by hilzoy
I’m a little late on this one, but here’s ABC’s The Blotter (via TPM):
“Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias submitted his resignation Friday, one day after confirming to ABC News that he had been a customer of a Washington, D.C. escort service whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation.
Tobias, 65, director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), had previously served as the ambassador for the President’s Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief.
A State Department press release late Friday afternoon said only he was leaving for “personal reasons.”
On Thursday, Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the “Pamela Martin and Associates” escort service “to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage.” Tobias, who is married, said there had been “no sex,” and that recently he had been using another service “with Central Americans” to provide massages.”
Ah, yes. Whenever I want to not have sex, I hire an escort service. It gets pretty expensive, what with all the time I spend not having sex, and the people at the dry cleaners look at me strangely when I show up to pick up my clothes, not having sex while accompanied by a bevy of hunky “Central Americans” (whose green cards I naturally check first), but hey: it’s my life, and if I want to not have sex while paying not to have it, that’s my business.
Via AmericaBlog, the Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report from April 22, 2004:
“U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Randall Tobias on Thursday in Berlin defended the use of prevention programs that emphasize sexual abstinence in African and Caribbean countries that are set to receive assistance through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Agence France-Presse reports (Agence France-Presse, 4/22). (…) Tobias, who was in Berlin for the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS’ 2004 Awards for Business Excellence, said that promoting abstinence and monogamy are “far more effective” than distributing condoms for preventing the spread of HIV, according to Agence France-Presse. “Statistics show that condoms really have not been very effective,” Tobias said, adding, “It’s been the principal prevention device for the last 20 years, and I think one needs only to look at what’s happening with the infection rates in the world to recognize that has not been working.” PEPFAR has been criticized by AIDS advocates for placing “false hopes” on abstinence and monogamy prevention programs, according to Agence France-Presse.”
“Ambassador Randall Tobias, who serves as Bush’s global AIDS czar, issued written guidelines in January that spell out the administration’s agenda. Groups that receive U.S. funding, Tobias warned, should not target youth with messages that present abstinence and condoms as “equally viable, alternative choices.” Zeitz of Global AIDS Alliance has dubbed the document “Vomitus Maximus.” He says, “I get physically ill when I read it. It has the biggest influence over how people are acting in the field.” And under a proposal being pushed by Republicans on Capitol Hill, Tobias would be given the power to divert even more money toward promoting abstinence. “All Republicans can think about is making Africans abstinent and monogamous,” says a Democratic staffer involved in the negotiations. “It’s the crassest form of international social engineering you could imagine.”
The anti-condom order issued by Tobias is already having a chilling effect among the groups most effective at combating AIDS. Population Services International, a major U.S. contractor with years of experience in HIV prevention, says it can no longer promote condoms to youth in Uganda, Zambia and Namibia because of PEPFAR rules. “That’s worrisome,” says PSI spokesman David Olson. “The evidence shows they’re having sex. You can disapprove of that, but you can’t deny it’s happening.””
That, no doubt, is why Tobias was so busy abstaining from sex with his escorts: he was putting his own body on the line in his efforts to prevent the spread of HIV.
A pity he forgot about one other part of the policies he was in charge of implementing:
“In passing the Bush global AIDS initiative, Congress included a provision requiring that all organizations receiving federal AIDS funds to have a policy “explicitly opposing” prostitution and sex trafficking in order to be eligible for U.S. funds (The Guttmacher Institute, 2003). The policy was originally applied to foreign organizations and was later broadened to a requirement of U.S. organizations receiving federal AIDS funds (Kohn, 2005). As with other ideology-based policies examined here, the implementation of the anti-prostitution pledge has resulted in a distorted environment that sacrifices lifesaving services and places ideology over people’s lives.
