Interpreters play bigger role in local courts

As King County has grown increasingly diverse, interpreters have become integral players in the state's largest court. The National Institute of Justice singled out King County Superior Court's Office of Interpreter Services as one of three model programs in the country in a 2006 report.

By Sara Jean Green
Seattle Times staff reporter
Originally published January 5, 2012 at 8:01 PM | Page modified January 5, 2012 at 9:16 PM


Vietnamese interpreter David Neathery, left, explains a question directed at 44-year-old Seattle gang leader Quy Nguyen by his defense attorney, before relaying the defendant's answer to the court. King County Superior Court Judge Julie Spector is at right.



Martha Cohen is the program manager of the Office of Interpreter Services. She says an interpreter's job, which pays $40 to $45 an hour, is mentally challenging and fatiguing. Frequent breaks are necessary because accuracy is compromised after about 40 minutes.
Enlarge this photo

STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES



The leader of a Vietnamese street gang apparently suffered "buyer's remorse" after hammering out a plea deal with prosecutors and admitting he was guilty of ordering a hit on a fellow gang member-turned-rival.

Quy Nguyen was supposed to be sentenced in King County Superior Court on Nov. 4, and even picked the occasion to beg his victim's family for forgiveness. But the Vietnamese-speaking defendant then said through an interpreter that he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea.

He claimed his public defenders did not spend enough time on his case, and his "crazy" and "possessed" cellmates had left him confused and sleep-deprived when he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder with a firearm and conspiracy to commit organized crime.

But Nguyen, the 44-year-old leader of Young Seattle Boyz, heaped the most blame on his court interpreter, Nova Phung. Not only did Nguyen claim Phung had interpreted months of legal proceedings inaccurately, he said Phung had suggested Nguyen could bribe his way out of prison or have his sentence halved because of government cutbacks.

Judge Julie Spector denied Nguyen's motion to withdraw his plea on Dec. 20 , saying he was "clearly aware of what he was pleading guilty to and the consequences of the plea." She said Nguyen had fabricated his complaints against his attorneys and "the maligned interpreter, Mr. Phung."

As King County has grown increasingly diverse, interpreters such as Phung have become integral players in the state's largest court, which includes the downtown Seattle courthouse, King County Juvenile Court and the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.

Court interpreters, who typically work as private contractors and travel to courts across the state as needed, participate in criminal proceedings as well as civil cases and family-law matters. Many also work in U.S. District Court.

The National Institute of Justice singled out King County Superior Court's Office of Interpreter Services (OIS) as one of three model programs in the country in a 2006 report examining how well the nation's courts help non-English-speaking, battered women obtain protection orders against their abusers.

The office, which "was started from scratch" in 1992, assigned interpreters to roughly 650 cases involving 50 languages in its first year, said program manager Martha Cohen, who is also a Spanish-language interpreter.

In the past year, OIS — which has a $1.1 million budget — found interpreters to participate in 3,000 cases, she said. A couple of weeks ago, Falam Chin, a language spoken in western Myanmar, became the 139th language that Cohen and her six-member team had to find someone to interpret.

Haven for refugees

She explained that King County is one of the top five regions in the country for refugee resettlement. "This is a very desirable place to live, ... and we're just a reflection of all that," she said.

Spanish always has been the most-requested language to be interpreted, followed by Vietnamese and Russian, Cohen said.

In a later wave, Cohen saw increased demand for Korean, Lao and Cambodian interpreters, then for speakers of a number of African languages, including Somali, "which is definitely in our top five now, where it wasn't five years ago," she said.

If Cohen and her team can't find a local interpreter, they will launch a national search, as they did recently to find someone to interpret Oshiwambo, a language spoken in Namibia in southern Africa.

"We ended up with two — a man in Nebraska who was a Peace Corps trainer in Namibia and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania," she said.

The complex case against gang leader Quy Nguyen and his Vietnamese-speaking co-defendant caused a temporary shortage of Vietnamese interpreters, requiring the OIS to fly in interpreters from Salt Lake City and Denver as the murder case in Superior Court readied for trial, according to Cohen.

More than 120 witnesses, many requiring the assistance of interpreters, were to testify. At the same time, other gang members faced charges in federal court and were assigned separate interpreters.

For Cohen, turning people away because of the language they speak is not an option. "It's a question of access to services, access to exercise their rights, access to justice," she said. "People who don't speak English have a right to understand what's said around them and to participate in their cases. We do whatever it takes."

Cohen described an adoption case from last year as a prime example.

The birthparents, who live in Korea, and the adoptive parents, who live here, are deaf and use Korean sign language to communicate. Cohen found a woman in Lakewood who spoke Korean and knew Korean sign language but didn't speak English well enough to interpret.

"So we did it as a relay," in which another interpreter interpreted translated English into Korean and the Lakewood woman then interpreted Korean into Korean sign language, with the biological parents participating in a family-court interview via Skype, she said.

The job of interpreting — the oral rendition of something spoken in one language to another (translation is the written form) — is far more involved than "just knowing two languages," Cohen said. "It's a very spontaneous activity and you have to be creative and resourceful," especially interpreting English idioms or sports references that often don't make sense in another language.

