Edgar Hoover pulled stunts like that, liberals considered it proof that the dark night of fascism was descending across the land. But when their own guys do it, they call it getting things done. Nary a word from Milbank about what business the president has dictating steel prices, by the way.

Yet Milbank is a piker in the thuggery-worship category, at least when compared with The New York Times' Thomas Friedman. In 2009, Friedman penned a column about how China's one-party autocracy was better than America's two-party system: "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks," he wrote, "but when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people . . . it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies to move a society forward." He went on to list some of China's critically important policies, which were ­ surprise! ­ policies of which he personally approved.

Well, anyone can write a stinker of a column now and then (heaven knows!). But a year later Friedman was still at it, relating on "Meet the Press" how he has "fantasized" about "what if we could just be China for a day?" Then "we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions." He didn't actually want America to "be China," mind you, he just wanted "my democracy to work with the same authority." That way, Friedman could impose his will on everyone else, and life would be grand.

This is what power fetishists always do: assume the power will be used in ways they like. (And since the ends are noble, they surely must justify the means, right?) Sometimes it is. But power changes hands, and the inheritors may be a rather different sort. The people pushing for more government power never seem to think of that ­ until it's too late.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/oped/2011/nov/18/tdopin02-hinkle-elites-agree-americans-are-too-dar-ar-1467094/

Gingrich think tank collected millions from health-care industry

Gingrich think tank collected millions from health-care industry
By Dan Eggen, Published: November 17

A think tank founded by GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich collected at least $37 million over the past eight years from major health-care companies and industry groups, offering special access to the former House speaker and other perks, according to records and interviews.

The Center for Health Transformation, which opened in 2003, brought in dues of as much as $200,000 per year from insurers and other health-care firms, offering some of them "access to Newt Gingrich" and "direct Newt interaction," according to promotional materials. The biggest funders, including firms such as AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Novo Nordisk, were also eligible to receive discounts on "products and workshops" from other Gingrich groups.

The health center advocated, among other things, requiring that "anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year must purchase health insurance or post a bond," a type of insurance mandate that has since become anathema to conservatives.

The group also pushed proposals to build centralized electronic medical records and use such data to research treatment effectiveness, both central features of President Obama's health-care reforms.

Gingrich, who has been under fire recently for his lucrative consulting business, left the health-care think tank earlier this year to run for president. But his time there exemplifies the former Georgia congressman's post-legislative career as a well-paid consultant and policy guru, a role that earned him and his companies tens of millions of dollars over the past decade.

His experience at the think tank also illustrates Gingrich's past flirtations with moderate policies ­ on health care, the environment and other hot-button issues ­ that have become the subject of controversy and criticism in the presidential race.

The Gingrich campaign referred questions about the center to the think tank. Susan Meyers, a center spokeswoman, declined to comment on the think tank's income or staffing levels because it is a private-sector organization. She said that neither the center nor Gingrich has engaged in formal lobbying.

Meyers called Gingrich "a health-care visionary" who was advocating far-reaching reforms "before many of these concepts in health care became mainstream." She said the think tank's members don't always agree on specific issues but are working "toward a common vision of saving lives and money."

Gingrich has been criticized in recent days after Bloomberg News reported that he earned as much as $1.8 million in consulting fees from Freddie Mac, a quasi-public corporation that many conservatives blame for the housing crisis. After first suggesting he was hired for a short time as a "historian," Gingrich has since acknowledged acting as a consultant for the mortgage giant "over a long period of time."

"I was approached to offer strategic advice; I was glad to offer strategic advice," Gingrich told reporters in Iowa this week. "We did it for a number of companies, and Gingrich Group was very successful."


Mixing policy, marketing

One of the key organizations of the Gingrich Group over the past eight years was the health-care center, an unusual hybrid that married the policy focus of a traditional think tank with Gingrich's instincts for self-promotion and marketing.

The center attracted a long list of global health-care firms and interest groups, which paid $5,000 to $200,000 a year, based on their size, to be members. Based on archived membership lists going back to 2003, that means the center brought in as much as $6.25 million per year from higher-level members giving $50,000 or more, totaling at least $37 million since 2003.

That does not include many other sources of revenue, such as dues from smaller members and fees for polling, research and other services the center offered.

The center has listed scores of firms and industry groups as members over the years, amounting to a Who's Who of the medical field, from GE Healthcare to the American Hospital Association to Wellpoint, the nation's largest health insurer. The think tank also drew funding from employers with sizable health-care costs, such as Detroit's Big Three automakers, records show.

Several firms characterized their membership as a way to share information about potential health-care reforms.

