Before he was sworn in Wednesday, Del. Albert Pollard Jr. was required to file a campaign finance report complete through the February 19 special election in House District 99.

View Pollard's Report

VPAP has posted the personal financial schedules from the annual Statement of Financial Interests that lawmakers are required to file each January. The disclosures are intended to provide a snapshot of each lawmaker's personal holdings -- stocks, investments, partnerships, real estate, clients -- that could pose a potential conflict of interest. 

You can find the holdings of any legislator by going to CANDIDATES --> FIND CANDIDATES --> LAST NAME SEARCH. Once you get to a legislator's page, click on the link for Personal Finances "Overview"

You can search across all legislators for stock holdings in specific companies or industries.

 

Whistle-blower Web site Wikileaks.org has been effectively ordered offline by a California court. Last week, the court ordered domain name registrar Dynadot to remove all DNS entries for that domain. According to a story by the BBC, Dynadot was also ordered to "prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court." Swiss banking group Julius Baer Bank and documents surrounding its offshore activities are at the center of the controversy. The Wikileaks.org site is still available here.

The Cayman Islands is located between Cuba and Honduras. In July 2000, the United States Department of the Treasure Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an advisory states stating that there were "serious deficiencies in the counter-money laundering systems of the Cayman Islands", "Cayman Islands law makes it impossible for the supervisory and regulatory authority to obtain information held by financial institutions regarding their client's identity", "Failure of financial institutions in the Cayman Islands to report suspicious transactions is not subject to penalty" and that "These deficiencies, among others, have caused the Cayman Islands to be identified by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (The 'FATF') as non-cooperative in the fight against money laundering". As of 2006 the U.S. State Department listed the Cayman Islands in its money laundering "Countries of Primary Concern".

The Cayman's case is not the first time Wikileaks has tackled bad banks. In the second half of last year Wikileaks exposed over $4,500,000,000's worth of money laundering including by the former president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi (see http://wikileaks.be/wiki/The_looting_of_Kenya_under_President_moi which became the Guardian's front page story in September 2007 and swung the Kenyan vote by 10% leading into the December 2007 election and http://wikileaks.be/wiki/A_Charter_House_of_horrors reported in the Nairobi paper The Standard and now the subject of a High Court Case in Kenya).
To find an injunction similar to the Cayman's case, we need to go back to Monday June 15, 1971 when the New York Times published excepts of of Daniel Ellsberg's leaked "Pentagon Papers" and found itself enjoined the following day. The Wikileaks injunction is the equivalent of forcing the Times' printers to print blank pages and its power company to turn off press power. The supreme court found the Times censorship injunction unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision.
The Wikileaks.org injunction is ex-parte, engages in prior restraint and is clearly unconstitutional. It was granted on Thursday afternoon by California district court judge White, Bush appointee and former prosecutor.

The order was written by Cayman Island's Bank Julius Baer lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion. The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman Island's operation, Rudolf Elmer. Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks servers which are based in several countries, the order was served on the intermediary Wikileaks purchased the 'Wikileaks.org' name through -- California registrar Dynadot, who then used its access to the internet website name registration system to delete the records for 'Wikileaks.org'. The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order from from even linking to the documents.

In order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup sites such as wikileaks.be (Belgium) and wikileaks.de (Germany) which remain active. Wikileaks never expected to be using the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of all places, the United States.

The order is clearly unconstitutional and exceeds its jurisdiction.

Wikileaks will keep on publishing, in-fact, given the level of suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices.

Wikileaks has six pro-bono attorney's in S.F on roster to deal with a legal assault, however Wikileaks was given only hours notice "by email" prior to the hearing. Wikileaks was NOT represented. Wikileaks pre-litigation California council Julie Turner attended the start of hearing in a personal capacity but was then asked to leave the court room.

White signed the order, drafted by the Cayman Islands bank's lawyers without a single amendment.

The injunction claims to be permanent, although the case is only preliminary.

Albert Pollard, Democratic candidate for House District 99, reports two donations of $1,000 or more received in the final days before the February 19 special election.

Lee Ann Washington, Republican candidate for House District 99, reports four donations of $1,000 or more received in the final days before the February 19 special election. 

I just ran across this and thought it was interesting the way NIC (the parent company of Virginia Interactive, the guys who manage Virginia.gov) buried the most interesting part in the middle of an unrelated press release.

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NIC Announces Retirement of Chief Executive Officer Jeff Fraser

Harry Herington appointed Chief Executive Officer

OLATHE, Kan. – February 6, 2008 – eGovernment provider NIC Inc. (NASDAQ: EGOV) today announced the retirement of Jeff Fraser as Chief Executive Officer, effective February 4, 2008. He will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board.

