Negroponte can absolve corps from opening books for "national security"

[BurtWorm]

SusanG at dailykos.com cites a BusinessWeek Online article:


http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/5/24/115758/212


Tell America once again, Mr. President, how your secretive, spying national security policy is for the benefit of citizens and not of your corporate cronies - or to cover up your administration's illegal and unconstitutional acts.

From Business Week Online this morning:

Intelligence Czar Can Waive SEC Rules

Now, the White House's top spymaster can cite national security to exempt businesses from reporting requirements

President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye.

Unbeknownst to almost all of Washington and the financial world, Bush and every other President since Jimmy Carter have had the authority to exempt companies working on certain top-secret defense projects from portions of the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. Administration officials told BusinessWeek that they believe this is the first time a President has ever delegated the authority to someone outside the Oval Office. It couldn't be immediately determined whether any company has received a waiver under this provision.

The article points out the "intriguing" timing of Bush's signing of the memo authorizing such an unprecedented move - the day of Porter Goss' resignation as head of the CIA. Administration officials unsurprisingly denied any connection between this unique delegation of authority to Negroponte and Goss' departure, and refused to clarify whether any company had been exempted yet from reporting.

Security-law experts speculate in the Business Week article that such waiving of reporting requirements for companies could be used to mask the funding of secret CIA or Pentagon assignments....

[Beelzebud]

1. Welcome to your new Unitary Executive branch. a.k.a Dictatorship.

Unitary Executive is doublespeak for dictator.

[Jigarotta]

3. welcome to hell.

as it's always been.

there's no nothing that can be more hellish than global corporate citisen 'human' (they are a 'person" according to the law) greed piling on powerless people.

how much more hellish can you get than what we see here for some. on this planet.

[BurtWorm]

4. A subsidiary of Halliburton, Inc.

[jimshoes]

2. Didn't the fuckhead in cheif

once say something about transparancy in government? This guy's putting up walls of secrecy that would put Stalin to shame.

[BurtWorm]

5. kick