A demanding job

Interpreters are paid $40 to $45 an hour, although they aren't compensated for any prep work they do on a case. The work is mentally challenging and fatiguing because interpreters must simultaneously listen, speak, change syntax, adjust grammar and sometimes change word structure, all while ensuring meaning isn't lost. Frequent breaks are necessary because accuracy begins to be compromised after about 40 minutes of straight interpreting, Cohen said.

Often, two interpreters are assigned to a defendant so they can spell each other off during lengthy trials. Interpreters who are assigned to a defendant cannot interpret for any co-defendants, witnesses or victims in the same case, nor can they interpret for someone they know — safeguards meant to remove the potential for conflicts of interest and ensure attorney-client privilege isn't violated. It's why some cases, such as Nguyen's, require multiple interpreters.

Interpreters don't interpret word for word, but instead convey "the meaning as close as we can," said Angela Torres-Henrick, a Peru native who has interpreted Spanish in Western Washington courts for 25 years. She was the first president of the Washington State Court Interpreters' and Translators' Society, which was founded in the late 1980s and was behind a statewide effort to certify interpreters and create a code of conduct.

The state Administrative Office of the Courts in Olympia now certifies interpreters in 15 of the most frequently used languages and requires rigorous testing and recertification every two years. An additional 39 languages are registered with the state, meaning interpreters are tested only for language fluency.

Torres-Henrick mostly works on criminal cases and said court interpreters, who can't offer advice and are ethically bound to keep confidential any discussions between defendants and their defense attorneys, can suffer "vicarious trauma."

"After difficult trials — it could be rape of a child, it could be murder, it could be vehicular homicide — you come home after interpreting all day and you just want to cry," she said. "Because we cannot share, many times it just stays with you."

Nguyen took the witness stand during his Dec. 20 hearing and tried to convince Spector he had not understood the guilty plea he entered a day after opening statements in his trial.

During his testimony, Nguyen's new interpreter, David Neathery, twice told the court, "The interpreter is repeating the question again," when Nguyen indicated he didn't understand what was being asked. Neathery's statements were necessary for the court record because interpreters aren't allowed to provide explanations or make comments to defendants.

"He wasn't behaving the role of interpreter. ... He was advising me like a teacher," Nguyen complained of Phung, his previous interpreter who was dismissed after Nguyen said he no longer trusted him.

But Spector wasn't swayed. She said Nguyen "looked thunderstruck" after the prosecution's opening statement, when he began to understand the overwhelming evidence against him. He actively participated in negotiating a plea deal the next day, she said.

Spector said Nguyen's attempt to withdraw his guilty plea amounted to "buyer's remorse."

He faces a prison term of 17 to 25 years when sentenced Jan. 20.

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654

Related

* Archive: Upcoming murder trial opens a window on Seattle-area street gang (Oct. 5, 2011)
* Archive: Vietnamese gang leader pleads guilty to murder (Oct. 13, 2011)

Language and the law
Top languages interpreted in King County Superior Court

1: Spanish

2: Vietnamese

3: Somali

4: Russian

The following languages are not ranked but also are frequently translated in court: Cantonese, Korean, Amharic, Tigrinya, American Sign Language and Cambodian.

Source: King County Superior Court Office of Interpreter Services


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017171327_interpreters06m.html

In South Korea, Plastic Surgery Comes Out of the Closet

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune



Dr. Park Sang-hoon, head of a top-ranked clinic in southern Seoul, consulted with Chang Hae-jin after her double-jaw surgery, a procedure that involves cutting and rearranging the upper and lower jaws.

By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: November 3, 2011


SEOUL — With a blue pen, Dr. Seo Young-tae drew arches on Chang Hyang-sook’s eyelids, marking where to cut and stitch to create a new fold to make her eyes look larger and rounder. It is an operation so common here that most women on Seoul streets seem to have a double fold, though only one of every five Koreans is born with one.



Chang Hyang-sook, a makeup artist, paid the 2.3 million won, or about $2,000, to make her eyes look larger and rounder.

“Promise you’ll do a great job on my eyes,” Ms. Chang said to Dr. Seo. “Never mind the pain. I can take it.”

For Ms. Chang, 25, a makeup artist, the 2.3 million won, or about $2,000, eye job is just the finishing touch in a program several months long to remake her face. In the previous two months, Ms. Chang had not only had her teeth rearranged, but her jaw bones cut and repositioned, for 22 million won.

“You must endure pain to be beautiful,” she said, adding that an eye job is so routine these days “it’s not even considered surgery.”

Cosmetic surgery has long been widespread in South Korea. But until recently, it was something to keep quiet about. No longer.

And as society has become more open about the practice, surgeries have become increasingly extreme. Double-jaw surgery — which was originally developed to repair facial deformities, and involves cutting and rearranging the upper and lower jaws — has become a favorite procedure for South Korean women who are no longer satisfied with mere nose jobs or with paring down cheekbones to achieve a smoother facial line.

