Yep, it's true. An unholy trinity of Bush Presidents is not only possible, it's probable, as the Bush dynasty family - George H.W. the father, George W. the brother, and George P. the son - is urging Jeb Bush to run for President. George P. Bush had the nerve to say said, "Make no mistake about it, I think a lot of people sorely miss and would relish some sort of return of that type of approach to leading our country."
Six years, and three audits later, the US still cannot account for $18.7 billion of the $20 billion that George W, shrink-wrapped, stuffed into a C 130, and then hurled it like a ho for turning free tricks, overseas to Iraq for distribution. Oh, you thought it was $6.6 billion that went missing? Wrong. That figure has now tripled.
This was money that had come from Iraqi development fund - oil sales, surplus funds from the UN oil-for-food programme and seized Iraqi assets. Moreover, the documents of expenditure are missing. Who got it, where it was spent, or whether anything was actually built with the money is "unknown". Yeah right, you can make a good faith bet that someone knows. Just like someone knows where the $2.3 trillion missing, reported on 9/10/01, went. Such a coincidence that the very next day, three towers -- probably containing much of that information -- and thousands of people -- who most certainly had a clue -- dissolve into dust.
The bottom line is that the American government was responsible for safeguarding that money, and they did not. Yet, a bank-teller's drawer, is found to be one penny short, or over (as I learned long ago), and that person can potentially go to jail. Yes...to jail, if it's found out that he or she added or took a penny to break even.
Billions, and trillions of dollars go missing on a regular basis, since W entered office, and it's no big deal?!? Come on people! How much evidence do you need to figure out that stone-cold, straight up gangster thugs, rollin' deep, and bustin' caps in anyone who gets in their way, transformed the United States of America into their own personal Babylon? That is, if there ever was a United States of America. I'm still trying to figure that one out.
While poorly paid, hard working Americans face relatively severe consequences should they engage in any type of misconduct no matter how small, government officials, bankers, CEOs, oil executives, in other words, the power elite, who are responsible for catastrophic damage, not only escape consequences of their misconduct, they often reap rewards for their egregious behavior.
Consider, for example, the bank teller, who is lucky to make $10/hour. If she inadvertently violates bank policy she can face relatively severe consequences. However, if she is a little more deliberate, and let's say adds a penny to balance out her cash drawer at the end of the day, she could possibly face jail time. That's right...jail time! For contributing her own money!
So, what are the latest reports of "misconduct" regarding the teflon coated, crème de la crème?
Well, it appears the Physicians For Human Rights author of "The Torture Papers" discovered evidence indicating that the Bush Administration conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. Experiments in Torture is the first report to reveal such information.
This evidence, of course, could possibly open the door to potential additional legal liability for the CIA and Bush officials. Nothing, as of yet, has materialized indicating that the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel determined that the alleged experimentation and research performed on detainees was lawful, as it did with the “enhanced” techniques themselves.
Escaping accountability for wrongdoing just because you're wealthy and powerful defies the rule of law. And it appears the current administration has no intention of preserving the equality of all its citizens before the law, as it is clear that those who reside at the lofty peak of American society are exempt.
Links:
I posted this back in early December, however since then, President Obama has made it clear he will not pursue the crimes of the Bush administration when he said, "I don't believe that anybody is above the law," he responded, but "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."
If that's true, than why bother investigating any crime? President Obama, more than anything else, reestablish the "rule of law" as that is what makes this country great. Ignoring the Bush Administration's blatant disregard for the law sends the opposite message...that as long as you are rich enough, powerful enough...the law does not apply to you. 
Barack Obama may not choose to indulge in the dangerous legal precedent the Bush administration has set, however, unless that legal precedent is overturned, it's very likely, that a President, like, let's say, Sarah Palin, will cite George W. in an attempt to push her agenda forward.
More than three decades ago, David Frost asked Nixon to respond to the following:
"So what in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston Plan or that part of it was one of them, where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal."
Nixon: "Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal."
23-years later, we emerge from an imperial presidency - no doubt, inspired by former President Nixon's statement, 31-years ago, that he is above the law. If 13 words from an impeached president, who resigned in disgrace, can bring on eight years of a president who declares himself immune from the "rule of law"...imagine what might foment in the future if we allow the precedent of illegal wire-tapping, suspension of habeas corpus, and systematically justifying torture as legal dogma, to stand.
