Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Shut Up, Bitch.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats alike seem unimpressed with this whiny little prick's desperate attempt to save a reputation that was pretty sullied to begin with. You did a shitty job, Brownie, and everybody knows it. Except maybe you-know-who. 

 

Ex-FEMA Director Brown Blames Others

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer 56 minutes ago

Former FEMA director Michael Brown blamed others for most government failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday, especially Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. He aggressively defended his own role.

Michael Brown

Brown also said that in the days before the storm, he expressed his concerns that "this is going to be a bad one" in phone conversations and e-mails with President Bush, White House chief of staff Andy Card and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin.

And he blamed the Department of Homeland Security — the parent agency for the Federal Emergency Management Agency — for not acquiring better equipment ahead of the storm.

His efforts to shift blame drew sharp criticism from Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike.

"I'm happy you left," said Rep. Christopher Shays (news, bio, voting record), R-Conn. "That kind of look in the lights like a deer tells me you weren't capable of doing that job."

Rep. Gene Taylor (news, bio, voting record), D-Miss., told Brown: "The disconnect was, people thought there was some federal expertise out there. There wasn't. Not from you."

Brown appeared before a special congressional panel set up by House Republican leaders to investigate the catastrophe.

"My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday that Louisiana was dysfunctional," two days before the storm hit, Brown said.

Brown, who for many became a symbol of government failures in the natural disaster that claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, rejected criticism that he was inexperienced.

"I've overseen over 150 presidentially declared disasters. I know what I'm doing, and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it," he said.

Brown resigned earlier this month after being removed by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff from on-site responsibility. Brown will remain on the FEMA payroll for two more weeks, advising the agency, said Russ Knocke, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.

Brown joined FEMA in 2001 and ran it for more than two years. He was previously an attorney who held several local government and private posts, including leading the International Arabian Horse Association.

Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio, voting record), D-La. told Brown: "I find it absolutely stunning that this hearing would start out with you, Mr. Brown, laying the blame for FEMA's failings at the feet of the governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans."

In a testy exchange, Shays compared Brown's performance unfavorably with that of former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

"So I guess you want me to be the superhero, to step in there and take everyone out of New Orleans," Brown said.

"What I wanted you to do is do your job and coordinate," Shays retorted.

"I'm happy to be called not a Rudy Giuliani...a scapegoat ... if it means that FEMA ...is going to be able to be reborn," Brown said.

Criticized by Shays for failing to get better equipment to make communication easier among emergency agencies, Brown blamed those above him.

"We put that money in our budget request and it was removed by the Department of Homeland Security" he said.

Brown said he was "just tired and misspoke" when a television interviewer appeared to be the first to tell him there were desperate residents at the New Orleans Convention Center.

Brown said he learned a day earlier that people were flocking there.

He blamed "a hysteric media" for what he said were unfounded reports of rapes and murders. He characterized blunt-spoken Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, the military coordinator for the disaster, as "a bull in the China closet, God love him."

And he said Americans themselves must play a more active role in preparing for natural disasters — and not expect more from the government than it can deliver.

Republican Rep. Kay Granger (news, bio, voting record) of Texas told Brown: "I don't know how you can sleep at night. You lost the battle."

Brown in his opening statement cited "specific mistakes" in dealing with the storm, and listed just two.

One, he said, was not having more media briefings.

As to the other, he said: "I very strongly personally regret that I was unable to persuade Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences, and work together. I just couldn't pull that off."

Both Blanco and Nagin are Democrats.

In Baton Rouge, La., Blanco's press secretary, Denise Bottcher, responded: "Mike Brown wasn't engaged then, and he surely isn't now. He should have been watching CNN instead of the Disney Channel," Bottcher said.

Despite the appearance by several Democratic Gulf Coast lawmakers, The hearing was generally boycotted by Democrats, who want an independent investigation conducted into government failures, not one run by congressional Republicans.

Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., cautioned against too narrowly assigning blame. "At the end of the day, I suspect that we'll find that government at all levels failed," Davis said.

He pushed Brown on what he and his agency should have done to evacuate New Orleans, restore order and improve communication.

"Those are not FEMA roles," Brown said. "FEMA doesn't evacuate communities. FEMA does not do law enforcement. FEMA does not do communications."

Brown said the lack of an effective evacuation of New Orleans before the storm was "the tipping point for all the other things that went wrong."

A "mandatory" evacuation was ordered Sunday by Nagin, the mayor. However, buses were not provided and thousands of residents were stranded without transportation in low-lying areas.


3:24:01 PM    comment []  


Jack Abramoff Again

The more we hear about this scumbag, this "dear friend" of fellow scumbag Tom DeLay, the uglier it gets.

