It's official. Corporations can now be granted permission by Bush's Intelligence czar, John Negroponte, to keep finances secrets. Negroponte can hand them permission to no longer disclose the accounting information that has historically been required, so investors can make informed decisions. This is all about accountability.
The Bush/Republican mob has been looting the nation, gifting the assets and resources to favorite corporations, unleashing these rabid, sociopathic dogs freeing them from the laws and regulations that have prevented them from abusing their corporate powers as immortal, in many ways exempt from law legal "persons."
This latest attack on the integrity and trustworthiness of America herself was a stealth move, according to a Business Week article
President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye.Unbeknownst to almost all of Washington and the financial world, Bush and every other President since Jimmy Carter have had the authority to exempt companies working on certain top-secret defense projects from portions of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Administration officials told BusinessWeek that they believe this is the first time a President has ever delegated the authority to someone outside the Oval Office. It couldn't be immediately determined whether any company has received a waiver under this provision.
An Emerging Strategy; Whittling
The right wingers who Bush serves, supports, owes his allegiance to and pays have a plan. They are dismantling centuries of laws, regulations and protections designed to make the US a safe, fair place for citizen, workers, investors... and now, as Bush's lame duck status ripens into a weaker, less influential, ever more under challenge, it appears that he is grabbing at as many opportunities to sneak in, to insert policies, to dismantle regulations, neutralize or eliminate laws that career legislators spent their lives achieving.
America is under attack. These right wing surrogates of both transnational corporations with no loyalty to the US and relgious extremists who also have no loyalty to the nation are happily taking all they can get from Bush and the congressional Republican enablers who are protecting and guarding his assaults on America's legal, commercial and judicial infrastructure. This particular whittling away at a law that is a key, taken-for granted aspect our national protection was discovered. But how many more secret amendments, notes, and changes have been entered into law by the devious, dishonest team of criminals who advise Bush on how to play games with the law. These are deadly games that will massively affect the lives of people in this country. These whittlings on our rules, our values (torture, imprisonment for years without access to justice, warmongering, theofascism...) our principles are like cuts in the barc at the base of a tree. Cut it enough and you kill the tree. These thousands of cuts are killing America, not just here at home, where millions go without health care, living in poverty even while working, but also abroad. The traitors who are more loyal to corporations and religious organizations (not god, religious operations, run by men, operated by men perpetrating sexual abuse, lies and propaganda, enabling racism, slavery, torture and murder) have already pretty much destroyed America's reputation has a noble nation supporting fairness, democracy, honesty and integrity. Now, the US is seen, as it should be, as the venal, crooked, predatory, corporation controlled monster that it has become-- a warmongering, incredibly dangerous, deadly bringer of death and destruction, opposing the light of science.
America has been turned into the handservant of the underworld gods of darkness. If Bush and those he serve are not stopped, the US could drag the whole planet into a time of darkness that could make the dark ages seem like a light and fluffy era. Maybe he'll start a nuclear war. Maybe he'll just destroy the value of the dollar. Maybe he'll run our economy into the ground as nations, no longer considering themselves loyal friends, as Bush betrays them, start seeing ways to band together to protect themselves from the rogue US nation.
We know that this ability of presidents to give corporations permission to fudge their books has been around. We need to know the history of this mistaken law. Will Bush report that he gave Enron's Ken Lay permission to fudge the books? Will Bush use this as a blanket tool for protecting all the sweetheart deals, all the no-bid contracts he's put together.
I hope that Businessweek and other mainstream media, with the resources, will submit freedom of information requests to find out how many times the right of the president to excuse publicly held corporations from disclosing their full financial records has been exercised.
We have no reason to trust Bush or his surrogate, Negroponte, to be an honest user of this "law." We have plenty of reasons to distrust Bush, to expect that he will almost certainly abuse the law.
Tell your local paper to make this a front page story. Tell your legislators to pay attention to this and do something about it.
