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Yearning to Be Whole Again
Sergeant Sees the Light After Year of Emotional, Family Turmoil

By Donna St. George
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 24, 2006; A01

When they called her name, she could not move. Sgt. Leana Nishimura intended to walk up proudly, shake the dignitaries’ hands and accept their
honors for her service in Iraq– a special coin, a lapel pin, a glass-encased U.S. flag.

But her son clung to her leg. He cried and held tight, she recalled. And so Nishimura stayed where she was, and the ceremony last summer went on without her. T.J. was 9, her oldest child, and although eight months had passed since she had returned from the war zone, he was still upset by anything that reminded him of her deployment.

He remembered the long separation. The faraway move to live with his grandmother. The months that went by without his mother’s kisses or hugs, without her scrutiny of homework, her teasing humor, her familiar bedtime songs.

Nishimura was a single mother — with no spouse to take over, to preserve her children’s routines, to keep up the family apartment.

Of her three children, T.J. seemed to worry most. He sent letter after letter to the war zone, where she was a communications specialist, part of the Maryland National Guard.

“He went from having one parent to having no parents, basically,” Nishimura said, reflecting, “People have said, ‘Thank you so much for your sacrifice.’ But it’s the children who have had more of a sacrifice.”

When war started in Iraq, a generation of U.S. women became involved as never before– in a wider-than-ever array of jobs, for long deployments, in a conflict with daily bloodshed. More than 155,000 women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Among their ranks are more than 16,000 single mothers, according to the Pentagon, a number that military experts say is unprecedented.

How these women have coped and how their children are managing have gone little-noticed as the war stretches across a fourth year.

“It has to be one of the hardest things that a mom and her children have to go through,” said Steven Mintz, a University of Houston professor with an expertise in family life. “You can’t cuddle a young child over the phone, and you can’t cuddle a child through e-mail.”

In the military, parental status is not a barrier to serving in a war. All deploy when the call comes — single mothers, single fathers, married couples — relying on a “family-care plan” that designates a caregiver for children when parents are gone.

The thinking is that a soldier is a soldier. “Everyone trains to a standard
of readiness and must be able to be mobilized,” said Lt. Col. Mike
Milord of the National Guard Bureau.

But war duty can be especially difficult for single parents. A year ago, Nishimura returned to the United States to face practical difficulties. Emotional issues. And unavoidable questions concerning her children: Will there be another deployment? What if a parent does not come back?

Home, but Still Apart

On a cool, dusky Saturday evening last November, her bus arrived at the
red brick Maryland National Guard Armory in Towson. There were yellow
ribbons and welcome-home banners. A crowd of supporters cheered and
cried.

One soldier walked off the bus and kissed the ground.

Nishimura fell into the embrace of two friends who had come to meet her, but she felt disconnected from the emotion of the moment. Instead, she noticed a friend who had returned on the same bus — and was now hugging her husband and son.

She wondered: When would she see her own children?

Before Iraq, Nishimura had worked as a teacher and cheerleading coach at a Christian school in Prince George’s County. Her National Guard duty,
with the 129th Signal Battalion, brought in extra money. Her ex-husband
paid child support. Still, she only scraped by, with the help of public
assistance.

Now her life was like a puzzle with missing pieces.

Her children — Cheyenne, then 3; Dylan, then 6; and T.J., then 7 — were
in Hawaii, being cared for by their grandmother. Nishimura did not have
the money to fly them back. She had no home for them, either, having
long ago given up her apartment.

As she got off the bus, she could not help but dwell on one fact of timing: Christmas was 50 days away. Would they be together for the holiday?

She was heartened by a good lead on a full-time contracting job with the National Guard. But there was a glitch: It would mean relocating to Havre de Grace, Md., more than 90 miles from her home in Waldorf.

If she got the job, she had decided, the family would move there.

For the kids, the move to her mother’s house in Hawaii had meant new
schools, new friends and a new caregiver with a high-rise apartment and
a full-time job. Nishimura’s 3-year-old daughter seemed to have the
toughest time, said grandmother Cynthia Nishimura. She cried at night
and at day care.

Unable to grasp the concept of a faraway war, the girl had absorbed only her mother’s mode of transportation. “Mommy works on an airplane,” she told people.

