Washed It!

The Border Patrol wants its leaders to talk to one another, and the agency is willing to pay some former government employees nearly half a million dollars to help make that happen.

In an example of how common it has become for government agencies to outsource seemingly routine tasks to former officials, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has awarded a “strategic consulting” contract worth up to $481,000 over five years to a small firm staffed by former agency insiders.

One of the three major tasks outlined in the deal is to “facilitate discussions among senior Border Patrol leaders” at conferences near the agency headquarters in Washington, according to the contract documents. The fees work out to about $240 an hour — not including travel expenses or the cost of the conferences.

Among those who will benefit from the contract are the agency’s former commissioner and the husband of a current agency spokeswoman. It’s legal as long as the officials observe a one-year ban on landing work from their former agency.

“It really is just contracting as usual,” said Allison Stanger, a Middlebury College professor who detailed the explosive growth of government contracting in her 2009 book “One Nation Under Contract.” “When contractors are doing so much of the work of government, these sorts of private companies are seen as extensions of government. When former agency employees are involved, the lines are blurred even further.”

In a statement, Homeland Security Department spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said the contract was intended to “solicit independent, expert input for CBP’s ongoing efforts to design a 21st century border security strategic framework,” and that the agency “will not utilize this or any other contracts to organize conferences for CBP officials.”

The contract documents say the consultants will facilitate discussions at the conferences, not organize them.

In July, the agency requested proposals for strategic consulting. The request sought three senior consultants for a total of 389 hours a year, with four years of renewable options.

The consultants’ role is to help Border Patrol leaders “discuss strategy, policy, outreach, development and the delivery of a unified corporate direction and message,” the documents said.

After a competition, the contract was awarded to Sentinel HS Group, a 12-person company that includes Robert C. Bonner, commissioner of U.S. Customs and then U.S. Customs and Border Protection from September 2001 to November 2005.

The firm, which reported annual revenue of $3.2 million in contract documents signed last week, was founded by one of Bonner’s top aides and includes three other former agency officials.

Among the firm’s “senior consultants” is Michael Ivahnenko, who worked at the border agency from November 2003 to January 2008. He is the husband of Kelly Ivahnenko, a Customs and Border Protection public affairs officer based in Washington.

Kelly Ivahnenko said in an e-mail that she played no role in the contract award and did not speak to any agency decision-makers about it.

In addition to Michael Ivahnenko, Sentinel Chief Executive Brian Goebel said he would work as one of the agency’s other two senior consultants, along with Joshua Kussman, a former senior policy advisor at the agency.

Goebel, who said he was speaking for all members of the firm, said Sentinel won the contract through “fair and open competition.”

“There are circumstances in which the government needs outside assistance,” he said. “From our vantage point, there are people who bring specialized knowledge. … Sometimes it’s a question of extra arms and legs, to help people who have to do their day job.”

Goebel said he worked as an advisor to Bonner at the agency in 2001.

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

Border Patrol gives contract to firm stocked with former insiders

The ranks of the working-age poor climbed to the highest level since the 1960s as the recession threw millions of people out of work last year, leaving one in seven Americans in poverty.

The overall poverty rate climbed to 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million people, the Census Bureau said Thursday in its annual report on the economic well-being of U.S. households. The report covers 2009, President Barack Obama’s first year in office.

The poverty rate increased from 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million people, in 2008.

The share of Americans without health coverage rose from 15.4 percent to 16.7 percent — or 50.7 million people — mostly because of the loss of employer-provided health insurance during the recession. Congress passed a health overhaul this year to address the rising numbers of uninsured people, but its main provisions will not take effect until 2014.

In a statement, President Barack Obama called 2009 a tough year for working families but said it could have been worse.

“Because of the Recovery Act and many other programs providing tax relief and income support to a majority of working families — and especially those most in need — millions of Americans were kept out of poverty last year,” Obama said.

The new figures come at a politically sensitive time, just weeks before the Nov. 2 congressional elections, when voters restive about high unemployment and the slow pace of economic improvement will decide whether to keep Democrats in power in the House and Senate or turn to Republicans.

The 14.3 percent poverty rate, which covers all ages, was the highest since 1994. It was lower than predicted by many demographers who were bracing for a record gain based on last year’s skyrocketing unemployment. Many had predicted a range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent.

Broken down by state, Mississippi had the highest share of poor people, at 23.1 percent, according to rough calculations by the Census Bureau. It was followed by Arizona, New Mexico, Arkansas and Georgia. On the other end of the scale, New Hampshire had the lowest share, at 7.8 percent.

