Category: Corruption

Bush’s Evil Minions&trade at HUD Ignored Allegations of Corruption

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Captain Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.

It appears that when career staffers at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development noticed that contracts were going to unqualified, but politically connected, contractors, in what appeared to be a highly irregular process senior management ignored their warnings.

Who could imagine that HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson and His Evil Minions™ would let out contracts on the basis of politics….Oh wait….he said this on tape in a speech….Never mind.

Bush and His Evil Minions&trade Can’t Even Convict Guilty People Without F%$#ing it Up

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As is to be expected, the defense attorneys in the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, et al trial are making a number of motions to dismiss. It happens in any trial. It’s what defense attorneys are supposed to do.

This time however, they make a fairly good point, specifically that the convening authority is illegitimate because it’s head acted inappropriately (the equivalent to this in a civil trial would be along the line of a juror talking to an attorney involved in the case).

Seems like they are half way there, because the presiding officer has already removed Brig. Gen. Thomas W., “What, Me, Ethics?” Hartmann from the case for his inappropriate behavior.

The five defense lawyers representing the so-called high-value detainees, who face the death penalty if convicted, argued in a 127-page motion that military commission rules require the legal advisor to provide “neutral and objective” advice.

The lawyers cited testimony that last summer Hartmann urged prosecutors to target “sexy” cases and those in which American blood was shed, hoping to boost the tribunal’s image as the presidential election approaches.

….

The defense motion said Hartmann had steered Guantanamo prosecutors away from other cases and toward the five defendants in hopes of racking up high-profile convictions.

Seriously, they screwed up the trial and execution of Saddam Hussein too, turning one of the more detested figures in the Arab world a martyr.

On the up side, there is no way that these trials start before the elections now.

Signs of Progress in Iraq and Afghanistan, They Are Entering the Modern Financial System

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Specifically insurance fraud, but it’s only the contractors, who have conspired with insurance companies to stick it to the tax payers.

It’s basically kickbacks. The contractors negotiate their own insurance deals, which are over priced, and they get commissions from the insurers:

KBR Inc., one of the largest defense contractors in Iraq, paid the insurance giant AIG $284 million for medical and disability coverage under the Defense Base Act, a reference to the federal law mandating the insurance. Due to the way KBR’s contract is structured, this premium, along with an $8 million markup for KBR, gets billed to the taxpayer.

“Out of this amount, just $73 million actually goes to injured contractors, and AIG and KBR pocket over $100 million as profit,” Waxman said.

Lovely.

Countrywide Shareholder Lawsuit May Proceed

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Gee, what makes you think that the people running the lender were more interested in lining their own pockets than running a business competently?*

Directors and officers of Countrywide Financial, the beleaguered mortgage lender, must answer shareholder accusations of insider trading and an overall failure to monitor lending practices that led to the company’s collapse, a federal judge in California has ruled.

Rejecting the arguments of Countrywide executives and directors that they were unaware of lax loan operations that led to ballooning defaults, Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer of Federal District Court in Los Angeles ruled Tuesday that she found confidential witness accounts in the shareholder complaint to be credible and that they suggested “a widespread company culture that encouraged employees to push mortgages through without regard to underwriting standards.”

Plaintiffs also identified “numerous red flags” that would have warned directors of increasingly risky loans made by Countrywide, according to the judge, who rejected a motion to dismiss the suit. “It defies reason, given the entirety of the allegations,” Judge Pfaelzer wrote, “that these committee members could be blind to widespread deviations from the underwriting policies and standards being committed by employees at all levels. At the same time, it does not appear that the committees took corrective action.”

Hope that these folks are left completely destitute. They should spend the rest of their lives in homeless shelters and gutters.

*The interesting thing about this is how many people are shocked by this. Capitalism 101 is that people act for their own benefit, but somehow the senior executives are exempt from all this?

Repulsive, But This Time I’m Not Surprised

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Yep, speaking in Israel, George W. Bush made Nazi references with regard to Barack Obama’s suggestion that we might want to talk to potential adversaries:

“We have heard this foolish delusion before,” Bush said in remarks to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

This is repulsive. You have this sort of accusation made in a public forum by the President of the United States. What’s more, this misuse of WWII and the Holocaust was made before the Knesset in Israel.

