Rape Nuts

I wonder if she'd vote for Vitter

The Republicans in the Senate obstructionist caucus are so eager to vote against everything that they even took the bizarre step of following the lead of Alabama KKK leader Jeff Sessions into a vote against protecting American women from corporate rape enablers. And I'm just talking about the extreme fringe of their caucus like Inhofe (OK), Vitter (LA), Cornyn (TX), DeMint (SC), Burr (NC) and Coburn (OK again). although all the Republican women abandoned the GOP leadership and crossed the aisle to vote with the Democrats against rape, some Republicans who try passing themselves off as moderates-- like Lamar Alexander (TN), John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC), and Bob Corker (TN)-- showed their true colors and allowed themselves to be counted among the 30 sociopaths condoning rape. OK, what am I going on about? You haven't heard about this in the mainstream media right? Let me explain.

On Tuesday, October 6, the Senate voted on what looked like an obscure amendment to a Defense Appropriations bill. I was watching closely because I'm waiting for the Obama Administration to sneak some amendment into such a bill that allows it unfettered ability to fund the occupation of Afghanistan without going through the legal requirements Obama swore during the campaign he would follow. So I watch these bills really, really carefully. This one, introduced by Al Franken-- his first-- was nothing like that. But what was it? It wasn't clear. The language of S. Amend. 2588 doesn't mention "rape," let alone "gang rape." Here's the official purpose Franken submitted:

To prohibit the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims.

"Certain claims?" So I snooped around a little, called some friends on Capitol Hill and realized it was a powerful story. I had it up at DWT by 6pm, about 90 minutes after the Senate passed it 68-30 and a couple hours later I put it up at Huffington Post. I mentioned to a couple of friends that I found a scoop but then the story just seemed to disappear. Unless Fox starts something, or unless the story is about baking sugar cookies, fake terrorists in boats, balloon hoaxes, or a kitty-cat stuck in a tree, CNN doesn't touch it. The NY Times and Washington Post are so obsessed with the ginned up ACORN story the GOP is pushing that all their "news" resources are pursuing that earth-shattering nothingness. So the 30 Republicans who voted against an amendment to prevent corporations from enabling rape... not a mention; not a peep. The women voters-- and the men who like women-- in Georgia don't know that Johnny Isakson, who's up for re-election in 2010 is a rape condoner. Sam Brownback is running for governor of Kansas next year; he's a rape condoner. John Thune is up for re-election and his image in South Dakota is very different from a guy who would vote to condone rape. I guess people foolish enough to vote for extremists like Dick Burr (NC), Tom Coburn (OK) and Jim DeMint (SC) don't care that they're part of the rape-is-ok coalition. But voters in Louisiana are trying to figure out what to make of serial whore-monger David Diapers Vitter before they have to go to the polls next year. Vitter has spent his entire political career pursuing prostitutes and, after he was caught-- being spanked by one of them and wearing a diaper-- he claimed to be chastened. I'm betting the women voters in Louisiana might be a little bit interested in knowing that David Vitter voted no on Franken's amendment, voted against disciplining corporations that force women to agree, as a condition of employment, that they can't sue if they get gang raped and locked up in a crate. It's the kind of thing women voters might care about.

Oh-- and Comedy Central noticed. Yep... CNN, the NY Times, AP may have all missed the story but Jon Stewart didn't. And if you watch the video closely, you'll see that he got his information straight from the source-- the Huffington Post story we posted about 3 hours after the Senate voted.

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Senate Passes An Amendment Despite Concerted GOP Opposition To Prevent KBR & Halliburton From Getting Away With Raping Employees (Literally)

Today the Senate "debated" the Department of Defense appropriations bill passed by the House (H.R. 3326) for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010. Republicans added frivolous amendments all day, starting with one of the Wyoming clowns, John Barrasso trying to prohibit the use of funds for the Center on Climate Change and National Security of the Central Intelligence Agency. That one failed 60-38, all Democrats-- even Nelson and Lincoln-- voting "no" and all but two Republicans-- the Maine gals-- voting for it. Coburn and McCain had similarly obstructionist amendments rejected and sensible amendments by Inouye and Bond were passed. But the amendment du jour came from Al Franken D-MN).

And what a doozy it is! S. Amend. 2588 simply prohibits "the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims." The "certain claims" have to do with sexual assault.

