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Archives for May 2005

Creating “Terrorism” Out of Misdemeanors

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Bush Administration manipulating statistics on terrorism investigations, convictions

By Bert Dalmer 
First published by the Des Moines Register, May 16, 2005

Editor’s note: We posted this report by Mr. Dalmer last year, which exposed some of the absurd cases classified as “terrorism” by the Bush Justice Department.

Newly released documents show that the U.S. Justice Department has greatly broadened how it defines and counts terrorism-related cases, a move that helped justify the department’s call for more funding and greater powers. However, the scant information provided about those cases has watchdog groups and members of Congress crying foul.

The criticism comes in the wake of independent reports suggesting that federal prosecutors have overstated their success in preventing further terrorist activity and attacks. Among the terrorism cases that have been identified in Iowa: the arrests of three contractors, all American, who failed to report drug convictions prior to starting work at airport runway jobs.

“I don’t know why they would call those terrorism cases,” said U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican. “They are obviously not.”

Justice Department memoranda obtained by The Des Moines Register under the Freedom of Information Act show officials loosened record-keeping practices and broadened the definition of terrorist crimes before the department reported a surge of new terrorism-related prosecutions in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The records show that top officials instructed federal prosecutors nationwide to catalog their work in ways that served to inflate the number of terrorism investigations. Even tips that were immediately disregarded, the memos show, were to be counted as terrorism-related investigations.

The higher numbers have since been cited in budget requests and in defense of the expansion of police powers, such as those granted by the controversial USA Patriot Act, which is up for renewal in Congress this summer.

Grassley, the senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he and his staff were “oblivious” of the changes in how terrorism cases were being counted. He said he has yet to hear back on an inquiry he made in early 2004 into massive discrepancies in terrorism arrest figures that the Justice Department presented in two different settings.

“I’m always cynical about (the executive branch) padding the numbers to justify more appropriations,” Grassley said. “If it’s found that’s the case, we ought to raise Cain with them, so they know that we’re watching and they aren’t going to get away with it.”

Justice Department representatives failed to return repeated messages seeking comment. In the past, officials explained that the sharp increase in cases was a reflection of a renewed vigor to disrupt terrorist threats.

In one Justice Department memo in 2002, a top official emphasized to prosecutors that following the new statistical guidelines was of utmost importance.

“We know that over time we will be called upon to report on the volume, type and outcome of your terrorism and anti-terrorism matters,” Deputy Director Theresa Bertucci wrote to federal prosecutors. “In an effort to account completely and accurately for all of your work, we must capture all terrorism and anti-terrorism matters and cases.”

In the past, some prosecutors have said that they sometimes charge people linked to terrorist activity with lesser crimes where evidence is weak, just to see that they are deported. They also want credit for investigations that seek to detect terrorist activity but which lead to arrests not related to terrorism.

“The fact that many terrorism investigations result in less serious charges does not mean the case is not terrorism-related,” former department spokesman Mark Corallo said in 2003.

However, the Justice Department has also rebuffed calls by Grassley and other officials to support its claims with case particulars that could put the public more at ease.

“Since Sept. 11, Americans have been asked to accept restrictions on their liberties. They deserve to know what they are getting in return,” said U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, in a hearing on the Patriot Act last week.

This year, for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks, the department omitted without explanation any figures on terrorism-related investigations and convictions in its annual performance report.

The omission followed an audit by Congress’ investigative arm, the Government Accountability Office, that criticized the accuracy of the statistics. The statistics account for the number and nature of leads from citizens and law enforcement agencies, and are grouped into crime categories defined by Justice Department policymakers.

In a series of memos sent to the nation’s prosecutors between September 2001 and April 2003, records show that the Justice Department:

. Required that any investigation involving a suspected terrorist link, even if unsubstantiated and unprosecuted, be counted as terrorism-related.

. Expanded the number of terrorism-related crime categories from two to six. Now, when federal authorities looking for terrorists make an arrest for other reasons, the case is logged by prosecutors as “anti-terrorism.”

. Exempted terrorism cases from a policy that generally counts leads only when prosecutors spend an hour investigating them. Unlike leads on conventional crimes, those on alleged terrorist activities are now immediately logged by prosecutors even if they are disregarded.

