Elsewhere in Nefarious Taxpayer Funded Organizations...
If you’re among the people celebrating the federal government’s decision to sever ties with ACORN — and I certainly am — you ought to take notice of another taxpayer funded organization whose behavior is even more abhorrent than anything you’ve seen on the Big Government hidden video.
Kelley Vlahos ably summarizes what’s going on:
Thanks to whistle-blowers — at the threat of their own security, professionally or otherwise — we have been informed of some of the basest, grossest behavior coming out of the contracting world on the taxpayers’ dime today. Whether it be soldiers electrocuted by cheap, poorly installed showers by KBR and Triple Canopy, the vodka-drug- fueled pimping frat boys from the Armor Group or the gang rape of a female American contractor by her fellow KBR employees, there is seemingly no end to evidence that the proliferation of privatization has created a runaway Frankenstein of venality, arrogance, avarice and corruption and downright evil, with no restraint that I can see, whatsoever.
Take this latest bit about the Armor Group. Thanks to the Project on Government Oversight, which had the wherewithal to FOIA the goods on this group, we now know that there has been unfettered depravity — including, we heard last week, the procurement of imported, unwitting Chinese girls for sex — at our U.S Embassy. Not surprisingly, there has been a ton of finger-pointing about who knew what and when, but the fact remains that the company got its $187 million contract renewed even after allegations began to surface. Not much different than (Blackwater) Xe, which got its contract renewed in Iraq last week even as their former guards stand trial for murder and the company has banned by the Maliki government for ever working there again.
Allegations of misconduct and corruption on this level go way back — Dyncorp was accused of pimping out skinny, war ravaged girls back in Bosnia. No one seems to care. They just got another contract worth up to $7.5 billion in Afghanistan. They have contracts elsewhere in the expanding U.S footprint, including Africa.
This is outrageous, indefensible, and unlike the ACORN case, those facts aren’t provoking an appropriate response.
This is the first I’ve seen of this — and our government just signed another contract? If this is investigated and found to be valid, then it’s even more reason to believe our government is totally out of control — and it doesn’t point to any one president or party — just to government, and it’s practices.
— mike farmer · Sep 18, 11:06 AM · #
It’s obvious what we need to do. The system is broken and we need to spend at least a trillion more dollars to cut the waste and fraud. I know the President would sign something like that.
— jd · Sep 18, 12:04 PM · #
lets have Brietbart send a sting team over there to expose Armor Group and KBR.
I’d even chip in.
You know Conor…this is relly depressing for me because I wrote a bit about it back when I was a “conservative”……those Blackwater contractors that were hung and burned likely deserved that just as much as Menchaca/Tucker deserved the multilation video.
— matoko_chan · Sep 18, 12:46 PM · #
I totally agree.
— J Mann · Sep 18, 01:22 PM · #
A trillion dollars and another government program that oversees and the overseers, then another to oversee them.
— mike farmer · Sep 18, 01:22 PM · #
Yes, this example clearly indicates that we ought to get the government out of the military, and let private contractors take over. Everything the government touches falls apart.
— rob · Sep 18, 01:28 PM · #
First I’ve seen of it, too. Uttterly despicable.
— Kate Marie · Sep 18, 01:36 PM · #
Rob, I hear your sarcasm, but the fact is that the military is one of the legitimate responsibilities of government, something even a limited government freak like myself can agree on, but, oddly, government is taking on every other responsibility it’s incompetent to handle and shirking its responsibility to manage a competent military.
— mike farmer · Sep 18, 01:58 PM · #
I just thought this was an odd point to start talking about the problems with gov’t-run enterprises, Mike. Wasn’t really the obvious lesson from the situation, regardless of one’s general stance on the legitimate responsibilities of gov’t (the most obvious lesson would seem to be what you mentioned, that the gov’t ought not be shirking its responsibility for running the military, and that lesson doesn’t really segue very well into your general points, even if it doesn’t necessarily contradict them, either).
— rob · Sep 18, 02:33 PM · #
Is there a coherent criticism there somewhere? Because it’s approaching an interesting subject. The military is the only thing the government should be funding, according to the constitution. Apparently, it can’t even do that very well. And do you support more government involvement in our lives?
I never respond to Sudoku_chum, but I just wanted to repeat her comment for emphasis. This is one despicable human being.
— jd · Sep 18, 02:49 PM · #
Naughty Conor! Certainly, the drift towards crony capitalism is one abetted by both main political parties over many years, though it seems to be taking a giant leap forward under Obama,for whom it represents a congenial expansion on the national stage of the “Chicago Way” that he flourished under back home. But that provides no reason for not continuing to beat up on ACORN, which but represents another grotesquely fascinating dimension of the Chicago Way!