Celebrities have helped to drive the trend, as they scramble to keep ahead of digital technology that mercilessly exposes not only their physical imperfections, but any attempts to remedy them, said Rando Kim, a professor of consumer science at Seoul National University.

“Wide-screen and high-definition TV put pressure on them to look good in close-ups,” Mr. Kim said. “And with the Internet, where people like to post ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures, they can no longer hide it. So they go public, often talking proudly about it on TV.”

That, in turn, has encouraged greater openness among ordinary South Koreans.

“It used to be all hush-hush when mothers brought their daughters in for a face-lift before taking them to match-makers,” said Dr. Park Sang-hoon, head of ID Hospital. “Now young women go plastic surgery shopping around here.”

Dr. Park’s is a top-ranked clinic in Seoul’s “beauty belt,” a swarm of hundreds of plastic surgery clinics clustered around a string of subway stations in the upscale districts of southern Seoul.

“Where did you get it?” asks one of the ads for clinics that cover the walls at the entrances of the Apgujeong subway station, the center of the beauty belt. “What about your nose? And your chin?”

Parents may promise their daughter an eye job if she passes her college entrance exam. In Apgujeong, it is not hard to find young women shopping in department stores immediately after their surgeries, wearing masks or sunglasses.

“Korean women want a revolution with their face,” said Dr. Park, a leading practitioner of double-jaw surgery.

“What we do in double-jaw surgery is to reassemble the face,” said Dr. Park, whose clinic has performed 3,000 such procedures in the past six years. “Normal people become, sort of, super-normal, and pretty people prettier.”

In traditional Korea, tampering with the body bestowed by one’s parents was a violation of Confucian precepts that also discouraged cremation and, later, organ and blood donations.

But in recent decades, cosmetic surgery has become a weapon in Koreans’ efforts to impress others, “like buying an expensive handbag,” said Whang Sang-min, a psychologist at Yonsei University.

Cosmetic surgery is not covered by national health insurance, making it difficult to determine the exact size of the industry. A survey last year by the Seoul city government found that 31.5 percent of residents 15 or older were willing to undergo surgery to improve their looks. In 2007 the percentage was 21.5.

In a 2009 survey by the market research firm Trend Monitor, one of every five women in Seoul between the ages of 19 and 49 said they had undergone plastic surgery.

The number of doctors trained as plastic surgeons has almost doubled in the past decade to 1,500. But 4,000 clinics provide cosmetic surgery, most of them in Seoul’s beauty belt, because the law allows other doctors to switch to this lucrative field. As competition heats up, some clinics host “Cinderella events,” where patients are given free surgery and appear in their ads.

Doctors say their main patients are young women entering the marriage and job markets. “As it gets harder to find jobs, they’ve come to believe they must look good to survive,” said Choi Set-byol, a sociologist at Ewha Woman’s University.

When the government imposed a 10 percent tax on five popular types of cosmetic surgery in July, civic groups as well as surgeons protested that this discriminated against women and the poor.

One consequence of the boom is that young women look increasingly alike, doctors say. “They come in with photos of starlets whose face they want to copy,” Dr. Park said.

“Koreans agree on what constitutes a pretty face,” he said. “The consensus, now, is a smaller, more sharply defined youthful face — a more or less Westernized look. That makes 90 percent of Koreans potential patients because they’re not born with that kind of face.”

Not everyone is happy with this development.

The film director Im Kwon-taek says it has become all but impossible to find an actress who still has a traditional Korean face. “They all have that surgery to have their eyelids scrolled up,” he said. “What kind of eye is that?”

He said that one day he was watching a provincial beauty competition on television and almost jumped up when he saw a young woman with a relatively round face with natural eyes.

He cast her in a movie set in old Korea.

In August, the Education Ministry issued a booklet warning high school students of “plastic surgery syndrome,” citing Michael Jackson and a local woman whose addiction to plastic surgery left her with a grotesquely swollen face. Last November, a woman hanged herself after her double-jaw surgery went wrong. “Every waking minute is hell,” she wrote in her diary of the pain.

Recently, a local television station secretly filmed a hospital official trying to sell a double-jaw procedure to a woman. “You want to get married?” he asked. “Then you have to do this, you have to take the risk.”

Chang Hae-jin, 21, an art student who was self-conscious about her slightly protruding teeth and chin decided to take that risk with Dr. Park. For weeks after the operation, she could not speak with her heavily bandaged swollen face. But it was worth it, she said.

“It opened a new world for me,” she said. “In the train today, a man sitting next to me talked to me. He said I looked younger than I am.

“My life has become much brighter.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/world/asia/in-south-korea-plastic-surgery-comes-out-of-the-closet.html

After Report on Speed, a Rush of Scrutiny

Once upon a time, the only thing that traveled faster than the speed of light was gossip.


Tiny Neutrinos May Have Broken Cosmic Speed Limit (September 23, 2011)
Martial Trezzini/KEYSTONE, via Associated Press


Dario Autiero, of the Institut de Physique Nucléaire de Lyon, on Friday explained his team's findings on neutrinos.


