tories of eye-popping waste and abuse of power among Greece’s bureaucrats are legion, including officials who hire their wives, and managers who submit $38,000 bills for office curtains.

The work force in Greece’s Parliament is so bloated, according to a local press investigation, that some employees do not even bother to come to work because there are not enough places for all of them to sit.

But as Europe looks for any sign of hope that Greece is on the road to reform, there are growing concerns about its ability — and willingness — to trim its payroll, a crucial element in bringing expenses under control enough to win continued international financing. (Read more)

I’m pleasantly surprised to see this reported on. Usually, anybody who calls for cuts is condemned as a right wing fascist nut job.

Politicians, with very few exceptions, are the scum of the Earth, and I love it when they’re forced to offer us a little glimpse of it.

I like the part where Eric Holder has to back track and say that he did, in fact, know about the operation. This is not “misunderstanding the question.” This is “L.Y.I.N.G.”

STEP 1: Today the Department of Energy announced $1 Billion in new loans to solar companies…

DOE announced a $737 million loan guarantee to help finance construction of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-megawatt solar-power-generating facility in Nye County, Nev. The project is sponsored by Tonopah Solar, a subsidiary of California-based SolarReserve.

STEP 2: SolarReserve is partnered with a company called PCG – Pacific Corporate Group…

STEP 3: The number two guy at Pacific Corporate Group is Ronald Pelosi. Coincidence??? (Read more)

Green Jobs = Transferring public money to your political friends. (And the suckers think they’re saving the planet)

My comments below.

(DoJ) – WASHINGTON – September 23, 2011 – A former captain in the U.S. Army Reserve stationed in Afghanistan was sentenced today to 120 months in prison for soliciting $1.3 million in bribes from contractors involved in U.S.-funded reconstruction efforts and participating in a conspiracy to traffic heroin from Southeast Asia.

The sentence was announced by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Sidharth Handa, 32, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga in the Eastern District of Virginia. Handa was also ordered to pay $315,000 in restitution. Handa, of Charlotte, N.C., pleaded guilty on June 21, 2011, to soliciting and accepting bribes while serving as a public official and to conspiring to distribute a kilogram of heroin.

“Mr. Handa used his official position assisting the United States’ reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan to line his pockets,” said Assistant Attorney General Breuer. “He promised multi-million dollar contracts to Afghan businessmen in exchange for cash. He was so meticulous about collecting his bribes that he kept track of them on a spreadsheet. We will not tolerate this kind of fraud and abuse. Today’s sentence reflects the disgracefulness of Mr. Handa’s conduct.”

“This case is the largest bribery prosecution to date from our mission in Afghanistan,” said U.S. Attorney MacBride. “From the day he stepped foot in Afghanistan, Mr. Handa negotiated a staggering amount of bribes from contractors in a blatant breach of the trust our military put in him. His actions brought shame to our mission, harmed our reconstruction efforts, and defrauded American taxpayers who funded the contracts he looted.”

According to court records, Handa was stationed in Afghanistan from March through November 2008 and served as the liaison to the local governor and engineers on the Kunar Province Reconstruction Team (PRT). In that position, Handa assisted in awarding reconstruction project contracts funded by the U.S. government to local contractors through a competitive bidding process. Handa admitted that almost immediately upon his arrival in Afghanistan, he became engaged in a scheme to secure bribes from contractors who sought to secure large PRT construction projects. With the help of an Afghan interpreter, Handa typically solicited bribes equal to 10 percent of the overall contract value, though the actual bribe payment was negotiated based on the contractor’s ability to pay. The total value of bribes contractors agreed to pay amounted to $1,323,000, and Handa and the interpreter collected $315,000, which they split evenly.

Handa admitted that after leaving Afghanistan, he tried to collect over $1 million in bribe money that contractors had pledged to pay. A cooperating witness (CW) offered to help Handa collect the money, and through 2010 and early 2011 Handa provided the CW with details of outstanding bribes and other relevant facts to help secure the promised bribes. During the course of these conversations with the CW, Handa indicated that he knew people in the drug business and he and the CW developed plans to sell kilogram quantities of Southeast Asian heroin to Handa’s drug contacts.

According to court documents, on April 7, 2011, Handa met with the CW and an undercover officer in a northern Virginia hotel, where Handa received what he believed was $500,000 in collected bribe payments and acknowledged that he knew the right people to receive the kilogram of heroin the undercover officer showed him. Law enforcement arrested Handa as he was leaving the hotel with the bribe money, a loaded handgun and a spreadsheet detailing specific bribe amounts paid and outstanding.

This case was investigated jointly by member agencies of the International Contract Corruption Task Force, including the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the FBI’s Washington Field Office and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, and also by the Drug Enforcement Administration. The case is being prosecuted by Senor Trial Attorney David Bybee of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kosta Stojilkovic and Dennis Fitzpatrick of the Eastern District of Virginia. (Read more from mssparky.com)

Close to home for me. Here’s my take on the whole mission:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/10/e-mail-from-afghanistan/7103/

I think the whole thing is a crime and a fraud. Handa’s mistake was participating in the illegal variety of crime and fraud.

