Saturday, July 14, 2012

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN - One of America's Most Corrupt




BARACK OBAMA IS NOTHING BUT BUSH’S THIRD TERM ON STEROIDS!
WAR, WAR, WAR, ENDLESS WAR TO PROTECT THE BORDERS OF MUSLIM DICTATORS WHILE OUR OWN BORDERS ARE LEFT WIDE OPEN TO THE NARCOMEX DRUG CARTELS AND MEXICAN INVADERS!
CA ALONE PUTS OUT $22 BILLION PER YEAR IN WELFARE TO ILLEGALS!
WHAT WOULD $51 BILLION HAVE DONE IF SPEND ON EDUCATION GRANTS TO LEGALS IN OUR BORDERS???????
WHO BENEFITS FROM THE OBAMA WAR MACHINE?
TRY OBAMA DONOR, SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN! ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT POLITICIANS IN HISTORY! AS BUSH’S WAR PROFITEER SHE RAKED IN MILLIONS AND WENT OUT AND BOUGHT HERSELF ANOTHER MANSION, HER $16 MILLION S.F. PLACE ONLY MILES FROM HER S.F. HOTEL WHERE SHE HIRES ILLEGALS BECAUSE THEY WORK “CHEAP” COMPARED TO A LEGAL!
WE CAN’T FIX OUR NATION UNTIL WE RID OURSELVES OF THESE CORRUPT POLITICIANS!
Auditors say billions likely wasted in Iraq work
by ROBERT BURNS | Associated Press – 6 hrs ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — After years of following the paper trail of $51 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars provided to rebuild a broken Iraq, the U.S. government can say with certainty that too much was wasted. But it can't say how much.
In what it called its final audit report, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds on Friday spelled out a range of accounting weaknesses that put "billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk of waste and misappropriation" in the largest reconstruction project of its kind in U.S. history.
"The precise amount lost to fraud and waste can never be known," the report said.
The auditors found huge problems accounting for the huge sums, but one small example of failure stood out: A contractor got away with charging $80 for a pipe fitting that its competitor was selling for $1.41. Why? The company's billing documents were reviewed sloppily by U.S. contracting officers or were not reviewed at all.
With dry understatement, the inspector general said that while he couldn't pinpoint the amount wasted, it "could be substantial."
Asked why the exact amount squandered can never be determined, the inspector general's office referred The Associated Press to a report it did in February 2009 titled "Hard Lessons," in which it said the auditors — much like the reconstruction managers themselves — faced personnel shortages and other hazards.
"Given the vicissitudes of the reconstruction effort — which was dogged from the start by persistent violence, shifting goals, constantly changing contracting practices and undermined by a lack of unity of effort — a complete accounting of all reconstruction expenditures is impossible to achieve," the report concluded.
In that same report, the inspector general, Stuart Bowen, recalled what then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asked when they met shortly after Bowen started in January 2004: "Why did you take this job? It's an impossible task."
By law, Bowen's office reports to both the secretary of defense and the secretary of state. It goes out of business in 2013.
Bowen's office has spent more than $200 million tracking the reconstruction funds, and in addition to producing numerous reports, his office has investigated criminal fraud that has resulted in 87 indictments, 71 convictions and $176 million in fines and other penalties. These include civilians and military members accused of kickbacks, bribery, bid-rigging, fraud, embezzlement and outright theft of government property and funds.
Much, however, apparently got overlooked. Example: A $35 million Pentagon project was started in December 2006 to establish the Baghdad airport as an international economic gateway, and the inspector general found that by the end of 2010 about half the money was "at risk of being wasted" unless someone else completed the work.
Of the $51 billion that Congress approved for Iraq reconstruction, about $20 billion was for rebuilding Iraqi security forces and about $20 billion was for rebuilding the country's basic infrastructure. The programs were run mainly by the Defense Department, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
A key weakness found by Bowen's inspectors was inadequate reviewing of contractors' invoices.
In some cases invoices were checked months after they had been paid because there were too few government contracting officers. Bowen found a case in which the State Department had only one contracting officer in Iraq to validate more than $2.5 billion in spending on a DynCorp contract for Iraqi police training.
"As a result, invoices were not properly reviewed, and the $2.5 billion in U.S. funds were vulnerable to fraud and waste," the report said. "We found this lack of control to be especially disturbing since earlier reviews of the DynCorp contract had found similar weaknesses."
In that case, the State Department eventually reconciled all of the old invoices and as of July 2009 had recovered more than $60 million.
The report touched on a problem that cropped up in virtually every major aspect of the U.S. war effort in Iraq, namely, the consequences of fighting an insurgency that proved more resilient than the Pentagon had foreseen. That not only made reconstruction more difficult, dangerous and costly, but also left the U.S. military unprepared for the grind of multiple troop deployments, the tactics of an adaptable insurgency and the complexity of battlefield wounds. It also left the U.S. government short of the expertise it needed to monitor contractors.
Although the audit was labeled as final, a spokesman for Bowen's office, Christopher M. Griffith, said several more will be done to provide additional details on what the U.S. got for its reconstruction dollars and what was wasted.
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Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington’s “Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians” for 2007
4.  Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA):  As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on military construction, Feinstein reviewed military construction government contracts, some of which were ultimately awarded to URS Corporation and Perini, companies then owned by Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum. While the Pentagon ultimately awards military contracts, there is a reason for the review process. The Senate's subcommittee on Military Construction's approval carries weight. Sen. Feinstein, therefore, likely had influence over the decision making process.  Senator Feinstein also attempted to undermine ethics reform in 2007, arguing in favor of a perk that allows members of Congress to book multiple airline flights and then cancel them without financial penalty.  Judicial Watch’s investigation into this matter is ongoing. 
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 “WHY HASN’T SHE EXPRESSED OUTRAGE ABOUT SOME OF THE POTENTIAL CONFLICTS WITH PEOPLE IN OR CLOSE TO THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION?... COULD IT BE THAT SHE HERSELF HAS SOME ENTANGLEMENTS?”

