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Kerry -- Yuck!
By Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder
Published 3/19/2004 12:05:01 AM
Phonies are like trolley cars. There's usually another one coming down the tracks. Just after we were getting over one phony -- Clinton -- we have another one waiting in the wings.
Clinton, of the lies and double-talk -- it depends what is is -- who smoked but did not inhale, who remembered black churches being burned in the South, although the last time it happened was thirty years before he was born, who felt your pain and, if you are a female, anything part of you that is in reach, and who even at the end of his reign debased the presidency by granting criminals last-minute politically and personally enriching pardons, and then left like the visitor who walked off with the family silver. Okay, so he didn't take the silver -- it was just White House odds and ends, and then, shamelessly he sent out invitations for housewarming gifts for his new home. Obviously, we could go on and on about the subject, but it is the next Democratic candidate for his position that compels our interest.
John Kerry is the second -- Gary Hart was the first --wannabe Kennedy imitator to inhabit our political landscape. He and Hart combed their hair like Kennedy, dressed like Kennedy, motioned with their hands like him, womanized like him -- although in fairness to Kerry, after landing a rich widow (making him the richest member of the Senate) he stopped chasing girls. Well, at least if he didn't actually stop, he managed damage control brilliantly, and at least in this respect, out-Clintoned Clinton.
On a Thursday, when his relationship with an intern surfaced, instead of becoming a semantic expert like Clinton, he went immediately to work. On the Thursday, the girl's father said he would not vote for Kerry, and her mother, as reported by the father, always felt that Kerry was despicable. By Saturday the father was voting for him, and the girl was located in Africa and said all the rumors were lies and Kerry never laid a hand, or anything else, on her. There are those who would argue that just for the way he handled this problem alone, he deserved to be president. If Kennedy was half as smart in defusing the Cuban missile crisis we would not have been at the brink of war, and he would not have committed American troops to Vietnam beginning the slippery slide into an unpopular and probably wrong war. At least Vietnam served one purpose -- it gave Kerry something to talk about.
All during the Democratic primaries, the airwaves were saturated with Kerry's activities in Vietnam. If there was a possibility we could forget he was in Vietnam, he would drag a veteran up on the podium with him -- usually the more injured the better, in order to exploit them and this country's mistakes.
We naively believed that this election was not about something somebody did or did not do 35 years ago, but rather, what Kerry as a president would do today. We had the unworthy thought that the next president would not be called upon to drive a boat up a river as part of his presidential duties.
WHEN THE REPUBLICANS CALLED into question Kerry's recent votes to undercut the military and security of the country, he immediately screamed that his bravery and patriotism were being called into question. In short, his maneuver was to cut off constructive debate about the problems of today by name calling. Worse yet, when Republicans made TV commercials that focused on President Bush's actions surrounding 9/11, Kerry called it exploiting a tragedy.
We believe, however, that 9/11 was a defining moment in modern history, not only for us, but for the rest of the world as well, and that the way this president has dealt with history's greatest assault on America and how he will deal with the problem of protecting the country from future 9/11s is the issue of most life-and-death interest to the country. Kerry feels most comfortable with this great debate stagnating over a boat going up a muddy river three decades ago, and apparently will pull out all demagogic stops -- including insulting the President's patriotism -- to prevent the real issues from being argued. Can anyone seriously believe that President Roosevelt should not have mentioned Pearl Harbor when he ran for a fourth term?
It should also fairly be noted that some of our greatest wartime presidents like Lincoln and Roosevelt had virtually no heroic service records, or even any military service at all, and some of our worst, like Grant and Kennedy, were wartime heroes.
Kerry's record, his real pertinent record -- the flip-flops on issues, eviscerating military budgets -- should be the stuff of legitimate public discourse, and Kerry should be allowed to explain and discuss. He should save the river tales to tell to his grandchildren, while counting their trust funds.
We try to approach Kerry with an open mind, putting political affiliation and party aside. So far he comes up as, at best, a windbag who takes himself too seriously, and at worst a demagogue. We would love to be proved wrong. Stifling honest debate is not the way to do it.

Jackie Mason is a comedian. Raoul Felder is a lawyer.
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Home Office, Tower of London Division
By Mark Griffith
Published 3/19/2004 12:06:13 AM
In case you thought governments were usually embarrassed about putting people in prison for crimes they hadn't committed, check out Britain, mother of parliaments, sceptered isle, home of Magna Carta etc.
