This video really, really, really, just pisses me off. We pay their salery with our hard earned money that we work our asses off for (well many of us do), we expect to to be protected from violent crime as well as expect to be treated with respect by the people that pledge to serve the community. We teach our children to find police if they feel threatened… but should we?

What we do not expect is to be hurt and abused by the people whose job is to PROTECT us. Yes, that is why we have police, they are supposed to “serve and protect” and keep the peace by upholding the law.

But with the good, you must always have the bad that abuse the authority we give them as a society and feel like they are somehow above the laws that they should be upholding.

This video is a sick reminder of that. Whats even worse to think of is what may have happened had the cop not been on video. This video really makes you wonder about all the officer involved shootings that occur outside the camera.

This man was driving down a road and went through a speed trap, from the video you can see that his speed was not outrageous and he got pulled over within seconds of passing the bored cop. What happened next is a disgrace.

The man asked too many questions of the cop and when wanting more info before signing the ticket, pissed the cop off. The man was made to get out of the car and the cop wanted him to put his hands behind his back so maybe he could handcuff him and search him.

This man still has done nothing wrong other than speeding. The man, looking confused, turned around and took a few steps back towards the car (his girlfriend or wife was in it), a few seconds later, it looks like the cop pulls a gun on him, but it was a taser, and the cop tasered the man. The female passenger jumps out screaming and gets yelled at and threatened with the weapon, she gets back in the car.

The tasered man gets arrested and the female passenger is told she “is free” to go and will not be arrested. The cop also refused to answer this mans questions nor wanted to read him his rights.

At the end of the day, the man gets tasered for speeding and asking questions, not once did he do anything that seemed threatning in any way. Force is supposed to be used to subdue a threatning individual that may hurt the officer, not as a show of “machismo”.

This officer got investigated, but never suspended. People that abuse the power given to them, such as this cop, should not be in a position of authority over anyone. It upsets me that in any other job, a show of misused force would result in firing, but not in this field, hmm. why is that?

From Rolling Stone, the article is called the Great Iraq Swindle. Not a new article, but worth a read… The Great Iraq Swindle

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins — he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress — until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you’ve been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good — four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life.

A few months later, in March 2004, your company magically wins a contract from the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq to design and build the Baghdad Police College, a facility that’s supposed to house and train at least 4,000 police recruits. But two years and $72 million later, you deliver not a functioning police academy but one of the great engineering clusterfucks of all time, a practically useless pile of rubble so badly constructed that its walls and ceilings are literally caked in shit and piss, a result of subpar plumbing in the upper floors.

You’ve done such a terrible job, in fact, that when auditors from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction visit the college in the summer of 2006, their report sounds like something out of one of the Saw movies: “We witnessed a light fixture so full of diluted urine and feces that it would not operate,” they write, adding that “the urine was so pervasive that it had permanently stained the ceiling tiles” and that “during our visit, a substance dripped from the ceiling onto an assessment team member’s shirt.” The final report helpfully includes a photo of a sloppy brown splotch on the outstretched arm of the unlucky auditor.

When Congress gets wind of the fias­co, a few members on the House Oversight Committee demand a hearing. To placate them, your company decides to send you to the Hill — after all, you’re a former Air Force major general who used to oversee this kind of contracting operation for the government. So you take your twenty-minute ride in from the suburbs, sit down before the learned gentlemen of the committee and promptly get asked by an irritatingly eager Maryland congressman named Chris Van Hollen how you managed to spend $72 million on a pile of shit.

You blink. Fuck if you know. “I have some conjecture, but that’s all it would be” is your deadpan answer.

The room twitters in amazement. It’s hard not to applaud the balls of a man who walks into Congress short $72 million in taxpayer money and offers to guess where it all might have gone.

Next thing you know, the congressman is asking you about your company’s compensation. Touchy subject — you’ve got a “cost-plus” contract, which means you’re guaranteed a base-line profit of three percent of your total costs on the deal. The more you spend, the more you make — and you certainly spent a hell of a lot. But before this milk-faced congressman can even think about suggesting that you give these millions back, you’ve got to cut him off. “So you won’t voluntarily look at this,” Van Hollen is mumbling, “and say, given what has happened in this project . . . ”

“No, sir, I will not,” you snap.

