Free Republic

The photographer who shot the picture violated his contract by reselling them to Newsweek. That photographer, Brian Adams, could not immediately be reached, and his agent, Kelly Price, declined to comment, saying, "I keep all of my clients' business private." But a spokeswoman for Runner's World confirms that Adams's contract contained a clause stipulating that his photos of Palin would be under embargo for a period of one year following publication -- meaning until August 2010. "Runner's World did not provide Newsweek with its cover image," the spokeswoman said. "It was provided to Newsweek by the photographer's stock agency, without...

PINELLAS PARK, Fla.- A Florida couple said the homeowners association of their retirement community is trying to evict their 6-year-old granddaughter. Jimmy and Judie Stottler of Pinellas Park said their granddaughter, Kimberly, came to live with them as an infant when authorities took her away from her drug-abusing mother, WSTP-TV, St. Petersburg, Fla., reported Thursday. The girl has stayed with her grandparents in the retirement community since, even though the community's rules don't allow children. The couple said the homeowners association is now pressuring them to comply with the ban on children, but they are unable to move because they...

Earlier this month, the Treasury Department quietly hired three law firms and a consulting firm for advice on restructurings and potential bankruptcies in the auto industry. Treasury did not issue a press release announcing the hirings, even through the contracts with the law firms were among the biggest yet for work on the government's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The deals drew scant coverage beyond trade publications. Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft LLP, Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP and Haynes and Boone LLP got six-month contracts worth as much as $8.59 million each, or $25.8 million total. Reports that the...

There’s a whole lot of wrangling in the news today here in the US about bonuses and contracts and such. I thought it might be a nice idea to put forth this Christian’s opinion on how God views contracts which are synonymous with covenants in my opinion. The first promise God made that I can think of was that He promised not to allow anyone to kill Cain after Cain slew Abel and did God keep that promise? Yep (Genesis 4). The first covenant was with Noah and subsequently all mankind. It is found in Genesis 9 where God promised...

Congresswoman Maloney wants to impose a 100% tax on the recipients of the AIG retention payments. Never mind that this is unconstitutional because it is a bill of attainder (a law aimed at a specific person or group of persons) and a taking without just compensation (others are considering a 98% tax to avoid this issue). What I find most concerning and ironic is that she is willing to say, out loud, that AIG should have merely not made the payments despite the fact that they were contractually obligated to do so. She compares it to GM's renegotiation of its...

All aspects of federal contracting programs favoring minority-owned businesses have been turned upside down by an injunction issued by a judge in San Antonio.

"Worst of all, the power which Congress delegated to the President enabled him to make criminals out of honest American citizens whose crime would consist only of trying to protect themselves from official debasement of their money. In more fundamental terms, Americans henceforth would be "under the gun" for exercising a fundamental, inalienable right: the right to deal with their own property as they saw fit. Gold, no matter what its special characteristics, is, after all, just another form of property."

"If you are like most people, including me, and you've got one house ... it turns out that under current law you can't modify that mortgage if you are in bankruptcy," Obama told a townhall meeting as he campaigned for an $800 billion economic stimulus package being debated by lawmakers. "That makes no sense ... that is forcing a lot of people into foreclosure," Obama said. "This is a piece of legislation that I strongly support."

In July, when heating oil was approaching $5 a gallon and the so-called experts were saying crude was headed to $200 and beyond, millions of homeowners were flipping coins. Heads, they'd commit to pay $4.50 to $4.75 a gallon for heating oil this winter; tails, they'd gamble it wouldn't going to $6 as predicted. In Connecticut, heads came up about 200,000 times. And as soon as those homeowners signed contracts with their suppliers, crude prices crashed 60 percent in less than four months. Today, heating oil can be had for as little as $2.40, c.o.d. As awful as those contracts...

Iraq Cancels Six No-Bid Oil Deals United Press International 9/11/2008 URL: http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=66533 The Iraqi government said it has canceled six oil contracts with foreign companies that were awarded in June in a no-bid arrangement. One-year contracts with Shell, Chevron, Total, BP, ExxonMobil and others, meant to increase Iraqi oil production by a 500,000 barrels a day, were canceled after Democratic U.S. senators complained the deals could interfere with Iraqi efforts to pass an energy policy law and reach a revenue-sharing agreement among Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites, The New York Times reported Thursday. To go ahead with the no-bid contracts "would...

