War on Drugs: Cui Bono? Cui Pacat? Cui Patitur?

 Since the Nixon presidency, the U.S. government has poured almost a trillion dollars into the “war on drugs,” and what has it produced? More drugs. More inner-city violence, and the largest prison population in the world. Since Mexico's former President Felipe Calderon initiated a large scale "war on drugs" in 2006 funded by millions, perhaps billions, of dollars in U.S. aid, the death toll in Mexico is believed to have reached at least 60,000, possibly even $80,000, with more than 26,000 people missing. As the murder rate has dramatically increased, with Ciudad Juárez on the northern border recognised, not too long ago, pinpointed as the most dangerous city on the planet, the supply of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine from Mexico continues to increase.

So, without doing much research, it's easy to answer questions such as these when it comes to the "war on drugs," Although, to be sure, research will most definitely support the answers we can see right in front of our eyes: escalated race and class warfare--in effect, a new Jim Crow; mass incarceration of American citizens (1100% increase for drug law violations); unimaginable violence, especially in Mexico; more drugs than ever before; wealthier than wealthy banksters, politicians, CEOs, multinational corporations, etc.;  unprecedented wealth and power, and the list goes on  and on. 

In other words:

Cui bono? Who benefits? Why, the capstone elite, of course. No, I'm not talking Illuminati, I'm just referring to those few special people who reside at the top of the socioeconomic pyramid.

Cui pacat? Who pays? We, the taxpayers, as usual. 


Cui patitur? Who suffers? The people who reside at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid.

Another question you might want to ask yourself is, which kills more people? Marijuana? War on drugs?  To my knowledge, pure marijuana has never killed anyone, while the war on drugs is responsible for millions of deaths.  In fact, marijuana has numerous health benefits, but that's another story.

Let's take a look at Mexico for a clear cut example. Not only who gets what, that's fairly obvious; but are the results of this "war on drugs"-- that just so happens to coincide with neo-liberal "reform"--purely an accident, making the "war on drugs" a complete failure?  Or, was/is the "war on drugs" really quite successful when you dig a little deeper and discover the true motive/agenda?  Remember, Mexico's war on drugs is using the same model used in Columbia: Plan Columbia. 

Warning: If you believe everything is a coincidence, and that the predator ruling class, no matter what political party they attach themselves, are mostly benevolent creatures, who are only looking out for our best interest, there is no need to read any further.

While Carlo Slim Helu, world's richest man according to Forbes, takes in $27 million per day--yes, that's per day--half of all Mexican citizens barely take in $2 per day. In fact, it's so bad in Mexico-- innocent people are kidnapped, tortured and brutally murdered, then displayed for public consumption by viscous rivaling drug cartels on a daily basis--right now that many of its citizens have two choices: sneak into America, or work for what's turned Mexico into the the horrific war zone that it is: the drug cartels.  The cartels have gained so much power, they could be considered a de facto and/or "parallel government."  After all, in too many areas throughout Mexico, the heavily armed cartels are implementing their own brand of law and order.

As for defending oneself in this living hell, it's almost impossible because legally owning a gun  is nearly impossible, and most of law enforcement/military/government are corrupt, or indistinguishable from the cartels, leaving Mexican citizens to live their daily lives like pop-up figures in a shooting gallery.

Now if Mexico were solely responsible for this unimaginable tragedy, one could argue, "it's their problem...let them deal with it," and tough immigration laws might make sense.  However, not only are most of the drugs sold to Americans, and not only is America providing 90% of the estimated 15 million illegal assault weapons--an arsenal of highly sophisticated weaponry-- the U.S. participated in setting up the conditions that would facilitate the drug cartels' slaughter of Mexican citizens...from the very beginning--and conditions we continue to facilitate

While Mexico most certainly took part, the Clinton administration, and other western imperial powers pushed NAFTA, which accelerated the neo-liberal "reforms" widening the already huge wealth gap in Mexico, pauperizing the working class, and pushing the already poverty-stricken Mexicans into even deeper poverty. Of course, this ensured that the drug cartels would have a vast population from which to recruit foot soldiers

Moreover, Clinton  refused to allow the subject of narco-trafficking, in relation to NAFTA, into public debate, even though, for example, the DEA, voiced its concerns that by improving infrastructure (road/rail system, removal of tariffs for goods going northwards), for the increased trade from Mexico into the U.S. would make it that much easier for drug traffickers.

Clinton can't say he didn't know of the consequences NAFTA would create for the Mexican people because he had already created and implemented Operation Gatekeeper, aimed at halting illegal immigration at the United States–Mexico border. He knew NAFTA would not only impoverish Mexicans, but it could be said the U.S. government was well aware of the war-zone it would create. In fact, it could be said that is exactly what they wanted.

