[Sosfbay-discuss] DiFi has resigned from MilCon - maybe due to Metro expose (was Re: The Metro)

[JamBoi]

Yes!!! Cool, some real muckraking!

Impeach for Peace!

Drew

Feinstein Resigns

Senator exits MILCON following Metro exposé, vet-care scandal

By Peter Byrne

SEN. Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction
Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in
these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for
six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her
husband Richard C. Blum's ownership of two major defense contractors,
who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects
approved by Feinstein.

As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military
construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer
design. She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world
to inspect construction projects, some of which were contracted to her
husband's companies, Perini Corp. and URS Corp.
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Perhaps she resigned from MILCON because she could not take the heat
generated by Metro's expose of her ethics (which was partially funded
by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute). Or was her work on
the subcommittee finished because Blum divested ownership of his
military construction and advanced weapons manufacturing firms in late
2005?

The MILCON subcommittee is not only in charge of supervising military
construction, it also oversees "quality of life" issues for veterans,
which includes building housing for military families and operating
hospitals and clinics for wounded soldiers. Perhaps Feinstein is trying
to disassociate herself from MILCON's incredible failure to provide
decent medical care for wounded soldiers.

Two years ago, before the Washington Post became belatedly involved,
the online magazine Salon.com exposed the horrors of deficient medical
care for Iraq war veterans. While leading MILCON, Feinstein had ample
warning of the medical-care meltdown. But she was not proactive on
veteran's affairs.

Feinstein abandoned MILCON as her ethical problems were surfacing in
the media, and as it was becoming clear that her subcommittee left
grievously wounded veterans to rot while her family was profiting from
the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It turns out that Blum also
holds large investments in companies that were selling medical
equipment and supplies and real estate leases—often without the benefit
of competitive bidding—to the Department of Veterans Affairs, even as
the system of medical care for veterans collapsed on his wife's watch.

As of December 2006, according to SEC filings and www.fedspending.org,
three corporations in which Blum's financial entities own a total of $1
billion in stock won considerable favor from the budgets of the
Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs:

# Boston Scientific Corporation: $17.8 million for medical equipment
and supplies; 85 percent of contracts awarded without benefit of
competition.

# Kinetic Concepts Inc.: $12 million, medical equipment and supplies;
28 percent noncompetitively awarded.

# CB Richard Ellis: The Blum-controlled international real estate firm
holds congressionally funded contracts to lease office space to the
Department of Veterans Affairs. It also is involved in redeveloping
military bases turned over to the private sector.

You would think that, considering all the money Feinstein's family has
pocketed by waging global warfare while ignoring the plight of wounded
American soldiers, she would show a smidgeon of shame and resign from
the entire Senate, not just a subcommittee. Conversely, you'd think she
might stick around MILCON to try and fix the medical-care disaster she
helped to engineer for the vets who were suckered into fighting her and
Bush's panoply of unjust wars.

Contact Peter Byrne or send a letter to the editor about this story. 

--- Andrea Dorey <andid at cagreens.org> wrote:

> Did you also notice that DiFi, after kicking up a lot of dust over  
> the recent Metro story, has decided to break her connection to those 
> 
> questionable investments?
> 
> On Mar 26, 2007, at 5:36 PM, Wes Rolley wrote:
> 
> > Reading the ads in the Metro can be fun... and I don't mean "those 
> 
> > ads".
> >
> > After reading the Fly demonstrate that Charlotte was ahead of her  
> > time,
> > again, I went paging through and found this on, linked from the
> PDF.
> >
> > http://www.clarum.com/
> >
> > Imagine that, a zero energy home advertised in the Metro.
> >
> > -- 
> >
> > I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.
> > Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
> > Being willing is not enough;
> > We must do. –Leonardo DaVinci
> > Wesley C. Rolley
> > 17211 Quail Court
> > Morgan Hill, CA 95037
> > (408)778-3024 - http://cagreening.blogspot.com
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > sosfbay-discuss mailing list
> > sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
> > http://lists.cagreens.org/mailman/listinfo/sosfbay-discuss
> 
> _______________________________________________
> sosfbay-discuss mailing list
> sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
> http://lists.cagreens.org/mailman/listinfo/sosfbay-discuss
> 


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JamBoi
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The Celts invading the Italian Penninsula's reply when questioned by the nervous Romans around 400BC
"To the brave belong all things"

Jammy The Sacred Cow Slayer

"Live humbly, laugh often and love unconditionally" (anon)
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