Scott Horton, a New York attorney specializing in international law and human rights, who wrote the cover story in the latest issue of Harper's Magazine, " Justice After Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration" believes a presidential commission of inquiry would be the swift, clear way to proceed. Normally, the justice system conducts such investigations, however as Horton points out, the justice department itself is the crime scene in this case.
President Bush is doing as much damage as he can on his way out. These are not the actions of a man who will redeem himself - if that's even possible - in the future. However, whether President Bush repents or not is not the issue. If it were, we could afford to let him off the hook, and concentrate on repairing what his administration destroyed, however, this goes far beyond what President Bush, the individual deserves or doesn't deserve and has everything to do with
renewing our nation's commitment to the rule of law.
On June 10, 2008 Congressmen Dennis Kucinich and Robert Wexler cosponsored 35 articles of impeachment for indicting George Bush. Included in the list of impeachable offenses:
We, the people, as consumers and/or employees, are normally unaware that we have signed binding mandatory arbitration (BMA) clauses (a for-profit backroom process of settling disputes), that require us to give up our rights to sue the companies - and the right to a jury trial - we do business with, if these companies cheat or treat us unfairly. Essentially, consumers and employees are railroaded into arbitration. It's a "rigged game in which justice is dealt from a deck stacked against consumers."
Haliburton, and many large corporations force employees to sign this type of contract, and the credit card industry is notorious for trapping consumers into private arbitration.
Public Citizen, a national non-proift public interest organization found that big business is pushing pre-dispute BMA in an effort to substitute the "star chamber", whose sole purpose will the execution of the credit card company's functions, for the open trial justice we're guaranteed access to by the Constitution. This is a deliberate strategy, by big business interests, who are fully aware that the liability will always fall on the consumer.
So, barred from bringing claims to court, victims of abusive lending practices, abusive employers, abusive credit card companies etc., frequently find that their contracts require them to go through arbitration. Not only are these proceedings conducted in secrecy, with very limited evidence and scarce documentation, the victims also pay excessive costs only to receive results guaranteed to benefit the company who has engaged in abusive tactics.
It works much the same way in the legal industry. Negligent, unscrupulous and incompetent attorneys know they have legal consumers at their mercy. In many states, there is virtually no recourse for victimized legal consumers because as a 2006 American Bar Association survey found, out of 123,927 complaints, only 3.5% led to formal discipline and less than 1% resulted in disbarment. I happen to reside in one of the worst states for lawyer and judicial accountability and believe me when I tell you it takes a "Tom Capano" act to get disbarred in this state, and even then, you better have clear video and a dozen eyewitnesses to back you up.
“A series of United States Supreme Court decisions have changed the meaning of the [Federal Arbitration] Act so that it now extends to disputes between parties of greatly disparate economic power, such as consumer disputes and employment disputes. As a result, a large and rapidly growing number of corporations are requiring millions of consumers and employees to give up their right to have disputes resolved by a judge or a jury, and instead submit their claims to binding arbitration.” (1)-S. 1782, Arbitration Fairness Act, Sec. 2 (1), 110th Cong. (2007)Sen. Russell Feingold [D-WI] introduced the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007.
The bill declares no predispute arbitration agreement shall be valid or enforceable if it requires arbitration of: (1) an employment, consumer, or franchise dispute, or (2) a dispute arising under any statute intended to protect civil rights or to regulate contracts or transactions between parties of unequal bargaining power.Read more...
Declares, further, that the validity or enforceability of an agreement to arbitrate shall be determined by a court, under federal law, rather than an arbitrator, irrespective of whether the party resisting arbitration challenges the arbitration agreement specifically or in conjunction with other terms of the contract containing such agreement.
Exempts arbitration provisions in collective bargaining agreements from this Act.
There are two ways to think about the Bush administration's willingness to torture prisoners in the wake of 9/11. One is the story we were sold after we learned about Abu Ghraib: A few "bad apples" at the lowest levels of the military went a little crazy and tortured some prisoners on their own initiative, for which (some) were duly punished. The second is confirmed in a new and devastating piece of investigating by The New Yorker's Jane Mayer: A systematic and rigorous program of highly abusive interrogation was approved at the highest levels of government at so-called "black sites" around the world. This second version of the national torture story reveals not so much the bad apples as a profoundly diseased tree.Read more...
