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U.S. arms Bahrain, despite human rights concerns

Bahrain — 2012-05-16T14:16:37-04:00

While much of the world’s focus has been on the civil war in Syria, the island kingdom of Bahrain continues to shake with anti-government protests that started in last year’s “Arab Spring.” While it has received less attention, human rights groups have documented ongoing government abuses.

Those concerns were enough to put a halt on a weapons sale from the U.S. to Bahrain last fall, but the Obama administration announced last Friday that it has decided to proceed with the sale, despite the ongoing upheaval and protests from both Congress and human rights groups.

“Bahrain is an important security partner and ally in a region facing enormous challenges,” wrote Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Nuland in an official statement announcing the sales. “Maintaining our and our partners’ ability to respond to these challenges is a critical component of our commitment to Gulf security.”

In a nod to the human rights concerns, the Pentagon said the weapons being sold to Bahrain will not include anything that could be used against protestors. Instead, it would be a package of equipment geared towards protecting the country from external threats, including engines for F-16 planes and harbor security boats.

“Sales of items that are sort of predominantly or typically used by police and other security forces for internal security, things used for crowd control, we’re not moving forward with at this time,” said an unnamed administration official on a conference call last Friday. “That would include things like tear gas, tear gas launchers, stun grenades – those sorts of things.”

In December, the Center for Public Integrity reported on concerns from the Government Accountability Office that equipment such as night vision goggles could be used by security forces to crack down on protests. The report also raised questions about how the State department often fails to investigate past abuses from foreign security forces slated to receive military technology, which can increase “the risk that [U.S.-funded] equipment may ultimately be used by violators of human rights.”

A $53 million sale was initially announced last fall, but was frozen in October while the U.S. waited to see improvements on the human rights situation. The administration has declined to disclose a total list of what materials will be sold to Bahrain, or how much the new package will cost.

Bahrain is a major strategic partner for the U.S. The island nation received $80.4 million in military financing from the U.S. between 2005 and 2010 and is home to a 60-acre U.S. naval base which houses the U.S. Fifth Fleet. The fleet patrols the waters of the Middle East and is responsible for making sure the Strait of Hormuz, which a significant portion of the world’s oil passes through, remains open. The fleet would also be a first line of defense against any aggressive moves from Iran.

The protests have largely been driven by a rift between Bahrain’s Sunni ruling family and its majority Shi’ite population, but have been exacerbated by human rights abuses suffered by protestors at the hands of government forces. In November, an independent panel formed by the Bahrani government issued a report detailing a number of abuses, including commonplace torture in police stations such as electrocution and threats of rape. In response to the report, the government promised to reform its internal security forces — something that has yet to happen, according to experts.

Human Rights Watch released a report in late April documenting ongoing abuses in the island nation. The group acknowledges that changes have been made, like putting cameras throughout police stations to record abuses, but found that the torture has simply moved outside the police station. In one case the group interviewed two teenage boys who were taken to an empty lot and beaten severely.

“The situation has not improved very much,” Joe Stork, Deputy Director for Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division, said in an interview. What improvements have occurred have been mostly cosmetic, “not a basic behavior change,” he says.

Stork believes the Obama administration cares about the human rights issue, but feels that political concerns trumped concerns over abuses. “To be meeting a Bahranian request for certain kinds of arms is a bad move in our view,” he says.

At least two leading Democrats in Congress agree the arms deal is a bad idea. “The U.S. and the Government of Bahrain share strategic interests, but if history has taught us anything, this is a time to demonstrate our unambiguous support for the aspirations of the Bahraini people for greater political freedom,” wrote Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) in a statement released Friday. The author of the so-called Leahy Law, which attempts to prohibit arms sales to foreign security forces facing human rights concerns, added that the deal “sends the wrong message.”

“This is exactly the wrong time to be selling arms to the government of Bahrain,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) added in a separate statement. Last October, Wyden introduced legislation to block arms sales to the country. “Reform is the ultimate goal and we should be using every tool and every bit of leverage we have to achieve that goal. The State department’s decision is essentially giving away the store without the government of Bahrain bringing anything to the table.”

The controversy may continue for some time. Stork says he expects the protests to continue. Protestors “feel betrayed they feel sick and tired of having their demands ignored,” he says. “I don’t see this ending, and I don’t think the government is capable of putting it down.”

Education Department issues guidelines for restraining, isolating disruptive students

2012-05-16T09:23:50-04:00

In response to simmering concerns over reported abuses, the U.S. Department of Education issued multiple guidelines Tuesday for how schools can avoid going overboard in restraining or isolating disruptive students.

