US Military’s Training of Mexican Security Forces Continues As Human-Rights Abuses Mount In Mexico
DoD Officials Claim Training is Part of the Solution, Not the Problem
By Bill Conroy | narcosphere | December 3, 2014
The U.S. government has spent more than $62 million since fiscal year 2010 providing highly specialized training to Mexican security forces, including some $16.3 million in fiscal 2013, as part of an effort to help Mexico better prosecute its war on drugs, records made public under the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act show.
The spending has continued even as Mexico’s military and police forces continue to face accusations of pervasive human-rights abuses committed against Mexican citizens, leading some experts to question whether the U.S.-funded training is resulting in some deadly unintended consequences.
The news of the disappearance in late September of 43 students who attended a rural teachers college in Ayotzinapa, located in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, has sparked massive protests in Mexico. The students were allegedly turned over to a criminal gang after being abducted by Mexican police and they remain missing. The police fired on the three buses transporting the students along a stretch of road near Iguala, about 130 kilometers north of Ayotiznapa, and the abduction was carried out near a Mexican military base, according to Human Rights Watch.
The Ayotzinapa incident was preceded by a lesser-known attack this past June during which Mexican soldiers killed 22 people inside a warehouse in Tlatlaya, 238 kilometers southwest of Mexico City. At least 12 of those homicides were deemed extrajudicial executions, according to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission [CNDH in its Spanish initials].
Last year, the Mexican government conceded that at least 26,000 people had gone missing, or been disappeared, in Mexico since 2006 — the year the war on the “cartels” in that nation was launched. Over that same period, INEGI (the Mexican State Statistics Agency) reports, there were some 155,000 homicides in Mexico, most with a nexus to the drug war.
The U.S. Department of Defense insists that the relationship it has with Mexican security forces is based on “trust and confidence and mutual respect” and is critical to helping to reduce the violence sparked by criminal organizations in Mexico.
The U.S. training, funded through the DoD and to a lesser extent the U.S. Department of State, encompasses a wide range of military strategy and tactics and is carried out at locations in the United States and inside Mexico. Among the course topics on the menu are asymmetrical conflict, counter intelligence, international counterterrorism, psychological operations, counter-drug operations and urban operations. The training is being provided to a broad spectrum of Mexican security forces, including the Army, Navy and the federal police, according to data provided to Congress under the requirements of the Foreign Assistance Act and is current through fiscal year 2013.
Adam Isacson, senior associate for regional security policy with the Washington Office on Latin America, a nongovernmental organization promoting human rights and democracy in Latin America, says there is a lack of reliable public data on the fate of Mexican security forces after they receive U.S. military training.
“What happens to these trainees a year or two down the road after they are placed in areas dominated by organized crime?” Isacson asks. “We simply don’t have good after-training tracking of these people, and the amount they are paid can’t compete with the drug money. Plus, the risk of getting caught is small. The biggest risk for them isn’t jail, but rather running afoul of the drug organizations.”
From fiscal 2010 through 2013, U.S. military training was provided to some 8,300 members of Mexico’s security forces, according to Foreign Assistance Act data. That training is overseen by U.S Northern Command (Northcom), a Department of Defense branch created in 2002 that is responsible for U.S. homeland defense as well as security cooperation efforts with the Bahamas, Canada and Mexico.
Northcom officials contend that all Mexican security forces receiving U.S. training are well vetted and that data is maintained on all participants. The training is designed to compliment Mexico’s existing efforts to maintain security and stability in the country.
“We do not believe that U.S. military training enables corruption and human rights violations,” Air Force Master Sgt. Chuck Marsh, spokesman for Northcom, says. “On the contrary, U.S. military members who provide training serve as positive role models, displaying professional values for foreign security forces to emulate. They conduct this training in strict accordance with the Leahy Law, which requires us to ensure individuals and units with whom we work are not involved in human rights violations.”
Still, in a country where fewer than 13 percent of crimes are even reported, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report, and where tens of thousands of murders and cases of disappeared individuals remain unresolved, it’s difficult to accept with certainty that the data maintained on U.S.-trained Mexican security forces is of much use in monitoring corruption. If human-rights abuses are not reported, much less investigated, then there’s nothing to track.
And even when abuses are probed, the conviction rates are anemic.
Mexico’s Military Prosecutor’s Office between 2007 and mid-2013 opened 5,600 cases into alleged human-rights abuses by soldiers, Human Rights Watch reports. Yet, as of October 2012, only 38 cases had resulted in convictions and sentences from military judges.
Mexico’s CNDH reported last year that Mexican security forces were suspected of playing a role in at least 2,443 cases in which people were disappeared. Human Rights Watch, in a study released last year, said it “found evidence that members of all branches of the [Mexican] security forces carried out enforced disappearances.”
“Virtually none of the victims have been found or those responsible brought to justice,” Human Rights Watch reports.
WOLA’s Isacson says there is no evidence at this point directly linking human-rights abuses by Mexican security-forces to U.S. military training, but adds that “the risk is huge.”
“Congress a few years ago required DoD to keep more records on trainees, but that information is classified,” he adds.