I might have phrased it differently myself-- like "prohibits any member of the executive team and Board of Directors of Halliburton and KBR from ever getting out of prison for any reason whatsoever" or something like that. But my amendment probably wouldn't have gotten many votes, unlike Franken's which passed 68-30, every Democrat being joined by 9 Republicans. (Does anyone know if LeMieux has to call Charlie Crist and get his OK before he votes?)

Franken offered the amendment because a KBR employee, Jamie Leigh Jones, age 19, was raped by a bunch of KBR workers in Iraq and then locked up in a crate when she tried reporting them. After she was rescued and returned to America she was informed that she couldn't take KBR to court because there was some fine print in her-- and everyone else's-- contracts that don't permit any such thing.

KKK Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, an especially corrupt member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was the key spokesperson for the GOP against the legislation which he called unfair to Halliburton, one of the biggest Republican Party contributors in history. This is what Republicans mean when they whine about regualar people having the right to sue. To them, this is a crime.

Corrupt Military Contracting-- Still The Crime Of The Century

"KBR is a sociopathic organization that turns lies into profit. It deserves a corporate death penalty."
-Congressman Alan Grayson

More than most members of Congress, Grayson knows exactly what KBR is and what they do and why they've earned such a harsh judgment from investigators who have looked into them. Before Grayson was elected to Congress to represent a central Florida district centered in Orlando, he was busy suing war profiteers. His successes are legendary, as documented in a Vanity Fair feature, "The People vs. The Profiteers," from 2007 that starts like this:

Americans working in Iraq for Halliburton spin-off KBR have been outraged by the massive fraud they saw there. Dozens are suing the giant military contractor, on the taxpayers’ behalf. Whose side is the Justice Department on?

On first meeting him, one might not suspect Alan Grayson of being a crusader against government-contractor fraud... Grayson spends most of his days and many of his evenings on a lonely legal campaign to redress colossal frauds against American taxpayers by private contractors operating in Iraq. He calls it “the crime of the century.”

His obvious adversaries are the contracting corporations themselves-- especially Halliburton, the giant oil-services conglomerate where Vice President Dick Cheney spent the latter half of the 1990s as C.E.O., and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, now known simply as KBR. But he says his efforts to take on those organizations have earned him another enemy: the United States Department of Justice.

Over the past 16 years, Grayson has litigated dozens of cases of contractor fraud. In many of these, he has found the Justice Department to be an ally in exposing wrongdoing. But in cases that involve the Iraq war, the D.O.J. has taken extraordinary steps to stand in his way. Behind its machinations, he believes, is a scandal of epic proportions-- one that may come to haunt the legacy of the Bush administration long after it is gone.

That time is now, as the NY Times reported today. Yes, Bush and his depraved regime are gone-- but so are untold billions of taxpayer dollars-- and they didn't just vanish into thin air. The connection between the Bush Family and KBR, a spin-off of the Houston-based Dubai-based Halliburton, once run by Dick Cheney, will be judged by historians as one of the actual causes of the Iraq War, the same way historians credit munitions manufacturers with having contributed to what came to be known as World War I. Halliburton and KBR are at the bottom of an effort by modern day robber barons to build generational wealth by massively ripping off the American public. The War Tapes, the first documentary of the Iraq War produced by U.S. soldiers who fought in it, mentions, for example, how Halliburton charged American taxpayers, with the Bush Regime's encouragement, $28 each for the disposable picnic plates given to the soldiers in the mess hall that their meals are served on. The slop they served on the plates cost more. And in a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday, Senators Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Susan Collins (R-ME), respectively the chair and ranking member of the contracting oversight subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee want to know why the Pentagon has collected the $100 million in known, admitted overcharges and why the same monopolistic practices that saw KBR and rake in $31.3 billion under its partners in the Bush Regime.

To the irritation of KBR’s critics, the Army has generally upheld the bills the company has submitted to the military, even when the Pentagon’s own auditors have questioned the amounts. But the argument that the Army was overcharged appears to be more clear-cut in the cases of several former KBR officials convicted of accepting bribes and kickbacks.

In those cases, the Army asked KBR to perform a certain task under the Logcap contract, like buying living trailers or building a dining facility, and the KBR officials found subcontractors in the region to carry out the actual work. The officials took bribes to steer the work toward subcontractors who were not the low bidders, or simply inflated the worth of the contracts once they had been awarded.

