This reports comes out while members of the congressional supercommittee are pissing and moaning about how we can't possibly cut any more money from the Defense department. These numbers seem to indicate otherwise:

How often does the Pentagon award contracts to defense companies that have already been proven to be defrauding taxpayers? A report the Department of Defense did at the request of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) reveals an answer that should make Washington very uncomfortable.

The report, released today, showed that hundreds of defense contractors found guilty of civil fraud received more than $1.1 trillion in defense contracts since 2001. The study took into account only companies that were found to have defrauded taxpayers of more than $1 million dollars.

More than $573 billion went directly to companies that were guilty of defrauding taxpayers, and when you factor in the awards that went to the parent companies of those contractors, the total is $1.1 trillion. Of that $573 billion, more than two-thirds—$398 billion—went to companies after they had been found guilty of fraud.

Companies convicted of “hard-core criminal fraud” received $255 million in contracts, $33 million of it after conviction.

Some of the country’s biggest defense contractors were implicated. “The ugly truth is that virtually all of the major defense contractors in this country for years have been engaged in systemic fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money,” said Sanders. According to the report:

Lockheed Martin in 2008 paid $10.5 million to settle charges that it defrauded the government by submitting false invoices on a multi-billion dollar contract connected to the Titan IV space launch vehicle program. That didn’t seem to sour the relationship between Lockheed and the Defense Department, which gave Lockheed $30.2 billion in contracts in fiscal year 2009, more than ever before.

In another case, Northrop Grumman paid $62 million in 2005 to settle charges that it “engaged in a fraud scheme by routinely submitting false contract proposals,” and “concealed basic problems in its handling of inventory, scrap and attrition.” Despite the serious charges of pervasive and repeated fraud, Northrop Grumman received $12.9 billion in contracts the next year, 16 percent more than the year before.

Translation: "Santa Claus doesn't live here anymore, boys!" I remember doing a defense story years ago and being surprised to learn that defense contractors typically use a research and development approach of several teams working on the same program at once, something they said enabled them to pick best practices from each team.

Oh yeah, and it's an extraordinarily expensive approach virtually unheard of in the private sector:

The Pentagon on Monday told the US defense industry to bring down costs and find more savings in a "new era" of more modest military spending.

Ashton Carter, chief arms buyer for the Pentagon, delivered the belt-tightening message to a gathering of hundreds of defense chief executives and senior managers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

The appeal for cost savings was part of an initiative announced by Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month to free up funds for weapons and other vital military needs, amid increasing pressure on the federal budget.

The industry CEOs understood the fiscal climate had changed, Carter said after the closed-door meeting.

"Everybody knows we're entering a new era," he told reporters. "They can do the math."

The US defense budget would no longer grow at the same dramatic pace that marked the years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and instead would expand at a more modest rate, said Carter, who also issued an open letter to industry.

As a result, weapons programs and services from private contractors would have to be carried out more efficiently starting next year, he said.

By slashing overhead, the Pentagon could increase funding for "war-fighting capabilities" by two to three percent, said Carter, or "in effect, doing more without more."

It's crazy, isn't it? It happens like clockwork the minute a Democrat's in the White House. Mike Lux on the Democratic deficit talk that's all the rage these days (as pointed out by Atrios the other day). Which once again raises the question: What, exactly, do Democrats stand for?

So just to summarize here: the deficit is caused by tax cuts for the rich, an economic collapse caused by wealthy bankers which resulted in bailouts for those wealthy bankers plus massive pain for middle income and poor people, tax loopholes and corporate subsidies designed to help the wealthy, plus two wars and wasteful defense spending (much of which goes into the pockets of wealthy defense contractors). And the solution for the deficit hawks: target middle class and lower seniors for social security cuts, and put in a regressive tax that is a burden to low and middle income people.

Justice: American style.

Elites are selling this as a grand compromise: Conservatives get Social Security cuts, and liberals get a tax increase. Oh, boy. My question is: what do regular folks get out of the deal besides screwed?

