So POGO had it wrong, the enemy ain't us. POGO is the enemy. That's his trash. Democrats are always quick to generously share their guilty culpability...
Although House Democrats have hardly been united in recent days, some are still capable of acting in unison. One excellent example: the Dems of Armed Services Committee, all 28 of them, have banded together to push panel chairman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) to reinstate a special subcommittee dedicated to oversight and investigations of the Pentagon.
The panel was shut down under the Republicans, they say, and it's high time to restart it. Hunter, however, is mightily resisting the idea.
Any wonder why? Set aside his own troubles as a target in the Cunningham fraud investigation. According to POGO, Hunter -- who's never been a particularly toothy watchdog of Pentagon activities -- has for several years co-owned a cabin in rural Virginia with a Rumsfeld confidante and senior Pentagon official.
For the past five years, Preston M. “Pete” Geren III has been kind of a top-shelf fix-it guy for Rumsfeld, POGO's Jason Vest reports. From 2001 to 2005, Hunter's co-homeowner was a special assistant to the Defense Secretary whose duties included "keeping Congress off Rumsfeld's back," according to one of Vest's anonymous sources. In particular, Geren is said to have been tasked with quashing Hill interest in the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Since then, Geren served briefly as secretary of the Air Force before taking the job of Undersecretary of the Army in February.
With friends like these, Hunter may wonder, who needs oversight?
___________________________________________________________
It has been nearly five months since Justice Department prosecutors working the Duke Cunningham corruption case first requested information from three key House committees. To date, they haven't got a scrap of paper in return, nor a single interview with a staffer, Roll Call's John Bresnahan reports today.
In May, if you recall, anonymous Hill denizens whined to the media that if they really tried to comply, Congress would "shut down."
DoJ wants information stretching back to 1997, and requests that broad could lead them to knock on many new doors. Independent reports have already confirmed that as offshoots of the Cunningham probe, the DoJ is looking into Reps. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Ken Calvert (R-CA), Katherine Harris (R-FL), and possibly others, as well as former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) -- and, of course, Cunningham himself.
___________________________________________________________ Wanna smell something fishy?
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) -- one of the five lawmakers known to be under investigation as part of the Cunningham scandal -- is forcing the Pentagon to spend nearly $26 million on a giant killer catamaran, "despite strong objections from the Navy," reports CongressDaily this morning.
That gets us to the water's edge -- but here's the stinking fish smell, courtesy of POGO: The boat is made by Titan Corp., who uses as a lobbyist Letitia White, the former staffer for Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) who now works at the Copeland Lowery lobby firm. (White, Lewis, and the firm are all under scrutiny as part of the Cunningham investigation.)
Hunter has also pushed the Navy to buy $27 million worth of Titan missiles which don't fly right, POGO says. I wonder if the feds are looking into this one?
The recent resignation of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Rancho Santa Fe, has focused the spotlight once again on the reprehensible ways that defense contractors work with lawmakers to win fat contracts for their services, whether they help the nation's defense or not.
Cunningham's bribe-taking was repulsive. But one of the biggest problems in contractors' and congressmen's mutual back-scratching isn't Duke-style corruption. It is what's perfectly legal.
This was underlined by the Union-Tribune article, "Contractor a master of gaining political access," by Dean Calbreath and Jerry Kammer. It detailed how Cunningham and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, worked closely with two local companies – ADCS Inc. of Poway and Audre Inc. of Rancho Bernardo – to make the Pentagon pay for converting printed documents to computer files. They and a few other lawmakers got Congress to allocate $190 million for "automated data conversion" projects from 1993 to 2001.
Did the Pentagon want this "help"? No. As a 1994 General Accounting Office report noted, it already had the tools for such work.
But Cunningham, Hunter and their House allies didn't care. Audre and ADCS were generous with contributions – and ADCS executive Brent Wilkes allegedly was bribing Cunningham. No matter who griped, lawmakers could always add "earmarks" for pet projects to bills and get their way. This led to such absurdities as a $9.7 million contract for ADCS to digitize historical documents from the Panama Canal Zone that the Pentagon considered insignificant.
This isn't governance. This is looting.
Hunter disagrees. In a phone interview, he said there was support within the Pentagon for such projects, citing several official letters praising Audre's technology or endorsing automated document conversion. He said his fighting for contracts to go to San Diego-area firms is what congressmen do.
But the preponderance of evidence shows defense officials objected to document conversion spending and saw it as ridiculous. That should have carried the day – with Hunter or any lawmaker trying to bring home the bacon.
Instead, the prevailing attitude was that when you have hundreds of billions of dollars to divvy up, everyone should get a piece – and if the Joint Chiefs of Staff think the military's bucks should go toward protecting soldiers and not the pointless preservation of old documents, well, tough luck.
This is no way to run a government. Forget the fatalistic argument that pork is an inevitable part of the legislative process. Just once it would be nice to hear a lawmaker declare he wouldn't vote to spend one dime on a military project that the Pentagon didn't request – or hear a president vow to veto every defense spending bill inflated by the legislative looters.
The status quo is revolting. If only it would inspire a voter revolt. A few more stories like the one about Cunningham, Hunter and the document conversion follies, and it just might.
And I didn't even have to go back to 1997!
Any reason why you can’t start a different thread with that?
LOL. Weak sister, you have to do better than that.
So POGO had it wrong, the enemy ain't us. POGO is the enemy. That's his trash. Democrats are always quick to generously share their guilty culpability...