What’s lacking is quantifiable public data that can be used to assess the effectiveness of U.S. training of Mexico’s security forces or the human-rights track record of trainees after the training is finished. “That evaluation has to now be based mostly on blind faith,” Isacson says.
And in yet another wrinkle to the military-training issue, Isacson points out that the U.S. military is helping to fund Colombia’s export of military training to other nations as part of its security coordination with the South American nation. Colombia provided military and police training to more than 10,310 members of Mexico’s security forces between 2009 and 2013, according to a recent WOLA report that uses figures provided by the Colombian National Police.
“Some of this training was U.S. funded, although Colombia carried out many activities using its own resources, or that of other donors such as Canada,” the WOLA report states.“… Beyond official advertisements of the strategy and occasional, anecdotal press reports, little information is available about the extent and nature of Colombia’s training.
“While foreign aid law requires the United States to report to Congress in some detail about its own overseas training, these reports include no mention of U.S.-funded activities carried out by Colombian forces.”
The nature and sources of funding for Colombia’s exported military training may be opaque. But what is clear is that U.S. military training was provided to 4,486 members of Colombia’s security forces in fiscal 2013 at a cost to taxpayers of $32.9 million, according to the most recently available Foreign Assistance Act data. A good share of that training was in areas consistent with regional security operations, including courses in international counter-terrorism, advanced security cooperation, joint operations and international tactical communications.
The Colombian military and police training provided to Mexico’s security forces, Isacson says, is essentially a proxy arrangement, given the United States’ role in helping to fund and coordinate that training.
“Colombians trained 10,000 Mexicans with the help of U.S. money,” he adds. “Our main concern is the lack of transparency and controls.”
Bankers Who Commit Fraud, Like Murderers, Are Supposed to Go to Jail
By Dean Baker | Beat the Press | December 3, 2014
Wow, some things are really hard for elite media types to understand. In his column in the Washington Post, Richard Cohen struggles with how we should punish bankers who commit crimes like manipulating foreign exchange rates (or Libor rates, or pass on fraudulent mortgages in mortgage backed securities, or don’t follow the law in foreclosing on homes etc.).
Cohen calmly tells readers that criminal prosecutions of public companies are not the answer, pointing out that the prosecution of Arthur Andersen over its role in perpetuating Enron left 30,000 people on the street, most of whom had nothing to do with Enron. Cohen’s understanding of economics is a bit weak (most of these people quickly found other jobs), but more importantly he is utterly clueless about the issue at hand.
Individuals are profiting by breaking the law. The point is make sure that these individuals pay a steep personal price. This is especially important for this sort of white collar crime because it is so difficult to detect and prosecute. For every case of price manipulation that gets exposed, there are almost certainly dozens that go undetected.
This means that when you get the goods on a perp, you go for the gold — or the jail cell. We want bankers to know that if they break the law to make themselves even richer than they would otherwise be, they will spend lots of time behind bars if they get caught. This would be a real deterrent, unlike the risk that their employer might face some sort of penalty.
Why is it so hard for elite types to understand putting bankers in jail?
US Pays PR Firm to Create Anti-Cuban Multimedia Content
teleSUR | November 27, 2014
The U.S. government has signed a US$1.4-million-contract with a public relations company to produce “TV and radio programs designed specifically for audiences in Cuba,” according to the Office of Cuba Broadcasting’s press release that Tracey Eaton cited in her blog Along the Malecon.
The Los Angeles-based company, Canyon Communications, is a public relations firm that specializes in writing “corporate histories.” Founded by Jeff Kline, the company was offered the no-bid contract because of what government officials said was its “unique profile.”
The Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), funded by the U.S. government through the presidentially appointed Broadcasting Board of Governors, runs Radio and Television Marti and has its headquarters in Miami, Florida.
In 2006, The New York Times revealed that OCB paid 10 journalists to work for Radio and TV Marti. The Miami Herald fired three of the journalists from El Nuevo Herald after learning they were receiving money from the Bush Administration.
The OCB’s interventions in Cuba have found their echo in more recent attempts by the U.S to use modern media to destabilize Cuba’s socialist system.
A scandal broke out in April when the U.S. was found to be engaged in “battle” with Cuba on the social media front. This latest onslaught was carried out under the guise of ZunZuneo, a social media platform targeted to Cuban users.
Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), ZunZuneo was intended to spark dissent against the Cuban government. In USAID’s own words, the project was designed to “renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.”
ZunZuneo, set up with the help of high-tech contracting firms from Nicaragua and Costa Rica, eventually reached over 40,000 Cubans. The contractors, together with USAID, set up an equally elaborate scheme of front companies using Cayman Islands bank accounts to hide the venture from the Cuban government. New executive recruits were also not told about ZunZuneo’s ties to the U.S. government.
Big Pharma—Crony Capitalism Out of Control
By Ralph Nader | November 21, 2014
Two recent news items about the voracious drug industry should call for a supine Congress to arouse itself and initiate investigations about the pay-or-die drug prices that are far too common.
The first item—a page one story in the New York Times—was about the Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Foundation, which fifteen years ago invested $150 million in the biotechnology company Vertex Pharmaceuticals to develop a drug for this serious lung disease.