The Board has named Harry Herington as Chief Executive Officer, effective February 4, 2008. Mr. Herington has served as President since 2006 and has held several leadership positions at NIC since joining the Company in 1995, including Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Portal Operations.

“Harry Herington has an outstanding track record of delivering results at NIC,” said Jeff Fraser. “I am confident that NIC will continue to grow under Harry’s highly capable and energetic leadership.”

These actions follow the conclusion of a review undertaken by the Audit Committee of the NIC Board of Directors, with the assistance of outside, independent counsel, which focused on the reimbursement of expenses by certain executive officers, including Mr. Fraser. The review covered the period from January 1, 2004, through June 30, 2007, and was conducted with full cooperation by the Company and Mr. Fraser in conjunction with an informal inquiry of expense reporting by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr. Fraser has reimbursed the Company approximately $97,000 in expenses as a result of the review, which followed reimbursement by him of approximately $186,000 in expenses made prior to the review. The reimbursement was made to correct expense reporting during the period from January 2004 through October 2006 that was inconsistent with the Company’s expense reimbursement policies.

The internal review also revealed that these expense reimbursement deficiencies were isolated to Mr. Fraser. NIC does not believe the amounts involved are material to its financial condition or results of operations.

Mr. Fraser co-founded the Company that would become NIC in 1992 and served as Chief Executive Officer until the end of 1999. He retired to become non-executive Chairman and relinquished day-to-day management to a new leadership team. Following an acquisition-based expansion strategy that placed NIC’s future growth at risk, the Board of Directors asked Fraser to return as Chief Executive Officer in May 2002. At his request, Fraser received a salary of $1.00 per year in 2002 and 2003 and $5,500 per year to cover medical benefits in 2004 and 2005. The Board approved a salary of $325,000 in 2006 in recognition of Fraser’s turnaround plan that refocused on the core portal business and returned NIC to profitability as a highly successful leader in the eGovernment space.

“We thank Jeff for his vision and commitment to building the industry-leading eGovernment provider from the ground up,” said Art Burtscher, Chairman of the Audit Committee of the NIC Board of Directors. “The Board of Directors is confident the current management team is capable of continuing NIC’s current track record of growth and we look forward to further success under Harry Herington’s leadership.”

VPAP has posted the pre-election campaign finance reports for the two candidates running in next Tuesday's (Feb. 19) special election in House District 99.

Albert Pollard Jr.

Lee Anne Washington

The winner will replace Rob Wittman, who was elected to Congress last year. 

 

This is a strange experience for Virginia voters. We have a primary that someone actually cares about. I had today off and stuck around the house and my phone has been ringing off the hook with recorded messages from the candidates. It actually started yesterday with a push-poll from Huckabee.

I've only gotten one call from the Democrats and that was from Obama.

The rest of the calls were evenly split between McCain and Huckabee. The McCain calls have all been sponsored by the campaign. The one strange call that I got was a recording of former Maryland Governor Ehrlich urging me to vote for McCain in "tomorrow's Maryland primary." I don't even live close to Maryland. The only reason I can think of for getting that call is that I lived in Maryland for a year and was registered to vote there.

Remember, vote early and often!

The weekend saw three opinion pieces concerning gifts to legislators:

• TriCities.com
• The Daily Press
• The Virginian-Pilot

VPAP's numbers were used in all three editorials.

In an article about a proposed constitutional amendment on homestead exemptions, The Washington Post cited information from VPAP showing the reliance of incumbent legislators for campaign contributions from businesses that lobby the General Assembly.

Today's Richmond Times Dispatch editorial defends Governor Tim Kaine's use of Spanish in greeting the pro-America president of El Salvador, complimenting his "hospitality" and "graciousness" to a foreign visitor and calling the fulminators on the internet and in the blogosphere who are bloviating about the Governor's bilingual greeting and the Spanish translation of his office's press release (an

MONDAY, Feb. 4 (HealthDay News) -- President Bush's new budget proposal would cut $196 billion over five years from both Medicare and Medicaid -- programs that provide health care to millions of poor and elderly, federal officials announced Monday.

The proposed cuts are part of a plan to stop Medicare from running out of money in little more than a decade, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Mike Leavitt told reporters during a press conference. He said the savings would help keep premiums affordable, maintain the Medicare/Medicaid system, and balance the current Medicare budget.

"The Medicare portion of the budget should be viewed as a stark warning," Leavitt said. "Medicare on its current course is 11 years from going broke. Americans have become numbed to entitlement warnings as a repeated cycle of alarms and inaction," he said.

But President Bush and Leavitt are sure to face a Congressional showdown over the budget proposals.