Her brothers knew more. T.J., in particular, knew that Iraq was dangerous. For a time, he watched war coverage on television. He saw the violence, heard about casualties. Finally, his grandmother banned the news.

The Essential Phone Calls

In Iraq, Nishimura was attached to a soft flannel pillow adorned with the
faces of her three children. “God’s gifts,” it read. “This is why I Fight!” She hugged it at night, even packing it in her duffle bag when she left the base.

As often as she could, she talked to her children by phone, and they had a ritual: At the end of every call, they counted one, two, three — and then made noisy kisses in unison.

Now she was back in the United States, still clutching the pillow and
talking on her cellphone, the children still thousands of miles away.

In a matter of weeks, Nishimura landed the job in Havre de Grace and found a little duplex to rent — with wood floors and a big picture window — using all that she had to cover the rent and security deposit.

There was a little yard. The public school was down the block.

On the day her new telephone service was connected, Nishimura called her children. Then the phone rang.

“Hi, Mommy,” her oldest son said.

Her middle child called next.

“Hi, Mommy,” he said.

The phone rang again.

“Mommy, I wanted to call you, too,” her daughter announced.

Nishimura assured them that they would be together soon.

Some days, she wondered how.

For airline tickets, she had pinned her hopes on the well-known charitable
program Operation Hero Miles, which donates airline miles to U.S.
service members.

It was only in late November that she learned the program was geared to hospitalized troops and their families. She and her children did not qualify.

Nishimura then took heart when fellow guardsmen offered to donate miles to her — only to learn that airlines would not allow such mileage transfers.

At 29 years old, she had no credit cards, she said, having badly damaged her credit in the financial turmoil of her divorce. While in Iraq, she sent her earnings to her mother for her children’s care.

“I’m pretty discouraged,” she admitted one afternoon four weeks after she flew home.

The Grace of Others

Help came in unexpected bits. There were groceries delivered by the pastor and elder of the church across the street. There was a bed for her
daughter donated by her new boss. There were clothes and food and other
help from volunteers Mary and Paul Crawford.

Much of this happened because Nishimura was “adopted” by First Christian Church of Havre de Grace through a National Guard program, Partners in Care, which links needy soldiers with congregations.

Then one of her senior officers, Maj. Timothy Mullen, wrote letters on her behalf, which inspired contributions for the plane tickets from three chapters of the 29th Division Association, a veterans group, and four churches.

Twelve days before Christmas, it all came together: The children and their
grandmother would board Christmas Day flights, which were least
expensive, at a total cost of less than $1,500, covered largely by the
generosity of strangers.

“It was probably one of the best things I’ve seen happen in a long time,” said Mullen. “I don’t think anyone [in the unit] had the volume of issues she had.”

Nishimura’s children bounded off a plane the morning after Christmas.

“I hugged Mommy first!” she recalled her daughter exclaiming.

Nishimura, in tears, felt the worst was behind them.

Shaken and Nervous
On a bright day in January, Nishimura walked her children to church, glad to be back to her old life, to be thinking about Sunday school and loose teeth and untied shoes and homework.

But the experience of war did not easily fade. She had been based in Tikrit, amid mortars that shook the earth, near roads where bombs were often hidden.

Now she found herself seized by sudden tears, insomnia and nightmares.

In one dream, she saw herself doing a military crawl, with her middle child on her back, as bombs exploded around them.

In another, she hunted everywhere for her children, but they were gone. “Either I’m separated and I can’t find them,” she said, “or I am with them and we are in danger. “

She eventually saw a counselor, who told her she had post-traumatic stress disorder and gave her medication .

The stress of war came on top of the stress of life.

Her closest friends lived far away. There were new schools, new neighbors. Her job paid well and she still got child support, but it was hard to make ends meet. Over time, her family settled in: her sons joining baseball teams, her daughter signing up for gymnastics. The family bought one pet bird and rescued another. “I feel like it’s finally coming together,” she said one spring morning.

Then her oldest son cried at the sight of her packing a suitcase for a short business trip. And after a veterans celebration at school, he refused to open his books.

Finally, she said he told her: “I don’t want you to go again.”

Experts say that emotional fallout for children can come and go after war. “Kids, at some level, must feel a sense of abandonment,” said Mintz, the Houston professor.