Analysts said the full blow of lost incomes was cushioned somewhat by increases in Social Security payments in 2009 as well as federal expansions of unemployment insurance, which rose substantially under the economic stimulus program. With the additional unemployment benefits, workers were eligible for extensions that gave them up to 99 weeks of payments after a layoff.

David Johnson, the chief of the Census Bureau’s household economics division, estimated that expanded unemployment benefits helped keep 3.3 million people out of poverty last year.

The 2009 poverty level was set at $21,954 for a family of four, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps.

Another 7.8 million people would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were included as income, Johnson said.

Last year saw the biggest single-year increase in Americans without health insurance, lifting the total number to the highest since the government began tracking the figures in 1987. The number of people covered by employment-based health plans declined from 176.3 million to 169.7 million, although those losses were partially offset by gains in government health insurance such as Medicaid and Medicare.

Diane Rowland, executive vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said additional increases in the uninsured are probable in the short run.

In 2014 under the new health law, Medicaid will be expanded to pick up millions more low-income people, and the government will offer tax credits for many middle-income households to use to buy coverage through new online insurance markets in each state.

By 2019, the government has estimated that nearly 93 percent of the U.S. population will have health insurance, roughly a 10 percentage point increase from today’s level.

Other census findings:

–Among the working-age population, ages 18 to 64, poverty rose from 11.7 percent to 12.9 percent. That puts it at the highest since the 1960s, when the government launched a war on poverty that expanded the federal role in social welfare programs from education to health care.

–Poverty rose among all race and ethnic groups, but stood at higher levels for blacks and Hispanics. The number of Hispanics in poverty increased from 23.2 percent to 25.3 percent; for blacks it increased from 24.7 percent to 25.8 percent. The number of whites in poverty rose from 8.6 percent to 9.4 percent.

–Child poverty rose from 19 percent to 20.7 percent.
1 in 7 Americans live in poverty, Census Bureau reports

The meandering network of pipes, wells and tankers belonging to the gigantic state oil company Pemex have long been an easy target of crooks and drug traffickers who siphon off natural gas, gasoline and even crude, robbing the Mexican treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Now the cartels have taken sabotage to a new level: They’ve hobbled key operations in parts of the Burgos Basin, home to Mexico’s biggest natural gas fields.

Forced to defer production and curtail drilling and maintenance in a region that spreads through some of Mexico’s most dangerous badlands, the world’s seventh-largest oil producer has become another casualty of the drug war.

In May, gunmen wearing camouflage and tennis shoes kidnapped five Pemex workers as they rode to the front gate of the Gigante No. 1 natural gas plant in the Burgos Basin. One man was a mechanic, another specialized in pumps. All were dressed in their crisp khaki uniforms with the Pemex logo, ready for long shifts. They have not been heard from since.

The kidnappings, plus the reported disappearance of at least 30 other employees of subcontractors in the same region, have terrorized a community where jobs on the oil rigs and at the gas wells are handed down, father to son, for generations.

“The traffickers are establishing it clearly,” said Sen. Graco Ramirez, a member of the congressional energy committee. “You collaborate, or you die.”

The capacity of the traffickers to exert influence over a company as mighty as Pemex only solidifies the widely held perception that the cartels are growing in size and strength despite the government’s crackdown.

“How is it,” asked a relative of a kidnapped worker, “that Pemex, supposedly the backbone of the nation, can be made to bow down like this?”

The Burgos Basin stretches across the northern border state of Tamaulipas, where the Gigante No. 1 plant is located, and spills into the states of Nuevo Leon and Coahuila. The three states are awash in violence, theater of a ferocious battle between the once-dominant Gulf cartel and its brutal former henchmen, the Zeta paramilitaries.

Pemex, which is Mexico’s largest income earner, pulling in nearly a third of the national budget, once staked great hopes on the area and its prospects for yielding gas, abundant thanks to the sandy soil and porous rock that make for ideal production and exploration conditions.

After dedicating nearly half a century to testing and exploration in the basin, Pemex in 2002 took the unusual step of opening it up to foreign investment, in contrast to Mexico’s historic protectionist attitude toward natural resources. Pemex officials anticipated an injection upward of $8 billion.

Employees of Pemex and a handful of foreign-owned firms were earning well in the basin, living good lives and working in relative safety.

Then convoys of mysterious gunmen started plying the roadways, followed by shows of force, intimidation, beatings and, finally, the abductions. Pleas for help and better protection, union leaders and workers say, went unheeded. The exact motives behind the May kidnappings remain unclear.

Ramirez, the senator, said the cartel responsible, probably the Zetas, may be after technical information to elude the measures Pemex is taking to guard against the rampant thefts of gas and oil.

