Parsons Fails in Iraq, But Keeps Lucrative Government Contracts?

One of the things you can do when a company fails to fulfill their obligations in Iraq--and screws the US taxpayer--is to look at just how many other possible government contracts they still have in other areas. Why should a defense contractor get away with not building a prison in Iraq but still keep contracts to provide workers for the US government in the United States?

I'm sure there are all kinds of high-minded reasons why I'm totally wrong, but here goes: Parsons of California screwed the taxpayers big time in Iraq:

The U.S. government paid a California contractor $142 million to build prisons, fire stations and police facilities in Iraq that it never built or finished, according to audits by a watchdog office.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said Parsons of Pasadena, Calif., received the money, part of a total of $333 million but only completed about one-third of the projects, which also included courthouses and border control stations. The inspector general's office is expected to release two detailed audits today, evaluating Parsons's work on the contract, which is worth up to $900 million.

"Far less was accomplished under this contract than originally planned," the inspector general wrote. "Millions of dollars in waste are likely associated with incomplete, terminated and abandoned projects under this contract." Auditors did not give a dollar figure of how much had potentially been wasted, but they said Parsons got about 10 percent -- or $11.3 million -- of the $108 million of award fees it could have received.

Parsons said in a written statement yesterday that it had "some serious reservations about the conclusions" in the audits, saying the company was hindered by the violent and unstable security situation in Iraq. One of Parsons's subcontractors was shot and killed at close range while in his office, the company said.

Therein lies the real problem--Parsons is merely stealing your money because it can. And while it is stealing your money, it's getting an award for doing a great job as it lies about the progress it is making so that it can claim awards it does not deserve.

And while all of that is going on, your government basically takes the coal shovel, and shovels the money at them while no one is watching over the contracts:

The office, which is charged with finding waste, fraud and abuse in U.S. spending, said a contract of Parsons's size should have had 50 to 60 contracting officers and specialists working on it, but it only had 10.

Parsons won its lucrative deal in 2004 to do security and justice work in Iraq, as part of a dozen other big reconstruction deals. Of 53 construction projects in the Parsons contract, only 18 were completed.

Auditors gave Parsons a scathing report on one of its biggest projects -- a multimillion-dollar prison in Diyala that was to house 1,800 inmates and help alleviate overcrowded facilities -- calling it a failure and wasteful. The U.S. government fired Parsons from the prison contract two years ago, saying it was late and over budget. It paid Parsons $31 million, and then paid other contractors $9 million to keep working on the project.

If Parsons was fired from that contract two years ago, take a look at this story from last year--another project to help restore the oil exporting infrastructure in Iraq details how Halliburton and Parsons have failed to meet deadlines:

Heavily armed soldiers spend their days at the oil terminals scanning the horizon looking for suicide bombers and stray fishing dhows (boats). Meanwhile, right under their noses, smugglers are suspected to be diverting an estimated billions of dollars worth of crude onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of ABOT and KAAOT has not worked since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Officials blame the four-year delay in repairing the relatively simple system on "security problems." Others point to the failed efforts of the two U.S. companies hired to repair the southern oil fields, fix the two terminals, and the meters: Halliburton of Houston, Texas, and Parsons of Pasadena, California.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) is scheduled to publish a report this spring [Spring, 2007] that is expected criticize the companies' failure to complete the work.

You'd think the gravy train was over for Parsons. You'd think they wouldn't have the gall to keep trying to get more government contracts and fill contractor positions at various US government sites. You'd think there would be great concern as to granting Parsons any more work. But, no worries! If you want to work on a government contract for Parsons, there's no shortage of existing government contract work waiting for you. Parsons has scores of current listings, all throughout the continental United States and throughout the world, looking for people to fill positions on key government contracts.

I believe there should be some sort of law or some sort of regulation that ties what a company does in Iraq to what they do in the United States or in other regions. If a company blows it in Iraq and fails to meet its obligations there, then that company should have its other contracting work for the government held, called into question, or audited for similar cost overruns or practices. Some companies may claim that what their international division does is separate from what their domestic division does--I think that's a sham in order to stovepipe things and keep the money flowing to one part of their business while they use another part of their business to rip off the taxpayers.