Recently, Nishimura switched military jobs, becoming a chaplain’s assistant. She wants to make the military a career, although she could be redeployed. “I tell [the children] that if God needs Mommy to go . . . then Mommy’s going to have to go again and they’re going to have to let me.”

Last week, Nishimura, in uniform, gave a presentation about Iraq to her sons’ Cub Scout pack. The boys were about to make care packages for U.S. troops, and she wanted to let them know about life as a soldier.

“I carried my M-16 wherever I went,” she told them.

T.J. listened wide-eyed.

“I had to go one whole year without seeing my kids,” she let them know. “How would you feel if you went one whole year without seeing your Mommy and Daddy?”

“Lonely,” volunteered one scout.

“I would go crazy,” another said emphatically.

T.J. spoke up without reluctance.

“I cried a lot,” he told them.

His mother was surprised by his admission, then glad.

When the boys went on to making cards for the troops, T.J. said he was reminded of all the letters he had sent her in Iraq. His own message to the war zone was simple. It read, “Come back safely!”

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Now, I wonder if this has any relation to the article I quoted earlier this week.

—Freckles

Texas teens among ‘nation’s worst’

They’re drinking, having sex at rates higher than U.S. average, report says

By Corrie MacLaggan
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, November 17, 2006

Texas teens are significantly more likely to have sex, drink alcohol and
drive drunk than their peers nationwide, according to a report being
released today.

The report, Kids Count, a national and state-by-state effort to track children’s well-being, does show some improvements for Texas teens: Fewer students are dropping out of school, for example.

But “when it comes to risky behaviors, Texas teens are among the nation’s worst,” said Frances Deviney, Texas director for Kids Count, which corrals data collected by various groups.

The Kids Count report, citing a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey, says that in 2005:

•52.5 percent of Texas high schoolers had sexual intercourse, compared with 46.8 percent nationwide.

•29.6 percent of Texas youth engaged in “episodic heavy drinking,” compared with 25.5 percent nationwide.

•15.4 percent of Texas youth drove a car under the influence of alcohol, compared with 9.9 percent nationwide.

•37 percent of Texas youth rode with someone who had been drinking, compared with 28.5 percent nationwide.

A survey done four years earlier found similar results in Texas. But in the ensuing years, teens across the country became less likely to drink heavily and drive under the influence of alcohol, while Texas rates stayed about the same.

Susan McDowell, executive director of LifeWorks, which provides a network of services to youth and families in Austin, said that Texas’ high child poverty rate and an education system that lags behind other states’ contribute to problems as
children become teenagers.

“We’re investing less in children in Texas,” she said. “We shouldn’t be surprised that as they grow up, they’re more prone to risky behavior.”

The study did not show how Central Texas teens compared to the state data. But Tracy Lunoff, coordinator of health for the Austin Independent School District, said
surveys show the district’s “students aren’t engaging in such risky behaviors.” For example, pregnancy rates decreased last year, compared with the previous school year, as did the number of middle school and high school students disciplined for tobacco, drug and alcohol use, she said.

However, a 2006 report on the district’s Web site shows that since 1996, the district’s eighth, 10th- and 12-graders have used alcohol as much or more than their peers statewide and have used marijuana more.

Reagan High School sophomore Jesse Martinez, 15, said fellow classmates often give in to peer pressure.

“They don’t want to seem like a punk around their friends, so they do something to fit in,” he said. “People try so hard to fit in that it’s not surprising that people want to get in cars with people who have been drinking or drink just to seem cool.”

Since last year, Martinez has participated in a support program for teenage boys called XY-Zone, which is run by Communities in Schools-Central Texas Inc. at five Austin high schools, one Austin middle school and Georgetown High School. Through the program, he said he’s learned it’s important to say no to drugs and to avoid having sex until later in life. He said he’s not participating in risky behaviors now. Before the program, he was “so-so” at avoiding such behaviors.

Communities in Schools-Central Texas CEO Suki Steinhauser said the nearly
eight-year-old program, which has expanded beyond its original mission of pregnancy prevention, is working. Last school year, 69 percent of participants in the XY-Zone decreased their participation in sexual activity, fighting, drug and alcohol use and riding in a vehicle with someone under the influence, according to an independent evaluation, she said.

“They begin to see themselves as leaders with something to contribute rather than kids who are always getting into trouble,” said Mike Hurewitz, senior program coordinator at Communities in Schools.