 

Two Charged in Miami Businessman's Death

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - Two men were arrested and charged with the Mafia-style killing of the founder of the Miami Subs sandwich chain, unsolved for more than four years, a law enforcement official said Tuesday.

Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis was ambushed after he left his office in Fort Lauderdale on Feb. 6, 2001. Boulis, who was involved in a business dispute with prominent Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff at the time, was shot to death after two cars stopped him.

Anthony Ferrari, 46, was taken into custody at his North Miami Beach home Monday evening, The Miami Herald reported. He was being held at the Broward County Jail, sheriff's spokesman Jim Leljedal said.

Fort Lauderdale homicide detectives arrested Anthony Moscatiello, 67, at his home in New York late Monday. A state law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the arrests.

Both men were charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation to commit murder, the paper reported. They were scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.

Boulis, 51, also founded SunCruz Casinos, a gambling fleet whose sale led to charges last month against Abramoff, a key figure in investigations involving House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

The indictment, returned Aug. 11 by a grand jury in Fort Lauderdale, charges that Abramoff and an associate, 36-year-old New York businessman Adam Kidan, used a fake wire transfer to defraud two lenders out of some $60 million to finance the deal to buy SunCruz from Boulis.

The slaying of Boulis came amid bitter legal fighting over the sale, including a physical altercation between Kidan and Boulis.

Both have pleaded not guilty in the fraud case, with a status hearing set for Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Paul Huck.

Kidan's defense attorney in the case, Martin Jaffe, said his client had not had any new interviews with Fort Lauderdale police since the indictment in August. Jaffe said that Kidan had nothing to do with Boulis' murder.

A call to Abramoff's Miami attorney, Neal Sonnett, was not returned.

DeLay, R-Texas, has asked the House Ethics Committee to review allegations that Abramoff or his clients paid some of DeLay's overseas travel expenses. DeLay has denied knowing that the expenses were paid by Abramoff, whom he once described as "one of my closest and dearest friends." He was not mentioned in any lawsuits involved in the SunCruz deal.

© 2005 The Associated Press.


1:56:05 PM    comment []  

The South: Time To Let Go

 

When Howard Dean was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he pledged to make the party competitive in every part of the country, including the South. While I have long been an admirer of Dr. Dean and his vision for America (and remain convinced that he would have made a better presidential candidate than John Kerry), I cannot help but feel that for the Democratic Party to put much, if any, emphasis on winning in the South would be a waste of its already limited (compared to the Republicans') resources.

For nearly a century, the South was monolithically Democratic. In 1877 Congressional Republicans ended Reconstruction as payment for Southern electors' help in stealing the 1876 presidential election for Rutherford B. Hayes. But Reconstruction, even after yielding to Jim Crow, stuck in the craw of white Southerners for decades afterward (in Vicksburg, Mississippi, the Fourth of July wasn't celebrated again until World War II), and as a result a Republican had about as much chance of being elected to a significant political office below the Mason-Dixon line as a Black Muslim.

 

That all changed with the stirring of the Civil Rights movement. When Harry Truman integrated the troops and paid nominal attention to the plight of Southern blacks, there arose within his party the "Dixiecrat" rebellion, which was quelled somewhat during the Eisenhower years (it is interesting to note that the deep South still clung to its Democratic prejudices in the elections of 1952 and 1956, casting its vote for liberal intellectual Adlai Stevenson over Dwight Eisenhower). But the Kennedy/Johnson administration's alliance with the mainstream Movement as personified by Dr. King, which culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, spelled the beginning of the end of Democratic dominance in the South. Heavyweight Democratic politicians began defecting to the Republicans, whose standard bearers (Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon) were the very antithesis of Civil Rights, followed by the white rank and file. This has resulted, over the past forty years, of a region that has gone from a Democratic to a Republican monolith.

While it is true that there are pockets that remain open to regional Democratic candidacy, the South as a whole needs, I believe, to be written off by the national party. The Western states (Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Montana in particular), as stated elsewhere on this blog, are much more fertile Democratic ground. Their brand of conservatism, which is rooted in free-thinking, individualistic, small-"l" libertarianism rather than the Christian fundamentalism of the South, and in many ways eschews the old, outmoded left-right paradigm, is far more open to the rational thought of Progressive Populism that Western Democrats are bringing to them.  In addition, the party needs to commit more resources to Midwestern "battleground" states like Wisconsin and Minnesota, whose Democratic margins have become razor thin of late. 