And, as if this needs to be added, Parsons should not be awarded any more government contracts until it rectifies the problems with the existing or previous contracts.

GAO Report Highlights Infrastructure Problems

According to the General Accounting Office (GAO), the US needs to reexamine how it funds, improves and rehabilitates its vital surface transportation infrastructure.

Through our prior analyses of existing programs, we identified a number of principles that could help guide a reexamination of the federal surface transportation program. While these principles are designed specifically to reexamine the surface transportation program, most, if not all of them, could be applicable to other federal infrastructure programs. These principles are:

• creating well-defined goals based on identified areas of national interest,
• establishing and clearly defining the federal role in achieving each goal,
• incorporating performance and accountability into funding decisions,
• employing the best tools and approaches to emphasize return on investment, and
• ensuring fiscal sustainability.

The reasons are very clear:

The economic well-being of the United States is dependent on the reliability, safety, and security of its physical infrastructure. The nation’s infrastructure is vast and affects the daily lives of virtually all Americans. In total, there are about 4 million miles of roads, 117,000 miles of rail, 600,000 bridges, 79,000 dams, 26,000 miles of commercially navigable waterways, 11,000 miles of transit lines, 500 train stations, 300 ports, 19,000 airports,5 55,000 community drinking water systems, and 30,000 wastewater treatment and collection facilities. Collectively, this infrastructure connects communities, facilitates trade, provides clean drinking water, and protects public health, among other things.

According to Popular Mechanics, there are ten critically important pieces of US infrastructure that need repair or rehabilitation immediately, including major interchanges, dams, airports, and canal locks.

For example:

In 2006, engineering experts calculated that in any given year there is a 1-in-6 chance that the Herbert Hoover Dike will fail, releasing waters from Lake Okeechobee. If that happened, South Florida's water supply could be contaminated, and 40,000 lakeside residents could be threatened by flooding. The Army Corps of Engineers has been working on improvements, but funding is limited–for the 2009 budget year, the government alloted about half of the requested money. In February 2008, a 1000-ft.-long stretch of dangerously eroded land was found near state-owned floodgates north of the lake.

The collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota highlighted the need to continue to invest and rehabilitate infrastructure. The cost of replacing bridges that collapse and kill or injure US citizens adds more of a burden are spread to the costs of lawsuits as well as the cost in productivity and wear and tear on other resources when commuters are shunted to other roads and vital arteries.

Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern, warn that turning the financing of infrastructure projects over to Wall Street could lead to another subprime mortgage meltdown:

Leaders of both the Republican and Democratic parties know the U.S. cannot raise money from traditional public sources of financing, including municipal bonds, user fees and taxes.

The financiers on Wall Street already have positioned themselves to take advantage of this national crisis for their own gain. Where most Americans see crumbling bridges and traffic congestion, the money managers see a treasure trove of fees, profits and more record bonuses for CEOs.

It's why some private equity firms and banks on Wall Street are raising massive dollars to buy these assets that have typically been owned and managed by the government.

In recent years, new infrastructure funds have been established in North America with capital commitments of $40 billion to $45 billion. These private funds have sprouted up like weeds, structured for short-term profits and sky-high fees -- usually up to a 2 percent management fee plus up to 20 percent of the profits.

It would be a monumental mistake to turn the future of America's infrastructure over to the same crowd that brought us the subprime crisis, an economy loaded down with debt and recession.

We should know better by now than to create a scenario where bridges and highways are sliced and diced like subprime loans into financially engineered "collateralized infrastructure obligations."

America needs a large source of stable, long-term capital to build the system of buildings, roads and power supplies needed to sustain the country. We need a source of capital that values infrastructure because it provides a reasonable rate of return, strengthens the overall economy and doesn't burden users with excessive fees.

Every decade or so, there is a renewed call for a return to the 1930s and the resurrection of the Civlian Conservation Corps as a means of reducing unemployment, investing in infrastructure, and energizing the American people in an effort to improve their country:

[Civilian Conservation Corps] CCC enrollees throughout the country were credited with renewing the nation's decimated forests by planting an estimated three billion trees from 1933 to 1942.

