Rules mean nothing to these people

A federal judge has ruled in favor of the American Small Business League (ASBL), and ordered the Small Business Administration (SBA) to provide the ASBL with more than 10,000 pages of data that listed the names of all firms that received federal small business contracts for fiscal years 2005 and 2006.

The ASBL filed suit to obtain the data, alleging that the SBA had covered up the fact that small business contracts were going to large companies. Now the ASBL is charging that the SBA manipulated the data that was turned over after a court order ruled the ASLB was entitled to see it.

The ASLB and two independent, third-party experts discovered hundreds of "dramatic and glaring discrepancies in the data" - indicating that officials in aWol bu$h's SBA manipulated the data to hide the fact that small business contracts actually wound up being issued to Fortune 500 corporations and other big businesses.

The administration has consistently denied the charge that big businesses are getting their grubby mitts on small business set asides, or in the common parlance, they have been lying about cheating for their fatcat friends. And the data proves it. Some of the largest firms in the world were the actual recipients of billions of dollars in federal small business contracts each year.

Examples of malfeasance below the fold...

- In May of 2007, the SBA went so far as to issue a press release titled, "Myth vs. Fact: SBA and Government Contracting," which stated that it is a myth that large companies, including large, multinational corporations are taking away federal contracts specifically intended for small businesses. After reviewing the data, the ASBL and both third party experts all found that the Bush Administration had in fact included billions of dollars in awards to Fortune 500 corporations and other large businesses in the United States and Europe in its small business contracting statistics. The Bush Administration falsified their compliance with the congressionally mandated 23 percent small business contracting goal by including such corporate giants as Dyncorp, Battelle Memorial Institute, Hewlett Packard, Government Technology Services Inc (GTSI), Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, General Electric, Northstar Aerospace, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. and Raytheon. (http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/news_07-30.pdf)

- The ASBL also discovered that the Bush Administration even included hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to large corporations in Europe such as British Aerospace Engineering Systems (BAE, British), Buhrmann NV (Dutch) and Thales (French). BAE is recognized as one of the five largest defense contractors in the world, and has more than 79,000 employees world wide. Buhrmann NV, headquartered in Amsterdam has more than 19,000 employees and French defense contractor Thales has 52,000 employees, according to Hoovers.com.

- The ASBL also found that contracting numbers to large corporations were manipulated to make it appear as if some firms had received significantly less small business contracting awards than they had. For example, the ASBL found that according to the SBA, BAE Systems Analytical Solutions Inc. received $8.5 million in 2005 and $4 million in 2006. However, Fedmine.us indicates that BAE Systems Analytical Solutions Inc. received small business contracts in excess of $137.6 million in 2005 and $134.5 million in 2006. Fedmine.us is one of several companies with access to the XML data feed from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS-NG). In another example, the SBA reported that Battelle Memorial Institute received $12,801 in 2005, but data from both third party experts indicated that Battelle had actually received more than $900 million during 2005. The ASBL found a pattern where contracts to large firms were altered in the same way they were with BAE and Battelle.

- The ASBL also discovered that the Bush Administration was forced to make a systematic counter balancing increase in the volume of contracts awarded to legitimate small businesses to prevent the total amount of contracts awarded for 2005 and 2006 from being diminished. Consequently, awards to legitimate small businesses were systematically inflated to equalize the reduction of small business contract dollars awarded to Fortune 500 corporations. The ASBL found that according to SBA numbers, Circle B Enterprises Inc. received $887.5 million during 2005. However, Fedmine.us indicates that Circle B Enterprises Inc. received $287.5 million during 2005, which represents a discrepancy of $600 million. The ASBL found several other instances of significant inflation of small business contracting numbers in legitimate small businesses.

While he was SBA Administrator, Steven Preston continually parroted the denial that large businesses were receiving small business contracts, but in June 2007 he adopted the SBA's 5-year re-certification and "grandfathering" protocol that allowed some of those companies to continue suckling at the small business teat through 2012.