McDowell of LifeWorks said it’s important to invest early and substantially in the overall health of children in order for them to avoid risky behaviors as they become teenagers. She said many of the teens LifeWorks meets didn’t have a consistent, responsible adult in their childhood who made sure they were making healthy choices.

“The question we have to ask ourselves in Texas is: ‘Are we providing kids the tools that they need to avoid risky behaviors?’ ” McDowell said. “In many cases in Texas, we struggle with that.”

Other findings

•The high school dropout rate in Travis County declined 58.6 percent from 2000 to 2005. In the class of 2005, 354 teens in the county (4.8 percent) dropped out between ninth grade and graduation. The dropout rate in Texas declined by 40 percent in the same period.

•Child poverty in Texas has increased for the fourth straight year. That means
there are more Texas children living in families below the federal poverty threshold ($19,971 for a family of four in 2005).

•Texas continues to have the highest rate of uninsured children in the nation.

Source: Kids Count State of Texas Children 2006

cmaclaggan@statesman.com; 512 445-3548

You want KBR or Halliburton in charge of foster kids? AGH!!!!! YIKES!!!!!! Did you even know this COULD be privatized? What is WRONG with this state???

–Freckles

Senator questions privatization of child protective services

Year-old state overhaul of system plagued with problems.

By Corrie MacLaggan
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, November 15, 2006

A year into a massive overhaul of Texas’ Child Protective Services, the death of a North Texas boy in foster care has a key state lawmaker and some children’s advocates questioning a state plan to privatize the foster care system.

Sixteen-month-old Christian Nieto died of a head injury over Labor Day weekend while in foster care in Corsicana. His foster mother has been charged with capital murder, and the state is revoking the license of the private agency that arranged his foster care, Harker Heights-based Mesa Family Services.

At a meeting Tuesday of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, Chairwoman Jane Nelson, R-Lewisville, said that when she bought into the idea of privatizing the foster care system, she believed that there would be protections to prevent this sort of tragedy.

“We’re not privatizing the printing of telephone books here,” she said. “We’re talking about children, and we can’t make mistakes.”

Mesa Family Services, which also had a child die in foster care a year before Nieto’s death, has about 350 children placed in foster homes in Texas, including 58 in Bell County, eight in Williamson County and two in Hays County.

With the license revoked, most of the children will stay in their foster homes, although the foster parents will report to a different placement agency and will undergo additional training, said Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the agency that oversees the CPS.

The privatization plan, which followed several high-profile child deaths, calls for the outsourcing of the foster care system to private agencies by 2011. Nearly 80 percent of the state’s 20,000 children in foster care are already in homes overseen by private groups. The plan will also outsource case management, which involves monitoring a child’s progress. That is now done by state workers.

State officials last month postponed awarding a contract for the first piece of the privatization effort, which would have outsourced services in the San Antonio area. They won’t say exactly why it was delayed. But the slowdown — and Nelson’s worries — seem to make the future of the privatization effort uncertain.

Although several agencies that place children in foster care urged the state Tuesday to move forward with the privatization, Barbara J. Elias-Perciful of Texas Loves Children, a nonprofit group dedicated to preventing child abuse, said that without firsthand knowledge of a child’s circumstances, there is no way for the state to hold private providers accountable.

Outsourcing case management “is a recipe for disaster and will lead to more child deaths,” said Elias-Perciful, an attorney specializing in child abuse law.

But Jack Downey, president of the Children’s Shelter in San Antonio, said children in Florida were safer after that state’s privatization. Further delay in Texas would “truly, truly hamper everyone’s efforts to make privatization successful,” he said.

Outsourcing the foster care system comes in the midst of a major privatization of another health and human services task: enrollment of Texans in public assistance such as food stamps and subsidized health care.

The state hired a group of companies led by Accenture LLP to run call centers to sign Texans up for benefits. After the project hit training and technical problems, officials indefinitely postponed statewide rollout of the system.

“Contract management may be the one thing our state does worse than managing foster care,” Lee Spiller, executive director of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Texas, told Nelson, the only senator to attend the committee meeting. Nelson authored 2005 legislation that reforms Child Protective Services and Adult Protective Services.

Carey Cockerell, commissioner of the Department of Family and Protective Services, told Nelson that CPS has begun random inspections of foster homes, increased the number of children placed with relatives and decreased the average daily caseloads for investigative caseworkers.