In the two years after the policy changes took effect, federal prosecutors were credited with winning 1,065 terrorism-related convictions. In the year leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, prosecutors took credit for only 29 such convictions. Hundreds of additional arrests by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have also been reported.

The Justice Department has identified few of the defendants, even at the request of Congress.

David Burnham, a Syracuse University researcher and author whose 2003 report on terrorism statistics provided new insight into the department’s handling of the cases, said the new reporting methods “of course would lead to more numbers” of such prosecutions.

“How much?” he said. “You can’t quantify it. There was an increase of government activity against terrorism, too.”

Burnham said he can appreciate the Justice Department’s interest in tracking the government’s anti-terrorism activities more closely. But he is skeptical that the jump in prosecutions was based purely on the initiative of federal agents.

“For decades, crime statistics have been manipulated for political reasons,” he said. “Many administrations have used that data to toot their own horns in inaccurate and misleading ways.”

Since the release of Burnham’s report, news organizations across the country have used the information to identify some of the government’s so-called terrorism targets: college entrance exam cheaters, check forgers, sham husbands and those who overstay visas, among them.

Of the 35 terrorism-related cases cited in Iowa in the two years following the Sept. 11 attacks, most that could be identified by the Register involved fraud or theft. Three were connected explicitly to terrorism: Luke Helder, an accused mailbox bomber who has not been deemed mentally fit to stand trial; and Youssef Hmimssa and Brahim Sidi, who marketed fraudulent documents to illegal immigrants, including members of a terrorist sleeper cell in Detroit.

© 2005 Des Moines Register

Wal-Mart Group’s Ad Equates Opponents With Nazis

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Corporation admits ad was “reviewed and approved by Wal-Mart,” then issues apology after uproar

By Rachel Peterson
First published by the Arizona Daily Sun, May 12, 2005

Editor’s note: After Wal-Mart initially denied knowledge of the ad discussed here, public relations person Daphne Moore admitted it was “reviewed and approved by Wal-Mart, but we did not know what the photo was from.”

Even ignoring the Nazi imagery, it’s remarkable for a corporation which regularly censors books (including the latest by George Carlin and John Stewart), music and magazines disfavored by its executives to accuse critics of censorship.

On May 18, 2005, Wal-Mart defeated a ballot question that would have limited new big box stores to 75,000 square feet (about twice the size of a typical chain supermarket). After outspending opponents by more than 3:1, Wal-Mart forces won 51% of the vote.

FLAGSTAFF — Campaign ads bankrolled by Wal-Mart and depicting a Nazi-era book burning are offensive and backhanded, say some Flagstaff citizens and veterans.

Backers contend they are a justified reminder of the need to protect freedoms.

The newspaper ads contend that Proposition 100’s restrictions on big-box retailers are an infringement of constitutional freedoms. The message has been conveyed through a blurred photo of a Nazi book-burning taken from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archives and a close-up of a person’s mouth covered with tape.

Accompanying the ads is the statement: “Freedoms worth keeping,” and references to the proposition as limiting choice.

The ad offended some local veterans, many of whom are requesting an apology from the campaign committee.

“There was just the observance of the 60th anniversary of when the death camps were liberated,” said Frank Brandt, a former Air Force Lieutenant and co-chair for YesforFlagstaff.com, a committee that supports the ballot measure. “Are they culturally insensitive?”

Brandt, also a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, said comparing shopping choices with the freedoms soldiers have fought for is a “slap in the face.”

“We fought for freedom and democracy, not corporate greed,” he said. “The No campaign is trivializing these ideals.”

Tom Farley, a consultant for Protect Flagstaff’s Future, the campaign that sponsored the ads, said they will continue because they “make people think.”

“If people are talking about the ads, they’re doing a good job. People are giving up a freedom if they vote yes on Prop. 100. What will they be asked to give up next?”

Although the ads have generated heat from the Yes campaign, Farley said they’ve been well-received by No supporters and have helped sway some undecided voters. The committee has plans for some new ads in the next week to continue to drive up voter turnout, he said.

