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Today's
Stories
December 29, 2003
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
December 19, 2003
Elaine Cassel
Courts
Rebuke Bush for Trampling the Constitution
Robert Fisk
Raid
on Fantasyville: Shooting Samarra's Schoolboys in the Back
Zoltan Grossman
The
Occupation Has Failed to "Capture" the Loyalty of Iraqis
Mike Whitney
Bush's
Afghan Highway to Nowhere
Harold Gould
Has the Radical Arab Strategy Really Worked?
Gary Leupp
The
Neocon's Dream Memo
December 18, 2003
Ann Harrison
A
Landmark Victory for Medical Pot
John L. Hess
Catfish
Blues: The SOB's from Out of Town
Karyn Strickler
Ebola
is Good for You!
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Duryodhana
Dies
Harry Browne
Hail
Jim Hickey, the "Irish Hero" of the Colonial Occupation
of Iraq
Hammond Guthrie
Captured in Abasement
December 17, 2003
Robert Fisk
Saddam's
Cold Comforts
Gideon Levy
"Don't
Even Think About the Children"
Marjorie Cohn
The Fortuitous
Arrest of Saddam: a Pyrrhic Victory?
Andrew Cockburn
Saddam's
Last Act
December 16, 2003
Robert Fisk
Getting
Saddam...15 Years Too Late
Mahajan / Jensen
Saddam
in Irons: The Hard Truths Remain
John Halle
Matt
Gonzalez and Me
Josh Frank
The
Democrats and Saddam
Tariq Ali
Saddam
on Parade: the New Model of Imperialism
December 15, 2003
Robert Fisk
The Capture
of Saddam Won't Stop the Guerrilla War
Dave Lindorff
The
Saddam Dilemma
Abu Spinoza
Blowback on the Stand: The Trial of Saddam Hussein
Norman Solomon
For
Telling the Truth: the Strange Case of Katharine Gun
Patrick Cockburn
The
Capture of Saddam
Stew Albert
Joy to the World
December 13 / 14, 2003
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts
at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli
Connection
Stan Goff
Jessica Lynch, Plural
Tariq Ali
The Same Old Racket in Iraq
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Map is not the Territory
Marty Bender / Stan Cox
Dr. Atkins vs. the Planet
Christopher Brauchli
Mercury Rising: the EPA's Presents to Industry
Gary Leupp
On Marriage in "Recorded History", an Open Letter to
Gov. Mitt Romney
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Saga of Iran's Alleged WMD
Larry Everest
Saddam, Oil and Empire: Supply v. Demand
William S. Lind
How to Fight a 4th Generation War
Fran Shor
From Vietnam to Iraq: Counterinsurgency and Insurgency
Ron Jacobs
Child Abuse as Public Policy
Omar Barghouti
Relative Humanity and a Just Peace in the Middle East
Adam Engel
Pretty Damn Evil: an Interview with Ed Herman
Kristin Van Tassel
Breastfeeding Compromised
Ben Tripp
On Getting Stabbed
Susan Davis
"The Secret Lives of Dentists", a Review
Dave Zirin
Does Dylan Still Matter? an Interview with Mike Marqusee
Norman Madarasz
Searching for the Barbarians
Poets' Basement
Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Dean on Race
December 12, 2003
Josh Frank
Halliburton,
Timber and Dean
Chris Floyd
The
Inhuman Stain
Dave Lindorff
Infanticide
as Liberation: Hiding the Dead Babies
Benjamin Dangl
Another Two Worlds Are Possible?
Jean-Paul Barrois
Two States or One? an Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva
Accords
David Vest
Bush
Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton
December 11, 2003
Siegfried Sassoon
A
Soldier's Declaration Against War
Douglas Valentine
Preemptive
Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program
John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra
Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride
James M. Carter
The
Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq
December 10, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Pat Youngblood / Robert
Jensen
Workers
Rights are Human Rights
Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children
CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart
Case
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
December
29, 2003
Catellus Development
The
Octopus Reborn?
By RICHARD TRAINOR
Thirty-seven years before writer Frank Norris
created the fictional Octopus in his 1901 novel, the U.S. Congress
gave birth to its real-life counterpart by granting the Southern-Pacific
Railway company a checkerboard pattern of right-of-way land parcels
lining either side of their tracks from Texas to California.