This is unbelievably, and unspeakably low, and speaks to the mind of a man who has no moral compass whatsoever.

What surprises me the most is that I’m not stunned by this. This is exactly what I have been expecting from him, and so I’m not surprised.

That being said, had he been drowned at birth, the world would be a far better place.

And in the Depart of Finally Getting a F$#@ing Clue

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After something like 20 years of fraud and deception, someone in the US military has noticed that Achmad Chalabi is a con man who has played the Neocons establishment like a freaking violin.

Sources in Baghdad tell NBC News that as of this week American military and civilian officials have cut off all contact with controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, the former favorite of Washington’s once powerful neoconservatives.

What is it that Tom and Ray Magliozzi say? “Unencumbered by the thought process.”

Dude, read up on Bush and His Evil Minions™. You got nothing on them.*

*Truth be told, neither are intellectual slouches, having degrees in from MIT.

The Republicans Are Starting to Attack Each Other

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It appears that the Loss in the special election has shaken them up something fierce:

House Republicans turned on themselves yesterday after a third straight loss of a GOP-held House seat in special elections this year left both parties contemplating widespread Democratic gains in November.

The Republicans have a real problem. When the Dems lost power in 1994, it was because of a few bounced checks in the house bank, not delivering on healthcare, and supporting NAFTA.

When you consider the war, child molestation (Foley), corruption, incompetence, etc. of the Republicans, it’s going to be a lot longer than 12 years for them.

Happy dance!!!!

Vaccine Junk Science: the NY Times Almost Gets It Right

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When they have the following paragraph in a story on an Autism-Thimerosal law suit:

Every major study and scientific organization to examine the issue has found no link between vaccination and autism, but the parents and their advocates have persisted.

The get close to being right…Except that it’s paragraph 3, and it should be in paragraph 1.

A core fact on the vaccine stupidity is that there is no correlation between vaccines or Thimerosal and conditions on the Autism spectrum. Period, full stop, check my earlier posts.

It is a fraud put forward by an unethical doctor.

They Are Spying on US, but They Aren’t Prosecuting Terrorists

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The LA Times is reporting that despite an enormous expansion in surveillance of Americans, there has been no increase in terror prosecutions.

Kevin Drum has a useful pictorial perspective:

He also has a perspective that is even more alarming:

If anything, the real situation is almost certainly even worse than this: ‘Warrants’ understates the vast increase in surveillance, which also includes things like national security letters and the warrantless programs run by the NSA, while ‘prosecutions’ overstates the number of genuine terrorists who have been taken to court. It would be nice if Congress actually took a serious look at this.

Needless to say, I’m not sanguine about the likelihood of a Congressional investigation, but I do have a theory as to why you would have an explosion in surveillance without any increase in anti-terror actions: surveillance of political enemies.

By expanding surveillance to unprecedented levels, it allows a few dozens of actions to be taken against political opponents. For people who are actually conducting the surveillance, typically non-poltical civil service appointees, it would be easy to miss the political surveillance among the hundreds discreet actions, but someone *cough* Karl Rove *cough* would have the clearance to get the data that they wanted.

If at First You Don’t Succeed, Hire Retired Generals

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Lockheed-Martin, the manufacturer of the “troubled” Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) has recieved authoriziation from the DoD to proceed on development and production.

It should have been canceled long ago. Not only are there other systems that do much the same thing, MBDA Storm Shadow or Taurus KEPD 350 come to mind, but the missile has escalated in cost beyond reason while showing real reliability problems.

We have yet another case of a defense contractor failing upward.

Deal Between Bush and Senate May Be Close on FEC

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It’s being presented as a grand compromise, with separate votes allowed so that Hans von Spakovsky would be voted but, as Josh Marshall so ably notes, it’s really another f&%# you from Bush and His Evil Minions™ to the Senate.

The problem right now is that the FEC does not have a quorum, so it can make rulings, which means, among other things, McCain’s bungee jumping into and out of the public financing system cannot be approved by the board.