“As education leaders, our first responsibility must be to make sure that schools foster learning in a safe environment for all of our children and teachers,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement accompanying the release of “Restraint and Seclusion: Resource Document.”

“I believe this document is an important step toward this goal. I also want to salute leaders in Congress for their vigilance on this issue,” Duncan said.

Duncan said 15 principles described in the document “come down to common sense.” He called on districts and schools to consider incorporating them into written policies that make standards clear to staff and parents.

The department’s guidelines state that restraint or seclusion should never be used as punishment, and should never be used at all unless a child’s behavior poses behavior poses “imminent danger” of serious physical harm to the child or others. The principles also warn that such policies should apply to all students, not just disabled children, and that parents and staff should be informed of policies. In addition, parents should be immediately told when a child has been subject to restraint or seclusion.

Congress has wrestled over whether to adopt national standards for secluding students in rooms alone, or restraining students, which can be defined as staff holding down children or restraining them with straps or other devices.

Although the House of Representatives passed a bill with national standards in 2010, the Senate failed to consider legislation on the floor. A similar 2011 measure went nowhere. Divisions among disabled rights groups and arguments over whether states should be left to set standards led to a stalemate.

At least 13 states do not have standards or regulations, according to detailed charts included in the Department of Education’s document. .

Ordered by Congress to investigate allegations of abuse, the U.S. Government Accountability Office in 2009 found “hundreds of cases of alleged abuse and death related to the use of these methods on school children during the past two decades.”

“Examples of these cases,” the GAO said, “include a 7-year-old purportedly dying after being held face down for hours by school staff, 5-year-olds allegedly being tied to chairs with bungee cords and duct tape by their teacher and suffering broken arms and bloody noses, and a 13-year- old reportedly hanging himself in a seclusion room after prolonged confinement.”

Teachers and staff were often found to be untrained in restraint or seclusion methods, and some who committed abuses continued to be employed in the field of education later, the GAO investigation also found.

After the 2010 stalemate in Congress, a Washington, D.C.-based group called TASH, which promotes equal treatment for the disabled, issued its own roundup of news reports of alleged abuses in a report called “The Cost of Waiting.”

In March of this year, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released analysis of the first-ever detailed collection of schools’ reports of students being restrained or put into isolated rooms. The data required by the department was included in its 2009-2010 Civil Rights Data Collection.

After analyzing it, the civil rights office found that students with disabilities were only 12 percent of the sample but nearly 70 percent of kids restrained by adults at school. Black students were 21 percent of students identified as disabled under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, but they were 44 percent of disabled students who were restrained.

Data also showed that Hispanic students who were not disabled were subject disproportionately to isolation. While comprising 24 percent of students without disabilities, Hispanics were 42 percent, of those subjected to seclusion.

Wisconsin Gov. Walker’s conservative media appearances pay off as he raises millions from out-of-state donors

Wisconsin,United States — 2012-05-16T01:03:01-04:00

On Nov. 10, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker gave the keynote address at the annual dinner of the Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank in Phoenix with ties to the powerful, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council.

“Tonight, you might say I’m preaching to the choir with a bunch of fellow conservatives,” Walker, the son of a minister, told more than 1,000 supporters that night. “I preach to the choir because I want the choir to sing. So tonight I’m asking you to sing.”

His message: Spread the word “in Arizona and all across America that we can do things better.”

The high-profile event was no anomaly. Two days later, Walker addressed students at a conference at the Reagan Ranch in Santa Barbara, Calif., where he was billed as one of America’s “top conservative leaders.”

Walker’s official calendars from his first 13 months in office chronicle these and scores more hours he spent building credentials with conservatives in Wisconsin and across the nation.

The governor granted more interview time to the national, conservative-leaning Fox News cable channel than any other media outlet — nearly twice as much as to his hometown newspaper, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which had endorsed him in 2010.

Walker’s spokesman, Cullen Werwie, said the governor “has multiple media availabilities every week where he is available to answer questions from any legitimate news organization who chooses to attend, liberal or conservative.”

Last fall and winter, Walker halved his overall work schedule, but his PR time hardly changed even as he raised unprecedented millions in response to a recall campaign. Since taking office in January 2011, he has raised more than $25 million -- more than half from other states.

Prime time for conservative hosts

Fox News isn’t the only conservative-leaning outlet Walker favors. Charlie Sykes, a radio host of Milwaukee’s WTMJ, was scheduled for more interview time with Walker than any other media professional in his first 13 months in office. Sykes donated $500 to Walker’s 2010 campaign, records show.