While this type of “shock-and-awe” campaign tactic has been used successfully on a national level, it’s a “perversion of the electoral process,” said Alexis Johnson, a Flagstaff attorney who litigates state and local constitutional questions across the nation.

When the deciding body is the voters, publishing such ads is “curiously misleading and terribly backhanded,” he said.

“Prop 100 is a vote of the people. The people are telling themselves what they want to do by the vote itself,” he said. “What this (advertising) means to someone like me is votes of the people are dangerous.”

With campaign contributions topping $280,000 from Wal-Mart and $50,000 from the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 99, this campaign has lost sight of the issues and voice of the people, Johnson said.

“Measures like this are increasingly attracting the attention of consultants from outside the community,” Johnson said. “The people often end up in the gun sights on these measures … and that is now apparently a style of the American electoral process. I think America’s due now to revisit the necessity and vitality of allowing campaign contributions from entities that don’t vote.”

Wal-Mart regional community affairs director Pete Kanelos said his company is involved because “Wal-Mart is adamantly opposed to any ordinance that would restrict consumer choice.”

The comment comes after Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott announced the company would not try to sidestep local politicians after criticism for winning a repeal of a anti-Wal-Mart ordinance in Inglewood, Calif.

“This is actually an ordinance that is different from Inglewood … That is why we have funded the No on Prop 100 campaign.” Kanelos said. “In Inglewood, they repealed the (big-box limitation) ordinance because we collected twice the number of signatures needed.”

In Arizona, the option to repeal by signatures alone is not available, and the issue must go to the voters.

The promise Scott made was with reference to a large project initiative, which included Wal-Mart, that was taken directly to the voters before presenting it to the city council first, Kanelos said.

Campaign involvement was not part of the equation, he said, adding that Wal-Mart’s involvement is merely funding, and the corporation doesn’t participate at a grassroots level. Because of this, Kanelos is unaware of the controversial campaign ads or whether Wal-Mart would support a campaign that used them.

“I can’t comment on the ad. I haven’t seen it,” he said. “We donate to the campaign committee.”

Farley, who has earned at least $20,000 from the Wal-Mart-backed committee, said his campaign isn’t about enabling corporate control but allowing choice.

“I don’t think the shoppers view it as corporate America,” Farley said. “I think they just view it as what’s being taken away from them.”

What is Proposition 100?

Proposition 100 is a ballot item before Flagstaff citizens to decide the fate of a big-box limitation ordinance.

If supported by voters, the big-box ordinance will require a conditional use permit for retailers building larger than 75,000 square feet, with a cap of 125,000 square feet. It will also impose an 8 percent cap on the amount of floor space a retail store could devote to nontaxable grocery items.

The ordinance, if in place, would limit the possibility of a Wal-Mart Supercenter , which uses 30 to 40 percent of its floor space for grocery items, moving into Flagstaff .

Those stores average 186,000 square feet. For comparison, Flagstaff ‘s current Wal-Mart store is 105,000 square feet.

A yes vote supports the ordinance; a no vote overturns it.

© 2005 Arizona Daily Sun

“Sunset Commission” Hands Dangerous Level of Power to President

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Hand-picked panel would wield power to eliminate disfavored federal agencies unless overridden by Congress

By Osha Gray Davidson
First published by Rolling Stone magazine, May 5, 2005 edition

Editor’s note: As we post this article on April 25, we have not had the opportunity to verify whether the proposed commission is truly as unaccountable and powerful a tool for the president as this article suggests. While government agencies certainly should be required to justify their programs and existence periodically, a panel representing only the chief executive would be antithetical to our Constitution’s republican structure of government. 

If you’ve got something to hide in Washington, the best place to bury it is in the federal budget. The spending plan that President Bush submitted to Congress this year contains 2,000 pages that outline funding to safeguard the environment, protect workers from injury and death, crack down on securities fraud and ensure the safety of prescription drugs. But almost unnoticed in the budget, tucked away in a single paragraph, is a provision that could make every one of those protections a thing of the past.

The proposal, spelled out in three short sentences, would give the president the power to appoint an eight-member panel called the “Sunset Commission,” which would systematically review federal programs every ten years and decide whether they should be eliminated. Any programs that are not “producing results,” in the eyes of the commission, would “automatically terminate unless the Congress took action to continue them.”

