On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 11:48 AM,
Sent: 6/17/2011 11:42:20 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: Weinergate on a grill: The real immorality is in the House Appropriations Committee on a rail as House Appropriations Committee commits real immorality Fri Jun 17 2011 10:35
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Weinergate on a grill: The real immorality is in the House Appropriations
Committee on a rail as House Appropriations Committee commits real immoralityFri
Jun 17 2011 10:35
by Monica Davis
Once more showing their true colors, Congress is more interested in running
exposed horn dogs out of town on a rail than they are in finding ways to cut the
budget and keep the safety net secure. Well coiffed, clothed and comfortable,
our congresskritters would rather spend $750,000 on one allegedly smart missile,
than recover the billions that were mispent/stolen by contracted theives and
rogue military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While the well-deserved departure of Anthony Weiner draws rapt attention in our
tabloid nation, the depredations of less colorful but more powerful politicians
go unnoticed, so long as no genitalia are involved.
>At the moment, for instance, Republican leaders in the House and the Senate are
>mounting yet another series of assaults on some of the most vulnerable
>Americans—the poor single mothers who cannot feed their children, and the
>long-term unemployed who still have no prospect of work nearly two years after
>the recession supposedly ended.
>Hardly anyone other than a lobbyist would normally pay much attention to the
>machinations of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, but that
>is where truly indecent behavior is running rampant these days. Members of that
>subcommittee, who oversee the Women, Infants and Children (or WIC) federal
>nutrition support program for the poor, recently decreed reductions in its
>annual funding, just as food prices are rising more rapidly than in many
>years. more
According to a Congressional policy paper, the government spent $18.4 billion
dollars for the WIC Program for women and children. Remember, they spend so
much money on the war in Iraq that more than $9 billion is still unaccounted
for. So, it's ok to throw money away on an unwinnable War on Terror which has
done more to create terrorists than Al whazzis ever dreamed of, but it is
"irresponsible" to fund nutrition programs for the poor, unemployment benefits
for the unemployed and national healthcare for everyone.
The following summary of the WIC program shows appropriations from 2006 to 2007.
In those years, kmore than 39 million poor children and 2 million
pregnant/postpartum women were served. Given the fact that this country has the
highest infant mortality rates of any allegedly industrialized nation, this is
money well spent.
As the economy continues to crumble, a whole lot of folk want to know where the
missing money is. Who got it? Can we get it back? Can we send some folk to jail?
And this doesn't even include the infamouse Oil-For-Food-Program, where another
$6.6 billion went up in smoke.
Under the Oil-for-Food Program, managed by the United Nations, a surplus of oil
revenues, estimated at $6.6 billion, were kept in Iraq's account at the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York.
>A year after the occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration airlifted the
>entire amount of $6.6 billion in plastic crates by U.S. military transport
>aircrafts, the C-130, to be kept under U.S. control in a secret location in one
>of the Saddam palaces basements. From May 28, 2004-June 28, 2004 the money
>disappeared.
>At the time, the Coalition Provisional Authority, comprising mainly of U.S.
>officials, maintained that the money was distributed to Iraqi officials to carry
>out development and service activities. However, no record was kept as to how
>such a vast amount of money was allocated and who the recipients were.
>Congressman Waxman expressed his surprise that the U.S. would airlift 336 tons
>of cash to a war zone.
>Commentators are beginning to claim that this was one of the biggest thefts in
>the history of the United States. Iraq plans to sue the U.S. for reimbursement
>of the large sum of money that was unaccounted for.
>Source: alliraqnews.com
According to a 2008 story from AFP,
The Pentagon cannot account for nearly 15 billion dollars in payments for goods
and services in Iraq, according to an internal audit which members of Congress
blasted Friday as a "shocking" accountability failure.
>Of 8.2 billion dollars in US taxpayer-funded defense contracts reviewed by the
>defense department's inspector general, the Pentagon could not properly account
>for more than 7.7 billion dollars.
So, exactly how much is missing from Iwreck and Afghanistheft? Where did that
336 tons of money disappear to?
Once things fde from the headlines, Americans forget. How can we forget a mass
criminal event which hijacked billions in cash, diverted trillions in war
materials, not to mention killed tens of thousands of Americans and wounded or
disabled hundreds of thousands?
Cui bono? Who benefits?
And who will pay the price?
And when will we demand an accounting?