Progressives ought to be screaming bloody murder at this phony compromise, but we also ought to have a constructive alternative on how we end the budget deficit. There are plenty of budget cuts we can live with: ending wasteful defense spending, take away subsidies to the big corporate farms, put a strong public option in health care reform, have the federal government negotiate drug prices, end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are plenty of taxes we can raise that wouldn't soak the people who have been most hurt by the economy of the last decade, including a financial transactions tax on the big banking speculators, an end to the corporate tax loopholes and offshore tax avoidance, bringing taxes on the wealthy back to the level they were before the Reagan tax cuts.

If you did all that, even waiting another year or two to let the economy get on a firmer footing, you could easily balance the budget before the 2010 decade is out and have plenty of money left over to invest in the infrastructure and schools that we so desperately need.

If you want to solve the deficit, target the folks whose time at the money trough caused it in the first place: the big banks, the defense contractors, the drug and insurance companies, the agribusiness giants, and the super wealthy that got all of those huge tax cuts in the first place.

This is completely unacceptable. The co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is throwing her support behind a Blue Dog named Jane Harman for reelection in 2010, and who happens to be the representative in my own district in California. I've been thinking of running against her because I'm so upset at Harman's actions in Congress, but for Woolsey to be holding fundraising events for a known Blue Dog should be a firing offense for the CPC.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva has been excellent for the CPC, but obviously Lynne needs to go. The idea is to grow the CPC and progressives in Congress, not support odious Blue Dogs who obstruct progressive legislation and take this country to the far, far right. This is a complete betrayal.

I'm calling for the CPC to remove her as the co-chair immediately.

Howie Klein has more:

Harman supports a wide range of Republican policies that Woolsey has always opposed-- from the Iraq War, the anti-family/pro-bankster bankruptcy bill, and abolishing the estate tax to warrantless wiretaps (except the ones that expose her as an Israeli spy) and offering "special treatment" to defense contractors. She is widely considered to be the least trustworthy and most disliked Democrats in the House by her fellow Democrats. And Lynne Woolsey understands that completely.

Is this how the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus builds a progressive movement? Marcy Winograd is in a tight primary race against Harman. It may be too much to expect Woolsey to campaign for Winograd, but endorsing the Blue Dog who is consistently voting against -- and working behind the scenes against -- everything the Progressive Caucus is supposed to stand for? Then they wonder why no one takes them seriously? Woolsey should be relieved of her position as co-chair...

Please have your phone in hand and start calling. Please be polite-- and firm:

Washington DC Office:

202-225-5161

Fax: 202-225-5163

District Offices:

Marin Office:

1050 Northgate Drive

Suite 354

San Rafael, CA. 94903

Ph.: 415-507-9554

Fax: 415-507-9601

Sonoma Office:

1101 College Avenue

Suite 200

Santa Rosa, CA 95404

Ph.: 707-542-7182

Fax: 707-542-2745

Talk about double-dipping! I wonder if it would be too much to ask that media outlets ask about such conflicts before they offer them outlets as "objective" analysts:

WASHINGTON — After retiring from the Marine Corps in December 2003, Emil "Buck" Bedard headed back to work — for both the Pentagon and defense contractors.

Two months after leaving the service as a lieutenant general, Bedard became an adviser for the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command, a job that this year paid him about $1,600 per day to help run war games and mentor high-level commanders on how to lead troops in battle. Bedard also signed on with seven defense contractors as a corporate director or consultant.

For one of those firms, Bedard marketed a video surveillance system to the Marines during the time he was getting paid by the Pentagon for mentoring, even after a general concluded that the technology "did not work as advertised," a USA TODAY investigation found.

Bedard's activities present a case study of the kinds of situations that arise when retired senior officers become paid Pentagon advisers even as they market products to the military as consultants for defense contractors. USA TODAY reported last month that roughly 130 retired generals and admirals have held taxpayer-funded military jobs as "senior mentors" while also working for defense contractors.

