THE BIG FIX IS IN! FEDS DROP BIG TOBACCO PENALTY!

Ha ha! It is to laugh. The government (which under Ashcroft wanted to dump this case) has asked for nothing significant in the penalty of decades of tobacco companies' lies and manipulation. Yes, here's another example of the rich and powerful $#%@ing on the people via the cozy insider action of the Bush administration.

washingtonpost.com

Tobacco Escapes Huge Penalty
U.S. Seeks $10 Billion Instead of $130 Billion

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 8, 2005; A01

After eight months of courtroom argument, Justice Department lawyers abruptly upset a landmark civil racketeering case against the tobacco industry yesterday by asking for less than 8 percent of the expected penalty.

As he concluded closing arguments in the six-year-old lawsuit, Justice Department lawyer Stephen D. Brody shocked tobacco company representatives and anti-tobacco activists by announcing that the government will not seek the $130 billion that a government expert had testified was necessary to fund smoking-cessation programs. Instead, Brody said, the Justice Department will ask tobacco companies to pay $10 billion over five years to help millions of Americans quit smoking.

Before it was cut, the cessation program was the most significant financial penalty still available to the government as part of its litigation, which had been the largest civil racketeering and conspiracy case in U.S. history. The government contended that six tobacco companies engaged in a 50-year conspiracy to defraud and addict smokers and then conceal the dangers of cigarettes.

"We were very surprised," said Dan Webb, lawyer for Altria Group's Philip Morris USA and the coordinating attorney in the case. "They've gone down from $130 billion to $10 billion with absolutely no explanation. It's clear the government hasn't thought through what it's doing."

The Justice Department offered little explanation for the figure. Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum Jr. and members of the trial team declined to answer questions as the court session ended. In 2001, then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft tried to settle or shelve the government's racketeering case against the industry before a public outcry forced its revival.

"It feels like a political decision to take into consideration the tobacco companies' financial interest rather than health interests of 45 million addicted smokers," said William V. Corr, director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "The government proved its case, but the levels of funding are a shadow of the cessation treatment program that the government's own expert witness recommended."

Sources and government officials close to the case said the trial lawyers wanted to request $130 billion for smoking-cessation programs but were pressured by leaders in the attorney general's office, particularly McCallum, to make the cut. Arguments within the Justice Department continued behind the scenes through yesterday morning, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the controversy over the matter.

When the case began in 2004, the government sought to force the tobacco industry to pay $280 billion in allegedly ill-gotten profits. But in February, a federal appeals court ruled that the administration could not seek that penalty.

Michael Fiore, the government expert who recommended $130 billion for cessation programs, is a medical professor and director of a tobacco research center who chaired the subcommittee on tobacco cessation in the Department of Health and Human Services' Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health.

His testimony was widely considered to represent the sum the government was seeking for a cessation program, though Justice Department lawyers had made no formal demand until yesterday.

The strength of the government's case hinged on a large collection of internal tobacco company documents, many of which were never before made public. The government began its case in September by showing on an oversized projection screen the written memos of tobacco executives and scientists as they described their plans to keep customers in the dark about whether their habit was addictive or dangerous and to encourage young people to smoke.

Facing those same internal documents in another suit,the tobacco industry in 1998 agreed to pay $246 billion to settle a lawsuit filed by states to recover their costs for the medical treatment of smokers.

Justice Department spokeswoman Cynthia Magnuson said the department could ask the court to force the industry to pay more in future years for cessation programs, which include a staffed help line for smokers, treatment programs and possibly free medications. She suggested the penalty was designed to comply with the recent appeals court ruling that such penalties could not be used to punish past fraud. Sources close to the case said the cessation program is either a valid penalty or it's not; the dollar figure should not change that.

"This proposal has been designed to be a forward-looking remedy to prevent and restrain future wrongful conduct consistent with the recent Circuit Court opinion in this case," she said.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, who is presiding over the case, is expected to decide in the next few months whether the government proved its case of an industry-wide conspiracy and whether to order any penalties against the companies. Among the other remedies the government is still seeking are an industry-funded anti-smoking educational campaign and a court injunction to stop the companies from targeting youth in their marketing.

The government also wants the judge to appoint a court monitor to watch over industry practices and ensure that tobacco companies do not commit fraud in the future. Kessler has repeatedly expressed concern about how such proposals would work.

Defendants in the case include Philip Morris USA; R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Brown & Williamson, which have merged to form Reynolds American Inc.; British American Tobacco; the Lorillard Tobacco unit of Loew's Corp.; and Vector Group Ltd.'s Liggett Group Inc. They began their closing arguments today.

Anti-smoking advocates assailed the decision as a self-inflicted blow that would help the tobacco companies' bottom line and miss a well-earned chance to help American smokers.

William B. Schultz, a former Justice Department official who oversaw the lawsuit under the Clinton administration, said that "it's disappointing, to say the least, that at the final stages of this litigation they have pulled their punches in such a significant way. This is the loss of a significant opportunity to advance public health. Smoking is the number one preventable disease. It kills 400,000 people a year."

Lead government attorney Sharon Eubanks had summed up the trial early yesterday, saying the government had proved the industry engaged in a "decades-long pattern of . . . misrepresentations, half-truths, deceptions and lies that continue to this day."