In the contracts handled by just one of those officials, Stephen Lowell Seamans, who pleaded guilty to bribery and conspiracy in March 2006, Pentagon auditors quickly found potential excess profits by a Kuwaiti subcontractor of $49.8 million, or 76 percent, “as a result of Mr. Seamans’s fraudulent activities,” the senators wrote.

Of $306 million in tainted contracts, at least $100 million of the charges appeared to be unjustified, wrote the senators.

And people who have looked into war profiteering in Iraq unanimously agree that that's just small change compared to what was actually ripped off. Today the Wartime Contracting Commission is meeting in Washington. At a February meeting Senator McCaskill, didn't shock anyone when she referred to the contracting in Iraq as "a massive failure. We have failed our military, and we have failed the American people." Government agencies report:

• A lack of oversight has led to widespread abuse among contractors who have bilked the government out of millions of dollars.

• There is no accurate count of contractor personnel in the war theater, just as there is no uniform system to track workers killed or injured.

• Private contractors' legal status is different from that of U.S. government employees; military leaders have less authority over contractors than over military or civilian subordinates.

• Criminal cases and civil lawsuits involving contractors, which are not tracked by U.S. agencies, routinely raise political and jurisdictional questions.

Crooked contractors and the Bush Regimistas who enabled them and took their bribes better hope this doesn't wind up going over to the House. Let's face it; Collins may even be complicit and McCaskill... what's she going to do? Send a tweet? If this gets taken up by the House, where members like Grayson, as well as former military officers like Joe Sestak, Patrick Murphy and Eric Massa-- not to mention Armed Services Committee member Carol Shea Porter-- know what this is all about and don't mind upsetting some apple carts to get to the bottom of it, the "crime of the century" prediction is going to play out on cable TV. “Some folks," said Eric Massa (D-NY), an Annapolis grad and former officer on the USS New Jersey, "might think that $100 million of missing money is not a lot, I'm not one of them. During the past eight years we did not hold contractors accountable, but that's going to change. I join with Senators Collins and McCaskill in calling for responsibility and accountability in ensuring our tax dollars are used properly. I will not stay silent when the American taxpayer is being ripped off and that is exactly what we're talking about.”

Retired admiral Joe Sestak (D-PA) is the highest ranking military officer to have ever served in the House. Like Carol Shea-Porter and Eric Massa, he serves on the House Armed Services Committee. He may or may not run for the Senate next year. But whatever he does, it doesn't bode well for the criminal contractors who have been ripping off the taxpayers. This morning he told us that "There is probably no more important issue than to correct what has been a failure of accountability in government for some time. I learned in the military that leaders are not only responsible for their actions, but are accountable for them. The failure to ensure accountability for overpayments to KBR and other companies does nothing except reinforce the viewpoint that our government fails to provide accountable leadership.”

The BBC made a short film about the scandal which, predictably, got more play in Europe than in the U.S. If you haven't seen it already, please take a look:

IS BUSH STARTING TO GET SERIOUS ABOUT WAR PROFITEERING?

Well, perhaps... but not the way one would expect the nation's chief law enforcement official to. Sure, the Bush Regime is trying to convince concerned voters they are cracking down on rampant war profiteering by their biggest supporters-- without damaging said supporters (of course). So they found some chumps to charge and now they're ballyhooing what awesome war profiteer fighters they are. It's a farce and I called Blue America's expert in this area, Alan Grayson, and asked him to explain what's going on. Keep in mind that Alan is running for Congress in Orlando against one of Bush's most pathetic and consistent rubber stamps, Ric Keller. If you'd like to see a real war profiteer fighter in Washington next year, please consider contributing to Alan's campaign here. His report:

The Bush Administration, having learned nothing, continues to operate as if the appearance of doing its job were just as good as-- maybe better than-- actually doing its job. Case in point: recently touting to the Chicago Tribune that a handful of unfortunate souls, around eight or so in five years, have been indicted for work that they did while employed by KBR and Halliburton in Iraq. And this is supposed to give the appearance that the Bush Administration actually has taken a stab at upholding the laws against war profiteering in Iraq. "Heck of a job, DOJ."

