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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (264850)	12/16/2005 9:37:57 AM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573351

Another liberal scum bag. Schroeder assailed for taking gas job By David Crossland December 16, 2005 BERLIN -- Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder faces mounting accusations of "disgusting" sleaze after accepting a top job on a Russian-German gas pipeline project that he helped set up in his final weeks in office. The Bundestag lower house of parliament yesterday held a special session to debate the issue, which threatens to tarnish Mr. Schroeder's reputation weeks after he handed over the chancellorship to Angela Merkel. The affair "compromises Germany as a state," European Union Commission Vice President Siim Kallas said. State-owned Russian gas firm Gazprom announced last Friday that Mr. Schroeder will become supervisory board chairman of the North European Gas Pipeline Co., a joint venture between Gazprom and German firms E.ON and BASF to build a pipeline through the Baltic Sea and pump Siberian gas to Germany. Analysts and politicians from all parties, including Mr. Schroeder's Social Democrats, balked at the notion of a German leader taking Russian paychecks and said the move smacked of favoritism, given Mr. Schroeder's close friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Putin were instrumental in arranging the joint venture, announced two weeks before Germany's September election. The affair also revived criticism that Mr. Schroeder's ties with Mr. Putin led him to overlook abuses of democracy and human rights in Russia. The $6 billion project has caused a diplomatic row with Poland and the Baltic states, which are being bypassed by the pipeline and stand to lose gas transit revenues as a result. Mr. Schroeder did not attend the debate yesterday in the Bundestag, where Greens Member of Parliament Matthias Berninger called the job "politically disgusting." "Herr Schroeder, reject this dubious job; you don't need it," he said. Mr. Schroeder has dismissed press reports that he could be paid between $239,000 and $1.2 million a year for the position. He said pay had not been discussed and that he regarded it as a matter of honor to accept the position. "It creates the appearance of a link between his own personal interests and politics," the conservative minister-president of Bavaria, Edmund Stoiber, said in a newspaper interview published yesterday.

To: combjelly who wrote (264850)	12/16/2005 12:27:19 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1573351

Inside Politics By Greg Pierce December 16, 2005 Angry prosecutor Ronnie Earle, the Travis County, Texas, district attorney, is apparently furious about a television advertisement that accuses him of being politically motivated in winning an indictment of Rep. Tom DeLay, Texas Republican. Mr. Earle's office has responded by notifying the ad's sponsor, the Free Enterprise Fund (FEF), that he plans to subpoena the District-based organization. The TV ad, which saturated airwaves in Austin, Texas, said: "A partisan prosecutor with a political agenda can be a dangerous thing," and compared Mr. Earle to a snarling, vicious dog. A draft of the subpoena provided to the FEF says the group's executive director must travel to Texas and "provide the Travis County District Attorney's office with any and all documentation regarding the advertisements that have been produced or paid for by the Free Enterprise Fund, including any and all information regarding media buys by the Free Enterprise Fund for those advertisements that have run in Austin, Texas." The Texas subpoena must be cleared by a D.C. court before it can be presented to the FEF. What Mr. Earle wants, a source with special knowledge of the request tells this column, is a copy of the organization's donor list, so he can find out who paid for the ads.