Although the railroad would dry up economically in the mid-20th
century, and disappear entirely in 1994 when it was swallowed
by the Union-Pacific Railroad in a merger, the Octopus that Congress
created still lives on in the form of the real estate giant that
it grew into from those 1864 checkerboard easements. This company,
once known as Southern-Pacific Realty, has tentacles that span
the continent. It is now known as Catellus Development, and it
is an absolute Colossus.
Catellus is the second largest private
landholder in the western United States with 817,000 acres in
California alone. It develops commercial real estate, shopping
centers, and housing, and acquired a number of properties on
some defunct military bases during the Clinton administration's
base closure program. Catellus has also been very active in a
number of land swaps, where it exchanged mostly worthless rural
properties for prime development land within urban areas, or
for land directly adjacent to planned freeways.
Catellus is headed by chairman/ CEO Nelson
Rising, a big-time developer formerly with McGuire-Thomas. This
is the development company that built Playa Vista in Los Angeles,
the mixed-use development out on the Ballona Wetlands. Rising
used to be a Hollywood producer whose 1971 film, The Candidate,
examined the political corruption of an environmental idealist
who sacrifices his principles to become elected as one of California's
U.S. Senators.
Catellus is one of the most politically
wired development companies in California with significant ties
to Senator Dianne Feinstein, outgoing San Francisco Mayor Willie
Brown (who was formerly their attorney), California State Senate
President Pro Tem John Burton (another ex-Catellus attorney),
and John Foran, the MTC lobbyist who briefly served as Catellus'
lobbyist on a very provocative piece of legislation sponsored
by Burton in 1997. Another client with Foran's lobbying firm
Nossaman, Guthner, Knox and Elliott is the LA Metropolitan Transit
Authority, whose offices happen to be in another Catellus property,
renovated with redevelopment money in downtown Los Angeles at
Union Station.
In a 1997 article published in Forbes
Magazine, writer Mary Beth Grover put it this way: "With
real estate, politics matters a lot, almost as much as location.
In California real estate, politics is the most important thing
(and) aside from sheer corruption, there are a number of ways
to appease these little gods. Catellus knows the game well."
It certainly hasn't hurt Catellus' cause
that the corporation and its officers, including ex-producer
Rising, have been significant contributors to the political war
chests of both Willie Brown and Dianne Feinstein. Besides the
$140,000 in legal fees that Willie Brown received from Catellus
as one of its attorneys from 1982 until 1994, Brown's two San
Francisco mayoral campaigns also received a lot of cash from
Catellus. So did Feinstein's U.S. Senate campaigns. Over the
past ten years, Feinstein's campaigns have received over $150,000
from Catellus Development. Brown's two mayoral campaigns landed
a total of close to $50,000 from Catellus and individuals associated
with the corporation.
Senator Feinstein has proven very successful
in promoting a land-swap project that involves Catellus properties
in Southern California. The Senator is very proud of this project
and lists it as one of her prime accomplishments on her Congresssional
website. This is the Desert Wilderness Protection Act of 1994
(the act was funded with additional legislation sponsored by
Senator Feinstein in the 1999, 2000 and 2001 sessions of Congress).
Now known as The Desert Wildlands Act, this bill involves the
transfer of over 400,000 acres of Catellus land in the Mojave
Desert to the federal government to create a natural preserve.
Of the $56.5 million purchase price for the Catellus desert properties,
$30 million of the money is coming from the U.S. government.
while the additional $26.5 million is coming from a non-profit
environmental group called The Wildlands Conservancy.
In a press release put out by Senator
Feinstein's office, Nelson Rising gave credit to Feinstein: "The
successful completion of these transactions would not have been
possible without the significant efforts of Senator Dianne Feinstein."
Rising then went on to credit David Myers and the Wildlands
Conservancy for "rais(ing) the private funds necessary to
complete these sales."
But a few critics wonder whether this
massive land swap was such a great deal for anybody other than
Catellus.
In a column titled "A Succession
of Land Deals" by Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters
published in March of 2001, Walters wrote that the Catellus desert
swap amounted to a deal where "Catellus walked away with
cash and valuable land and gave up virtually nothing of real
value. It was a coup for the company's top executive, Nelson
Rising." Walters went on to state that the Catellus desert
bill bore some similarities to the Headwaters Forest bill in
that both were used to appease envirnonmentalists who favored
the desert park and wanted to preserve the forest. Senator Feinstein
negotiated the half-billion dollar Headwaters deal right before
she authored the Desert Wildlands bill.