 "Why hasn't she expressed outrage about some of the potential conflicts with people in or close to the Bush administration?" Lewis said. "Could it be that she herself has some entanglements?"

Blum's firms win multimillion-dollar defense contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross Sunday, April 27, 2003 When it comes to scoring mega-military-related contracts, Sen. Dianne Feinstein's multimillionaire husband, Richard Blum, is right in the thick of things.


 First up: a contract announced last week between the Army and URS Corp., the San Francisco planning and engineering company that specializes in defense work -- and that happens to be partly owned by Blum's investment firm. The contract -- which could grow to $600 million -- is to help with troop mobilization, weapons systems training and anti-terrorism methods. That's on top of a $3.1 billion Army contract that URS snared back in February for weapons systems and homeland defense. Next up: Perini Corp., which qualified earlier this month for as much as $100 million of defense work in Iraq and elsewhere. The Massachusetts-based company is already busy building barracks and other facilities for the new Afghan army -- a separate contract worth $28 million. Blum's investment firm controls about 20 percent of Perini's shares, with the majority held by a group of investors led by company chairman Ron Tutor. Some of Perini's stock is also held by Tutor's West Coast construction company, Tutor-Saliba -- the firm that built the Los Angeles subway system, rebuilt the Oakland Coliseum and put BART into San Francisco International Airport. Tutor-Saliba also oversaw construction of SFO's new international terminal - - work that is under investigation by the city attorney's office for alleged overbilling. But it's Blum's ties to URS -- in which he controls about a quarter of the stock -- that are certain to raise the most questions. In July, URS acquired defense contractor EG&G (the technical services branch that won the $600 million contract) from the Carlyle Group investment firm. That's the outfit that boasts ex-President George H.W. Bush, former Secretary of State James Baker and ex-British Prime Minister John Major as advisers. In exchange, Carlyle received cash and a chunk of URS stock worth a total of $500 million. What's more, a top Carlyle manager now sits alongside Blum on URS' board of directors. Celia Wexler, research director for Common Cause in Washington, D.C., says all the defense and homeland security deals involving Blum-connected companies raise concern of political hanky-panky -- especially with talk of the United States spending $100 billion to rebuild Iraq. "You don't want this process to be tainted by the possibility that there is any favoritism involved -- whether it's to the husband of a powerful Democratic senator or someone close to the Bush administration," Wexler said. "In the end, you want a process that is competitive, accountable and open. It's the only way there will be confidence the process is not larded by cronyism or inside deals." Both Blum and Feinstein -- along with representatives of both URS and Perini -- said all the deals have been on the up and up. "Sen. Feinstein has no say or involvement whatsoever in how (Defense Department) contracts are awarded," said Blum spokesman Owen Blicksilver. He added that URS -- with 27,000 employees worldwide -- is "a big public company that bids on dozens of public contracts . . . and as a matter of policy, the board of directors -- of which Mr. Blum is a member -- is never told what the company is bidding on." As for Blum's Perini involvement, Blicksilver said that Blum doesn't serve on the board and that the company represents less than 1 percent of his overall investments. "So his benefit from any contract to Perini is (minuscule)," Blicksilver said. Feinstein spokesman Howard Gantman similarly dismissed any ethics concerns, saying none of the contracts is voted on by the Senate. "We have checked with the Ethics Committee to make sure there is no conflict of interest, and have been told there are no conflicts," Gantman said. By the way, we questioned the office of Rep. Henry Waxman, the Los Angeles Democrat and House Government Reform Committee member whose protest recently halted the awarding of a defense contract to Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton. "That's a fundamentally different situation," said Waxman's chief of staff, Phil Schiliro. His boss objected to a Halliburton subsidiary being awarded a no-bid contract to repair Iraqi oil fields because the firm had just paid $2 million to settle a claim that it had overcharged the government on an earlier contract, Schiliro said. "The government didn't allow any other bidders to compete for the contract, and gave Kellogg Brown & Root (the Halliburton subsidiary) the kind of contract it had just abused," Schiliro said. Charles Lewis, executive of the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity watchdog group in Washington, says that "regardless of whether there is a direct conflict of interest, it's useful to know that the spouse of a sitting senator is getting richer because of what's going on in the world."
“WHY HASN’T SHE EXPRESSED OUTRAGE ABOUT SOME OF THE POTENTIAL CONFLICTS WITH PEOPLE IN OR CLOSE TO THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION?... COULD IT BE THAT SHE HERSELF HAS SOME ENTANGLEMENTS?” "Why hasn't she expressed outrage about some of the potential conflicts with people in or close to the Bush administration?" Lewis said. "Could it be that she herself has some entanglements?"




