The American way

It seems the Seneca Nation's casino building ventures have officially sunk into a familiar business tactic: the front. This shouldn't shock anyone. The business of putting forth a false face to score deals a company normally wouldn't get (and shouldn't) is engrained in capitalism's culture, and the Seneca Nation proves no different in that regard.

According to Sunday's Buffalo News expos?(c), the "tribal preference law" is to blame. The law allows for Seneca joint venture firms to receive cost breaks on the jobs they bid for over non-Indian firms, while allowing for a 10 percent higher bid on jobs less than $100,000, or one percent on jobs over $7 million in the process. For practical purposes, the law counts companies with only one Seneca Nation member in a leading role for preference law eligibility. With the advent of the casino, numerous new firms have sprung up using this model. Coincidence? Of course not, but it's nothing new.

These schemes create an assortment of ethical business concerns, but no one should be surprised it's being utilized. The Seneca Nation is using the same model employed by "successful" businessmen for generations. Though it's not right, it's how business is done.

From the K Street lobbying scandal currently engulfing Washington, the Enron and MCI WorldCom accounting debacles, to the military industrial complex led by the Carlyle group, crony capitalism utilizing "frontmen" is the norm in our nation's business practices. There's always been a fine line between organized business versus organized crime when big money, such as casino proprietorship, is concerned. Loopholes and exceptions are built into every contract and those that exploit them the most accumulate the greatest wealth. It's the American way.

When leakers cry leak

White House politicization of leaks embodies double standard

Let's get this straight. In Bush's world, leaking is justified and legal for his crowd, yet unlawful for everybody else.

CIA analyst Mary McCarthy was fired Thursday following accusations she leaked information to reporters pertaining to the infamous CIA rendition program that sent terror suspects to secret prisons in other countries for torture. After the Washington Post reported on the ongoing practice in response to Sept. 11, which won them a Pulitzer Prize, the CIA, at the White House's behest, began a vigorous effort at finding, and stopping, such leaks.

On the surface, this seems fine. The CIA has a right to keep it's secrets - that's the business they're in - when national security's at stake. But as with everything involving the Bush administration, the surface means nothing. It's what is below that counts.

The McCarthy firing is simply politics at its worst. Her leak didn't endanger national security or expose U.S. forces and intelligence assets - it also didn't endanger a very specific target, like the Bush-okayed leak that exposed Valerie Plame. McCarthy's leak exposed the possible criminality of the Bush administration. In her mind, she was defending the Constitution of the United States, and Geneva Conventions, against Bush's actions.

By firing McCarthy, two messages are sent. One is that government employees should turn a blind eye to government-sanctioned crime. The second message is that U.S. politicians learned the wrong lesson from Nixon and the Watergate scandal - exposing your enemies.

Don't forget, Bush himself authorized the leaking of classified information to the press in the run up to the Iraq war. In fact, Bush, Cheney and Rice have all been involved with leak investigations in one way or another, so leaking itself isn't the issue. It's the politics of those who leak that is key.