As a result of the policy, groups such as Population Services International (PSI), which runs HIV prevention programs targeting sex workers in bars and brothels in Central America, appear to be losing federal support (Kohn, 2005). Last year PSI’s program made contact with 422,000 people in high-risk groups and has demonstrated a significant decrease in HIV infections among sex workers. An official with the UNAIDS office cites the program as one of the best in the region. Other organizations, such as DKT International, refused to sign the clause on free speech grounds and as a result lost funding (Kohn, 2005; Phillips, 2005). DKT International has subsequently filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government. And the country of Brazil has refused $40 million in U.S. HIV/AIDS grants because they are conditioned on the pledge requirement (Phillips, 2005).
The pledge also is having a chilling effect, as groups wary of losing precious funds cut activities that are aimed at assisting sex workers. The ambiguity of the policy, which, for example, does not clearly define what it means by “prostitution,” exacerbates the problem. As a result, for fear of losing funding, nongovernmental organizations in Cambodia discontinued plans to provide English language classes to sex workers — classes which would potentially open opportunities for alternative income generation (CHANGE, 2005b). By forcing service providers to take a position condemning the very people they are seeking to help, the anti-prostitution pledge is yet another example of the Bush administration’s fervent commitment to serving the demands of its social conservative base. And it does so at the cost of the lives of those it purports to help through its HIV/AIDS funding and programs.”
Opposition to prostitution: it’s fine to impose it on others, but don’t ask the members of the Bush administration who defend and implement this policy to practice it themselves.
***
While I’m at it …
I should note the rolling scandals surrounding Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ), which are connected to the US Attorneys scandal (one of the USAs who was asked to resign was investigating him.) The WSJ has had the best coverage of this, but unfortunately it’s behind the subscription wall. The main scandal involves a land swap:
“In exchange for supporting the bill, the local congressman, Rick Renzi, a Republican, insisted on something in return: He wanted Resolution to buy, as part of the land swap, a 480-acre alfalfa field near his hometown of Sierra Vista, according to documents and people involved in the deal.
Resolution executives refused. For starters, they thought the land was overpriced, people close to the deal say. More troubling, they discovered it was owned by Mr. Renzi’s former business partner, these people say.
Resolution wasn’t the only party troubled by the congressman’s demands. His chief of staff resigned and began cooperating secretly with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to witnesses and others close to the case. The FBI began a preliminary inquiry that was first reported in October, just before Mr. Renzi was elected to a third term.”
Someone else did buy the lands, and guess what happened:
“One focus of the FBI’s current investigation is whether Mr. Renzi profited from the sale of Mr. Sandlin’s land to the Petrified Forest group, people close to the case say. Federal investigators have been asking questions about a May 2005 payment of $200,000 from Mr. Sandlin to Mr. Renzi, which was sent the same day that Mr. Sandlin received the first payment from the Petrified Forest group, these people say. The payment went to a wine company owned by Mr. Renzi, which was sold to his father days later, public records show.”
And by a strange coincidence, Renzi didn’t disclose that $200,000 payment:
“Renzi’s claim that Sandlin’s $200,000 payment was a legitimate business transaction is weakened by the fact that he failed to disclose it in his personal financial disclosure report for 2005 filed with the House clerk.”
Oddly enough, the agents investigating Renzi encountered a series of mysterious delays:
“As midterm elections approached last November, federal investigators in Arizona faced unexpected obstacles in getting needed Justice Department approvals to advance a corruption investigation of Republican Rep. Rick Renzi, people close to the case said.
The delays, which postponed key approvals in the case until after the election, raise new questions about whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or other officials may have weighed political issues in some investigations. The Arizona U.S. attorney then overseeing the case, Paul Charlton, was told he was being fired in December, one of eight federal prosecutors dismissed in the past year. The dismissals have triggered a wave of criticism and calls from Congress for Mr. Gonzales to resign.
Investigators pursuing the Renzi case had been seeking clearance from senior Justice Department officials on search warrants, subpoenas and other legal tools for a year before the election, people close to the case said.”
