The New York Times has begun a series which it says will examine government contracting with the critical eye that it is rarely subjected to. The first article in their series, published yesterday by Scott Shane (one of the Times’ really good reporters), is a lengthy piece about what it calls the practice “that […]
President Bush is requesting the largest military budget in all of US history for his last year in office, 2008. The budget is more than half a trillion dollars- $622 billion to be exact. The Administration is also requesting an extra $93 billion for this year, 2007.
Depending on the fate of the current Warner-Levin compromise […]
Phew. According to the Washington Post today, Bush’s Department of Defense has been sneaking no-bid contracts and in some cases illegal contracts out of the Department of the Interior. According to the Post, DoD officials find it easier to get their contracts through the DoI, and have routed 1.7 billion dollars through it over the […]
Barack Obama, from his recently-released book The Audacity of Hope, chapter 5, titled Opportunity:
[After Clinton left office] For the first time in almost 30 years, we enjoyed big budget surpluses and a rapidly declining national debt. Ever after the dot-com bubble burst, and the economy was forced to absorb the shock of 9/11, we had […]
Remember Dubai Ports World? That was the private foreign corporation based in the United Arab Emirates that the White House had set their hearts on out-sourcing US port security to. A huge outcry of public and Congressional indignation stopped them from contracting American security out to a foreign corporation (with alleged ties to Osama bin […]
Larry Kahaner, author of “AK-47: The Weapon That Changed the Face of War” wrote in the second paragraph of a 2686-word Washington Post feature yesterday:
The AK-47 has become the world’s most prolific and effective combat weapon, a device so cheap and simple that it can be bought in many countries for less than the cost […]
The London Times reports that Democrats are planning to hold extensive hearings on Iraq rebuilding corruption:
American taxpayers have spent $36 billion (£19 billion) on reconstruction in Iraq, much of it unaccounted for. A further $22 billion of Iraq’s own money, derived mainly from oil, has been largely squandered, with little scrutiny.
The Democrats intend to use […]
The Associated Press reported today that the US military plans to spend 125 million dollars worth of taxpayer’s money in order to build a gigantic new compound in Guantanamo to put detainees on trial for war crimes.
My question is: is anybody really fooled? Does anybody really think that this Administration is going to conduct fair […]
CNN notes the increase in government spending under the Bush Administration.
The poll released Friday also showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans perceive, correctly, that the size and cost of government have gone up in the past four years, when Republicans have had a grip on the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White […]
NYT published an article today that says a federal investigation has now revealed that Halliburton sub-corp KBR has “misused federal rules to withhold basic information on its practices from American officials.”
The contracts awarded to the company, KBR, formerly named Kellogg Brown & Root, are for housing, food, fuel and other necessities for American troops […]
Over in Iraq, 91 Americans have perished so far this month. This is by far our highest death toll in a single month for the entire year, as violence is intensifying in much of Iraq. More than 3,500 Iraqi civilians died in August– the most recent month for which data are available (the exact number […]
$21.45 million. That’s roughly how much Kenneth ‘I love writing about oral sex almost as much as Bill O’Reilly does‘ Starr spent in the first three years of his eight-year politically-motivated investigation of whether or not former President Clinton cheated on his wife or not, and also the whole (entirely cooked up) Whietwater debackle. And […]
Wonkette takes a serious moment:
Federal spending increased by 9 percent this year alone — the biggest increase since 1990, when those other big-spending liberals were in charge of Congress — to $2.7 trillion.
Republican voters are so disgusted that they’re threatening to stay home in November — or even vote for a comparatively thrifty Democrat!
Republicans are […]
Maybe you remember: the other day I asked if the “pork-busting” bill backed by Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) would finally pass through Congress to become law.
After passing the Senate, the bill passed through the House and is expected to be signed by the President soon. The database won’t be established until […]
Will the Tom Coburn (R)- Barack Obama (D) “pork-buster” bill finally make it out of the Senate House today?
The problem was never with gathering enough votes (waste of tax money is an ever popular issue in election years), but rather with the damn secret holds. Fingers crossed it passes today with the overwhelming support it […]
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