The administration portrays the commission as a well-intentioned effort to make sure that federal agencies are actually doing their job. “We just think it makes sense,” says Clay Johnson, deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, which crafted the provision. “The goal isn’t to get rid of a program — it’s to make it work better.”

In practice, however, the commission would enable the Bush administration to achieve what Ronald Reagan only dreamed of: the end of government regulation as we know it. With a simple vote of five commissioners — many of them likely to be lobbyists and executives from major corporations currently subject to federal oversight — the president could terminate any program or agency he dislikes. No more Environmental Protection Agency. No more Food and Drug Administration. No more Securities and Exchange Commission.

“Ronald Reagan once observed, ‘The closest thing to immortality on this earth is a federal government program,’ ” says Rep. Kevin Brady, a Republican from Texas who has been working for the past nine years to establish a sunset commission. “We need it to clear out the deadwood.”

Without many of those programs, however, American consumers, workers and investors would be left to the mercy of business. “This is potentially devastating,” says Wesley Warren, who served as a senior OMB official in the Clinton administration. “In short order, this could knock out protections that have been built up over a generation.”

Others note that the provision goes beyond anything attempted by conservatives in the past. “When you look at this,” says Marchant Wentworth, a lobbyist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, “it’s almost like the Reagan administration was a trial run.”

The man behind the sunset commission is Clay Johnson, the most influential member of Bush’s inner circle whom you’ve never heard of. The two Texans have been close friends since 1961, when they met as fifteen-year-olds at Andover prep school and later roomed together for four years at Yale. When Bush was elected governor of Texas in 1994, he put the buddy he calls “Big Man” — Johnson is six feet four — in charge of all state appointments. Johnson, a former executive at Neiman Marcus and Frito-Lay, refers to Americans as “customers” and is partial to Chamber of Commerce bromides such as “We’re in the results business.” He is also partial to giving corporate lobbyists a direct role in gutting regulatory protections. One of his first acts in Texas was to remove all three members of the state environmental-protection commission and replace them with a former Monsanto executive, an official with the Texas Beef Council and a lawyer for the oil industry. Overnight, a commission widely respected for its impartiality became a “revolving door between the industry lobby and government,” says Jim Marston, the senior attorney in Texas for the nonprofit organization Environmental Defense.

Johnson continued his anti-regulatory efforts in the early days of the Bush presidency, when he helped place industry champions in positions throughout the government. As director of OMB, an obscure but powerful arm of the White House, he has implemented a “Program Assessment Rating Tool” to evaluate federal programs and cut funding to those that are “not getting results.” In reality, though, Johnson uses PART to slash government efforts that don’t fit the administration’s political agenda. This year’s budget eliminates twenty percent of the programs that were rated most effective, including efforts to improve the environment and education, and increases funding for programs that received the lowest possible rating — including an attempt to reduce the number of poor people claiming a low-income tax credit.

The evaluations “are based on the whims of White House budget bean counters,” says Gary Bass, executive director of the nonpartisan OMB Watch. “These are meaningless numbers that do nothing but back up preordained political conclusions.”

The Sunset Commission would go even further. The panel — which will likely be composed of “experts in management issues,” according to one senior OMB official — will enable the administration to terminate entire government programs that protect citizens against injury and death. Consider what America might look like if Reagan had wielded such an anti-regulatory ax twenty years ago. Abolishing the EPA would have increased air pollution, causing tens of thousands of children to develop chronic respiratory diseases. Terminating the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would have eliminated many protections we now take for granted — including air bags, child safety seats and automatic seat belts. And getting rid of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would have forestalled workplace regulations that have prevented illnesses among millions of farmworkers.

Even if such regulations remain on the books, eliminating entire agencies would leave no one to enforce them. “And if there’s no cop on the beat, who’s going to follow the law?” says J. Robert Shull, senior policy analyst at OMB Watch.

