Voters Oust Indicted Congressman in Louisiana
"Representative William J. Jefferson was defeated by a little-known Republican lawyer here Saturday in a late-running Congressional election, underscoring the sharp demographic shifts in this city since Hurricane Katrina and handing Republicans an unexpected victory in a district that had been solidly Democratic."
Sunday, December 7, 2008
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Why are there only positive "watches" on Republicans and only negative "watches" on Democrats? Enquiring minds want to know.
http://commonsensejoe.blogspot.com/2008/10/ted-stevens-watch.html
Maybe because most of the Republicans lost in 2006. There was a watch on Ted Stevens.
I thought maybe it had something to do with the blogger's "bias". lol
Gotcha!
If a leader of congress is blatantly corrupt and on the take from big oil whether democrat or not, he or she should be ousted and then sent to jail. I'm glad to see this democrat lose, especially to a Republican with Vietnamese origins, its nice to see someone from a society whose children and villages we bombed and whose forests we sprayed with agent orange that still give their children cancer and genetic deformations today...its nice to see a refugee from Vietnam in Congress today to sort of pardon America for those countless war crimes in Vietnam ... too bad he picked the wrong party, but maybe he'll be a maverick like McCain used to be and vote with the Democrats much of the time on the big moral issues.
Yet again I agree with MsAnthrope why do you waste our time "watching" the small fish when you'd make better use of your time and energy "watching" the big time corruption like Rumsfeld and Cheney, corporate CEOs of banks, military and big oil that escape big media entirely ...why not some positive watches on people like Feingold and Kucinich who are fighting hard in order to protect our liberties from the nazi like neocons, etc???? What's your common sense answer to why the Pentagon lost 2.3 trillion dollars???
I haven't found any refrences to the "lost" 2.3 trillion dollars.
More money for the Pentagon, CBS News Correspondent Vince Gonzales reports, while its own auditors admit the military cannot account for 25 percent of what it spends.
"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.
$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.
"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
Minnery, a former Marine turned whistle-blower, is risking his job by speaking out for the first time about the millions he noticed were missing from one defense agency's balance sheets. Minnery tried to follow the money trail, even crisscrossing the country looking for records.
"The director looked at me and said 'Why do you care about this stuff?' It took me aback, you know? My supervisor asking me why I care about doing a good job," said Minnery.
He was reassigned and says officials then covered up the problem by just writing it off.
"They have to cover it up," he said. "That's where the corruption comes in. They have to cover up the fact that they can't do the job."
The Pentagon's Inspector General "partially substantiated" several of Minnery's allegations but could not prove officials tried "to manipulate the financial statements."
Took me all of 5 seconds to find this reference.
Ah, but Dan was blamig the "loss" on the Bush administration and the war in Iraq in previous posts. That is from before Bush took office.
http://benfrank.net/patriots/news/national/pentagon_missing_trillions
Accounting errors have long been a problem with all government agencies. Some to increase their budget for the next year spend all the remaining in the last month of the budget. I remember a story were a 4 AA batteries cost $100 because of all the overhead. The government then issued credit cards to people to buy stuff at the local stores. Then people abused those cards.
A lot of the money is waste and fraud. Other is black-ops. Other is sloppy accounting. Do you want to spend $100 in man hours to track a $3 purchase?
I remember needing to buy a $70 program to due a job for a company I was working on as a consultant. The work and time involved in approving that purchase was probably over $1000 if you included the salaries of all the people involved.
I wouldn't want to spend a $100 in man hours to find $3BUT finding 2.3 trillion is another matter.
The question is how far does that estimate go back? To WWII? To the Revolutionary War?
And of the 2.3 trillion, it may contain 10 billion purchases of $100 or less.
The announcement was made on Sept 10, 2001. Bush WAS in office. And do you REALLY believe the books are only checked every 225 years? Or for that matter every 60 years?
Bush didn't have access to 2.3 trillion in the first eight months of his presidency. The "books" may include all transactions. The 2.3 trillion unaccounted for may be just the Clinton administration, but who knows?
It was the Bush administration, it was Rumsfeld questioned by Congress, Rumsfeld worked for Bush not Clinton, anyway it doesn't matter if it was Clinton or Bush, its 2.3 trillion dollars the pentagon stole from the people, that's the point and you could care less, common sense joe, you worry about and spend lots of time on petty theft by black politicians which cost the people nothing in comparison instead of trying to find out why the pentagon can not account for 2.3 trillion???? and the countless other trillions wasted by mostly Republican administrations on crony capitalism just because its waste and theft by Republicans even though it dwarfs waste and theft by Democrats. "Common Sense" dictates you should go after big theft before small theft!!!