"We engage with a variety of organizations to participate in public policy discussions on issues impacting our business," said Tony Jewell, spokesman for drugmaker AstraZeneca, which has been listed as a "founding charter member" since 2005. He said the company is reviewing its membership for next year.

Rick Tyler, a longtime Gingrich spokesman who left as part of a staff exodus from the campaign over the summer, said the think tank "was very successful financially" and played a vital role in promoting free-market solutions for the health-care system. He said Gingrich could have easily cashed in as a registered lobbyist after leaving Congress but chose to try to shape the debate over major public policies instead.

"I don't think Newt was trying to be an influence-peddler," Tyler said. "If he had wanted to do that, he could have done that, and he would have been rewarded handsomely for it, I'm sure."

Although Gingrich gave up ownership of the think tank earlier this year to begin his candidacy, the group still bills him prominently as its founder and sells a long list of Gingrich-related books, videos and other products. Another Gingrich venture, a nonprofit called American Solutions for Winning the Future, closed its doors over the summer amid financial problems.


An issue on campaign trail

A financial disclosure form filed by the candidate in July said his net worth was at least $6.7 million, with income of at least $2.7 million in 2010. The form listed a "convertible promissory note" ­ a kind of loan that can be paid back or converted into stock ­ worth $5 million to $25 million from Gingrich Group to Gingrich Productions, a media company run by his wife, Callista.

Gingrich has clashed with other Republican presidential candidates over his evolving positions on health-care issues. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, whose own state health-care reform plan was a model for Obama's national approach, attacked Gingrich at one debate: "We got the idea of an individual mandate from you!"

The Gingrich health center's support for such a mandate was part of an "Insure All Americans" plan that appears to have disappeared from the center's Web site Thursday.

Gingrich has characterized his previous support for insurance mandates as a response to President Bill Clinton's more government-focused health-care proposal in the 1990s, and he has said he turned against the idea.

"I am completely opposed to the Obamacare mandate on individuals," he says in a recent campaign video. "I fought it for 2¹ / ₂ years at the Center for Health Transformation."

During a recent interview in South Carolina, Gingrich said that ending his involvement in the health-care think tank and other businesses was difficult. He also said that if he fails to win the Republican nomination, he doesn't know whether he will "do anything as big as the center" again.

"You know, I've made a good deal of my income off the speeches and off of being a commentator," Gingrich said. "All of that went away. So it just got to be much more challenging."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gingrich-think-tank-collected-millions-from-health-care-industry/2011/11/16/gIQAcd72VN_story.html?hpid=z1

Gingrich Campaigning as Change Agent Profited as an Insider

Gingrich Campaigning as Change Agent Profited as an Insider
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Kristin Jensen - Nov 18, 2011 7:49 AM ET

When U.S. House Republican leaders in 2003 were short of votes to pass a $395 billion Medicare prescription drug benefit, they recruited former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for help.

In a hushed room on Capitol Hill, Gingrich told his former Republican colleagues that if he could endorse the measure, they should be comfortable with it, too, said two former, senior House aides who attended the closed-door session.

Two days later, after a vote was held open for three hours as leaders corralled the final ayes, the measure passed and was eventually signed into law by President George W. Bush.

What Gingrich didn't mention during the Republican caucus meeting was that he was also building a for-profit, health-care research company and seeking financing from drugmakers, which were investing $128.6 million in lobbying for passage of the new benefit for seniors.

His founding of the Center for Health Transformation in 2003 was a critical step in Gingrich's formation of a set of private companies that traded on his name and made him millions. The health-care policy center collected at least $37 million, the Washington Post reported.

"It undercuts his message that he's a 'change agent,'" said John Pitney, a former Republican Party strategist who teaches political science at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. "It's not that he necessarily did anything unethical, but it cements his image as a Washington insider. That's not illegal, it's just politically very unpopular."


Rise in Polls

Gingrich's rise in such public opinion polls as a Bloomberg News Nov. 10-12 survey that put him in a four-way tie for first place in Iowa, where the first contest will be held Jan. 3, is also elevating scrutiny of his consulting firm, The Gingrich Group, and other private companies.

The former Georgia congressman reported assets in 1997 of between $197,000 and $606,000, according to his last House personal financial disclosure report, which permits lawmakers to record their wealth in broad ranges. According to his 2011 presidential disclosure report, the Republican primary candidate today is worth between $7.3 million and $31 million.

"If you somehow made it illegal or untenable for former members of Congress or former administration officials to trade on their previous associations, the national unemployment rate would go up to 10 percent," said Rich Galen, a former Gingrich adviser.


'Truly Dumb'

Gingrich wasn't paid to lobby the Republican caucus.

He said yesterday that his intellect and congressional experience were magnets for corporate clients.