— nb · Sep 18, 02:57 PM · #
Cr*p, jd – my policy of skipping Matoko posts came back to bite me. For the record, I agree with Conor.
— J Mann · Sep 18, 03:09 PM · #
This has been floating around for awhile now, but yes, I await the freak out over this. I think I’ll be holding my breath for a good long time. I don’t suspect we’ll see this blazing though the blogosphere, mostly because relatively unimportant non-profits>>>>>privatizing our military in the name of…what exactly?
— Mike P · Sep 18, 03:18 PM · #
Is there a coherent criticism there somewhere?
No. Only, as Mike Farmer notes, sarcasm.
— rob · Sep 18, 03:31 PM · #
I hope (only a little bit of hope) that this will end up being the best thing that comes out of the ACORN mess (I too am fine with beating up on ACORN, though I consider them relatively small fish). Maybe, just maybe, people will have a look at the pork-ridden, corrupt military-industrial-congressional complex and notice some dark things lurking.
— Rob in CT · Sep 18, 03:50 PM · #
You’re in a funny mess though. Wackenhut (ARMOR’s parent) in elbows deep in a lot of government now. Post guard positions that used to be filled by uniformed soldiers (that being a good use for Private Snuffy when he’s at home) are filled by contractors, and even a lot of teaching positions at military schools that would’ve been filled by NCOs or officers are contracted. Can you unwind all these contracts on the fly? I doubt it, not without bringing a lot of operations to a screeching halt first. That doesn’t mean renewing those contracts those particular apparently ridiculously vile companies is “all right,” but I think deciding what to do about them is necessarily secondary to deciding what you’re going to be doing with military manpower in Iran and Afghanistan. I think the best you can say is that it’s one more good argument for bringing those operations to a rapid close but I don’t know that it’s the most significant one for or against.
— Sanjay · Sep 18, 04:06 PM · #
What are you gonna do? Whatever those companies do, we still need US citizens in Kabul to have security. We don’t need poor people in the US to have advocates.
The military is the only thing the government should be funding, according to the constitution
jd, the very next item after ‘provide for the common defence’ in the Constitution’s list of duties for the government is ‘promote the general Welfare’. I realize you can’t be expected to read the whole Constitution without hurting you brain, but, please, this is the very first sentence of the Constitution.
— Bo · Sep 18, 04:19 PM · #
not as despicable as you, jd, happy to look the other way rather than acknowlege the Iraqi Rape Squad, that gang-raped a FOURTEEN YEAR OLD CHILD, slaghtered and burned her family, and would have got away with it if the village shayyk hadn’t turned to the local al-Q franchise for some traditional tribal justice in the form of a sexual mutilation video of some of the perps.
— matoko_chan · Sep 18, 04:22 PM · #
Democracy promotion in action.
/spit
— matoko_chan · Sep 18, 04:23 PM · #
Said video caused the rest of the perps to then confess in pantswetting terror that they would be snatched next.
You see, the village knew who did it….the shayyk went to the ‘Merican oppcupiers for justice, but got turned away with the excuse that it was sectarian violence.
I would not be at all surprised if the blackwater mercs had few little R&R adventures that might have turned the local village against them too.
You see….jd….before Our Little Grand Misadventure in MENA, the occupied countries always had a prostitute class to service the occupation…..prostitution is illegal in islamic states.
So the mercs either prey off the locals and blame sectarian violence or import sexslaves.
No little half-american babies or warbrides (like germany, japan, vietnam, philipines, etc) tho…..that should make Sailer happy.
— matoko_chan · Sep 18, 04:33 PM · #
You keep trying to pretend to we are the good guys.
We aren’t.
Sometimes I’m not even sure we are the better guys.
— matoko_chan · Sep 18, 04:44 PM · #
Hey I found your blog today linked from Human Events. I really like what I see. I’ll be sure to regularly stop in.
I am a 26 year old grad student from Chicago and I have a humble little blog of my own (A Voice in the Wilderness) and here’s my latest piece:
rjmoeller.com…et-it-obama/
Keep up the good work. Thanks and God bless!
-RJM
— RJ Moeller · Sep 18, 07:25 PM · #
The American Conservative covered the Armor Group scandal years ago. The juiciest detail is that the owner, David H. Brooks, spent $10 million of his ill-gotten gains on his daughter’s bat mitzvah party.
That might have something to do with why the story didn’t get traction in the national media.
— Steve Sailer · Sep 18, 08:49 PM · #
Ah yes….its all about teh joooos…..or the blacks…..or the hispanics.
— matoko_chan · Sep 18, 09:27 PM · #
BO:
No way in hell they meant what YOU think it means.