Whatever the motive, the effect has been to cripple operations in some areas of the basin.

“In the Burgos project, there are areas we cannot access,” Carlos Morales Gil, director of exploration and production for Pemex, said during a news conference in the Tabasco city of Villahermosa in July. It was a startling admission.

“We are not going to enter any area where security is at risk,” he added, calling for increased army and navy protection for oil and gas installations.

Pemex would not comment to The Times or make an official available for this story.

However, a confidential report submitted to Congress in July and made available to The Times acknowledged that stolen natural gas and delayed gas production have cost the company nearly $50 million in just the first five months of this year.

Mexican drug cartels cripple Pemex operations in basin

Pressure on President Obama to do something about the weakening economy intensified Friday with new government data showing that hiring remains lackluster, nudging the nation’s unemployment rate up to 9.6%.

With congressional elections less than eight weeks away, Obama appeared in the Rose Garden to say that he would soon propose a new package of tax cuts and other incentives to spur employment.

“We are confident that we are moving in the right direction, but we want to keep this recovery moving stronger and accelerate the job growth that’s needed so desperately,” the president said.

Obama spoke after the Labor Department reported that the nation lost 54,000 net jobs in August, fewer than economists had expected but still dismal. The private sector’s weak gain of 67,000 jobs was wiped out largely by the number of federal census jobs that ended.

The unemployment rate edged up to 9.6% from 9.5% in July, the first increase in that figure since April.

The president is expected to use a speech in Cleveland on Wednesday to outline a series of measures to kick-start the economy, which could include extending research and development tax credits for business, increasing spending on highways and other public works projects, and retaining the middle-class portion of the Bush administration tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of the year.

Many analysts believe that those measures will have only a modest effect, especially in the short time remaining before the midterm elections. But with Republicans lined up solidly against the Democratic administration on economic policy, more far-reaching proposals are considered out of the question.

“The key will be whether it’s smart — getting bang for the buck — and if it’s big enough,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning research group in Washington. “And I’m concerned on both of those fronts.”

One idea that has received some support from Republicans is a three-month payroll tax holiday for all workers and businesses.

That would amount to a 6.2% tax cut for each, freeing up money that employers could use for new hiring and workers could use to boost consumer spending.

But White House aides indicated that Obama will not embrace the idea. It would cost the government about $120 billion in revenue if adopted for two months — and a staggering $700 billion if continued for a full year.

Also, an unrestricted tax holiday would not be narrowly focused on Obama’s goal of adding jobs.

“I think the notion of giving payroll tax holidays is not very well targeted,” said Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington. “That’s going to go to all kinds of firms, even those that are reducing their employees.”

Instead, Alan Krueger, the Treasury Department’s chief economist, said Obama asked his economic team to “review options that are targeted and responsible” — that is, more narrowly focused and less likely to aggravate the government’s budget and deficit problems.

Recognizing that many Americans have an unfavorable view of last year’s massive stimulus program, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has been taking pains to caution that “some big new stimulus plan is not in the offing.”

Among the narrower options under consideration is extending a tax break signed into law in March that exempts employers from their share of payroll taxes for the remainder of 2010 and provides other incentives if the employer hires someone who has been unemployed for at least 60 days.

The law, known as the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, or HIRE, passed with bipartisan support, and one of its main backers, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), recently urged a six-month extension.

A White House aide, Jen Psaki, would not lay out specifics, but said that “the options under consideration build on measures the president has previously proposed.”

The moves being discussed are unlikely to change the jobs picture any time soon, Burtless said. He noted that the R&D tax credit, which expired Dec. 31, has repeatedly been renewed and is expected to be extended again this year.

Obama to propose new incentives to spur employment

Thirty-three men stuck a half mile underground are now the longest-trapped miners in recent history as a huge drill is the early stages of digging a planned escape route.

The men were trapped Aug. 5 when a landslide blocked the shaft down into the San Jose copper and gold mine in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. Last year, three miners survived 25 days trapped in a flooded mine in southern China, and the Chileans surpassed that mark Tuesday.

While doubts and extreme challenges remain, experts said the rescuers have the tools to get the job done — though the government still says it will take three to four months to reach the miners.

“The drill operators have the best equipment available internationally,” said Dave Feickert, director of KiaOra, a mine safety consulting firm in New Zealand that has worked extensively with China’s government to improve dangerous mines there.

“This doesn’t mean it will be easy,” he added. “They are likely to run into some technical problems that may slow them down.”

The 31-ton drill made a shallow, preliminary test hole Tuesday in the solid rock it must bore through, the first step in the weeklong digging of a “pilot hole” to guide the way for the rescue. Later the drill will be outfitted with larger bits to gradually expand the hole and make it big enough so the men can be pulled out one by one.

