Top McCain Fund-Raiser Made Tens of Millions Overcharging for Fuel Sent to Iraq

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

The Democratic chairman of a House investigative committee presented documents to the Pentagon on Thursday alleging that a top Republican fund-raiser, Harry Sargeant III, has made tens of millions of dollars in profits over the last four years because his contracting company vastly overcharged for deliveries of fuel to American air bases in Iraq.

Mr. Sargeant, who is the finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party and a major fund-raiser for Senator John McCain, did not immediately return several messages left for him on Thursday, but in the past he has denied any improprieties on the part of the the company, International Oil Trading Company, known as I.O.T.C.

The company was briefly in the news over the summer when a former partner filed a lawsuit against Mr. Sargeant in a Florida circuit court. The former partner, a Jordanian named Mohammad al-Saleh, is the brother-in-law of the King of Jordan, and the court papers laid out what Mr. Saleh claimed was a seamy tale in which he obtained special governmental authorizations for the company to transport the fuel through Jordan and was then unlawfully forced out by Mr. Sargeant, who strongly disputed those allegations.

But the latest claims of impropriety by the company go much further. In a letter addressed to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, by Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Mr. Waxman uses emails, company documents, Pentagon reports and other information to make the case that Mr. Sargeant repeatedly received contracts to deliver the fuel even though his company was never the lowest bidder for the work.

In one case, Mr. Waxman's letter asserts, Mr. Sargeant's company was actually the highest of six bids but received the contract anyway. In fact, Pentagon contracting officers complained that the company's prices were unreasonably high and initially said they could not justify giving the work to Mr. Sargeant. But for reasons the company was never able to explain, Mr. Waxman's letter indicates, no other American company was given an authorization to transport the fuel through Jordan. And when United States Central Command declared that the need for the fuel was urgent, the Pentagon was forced to award the contract to Mr. Sargeant's company.

Nothing in the documents Mr. Waxman's staff assembled indicates that there was any attempt by Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, or his staff to influence the granting of the contracts. According to the documents , the Pentagon attempted to negotiate a lower price with Mr. Sargeant, but he held firm, saying the prices were reasonable given his expenses. But as a result, Mr. Waxman's letter says, the company has been paid $1.4 billion for the fuel deliveries and made a profit of $210 million after expenses. The letter and other documents indicate that Mr. Sargeant currently has just one other partner in the venture, suggesting that they would largely divide those profits.

A spokesman for Mr. Gates, Chris Isleib, said that Pentagon had supplied all the documents that Mr. Waxman, in June, had requested in the case. "As a result of these documents and subsequent discussions with the Committee, Congressman Waxman asked the Secretary of Defense to investigate allegations that IOTC has overcharged for the delivery of fuel," Mr. Isleib said in an email message. The Pentagon will respond to that request directly to the committee, Mr. Isleib said.

Jim Greer, the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, said, "Since Harry Sargeant has been the finance chairman, he has always demonstrated the highest degree of ethics and integrity and has always served the party well." Mr. Greer added, "Every dealing that I've had with Harry Sargeant, I've always found him to be a man of character, and someone who has always been willing to help when asked."

A spokesman for the McCain campaign said on Thursday afternoon that campaign officials would read the letter and decide whether to respond to it. Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense in Washington, said that further investigation was warranted even though the initial inquiry did not turn up direct evidence of political meddling. Mr. Waxman estimated that if the lowest bidder had been awarded the contracts, taxpayers would have saved $180 million.

"The fact that the contracting officer warned them lends credence to the general allegation that this is profiteering and that this is an unfair contract," Ms. Alexander said. "To allow that high of a profit to deliver fuel to the troops is not the kind of mnanagement we need right now."

Mr. Sargeant is one of several dozen people who are listed on Senator McCain's web site as raising $500,000 or more for him. He was the host of a fundraiser for Mr. McCain at his mansion in Delray Beach, Fla., this year.

Mr. Sargeant came under scrutiny in August when media reports highlighted a cluster of more than $50,000 in unusual campaign contributions bundled together by Mr. Sargeant from a single extended family in California and a few of their friends. The donations sparked questions of whether they might have been made by donors in name only who were reimbursed by someone trying to skirt contribution limits.

It turned out that the donations were not actually solicited by Mr. Sargeant but another Jordanian business partner, Mustafa Abu Naba'a. The McCain campaign later said it would return all contributions solicited by Mr. Abu Naba'a and review all donations collected by Mr. Sargeant.

The conclusions from Mr. Waxman's committee are sure to be wielded by Democrats as a cudgel against Mr. McCain.

http://www.truthout.org/101708N

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Bump...

ACORN controversy: Voter fraud or mudslinging?

The stories are almost comical: Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, registered to vote on Nov. 4. The entire starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team, signed up to go the polls — in Nevada.

But no one in either presidential campaign is laughing. Not publicly, anyway.

Republicans, led by John McCain, are alleging widespread voter fraud. The Democrats and Barack Obama say the controversy is preposterous and is just political mudslinging.

In the middle is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as ACORN, a grass-roots community group that has led liberal causes since it formed in 1970. This year, ACORN hired more than 13,000 part-time workers and sent them out in 21 states to sign up voters in minority and poor neighborhoods.