MORE DENIAL FROM THE ABYSS

Spin. Smoke. Mirrors. Whatever. The NY TIMES reports the army can't even meet its recently LOWERED recruiting goals. This administration just throws out everything but the truth on what is happening with the war, the economy. Take your pick. And then they call you a liar or unpatriotic for questioning them for being liars (and greedy, stupid and small). Its war in Iraq if failing. It's creating more terrorists. It's making the world more dangerous for America and it's not only losing out on new recruits, officers are bailing like never before.


And YET! Where are the red state conservatives' children? Why are they not signing up to go to war? We should have a GLUT of WHITE, right wing, Christian, conservative recruits! If there is no hypocrisy among conservatives their children should be the patriots they claim they are (since they cast vile dispersions on any questioning the administration or its war) and flooding the army. Hell, Bush's daughters and all his male nephews should be in the military and serving over in Iraq. But they aren't. And it's sad to see fairly decent conservatives back this corrupt regime while led by the nose via its false nationalism and greed over tax cuts. It's nothing but a "get mine while I can" group of opportunists with no moral understanding. Or an intellectual one. And let's face it. These people aren't dumb because they are keeping their kids out of the military. Only they would never admit the real reason why.

"At long last. Have you no decency, sir?" --- Army Attorney Joseph Welch to Sen. Joseph McCarthy

Sam

June 8, 2005 NYT

After Lowering Goal, Army Falls Short on May Recruits
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, June 7 - Even after reducing its recruiting target for May, the Army missed it by about 25 percent, Army officials said on Tuesday. The shortfall would have been even bigger had the Army stuck to its original goal for the month.

On Friday, the Army is expected to announce that it met only 75 percent of its recruiting goal for May, the fourth consecutive monthly shortfall in the number of new recruits sent to basic training. Just over 5,000 new recruits entered boot camp in May.

But the news could have appeared worse. Early last month, the Army, with no public notice, lowered its long-stated May goal to 6,700 recruits from 8,050. Compared with the original target, the Army achieved only 62.6 percent of its goal for the month.

Army officials defended the shift on Tuesday, saying it was not uncommon to change monthly goals at midyear. They said that the latest change reflected the reality that the Army was not going to meet its May goal, and that it made more sense to shift some of that quota to the summer months, traditionally a better season for recruiters to attract new high school graduates.

"We typically reallocate monthly goals during the course of the year," said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, an Army spokesman, who said that the Army still expected to meet its overall annual goal of shipping 80,000 new recruits to boot camp. "The summer is relatively easier for recruiting."

Because of a series of recent incidents in which Army recruiters were found to be breaking or bending rules to meet their monthly quotas, two senior Army officials acknowledged that the shift in May could leave the impression that the Army was playing "a shell game" with its recruiting figures, shifting its goals to make the numbers look better than they are. But the two officials, who were speaking on condition of anonymity because the monthly figures have not yet been made public, said that impression was not justified.

The Pentagon has delayed until Friday the public release of May recruiting figures for all the armed services, a decision some military officials say is an effort to minimize what has become a drumbeat of bad news for the Army and the Marine Corps at the beginning of each month. Previously, each service, as well as the National Guard and the Reserve, released their monthly figures on different days at the start of each month, with each gaining some media attention.

But a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said, "Any large organization with data that is of public interest would want to present it in a way that makes sense and is complete for the entire organization."

The Army's figures for May put the service about 8,300 soldiers behind its projected year-to-date number of enlistees sent to basic training by now. "The trend line is going against them," said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

The Army has tried to reverse the trend by adding 1,000 recruiters since last September, starting a new advertising campaign, offering selected enlistment bonuses of more than $20,000 and pairing returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan with recruiters to attract soldiers.

Harvey Perritt, a spokesman for the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, said the original May quota was set months ago when officials expected an early surge in recruiting. That did not happen. By April, only 50 percent of the training positions at the Army's five major training centers were filled, down from 92 percent in the corresponding period a year earlier, Mr. Perritt said. The Army then reallocated some of the May quota.

"The shifting of the goal suggests to me that the Army is aggressively working the problem and not passively sitting by and letting the mission slip away," said Beth J. Asch, a senior economist at the RAND Corporation.

Two recruiters in the New York area, insisting on anonymity because the Army has ordered all recruiters not to talk to reporters, said their mission for June had not been changed, nor had the goals for July, August and September.

One of the recruiters said he doubted that the summer would yield more recruits than the spring. "The summer is supposed to be big, but I don't think it's going to happen," he said. "I don't see much interest among the high school seniors."

To help offset the recruiting shortfalls, the Army is also trying to keep more soldiers. A memorandum from the Army's top personnel officer last month outlined a plan to reduce attrition among first-term enlistees by 1 percent, and retain 3,000 soldiers.

The memorandum, first reported last week by The Wall Street Journal, requires the approval of more senior-level brigade commanders, instead of battalion commanders, to discharge soldiers for pregnancy, drug or alcohol abuse, or poor fitness.

Colonel Hilferty said the Army was ahead of this year's goal to re-enlist 64,162 soldiers, which is 8,000 more than last year's target. Aided by tax-free re-enlistment bonuses, virtually every Army unit that has served or is serving in Iraq or Afghanistan has exceeded its re-enlistment goals in the past two years.