The 1932 Presidential election was more a cry for help from a desperate people near panic as it was an election in a "landslide" vote, the nation turned to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic party searching for an end to the rampant unemployment and economic chaos that gripped the country. They weren't disappointed. Accepting the Presidential nomination on July 1, 1932, New York Governor Roosevelt planned a fight against soil erosion and declining timber resources, utilizing the unemployed of large urban areas.

Professional foresters and interested layman raised these aims. In what would later be called "The Hundred Days," President Roosevelt revitalized the faith of the nation with several measures, one of which was the Emergency Conservation Work (ECW) Act, more commonly known as the Civilian Conservation Corps. With this action, he brought together two wasted resources, the young men and the land, in an effort to save both.



The President wasted no time: He called the 73rd Congress into Emergency Session on March 9, 1933, to hear and authorize his program. He proposed to recruit thousands of unemployed young men, enroll them in a peacetime army, and send them into battle against destruction and erosion of our natural resources. Before it was over, over three million young men engaged in a massive salvage operation, the most popular experiment of the New Deal.

Could an infrastructure revitalization project, based in part on the CCC model, make up for the gaps in what Federal, state and local governments are willing to spend on infrastructure? A proposed pilot program could answer that question, if enacted and studied properly.

Infrastructure Matters

Last week, we got a stark reminder of the cost of war when the I-35 West collapsed in Minneapolis, dumping commuters and construction workers into the Mississippi River.

Now calm down – the bridge didn’t collapse because of the war, and I am not saying it did. I am saying that we have some totally screwed up spending priorities.

Consider that the war is costing $150 Billion dollars a year, or about $3 Billion per week. $150 Billion dollars could repair 600 bridges a year.

Infrastructure matters. Without sound infrastructure, the economy is at risk. Highways are deteriorating, bridges are crumbling, the electric grid is teetering, ports are not secure, and we all saw two years ago this month that the levee system is unreliable.

The Resident was mindful of the post-Katrina flap when he went to Minneapolis and pledged the money to rebuild the bridge. And that’s all well and good. But then today, as he headed off to yet another vacation, the Leisure President denounced a hike in the gas tax to repair infrastructure.

“Before we raise taxes, which could affect economic growth, I would strongly urge the Congress to examine how they set priorities,” Mr. Bush said.

“My suggestion would be that they revisit the process by which they spend gasoline money in the first place,” he added, accusing lawmakers of focusing on their own parochial concerns — or plum projects — above such national concerns as bridge conditions.

Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska and a member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, has raised the possibility of increasing the gasoline tax as a way to pay for bridge repairs throughout the country in the wake of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, which raised new concerns about potential problems with a number of the nation’s bridges. A plan being considered by the House committee would index the current gasoline tax for inflation, which would result in an increase of roughly 5 cents.

Sweet Jeebus…he wants everyone else to reevaluate priorities? While bridges fall down and levees fail and people perish? But he won’t even consider reevaluating his pet war?

Déjà Vu, Anyone?

Haven't we seen this movie before?
Played out at the other end of the Mississippi?
In another August?
After years of infrastructure neglect?

Minneapolis is so screwed...

George the Scourge™ showed up in Minneapolis yesterday for a disaster scene photo-op.

Oh, it was touching.

"I'm here with the Secretary of Transportation, because our message to the Twin Cities is, we want to get this bridge rebuilt as quick as possible; that we understand this is a main artery of life here; that people count on this bridge and this highway system to get to work. There's a lot of paperwork involved with government. One of our jobs is to work with the Governor and the Mayor and the senators and the members of the Congress to cut through that paperwork, and to see if we can't get this bridge rebuilt in a way that not only expedites the flow of traffic, but in a way that can stand the test of time." (But in the very next breath he made "no promise of a time line.")

Like I said...Touching...

I actually heard the fife and drum...

Then realized that a Green Acres rerun was on in the other room.

In Iraq, hundreds of thousands are without water as the electric grid teeters on the brink of collapse

When a delusional halfwit like Pollack or O'Hanlon, or someone idiotic enough
to tout those fools as credible, insists it's looking up in Iraq,
show them this picture of Iraqi's gathered for Friday prayers in West Baghdad.

