US politics – Page 40

Cui Boeing-o?

Published on October 17, 2007

Bush at Boeing 2004

Times and others:

‘Suicide’ casts shadow over USAF links to defence contractor

Charles Riechers, deputy head of the Air Force’s multibillion-dollar procurement budget, is believed to have committed suicide amid controversy over his links to a defence contractor. Mr Riechers, who was found dead at his home in Virginia over the weekend, joined the USAF procurement team in January after his confirmation had been held up by the US Senate for two months.

During those two months Mr Riechers, who had served in the USAF for 20 years, worked for a defence advice company, Commonwealth Research Institute (CRI). According to reports, the $13,400-a-month (£6,600- a-month) job was arranged by the USAF as a favour while the Senate considered Mr Riechers’s confirmation. Quoted last month in The Washington Post, Mr Riechers said: “I really didn’t do anything for CRI. I got a pay cheque from them.”

A USAF spokesman said that it would co-operate with county officials who were investigating the death of Mr Riechers, but that the matter was “a civilian, not a military, one”. The arrangement has come under scrutiny from politicians concerned about this relationship. The case received additional attention last week when Pemco Aviation, another defence company, amended a legal challenge to a contract won by Boeing to mention CRI and its parent Concurrent Technologies.

Pemco is challenging a $1.2 billion contract awarded by the USAF to Boeing for the maintenance of air-refuelling tankers. Reuters said yesterday that Pemco was claiming that Boeing had close ties to Concurrent, so there might have been a conflict of interest in the hiring of Mr Riechers.

The USAF’s not having a lot of luck with their procurement officials, is it? Remember Reichers’ predecessor Darleen Druyun?

By George Cahlink
gcahlink@govexec.com
October 1, 2004

Darleen Druyun, former No. 2 acquisition executive for the Air Force, was sentenced to nine months in prison on Friday for negotiating a job with Boeing at the same time she was involved in contracts with the company, the nation’s second-largest Defense contractor.

Druyun, 56, will serve nine months at a minimum security prison and another seven months at a halfway house or on home detention. She also was fined $5,000 and ordered to perform 150 hours of community service. Sentencing guidelines could have required Druyun to serve up to 16 months in prison.

Federal District Court Judge T.S. Ellis called the “stain of this offense very severe,” particularly while the nation was at war. Ellis agreed to allow Druyun to serve her sentence in South Carolina, where she plans to retire with her husband.

As part of the plea agreement, Druyun admitted that she did “favor the Boeing Company in certain negotiations as the result of her employment negotiations and other favors provided by Boeing to the defendant.” Previously, Druyun had admitted to negotiating a post-government job with Boeing, but steadfastly maintained that she had never favored them at the negotiating table.

Prosecutors said Druyun admitted to favoring the defense contractor after failing a lie detector test this summer. She also confessed to altering a personal journal to make it appear that there were no conflicts with Boeing.

Druyun’s plea agreement outlined four specific contract negotiations where she favored Boeing:

Druyun agreed to a higher price than appropriate for a proposed deal to lease 100 tanker planes from Boeing, which she called “a parting gift” to her future employer. She also shared a competitor’s proprietary data with Boeing.
In 2002, Druyun awarded $100 million to Boeing as part of a restructuring of the NATO Airborne Warning and Control System contract. She said the payment could have been lower, but she favored Boeing because her daughter and son-in-law worked there and she was considering work there as well.

In 2001, Druyun oversaw a $4 billion award to Boeing to modernize the avionics on C-130 J aircraft. She admitted she favored Boeing over four competitors because the company had given her son-in-law a job.

In 2000, Druyun agreed to pay $412 million to Boeing as a settlement over a clause in a C-17 aircraft contract. She admitted to favoring the payment because her son-in-law was seeking a job with Boeing.
Officials with the watchdog group Project for Government Oversight lauded the conviction.

“The Druyun case is offering an unusual view of just how cozy the Pentagon and defense contractors have become,” said POGO Senior Defense Investigator Eric Miller. “Her supplemental plea filed with the federal court on Friday details an even sleazier story than we could have imagined.”

“The Pentagon has been saying Ms. Druyun was a tough negotiator,” Miller continued. “Ironically, while she was working for the Air Force, as we initially suspected, she was actually negotiating on behalf of Boeing.”

The tanker purchase is now up for discussion in Congress again and there are fears that the USAF is trying to slant the process unfairly in favour of Boeing, again. Boeing is the red thread here, that and its relationship with the Bush administration and the Pentagon, which has been very cosy, particularly so during the 2004 election campaign:

Bush visit raises $2.4 million for Republican Party

After landing Friday afternoon at Boeing Field in Seattle, Bush said European nations should end their subsidies of Boeing rival Airbus. He declared the United States is prepared to take action before the World Trade Organization to stop them.

