"If you see some pork, let me know"

You asked for it

What'd you expect?

Would someone please explain to me why exactly we have a "Small Community Air Service Development Program?" Whatever happened to the free market?

SNOWE, COLLINS ANNOUNCE $555,000 GRANT TO IMPROVE AIR SERVICE IN KNOX COUNTY

Contact: Antonia Ferrier (202) 224-5344
Monday, August 29, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C.-U.S. Senators Olympia J. Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME) today announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded $555,000 to Knox County to improve air service. The grant, awarded under the Small Community Air Service Development Program, will be used to provide eight island communities off the coast of Rockland with service to the mainland. The service would connect the islands with each other and with Rockland, Bar Harbor and Augusta on the mainland. Local sources have committed to provide additional funds and in-kind contributions to this community effort to enhance air service to the islands.

“The island communities in Knox County must have adequate air service to deal effectively with emergencies and maintain a link to the mainland,” said Senators Snowe and Collins in a joint statement. “This funding will go a long way towards helping Knox County keep this vital lifeline.”

The Small Community Air Service Development Program helps communities address the challenges of local air service, such as high fares and insufficient levels of service. The grants will be used by communities around the country for programs such as financial incentives to air carriers, studies to determine air service needs, and marketing programs that encourage communities to use commercial carriers offering local air service.

Complete community proposals and the department’s final order are available on the Internet at http://dms.dot.gov, docket number OST-2005-20127. A list of recipient communities and funding totals is available on www.dot.gov/affairs/chart05.htm.

I've seen this reluctance to cut pork even at the local level. We announced a budget-cutting meeting for our local schools and it turns out that every budget item had its own little constituency. They all came to the meeting to protect whatever their pet item was from the axe. They all said things along the lines of, "oh yes, we're all for cutting fat out of the budget, but not next year's appropriation for electric dog polishers. We absolutely gotta have electric dog polishers, otherwise the children will suffer." Etc.

So, in the end, nothing got cut.

I expect the federal gubbmint probably works the same way.

Here's a tip: don't quit your day job.

Here's another one: don't eat yellow snow.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

The grant, awarded under the Small Community Air Service Development Program, will be used to provide eight island communities off the coast of Rockland with service to the mainland.

Slublog, at least they're not trying to build a bridge a la Alaska.

Pork is just the other white meat. Beef is what's for dinner.

Found some in Texas, even though we have the least amount of pork per capita. Will probably find some more, but I just did a quick search while at work, so I didn't have time to really study.

I also found some interesting stats at Citizens Against Government Waste about which states REALLY bring home the bacon (just about any state that is at the top of the least-populous list - Alaska, DC, N. and S. Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Vermont), while the two most populous states (CA and TX) are at the bottom of the pork per capita list.

Does it count when a very high-level procurement officer is busted?

Now with WORKING LINK!

Excerpt:

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy handles procurement policy for the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

Until Friday the Administrator of the office was David Hossein Safavian.

Today he was arrested on a three count indictment.

How do you say PORK in Arabic?

I'd use words like STOLEN or LOOTED, but BrewFan gets all touchy about that.

well, that and you've not been able to support your assertions.

except by citing Juan Cole.

I know I find that compelling.

(well, it compels me to want to take a shit)

tubby,

Are you f*cking retarded dude? You make assertions on a 'conservative' blog and use Juan Cole as evidence. WTF?

Please go back to DU or Daily Kos or where ever you came from and find some of your fellow travellers there who will believe your two-bit conspiracy theories. Or become a Republican. Either one.

P.S. Speaking of republicans, when you become one we can share secret information with you like how Karl Rove stole the $8.8 billion and used it to build the Hurricane Machine™

Hee hee, Dave takes the bait: "well, that and you've not been able to support your assertions."

An official involved in the spending and disbursement of the Iraqi proceeds described an environment awash in $100 bills. One contractor received a $2 million payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack. They also found that $774,300 in cash had been stolen from a vault. Cash payments were made from the back of a pickup truck, and cash was stored in unguarded sacks in Iraqi ministry offices. One official was given $6.75 million in cash and ordered to spend it in one week, before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds.

