Study: Waste Could Fund up to 45,000 Years of White House Tours
A study from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) shows the federal government's needless spending and costly regulations waste over $42 billion dollars–enough to fund up to 45,000 years of White House tours.After the White House announced that its public tours would be one of the first government functions to be shut down due to the budget sequester's slowdown of spending increases, conservatives have highlighted government spending on inconsequential projects ranging anywhere from puppet research to snail sex.
The NRCC has compiled a "waste list" totaling $42,642,721,597 from its findings. Some of its expenditures include:
- Dancing iPhone robots–$547,430: "Part of a $547,430 grant from the National Science Foundation went to the development of a dancing robot that connects to an iPhone."
- Talking urinal cakes–$10,000: "Federal funds were used to purchase 400 anti-drunk driving talking urinal cakes."
- YouTube video contest–$106,000: "$106,000 was spent on a YouTube video contest to promote eating fruits and vegetables."
- Cupcakes–$2,000,000: "10 cupcake stores received $2 million in taxpayer-funded loans."
- "Healthy food" initiative - $32,000,000: "$32 million was spent to increase access to healthy foods in low-income communities with no measurable result."
- Robot squirrels–$325,000: "Researchers received part of a grant to construct robotic squirrels to test if they are attacked by rattlesnakes the same way real squirrels are."
In an interview with ABC News, President Obama insisted the Secret Service made the decision to cancel White House tours and not his administration. He signaled that he is open to resuming tours for student groups but has not taken any action in over two weeks to follow through.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/30/Study-Waste-Could-Fund-45000-Years-of-WH-Tours
Obama Asks Congress for $21B for Infrastructure in Front of Chinese Cranes
On Friday, President Obama claimed his administration, known for its rampant green energy boondoggles like Solyndra, had the ability to avoid pork barrel projects when asking Congress to approve $21 billion for infrastructure funding. He made his remarks in Miami, Florida in front of Chinese-made cranes Obama's advance staff failed to properly conceal with American flags.Obama's plan includes $10 billion for an infrastructure bank that would give seed money to projects his administration selects as winners, $4 billion for a federal infrastructure loan program, and $7 billion in tax incentives for state and local bonds.
“Instead of picking projects based on pork barrel politics, we'll pick them based on how good they are for the economy,” Obama said.
According to The Hill, Obama will include the plan in his budget when he releases it on April 10, and Republicans--like House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)--have indicated they will oppose his plan.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/30/Obama-Asks-Congress-for-21B-for-Infrastructure-in-Front-of-Chinese-Cranes
High-Speed Waste For Slow-Speed Rail
We’ve all heard of “shovel-ready” jobs, which were promised to us in the stimulus-spending package. But billions of dollars of investment in infrastructure, meeting consumer demands and creating jobs has resulted in a lot of very expensive “shovels” that have yet to break ground. Take, for instance, a report into the $12 billion wasted on the promise of giving Americans high-speed rail. Billions of dollars in taxpayer funds have been put toward 134 projects, most of which made slow trains a tad bit faster, and by a “tad” I mean an average of 10 minutes.Washington spends money every day, which they take from Americans’ paychecks. When they sell Americans a plan for how that money will be spent and never follow through, that money disappears. When Washington fails to live up to their promises, they should be held accountable.
Much of the stimulus money billed as an investment in infrastructure has been spent on projects that would hardly benefit taxpayers at all. A train project in mountainous Vermont – where few people ride trains – cost taxpayers $50 million, and it is being barely used.
In some cases, government spending projects are forever banished to the “planning stages,” as is the case in California, where the promise of a high-speed train from LA to San Francisco has resulted in 10 years of planning and not a single track laid. It’s as if lawmakers in D.C. don’t care if the money actually produces results. It becomes spending for spending’s sake.
The big disconnect in Washington seems to be whose money it is to begin with. From time to time you hear politicians talk about generating “savings through the tax code” or explaining that America can’t afford to not raise taxes. All of this presupposes that it’s the government’s money first, not the working men and women who earned it. Washington may be desensitized to their egregious spending debacles, but Americans are fed up. Real actions should have real consequences.
It is outrageous that Americans were sold on the idea of something that could make their lives easier – high-speed rail – and were not given what they paid for. But it doesn’t end there. Each year, another billion is fed to the fund, which has no end in sight. Americans don’t have the luxury of depleting money from a seemingly inexhaustible fund. They take time and consideration into every dollar they spend because they earned it. Lawmakers must end their careless attitude of spending like it’s going out of style. If they aren’t holding themselves accountable for their waste, we should buy them a one-way ticket home.