Thanks to the Internet, the whole physics world was watching on Friday when Dario Autiero, of the Institut de Physique Nucléaire de Lyon in France, in front of a palpably skeptical roomful of physicists, put a whole new category of speed demons on the table, namely the shadowy subatomic particles known as neutrinos. He was describing a recent experiment in which neutrinos were clocked going faster than the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit set by Albert Einstein in his theory of relativity back in 1905.

According to Dr. Autiero’s team, neutrinos emanating from a particle accelerator at CERN, outside Geneva, had raced to a cavern underneath Gran Sasso in Italy — a distance of 454 miles — about 60 nanoseconds faster than it would take a light beam. That amounts to a speed greater than light by about 25 parts in a million.

“We cannot explain the observed effect in terms of systematic uncertainties,” Dr. Autiero told the physicists at CERN, the European organization for nuclear research. “Therefore, the measurement indicates a neutrino velocity higher than the speed of light.”

Dr. Autiero said his group had spent six months trying to explain away the result, but could not do it. Given the stakes for physics, he said, it would not be proper to attempt any sort of theoretical interpretation of the results. “We present to you this discrepancy or anomaly today,” he said.

The purported effect sounds slight, but to be even slightly on the wrong side of the speed of light is forbidden in the world that Einstein described. Faster-than-light travel can also lead to the possibility of time travel, something that most physicists do not believe is possible.

Relativity has been tested over and over again for a century, and as Carl Sagan, the late Cornell astronomer, liked to say: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. “This is quite a shake-up,” said Alvaro de Rujula, a theorist at CERN. “The correct attitude is to ask oneself what went wrong.”

And the assembled CERN physicists were only too happy to oblige, diving in, after Samuel C. C. Ting, an M.I.T. Nobelist in the audience, offered his congratulations for work “very carefully done.” They asked detailed questions about, among other things, how the scientists had measured the distance from CERN to Gran Sasso to what is claimed to be an accuracy of 20 centimeters, extending GPS measurements underground. Had they, for example taken into account the location of the Moon and tidal bulges in the Earth’s crust?

The recent history of physics and astronomy is strewn with reports of suspicious data bumps that might be new particles or new planets and — if true — could change the way we think about the world, but then disappear with more data or critical scrutiny. Most physicists think the same will happen with this finding. The prevailing attitude was perhaps illustrated best by an XKCD cartoon, in which a character explains his intention to get rich betting against the new discovery.

Neutrinos are still a cosmic mystery. They are among the weirdest denizens of the weird quantum subatomic world. Not only are they virtually invisible and able to sail through walls and planets like wind through a screen door, but they are shape-shifters. They come in three varieties and can morph from one form to another as they travel along, an effect Dr. Autiero and his colleagues were trying to observe.

Their experiment, known clunkily as Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus, or Opera, is a collaboration of 160 physicists from 11 countries, primarily Japan and Italy. It is based at the Gran Sasso laboratory, a center for underground physics experiments that need sheltering from cosmic rays.

The action begins in a tank of hydrogen gas inside a building at CERN. Atoms in puffs of gas from the tank get stripped of their electrons, becoming naked protons, and then get sent on a Coney Island-style speed ride through a series of particle accelerators, eventually winding up in the main ring of the Large Hadron Collider — the mother of all particle accelerators.

For the Opera experiment, some of the protons are siphoned off at an intermediate energy and slammed in pulses 10 microseconds long into a graphite target, where they produce a pulse of lesser particles called mesons. The mesons in turn decay into neutrinos, which then disappear into the Earth in the direction of Gran Sasso. There, the arriving neutrinos run into an assemblage of lead bricks and photographic emulsion.

In theory, during the trip, which takes a few milliseconds, some of the neutrinos should shape-shift from a variety known as muon neutrinos to tau neutrinos. The goal of the Opera experiments was to study this transformation: In three years, the researchers have recorded some 16,000 neutrinos in their detector, but only one tau neutrino.

Measuring the speed of the neutrinos was only a side ambition, explained Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern, the head of the Opera collaboration. “Now it is becoming a main issue,” he said, adding, “we would like to see some tau neutrinos,” to appreciative laughter from the audience.

In the old days, when scientists sent around copies of journal articles and wrote letters to one another, the process of scrutiny of a controversial measurement could have happened quietly, but the Web has changed all that. Dr. Autiero’s talk at CERN and the appearance of a paper by the Opera group on the Internet Thursday night came at the end of a drumbeat of rumors and blog postings. One blog called it “Rumour of the Century.”

Some physicists, inside and outside of CERN, were critical of this process, saying the laboratory was giving too much weight to a premature result by a group that was not even part of CERN.

Nima Arkani-Hamed, a particle theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, said in an e-mail, “There was no need for a press release or indeed even for a scientific paper, till much more work was done. They claim that they wanted the community to scrutinize their result — well, they could have accomplished that by going around and giving talks about it.”

Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director general of CERN, said in an e-mail from Spain, “I agreed to the seminar at CERN because it is the duty of a lab like CERN to give the collaboration the possibility to ask the community for scrutiny of their findings.”