On Tuesday, the Home Office, Britain's avuncular-sounding ministry for lawcourts and prisons, asked to the Royal Courts of Justice to uphold an amazing practice of charging bed and board to innocent people held for years in UK prisons for crimes they never committed.
That's right, charge wrongfully-convicted people when they are let out for food and accommodation they enjoyed during the prison term they served. Not a few of these unjustly-imprisoned inmates only served sentences because another Home Office employee, such as a police officer, fitted them up with fake evidence.
TAKE ROBERT BROWN, a Glasgow man who at age 19 was found guilty in 1977 of murder. In 2002 he was freed, after 25 years imprisonment in which he continually protested his innocence, his conviction finally overturned by a court.
Cue a bill for the ?80,000 (over $140,000) his stay cost the British government.
Or Michael O'Brien, freed in 1999 after it emerged he had not after all murdered a man he was locked up 11 years earlier for killing. He was billed ?37,000, except that, to the fury of the Home Office, a court overturned this particular bed-and-board charge. Mr. O'Brien was finally permitted not to pay for being imprisoned for the crime he didn't commit.
Which is why the Home Office went to court this week -- to put a stop to this irritating business of innocent people getting out of paying for their time in jail.
Charges tend to be overlooked, because they appear as deductions from compensation. Wrongfully-imprisoned people get compensation in Britain (fairly mean amounts by U.S. standards), which they are then stunned to find has had a sum deducted for "food and lodging." Home Office officials claim, seemingly with straight faces, that as the food and board would have been consumed by the prisoner anyway during those decades, it is quite reasonable to bill people locked up by miscarriages of justice.
So O'Brien got compensation of ?650,000, just over a million dollars. Not generous, but something with which to rebuild a broken life. Finding that ?37,000 ($67,000) was deducted from that compensation is perhaps more insult than injury -- but what an insult. Not surprisingly, O'Brien argued the amount symbolically reasserted his guilt, even after he had been cleared completely of the crime.... as if the police, courts, and prison system could only admit they had made a mistake in the most grudging, sour-faced way imaginable.
HOME SECRETARY DAVID BLUNKETT, Britain's most powerful blind man, is being criticized for pressing his department's right to claw back chunks of settlements wrongly-imprisoned people get once someone listens to them. Settlements the Home Office clearly resents, with startlingly public pettiness.
But though Blunkett, whose guide dog has become a familiar figure in TV talk shows and the House of Commons, does seem to be channeling his Inner Kommandant ever more keenly, this prison-cost clawback is not just him. It is deeply rooted in the department's eerie, authoritarian culture. Several British politicians since the mid 1970s rapidly became darker, flintier figures after spending too long among Home Office employees.
Michael Howard, current leader of the Conservative Party -- possibly the next British Prime Minister -- was said to have "something of the night" about him when he was Home Secretary. Newspapers referred to Merlyn Rees, Labour Secretary of State in the 1970s, as "the sinister Merlyn Rees." Ann Widdecombe, Minister of State at the Home Office in the late 1990s, was frequently called "scary" and "weird." Recent Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw started to sound sneering and bitter in the post. The Home Office is often called "the graveyard of political reputations" by Westminster-watchers.
The sightless Blunkett advocates scanning every eyeball in Britain to create the ID card system the Home Office yearns for, complains juries mean the government gets fewer convictions (that can't be good, can it?), and this week demanded powers to charge bars and restaurants for drunken violence in streets nearby. He's clearly not shy about bossing people around. But is he just another politician to have fallen among hard-faced advisers at the Home Office?
Westminster wits privately claim that Home Office civil servants are bitter about their own life sentence -- having to work in the ugliest ministry buildings in British government. The address "Queen Anne Gate" suggests an early-18th-century Augustan terrace along the civilized lines of Williamsburg. But since the '60s it has been a darkly forbidding concrete building in a style literally known among architects as "New Brutalist." The Home Office is moving to another site in 2005.
Will we see fewer spiteful gestures towards men like Vincent Hickey and his cousin Michael (both wrongfully imprisoned for 18 years, both billed 60,000 pounds for bed and board) once Britain's law-and-order officials work a year or two in pleasanter premises?
Mark Griffith is a freelance British journalist based in Eastern Europe. He may be reached at markgriffith@yahoo.com.
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Ex-mobster who ratted on boss sentenced
By Denise Lavoie, Associated Press Writer, 3/22/2004
BOSTON -- A former lieutenant to fugitive gangster James "Whitey" Bulger who helped authorities unravel his gang's cozy relationship with the FBI was sentenced Monday to six years in federal prison, including time served.