Crazy? Not so much. There is no doubt that preparing Mexico and laying the foundation for NAFTA were in the works a long time ago. In the 1980s, as Mexico was coerced to implement a more neo-liberal approach toward politics and government, abandoning the social arena, and creating, more or less, a social vacuum that the cartels were/are more than happy to fill, that is, along with the brutal violence.

“From 1980 to 1991, Mexico received thirteen structural adjustment loans from the World Bank, more than any other country. It also signed six agreements with the IMF, all of which brought increased pressure to liberalize trade and investment.”-- Tom Barry, Zapata’s Revenge.

NAFTA reshaped Mexico's  land ownership laws, slashed tarrifs on U.S. imports, and allowed subsidized U.S. corn to flood the country, devastating Mexico's agricultural sector.  Ironically, lured by the promise of work, border towns like Ciudad Juarez, now murder capital of the world,  attracted many of the Mexicans who could no longer find work after NAFTA was implemented.  The factories located there that provided cheap labor (equivalent of approximately $5/day) to foreign manufacturers offered employment, albeit, at slave wages.

The violence the drug cartels and the Mexican government have created is a bonus as it controls workers and displaces communities from territories of interest, that is, with valuable resources, to transnational corporate expansion. Corporatized conflict or disaster capitalism, where people are the collateral damage to keep capital moving through the feudal system.

"This notion of “security” calls up the Colombia model: paramilitarization in the service of capital. This model includes the formation of paramilitary death squads, the displacement of civilian populations, and an increase in violence. In the commercial sector, it is workers, small businesses and a sector of the local elite who are hit hardest by drug war policies.

Consider the links between the drug war and struggles around areas with natural resources:

• Residents of Ciudad Mier, a small community in Tamaulipas, left en masse because of paramilitary violence. The town sits on top of Mexico’s largest gas field, as does a large portion of the violence-ridden state.

• In the Juárez Valley, considered the most dangerous place in Mexico, killings and threats have forced many to leave, just as a new border crossing between the U.S. and Mexico is being constructed.

• In Santa Maria Ostula, a small Indigenous Nahuatl community in coastal Mexico, at least 28 people have been killed (and four others disappeared) by paramilitary and state violence since 2009. Their territory is in a mineral rich and strategically located area.

• In the Sierra Madre mountain range in northern Mexico, Canadian mining companies operate in areas where even government officials fear to enter because of the presence of armed narcotraffickers.

• In Petén, Guatemala, government officials militarized the area and declared a state of emergency because of the presence of Zetas that lasted eight months, ending in early 2012. Recent announcements indicate that a new oil rush is taking place in the same region.

 The "war on drugs" is not about drugs; rather, it's a smokescreen. It "may be better understood as being about increased social and territorial control over lands and people, in the interest of capitalist expansion."

“In this context, the current offensive follows the neo-liberal manual on indigenous territories. It is about sowing terror with a baseline of murders and disappearances until families abandon their lands…”--columnist and indigenous rights activist Gloria Munoz Ramirez

Cartel Kidnapping in Chihuahua Mexico

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Mormanism: Temple of Doom?

How do intelligent, well-educated, and mostly well to do people--relatively speaking--end up with a cult-like belief system that started less than 200 years ago by one megalomaniac man, Joseph Smith, a sorcerer "treasure seeker,"  who claimed to have had a "Star Wars" like vision? Who claimed that he was called of God to re-establish Christ's true Church on the earth? And how could this obvious cult, who so thoroughly perverts the gospel of Jesus Christ, have formed into a major world religion of considerable respectability--so much so that a wealthy Mormon had a good chance at becoming president of the U.S.? Is this just another branch of Christianity with conservative, family-based values, or something much more sinister?

It all started in 1820, in upstate New York, when a man named Joseph Smith claimed to have had a vision--not taught in the church for 22 years after it happened, nor did it appear in his mother's biographical sketch of him-- from God that supposedly resolved his sense of religious confusion and personal questions and that relayed to him that all his sins were forgiven. In 1823, he received another vision that revealed the location of a buried book of golden plates. In 1827, Smith "transcribed" some of the Egyptian characters engraved on the plates (conveniently, no one in North America could decipher Egyptian at the time...more on that later). And finally in 1830, his "divine" translations were published.

Included amongst his almighty revelations from God were visions of John the Baptist, Elijah, and the voices of Peter, James and John, who confirmed his translations (John the Baptist) and who ordained (Peter, James, John) Smith and his friend, Oliver Cowdery to a higher priesthood.  In Smith's world, angelic revelations timed themselves perfectly with his desires.

In 1912, eight Egyptologists were asked to check Joseph Smith's translation of the sacred texts. Their conclusion when "held up to the merciless light of modern scholarship" was that Smith's translation was a "work of the imagination...its authenticity has been destroyed completely."

More from the Egyptologists in 1912:

"It is difficult to deal with Joseph Smith's impudent fraud." -- Dr. A.H. Sayce of Oxford University

"A Figaro of nonsense."--Dr. Arthur Mace, Assistant Curator of the Metropolitan Museum.

