I bitched about outsourcing shit to India here and here, so today it’s China’s turn:
Gary Leong knew things weren’t right during a recent tour of a Chinese plant when he witnessed workers manufacturing glucosamine sulfate to relieve joint discomfort in the morning and fertilizer to help plants grow in the afternoon - using the same equipment.
Not only do my joints feel great, I’ve grown 2 inches!
Dead bodies, of course.
[click to enlarge]
Securities Class Action Filed ...
We LOVE the Smell of Litigation in the Morning!
Diebold is going to be sued for securities fraud! Location: federal district court in [wait for it] OHIO. Eight current and former executives are named as co-defendants, including former CEO Wally O'Dell (who just resigned for "personal reasons") and new CEO Thomas Swidarski. The class period appears to be from October 22, 2003 to September 21, 2005, so if you owned the stock (ticker symbol DBD), get thee to a lawyer!
tags: impeach bush black box voting diebold wally o'dell thomas swidarski
Used Car Dealer Cattan Pisses Away More Than a Billion!
[via Raw Story] Please don't think that the Brownie phenomenon, discussed here and here, is contained within U.S. borders. It has been reported that Bu$hco's choice for chief weapons procuror, Ziad Cattan, "was a Polish Iraqi used-car dealer with no weapons-dealing experience until U.S. authorities turned him into one of the most powerful men in Iraq last year — the chief of procurement for the Defense Ministry, responsible for equipping the fledgling Iraqi army." Are you surprised then that Iraq was defrauded of over $1 billion in the resulting scandal?
As U.S. advisors looked on, Cattan embarked on a massive spending spree, paying hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi funds for secret, no-bid contracts, according to interviews with more than a dozen senior American, coalition and Iraqi officials, and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times. The money flowed, often in bricks of cash, through the hands of middlemen who were friends of Cattan and took a percentage of the proceeds. Although much of the material purchased has proved useful, U.S. advisors said, the contracts also paid for equipment that was shoddy, overpriced or never delivered. The questionable purchases — including aging Russian helicopters and underpowered Polish transport vehicles — have slowed the development of the Iraqi army and hindered its ability to replace American troops, U.S. and Iraqi officials say. [emphasis supplied.]Perhaps Mr. Cattan, now under investigation, is a good judge of horse flesh.
If It's Not Halliburton, It's Rove and a Neo-Nazi At CPB
How Many More Ghost Employees [Don't] Exist?
Tomlinson Still in Important Position - Pulls a "Brownie"
Two similarly-themed stories greeted Blogenfreude in this morning's NYT, and one implicates (guess who?) Karl Rove, who seems to have his tentacles in every bit of administration corruption:
You will recall that Tomlinson is the Repug who went to war with Bill Moyers (and seemingly lost) over the "liberal" content of public broadcasting. This tidbit stands out: "Mr. Tomlinson remains an important official as the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The board, whose members include the secretary of state, plays a central role in public diplomacy. It supervises the government's foreign broadcasting operations, including Radio Martí, Radio Sawa and al-Hurra; transmits programs in 61 languages; and says it has more than 100 million listeners each week."
The juiciest bit comes after the jump:
In recent weeks, State Department investigators have seized records and e-mail from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, officials said. They have shared some material with the inspector general at the corporation, including e-mail traffic between Mr. Tomlinson and White House officials including Karl Rove, a senior adviser to President Bush and a close friend of Mr. Tomlinson. Mr. Rove and Mr. Tomlinson became friends in the 1990's when they served on the Board for International Broadcasting, the predecessor agency to the board of governors. Mr. Rove played an important role in Mr. Tomlinson's appointment as chairman of the broadcasting board. The content of the e-mail between the two officials has not been made public but could become available when the corporation's inspector general sends his report to members of Congress this month.
Per the KBR story, "[t]he Bush administration repeatedly gave Halliburton special treatment and allowed the company to gouge both U.S. taxpayers and the Iraqi people," Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who is the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, said in a statement on the new audits. "The international auditors have every right to expect a full refund of Halliburton's egregious overcharges."
Just to show they can contribute, the Iraqi ruling class stepped in too:
But some of the [private] K.P.M.G. audits that were carried out, relying on Iraqi ministry documents, turned up what appears to be clear evidence of mismanagement and corruption among Iraqi officials that was apparently unrelated to the K.B.R. work. In its report on the Iraqi Oil Ministry, the auditing firm used the euphemism "nonrefundable fees" for bribes in the awarding of oil contracts. "We found two cases," the report said, "where nonrefundable fees ($10,000 and $20,000) were charged to obtain tender documents (total contract value $150,302,897)." Other entries suggest the existence of $600,000 in ghost payrolling in the Electricity Ministry and additional evidence of bribes.
All emphasis supplied.
tags: kenneth tomlinson corporation for public broadcasting iraq halliburton karl rove corruption K.B.R.
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