"This administration ought to know that five years' worth of Medicare and Medicaid cuts totaling $200 billion are dead on arrival with me and with most of the Congress," Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told theAssociated Press.
Not every agency would lose funds in the new budget: The cash-strapped U.S. Food and Drug Administration would receive a nearly 6 percent boost in financing, much of which would go to programs that oversee food safety, agency officials said.

All of these announcements stem from the $3.1 trillion 2009 budget proposal announced by the Bush administration Monday.

According to Leavitt, the majority of the Medicare cuts would come from reductions to fees paid to hospitals, nursing homes and hospices.

Medicare makes up 56 percent of the $737 billion HHS budget, Leavitt said. Cuts in the Medicare budget will become the norm until Medicare itself changes, he said. "We can keep our national commitment, but to do this we need to change our management of Medicare," Leavitt said.

Under the president's plan, the annual growth of Medicare spending would slow to 5 percent instead of the 7 percent currently projected. Similarly, spending growth would slow from 7.3 percent to 7 percent for Medicaid.

Medicare is an inefficient system and needs to be changed, Leavitt charged. Changing the system means putting more responsibility into the hands of consumers, enabling them to make their own health-care decisions, he said.

"If consumers were allowed to make the decisions in an efficient market, through electronic medical records, through quality measures, through cost comparisons and choices and incentives, their decisions would be far more precise and wise," he said. "It would produce better health, and at a lower cost."

But at least one critic believes a shrinking Medicare budget would hurt consumers and the health-care system.

"President Bush's proposed cuts to Medicare would hurt older and disabled Americans and take a wrecking ball to many essential hospitals across the country," Robert M. Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Center, said in a prepared statement. "It is indefensible for the President to propose hurting America's grandparents while maintaining his rabid defense of Medicare overpayments to for-profit health insurance companies."

Under the Bush proposed budget, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would receive an additional $130 million added for fiscal year 2009, which begins Oct. 1.

"The agency's 2009 budget includes $2.4 billion, which includes direct budget authority and user fees," John Dyer, FDA's deputy commissioner for operations and chief operating officer, said during a Monday afternoon teleconference. "That's a 5.7 percent increase over the 2008 budget just passed by Congress."

According to Dyer, the budget would increase resources spent on food safety, modernize drug safety, speed approval of generic drugs and improve the safety and review of medical devices. The budget also includes increases in salaries and up to 1,000 additional employees for the FDA.
The agency, which was shaken by a long list of food recalls and food-linked illness outbreaks in 2007, plans to boost its inspections of domestic and imported food, as well as medical products. It will also target more inspections of high-risk food items, Dyer said.
An industry group applauded the agency's new emphasis on bringing cheaper generic drugs to the public faster.

"Bringing generic medicines to market in a timely manner is a win-win for the federal government, the generic industry and, most of all, consumers," Generic Pharmaceutical Association President and CEO Kathleen Jaeger said in a prepared statement.
Other agencies within HHS would either receive no added funding or lose money under the Bush budget proposal. These include the National Institutes of Health, which would see its budget hold steady at $29.4 billion for next year, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which would have $400 million shaved off its current budget of $6.2 billion. Programs aimed at providing health care to the rural poor would see their budgets fall from $6.9 billion to $6.0 billion, the president's office announced.

In addition to these other agencies, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is looking at a $7.14 billion budget proposal for 2009. The agency hopes to use its money to strengthen energy and homeland security around cities and major ports.

The EPA would also continue to promote energy efficiency and clean air and water standards. The agency intends to use $170 million to fund emergency teams that can address more than one terrorist attack at a time, the agency said in a statement. In addition, the EPA is looking for a total of $563 million for criminal enforcement.

More information
For more on Medicare, visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
SOURCES: Feb. 4, 2008, teleconference with Mike Leavitt, Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; John Dyer, M.P.H., deputy commissioner for operations and chief operating officer, U.S. Food and Drug Administration; statements: Medicare Rights Center; Generic Pharmaceutical Association; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency;Associated Press,Bloomberg

The state's major newspapers all published articles today based on gifts data that VPAP compiled from legislators' annual financial disclsoure reports.

The Washington Post

The Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Virginian Pilot

The Associated Press

The Roanoke Times

VPAP has posted a list of trips and gifts that legislators reported in their annual Statement of Economic Interest forms. The documents were filed with the House and Senate clerks just before the 2008 General Assembly session convened and cover activity during calendar year 2007.

Top Gift Recipients - House

Top Gift Recipients - Senate

Top Gift Givers

Gift Giver Search

In January, the Daily Progress ran a story on a bill to reform campaign finance filing laws for PACs. As of Feb. 1, the Legislative Information System lists HB 789 as being reported from the House Privileges and Elections Committee.

VPAP has posted the year-end report for the Virginia Conservative Alliance.