As temperatures in Baghdad soared to 120º Fahrenheit, the electric grid wheezed and strained and sputtered, leaving western Baghdad without water. It simply can’t deliver the electricity to operate water purification plants and pumping stations.

The electric grid is on the brink of collapse, unable to meet rising demand. Compounding the problems, provinces are taking local generating stations off the national grid. Coalition bombing runs and insurgent attacks have destroyed the infrastructure of the grid, while fuel shortages inhibit electricity production. Of 17 high-tension lines running into Baghdad, only two were operational at the time the AP filed their story.

Power supplies in Baghdad have been sporadic all summer and now are down to just a few hours a day, if that. The water supply in the capital has also been severely curtailed by power blackouts and cuts that have affected pumping and filtration stations.

Karbala province south of Baghdad has been without power for three days, causing water mains to go dry in the provincial capital, the Shiite holy city of Karbala.

"We no longer need television documentaries about the Stone Age. We are actually living in it. We are in constant danger because of the filthy water and rotten food we are having," said Hazim Obeid, who sells clothing at a stall in the Karbala market.

Electricity shortages are a perennial problem in Iraq, even though it sits atop one of the world's largest crude oil reserves. The national power grid became decrepit under Saddam Hussein because his regime was under U.N. sanctions after the Gulf War and had trouble buying spare parts or equipment to upgrade the system.

The power problems are only adding to the misery of Iraqis, already suffering from the effects of more than four years of war and sectarian violence. Outages make life almost unbearable in the summer months, when average daily temperatures reach between 110 and 120 degrees.

Water is a necessity of life. In fact, it makes more sense to fight wars over water than it does over oil…(and even as I write that I get a chill up my spine, knowing that that day is coming, possibly in my lifetime, and certainly in the lifetime of my grandchildren.)

None-the-less, it activates my irony meter that this war over oil – and an arrogant determination to keep squandering a precious and dwindling resource foolishly – has stolen that necessity of life away from hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people.

Infrastructure Matters

What happened Wednesday in Minneapolis was a wake-up call. Put bluntly, our infrastructure is going to hell in a hot-rod. Granted, I am a little more cognizant of that than many people are, because infrastructure considerations are a big part of mass casualty drills, and in my two decades in trauma services, I have participated in a lot of mass casualty drills and a couple of mass casualties.

When I say I worry about infrastructure, I mean I am somewhat obsessed with it. Let me put it this way – when I have nightmares, they star bridges and tunnels. And water supply. But mostly, bridges and tunnels.

Speaking of bridges – somewhere in this country a bridge fails every single week. It might be a wooden bridge over a creek on a gravel road in rural Missouri, five miles from the nearest blacktop, but if it cuts a family off from that blacktop road, it cuts them off from town – and doctors – and school, and supplies. This week, the bridge that failed got our attention, because it failed big-time, killing people and dumping scores of cars and commuters into the Mississippi freakin’ River in a major metropolitan area.

Four years ago another I-35 bridge failed, that one across the Missouri River in Kansas City. It didn’t catastrophically fail like the one in Minneapolis, but it was closed in 2003 for emergency repairs, reopened; then closed for several months in 2005 to do the repairs properly. Had the Paseo Bridge failure in January 2003 happened during rush hour, instead of in the middle of the night, what happened in Minneapolis might have been a tragic replay. We got lucky.

Last month, a steam-pipe in Manhattan blew. In August 2003, there was a northeast blackout.

In New Orleans, two years ago this month, levees failed and people died and a city was changed forever.

Infrastructure costs money. Bridges, tunnels, the electric grid, the levee system – all of these things cost money, and without the infrastructure, it all falls apart.

Infrastructure maintenance is funded by the tax base. When you gut the treasury and cut taxes, infrastructure suffers.

It is no longer my job to stress out about this stuff – now it’s a hobby, I guess, because I can’t just stop giving a shit, and I can’t unring the bell and forget the stuff I know.

It was fun sucking up tax cuts and encouraging the buying of jet skis and SUV’s and cardboard McMansions. But the party’s over. It is time to suck it up, tote the board and start paying taxes at a responsible rate.

