Tuesday, February 21. 1995 UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN Chicago criminals turn to politics The Associated Press CHICAGO — Alderman candidate Wallace "Gator" Bradley has a unique slant on the gang crime that has sent Chicago's homicide rate soaring and buried some neighborhoods under heroin and cocaine. As he freely admits, he was once a leader of Chicago's biggest street gang, the Gangster Disciples, blamed by police for hundreds of street-corner shootings and a big share of the drug trade. "Have no problem being part of the gang," the convicted burglar and armed robber says between hugs from well-wishers as he schmoozes through City Hall. "I belong to the Democratic Party — that's a gang. Churches I've joined — that's a gang." The winner in the nonpartisan primary in Bradley's ward on Feb. 28 is more likely to be one of the two other serious candidates: incumbent Dorothy Tillman or former alderman Tyrone Kenner. Even so, Bradley's candidacy cannot be written off as a mere oddity. In Chicago, where street gangs are everywhere and corruption often seems a spectator sport. Bradley is the most prominent example of a growing movement. Current and former Gangster Disciples, from teen-agers to old hands with long prison records, are climbing into the political arena, registering voters and passing out campaign leaflets. He advocates more help for the poor and attacks racial bias in the criminal justice system. They claim to be blazing a trail toward black empowerment and saving young people from falling prey to drugs and guns. They've won allies at City Hall and the Statehouse. But gang experts warn that the movement more likely represents a renewed effort by gang leaders to carve out a share of the spoils for themselves. "You wouldn't choose an arsonist to head your fire-prevention committee. Why choose people associated with drugs and violence as your political leaders?" said Chicago State University gang authority George Knox. While Bradley has gained the most attention, the core of the movement that he is part of is a 2-year-old group called 21st Century V.O.T.E. (Voices of Total Empowerment). The group, which has headquarters over an abandoned storefront in the bleak Englewood neighborhood, is highly secretive about its affairs. Its chief representative, Thomas Harris, is even reluctant to say exactly how many members it has. Twice, it has flooded downtown streets with thousands of demonstrators protesting the closing of a health clinic and a funding dispute that delayed the opening of schools. It sent hundreds of young volunteers on voter registration drives through crime-ridden high-rise projects. Authorities find 21st Century V.O.T.E. disturbing. "The board of 21st Century V.O.T.E. does happen to contain members of questionable background," the Chicago Crime Commission said cautiously in a Feb. 1 report, noting that the group's board of directors includes a convicted killer. Bradley, 43, said he was reformed 20 years ago while serving four years in prison for burglary and armed robbery. Other 21st Century V.O.T.E. leaders merely shrug when asked if they were once members of the Gangster Disciples, which has some 10,000 hard-core members. But they're infuriated by claims that they're nothing more than a gang front. "They're going to try to label us as this and label us as that," Harris said. "That's fine. If we can service our people ... they'll take care of the rest of it for us. We don't have to worry about the newspapers." Gangs dabbling in politics is nothing new in Chicago. The Blackstone Rangers and the Vice Lords were politically active in the heyday of President Johnson's Great Society and received sizable antipoverty grants. Authorities say the money was largely frittered away. Now, some mainstream politicians have distanced themselves from 21st Century V.O.T.E. — or wished they had. Mayor Richard M. Daley's administration canceled a city contract with the Urban League to monitor minority hiring after newspapers noted that 21st Century V.O.T.E. was a subcontractor. Daley's chief rival in the Democratic primary, Joseph Gardner, was embarrassed when Bradley appeared at the rally where Gardner announced his candidacy. Harris, 21st Century V.O.T.E. representative, said Friday that the group had decided not to make an endorsement in the mayoral primary. Clinton health-care consultants were paid well The Associated Press WASHINGTON — The White House touted the long hours and sacrifices of those who crafted its ill-fated health care plan, but it turns out that the work brought healthy rewards for a small cadre of advisers and contractors. Some businesses got six-figure contracts. For select advisers, there were consulting fees as high as $40 an hour, allowing some to earn up to $100,000, according to an Associated Press review of government records. The payments were made in spite of a warning from White House lawyers to use full-time government employees, not consultants. The Clinton administration has declined to say how much was spent developing its health care plan. The new Republican Congress has begun its own review. Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a tribute to task force workers in the spring of 1993, likened their labor to the "planning for the Normandy invasion." She extolled their sacrifices and the "all nighters" they pulled in the Old Executive Office Building. But amid the ruins of President Clinton's Health Security Act, records obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act, lay bare a multimillion-dollar hired bureaucracy. The primary beneficiaries were professional consultants, with specialties ranging from projecting long-term health costs to writing arcane legislative language. In all, the White House used about 1,000 people for work and advice on the plan. Most of the high-profile experts worked for free. The few who were paid were members of a White House inner circle, hired as consultants for an extended period to work on Mrs. Clinton's health task force—although White Lawyers cautioned against it. "To avoid ethical difficulties, the members of the cluster groups, and especially the heads of issue working groups, must be full government employees," aide Atul Gawande wrote health czar Ira Magaziner in a Feb. 2, 1993, memo obtained by AP. Gawande said the White House counsel's office had advised that payments were "not clearly in violation of any law," but it would give antagonists leverage for attacking them in the press and possibly in legal channels. Avis LaVelle, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the consultant payments were necessary to attract top-calibre advice without expanding the permanent federal work force. "These people brought a high level of expertise to government, and their rate of pay was in line with (the) standard federal pay package," she said. "This is what people of this caliber are paid when they come to government service." Critics denounced the arrangement. "I think it is a very dangerous trend to have this kind of private-public partnership where it insinuates into the very process of government corporations and individuals that stand to profit from it," said Dr. Jane Orient, head of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which successfully sued to force the White House to disclose working documents from the task force. At least a dozen advisers to Mrs. Clinton were paid between $33 and $49 an hour in consulting fees by the Department of Health and Human Services. Among the highest paid was Walter Zelman, a former California state official and activist for the citizens group Common Cause. He received $101,649 in consulting fees from January 1993 to March 1994, at a rate of $48.39 an hour, according to HHS records. Zelman left the administration after the plan's defeat. Another top recipient was Brian Biles, who earned $97,950 over the same period. His work typifies that of many of the advisers. Biles, a former congressional staffer, began as a consultant and eventually was hired as a deputy assistant secretary at HHS. He recently left for the private sector. "This was all new policy and the analysis necessary to describe the pros and cons was all new work." Biles said. "The work we have done has built a foundation (for future health reform debates)." The AP identified at least 18 members of the working groups who were paid a total of $851,620 as HHS consultants. They included: —Clifton Gaus, former director of Georgetown University's Center for Health Policy Studies: $87,336 at $557 a day. He now heads the U.S. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research at HHS. —Roz Lasker, a University of Vermont medical professor and former analyst with the Physician Payment Review Commission: $85,151 at $46.48 an hour. She works full time at HHS. —Lawrence Levitt, a former California state insurance official: $70,429 at $33 an hour. He has left the administration. —Arnold Epstein, a Harvard University medical professor: $47,999 at $48.78 an hour. He has returned to his job. At the same time, some medical professionals who volunteered their time to advise the task force couldn't even get their travel costs reimbursed. "I paid for the privilege," said Dr. Norman Fost, a University of Wisconsin researcher who absorbed $7,000 in travel expenses. He wrote a letter in March 1993 seeking reimbursement for colleagues who were "experiencing more severe hardship." His plea fell on deaf ears. Several contractors also were hired for technical tasks. VHI Lewin, a Washington-based consulting firm, did numerous studies for both proponents and opponents of health reform. At the same time, the company was paid by the government to analyze the Clinton plan's impact on long-term care and academic hospitals. Meantime, Lewin produced what it called an independent study of the economic assumptions in the administration plan. The company picked up the tab for the study, touted repeatedly by Cabinet officials as independent proof that the plan was solid. The company maintains it did not have a conflict in doing both jobs, saying the personnel who worked on the