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POPSTop 25 Censored Stories for 2009/10 "Project censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcast outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism." — Walter Cronkite
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POPSStunning Statistics About the War Every American Should Know A year from now, we will likely see more than 220,000 US-funded personnel on the ground in Afghanistan. The US has spent more than $23 billion on contracts in Afghanistan since 2002. By next year, the number of contractors will have doubled since 2008 when taxpayers funded over $8 billion in Afghanistan-related contracts. Despite the massive number of contracts and contractors in Afghanistan, oversight is utterly lacking. “The increase in Afghanistan contracts has not seen a corresponding increase in contract management and oversight,” any USAID staff are “administering huge awards with limited knowledge of or experience with the rules and regulations.” According to one USAID official, the agency is “sending too much money, too fast with too few people looking over how it is spent.” As a result, the agency does not “know … where the money is going.”
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POPSCut Military Spending in Half By Benjamin H. Friedman, a research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato Institute and a PhD candidate in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From comment at the site: ... From 2000 to 2008, Texas defense contactors raked in $255 billion, according to federal data compiled by governmentcontractswon.com ... but 2008 yielded the highest profits of the decade. Halliburton, the Houston-based oil-field services company once headed by Dick Cheney, has been the state’s most notorious war profiteer. KBR, formerly a subsidiary of Halliburton and also headquartered in Houston, is the U.S. Army’s largest construction and contracting group in Iraq and Afghanistan. Aerospace giants clustered in the Dallas-Fort Worth area—Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, CSC Technologies and DynCorp, to name a few—have also swept in huge defense contracts to produce military aircraft, conventional missiles and military satellites.
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POPSWhy are Healthcare and Military Costs So High? Theft! The word "shoddy" comes from a descriptin for civil war uniforms made from scrape wool that would fall apart in the rain. Shoddy, is an apt description for the ethics of the companies listed below, which even after paying huge fsetlements for false claims are still getting government contracts. We have met the enemy - and he is us because we continue to vote for those who will not manage and do their job.
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POPSPTSD & Faith-Based Initiatives At the VA
More from the article below: "The story of the mistreatment of returning veterans from Iraq is well known and shocking. But the role of religious ideology in that mistreatment—how, inside the government, it was a potent tool in the betrayal of an overwhelmingly Christian Army—is much less known. “I couldn’t stand to hear that phrase any longer—‘God was watching over me,’” Benimoff wrote. Sullivan explained to McLendon and the other attendees that the rise in benefits claims the VA was noticing was caused partly by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were suffering from PTSD. “That’s too many,” McLendon said, then hit his hand on the table. “They are too young” to be filing claims, and they are doing it “too soon.” He hit the table again. The claims, he said, are “costing us too much money,” and if the veterans “believed in God and country . . . they would not come home with PTSD.” At that point, he slammed his palm against the table a final time, making a loud smack."
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POPSAny Way these Firms Can be Experts in Everything? What these government contractors are expert at is: 1. Placing job sites in states and districts of Congressional Members who serve on funding committee for Defense, IT, and Homeland Security. 2. Have Political Action Committees that donate money to candidates on same committees. 3. Having paid representatives at every meeting in Congress or government agency that could affect their funding.
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POPSInvested In War n 2004, the first full year after the current Iraq war began, Republican and Democratic lawmakers-both hawks and doves invested between $74.9 million and 161.3 million in companies under contract with the DoD. No wonder the Democratic congress kept approving the enormous spending bills on the war, since a significant portion of it happens to end up in their deep pockets. Interestingly, the report also mentioned that members of the senate foreign relations and armed services committees which oversee the Iraq war had between $32 million and $44 million invested in companies with DoD contracts. The burning questions for many people are the following: Are there any ethics left in politics? Could the universe ever exist without wars? The answer is no, because wars have been a major part of our social make up, in addition they force geostrategic changes, make profits for the elite, and reduce population.
