Last year the quest was on to hire private bounty hunters to collect over $300 million in unpaid tax debt. link

In March 2006 Linebarger, Goggan, Blair & Sampson was given a bounty-hunter contract to collect IRS debt. Linebarger was a controversial pick from the start. When it was awarded a contract, a competitor

accused the company of offering illegal gifts and rigging bids to win collections contracts. Also, in 2002, a then-partner of the Linebarger firm was convicted in a San Antonio bribery scandal involving a city collections contract. "Of all the collection agencies to turn over taxpayers' private information, you couldn't have a worse candidate for the job," says Ridout, the consumer advocate.

Now Linebarger and the IRS have parted ways . . .

The Bush administration Interior Department has long been waging a war against the Endangered Species Act. The high cost of implementing the ESA by designating critical habitats, they claim, gets in the way protecting newly endangered species. It turns out that it gets in the way of business, too, which has been of critical concern to Bush's appointees in Interior.

Unable to dismantle the ESA, and forced by persistent lawsuits to implement it, Interior Dept. officials have been busy trying to hollow out the enforcement mechanisms by which it can be obliged to designate new species and new habitats for protection.

The British Foreign Secretary told Parliament on Thursday that Bisher al-Rawi will be released from the Guantanamo Bay gulag and sent back to Britain. He's been held in monstrous conditions there for four years, and before that at the Baghram Air Force base in Afghanistan, where he states he was tortured. Although he has been declared an 'unlawful enemy combatant' by a Guantanamo tribunal, like nearly all prisoners there he's never been charged and put on trial. His release is an admission that Bisher al-Rawi was guilty of nothing. Rather than being proven a terrorist, "the worst of the worst" as Bush and Cheney frequently claim, he was instead terrorized by the US government.

For four long years.

So who will pay for this injustice? Will the CIA face trial for kidnapping? Will the Army be forced in open court to state precisely how it has been treating these prisoners? Will George W. Bush be removed from office for violating human rights, the Geneva Conventions, US law, and everything that is decent?

Or will Americans pretend that justice has now been served by al-Rawi's release? After four long years?

Or will Americans pretend that justice cannot be served, not against our government, not ever?

Even if you don’t know a hay bale from a straw bale and can't tell the difference between a moldboard plow and mullberry pie, you should care about what’s going into the new farm bill. Under the 2002 version of the bill, taxpayers have been shelling out big bucks for farm programs that don’t benefit us much – including $1.3 BILLION to landowners who don’t actually grow any crops.

And to round out our check in on events connected with Walter Reed, IAP, and privatization, here is a resonse by the American Federation of Government Employees to the excuses IAP and the Army are making. Read on.

IAP has not been much in the news lately, so it seemed to be a good time to check on what it has to say for itself.

This is an update on some events related to the situation at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital. There may not be daily news reports, but that does not mean nothing is being done.

Take the Wounded Warrior Assistance Act, now moving through the House, a bill that seeks to prevent the problems caused by privatization.

Earlier this month, I was happy to report that the House was set to vote on a bill that would finally give DC residents Congressional voting representation. Of course, it couldn't be that easy; a Texas Republican had to foul things up.

At Harvard, their have an acceptance rate of 40%.
At Princeton, 35%.
At the University of Pennsylvania, 41%.
They are three times more likely to get the thick envelope from admissions than are other students.

On Feb. 22, 2006 OMB Watch reported:

According to reports, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is developing a program to collect and search a wide array of personal, public and classified information, similar to a program killed by Congress in 2002. The Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE) program would implement a massive data mining program to prevent terrorist attacks; the program, however, continues to lack the necessary oversight structure and procedures to protect privacy and safeguard civil liberties.

link

We now have a string of GAO reports that confirm just those problems.

Last week, GAO released a report on its investigation into what comes down to serious tax fraud by Medicare Part-B providers. So serious that in just the first 9 months of 2005, the government failed to to collect $50- $140 million in unpaid taxes.