Part of that reality we need to deal with is a crumbling infrastructure. Our interstate highway system is 50 years old. I-70 is in such disrepair from KC to St. Louis that some people say that MODOT should just cut their losses and build a whole new I-70 parallel to the one we currently refuse to drive on, it is in such sad shape; I'll take the train across the state, thanks just the same. The average interstate highway bridge was built in the 60's, when our cities were smaller, our population was lower, a lower percentage of that lower population owned cars, and most cargo still moved by train. In short - not only are the bridges 40-50 years old, but they were built for a different demographic and are not standing up at all well to the wear and tear of the traffic loads they bear.

Our infrastructure is so compromised right now, that we might actually be to the point of needing another WPA type effort, or face serious economic consequences as a result of our obstinance. If we don't get with the program and start dealing with these problems, we better get used to stories like the one from Minneapolis happening once or twice a year.

Meanwhile - if you are one of those people who is sustained by fear...go to ASCE.ORG and look at our infrastructure report card. You will find some stuff there to be by-god terrified about.

Of Strafing Runs and Pyrrhic Victories

Last spring I started noticing a trend in the news reports coming out of Iraq. Air strikes were – are – being used with increasing frequency. Well, I was right to notice. As of the end of May, the United States had already dropped more bombs than they did in all of 2006, according to an AP story by Charles Hanley dated 05 June:

"U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago. … And it appears to be accomplished by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties.

"In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press."

Using air strikes against a counter-insurgency is a very serious act – it is a desperate last move of an army that is losing. It sure ain’t a stand-up fight. I would go so far as to argue that the reliance on air power is evidence of the failure of the s(pl)urge.

First of all, it indicates that our forces are facing an adversary that is increasing in effectiveness, and that is developing both strategic and tactical acumen. It speaks to the ability of the insurgents as a fighting force, at least to the locals.

The pitched battles will always go to the Americans, because the Americans can call in the Air Strikes. But that they are increasingly necessary in order for the Americans to not lose the battle, represents overwhelming psychological victory.

Air strikes always kill far more civilians than targeted fighters, and this serves to enrage the local populace. This has the net effect of increasing the sympathies of the locals to the insurgent fighters that were the targets of the aerial assault. Air strikes also kill indiscriminately and they destroy vital civilian infrastructure.

Psychologically, it is a boon to the insurgency – the United States is a bunch of cowards who only dare fight from five miles high, dropping bombs indiscriminately, on innocents as well as insurgents. Morally, it turns the United States into a Goliath that must be fought, and must be slain.

This is the stuff that martyrs are made of, and we are intervening in a culture with a long, strong and proud tradition of martyrdom. Just the folks whose resolve needs a good strengthening.

[Crossposted from WTWC]

This is starting to look like "strategy" to me

In the past seven weeks, as many bridges have been targeted by jihadist fighters in Iraq, bent on crippling the populace both logistically and psychologically by destroying infrastructure. (.pdf map of Baghdad with bridges labeled can be found here. Hat tip to Larry Johnson at No Quarter.)

This is an ominous trend.

The most obvious place my mind goes when this disturbing development is considered is the “sitting ducks” that are inevitably created; where traffic will bottleneck at the remaining routes across rivers and highways. The bombing on Monday that took out a bridge over the Diyala River means that traffic must be rerouted through insurgent-controlled Baquba. “Victims, right this way…”

And that leaps logically to the second place my mind goes: the strategic implications. Supply lines have not been cut, but they have sure as hell been complicated by this development. If this trend continues, the potential to isolate and cut off those “surge” troops that “surged” into neighborhoods from supplies and support is all too real.

(On the Faux News front, Bill O-Lie-ley has decided to push the bullshit line that these explosions don’t matter, and not only that, but that by the very act of reporting on these events, CNN and MSNBC are helping the terrorists win…Think Progress has more, including the video)

Seven bridges have been closed or seriously compromised by this effort that is starting to look a hell of a lot like a full-fledged strategy at this point. In addition, it has a huge psychological impact on the Iraqi populace that is directly affected by these attacks.

And when it comes right down to it, we don’t have the troops to secure the infrastructure, let alone the capitol much less the entire damned country. So can we accept the reality of the situation on the ground, please, before we lose another 3500 to Bush’s splendid vanity war?