Bush made the comments after meeting with Boeing executives and employees in a company hangar.

The relationship is cosy enough even for a little espionage not to disrupt it. For instance, whatever happened to this Boeing radar scientist suspected of spying for Israel?? I don’t ever recall hearing of a charge or trial:

FBI Investigating Boeing Scientist
October 19, 2006 9:00 AM

Vic Walter and Eric Longabardi Report:

Agents in the FBI’s foreign counterintelligence unit have opened a criminal investigation into the handling of classified material by a senior scientist at Boeing.

The scientist, Abraham Lesnik, of suburban Los Angeles, works in the development of anti-missile systems for aircraft and holds a Department of Defense security clearance of Secret, Special Access, according to his resume filed in court papers.

The FBI has conducted three separate searches of Lesnik’s home in Valley Village, Calif., according to Lesnik’s lawyer, Marc Harris.
Investigators in the case say Lesnik’s Boeing laptop computer has been turned over to the FBI after questions were raised as to whether classified data ended up in the hands of unauthorized individuals including foreigners.

Lesnik’s lawyer says his client “has never improperly transmitted any classified information to anyone.”

Lesnik’s neighbors say FBI agents have been conducting a 24-hour surveillance of his home for the past few weeks.

An FBI spokesperson confirmed search warrants had been served but said the affidavits filed with the court were sealed, and no other information on the case could be made public.

Boeing spokesperson Walt Rice tells ABC News, “Boeing is cooperating with U.S. Government investigators in this case, and as such, we cannot comment further.”

Odd.

While we’re on the subject of dirty tricks, at least $1500 of the money Bush raised at that Boeing visit went to fund skullduggery like the GOP’s fake ‘sex offender in your neighborhood’ cards in Washington State.

But back to those tankers and Reicher’s death.

If the Northrop Grumman team wins, most of the work would be done in Mobile, Ala. But engineering, management and some support services would be based in Melbourne.

If the Boeing team wins, most of the work would be done in Everett, Wash., and Wichita, Kan. Some of the work by Boeing and its suppliers would be in Florida, focused in cities such as Clearwater and Stuart.

There’s a lot resting on this tanker deal.

Why did Reichers kill himself, if indeed he did die by his own hand? That has yet to be proven, even though the wire services confidently asserted it was suicide within hours of the event’s announcement. If he did kill himself, was it from fear of prosecution or exposure or jail? If he didn’t, I ask again – who benefits?

Comment of The Day

Published on October 12, 20072 Comments

Is by heliograph at Digby, on the sheer viciousness being shown by the Right against the idea of healthcare for poor children:

What we are seeing play out here are the politics of resenting the poor, sick, and injured, which have their roots deep in the principles of Social Darwinism and the ensuing Eugenics movement. People who think of themselves as naturally superior (in this case, right-wing Republicans) resent having to pay for, think about, or otherwise deal with the inferior (people who get sick, have genetically-based conditions, or get into accidents — by definition, such people are inferior losers, plus, they tend to vote for Democrats, which is further evidence of their inferiority).

Areader above has tapped into the core philosphy of this Social Darwinism, via Charles Dickens’ quote about “decreasing the surplus population.” In the mid- to late 19th century, turning one’s back on the ill and poor was couched in terms of letting nature run its course — any intervention by society was seen as un-natural and leading to a proliferation of inferior genes.

Today, denying financial assistance to the needy, ill, or injured is couched by the right wing in terms of free market principles and a philosophy of limited government. But it’s still social Darwinism, and it still has at is base the idea that the superior members of society (the well off, and those who fancy themselves someday as being well off — think Republicans) are doing nature and society a favor by denying help to the needy.

Of course this kind of Social Darwinism in the 19th century led to the Eugenics Movement, which culminated in the unspeakable atrocities of the German National Socialist regime ca. 1933 to 1945. The right wing bloggers and their mainstream beneficiaries and enablers know that today they can’t come out and say what’s really on their minds — i.e., that the poor and injured and sick probably don’t deserve to live at all — so they phrase their thoughts in terms of saying that the poor and injured and sick don’t deserve to be helped by taxpayers and they don’t deserve to live a comfortable life. It would be a little too rash to advocate cutting off health care to “decrease the surplus population.” So instead they advocate making the surplus population suffer by proposing that they sell their houses and businesses, eat cheaper food, give up private schools, forego certain kinds of furniture, autombiles, counter-tops, whatever. But the 21st century hateful outbursts of Malkin et al. basically reflect the same core philosophy as mid-19th century Social Darwinism: Society will be better off if we don’t help these chiseling, undeserving bastards who manage to get poor, sick, or injured.