Jeffrey Baird, a computer programmer
who works for the County of San Bernardino, says that the whole
thing stinks to high heaven. "I believe that non-profits
(e.g. The Wildlands Conservancy) masquerading under the cloak
of "environmentalism" are being used as vehicles to
initiate a series of land purchases/swaps that will ultimately
benefit Catellus Corporation and their friends at the expense
of John Q. Public." Baird says that Catellus is giving up
desert lands that are undevelopable in exchange for lands adjacent
to freeways that are well traveled and worth considerably more.
Baird pointed out that there seems to
be a connection between Catellus Development and The Wildlands
Conservancy that constitutes a direct conflict of interest, and
says that he fears "that the resulting charitable gift/sales
of 'ostensibly appreciated land' are inconsistent with the underlying
land values of these properties as determined by the county assessor."
Baird says that the assessed values of the land when they are
transferred from Catellus ownership to the Wildlands Conservancy
increase sharply, as high as 300% in some cases, yielding huge
tax benefits to Catellus. Baird has been trying to get a number
of investigative agencies to look into the issue without success.
Baird also believes that some of the
federal land transfers involve public lands that have been illegally
transferred to private ownership by the federal Bureau of Land
Management. Baird has shown this reporter a series of land parcels
with map overlays that seems to establish his contention that
the parcels were in fact public lands as little as ten years
ago. "I think the whole thing is a money pump," said
Baird.
In a May 1997 issue of Media ByPass
magazine, writer Karen Lee Bixman explored an area of the
land swap that made some of Baird's concerns look pale by comparison.
In this story titled "The Great Gold Heist: The Desert Wilderness
Protection Act," Bixman characterized Senator Dianne Feinstein
as "The Modern Jesse James." Exchanging worthless desert
land for more viable commercial land alongside interchanges
is bad public policy, but swapping worthless land for rich, gold-bearing
deposits was also scheduled.
Bixman wrote: "the real motivation
for the passage of (the Feinstein) bill lies with the special
interest groups that would benefit monetarily.Through a complex
series of land exchanges, Catellus will receive land that contains
some of the richest gold deposits in the world."
Part of the Catellus land exchanges in
the Mojave included a swap for a decommissioned military base
called Chocolate Mountain. Bixman said geologists told her that
Chocolate Mountain has deposits worth somewhere between $40-100
billion. Catellus owns the nearby Mesquite mine in the Chocolate
Rift zone, which, Bixman wrote, "is one of the ten most
profitable mines in the United States and has some of the most
profitable gold deposits of any mine in the world."
Catellus Development is based in San
Francisco at 201 Mission Street -- just across the street from
the Transbay Terminal. Catellus has a number of high profile,
multi-billion dollar projects underway in the Bay Area, including
the $3 billion Mission Bay project in San Francisco, and the
$1.5 billion military base conversion project in Alameda, at
the former Fisk Naval Air Center. Both of these projects are
mixed-use developments that will include commercial office space,
retail space, and housing.
There is a strong possibility that Catellus
(CDX on the New York Stock Exchange listings) could be the latest
publicly-traded stock which might experience a sudden price rise
from a process related to transportation projects. These projects
include the planned redevelopment of the Transbay Terminal in
San Francisco and the so-called Mid-Bay Crossing bridge being
studied by the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
On the first project, a Transbay Terminal
bill was passed in the 2000 California legislative session that
was carried by Assemblyman Dion Aroner, an East Bay legislator.
This bill, AB 1409, proposed a new 900,000 square foot transit
building with commercial offices above it that was initially
pegged to cost $900 million. Although Aroner was the bill's nominal
author, sources at the State Capitol told this reporter that
outgoing San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown had a large hand in
drafting the legislation.
The bill was essentially a land swap
with the City of San Francisco. With a new tower atop the Transbay
Terminal, and adding in the adjacent lands that were then scheduled
for the swap, the City of San Francisco would have received approximately
$4 billion worth of prime development land for a buck. One of
the potential developers surely to be considered for this project
is Catellus Development, whose corporate headquarters at 201
Mission Street, is adjacent to the terminal site.