It's true that there is a Progressive tradition in the South that has produced the likes of Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and John Edwards, but it has of late become a politically uncompetitive minority. Remember that, with the exception of Florida, Gore didn't carry a single Southern state, including his own, in 2000, and Edwards was zero help in attracting Southern votes for the '04 ticket.  And while historically the South has produced a proud literary tradition (Willie Morris, Shelby Foote, Harper Lee, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, et. al.), some of the greatest American music (jazz, blues, bluegrass, zydeco, early country, rock and roll) and some damn fine food, it is dominated today by NASCAR, football, fake country music (Clint Black, Toby Keith, et. al.), a wildly distorted interpretation of the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the Republican Party. Progressives should regard the modern South as a Third World country within our borders, a colorful if politically and culturally bass-ackward place to visit on occasion for a good time and a break from the winter cold, but not to take seriously. 

In the first years of the Bush administration, particularly after 9/11, Southern conservatives gloated about their control of the agenda, and after the disaster that was the 2004 election became even more emboldened, even more determined to make their grotesque subculture of "Jesusland" the blood-red law of the land. Katrina blew a big hole in their arrogance, and exposed their form of "conservatism" as the bloodthirsty, theocratic, neofascist radicalism it truly is. Let them have Bill Frist, Saxby Chambliss and David Vitter. We'll take Brian Schweitzer, Mark Udall, Janet Napolitano, Bill Richardson and Ken Salazar. The sooner we stop pandering to the South, the sooner they'll become politically isolated and marginalized, the sooner their power will wane, and the sooner there won't be a damned thing they can do to us.  

--MDZ  


12:56:48 PM    comment []  

 
The KatrinaRita


September 27, 2005

by Molly Ivins


AUSTIN, Texas -- The Big Whew blew over Texas, leaving Port Arthur underwater and whole lot of stress across the state. It is highly stressful to be in a car with two adults, three children, the dog and the cat for a 12-to-20 hour trip from Houston to Austin, Dallas or San Antonio. It is also stressful to have two adults, three children, their dog and their cat move into your 1,200-square-foot house with you, especially if your sister-in-law thinks anyone who criticizes George W. Bush is a tool of Satan.

Stress-sensitive groups like Alcoholics Anonymous were doing land-office business in Texas this weekend, while bartenders served up the KatrinaRita. Austin, of course, was also having a music festival and offering free yoga and aromatherapy sessions to hurricane refugees. Austin musicians have adopted New Orleans musicians en masse: You're practically no one if you haven't got a Neville in your guest room.

The refugees trade tales of heroism and generosity, along with reports of the bad and the ugly. That's human nature, but there's nothing forgivable about organized government corruption.

I'm sorry, there are no exceptions: The first commandment of governing is Thou Shalt Not Steal the People's Money. Ronald Reagan came into office in 1980 on the mantra that he would rid the nation of Waste, Fraud and Abuse. He proceeded to raise the national deficit by $2 trillion with tax cuts and spending on the military in the face of a collapsing Soviet Union. This led to the peppy military procurement scandals of the late '80s and early '90s -- the $435 hammer and the $640 toilet seat.

When Newt Gingrich and Co. took power in 1994, they promised many "reforms" and spent millions of dollars on hearings and investigations -- the endless prosecution of Henry Cisneros may actually be a stronger case in point than the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Despite these splendid efforts, they never could find the Waste, Fraud and Abuse they claimed were the hallmarks of government. But this Bush administration has given us Waste, Fraud and Abuse galore.

The waste of money in Iraq is already into the billions, and the lack of accountability is fed by a Republican Congress that refuses to seriously investigate anything done by the Republican administration. The sums being overtly wasted are already staggering, and because there is no accountability, we can expect that situation not only to continue, but deteriorate.

With billions being allocated to clean up after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, you can already smell the corruption -- fat contracts awarded without competitive bidding. The New York Times reports, "More than 80 percent of the $1.5 billion in contracts signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency alone were awarded without bidding or with limited competition, government records show, provoking concerns among auditors and government officials about the potential for favoritism or abuse."

"Provoking concerns," eh? Good old Times, eternally blah -- why doesn't it ever run a screaming headline that says, "You're getting ripped off!" "They are Stealing Your Money to Pay Off Their Political Pals!" The trouble with journalism in this country is that it's too damn polite.

Look, this is rank, nasty business -- corruption, cronyism and competence (the lack thereof) are the issues here. And as we have so recently and so painfully been reminded, when government is run by corrupt, incompetent cronies, real people pay a real price. There is nothing abstract about swollen bodies floating in flooded streets or dozens of old people dead in nursing homes.

Frankly, it's just a mercy most of Houston didn't drown in a giant traffic jam last week. Already, the corporate vultures are moving in -- contracts are arranged through people like Joe Allbaugh, the former FEMA director who brought in his old buddy Michael ("Heckuva job, Brownie") Brown to run the agency.