The scrutiny is surely coming.

An earlier measurement of neutrino speeds was performed by a collaboration known as Minos, for Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search, in 2007. Jenny Thomas of University College London, said the Minos experiment would be able to do a more precise measurement in four to six months.

“They’ve done their best,” Professor Thomas said of the Opera group. “The light’s going to shine on us now while we repeat our experiment.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/science/24speed.html

网评员工作守则

2011-06-27 11:24

网评员工作守则通知，网评员的工作守则。请大家严格按照规范开展工作。


网管办《网评员内部资料(严禁外洩)》

总则:

网络舆论战争0000为了祖国母亲的繁荣富强，为了中华民族的复兴，每一个网络评论员必须时刻准备着用自己的智慧和艰苦劳动保卫国网络防线。

基本工作方法∶

1、在工作时间内必须每小时至少查看一次工作邮箱，时刻注意领会上级指示的最新精神。

2、网络评论员根据上级指示进行合作，根据工作需要，将由跨地区、跨专业的网络评论员组成工作小组，执行特定的任务。在有必要增加人员时，上级将从其他小组抽调人员加以充实。

3、基本工作方法：日常工作按照网站分小组，每个重要网站的有关论坛由一个小组负责。日常工作是按照总体方针，维护正确的网络舆论导向。遇到突发事件，则按照上级部门的专门工作组的指令行事，暂时停止日常工作，把有关人员资源投入到突发事件的舆论导向工作。

4、网络评论员要善于隐瞒自己的真实身份，必需有多个不同的网名，而且不同的网名要发表不同风格的文章。必要的时候，可以由不同小组成员制造网友辩论的假象，然后由第三方推出强有力的证据， 把公众舆论引导到第三方。

5、某些网络谣言出来的时候，必须尽快搜索到谣言的首发地点和首发人，然后勒令网站管理员删除原贴，网络评论员则拷贝内容，以不同的IP地址发表自己就是事发所在地的当地人的申明，然后由版主或以其他网友身份指出：他的IP地址不在事发所在地，该消息纯属谣传。

6、必要时可以制造更加耸人听闻的假新闻，吸引网民视线，然后很快澄清该消息纯属谣言。

7、某些论坛人气不错，网友信用度比较高，这时首先要做的是制造一种混乱，通过似是而非的文章进行干涉，跟贴作非理性的故意曲解、制造误会和争辩，转移网民注意力。

8、0000较难控制，当不能主导论坛舆论的时候，可以采用大量短贴、无实质内容贴、非理性贴进行刷屏，令版面充斥无意义的混乱，使读者失去兴趣，这样达到避免反思想流通传播的目的。

9、不断学习，提高文字水平，学会使用不同的文笔风格写作，善于模仿他人文笔，这是网络评论员的基本功。

10、学会与网友交流的技巧，与网友私下打成一片，获取网友的信任，尤其是那些文章有影响力的网友。如果有可能，争取一些重要论坛的版主位置。

11、培养高超的判断力，能够在诸多贴子​​中迅速找到真正有影响力的帖子和写手，作为重点工作对象。

12、注意培养政策法规意识，不可误解当前的工作精神。注意吃透上级指示的近期发贴类型实例，融会贯通，举一反三。

13、灵活性与原则性相结合。一定要制造真假难辨的形象，成为一个不容易被监别身份的人。不仅要熟悉我们的观点，更要熟悉对方的思路，知己知彼。

14、网络评论员要时刻牢记自己的光荣任务，不被困难和误解阻挡，不在乎表面上的面子，做到任何情况下不会真正被对方激怒，永远保持理性、冷静的心理。

15、网络评论员要立场坚定，头脑清醒，在各种富有迷惑力的思潮面前保持清醒的头脑，珍惜自己的政治前途。

16、网络评论员实行小组监督和纠察监督相结合的原则。其工作成绩由上级有关部门评定。





网评员《上级通知》

为了防止台湾民主影响的扩大化，进一步做好舆论引导工作，根据上级要求“讲策略、讲技巧”的工作方针，希望网评员认真研究网民心理，掌握国际动态，更好地做好网评工作。特通知如下：

一、尽量以美国为批评目标，淡化台湾的存在；

二、不要直接以“民主”为敌，而要以“什么样的制度才能真正实现民主”为题构思帖子内容；

三、尽多地挑选西方国家的各种暴力、不合理事件以说明资本主义是不适合民主；

四、用美国等国家对国际事务的干预说明西方民主实际是对别国的侵略和强行推行西方价值观；

五、用历史上弱小民族的血泪史激发人们的爱党爱国心情；

六、多对国内事件正面宣传，进一步配合做好维稳工作。


http://hi.baidu.com/%CE%E5%C7%A7%C4%EA%D7%EE%BA%DA/blog/item/e846dcddaa9cc52c32fa1c69.html

Boeing's wartime tax rate: less than zero

Originally published Saturday, July 2, 2011 at 8:52 PM
Danny Westneat
Seattle Times staff columnist


Who would you guess pays more in federal taxes: me or Boeing?