"The interpretation of the plates displays ignorance." Dr. John Peters, Univ. of Pennsylvania, who conducted an expedition to Babylon in 1888 could find nothing but amusement in the Mormon prophet's work

"None of those, either human or divine, who helped Joseph Smith translations had any conception of the most commonplace Egyptian characters." -- Prof C.A.B. Mercer, custodian of the Hibbard collection of Egyptian reproductions at the Western Theological Seminary

And the most interesting of all in my humble opinion:

"The papyrus which Joseph Smith declared to be the book of Abraham and explained in his fantastic way are parts of the well-known [Tibetan] Book of the Dead." -- Dr. Edward Meyer, University of Berlin

You must remember that in Mormonism, a living prophet is better than a dead one. This means that Mormon doctrine can change, sometimes, turning the original belief on its head. For instance, Joseph Smith said a Mormon cannot get into heaven without more than one wife. Later, when the Mormons desired statehood, they were told they must give up the practice of polygamy. Well, guess what? The "prophet" at that time received a revelation that told him polygamy was wrong. So, to the public, anyway, he declared that Mormons with more than one wife will be excommunicated.

Almost every law, article, rule, practice of the LDS Church is anti-Christian. Take the Law of Eternal Progression, , which is the cornerstone doctrine of the Mormon church, as well as many other occultic religions.  It's the idea that you can become a god.  Christian doctrine says the complete opposite, but Mormons, who claim to be Christian, accept this lie as truth, believing in a large number of man-gods who, now ruling over other planets, were once simply men, now ascended to godhood. How is that in any way, Christian?

As man is, God once was, and as God is, man may become. Law of Eternal Progression

"Brethren 225,000 of you are here tonight. I suppose 225,000 of you may become GODS. There seems to be plenty of space out there in the universe." Mormon Prophet Spencer W Kimball, General Conference, Oct 1975. Doctrine and Covenants (DC) 132: 20 Then shall they be gods,

Another thing, why do Mormons need a "temple recommend" to even enter a Mormon temple? Name one Christian church who does that.  What's more, the 8th Article of  the Mormon Faith denies the Bible is inerrant, claiming  the Book of Mormon to be perfect. Smith actually "corrected" many passages of the bible, such as Luke 10:22. 

Smith's concept of the trinity --the core of Christian doctrine--that is when he believed in the trinity, changed constantly to the point where he finally decidied it did not exist.  He replaced it with a polytheistic universe. God the Father is an extraterrestrial who lives on the planet, Kolob. "As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become." Also, God can be fired.

Did you ever wonder why Mormons have the largest genealogical record of any institution in the world, why they're so good at keeping genealogical records?  Well, it's due to their belief in baptism for the dead.  It is the duty of every Mormon to do their genealogy back at least four generations and then take those ancestors and baptize them by proxy, "do their endowments." Oh yeah, up until this time the ancestors are in "spirit prison," just waiting for you to liberate them.  They use children to substitute for the dead people they're baptizing.

Undertones of the occult abound in the Mormon church. For example, the inverted hexagram, where instead of the one point sticking up, two points stick up, is considered one of the most profoundly evil symbols in all of magic, yet it's on a Mormon temple in Logan Utah. And what kind of religion asks its members to pantomime their own murders? Up until 1990, the Mormon endowment temple ceremony required the members to do this. They stopped this as well as some other questionable practices after conducting a survey as to why members were leaving.

The LDS church has always been politically active. There is a high percentage of Mormons in the CIA, FBI, secret service and amongst the highest levels of presidential advisers. At one time four out five Joint Chiefs were Mormon. Now we have Glenn Beck doing his best to mainstream Mormonism. What's more, the Washington DC temple, located in Silver Springs Maryland, on the fifth floor has an exact replica of the oval office and corresponding telemetry so powerful that they actually have to reroute airplanes around the temple.

"Mormonism seems as American as apple pie, and Mormons seem to be the perfect citizens with their close families, high morals, patriotism, Boy Scout programs, Tabernacle Choir, and conservative politics. A Los Angeles Times article implied that Mormons have recently gained the image of "super-Americans . . . [who] appear to many to be 'more American than the average American." [vii]This may explain why such a high proportion of Mormons find their way into government. Returned LDS missionaries have "the three qualities the CIA wants: foreign language ability, training in a foreign country, and former residence in a foreign country."[viii] Utah (and particularly BYU) is one of the prime recruiting areas for the CIA. According to BYU spokesman Dr. Gary Williams, "We've never had any trouble placing anyone who has applied to the CIA. Every year they take almost anybody who applies."[ix] He also admitted that this has created problems with a number of foreign countries, who have complained about the "pretty good dose of [Mormon] missionaries who've gone back to the countries they were in as Central Intelligence agents."[x]

This may at least partially explain the reported close tie between the Mormon Church and the CIA.[xi] A disproportionate number of Mormons arrive at the higher levels of the CIA, FBI, military intelligence, armed forces, and all levels of city, state, and federal governments, including the Senate, Congress, Cabinet, and White House Staff. Sincere and loyal citizens, most of them may be unaware of the secret ambition of The Brethren. What could be better than having such patriots as these serving in strategic areas of government and national security?