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POPSFighting Fraud
To put it into perspective, ACORN received about $53 million of federal funding over the past 15 years. Meanwhile, Blackwater, the private military contractor to which the U.S. government has farmed out security duties, may owe the government as much as $55 million for allegedly failing to fulfill the terms of one of its federal contracts. Yet Blackwater (now known as Xe), a company that has five of its employees facing murder charges in a massacre of Iraqi civilians in 2007, got a $217 million contract from the Obama administration to provide security in Iraq. The former Haliburton subsidiary, KBR, got $80 million in contract bonuses to provide electrical wiring in Iraq -- wiring that has fatally electrocuted 16 soldiers and two contractors. They haven’t been defunded by Congress. According to the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, the biggest three defense contractors -- Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman -- have been cited 109 times for misconduct since 199
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POPSThe cost of supporting Israel
These have cost the U.S. $1.5 trillion, excluding the additional costs incurred since 2001. The cost of supporting Israel increased drastically after the 1973 Israeli-Arab war. U.S. support for Israel during that war resulted in additional costs for the American taxpayer of between $750 billion and $1 trillion. When Israel was losing the war, President Richard Nixon stepped in to supply the Jewish state with U.S. weapons. Nixon’s intervention triggered the Arab oil embargo, which cost the U.S. as much as $600 billion in lost GDP and another $450 billion in higher oil import costs. The 1973 oil crisis cost the U.S. economy no less than $900 billion, and probably as much as $1.2 trillion. As a result of the oil embargo the U.S. government created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to “insulate Israel and the U.S. against the wielding of a future Arab “oil weapon.” The billion-barrel SPR has cost taxpayers more than $134 billion so far. Making things worse, Israel gets “first
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POPSHere’s What Israel Is Really Costing American Taxpayers Want to know what's really sinking America? These have cost the U.S. $1.5 trillion, excluding the additional costs incurred since 2001. The cost of supporting Israel increased drastically after the 1973 Israeli-Arab war. U.S. support for Israel during that war resulted in additional costs for the American taxpayer of between $750 billion and $1 trillion. When Israel was losing the war, President Richard Nixon stepped in to supply the Jewish state with U.S. weapons. Nixon’s intervention triggered the Arab oil embargo, which cost the U.S. as much as $600 billion in lost GDP and another $450 billion in higher oil import costs. The 1973 oil crisis cost the U.S. economy no less than $900 billion, and probably as much as $1.2 trillion. As a result of the oil embargo the U.S. government created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to “insulate Israel and the U.S. against the wielding of a future Arab “oil weapon.”
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POPSCommercial Espionage Not only do I think it would be stupid not to believe the Chinese do it...when the stakes are high, everyone does it. Governments, companies, whatever. The Chinese are kind of right to suggest commerical and political victimization. This is an everyday reality with all contacts.
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POPSOn Facebook, MySpace? Obama's got your e-mail
In fact, according to the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, federal agencies have negotiated agreements and contracts with social networking sites like Google, YouTube, SlideShare, Facebook, AddThis, Blist, Flickr and VIMEO to collect information on visitors for federal websites. All of these private companies are known to have agreements with federal agencies, but the public has never seen them. In public comments submitted to the Office of Management and Budget, EPIC notes it has obtained documents that show federal agencies have negotiated these contracts with the private sector in violation of "existing statutory privacy rights." Those agencies include: Department of Defense, Department of the Treasury, and the National Security Agency. There are suspicions the White House is already involved. According to Obama "technology czar" Vivek Kundra, the "compelling need" driving this major policy reversal is the administration's desire to create "more open" government
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POPSShoddy/Profiteering - Former Bush Cronies Cash In Shoddy was a term that entered the language to describe uniforms sold to Union troops during the civil war. The uniforms literally disolved when they got wet. Profiteering is a better understood term that came out of the same era. Now it is part of the revolving door syndrome in Washington DC. Retire or resign from your politically appointed job or high military post and go to work for a government contractor to be sure you get contracts for work you may or may not do or do well but get because of old "relationships" Stinks doesn't it - no matter what party does it. It has been reason so many companies now have offices and divisions near Washington. Make me mad as hell.
