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$23
By Joe Conason
$9.35
$22
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pjvoice.com
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A BBC investigation on U.S. war profiteering estimates that $23 billion of taxpayer funds has been “lost, stolen, or not properly accounted for in Iraq.”
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A day after Barack Obama made history, an unfortunate figure from his past was back in the headlines. Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a former Obama fundraiser, was convicted of 16 corruption charges. Obama said he was “saddened,” but took the opportunity to get in another plug for change: “This isn’t the Tony Rezko I knew, but now he has been convicted by a jury on multiple charges that once again shine a spotlight on the need for reform.”
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AP photo / Lawrence Jackson
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert issued a warning across the ocean to Iran during a visit to Washington Tuesday, urging the international community to convince Tehran that pursuing a nuclear weapons program would be a really, really bad idea.
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AP photo / Dan Balilty
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Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak called for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to resign or temporarily step down from his post in the midst of investigations into allegedly illegal donations to Olmert’s campaign. Barak threatened to pull the Labor Party out of the coalition government that supports Olmert unless he removes himself from the “day-to-day management of the government.”
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Thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the privatization of the military and the surge in defense spending since 9/11, individual Pentagon auditors now have to keep track of more than three times as much money as they did 10 years ago. Because of limited resources, the Defense Department inspector general revealed in a recent report, about half of the military’s $316 billion weapons budget went under the radar last year.
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press.princeton.edu
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Sheldon Wolin’s new book offers a controversial but ultimately convincing diagnosis of how America’s democracy has succumbed to an unacknowledged totalitarian temptation.
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By Marie Cocco — Republicans have had great success in convincing Americans that “voter fraud” is a grave and growing threat to the republic, but the exact crime that they speak of is almost nonexistent.
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vassar.edu
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It’s the end of an era for the friends of General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan, who resigned from her post Tuesday following years of allegations of corruption and other inappropriate uses of power. Doan’s reign over the government’s chief contracting agency was riddled with contract handouts and examples of using her appointed position for political (read Republican) purposes.
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Flickr / Kevindooley
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By James Harris — Harvard scholar Linda Bilmes speaks about the book on the Iraq war’s costs that she wrote with Joseph Stiglitz. The two former Truthdiggers of the Week have been working hard to uncover even more hidden expenses for the war, which they estimate will cost the taxpayers and their children trillions of dollars.
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By David Sirota — A straight line can be drawn between the 1914 labor massacre in Colorado and today’s killing fields in Colombia. And one of the villains in both cases is the U.S. government.
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By Marie Cocco — The same kinds of mismanagement and dysfunction that are at work in Iraq continue to plague veterans when they seek medical care at home.
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By Joe Conason — Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the American forces in Iraq, is more candid than his publicity agents. Unlike the senators and editorial writers who claim that the glorious “surge” should be hailed as one of the most successful military campaigns in history, he warns that the escalation’s achievements are mixed at best.
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By David Sirota — The real John McCain is re-emerging: a politician who rakes in big bucks by being a hired gun for the corporations.
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By David Sirota — The Federal Reserve Bank’s decision last week to address the housing crisis by extending $200 billion of taxpayer-financed credit to Wall Street banks was met with a stunned reaction typical of surprising events. But really, the move was the expression of longstanding isms that routinely package corruption as sound public policy.
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By Marie Cocco — Elections do matter. Some people who win office really do keep campaign promises. And legislation the public wants—but which the politicians, by and large, don’t—actually can be enacted, even if the kicking and screaming can practically be heard coming from behind those infamously closed doors.
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By Marie Cocco — While Pakistan steals headlines, neighboring Afghanistan offers a more realistic opportunity to crack down on the incubation of terrorists—if only the United States and other interested governments are willing to think outside the box.
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A California court has ordered Wikileaks.org, a Web site that allows users to anonymously post documents and allege corruption, to be shut down. A Swiss bank brought the case after someone using the site alleged the firm had facilitated money laundering. Wikileaks says it was “given only hours notice” of the hearing.