Erik D. Prince
Dick Cheney, the mastermind behind the privatization of the military bureaucracy, and possibly the puppet master in the Bush Administration, surely makes him a contender for this epithetical title. His efforts resulted in radically transforming the US military and national security infrastructure from the public sector to the private. How is that a bad thing? In a nutshell, he runs the risk of making profit motive the primary impetus behind national security which is potentially very dangerous to any nation's security, particularly intelligence.
However, as far as devils go, look at that face above...those eyes...something about this picture reminds me of The Final Conflict. I don't know, maybe it's his resemblance to Sam Neill, the actor who portrayed Damien Thorn, 20 years ago. Then, combine the names Erik D. Prince, son of Edgar D. Prince, with the name of Mr. Prince's company, Blackwater, and the name of the swamp Mr. Prince's company emerged, Great Dismal Swamp, and it sounds more and more like something out of Edgar Allan Poe's imagination. Well, let's see if Mr. Prince qualifies under the standards I've imposed in my last post on the Antichrist - level of insidiousness and and the extent of his power and influence - for the exalted designation of "Antichrist". I guess blogging about the Antichrist only reinforced my insanity...oh well.
As far as the insidious factor, or how far this man will go to avoid the radar, Mr. Prince lives his life in the shadows. All his executives must sign confidentiality agreements, prohibiting them from talking about Mr. Prince once they leave the company. Reclusive and secretive, Mr. Prince does not like his photo taken and often uses his hands to shield himself from photographers. Is there anything in devil doctrine that precludes photographs from being taken?
The book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," by Jeremy Scahill, is convinced Mr. Prince is a "neo-crusader", a "Theocon" with a Christian-supremacist agenda. Mr. Prince's idea of Christianity is severely skewed to the point of no return...the polar opposite of what he says he is so dedicated too.
"I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with -- homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kinds of bills." -- Erik Prince on his internship in the White House under President George H. W. BushBlackwater Worldwide, a privately owned company, has made over $1 billion from its security contracts alone and is only part of Mr. Prince's global business empire. The Prince Group LLC formed Total Intelligence Solutions as its intelligence gathering and analyzing part of the business...in other words, it's the CIA for hire. Graystone Limited (promotional video) is an international company Mr. Prince acquired in 2004, and this company has managed to avoid the radar completely. Aside from the tax benefits of incorporating in the Barbados, Mr. Prince chose that spot to "better position the company for international contracts." It's primarily responsible for marketing its services to foreign governments and as Mr. Prince increasingly, recruits more and more of his foot soldiers from third world countries - "discount soldiers"
"They're going to pay these people a lot less, and they're not going to respect the same type of employee and labor rights that U.S. nationals would require," -- Erica Razook, an Amnesty International lawyer whose work focuses on private-security contractors.- and aggressively pursues business from foreign governments Greystone has become Prince's primary recruiter of "foreign military muscle".
"I think it's extraordinarily dangerous when a nation begins to outsource its monopoly on the use of force ... in support of its foreign policy or national security objectives. The billions of dollars being doled out to these companies, he says, "makes of them a very powerful interest group within the American body politic and an interest group that is, in fact, armed. And the question will arise at some time: to whom do they owe their loyalty?" -- Joe Wilson, who served as the last US ambassador to Iraq before the 1991 Gulf warThe evidence more than supports Mr. Prince's desire to keep everyone in the dark. When testifying about the 17 Iraqi civilians gunned down by Blackwater operatives in the city of Baghdad, even after it was brought up that "we the people" pay 90% of his salary, he refused to disclose his earnings.
It works like this: Blackwater, for example, will win a U.S. government contract; it will then subcontract with itself—that is, with Greystone—to do the job. From there, Greystone looks to its network of international affiliates, firms like Pizarro's Grupo Táctico in Chile or ID Systems in Colombia, which maintain informal relationships with what are known in the trade as "briefcase recruiters"—individuals with connections to the local paramilitary scene. These men find the recruits and funnel them back up the chain until, finally, they are deployed alongside U.S. forces in Iraq. The practice also serves as a convenient firewall, shielding U.S.-based companies from direct liability for the actions of their subcontractors. "If a court is looking at these issues, where the contract is signed is a factor. There is a lot there that would take it out of a U.S. court's control." -- Erica RazookWith the exception of congressman Henry Waxman, Democratic Congressman from California, almost no one in the Congress has done anything to effectively take on these individuals or this company. Although Obama has a very good understanding of what's going on and has even authored legislation to combat the problems outsourcing security causes, he will not sign the Sanders-Schakowsky bill, Stop Outsourcing Security Act, which seeks to ban the use of these companies in U.S. war zones and make all of the diplomatic security agents full-time employees of the U.S. government, meaning an accountability structure would be in place.
