Why is the media so surprised when we're not?

John Byrne of Raw Story:

President George W. Bush's Labor Department misled Congress in an effort to prove outsourcing jobs to private companies was more efficient than assigning the jobs to government employees, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Monday.

Misled? Misled? When are we going to be able to just come out and say it? He LIED. They LIED. The Bush administration LIED and they will continue to do so even as they walk out the door. LYING to the American people is what they did, do and will do. Look for Bush administration apologists trying to rewrite history and LYING in their forthcoming books.

The report (pdf here) found that the Department used fictional projected numbers to improve "savings reports" -- even when real numbers were already available. And when the government did find private firms to take a government job, that employee generally was either reassigned to another task with the same title or promoted.

The effort was called "competitive sourcing," aimed to increase government efficiency by having federal and private organizations compete for providing services. While part of a federal government approach since 1955, the Bush Administration has made the approach a key element of the President's Management Agenda under the Office of Management and Budget.

An investigation revealed, however, that the Labor Department -- under direction from Bush budget officials -- deliberately withheld information about true costs.

According to the report, the Department of Labor "excluded a number of substantial costs in its reports to Congress -- such as the costs for precompetition planning, certain transition costs and staff time and post competition review activities -- thereby understanding the full costs of this contracting approach."

The report noted that this approach was consistent with "guidance" given by the Administration's Office of Management and Budget.

In addition, the report found the Department's "savings reports" were "not reliable: a sample of three reports contained inaccuracies, and others used projections when actual numbers were available, which sometimes resulted in overstated savings."

Most workers were also demoralized as the government tried to find private firms to take over their jobs, the probe found.

Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao began having workers compete for their jobs in 2004. Few employees have lost their jobs. But when the government found a private company to take over their position, 84 percent were reassigned to different positions with the same title or were promoted.

And look at this:

Since implementation, 22 employees were laid off or demoted, all of them African American.

Move along. Nothing to see here!

The senator who commissioned the report, Iowa's Tom Harkin, along with the House committee that oversees the Labor Department, David Obey, said in a letter Monday that the report proved "the negative impact the Bush Administration's failed policies have had" on the Department.

"Under the direction of this White House, the Department of Labor has increasingly attempted to move work performed by Federal employees to private contractors" and, in so doing, hurt workers' morale and "grossly overstated savings," they wrote. "We look forward to working with the Obama Administration to strengthen the Department of Labor as it undertakes the critical missions of making sure our workplaces are safe; protecting employee pensions, health benefits and rights; and providing workers with the skills they need to compete successfully in the 21st century economy."

Bring the shovel and the bleach, we've got a hell of a lot of purging and cleaning to do.

Why don't they just tell us who is so totally patriotic and beyond reproach

That they can fly. Then give all the rest of us little yellow stars....

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - A senior FBI official has testified before Congress, detailing to Washington the current progress of the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), which was recently audited by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The TSC has combined 12 existing terror lists which were kept by different departments and agencies within the federal government, and compiled a consolidated Terrorist Screening Data Base (TSDB).

However, according to the GAO report, the number of names in the TSDB has reached over 755,000.

Civil liberties groups and some lawmakers have called on the FBI and the White House to impose stricter oversight measures in an effort to make sure the terror list doesn't grow to encompass innocent people.

"As the number of people on our global watch lists steadily gallops towards one million, we should reevaluate how effective these lists are. If we must live with these blacklists, the very least we should ask for is that they remain relevant and functional," American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Senior Legislative Counsel Timothy Sparapani said. "Congress needs to intensify its oversight of these lists before we all become suspects in the eyes of the Terrorist Screening Center."

Nonetheless, TSC Director Leonard Boyle testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and explained their critical role "in securing our borders and the safety of the American people by providing to the nation's entire screening and law enforcement communities the identities of known and suspected terrorists."

Boyle told lawmakers that the TSDB has "a process for removing names from the watchlist when it has been conclusively determined they do not have a nexus to terrorism," as well as "a redress process for any individuals who believe they have been improperly delayed or otherwise inconvenienced because of the watchlist."

"The TSC has significantly enhanced interagency cooperation in the post-9/11 culture where information sharing is a must," Boyle said. "In fact, as the GAO report cites, 'The TSC plays a central role in the real-time sharing of information, creating a bridge among screening agencies.' The TSC has... provided a physical mechanism to ensure information sharing is done in an efficient manner."

You've gotta be fucking kidding me. It was ... what... two years ago that 60minutes ran their article about the ten Tom Johnsons (Thompson...Smith.. whatever) who CONTINUALLY were stopped at the airport. Nothing has changed. Nothing has been made more efficient, except maybe we aren't threatened by terrorist sippy cups.

The Bush administration likes corralling people and demanding papers, look at how they treated protesters. They like harassing citizens and making them cower. Maybe they even dream of dressing the airport security in uniforms and high black boots and dramatic insignias. The PNAC neocons love this kind of shit.

They're not going to change anything.

Are the Democrats able to support the troops

By bringing them home like we asked?

Via jurassicpork at Welcome to Pottersville,

Paul Krugman:

There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks.

So how can the military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that “if a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.” So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.

Oh, and by the way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with Shiite militias driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess what? When a Sunni enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that district falls because there’s nobody left to kill, that counts as progress by the Pentagon’s metric.

Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.

I’ve written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress” in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt,” that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward” and that “there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” A year later, he declared that “there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.”

But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.”

Third, any plan that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on Tuesday Mr. Bush told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “we’re kicking ass” in Iraq. Enough said.

Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do. Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Finally, the public hates this war and wants to see it ended. Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don’t see Congress doing anything to stop the war.

In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that sets a “goal” for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to sound moderate — but who always vote with the Bush administration when it matters — political cover.

And six or seven months from now it will be the same thing all over again. Mr. Bush will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the Marine nickname for the giant air base he never left on his recent visit to Iraq. The administration will move the goal posts again, and the military will come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success.

One thing is for sure: like 2004, 2008 will be a “khaki election” in which Republicans insist that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against the troops. The only question is whether they can also, once again, claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who can’t make up their minds.

Supporting our troops

One brain lesion at a time. I guess the Bush administration's thinking goes: if you're wounded, you should just stay in Iraq and be used up. Why come home and cost money for the Pentagon?

Think Progress:

Salon.com’s Mark Benjamin revealed last month that seriously injured U.S. soldiers are being dispatched back to Iraq:

As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records.

Days later, House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) and Military Personnel Subcommittee Chairman Vic Snyder (D-AR) requested an immediate review of Benjamin’s report in a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

[snip] One of those soldiers received this caring treatment of his brain lesions:

An MRI later showed that Thurman had lesions on the right parietal lobe of his brain, a condition that led to a “don’t deploy” order — which the Army violated, according to Thurman. Worse, rather than providing compassionate understanding of the symptoms associated with traumatic brain injury, he said leaders at Fort Carson, Colo., have harassed him, refused him medication and pushed for an Article 15.

Which makes me want to rerun this post:

Snagged Bryan's entire post at Why Now?

1-800-984-8523

Lurch at Main and Central reports on the The Wounded Warrior System:

The Wounded Soldier and Family Hotline can be reached from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. [EDT] Monday through Friday at (800) 984-8523. The call center is under the command of the U.S. Army’s Human Resources Command. As the system gears up, it is expected that it will go 24/7.

This is a reaction to the problems with the military medical system. It is a start, and should be used so they can at least understand the scope of the disaster.

Update: McClatchy Washington Bureau has a report on 'Disposable Soldiers'.