I don't mean in rates but in actual dollars. Has the federal Treasury gotten more money of late from the huge aerospace company, which booked $4.5 billion in pretax profits last year? Or from me?

"It's not even close," says Bob McIntyre. "In the past three years, you have paid way more into the system than Boeing."

McIntyre is a tax wonk, the director of a couple Washington, D.C., think tanks that focus on who actually pays the government's bills.

Last month, his group, Citizens for Tax Justice, released a study showing that 12 major U.S. businesses, with $171 billion in profits, combined to pay negative $2.5 billion in federal taxes the past three years. Meaning that even with all that profit, they paid no taxes.

Boeing was in this group. The company made $9.7 billion in profits in 2008, 2009 and 2010. It paid nothing in federal taxes, booking $178 million back from the government in various credits, for a total federal tax rate of -1.8 percent.

These figures are from the company's financial reports. Still, I was expecting when Boeing executives went to Congress recently to ask for even lower taxes that they would deny this report. But they didn't.

"Over the last three years, we have not paid," confirmed James Zrust, Boeing's vice president for tax.

One congressman was incredulous.

"I think in testimony I heard earlier that Boeing would like lower taxes," said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif. "How much lower could you possibly need?"

Zrust explained the zero tax bill isn't likely to last. It's due to temporary factors, he said. Such as pension payments, and the costs of the development — but not yet any deliveries — of the 787 Dreamliner.

"Those same things that gave rise to low tax payments in the last three years will reverse in the next few years and result in considerable tax payments," Zrust predicted.

I asked McIntyre about that. Is he casting Boeing as a tax freeloader by looking at only a three-year window?

"Well, let's look at 10 years," he suggested. He tapped away at a database he keeps of financial statements.

"In the 10 years ending in 2010, Boeing had $29 billion in profits, and paid minus-$948 million in federal taxes."

McIntyre said if you include the past 11 years, Boeing's effective tax rate was positive, but only barely.

In other words, for the decade when the government launched two wars and ran up historic red ink, one of our largest companies — one that's a major beneficiary of military spending — contributed essentially zero to the ledger.

Now, Boeing pumps $1 billion a week into the U.S. economy. Its 160,000 employees have no doubt paid billions of income taxes in a decade. So it has great value beyond what the corporation itself pays to support the common good.

Boeing also didn't do anything wrong. As Zrust testified, the company is under ceaseless IRS audit, with 30 agents eyeballing it from offices located at Boeing. The zero tax bill isn't a sign it got away with something. It's just the way it is.

But should it be this way?

"I just think they ought to pay something," McIntyre says. "Like we all should. Every other time we've gone to war, the government has raised taxes to pay for it. In particular, it has asked the corporations to pay more.

"But nothing was asked this time. We're in two wars and we've cut their taxes, given them new loopholes, allowing them to pay, in some cases, nothing."

In my view, the most irresponsible thing we've done in my lifetime was to go to war while cutting taxes. That put war on a perpetual credit card, as if we were buying a sofa. Ten years in and still no one will say how we pay that bill.

Now Congress is going to political war over the deficit. Spending will be cut, as it should. But one side, the Republicans, insists that taxes not only cannot be raised, but are so high they must be cut still further.

As that one congressman wondered: lower than zero?

I'm not sure what the formula is for getting out of this mess. But somehow I doubt less than zero is going to pencil.


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2015494306_danny03.html

What The Top U.S. Companies Pay In Taxes

Christopher Helman, 04.01.10, 3:00 PM ET



HOUSTON -

As you work on your taxes this month, here's something to raise your hackles: Some of the world's biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do--that is, if they pay taxes at all.

The most egregious example is General Electric. Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.

Avoiding taxes is nothing new for General Electric. In 2008 its effective tax rate was 5.3%; in 2007 it was 15%. The marginal U.S. corporate rate is 35%.

In Pictures: What The 25 Top U.S. Companies Pay In Taxes

How did this happen? It's complicated. GE's tax return is the largest the IRS deals with each year--some 24,000 pages if printed out. Its annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission weighs in at more than 700 pages.

Inside you'll find that GE in effect consists of two divisions: General Electric Capital and everything else. The everything else--maker of engines, power plants, TV shows and the like--would have paid a 22% tax rate if it was a standalone company.

It's GE Capital that keeps the overall tax bill so low. Over the last two years, GE Capital has displayed an uncanny ability to lose lots of money in the U.S. (posting a $6.5 billion loss in 2009), and make lots of money overseas (a $4.3 billion gain). Not only do the U.S. losses balance out the overseas gains, but GE can defer taxes on that overseas income indefinitely. The timing of big deductions for depreciation in GE Capital's equipment leasing business also provides a tax benefit, as will loan losses left over from the credit crunch.

But it's the tax benefit of overseas operations that is the biggest reason why multinationals end up with lower tax rates than the rest of us. It only makes sense that multinationals "put costs in high-tax countries and profits in low-tax countries," says Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation. Those low-tax countries are almost anywhere but the U.S. "When you add in state taxes, the U.S. has the highest tax burden among industrialized countries," says Hodge. In contrast, China's rate is just 25%; Ireland's is 12.5%.