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By David Sirota — To the consternation of news bureaus, political consulting firms and has-been politicians, The Wall Street Journal’s poll last month shows that America is hostile to an independent presidential candidacy by Michael Bloomberg.
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Rudy Giuliani has made much of his time as mayor of New York, but a growing number of his former lieutenants are speaking out about his dictatorial ways. As one former city commissioner put it: “People used to say that if Mayor Koch said, ‘Let’s kill all 12-year-olds, everyone working around him would freely tell him, ‘You’re crazy,’ but if Mayor Giuliani said it, then everyone would say, ‘Brilliant, Rudy! Have you thought of killing 13-year-olds, too?’ ”
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news.bbc.co.uk
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Benazir Bhutto’s teenage son has been named the chairman of her Pakistan People’s Party, although her husband will run the PPP until Bilawal finishes college. Asif Ali Zardari refused to allow his wife to be autopsied but has asked the U.N. and Britain to investigate her assassination.
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mcclatchydc.com
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BBC: “The UK will hand over control of Basra to Iraqi forces despite failing in its goal to establish security there, an MPs’ [members of Parliament] report says. The city is dominated by militias and the police contains ‘murderous’ and ‘corrupt’ elements, the report added.”
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By David Sirota — Through their ethics scandals, Republicans in Washington long ago began making the word conservative synonymous with the term corrupt. Surprisingly, though, it is a group of Democrats that is cementing this definitional conversion for good.
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AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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By Chris Hedges — All great empires and nations decay from within. By the time they hobble off the world stage, overrun by the hordes at the gates or vanishing quietly into the pages of history books, what made them successful and powerful no longer has relevance.
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AP photo / Al Grillo
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The federal corruption probe that first blew the lid off the Alaskan political scene a year ago with the discovery of $32,200 in cash stashed away in the home of Republican Pete Kott, former speaker of the Alaskan House of Representatives, has since spread like an oil slick, leaving precious few prominent lawmakers unstained.
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nytimes.com
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Bernard Kerik, the man Rudy Giuliani mentored, appointed as police commissioner of New York and recommended to head the Department of Homeland Security, has been indicted on corruption charges. For Giuliani, it’s not just a problem of unsavory association, but that he championed Kerik when the cat was seemingly already out of the bag.
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Typically cool as a cucumber, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice struggled to hold it together Thursday as members of the House Oversight Committee let her have it on everything from the enormous, expensive and incomplete U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Blackwater’s killing spree.
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By Joe Conason — For an object lesson in the distorted values of the Senate, contrast how it is handling the Larry Craig case with how it is handling the Ted Stevens case.
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By Amy Goodman — Troy Anthony Davis and Martina Correia are fighting for their lives. He faces death by lethal injection at the hands of the state of Georgia, and she has breast cancer. Their parallel battles against insuperable odds deserve the public’s attention.
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Asked to what extent the State Department had covered up corruption in the government of Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the department’s top Mideast official told the House Oversight Committee that information that could “damage” the U.S. relationship with Iraq is considered “confidential.” That didn’t go over well with committee Chairman Henry Waxman, who then threw down the gauntlet.
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Rep. Henry Waxman has accused the State Department’s top oversight official of looking out for the best interests of the Bush administration, and not the American taxpayer. A number of current and former subordinates of the State Department’s inspector general contacted Waxman to report interference with investigations into fraud and corruption in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The GOP spin machine is revving up with the news of Alberto Gonzales’ departure. Some Republicans are suggesting that tracking down wrongdoing in Gonzales’ Justice Department would bring not peace but extreme disruption. In other words: Can’t we all be buddies and forget these trivialities?
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By Marie Cocco — With Alberto Gonzales’ resignation, the president has lost not only a buddy willing to humiliate himself before Congress but a loyal agent who, whether knowingly or not, helped co-opt the federal government.
