A22 Thursday, July 16, 2009
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AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Call in the Prosecutors
Dubious earmarks add to the case
for a criminal investigation of Marion Barry.
roll. Now come new — and even more troubling — allegations that Mr. Barry steered nearly $1 million of public money to organizations that are questionable in their origin and purpose. The D.C. Council’s decision to authorize a broad inquiry into these affairs is a good first step. But the seriousness of the charges and the fact that the council’s own lax oversight is implicated de- mand separate investigations by the D.C. in- spector general and the U.S. attorney’s office. Less than a week after the disclosure that Mr. Barry directed $15,000 to a then-girlfriend, the Washington City Paper reported on Mr. Barry’s use of legislative earmarks to fund six nonprofit groups in Ward 8 that apparently are controlled by his staff. Reporter Mike DeBonis showed how Mr. Barry secured funding for the groups even before they officially existed and detailed apparent irregularities, including allegations of forgery and false statements, in how some were constituted. Each received grants of $75,000 this year and are set to get more money next year. It’s unclear what the groups did for the money.
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The council last year established new rules limiting earmarks and requiring recipients to submit extensive documentation and to undergo audits. That the rules fall short seems clear from
IRST CAME the revelation that D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D- Ward 8) put his girlfriend on the city pay-
a taped account — the person responsible says the recording was accidental — of a March meeting in which members of the council staff can be heard fretting when confronted with Mr. Barry’s unusual involvement in the operations of the nonprofits. Says Council Budget Director Er- ic Goulet: “We’ve moved beyond the ideal of how this should work. I’m glad this is not on tape right now . . . but the council member should not be directly making decisions about these grant agreements.” The events surrounding Mr. Barry illuminate concerns about how expenditures near and dear to council members are policed. Separate from funds that are earmarked as part of the legisla- tive process, the council has an operating budget of some $20 million. It appears — as witnessed by Mr. Barry’s shameless boast that he broke no rules in hiring a girlfriend and would do so again —that members are given wide latitude to do what they want. Accordingly, it was encouraging that D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) agreed to expand the scope of the investigation by noted lawyer Robert S. Bennett to cover the council’s use of personal services contracts and earmarks and whether there is a need to toughen council rules. However, more than ethical issues are in play; that’s why authorities empowered to con- duct criminal investigations must also take a look at Mr. Barry’s actions.
Dangerous Side Effects
A law meant to spur prescription drug competition has instead delayed it. Congress could change that.
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VERY YEAR, American consumers pay an estimated $3.5 billion too much for health care because of a loophole in a law
regarding the marketing of prescription drugs. The 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act was supposed to help consumers by offering a 180-day exclu- sive marketing period to generic companies that could develop their own “bio-equivalent” ver- sions of brand-name drugs without infringing on the brand-name drugs’ patents. Allowing brand-name patent holders to sue if they thought the generic equivalents came too close to the patented drug’s composition, the act was designed to promote the development of cheap- er alternatives and encourage challenges to weak patents. But the result has been an in- creasing number of out-of-court settlements in which brand-name drug companies simply pay generic competitors to stay out of the market. A measure intended to make cheaper, generic al- ternatives available sooner has had the para- doxical effect of delaying competition. The laws that are in place are not working. Courts have been divided on the subject of “exclusion payments” — with several finding that only settlements that delay the entry of a generic alternative beyond the expiration of a brand-name’s patent can be deemed anti-competitive. But this holds only for companies whose patents are strong. And it
misses the point of the incentives that Hatch-Waxman was designed to create: to test whether a company’s patent blocks entry into a market and to allow generic competition sooner if it does not.
When a generic competitor offers a solid case against a brand name’s patent but accepts payment instead of going to court, consumers pay a substantial price. The drop-off in price between brand-name and generic drugs is vast and ever-increasing; the prices of many generic drugs are 85 percent lower than the brand-name versions, while some are as much as 95 percent less.
As Congress embarks on major health-care reform, it has a chance to fix the system. Banning all “pay-for-delay” settlements except where they can be proven to be pro-competitive would be a good start. True, some pay-for-delay settlements inadvertently benefit consumers by allowing generic products to enter markets sooner than they would have after litigation. But that is no excuse for failing to fix a system with fundamentally flawed incentives. The only difference between one company paying another not to produce a competing product and one company paying another not to produce a competing product yet is that the second is still, paradoxically, legal. This must change.