***
Meanwhile, the Abramoff investigators seem to have developed an interest in JD Hayworth (ex-R-AZ), and Karl Rove’s flying monkeys seem to have been delivering briefings on how federal employees, paid with our tax dollars, could help Republicans in the midterms. Briefings with slides like this:
And global public health jobs at the CDC are going unfilled, in large part because applicants have to be vetted by political appointees:
“Facing a tangled bureaucracy and a lack of qualified staff, nearly half of the overseas jobs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are vacant despite an urgent need to guard against foreign health threats. Many of the jobs will remain unfilled for another year, according to an internal CDC memo obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“This is a critical time for global health,” wrote Dr. Stephen Blount, director of the CDC’s Coordinating Office for Global Health, in an April 13 memo to CDC Director Julie Gerberding. The potential of an influenza pandemic, the current HIV/AIDS pandemic and the threat of a bioterrorist attack from abroad “fuels the urgency to make overseas assignments in a timely manner,” he wrote.
Only 166 of the CDC’s 304 overseas positions in 53 countries are filled, according to the memo. At least 85 positions likely will remain unfilled until 2008, Blount said. Among the causes he cited: Delays at a federal human resource center in Atlanta and an additional bureaucratic layer that requires CDC foreign postings be approved by a senior political appointee’s office in Washington.”
***
Finally, just for bril: I continue to hope that Rep. Jefferson, he of the frozen money, resigns. Also, I still oppose terrorism, murder, and the sexual molestation of children, and I oppose any attempt to overthrow the government of the United States by force or fraud.
Yeah, but Democrat debate hyprocrites flew off in all directions on separate gas-guzzling planes and not a one was wearing a condom, though Hillary could easily have found that and other fun commodities among her Christmas decorations.
Except for the Wicked Witch of the West melting because of a thrown bucket of water and the Soviet Union dissolving under the assault of B movie scripts and maybe a death star imploding on Star Trek, I can’t think of anything coming apart so completely and suddenly and simultaneously and exquisitely and in so many shiny, splintery shards as the now defunct Republican Party.
It really must be discombobulating for the rank and file, who have managed to maintain their conservative principles as pristinely and magisterially as the Virgin Mary’s hymen wrapped in the armored chastity belt of William Bennett’s rhetoric, to witness the fact that every thief, skunk, priapic bounder, option-back-dater, pickpocket, boy-sniffer, mons-mounting-mountebank, lascivious liar, snake-oil purveyor, bluebearded mercenary, false sweaty wanking prophet, corner bar fascist demagogue, and forked-tongue two-faced hand-under-the-bishop’s-robe pulpit-humping Enronic Gollum in the country got a job in this Administration or was elected as a republican office-holder or has a talk-radio gig … and they weren’t and don’t.
All three of them.
It is disturbing to be simultaneously inarticulate with rage and contemplating forming a rock band named The Enronic Gollum. I think I better walk it off.
Where’s a good Republican to hit in the face with a copy of _The Party of Death_ when you really need one?
Tobias, who is married, said there had been “no sex,”…
Does anyone else suspect a Clinton-esqe parsing of what sex is?
Gee I guess democrats did it too, although without apparently paying for it in the same sense.
…and you didn’t even mention this month’s other shining example of the consistency-is-for-other-people school of thought. Ladies and gentlemen: Paul Wolfowitz. You couldn’t make it up…
“The WSJ has had the best coverage of this, but unfortunately it’s behind the subscription wall.”
I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned it here before, but I long ago found that my local library system gives online (home) access to the subscription material of the WSJ, NY Times, and most subscriber newspapers and magazines, to everyone with a library card; you just have bother to make use of it, since it involves a few more clickthroughs than going directly to an article; I suspect most people’s local library systems in the U.S. (and perhaps elsewhere) grant similar privileges.
And now I must call my local escort service, as I could use a massage. Alas, the library has yet to provide this service, though I fail to understand why.
Uhh … “abstinence” applies only to women. I’d have thought that was obvious.