Lots more in the 25-page PDF report where that came from!.

Oh okay, here's another taste:

• An inexperienced but politically connected security firm, Custer Battles, received over $11 million in Iraqi funds, including over $4 million in cash. The company has been barred from receiving federal contracts and faces a False Claims Act lawsuit for multiple fraudulent billings.

• Over $600 million in cash was shipped from Baghdad to four regions in Iraq to allow commanders flexibility to fund local reconstruction projects. An audit of one of the four regions found more than 80% of the funds could not be properly accounted for and that over $7 million in cash was simply missing.

• CPA officials gave over $8 billion in cash to Iraqi ministries that had no internal or financial controls in place to handle such an influx of funds. The Special Inspector General found significant funds that appeared to be paid to “ghost employees” and billion-dollar discrepancies in some expenditures.

For your next trick, Dave, why don't you cite Bowen? Heh.

Slublog, at least they're not trying to build a bridge a la Alaska.

Trust me, given how rural those communites are, this idea is just as useless.

Tubino, are you saying that foreign policy pork makes domestic pork okay? Because, you know, most of us would agree that it's bad as well.

Being contrarian has to have its limits you know.

I'm going for the award for BIGGEST NUMBERS. Check this out:

The findings in this report underscore the need for a comprehensive investigation into how the United States spent and disbursed billions of dollars in Iraqi funds. There is substantial evidence of widespread mismanagement, waste, and corruption in the spending and disbursement of over $19.6 billion in Iraqi funds during the period of U.S. control. The full extent of the waste, fraud, and abuse will not be known without additional investigation.

First Juan Cole. Now a report prepared by democrats for Henry Waxman. You *ARE* retarded tubby.

But he's Speaking Truth to Power™

"Tubino, are you saying that foreign policy pork makes domestic pork okay? Because, you know, most of us would agree that it's bad as well."

????? I don't think misuse of Iraqi funds makes ANYTHING okay. Here are the rules in that case:

Once the cash from the Federal Reserve arrived in Iraq and came under the control of U.S. officials at the Coalition Provisional Authority, the cash was spent and disbursed with virtually no appropriate financial controls. Under the terms of the U.N. resolution creating the Development Fund for Iraq, the fund was to be used “in a transparent manner to meet the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people … and for other purposes benefiting the people of Iraq.” But no certified public accounting firm was hired to audit disbursements, and hundreds of millions of dollars in overcharges were withheld from international auditors. According to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, U.S. officials cannot account for the spending of billions of dollars in cash.

BrewFan fails to notice the SOURCES for Waxman's report and Juan Cole's story. Try harder. Lots harder.

Ok. I'm leaving before tubby pulls out a special expose by Michael Moore on how there's a donut shortage caused by the mysterious loss of $8 billion dollars worth of chocolate frosting and jimmies in Iraq.

Woo hoo! The Cowboys are beating the Redskins!

How politically incorrect is that sentence?

Still, 10-0 in the third. Plenty of time for the Cowboys to choke.

Too bad BrewFan left before I could ask him about the results of Congressional investigations. Surely there were investigations? And what were the sources for the Waxman report?

Although Congress has conducted an extensive investigation of mismanagement in the U.N.-administered Oil-for-Food program, holding at least 13 hearings on the subject, Congress has, until now, failed to similarly review the U.S. administration of Iraqi assets and revenues by the CPA.

As part of an effort to conduct such a review, the Committee on Government Reform obtained documents from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Department of Defense. Committee staff reviewed over 14,000 pages of financial records and other documents from the Federal Reserve and over 15,000 pages of documents from the Department of Defense. These documents show that billions of dollars of DFI and TSPA funds were shipped to Iraq in the form of United States currency, for disbursement by the CPA to Iraqi ministries and CPA contractors.