Washington, D.C. - Here's a new reason for taxpayer dismay: There's increasing evidence that companies may be protesting government contract awards as a strategy to negotiate their way into contracts or to derail an award process already in place. ... In February, IBM protested the Federal Bureau of Investigation's award of a $1 billion contract to Lockheed Martin (nyse: LMT - news - people ). Big Blue dropped its dispute two months later when Lockheed announced it would use IBM as a subcontractor.

Efforts by utility regulators to reopen costly long-term electricity supply contracts struck at the height of the California energy crisis were deflected by the U.S. Supreme Court in a ruling yesterday. The decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia sent the case back to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, with instructions to determine if the public interest was harmed by energy supply contracts signed in 2001. The case was filed by Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County, Wash., which entered into a long-term electricity supply contract with the Morgan Stanley Capital Group. As the crisis waned, prices dropped, but...

Iraq's Oil Ministry has approved 35 companies it will allow to bid for soon-to-be announced tenders to develop oil and gas fields. The largest oil companies in the world -- ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Conoco Phillips, Chevron -- all qualified, as did firms of a variety of sizes and nationalities. The announcement Monday on the ministry's Web site is a major move that could bring foreign oil companies en masse into Iraq since the third-largest oil sector in the world was nationalized three decades ago. It takes place as the ministry attempts to increase oil and gas production as a new...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The U.S. State Department's renewal of Blackwater's contract to provide security in Iraq "is bad news," an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said. Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 people, including women and children, last September, prompting an outcry and protest from Iraqi officials. "This is bad news," al-Maliki adviser Sami al-Askari said. "I personally am not happy with this, especially because they have committed acts of aggression, killed Iraqis, and this has not been resolved yet positively for families of victims." About 25,000 private contractors from three companies protect diplomats, reconstruction workers and...

International Business Machines Corp. has been temporarily banned from new business with the federal government and is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia over a contract awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency, the company said Monday.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IBM is under investigation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over an $80 million bid it made in 2006 to modernize EPA financial systems and has been suspended from seeking new contracts with all U.S. agencies, the company said on Monday.

Address only per protocol. www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080308/NEWS01/80308067

A big protest is planned for Monday afternoon, ahead of the latest public hearing on the proposed statewide tollway. Lots of landowners are upset about the state’s plan to build a tollway from Mexico to northeast Texas. There have already been several town hall meetings about the Trans-Texas Corridor. Most of the people who have spoken out about the plan say it will put them out of business. But state officials argue the tollway is necessary to keep up with the growing population in Texas. Monday’s meeting is being held in Huntsville. It starts at 6:30 p.m. at the Walker...

Highways The Texas Department of Transportation plans to let contracts for $4.1 billion in construction in 2008 are in jeopardy after having to return around $950 million to Washington over the past 18 months. The mood in Austin is uncertain, although voters approved Proposition 12 in November, authorizing the next Texas Legislature in 2009 to issue up to $5 billion in bonds (paid from general revenue) to build highway projects. A required independent audit of the Texas Department of Transportation during 2007 recommended that the department “should continue to pursue Comprehensive Development Agreements (CDA) and toll pricing at levels that...

Billions of dollars are pouring into Iraq to fight the war and rebuild the country, and companies are vying for a piece of the action. In some cases, contractors paid kickbacks to military contracting officers to gain the upper hand. For Eric W. Barton of Tennessee, he may have had an Barton is accused of having an affair with Air Force Capt. Sherrie L. Remington, a former contracting officer in charge of awarding some of the lucrative work. The Army claims Barton used a six-month relationship with Remington to his advantage to win at least $2.5 million in contracts for...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19, 2007 – The Defense Department has let contracts for an additional 2,400 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, bringing the total number of the vehicles ordered to 8,800. “We’re going to do everything we can to get as many vehicles in theater as fast as we can,” a senior Pentagon official, speaking on background, said yesterday. The MRAP is designed to survive blasts from improvised explosive devices and armor-piercing IEDs known as explosively formed penetrators or projectiles, the main killers of American servicemembers in Iraq. The vehicles have a V-shaped hull that deflects shrapnel, providing more effective protection for...

BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 — Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of enormous power plants, the Iraqi electricity minister said Tuesday. Word of the project prompted serious concerns among American military officials, who fear that Iranian commercial investments can mask military activities at a time of heightened tension with Iran.