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org/high-speed-waste-for-slow-speed-rail/#.UVdN5Ved58E
Energy Department approves lavish bonuses: $3.5 million to 10 workers alone
Ten contractors are on pace to collect $3.5 million in excessive bonuses due to a lack of oversight, investigators warn
Federal
employees are facing unpaid days off and salary cuts due to the
sequester, but several contract workers inside the Energy Department are
still raking in the cash.
Ten individuals at the department's operations in Oak Ridge, Tenn., are set to make an extra $3.5 million above and beyond their normal pay, according to an Energy Department inspector general investigation that exposed a lavish bonus system.
The operations in Tennessee include a national laboratory, a security site, and a former uranium enrichment facility that is being cleaned up. The contractors are involved in what is known as the East Tennessee Technology Park, where the cleanup work is going on. (An earlier version of this story incorrectly mentioned the lab as being connected to the contractors.)
The 10 people are executives at the company UCOR, which the department hired for environmental clean-up. And despite watchdog warnings that the executives' salaries are as much as 82 percent above the market rate, Energy Department officials continue to pay out the bonuses.
"The Department could incur approximately $3.45 million over the market rate salaries for 10 UCOR contractor executive salaries over the life of the five-year contract," the inspector general's report said. "The events leading up to the UCOR salary approvals involved Headquarters and [Oak Ridge] officials taking a number of actions that were inconsistent with existing policy and were not well coordinated."
The Energy Department hires more civilian contractors than any other government agency: at last count more than 100,000 in all.
In April 2011, the department gave a $2.2 billion contract to "URS|CH2M Oak Ridge, LLC." Shorthand, the company is known as UCOR. The task was environmental clean up of the East Tennessee Technology Park.
But officials at the Oak Ridge Office (ORO), approved salaries that were far above market rates and much more than the UCOR contractors should have been getting, the inspector general said. In the most extreme case, one person received $299,800, an 82 percent mark-up over the $164,900 they should have been paid, the inspector general said.
Despite the inspector general's warnings, the executives are continuing to receive excessive pay. When inspectors notified ORO officials of the overpayments, the salary rates were rescinded. Soon afterwards, however, they were reinstated and those same 10 contractors were approved for overpayments from $5,741 to $143,181 each.
For failing to clamp down on excessive payments and bonuses, the Energy Department's Oak Ridge Office wins this week's Golden Hammer, a weekly distinction awarded by the Washington Guardian to the worst examples of government waste, fiscal abuse and unnecessary spending.
Energy Department officials blamed the bonus bonanza on a miscommunication. ORO officials assumed that the salary levels would be evaluated by the department's Source Evaluation Board (SEB), which oversees proper pay rates. But SEB officials didn't review the salaries, instead assuming that ORO officials would set them at market rates.
ORO officials that inspectors spoke with seemed convinced that the salary rates had been properly evaluated.
"After we questioned the process, a procurement official at ORO even went so far as to prepare a document certifying that an executive salary reasonableness determination had been made during the SEB process," the inspector general said, noting that no such evaluation had taken place.
Another official, however, told investigators it was believed that ORO "had the authority" to set the salaries itself, bypassing some of the department's approval processes.
Oak Ridge officials said they would improve the oversight process and ensure salaries are properly approved, but disagreed that the executives' pay was excessive.
"By comparison, the [UCOR] senior executive salary level parallel's executive salaries of Department of Energy cleanup contractors at two other sites doing environmental cleanup work comparable to Oak Ridge," said a letter from Larry Kelly, the manager of the Oak Ridge Office.
Investigators, however, said there were still serious flaws in the department's contractor salary approval process.
"In light of current budgetary pressures, we concluded that the Department needs to implement executive measures to ensure that contractor executive salaries are: 1) reasonable; 2) consistent with local market compensations rates; and 3) established using Departmental procedures," the inspector general concluded.
Ten individuals at the department's operations in Oak Ridge, Tenn., are set to make an extra $3.5 million above and beyond their normal pay, according to an Energy Department inspector general investigation that exposed a lavish bonus system.
The operations in Tennessee include a national laboratory, a security site, and a former uranium enrichment facility that is being cleaned up. The contractors are involved in what is known as the East Tennessee Technology Park, where the cleanup work is going on. (An earlier version of this story incorrectly mentioned the lab as being connected to the contractors.)