However, Mike Gousha, a television news anchor of Milwaukee’s WISN whose work long has been respected by conservatives and liberals alike, was scheduled for nearly as much time as was Sykes.

Conservative-leaning Vicki McKenna, a radio host on Madison’s WIBA, accrued the third-most time with Walker.

Overall, five of the seven radio and TV talk show hosts with whom Walker spent the most media time are conservatives. (The seventh, Greta Van Susteren of Fox News, has said her stance “depends on the issue.”)

Sykes and McKenna didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.

Walker’s time with media was tallied using a database the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism created from Walker’s calendars.

Katherine Cramer Walsh, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the Center’s findings matched her own assessment of Walker’s strategy: “To shore up his base, spend time with his supporters, and not necessarily build bridges, compromise or reach out to opponents.”

Although politically charged radio hosts such as Sykes and McKenna are popular, their programs are heard by a relatively small slice of the population, said Michael J. Flaherty, who runs a Madison public relations firm and is a former Capitol reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal.

“Most folks don't listen to these people, but the folks who do tend to be fairly loud voices in their local communities,” Flaherty added. “It may look like the governor is talking only to himself half the time. But he’s reinforcing a message that has been multiplied many, many times by these storytellers.”

Walker faces Democrat Tom Barrett, mayor of Milwaukee, in a nationally watched election on June 5.

Distant with liberal media

During Walker’s first 13 months in office, he appeared at numerous press conferences, scheduled nearly 200 hours with media and granted interviews to at least 115 outlets. But not all media outlets had easy access to the governor.

“Gov. Walker skips interviews, does NYC fundraiser,” read a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel headline in January 2012 after a reporter was denied an interview. Walker was fundraising at the time for his recall election alongside Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the founder of financial services giant American International Group.

Liberal-leaning media, such as Madison’s The Capital Times newspaper and The Progressive Magazine, attended Walker’s press conferences. But they weren’t scheduled for interviews, his calendars show.

Capital Times Editor Paul Fanlund said in one instance this winter when the governor was scheduling year-end interviews with many news media outlets — a common practice — Walker seemed to single out his paper for rejection. Fanlund said Werwie told a reporter that “he personally didn’t like our editorial about his role in the John Doe investigation and he didn’t think Walker would gain anything by talking with us.”

Werwie responded by email that it was “completely absurd” to cover a single denial and supplied four rejections to a Fox News producer. “I turn down tons of requests for interviews,” Werwie said, adding that the governor has rejected media requests from “across the ideological spectrum.”

Dean Pagani, a former press secretary for Republican Gov. John Rowland of Connecticut who now covers gubernatorial issues at GovernorsJournal.com, said he wasn’t surprised Walker didn’t “waste time” talking to people he’s unlikely to persuade.

“When I was (a press officer), our job was to get as much press as possible, regardless of who was asking the question,” he said. But now, “the press secretaries are much more protective, and they want to know where you’re coming from before they let you talk to their governor.”

Governor on the go

In a single day last November, Walker flew to Wausau for a jobs announcement, hopped to La Crosse to sign two economic bills, gave a radio address and headed to his home near Milwaukee, where he gave a Fox & Friends interview the next morning.

His calendars highlight what political scientists call a key political strategy — a constant public-relations focus in a 24-hour news world.

“Scott Walker is a modern politician,” said Geoffrey Skelley, political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “He spends a lot of time in transit, doing public relations events, talking to people and trying to promote his agenda.

“As the population gets larger and people feel less connected to government officials, it’s a way to seem like you're still in touch with the people who put you in office,” Skelley said.

Walker spent about 530 hours on PR work. His top priority appeared to be his jobs agenda, at about one-fifth of that time, according to the Center’s analysis. Time spent networking with his base and with other politicians came in second.

During his first year in office, Walker visited at least two-thirds of Wisconsin’s counties and 12 other states, plus Washington, D.C. But he bypassed much of the northern third of Wisconsin.

Spokesman Werwie said, “While some counties are harder than others to visit given his hectic schedule, (Walker) has made it a priority to regularly have events and grant media interviews in all areas of the state.”

Pagani said Walker has leveraged his national attention well. If he wins the recall election, he’ll be a conservative hero. If he loses, he’ll be a martyr who can “travel the country saying, ‘I fought the good fight.’ ”

Explore interactive graphics of the governor’s calendars at www.wisconsinwatch.org/walkercalendars.

Coming Sunday, May 20: Who got access to Walker?