Committee staff reviewed all available audit reports addressing the expenditure of the Iraqi funds. These audit reports included reports from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the Defense Contract Audit Agency, the U.S. Army Audit Agency, and the Government Accountability Office. Committee staff also reviewed letters issued by KPMG, the audit firm hired by the IAMB, as well as statements and meeting minutes from the IAMB.

You know, it just might be that conservatives would NOT be happy what the CPA did with its control of $23.3 billion in Iraqi funds. More than $12.7 billion was disbursed in cash.

Read the report. Does it make you proud?

I've pasted in a passage and left two of the footnote numbers and sources. I paste, you decide.
------------------------
In June 2003, the CPA issued a regulation requiring that “an independent,
certified public accounting firm” oversee the expenditures of the Iraqi funds. The
regulation directed:

The CPA shall obtain the services of an independent, certified public
accounting firm to support the objective of ensuring that the Fund is
administered and used in a transparent manner for the benefit of the people
of Iraq, and is operated consistent with Resolution 1483.30

On April 20, 2004, however, CPA officials reported that the “CPA did not obtain
the services of a certified public accounting firm as it was determined that these services were not those required.” Instead, the CPA hired an obscure consulting firm called North Star Consultants, Inc., “to promote the effective administration of DFI Funds in a transparent manner for the benefit of the Iraqi people.” The
firm is so small that it reportedly operates out of a private home near San Diego.33

33 “What happened to Iraq’s oil money?” NBC News (Nov. 30, 2004).

When the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction audited North Star’s work, the Special Inspector General found that North Star did not perform any review of the CPA’s internal controls:

In October 2003 a $1.4 million contract was awarded to North Star
Consultants, Inc. that required the contractor to perform a review of
internal controls and provide the CPA a written report of their evaluation.
The North Star Consultants did not perform a review of internal controls
as required by the contract. Consequently, internal controls over DFI
disbursements were not evaluated. In addition, the Comptroller verbally
modified the contract and employed the contractor to primarily perform
accounting tasks in the Comptroller’s officer.34

34 Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, Coalition Provisional Authority Comptroller Cash Management Controls Over the Development Fund for Iraq, Report No. 04-009 (July 28, 2004).
------------------

I can already hear it. A year from now, when Rove's control of NOLA reconstruction is awash in scandal, I'll be told, "at LEAST it's better than in Iraq!"

----------------
Controls appeared to break down completely in the final days of CPA authority, just as billions of dollars in cash were being rushed into the country. A Special Inspector General audit found that CPA staff members were encouraged to spend cash quickly in its last days before the interim Iraqi government took control of the funds. In the South-Central region of Iraq, one disbursing official was given $6.75 million in cash on June 21, 2004, “with the expectation of disbursing the entire amount before the transfer of sovereignty” on June 28, 2004.44

The end result is that billions in Iraqi funds spent or disbursed by the CPA cannot be accounted for. The Special Inspector General concluded that “the CPA did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial, and contractual controls to ensure DFI funds were used in a transparent manner” and that funds were “susceptible to waste, fraud, and abuse.”45 Although U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483 required that the Iraqi funds be administered “in a transparent manner,” the lack of adequate financial and physical controls have made transparency and accountability virtually impossible.

Why is it moonbats always post lengthy coma-inducing screeds as blog comments?

Can someone answer me that?

It just keeps getting better.
------------------------------
In addition, Halliburton repeatedly refused to provide information requested by DCAA auditors, including its actual costs for fuel from Turkey and Jordan and the process it used to choose its Kuwaiti subcontractor.51 Although Security Council Resolution 1483 requires “transparency,” U.S. officials affirmatively sought to withhold information about Halliburton’s overcharges from the IAMB. After failing for months to respond to repeated requests by the IAMB for DCAA’s audits, U.S. officials finally provided the IAMB with “redacted copies of the DCAA audit reports on sole sourced contracts, at its meeting in October 2004.”52 These audits were so heavily redacted, however, as to be nearly meaningless. Every reference to every overcharge in every audit submitted to the IAMB was blacked out. In total, references to overcharges and other questioned costs were redacted 463 times by Halliburton and U.S. officials.53

Tony, the answer is that on several occasions I've been told that I failed to back up my assertion about Iraqi funds. In fact I linked to the report earlier, but that was apparently not good enough. But do you want something exciting? You're in luck! Read this! Read what kind of collosal screw-up had to happen for any criminal charges to be filed! They had to HAND THE EVIDENCE over to get in trouble!

