Another day, another middle finger to the American taxpayer and American soldier from the Bush Administration and friends at Kellogg Brown & Root.

The New York Times has an article up detailing how back in the early stages of the Iraq War, the Army's own auditor found lack of support for $ 1 billion in fees and charges sought by KBR for their "services," and that the senior civilian overseeing the KBR contract was "reassigned" for demanding KBR provide information:

The official, Charles M. Smith, was the senior civilian overseeing the multibillion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years of the war. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Smith said that he was forced from his job in 2004 after informing KBR officials that the Army would impose escalating financial penalties if they failed to improve their chaotic Iraqi operations.

More below...

The New York Times has an article up detailing the Army's lack of oversight and accountability regarding both taxpayer dollars and Iraqi funds used to pay contracts in Iraq.  Rep. Waxman, and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform had a hearing today regarding an internal Pentagon audit.

A Pentagon audit of $8.2 billion in American taxpayer money spent by the United States Army on contractors in Iraq has found that almost none of the payments followed federal rules and that in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.

...almost none of the payments [made by the Army] followed federal rules and ... in some cases, contracts worth millions of dollars were paid for despite little or no record of what, if anything, was received.

... not exactly chump change.  More over the flip.

Not only does the Bush crime family assume that it can ignore congressional subpoenas, apparently they also don't have to cooperate with congressional auditors from the Government Accountability Office.

Who do those auditors think they are, anyway? -- questioning the operationof one of Bush's cabinet agencies. What nerve!

In its most basic and simplest form the President's refusal to produce documents and refusal to allow testimony is a refusal to account for the money Congress provides. That accounting is called an audit.

Congress has the absolute, unconditional right to know exactly what the money they provide the President is producing. How is that money being used? What, exactly, is being done with it? Every document, every decision, every action by the President and his administration is paid for by Congress.

The reality is that there is no so-called "Constitutional Crisis". All Congress has to do is refuse to provide any more money until the President fully accounts for what he has already spent.

Obviously he will refuse. He has to. Otherwise he will undoubtedly will be impeached, possibly convicted and jailed.

Rush Holt's D(NJ-12) Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility bill (H.R. 811) was postponed for markup in House Administration today.  I just got word that it will be heard again on Tuesday.  It is essential that the committee, on both sides, pass this bill so that the full House can vote on it as soon as possible.

The bill would require that electronic voting machines produce a paper record by November 2008 for every vote cast.  Seventeen states plus the District of Columbia currently use paperless voting machines. It would also require states to conduct mandatory random routine audits (a mouthful I know).  Currently, more than 75% of the voting systems in the country are unaudited, which scares the hell out of me.

This has been taking long enough.  Delay after delay in the last congress allowed tens of thousands of people to lose their votes across the country (that we know of).  I want to have as much confidence in my vote being counted as I do in my pay checks being credited to my bank account.  We all know what the problems are with the machines, we know how to fix them, when will we see action?

The IRS recently stripped Savage's "Paul Revere Society" of its tax exempt status, apparently because it was being used as a tax shelter and slush fund for Mr. Savage's personal use. I'm sure you're all shocked, but I dug up his 2004 tax return.

ON EDIT: Can somebody with a guidestar subscription do the same thing for his 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005 returns?

On Wednesday the Washington Post reported that an internal audit of the terrorim statistics reported by the Justice Department from the period of 2001 - 2005 concluded that those numbers to were both highly innacurate and significantly inflated:

Most of the Justice Department's major statistics on terrorism cases are highly inaccurate, and federal prosecutors routinely count cases involving drug trafficking, marriage fraud and other unrelated crimes as part of anti-terrorism efforts, according to an audit released yesterday...

The analysis is the latest to find serious faults with the Justice Department's terrorism statistics, some of which have been featured prominently in statements by President Bush or the attorney general as evidence of the terrorist threat and the department's successful efforts to combat it...

[Inspector General Glenn A.] Fine's report was careful to stress that the inaccuracies did not appear to have been intentional but instead were the result of shoddy recordkeeping, disagreements over definitions and other problems.

The justice Department has released an audit admitting that terrorism isn't that common and that they are using the laws passed after 9/11 to incarcerate people who aren't terrorists:

The report, released Tuesday by the Justice Department's inspector general, concluded that the department in most cases "could not provide support for the numbers reported or could not identify the terrorism link used to classify statistics as terrorism-related."
All but two of the 26 statistics reviewed from October 2000 through September 2005 were wrong. "These inaccuracies are important because department management and Congress need accurate terrorism-related statistics to make informed ... decisions," Inspector General Glenn Fine said in the report.

The Department of Justice's and FBI's statistics on terrorism cases are grossly inflated to take the spotlight off the government's failures in the war on terrorism.