March 1, 2006 The Democrats' Daddy Warbucks
Feinstein family war profits, part II


Sen. Dianne Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, could well be called the Democrats' Daddy Warbucks. He's scored bundles from war contracts. He has recently purchased a $16.5 million crib in San Francisco and along with his wife has handed hundreds of thousands of dollars over to fellow Democrats. Since the 2000 election cycle, Blum has contributed over $75,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Committee, and thousands more to individual Democrats, including John Kerry, Robert Byrd, Joe Lieberman, Ted Kennedy, and Barbara Boxer. Richard Blum's history as an entrepreneur began at the ripe age of 23 when he began to work for the San Francisco brokerage firm Sutro & Company. Blum quickly climbed the ranks and became a partner by the age of 30. According the San Francisco Chronicle, "Blum proved that he had an eye for fixer-upper properties when he led a partnership that acquired the struggling Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for $8 million – then sold it to Mattel Inc. four years later for $40 million." In 1975, Blum went out on his own and formed a brokerage agency. Today, Blum's lofty firm, Blum Capital, holds positions in more than 20 companies, including real estate giants, credit bureaus, and yes, even military contractors. Blum sees himself as an altruistic capitalist, claims one of his ex-employees: "He likes to go after companies that are down and out, and bring their stock back to life. He thinks he's doing good." Blum shares a large stake in Perini, a civil construction company that is happily employed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But not all of Blum's war profits come from Perini. In 1975, his venture capital firm went after fledging construction and design company URS when the business was about to be bought out by another corporation. Since then, Blum has increased his stock in URS, capitalizing on its recent military contracts. Unlike Blum's dabbling with Barnum & Bailey, his current profits aren't so safe for child consumption. Here are the basics to date: Blum currently 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 Carlyle Group in 2002. Carlyle's trusty advisers, past and present, include former President George H.W. Bush, James Baker, and ex-SEC Commissioner Arthur Levitt, among other prominent neoconservatives and Washington power brokers. URS and Blum have since banked on the Iraq war, scoring a phat $600 million contract through EG&G. As a result, URS has seen its stock price more than triple since the war began in March 2003. Blum has cashed in over $2 million on this venture alone and another $100 million for his investment firm. "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." The Carlyle Group has long been accused of exploiting its political connections to turn a profit. And if Carlyle can come under the microscope for its government ties and war profiteering, as it did in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, than surely Blum's URS ought to be subject to the same scrutiny.