The 10 people are executives at the company UCOR, which the department hired for environmental clean-up. And despite watchdog warnings that the executives' salaries are as much as 82 percent above the market rate, Energy Department officials continue to pay out the bonuses.
"The Department could incur approximately $3.45 million over the market rate salaries for 10 UCOR contractor executive salaries over the life of the five-year contract," the inspector general's report said. "The events leading up to the UCOR salary approvals involved Headquarters and [Oak Ridge] officials taking a number of actions that were inconsistent with existing policy and were not well coordinated."
The Energy Department hires more civilian contractors than any other government agency: at last count more than 100,000 in all.
In April 2011, the department gave a $2.2 billion contract to "URS|CH2M Oak Ridge, LLC." Shorthand, the company is known as UCOR. The task was environmental clean up of the East Tennessee Technology Park.
But officials at the Oak Ridge Office (ORO), approved salaries that were far above market rates and much more than the UCOR contractors should have been getting, the inspector general said. In the most extreme case, one person received $299,800, an 82 percent mark-up over the $164,900 they should have been paid, the inspector general said.
Despite the inspector general's warnings, the executives are continuing to receive excessive pay. When inspectors notified ORO officials of the overpayments, the salary rates were rescinded. Soon afterwards, however, they were reinstated and those same 10 contractors were approved for overpayments from $5,741 to $143,181 each.
For failing to clamp down on excessive payments and bonuses, the Energy Department's Oak Ridge Office wins this week's Golden Hammer, a weekly distinction awarded by the Washington Guardian to the worst examples of government waste, fiscal abuse and unnecessary spending.
Energy Department officials blamed the bonus bonanza on a miscommunication. ORO officials assumed that the salary levels would be evaluated by the department's Source Evaluation Board (SEB), which oversees proper pay rates. But SEB officials didn't review the salaries, instead assuming that ORO officials would set them at market rates.
ORO officials that inspectors spoke with seemed convinced that the salary rates had been properly evaluated.
"After we questioned the process, a procurement official at ORO even went so far as to prepare a document certifying that an executive salary reasonableness determination had been made during the SEB process," the inspector general said, noting that no such evaluation had taken place.
Another official, however, told investigators it was believed that ORO "had the authority" to set the salaries itself, bypassing some of the department's approval processes.
Oak Ridge officials said they would improve the oversight process and ensure salaries are properly approved, but disagreed that the executives' pay was excessive.
"By comparison, the [UCOR] senior executive salary level parallel's executive salaries of Department of Energy cleanup contractors at two other sites doing environmental cleanup work comparable to Oak Ridge," said a letter from Larry Kelly, the manager of the Oak Ridge Office.
Investigators, however, said there were still serious flaws in the department's contractor salary approval process.
"In light of current budgetary pressures, we concluded that the Department needs to implement executive measures to ensure that contractor executive salaries are: 1) reasonable; 2) consistent with local market compensations rates; and 3) established using Departmental procedures," the inspector general concluded.
http://www.washingtonguardian.com/bonus-bonanza
Three Dozen Indicted in Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal
Altering student test scores for financial rewards
Juwanna Guffie was sitting in her fifth-grade classroom taking a standardized test when, authorities say, the teacher came around offering information and asking the students to rewrite their answers. Juwanna rejected the help."I don't want your answers, I want to take my own test," Juwanna told her teacher, according to Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard.
On Friday, Juwanna -- now 14 -- watched as Fulton County prosecutors announced that a grand jury had indicted the Atlanta Public Schools' ex-superintendent and nearly three dozen other former administrators, teachers, principals and other educators of charges arising from a standardized test cheating scandal that rocked the system.
Former Superintendent Beverly Hall faces charges including conspiracy, making false statements and theft because prosecutors said some of the bonuses she received were tied to falsified scores. Hall retired just days before the findings of a state probe were released in mid-2011. A nationally known educator who was named Superintendent of the Year in 2009, Hall has long denied knowing about the cheating or ordering it.
During a news conference Friday, Howard highlighted the case of Juwanna and another student, saying they demonstrated "the plight of many children" in the Atlanta school system.
Their stories were among many that investigators heard in hundreds of interviews with school administrators, staff, parents and students during a 21-month-long investigation.
According to Howard, Juwanna said that when she declined her teacher's offer, the teacher responded that she was just trying to help her students. Her class ended up getting some of the highest scores in the school and won a trophy for their work. Juwanna felt guilty but didn't tell anyone about her class' cheating because she was afraid of retaliation and feared her teacher would lose her job.