On the CDC jobs shortage, we need to look for paralells. Can anybody think of a country whose leadership was consumed with a nonfunctional ideology, put loyalty to the Party above everything else (especially competence), put Party loyalists in charge of all important functions, subordinated science to ideology, allowed no dissent, made a fetish of secrecy, purged the military of officers who don’t toe the ideological line … ?
I’ve heard that the PNAC folks who are the intellectual core of the Administration are ex-Marxists. I’d question the “ex” ….
The Obstruction of Justice Department head Alberto Gonzales said today …
Condoms are ineffective in promoting abstinence a Bush administration official said.
Journalism should be fun these days.
…abstinence and monogamy prevention programs…
??? 😉
I’m still trying to get my head around the idea that, in 2007, prostitution is still illegal in this country.
One thing Bill Clinton never had to worry about was prostitutes.
ThinkProgress quotes a reporter who interviewed Randall Tobias:
Oddly, when I order pizza, it’s never like ordering “gals” from an escort service.
Really? I always make sure mine come with extra cheese…
“Oddly, when I order pizza, it’s never like ordering ‘gals’ from an escort service.”
I read the ThinkProgress piece via Memeorandum earlier, and my reaction was that I have enough memory of who has delivered my pizzas to give an at least a vague basic description (“a guy about 20, about 5’9, blond with a bit of red, curley-haired” — that sort of thing) and I could probably, though not surely, pick them out of a line-up, for at least 4-6 months after the fact.
I have a mediocre memory, but it isn’t that bad, and I don’t pay that little attention to the human beings I interact with.
Though, to be sure, I undoubtedly interact with far fewer people in person than many folks do.
Nonetheless, the “who could possibly recall what their food delivery people look like?” meme doesn’t fly with me, other than in saying more about the speaker than about what many people can or would recall.
Anarch, I prefer extra cheese on the pizza, but extra sauce on the escorts.
Also, garlic on the first, not so much on the second. Ditto the hot pepper.
Though when ordering, I do like to get two smalls, for variety’s sake, rather than one large.
Criminy, arriving fresh from the “scary monsters” thread, now I’m paralyzed with indecision about which off-color pizza “topping” remark to choose: Do I start with “sausage”?…Or do I throw caution aside and start talking about guys who do or don’t like anchovies?
johnt:
“One thing Bill Clinton never had to worry about was prostitutes.”
True.
It was naive of him not to worry about Lucianne Goldberg.
“I do like to get two smalls, for variety’s sake, rather than one large.”
…hold the innuendo.
“…hold the innuendo.”
Isn’t that a classic Italian spice?
Perhaps it’s just cheese.
I am inexpert in some of these matters. I simply try to cook what will please myself and my invitees, whether guests or partners.
Bottom line is that I tend to believe in sharing.
John Thullen, a tad slimy but no surprise, one excretes what one is.
I take it you are angry at Goldberg for helping to expose a hero of yours, when he was not busy exposing himself.
Or maybe having driven yourself to poetic extremes in your first effort you didn’t wish to reminded of the dead cats in your alley.
Then again if what you say about Goldberg is true you might be referring to personal experience. If so did Lucianne charge you extra and request you wear a paper bag over your head ?
John, if Clinton wasn’t so obsessed with sex he would not have had to worry about anybody. did that need saying?
As always John, a pleasure.
I would rather be living homeless in Thullen’s alley with DaveC and OCSteve as cardboard box mates and Charles Bird and Sebastian Holsclaw as beat cops than have the nicest mansion on the hill (with state of the art security system) in johnt’s neighborhood. Just saying.
On the (il)legality of prostitution in the USA, just heard this from an American friend temporarily residing in New Zealand:
A court case concerning the Good Friday and Easter Sunday blue laws was brought against a (legal) brothel in Wellington, discovered to be open for business on Easter Day. The court ruled that since the establishment was not selling goods (forbidden), but services (permitted), it was not in violation of the laws, and the case was thrown out. So, the next time you are in Wellington on Easter, remember: sexual services, yes; bread, milk, and chocolate bunnies, no.