“. . . ‘We will return the profits.’ . . .”

“No, sir, I will not,” you repeat.

Your testimony over, you wait out the rest of the hearing, go home, take a bath in one of your four bathrooms, jump into bed with the little woman. . . . A year later, Iraq is still in flames, and your president’s administration is safely focused on reclaiming $485 million in aid money from a bunch of toothless black survivors of Hurricane Katrina. But the house you bought for $775K is now ­assessed at $929,974, and you’re sure as hell not giving it back to anyone.

“Yeah, I don’t know what I expected him to say,” Van Hollen says now about the way Robbins responded to being asked to give the money back. “It just shows the contempt they have for us, for the taxpayer, for everything.”

Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam ­Hussein’s Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush’s war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity — to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they fuck things up.

And just maybe, reviewing this appalling history of invoicing orgies and million-dollar boondoggles, it’s not so far-fetched to think that this is the way someone up there would like things run all over — not just in Iraq but in Iowa, too, with the state police working for Corrections Corporation of America, and DHL with the contract to deliver every Christmas card. And why not? What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism, where revenues are forcibly extracted from the customer by the state, and obscene profits are handed out not by the market but by an unaccountable government bureauc­racy. This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profit­eering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure — American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.

It was an awful idea, perhaps the worst America has ever tried on foreign soil. But if you were in on it, it was great work while it lasted.

Find the rest of the story here

So how does one go about building the perfect image? Well, for most of us, we look, listen, read and learn from prior mistakes.

That even seems to work for the President of the United States.

Yep, that I am just a hard-working, middle-class family man, trying to put food on the table, don’t ask me the Indian Prime Ministers name ‘cuz I don’t know, st..st..st..Studdering “say what” dumbfounded look, took some practice.

It’s an image put together by the very sharp minds of some NON working-class and NOT so typical Yale graduates.

This is the story of how George W. Bush got SO DUMB, and NO, he was not born that way as most would think. Proof of that may come from his SAT score, 1200+ range, 1300 is good enough for MENSA.

George W. Bush is a far cry from the man he has tailored himself to represent. George W. Bush was born into the Elite, a family of great wealth, power and political pull. He had every advantage imaginable, went to the top prep schools and Universities and some say was already a millionaire in Elementary school due to stock in his daddy’s oil companies. Most American 10 year olds do not own a million shares of daddy’s oil companies.

So how did this very rich kid, who never had to work a day in his life and was able to ditch the draft because of his families “political pull” end up being the “typical middle-class good ‘ole boy from Texas”? It takes a serious image makeover considering George was not even born in Texas.

George W. was born in New Haven, Connecticut and moved to Texas due to his families’ oil interests. Not the Texas farm boy we all imagine. Actually, his first time stepping foot on a farm was in his 30’s during a campaign in the 1970’s.

As a teen and young adult, George W. Bush went to Yale and later Harvard. His time there seems to have been spent partying at the Frat house.

Bush never went to Vietnam; instead, with the help of his family, he entered the Texas Air National Guard.

Bush was immediately accepted into the Guard, where he kept getting promoted ending up in the 11th Fighter Interceptor Squadron ahead of long waiting lists with more qualified applicants. I guess it pays to have family in high places with lots of money.

At a sad time when most American families saw their sons coming home in body bags or worse, the Bush son was in no danger. So, again… not the typical middle-class American.

With 2 years left to go, Bush was grounded for “his failure to accomplish annual medical examination.” Either he never showed up, or he failed the physical. Some people speculate that he failed due to a drug test, but we will never know because those records are sealed. I am not sure if anyone knows what he did for those last two years other than Bush himself, all we know is he never did go overseas with the rest of the American boys.

Afterwards, George W. tried his hand in oil. His companies sank and each time his company drowned, he got bailed out by “friends” of the family in the way of buyouts and mergers.