The following pictures are the tip of the iceberg or an infinitesimally small representation of the harm, misfortune and destruction I referred to when blogging the Antichrist out of my system.
The worst kind of enemy is the deceitful kind who operates in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way, but in actuality, is committing atrocities that appear to be the fault of someone or something else, and all the while, laying the groundwork for that which causes harm, misfortune, and destruction to become infectious and spread sort of like a cancer or disease, without marked symptoms, but ready to become active upon the slightest unavoidable change.
Since the current administration shows little interest in doing anything substantial to support our troops and veterans:
Citizen Soldier - GI Vetern's rights advocacy group founded during the Vietnam War.
GI Rights Hotline - who provide information to servicemembers about military discharges, grievance and complaint procedures, and other civil rights.
Military Law Task Force - assists those working on military law issues as well as military law counselors working directly with GIs.
National Gulf War Resource Center - help veterans of recent and current wars and operations.
National Institute Of Military Justice - to advance the fair administration of military justice and foster improved public understanding of the military justice system. NIMJ is not a government agency.
National Veterns Foundation - Lifeline for America's Veterns
National Veteran's Legal Services Program - ensuring that the U.S. government honors its commitment to our veterans by providing them the federal benefits they have earned through their service to our country.
Objector - supports and promotes individual and collective resistance to war and preparations for war.
Don't Ask Don't Tell:
ServiceMembers Legal Defense Network - a national, non-profit legal services, watchdog and policy organization dedicated to ending discrimination against and harassment of military personnel affected by "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and related forms of intolerance.
Soloman Response - a place to voice opposition to the military discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.
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The Bush Administration also strongly opposes:
U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had ordered the Bush Administration to safeguard,
''all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."
President Bush conveniently said he "has no recollection" of videotapes of CIA interrogations of some al Qaeda suspects or of plans to destroy the tapes, a White House spokeswoman said.
Maryland's Joppatowne High School is the first high school in America to support the "Military-Industrial-Complex" in the USA. Several defense firms as well as federal, state, and local agencies finance and preside over the school in hopes it will serve as a model for the rest of the Country.
Surrounded by the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground and weapons maker, Northrop Grumman, this elite institution of martial learning is located in what is now considered the hub of the military industrial complex, Northeast Maryland. Homeland security has become such a profitable industry you can be sure Jack Bauer Highs will be popping up all over the place.
Matthew Dowd, a 46-year old political strategist, and one-time Democrat who helped put Bush in office is now expressing his disillusionment with President Bush. He questions the federal government's role in same-sex marriage; he questions Bush's decision to tell Americans to go shopping and get back on airplanes instead of asking for sacrifice, and ultimately he questions the Iraq war itself.
His disenchantment with the president built over several years. Dowd went public at a Berkeley seminar on the 2006 California governor's race; Dowd was both a senior advisor to the Republican National Committee, where he landed after Bush took office, and a top strategist for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's reelection effort. It was a question about the president that set Dowd off and, looking back, liberated him.Read more...
"Do you lose sleep at night knowing that you gave this country probably the worst administration we've ever had?" asked a young man. "I mean, have you thought about maybe trying to save your soul by calling for impeachment?"
Dowd tensed and leaned forward. Rather than defend Bush, he spoke of the oldest of his three sons, an Army language specialist then facing deployment to Iraq. "Now, am I a person who stays up at night thinking about that? Yeah. . . . Do we have hopes and dreams and disappointments? . . . Yes," Dowd said.
Sometimes it's really hard to believe this opportunity to dramatically increase the executive branch's role, strengthen law enforcement and surveillance authority, and practically rewrite the Constitution happened completely through a series of convenient coincidences, considering the right-wing’s well-known agenda is, as Grover Norquist so eloquently articulates, "... to bring this country back to the way it was before Teddy Roosevelt and the socialists came in" and “undo the new deal and the Great Society”.