Before rescuers dug small bore holes down to the miners’ emergency shelter, the men survived 17 days without contact with the outside world by rationing a 48-hour supply of food and digging for water in the ground.

Aside from their rescue, a union leader has expressed concern for the men’s livelihoods.

San Esteban, the company that operates the mine, has said it has no money to pay their wages and absorb lawsuits, and is not even participating in the rescue. State-run mining company Codelco has taken over.

Union leader Evelyn Olmos called on the government to pay the workers’ wages starting in September, plus cover the roughly 100 other people at the mine who are now out of work and 170 more who work elsewhere for San Esteban. Its license has been suspended by the government.

“We want the government to pay our salaries in full until our comrades are freed and then pay our severances,” said Olmos.

Mining Minister Laurence Golborne said the government was prohibited by labor laws from assuming responsibility for the salaries. He said it was up to the mining company and would have to be worked out in Chilean courts.

Golborne noted the extraordinary circumstances of the mine collapse but pointed out there are many other Chileans who lack a job and said the government cannot be responsible for all of them.

Union leaders and others blame the government in part for the San Jose accident because the mine had been cited for safety violations in the past but was allowed to continue operating.

In 2007, executives were charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of a miner. The worker’s family settled and the mine was closed until it could comply with safety rules, said Sen. Baldo Prokurica, who has long called for tougher regulations.

The next year, the mine reopened even though the company apparently had not complied with all the regulations, he said, adding that the circumstances surrounding the reopening are being investigated.

Workers at the current rescue operation are using the three existing bore holes to deliver food, water, air and medicine to the 33 miners, who are trapped about 2,300 feet underground in a shelter large enough to walk around in.

In an eight-minute video released by the government, the second made by the trapped miners, about a dozen of the men send greetings to their families and say they are feeling better since receiving the sustenance and supplies, including special clothes to keep them dry in the hot, humid mine.

The government last week said that five of the miners were suffering from depression, but Golborne said Sunday from the mine site that those men were doing better, had received antidepressants and were getting counseling.

Helping raise their spirits, the men spoke for about three minutes each to a family member on Sunday after a telephone line was lowered down one of the three existing 6-inch bore holes.

The men, while showing courage that has inspired people throughout Chile and the world, could not help but break down when speaking about their loved ones on the latest video.

“I’m sending my greetings to Angelica. I love you so much, darling,” said 30-year-old Osman Araya, as his voice choked and he began to cry. “Tell my mother, I love you guys so much. I’ll never leave you. I will fight to the end to be with you.”

The video showed the men mostly upbeat, joking on camera and talking about their absolute certainty that they would get out alive.

Experts say maintaining high morale among the men is essential. They will play a key role in winning their own rescue: The drilling technique that must be used means that up to 4,000 tons of rock and debris will fall down into a large mine shaft near the shelter — but far enough away from the men that they will not be in any danger.

Officials have said that it is essential the men be at their best physically and mentally because their own work clearing the rocks will be vital to keeping their eventual escape route from becoming plugged.
Drilling begins as Chile miners become longest-trapped in recent history

Afghanistan’s attorney general denied Sunday that a prosecutor investigating allegations of corruption in the upper reaches of the government had been fired, saying the official simply had reached the point when retirement was mandatory.

Atty. Gen. Mohammad Ishaq Aloko said during an interview in his Kabul office that prosecutor Fazel Ahmed Faqiryar stopped working Thursday in accordance with Afghan law after 40 years of service. The rules state that officials must step down if they are older than 65 or have served for four decades, he said.

The prosecutor was not forced out because of any conflict with President Hamid Karzai, Aloko said. Faqiryar’s claim Saturday that he had been fired “is absolutely groundless,” he said. “He wants to be admired by the public and the media. His retirement has no relation with corruption.”

Faqiryar’s exit from his post comes amid growing concern in Washington that billions in U.S. taxpayer money have been pocketed by Karzai’s inner circle. At the same time, some U.S. officials fear that pushing the shaky government too hard on corruption could undermine the wider war effort.

A senior State Department official said Sunday that the facts of the prosecutor’s case seemed unclear and that he was unaware whether anyone in the administration was raising the issue with the Karzai government. “We are watching this very closely,” he said.

Another U.S. official said an open fight with Karzai probably would make him more intransigent and complicate relations ahead of parliamentary elections and major military operations scheduled for the coming weeks. “It’s not worth the potential trouble over one prosecutor where the facts aren’t entirely clear,” the official said.