But although the state has hired more than 2,200 CPS workers since September 2005, high turnover continues to plague the agency. About 30 percent of Child Protective Services workers left in the 2006 budget year, Cockerell said.

One of the highest rates of turnover is among special investigators, a new group of caseworkers with law enforcement backgrounds who work on complex cases.

Cockerell stressed that the benefits of hiring caseworkers and putting them through training will take time.

“We’re just at the beginning of that process,” he said.

cmaclaggan@statesman.com; 445-3548

Dear Democrats,

Y’all did a great job getting elected! Can’t wait to see how much of this Bush mess you can fix. Please ask for hearings and please give us our country back.

Thanks,

Freckles

Didn’t Bush say he was going to listen to the generals? Hmmm. Maybe that was last month….

This was in the Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Times & Air Force Times last weekend.

—Freckles

Editorial
Time for Rumsfeld to go

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld —

“So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion … it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth.”

That statement was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins more than a half-century ago during the Korean War.

But until recently, the “hard bruising” truth about the Iraq war has been difficult to come by from leaders in Washington.

One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “mission accomplished,” the insurgency is “in its last throes,” and “back off,” we know what we’re doing, are a few choice examples.

Military leaders generally toed the line, although a few retired generals eventually spoke out from the safety of the sidelines, inciting criticism equally from anti-war types, who thought they should have spoken out while still in uniform, and pro-war foes, who thought the generals should have kept their critiques behind closed doors.

Now, however, a new chorus of criticism is beginning to resonate. Active-duty military leaders are starting to voice misgivings about the war’s planning, execution and dimming prospects for success.

Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, told a Senate Armed Services Committee in September: “I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it … and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war.”

Last week, someone leaked to The New York Times a Central Command briefing slide showing an assessment that the civil conflict in Iraq now borders on “critical” and has been sliding toward “chaos” for most of the past year. The strategy in Iraq has been to train an Iraqi army and police force that could gradually take over for U.S. troops in providing for the security of their new government and their nation.

But despite the best efforts of American trainers, the problem of molding a viciously sectarian population into anything resembling a force for national unity has become a losing proposition.

For two years, American sergeants, captains and majors training the Iraqis have told their bosses that Iraqi troops have no sense of national identity, are only in it for the money, don’t show up for duty and cannot sustain themselves.

Meanwhile, colonels and generals have asked their bosses for more troops. Service chiefs have asked for more money.

And all along, Rumsfeld has assured us that things are well in hand.

Now, the president says he’ll stick with Rumsfeld for the balance of his term in the White House.

This is a mistake. It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation’s current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads.

These officers have been loyal public promoters of a war policy many privately feared would fail. They have kept their counsel private, adhering to more than two centuries of American tradition of subordination of the military to civilian authority.

And although that tradition, and the officers’ deep sense of honor, prevent them from saying this publicly, more and more of them believe it.

Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.

This is not about the midterm elections. Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth:

Donald Rumsfeld must go.

I am a year away from getting my driver license, but I care about the gas prices.

Anyone interested in this contest?

—-Freckles

COMMENTARY: JOHN KELSO

How long after the elections before gas prices shoot back up? Take a wild guess

Tuesday, October 31, 2006Let’s start a little contest so you people can guess when the price of gasoline is going to shoot up like a striped-behind ape after the Nov. 7 election.

This is just conjecture on my part, saying that gasoline prices will go up after the votes are counted.

As many people would point out, market forces other than slimeballs trying to get re-elected are at work here.

For example, other factors affecting oil prices include the large number of Chinese driving new Kias, and how much the Arabs hate our guts.

Yeah, well, so what? After the election, there will still be a passel of Chinese drivers, and the Arabs will still hate our guts. So the only real factor I can figure that will change things? The politicians will stop sucking up for votes.

OK, so maybe it’s cynical on my part to think our elected officials would hold down prices at the pump before the election to get a few votes.

Then again, maybe I’m just freakin’ clairvoyant.

OK, here’s the deal on the contest. Whoever among y’all can guess the date when regular gas gets back up to $2.69 a gallon at the King Food Mart at 2907 S. First St. wins either lunch with me or a $25 shopping spree in the King Food Mart.

On Monday, regular gas at this convenience store was $2.09.