"It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
- Hermann Goering
"September 11, 2001, played into neoconservative hands exactly as the 1933 Reichstag fire played into Hitler's hands. Fear, hysteria, and national emergency are proven tools of political power grabs. Now that the federal court are beginning to show some resistance to Bush's claims of power, will another terrorist attack allow the Bush administration to complete its coup?"
-- Former Reagan administration official and Wall Street Journal and National Review assistant editor Paul Craig Roberts,
"There is only one politically serious explanation of this now-indisputable fact: powerful forces within the US military/intelligence complex wanted a terrorist incident on US soil in order to create the needed shift in public opinion required to embark on a long-planned campaign of military intervention in Central Asia and the Middle East. Whether or not they knew the scale of the impending attacks and what the precise targets would be, they acted in such a way as to block the arrest of known terrorist operatives and allow them to carry out their plot."
--Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, Army intelligence officer
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
-- George W. Bush
Worse than traitors in arms are the men who pretend loyalty to the flag, feast and fatten on the misfortunes of the nation while... their countrymen are moldering in the dust,"It's really hard, almost impossible, to see the forest through the trees but we must try because the alternative, burying our heads in the sand, is certain to destroy us. Read more...
-- Abraham Lincoln
[...]"Should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply “drop their guns and go home.” Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those “who deliver their bullets and beans.Read more...
This potential scenario is just one example of why it’s in our national self-interest to attend to Iraq policy the White House counts on us to ignore. Our national character is on the line too. The extralegal contractors are both a slap at the sovereignty of the self-governing Iraq we supposedly support and an insult to those in uniform receiving as little as one-sixth the pay. Yet it took mass death in Nisour Square to fix even our fleeting attention on this long-metastasizing cancer in our battle plan."[...]
A growing number of first or second generation immigrants from Russia, the Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union are gathering in mostly the western states of the US to form viscious anti-gay movements.
"The West Coast connection" or the "U.S.-Latvia Axis of Hate", started by a Latvian megachurch preacher, is primarily responsible for spreading the hate toward the GLBT population in the Sacramento Valley. The followers of this anti-gay group call themselves the "Watchmen on the Walls" and tend to be active in gay-friendly areas such as Sacramento, Seattle and Portland, Oregon.
God has "made an injection (referring to the anti-gay activists)..In those places where the disease is progressing, God made a divine penicillin." -- Vlad Kusakin, the host of a Russian-language anti-gay radio show in Sacramento and the publisher of a Russian-language newspaper in Seattle
"The White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives did not give Hutcherson the title, 'Special Envoy for Adoptions, Family Values, Religious Freedom, and Medical Relief.' The White House did not give Hutcherson any other titles and did not coordinate with Hutcherson on his recent trip to Latvia."
CIA renditions, torture memos, Abu Ghraib, water boarding, "Black sites", "enhanced interrogation techniques", military commissions, indefinite detentions, 600,000 dead Iraqis, over 4,000 dead American soldiers (including contractors), countless life-changing injuries to Americans and Iraqis, millions of Americans without health insurance, tax-cuts for the rich etc. pretty much says it all.
The Department Of Justice says it is opposed to Net Neutrality because
"it could hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks."The problem with this is that now instead of the internet being open, these companies now get to discriminate who gets online, who gets to use their services and at what speed. Gatekeepers (large corporations) will stifle innovations because they will control flow of information to benefit their bottom line. Sound familiar?
Read more...
"“It would seem that the president and the Justice Department cannot do enough for AT&T and the other companies that agreed to spy on the American people. Without network neutrality, companies are free to turn over user information without a warrant or to block users from desired content, as AT&T recently did ‘accidentally’ by blocking Pearl Jam’s criticism of the president during a concert performance carried on AT&T’s broadband service." -- Harold Feld, senior vice president of Media Access Project
$1.6 billion dollars was the amount paid to public relations firms, advertising agencies, media organizations and individuals to keep Americans brainwashed and out of their way.