———
And, reverting to another theme in this thread: No, Gary, innuendo is not an Italian spice. It’s an Italian suppository.
A matter of protocol: Do the posting rules prohibit me from suggesting that “johnt” was being self-referential when he used the term “slimy”?
Just asking.
No, Gary, innuendo is not an Italian spice.
PIZZA JOKE
“This woman called up the pizza place where I work and asked for a Pizza Innuendo. So I went over to her house and gave her one.”
hilzoy,
“Oddly, when I order pizza, it’s never like ordering “gals” from an escort service.”
Somehow, I suspect that you haven’t ordered one of them enough for a fair comparison.
johnt:
You were starting to get the hang of the role of straight man, but your last comment gives me nothing to riff on…..
….. like Gilligan’s Island last week.
See, we could have exchanged an amusing series of Clinton one liners punctuated with one of my breathless, unpunctuated, run-on rants, which you must admit are entertaining in a kind of Barney Fife meets Foghorn Leghorn sort of way, YMMV…
…. but then you killed the joke with the “excretion” line …. that’s like George Costanza’s awkward use of the word “manure” (see, first you have “ma”, followed by the “nure”) to impress the ladies when conversation flags.
… wait a week or so because the D.C. Madam scandal is about to blow, not to put to fine a point on it, and most of my heros (if Mickey Mantle, Laurence Olivier, and Gustave Flaubert have managed to get some while dead I’m going to be very impressed) and most of your heros (Bud Abbott, Dean Martin, Moe Howard and Margaret Dumont) are going to be in the news.
God, I even hear that many women in high-powered positions (not the missionaries, too!) are going to have their names dropped-kicked as former employees of the Madame.
There will be more than enough material for the two of us.
Somehow, receiving a massage from Jeanne Kirkpatrick doesn’t do much for me.
O.K., your turn.
I’d just like to say one thing:
In a totally platonic kind of a way, I’m completely head-over-heels in love with John Thullen.
Actually, two. Capers are great on pizza. Sort of the vegetarian equivalent of anchovies, I’m told.
“In a totally platonic kind of way,”
I read Aristotle for the loopholes. 😉
I only love you for your Form.
liberal japonicus, dr ngo, John Thullen
lib jap, have no fear, you would not be allowed in my neighborhood and I’m quite sure you’re used to living in alleys and cardboard boxes.
dr ngo, my comments were only self referential if you are reading disabled, and by the way, hold the egg rolls.
John, if you had an imagination you wouldn’t need me for inspiration, which sadly you would lack in any case. Pleased to see you admit you rant, a small step to recovery. And don’t wait for Ms Kirkpatrick’s massage, do what you always do behind the locked bathroom door, just watch out for warts.
And who are you kidding with the Aristotle bit?
Really now, here you guys are getting off on some unknown Czar of Prophylactics, inspired by Hilzoys tome, any longer and it would knock War and Peace out of the box, and you’ve got Clinton in your corner.
A little shame please !
Jes:
Would you like to step into my cave and view my shadows?
johnt:
You must have a “hemlock” joke about now.
P.S. Upon preview, I see you’re sticking with the weaker poisons.
This thread needs a laugh track all of a sudden.
I was kidding St. Thomas Aquinas, Zeppo.
Something about bringing a knife to a gunfight seems apropos here…
Did he sound anything like THAT?
Howls of derisive laughter, Bruce.
It helps to read johnt’s comments in an Eric Cartman voice, just for full effect.
Something about bringing a knife to a gunfight seems apropos here…
A butter knife, no less.
To one and all, patiently I waited for some recognition, anything, that the consistency your mentor and intellectual guide dog,Hilzoy, stressed. As you review the various types of slop posted above this you see for your selves, if selves you have, that no brave and honest soul was available for a minimal expression of this morally required consistency. It’s possible that you are waiting for a signal or approval from the Goddess of Reason, again and who else but Hilzoy. I daresay that you at least have the sense not to hold your breath.