The Council of Ytfif, originally called the Illuminati, was an elite secret order within the highest levels of the LDS church designed to bring about LDS rule of the U.S. Within in this group Smith was crowned king of the United States. This group later morphed into the Freeman Institute and National Center for Constitutional Studies in the 1970s, later changed to the National Center of Constitutional Studies in the 1980s, which still maintains its political agenda as best it can.

Furthermore, the oath of vengeance (or law of vengeance) is an oath that was made by participants in the Endowment ritual of the LDS Church in1845, in which participants vowed to pray that God would avenge the U.S. for the blood of the prophets Joseph Smith, Jr. and Hyrum Smith, who were assassinated in 1844 by a mob. Yes, Mitt Romney took this oath as he was once a Mormon bishop in Boston.  Good thing Mitt Romney didn't get elected, right?

Let's not forget the issue of polygamy, which despite what you're told, still exists to this day.  Joseph Smith married at least 33 women,  the youngest being 14-years old when he was 37-years old. Of those 33 women, 11 were already married to good active living members of the LDS church.  Smith would often send these men on missions and marry their wives while they were gone. Moreover, Smith did not treat his extra wives like wives, except for having sexual relations. They did they live with him, nor did he support them.  Upon his death, he was married to 27 women.

Apostle, John Taylor, who later became the third president of the church lied in a public debate with protestant ministers in France in 1850, when he boldly denied Mormons were practicing polygamy; he had 12 wives at this time. So, today, it is estimated that at least 50,000 people live in polygamist families in North America, solely because Joseph Smith received a revelation from God commanding him to do it.

Don't get me wrong. This is not a criticism of the Mormon people. Most LDS members are very sincere in their belief,  are very good hard-working people who actually have the right idea on some things, such as taking care of their own. Poor Mormons do not suffer the same fate that other poor Americans do.  However, it's very troublesome that this religion masks itself as Christianity when it's clearly not even close. 








Links for more information:

More Truth Foundation

Mormon Think The links page on this site provides all the best critic sites from both sides of the argument.

Richard Packham

Rethinking Mormonism 

Utah Lighthouse Ministries

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Voting Charade

As someone commented on the George Carlin video below, "Fuck this illusory nonsense. It's hypocrisy disguised as righteousness and I'm sick of it."

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Continuous Cycle of Child Poverty: US 2nd Highest Rate In the Developed World

After hearing the US is #2, to be sure, Mitt Romney exclaimed, "Why aren't we #1, dammit?!?"  while, under his breath,  President Obama mutters, "I got Osama."  Anyway.......... 

Child Poverty Rates in Developed World

The most recent U.S. Census Bureau  poverty data shows millions of families struggling fiercely to keep their heads above water.  According to the census, fourteen states saw statistically significant increases in their child poverty rates, 26 states saw small increases, and nine states and the District of Columbia saw small declines in child poverty rates last year. The bottom line is that 16.1 million children are living in poverty in our wealthy nation with more than 7 million living in extreme poverty.

Moreover, if you use the definition of poverty used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which states a child is living in poverty if he or she is growing up in a household where disposable income, when adjusted for family size and compensation, is less than 50% of the median disposable income, 30 million children are living in relative poverty.

So, given America's immense wealth, the U.S. has/has had unusually high rates of child poverty and income inequality, even prior to the 2008 financial meltdown. In fact, the U.S. has one of the highest child poverty rates in the developed world.  Only Romania surpasses the U.S.

One of the problems is that the U.S. does little to assist low-income working families who, despite each adult working 40 hours per week or more, do not earn enough to make ends meet. 

Yet despite the toxic toll a high child poverty rate takes on a nation as wealthy as the U.S., our political leaders rarely if ever mention it.  It's only very recently that  President Obama broke his silence on child poverty while Mitt Romney ignores the issue completely.  After all, children do not vote and they do not pay taxes. 

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Is Mitt Romney a Financial Parasite?

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”. -- Abraham Lincoln

How does the good of a few greedy parasites, beholden to nothing, outweigh the good of the nation? How does anyone justify legislation and policy that further lines the pockets of these parasites? Even if parasitic wealth was taxed at the same rate as the rest of us, they would still be filthy rich! And, they don't create jobs. Hell, most of them never worked a day in their life. But apparently, enough of us believe in their speculative finance economy that has made them obscenely wealthy, and the propaganda that they spew that we are willing to risk an economic catastrophe to protect that obscene wealth.