George Bush Sr. was now in the White House and everyone wanted to help out the President’s son. Being the President’s son gave him an advantage at corporate fundraising. He was also known to have been a party boy and had a knack for remembering everyone’s name, both traits work well for raising money.

In the late 1970’s Bush decided to run for office, maybe because he was bored or even pressure from his dad. He never seemed to care about politics before. Either way, he made many mistakes and learned from them.

At a forum, Bush told the crowd: “Today is the first time I’ve been on a real farm.” That didn’t exactly impress the rural voters.

He also showed himself jogging, again, not impressing the voters who did not jog nor had time to do so.

In the debates, Bush tried his best to come off sounding smart and serious. He made references to complicated economic policies. Difficult as it may be to believe now, many voters in the 1978 campaign were turned off by George W. Bush’s overt intelligence. They figured him for some kind of brainiac.

That sounds funny now, George W. Bush, seen as an Elitist “brainiac” who is so out of touch with constituents as to have never stepped on a farm while living in cowboy country.

So now, lets fast-forward to his Presidential campaign. George W. Bush now knows that looking too “smart” is not going to get him elected. He now knows that he cannot look too polished, too rich, or refined because most Americans will not relate. He may have a knack for remembering everyone’s name, but most Americans do not know the name of the Indian Prime Minister or do they care about the names of foreign heads of State. Most Americans are working class people who do not know what its like to be rich, they worry about finances and they worry about feeding the kids and losing the house. George W. will have to do his best to pretend to be one of them, and a great job he did at that!

During his presidential campaign he did not make the same mistakes as he did in the 70’s. He went as far as convincing most Americans that he was that working-class Texas farm boy.

It’s a great illusion and better than any of the great magicians could ever pull off. The illusion is so good, that even knowing the facts of the Bush family, most people still see him as the “middle-class” workingman.

That dumbfounded “I can’t remember” look works completely to his advantage. His opponents underestimate him for it and his followers believe it.

As a society we are conditioned to believe that clumsiness, stupidity and naive ness go with honesty while intelligence goes with dishonesty, scheming and conniving.

Even in Hollywood movies, the above holds true. We have the mad scientist, the evil genius and the lovable honest, clumsy hero.

What does it say about Americans as a whole? Well, that we tend to mistrust the smart and the smartest thing someone can do is make them selves look stupid. It seems crazy, but it is true. Americans are intimidated by intellect and if you want to appeal to middle America, you better dumb yourself down to a “lovable” non-intimidating level.

George W. Bush did it right. He transformed himself publicly into the bumbling, “honest” man and got a county to follow his family’s oil interests. Followed the oil all the way to the Middle East like his dad did before him, and, following family tradition, turned nations to ruble.

Well, at least we can assume that he has now paid off those family debts for decades of favors. Hopefully the large oil companies and other contractors are now paid. Too bad, his debts have cost the world 100’s of thousands of lives.

George W. Bush… should not only go down in the history books as America’s 43-rd President, but also as one of the great illusionists and quick change artists of our modern age. Following Hollywood’s lead into America’s perception of the “working-class”, honest, lovable, hero, George W. created the perfect Presidential image

Sheriff Carona Is Up To His Old Tricks

An April 2006 study by Virginia Tech and the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration found that “almost 80 percent of crashes” involve driver inattention to the road “within three seconds” of an accident. The study blamed cell phone use as the most common form of driver distraction. It also noted that other activities—like reaching for a cup or talking to passengers—are statistically more dangerous.

But the federal report didn’t examine cases where a driver uses a cell phone while engaged in sex or smooching. Not to worry. For these dangers we can turn to Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona, the self-proclaimed conservative Christian politician and accused serial adulterer who is seeking re-election on June 6.

Evidence obtained by the Weekly places Carona inside a moving vehicle while, well, affectionately engaged with a then-low ranking sheriff’s department employee. The pair kissed, giggled, moaned, groaned, cleaned up and offered expressions of love. After the 45-minute romp, the female said to Carona, “Do I still smell like you?”