During the past few weeks, a number of reports have been issued on workplace issues. These reports include a wide range of issues. This post only lists reports and gives links related to older workers and does not include analysis of the reports. I include reports that are not solely about older workers but that address relevant issues.

A lot of blame goes around about our healthcare system, and I am certainly one of the players in the blame game. As we move inexorably toward national healthcare, it is worth thinking about some of the costs of healthcare we all bear - and with April 15 - or 17th this year - close at hand, let me emphasize how taxes fit into the costs.

College for the rich. Poor students need not apply. That's a story that flies in the face of the American Dream, but it is the truth for our time. Scholarship money is shifting from needy students to students who don't need it but who raise college's stats and rankings.

Young people who might like to do public service work are so burdened by debt that they cannot take this path. They have to take the highest paying job if they wer ever to pay off their loans.

Their loss is our loss.

National Coalition to Protect Family Leave. Sounds like a group that wants to, well, protect family leave. Unbossed periodically searches out wolves in sheep's clothing, for example, this piece on wolves in academics' clothing from awhle back.

Figuring out the agenda of the NCPFL is easy.

How many of you have been told by your employer: "Do not discuss your pay [or benefits or other working conditions]" OK, I see that's almost everyone. And does your employer's employee handbook include a rule that forbids discussing your pay and other working conditions? What? You don't have a handbook? You have one but didn't read it? OK of the rest of you? I see lots of hands.

If you are in the private sector, the law says these oral or written rules are illegal. If your employer disciplines your for discussing your work conditions, especially with your fellow workers, that also is a violation. It entitles you to reinstatement, backpay, expungement of the discipline from your files and, boy employers hate this one, a written notice to employees that employees have these rights and the employer will not violate them.

You don't believe me?

One of the consistently best shows produced by National Public Radio is On the Media - OTM. They regularly poke into the dark corners of media coverage and behavior, and they do this with such panache and directness, I am constantly surprised they continue to exist. In addition, they are good interviewers.

You should definitely put them on your list of shows to stream if they are not carried in your area - and push to get them scheduled at a seasonable slot.

This past week, they carried a couple good stories related to the Gonzales scandal.

File this as just one more exhibit in the sad situation created in this country by the lack of universal health care. Public employee asks for health insurance. Public employee fired for asking for health insurance. Court finds no violation.

First, the good news: The FDA will not slash the budget of the Office of Women's Health after all. (See previous post here.)

Now, the bad news: The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the Bush administration can keep attaching counterproductive strings to global HIV/AIDS prevention funding.

Recently the mainstream media has caught on that privatization was involved in the problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. But, as usual, they miss key points about why privatization matters here. Two weeks ago, I gave background information about the privatiation issue here and here. In addition, if you check out unbossed archives for early March you will find many pieces on the situation there.

Here is an update on the AFGE response to claims about the situation at Walter Reed and the way the press is portraying privatization. You could call it "spending $12.7 million to save $7.4 million"- assuming there are no cost overruns.

Three months ago when the last quarterly report on Iraq appeared, I called it blatant propaganda. Released on December 18, the day that Gates took over as Defense Secretary, the report ignored so much information about the deterioration of Iraq, while downplaying, obscuring, and misrepresenting other evidence, that it seemed an insult to the gravity of the situation. Clearly, Bush & Co. still refused to get serious about Iraq. The shallow news coverage the document received also showed that few journalists had bothered to read it.

I anticipated that the very same things would be true of the newest quarterly report, released on the eve of the 4th anniversary of the invasion. To my surprise, however, this report makes rather a show of candor. The results are far from perfect, and certainly disingenuous in some important respects. But, still, it presents a striking contrast to every other Pentagon report to date on the situation in Iraq.

This is not a trick question. What do you want your city council members to do? Ensure that your city is well run by keeping qualified city workers? Or use their power to punish city workers who are members of a different party by eliminating their jobs?

Sickening spectacle this weekend as apologists for George Bush seek to excuse the unprovoked invasion of Iraq four years ago—by putting his critics on the defensive. It appears to me that the news media, ever eager to distract from its own culpability, has played along by pretending that the nation is divided about the Iraq War.