They submitted 1.3 million registration cards to local election officials.

Along the way, bogus ones appeared — signed in the names of cartoon characters, professional football players and scores of others bearing the same handwriting. And in the past few days, those phony registrations have exploded into Republican condemnations of far-ranging misconduct, and a relatively obscure community activist group took a starring role, right behind Joe the Plumber, in the final presidential debate.

Looking beyond the smoke and fire, the raging argument boils down to essentially this:

Is ACORN, according to McCain, perpetuating voter fraud that could be "destroying the fabric of democracy"? Or are Republicans trying to keep the disadvantaged, who tend to be Democrats, from casting ballots in a hotly contested presidential race that has drawn record numbers of new voters?

By legal definition, to commit voter fraud means a person would have to present some kind of documentation at the polls — a driver's license, a phone bill or another form of ID — that bears the name of Mickey Mouse, for example. To do so risks a fine and imprisonment under state laws.

Submitting fake registration cards is another matter. Local law enforcement agencies in about a dozen states are investigating fake registrations submitted by ACORN workers. Late last week, The Associated Press reported the FBI will be reviewing those cases.

Accusations of stolen votes have a long history in presidential elections. In the 2000 recount debacle, Republicans claimed illegal ballots were cast. Democrats contended that legal ballots were thrown out. In 2004, when Ohio gave the presidency to George W. Bush, Democrats charged that long lines and malfunctioning machines in that state led to an inaccurate count.

But in this contest, involving the first African-American in American history with a real chance at becoming president, the vitriol is particularly pointed.

"This is all just one big head-fake," said Tova Wang of the government watchdog group Common Cause. "What silliness this is, at this point. It's all about creating this perception that there is a tremendous problem with voter fraud in this country, and it's not true."

On Friday, during a campaign appearance, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin repeated McCain's recent claims that Obama has close ties to ACORN.

"You deserve to know," Palin told thousands in a park north of Cincinnati. "This group needs to learn that you here in Ohio won't let them turn the Buckeye State into the Acorn State."

Obama helped represent ACORN in a successful 1995 suit against the state of Illinois, which forced enactment of the so-called motor-voter law, making it easier for people to register vote. Obama said this week that he had "nothing to do with" ACORN's massive voter registration drive.

ACORN spokesman Brian Kettenring retaliated this week in a series of conference calls and interviews. "What we're seeing is the manufacture of a crisis, and attempts to smear Sen. Obama with it. It gives you an excuse should you lose or if there's a contested outcome of the election."

Voter fraud is rare in the United States, according to a 2007 report by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. Based on reviews of voter fraud claims at the federal and state level, the center's report asserted most problems were caused by things like technological glitches, clerical errors or mistakes made by voters and by election officials.

"It is more likely that an individual will be struck by lightning than he will impersonate another voter at the polls," the report said.

Alex Keyssar, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, calls the current controversy "chapter 22 in a drama that's been going on awhile. The pattern is that nothing much ever comes from this. There have been no known cases of people voting fraudulently."

"What we've seen," Keyssar said, "is sloppiness and someone's idea of a stupid joke, like registering as Donald Duck."

ACORN officials have repeatedly claimed that their own quality control workers were the first to discover problematic ballots. In every state investigating bad registrations, ACORN tipped off local officials to bogus or incomplete cards, spokesman Kettenring said.

Many states require that all registrations be submitted to local voting officials so that election directors are in charge of vetting problem ballots, not the groups collecting them.

Part-time ACORN workers receive one day of training and are paid $8 an hour to collect signatures, according to Kettenring. He blamed bogus cards on cheating and lazy employees trying to make a buck for doing nothing.

When caught, Kettenring said, those workers are fired. The group is in the process of tallying the number of bad cards ACORN flagged for election officials, he said. Kettenring said he doubted the percentage of such registrations would reach 2 percent.

But Republicans say any number of fake registrations is unacceptable and could affect the November election.

Signing up voters is a small part of ACORN activities. The group frequently leads challenges to minimum wage laws, predatory mortgage lending in poor and working-class neighborhoods and immigration policies.

Controversy is nothing new. Its leaders are currently locked in a legal dispute stemming from allegations that the brother of the group's founder misappropriated nearly $1 million of the nonprofit's money several years ago.

Since the 2004 election, ex-employees have been convicted of submitting false registrations in states including Florida and Missouri.

"There are certainly problems and I don't think anyone disagrees on that," said Wang of Common Cause. "But it doesn't get reported that ACORN finds these registrations errors themselves. They flag them as being no good, but they have to turn them in anyway."

"They don't get processed," she said. "And Mickey Mouse is not going to vote."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081018/ap_on_el_ge/fraud_or_foolishness

[Paladin]

Repugnicans need to try and solve problems and come up with new ideas instead of just trying to smear and scare people.

Maybe they can meet in Wisconsin and try again......

[Odysseus]

I think it is ironic that the Republicans are alleging voter fraud at every instance all the while purging databases, dumping voter records, minimizing polling locations and using automated dialing to continue attacks on a candidate rather than offer any solution that isn't laughable.