While waiting to be confirmed by the White House for a top civilian post at the Air Force last year, Charles D. Riechers was out of work and wanted a paycheck. So the Air Force helped arrange a job through an intelligence contractor that required him to do no work for the company, according to documents and interviews. For two months, Riechers held the title of senior technical adviser and received about $13,400 a month at Commonwealth Research Institute, or CRI, a nonprofit firm in Johnstown, Pa., according to his resume. But during that time he actually worked for Sue...

LONDON - The chief U.S. missile defense negotiator defended plans to place anti-missile sites in Eastern Europe, saying Wednesday that the system could prevent a war with Iran by building an effective deterrent. "Our intent is to address emerging threats in the Middle East," U.S. Assistant Secretary of State John Rood said in an interview with The Associated Press during a visit to London to attend a conference on defense trade. "Countries like Iran are developing long-range missile systems. And we're concerned not only about the emerging capability but of the hostile intent from countries in the region."

# Story Highlights # Pentagon investigating criminal charges related to $6 billion worth of contracts # Contracts are for equipment and services needed in Iraq and Afghanistan # 90 investigations and 29 audits underway; about half are for procurement fraud # 16 linked to the theft of money or property and violations of U.S. export rule

How does renegotiation of contracts not fall under consideration? How do athletes, etc., get away with renegotiating the contract and why do the institutions not sue for the first contract agreed upon?

WASHINGTON, July 18, 2007 – Thousands of disabled military veterans have enrolled in a governmentwide program that’s designed to help them succeed in new careers as business owners, a Defense Department official said here today. The Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business Office was established at the Pentagon by an October 2004 presidential executive order and federal legislation that stipulates 3 percent of all annual military contracting will go to small businesses operated by service-disabled veterans, Anthony R. Martoccia, director of the office of small business programs at the Pentagon, told veterans’ service organization members during a conference call today. Military...

It’s a big, evil secret behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq - a 100,000 strong mercenary force that the Bush administration has hired to do the U.S. government’s riskiest and dirtiest operations. It works behind the scenes and is virtually above the law. Its name is Blackwater USA -- and it’s a private army with a license to kill. More evil still is the fact that Blackwater USA is run by a multimillionaire Christian fundamentalist who has also bankrolled President Bush’s election campaigns. And what makes the whole exercise so frightening is that American mainstream media - supposedly the champions...

HANOI (AFP) - A Vietnamese man has contracted the deadly bird flu virus, becoming the country's second human case since late 2005, a health official said Saturday. The 19-year-old man tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus early this week after being admitted to the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Hanoi, a doctor there told AFP. The doctor, who asked not to be named, said the victim had been admitted on May 19 and was now in a stable condition. The daily Lao Dong said the patient had been working for a poultry slaughterhouse in the capital before...

The value of federal contracts awarded without competitive bidding has soared since President Bush took office in 2000, according to a new study to be released Monday by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. Federal contracting grew from $203 billion in fiscal 2000 to $377 billion by fiscal 2005. During the same period, the value of federal contracts awarded without competitive bidding more than doubled, from $67 billion to $145 billion, the study found. At the same time, government oversight of contracting has weakened, according to the study's author, Scott Lilly, a senior fellow at the center...

LOS ANGELES -- The California Department of Justice issued a new confidentiality policy Monday spelling out when information on its contracts may be withheld from state records. An Associated Press investigation had found tens of millions of dollars of contracts were improperly shielded from public view. "This policy change will absolutely ensure those things don't happen again," said agency spokesman Nathan Barankin. The AP investigation found that information on scores of Justice Department contracts, many of them let without bids, was erroneously labeled "confidential" and omitted from computerized state records, cloaking it from public sight. The hidden contracts included spending...

One Half of Green Power Contracts Fail "A contractor report prepared for the Energy Commission in 2005 identified renewable energy contract failure as a potentially significant impediment to achieving the state's aggressive renewable energy goals. A subsequent report summarized potentially relevant experience with renewable energy contract failure based on a contract sample of more than 21,500 MW of renewable energy capacity. The data suggest that a minimum failure rate of 20 to 30 percent should generally be expected for large solicitations conducted over multiple years. The likelihood of much higher failure rates is supported by historical experience, especially for projects...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. military contractors can expect to see a robust year in defense work, with the Pentagon's supplemental budget expected to balloon by 50 percent to roughly $99.7 billion next year, defense industry analysts say. The Defense Department is expected to submit its fiscal year 2007 supplemental budget request to Congress for approval in February. Initial estimates suggest the total fiscal budget for 2007 could reach $640 billion, including a $99.7 billion supplemental request and $70 billion in bridge funding. Defense companies like General Dynamics Co., Lockheed Martin Corp., Raytheon Co., Alliant TechSystems Inc., DRS Technologies Inc., L-3...