To enter, just call me or e-mail me at the number or e-mail address at the bottom of this column and pick a date. If we have several people who pick the same day, we’ll draw the winner out of a hat.

I’d offer a free tank of gas as a prize, but if you’re driving an SUV with a 57-gallon tank, the newspaper might not expense account it. And, frankly, I’m cheap.

I picked the King Food Mart for no particular reason other than I needed a specific location and price to make this contest work. On the other hand, a $25 shopping spree at the King Food Mart is nothing to sneeze at. The place carries a wide range of products, including Mrs. Baird’s Honey Buns, Chees Nips and Tijuana Mama Pickled Sausage.

American-Statesman employees can’t enter. But my guess is that gasoline will make it back up to $2.69 a gallon on Nov. 22.

According to this goofy calendar I’ve got on my desk, Nov. 22 is “Go For a Ride Day.”

And it’s right before Thanksgiving, when we all fill up the car and drive to Granny’s.

Besides, it’s enough time for the oil companies and politicians to synchronize their checkbooks.

A friend of mine says I’m being cynical. (He has an astounding grasp of the apparent.) Playing the devil’s advocate, he asked why I’m singling out gasoline. Why wouldn’t the price of, say, condoms go up after an election?

Well, for one thing, there’s a lot more money in gasoline than there is in condoms. Sadly, people do a lot more driving around looking for sex than actually finding it.

And you’ve got to drive to the store to buy a condom. But you don’t have to wear a condom to the store to fill up your gas tank.

And if you did, and it were apparent to the attendant, he’d probably call the police.

John Kelso’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 445-3606 or jkelso@statesman.com .

Are lying, manipulating CEOs OK with the Bush administration?

EDITORIAL BOARD
Tuesday, October 31, 2006Over the past five years, hundreds of thousands of shareholders have been ripped off by executives who wore suits, lived in luxurious homes and, sometimes, were celebrated in the media. Billions of dollars were taken or squandered by these business leaders, who were among the highest-ranking officers of their companies, such as Enron, Adelphia, WorldCom, Tyco and others.

The only satisfaction for some shareholders was a partial recovery of their money and seeing some of these executives tried, convicted and marched off to prison for sometimes lengthy sentences.

But now some of the nation’s most influential business figures, apparently with the cooperation of the Bush administration, are moving to put an end to such outrages. No — not the direct looting of companies or the manipulation of stock values and lying about it to shareholders, but the efforts to bring dishonest executives and their enablers to account.

As reported last week in The New York Times, two industry groups are preparing to propose changes in federal regulations and laws that, at bottom, are intended to make it more difficult for ripped-off shareholders and government prosecutors to go after white collar thieves. Until recently, one of the groups was led by Robert K. Steel, who was sworn in this month as the U.S. undersecretary of the Treasury for domestic finance.

The other group is known as the Paulson Committee, after it received encouragement from U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson. Until this spring, he was chairman and chief executive officer of the Goldman Sachs Group, one of the nation’s most important investment bankers. The Paulson Committee includes former Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans, who is from Texas and is a close friend and longtime supporter of President Bush.

Probably because they know how proposals to go lighter on renegade executives and corporations will be received by the public, the two business groups are waiting until after the elections to officially unveil their proposals.

One aspect of their proposals, the Times reported, would be to curtail the ability of state officials, such as New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, to prosecute cases involving executive manipulation of corporate finances for personal gain. For the first few years of Bush’s presidency, Spitzer proved far more zealous in going after such cases than any federal agency, including the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The business groups also are thought to want higher barriers to shareholders filing class-action lawsuits against companies and their executives accused of having lied about or manipulated corporate finances.

Investors in company stocks are not entitled to a profit. In buying stock, they take a risk of losing some or all of their money if the business does poorly. Nor are shareholders entitled to compensation if management makes bad decisions by guessing wrong about what products or services customers want or how to most effectively operate the business. Bad, even incompetent, decisions can be made in good faith.

But corporate chieftains, who today are paid staggering amounts of money for their services, must be held to account when they lie about or manipulate their publicly traded company’s finances, especially when doing so pours shareholders’ wealth into their own pockets and those of favored friends. Those who want to relax the laws and regulations against corporate thievery should bear a very heavy burden of proof before Bush or the Congress makes any changes.

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
- Henry Kissinger