A new Justice Department audit report  (07-20) confirms what many have suspected, that officials there have inflated terrorism statistics.  But, the report also includes alarming revelations about mishandled databases that have disturbing implications for justice and homeland security.

This week, I've been writing about the issue of election reform in Florida.  On Monday, I wrote a diary entitled "Making Your Vote Count" about the controversial election in Sarasota County and provided an overview of election reform bills currently filed with the legislature. Tuesday, I wrote "Action Alert on Election Reform" calling on Floridians to email the Senate Ethics & Elections Committee who've requested our input on election reform legislation.  Wednesday, I wrote "Governor to Mandate Paper Trail in Elections" about Crist's proposal to eliminate touch-screen voting machines.  This is only a first step in addressing the problems with our elections system.

In case the Bush tax cuts, the millions Halliburton has "lost" in Iraq, and the abolition of the Estate Tax (for those who work so hard at not working) weren't scandal enough, the New York Times reports on tax reforms from 2003 that are effectively allowing companies to defraud millions from the US government--and get away with it.  

Oh, but those of you who work for a living?  Don't get any funny ideas about your taxes : somebody needs to be left holding the bag.

What company doesn't like more loopholes to wiggle through.

The New York Times has an interesting (to say the least) piece in its business section today.  Up until this point we naive Americans felt that Mr. Bush's ass licking of corporations and big money was restricted to giving out no bid contracts and unnecessary tax cuts.  But Mr. Bush is not prone to doing anything halfway (look at Iraq... oh wait... bad example.  War on terror?  crap... moving on).  

So, technically, I shouldn't have been surprised to see this interesting piece in the NY Times.  To make it easy on my fellow Kossacks, I'll summarize the main points below.

Why is the party of limited government and personal responsibility so consistently and eggregiously opposed to accountability in government?
According to today's Washington Post, Lurita Alexis Doan, Bush's chief of the U.S. General Services Administration is trying to "limit the ability of the agency's inspector general to audit contracts for fraud or waste"

She even went so far as to liken the efforts of her IG to terrorists:

There are two kinds of terrorism in the US: the external kind; and, internally, the IGs have terrorized the Regional Administrators,

You'd think that the last election would have sent a message to the administration that it needs to clean up its house, but it seems to be business as usual for Bush and his cronies.

Read the rest at the Washington Post.
(crossposted from www.progressivetrail.org)

In a classic example of Republican pork barrel politics, the Guardian reports that money that was supposed to go for the overthrow of Castro is instead going for gameboys, luxury items, and chocolates which are them being shipped by Cuban dissidents to relatives over in Cuba.

A scathing congressional audit of democracy-assistance programmes found "questionable expenditure" by several groups funded by Washington in opposition to President Fidel Castro's rule on the communist Caribbean island.

The Miami-based Acción Democrática Cubana spent money on a chainsaw, Nintendo Game Boys and Sony PlayStations, mountain bikes, leather coats and Godiva chocolates, which the group says were all sent to Cuba. "These people are going hungry. They never get any chocolate there," Juan Carlos Acosta, the group's executive director, told the Miami Herald.

Speaker Pelosi's announced 100 hour agenda is a great start, but everything the 110th Congress can accomplish (or attempt to accomplish) pales in comparison to three absolutely critical items:

#1: Repeal of the Military Commissions Act;  
#2: Legislation of election standards that require a verifiable paper audit trail of electronic voting;
#3: Investigations.

Paper trail legislation is likely veto-proof, and repeal of the MCA is likely NOT veto-proof, but both position the Democrats as the party that ensured vote counting integrity and fought to restore our constitutional rights.

[cross-posted at Seesdifferent: the blog]

Unable to pursuade congressional Republicans to cut the estate tax for the top 0.3% in an election year, Bushco has taken the low road: encourage cheating by firing half of the IRS lawyers who investigate and prosecute estate and gift tax violations.

The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others.
The administration plans to cut the jobs of 157 of the agency's 345 estate tax lawyers, plus 17 support personnel, in less than 70 days. Kevin Brown, an I.R.S. deputy commissioner, confirmed the cuts after The New York Times was given internal documents by people inside the I.R.S. who oppose them.

Gee, another leak to the traitorous NY Times. Aid and comfort to our enemies. Malkin will have a fit.  

MORE

Reuters reports that the Pentagon could not pass the muster of a traditional audit despite the fact that its proposed budget for 2007 is $440 billion. They apparently only recently determined a cost for each individual piece of equipment. A spokesman indicated that the Pentagon is likely several years away from being able to conduct an audit that could be certified. At a time when we have record deficits, a national debt that continues to spiral out of control under this administration, and calls for reduced spending, it seems unconscionable to allow the entity with one of the largest dollar allocations to run such an abominable accounting system. It's frightening to imagine the amount of money that will ultimately be determined to have been mishandled. Read the article below.