This pattern is not just one rotten agency: The arrest last week of David Safavian, the Bushie who oversaw contracts for the Office of Management and Budget, ties into a whole nest of cronyism. Safavian's friend and former lobbying partner is Jack Abramoff, who in turn is big buddies with Texas Rep. Tom DeLay.

The corporate clout in this administration is mirrored everywhere, with the same pattern of crony contracts. Allbaugh didn't just start getting contracts for politically connected firms after Katrina. He's been in Iraq, where he has a flourishing lobbying business precisely to help corporations get government contracts.

Already, Homeland Security is flooding what's left of New Orleans with mercenaries from the same private security contractors flourishing in Iraq. The Nation reports companies like DynCorp, Intercon Security, American Security Group, Blackwater, Wackenhut and an Israeli company called Instinctive Shooting International are all in New Orleans.

"Some, like Blackwater, are under federal contract. Others have been hired by the wealthy elite, like F. Patrick Quinn III, who brought in private security to guard his $3 million private estate and his luxury hotels, which are under consideration for a lucrative federal contract to house FEMA workers."

Baghdad on the Bayou for real.

To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2005 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC


11:32:45 AM    comment []  

You Know This. I Know This. Jon Carroll Certainly Knows This. So Why In Hell Doesn't The So-Called "Leadership" of the Democratic Party Know This? And If They Do, Why Don't They Do Something About It?

 

San Francisco Chronicle

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

I'm not sure when I first became fed up with the Democrats. Probably sometime during the Kerry campaign, although at that time I was being eaten up by the Fear and not noticing the flaws of the Kerry campaign so much. I feel foolish now. Many of us feel foolish now.

But here's the moment at which it all crystallized for me: It was at the beginning of what was then called "the great Social Security debate," which was a brief fad that hit America at about the same time as the 2005 Rose Parade.

Congressional Democrats solemnly announced that they were not going to come up with an alternative plan, because that would be politically unwise. It would be much better for the party to just snipe at the Republican plan. Yeah, I know, Social Security was not in nearly as bad shape as the GOP said it was, but could certainly have used -- still certainly could use -- a little help. Innovative thinking, maybe. Or, you know, the appearance of innovative thinking. Something other than "This plan is very terrible, and that's good for our side."

But it's typical. The party of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson is back on its heels. It is reacting rather than acting. It is getting sucked into pointless debates. It is providing zero leadership. Some individuals within the party are trying -- hello, John Edwards -- but there's no vision.

What do Democrats believe? Well, you know what Republicans believe. Well, Democrats believe the other thing. Democrats stand for a vision to be named later.

Poverty was not a secret before Hurricane Katrina hit. The plight of inner-city African Americans was not a secret before the storm hit. If Democrats had wanted an issue, that was always there. If Democrats wanted to stay on message, there was that message. It's not the only possible message, but it's a pretty good one -- and it's a message that reaches across ideological lines to the so-called "values voters."

Here's the first thing the Democrats should do. Stop taking the pundits seriously. Stop responding to every mini-flurry of gossip or speculation that eddies through the corridors of Washington. That is not real life. That is not what we care about out here in people-land.

In the last election, when the Swift Boat Veterans for I'm-With-Stupid started their well-financed reputation-smashing campaign, the Democrats should have appointed one politician as Authorized Bull Catcher. Every Democratic candidate would refer all rumors, allegations, thunderings, rumblings and billingsgate to the Bull Catcher. The Bull Catcher would hold eight-hour news conferences every day and keep talking until everyone walked away. Meanwhile, the candidates would insist on talking about poverty and racial justice and the benefits of peace over war. (In peace: less killing. You'd think that would be a selling point.)

It would help, of course, if the idiot press would not go chasing after every whiff of a scandal-like odor. Ooh, Teresa Heinz Kerry has a temper. Ooh, Jenna Bush may have gotten drunk. Ooh, someone saw Rick Santorum in a gay bar. Ooh, Russ Feingold is getting a divorce. Are we running a country or a hair salon? I mean no disrespect to hair salons.

The right-wing attack machine knows no shame. It will slime war veterans like John Kerry. It will slime badly injured war veterans like Max Cleland. It'll slime grieving mothers like Cindy Sheehan. It's not a fight the Democrats can win; it's not a fight that any decent person could win. Solution: Get out of the fight. Takes two to have a shouting match.

And Democrats might want to get off the "values" horse too. The fights are mostly futile, anyway, at least short term. Abortion is not going to be outlawed in this country; it's just not. Prayers in schools are not going to be allowed in this country; they're just not. Gay marriage is never going to be the law of the land; it's just not.

And, at the risk of alienating my base and some of my relatives -- I don't think gay marriage is that important an issue. I mean, dead citizens in Iraq; tortured Muslims at Guantanamo; AIDS epidemic in Africa; ice caps melting and fish dying pretty much everywhere. Gay marriage freaks people out -- it shouldn't, but it does. Heck, I think the failure of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy is more important than gay marriage, and even that takes a backseat to, uh, some of the other problems the military is having.

