Blackwater is Another Term for Human Waste Water

So today let us reveiw what it's like to give congressional oversight to a company that goes by a word for what you flush down the toliet.

Biggest bombshell of the day is the fact that there's no budgetary justification for employing war contractors to replace our military's soldiers after all. One Blackwater mercenary costs America more than $400,000 while his counterpart in the US military costs only $50,000 to $70,000. Astounding.... but that get's a little lost in the cauterwailing on the Republican side of the aisle over the idea that Blackwater needs its "conduct" examined by Congress. What do we find in these murky waters?

In one incident last Christmas Eve, [b]a drunken Blackwater contractor shot and killed a security guard for one of Iraq's vice presidents[/b], and the State Department allowed the contractor to leave Iraq, the report said.



In response to questions about the Christmas Eve shooting, Prince said that the employee was promptly fired and fined "multiple thousands of dollars" but that Blackwater did not have authority to take other punitive action.

"I'm not going to make any apologies for what he did," Prince said. "He clearly violated our policies." He said Blackwater acquired an airline ticket for the employee to return to the United States "by direction of the State Department."

Blackwater shelled out $15,000 to the family of the Iraqi guard, which the State Department handed off. The made the mercenary in question pay for his own airplane ticket and then withheld a bonus, but that does not constitute a "fine." Neatly, the bonus comes out a bit shy of what they paid to the family of the guard. You can bet that $15,000 didn't come out of Blackwater profits.

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said [b]the Justice Department has informed the committee that it is still investigating the Christmas shooting nine months later.[/b]

[b]Prince also was asked about an initial erroneous report that the Iraqi security guard had been shot by a drunken U.S. soldier, rather than a private contractor. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) pointed to a Blackwater e-mail referring to the mistake and saying that "at least the ID of the shooter will take the heat off us."[/b]

Prince said Blackwater did not take any action to correct the account because it is prohibited by contract from engaging with the news media. "I don't believe that false story lasted in the media for more than a few hours," the Blackwater chief executive said.

He also disputed charges that Blackwater guards have killed innocent Iraqi civilians in reckless shootings while escorting convoys, but he said there have been "times when guys are using defensive force" to protect themselves or their convoys and could have killed civilians through "ricochets" or "traffic accidents."

So we have Prince testifying before Congress that never have Blackwater mercenaries ever pointed their weapons at an unarmed and innocent Iraqi and just killed them. The only civilians Blackwater mercenaries kill, are the Iraqis that they don't aim at. So I geuss they just define insurgents and terrorists as anyone they aim at? Hey- they may be better at fudging numbers than the White House.

Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) said he was "a little saddened by this hearing" because Blackwater is a member of "our team." He said the committee "should not go to the extent of undermining Blackwater's ability to perform as our team."

But Rep. John J. Duncan Jr. (R-Tenn.), voicing rare GOP criticism of Blackwater at the hearing, observed that [b]Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, earns about $180,000 a year, less than half the salary of a Blackwater official in charge of a 34-member security team[/b].

The war in Iraq has produced some of the most "lavish" and "excessive" contracts in U.S. history, Duncan said. "Fiscal conservatives should feel no obligation to defend this kind of contracting. . . . In fact, fiscal conservatives should be the ones most horrified by this."

Time will tell if the Republicans send through an ammendment giving Petraeus a raise to the level of what a Blackwater official for a security team gets paid. You know, if they really valued his service. On the other hand, it's good to have clear to the world exactly what some Republican members of Congress place as the value of an innocent Iraqi life. Even lower than $15,000 it seems, if it's not worth even the slightest public embarressment for a Republican campaign contributor.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released preliminary information gleaned about Blackwater's conduct.

Blackwater security contractors in Iraq have been involved in at least 195 "escalation of force" incidents since early 2005, including several previously unreported killings of Iraqi civilians, according to a new congressional account of State Department and company documents.

In one of the killings, according to a State Department document, Blackwater personnel tried to cover up what had occurred and provided a false report. In another case, involving a Blackwater convoy's collision with 18 civilian vehicles, the firm accused its own personnel of lying about the event.

....In total, the documents indicate, Blackwater has terminated 122 employees under its State Department contract. According to Prince, the company currently has about 1,000 employees in Iraq.

...Based on more than 437 Blackwater documents and "a limited number of incident reports and documents from the State Department," the Democratic staff memo said, Blackwater personnel had participated in 195 incidents in which they discharged firearms, with Blackwater firing first in more than 80 percent of them. At least 16 Iraqi casualties resulted.

Another blogger over at Pissed On Politics worked on the numbers for Blackwater a little more. Blackwater charges Regency a baseline of $815 for a single mercenary and $1,075 a day for a senior manager. How much does Petraeus make a day? $493

Let's do a little more math. Not much, moonbat's honor. So if you have about 1,000 employees in Iraq, and you have to fire 122 of them for conduct reasons, that means 17% of your employees were a problem and got caught. Let's emphasize the "got caught" part. Is anyone going to try to say that the percentage of military personal we have had to prosecute for conduct in Iraq even approaches this horrifying number?