But even limiting my observation to that, my sense is that he’s just the one who got caught.

Also reported here: http://blogs.wsj.com/corruption-currents/2011/09/23/former-army-reserve-captain-sentenced-to-10-years-for-bribery/

Edit: Ha! Look at the comments on mssparky.com.

Fixa says:
September 25th 2011 at 5:42 pm
I was stationed to and I think its fucked up he couldn’t hook me up with any money I think SH3 Simmons snitched on him. Karma is a bitch shouldve shared the wealth sucka.

bryan says:
September 25th 2011 at 6:59 pm

Simmon’s problably did snitch, but he Honda was always a moron. Endangering our lives, his paycheck was more than enough income to make an easy life. Sadly our society has gotten greedy and always wants more. Thank you Fixa for sharing the link, and to think Camp you lost your clearance so this ass could scrap thousands from our tax dollars.

Roman says:
September 25th 2011 at 10:19 pm

@ bryan — yeah. It sounds like they didn’t need a snitch. He might have gotten busted trying to traffic heroine, and the spreadsheet of bribes led to the PRT corruption.

Think Ron Paul is the only person asking questions about the actual gold supposedly backing the currency in circulation. Think again: the “ask your central banker where his gold is” tour just went global after the Dutch the Dutch Socialists Party (SP)’s spokesman for financial affairs, Mr. Ewout Irrgang, asked the Dutch Secretary of the Treasury 10 detailed questions about the gold supposedly held by the Dutch Central Bank. Questions vary from: where is the gold? why are gold and gold receivables one line item? how much gold is loaned out? As Dutch website Vrijspreker.nl points out, “This is potentially a big breakthrough for global awareness on how central banks hide crucial info from the public and the disastrous effects central banks have on society.” Is Belgium next to ask the same question in a vain attempt to understand just how much of its gold is permanently “lent out”? And after Belgium, everyone else with a central bank perhaps?

The Questions:

1 Did the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) loan part of their gold? If yes, how much and to whom?

2 Why are gold and gold loans stated as one line item in the annual report 2010 instead of mentioned as 2 separate items?

3 Can you give an overview of the yearly yields of the gold loans during the past years?

4 Where IS the physical gold of DNB? At which locations and how much is where? What is the reason that the gold is still at these locations?

5 What was the most important reason for DNB to sell the gold in the past? Are the storage costs a reason? What are the actual costs to store the gold?

6 Can you confirm that since 1991 of the 1700 tons of gold about 1100 tons have been sold? Is the remark of journalist Peter de Waard correct that because of these historic sales there is a loss of about 30 billion euro? If not correct, what is the right amount?

7 How much of the National Debt has during the past 20 years been paid off with the proceeds of the gold sales? Are you of opinion that the sustainability of the national debt will be improved by paying off the debt and at the same time selling the gold?

8 What is in your opinion the present function of the gold stock?

9 What is the relation between the size of the market of the gold stock and the size of the market of gold derivates? What are the possible consequences of this?

10 Can you confirm that recently a number of countries have even enlarged their physical gold stock? Do you have an explanation for this development? (Read more from zerohedge.com)

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress.

“These are all whopping numbers,” said Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis. “You’re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money.”

(View the Bloomberg interactive graphic to chart the Fed’s financial bailout.)
Foreign Borrowers

It wasn’t just American finance. Almost half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers, measured by peak balances, were European firms. They included Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, which took $84.5 billion, the most of any non-U.S. lender, and Zurich-based UBS AG (UBSN), which got $77.2 billion. Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding AG borrowed $28.7 billion, an average of $21 million for each of its 1,366 employees. (Read more from bloomberg.com)

Ron Paul at the Concord Monitor from Concord Monitor on Vimeo.

* Dollar getting beat up.

* Gold / silver pull back because of pullback from Euro?

* Bernanke says, essentially “it ain’t money if I can’t print it.” Says people buy gold because of uncertainty. But Peter is buying gold b/c he is certain Bernanke is destroying the dollar.

* Bernanke claims dollar’s worth has nothing to do with America’s purchasing power. Is he nuts?

* By saying the U.S. will default if the credit ceiling isn’t raised, Obama tells U.S. creditors how low they are on the totem pole of who gets paid.

* Another NIA pump-and-dump scam.

Great charts of who and how much here.

By 2003, such was Murdoch’s access to Blair, that he was even able to put a call through to the prime minister on the eve of the Iraq war and advise Blair to join George Bush’s invasion. (Read more from guardian.co.uk)

Government often consists of creating arbitrary restrictions, then selling exceptions to them. Here, for example:

From my friend Drew: One is from New York , another is from Tennessee and the third is from Florida.

All three go with a White House official to examine the fence. The Florida contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. “Well,” he says, “I figure the job will run about $900: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me.”

The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, “I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for my crew and $100 profit for me.”

The New York contractor doesn’t measure or figure, but leans over to the White House official and whispers, “$2,700.” The official, incredulous, says, “You didn’t even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?” The New York contractor whispers back, “$1000 for me, $1000 for you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence.” “Done!” replies the government official.

And that, my friends, is how government contracting works!