Additionally, one of the remaining members of the board, FEC chairman David Mason has been very vocal about McCain’s law breaking on the matter, which is an embarrassment.

Bush has renominated von Spakovsky, but is now saying that they can take a separate vote on the nominees, which Spakovsky, would lose, but he is now also submitting a replacement for Mason too, with the idea that once he is removed, McCain gets what he wants on a party line vote.

Office of Special Counsel Raided by FBI

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Details here, here, here, here, and here.

It appears that Scott Bloch was the target of the raid, which appears to be about obstruction of justice, at least that was what was on the subpoena.

Note that Bloch had his disk wiped to NSA standards some time back, and claimed that it was virus removal:

Jeff Phelps, who runs Washington’s Geeks on Call franchise, declined to talk about specific clients, but said calls placed directly by government officials are unusual. He also said erasing a drive is an unusual virus treatment. “We don’t do a seven-level wipe for a virus,” he said.

He used the office for political advantage, and then covered it up.

Why he needed computer consultants to break the law is beyond me though.

In 1989, before it became horrific bloatware, Norton Utilities had this ability, and you could find a dozen or so similar utilities on the Google, but having a receipt like this pretty much slam

Bush Plans to Use Guantanamo Trials for November Election Failing

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It appears that non only will they miss the election deadlines, but that the trials will not have started by the time that Bush leaves office either.

This affair is a complete cock-up. We already have the former prosecutor saying that administration officials were demanding convictions because an acquittal would be inconvenient, and , “and one high-ranking Pentagon officer has been quoted talking about the “strategic political value” of doing so before the November elections,” so it looks like this mess will be dumped on whoever is sworn in in 2009, as Will Bunch notes.

The Mongoose Gang* in the US

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It appears that people under investigation in what appear to be politically motivated cases, and those who whistle blow on the same, are being systematically targeted with arson, break ins, and attempts to force their car from the road.

Cases in point:

  • Governor Don Siegelman home was burglarized twice with nothing taken, “the only items of interest to the burglars were the files in Siegelman’s home office.”
  • Siegelman’s attorney experienced the same type of break-in at her office.
  • Dana Jill Simpson, who went on 60 Minutes to allege that Siegelman was the target of a political prosecution had her home burned down, and her car forced off the road.
  • In Muississipi, in a similar case, attorney Paul Minor, had his office broken into, Mississippi Supreme Court Justice, Oliver E. Diaz Jr., had his home burglarized, again with nothing taken except documents and a computer , and another defendant, John Whitfield, had his office was the target of arson.

I want my country back.

*Mongoose Gang reference is here. I went on vacation to Grenada a number of times as a kid, and the name given to Eric Gairy’s group of thugs and bully-boys used to enforce political intimidation always stuck in my head.

Borzou Daragahi and Raheem Salman are F&^%ing Morons

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And so are the US diplomats that they interviewed, because they find it somehow culturally alien that an envelope of cash won’t make everything better with regards to the Blackwater massacre in Baghdad.

As Spencer Ackerman so eloquently states:

If an unaccountable band of politically-connected soldiers-of-fortune shot my mother as she was trying to flee from a traffic circle, and the State Department offered me $5,000 in order to make the incident go away, I would not only be angry, I would be exploring my options for revenge. You don’t have to be an Iraqi to understand this.

If this happened in America, you would have family members demanding the death penalty

$5000 and a meaningless apology does not mean anything them, and it does not mean anything to us.

We are treating them like easily bought off sub humans, and they have legitimate cause to take exception.

The problem is that some of the soldiers in Iraq will die for what the mercenaries did in Iraq.

Yes, There Are Similarities. Corruption is as Corruption Does

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Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) is noting that the firing of Mary Gade as regional administrator of region 5 for her attempts to keep dioxin out of the environment resembles the US attorney scandal.

Of course. When one believes that government is an unmitigated evil, as movement conservatives do, the only role for government agencies is to do favors for friends and allies.

Dow is a friend, poor children who you put at risk for cancer are not.