Bedard's case goes beyond getting paid to advise the government and industry at the same time. E-mails and interviews show that Bedard pushed for his former service branch to buy the video system, including sending e-mails while on mentoring assignments.

"In the corporate world, this ... would not be tolerated," said Kirk Hanson, director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California.

"It is not uncommon for someone to consult with their former employer, but it is a major concern if they are simultaneously representing groups that sell to or try to influence their former employer."

I can't tell whether I have a bad cold or the swine flu, but I sure would have gotten the vaccine if it had been available. Now I know why I never got that notice:

When the swine flu vaccine was most scarce, health officials gave thousands of doses to corporate clinics at Walt Disney World, Toyota, defense contractors, oil companies and cruise lines, according to a USA TODAY review of vaccine distribution data from three states.

USA TODAY examined how state health departments distributed H1N1 vaccine after public outcry last month over Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs receiving doses while doctors and hospitals encountered shortages. The data show other companies got the vaccine in October and early November. In some cases, early doses went to people not deemed most at risk by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Now we have evidence of what my suspicions were," said U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., chair of a House health subcommittee. "I'm afraid when you have these corporate initiatives, it's not primarily needs-based."

Pallone said he would send the CDC a letter Tuesday asking it to revise guidelines to states on the use of corporate health clinics.

Each state health department must decide how to provide the vaccine to people most at risk, and employers are a legitimate venue, said Anne Schuchat, the CDC's immunization director. CDC's priority groups include pregnant women, people with chronic health conditions, health care workers and people ages 6 months to 24 years. "This is much less about what you do for a living and much more about how do you get the vaccine in the path of those target populations," she said.

It sure would be interesting to know who made those decisions - and at whose request.

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You'd think rape would be one issue Republicans would be smart enough not make into a partisan issue, but no. They couldn't help themselves.

Franken passed an amendment that was attached to a defense bill that would withhold government contracts from companies that refused to let employees bring rape cases before the courts. It should be tough voting against rape, but thirty Republicans did just that and now they are whining the night away because bloggers and some MSMers have highlighted their atrocity. And in their usual silly reality, they are blaming Sen. Al Franken because they are getting hammered over their malfeasance.

Al Franken fallout has GOP fuming

The Republicans are steamed at Franken because partisans on the left are using a measure he sponsored to paint them as rapist sympathizers — and because Franken isn’t doing much to stop them.

“Trying to tap into the natural sympathy that we have for this victim of this rape —and use that as a justification to frankly misrepresent and embarrass his colleagues, I don’t think it’s a very constructive thing,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in an interview.

“I think it’s going to make a lot of senators leery and start looking at things he’s doing earlier on, because I don’t think it got appropriate attention ahead of time.”

--

Franken, who declined to be interviewed, has said previously that the measure was inspired by the story of former KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones, who alleges that she was drugged, beaten and gang-raped at age 19 when stationed in Baghdad. She fought the arbitration clause in her contract, and in September the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Jones’s sexual assault allegations were not “related to” her employment, allowing her to proceed in court. KBR is fighting the ruling.

--

“I don’t know what his motivation was for taking us on, but I would hope that we won’t see a lot of Daily Kos-inspired amendments in the future coming from him,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, No. 4 in the Senate Republican leadership. “I think hopefully he’ll settle down and do kind of the serious work of legislating that’s important to Minnesota.”

Aides point out that despite attacks on Republicans by liberal commentators like Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann and on blogs such as Daily Kos, Franken never appeared on any of the shows or on the blogs to make a partisan argument about the matter, saying that the senator turned down entreaties to do so.

Also, they point to the 10 Republicans who voted for the amendment as proof that it wasn’t a partisan measure.

“Sen. Franken has been proud to partner with both Republicans and Democrats to find common-sense solutions to the problems we face,” said Jess McIntosh, his spokeswoman. “He’s been working hard for Minnesota since he got here five months ago and has already introduced 10 bills — four of which were introduced with Republican co-sponsors, and two already passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support.”