I don't think the Democratic Party should be another talking-points-generating engine, as the Republican Party is. Democrats are always going to disagree; it's a good thing. But please, let us disagree about real things, about real policies and real ideas and real solutions. And, seriously, the Democrats really should find a candidate who's a uniter, not a divider. That job is definitely still open.

It's like, OK, I do not know how to fix this car, but I do know that sitting around hurling slogans rather than reading the manual is not the way to go about it.

Sometimes when we touch, the honesty's too jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.


11:13:01 AM    comment []  

Your Charitable Dollars. . .Down The Drain?

It might be time to rethink that knee-jerk contribution to the bloated, bulging bureaucracy that is the Red Cross.

 

The Red Cross Money Pit

By Richard M. Walden, Los Angeles Times Op-Ed

Richard M. Walden is president and CEO of Operation USA, a 26-year-old international disaster relief agency based in Los Angeles. Website: www.opusa.org.

WITH HURRICANE RITA now making news, it's time for Americans to take a more disciplined look at their tremendous generosity. As of last week, the American Red Cross reported that it had raised $826 million in private funds for Hurricane Katrina victims. The Chronicle of Philanthropy has the total figure at more than $1.2 billion for all relief groups reporting. So the Red Cross received about 70% of all giving.

This percentage was no doubt bloated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency's mystifying release to the media of the names of 19 faith-based charities (plus the Red Cross, Humane Society and three lesser-known groups) to which the public should donate — rather than the much wider group of established relief agencies.

This skewed giving to Red Cross would be justified if the organization had to pay the cost of the 300,000 people it has sheltered. But FEMA and the affected states are reimbursing the Red Cross under preexisting contracts for emergency shelter and other disaster services. The existence of these contracts is no secret to anyone but the American public. The Red Cross carefully says it functions only by the grace of the American people — but "people" includes government, national and local. What we've now come to expect from a major disaster is a Red Cross media blitz.

The national Red Cross reports it spent $111 million last year on fundraising alone. And it's hard to escape the organization's warning of Armageddon if you don't call in a credit card number or send a check or donate blood (which it resells to the tune of more than $1.5 billion annually, part of its $3 billion in income).

In Southern California, we have had the spectacle of "drive-by" drop-offs of bags of money at public places such as the Rose Bowl, massively promoted by local media. Hollywood studios and stars and corporate America compete to make huge donations.

The Red Cross brand is platinum. Its fundraising vastly outruns its programs because it does very little or nothing to rescue survivors, provide direct medical care or rebuild houses. After 9/11, the Red Cross collected more than $1 billion, a record in philanthropic fundraising after a disaster. But the Red Cross could do little more than trace missing people, help a handful of people in shelters and provide food to firefighters, police, paramedics and evacuation crews during that catastrophe.

When New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer asked for documentation of 9/11 expenditures, the Red Cross' response was that it is federally chartered and not answerable to state government regulators. The clamor rose, however, when the media began dissecting Red Cross activities in the 9/11 aftermath. This resulted in the resignation of the organization's president and chief executive, Dr. Bernadine Healy, and the appointment of ex-Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine) to oversee its 9/11 fund and help clean up its image. Funds were then pushed out the door — including millions to New York limo drivers who said they lost income after 9/11, and to upscale residents of lower Manhattan to help pay their utility bills.

The organization also ran into trouble after the 1989 San Francisco Bay Area earthquake when it was revealed that it planned to spend only a fraction of the millions of dollars it had collected in the area damaged by the earthquake. When the Bay Area's mayors found out, they insisted that these funds be spent on housing, homeless shelters and health clinics. The Red Cross had to waive, for one time only, its long-standing policy against funding non-Red Cross groups. (Spare change — and there will be a lot of it this time — stays in a Red Cross "national disaster account." This allows it to spend funds donated for one purpose on another.)

The Red Cross expects to raise more than $2 billion before Hurricane Katrina-related giving subsides. If it takes care of 300,000 people, that's $7,000 per victim. I doubt each victim under Red Cross care will see more than a doughnut, an interview with a social worker and a short-term voucher for a cheap motel, with a few miscellaneous items such as clothes and cooking pots thrown in.

The Red Cross' 3 million unpaid volunteers, 156,000 of whom it says are deployed in Hurricane Katrina, are salt-of-the-Earth Americans. But asking where all the privately collected money will go and how much Red Cross is billing FEMA and the affected states is a legitimate question — even if posed by the president of a small relief agency.