The problem though is that Americans have turned against the war decisively. So how do you smear the majority of the public? Now that wrapping oneself in the flag has lost its cachet, and only a few fools continue to believe that we are "winning" the civil war, cheerleaders have to resort to increasingly desperate ploys.

The favorite mind game is to bitch and moan that critics are careless of the troops and their families. A shred of human decency, it's implied, and they'd know enough to keep their mouths shut. But all recklessly, Bush's critics are undermining troop morale.

A few days ago smintheus posted an essay on how to use a historian's training to read sources. Here is a careful reading of parts of the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics new report on wages - Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers: 2006 (February 28, 2007).

And as a bonus, I include some additional information about a new study on work, de-industrialization, unions, and wages at the end.

This is a post about privatization, doing favors for one's friends, and stealth attacks on public employees.

A new bill has been introduced to raise penalties for people who breach taxpayer privacy. There was something odd about the bill that led me to look deeper. Don't get too comfortable, because we are lifting a big ol' rock that is giving cover to some ugly, slimy critters. Here is what I found.

Two years ago, I posted Work Till You Drop - a piece that reviewed the campaign to force workers to stay on the job longer.

Now that campaign has borne fruit. So put away those dreams of a fun retirement, because the Administration has no plans of ever letting you stop working.

It's stunning the pace at which the administration's cover-ups are crumbling. In the first six years of Bush's rule, his only policy achievements were in the fields of public deception, stone-walling, and cover-ups. Now even that modest measure of success is all gone.

This is a good news-bad news story to follow up on em dash's post. Which actually is also a mixed-news piece.

When discussing women and politics, the images that come to mind are solemn suffragists in drab black dresses earnestly demanding the right to vote and righteous feminists advancing the still-yet-to-be-passed Equal Rights Amendment.

But those eras have long since passed. Today, new generations of savvy young women are flexing their political muscles in a variety of ways.

The scandalous disregard of the vets being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center has served to crystalize public perceptions of what is wrong with the Bush administration. For many Americans, it's become almost impossible to believe any longer that their policies take any real account of the concerns of vets. In the news today, I find two measures of this great sea-change in public attitudes.

The best news is that the House, in open revolt against the military legacy of Bush and Rumsfeld, has reversed the decision to close WRAMC taken in 2005 by Rumsfeld's Base Realignment and Closure Commission. Secondly, one aspect of the Congressional investigations of Walter Reed demonstrates that no part of its operations is any longer beyond scrutiny. The VIP suites at WRAMC, primarily reserved for politicians, are now under investigation.

In other words, the gloves are off.

What follows is a slightly updated version of something I posted a year ago at other sites, but not at Unbossed. Sadly, it remains all too relevant...what with the Pentagon finally admitting that there is indeed a civil war in Iraq, and with the newest revelations about lies and half-truths told by Bush administration officials recently and not so recently.

For about two years I thought of writing a commentary along these lines, though I've always held back because my point is pretty well summed up by the chosen title. Frankly, my take on the matter is not profound or new. It is, however, methodical.

I'm speaking of this from the perspective of an ancient historian. Our graduate training focuses on how to interpret sources that are, at best, barely satisfactory and, at worst, outright liars. Perhaps more than any other branch of history, we emphasize the need to develop a methodical approach to sources. One of the fundamental rules of this science of interpretation is, simply, never to trust proven liars.

Today, the House Judiciary Committee took a step toward righting a disgraceful wrong in our nation’s capital. The committee members approved a bill granting the District of Columbia a voting seat in the House of Representatitves, sending it to the full House for a vote.

Here’s what I wrote in November about the situation:

The FDA is addicted to drug-industry money. Like many addicts, it’s taking resources from important things like food in order to fill the drug need. It’s operating on progressively thinner ice, and putting others at risk in the process.

The FDA’s concerned friends are staging an intervention.