The sheriff said, “A lot! A lot! A lot! A lot! A lot! A lot!”

“How do we hide it?” she replied.

Through a private attorney, the sheriff declined interview requests, demanded a copy of the recording, and implied he might claim it’s been doctored. However, the woman confirmed details of the encounter. She asked that her name not be used in this article for fear of retaliation.

But it’s not just her word. Neither Carona nor the woman knew at the time that their physical activities in the vehicle had inadvertently activated the redial button on a cell phone. And this is where Carona’s already stunning gift for creating scandal becomes legendary. An audio recording of the affair was left on an unwitting person’s telephone answering machine.

This time, the sheriff—a man predisposed to blame his foibles on underlings, friends, acquaintances and the media—had fingered himself, so to speak.

* * *

Powerful politicians often lead double lives, the public versions contrary to reality. In Carona’s case, the gap appears staggering. He portrays himself as a simple man committed to his faith, his family and his duty. But if Carona has proven anything in his seven years in power, it’s that he’s a scandal magnet. Among other well-documented missteps, Carona has:

•partied and accepted contributions from a colorful Las Vegas mafia associate and strip club owner

•given official badges and guns to large campaign contributors, some of them emotionally unstable

•accepted tens of thousands of dollars in illegal contributions, once taking $49,000 from a man with a 30-year crime record

•allowed Joseph Medawar, a con man with ties to Saudi Arabia and now a convicted felon, to film a top-secret anti-terrorist training exercise

•offered free inmate labor to a political campaign contributor

•watched the grand jury indict several close friends on corruption charges

•sent birthday cards to his best friend’s wife—cards in which he referenced “butt floss” and his now notorious penis, which he calls “The Little Sheriff.”

* * *

Last year, as he planned to renege on his pledge to run for no more than two terms, Carona huddled with his PR advisers. He wanted a strategy to downplay the persistent infidelity rumors. The team decided to blame George Jaramillo, the sheriff’s longtime No. 2, who is currently facing bribery charges based on his relationship with a felon he met through Carona. Publicly, they said Jaramillo was determined to spread lies about the sheriff. As for the women who alleged the sheriff had approached them for sex, they were portrayed as nuts.

But the sex stories—all of them told reluctantly, some of them by women compelled to testify under oath before the grand jury—kept coming (so to speak): Carona’s unwelcome phone calls to another man’s wife in hopes of luring her to San Francisco for a weekend sex romp; his persistent interest in a pornographic photo album of females (including county employees) inside the sheriff’s executive suite; using an official helicopter to taxi a mistress and promises of employment consideration in exchange for sex.

Articles were published, even in the conservative Orange County Register. TV and radio reporters at LA-based stations got interested. And Carona—perhaps America’s smoothest-talking sheriff—went to Plan B. He granted interviews only to trusted reporters and wore his now perfected who-me face. Then he invited reporters and the California attorney general’s office to investigate.

His gamble wasn’t entirely insane: many reporters are spineless, lazy and awed by power. The attorney general’s office is understaffed, overworked and often loath to act on explosive, politically sensitive revelations—like the one that our balding, 51-year-old sheriff might be a slut. Satisfied by his own careful calculations, Carona claimed he welcomed their probes. So to speak.

A few months later, however, the Weekly found evidence of the sheriff’s insincerity. In a phone message, he confided to defense lawyer Joseph G. Cavallo, his drinking buddy of 26 years, that he would retaliate against anyone who stepped forward with additional claims. It’s no idle threat, coming as it does from a man with high-level police powers, an annual budget of $580 million, high-tech surveillance and bugging equipment and thousands of employees ready to follow orders. Carona is also a senior Homeland Security advisor to President George W. Bush and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The threat frightened several of the women who’d complained; it helped keep other women publicly silent. But the intimidation tactics failed on the one person who could easily unravel the sheriff’s duplicity: Jaramillo, Carona’s longtime confidant who was fired in March 2004. The two men, who once called each other “brother for life,” have become bitter enemies.