Corporations are getting smarter, not just about doing more business in low-tax countries, but in moving their more valuable assets there as well. That means setting up overseas subsidiaries, then transferring to them ownership of long-lived, often intangible but highly profitable assets, like patents and software.

As a result, figures tax economist Martin Sullivan, companies are keeping some $28 billion a year out of the clutches of the U.S. Treasury by engaging in so-called transfer pricing arrangements, where, say, Microsoft's overseas subsidiaries license software to its U.S. parent company in return for handsome royalties (that get taxed at those lower overseas rates).

"Corporations are paying lower amounts of their profits in taxes now than in the past," says Douglas Shackelford, who teaches tax law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Other countries have been lowering their rates, but not the U.S."

Mind you, not all global megacorps enjoy such low tax rates. Try to muster some pity for Big Oil. ExxonMobil in its 2009 annual report to the SEC, recorded a larger income tax expense than any other U.S. company last year, some $17.6 billion, or 47% of pretax earnings. Exxon's peers Chevron and ConocoPhillips likewise recorded similarly high effective tax rates. The oil companies are oddities among the multinationals because many of the oil-rich countries where they do business levy even higher taxes than the U.S.

Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. Exxon has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas. Likewise, GE has $84 billion in overseas income parked indefinitely outside the U.S.

Though Exxon's financial statement's don't show any net income tax liability owed to Uncle Sam, a company spokesman insists that once its final tax bill is figured, Exxon will owe a "substantial 2009 tax liability." How substantial? "That's not something we're required to disclose, nor do we."

Naturally the Obama administration wants to put an end to this. It has proposed doing away with tax deferrals on overseas income. If the plan passes, a U.S. company that pays a 25% tax on profits in China would have to pay an additional 10% income tax to Uncle Sam to bring it up to the 35% corporate rate. "Eliminating deferrals would put U.S. companies on an unlevel playing field," says the Tax Foundation's Hodge, "especially if competing with the likes of Germany, which only taxes companies on domestic operations."

Hewlett-Packard and others among the top 25 state in their annual reports that if Obama's tax measures pass it would mean a certain tax hike, probably amounting to billions of dollars.

Would no more tax holiday for GE really end up helping Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer? Doubtful. "The average Joe should be in favor of lower corporate taxes," says Hodge, "because ultimately they are paying the corporate income tax. Either as workers, getting lower wages and fewer jobs, or as consumers, paying higher prices, or as retirees, getting lower dividends and earnings on their investments."

In the same vein, JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon has spoken out against an Obama proposal to levy a special tax on banks to recoup bailout costs. "Using tax policy to punish people is a bad idea," said Dimon. "All businesses tend to pass costs on to customers."

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corporate-taxes.html

Public hospital execs make big bucks

by SUSANNAH FRAME / KING 5 News
Posted on May 23, 2011 at 11:48 PM



RENTON, Wash. -- Top salaries at a publicly-funded hospital in Renton, Valley Medical Center, have become intensely controversial since two hospital district commissioners were voted into office. The elected officials call themselves reformers. Others in the community call them troublemakers.

The chief executive officer of the hospital, Rich Roodman, is the highest paid public employee in the state of Washington. Last year he made a base salary of $615,000. He also collected a bonus of $201,201 for meeting performance goals. On top of that he was paid $263,335 in a retention payment.

The five-member board of commissioners who set Roodman’s salary authorizes this annual payment as a way to motivate Roodman to stay on at the hospital. He’s been at the helm since 1983. Most companies provide a retention payment as a lump sum once the executive has fulfilled his or her contractual obligation; not on a yearly basis.

In total, Roodman earned $1,134,837 in 2010 to run Valley Medical Center, which is part of King County Hospital District No. 1. The district collects property taxes from 400,000 residents in Renton, Covington, Tukwila, as well as parts of Bellevue, Newcastle, SeaTac, Black Diamond, Maple Valley and some unincorporated areas of King County.

Roodman makes about 40 percent more than the chief executive officer of University of Washington Medicine and more than double what the executive director of the University of Washington Medical Center earns.

"Do we need to be paying this much? And the answer is no," said Anthony Hemstad, one of the reformer commissioners elected in 2008. “When corners are being cut every which way, public health tax dollars need to be going into maximizing the public health benefit, not the benefit of CEOs.”

Vascular Neurologist Dr. Aaron Heide is the other reformer commissioner. His six year term began last year.

"There are no justifications for making this salary in this current atmosphere," said Heide.

Heide and Hemstad say Valley Medical Center is run more like a private club than a public agency. They ran on platforms to make the hospital’s business more transparent and accountable to taxpayers. But the men say the other three commissioners have no interest in reforming anything.

"I've worked at many layers of government and I've never seen an institution run this way and it raises all sorts of warning bells for me," said Hemstad. "This is an old culture that doesn't want to change," he added.