Democrats in Congress continue to run in circles trying to find a way to rein in the Bush administration's open-ended commitment to more of the same in Iraq. The proposals become more and more round-about, week by week, as leaders search for a compromise that can get through both chambers, that won't be subject to a filibuster in the Senate or a veto from Bush. There's also much hand-wringing about the need to limit any initiatives to Congress' power of the purse, so as not to step upon the Executive's Constitutional authority.

It seems to me that they've narrowed their focus so radically so quickly that nothing will be enacted. In any case, the leadership has repeatedly tied its own hands by stripping proposals of real teeth. For example, Murtha's proposal to require that all troops sent to Iraq are fully rested, equipped and trained. It would thwart Bush's escalation by concentrating attention on this awkward fact--troops in all manner of unreadiness are being shipped out. Rather than face up to that fact, Republicans and a few 'Blue Dog' Democrats (plus Sen. Lieberman, whatever he is now) demand instead that Bush be permitted to waive this requirement if he determines that it's necessary to sent unready troops. This is the very President who's been sending unready troops to Iraq up until now, even badly wounded troops.

So if any bill does make it to Bush's desk, at this stage it looks like it will be merely symbolic. But symbolic of what? Of the slim Democratic majority's ability to force Bush's hand? Or of their unwillingness to grasp the nettle? Because surely, if the problem is one of political chess, then there are bold moves that could put the oppenents of withdrawal on the defensive now and permanently.

The best tactics in the short and long term usually are those that hew to the heart of the matter. And the unpleasant truth is that this war has been sold to America from the start as one that will be easy. The agony and horror have been swept from the public eye. The longterm damage to US interests has been the subject of silence. And the costs have been excluded from public reckoning.

Hence any viable solution to Bush's determination to pursue more of the same in Iraq ought to strike at the carefully cultivated image that the Iraq war is nearly painless.

The most effective step, then, would be for Congress to raise taxes to pay for the ongoing war.

The US Supreme Court just denied cert in a case involving immigration and RICO claims, thus allowing it to go to trial. In this case, the point of the violations was to use immigrants to destroy other worker's working conditions. Here's the 411.

What began with promising hopes for employment in the United States culminated in this RICO lawsuit by Indian citizens who were recruited under false pretenses to become steelworkers in Louisiana.

Thus begins a decision by the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

George Bush pulled another fast one on Friday, though so far the whole thing has gone unnoticed. It's a classic Bush & Co. document dump, with a twist.

Bush is traveling abroad, while his administration is rocked by one major scandal after another, and the escalation in Iraq just rescalated. What better time then to get some Awkward News out? This Awkward News happens to concern the military budget.

The twist here is that in the letter Bush sent to Nancy Pelosi asking Congress to give the DOD more money, he gave a seriously misleading account of what he planned to do with it all. In the letter, Bush claims that the money is needed for base closures. The truth of the matter emerges only once you examine a document sent along with that letter.

And the truth is that Bush wants to cut billions of dollars from domestic programs partly in order to pay for troop deployments in Iraq.

More than a week ago, blogs (especially Unbossed) helped to bring public attention to the role that IAP's contract at Walter Reed Army Medical Center played in the neglect of wounded soldiers there. On Saturday, the Washington Post finally got around to examining the issue. There have been a few stray mentions of the IAP contract in WaPo stories in the past, but overall the paper of record in DC had ignored or downplayed the issue.

So how deep does WaPo dig into the IAP scandal this time? Not very. You would learn little from the article that you didn't already know from reading the posts here at Unbossed over the last week.

Democrats announced on Friday that they'll directly investigate the role of the White House in the firing of six US Attorneys. The House Judiciary Committee has sent a letter to former White House Counsel, Harriet Miers, requesting her testimony. Democrats also revealed that the Committee is going to call other top administration figures, including Deputy Counsel William Kelley, current White House Counsel Fred Fielding, and some other as-yet unnamed WH officials. In addition, the Committee is requesting documents related to the firings.