A Glass Partly Full
The long, fractious road to global climate talks in Copenhagen
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O THE CLIMATE talks at the Group of Eight summit in L’Aquila, Italy, with the world’s 17 major greenhouse gas emitters didn’t go as planned. Unrest back home forced Chinese President Hu Jintao to leave before he could get down to negotiating with an engaged American president. Developing nations balked at committing to long-term emissions reduc- tions goals because industrialized countries balked at setting short-term targets. And they were none too pleased that rich nations wouldn’t make a firm commitment to help them deal with the effects of climate change. All this spells dis- aster if you have a glass-half-empty worldview. But take a look at what was accomplished. All of the nations agreed that the Earth’s average temperature should not rise more than 3.6 de- grees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre- industrial levels. The eight leading industrial na- tions agreed to slash their greenhouse gas emis- sions by 80 percent by 2050. This is an improve- ment over the 50 percent reduction that the G-8 agreed to last year and now puts the industri- alized world in sync with what the Intergovern- mental Panel on Climate Change says is needed to halt the catastrophic consequences of climate change. President Obama played an active role in getting this done, quite a change from the foot-dragging and denial that characterized U.S. climate change policy under President George W. Bush.
That’s not to say that all’s smooth sailing to the big climate treaty talks in Copenhagen in De- cember. In addition to the big hurdles mentioned above, the baseline year is fluid — based on emission levels “compared to 1990 or more re- cent years.” Many European countries wanted
reductions based on 1990 levels. The recently passed American Clean Energy and Recovery Act (a.k.a.Waxman-Markey) is pegged to 2005 levels. And thus our attention moves from the hobbled progress abroad to the chaotic road to consensus at home on climate change legislation that Mr. Obama can take to Denmark. Even with all the compromises, directives, subsidies and other giveaways hurled at mem- bers to secure their votes, Waxman-Markey barely made it out of the House last month. It calls for a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 below 2005 levels. It would also give away 85 percent of the pollution credits in the initial years of a complicated cap-and-trade system that would put a price on carbon through a declining cap on emissions set by the federal government. That’s a far cry from the 100 percent auction of pollution allowances advocated by Mr. Obama as a presidential candidate. Sadly, we have no confidence that things will
improve in the Senate. Despite holding a news conference in February declaring that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee would be “starting fresh” and that “we’re willing to look at everything,” Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is using the cap-and-trade provisions of Waxman-Markey as the template for her com- mittee’s bill. Her committee staff promises that members are being creative in looking at how to do things differently to achieve the bill’s goals. Unless that includes serious consideration of a properly designed carbon tax or a cleaner cap- and-trade system that auctions a majority of the emissions credits and rebates the money to tax- payers, that’s a promise that won’t be fulfilled.
The Washington Post
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
A Double Standard for Judge Sotomayor
The July 13 front-page article “Hearings Not Just About Soto- mayor” said of Supreme Court nomi- nee Sonia Sotomayor: “How she an- swers the questions of Republican panel members . . . will help deter- mine whether charges from her crit- ics persist about her ability to apply the law fairly, without a bias toward any group.”
What an astounding double standard.
Has any white man or white
woman, during Supreme Court confirmation hearings, been asked whether being Caucasian makes him or her unable to apply the law without bias in cases involving people who are not Caucasian? Has any male Supreme Court nominee ever been asked whether
Sarah Palin’s Misguided Energy Policies
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s attack on President Obama’s climate plan [“The ‘Cap And Tax’ Dead End,” op-ed, July 14] distorted the pro- posal’s economic impact and ig- nored the economic and ecological damage associated with global warming.
The United States Climate Action Partnership — a coalition of some of the country’s largest en- ergy companies, manufacturers and environmental groups — sup- ports the pending legislation be- cause the costs of failing to address climate change far outweigh the costs of moving to a clean-energy economy. Ms. Palin should understand this: Research from the University of Alaska at Anchorage predicts that melting permafrost in Alaska will cost the state more than $3.6 billion in infrastructure damage over the next two decades, while scholars at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks have found that warm- er ocean temperatures are increas- ing disease in the state’s economi- cally important salmon fisheries. The “inherent link between en- ergy and prosperity, energy and op- portunity, and energy and security” need not point us toward increased fossil fuel exploration, as Palin said it should. A recent report by the Center for American Progress and the Univer- sity of Massachusetts at Amherst projects that Mr. Obama’s stimulus package and the Waxman-Markey energy bill now being considered by the Senate would create 1.7 mil- lion green jobs annually, enabling the United States to lead the world in clean-energy development. Long-term prosperity will come from tackling the threat of climate change, not ignoring it.
WHITNEY ANGELL LEONARD
Junior Fellow for Energy and Climate
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Washington
Why It Wasn’t ‘McNamara’s War’
Bradley Graham wrote in his July 12 Outlook commentary [“McNa- mara Apologized. Will Rumsfeld?”] that as defense secretary, Robert Mc- Namara took the country “into a dis- astrous war.”