federal contracts were kept separate from those who did the public analysis. "We were doing studies for a wide variety of people, including people who opposed the Clinton plan very ardently, as well as people in the government," founder Larry Lewin said. "And we tried to do that and maintain the balance so no one side could make the claim they were exerting influence over our objectivity," he said. War restarts after truce in Chechnya The Associated Press GROZNY, Russia — Russia's defense minister said yesterday that no peace can come from negotiations with Chechen rebels, declaring that Moscow will only settle for their surrender. Coming a day after a tentative truce expired, the comments by Defense Minister Pavel Grachev further dimmed any hopes that the war he once said could be settled in two hours would end any time soon. Sporadic shelling and small-arms fire erupted in Grozny, the Chechen capital, and Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev said the war would "last for another 50 years." Grachev, visiting an armor testing range outside Moscow, said Chechen military commanders "are willing to talk about a cease-fire. But our talks with them are short — no cease-fire whatsoever, just an ultimatum about surrendering the weapons." It was unclear whether Grachev was speaking for the government. He was one of the main figures in planning the Chechnya operation, but his current role is not certain. The warring sides in the breakaway republic reported scattered clashes but no large-scale military activities Monday. Earlier, they accused each other of breaching the cease-fire, which began Wednesday. Boris Agapov, a mediator in past peace talks, said he had spoken with both sides but was not immediately able to arrange a new round of negotiations. The Russian military command in Chechnya did not sound like it was ready to compromise over the 10-week-old war. It appealed to Chechen civilians, urging them to negotiate with federal forces and expelrebel fighters from their settlements. It promised to spare villages and towns that would offer no resistance but reiterated that it plans to take "adequate measures" after exhausting all possibilities to negotiate. Dudayev, meanwhile, repeated his call for negotiations with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, saying he never expected talks at the military level to succeed. "Commanders are never able to solve problems," he told the Estonian newspaper Postimes, the Interfax news agency reported. Dudayev also denied reports that his son Avlur was killed, saying he was only wounded and that his entire family now lives in the mountains. But Russian officials said Dudayev's elder brother, Bekmurza, was detained Thursday in Grozny and is being held in Moscow. As the cease-fire ran out, heavy explosions could be heard south of Grozny. Some firefights occurred outside Grozny, according to Chechen fighters interviewed on a road near the deserted village of Alkhan-Yurt. As they spoke, an artillery round smacked into the dense woods behind them, startling nearby women. Like a few others, they had gone to Grozy to see their apartments only to leave again. Bobbitt's pornography film fuels university controversy The Associated Press WASHINGTON — A student group at George Washington University has stirred controversy with plans to show an X-rated movie featuring John Wayne Bobbitt, who became a household name after his wife severed his penis and surgeons reattached it. Members of the Program Board, the student organization that wants to show the film, say that presenting the hour-long "John Wayne Bobbitt ... Uncut" is a legitimate way to prompt an academic discussion on pornography. But feminist, religious and conservative groups on campus contend that the screening would play to the worst impulses of a violent and sexist society. "All they want to do is have a wellattended event; sex sells," said Roshan Kalantar, 20, a member of a feminist group called Womyn's Issues Now. "Last year, we had a debate on pornography, and we didn't need to show a movie glorifying a known wife-batterer or spend campus funds to do it." Program Board members argue that censorship has no place in academia. "We thought (showing the film) would get people talking, but we never anticipated the outright claim that we just shouldn't show it here," said Ellen Maccarone, vice chairwoman of the Program Board. The group receives university funds to sponsor activities to entertain and educate students. Opponents plan to hold a demonstration and teach-in before the screening, slated for Monday. Lorena Bobbitt said her husband frequently beat her and that he raped her the night in June 1993 when she cut off his penis with a kitchen knife. She was acquitted of malicious wounding charges by reason of insanity. John Bobbitt was acquitted of the rape charge, but he has since served jail time for beating another woman. The film is a takeoff of the Bobbitt's story, with a "Lorena" character re-acting the kitchen-knife incident. 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