In a June 24, 2005, incident -- reported in a U.S. Embassy memo that was cited by the committee and obtained by The Washington Post -- a Blackwater security detail in the city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, shot a civilian man standing at the side of the street as the contractors drove by. "This is the case involving the PSD [personal security detail] who failed to report the shooting, covered it up, and subsequently were removed" from the city, an embassy security officer wrote in a July 1, 2005, report.

Everyone remember what Prince said about Blackwater mercenaries not shooting civilians intentionally? Oh, did our little Prince just lie? To Congress? No you see, anyone Blackwater mercenaries aim at is de facto a terrorist, even if they are unamred and walking down the street to the bakery. Prince fired the shooter not for murdering some guy in cold blood for fun, but for not filling out the paperwork afterwards.

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Ending Poverty for the Average Federal Employee

So today let's note a rather unusual book out there in the slew of presidential hopeful pulp-novelas: Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream. The book contains only an essay by Democratic hopeful John Edwards, and the meat of the book at least isn't endless puffing about how he's going to fix everything that's wrong with you. Instead, it's a collection of essays by both liberals and conservatives, produced by the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity. These essays are scientifically based studies of the nature of poverty and both the successes and failures of recent American policy in creating a fair economy for all of us. The collection begins centered around a simple set of irrefutable statistics:

"In 2005, 37 million Americans- about 1 in 8 people- lived below the income poverty level, defined as $19,874 for a family of 4. Almost 13 million were children under 18... The income gap between the rich and poor is growing as well: in 2005 the top 20% of U.S. households received over half of all income, while the bottom 20% of households received only about 3% of total income. Wealth inequalities are also on the rise: in 2004 the top 1% of households by income held more than a third of all net worth and financial assets. Approximately 80% of stock is held by the top ten percent of wealthy households; the poorest 40% of households own less than 1% of all stocks... Over 46 million Americans (about 16% of the population) lacked health insurance coverage in 2005... over 27 million workers are employed with no health insurance."

What does a poverty statistic mean on a personal level? How accurate is this idea that passing over $19,874 will enable parents to care for two children? Heck, what about single young women working for the federal government to defend the nation against terrorism? Let's calculate the cost of living for one such employee: $9,600 Rent ($800 a month, 1 bedroom), $1,960 Food ($35 a week), $2400 Gas (1 hour commute), $740 Insurance USAA, $396 Work Parking Permit, $1,920 Retirement Savings, $1,440 Health Insurance Co-Pay, $140 Prescriptions (No Birth Control), $100 Emergency Room Co-Pay, $230 New Tires, $480 Cell Phone, $252 Internet Services, $60 Bank Fees, $370 Vet Bills for 1 Cat, $1,940 Car Repairs, $120 AAA, $60 (3 $20) Haircuts, $270 Plane ticket to see dying grandfather, $120 Contact Lenses, $180 Dentist plus x-rays, $380 Holiday Gifts (including Birthdays and Christmas). Not included: Thanksgiving Dinner, Booze, Christmas Tree, Easter Eggs, clothing of any kind, movie tickets, books or magazines, Starbucks, Halo 3, dating, make-up, cable television, laundry detergent. Yes, I need the Internet, as a college student. The cell phone serves as a stand in for a land line. Total Cost for 1 Year: $23,158.

Base Salary? $23,700. A cost of living adjustment raises the total to $27,100. After $3,523 in federal taxes and $813 in state taxes, take home pay would equal $22,764. Rumors on several job sites are that pay is $33,000 and that is not true. For those of you who are curious, the cost in salary and benefits of TSA for 2007 will cost $3.45 billion, at an approximate cost of $1.91 per passenger, and $1.65 per checked bag. The cost per passenger includes the cost of screening carry-on luggage. How interesting it would be to ask passengers how much they think it costs to screen them in terms of labor. The above recounting of expenses includes $26 in prescription co-pays for medication after needing four stitches for an on-the-job-injury, my second in as many years after surviving ten years in retail with a clean record.

Edward's book notes that "One in four people who work full-time, year round, still earn less than the amount of money needed to keep a family of four above the poverty threshold... The single parent with three children, working a full 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year, must earn $9.55 an hour to stay at the poverty line." So basically what you have here is the cold hard economic fact that a fighting the war on terror won't even allow you to provide for yourself, let alone a spouse and two children, without massive government assistance or going without health insurance. And several of my coworkers follow the later track in order to come up with money for their families, betting against the odds that all of their medical needs can be solved with extra sleep and Tylenol. Times I have required medical care in the past year? Three times with my family practice and one emergency room visit after an allergic reaction to a steroid inhaler in the middle of the night. Not that I am completely innocent, I agree, having twice had overdraft charges of $34 dollars for a total of $68 in the past year.

The Congressional Budget Office reports that between 1979 and 2000, the income of the top 1% of Americans grew 184%. Top 5th grew 70%. The real income of the bottom 5th grew only 6%. Edwards's book notes that inter generational mobility has stagnated to the point that "it would take a poor family of four with two children approximately 9 to 10 generations- over 200 years- to achieve the income of the middle-income four-person family... A son whose father earns about $16,000 a year has only a 5% chance of earning over $55,000 per year." Meanwhile, the CBO has just released two estimates of the cost of staying in Iraq. For the favored Republican scenario of continued combat operations, the estimated cost is $25 billion per year. For the favored Democrat scenario of non-combat peace-keeping operations, the estimated cost is only $10 billion per year. Both scenarios use conservative estimates on the necessity to replace equipment and armor. Some one's going to have to pay for all of this, and sorry to you war-mongers out there, but this federal employee is running in the budgetary red.