This assertion fails to recognize that the president, not the secretary of defense, is the commander in chief.
Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson received advice on Vietnam from a number of offi- cials, including the secretary of state and the national security adviser.
As early as 1967, Mr. McNamara
warned Mr. Johnson in writing that the war was unwinnable. But Mr. Johnson let Vietnam continue, not wanting to be tainted as a president who lost a war. To perpetuate the myth that
Vietnam was Mr. McNamara’s war is to unfairly tarnish the reputation of a dedicated public servant. ROBERT G. GARD JR. Rockville
The writer was military assistant to the secretary of defense from 1966 to 1968.
Just Punishment for Abetting Genocide
The news that Tharcisse Ren- zaho, former governor of Kigali, Rwanda [World Digest, July 15] has been found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity by an inter- national court and sentenced to life in prison is of some personal satis- faction to me.
In June 1994, just weeks before the end of the Rwandan massacres, while working for a humanitarian organization, I visited Mr. Renza-
ho’s office with a Rwandan friend. Our goal had been to enlist the
governor’s assistance to help save my friend’s wife and young children, who were trapped in their home and targeted for death because of their ethnicity.
Not only did Mr. Renzaho refuse
to provide any assistance, he flatly denied that civilians were in any danger in his city. Shortly thereafter, my friend’s family was taken away, and was nev- er seen again.
CHRIS HENNEMEYER Wheaton
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Comic Relief From Mr. Barry
Regarding the allegations that D.C. Council member Marion Barry misused city funds by awarding Donna Watts-Brighthaupt a $5,000- a-month city contract shortly after they started dating [“Hiring Girl- friend Was Legal, Barry Says,” Met- ro, July 15]: I urge the D.C. Council not to rein in Mr. Barry’s spending on staff.
Fifteen thousand dollars is cheap entertainment for the millions of people living in the area.
RONALD NARMI Alexandria
Better Choice for Honduras
The July 9 editorial “A Chance for Honduras” suggested that the best way to defeat deposed president Ma- nuel Zelaya is to allow his return. I disagree. Mr. Zelaya has violated the law nu- merous times. Recently, he and a mob of followers stormed a military base to seize and distribute ballots for an illegal referendum that could have paved the way for his reelec- tion. This “coup by democratic means” has succeeded previously in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecua- dor. To bring back Mr. Zelaya as presi-
dent would be a grave mistake. He would seek the help of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to achieve through military means what he could not accomplish through demo- cratic ones — to become another caudillo in perpetuity and destabilize Central America. The best way to de- feat Mr. Zelaya is by letting provi- sional President Roberto Micheletti call for new, internationally mon- itored elections immediately.
JORGE E. PONCE Burke
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he can apply the law without bias, since more than half of the U.S. population is female? It would be nice to see women and people of color being treated like full citizens held to the same standards as everyone else. Maybe someday, but clearly not yet.
AMY E. LESEN New Orleans
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The headline on the July 14 editorial “Two Wrongs . . .” said that as president, Barack Obama deserves “the deference that Sen. Obama failed to show” President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees. The editorial called then-Sen. Obama’s votes against Supreme Court nominees John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. “mistakes.”
Yet the editorial offered Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) a free ride to vote against Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor if he did so “on the merits as he views them and not as a ploy for political gain.” Did Sen. Obama not live up to that standard? Or was his “mistake” that he did not agree with your assessment of the nominees? RUTH P. ROLAND Warrenton
Tom Toles is away.
BY LUCY NICHOLSON — REUTERS
Uninsured patient Josefa Martinez, 8, has her blood pressure measured at a clinic in Venice, Calif.
Who Should Fund Health Care?
Democrats in the House of Representatives seem deter- mined to “force the richest 2 mil- lion U.S. taxpayers to shoulder much of the cost of an expansion of the nation’s health-care sys- tem” (“Health-Care Plan Would Add Surtax on Wealthy,” front page, July 15).
Seeking money from the few
to pay for all of the president’s proposals would have enormous consequences for everyone else. We already have a society in which nearly half of the people pay no federal income taxes. Everyone understands the need to help those less fortunate, but do we want half the country to feel no obligation to pay any-
thing — even just a few dollars — for defense, education, health care and protecting the environ- ment?
The wealthy should pay their fair share and then some, but what does it do to the American dream when you are continually and disproportionately punished for your success?
Before members of Congress
take even more from the few, par- ticularly during this recession, maybe they should stop building buildings and airports with their names on them and stop distrib- uting others’ earnings in ways that keep them in office. ROBERT J. BRUDNO Washington
Marketing Counsel
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