For many months now friends and family have been urging me to document all I know about the Traffic.com scandal and my three-year effort to "out" it in a book, because this scandal is so involved and has been going on for so long. I've finally taken their advice, and am knee deep in writing a book called, fittingly...

Outing Traffic.com:

How the Internet Proved Invaluable in Exposing Big-Time Fraud and Corruption in Our Federal Government

Today the press and media are all buzzing from the indictment of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens on seven counts of failing to report gifts of several hundred thousand dollars on his federal financial disclosure forms.  Of course, we could see this coming ever since the FBI raided his chalet in Girdwood, Alaska almost a year ago.

I'm sorry to say, however, that Republicans aren't the only ones who receive improper/illegal financial perks from corporate interests seeking their favor.  Democrats are equally adept at these games.

Hope Reborn is already on the rec list with a diary on this subject, but I had to post here as well.

I already wrote about Grampy McSame's jaw-droppingly cynical fraud at TPM [as well as the collective yawn from the media that's in his back pocket].

NOTE: Please click on the TPM link, scroll to the end of the diary & click on recommend.  This is a story that needs to get out; even if it means shaming the MSM into covering it.  Thanks.

More after the break.

I think all sides can agree on one thing about the current war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Whether you agree with the justification for these actions, at times the execution has been nothing short of appalling. I'm not sure how I missed this particular story for so long, but here it is.

While Jay McKinnon was on an American road trip, opendna was "outed" (sic) and accused of counterfeiting a birth certificate for a United States Senator Barack Obama. This diary is dedicated to Jeniffer, an enthusiastic and hopeful voice and the first person to ask me to explain the very weird things being said about Jay McKinnon.

"I believe that there is overwhelming evidence, which establishes beyond a reasonable doubt, that Senator Obama is a natural born US Citizen, and that he has acted in good faith to establish this fact. I have no evidence to contradict that belief, have not seen any, and do not believe any exists. I have been libeled by humorless fools trying to look clever on the internet." - Jay McKinnon

The following is the transcript of an interview conducted on July 4th 2008.

I have seen excellent diaries on the need for universal health care.  Although I am not a specialist in the field of medical insurance, my background in the group insurance industry has led me to do a lot of thinking about how we pay for medical care, and what we get for it.  I have come to believe that a single-payer system is our best option.

This option is not without risks, however.  In this diary, (My first), I want to highlight some things that I think are good in the American health-care system, which we need to be careful not to loose.

These are:  

1. High-end health care

2. Medical education

3. Fraud prevention incentives

4. Choice of Doctors

5. The ability to experiment with plan designs

Details on each of these after the break.

Today's Washington Post has a front-page, above-the-fold article on the backlog of 900+ qui tam (False Claims Act) cases alleging fraud against the government.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/...  I know about this first hand because for the past two years, before joining the Government Accountability Project, all I did was bring Iraq reconstruction fraud cases.

Not content to let the House have all the action, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Friday launched a probe of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s (OJJDP) alleged political grantmaking, Youth Today reported Friday.

The D.C.-based newspaper’s ongoing coverage of the story, in which OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores has had to answer for several suspicious moves in awarding precious juvenile justice funds — including that he helped politically connected money seekers over more qualified applicants and even allowed proposal submissions to arrive after the deadline — prompted the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to call Flores before its panel 10 days ago.

More after the jump.

You knew it was bound to happen someday, as the failure of 30 years of power grabbing and crony coddling finally got them the regime they dreamed of - one of their own organs would finally cry "enough" on something that cuts at the core of their ideology.  

And no, we're not talking about the now customary slaps at the hypocrisy and failures of the social conservative fringe - this time we've gotten to the failure of the "we want small government", alleged pro-business contingent.

Caveat emptor: buyer beware the lowly pay phone. Any of you use one of these lately? I have, and it’s certainly not my parents’ pay phone! And I don’t mean in a good way. Never the consumer's friend, the telecoms have really ratched up the rip-off sweeps, big time.

This is simply to draw attention away from the crooked deal that Paulson struck to get Bear Stearns into the hands of JP Morgan Chase.

It's no surprise to any astute observer that the Republican National Committee would coordinate with someone like Larry Sinclair- a man arrested for fraud, who failed a lie-detector in regards to his claims, a man who's claims contradict all likelihood of being truthful(Obama could afford a limo to bang in during the 90's when he still had student loans?).  After all, the worst smearing McCain ever receiving came out of his own party.  Senator Kerry, a decorated veteran, was made to appear like a war criminal.  Senator Cleland, a triple-amputee vet, was thrown up on a screen with Osama bin Laden.