Which brings me to presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, whose fiscal plan delivers huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans while simultaneously forcing massive cuts to public services and social security on which the middle class rely. Then, there is the matter of his personal finances...

Not only, according to his released tax returns, did Romney make $42.7 million over the past two years, paying only $6.2 million in taxes - that’s an effective tax rate of less than 13.9% for doing nothing - he took advantage of a giant tax loophole that's available to only a very select few. It's called the carried interest loophole, or as it's often called the hedge fund manager tax loophole (in 2009 Top 10 Hedge Fund Honchos Averaged $900,000/Hr). Why hedge-fund tax loophole? Because hedge fund managers, partners in real estate ventures, and private equity kingpins are the select few who can use this legal provision to escape paying what the 99.9999 of the population are forced to pay.

What exactly is carried interest? 

Well, aside from the fact that closing this loophole could save taxpayers and the deficit $15 billion by 2015, it is the percentage - usually 20% - that  hedge fund managers and private equity kingpins can claim as investment,  taxed at the long-term capital gain of 15% rate,  instead of claiming what it actually is, fees or income,  which would be taxed at what the rest of us pay, 35%.

Wait, it gets better.  The maximum amount a married couple can pass to their children without paying gift taxes is $10 million, but Romney paid zero gift tax on the $100 million trust funds he set up for his sons. That's right, they avoided $31 million in gift tax that 99.9999% of the population would've had to pay if they did the same thing! According to David Cay Johnston, they "gave their sons some of their carried interest. And because the carried interest is not an ownership, it is a right to receive profits, Congress lets you value that gift at zero". 

In a nutshell, top hedge fund managers, gifted with a much lower tax rate, who do not produce anything tangible, or, some might argue, anything of any value whatsoever, make  more hourly, than most Americans will earn in a lifetime,  and financial parasites presidential candidates, who left their company 13 years ago,  still receives a share of the firm’s “carried interest” profits – taxed at the same low rate. It's the gift that keeps on giving to those with ghastly gobs of power and privilege.

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We Need a President Who Helps Eligible Investors Avoid Paying U.S. Taxes...

..Like President Bush needs a crash course in "trickle-down" economics.

Matt Romney, the wealthiest candidate running for president, with a personal fortune of up to $250 million, may look Presidential but as we all know appearances can be deceiving.

-- While in private business, Mitt Romney utilized shell companies in two offshore tax havens to help eligible investors avoid paying U.S. taxes, federal and state records show.

Romney gained no personal tax benefit from the legal operations in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. But aides to the Republican presidential hopeful and former colleagues acknowledged that the tax-friendly jurisdictions helped attract billions of additional investment dollars to Romney's former company, Bain Capital, and thus boosted profits for Romney and his partners.

Romney has based his White House bid, in part, on the skills he learned as co-founder and chief of Bain Capital, one of the nation's most successful private equity groups. His campaign cites his record while governor of Massachusetts of closing state tax loopholes; his involvement with foreign tax havens had not previously come to light.

In the Cayman Islands, Romney was listed as a general partner and personally invested in BCIP Associates III Cayman, a private equity fund that is registered at a post office box on Grand Cayman Island and that indirectly buys equity in U.S. companies. The arrangement shields foreign investors from U.S. taxes they would pay for investing in U.S. companies.

Romney still retains an investment in the Cayman fund through a trust. Campaign disclosure forms show the investment paid him more than $1 million last year in dividends, interest and capital gains.

In Bermuda, Romney served as president and sole shareholder for four years of Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. It funneled money into Bain Capital's Sankaty family of hedge funds, which invest in bonds and other debt issued by corporations, as well as bank loans.

Like thousands of similar financial entities, Sankaty maintains no office or staff in Bermuda. Its only presence consists of a nameplate at a lawyer's office in downtown Hamilton, capital of the British island territory.

"It's just a mail drop, essentially," said Marc B. Wolpow, who worked with Romney for nine years at Bain Capital and who set up Sankaty Ltd. in October 1997 without ever visiting Bermuda. "There's no one doing any work down there other than lawyers."

Investing through what's known as a blocker corporation in Bermuda protects tax-exempt American institutions, such as pension plans, hospitals and university endowments, from paying a 35% tax on what the Internal Revenue Service calls "unrelated business income" from domestic hedge funds that invest in debt, experts say.

Kevin Madden, Romney's campaign spokesman, said there was nothing improper about the Bermuda arrangement, or in Romney's investment in the Cayman fund. In neither case, Madden said, did Romney gain the ability to defer or avoid paying U.S. taxes.

"I would disagree that these could be described as tax loopholes," he said. "These are perfectly normal and perfectly legal arrangements that American companies put together to be successful in the market."

The Cayman fund is registered at P.O. Box 908GT on Grand Cayman Island, corporate records show. Like the Bermuda company, it maintains no office or staff overseas.

