I was surfing around the internets and found this story at Truthout.org.

Remember all those right-wing propagandists wringing their hands over how the media was not reporting all the good things that were going on in Iraq? Well, it turns out that many of the "good things" -- reconstruction projects that were supposed to get Iraq back on its feet -- never happened. In other words, there was nothing to report.

From CNN.com:

The U.S. government paid more than $1.7 million in defense contracts over the last decade to companies owned by leaders of Warren Jeffs' polygamous sect, with tens of thousands allegedly winding its way back to Jeffs and his church.

The Pentagon had contracts with three companies with ties to Warren Jeffs' polygamous sect.

In fact, some of the deals were made after Jeffs was named to the FBI's "Most-Wanted List" and remained in place while he was on the run.

CNN has learned that between 1998 and 2007, the United States Air Force and Defense Logistics Agency purchased more than $1.7 million worth of airplane parts from three companies owned by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which practices polygamy.

Well, Dubbya is closing in on the end of the most criminal regime since the Reagan Years and he is doing his best to secure his friends some going away money.
The MSM has not advertised it, but there is a new I.D. for terminal workers in our ports-called T.W.I.C. Its a brilliant program, it's like a work license .Of course, the same government that brings us the DMV won't cover the National Workers Card. The I.D. costs $132.50, consists of a simple questionaire and fingerprinting. Sounds good right? Lockheed Martin got the contract, costing the government and Dock works across the country millions. Awesome,the privitization of Katrina helped so much that our National Security has been privitized as well.
Big Oil is also reimbursing their employees for the cost of the I.D. and are set to receive a nice tax break for allowing their workers to get cancer!

    In 1993, amidst banking scandals which were tainting the reputation of the Democratic official of Kentucky's seventh district, the decision was made to incorporate district seven into district five, into the loving arm of...Hal Rogers?!

we had a meeting for our union contract and when it came time to vote we did not vote. There are claims that 70% voted for the contract it seems strange then why all those people are yelling?

CTU Contract Meeting Aug 31, 2007

With Tests schedualed for this week, has anyone addressed the issues of the defective pumps purchased from Republican funders, or how the combination of the two would work?

Just when you thought the US couldn't do more damage to the "freedom and democracy" brand, there is a new shocker.  Ho-hum.  So jaded I am that Yet Another Outrage(tm) just can't light me up...I'm already at full burn!  Turns out that it appears that our palatial Superduper Mega Embassy of Peace and Freedom(tm) in Baghdad not only is riddled with false/faulty wiring (gasp!) but that it may well be being built with the labor-friendly practice of press gangs (otherwise known as "slave labor" or "forced labor").

OrangeClouds115 asked, so ...

The typical American wage worker hasn't gotten a raise in somewhere around thirty years:

[From the report], "A New Social Contract: Restoring Dignity and Balance to the Economy":

In 2000, the average high-school educated workers age 25–29 started out earning about $5,000 less real income and could expect slower growth in earnings than those who entered the labor force in 1970. Workers with some college started about $3,500 behind their 1970 counterparts.

Thing is, the typical American farmer or rancher isn't doing much better. (pdf) As the profits of food processors, meat packers and agribusiness firms have soared, farmers and the rural economies that center around them have been methodically and systematically crushed.

We've known for a while that no-bid and limited-bid contracts issued by federal agencies for recovery projects in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have been dominated by uber-companies like Shaw and Halliburton.  Yesterday, PolitCalypso touched on the subject in the diary Buying Up the Coast for Fun and Profit--LOTS of Profit, citing the head-spinning report from CorpWatch on how those companies have "cleaned up" in the cleanup process.

Now, the GAO reports that one of the ways these large companies profited so handsomely was to bend--and break--the rules of the contracts requiring local, disadvantaged and small business to receive subcontracts.

Join me subfold for more details.

Any fan (or closet fan - hey we all understand guilty pleasures) of modern pop culture knows that The Smoking Gun can be counted on for the most unforgiving glimpses into the lives of celebrities.  Among their usually more mundane stories is to leak contract riders evidencing the outrageous demands from such stars as Jennifer Lopez, Paul McCartney, and "Screech" from Saved by the Bell.  They even gave us a peek in to the neuroses of the most disgraced Vice-President in U.S. History.

To this list of victims we can now add Rudy Giuliani, and what an insight it is!

The barefaced hypocrisy of the US Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable and other big business groups is astounding when you consider the double standards most business leaders compel upon the rest of America.  Especially when it comes to their opposition to contracts with their employees.
Journeying down memory lane, the recent uproar over the $210 million Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli took home with him is still fresh in our minds.  While ordinary Americans and shareholders reacted with unanimous outrage, you would have been hard pressed to hear hardly a word of this from the rest of corporate America.

In 1972, Exxon, BP and Shell were kicked out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein who nationalized the oil industry.
After hundreds of billions of tax dollars and hundreds of thousands of deaths and serious injuries, BushCo is close to getting those contracts back for 'em.
http://www.dailykos.com/...

Lee Raymond, former CHM Exxon, spoke ad nauseum, e.g. here: http://www.exxonmobil.com/...
and here:
http://www.exxonmobil.com/...

The recent Pentagon report Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq covers the electrical power situation with a combination of spin and understatement:

Oil production and electricity generation have improved since August 2006, but the security situation, maintenance deficiencies, and management issues have adversely affected distribution and delivery of these essential services.

Last February IEEE Spectrum published a great article (Re-engineering Iraq) that mapped out the situation much more realistically:

"It would be hard to find another endeavor, anywhere, anytime, in which so much was asked of engineers, personally and professionally. Never before has so vast a reconstruction program been attempted in the face of enemy fire or managed in the shadow of geopolitics, where infrastructure itself became a battleground."

Staff writers for the Raleigh News and Observer Joseph Neff and Jay Price wrote an article that appeared in today's paper, detailing steps Rep. Henry Waxman has begun to take to start the accountability train rolling when it comes to contracting in Iraq. Read full article here:

http://www.newsobserver.com/...

I think the participants in this great American rip-off are already starting to feel the heat, and it's only going to get hotter courtesy of the honorable Mr. Waxman.

The "war on terror" has been expanded to include a "war" on the Inspector General's (IG) office that audits Government Gervices Agency (GSA) contracts according to the Washington Post. The new GSA Administrator Lurita Doan, has proposed cutting $5 million in spending on audits and called the IG's audits terrorism, Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow Jr. Report

"There are two kinds of terrorism in the US: the external kind; and, internally, the IGs have terrorized the Regional Administrators,"

Interesingly, the Post's story has been changed on-line.  It has been softened to no longer directly call the IG's work terrorism. The bottom line stays the same, however. The auditors who investigate fraud, corruption waste and abuse are under attack by the new GSA Administrator.

Remember our old friend, HUD Secretary Alfonso Jackson?  And the lovely speech he gave in Dallas in May, 2006, where he flat-out stated that you won't get a HUD contract if you don't support President Bush:

HUD secretary's blunt warning

Alphonso Jackson says deal was scuttled after contractor admits not liking Bush

Dallas Business Journal - May 5, 2006
by Christine Perez
Staff Writer
..
After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, [HUD Secretary Alphonso] Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

more...

  It is being reported in today's NY Times and Washington Post that the Halliburton subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg Brown and Root)hs been using legal loopholes to hide its activity in Iraq from the US government.  The papers are basing their reporting on a memo issued by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Stuart Bowen.  It must be mentioned that KBR has contracts with the US ranging from housing and food for Americans in Iraq, to rebuilding Iraq's oil infrastucture that total 2O BILLION DOLLARS