The Republican Party, "the party of family values," only values one thing; winning.

Just when you thought you couldn't swear more profusely and violently than you have...

BBC Panorama tonight reveals what Henry Waxman calls quite possibly "the largest war profiteering in history."

At least 23 billion dollars. Billion. Not million. Billion. 23 Billion dollars to private contractors - Halliburton apparently number one on the list of more than 70 companies.

And why is it the BBC covering this major theft from Americans, instead of WaPo or the NYT or any one of our other media outlets? Because the Bush administration has placed a gag order on the discussion.

While the Clinton and Obama supporters try to get over their disdain for the other candidate and move on, we have a Republican foe by the name of John S. McCain who is still running around out there with people acting like he's some sort of maverick. At the beginning of this campaign, I respected Senator McCain because I thought he was a "straight talker" due to the fact that he did oppose his party at times. During the height of the Democratic Primary when tensions were highest, I even said I would vote for McCain over Clinton because at least I thought I could trust what he said (even if I didn't agree with any of it). But now that the Democratic primaries are officially over, and Obama is officially the "last man standing" as the Democratic nominee for President, I'm seeing more of McCain's true colors, and I realize he is a total fraud.

JuMp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I'd say this notion of a "Knowledge Economy" is a subversive elitist campaign translated to mean, "The American Dream now comes with an IQ Test, administered by us. Do you have your application fee?"

Bill Beutler at The Nation writes:

^{Byron Dorgan’s Contracting Fraud Crusade}

The North Dakota senator has made investigating contractor corruption his mission, but will he succeed in creating a congressional committee devoted to it?

While Congress has launched sporadic inquiries into contracting fraud, one legislator, Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has made it his mission to investigate contractor corruption.

Dorgan chairs the Democratic Policy Committee, a Senate entity tasked with gathering and distributing policy, strategy, and oversight information to congressional staff and other Democratic officials. (There is also a Republican Policy Committee.) Since 2003, the DPC has held 14 hearings dedicated to exposing the corruption of the Iraq reconstruction effort, and last month the committee released an encyclopedic report detailing major examples of fraud.

When the war in Iraq began, says Dorgan, "no one really [decided] to say, ‘All right, now we’re going to be an investigative committee so there’s accountability.’"
... since 2005 Dorgan has attempted to establish a congressional committee with full oversight clout to oversee military contracting. Dubbed the Special Committee on War and Reconstruction Contracting, the proposed panel is modeled on the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program (commonly known as the Truman committee), which was charged with investigating the waste and corruption of billions of dollars of World War II-era defense contracts. ...

If Dorgan gets his way, it could substantially bolster the Democrats’ efforts to uncover and deter acts of fraud and corruption in war contracting.

The Overnight News Digest has been posted.

A majority of Republicans are "admittedly" voting for Clinton during the 2008 Democratic Primaries and yet the Democratic Party continues to act like it is a legitimately close race between her and Barack Obama.  How many stupid people do you honestly think that there are in the United States of America that are actually buying all this crap?  Is it not OBVIOUS that the news media is playing a "shell game" with the people's emotions (and intelligence)?  Doesn't this look like a bait-and-switch operation to you?  Is it not obvious why Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Fox News Channel and The Wall Street Journal, has finally said ENOUGH OF THIS NONSENSE! and is putting his power behind Barack Obama now?

Wake up America, there is a naked emperor running around out there somewhere...

But it happened. The paper trail said one thing and the electronic voting machines said another.

ES&S iVotronic, which failed so publicly in Arkansas that the election results were reversed, are widely used across the country.

Once again, BradBlog is on the case, letting us know of this terrible threat to our democracy.

BradBlog quotes chilling facts reported by Joe Lamb in Arkansas' Log Cabin Democrat:

"[T]he votes for the constable race were later found to have recorded accurately on the voter-verifiable paper trail and therefore would not have appeared erroneous to voters either." (Which means there also would have been a fight, in any contested recount, about which numbers actually reflected voter intent!)

"What makes the situation all the more baffling, [Faulkner County Election Commissioner Bruce Haggard] added, is that the machine in question, along with its associated software and coding, were found to have worked to perfection during early voting."

Find links at the original BradBlog report. Says BradBlog:  "By all means, let's not pay attention to this report until after November."