La famille du porc
Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Chairman of the UC Regents Richard Blum
And, just think, neither of these articles below touched on the Level-4 Biowarfare lab in Tracy under the authority of the UC/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, or the future of UC Merced, a developer boondoggle from which, one imagines, Richard, Marquis du Porc, managed to make a bit of money, somehow – just because he is that kind of guy. And being that kind of guy, of course, we owe it to him, at least through one or another of his investment interests, right? That would be because he has class. Or is it only style?
Lest the reader accuse the writer of tedious repetition of the details of government of pork, by pork and for pork, and the reader wants to go on to new visions of the amazing political abilities and managerial excellence of Big Shot Americans, the reader ought – we think – to consider, when questions arise about how the nation operates, that the principle of Pork will often provide a key to understanding contemporary events that no other key offers. Without the key of Big Shot Pork, the reader, the writer and the rest of us – we think – wander in error on the problem of cause and effect in local, regional, state and national issues.
Bill Hatch
-------------
Notes:
4-4-07
Counterpunch.com
Senator Feinstein's War Profiteering
Democratic Blood Money
By JOSHUA FRANK
http://www.counterpunch.com/frank04042007.html
Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California silently resigned from her post on the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee (MILCON) late last week as her ethical limbo with war contracts began to surface in the media, including an excellent investigative report written by Peter Byrne for Metro in January. MILCON has supervised the appropriations of billions of dollars in reconstruction contracts since the Bush wars began.
Feinstein, who served as chairperson for the committee from 2001-2005, came under fire early last year in these pages for profiting by way of her husband Richard Blum who holds large stakes in two defense contracting companies. Both businesses, URS and Perini, have scored lucrative contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last four years, and Blum has personally pocketed tens of millions of dollars off the deals his wife, along with her colleagues, so graciously approved.
Here's a brief rundown of the Feinstein family's blatant war profiteering. In April 2003, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave $500 million to Perini to provide services for Iraq's Central Command. A month earlier in March 2003, Perini was awarded $25 million to design and construct a facility to support the Afghan National Army near Kabul. And in March 2004, Perini was awarded a hefty contract worth up to $500 million for "electrical power distribution and transmission" in southern Iraq.
But it is not just Perini that has made Feinstein and Blum wealthy. Blum also holds over 111,000 shares of stock in URS Corporation, which is now one of the top defense contractors in the United States. Blum is an acting director of URS, which bought EG&G, a leading provider of technical services and management to the U.S. military, from the neocon packed Carlyle Group back in 2002.
"As part of EG&G's sale price," reports the San Francisco Chronicle, "Carlyle acquired a 21.74 percent stake in URS -- second only to the 23.7 percent of shares controlled by Blum Capital."
URS and Blum have since banked on the war in Iraq, attaining a $600 million contract through EG&G, which Sen. Feinstein permitted. As a result, URS has seen its stock price more than triple since the war began in March of 2003. Blum has cashed in over $2 million on this venture alone and another $100 million for his investment firm.
And it is not just the Feinstein family that has benefited from the war -- so too has the Democratic Party. Since 2000, the Democrats' Daddy Warbucks has donated over $100,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Committee including leading Democrats including John Kerry, Robert Byrd, Ted Kennedy, and even Barbara Boxer.
Feinstein's resignation from MILCON was the least the senator could do to atone for profiting off the spoils of war. But Feinstein wasn't trying to atone, she was trying to cover her tracks. If the Democratic Party had any foresight whatsoever it would return all the Blood Money donated by Blum. From there the Senate ought to hold hearings and examine Feinstein's tenure as the chair and ranking member of MILCON and analyze every single contract she approved which benefited her husband's respective companies.
There is absolutely no question -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein has a plethora of ethics violations she needs to account for at once.
Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush and edits www.BrickBurner.org
------------------
4-4-07
Washington Post
Fox-in-the-Henhouse Government...Ruth Marcus
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR200704...
The Bush administration's House of Straw seems to be blowing apart, buffeted by alternating gusts of scandal and incompetence. The tornado of disastrous headlines -- a Pentagon that can't take proper care of its wounded, a Justice Department that can't be trusted to follow the law or tell the truth to Congress, a top White House aide who lied to a grand jury-- has been so overpowering that the day-to-day outrages of life in the Bush administration tend get overlooked. So it's worth pausing to pay attention to some recent events that similarly underscore the failings of this administration and illuminate one of their root causes: a contemptuous attitude toward government itself. These episodes illustrate the administration's fox-guarding-the-henhouse personnel plan, the disdain of its appointees for the laws they are sworn to enforce and their spoils-of-war attitude toward the government they are entrusted with overseeing...Eric Keroack, Michael Baroody, Julie MacDonald, the official who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service but who has no academic background in biology, overrode the recommendations of agency scientists about how to protect endangered species. MacDonald also shared internal documents with industry officials and groups that lobby for weakened environmental protections, not to mention an online gaming buddy, the IG found. An Interior lawyer called MacDonald's involvement in one endangered species matter "the most brazen case of political meddling" he had seen in more than 20 years in government. Nor, it seems, is such politicization limited to MacDonald. "Policy trumps science within the Assistant Secretary's corridor on many occasions," another department lawyer told the IG, J. Steven Griles, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, Lurita Doan