This is a major expansion of the probe. Ask John Dean about what happens when investigations of a corrupt and lawless administration settle upon the White House Counsel.

While shirah and smintheus have been covering the harmful effects of privatization at Walter Reed, there’s been another ongoing story about problems with privatizing federal functions. This time, the work is science, and it could affect all of us.

Aside from not doing work at Walter Reed and the IRS. For days unbossed has been trying to unravel the IAP web. If you go back through recent posts, you will find a tantalizing tale on many levels, details yet to be sorted out.

It is amazing that a company that did not exist until recently has won so many contracts and in such diverse areas. A constant seems to be getting ice to hurricaine Katrina damaged areas. One wonders what IAP will do for income when the damage is fixed. I did not include all of those contracts. You can find them on its newsroom archive page.

Here are a few more of its diverse contracts from recent years, all from IAP's press release page.

The arrest of hundreds of illegal aliens at the Michael Bianco factory in New Bedford, and of the factory owner who was fully complicit in employing them, has gotten a lot of attention in the national news media. For the most part, however, only local journalists have shown any interest in these other aspects of the case:

• The workplace rules and the conditions at the factory qualify it as a sweatshop
• The factory's main contract was with the Defense Department
• The Army must have known about the nineteenth-century like factory conditions, and the employment of illegal aliens, because it maintained an office at the factory

Though the raid at the Massachusetts leather factory has evoked plenty of comment around the country, especially from immigrant-bashers, the DoD has remained almost silent about its role in permitting this to continue for years. And what little it has said is almost certainly false.

Yesteday, IAP finally responded to claims that it was responsible for problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. link According to IAP it could not have any responsibility because it was not until Feb. 4, 2007 that "290 IAP and subcontractor personnel began work."

On the other hand, there are its press releases still on its website, and one press release in particular.

The author of this piece, Philip Mattera, has kindly agreed to permit us to crosspost his essay here at Unbossed. It appeared at Tom Paine.

Reports of substandard conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center have outraged the country. But that anger should not be directed only at the callous Army officials running the facility.

The full story behind the scandal involves a misguided program to “reinvent government” through outsourcing, a company that botched the delivery of ice to victims of Hurricane Katrina and a giant hedge fund led by a former member of President Bush’s cabinet. The private sector has indirectly had a hand in converting the once legendary Walter Reed into a symbol of the shameful treatment of people who have been maimed in the service of their country.

Today IAP Worldwide Services finally issued a press release regarding the allegations, which first became public last Friday, that its A-76 privatization contract at Walter Reed Army Medical Center had contributed to the abysmal conditions that wounded soldiers were enduring. The fact that it took a mere 5 days to comment is surely some indication of how seriously the corporation takes its responsibilities at WRAMC.

The statement itself, aahhh, errm...leaves a little to be desired in the categories of empathy, honesty, candor.

Want to know who owns IAP? The IAP that magically gets and messes up contracts with Walter Reed and the IRS? The IAP whose officers have close, close ties to Halliburton and KBR? Then meet
Cerberus Capital Managment L P.

This post was written by operculum and appears here with her permission.

Thanks to operculum for research on this story.

In reports a few days ago on the IAP-Walter Reed privatization (links here and here), we saw that although the IRS employees had won the competition to keep their work, somehow in 2006 hands were waved and the winner that emerged was IAP.

An aberration you think?

Thanks to operculum for her research on this story.

The IAP Worldwide connection with Walter Reed has not been in the MSM, but is no secret for unbossed readers. And unbossed readers know that we have been keeping our eyes on the push to privatize IRS debt collection. It’s always nice when you can multi-task your obsessions.

There are so many screaming headlines today--about the perjury conviction of the Vice President's former Chief of Staff; about the deaths today of so many more in Iraq, including 9 American servicemen; about the Congressional hearings into the firing of six US Attorneys and the threats they've endured from politicians; about the investigations into the Walter Reed scandal--that you might well have overlooked some pretty astounding stories.