Kevin Weeks, a one-time gravedigger and lookout for Bulger's Winter Hill Gang, has already served nearly five years, meaning he could be released by the end of this year with good behavior.
Before he was sentenced, Weeks stood to address the court, saying he decided to cooperate with investigators to give closure to the families of the gang's victims.
"I apologize to those families, and I hope my actions over the last five years show that my apology is sincere," he said.
With his assistance, investigators were able to uncover the relationship between Boston FBI agents and their underworld informants.
Weeks, 48, helped recover the bodies of six people murdered by Bulger and fellow mobster Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi and helped solve murders in Florida and Oklahoma. He also helped convict former FBI Agent John J. Connolly Jr. of charges he protected gangsters.
"The defendant has fully cooperated in some of the most significant prosecutions in this district's history," U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan wrote in a letter to the court.
Bulger, who disappeared in 1995, is on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list and is sought in connection with 21 murders.
Weeks was charged with racketeering, extortion and money-laundering, but struck a plea deal in 1999. Federal prosecutors had recommended that he serve nine years in prison.
Flemmi was sentenced to life in prison for the 1982 killing of a World Jai Alai executive, John Callahan, in Miami. Flemmi reached a plea deal after implicating his former FBI handler, H. Paul Rico, in the 1981 murder of another World Jai Alai figure, owner Roger Wheeler, in Oklahoma. Rico died before he could be tried.
? Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Mutual fund firms adding disclaimers
Market timing said to spur bid for legal cover
By Andrew Caffrey and Beth Healy, Globe Staff, 3/22/2004
Mutual fund companies stung by charges of fraud in the market-timing scandals that have engulfed the $7.5 trillion industry for the past six months are amending their legal documents to fend off future litigation.
Even as it was settling fraud charges for $250 million last Monday, FleetBoston Financial Corp.'s Columbia funds unit filed with regulators clarifications to the company's policies on market timing. In addition to warning investors against market timing, Fleet included this disclaimer: "There is no guarantee that the Fund or its agents will be able to detect frequent trading activity or the shareholders engaged in such activity, or, if it is detected, to prevent its recurrence."
Fleet-Columbia spokesman Charles Salmans said the new language is intended to warn fund shareholders that no amount of diligence may be able to stop market timers intent on using evasive techniques.
"This is an effort to make sure our shareholders understand the reality of the situation, and it does not reflect an effort to ease up on our dedication to detect and deter market timing," Salmans said.
But industry critics said the new warnings seem to be an effort by companies to shield against future legal problems should investigators find more instances of market timing in their funds.
"There is no excuse for this," said Secretary of State William F. Galvin, chief of the Massachusetts Securities Division. "It shows me they've learned nothing at all from their recent experience, and they're unrepentant."
Mutual fund companies "have a fiduciary duty to stop it once they know it's going on," said Mercer Bullard, a former US Securities and Exchange Commission attorney who founded the watchdog group, Fund Democracy. "That disclosure cannot insulate them from liability."
MFS Investment Management, which settled a $350 million fraud case with regulators last month, also added disclaimers to its fund prospectuses in recent days, as did State Street Research & Management Co., whose brokerage operations paid a $1 million fine in February for failing to stop outside brokers from making excessive trades in the company's mutual funds.
In many of the recent prosecutions, regulators seized on what mutual funds said about market timing in their prospectuses as the basis for bringing fraud charges. Now, mutual fund attorney Roger Joseph says, funds are trying to protect themselves.
"Companies don't want to promise that they can absolutely control the issue," said Joseph, a partner at the Boston law firm Bingham McCutchen. "One of the ways in which you can be sued by either the regulators or by investors is by having prospectus disclosure that is misleading."
"The fact of the matter is there have been people who have circumvented the system, and it's just alerting the shareholders that it happened," said State Street Research spokeswoman Robyn Tice. Keeping out timers, she said, is "a challenging process."
The disclaimers usually accompany other details mutual fund companies are telling investors about the new steps they're taking to deter market timing and other improper trading. For example, MFS is telling investors about new fees they would have to pay if they tried to make rapid trades in and out of its funds.
The new language appears to be at least partly a reaction to a proposed SEC rule calling for greater disclosure in mutual fund prospectuses of the risks of market timing and fund groups' policies for combating market timing.