The first hint of Bush’s plan to create a commission surfaced only weeks after he won re-election last November. At an economic conference convened by Treasury Secretary John Snow, one panel member made the case for inserting a sunset provision into existing regulations. Such a move would “shift the burden of proof onto the regulations and require us to demonstrate that they’re still needed,” said Susan Dudley, director of regulatory studies at the Mercatus Center, a free-market think tank based in Washington, D.C.

It’s fitting that the first public mention of Bush’s plan came from Mercatus. The center’s “regulatory studies program” was founded by Wendy Gramm, the wife of former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm and the woman Reagan called “my favorite economist.” As a senior official at OMB under the Gipper, Gramm fought hard to eliminate federal regulations. Her most notorious victory came in 1992 when, as chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, she pushed through a measure exempting companies that trade in energy derivatives from regulation, following an intense lobbying campaign by Enron. Gramm resigned from the commission and accepted a seat on the Enron board of directors, where she was paid $1.85 million and received donations from the company to support Mercatus. Enron, meanwhile, used its exemption from federal oversight to engage in its infamous accounting fraud that destroyed the company and bankrupted investors.

But such dangers of eliminating regulations have done nothing to slow Bush’s drive for a sunset commission. Given its political gains last November, the administration is optimistic about winning approval in Congress. “The stars and the planets are aligned,” Johnson recently declared, citing the solid Republican majority in Congress and the need to curb the soaring federal deficit.

But there may be a stumbling block. The commission not only threatens the environment and public health — it would also violate the constitutional separation of power between Congress and the executive branch, enabling the president to dismantle programs created by lawmakers. “Under the administration’s proposal, Congress would relinquish its constitutional power to legislate,” says Rep. Henry Waxman, a Democrat from California who has been the commission’s most vocal opponent. “Power would be consolidated in the executive branch, and the legislative role would be emasculated.”

Republicans already have a plan to counter such concerns. Under a bill expected to be introduced soon, the power to appoint the commission would be given to Congress rather than to the president — simply transferring the authority from Bush to his GOP allies on the Hill. And if the commission is challenged in court, the administration is likely to drag out the fight until it has firmly established a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.

Either way, opponents consider the commission a serious threat. “The end result,” says Waxman, “would be a field day for corporate lobbyists.”

© 2005 Rolling Stone

Supreme Court Rules Against Immunity for Dow Chemical

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Bush Administration filed brief asking Court to protect pesticide companies and deny compensation to victimized farmers.

By David G. Savage
First published by the L.A Times, April 28, 2005

 Editor’s note: This article is a classic example of how our regulatory agencies often are protecting giant corporations, not citizens (or small businesses). The issue is rarely spelled out so clearly as in this case.

The Time’s headline read: Supreme Court rules against the White House’s pro-business reading of a 1972 law. A fine letter to the Times’ editor by Jennifer Rockne — director of the American Independent Business Alliance — follows the article, pointing out the misleading, but common use of the label “pro-business.”

The makers of pesticides and weedkillers can be sued and forced to pay damages if their products cause harm, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, rejecting the view of the Bush administration and reversing a series of lower courts.

The 7-2 ruling permits lawsuits by farmers whose crops are damaged by pesticides, as well as suits by consumers who are hurt by bug sprays.

In its first ruling on the scope of the 1972 federal law regulating pesticides and related chemicals, the justices said the requirement that chemical companies submit their products for approval by the Environmental Protection Agency did not “give pesticide manufacturers virtual immunity” from being sued if those products proved to be harmful to people, plants or animals.

Wednesday’s ruling restores the law to what it had been before the 1990s.

During most of the 20th century, Americans who were hurt or killed by toxic chemicals could sue the maker of the product in state court. But more recently, lawyers for the chemical industry convinced courts in much of the nation, including California , that the federal law regulating the pesticides barred such lawsuits in state courts.

Four years ago, the Bush administration adopted this pro-industry position, saying that once a pesticide or weedkiller had won EPA approval, it had a federal shield against being sued – even if the product did not work as advertised.

The case of 29 Texas peanut farmers illustrated the issue. Five years ago, they were persuaded by agents of Dow Chemical Co. to try Strongarm, a powerful, newly approved weedkiller. The farmers say Strongarm killed not just their weeds, but also their peanut plants.