For example, had you heard that George Bush's escalation in Iraq, announced in January, now has its own escalation? It didn't take him long, did it, to get the escalation-bug into his bloodstream? Just like LBJ and RMN before him, Bush is gripped by the urge to surge. So it goes...one escalation piled on top of another.

A timely issued GAO report is out: DOD and VA Health Care: Challenges Encountered by Injured Servicemembers during Their Recovery Process GAO-07-589T, March 5, 2007.

This is an addendum to the prior - and long - post on IRS privatization.

It's a strange world. Walter Reed is in the news, but the role of privatization connected with the scandal is not. And as we approach April 15 - or April 17 this year - taxes are barely in the news, and the mainforce effort to give private bounty hunters the job of collecting tax debt is not.

Some inconvenient news was just released in Britain: Fewer than 4% of "terrorism" arrests in the UK have led to convictions. Americans shouldn't be surprised. The Bush administration's domestic 'War on Terror' has been a sorry disgrace from the beginning. We could laugh about the Keystone Kops element, were it not for the fact that so many thousands of lives of fellow Americans have been shattered.

Its high time we get serious about ending Rep. Heather Wilson's career in Congress and I think I know just the guy to do it. The State of New Mexico's Natural Resources Trustee and Albuquerque, New Mexico City Councilor Martin Heinrich.

What do you want in a Congressional representative? How about someone who is working and fighting to make your city and state a livable, attractive place of opportunity for ALL its residents while looking out for the greater good. Clean? No ethics problems? Integrity? Articulate? Clear? Strong?

Follow me.

It's a story that shirah has been chronicling for years at Unbossed: the outrages against decency and common sense that have been committed by Bush & Co. in the name of privatization. On Friday came word that the appalling conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center are due in large part to the implementation of one such privatization scheme.

My commentary at Daily Kos about Walter Reed gained some attention on line this weekend. But so far, the news media have not generally acknowledged that privatization run amok provides the key to understanding what went so badly wrong there. This is a repost of that commentary, slightly revised and expanded, with the purpose of focusing more public attention on the issue of the insidious effects of privatization.

Friends, there has been a real war going on for years, if you haven't noticed. In this case, not the one in Iraq. It's the war at home in which the Bush Administration has used every means at its disposal to destroy unions, loot the public treasury, and funnel money to special administration friends. Now with Walter Reed and the privatization money train to IAP, we have the collision of both wars, making visible what was once invisible.

operculum on Daily Kos took up the challenge to start digging into the pasts of IAP execs and agreed to permit unbossed to post his findings so far. As she puts it, this is easy to find, and that's certainly true. However, it takes work and being willing to keep at it. Not everyone has the time or drive to do this basic investigation. We hope more will take up the challenge. It's a big job.

Here is what she has found so far.

IAP is a private company that last year was awarded a contract to manage parts of Walter Reed last year - after some . . . events discussed here. IAP Worldwide is apparently also a PAC.

Not exactly a company you see much about, so here's a start on getting to know these folks.

Oh, and by the way, this really does have KBR finger prints on it.

Last October, in Privatization - Henhouse? What Henhouse? I reported on a cushy little pork-fest, get-together of military contractors and government officials. So now with IAP and Walter Reed in the news, let's just put on our hip-waders and take a walk down memory lane and privatizing around Walter Reed.

By the way, the president of the key privatizer is a guy named . . . more about him in another post.

Yesterday the President gave a speech at a school in New Orleans. Articles spread the news far and wide with optimistic headlines such as "Bush vows to speed Gulf Coast recovery," "Bush tours Gulf Coast to reassure Katrina victims" and "Bush: 'There is hope' on the Gulf."

Naturally, I was eager to read the good news, but instead of reassurances and speedy action, what's the first thing I read from Bush?

"The federal government still knows you exist."

Well how reassuring! Another Royal-Georgism. You just can't beat the Bush family for those punchy "let them cake" statements. And to think this cheery-headline spinning press is the same one that mocked "I feel your pain."

Actually, it was an interesting speech. I'll be so bold as to suggest some different headlines.