On November 19, the Foundation reported a return of $3.3 billion from that investment. Kalydeco, the drug developed with that investment, is taken daily by CF patients (who can afford it) and is priced at $300,000 a year per patient. Who can pay that price?
The second news release came from the drug industry funded Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development. The Center’s Joseph DiMasi asserts that the cost of developing a new prescription medicine is about $2.558 billion, significantly higher than the previous estimate of $802 million that the Center claimed in 2003.
The drug industry promoters use this ludicrous figure to justify sky-high drug prices for consumers. Unfortunately, the criticism of this inflated number does not receive adequate media attention.
Half of the DiMasi assertion is opportunity costs foregone if the drug company invested its money elsewhere. That cuts his estimate by almost half to $1.395 billion. This maneuver gives “inflation” a new meaning. According to economist James P. Love, founder of Knowledge Ecology International, DiMasi also conveniently ignores government subsidies such as so-called orphan drug tax credits, research grants from the National Institutes of Health and government support of the cost of clinical trials that qualify (see keionline.org).
Mr. Love adds that the drug companies spend “much more on marketing than they do on research and development.”
Rohit Malpani, Director of Policy and Analysis of Doctors Without Borders (which received the Nobel Prize in 1999), says that if you believe Tufts’ figures, whose alleged data analysis is largely secret, “you probably also believe the Earth is flat.”
Mr. Malpani cites GlaxoSmithKline’s CEO Andrew Witty himself who says that the figure of a billion dollars to develop a drug is a myth.
Malpani adds that “we know from past studies and the experience of non-profit drug developers that a new drug can be developed for just a fraction of the cost the Tufts report suggests. The cost of developing products is variable, but experience shows that new drugs can be developed for as little as $50 million, or up to $186 million if you take failure into account… not only do taxpayers pay for a very large percentage of industry R&D, but are in fact paying twice because they then get hit with high prices for the drugs themselves.”
Mr. Malpani was referring primarily to the U.S., where the drug companies show no gratitude for generous tax credits and taxpayer funded R&D (that they get mostly free.) Add the absence of price controls and you the consumer/patient pay the highest drug prices in the world.
Another largely ignored aspect of the industry’s R&D is how much of it is directed to products that match, rather than improve, health outcomes—so-called “me too” drugs that are profitable, but don’t benefit patients’ health.
Also, the consistently profitable drug industry has been continually unable to restrain its deceptive promotion of drugs and inadequate disclosure of side-effects. About 100,000 Americans die every year from adverse effects of pharmaceuticals. Tens of billions of consumer dollars are wasted on drugs that have side effects instead of drugs for the same ailments with lesser side-effects (see citizen.org/hrg).
During a visit in 2000 with military physicians and scientists at the Walter Reed Army Hospital, I asked how much they spent on R&D to develop their antimalarial drugs and other medicine. The answer: five to ten million dollars per drug, which included clinical testing plus the salaries of the researchers.
This “drug development entity” inside the Department of Defense arose because drug companies refused to invest in vaccine or therapeutic drugs for malaria—then the second leading cause for hospitalizing U.S. soldiers in Vietnam (the first being battlefield injuries). So the military brass decided to fill this void in-house, and with considerable success.
The problem with the stinginess of the coddled private pharmaceutical industry regarding vaccine development continues.Drug resistant tuberculosis and other infectious diseases rampant in developing countries continue to take millions of lives each year. The Ebola epidemic is a current lethal illustration of such neglect.
The survival of many millions of people is too important to be left to the drug companies. For a fraction of what the federal government is wasting on spreading and failing lawless wars abroad, it can expand from the Walter Reed Army Hospital example to become a humanitarian superpower that produces life-saving vaccines and medicines as if the plight of sick people mattered more than windfall profits for Big Pharma.
Ralph Nader’s latest book is: Unstoppable: the Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State.
Ben & Jerry’s Israeli Factory and Israel’s Stolen Land and Stolen Water
Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel
The Ben & Jerry’s factory is in Be’er Tuvia, adjacent to the town of Kiryat Malachi, one of four Israeli localities located on the lands of the former village of Qastina, in territory allotted to the Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan. However on July 9, 1948, after Israel’s declaration of independence and the ensuing war, Qastina and its more than 147 houses were completely destroyed by Israeli forces of the Givati Brigade, and the land incorporated into Israel. (Based on information documented at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qastina, accessed December 2012).
