Bad Deeds for 5-5-2009

 

Pete Olsen Using Taxpayer Money to Spread Lies
I just received a glossy mailer from Congressman Pete Olsen marked ‘PUBLIC DOCUMENT” and “OFFICIAL BUSINESS.”
Inside, it lists the following “Special Interest Spending” items (among others):

• $8 billion for High Speed Rail, including a rail line from Las Vegas to Disneyland sought by the Senate Majority Leader
• $4.5 billion to convert federal buildings into “high performance green buildings”
• $2 billion for ACORN and other “community organizers” through the Neighborhood Stabilization Fund

The first and third items have been proven to be false by numerous sources. These items have been known to untrue for quite some time, but that didn’t stop Olsen from repeating them now on his taxpayer-funded mailer. See: After Lying About High-Speed Rail Line From Disneyland, Jindal Leaves For Disney World (Seriously) and The Hill repeated false GOP claim that ACORN is a beneficiar[y] of the stimulus package.

And as for the second item, what is special interest about reducing our reliance on foreign oil, saving government money by reducing energy costs, and reducing pollution in the air that all Americans breathe?

I suggest we all take our mailers to Olsen’s local office and demand that he refund the money we spent to fund his spreading of GOP lies. I don’t pay taxes to support lying.

 

Small-Town Texas Police Confiscate Cash and Belongings From Racial Minorities – Roderick Daniels was traveling through East Texas in October 2007 when, he says, he was the victim of a highway robbery. The Tennessee man says he was ordered to pull his car over and surrender his jewelry and $8,500 in cash that he had with him to buy a new car. But Daniels couldn’t go to the police to report the incident. The men who stopped him were the police.

Daniels was stopped on U.S. Highway 59 outside Tenaha, near the Louisiana state line. Police said he was driving 37 mph in a 35 mph zone. They hauled him off to jail and threatened him with money-laundering charges — but offered to release him if he signed papers forfeiting his property.

Now Daniels and other motorists who have been stopped by Tenaha police are part of a lawsuit seeking to end what plaintiff’s lawyer David Guillory calls a systematic fleecing of drivers passing through the town of about 1,000.

Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson said they agreed to forfeit their property after Russell threatened to have their children taken away. Like Daniels, the couple says they were carrying a large amount of cash — about $6,000 — to buy a car. When they were stopped in Tenaha in 2007, Boatright said, Russell came to the Tenaha police station to berate her and threaten to separate the family.

Maryland resident Amanee Busbee said she also was threatened with losing custody of her child after being stopped in Tenaha with her fiancé and his business partner. They were headed to Houston with $50,000 to complete the purchase of a restaurant, she said. “The police officer would say things to me like, ‘Your son is going to child protective services because you are not saying what we need to hear,’ ” Busbee said.

Guillory, who practices in nearby Nacogdoches, Texas, estimates authorities in Tenaha seized $3 million between 2006 and 2008, and in about 150 cases — virtually all of which involved African-American or Latino motorists — the seizures were improper. “They are disproportionately going after racial minorities,” he said. “My take on the matter is that the police in Tenaha, Texas, were picking on and preying on people that were least likely to fight back.”

 

Former Unit of Cheney’s Firm Makes Up ‘Vast Majority’ of Criminal Audit Cases in Wake of Iraq War – In shocking testimony made by the Pentagon’s top auditor on Monday, the Defense Department revealed that a former unit of the company where Vice President Cheney was CEO is under investigation for allegedly billing for unallowable costs, accepting bribes, falsifying time cards and overbilling.

April Stephenson, head of the Pentagon’s contract audit agency, said she didn’t know of any contractor probed that had ever been cited for so many abuses. Of the 32 cases under criminal investigation, KBR constituted the “vast majority.”

Regards,

Jim