About three weeks ago, stories started to surface regarding possible implications that Californian Republican representative, Randy “Duke†Cunningham, could have been involved in some dirty back room deals with a military contractor called MZM.
The involvement apparently started when Mitchell Wade, the head of MZM, reportedly purchased Duke’s house in 2003 for the sum of 1.675 million dollars. Wade then sold the house for approximately $975,000, which was its actual market value, netting a loss of $700,000. Now why some may think this was nothing more than a poor decision on Wade’s part (after all who hasn’t overpaid for something in the past), read on and hear about the other dirty details that have been uncovered.
After the Duke sold his house, he moved to Washington DC. Now that is an appropriate place to live for a congressmen, but it turns out he took residence on a yacht that was owned by wade and named the duke stir. Still not convinced that there is something wrong here? Well as I said Wade ran, up until a couple weeks ago, MZM which is a defense contactor. The Duke is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, and also the defense appropriations subcommittee. Yup, the Duke sits on the two key committees that approved defense contracts for the military.
Now MZM was started by Wade in 1993, but its growth didn’t happen until late 2002 when it was granted a written contract called a blanket purchase order. One of the first contracts MZM was awarded under this was a $140,000 deal to provide furniture for the White House in 2003. MZM had done and estimated $163 million in Pentagon contracts before the Defense Information Systems Agency cut off all contracts two weeks ago.
Currently the FBI and Pentagon are conduction investigations into the dealings of MZM, and the Washington Post has an excellent article today detailing the execution of search warrants and questioning that has taken place, including the searching of MZM headquarters yesterday.
When I read this article, I was pleased to see the government was taking actions into this alleged tie. I was reading through the Washington Post’s article this morning, and when I got to the end I noticed something very interesting in it.
According to news reports, some former and current MZM employees have complained that they were pressured to contribute to the company’s political action committee, which could be illegal. The PAC and MZM employees contributed $50,000 to the 2004 campaign of Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.), according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors campaign spending.
Remember Katherine Harris? She was the Attorney General of Florida and a campaign manager for George Bush during the 2000 election. She was the state authority in charge of overseeing elections in the state that became the center of controversy during the election and ultimately gave Bush the White House.
So why would a company based out of Washington D.C. be in such support of a Representative from Florida? Well reading through the committee’s that Rep. Harris sits on; I could only find one that may benefit MZM on a financial level. That committee is the House Committee on Homeland Security. However, I don’t think that is the reasoning for such a lucrative and illegal campaign contribution. I am in firm belief that this all stems from the 2000 election and was a way of thanking Katherine Harris for ensuring George Bush would be in the White House.
As we are crawling through the second term of this Bush administration, I am reminded of how Bush took my state of Ohio. I sat in awe that cold November night in 2004 when everything had boiled down to my state. I kept saying to myself, “How can this all ride on Ohio?†Then it came to me. J. Kenneth Blackwell, attorney general of Ohio. This was a name that I was unfamiliar with. Mr. Blackwell server on Cincinnati City council for years, and growing up in a suburb of Cincinnati I heard his name a lot. So now we are into the second term election of Bush and once again we were surrounded by controversy.
Now that was eight months ago, but the controversy is still alive and well in Ohio. There is a high probability that election reform will be on our ballot this fall because of this. Mr. Blackwell had another tie that mimicked Katherine Harris. During the 2004 election, he was also a Campaign Manager for Bush. In a country that is supposed to be the model of democracy, how can we allow the people who oversee the election process to be campaign managers in a Presidential campaign? We have 50 states, each with attorney generals who oversee the elections. There is no need for it, and in order to protect our democracy laws should be passed to prevent it.
This article now has me wondering what benefits Mr. Blackwell will receive for his part in the 2004 election. He did state publicly before the election that he “will do anything in his power to assure President Bush’s return to the White Houseâ€ÂÂ. Pretty bold words from a man who is suppose to help uphold our democracy.
This article shed light on a lot of dirty things going on in Washington. I only hope it leads to further investigations including ones into Halliburton. Last week testimony was given against Halliburton in a Democrat hearing conducted on Capital Hill. During the hearing, certain issues were brought to light including; The serving of rancid food to our troops, the overcharging of food and commodities to our government, the lack of work being done to restore the oil systems in Iraq, and the lack of security being provided to other contractors. In total, the committee noted almost two billion dollars in overcharges to the tax payers by the vice President’s former employer and is pushing for a formal hearing to get underway.
So here we are on the weekend where we celebrate our Independence. It appears that once again we are going to have to fight to be free though. Our new enemy is not overseas however. Now they are the very companies you may work for. We need to start reforming our government to keep big business out of it and return it to the point it is a nation “by the people and for the peopleâ€ÂÂ.