Check out this poster from the Nazi-era Eugenics movement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Ima…ePropaganda.jpg

[See above]

It shows a disabled, elderly man and, in advocating for euthansia of the elderly, has this caption:

“60000 RM [Reichsmarks] —

This is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the Community of Germans during his lifetime.

Fellow German, that is your money, too”

Someone explain to me please the difference between the sentiments expressed in this poster, and what we’ve seen posted by Malkin et al. over the past several days as they’ve set out to destroy a 12 year-old boy whose only crime was to get injured, accept help, and then advocate that the fortunate should help the unfortunate.
heliograph | 10.12.07 – 2:49 am | #

Differences? There are no differences except those of time and place. Maybe Malkin should keep in mind that alleged Pastor Neimoller quote (I paraphrase wildly)

“First they came for the sick ~~children~~ parasites, then they came for the moonbats, then they came for the anchor babies…”

Cry Me A F****ing River

Published on October 8, 2007

Meghan O'Sullivan. former model and Bush Iraq adviser, wants your sympathy

I read this article by uber Beltway insider Peter Baker in the Washington Post yesterday and I was astonished and angry at its effrontery. The enablers of George Bush and Dick Cheney’s homicidal madness want us to feel sorry for them because they feel a bit bad about what they did? And Baker thinks this is reasonable?

I don’t think so.

It had been four days since Meghan O’Sullivan left her job at the White House. Just four days since she gave up her Secret Service pass, her classified hard drive and her entree to the president. Four days since she gave up any day-to-day responsibility for Iraq.

Too soon, evidently, for the dreams to end. “In fact, I was dreaming about Iraq last night,” she said. “And I woke up and thought, ‘When do you think this will stop?’ ”

Well for some, it never will – and I hope it never stop for you either, Meghan.. I hope you never have a quiet night’s sleep ever again.

Personally I’d like to see every member of the White House staff appointed by this administration strapped to spiked chairs 24/7, with their eyelids propped open, made to watch the Abu Ghraib tapes and listen to the screams of tortured children, the children whose shrieks of agony they are responsible for – but I think there’re too many of them that would enjoy it.

Karl Rove feels guilty for leaving in a time of war, yet he wants to reinvent himself as more than simply “the Bush guy.” Peter H. Wehner rues lost friendships with those estranged by the war. Dan Bartlett is relieved to shed the burden of worrying that any day could bring another terrorist attack.

They left for different reasons — new professional opportunities, a gentle or not-so-gentle nudge, young kids, the hope of having young kids — but the cumulative exodus of so many key people at once has transformed the White House as it heads into the dwindling months of the Bush presidency. Rove and Bartlett are gone, and so are their fellow Texans, Harriet E. Miers and Alberto R. Gonzales. Tony Snow, Sara M. Taylor, Rob Portman, J.D. Crouch, Peter D. Feaver, J. Scott Jennings and a host of others have left.

There is so much turnover that on one recent Friday there were four farewell parties or last-day exits. Bush poses for so many Oval Office photos with departing aides it feels like an assembly line. Officials said the transition is a function of so many aides having stayed longer than in past White Houses. “When you look at the people who are leaving, these are people who have been here since the beginning,” said Liza Wright, who herself left last month as White House personnel director. “And it’s a killer of a job.”

I think the author may have got those words garbled. Not “it’s a killer of a job” – more like ‘the killers are on the job”.

What the hell is this article? Is it not the job of the fourth estate, the other check and balance, to hold government to account? Since when has it been the job of the Washington Post to curry sympathy for war criminals?

One former senior official said nearly everyone who has left the administration is angry in some way or another — at the president for making bad decisions, at his staff for misguiding him, at events that have spiraled out of control

They’re angry? Sheesh.

But then what can you expect from one half of yet another Washington Village insider power couple, but an apologia for this gang of murdering redneck yahoos in suits? As the first to break the story Baker certainly advanced their cause during the Clinton/Leinsky affair: why should now be any different? As we all know, a blowjob is worse, much worse, than a million dead – a million dead’s a mere bagatelle that you can just feel a little bitter about – compared tio actual White House fornication, it’s nothing.

Baker served as the Post’s White House correspondent covering the Clinton Administration. During this time he co-wrote the original story on the Lewinski investigation and went on to become the Post’s lead writer on the scandal and impeachment battle. Baker went on to author the New York Times bestseller, “The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton.” Baker started with the Washington Post in 1988 as part of its Virginia staff. Prior to the Post, he worked at the Washington Times.