Romney first purchased a 3.25% share of the Cayman fund, and was listed as a "general partner (passive)" before his retirement from Bain Capital in late 2001, records show. He put his financial assets into a blind trust in January 2003, when he took office as Massachusetts governor.

Brad Malt, who controls Romney's financial trust, said Bain Capital organized the Cayman fund to attract money from foreign institutional investors.

"This is not Mitt trying to do something strange," he said. "This is Bain trying to raise some number of billions from investors around the world."

The privately held Cayman fund does not disclose its total investment pool. But Securities and Exchange Commission records show it has invested through a Delaware partnership in a California-based network of healthcare centers, a Texas real estate group, a New Jersey phosphate manufacturer and numerous other companies.

Romney is the wealthiest candidate running for president, with a personal fortune of up to $250 million, according to financial disclosure forms he filed in August. His financial trust retains investments in at least 32 Bain and Sankaty equity, hedge and debt funds, among other assets, the documents disclosed.

Under his retirement agreement, Romney retains a share of the profits at Bain Capital, as well as the right to make new investments in Bain funds through his trust, until February 2009.

Malt said he had repeatedly increased Romney's stake in the Cayman fund since 2003. He said he was unaware of the specific figures, but added that he knew he "wrote a lot of checks," and that it paid a return of 20% to 30% a year.

Malt said he was "pretty confident" that he had invested in additional offshore funds for Romney since taking over the trust. "I don't care whether it's the Caymans or Mars, if it's organized in the Netherlands Antilles or the Jersey Islands," he said. "That means nothing to me. All I care about is whether it's a good fund or a bad fund. It doesn't affect his taxes."

Connections with offshore companies became a presidential campaign issue in April, when the Washington Post reported that Democratic candidate John Edwards had worked as a paid advisor to the Fortress Investment Group. Fortress incorporated hedge funds in the Cayman Islands, allowing its partners and foreign investors to avoid or defer paying U.S. taxes. The disclosure embarrassed Edwards, who has called for reducing financial inequalities in America and who had sharply criticized corporations that utilize offshore tax shelters.

Eugene Steuerle, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan Washington-based think tank, said he was troubled by the growing use of offshore jurisdictions, even for legitimate purposes.

"There's clearly something wrong when you have to use post office boxes to conduct business," he said. "You ideally want a world where setting up shell corporations wouldn't be necessary."

But offshore companies are now "part and parcel" of America's booming private equity and hedge fund business, said Kurt Schacht, managing director of the Centre for Financial Market Integrity at the CFA Institute, which represents chartered financial accountants, in Charlottesville, Va. He defended the practice.

"I don't think they're loopholes," he said. "It's not like they're trying to break the law. It's just taking advantage of what's available under current tax laws."

As a presidential candidate, Romney regularly touts his successful business background. But he rarely describes his unusual experience in the rarefied world of international high finance.

After starting as a management consultant, Romney helped found Bain Capital in 1984. Initially launched as a venture capital fund to provide seed money to start-up companies, Bain Capital quickly evolved into a leveraged-buyout shop. Romney and his partners borrowed money to buy dozens of troubled companies, and then charged high fees to revamp management, consolidate operations and, in some cases, lay off workers. To cash out and pay the underlying debt, they resold the companies or took them public as quickly as possible.

Romney took a leave of absence from Bain Capital in February 1999 to take over the scandal-marred 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. By then, Bain Capital already had opened its first offshore entities.

According to a report by Fitch IBCA, a major credit-rating service, Bain Capital managed more than $5.5 billion in assets by mid-1999. The total included $2 billion managed by Sankaty Advisors, which included at least two Bermuda-based subsidiaries set up during Romney's tenure.

Public documents do not disclose how much of the $2 billion was channeled through Bermuda. The Sankaty funds are named for a red-and-white lighthouse on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket.

Romney legally remained the top executive at Bain Capital during his leave of absence. On Feb. 20, 2001, a Bain filing to the SEC described Romney as "sole shareholder, a director and president of Sankaty Ltd. and thus . . . the controlling person of Sankaty Ltd." The company, it added, was organized "under the laws of Bermuda."

Today, Bain Capital manages $60 billion in assets, according to a spokesman. The total includes $23 billion in Sankaty debt and credit funds. Half a dozen Sankaty affiliates now are active in Bermuda, corporate registry records show.

The Sankaty debt hedge funds are organized as partnerships in Delaware that produce taxable business income by investing in fixed-income bonds and other debt instruments. Under tax law, even tax-exempt U.S. institutions may face a 35% tax if they invest directly in such hedge funds. By investing instead through a Bermuda corporation, the taxes are legally blocked, experts say.

In Congress, both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee held hearings in September that examined whether the use of such offshore blocker corporations allowed tax-exempt U.S. organizations to improperly engage in business.