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POPSThe Worldwide H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic. These statements serve to mislead public opinion. There is ample evidence, documented in numerous reports, that the WHO’s level 6 pandemic alert is based on fabricated evidence and a manipulation of the figures on mortality and morbidity resulting from the N1H1 swine flu. The Pandemic serves the interests of Big Pharma. The WHO is planning for the production of 4.9 billion dose, enough to inoculate a large share of the World’s population. Big Pharma including Baxter, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis and AstraZeneca have signed procurement contracts with some 50 governments. (Reuters, July 16, 2009). For these companies, compulsory vaccination is a highly lucrative undertaking: The Role of the Military According to CNN, the Pentagon is “to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials.”
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POPSDemocrat Corruption On A Roll Scandals involving the Obama Administration include prominent cabinet picks, some confirmed and others who withdrew amid intense public scrutiny of their wrongdoings. Former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle dropped his bid to be Health Secretary after being exposed for failing to pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes over the years and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson dropped out as Commerce Secretary amid a grand jury investigation into his out-of-state political donors getting a lucrative state contract. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was confirmed even though he knowingly hired an illegal immigrant and failed to pay tens of thousands of dollars in taxes on his lucrative salary. The nation’s new Deputy Defense Secretary (William Lynn) was a major defense industry lobbyist before becoming the Pentagon’s second-in-command, a violation of Obama’s “strict ethics rules” banning lobbyists from his administration.
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POPSBrutalizing Prisoners at Gitmo Under Obama
Since taking office, Obama has: 1. Reconstituted the Military Commissions. 2. Denied detainees Constitutional and Geneva Conventions protections. 3. Praised torturers and murderers as dedicated public servants and vowed to violate US law to protect them from prosecution. 4. Expanded Bush's State Secrets legal theory. 5. Continued illegally spying on Americans. 6. Continued to use USAPATRIOT Act powers and not called for repeal. 7. Retained Gates as Secretary of Defense despite his tainted record. 8. Promoted General MacChrystal to commander in Afghanistan despite his tainted record. 9. Continued contracts with abusive, fraudulent private contractors. 10. Concealed evidence of war crimes. 11. Increased illegal attacks on Pakistan. 12. Increased drone attacks, with a horrific civilian death and injury rate, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. 13. Not banned white phosphorus or cluster munitions. 14. Escalated the Afghan war. 15. Adopted Bush's Iraq war plan. 16. Threatene
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POPSEarmarks of Scandal There’s plenty of questions to answer. The firm was led by Paul Magliocchetti, a former appropriations staffer and Murtha protégé who wined and dined his former bosses and comrades with abandon. These raucous dinners and big expense-account tabs should be vetted for ethics violations. Of course, it didn’t stop with steaks and fine wines. PMA funneled more than $40 million in donations to members of Congress since 1998, including $2.4 million to Mr. Murtha and $7.8 million to members of his committee. Congress, in turn, rewarded PMA clients with rarely debated earmarks. Last year, the firm was able to marshal more than 100 lawmakers to earmark $300 million in contracts for the lobbyist’s clients. Ms. Pelosi cannot ignore this sorry churn of taxpayer money. Newcomers and moderates are right in warning that if the House majority doesn’t police itself, it will lose credibility all the way to the next election.
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POPSObama Puts Defense Contractors on Notice It's about time. Examples of cost overruns have plagued this entire industry for decades and nothing is ever done. Contracts awarded in shady 'no bid' deals, prices formally agreed on while under the table everyone involved expects their 'cut'. This is the good ole boy network on steroids. Items that civilians can purchase anywhere are priced many times higher if they are designated for military use. Reports of substandard equipment sent to troops in Iraq and substandard performance by defense contractors pepper the media while companies responsible for this disgrace get fat on inflated costs just because the buyer is the U.S. government. The actions of these contractors border on treason and is clearly guilty of theft. They should be punished accordingly.
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POPSPentagon Inspector Details Billions in Contractor Waste Rep. James Moran, D-Va., chairing the subcommittee, said that we're spending more on contractors than we are on military personnel and benefits. Also troubling: also described how private contractors were given control of a program to provide encrypted "common access cards" to military facilities -- including classified spaces -- and gave cards to their employees without proof of background security checks. Anyone notice how we have to bailout banks and car companies and airlines and homeowners, but we don't have to bail out military contractors? Yeah, that's because we already have.
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