As Hurricane Rita dissipates, let me answer my unpopular question like this: Giving so high a percentage of all donations to one agency that defines itself only as a first-responder and not a rebuilder is not the wisest choice. Americans ought to give a much larger share of their generous charity to community foundations, grass-roots nonprofit groups based in the affected communities and a large number of international "brand name" relief agencies with decades of expertise in rebuilding communities after disasters.


10:51:07 AM    comment []  

And The Creeps Just Keep on Coming. . .

I remember when this guy's father ran for President. John Schmitz was pretty nuts, and apparently the nut doesn't fall far from the tree. But he was obviously a loyal Bush whore, and in this administration that's apparently all that counts.

 

The Scrutinizer Finds Himself Under Scrutiny

Joseph Schmitz, for three years in charge of investigating waste, fraud and abuse at the Pentagon, is now the focus of complaints.

By T. Christian Miller
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 25, 2005

WASHINGTON — When Joseph E. Schmitz took over as the Pentagon's inspector general in 2002, the largest watchdog organization in the federal government was under fire for failing to fully investigate a senior official, falsifying internal documents and mistreating whistle-blowers. He publicly pledged to clean it up.

Three years later, similar accusations now surround Schmitz.

Schmitz slowed or blocked investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spent taxpayer money on pet projects and accepted gifts that may have violated ethics guidelines, according to interviews with current and former senior officials in the inspector general's office, congressional investigators and a review of internal e-mail and other documents.

Schmitz also drew scrutiny for his unusual fascination with Baron Friedrich Von Steuben, a Revolutionary War hero who is considered the military's first true inspector general. Schmitz even replaced the official inspector general's seal in offices nationwide with a new one bearing the Von Steuben family motto, according to the documents and interviews.

The case has raised troubling questions about Schmitz as well as the Defense Department's commitment to combating waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayers' money, especially in politically sensitive cases.

Schmitz comes from a family that is no stranger to controversy. His father was the ultraconservative Orange County congressman John G. Schmitz, who once ran for president but whose political career ended after he admitted having an affair with a German immigrant suspected of child abuse. Schmitz's sister is Mary Kay Letourneau, the Washington state teacher who served more than seven years in prison after a 1997 conviction for rape after having sex with a sixth-grade pupil with whom she had two children. After Letourneau's release from prison, she and the former pupil, now an adult, married each other.

Schmitz, who resigned on Sept. 10 to take a job with the parent company of defense contractor Blackwater USA, is now the target of a congressional inquiry and a review by the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, the oversight body responsible for investigating inspectors general, according to the documents and interviews.

"I've seen this office become involved in many questionable projects despite strong and persistent opposition from senior staff," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, whose office is pursuing complaints about Schmitz. "It appears to me that this has created a lack of respect and trust, and has resulted in an ineffective Office of the Inspector General."

In a brief response to written questions, Schmitz said it had been "an honor to serve the American people as inspector general of the Department of Defense." He listed a series of accomplishments, from eliminating three layers of management to establishing a "new mission, vision and core values."

Without giving specifics, Schmitz also said that some of The Times' questions "appear to include false or misleading assumptions and/or law enforcement sensitive information." He directed further inquiries to the inspector general's office, which declined to answer the questions.

Schmitz's allies said he was being persecuted. One senior Pentagon official defended Schmitz by saying that he was concerned about protecting the reputation of senior officials in Washington, where political enemies can cause trouble with an anonymous hotline tip.

At a ceremony earlier this month, acting Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England presented Schmitz with a distinguished public service award for "inspiring a culture of integrity, accountability and intelligent risk-taking." The White House said his five years in the Navy and 18 years as a reservist qualified him for the job.

Current and former colleagues described Schmitz, a former attorney for the Washington law firm Patton Boggs, as an intelligent but easily distracted leader who seemed to obsess over details.

They described a management style in which Schmitz asked for updates on personal projects — such as a new bathroom in his executive suite or the hiring of a speechwriter — while avoiding substantive issues such as tight budgets. Schmitz never won approval for the bathroom or the speechwriter.

He paid close attention, however, to the investigations of senior Bush administration appointees. At one point, investigators even stopped telling Schmitz who was under investigation, substituting letter codes for the names of individuals during weekly briefings for fear that Schmitz would leak the information to Pentagon superiors, according to a senior Pentagon official.

"He became very involved in political investigations that he had no business getting involved in," said another senior official in the inspector general's office.

The Times has previously reported on Grassley's allegations that Schmitz intervened in investigations of senior Bush officials. A review of e-mail messages and documents provides new details.

One case involves John A. "Jack" Shaw, a deputy undersecretary of Defense accused by whistle-blowers in Iraq of directing a lucrative telecommunications contract to a company whose board members included friends. Shaw has denied wrongdoing. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Schmitz, who had signed an unusual agreement giving Shaw limited investigative powers, sent the case to the FBI over the objections of his own investigators and then blocked them from assisting the FBI, according to interviews and e-mails obtained by The Times.