"A lot of people are looking at this," said a Senate investigator, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to deal with the media. "It grates that these people are only using these offshore arrangements to avoid paying taxes."

Janne Gallagher, vice president and general counsel of the Council on Foundations, a nonprofit membership group of 2,100 charities and grant-making foundations, said the practice was "pretty prevalent" in her field as portfolio managers sought to spread risk through hedge funds.

"It's a substantial tax, and that's what generally has led people to invest in these offshore blockers," she said. "I think everyone would prefer not to if they could avoid the consequence."

Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) introduced legislation that would allow tax-exempt institutions to make such investments without going offshore. The bill passed the House but has drawn little support in the Senate.

As governor, Romney helped raise at least $300 million in much-needed state revenue by closing what he called tax loopholes. Critics called the strategy a backdoor way to raise taxes, and Romney failed in an effort to give state officials the authority to penalize corporations that lowered their tax bills by moving their profits out of state.

As a presidential candidate, Romney calls for lowering the corporate tax rate, lowering income taxes and eliminating taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains for those earning less than $200,000. He does not discuss the use of offshore tax havens on his campaign website.

We can't forget about Cofer Black, Romney's personal advisor. Romney made a point of saying that on matters of interrogation and torture techniques he defers to his campaign's counterterrorism czar, Cofer Black

"Blackwater appears to have its own presidential candidate [Romney] . . . one whose presidency could make the company's profitable business under Bush look like a church bake sale." -- Jeremy Scahill

Gosh, this guy makes George Bush and Rudy Giuliani look like Bert and Ernie.

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I Did Have Sexual Relations With That Woman By FRANK RICH

I Did Have Sexual Relations With That Woman By FRANK RICH

IT’S not just the resurgence of Al Qaeda that is taking us back full circle to the fateful first summer of the Bush presidency. It’s the hot sweat emanating from Washington. Once again the capital is titillated by a scandal featuring a member of Congress, a woman who is not his wife and a rumor of crime. Gary Condit, the former Democratic congressman from California, has passed the torch of below-the-Beltway sleaziness to David Vitter, an incumbent (as of Friday) Republican senator from Louisiana.

Mr. Vitter briefly faced the press to explain his “very serious sin,” accompanied by a wife who might double for the former Mrs. Jim McGreevey. He had no choice once snoops hired by the avenging pornographer Larry Flynt unearthed his number in the voluminous phone records of the so-called D.C. Madam, now the subject of a still-young criminal investigation. Newspapers back home also linked the senator to a defunct New Orleans brothel, a charge Mr. Vitter denies. That brothel’s former madam, while insisting he had been a client, was one of his few defenders last week. “Just because people visit a whorehouse doesn’t make them a bad person,” she helpfully told the Baton Rouge paper, The Advocate.

Mr. Vitter is not known for being so forgiving a soul when it comes to others’ transgressions. Even more than Mr. Condit, who once co-sponsored a bill calling for the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings, Mr. Vitter is a holier-than-thou family-values panderer. He recruited his preteen children for speaking roles in his campaign ads and, terrorism notwithstanding, declared that there is no “more important” issue facing America than altering the Constitution to defend marriage.

But hypocrisy is a hardy bipartisan perennial on Capitol Hill, and hardly news. This scandal may leave a more enduring imprint. It comes with a momentous pedigree. Mr. Vitter first went to Washington as a young congressman in 1999, to replace Robert Livingston, the Republican leader who had been anointed to succeed Newt Gingrich as speaker of the House. Mr. Livingston’s seat had abruptly become vacant after none other than Mr. Flynt outed him for committing adultery. Since we now know that Mr. Gingrich was also practicing infidelity back then — while leading the Clinton impeachment crusade, no less — the Vitter scandal can be seen as the culmination of an inexorable sea change in his party.

And it is President Bush who will be left holding the bag in history. As the new National Intelligence Estimate confirms the failure of the war against Al Qaeda and each day of quagmire signals the failure of the war in Iraq, so the case of the fallen senator from the Big Easy can stand as an epitaph for a third lost war in our 43rd president’s legacy: the war against sex.

During the 2000 campaign, Mr. Bush and his running mate made a point of promising to “set an example for our children” and to “uphold the honor and the dignity of the office.” They didn’t just mean that there would be no more extramarital sex in the White House. As a matter of public policy, abstinence was in; abortion rights, family planning and homosexuality were out. Mr. Bush’s Federal Communications Commission stood ready to punish the networks for four-letter words and wardrobe malfunctions. The surgeon general was forbidden to mention condoms or the morning-after pill.

To say that this ambitious program has fared no better than the creation of an Iraqi unity government is an understatement. The sole lasting benchmark to be met in the Bush White House’s antisex agenda was the elevation of anti-Roe judges to the federal bench. Otherwise, Sodom and Gomorrah are thrashing the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition day and night.