She eventually told her sister and later told the district attorney's investigators. Still confident in her ability to take a test on her own, Juwanna got the highest reading score on a standardized test this year.
The other student cited by Howard was a third-grader who failed a benchmark exam and received the worst score in her reading class in 2006. The girl was held back, yet when she took a separate assessment test not long afterward, she passed with flying colors.
Howard said the girl's mother, Justina Collins, knew something was wrong, but was told by school officials that the child simply was a good test-taker. The girl is now in ninth grade, reading at a fifth-grade level.
"I have a 15-year-old now who is behind in achieving her goal of becoming what she wants to be when she graduates. It's been hard trying to help her catch up," Collins said at the news conference.
The allegations date back to 2005. In addition to Hall, 34 other former school system employees were indicted. Four were high-level administrators, six were principals, two were assistant principals, six were testing coordinators and 14 were teachers. A school improvement specialist and a school secretary were also indicted.
Howard didn't directly answer a question about whether prosecutors believe Hall led the conspiracy.
"What we're saying is, is that without her, this conspiracy could not have taken place, particularly in the degree that it took place. Because as we know, this took place in 58 of the Atlanta Public Schools. And it would not have taken place if her actions had not made that possible," the prosecutor said.
Richard Deane, an attorney for Hall, told The New York Times that Hall continues to deny the charges and expects to be vindicated. Deane said the defense was making arrangements for bond.
"We note that as far as has been disclosed, despite the thousands of interviews that were reportedly done by the governor's investigators and others, not a single person reported that Dr. Hall participated in or directed them to cheat on the C.R.C.T.," he said later in a statement provided to the Times.
The tests were the key measure the state used to determine whether it met the federal No Child Left Behind law. Schools with good test scores get extra federal dollars to spend in the classroom or on teacher bonuses.
It wasn't immediately clear how much bonus money Hall received. Howard did not say and the amount wasn't mentioned in the indictment.
"Those results were caused by cheating... And the money that she received, we are alleging that money was ill-gotten," Howard said.
A 2011 state investigation found cheating by nearly 180 educators in 44 Atlanta schools. Educators gave answers to students or changed answers on tests after they were turned in, investigators said. Teachers who tried to report it faced retaliation, creating a culture of "fear and intimidation," the investigation found.
State schools Superintendent John Barge said last year he believed the state's new accountability system would remove the pressure to cheat on standardized tests because it won't be the sole way the state determines student growth. The pressure was part of what some educators in the system blamed for their cheating.
A former top official in the New York City school system who later headed the Newark, N.J. system for three years, Hall served as Atlanta's superintendent for more than a decade, which is rare for an urban schools chief. She was named Superintendent of the Year by the American Association of School Administrators in 2009 and credited with raising student test scores and graduation rates, particularly among the district's poor and minority students. But the award quickly lost its luster as her district became mired in the scandal.
In a video message to schools staff before she retired in the summer of 2011, Hall warned that the state investigation launched by former Gov. Sonny Perdue would likely reveal "alarming" behavior.
"It's become increasingly clear that a segment of our staff chose to violate the trust that was placed in them," Hall said. "There is simply no excuse for unethical behavior and no room in this district for unethical conduct. I am confident that aggressive, swift action will be taken against anyone who believed so little in our students and in our system of support that they turned to dishonesty as the only option."
The cheating came to light after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that some scores were statistically improbable.
Most of the 178 educators named in the special investigators' report in 2011 resigned, retired, did not have their contracts renewed or appealed their dismissals and lost. Twenty-one educators have been reinstated and three await hearings to appeal their dismissals, said Atlanta Public Schools spokesman Stephen Alford.
APS Superintendent Erroll Davis said the district, which has about 50,000 students, is now focused on nurturing an ethical environment, providing quality education and supporting the employees who were not implicated.
"I know that our children will succeed when the adults around them work hard, work together, and do so with integrity," he said in a statement.
The Georgia Professional Standards Commission is responsible for licensing teachers and has been going through the complaints against teachers, said commission executive secretary Kelly Henson. Of the 159 cases the commission has reviewed, 44 resulted in license revocations, 100 got two-year suspensions and nine were suspended for less than two years, Henson said. No action was taken against six of the educators
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/30/3-dozen-indicted-in-Atlanta-cheating-scandal
Cleric Calls American Aid to Egypt Tribute
Egyptian cleric says American aid is a mandatory tax
This taxpayer aid constitutes a “poll tax” that America must pay to placate the Muslim Brotherhood, according to Khaled Said, a cleric who serves as the official spokesman for the country’s Salafi Front, an extremist political party that has called for Islamic law in Egypt.