It was Jaramillo’s voice mail that Carona inadvertently redialed during his May 2001 encounter with the woman in the vehicle. That record was preserved and is now in the hands of the Weekly and the state attorney general’s office. The lengthy audio recording sounds like a scene in a 1970s porn flick. Read it, and as you do, supply your own funky bass line:

It’s dark out, and Orange County’s sheriff is giddy inside a white Honda SUV. He gives his female companion a breath mint, then leans over and kisses her. When he’s done, Carona says, “You’re so fucking cute.”

There are sounds of renewed physical contact. Moments earlier, it was the lawman who moaned and groaned. Now it’s the woman who is expressing pleasure. She says nothing but giggles over and over. Carona whispers something inaudible. The woman giggles again.

She later recalls that the sheriff had been fondling her.

Unaware, Carona’s wife and young son stand 50 feet away. Before exiting the SUV to join his family and attend an official function, the sheriff savors the moment with a sigh. He asks if there’s lipstick smeared on his face; emboldened, he says he has half a mind not to wipe off the lipstick.

And then he tells his employee, “I mean, I gotta tell you, I . . . love . . . you!”

Can a get a taxpayer paid 60 day vacation if I get arrested?

I think not, but this fool sure can. What is wrong with this picture? Apparently, he will not resign and needs the 60 days of paid leave to deal with the charges against him…

So 1 more time! what ordinary citizen in the US would ever qualify to take a 2 month vacation payed by taxpayers because they really f’d up by getting caught?

Innocent till proven guilty? well we see the Sheriffs play that out on the news all the time.

“The sheriff and his defenders insist that Mr. Carona deserves his day in court, should be considered innocent until proven guilty and should not be “tried” in the media. ”

That is why Carona needs the 2 months… he is innocent and will remain so until it is poven otherwise. We all know the Sheriffs department upholds that.

Yep, we see them treat everyone they arrest with the dignity and respect given to an innocent man. Pulling people over and searching them on a hunch, being searched and detained for being the wrong skin color, beating that “innocent till proven guilty” man for resisting arrest, or sometimes, just shooting them for non-compliance.

Yep, they treat the “innocent till proven guilty” well and every suspect should get paid for being put through this type of thing.

Editorial: Carona’s leave should be permanent

An Orange County Register editorial

Sheriff Mike Carona, stung by a federal indictment detailing seven charges of corruption, announced last week that he would take a 60-day, taxpayer-funded leave of absence so that he could battle the charges against him. As is typical with this scandal-plagued sheriff, he has put his needs before those of the public. The apparent goal of this move is to take the sheriff’s travails off the front pages and hope that the issue blows over so that he can save his job. While the leave certainly calms the growing storm of resignation demands, from voices as disparate as Supervisor John Moorlach to the deputies’ union, we don’t think a temporary respite is the right call.

The sheriff and his defenders insist that Mr. Carona deserves his day in court, should be considered innocent until proven guilty and should not be “tried” in the media. That certainly is true when it comes to the specific criminal charges filed against Mr. Carona. But there is a broader public policy concern. Supervisor Janet Nguyen captured the point in her recent statement: “Sheriff Carona’s alleged offenses do, in my judgment, constitute an abuse and violation of public trust. While Mr. Carona the person is entitled to the presumption of innocence in the court of law, Sheriff Carona as an officeholder and as the top law enforcement officer in the county has no similar presumption with regards to his fitness to continue to hold office in that capacity.”

There are two issues: legal guilt or innocence, and fitness to continue in the job as the county’s top law enforcement official. The first part is an open question and will be resolved in the courts, but the second part is different. Even if Mr. Carona’s behavior is not illegal, the circumstance of the county’s top cop facing federal indictment and prosecution makes him unfit to continue as Orange County’s sheriff.