[My emphasis.]

Well, there you go: yet another beltway insider making his own reality. There have been questions asked about not just the tone but the substance of Baker’s reporting, not only on Clinton/Lewinsky but on the current administration and its lies. The man just sucks up Bushco spin like it was mother’s milk.

But as always, the DC Village looks after its own, even it means denying reality.

To have to publicly admit that what Bushco has done and what Baker’s condoned with his reporting, well, the cognitive dissonance alone could make Baker’s head explode. Therefore he appears to feel compelled to sanitise the record with an appeal to sympathy, a human interest story – in asking for undersanding for the war criminals, he’s asking for understanding and sympathy for himself, their enabler.

Matt Yglesias, though I’m not generally a fan of his, does have an apt phrase for this kind of revisionism on the fly: he calls it legacywashing.

But there’ll be no legacywashing at the Hague, not if we the electorate have anything to say about it, which remains to be seen – but if we have our way, useful idiots and propagandists like Baker and his ilk will be right up there on the stand with the criminal Meghan O’Sullivans and David Addingtons, as co-accused.

Not The Justice League of America

Published on October 4, 2007

The sooner Democratic supporters get that through their heads the better.

Democrats ?Justice League of America

You’d think, wouldn’t you, that after the warcrimes of Iraq and Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, after the warrantless wiretapping of its own citizens, and the theft of an election, that the congressional Democrats would be taking a long, hard look at any candidate for Attorney General that Bush might’ve nominated. A reasonable person might consider that the very fact that Bush, a known criminal and liar, nominated him or her should be sufficient to put a confirmation on indefinite hold.

You’d be wrong.

This is the man, Michael Mukasey, that the Democrats have agreed is a fit person to be potentially in charge of of the impartial administration of federal justice and to be the arbiter of the legality of all executive actions:the judge who took away habeas corpus.

Dealing with terrorists

“Michael Mukasey was the chief judge of U.S. District Court in Manhattan from 1987 thru 2006. President Reagan appointed him to the bench. He was the judge of the 1995 trial of 10 militant Muslims who were convicted of a plot to blow up the United Nations and other landmarks around the city. He should be better known however as the first judge to rule on Jose Padilla after his arrest. He ruled that President Bush did have the authority to hold Mr. Padilla as an enemy combatant without charging him for a crime.[4] But he also ruled that the government must allow Mr. Padilla to see his attorneys.

Supports torture

In October 2001, Judge Mukasey “dismissed concerns by a 21-year old Jordanian immigrant that he had been beaten while in U.S. custody, leaving bruises that were hidden beneath his orange prison jumpsuit.”[8] “‘As far as the claim that he was beaten, I will tell you that he looks fine to me,’ said Judge Mukasey.”[9]

Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff reported in the October 1, 2007, issue[10] “that in recent private meetings with ‘hard-liners,’ Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey reassured conservatives that he was committed to the Bush administration’s right-wing ideology:

“According to three sources, who asked not to be named discussing the private meetings, Mukasey said that he saw ‘significant problems’ with shutting down Guantánamo Bay and that he understood the need for the CIA to use some ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques against Qaeda suspects. Mukasey also signaled reluctance with naming a special prosecutor to investigate Bush-administration misconduct, according to one participant.”[11]
[edit]

“Terror trials hurt the nation even when they lead to convictions.”

In an August 22, 2007, Wall Street Journal op-ed, Mukasey[12] “argues that ‘Terror trials hurt the nation even when they lead to convictions’,” ArgusRun wrote in The Daily Kos.[13] “Not because they involve detainees who have been tortured or mistreated, or secret information not available to the defense. No, this respected jurist does not care about the damage done to the rule of law or our constitutional protections. Rather, he is terrified that the trials give valuable information to the terrorists.”

“Mukasey is obviously just what the Justice Department needs to restore Americans’ confidence in their legal system: A judge who does not have confidence in our legal system,” Argus Run commented.[13]
[edit]

Defended Patriot Act

“In a 2004 speech accepting the Learned Hand Medal for Excellence in Federal Jurisprudence, Judge Mukasey delivered a defense of the controversial counter-terrorism law.[14]

“I think one would have to concede that the USA Patriot Act has an awkward, even Orwellian, name, which is one of those Washington acronyms derived by calling the law ‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Interrupt and Obstruct Terrorism.’ You get the impression they started with the acronym first, and then offered a $50 savings bond to whoever could come up with a name to fit. Without offering my view on any case or controversy, current or future, I think that that awkward name may very well be the worst thing about the statute.”