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McClatchy is reporting that Congressman Don Young, R-Alaska, is under investigation for earmarking millions in funds for a road project in Florida that wasn’t even wanted by the local community but could have been something of a gold mine for one of his campaign contributors. The Justice Department is also investigating potentially unsavory behavior on the part of Republican Sen. Ted Stevens and other Alaska legislators.
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engadget.com
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AP is reporting that Sen. Ted Stevens may have broken the law by not declaring a gift from a longtime aide. Earlier this week, the FBI and IRS raided Stevens’ Alaska home as part of an investigation into the Republican senator’s relationship with a local contractor who admitted to bribing Alaskan lawmakers.
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The FBI has raided the home of Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the U.S. Senate’s history, who famously described the Internet as “a series of tubes.” Agents were apparently searching for documents related to a contracting company that may have profited from relationships with prominent lawmakers.
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Media icon Bill Moyers objects not just to Rupert Murdoch’s politics but to the damage he says the mogul has done to the ailing Fourth Estate. And in this critique, the venerable journalist doesn’t hold back: “If Rupert Murdoch were the angel Gabriel, you still wouldn’t want him owning the sun, the moon and the stars. ... But Rupert Murdoch is no saint. He is to propriety what the Marquis de Sade was to chastity.”
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AP Photo / George Osodi
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By Gbemisola Olujobi — In some ways, the ascension of Nigeria’s new President Umaru Yar’Adua to his country’s top post can be seen in a hopeful light, however his ties to his predecessor may make him more of a representative for the old guard than a fresh new face in Nigerian politics.
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AP Photo / Lauren Victoria Burke
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Rep. Henry Waxman, who more than any other politician is fulfilling the Democrats’ election promise to bring good governance and oversight back to Washington, tells Truthdig about Iraq corruption, the tragedy of post-traumatic stress disorder, and why it’s only a matter of time before Congress—Republicans included—pulls the plug on the war.
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AP Photo / Lauren Victoria Burke
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Rep. Henry Waxman, who more than any other politician is fulfilling the Democrat’s election promise to bring good governance and oversight back to Washington, tells Truthdig about Iraq corruption, the tragedy of post-traumatic stress disorder, and why it’s only a matter of time before Congress—Republicans included—pulls the plug on the war.
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By Marie Cocco — With the furor over the war funding bill, you may not have noticed that Congress did something right this week. Although it will likely threaten their tenuous hold on a majority, the Democrats pushed through legislation to further limit the influence of lobbyists in Washington.
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nytimes.com
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Paul Wolfowitz will resign as president of the World Bank, effective June 30. He continued to insist that he behaved ethically while arranging a major raise for his girlfriend, but an internal investigation at the bank found otherwise.
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An election monitoring group in Nigeria is planning to reject the results of Saturday’s presidential election to replace Olusegun Obasanjo, saying there was corruption in the voting process. The poll results aren’t fully tallied yet, but two of the 24 candidates are accusing the governing People’s Democratic Party of tampering with the political process.
Posted on Apr 22, 2007
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AP Photo/George Osodi
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By Gbemisola Olujobi — On April 21, Nigerians held elections to replace outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo, who staged a battle (outwardly, at least) against corruption in Africa’s most populated country during his tenure in office. Nigerian journalist Gbemisola Olujobi explains how outsiders’ ideas about the issue of corruption in Africa can be limited by their differing cultural perspectives.
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Jon Stewart swings away at the Wolfowitz scandal: “Last week it was disclosed Wolfowitz had used his influence to get a promotion and a raise for his longtime paramour, World Bank employee Shaha Ali Riza—considered to be a foremost expert on the Middle East. Which means—you know what they say—opposites attract.”
Posted on Apr 18, 2007
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What a difference a year makes! Let’s review: Here’s what Paul Wolfowitz said about ending corruption at the World Bank in early 2006, about 14 months before news of his very own corruption scandal broke.
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By Joe Conason — The plot to eliminate politically inconvenient U.S. attorneys was a direct assault on the integrity of American justice, and its architects should be investigated and punished accordingly.
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Greenland’s Great Melt Is Pinned On Climate Change
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