As if you need another reason to love Iggy Pop, the veteran rocker (and his band The Stooges) have the single most entertaining concert rider TSG has ever obtained. The document--all 18 pages of which you'll find below--describes Iggy's requirements in terms of amplifiers, security, lighting, stage set up, and dressing rooms. But unlike most similar documents, Iggy's rider is written in a rollicking, stream-of-consciousness fashion that delivers multiple laughs per page. Apparently written by roadie Jos Grain, the Iggy rider is peppered with witty gems, tasteless asides, and typos. For example, in describing how Iggy's dressing room should be...

Saddam wanted nukes -and - no matter what the world did,went back time, and time again in an effort to obtain them. This is a brief history, with links to some material you may have never seen before.

HALIFAX (CP) - Boeing Corp. will win a controversial contract to provide heavy-lift transport planes and helicopters to Canada's military because it can deliver the aircraft faster than competitors, company officials claimed Saturday. Officials with the Chicago-based aerospace giant made the assertion Saturday, during tours of the C-17 transport plane at a Halifax-area air show. Len Tavernetti, a senior manager in charge of marketing the C-17, said Boeing was likely to win the $8-billion contract by next spring. "As we understand . . . there was no other aircraft that could meet the timeline with the same capabilities," said Tavernetti,...

Whistle-blower says Halliburton overcharged for Iraqi recreation

Total Purchases: $388,017,686,748 Fiscal 2005 Contract Awards Rank Parent Company Total $ DoD $ Civilian $ DoD Rank Civil. Rank 1 Lockheed Martin Corp. $26,312,273,206 $20,016,273,528 $6,295,999,676 1 1 2 Boeing Co. 21,347,810,866 18,890,249,207 2,457,561,658 2 5 3 Northrop Grumman Corp. 15,632,683,034 13,742,026,915 1,890,656,119 3 7 4 General Dynamics Corp. 11,527,395,499 11,182,583,664 344,811,834 4 38 5 Raytheon Co. 9,953,128,166 9,444,816,263 508,311,901 5 23 6 Halliburton Co. 6,099,064,859 5,956,162,998 142,901,860 6 84 7 L-3 Communications Holdings 5,341,120,624 4,849,615,503 491,505,120 8 25

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation Wednesday implementing a contract with California's largest state employee union that includes an average pay raise between 7.8 percent and 9.8 percent over two years. The Republican governor also signed a bill installing a union contract with a similar wage increase for 12,000 highway maintenance workers, heavy-equipment operators and state employees in other related fields. Under the deal struck in June between state negotiators and the Service Employees International Union Local 1000, the 87,000-member labor group retained its current health care package for most members, in addition to the two-year raise and a $1,000 one-time...

The Army has awarded its five-year, $5 billion Worldwide Satellite Systems contract to six vendors. The award winners include two large businesses—Boeing Co. and General Dynamics Corp.—and four small businesses: DataPath of Duluth, Ga.; D&SCI of Eatontown, N.J.; Globecomm Systems of Hauppauge, N.Y.; and TeleCommunications Systems of Annapolis, Md. Under the indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract, each vendor is required to bring turnkey commercial satellite systems and associated support services for satellite terminals, including all hardware, software, services and data to operate the terminals. Both Defense and non-DOD agencies can order from the contract. Army officials say WWSS products and services will support...

The government awarded 70 percent of its contracts for Hurricane Katrina work without full competition, wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process, says a House study released Thursday by Democrats. The report, a comprehensive overview of government audits on Katrina contracting, found that out of $10.6 billion in contracts awarded after the storm last year, more than $7.4 billion were handed out with limited or no competitive bidding. In addition, 19 contracts worth $8.75 billion were found to have wasted taxpayer money at least in part, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the report....