If the allegations are true, they reflect terribly poor judgment. One reader sent us a copy of a peace officer “code of ethics.” It includes these statements: “I will keep my private life unsullied as an example to all; maintain courageous calm in the face of danger, scorn or ridicule; develop self-restraint; and be constantly mindful of the welfare of others. Honest in thought and deed in both my personal and official life, I will be exemplary in obeying the laws of the land and the regulations of my department. … I will never act officiously or permit personal feelings, prejudices, animosities or friendships to influence my decisions.”

Such a code should apply even more to the county’s top cop, who – as an elected official with enormous power and a holder of the public trust – should be beyond reproach.

The indictment accuses Mike Carona of engaging in a conspiracy with his top aides to use the office to enrich themselves and of witness tampering. But the charges come after a long history of scandal in the department, ranging from his associations with a suspected mobster to sexual allegations to engaging in political retaliation against opponents within the Sheriff’s Department.

Enough is enough. If Mr. Carona refuses to do the honorable thing and resign, the voters should get going on a recall election.

Why get put under the gun and answer “real” reporters questions, when you can take fake it? I guess FEMA did just that, borrowing from the Hollywood handbook, and using its own “actors” to pose as reporters at this press conference. A bit sneaky… well blame it on bad decision making, they do. Can we expect any better behavior from such an honest agency?

(CBS/AP) CBS News has obtained this photo of the now infamous fake FEMA press conference held during the California wildfires. The photo, taken by a FEMA employee, is one of the only known photos of the press gallery of that event.

The gallery is not filled with members of the press but with high-level agency employees.

At the podium on the left is Vice Admiral Harvey Johnson, the second in command at FEMA.

The former director of public affairs at the agency, John “Pat” Philbin told CBS News last week, “I am not aware that he knew what was happening and all of sudden staff were asking questions.”

Identified in the photo are staff members that Johnson works closely with on a daily basis.

From left to right: Nathaniel Fogg, Counselor to the Director and Deputy Director; John “Pat” Philbin, former Director of External Affairs; Michael Widomski, Public Affairs Specialist; Eric Heighberger, Special Assistant, Office of the Administrator; Cindy Taylor (in tan suit), Communications Deputy Director; Dan Shulman (red tie), Director of Legislative Affairs; Debbie Wing (curly blond hair), Media Response Liaison; Aaron Walker (back to camera), National Spokesman.

(CBS)

It was announced Thursday that an internal investigation had found that FEMA’s press secretary encouraged, and in some cases instructed, employees to pose as reporters and ask questions at the fake news conference.

At the same time, the investigation, which was conducted by Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke, concluded that officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, did not set out to deceive the public. Knocke blamed bad decision-making and a rush to get out information about wildfires that were raging in southern California.

“Much like in an airline crash or automobile accident that was reconstructed, there were several different points leading up to the press conference where, had a single decision been made differently, the event itself could have been averted,” Knocke said Thursday.

Aaron Walker, the FEMA press secretary, has since accepted a job with a public relations firm in Utah. He said Thursday that FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison did not ask him to leave as a result of the incident or the investigation’s findings.

On Oct. 23, reporters were given 15 minutes’ notice for what turned into a staged question-and-answer briefing with FEMA’s deputy administrator about the California fires. No genuine journalists attended, although they were given a conference call number they could use to listen in but not ask questions. A half-dozen questions were asked at the event by FEMA staff members posing as reporters.

Since the briefing Philbin - who, at the time of the news conference, already had accepted a job at the office of the director of national intelligence - lost his new post before he even started because of the incident.

The incident has been condemned by the White House and by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Paulison called it “an egregious decision.”

A FEMA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the investigation found that during the news conference Walker advised the staff that the briefing continued to be televised and that they should continue to ask questions. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about personnel matters.

Walker, in an interview Thursday, said he had asked his boss to push back the time of the news conference, which had been hastily set for 1 p.m. Walker said he sent a 12:17 p.m. e-mail to Philbin and Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for public affairs, Ed Fox, and asked for more time, but the e-mail went unanswered.

The agency’s deputy administrator, Harvey Johnson, called on FEMA employees by name during the news conference and knew they weren’t reporters.

The Homeland Security Department, of which FEMA is a part, directed FEMA officials to hold a news conference that day before Chertoff and Paulison landed in California, but did not designate a specific time, the FEMA official said.