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“WE MUST PROTECT BUSH’S FILTHY SAUDIS BED PARTNERS! IT MEANS MONEY IN MY PIMP’S POCKETS!” --- Senator Dianne Feinstein, Whore.



The Byrne Report Hawk Tale By Peter Byrne ON JAN. 18,

California senator Dianne Feinstein introduced Dr. Condoleezza Rice at a Senate nomination hearing for Secretary of State in terms so saccharine that molasses seemed to ooze out of her mouth. She was a precocious child, Feinstein purred. She has skill, judgment and poise. She loves football. Bush loves her. "The problems we face abroad are complex and sizable. If Dr. Rice's past performance is any indication, though, we can rest easy." That very same day, Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum, took advantage of a spike in the price of his URS Corporation stock. He sold a third of his holdings in the defense contractor for $57 million, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. With Rice confirmed, the business of death and occupation looks rosy as hell for Feinstein, who--let's get real--benefits tremendously from sharing community property with Blum. URS' largest customer is the U.S. Army, which accounted for 17 percent ($587 million) of its cash revenue in 2004. In 2001, URS enjoyed a mere $169 million in defense contracts. Now, its war contracts total more than $2 billion. According to its annual report, the San Francisco based URS anticipates that profits will rocket up in 2005, because "operations in the Middle East are expected to generate increased work related to the development of weapons systems, the training of military pilots and the maintenance, upgrade and repair of military vehicles."

 Provided, of course, that our hawkish leadership remains as poised and lovable as the new Secretary of State. Feinstein, who sits on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, is an advocate of first-strike warfare, even though it flouts international law and the standards of common decency. Interestingly, her Financial Disclosure Report for 2003 was more than three times the size of her 2002 disclosure (Feinstein's 2003 disclosure numbers 133 pages, compared to Sen. Barbara Boxer's six-page report). The Feinstein-Blum portfolio is crammed with multimillion dollar investments in the military-industrial-financial complex and corporations that heavily exploit Third World peoples.



The senator has a lot to lose should the neoconservative war machine falter. Hubby holds a controlling interest in another engineering firm, Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass. Perini ranks No. 6 by dollar amount in war-related government contracts in the Middle East. According to its annual report, "Perini proudly supports the U.S. government with global rapid response capabilities for defense, reconstruction and security." Perini builds military facilities and roads in Afghanistan, electrical infrastructure in Iraq and U.S. embassies around the world. After the Senate, Feinstein included, approved Bush's war plans in 2002, Perini's defense contract awards soared from negligible to $2.52 billion. But, as with many of the sole-source, open-ended contracts awarded to politically connected firms, there are problems with accountability. Last summer, Department of Defense auditors determined that Perini could not adequately justify its costs in Iraq as fair and reasonable. That's government-speak for: They're gouging the #!$% out of us. Perini is heavily engaged in military and municipal public works projects inside the United States; at least two are also under investigation for contract fraud. For example, the city of San Francisco has sued general contractor Perini--which was in a joint venture with the Tutor-Saliba construction firm--for $100 million in cost overruns at a San Francisco International Airport project. The lawsuit alleges that the joint venture engaged in "a sophisticated pattern of fraud," including inflating costs, fabricating delays and setting up minority front companies to exploit affirmative-action preferences. The attorney general of Massachusetts is looking into alleged false claims made by a Perini joint venture in the "Big Dig" urban highway construction boondoggle in Boston. Ron Tutor, owner of Tutor-Saliba and CEO of Perini, bought into the latter company, along with Blum, as it teetered on the edge of solvency in the mid- 1990s due to a bad real estate investment. It rebounded, thanks to the firm's sudden ability to obtain lucrative U.S. military and government contracts, which, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that Blum's powerful wife has her hands on the military's purse strings. Remarkably, Perini grossed $1.37 billion in 2003, up 27 percent from the previous year, before the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Perini attributes its rocketing profits to "increased volume of work in Iraq and Afghanistan." As a risk factor, the firm notes that continued demand for its military services depends upon "the political situation in Iraq," which, logically, means that it desires the bloody war and useless occupation to continue indefinitely--a wish that hawktails with the foreign policy positions of Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and Feinstein. I almost forgot: Perini Corp. is the nation's most active builder of Indian-fronted casinos. That explains a few things about Sen. Feinstein and the politics of gambling, soon to be revealed in greater detail in this space.










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