Ghatheyya Mifleh al-Khawalda was a 15-year old teenager when she fled to Gaza from her home in the village of al-Qastina, now the town of Kiriyat Malachi and site of the Ben & Jerry’s factory, during the Nakba of 1948. So this woman, a refugee living only a day’s walk from the village that she was driven from, represents a personal and tragic link to the site where now the Ben & Jerry’s factory churns out ‘Peace and Love’ ice cream. Yes, they do profit from this stolen land, and yes, the Nakba was a crime, and yes, the occupation is an affront. Ghatheyya is one of generations of Palestinians in Gaza who are locked away from their land, their families and the world. Some seethe with anger and resort to violence – three people in Kiriyat Malachi died in November 2012 in a rocket attack from Gaza. Ghatheyya said, “We had a very nice house, a big house with marble floors in the hallway. My father was a farmer, and we had farmland with orange trees, apple trees, grapefruit trees and others. We were very happy.” Her life changed dramatically in 1948, when Jewish militias arrived. “Some Jewish militia members were wearing uniform and others had civilian clothes,” Ghatheyya said, “and when they arrived in the village they began firing at people, killing three villagers. We ran away, afraid for our safety, and went to Tal al-Safi, a nearby village. It was within walking distance, and we were in a hurry to leave, so we didn’t take anything with us. It was like Doomsday. It was utter terror. We couldn’t think of anything except leaving, not even simple things like bringing food with us.” After a few days in Tal es-Safi, militias came again and forced them to leave. Ghatheyya and her family fled to Beit Jibrin to spend the night, but were followed and forced to leave again. “If you wanted to die, you stayed. If you wanted to live, you left,” she recalls. “Their main aim was not to kill us, but to get rid of us. If they had wanted us all dead, not one of us would have survived. They used fear to force us to leave our land.” The family walked along the coast until they reached Gaza. “There were thousands of people who fled other villages, sleeping in mosques or on the street,” Ghatheyya says, and UNRWA began to build tents for the families. (From a story “Nakba survivor: If you wanted to live, you left” at Ma’an News )
Water Used by the Factory
When investigating Ben & Jerry’s business dealings in Israel and the occupied territory, we also set out to determine if the company’s franchise was benefiting from Israel’s criminal diversion of Palestinian water. Our inquiry, which included discussions with an international water consultant, led us to the tentative conclusion that Ben & Jerry’s factory in Kiryat Malachi may be drawing water from the Jordan River system and the Mountain Aquifer in the occupied West Bank, the two highest-quality water sources in the region, thus diverting it from Palestinian use.
Palestinians under occupation have been denied access to the Jordan River since 1967, leaving the Mountain Aquifer as their only source of water. A study by The World Bank determined that “Palestinian per capita access to water resources in the West Bank is a quarter of Israeli access and is declining.” This is a result of Israeli government planning and regulation.
To make matters worse, Israeli settlers in the West Bank often obstruct or disconnect the flow of water to Arab communities, while 500,000 settlers consume in total approximately six times more water than three million Palestinians. This difference is even higher when agricultural use is factored in. Regular access to water explains why one commonly sees green lawns and swimming pools in Israeli settlements. In stark contrast, throughout the year, but especially in the summer, Palestinian cities and villages are denied continuous access to water, sometimes for weeks on end. This gross injustice is aggravated by Israel’s policy of denying permits to Palestinians to drill new wells or rehabilitate old ones.
By manufacturing in Israel and marketing in the occupied territory, Ben & Jerry’s is a willing partner to a water system that is grossly inequitable, transgresses international law, and denies Palestinians their fair share of the Mountain Aquifer and the Jordan River. Please see Our Report for more information on Israel’s water crimes in the occupied territory.
UK journalists take legal action against police spying
Press TV – November 21, 2014
Six British journalists have filed a lawsuit against the Scotland Yard after documents showed that the police in London were spying on them for more than a decade.
The lawsuit, which was filed by the National Union of Journalists against London’s Metropolitan Police and the Home Office, was announced late Thursday.
The group of journalists, including three photographers, an investigative journalist, a newspaper reporter and a freelance video journalist, took legal action after they discovered the Metropolitan Police had been recording their professional activities on a secret database.
The database was reportedly designed to monitor so-called domestic extremists.
The records included the movements of the journalists while working, their appearance and how they used a camera to record the events they were covering.
Freelance photographer David Hoffman questioned why he had been labeled as an extremist in the files kept by the police, saying he has “never contemplated any sort of extreme action of a political or criminal nature.”
The journalists said the lawsuit is aimed at exposing the persistent pattern of journalists being assaulted, monitored and stopped and searched by police during their work.
The group is also seeking to force the police to destroy the files containing records of their activities, saying the surveillance violates the liberty of the press and their privacy.
Both the Metropolitan police and the Home Office have declined to comment on the legal action.
The lawsuit comes as recent public disclosures of police records have revealed that Scotland Yard secretly seized journalists’ telephone records.
Several senior police officers have acknowledged keeping an eye on journalists by using powers granted under anti-terrorism measures.
A previous lawsuit by five journalists resulted in the police apologizing or paying damages for wrongdoing, including assault and unjustifiable searches while they were working.
My Town Fought Wal-Mart – and Wal-Mart Won
By Christopher Orlet | CounterPunch | November 21, 2014
Four years ago, the developer of a proposed Wal-Mart supercenter in Florissant, Mo. (pop. 52,000) appeared before city leaders. For decades Wal-Mart had wanted to open a supercenter in my hometown and on this particular Monday evening a representative from THF Realty – Wal-Mart’s longtime developer of choice – was alternately putting on the poor mouth and subtly threatening city officials. In order to fund the development, a project developer told the city council, THF Realty would require $9 million in tax breaks.