"The new report reveals that federal public relations spending goes far beyond "video news releases." The contracts covered the waterfront, from a $6.3 million agreement to help the Department of Homeland Security educate Americans about how to respond to terrorist attacks; to a $647,350 contract to assist the Transportation Security Administration in producing video news releases and media tours on the subject of airport security procedures; to a $6,600 contract to train managers at the Bureau of Reclamation in dealing with the media."Read more...
The Democratic Underground makes a case for why our current government should be abolished.
…Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends (our unalienable rights), it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government… When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same objective, evinces a design to reduce {the people} under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government… from the U.S. Declaration of Independence – July 4th, 1776Read more...
Government by Corporation
A monumental shift has quietly and quickly been taking place in the way the public's business is done - and We the People have not even been informed about it, much less been asked to discuss and okay it. Corporations are taking over our government. No longer is it just a matter of big business's lobbyists and campaign donations perverting public policy. Now, politically connected corporations are also seizing day-to-day governmental operations for their own profit.
Since the Carter years, Washington has drifted toward more and more outsourcing of public functions to private contractors, but Bush Incorporated has turned that gradual increase into a fullblown, jet-powered rush to privatization. The shadowy and highly lucrative world of government contracting has boomed under George W, rising 86% since he's been in office and now totaling nearly $400 billion a year. Get this: There are now more people doing federal jobs under corporate contracts than there are people employed directly by the government. In other words, in today's government, corporate servants outnumber civil servants.
Bush likes to claim that he has cut the federal bureaucracy. In fact, he's increased it, but most of the people working in his government wear corporate logos. The New York Times recently reported that contract employees are in practically every agency, not merely doing perfunctory chores, but sitting in on policy sessions and drawing up agency budgets. "Even government's online database for tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been outsourced," says the Times.
This phenomenal change is the product not of managerial rationality, but of nonsensical anti-government ideology. Like the Iraq invasion, which was on the international agenda of the rabid neocons from Day One of Bush's tenure, privatization has long been on the domestic agenda of the laissezfaire ideologues. A January 10, 2001, report from the right-wing Heritage Foundation provided the roadmap. Titled "Taking Charge of Federal Personnel," it showed the Bushites how to storm into office and seize control of every agency. It stressed that they "must make appointment decisions based on loyalty first and expertise second," that "the whole governmental apparatus must be managed from this perspective," and that they should use "contracting out as a management strategy."
The official rationale for this privatization surge is that corporations are inherently more efficient than government and save the taxpayer oodles of money. Nice theory, but they aren't ... and they haven't. Start with this ideological assertion's most obvious flaw: By their very nature, corporations are loyal to their own bottom line, not to the country or to the common good. Any "efficiency" that they produce is derived from paying workers less (hardly a morale booster) and by taking shortcuts on the services or products they deliver. These "savings" are more than eaten up by the high profits, extravagant executive salaries, and other compensation that corporations demand - costs that are not incurred when government does the job.
Another flaw in this privatization push is that Bush & Company are unabashedly running it as a crony program. An analysis by the Times found that more than half of their outsourcing contracts are not open to competition. In essence, the Bushites choose the company and award the money without getting other bids. Prior to Bush, only 21% of federal contracts were awarded on a no-bid basis.
Also, if privatization is so good, why is there no ongoing analysis of the costs and quality of service being delivered? This is an administration that demands a cost-benefit analysis of even the smallest government regulation of business, yet it is throwing trillions of our tax dollars into the coffers of corporate contractors without monitoring whether the outsourcing is costing us more and producing less than if the work were done by government employees.
Meanwhile, as the number of contracts has skyrocketed, the number of contract supervisors in federal agencies has remained the same, which means that the supposed overseers can't keep an eye on the performance of the profiteers. Whenever agencies or members of Congress do try to probe, the corporations simply claim that their financial and performance records are proprietary. While agencies are accountable to the public and subject to the Freedom of Information Act, corporate contractors are not.
Even when it's known in advance that a privatization project will be a rip-off, ideology has trumped integrity. Last fall, for example, Congress rubberstamped a Bush initiative requiring the IRS to outsource the collection of certain taxes to three private debt collectors. The collection agencies will pocket about 24 cents of every dollar they recover. But if the IRS were simply allowed to hire more revenue agents, it could collect these same debts for only 3 cents of every dollar brought in. Over 10 years, the three companies expect to reap $330 million from this deal.