------------

The performance of Custer Battles appears to be rife with waste, fraud, and abuse. In just one example, Custer Battles allegedly seized forklifts from Baghdad airport abandoned by Iraqi Airways, repainted them to cover the Iraqi Airways markings, claimed the forklifts were owned by a Cayman Islands shell company created by Custer Battles, and billed the government to lease the same forklifts under the currency exchange contract.59

At a meeting between U.S. officials and Custer and Battles, a Custer Battles
representative accidentally left behind a spreadsheet detailing the amounts that
Custer Battles had overcharged the government.60 Government investigators
subsequently verified that Custer Battles “fraudulently increased profits by
inflating its claimed costs.”61

The company has been barred from receiving federal contracts,62 and it is now facing a federal lawsuit under the False Claims Act.63
---------------------
Good reading, eh???

Still, 10-0 in the third. Plenty of time for the Cowboys to choke.

See what I mean? They're now down by one.

Will the US press touch this one? It's in The Guardian now. I'm sure BrewFan will be shocked, SHOCKED. Still not sure if the money was from CPA's control of DFI (CPA stuck Iraq with contracts), but the pattern fits... BrewFan, and geoff too I think, believe that there was NO FRAUD or ABUSE with the DFI funds. Right, boys?

Right?
------------
Iraqi authorities are preparing an arrest warrant for the country's former defence minister in connection with a massive fraud case involving the "disappearance" of more than $1bn from ministry coffers.
Judge Raid al-Radhi, who is head of Iraq's commission on public integrity, said yesterday that he had given Iraq's central criminal court a dossier of evidence against Hazim Shaalan, who was minister of defence under the former government of Ayed Allawi.

"What Shaalan and his ministry were responsible for is possibly the largest robbery in the world. Our estimates begin at $1.3bn [£720m] and go up to $2.3bn," Judge Radhi, who is Iraq's senior anti-corruption official, told Reuters.

The "robbery" is believed to include the signing of multimillion-dollar deals with companies to supply equipment that was sometimes inappropriate for the new army or was years out of date. It is also alleged that the ministry paid huge premiums for some military hardware.

BrewFan, is it stealing yet?

------------
The South-Central region disbursed $119.9 million in Iraqi funds. But the Special Inspector General found that the CPA could not account for the expenditure of $96.6 million — 80% of the funds — and “there was no assurance that fraud, waste, and abuse did not occur in the management and administration of cash assets.”67 Of the $96.6 million that could not be accounted for, $7.2 million in cash remains missing.68

Moreover, the Special Inspector General found evidence of fraud and referred cases to the United States Attorney for prosecution. In one of these cases, two agents who were entrusted with cash left Iraq without accounting for their balances of $777,050 and $715,000. Rather than report the missing cash, an account manager simply adjusted the accounts to remove the outstanding balances.69
-----------
Oh wait, it wasn't stealing because the account manager adjusted the accounts!!!

Iraq was practice. NOLA will be the real deal. Will conservatives let it slide, as they did in Iraq?

http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/09/bust-some-chops.html

Tubino, what you are doing is not 'commenting' anymore, it is out-and-out threadjacking.

This thread barely even touches on the subject of the post, and most of the posts are by you, and they are lengthy cut-and-pastes from external articles.

Please use links. Nobody is going to read all that crap.

For your next trick, Dave, why don't you cite Bowen

I was busy taking a shit. But that does make me think of you.