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Authors, sign in!Most Americans hadn't heard of ACORN until FOX News began bashing it earlier this year. The recent dust-up over "prostitutes" and "pimps" didn't help the community organizing group much. But ACORN isn't the only group that deserves Congress's attention:
Take the case of the top three war contractors, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. These companies have engaged in 108 instances of misconduct since 1995 and have paid fines or settlements totaling nearly $3 billion. In 2007 they won some $77 billion in federal contracts. Or consider pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which in September paid $2.3 billion to settle a slew of criminal and civil cases, including Medicaid fraud. According to the Justice Department, this was "the largest healthcare fraud settlement" in its history. Yet Pfizer made more than $40 billion in profits last year and won $73 million in federal contracts in 2007; it continues to do robust business with the government..."And what about Halliburton? Its exploits as a no-bid contractor for the Iraq war are legendary. When Jamei Jones, a former employee of a Halliburton subsidiary, was gang raped by her coworkers
...the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job... she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.But Jones can't sue Halliburton or its former subsidiary KBR. Her employment agreement with KBR forbids it. U.S. Senator Al Franken Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) proposed an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.”
Thirty Republican senators voted against the bill, including Kansas Senator Sam Brownback. Why? According to Sen. Jeff Sessions, "The Congress should not be involved in writing or rewriting private contracts. That's just not how we should handle matters in the United States Senate, certainly not without a lot of thought and care and the support of, at least the opinion of, the Department of Defense."
Published October 16, 2009 by Henry Schwaller |
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Congress
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Ethics
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Sam Brownback