The Aroner bill also carried an exemption
in it stating that the State of California would not receive
fair market value for the exchange. At the end of that year's
legislative session, then-Governor Gray Davis vetoed the bill
but said that he would try to accomplish the same goal by handling
the matter "administratively," which presumably meant
that the package could go through without the legislature having
to enact a new piece of legislation. Neither Davis nor Governor
Arnold Schwarzennegger would comment for this story. At present,
the new, so-called "Great Expectations" terminal project
is still on hold.
The second potentially profit-producing
process involves a possible new bridge across the San Francisco
Bay.
Almost directly after San Francisco
Chronicle columnist Alan Temko's article touting the bridge
of his good friend, the late T. Y. Lin, appeared on the newspaper's
front page in its March 10, 1997 edition, the MTC's chief lobbyist,
John Foran, was hired as a lobbyist by Catellus Development to
work on behalf of SB 1215. This piece of legislation was authored
by San Francisco's State Senator John Burton, the man who describes
himself as "Willie Brown's best friend." Burton was
also once Catellus' lawyer. The bill was co-sponsored by the
two Assembly members from San Francisco, Carole Migden and Kevin
Shelley, both of who are part of what former State Senator, now
Sam Mateo Superior Court Judge, Quentin Kopp calls "Willie
Brown's cabal."
The Burton bill resolved a long-standing
dispute between the City of San Francisco, the State of California,
and the private developers, Catellus, doing business under the
name of Western Realty. The bill allowed the development of filled
tidelands to take place in Mission Bay and also provided for
a new University of California San Francisco campus. SB 1215
was passed as an emergency measure that took effect immediately
when it was signed by then-Governor Pete Wilson in August, 1997.
The bill didn't receive one nay vote as it went through the legislature,
nor did it generate one single news story despite its huge potential
impact on the long-stalled Mission Bay project.
What is most interesting about the hiring
of John Foran on the Burton/Catellus bill was the length of his
contract with Catellus and how much money he was paid. Foran's
term of employment was 22 days -- from March 20 through April
11 of 1997, for which he was paid almost $17,000. That's an astronomical
rate of pay for a contract lobbyist to represent a client on
one piece of legislation only. During that same time, Foran's
yearly pay for the MTC was $50,000.
What was a transportation lobbyist, the
man who founded the MTC, doing on behalf of a real estate company
like Catellus?
When I asked Willie Brown about this
bill at a televised press conference in the summer of 1998, he
denied that he knew anything about it. This seemed puzzling,
as the main lobbyist for Catellus Development, Marsha Smolins,
then happened to be the main lobbyist for the City and County
of San Francisco. Smolins began her career in politics as an
aide to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Brown's first response to my question
was that he didn't know what I was talking about. When I pressed
him with a follow-up question, he said, "I'll have my people
get back to you about it." Since this bill provided for
a new UCSF campus, and since such a campus would likely demonstrate
a significant demand for transit, I asked him whether or not
he had given any thought to the possibility of a new Mid-Bay
Crossing bridge. "You'd better watch yourself, or you're
going to go off that bridge," said Mayor Brown.
A year-and-a-half after he had chided
me about "going off that bridge," and almost directly
after being reelected Mayor of San Francisco in the fall of 1999,
Willie Brown received an appointment to the $100 billion California
Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) pension fund investment
board -- the investment fund that once owned 80% of Catellus
Development stock and is still its largest institutional shareholder
at somewhere close to 40%. Shortly after Mayor Brown was appointed
to PERS, Dianne Feinstein wrote a letter to Governor Gray Davis
asking for an updated study of the Mid-Bay Crossing bridge. If
such a bridge design included a landfall at either of the two
Catellus properties -- at Mission Bay or the Fisk Naval Air Center
base conversion -- it would likely have a beneficial effect on
Catellus stock prices.
In near record time, MTC approved the
Mid-Bay Crossing study, which is currently underway. Then Willie
Brown, Dianne Feinstein and the San Francisco bunch took a shot
at winning the trifecta: three stocks with three bills.