"Based upon a number of federal investigations that have been done on this subject, such as 5-14, 5-15, and 5-16 from the SBA Office of Inspector General and our analysis of this information, it looks like the pattern that we are seeing in 2005 and 2006 will be repeated every year during the Bush Administration. If that holds true, the Bush Administration will have diverted somewhere between $500 and $800 billion from our nation's middle class economy," President of the ASBL, Lloyd Chapman said. "It's time for Congress to call for a GAO investigation to get to the bottom of this issue. The Bush Administration has consistently tried to paint me as a conspiracy theorist. Based on the release of this data and the fact that I have won five federal lawsuits against the Bush Administration, I expect that will be a more difficult job for them in the future. I would like to see the media report this story accurately and responsibly and start listening to sources outside the SBA's press office. The facts don't lie."

Up to $800 billion, diverted from small businesses and the middle class American economy. We're perilously close to talking about real money here.

The ASBL is continuing to audit the data and a more detailed report on their findings will be released within 30 days. The information is now available on the ASBL's website.

Disenfranchised

When Shirley Preiss was born in Kentucky in 1910, the state did not yet issue birth certificates, and women had not been granted suffrage.

Now, after living 97 years, and nearing the end of her time on earth, the Surprise, Arizona woman finds that she has come full circle. She is every bit as disenfranchised from the political process today as she was the day she was born.
The former schoolteacher is still pretty sharp at 97, pointing out that for someone who once lived in a time when women could not vote, the law is a step backwards. She has voted in every single presidential election since 1932. "I'm a legal American," Preiss said. "I'm born here. Born and raised in America."

So how has this happened?


The Arizona voter I.D. law, one of the most restrictive in the nation, was approved by voters in 2004 and upheld by a federal judge on Monday. The law, which sprang from the fetid, fevered, xenophobic little republican brain of state representative Russell Pierce, requires voters to produce specified types of government issued identification when casting ballots at polling places, and to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote either for the first time or in a different county of residence. Pearce doesn't feel any qualms about the disenfranchised. "To get a movie, you have to prove who you are," Pearce said. "To go rent a car, you have to prove who you are. That's part of life."

Of course, Pearce doesn't acknowledge that one doesn't need to prove citizenship to board a train, cash a check, rent a movie or rent a car. Nor does he acknowledge that there is a significant number of people who don't do any of those things he rattles off as everyday, routine things. Not everyone drives, not everyone travels and I know my grandmother never once in her life rented a movie or showed her ID when she wrote a check.

He insists that the law will protect the integrity of the voting process. (Please, note: that integrity was never in jeopardy, this has always been a solution in search of a problem, an attempt by republicans to eliminate some of the competitions reliable votes, and everyone who isn't an intellectually dishonest jackass or sycophantic party shill knows it, and we are operating from the assumption that the folks who fall into that category aren't reading this blog.)

"You can see my mother's not a national threat," said her son Nathan Nemnich. "Been voting since 1932." Nemnich produced the files documenting his attempts to get her registered.

"A delayed birth certificate," he said. "You have to have witnesses. Everybody's dead.

"When the family tried to get school records from Tennessee, they found out the school no longer exists.

"We're talking about something that is so precious, that right to vote, "said Linda Brown of the Arizona Advocacy Network. "How many hurdles are OK to jump through? How many barriers are we going to accept?"

Her son said his next step will be to call the governor's office for help.

Election experts say that while there is no way to know exactly how many Arizona voters have been affected by the voter suppression effort, but at least 40,000 voter registration applications have been denied since application of the law has been in effect.

Huge swaths of rural elderly voters - the very people who were children or who came of age during the depression and who remember the New Deal and the very real impact those programs had on their lives - and who have had the audacity to live long lives because they received Social Security and Medicare - are the very people most disenfranchised by these craven, cruel, antithetical-to-America voter-suppression schemes. The cynic in me says that is by design. We are fucked again, just like we were 75 years ago, and this time the republicans want to keep us down. Can't have those old-timers fucking up their grand schemes of oppression.