"It's a safe bet you can bury something at the FBI, because they won't have time to look at it," said one Pentagon official.

After the publication of Times articles about the accusations leveled at Shaw, Schmitz helped to draft a press release in August 2004 that appeared to exonerate Shaw. The release said that Shaw "is not now, nor has he ever been, under investigation by the [Department of Defense inspector general]."

Schmitz's own staff strenuously objected. Chuck Beardall, head of the agency's criminal investigative service, said the release was "dead wrong and needs to be removed ASAP. Failure to do so reflects poorly on the DOD's and our integrity," according to an Aug. 13 e-mail.

But Schmitz told an assistant, Gregg Bauer, that he was inclined to "let the sleeping dog lie."

"We did the right thing by recommending a less-inclined-to-misinterpretation" version of the press release, Schmitz wrote in an e-mail response.

When confronted later by congressional staff about the accuracy of the release, Schmitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee in August 2004 that the release was "technically correct." But this year, when asked again, he acknowledged that the release was "inaccurate." The Department of Defense has also acknowledged that the information in the press release "may not have been accurate."

Another case in which Schmitz intervened came when the inspector general's office began examining the jobs received by Pentagon officials who left for the private sector, according to another U.S. official, who also declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

One of those on the list was Edward "Pete" Aldridge, the former Pentagon procurement chief who took a job with defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Schmitz would not sign a subpoena allowing investigators to examine employment documents, the official said.

Instead, the official said that Schmitz created a new policy that made it more difficult to get information by subpoena by requiring additional bureaucratic steps. During his tenure, Schmitz also made it harder to initiate an investigation of a political appointee, requiring high-ranking approval before investigators could proceed.

A Lockheed Martin spokesman confirmed the company had received a request that the firm "voluntarily provide" information regarding Aldridge. It said it had "promptly and fully" responded to the request.

Among other complaints about Schmitz, several senior officials also said he did not aggressively pursue more funds for the agency. Although the Defense budget jumped almost 30% between 2002 and 2005, the number of agents in the inspector general's office increased only 7%, from 307 to 329, according to department statistics. Investigations into procurement, healthcare fraud and environmental crimes have declined precipitously as agents focused on terrorism-related inquiries.

Some of the more unusual complaints regarding Schmitz deal with what senior officials called an "obsession" with Von Steuben, the Revolutionary War hero who worked with George Washington to instill discipline in the military. Von Steuben reportedly fled Germany after learning that he was going to be tried for homosexual activities.

Shortly after taking office, Schmitz made Von Steuben's legacy a focus. He spent three months personally redesigning the inspector general's seal to include the Von Steuben family motto, "Always under the protection of the Almighty."

He dictated the number of stars, laurel leaves and colors of the seal. He also asked for a new eagle, saying that the one featured on the old seal "looked like a chicken," current and former officials said.

In July 2004, he escorted Henning Von Steuben, a German journalist and head of the Von Steuben Family Assn., to a U.S. Marine Corps event. He also feted Von Steuben at an $800 meal allegedly paid for by public funds, according to Grassley, and hired Von Steuben's son to work as an unpaid intern in the inspector general's office, a former Defense official said.

He also called off a $200,000 trip to attend a ceremony at a Von Steuben statue earlier this year in Germany after Grassley questioned it.

Finally, Schmitz's son, Phillip J. Schmitz, has a business relationship with a group tied to Von Steuben. Schmitz, who runs a technology firm, provides web-hosting services for the World Security Network, a nonprofit news service focused on peace and conflict issues. Von Steuben serves on the network's advisory board.

Hubertus Hoffmann, a German businessman who founded the network, said Von Steuben played no role in assigning the contract to Phillip Schmitz, who is paid a "modest sum" for his work. Schmitz said he first made contact with Hoffmann through his father but that he had never met Von Steuben.

The relationships troubled many at the Pentagon.

"He was consumed with all things German and all things Von Steuben," said the former Defense official, who did not want to be identified because of the ongoing inquiries. "He was obsessed."

At Grassley's request, the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, the inspector general oversight body, is reviewing two occasions when Schmitz accepted gifts, one involving plane tickets on Asiana Airlines and a second when he accepted baseball tickets to a Washington Nationals game.

On both occasions, Schmitz said that he had had the gifts approved by an ethics officer.

Still, Grassley said the gifts raised concerns.