The one federal official caught on the D.C. Madam’s phone logs ahead of Mr. Vitter, Randall Tobias, was a Bush State Department official whose tasks had included enforcing a prostitution ban on countries receiving AIDS aid. Last month Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network succeeded in getting a federal court to throw out the F.C.C.’s “indecency” fines. Polls show unchanging majority support for abortion rights and growing support for legal recognition of same-sex unions exemplified by Mary Cheney’s.

Most amazing is the cultural makeover of Mr. Bush’s own party. The G.O.P. that began the century in the thrall of Rick Santorum, Bill Frist and George Allen has become the brand of Mark Foley and Mr. Vitter. Not a single Republican heavyweight showed up at Jerry Falwell’s funeral. Younger evangelical Christians, who may care more about protecting the environment than policing gay people, are up for political grabs.

Nowhere is this cultural revolution more visible — or more fun to watch — than in the G.O.P. campaign for the White House. Forty years late, the party establishment is finally having its own middle-aged version of the summer of love, and it’s a trip. The co-chairman of John McCain’s campaign in Florida has been charged with trying to solicit gay sex from a plainclothes police officer. Over at YouTube, viewers are flocking to a popular new mock-music video in which “Obama Girl” taunts her rival: “Giuliani Girl, you stop your fussin’/ At least Obama didn’t marry his cousin.”

As Margery Eagan, a columnist at The Boston Herald, has observed, even the front-runners’ wives are getting into the act, trying to one-up one another with displays of what she described as their “ample and aging” cleavage. The décolletage primary was kicked off early this year by the irrepressible Judith Giuliani, who posed for Harper’s Bazaar giving her husband a passionate kiss. “I’ve always liked strong, macho men,” she said. This was before we learned she had married two such men, not one, before catching the eye of America’s Mayor at Club Macanudo, an Upper East Side cigar bar, while he was still married to someone else.

Whatever the ultimate fate of Rudy Giuliani’s campaign, it is the straw that stirs the bubbling brew that is the post-Bush Republican Party. The idea that a thrice-married, pro-abortion rights, pro-gay rights candidate is holding on as front-runner is understandably driving the G.O.P.’s increasingly marginalized cultural warriors insane. Not without reason do they fear that he is in the vanguard of a new Republican age of Addams-family values and moral relativism. Once a truculent law-and-order absolutist, Mr. Giuliani has even shrugged off the cocaine charges leveled against his departed South Carolina campaign chairman, the state treasurer Thomas Ravenel, as a “highly personal” matter.

The religious right’s own favorite sons, Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee, are no more likely to get the nomination than Ron Paul or, for that matter, RuPaul. The party’s faith-based oligarchs are getting frantic. Disregarding a warning from James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who said in March that he didn’t consider Fred Thompson a Christian, they desperately started fixating on the former Tennessee senator as their savior. When it was reported this month that Mr. Thompson had worked as a lobbyist for an abortion rights organization in the 1990s, they credulously bought his denials and his spokesman’s reassurance that “there’s no documents to prove it, no billing records.” Last week The New York Times found the billing records.

No one is stepping more boldly into this values vacuum than Mitt Romney. In contrast to Mr. Giuliani, the former Massachusetts governor has not only disowned his past as a social liberal but is also running as a paragon of moral rectitude. He is even embracing one of the more costly failed Bush sex initiatives, abstinence education, just as states are abandoning it for being ineffective. He never stops reminding voters that he is the only top-tier candidate still married to his first wife.

In a Web video strikingly reminiscent of the Vitter campaign ads, the entire multigenerational Romney brood gathers round to enact their wholesome Christmas festivities. Last week Mr. Romney unveiled a new commercial decrying American culture as “a cesspool of violence, and sex, and drugs, and indolence, and perversions.” Unlike Mr. Giuliani, you see, he gets along with his children, and unlike Mr. Thompson, he has never been in bed with the perverted Hollywood responsible for the likes of “Law & Order.”

There are those who argue Mr. Romney’s campaign is doomed because he is a Mormon, a religion some voters regard almost as suspiciously as Scientology, but two other problems may prove more threatening to his candidacy. The first is that in American public life piety always goeth before a fall. There had better not be any skeletons in his closet. Already Senator Brownback has accused Mr. Romney of pushing hard-core pornography because of his close association with (and large campaign contributions from) the Marriott family, whose hotel chain has prospered mightily from its X-rated video menu.

The other problem is more profound: Mr. Romney is swimming against a swift tide of history in both culture and politics. Just as the neocons had their moment in power in the Bush era and squandered it in Iraq, so the values crowd was handed its moment of ascendancy and imploded in debacles ranging from Terri Schiavo to Ted Haggard to David Vitter. By this point it’s safe to say that even some Republican primary voters are sick enough of their party’s preacher politicians that they’d consider hitting a cigar bar or two with Judith Giuliani.

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