More voices are speaking up about what our money has been buying us in Iraq: Foreign Policy's Terrorism Index.

"The outcome of the war in Iraq may now rest in large part on the success or failure of the so-called surge. Beginning in February, the White House sent an additional 28,000 U.S. troops to Baghdad in an effort to quell the violence there. Securing the capital with overwhelming force is a key component of the anti-insurgency plan developed by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq and the military’s foremost expert on counterinsurgency tactics. It took until June for all the U.S. forces to be put in place, and the number of American troops in Iraq is now at its highest level since 2005. But is Petraeus’s plan working?

The index’s experts don’t think so. More than half say the surge is having a negative impact on U.S. national security, up 22 percentage points from just six months ago. This sentiment was shared across party lines, with 64 percent of conservative experts saying the surge is having either a negative impact or no impact at all. When the experts were asked to grade the government’s handling of the Iraq war, the news was even worse. They gave the overall effort in Iraq an average point score of just 2.9 on a 10-point scale. The government’s public diplomacy record was the only policy that scored lower.

These negative opinions may result in part from the experts’ apparent belief that, a decade from now, the world will still be reeling from the consequences of the war. Fifty-eight percent of the index’s experts say that in 10 years’ time, Sunni-Shiite tensions in the Middle East will have dramatically increased. Thirty-five percent believe that Arab dictators will have been discouraged from reforming. Just 5 percent, on the other hand, believe that al Qaeda will be weaker, whereas only 3 percent believe Iraq will be a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. If true, the surge, or any other tactical shift for that matter, was probably already too little, too late."

Americans need to get over their love affair with movie stars and cowboys as Presidents. Certainly doesn't make the world safer, or fairer, or more democratic. As a democrat, I want a renewed commitment to the ideals of democracy, towards compassion and justice. I want to see America renewed in the beauty that democracies are able to produce, in their bustling cities and the equal allocation of riches to it's people, the wealthy and the worker. Instead of tax breaks for corporations, I want workers to have the right to show each other their paychecks without getting fired. Instead of private mercenaries used to secure oil reserves, I want trained and armored US soldiers deployed to end on-going genocide. I want to be able to travel to my job on public transportation, I want utility companies brought under control, I want spammers put out of business. And I want the American Dream for myself, to be able to put away money for a new car and use my tuition to reduce my tax-burden even though I don't itemize.

I want a President who believes in the noble endeavor that democratic government was created to bring about in the world, instead of being pledged to destroy it in the name of private profit. John Edwards saves his remarks until everyone else at his Center has been given a chance to contribute, and he makes a point of including everyone's good ideas towards creating a wonderful future for America... both conservatives and liberals. And it's a good vision, about us as a people... a way to give up terror and war, in exchange for hope and peace.

"The American people understand that no one who works full-time should live in poverty... Let us set a national goal-the elimination of poverty in America in 30 years. It will not be easy, but I believe in the unlimited power of the American people to accomplish anything we set our hearts and minds to acheive. If we do not rest until poverty is history, it will be."

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Circuit City Fires Good Workers, Goes to NASCAR

So today moonbat joins a boycott of a store she's too poor on a federal employee's salary to shop at: Circuit City, which fired 3,400 higher salaried customer service employees to hire zero-experience lowballs. Circuit City thinks it deserves a pass because it learned something from the AttorneyGate and was honest about the firings, and didn't try to say they were all canned because they had poor performance. Of course, that means they were fired for the opposite... being good, hard-working and loyal employees who had earned raises over their years at the company. Which of course means that to survive in retail, we must instill in our children the virtues of laziness, dishonesty and insolence. Customers report whether they have joined the small boycott or not, but no where in the whole story do the executives say, look, we know things are bad and we took a paycut to make it a universal burden. Nope.

Not to say that heads haven't rolled... or fled the axe, which ever may yet prove the case. Chief Financial Officer Michael Foss bailed for PETCO on Feb. 23, only 15 days after Circuit City announced that it would be depending on him to "work on improving productivity and identifying new growth opportunities" as part of their restructuring plan that closed 70 stores in Canada. Feb.8th also saw the announcement that Chief Merchandising Officer Douglas Moore had left after 17 years, a development seen by a Goldman Sachs analyst as the "least favorable development" since the company's recent turnaround had shown promise. Circuit City expects $85 million to $105 million in expenses from store closings, including about $40 to $60 in "goodwill impairment." Circuit City expects that firing these proven 3,400 employees for "discount versions" will save an estimated $110 million by the end of fiscal year 2008. Meanwhile, Circuit City spent an undisclosed ammount of money sponsoring NASCAR races this last Friday. At which, no doubt, company executives who live in Virginia, had a good time.

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economics, liberal, conservative, retail, working poor, canada