"If you just take what people say about me in the debates and say to yourself, 'Gee, is that a person somebody might have hired for advice?' I think it's hard to argue that they should have hired somebody that is truly dumb," he said at a campaign stop in Jacksonville, Florida.

R.C. Hammond, Gingrich's campaign spokesman, said in an interview that "companies came to him because of what he thought. He didn't mold his thoughts around what companies wanted."

As a businessman, Gingrich at times did stray from his party's conservative orthodoxy. Many of the Republican voters he's now courting are critical of the drug-benefit program because it drove up the deficit. Gingrich's advocacy of ethanol subsidies, which attracted a client to his consulting company in 2009, separates him today from such presidential rivals as former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, Texas Governor Rick Perry and Texas Representative Ron Paul, who oppose them.


The Gingrich Group

Gingrich's private industry career began soon after he left office in January 1999 and started The Gingrich Group with offices in Atlanta and Washington. In April 1999, he announced a strategic alliance with PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP and landed Freddie Mac, the government-backed mortgage-financing company, as a client in May.

"He was completely accessible by the phone," said Mitchell Delk, who was Freddie Mac's chief lobbyist, in an interview. For the monthly retainer of $25,000 to $30,000, "you could just call up and throw an idea off of him," Delk said.

The Gingrich Group focused primarily on policy issues, said Nancy Desmond, one of the firm's original employees and now the head of the Center for Health Transformation. She remembers helping one company figure out how more children could get access to computers.

"It was usually about bringing various people in the room and talking about various solutions," Desmond said.


Speaking Fees

A year later, the former speaker opened Gingrich Communications, which managed among other things his speaking engagements, according to Hammond. Gingrich was paid as much as $50,000 for a speech appearance, the Atlanta Journal- Constitution reported in November 1999.

In September 2002, Gingrich began planning for the new health-research center. The center was established in 2003 to study industry trends, propose overhauls, and make the former speaker available to corporate boards and executives for brainstorming and other strategic advice.

Companies could pay membership fees of $20,000 to $200,000, gaining various levels of staff attention, access to white papers and time with Gingrich. The center's site lists three levels, from "premium" to "charter" memberships. Those paying more than $100,000 a year, could get Gingrich to speak to a private event, according to two people familiar with the arrangements.


Corporate Members

Among the member companies were drugmaker Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and health insurer Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, according to an Aug. 26 press release. Officials at both firms didn't respond to requests for comment yesterday.

WellPoint Inc. (WLP), the nation's largest insurer by revenue, was a member of the center for five years, spokeswoman Kristin Binns said in an e-mail to Bloomberg. It was "a way to network with various stakeholders on the best emerging ideas for improving the delivery of health care," Binns said.

The U.K. drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc (AZN) also was a member of the center, according to spokesman Tony Jewell, who declined to give further details.

Pfizer Inc. (PFE), the world's largest drugmaker, had consulting contracts with Gingrich, according to two people familiar with the arrangements. Pfizer spokesman Ray Kerins didn't respond to requests for comment.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the industry's trade group, was also a client. His firm "was retained by the PhRMA general counsel's office at one time to provide advice on a positioning project," the group said.


Growing Staff

The Gingrich Group had "about a half dozen" employees to start and, as the center grew, it employed an average of 40, including support staff, Hammond said.

In addition to his work with the center, Gingrich continued to accept private retainers from health-care companies and others.

In 2006, Freddie Mac officials met with Gingrich in his Washington office on K Street to discuss a renewal of his consulting services, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Freddie Mac didn't want him to lobby in the traditional sense. With the company facing new regulations from Congress, a high-profile, supportive Republican leader would provide indirect benefits, they said.

Gingrich agreed to work with Freddie Mac for an annual fee of $300,000 for two years, according to people familiar with the agreement. He downplayed the amount this week, saying on Nov. 15: "It wasn't paid to me. Gingrich Group was a consulting firm that had lots of people doing things and we offered strategic advice."


Health-Care Roundtable

Around the same time, Gingrich joined an advisory board created by Pfizer that also included Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, according to two people familiar with the group. Pfizer would organize meetings with about 15 people in its New York offices or the Ritz-Carlton in McLean, Virginia, to discuss policy initiatives in Washington.

Gingrich's clients were big and small.

Growth Energy, an ethanol industry lobbying group formed in late-2008 by a group of producers of the corn-based fuel, paid Gingrich $575,000 between 2009 and 2011 for advice.

"Growth Energy reached out to Speaker Gingrich and hired him because we know of his record in Congress in support of ethanol," Chris Thorne, a spokesman for Growth Energy, said in a statement. "He's smart, engaging, and his time as a leader here is helpful to folks who are puzzling through how this town works."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-18/gingrich-running-as-change-agent-profits-from-washington-insider-status.html