An example of what the two commissioners say is problematic at Valley Medical Center is the difficulty they have in obtaining information. When they asked for detailed executive pay data, it took four months to obtain it. The numbers weren’t turned over until Hemstad submitted a formal request for public records.

“They certainly didn’t want this [executive pay] to be public, even to the commissioners. If they did they would have given it to us when we asked for it,” said Hemstad.

The KING 5 Investigators had no trouble obtaining salary data from the hospital after submitting a public records request. The reporters found it's not just the CEO, but all top managers at Valley Medical Center who pack home healthy paychecks.

Paul Hayes, the executive vice president, made $588,249 last year, which included a bonus of $154,275 for meeting performance goals.

The senior vice president of medical affairs, Kathryn Beattie, made $489,479. Those figures outpace the top boss at renowned Harborview Medical Center, which is also funded by tax dollars.

The in-house attorney for Valley Medical Center, David Smith, pulled in $352,196 in 2010, which makes him the highest paid public lawyer in the state. Smith makes about two-and-a-half times what Attorney General Rob McKenna is paid.

“Maybe in good times, absolutely. In bad times? I have a tough time when we’re talking about cutting staff and cutting services, and they’re still making more and more and more. I have a problem with that,” said Heide.

KING 5 attempted to conduct on-camera interviews with the other three commissioners and with CEO Roodman. All of them declined. Board president Sue Bowman did speak with KING 5 by telephone. She said the compensation levels are important to stay competitive. They don’t want to lose top talent to other hospitals.

“I don’t know why Rich’s [CEO] pay is an issue? Commissioner Hemstad brings it up over and over again. I told him, 'Anthony, it is what it is,'” said Bowman. “I don’t think the five-member board needs to keep focusing on compensation. What are we doing for the community? That’s what’s important.”

Bowman also said the board carefully considers research presented to them by outside consultants and attorneys before voting on CEO compensation. Milliman, a healthcare compensation consulting firm, provides the hospital with a full analysis of market comparative data every other year. They consistently find Valley Medical Center’s pay structure is right on target.

John Hankerson, principal and strategic rewards practice leader of Milliman, wrote a memo about his findings to Roodman and Bowman dated February 9, 2011.

“We have consistently found that base pay and total cash compensation have been well aligned with [hospital goals] and that the magnitude of the incentive plan is consistent with other healthcare organizations that are striving to improve performance and quality patient care,” wrote Hankerson.

“We defined the appropriate market [comparable salaries] as ‘where VMC [Valley Medical Center] might recruit executive talent from or where it might lose executive talent to.’ In that light we have included such local organizations as Evergreen, Overlake, Virginia Mason to name just a few,” wrote Hankerson. “In our opinion, the current levels of incentives used at VMC are appropriate and consistent with best practice as well as smart management.”

Senator Cheryl Pflug, the ranking minority on the Senate Health & Long-Term Care Committee, doesn’t think public hospitals should be basing salaries on what non-profit and for-profit institutions pay.

“They pick and choose who they compare themselves to. A much more appropriate comparison would be the University of Washington,” said Pflug.

Pflug unsuccessfully sponsored a bill this session that would have banned public hospitals from coming up with salaries by comparing themselves to institutions that aren't taxpayer-funded, such as Swedish Medical Center and Virginia Mason.

“Seriously, is this the Mayo Clinic? No. This is not the University of Washington Medical Center either, which doesn’t pay these kinds of salaries,” said Pflug.

Controversy over money isn't new to Valley Medical Center. Four years ago the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) fined CEO Roodman $120,000 after they found the hospital illegally spent tax dollars on mailings, postage and consultants to sway voter opinion on ballot measures in 2005 and 2006.

The PDC called it the biggest case ever involving a public agency misusing taxpayer dollars for a campaign. Valley Medical Center called it a misunderstanding.

In 2009 the Washington State Auditor’s Office found Roodman collected a troubling $1.7 million retirement payment that year, on top of the $900,000 salary he earned in 2009. The auditor found the commissioners authorized this payment “without explanation or public benefit." The auditor also recommended Valley Medical Center should “avoid including similar provisions in future contracts.”

The reformer commissioners say voters put them in place to enact change but it's impossible because they are consistently voted down, three to two.

"To be a little crude, if I were to ask to scratch my butt, it would be voted against three to two," said Heide.

Video of board meetings from the hospital’s website shows dysfunction and conflict within the five-member panel. During a meeting last year commissioners are seen bickering, talking over each other and raising their voices when Dr. Heide continues to try ask questions about executive compensation. He’s told by fellow commissioners that the item is not on the agenda and that he is out of turn and out of order.

"If there is an idea, there is a question, let it be asked, let it be discussed. And that has not been allowed from day one that I've been on the commission. Never. Just sit down and shut up? Correct," said Heide.

Commission president Bowman tells KING 5 Heide and Hemstad create needless trouble and get in the way of progress for the hospital.

“The dissension within the board is very sad because I don’t think they [Heide and Hemstad] understand healthcare,” said Bowman. “They are dead wrong [on most issues.] The things they propose, any board member would vote against.”

http://www.king5.com/news/investigators/valley-medical-center-122473009.html