Bush I, Reagan, Clinton are mostly responsible for the 2.3 Trillion loss, mostly spent on covert operations overthrowing democracies and putting in their place brutal dictators, mostly in South America, also a lot went to crony capitalism paying way more than necessary private contractors for useless military equipment and huge expense accounts...this is why it is all kept secret, Bush II is responsible for wasting trillions on the invasion of Iraq, trillions to the oil companies and recently trillions to the banks by reducing oversight. Bush II is also responsible for concentrations camps and torture and crimes against humanity and destroying the reputation of America around the world. I also think a case can be made that Bush II could have prevented 9/11 but didn't on purpose, unless he was kept completely in the dark by Cheney which could be possible.
The Defense Department Budget for 2007 was $439.3 Billion. So 8 years would be under 4 trillion. So my assumption that the "2.3 trillion" unaccounted for occured over many years is legitimate.
Your assumption it is all theft is incorrect. Government has bad accounting because it is not responsible to the people. All the agencies probably have similar accounting problems.
Foreign aid is ripe with examples of loans "forgiven". My basic assumption is that when the government says it is a loan, don't expect to see the money back.
Your hatred of Bush is showing. Banks oversight was reduced under Clinton.
The military has problems because congressmen, like Murtha, often require them to buy things they don't want. Because the nature of war they often have to get things done right away, without having the ability to fully check into the backgrounds of those the hire (like in Iraq).
The government in general has a problem because those that write the checks don't have a personal interest in making sure they get what they pay for.
I don't "hate" Bush I just believe that war criminals and dictators should not be above the law in America, or anywhere for that matter... I believe in free societies, not tyrannies and police states.
Presidents who order America's sons and daughters to drop cluster bombs on villages filled with children just because our installed dictator puppet stopped obeying orders...just so that Halliburton, Boeing, Raytheon, Monsanto, Exxon... can make more profits, I believe is immoral... and that we the people should not accept behavior like that from public servants, even the President, yet we do and we have since the Cold war started, with some exceptions during Kennedy and Carter.
The job of government is to administrate the will of the majority of the people and balance that with maintaining the rights of the minorities, in a free society. I have observed over the last 30 years that Republicans as well as corporate controlled Democrats have consistently done the opposite, ignored the will of the majority (the middle class) and abused the rights of the minorities (the left ), unless really really pressured by activists (concerned citizens on the left) or unless secret agendas were leaked to the media by concerned citizens in government.
The only "common sense" attitude to take, given the clear and overwhelming evidence, is to assume that corporate controlled politicians (99% of the Republican party (Ron Paul excepted) and 70% of the Democratic party) will only legislate on behalf of increasing profits for corporations that lobby them,(btw, higher profits doesn't necessarily mean more jobs) and not legislate on behalf on what's really desired by the majority. Given this evidence the only "common sense" thing we can do is keep pushing American society more to the left until government acts the way its supposed to act.
You blame the government but you keep voting and supporting Republicans or corporate controlled Democrats... so what do you expect???
Obama (whom you fought against) is the first leader we've had since Carter who is not totally under corporate control ... ExxonMobil and big oil are destroying our climate, Monsanto is destroying our food supply (Google the "Future of Food" watch the film to understand if you are still ignorant as to the dangers of GM foods, which is mostly illegal and must be labeled in Europe and Japan but not in the USA) ...letting corporations control our government is definitely not in the interests of the people, in fact it appears to be extremely dangerous to our children's health (asthma, obesity, diabetes ...) ...you worry about government officials not doing the people's bidding yet you support and blog on behalf of corporate controlled politicians and criticize relatively clean politicians like Obama, Feingold, Kucinich, Boxer, Kennedy etc?? This does not make "common sense" to me???? Our only defense against corporate controlled government is ourselves, people who trust government and corporations blindly are really stupid or lazy or immoral or a combination thereof. Your blind trust of Republicans is beyond me? The worst of the worst???? They are so in the pockets of big oil and the military contractors its stunning! Yet you defend their corruption and call it common sense??? I would like to see you go after big time corruption like Exxon and Monsanto...put them on "watch" they are destroying the future for our children!!!!
BTW concerning foreign aid, 90% plus goes to supporting military dictatorships and police states who screw their people to allow our corporations to exploit their resources at great cost to the environment!! Foreign aid should go to helping the poor!
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