Cornyn should be embarrassed by the Republicans, but instead tries to say they were misrepresented. Really? Did he vote yes or no? That's the only question that should be debated. All the Republicans who voted against Franken's measure have a lot more to answer for. Bad PR is just the beginning.

This is infuriating. If there was any doubt in your mind as to whose side the political establishment is on, this should settle it:

An amendment that would prevent the government from working with contractors who denied victims of assault the right to bring their case to court is in danger of being watered down or stripped entirely from a larger defense appropriations bill.

Multiple sources have told the Huffington Post that Sen. Dan Inouye, a longtime Democrat from Hawaii, is considering removing or altering the provision, which was offered by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and passed by the Senate several weeks ago.

Inouye's office, sources say, has been lobbied by defense contractors adamant that the language of the Franken amendment would leave them overly exposed to lawsuits and at constant risk of having contracts dry up. The Senate is considering taking out a provision known as the Title VII claim, which (if removed) would allow victims of assault or rape to bring suit against the individual perpetrator but not the contractor who employed him or her.

"The defense contractors have been storming his office," said a source with knowledge of the situation. "Inouye either will get the amendment taken out altogether, or water it down significantly. If they water it down, they will take out the Title VII claims. This means that in discrimination cases, they will still force you into a secret forced arbitration on KBR's (or other contractors') own terms -- with your chances of prevailing practically zero. The House seems to be very supportive of the original Franken amendment and all in line, but their hands are tied since it originated in the Senate. And since Inouye runs the show on this bill, he can easily take it out to get Republicans and the defense contractors off his back, which looks increasingly likely."

A Democratic aide on the Hill, also with knowledge of the situation, confirmed the account, as did a source who works on defense contracting matters outside of Congress. "The contractors are putting on a full-court press on this amendment... they are all doing it," said the latter source.

It's got to be done, and using someone like Gates to do it is a smart plan. But we can expect defense contractors to throw a lot of political muscle and money into the fight:

WASHINGTON - As the Bush administration was drawing to a close, Robert M. Gates, whose two years as defense secretary had been devoted to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, felt compelled to warn his successor of a crisis closer to home.

The United States "cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything," Gates said. The next defense secretary, he warned, would have to eliminate some costly hardware and invest in new tools for fighting insurgents.

What Gates didn't know was that he would be that successor.

Now, as the only Bush Cabinet member to remain under President Obama, Gates is preparing the most far-reaching changes in the Pentagon's weapons portfolio since the end of the Cold War, according to aides.

Two defense officials who were not authorized to speak publicly said Gates will announce up to a half-dozen major weapons cancellations later this month. Candidates include a new Navy destroyer, the Air Force's F-22 fighter jet, and Army ground-combat vehicles, the officials said.

More cuts are planned for later this year after a review that could lead to reductions in programs such as aircraft carriers and nuclear arms, the officials said.

Now to be fair, Bucky Bush has not been accused of any wrongdoing. I just find it sadly ironic that a Bush is making so much money from illegal acts by defense contractors.

LA Times:

President Bush's uncle William H.T. "Bucky" Bush was among directors of a defense contractor who together reaped $6 million from what federal regulators say was an illegal five-year scheme by two company executives to manipulate the timing of stock option grants, court documents show.

The youngest brother of former President George H.W. Bush, he is the second Bush family member whose name has surfaced in stock options scandals this month.

He was an outside, nonexecutive director of Engineered Support Systems Inc. of St. Louis, a supplier of military equipment and electronics that financially benefited from the Iraq war. [..]In a civil suit filed Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused the former chief financial officer and former controller of enriching themselves and others with backdating.

Bush and the other board members were not accused of any wrongdoing.

Bush made about $450,000 in January 2005 by exercising his company stock options and selling shares, his SEC filing shows. When questioned by a Times reporter about the sale at the time, he said he had not pulled any strings in Washington to win Iraq war contracts.

[..]Last week in an unrelated case, Marvin Bush, the current president's youngest brother, was named as a defendant in a suit charging that officers and directors of HCC Insurance Holdings benefited from backdated options.