No tax breaks, no Wal-Mart.
In brief, THF wanted a TIF – tax incremental financing, which meant the portion of the development’s property tax revenue that ordinarily would go to local schools, police, libraries and fire departments, instead would remain in the pockets of the developer.
Such threats, coming from multibillionaire developers, are commonplace. They are also effective. Though not as effective as they once were.
THF Realty (the acronym stands for To Have Fun) owns or leases more than 100 shopping centers in 22 states, many anchored by Wal-Mart stores or Sam’s Club. That’s due in part to THF’s chairman – sports and real estate tycoon Stan Kroenke – being married to Wal-Mart heiress Ann Walton. The last time Kroenke was obligated to disclose his ties with Wal-Mart – when he served on Wal-Mart’s board of directors 13 years ago – his company was renting 55 stores to the giant retailer.
Today, Kroenke — the 105th richest American — has an estimated net worth of $5.7 billion. His wife, Ann, is worth an estimated $4.8 billion. Kroenke owns the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche, the St. Louis Rams, the Colorado Rapids and, in a sure sign that he is running out of ways to unload his billions, the English soccer club Arsenal.
Wal-Mart doesn’t always use outside developers (or inside developers like Kroenke) to build its discount stores and supercenters. “Sometimes Wal-Mart is itself the developer,” says Al Norman, an anti-sprawl consultant. When Wal-Mart purchases and develops a site it utilizes the Walmart Real Estate Business Trust, one of its many subsidiaries.
“[But] if Wal-Mart hasn’t bought the land, it’s better for them to put the burden on a developer to get all the permits, ask for the subsidies, and make any land agreement contingent on the developer having all the permits in place,” says Norman. Using outside developers, however, allows Wal-Mart to benefit from government subsidies without being the one making the pitch for the handout.
If Wal-Mart hoped to draw attention away from itself by using this tactic in Florissant it failed. For the most part the public regarded the proposed development as a Wal-Mart project and refused to distinguish between Wal-Mart and its developer. And local media played up the connection: “Florissant Council Turns Down Wal-Mart Developer,” cried one headline.
In many ways Florissant, Mo., a working class city in North St. Louis County, is no different than most American cities. When it comes to big box shopping centers its philosophy seems to be that a town can never have too many. Florissant’s sprawling main drag, Lindbergh Boulevard, is an unbroken chain of such shopping centers, with only a few acres of unadorned, treeless asphalt parking lot separating them. Each center has a large grocery store chain or a big box retailer (Target, Kmart, Michaels, Sears, Lowes, Home Depot, Office Depot) as its anchor.
Nor can it be said that Florissant residents are suffering a dearth of Wal-Marts. There’s a supercenter four-and-a-half miles away in Ferguson (you may recall that it was vandalized during the recent Ferguson riots). Another Wal-Mart waits 13 miles away in Bridgeton. Yet another sits 14 miles down the road in Granite City, Ill. And another 14 miles away in the opposite direction in St. Charles.
Fortunately for Wal-Mart and its developers, they do not have to show a need or demonstrate likely economic benefits to the community to receive subsidies and tax breaks. They need only ask and they shall receive.
Wal-Mart was no disinterested party in THF’s quest for tax breaks. A TIF could mean big savings for the retailer.
“Wal-Mart is in a position to negotiate lower lease rates when the developer is being subsidized,” says Philip Mattera, director of a watchdog group called the Corporate Research Project.
Wal-Mart was counting on that subsidy.
Subsidy Creep
As a reporter I’ve covered local government since the mid-1980s. Time after time I’ve watched as Wal-Mart and its developers rode into rural and suburban cities and towns with their hands out and came away with their pockets stuffed with tax breaks and subsidies, often with little or no opposition. Back in the 1980s, the major concern of local governments, small business owners and (to a lesser extent) local residents was whether Wal-Mart would drive local mom and pop shops out of business. (The answer turned out to be an unqualified Yes.) But even then, standing in the way of “progress” and free-market competition (competition in which one side was given taxpayer-funded subsidies and everyone else was not) was considered futile, if not downright un-American. Stand in the way of progress you get runned over. Today, those concerns are moot. Wal-Mart can boast “mission accomplished.”
Then as now the tax break of choice for Wal-Mart and its developers was tax increment financing. TIFs were originally established to encourage developers to invest in hopelessly blighted commercial areas. Blighted soon came to mean non-blighted. Call it subsidy creep.
Historically a few school officials and PTA moms groused when these TIFs were granted. Yet in all those countless city council meetings I attended, I never once heard a city official ask why one of the wealthiest corporations in the world couldn’t build its discount stores and parking lots without withholding tax dollars from local schools, fire departments, libraries and other public services.
The simple answer was that nobody asked them to. When it came to subsidies and tax breaks Wal-Mart’s motto seemed to be: It doesn’t hurt to ask. All they can do is say no. And then we threaten to move to the next town.
Those threats were real. If a town even considered turning down a TIF request, a neighboring jurisdiction would immediately begin courting the Waltons. The practice became so widespread the Missouri legislature was forced to pass a reform law in 2007 to address this type of “retail pilfering.” In Missouri, TIFs are now granted only on a county-wide basis.