Both officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

In an interview Sunday in his modest Kabul apartment, Faqiryar disputed Aloko’s account, saying he was authorized to work past 65. Like many Afghans, he doesn’t know his exact birthday but says he’s about 72. He also said he had worked only 39 years and five months, not counting schooling and five years under Taliban rule when he was off the government clock.

The prosecutor, who was also deputy attorney general, said his relations with the Karzai administration turned sour last year when he briefed a closed-door session of parliament regarding about 25 corruption cases the attorney general’s office was working on, naming governors, ministers and ambassadors who were targets of investigation.

The attorney general quickly expressed his unhappiness with the move, Faqiryar said, “so from that time, our relations went bad.”

Faqiryar said this rather tense atmosphere carried on until he sent a midlevel prosecutor to speak about corruption on a television station this month. After that, he said, his retirement was fast-tracked.

Faqiryar said he’d watched legal cases involving powerful officials delayed, sidelined and dismissed or the parties ruled not guilty. “We can implement the law on poor people,” he said, “but not on rich and influential people.”

Analysts said the Karzai administration appeared to be following a strategy used by other rulers in South Asia of diverting state resources to secure personal loyalties.

“It’s not aimed at using government money to make a good society but, rather, to cement alliances,” said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political science professor at Pakistan’s Lahore University of Management Sciences and the author of a book on war, ethnicity and governance in Afghanistan. “It’s a very heartbreaking story in Afghanistan.”

This month, Karzai stepped in to stop the prosecution of a close aide, Mohammed Zia Salehi, who according to investigators was heard on a wiretap demanding a bribe from another Afghan hoping to foil a corruption investigation.

The Salehi case was still under investigation, Aloko said Sunday, but there was no risk of his escaping since “he’s working in a high post.” He added that Salehi would remain free until his case was in the investigation process.

In many parts of the country, the government only recently has gained a foothold amid security concerns, Aloko added, and, although many lower-level officials have been prosecuted, cases involving ministers have not gone ahead since, under the constitution, they need to be tried in special courts, which have not yet been established.

“Corruption is greatly reduced compared with before,” he said. “Today, rule of law is revived, everyone fears the law and being prosecuted, and we have made progress.”

.

mark.magnier@latimes.com

Times staff writer Magnier reported from New Delhi and special correspondent Yaqubi from Kabul. Times staff writers David S. Cloud and Paul Richter in Washington and special correspondent Hashmat Baktash in Kabul contributed to this report.

Prosecutor investigating Afghan corruption wasn’t fired, official says

Shirley Sherrod, forced from her government post after becoming a target for unfounded complaints that she was a racist, rejected an offer Tuesday to return full-time to the Department of Agriculture.

At a joint news conference after meeting with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Sherrod, however, said she would work as a consultant with the agency on civil rights issues.

“I enjoyed my work at USDA,” said Sherrod in turning down the offer. “I just don’t think at this point I can stay full time with USDA.”

Sherrod was the Agriculture Department’s director of rural development in Georgia until she was forced to quit after a conservative blogger published edited portions of a speech in which she appeared to make remarks that could have been interpreted as racist.

Vilsack and others in the Obama administration condemned the comments which were later found to have been taken out of context. The NAACP also condemned Sherrod, a black woman.

When her remarks were published in context, both the Obama administration and the civil rights group apologized for their reaction and for Sherrod’s departure. On Tuesday, Sherrod told reporters she expected to file a lawsuit against the blogger.

Vilsack repeated his apology Tuesday and took full blame during the televised news conference.

“This was my responsibility and I will continue to take responsibility tor it as long as I live,” Vilsack said. “I know that I disappointed the president. I disappointed this administration. I disappointed the country. I disappointed Shirley. I have to live with that. I accept that responsibility.”

Vilsack said he hoped that the incident would be a spotlight on efforts to deal with civil rights issues. He also said the department has changed its internal procedures to avoid the type of rush to judgment that was involved in the Sherrod case.

“The secretary did push really, really hard for me to stay and work from the inside,” Sherrod said. But “look at what happened. I know he apologizes and I have accepted that. I know a new process is in place but I don’t want to be the one to test it.”
Agriculture official, ousted in racial controversy, rejects new job offer at USDA

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haiti’s electoral commission said Friday that hip hop artist Wyclef Jean cannot run for president of this Caribbean nation, ending his outsider’s bid to lead a country struggling to recover from the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Jean, who faced a challenge to his candidacy in the Nov. 28 elections because he has not lived in Haiti for the past five years as required, issued a statement urging his supporters to remain calm and respond “peacefully and responsibly to the disappointment.”

“Though I disagree with the ruling, I respectfully accept the committee’s final decision, and I urge my supporters to do the same,” he said.