From this I assume that your morals are disposable, in effect non-existent. Or worse yet, such glimmers and passing visits of morals that you may on rare occasion suffer are triggered solely by your politics, that is, you have invested your judgment if not the entire ethical package in, God help us, Liberalism.
Which daydream includes Bill Clinton, OK, and some loser and lout who engaged prostitutes, not OK and even bad.
To wrap it up, this myopic and mindlessly prejudicial morality would do dishonor to a barbarian or savage, but at Obsidian Wings it’s found a home.
However I am not discouraged. I will stop by now and then and observe and wait for that day when Hilzoy or the NY Times instructs you that life and morals exist & are bigger than the Democratic Party, that error and wrong can occur within that august body, however rarely, and that you ought not pickle your brains or choose your outrage based only on what you want, or crave, to be told.
John Thullen, have you purchased that .357 yet or are you busy finishing your commentaries on Aristotle?
One of these days John you must rest from your intellectual and monk like labors long enough to inform me as to your preferences, Plato’s Republic or Aristotle’s Politics, the differences and reasons for your Solomonic judgment, the insight that only you can offer.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ‘How to extend B-B-But Clinton to seven paragraphs’ by johnt.
johnt: that is, you have invested your judgment if not the entire ethical package in, God help us, Liberalism.
Being a far cry from a liberal myself, I have to say that I really don’t understand your goal here. Your first comment on this thread was to introduce Clinton to the topic. Fair enough, I have a tendency to do that myself. But even I can see where that is a stretch here. To the best of my memory, Clinton was never in the business of preaching abstinence and monogamy (!) and requiring all organizations receiving federal AIDS funds to explicitly oppose prostitution while at the same time procuring the services of prostitutes. In fact, I’ll bet Clinton would be deeply offended at any insinuation he “had to pay for it”. As you said, “One thing Bill Clinton never had to worry about was prostitutes”. Surely you can see the hypocrisy in this case (Tobias) though.
Your second comment was what appeared to be an unwarranted ad homonym attack on John Thullen. The rest of your comments here are nothing but attacks on individuals.
I find it somewhat humorous that you would have the gall to critique John’s writing style. I submit that if you can not enjoy sharp and witty commentary in its own right just because it comes from an ideological opposite then you are the one wearing political blinders. Thullen and I probably have less in common politically than Obama and W – but I greatly enjoy his comments, even if I happen to be on the receiving end of his rapier wit.
I’m sure you don’t want advice from me, but here goes anyway: Liberals are not always wrong just because they are Liberals, and Conservatives are not always right just because they are Conservatives. If you can’t get past your own political preconceptions to consider commentary on its own merits then it is actually your loss. And I can’t understand why you would continue to pursue this over a period of years.
Gives OCSteve a standing ovation. Clap, Clap, hurrah.
john miller: Megadittos (ducks)
No need to duck. My throwing arm isn’t that good.
OCSteve:
You join DaveC. in being my friend whether you like it or not! 😉
However, let’s give johnt credit for coming up with “Czar of Prophylactics”. He may come around yet.
Your comments above seem to come from a lack of experience in the field.
For instance, PSI which you end up defending above is an example of how badly we are spending aid. PSI was a sex toy manufacturer who cashed in our need to giveaway money quicker than better and who have turned their factories into making their condoms in the name of fighting aids. The organization puts out billboards, attracts actresses and rap artists to make glossy appearances and then keeps the condoms rolling without ever taking the time to develop the relationships necessary to accomplish behaviour change, i.e. inspiring the young people to wear them.
Their branch called Youth Aids actually exists soley to fundraise, having absolutely no function towards reaching youth.
These guys receive funding for their work throughout not only Africa but in Latin America and beyond.
Please talk about that rather than continuing factionalizing subjects that are important.