A Corporatized War
As we've learned during the last four-plus years, George W's Iraq war is run by a bumbling triumvirate composed of the White House, the Pentagon, and the Department of Halliburton.
This massive military contractor has done awfully well the past few years, thanks to its old CEO, "Buckshot" Cheney. Since the BushCheney regime took office, Halliburton's government contracts have increased by a stunning 600%, including more than $10 billion in Pentagon contracts - many of them awarded without the fuss and muss of competitive bidding.
In return, Halliburton has delivered gas-price gouging, contaminated food and water, and a consis- These are our "savings" from privatization A 2006 federal audit of $1.7 billion in Pentagon purchases found that taxpayers were soaked for excessive fees from contractors and for tens of millions of dollars in waste. One reason was "poor contracting practices." Such as? The audit reports that 92% of the contracts were awarded without verifying that the contractors provided accurate cost estimates, and 96% of the work was inadequately monitored. 2 Hightower Lowdown June 2007 tent pattern of overcharges. It has been caught hiring Third World laborers to do its grunt work in Iraq, paying them as little as $5 a day, and then billing Uncle Sam more than $50 a day for each worker. In a February analysis of $10 billion in waste and overcharges by various contractors in Iraq, federal investigators found Halliburton responsible for $2.7 billion.
The corporation's 2006 profits were $2,348,000,000, and its overall profits have increased over 368% since the Bushites have been in office. Meanwhile, Halliburton has now outsourced itself, announcing this year that its top executives will move from Houston to palatial new corporate headquarters in Dubai. But don't worry - the executives are keeping enough of a corporate presence in the good ol' USA to qualify for more government contracts.
People see Halliburton as the face of the privatized war in Iraq, but that's hardly the whole story. Indeed, there's a dirty little fact that Washington's warmongers don't tout: Bush has put almost as many private contractors in the Iraq war as U.S. troops.
Prior to Bush's "surge," there were about 140,000 American troops in Iraq and about 100,000 contract employees there. Contrast this to only 9,200 privatized troops sent to the Gulf war by George's daddy in 1991. And the 100,000 number doesn't count subcontractors, which would add an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 more private troops (no one knows for sure, since the Pentagon doesn't keep track of them). In addition, while the surge will put another 22,000 military troops in Iraq, it will also increase the private forces by an untold number.
Outfits like Halliburton, DynCorp, Blackwater, L-3, Titan, Custer Battles, Triple Canopy, and Wackenhut are reaping billions of our tax dollars doing military work that the Bush-Cheney Pentagon has outsourced. Not coincidentally, nearly all of these corporations are big-dollar donors to Republicans and/or are run by executives with tight GOP ties.
In part, corporate Iraq assignments provide support services - laundry, meals, delivery of water and gasoline, etc. But a huge part of the military function itself has been privatized in this war - such things as interrogating prisoners (including in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison), training the Iraqi army, guarding the Green Zone and the Baghdad airport, protecting military convoys, analyzing intelligence, and providing paramilitary security forces.
The personnel performing these tasks are not soldiers but hired hands, most of whom lack the training needed to make proper combat judgments, and they operate independently of the military command. "They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath," says a frustrated U.S. officer.
They also get shot, bombed, maimed, and killed. Yet the Bushites, wanting to downplay the negatives, don't count such people in casualty reports. The official number of 3,400 troops killed in Iraq doesn't include any from Bush's contract army. How many of them have died? No one knows the real number, but the Labor Department, which tracks workers compensation claims, has silently recorded 917 contractor deaths. More than 12,000 have been wounded in battle or on the job. These casualties are a hidden toll of this awful war, another measure of its deceit and immorality.
Contractors Galore
Washington is under assault by hordes of corporations that are eagerly dicing up our government into digestible segments and then consuming them through either contracts or outright privatization.
Here are some examples:
* WALL STREET BANKING conglomerates leer lasciviously at our Social Security Fund, eager to grab the hundreds of billions of dollars in fees they could assess for "managing" our accounts in a privatized system.
* BUSH HAS REDUCED FEMA, a onceproud and strong government responder to natural disasters, to a haven for political hacks hurling billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to Halliburton and its ilk for the rescue and rehab of New Orleans - only to see the money disappear and the wreckage remain.