Changing Times
Now, three decades later, Wal-Mart and its developers find themselves having to work harder to obtain the same subsidies and tax breaks they once received by default. Cities and towns – even municipalities like Florissant, the majority of whose residents really want a Wal-Mart Supercenter – are beginning to stand up to the retail giant and its sidekick THF Realty. Indeed, across the Midwest – Wal-Mart’s home turf – more and more cities are saying they’ve had enough of Wal-Mart’s bullying.
My town did.
When Wal-Mart developers returned to Florissant in 2010 demanding tax breaks and threatening to walk away if they were denied, city officials happily showed developers the door.
That response was almost unprecedented outside of a few quaint New England hamlets. In fact, the neighboring city of Bridgeton, had just rubber stamped THF’s request for $8 million in TIF subsidies to build a Wal-Mart supercenter, no questions asked.
In voting 9-0 to deny the subsidy request, Florissant officials pointed out that a TIF district would divert $300,000 annually in property taxes from local schools, libraries, police, and fire departments to Kroenke’s THF Realty. Florissant’s mayor told reporters that Wal-Mart and its developer were “strong enough to pay with [their] own nickel.”
Even Missouri’s right-wing think tank, The Show-Me Institute, criticized Wal-Mart and Kroenke’s browbeating tactics. “You don’t need TIFs to attract retail development. With the right project and the right location, retail development will still come,” one policy analyst said.
So what changed?
First and foremost Americans have just been through the nation’s worst economic slump since The Great Depression. While average working Americans lost their homes and livelihoods, Wal-Mart got richer. Wal-Mart was one of the few stores to thrive during the U.S. recession, noted Forbes in March 2009.
What’s more, Americans wised up. In our total information society it is hard to remain deaf to the continual buzz of stories that spotlight the incredible wealth of the retailer (Wal-Mart Inc. is now wealthier than 157 nations.) When another St. Louis County municipality (Shrewsbury) rejected Wal-Mart’s request for a TIF in 2013, an alderwoman was quoted as saying, “The six Wal-Mart heirs alone have more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the people in the United States!” This statement was met with loud applause.
At the same time as its phenomenal growth was taking place, Wal-Mart received hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate welfare (tax breaks, grants, low-cost financing, tax abatements and free land) from state and local governments. A new report by Americans for Tax Fairness concluded that Wal-Mart receives $6.2 billion a year in taxpayer subsidies. In a 2007 report, the nonprofit Good Jobs First noted that Wal-Mart’s developer THF Realty received at least $54 million in tax breaks from local governments for Wal-Mart stores between 1994 and 2006.
While Wal-Mart benefits enormously from corporate welfare, it has become adept at dodging local, state and federal taxes. The same report by ATF noted that Wal-Mart uses tax loopholes to avoid paying $1 billion of federal taxes a year. An example of this flimflammery showed up recently in a The Wall Street Journal story which showed how Wal-Mart evades some state taxes by paying rent to itself. Yes, these tax dodges are legal, though they are only available to the world’s richest corporations who can afford to hire the world’s slickest tax attorneys.
Equally damaging are the frequent stories that show Wal-Mart stiffing American taxpayers and its non-union employees. Low wages at a typical Wal-Mart Store cost taxpayers about $1 million in government assistance annually, according to a study by Democrats in the U.S. Committee on Education and the Workforce. Meanwhile the media is rife with stories of Wal-Mart employees who can’t afford to shop at Wal-Mart, who are forced to rely on food stamps, and who cannot afford to buy even the crappiest of cars to get to work. In October, Wal-Mart announced it would end health care benefits to a portion of its part-time employees.
And who can forget the story about Wal-Mart employees holding Thanksgiving food drives for their co-workers?
Plan B
After receiving an unexpected setback in Florissant, THF Realty redoubled its efforts in the fall of 2012. Plan B was to seek designation as a community improvement district. Missouri’s CID law, passed by the state legislature in 1998, was created to combat “community disinvestment and neighborhood decline” in inner-ring suburbs. (Florissant is an outer-ring suburb, but no matter.) In effect, community improvement districts bring improvements to small pockets of retail, while the rest of the town crumbles. And it is more likely to crumble since residents who are already paying higher sales taxes in these retail pockets will have less taste for a city-wide sales tax which would raise the standard of living for all residents.
The special taxing district would have permitted Wal-Mart to assess a one percent sales tax on store transactions. Just another way for Wal-Mart and THF to pass along the costs of construction to the middle and low-income folks who shop at their stores. Needless to say that revenue would not go to increase the wages of Wal-Mart workers.
Again, Florissant city leaders stuck to their guns, unanimously voting down the proposed CID.
Kroenke, however, still had his ace in the hole. He turned to the courts; not to sue the city of Florissant, but to file a petition in circuit court for the formation of a transportation development district.
The Missouri Transportation Development Act was passed by the Missouri Legislature in 1990 to address genuine transportation needs. Say, your town has grown by leaps and bounds and you desperately need a new overpass over the Interstate highway so emergency vehicles can get to the other side of town more quickly and thus save lives.
