The Daily Background

ABC’s Blotter reports:

Democratic investigators have identified 118 contracts worth $745.5 billion with “significant overcharges, wasteful spending or mismanagement over the past five years.”

The findings are included in a 65-page report, “Dollars Not Sense, Government Contracting Under the Bush Administration,” released today by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA).

Halliburton was identified as the single fastest growing federal contractor from 2000 to 2005, now holding the No. 6 spot on the list with near $6 billion in contracts.

Surprise, surprise. Now you might not think this was so strange, but let’s think about it in terms of if it were something different– but analogous.

What if the Vice President of the United States happened to previously serve as the CEO of a big company that, say, paved roads. And this Vice President was still the CEO of this road-paving-company while he was running for the White House in 2000. And this road-paving-company happened to give him 20 million dollars when he retired (on top of the more than 40 million he earned while still working there). And also gave him millions of dollars more worth of stock options (by the way, their stock has gone up hundreds of percent under this Administration) which he still holds to this day.

Then, let’s say that the Administration decides that every interstate highway in the country needs to be re-paved. Instead of going to the entities that usually pave the roads- public municipalities- the Administration instead decides to all of a sudden switch to this road-paving company that happened to pay the Vice President more than 60 million dollars in the past 5 years. They make this decision without consulting anyone, and without an open bidding process, to allow other companies to compete with a more cost-effective offer.

Then, let’s say that there are allegations that this road-paving company has over-charged the government (and consequently the American taxpayer) by hundreds of millions of dollars. But, for some reason there is no investigation. Years later, we learn that there have been no less than 22 either ongoing or concluded investigations of overcharging, corruption, and other misconduct regarding this particular road-paving company that happened to pay the Vice President millions of dollars.

But for some reason, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of no-bid, no competition contracts are awarded to this road-paving company– regardless of prior investigations and new allegations of misconduct.

Oh, and for kicks, let’s also add in the fact that this particular road-paving company is not actually very good at everything they say they’re good at. In fact, while paving some roads in some places, they actually did some very questionable things regarding safety that Americans lives depend on, and may have resulted in many deaths of Americans, because their roads weren’t clean, and when U.S. soldiers drank said roads in Iraq, they got diseases and kind of died. But still, the Administration kept on giving them no-bid contracts.

Okay, people don’t drink roads. Maybe that’s where my analogy fell apart. But you sort of get where I’m going with this, right?

If you’re interested in learning more about the Vice President, PBS will be examining him in a widely-publicized (you’ve probably seen spots on liberal blogs advertising it already; they’re running in heavy rotation at several blogs) investigative documentary tonight called The Dark Side. 9pm on most PBS stations. Check your local listings.

Filed under: Tax Money, Z-TDB Blog