“They pay so that we will let them be,” Said stated in a recent interview on Egyptian television.
Said’s remarks come on the heels of Secretary of State John Kerry’s announcement that the United States has allocated another $250 million in aid to Egypt.
“If the revolution declares a framework for dealing with the West and America – they will accept it, kiss our hands, and double the aid they give us,” Said said during his television appearance, according to a translation of his remarks by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “We consider this aid to be jizya [poll tax], not regular aid.”
The United States is obligated to pay millions in aid, said Said, who frequently appears on Egyptian television toeing the radical Salafi line.
“The aid the Americans give us is the jizya tax they have to pay?” an interviewer asked.
“Yes, it is,” Said replied. “They pay it for the right of passage through our airspace and territorial waters.”
“Is this the rhetoric of the revolution?” the interviewer asked
“It certainly is,” Said responded.
Egypt has imposed this aid payment on America, Said said.
“We must strive to realize the goals of the revolution, and to establish a sovereign, Arab Islamic state in Egypt,” he said. “Then this state will impose payment of aid upon America as jizya, in exchange for allowing it to realize its interests—the ones that we approve, get it?
“They must pay reparations for destroying our country and the Islamic nation—them and others in the West—so that we will agree to cooperate with them,” Said added.
“It’s significant that this sheik is willing to say this publicly,” said David Reaboi, vice president for strategic communications at the Center for Security Policy. “Maybe he’s savvy enough to know US media, for the most part, is allergic to understanding or even presenting what’s said in Islamic societies in their shariah or Muslim contexts.”
The comments are important “because it’s incomprehensible divorced of its meaning in Islamic law,” Reaboi said. “In covering it at all, the media is forced to try to explain what he’s saying in Islamic legal terms—something they’ve gone through great pains to both avoid and obfuscate. The sheik, communicating this to both his followers and the wider Islamic world, is heard very clearly.”
http://freebeacon.com/cleric-calls-american-aid-to-egypt-tribute/
The bloody company Hollywood keeps
By Michelle MalkinBleeding-heart liberal Robert Redford is already the subject of early Oscar buzz. His much-hyped new film glamorizing the lives of Weather Underground domestic terrorists, “The Company You Keep,” will be released in the U.S. next week. But peace-loving moviegoers should save their money and take a stand.
Hollywood’s romanticizing of murderous radicals is an affront to decency. Redford and Company’s rose-colored hagiography of bloodstained killers defiles the memory of all those victimized by leftwing militants on American soil.
Tinseltown cheerleaders can’t stop gushing about Redford’s paean to gun-toting progressives, of course. Variety called the flick an “unabashedly heartfelt but competent tribute to 1960s idealism.” The entertainment daily effused: “There is something undeniably compelling, perhaps even romantic, about America’s ’60s radicals and the compromises they did or didn’t make.” One of the film executives promoting the Weather Underground movie slavered: “This is an edge-of-your-seat thriller about real Americans who stood for their beliefs, thinking they were patriots and defending their country’s ideals against their government.”
Compelling? Romantic? Real Americans? Patriots? The movie plot centers on a 1970s Michigan bank robbery perpetrated by fictional Weather Underground members Sharon Solarz (portrayed by bigwig Democratic activist Susan Sarandon) and Jim Grant (played by Redford). The group shoots and kills one off-duty police officer working as a bank security guard. Grant goes on the lam and assumes a fake identity; decades later, a reporter launches an investigation into his role in the crime. The movie drums up “unabashedly heartfelt” sympathy for Grant as he works to exonerate himself.
Moviegoers would be better served by educating themselves about the real-life bank robbery and murder on which the movie is loosely based. In 1981, rich-kid Weathermen ideologues and lovers Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert joined forces with Black Liberation Army thugs and other ragtag commie revolutionaries to hold up an armored Brink’s vehicle in Nyack, N.Y. Their booty: $1.6 million to fund their violent activities. Before taking up her assignment as the getaway vehicle driver, Boudin dropped off her toddler son, Chesa Boudin, at a babysitter’s house.
Two of the holdup victims gunned down in the botched Brink’s robbery were police officers. One was a private security guard. All three were veterans from working-class backgrounds. Their names: Waverly Brown, Edward O’Grady and Peter Paige.