More often, however, a TDD is just another needless handout to billionaire developers.
With one rather remarkable difference. Unlike a TIF or CID, the public (or its elected representatives) have no say in the matter. Since St. Louis judges are appointed, the project is approved (TDDs are always approved) by an unelected judge. Taxpayers have no say whether sales taxes are imposed or what happens to their tax dollars or even whether the transportation projects are needed.
If approved, the THF’s transportation development district would have allowed a board handpicked by Kroenke to impose a sales tax on shoppers to help pay for roadwork that benefits his private property. What’s more, any money that Kroenke “loaned” to the project would be repaid with interest. If this TDD turned out like Kroenke’s other ventures, it would be overseen by a board made up of his rubber-stamping cronies. A board that meets and operates without any real oversight. “Read state auditors’ reports on special taxing districts, and you’ll see all kinds of reports of shoddy record keeping, self-dealing and much transparency in name only,” reports the Kansas City Business Journal.
Once again, working families would pay for Wal-Mart and the billionaire Kroenke’s street improvements through higher sales taxes.
At the hearing for what was now called the Shoppes at Cross Keyes Transportation Development District, Florissant’s city attorney informed the judge of Florissant officials’ unanimous objection to the transportation district. Nevertheless Circuit Judge Brenda Stith Loftin could find no legal reason not to approve the TDD. Moral reasons, yes. But legal, no.
The TDD was approved.
Beaten, the Florissant City Council approved zoning for the Wal-Mart. As one disgruntled city councilman told a St. Louis newspaper, “We sort of feel like they pulled an end-around.”
To many observers, Wal-Mart and their developer looked pathetic in their desperate craving for a corporate welfare fix. Wal-Mart and Kroenke didn’t seem to care what kind of Three-Letter Subsidy they wrangled (TIF, CID, TDD) as long as they got something from the taxpayers. Anything. Free landscaping. Free signage. Whatever.
Still it’s hard to blame Wal-Mart too much. Writing in Forbes, David Brunori notes that it’s wrong to fault corporations for behaving like giant, amoral machines acting in their own self-interest. “They act rationally,” he writes. “If someone gives you $1 billion, you take it. The blame lies with us.” In the end it is the fault of all of us for giving Wal-Mart’s lawyers the tools with which to defeat us.
There’s an old saying: You can’t beat City Hall. This is still true for 99 percent of Americans.
Just not for the One Percent.
Christopher Orlet is a journalist living in Florissant, Missouri.
Super-rich control $30tn of global wealth, equal to 40 percent of world GDP – study
RT | November 21, 2014
About 13 percent of global wealth of adults is concentrated in the hands of 0.004 percent of the population, according to a new study. And the trend is set to continue with the number of high net worth individuals reached a record 211,275 in 2014.
Swiss bank UBS and consulting firm Wealth-X compiled the World Ultra Wealth Report 2014 released Thursday.
“Ultra-high net worth” (UHNW) individuals are defined as people with a fortune of about $30 million. Of the 211,275 that fall into the category, 2,325 are billionaires, a 7.1 percent increase since last year. Experts believe the number of billionaires could rise to 4,000 by 2020.
“Even amidst geopolitical conflicts, socio-economic strife, and volatile currency markets, the world’s equity markets displayed strong performances, thereby enabling UHNW individuals’ wealth to increase and their influence across industries and sectors to grow — from their importance in wealth management to their consumption of luxury goods,” the report said.
The UHNW adult population account for approximately 1 in every 35,000 people in the world, or just 0.004 percent.
“Such a large concentration of wealth in the hands of these few individuals means that they tend to have a large degree of influence, whether on global equity markets or specific industries,” the report says
Average wealth of an UHNW individual has risen to $139.4 million, up $1.8 million last year.
The geographical heavyweight was again North America, which accounts for nearly a third of the total $30 trillion, at $9.7 trillion in held wealth. Europe is home to about 25 percent and Asia 23 percent.
Another major trend the report forecasts is that Asian wealth will overtake Europe in 2017. Currently Asia is home to 44,505 super-wealthy individuals with a combined fortune of $6.6 trillion, and Europe’s wealth stands at $7.7 trillion, shared between 58,065 people.
Latin America is the only region in 2014 to incur a fall, down 600 individuals and $75 billion.
Eighty-seven percent of the list is men, and more than two-thirds struck it rich on their own, 13 percent by inheritance, and the rest a combination.
Women, on the other hand, are more likely to become wealth via inheritance. Almost 50 percent got rich through inheritance, and one-third was “self-made.”
The average UHNW individual spends $1 million a year on luxury goods and services, the report says.
READ MORE: Number of billionaires hits new record high in 2014-report
Former head of Iceland’s Landsbanki jailed for role in 2008 crash
RT | November 20, 2014
Sigurjon Arnason, the ex- CEO of Landsbanki, one of the three Icelandic banks that crashed and ruined the economy in 2008, has been sentenced to 12 month in prison for manipulating the bank’s share price and deceiving investors in the bank’s dying days.
A court of Reykjavik found Arnason guilty, but nine months of his term will be suspended and served on probation.
Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki – the three largest Icelandic banks – spectacularly crashed in the autumn of 2008 after gaining assets equivalent to 10 times the size of Iceland’s economy as they funded operations by local businessmen abroad. The former chief executives of the other major banks have already received jail sentences.
Ivar Gudjonsson, Landsbanki’s former director of proprietary trading, and Julius Heidarsson, a former broker, were sentenced to 9 months of which 6 months will be suspended. They were accused of manipulating the bank’s share price by lending funds to investors provided they buy shares.
All the accused pleaded not guilty.
“This sentence is a big surprise to me as I did nothing wrong,” Sigurjon Arnason told Reuters after the hearing. His attorney said he would appeal the verdict, according to Icelandic media.
Unlike other western countries Iceland is actively targeting the former top management of its banks as it investigates alleged financial crimes committed in the lead up to the crisis of 2008.
READ MORE: Icelandic ‘banksters’ get jail time over Kaupthing fraud
US Police Visit Israel to Learn New Strategies
teleSUR | November 17, 2014
Police officers from Chicago, Illinois, in the United States, which is one of the countries with the most militarized police corps, visited Israel, which has one of the most repressive security agencies, to learn “cutting-edge policing strategies and technologies.”
The public security officials attended the Third International Homeland Security Conference held last week in Tel Aviv.
The U.S. delegation was led by the Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who spoke at the conference, according to the Jewish United Fund (JUF), which sent the officials to Israel.
Several areas were addressed during the conference, including cybersecurity, emergency preparedness, counterterrorism and critical infrastructure, such as ports, airports, trains and pipelines.
Both countries have recently been under the radar for the repressive and violent methods that their police corps use against their population.
As an example, United States security agencies have been condemned over the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, where heavily armed policemen dispersed huge protests and riots that erupted in August after officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed teenage African-American boy.
Witnesses assert that Brown had his arms raised before being shot, six times. But Wilson claims he feared for his life after Brown resisted arrest.
Policemen that attended Ferguson to “control” the riots were seen using automatic rifles, camouflage uniforms and tactical equipment. Veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars condemned authorities for that and asserted that the policemen were better equipped and armed than they were when at war in the aforementioned countries.
“Lets remind the officers were facing unarmed angry civilians and that the U.S. soldiers were fighting a regular army and insurgent groups, all of them using heavy weapons,” the veterans said in a joint statement.
On the other hand, Israeli security corps, who are always questioned over their lack of respect toward human and civil rights, have always been criticized for the repressive methods they use against Palestinians.
They use tear gas, rubber bullets and even real bullets to disperse demonstrations, while Palestinians throw rocks. Dozens of videos demonstrate how Israeli policemen and soldiers hit children and unarmed Palestinians.
And most recently, Israeli security agencies have staged several clashes with dozens of Palestinians after agents blocked access to the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of the most holiest sites in the world for Muslims.
However, United States is not the only country that is learning Israeli methods. Agencies from over 60 nations sent representatives to the security conference in the Israeli capital, according to the JUF.
“We will now bring the lessons home; our community should feel secure knowing that the relationships in Chicago and Cook County between homeland security, law enforcement, emergency management and JUF is a testament to the strong relationships, common interests and shared concerns of everyone,” said McCarthy.
Featured Video
Did the 9/11 Hijackers Really Fly the Planes?
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Excerpt
Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
An excerpt from ‘The Great Betrayal’
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- The Straight of Hormuz is Open for Iranian Business… Oil is Moving and Iran is Getting Paid
- Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
- Lebanon Accuses Israel Of Violating The Chemical Weapons Convention By Spraying Toxic Herbicide Over Farmland
- Did the 9/11 Hijackers Really Fly the Planes?
- ‘Jewish lobby’ deceived Putin – Lukashenko
- The UK Joins the Pirates
- Israeli government plans to fund extremist occupier group in occupied West Bank with $1.89M: Report
- Press TV reporter wounded in Israeli drone strike on southern Lebanon
- Time for Trump to Tell Benjamin Netanyahu to Go Away!
- Israeli officials: ‘Security zones’ to remain in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza
- If Americans Knew
- Jared Kushner’s Israel-linked island, and other dubious projects
- Why Are Crypto Billionaires and AIPAC Spending $8+ Million to Elect Adrian Boafo?
- Why the Mainstream Media Should Stop Using the ADL as Their Go-To Antisemitism Source
- Censorship and Thuggery Won’t Save Israel’s Reputation
- Israel Searches for a Red Sea Foothold in Somaliland
- They Weren’t Convicted of Terrorism, But These Palestine Activists Got Sentenced as Terrorists Anyway
- “Ceasefire” is not in Israel’s vocabulary – Daily Update
- Did Trump just threaten a nuclear attack on Iran? Another merger for Israel-Firster David Ellison –Daily Update
- Israeli Firm Accused of Launching Smear Campaigns During US, European Elections
- As World Cup kicks off, Gaza amputee girls chase football dreams
- No Tricks Zone
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
- European “Expert Commission” Urges COVID-19-Like Global Climate State Of Energency!
Aletho News 