Since the incident, the department suffered another public relations embarrassment when it was discovered that the assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement judged a Halloween costume contest and awarded “most original” to an employee dressed in dreadlocks, dark makeup and prison stripes. That employee has been placed on leave.

We give them the power… and some seem to run with it thinking that they are above the law since they enforce it. Some corrupt cops do get caught, mostly because they get so bold that they became stupid.

This page on police corruption just went up. It has some great info about the most corrupt cops in the US bunch. Murderers, thieves and drug smugglers, all done with the help of a city or county issued badge. A badge that they got when they swore to protect the citizens and not prey upon them.

Seems, many times a lust for power and greed wins the ethics war and the cops turn to the “Dark Side” of the force

Check out the Police Corruption Page Here 

CEO’s and defense contractors got a combined 1 billion since 9-11 - Guess that industry is no longer in ruin.

For an industry that was in financial trouble some years back, they now end up on top.

I remember a few years ago, the huge lay-offs, the facility shutdowns, reports of record losses in aerospace and defense. And just when defense contractors and CEO’s thought they would have to trade the Bentley in for the cheaper Jag… thier prayers got answered and financial woes are no more. One of the core American industries bailed out by the government and they all profit.

hmmm. coincidence? well thats the question on every conspiracy theorists plate.

and with huge profits like that… why would they ever want it to end?

From Truthdig:

AP photo / Junji Kurokawa

By Robert Scheer

Not to stoke any of the inane conspiracy theories running wild on the Internet, but if Osama bin Laden wasn’t on the payroll of Lockheed Martin or some other large defense contractor, he deserves to have been. What a boondoggle 9/11 has been for the merchants of war, who this week announced yet another quarter of whopping profits made possible by George Bush’s pretending to fight terrorism by throwing money at outdated Cold War-style weapons systems.

Lockheed Martin, the nation’s top weapons manufacturer, reaped a 22 percent increase in profits, while rivals for the defense buck, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, increased profits by 62 percent and 22 percent, respectively.  Boeing’s profits jumped 61 percent, spiked this quarter by its commercial division, but Boeing’s military division, like the others, has been doing very well indeed since the terrorist attacks.  As Newsweek International put in August: “Since 9/11 and the U.S.-led wars that followed, shares in American defense companies have outperformed both the Nasdaq and Standard & Poor’s stock indices by some 40 percent.  Prior to the recent cascade of stock prices worldwide, Boeing’s share prices had tripled over the past five years while Raytheon’s had doubled.”

Not bad for an industry in serious difficulty with the sudden collapse of the Cold War at the beginning of the 1990s, when the first President Bush and his defense secretary, Dick Cheney, were severely cutting the military budget for high-ticket planes and ships designed to fight the no-longer-existent Soviet military.  Sure, they had Iraq to kick around, but the elder Bush never thought to turn the then very real aggression of Saddam Hussein into an enormously expensive quagmire. He both defeated Hussein and cut the military budget.

Not so Bush the younger, who exploited the trauma of 9/11 as an occasion to depose the defanged dictator of Iraq and thus provide a “shock and awe” showcase for the arms industry, which continues to benefit obscenely from the failed occupation. The second Iraq war, irrationally conflated with the 9/11 attack that had nothing to do with Hussein, provided the perfect threat package to justify the most outrageous military boondoggle in the nation’s history.  The bin Laden boys only had an arsenal of $3 knives, but Bush claimed Hussein had WMD. Sadly for the military-industrial complex, Hussein’s army collapsed all too suddenly. But the insurgency, much of it fueled by the Shiites, who were ostensibly on our side, provided the occasion for pretending that we are in a war against a conventionally armed and imposing military enemy.

