Day: August 20, 2002

Congressional Black Caucus Lied about Zimbabwe Vote

Speaking of honesty, I was doing some research about Zimbabwe when I came across this press release from the Congressional Black Caucus about last year’s vote on a sanctions bill against Zimbabwe. The first paragraph didn’t make any sense to me,

Yesterday, Members of the Congressional Black Caucus unanimosly voted in favor of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 in an attempt to formulate a US policy initiative to support a resolution to the current political instability and on-going land conflict that has long plagued the country.

Huh? Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and she is on record as opposing that bill. What gives?

So I checked the roll call on the bill (technically, the House voted on a resolution to suspend its rules and pass the bill, which is common when there is overwhelming support for a bill)– McKinney is listed as not voting on the resolution.

Apparently McKinney’s defense of Mugabe was even too embarassing for the CBC, but why lie?

McKinney Madness Runs in the Family

During her re-election campaign, Cynthia McKinney got caught using recycled endorsements from Andrew Young. Young endorsed her last time, but stayed out of the current contest probably due to McKinney’s controversial post-9/11 comments.

It turns out that McKinney’s father, Bill, has a theory about that whole imbroglio — the Jews did it!!

Again, as reported by the web site of WXIA-TV,

The comments followed 11Alive asking Billy McKinney about his daughter using an old endorsement from former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young.

“That ain’t nothing. That’s nothing,” he said. “Jews have bought everybody. Jews… J-E-W-S.”

Hey, at least he can spell. Can you imagine those family get-togethers? Probably devoted to discussing how the Jews are plotting against Robert Mugabe.

Now We Know Why Cynthia McKinney Liked Mugabe So Much

Last week I noted that Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga) was the only (to my knowledge) national politician to stand up and defend Zimbabwean strongman Robert Mugabe. In her statement opposing sanctions against Zimbabwe, McKinney defended Zimbabwe’s corrupt and rigged elections as commendable as compared to what she sees as the wholesale sellout of democracy over what happened in Florida in 2000.

But McKinney’s supporters have a very odd idea of what counts as fair electioneering practices. Somebody has been making tape recorded calls in Georgia targeted at Republican voters telling them that they could be arrested if they vote in the Democratic primary.

The web site for WXIA-TV reports that the message says,

This is an official notice for Republican voters. It is a violation of state and federal law to attempt to vote in a Democratic primary without proper documentation. State and federal enforcement officials will be monitoring the polling places closely tomorrow for violations of the law. Do not risk violating the law by trying to vote in a Democratic primary without the proper documents.

Georgia, like many states, has an open primary system so any registered voter can vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary. The only thing any voter needs to vote in either primary is just some sort of legal identification such as a driver’s license. In McKinney’s case since there’s no way the Republicans are going to win the seat in her district, Republicans have been urging their voters to vote for McKinney’s opponent in the Democratic primary. Apparently somebody’s afraid that strategy might work.

The phone messages themselves are likely a violation of federal and state laws against voter intimidation.

Just the sort of thing that Robert Mugabe would try to discourage opposition voters.

Behind the Music — How the Backstreet Boys Got Screwed

Normally I’m not interested in reading any about the Backstreet Boys, but The New York Times had a fascinating look at the group’s rise and fall.

But the article is really about the shady business dealings in the recording industry. Even though their CD “Backstreet Boys” sold millions of copies in Europe and 10 million copies in the United States, between 1993 and 1998 the band members only received $300,000 total in royalties due to the slippery accounting methods used by record companies (the movie and record industry accounting practices make WorldCom and Enron look honest in comparison).

Their original manager, for example, cleverly booked his expenses against the band’s royalties, so while he was making millions, they were earning peanuts. He also crafted their original contract in such a way that he was a member of the group, so he paid himself as the manager and then paid himself again by taking a share of the royalties as a member of the group.

They get out of that contract thank to a small management company called the Firm which then uses the Backstreet Boys to build its own business, including entering into deals which clearly benefit the management company but also help kill the band’s career. (They sold the “Black and Blue” tour to Clear Channel which was great for the Firm but pissed off a lot of the group’s fans because it meant huge ticket prices and, in many cases, poor ticket sales as a result).

Backstreet Boys music sucks as far as I’m concerned, but the behind the scenes story is fascinating.

South Africa Just Won’t Give Up When It Comes to Promoting AIDS

Given that South Africa has such a high incidence of AIDS infection, a reasonable person might conclude that the country would try to do everything in its power to reduce the risk of infection. Instead, the government continues to do all it can to prevent pregnant women from having access to a drug that can reduce by up to half the risk of passing on AIDS to their newborn infants.

The drug is nevirapine, and studies show that a single dose taken by women during labor can reduce by up to 50 percent the risk of women passing on AIDS to their newborns. The drug is used throughout the world for this purpose, but South Africa has decided that the drug may be too toxic.

A court earlier this summer ordered South Africa’s government to begin providing nevirapine to pregnant women, but now South Africa’s drug approval agency has said it wants to revisit the issue of whether or not the drug is toxic. The agency cites an FDA study in Uganda, but the FDA concern in that study was over whether or not the researchers carrying out the study had sufficiently documented their findings.

The New York Times noted that, “the council’s deliberations revived serious questions about South Africa’s handling of the AIDS epidemic.” To put it more bluntly, is South Africa seriously interested in stopping its AIDS epidemic? Instead of doing so, it seems focused on making the AIDS crisis the focus of some sort of bizarre internal political exercise. South African president Thabo Mbeki seems intent on allowing infants to contract AIDS simply so that he can assert his country’s independence from the medical consensus on HIV.

Source:

South Africa may bar AIDS drug in childbirth. Rachel L. Swarns, The New York Times, August 5, 2002.