* WHEN THE PENTAGON DECREED a few years ago that the esteemed Walter Reed Army Medical Center was to be substantially privatized, the treatment of wounded vets quickly deteriorated to scandalous levels. The politically connected IAP Worldwide Services company - run by two former Halliburton executives and boasting of having Dan Quayle on its board - was handed a $120 million contract to manage the place (even though IAP had previously botched the delivery of ice to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina - a job that it was contracted to do by FEMA).
* THE CURRENT COLLEGE-LOAN scandal is not merely a matter of some financial-aid offices at universities taking gifts, consulting fees, and stock from big private lenders. Rather, the entire system is scandalous - it's an artificial, privatized lending structure that adds nothing of value to students but greatly increases the cost and complexity of getting student loans that could be made cheaply, simply, honestly, and directly by the Department of Education.
* FEDEX, UPS and the giant corporate mailers are trying to privatize the U.S. Postal Service piece by piece by deregulating the entire postal market, outsourcing the most lucrative postal functions, and abandoning America's principle of universal service for everyone.
Lurita's Lurid Tale
Lurita Doan, who ran a federal contracting company in Virginia and who has been a six-figure donor to Bush and the GOP, was chosen by George last year to head the General Services Administration (GSA). This agency doles out some $56 billion annually in federal contracts and is in charge of policing the contractors. At her confirmation hearing, Doan said she wanted to prove she can run a federal agency like a business - and she has. She's run GSA like Enron.
Just two months after taking office, Doan made a robust attempt to hand a $20,000 no-bid contract to a friend and former business associate, even going so far as to sign the deal personally. Ultimately, GSA's general counsel had to step in and nix this obvious conflict-ofinterest gaffe.'
But Doan kept playing loose with the people's money. Last year, when a technology contract with Sun Microsystems was up for renewal, two GSA contract officers rejected it on the grounds that the corporation was overcharging taxpayers. Doan personally intervened, suggesting that one of the officers was "stressed." She brought in another officer, who promptly approved the renewal - and got a long-coveted transfer to GSA's Denver office.
Then Doan got paranoid, apparently feeling that the agency's independent inspector general (IG) was foiling her enthusiastic efforts to "streamline" the contract-awarding process and to loosen up audits on corporations getting contracts. She chided the IG and, according to notes taken in a staff meeting, compared him and his staff to terrorists! Doan has now proposed cutting $5 million from the IG's audit budget, which is used to detect corporate fraud and waste, and shifting some of his duties to - are you ready for this? - private contractors.
Coalition of Greed
Why is this happening? Paul Light, a New York University professor and expert on public service, points to a coalition of the greedy fueling the growth of what he calls "the hidden workforce of contractors." The contractors, of course, love privatization. Many corporations have been formed (often by former officials in the military or government) just to sup at the federal trough and many subsist wholly on government contracts. Pentagon contractors have grown especially fat on our tax dollars, with the largest, Lockheed-Martin, now receiving more federal funds than the Department of Justice.
At the same time, a huge lobbying force has been built to keep the cash flowing. Each corporation has its own lobbyists, and the contracting industry as a whole has an additional lobbying group, the Professional Services Council, which pushes for still more corporatization of government.
Then there are the politicos in both parties who're eager to show that they are reigning in big government. They shove public tasks into corporate hands in order to create what Light calls "the illusion that [government] is smaller than it actually is." And, of course, there are the political ideologues who push privatization simply as a matter of faith and political correctness, even though there's no evidence that it is cheaper - much less better.
It's on this last point that corporatization ultimately founders. For contractors, the concept of "better" applies strictly to their bottom lines - not to the country. They are out to get theirs, no matter what happens to the rest of us. This is why they've kept the size and scope of the corporate takeover hidden from us. It's also why there's no accountability, no public scrutiny, no analysis of public benefits built into the privatization push - the contractors know that corporatization is not better for America.
Our government is not meant to be a marketplace. It is intended as a democratic forum where the needs and aspirations of ALL the people are addressed. The corporations' grab-all-you-can, survival-of-the-fattest ethos is about serving their interest, not the public's. This is why We the People must expose, challenge, stop, and reverse the corporatization of our public institutions.
Not only are corporations taking over government functions, they are also moving rapidly to take over our essential public assets - from highways to airports. In next month's newsletter, we'll give you the lowdown on who's selling America to whom ... and why.
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