[edit]

Joined at the hip with Giuliani
[edit]
Battling crime in New York

Michael Mukasey was “an assistant U.S. attorney and head of the official corruption unit” when Rudolph W. Giuliani was U.S. Attorney in New York. “To prepare for trials, Giuliani practiced his cross-examinations on Mukasey, who would portray the witness.”[15]

In 1985, when Mukasey was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Giuliani “was coming under intense criticism for his aggressive tactics in prosecuting organized crime, including his use of mass trials, his habit of holding defendants without bail and his practice of subpoenaing defense lawyers to testify at their clients’ grand jury hearings, which lawyers argued was a violation of client confidentiality.

“Springing to Giuliani’s defense was a former colleague, Michael B. Mukasey, who argued in a strongly worded opinion piece that Giuliani’s tough tactics were justified to defeat an enemy that, he said, was far more dangerous and powerful than Giuliani’s critics were willing to acknowledge,” Alec MacGillis reported September 18, 2007, in the Washington Post.[16]

[edit]

Swore Giuliani in as NYC Mayor

On January 2, 1994, Judge Michael Mukasy swore in now Republican 2008 presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani as Mayor of New York City.[17]

“When Giuliani was elected mayor of New York in 1993 and 1997, Judge Mukasey presided at his friend’s swearing-in. In fact, one of the ceremonies was held at Mukasey’s own Manhattan apartment.”[15]

[edit]

Justice Advisory Committee

Michael Mukasey and his son, Marc L. Mukasey (see below),[18] both partners (Michael prior, Mark current) in Giuliani’s law firm, are both members of Giuliani’s Justice Advisory Committee.[19][20]

There’s more, much more…

Those who want actual change in America aren’t going to find it via any Democrat.

Either Dems’ve been pressured (it’s not just hippies get wiretapped) or they really do not give a shit anymore for anything except short-term political self-interest or they’ve just gone “Oh, it’s only another 15 months, what the hell, saves hassle”. Any one of those reasons is enough to prove they’ve totally abdicated their responsibility to their country.

An electorate that allows their Democratic representatives to continue to cave in to Bush and the far-right, over and over again, and who then continue to donate to and vote for them, deserves everything it gets as a consequence. America was a great political experiment, once. It’s very sad to anyone who believes in liberty and equality to see it fall apart like this.

Arbeid Macht Freiheit

Published on October 2, 20073 Comments

Corrupt Bush crony corporation ~~Mercenaries R Us~~ Blackwater International and their head honcho Erik Prince are in the Senate spotlight at the moment and the media is finally catching up with what bloggers have been saying about them since the invasion – not that bloggers’ll get any credit.

But you only had to look at their bloody logo to see what they are, as Gaylord Sundheim graphically points out at Inhuman Interest:

Brownshirts, 21st Century-style

I can tell you this:: I’m not even a liberal, and Blackwater is about as fucking sketchy as sketchy can be.

And someone working there knows their fascist symbolism, guaran-damn-tee you. See below:

Can you guess which logo is Blackwater’s? *

For an extra jolt of distinctly teutonic imagery such as Himmler might have admired, check out the Wayback Machine’s file on Blackwater associate company Greystone Ltd. Their original brochure is a treat, too.

Oh, and Erik Prince, the far-right Christian billionaire behind the whole Blackwater/Greystone deal has been associated with the Bush family for years in some way.

I’m sure Dubya’s granddaddy Prescott would approve.

How very coincidental that Erik Prince is also closely associated with the far-right supporting Freiheit Foundation:

While Prince’s family has contributed greatly to religious right groups, Prince’s foundation has primarily funded conservative Catholic or evangelical organizations that do not have clear ties to the religious right. A major exception is the Freiheit Foundation’s $500,000 grant to ex-Watergate felon Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship, an evangelical ministry operating within the United States’ prison system and receiving financial backing from a variety of religious right funders.

[…]

Prince has also provided $195,000 to the Institute for World Politics, a graduate school in Washington DC offering training in “statecraft” by examining diplomacy, military strategy, the formation of opinion, and other such topics taught by former government officials from the Department of Defense, Central Intelligence Agency, and other such agencies as well as private institutions such as the American Enterprise Institute. Like the American Enterprise Institute, the Institute for World Politics promotes a foreign policy in line with that of the Bush administration—a policy that has functioned to help Blackwater earn government contracts and to increase Prince’s own fortune.

*It’s the bear claw. Of course it could just represent Prince’s big love of doughnuts…

OOPS NEARLY FORGOT:

Blackwater have just been awarded the contract for US domestic drug enforcement. Be afraid.