Of course, we are in nothing of the sort with this so-called war on terror, a propaganda farce that draws resources away from serious efforts to counter terrorism to reward the corporations that profit from high-tech weaponry that has little if anything to do with the problem at hand.  As Columbia professor Richard K. Betts points out in Foreign Affairs magazine:  “With rare exceptions, the war against terrorists cannot be fought with army tank battalions, air force wings, or naval fleets—the large conventional forces that drive the defense budget. The main challenge is not killing the terrorists but finding them, and the capabilities most applicable to this task are intelligence and special operations forces. … It does not require half a trillion dollars worth of conventional and nuclear forces.”

That half a trillion only covers the Pentagon budget for expenses beyond the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars or the Department of Homeland Security. Those last three items total more than $240 billion in Bush’s 2008 budget requests.  Add to that the $50 billion spent on intelligence agencies and an equal amount of State Department-directed efforts and you can understand how we manage to spend more fighting a gang of mujahedeen terrorists, once our “freedom fighters” in that earlier Afghan war against the Soviets, than we did at the height of the Cold War.

“The Pentagon currently absorbs more than half of the federal government’s discretionary budget,” writes Lawrence J. Korb, “surpassing the heights reached when I was President Reagan’s assistant secretary of defense. … And, much like the 1980s, we are spending billions of dollars on weapons systems designed to fight the Soviet superpower.”

Thanks to bin Laden and Bush’s exploitation of “war on terror” hysteria, the taxpayers have been hoodwinked into paying for a sophisticated military arsenal to fight a Soviet enemy that no longer exists. The Institute for Policy Studies calculated last year that the top 34 CEOs of the defense industry have earned a combined billion dollars since 9/11; they should give bin Laden his cut.

From Rolling Stone: - the great iraq swindle - from some time back

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins — he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress — until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

Now you can finally move out of your dull government housing on Bolling Air Force Base and get your wife that dream home you’ve been promising her all these years. The place on Park Street in Dunn Loring, Virginia, looks pretty good — four bedrooms, fireplace, garage, 2,900 square feet, a nice starter home in a high-end neighborhood full of spooks, think-tankers and ex-apparatchiks moved on to the nest-egg phase of their faceless careers. On October 20th, 2003, you close the deal for $775,000 and start living that private-sector good life.

Via Washington Post:Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, disclosed in an interview that the FBI asked him to preserve records as part of a widening investigation into Alaskan political corruption that has touched his son and ensnared one of his closest political confidants and financial backers.

Stevens, who is famous for bringing home federal earmarks for Alaska when he was Appropriations Committee chairman, was not previously known to be linked to the Justice Department’s probe, which has uncovered evidence that more than $400,000 worth of bribes were given to state lawmakers in exchange for favorable energy legislation.

Investigators have used secret recording equipment, seized documents and cooperating witnesses to secure the indictments of four current and former state lawmakers, including the former state House speaker, shaking the core of Alaska’s Republican Party

Click here to see the video of the raid and Senate rep. Ted Stevens confrontation with reporters

Plumbing boss charged Pentagon $1m for two washers

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Friday August 17, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Plumbers are notorious for excessive bills, but this is a bit steep here. I doubt any plumber has come even remotely close to matching an extravagant claim by a South Carolina firm: almost $1m (£500,000) for two metal washers worth 19c each.

Charlene Corley, 47, co-owner of the plumbing and electrical firm C&D Distributors, who supplied parts to the military, is awaiting sentence after pleading guilty yesterday to defrauding the Pentagon. She faces 20 years in jail.

The most expensive washers in history were part of $20.5m the company stole from the Pentagon over the last 10 years. The company shipped plumbing and electrical parts to US bases round the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

It took advantage of an automated system intended to cut out red tape by making speedy payments. The company repeatedly added hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of shipping parts.

The company claimed $998,798 for sending the two washers, which could have been put in an envelope and posted through normal mail for a few dollars.

Corley used the money for luxury homes, cars, plastic surgery and jewellery.

She admitted her role in the fraud but lawyers placed most of the blame on her sister and co-owner, Darlene, who committed suicide in October after being approached by investigators.

Other bills included $445,640 for shipping one elbow pipe worth $8.75, $492,096 for a machine thread plug and $403,436 for six screws worth $59.94.