“They just plain withered away,” said Ronnie Love, 63, who said he applied Strongarm to 150 acres when he seeded his fields that spring. Despite a summer of heavy watering, the peanut plants were stunted and failed to produce a crop, he said.

Love and the other farmers say Dow reneged on a promise to compensate them for millions of dollars in crop losses. They notified the company that they intended to sue in a Texas court under the terms of the state’s consumer protection law, which allows suits for products that are defective or are deceptively marketed.

But before they could file their claims, lawyers for Dow went to a U.S. district court in Lubbock and asserted it was shielded from such suits.

A federal judge agreed with Dow and dismissed the farmers’ suit. And the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans agreed as well, saying federal law that regulates pesticides preempts or bars lawsuits in a state court. The California Supreme Court handed down a similar ruling five years ago.

But the Supreme Court took up the case of the peanut farmers – Bates vs. Dow AgroSciences – and ruled Wednesday that the lower courts were wrong to throw out such claims.

Justice John Paul Stevens noted that the EPA did not test products to see if they were effective. It simply relies on information supplied by the manufacturer.

After the peanut crops in Texas failed, Dow changed Strongarm’s product label to say the weedkiller should not be used in regions with high-alkaline soils, which are common in Texas and Oklahoma .

The company did not acknowledge liability for the earlier damage.

Stevens described the 1972 law as an effort by Congress to impose greater regulation on “poisonous substances.” Converting it into a shield against lawsuits would “create not only financial risks for consumers, but risks that affect their safety and environment as well,” he said.

“This is a huge win for farmers, and I think it will have a big impact in the agriculture industry,” said David C. Frederick, the Washington lawyer who represented the peanut farmers. “Pesticide makers and farmers have to work together. And if something goes wrong with a pesticide, the farmers deserve to be compensated. Now the courthouse door is open to them again after being closed for the past 15 years.”

Patti Goldman, a lawyer in Seattle for the environmental group Earthjustice, said the ruling would help consumers and workers harmed by pesticides.

She and other lawyers cited cases of children sickened by pesticides that had drifted from fields into residential areas and that of a young man who died after riding a horse that had been sprayed with a pesticide. Recently, such lawsuits had been dismissed prior to a trial.

Wednesday’s ruling does not mean the plaintiffs will always win, the lawyers said, noting that they would have to prove the product was defectively made or inadequately tested to prevail in court.

“This just means that people will be allowed to sue for compensation when they are harmed by a pesticide,” Goldman said. “The court recognized that these [EPA-approved] labels are written by the manufacturers.”

The Bush administration, the chemical industry and other business groups joined the case on the side of Dow Chemical Co., arguing that the court should erect a barrier to such lawsuits.

“This is a complete loss and a big disappointment,” said Steve Bokat, general counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Our concern is that this gives an opening for the plaintiffs’ bar to bring more tort claims against large companies.”

In his opinion, Stevens pointed out that the Clinton administration believed that the federal pesticide registration law did not shield manufacturers from all lawsuits. The Bush administration reversed course in 2001 and said the law as originally written did block such claims.

Stevens called the new interpretation “particularly dubious” and not entitled to much deference from the high court. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer joined the court’s opinion.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented in part, criticizing the court for “tipping the scales in favor of the states and against the federal government” by allowing lawsuits in state courts.

© 2005 Los Angeles Times

 

To the Editor,

Re “Lawsuits Over Pesticides, Herbicides Allowed” (Nation, 4/28), your subhead reads, “Supreme Court rules against the White House’s pro-business reading of a 1972 law.” Yet as the story makes clear, there’s nothing inherently “pro-business” about the Bush Administration’s advocacy on behalf of the chemical industry — it’s favoring Dow Chemical and other giant pesticide companies at the expense of small farming businesses.

I’m not nitpicking a single headline choice, but pointing out a persistent misrepresentation conveyed by using “pro-business” to describe policies that favor the most politically powerful corporations, often to the detriment of America’s small businesses.

In the future, please avoid the overly broad term “business interests” in favor of identifying which business interests benefit and any that are harmed by particular actions or proposals.

Jennifer Rockne
The writer directs the American Independent Business Alliance