There is, however, an important difference between the market-timing behavior that has gotten so many mutual fund companies in trouble, and the kind of excessive trading the companies are referring to in the new disclaimers. In the fraud cases so far, the SEC and state regulators have brought charges when companies knowingly allowed market timing and even conspired with select traders when their official policies prohibited such abusive trading. The new disclosures purportedly address market timers the companies don't want -- and try to kick out -- but who somehow find a way back into the funds undetected.
In particular, the new disclaimers discuss the difficulty of policing such trades that are buried inside so-called omnibus accounts. These are giant collections of individual investors, or "beneficial owners" in industry parlance, such as a corporate 401(k) plan, where mutual fund's contract is with the plan, rather than the individual members of the plan. The trades of all these members are bundled together at the end of the day and shipped en masse to the mutual fund company by a financial intermediary, such as a brokerage firm or retirement plan administrator.
Many fund groups argue that it's difficult for them to monitor these group accounts, and hard to stop abuses even once they are identified. In one widely publicized case last year, Putnam Investments did identify rampant market timing by 10 members of a union group, Boilermakers Local 5 in New York, who managed to make more than $4 million in a rapid-trading scheme over three years. Galvin's office sued Putnam for securities fraud in the matter, alleging that the Boston firm failed to police those trades. Putnam said its contract with the union local did not give it direct control over individual accounts.
Fleet's Columbia unit said in its filing this week that, "The fund typically is not able to identify trading by a particular beneficial owner, which may make it difficult or impossible to determine if a particular account is engaged in frequent trading." Fleet and other companies also have cited "operational and technological limitations" that prevent them and financial intermediaries from cracking down on market timers in omnibus accounts.
But that argument is flimsy, according to high-tech executives who sell systems to investment firms. While much of the investment industry didn't have this capability in 2002, many brokers, fund groups, and retirement plan administrators in the past year have spent heavily on new technology that can more precisely trace trading.
"There is an enormous amount of money being put into technology to remedy these problems," said David Tilkin, chief executive of Protegent Inc., a Hingham firm that sells software to brokerage houses.
Fidelity chief executive Edward C. Johnson III, in his letter to customers in annual reports of Fidelity funds sent out in recent days, said the company has taken pains to shut out market timers. But even he leaves room for improvement: "It is reasonable to assume that another structure can be developed that would alter the system to make it much more difficult for predatory traders to operate." And he indicates the responsibility doesn't rest solely with the fund group: "This, however, will only be achieved though close cooperation among regulators, legislators, and the industry."
In a comment letter last month to the SEC, Fidelity said it would prefer to make market-timing disclosures in an even more arcane document than the prospectus -- the "statement of additional information" fund companies must file with regulators. In addition, Fidelity expressed concern about having to reveal its methods for keeping out timers, saying such a disclosure would only help timers circumvent the rules.
Mercer Bullard, the fund activist, said fund companies could force financial intermediaries to crack down on improper traders in their large accounts, but are afraid to. He said companies fear these middlemen will simply take the investment business to a more compliant mutual fund.
"This isn't a matter of being unable to identify who that trader is," Bullard said. "It's a matter of being unwilling to bear the risk" of losing that business.
Andrew Caffrey can be reached at caffrey@globe.com; Beth Healy at bhealy@globe.com.

? Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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E.U. Arrests Reporter Who Exposed Corruption

Apparently the apparatchiks who rule the European Union don't always agree with freedom of the press.
According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who covers the E.U. for the Telegraph, fellow journalist Hans-Martin Tillack, the Brussels correspondent for Germany's Stern magazine, was arrested and held for 10 hours without counsel by police in Belgium after his office and home were raided by six officers.
Pritchard said police seized Tillack's computers, address books and archive of files "in a move that stunned Euro-MPs."
Tillack, who describes himself as a "pro-European federalist," said the raid on his equipment was triggered by a complaint from the E.U.'s anti-fraud office, OLAF.
Tillack "was accused of paying money to obtain a leaked OLAF dossier two years ago, which he denies," Pritchard wrote.
The European Ombudsman has already criticized Tillack's arrest.
Tillack has been OLAF's most vocal critic, accusing the agency of covering up abuses by the European Union system.
OLAF was created to replace the old fraud office, UCLAF, which was accused of covering up abuses by the disgraced Santer Commission. The UCLAF staff largely transferred to OLAF.
"As the author of a recent book on E.U. corruption, [Tillack] has the greatest archive of investigative files of any journalist working in Brussels," Pritchard wrote.
The European Superstate is here and not so nice.