Boudin and Gilbert were convicted and sent to prison. Prior to her arrest in Nyack, she had been an 11-year fugitive from justice after an accidental homemade bomb explosion at her New York City townhouse resulted in the death of three people. At the time of her arrest in Nyack, Boudin gave police one of many false identities she had used to evade the law.
Boudin was paroled in 2003 after convincing parole board members that she acted nobly out of “white guilt” to protest racism against blacks. Never mind that one of the officers killed, Waverly Brown, was black.
While Redford glorifies his fictional Weather Underground murderers as “patriots,” he ignores the patriotic legacy of the victims of Weather Underground violence. And while Redford lionizes the Weather Underground zealots as compassionate parents, where are his passion and compassion for the children of the Weather Underground victims?
Brown served in the Air Force after the Korean War and had two grown daughters and a teenage son when he died in the brutal shootout. O’Grady, who served in the Marines and did two tours of duty in Vietnam, left behind a wife and three children — 6, 2 and 6 months old. Paige, a Navy veteran, also left behind a wife and three kids — 19, 16 and 9.
The sons and daughters of those gunned down by Weather Underground killers have lived in obscurity. Meanwhile, as I first reported more than a decade ago, Chesa Boudin has lived a pampered life surrounded by tenured academics and celebrity friends. His adoptive parents? The infamous pals of Barack Obama, Weathermen organizers Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
Refresher course: Dohrn declared war on “AmeriKKKa,” helped stage the “Days of Rage” in Chicago, when Weathermen blew up a memorial statue to police officers and rioted violently, leaving 75 policemen wounded and one permanently injured in a wheelchair, and then spent years as a fugitive from justice before settling into a comfy post as director of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University.
Ayers remains in the limelight after celebrating the Weathermen bombing the Pentagon and flitting from campuses to socialist regimes and back preaching education as the “motor force for revolution.”
Chesa Boudin attended Yale, won a prestigious Rhodes scholarship, shilled for Hugo Chavez, wrote books and keeps a busy speaking schedule. He still stands by the Weathermen’s revolutionary agenda: “My parents were all dedicated to fighting U.S. imperialism around the world. I’m dedicated to the same thing.”
Cinematically and metaphorically, Redford manufactures the same stance that unrepentant Weather Underground criminals and apologists still hold of themselves today: Not guilty.
http://www.humanevents.com/2013/03/29/the-bloody-company-hollywood-keeps/
Tax Dollars May be Funding Terror as Questionable Army Contracts Linger
Americans’ tax dollars may currently be supporting terrorist groups by way of 43 questionable contractors used by the U.S. Army.
After passage of the “No Contracting with the Enemy Act” provision of the Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) identified nine contractors and the Entity List, a notification by the Department of Commerce supported by all-source intelligence analysis, identified 34 more as potentially having direct links to an insurgent or terrorist group.
These recommendations to suspend or terminate work with a contractor were referred to the Army for investigation in September 2012. The Army’s Suspension and Debarment office has a stated goal of 30 days to process referrals from an inspector general or investigative agency, but all of the cases are backlogged.
The individuals and companies identified are believed to have links to groups such as the Haqqani Network and al-Qaeda. Ground-level investigations into the referred contractors found the parties “were active supporters of the insurgency or were otherwise engaged in actively opposing U.S. and Coalition Forces in Afghanistan” or had provided “material support to persons engaged against U.S. and Coalition forces in Afghanistan.”
In a letter this week to Army Secretary John McHugh and Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) called for a review of these 43 outstanding cases.
“Given the serious nature of these determinations, we strongly believe these cases continue to warrant special and immediate consideration from the Department of the Army,” the lawmakers wrote.
They noted a Jan. 15 response from the Army chiefs stating “the 43 recommendations did not include any supporting evidence other than the fact that the subject individuals or entities were so listed.” But the Army needed to look at classified materials to see that evidence.
“Despite numerous attempts by the SIGAR office to facilitate involvement in these cases by the Army’s Suspension and Debarment Official (SDO), it is our understanding that this individual has not yet conducted necessary reviews of the classified materials,” the senators wrote.
“We strongly believe that these debarment referrals are sufficient to call into question the acceptability of doing business with the named individuals or companies. However, we also believe that a thorough review of the underlying evidence is essential to effectively processing these 43 cases. While we understand that the review process may have started with some cases, it is time for the Army’s Procurement Fraud Branch and the SDO to fully process these designations without further delay.”
The senators asked for a determination to be made on each case within 30 days.
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/03/29/tax-dollars-may-be-funding-terror-as-questionable-army-contracts-linger/
No comments:
Post a Comment