— jd · Sep 18, 09:42 PM · #
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— jfjfg · Sep 19, 05:11 AM · #
Wow, makoto. You posted something a while back that accorded with my sense of how you don’t read well and I thought I’d lay off you, but — wow. You are an asshole with no moral sense, and Asperger’s doesn’t explain that. I recognize jd is a bit of a fool but he was right to call you out, and that was the point to apologize because we all say something amazingly dumb sometimes. But, no, you doubled down. That’s at least as bad as anything asses like Limbaugh are doing. Actually I think it’s worse.
I don’t want what was done to those civilian contractors done even to our military, or their military, or, hell, to their terrorists, and the people who did it made themselves and their whole town look like beasts. I find you thoroughly repugnant and an insult, in how you defend yourself, to the fine Sufis with whom I’ve travelled. Congrats to TAS I suppose for not censoring anything, but, wow. I’m done: JMann has it right, and I am a fool to read anything above your signature block.
— Sanjay · Sep 19, 04:45 PM · #
Well you see, sanjay, you are judging what the Iraqi viallagers did by your cultural standards.
By their standards they acted appropriately.
What our contractors (Kabul sexparties) and OUR SOLDIERS did was completely immoral AND ILLEGAL even according to our social mores and taboos, plus the oath the service the soldiers swore and the contracts and clearance billets signed by contractors and the f*ckin’ RULE OF LAW that our civil society enforces.
Take your big white bwana judeo-xian democracy and shove it.
— matoko_chan · Sep 19, 07:19 PM · #
The truth is we have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in MENA with our Big White Bwana bumbling, and we can’t even obey our own fucking laws there. And you know what else? I just told the truth.
That is what Sufi’s do…ask your friends.
Ya-haqq!
— matoko_chan · Sep 20, 12:21 AM · #
Sanjay,
Hear, hear.
I actually hadn’t read the latest from what’s her name, until I saw your comment. I’m done, too.
— Kate Marie · Sep 20, 08:05 AM · #
Yeah that is gonna fix your problems.
You sanctimonious hypocritical intellectual troglidytes.
I thought conservatism was the philosophy that acknowledged the truth of human nature…that is what the whited sepulchres at Secular Right are always carping about.
Well the truth about human nature is that if you go on your little neocon foreign adventures in countries without a prostitute class you better bring your own roman style camp followers and sex workers, or go to sex parity in the occupation army….that is human nature.
Here is a swell feature of our oh-so-superior western culture that we are importing to Afghanistan…. organized crime prominantly featuring REAL child sex slave trafficking.
Haha, there you go KHatemarie, some REAL child sex slave trafficking for you get all puffed up about, instead that fake stuff.
— matoko_chan · Sep 20, 01:48 PM · #
No one, least of all American conservatives, cares about foreign victims of rape. Acorn is, for some reason, associated in the conservative id with evil and thievery and black people, so it gets a ton of attention. Of course a principled conservative movement would care passionately about ferreting out this kind of abuse. Unhappily, there’s no such thing in this country.
— lloyd · Sep 21, 01:51 AM · #
Matoko – please stop judging Republicans by your cultural standards. By their cultural standards, they are awesome.
— J Mann · Sep 21, 02:44 PM · #
Yup, republican cultural standards are awesome to republicans aka “conservatives”.
Unfortunately those standards include torture, rape, murder, assassiations and coups, sponsoring child sex-slaves and human trafficking, pimping drugs and cigarettes, neocon interventionism, meddling and wars of choice, as long as it is american perps and third world victims.
Got it J Mann.
— matoko_chan · Sep 21, 05:22 PM · #
Sanjay Wins at Comboxing, Life.
Matoko is definitely not funny ha-ha. I hope she survives herself.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Sep 21, 08:51 PM · #
Well……I am a Sufi.
And Sanjay is not my shayyk. He doesn’t get to crit me because I don’t conform to his perception of sufis as a bunch of fluffy love bunnie mystical aethetes.
That was rude.
— matoko_chan · Sep 22, 01:28 PM · #
Matoko, stop imposing your cultural standards on Sanjay.
— J Mann · Sep 22, 02:16 PM · #
J Mann, isn’t kind of obvious that Sanjay was just imposing his version of what he thinks a “fine” Sufi should be like on me?
— matoko_chan · Sep 22, 02:41 PM · #
You are imposing your cultural value of anti-imposition, you imposer!
— J Mann · Sep 22, 03:18 PM · #
haha, ‘zactly.
I am anti-evangelism and pro-liberty.
Free the memes!
ya haqq!
— matoko_chan · Sep 22, 04:23 PM · #
IOKIYAR
http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/IOKIYAR
INOKIYAD or B or L ….
— eitenk · Sep 22, 09:06 PM · #