But something is wrong with this picture. These folks have been indicted for their roles in submitting bloated bills to the Army and the taxpayer, but KBR and Halliburton never had to give any of that money back. And KBR and Halliburton themselves have escaped all punishment, not only for the overbilling, but also for establishing and perpetuating a crooked system in which such criminals flourished.

The Chicago Tribune's report was front-page news. You know what really would be front-page news? If Dick Cheney's old company ever was held accountable for even a penny of the waste and fraud that they've perpetrated on the troops, and the taxpayers.

CONGRESS TO DEAL WITH THE CONCEPT OF WAR AS A PROFIT CENTER

In the early 80s I read the first of the Robert Caro books on the life of LBJ. Maybe I was naive but I really was shocked to learn about the absolute, unadulterated venality of how Big Business-- not in the 1920s but in my own time-- intersected with politics. LBJ's career was also the story of Brown and Root which became KBR which became, in effect, Halliburton. Vietnam may have torn the country apart-- it did-- and destroyed Johnson's presidency and his legacy but it was a real honeypot for his cronies. A few days ago James Glanz told the more contemporary story of KBR and Halliburton in the NY Times, Bribery Network to Bloat War Coasts Is Alleged. No more Vietnam; now it's Iraq. And for LBJ we have Cheney and Bush.

Every soldier, every contractor and every journalist I know who has been to Baghdad says Halliburton and a handful of other Bush Regime-connected companies are raking in billions of dollars. No one calls the Green Zone anything but the Greed Zone. And the Times is reporting that "Federal
investigators have uncovered what they describe as a sweeping network of kickbacks, bribes and fraud involving at least eight employees and subcontractors of KBR, the former Halliburton subsidiary, in a scheme to inflate charges for flying freight into Iraq in support of the war, according to court papers unsealed yesterday."

At the core of the case is a contract that KBR, previously known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, won before the war to supply the American military with food, fuel, housing and other necessities. The value of the contract soared with the Iraq invasion, and has so far paid KBR some $20 billion.

The company hired Eagle in a subcontract to fulfill part of that mission, carrying military goods from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Baghdad. But the scheme by the Eagle executives began in November 2003 when a plane operated by a rival carrier, DHL, was struck by a missile and landed in Baghdad with its left wing in flames. The Eagle executives used that incident to charge a fraudulent “war-risk surcharge” of 50 cents for every kilogram (2.2 pounds) of freight on its own flights, the papers say.

Between November 2003 and July 2004, Eagle made 379 flights as part of the subcontract, charging some $13.3 million-- an amount that included $1.1 million in overcharges. It is not clear whether KBR knew of the overcharging scheme, but the papers say that Mr. Smoot and an Eagle subordinate delivered nearly $34,000 in gratuities to KBR employees “to obtain or reward favorable treatment” in connection with the contract.

According to the papers, the gratuities included “meals, drinks, golf outings, tickets to rodeo events, baseball and football games and other entertainment items.”

On Tuesday the House Judiciary Committee voted to make this kind of excessive overcharging, or biling, in Iraq and Afhanistan a "war profiteering" cime. Not a single Republican member of Congress dared to object, although the Bush Regime objects strenuously. If the bill passes the House-- it will-- and the Senate-- where McConnell plans to use his obstructionist tactics to bury it for as long as he can-- and then can overcome a Bush veto, it would make it a crime to overcharge on contracts during a war or reconstruction. The felony would carry penalties up to 20 years in prison and fines up to $1 million or twice the amount of illegal profits, whichever is higher. If you think Cheney was incensed over Scooter Libby, just watch him on this one!

Jim Webb and Claire McCaskill have introduced a similar bill in the Senate. Another freshman senator, Amy Klobuchar of Minneaota-- a former prosecutor-- in announcing her support for the bill explained that he office's motto was "follow the money and you'll find the bad guys. That's what we're trying to do with the legislation."


UPDATE: AND BECHTEL TOO

According to yesterday's NY Times "One of the largest American contractors working in Iraq, Bechtel National, met its original objectives on fewer than half of the projects it received as part of a $1.8 billion reconstruction contract, while most of the rest were canceled, reduced in scope or never completed as designed, federal investigators have found in a report" just released, "first of a planned series of audits of Western contractors that have received large slices of the roughly $40 billion in American taxpayer money that has been spent on the troubled program to rebuild Iraq."