Gun maker seeks U.S. Army contract Bloomberg News Published: August 22, 2006 WASHINGTON Smith & Wesson, fresh from winning military contracts in Afghanistan, now wants a bigger prize back home: a U.S. Army deal worth as much as $500 million that would be its biggest defense order ever. The largest U.S. handgun company, which makes the .44 Magnum popularized in Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" movies, will bid on a contract to make about 645,000 of its .45-caliber pistols over the next 10 years, the chief executive, Michael Golden, said in an interview. Beretta of Italy has the current Army contract,...

WASHINGTON – Eight months after former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham confessed to taking massive bribes in exchange for providing at least $230 million in questionable defense and intelligence contracts, the Defense Department inspector general still has not determined whether any of those projects were improper. This week, the Pentagon announced that it would not renew one contract related to the scandal. But officials have been tight-lipped about the status of other taxpayer-funded work that may have been tainted, including a secret counterintelligence program. In fact, although several other Defense Department public affairs personnel and a congressional press aide have said...

WASHINGTON, July 17, 2006 – The United States has contracted a commercial ship to assist in a possible mass evacuation of Americans from Lebanon, a Defense Department spokesman said here today. The cruise ship Orient Queen is expected to arrive in the area of operations sometime tomorrow, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. The ship can accommodate hundreds of passengers and may be used to ferry U.S. evacuees from the port of Beirut to the island of Cyprus. The U.S. Navy destroyer USS Gonzalez has been tasked to escort the Orient Queen as a force-protection measure, Whitman said. A number of...

From Citizen Kane to All the President's Men, Hollywood has enjoyed an enduring love affair with newspapers. But now that relationship seems to be cooling. As film studios have undergone their own strains in recent years, they have increasingly turned away from newspaper advertising.During the first quarter of the year - the busiest time for film industry advertising because of the seasonal awards - spending on newspapers was $233m, according to the Newspaper Association of America, an industry trade group. That marked a steady decline from the same period three years ago, when newspapers hauled in $310m from Hollywood.For most...

The army has decided to end a controversial multibillion-dollar contract with Halliburton, the oil services company, to provide logistics support to US forces in Iraq. Under a new contracting scheme, to be launched late this year, three contractors will be used for the army's contracted logistics work, such as providing meals, washing clothes, transporting fuel and delivering mail. An additional contract will be awarded to a single company to manage the workload. Army officials said the change would improve planning and accountability, and provide better contingency options if one contractor performed poorly. But the shift comes amid charges from government...

Former Army reservist will admit guilt in bidding scheme related to Iraq reconstruction. _____ WASHINGTON--A former U.S. Army Reserve officer from Spotsylvania County has agreed to plead guilty to playing a key role in a kickback scheme that steered millions of dollars in Iraq-reconstruction contracts to one businessman. Bruce D. Hopfengardner, 46, served as a special adviser to the U.S.-led occupation forces, recommending funding for projects on law-enforcement facilities in Iraq. Documents filed yesterday in U.S. District Court said that Hopfengardner will plead guilty to conspiring with Philip H. Bloom, a U.S. citizen with businesses in Romania, Robert J. Stein,...

The Central Intelligence Agency has warned former employees not to have unapproved contacts with reporters, as part of a mounting campaign by the administration to crack down on officials who leak information on national security issues. A former official said the CIA recently warned several retired employees who have consulting contracts with the agency that they could lose their pensions by talking to reporters without permission. He added that while the threats might be legally "hollow," they were having a chilling effect on former employees. The CIA called the allegations "rubbish". Jennifer Millerwise Dyke, spokeswoman for CIA director Porter Goss,...

Prime minister has said that he will look for the needs of the people in putting his government program, and will take his voice from the voices of the Iraqis. He threatened that he will take revenge from terrorists, condemning killings and displacement events.This came in a meeting with the delegate of Congress yesterday in which he showed that his government will work to allow investments and rebuilding projects, and finding job opportunities for Iraqis to improve their living standers. He added that the government will emphasize on the concept of national unity government to apply constitution and make Iraq...

The Tampa Port Authority gave the green light Tuesday to sign a contract with the British company at the center of the controversy over its sale to a business based in the United Arab Emirates based on concerns it may threaten U.S. homeland security. Amid growing criticism of a deal to give a United Arab Emirates company a major presence in U.S. ports, Tampa Port Authority commissioners took a different tack Tuesday. They authorized port director Richard Wainio to sign a contract to bring the British company at the center of the controversy to Tampa to run cargo handing at...