"As the watchdog of our federal agencies, inspectors general must be held to a higher standard," Grassley said in a statement. "They must always set an example of excellence and must be beyond reproach."
10:37:13 AM    comment []  

The Long Tentacles of Jack Abramoff

This administration is starting to make Reagan's look like the Vienna Boys Choir. Remember the days when they could say, with a straight face, that they were bringing "trust and integrity" back to the White House?

Demotion of a Prosecutor Is Investigated

By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 - The Justice Department's inspector general and the F.B.I. are looking into the demotion of a veteran federal prosecutor whose reassignment nearly three years ago shut down a criminal investigation of the Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, current and former department officials report.

They said investigators had questioned whether the demotion of the prosecutor, Frederick A. Black, in November 2002 was related to his alert to Justice Department officials days earlier that he was investigating Mr. Abramoff. The lobbyist is a major Republican Party fund-raiser and a close friend of several Congressional leaders.

Colleagues said the demotion of Mr. Black, the acting United States attorney in Guam, and a subsequent order barring him from pursuing public corruption cases brought an end to his inquiry into Mr. Abramoff's lobbying work for some Guam judges.

Colleagues of Mr. Black, who had run the federal prosecutor's office in Guam for 12 years, spoke on condition of anonymity because of Justice Department rules that bar employees from talking to reporters. They said F.B.I. agents questioned several people in Guam and Washington this summer about whether Mr. Abramoff or his friends in the Bush administration had pushed for Mr. Black's removal. Mr. Abramoff's internal e-mail messages show that he boasted to clients about what he described as his close ties to John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, and others at the department.

Mr. Black's colleagues said that similar questions had been raised by investigators for the Justice Department's inspector general's office, which serves as the department's internal watchdog.

Spokesmen for the department in Washington have said there was nothing unusual about the timing of Mr. Black's reassignment in 2002. They said it was appropriate for the Bush administration to want to replace him with a permanent, Senate-confirmed United States attorney.

Mr. Abramoff, once one of the capital's best-paid lobbyists, is now the subject of a broad corruption investigation by federal prosecutors in Washington focusing on accusations that he defrauded Indian tribes and their gambling operations out of millions of dollars in lobbying fees.

A spokesman for Mr. Abramoff said he had "no recollection of being investigated in Guam in 2002" but would have cooperated if he had been aware of any inquiry at the time. Mr. Abramoff had a lucrative lobbying practice on Guam and the neighboring Northern Mariana Islands, another American territory; his lobbying clients paid for luxurious trips to the islands for several members of Congress.

Justice Department officials said they knew of no evidence to suggest that Mr. Ashcroft was involved in the decision to reassign Mr. Black. A spokesman for Mr. Ashcroft said the former attorney general and his aides at the Justice Department had done nothing to assist Mr. Abramoff and his clients and had had no significant contact with him.

Reached in Guam, Mr. Black, who continues to work as an assistant United States attorney, declined to answer questions about his 2002 reassignment.

The Los Angeles Times and news organizations in Guam have reported on questions about the circumstances of Mr. Black's demotion. The recent inquiries by the F.B.I. and by the Justice Department's inspector general had not been previously reported; nor had Mr. Black's contacts in November 2002 with the department's public integrity section about his investigation of Mr. Abramoff.

In a statement on Monday, the department said it was natural for the Bush administration to replace Mr. Black, whose assignment to run the United States attorney's office was never meant to be permanent, with a White House selection.

The department said the vetting process for Mr. Black's replacement, Leonardo Rapadas, the current United States attorney, was "well under way in November 2002," when the nomination was announced.

Colleagues said they recalled that Mr. Black was distressed when he was notified by the department in November 2002 that he was being replaced.

The announcement came only days after Mr. Black had notified the department's public integrity division in Washington, by telephone and e-mail communication, that he had opened a criminal investigation into Mr. Abramoff's lobbying activities for the Guam judges, the colleague said. The judges had sought Mr. Abramoff's help in blocking a bill in Congress to restructure the island's courts.

The colleagues said that Mr. Black was also surprised when his newly arrived bosses in Guam blocked him from involvement in public corruption cases in 2003. Justice Department officials said Mr. Black was asked instead to focus on terrorism investigations, which had taken on new emphasis after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Whatever the motivation in replacing Fred, his demotion meant that the investigation of Abramoff died," said a former colleague in Guam.

The Justice Department's public integrity section is responsible for cases involving government corruption. It is now overseeing the larger investigation of Mr. Abramoff in Washington.

Representative George Miller, a California Democrat who has long focused on issues involving American territories in the Pacific, said the disclosures about Mr. Black's demotion raised questions about a possible conflict of interest at the Justice Department in its investigation of Mr. Abramoff.

"What this starts to suggest is that Abramoff's ability to corrupt the system was far more pervasive, certainly than we knew at the time," Mr. Miller said.



10:03:46 AM    comment []