The first bill was the Catellus-sponsored
legislation, SB 1215, from the 1997 session (As a matter of fact,
during the passage of SB1215, Catellus stock went from below
$10 a share to $18 a share. On November 26 and 28, 1997, after
Burton's SB 1215 had become law, almost 4.25 million shares of
Catellus stock were traded at over $18 a share. Insider activity
was heavy, with over 3 million shares traded.) Senator John Burton's
additional bill in the 2000 session, SB 1562, called for development
of a new rail link between San Francisco Airport and another
airport on land owned by a city and county and located in another
county. There's only one likely place that this can be: the former
Fisk Naval Air Center in Alameda. By some strange quirk, part
of this airbase is within the city and county limits of San Francisco.
The Fisk Center is presently being developed as a mixed-use commercial
office and retail center with 350 dwelling units. The developer
is Catellus.
Directly after Senator Burton's first
bill, SB 1215, was passed in the 1997 session, Burton's campaign
received three contributions totalling $55,000 from the Southern
California District Council of Carpenter's Political Action Fund.
Richard Blum, Senator Feinstein's husband, is this union's pension
fund manager.
Then, on the day that he introduced SB
1562 in the 2000 session, Burton's campaign received a $4,000
contribution from Nossaman, Guthner, Knox and Elliott, the lobbyist
group headed by John Foran who have been active on every speculation-driven
stock from the bullet train in 1982 until now.
When the legislature went to conference
committee in June, 2000, a new paragraph was amended into the
trailer bill that was the financing scheme for the purchase of
the Cargill Salt Flats near San Francisco Airport. Cargill Salt
is another Nossaman, Guthner client. The trailer bill was Assemblywoman
Carole Migden's AB 398. Migden's original bill called for $150
million in state funds to help acquire the Cargill salt flats.
(When Governor Gray Davis signed the bill into law, the amount
of state funds had been reduced to $20 million). Besides acquiring
the Salt Flats for environmentalists, the land was also scheduled
to be used for the estimated $3 billion expansion of the San
Francisco Airport.
During the hearing for AB 398, Migden
mentioned the fact that Senator Feinstein was carrying the ball
for the acquisition in Congress with a "spot" bill.
The same type of legislative vehicle that drove the Bay Bridge
and Bullet Train profit-making processes. What she didn't mention
was that URS Greiner, Richard Blum's company, was chosen as the
engineering design firm in charge of the $3 billion SFO expansion,
presently on hold.
Like all the other transportation bills
dating back to the bullet train in 1982, the Burton-Migden-Feinstein
package began as "spot" bills that contain the famous
California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemptions and other
key elements these legislative wizards have been refining ever
since. It also involved an airport runway "competition"
for SFO that was very like that for the Bay Bridge competion.
This time, the notice for the competition was posted the very
day the competition closed. But this time, there were five finalists,
not two. It wasn't much of a surprise to learn that URS, Blum's
firm, won.
All the usual players were present when
the deal was going down in conference committee during the 2000
session. Mayor Willie Brown and his people were there. Willie
called the airport expansion "a golden opportunity"
when he gave testimony on the bill's behalf. Senator John Burton
was up on the dais. The MTC's Executive Director Steve Heminger
was circling around, and so was MTC founder, John Foran. So were
other lobbyists from the Nossaman, Guthner group. Notably absent
were Richard Blum and his wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein.
In the weeks leading up to the Burton-Migden-Feinstein
legislative package, the savvy investors were furiously buying
stock. Richard Blum was purchasing URS stock in 100,000 share
lots; it had fallen from 28 to 12 in the time that Willie Brown
and Dianne Feinstein made every effort to kill the new eastern
span of the Bay Bridge that the MTC had chosen in May, 1998.
Then URS turned around and began rising again, from $12 to $20
a share in six months. Lockheed-Martin (LMT on the NYSE) would
experience a significant jump in 2001-2002 when the new high-speed
train legislation went through. The MTC was studying a new southern
crossing bridge. Can you imagine the effect on Catellus stock
if the bridge runs from one of their properties to a landfall
on another property they own? The previous MTC study in 1991
alluded to such a possibility. As a matter of fact, the late
T.Y. Lin already had a bridge designed for a Mid-Bay crossing.
And who cares if it ever gets built? Just take the speculation-driven
profit and move on to the next process.
Richard Trainor
is an investigative reporter living in Eugene, Oregon. He can
be reached at: richardtrainor@hotmail.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
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Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
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