Welcome back to the wonderfully dreadful world of waste and fraud. Kicking off this whirlwind tour of war profiteers this week is the expansion of the Blackwater USA empire to Illinois. In addition to the 7,000-acre training facility in North Carolina, Blackwater is expanding with an 80-acre facility in Mount Carroll, Ill. Coming soon: A [...]

Rep. Henry A. Waxman. Democrat. Crushing the nuts of war profiteers, one testicle at a time. The Associated Press' Erica Werner put together a story on the next House Government Reform Committee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-California) and his priorities for the 110th Congress. Waxman's biggest challenge as he mulls what to probe? "The [...]

Fire up the industrial-sized printer, we've got subpeonas to issue!  Election Day has come and gone. Democrats have ascended to power in the legislative branch, capturing both chambers of Congress — House and Senate — and did not lose one Democratically-held seat. In what can only be considered a landslide victory, come January, Democrats will [...]

Normally, Saturday afternoons are reserved for the never-ending, wasteful clusterf*ck that is war profiteering in Iraq. But with Tuesday's historic midterm elections on the horizon, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge its importance.  One that will ultimately shape this nation for, certainly, the next several years, but quite possibly for the next few [...]

It was reported by the Associated Press yesterday that a 40-year old Oregon man working as a contractor for Halliburton in Iraq, was killed. Craig Johnson spent nearly three years working in Iraq. Earlier this week, Reuters put the total number of contractors killed in Iraq at 647. U.S. losses currently stand at 2,758 killed [...]

(image from dKos diarist, immigrant punk) Oh boy.  Richard Pombo (R-Tracy, Calif.), U.S. House Representative for California's 11th Congressional District, was caught lying to his constituents by the Associated Press today. Last Thursday at a forum in his hometown of Tracy with Democratic challenger Jerry McNerney, Rep. Pombo responded to questions about his connections to [...]

Must shoot spit balls… yeah, that's the ticket! So I was doing some web browsing when I had some down time at work — these days, there isn't much — and, wouldn't you know it, the House Government Reform Committee (!) picked apart the Blackwater USA contract. (Major hat tip to Facing South, blog for [...]

  A couple weeks ago, I was able to watch an advance copy of documentarian filmmaker Robert Greenwald’s latest, Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers. This summer, I blogged a bit for Brave New Films regarding Erik Prince, CEO and founder of Blackwater USA, a "private security firm" based in North Carolina. The film covers [...]

Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), the subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former employer, is back in the news after court documents from a whistleblower lawsuit filed last year were unsealed this week. Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root charged millions to the government for recreational services never provided to U.S. troops in Iraq, including [...]

Bill Sizemore of The Virginian-Pilot has a new article out today that puts a spotlight on some of the behind-the-scenes operations of Blackwater USA, a private security firm co-founded by a major Republican donor from an extremely wealthy and politically well-connected family. About three dozen former Colombian soldiers are engaged in a pay dispute with [...]