Super PAC cash plays big role in Nebraska Senate race

Nebraska,United States — 2012-05-15T19:10:46-04:00

For the second time in two weeks, super PACs will play a major role in determining the outcome of a U.S. Senate primary contest.

Republican Jon Bruning, Nebraska’s attorney general, was expected to win in a cakewalk for the seat, soon to be vacated by retiring Sen. Ben Nelson, a Democrat. Instead, two underfunded insurgent candidates — Don Stenberg and Deb Fischer — are giving him a run for his money, thanks in large part to a handful of outside groups.

Bruning has the fundraising advantage, having raised more than $3.6 million for his campaign. Stenberg has raised about $750,000, while Fischer has raised less than $440,000 for the race, including $35,000 of her own money.

But heading into today’s primary, conservative outside groups have spent more than $2 million on advertising, according to Federal Election Commission records, with nearly $1 million going toward ads attacking Bruning. The ads appear to have been effective — Bruning’s numbers have slipped, according to recent polls.

“This is an unusual amount of spending for a Nebraska primary,” said Michael Wagner, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “I don’t think the Bruning campaign foresaw this.”

Last week, outside groups led by the conservative Club for Growth spent millions in the GOP U.S. Senate primary election in Indiana, where six-term incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar lost to Richard Mourdock, a tea party favorite.

The Club is again flexing its muscles in Nebraska, where it supports Stenberg. So far, its super PAC, called Club for Growth Action, has reported spending more than $714,000 opposing Bruning, mostly on radio and TV ads.

Only Sen. Jim DeMint’s leadership PAC, known as the Senate Conservatives Fund, has spent more on independent expenditures. DeMint’s group has invested more than $947,000 on messages touting Stenberg.

But while polls show that Bruning’s standing has fallen, Stenberg hasn’t experienced a boon. Instead, Fischer, who was endorsed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin last week, has seen a last-minute surge.

“The top two contenders spent a lot of time bloodying each other up, leaving the door open to an alternative who wasn’t bloodied up yet,” said Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, chair of the political science department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “The timing of the pro-Fischer spending couldn’t have been better.”

Since Friday, the Ending Spending Action Fund, a conservative super PAC, has spent more than $250,000 on a pair of last-minute ads designed to help Fischer across the finish line.

One ad, entitled, “Him: Anyone but Bruning,” plays ominous music as money rains down behind a picture of Bruning, who is accused of getting rich while in office. The other, entitled, “Her: Rancher, Mother, Leader,” plays more upbeat music and urges viewers to “surprise the world” and vote for Fischer, who is described as “conservative outsider” and “one of us.”

The super PAC — along with its sister nonprofit group, Ending Spending, Inc., which is organized under section 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code — advocate for decreasing government spending, balancing the budget and reducing the federal debt.

Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010 and a lower court ruling, super PACs like the Ending Spending Action Fund can accept unlimited contributions and pay for ads that advocate for the election or defeat of federal candidates.

The ads cannot be coordinated with the candidates they support.

The Ending Spending Action Fund has reported raising about $1.2 million through March, when it filed its most recent campaign finance report. At that time, the super PAC had less than $2,000 cash on hand.

Joe Ricketts, the founder of the financial services giant now known as TD Ameritrade, is the super PAC’s sole individual donor. (Ending Spending, Inc., where Ricketts is the chairman and CEO, is the sole organizational contributor and has donated about $21,000 in “legal services.”)

Ricketts — a native of Nebraska who now lives in Little Jackson Hole, Wyo. — could not be reached for comment. But Brian Baker, the president of Ending Spending, confirmed that Ricketts was behind the cash boost that allowed the super PAC to play a role in the Nebraska Senate contest on Fischer’s side.

“We think she will be the strongest general election candidate,” Baker said, adding that Fischer was surging in the polls “well before we decided to place any ads.”

Baker declined to discuss if the Ending Spending Action Fund would continue to invest money in the race if Fischer loses the primary.

The winner is expected to face former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey, the one-time governor of Nebraska, who is expected to be a formidable foe.

Wagner, of the University of Nebraska, predicted that outside groups will continue to be a significant force in the general election, especially in states with competitive U.S. Senate races. Republicans hope to win control of the Senate this November.

“This is the tip of iceberg for what the fall will bring,” Wagner said.

Another $250 million drink for missile defenses

United States — 2012-05-16T10:50:35-04:00

The talk of the defense world is the budget — specifically, how to shrink it and what will be cut, due to Congressional wrangling or the looming “sequestration”. Given the new austerity pressures, it’s noteworthy that a costly program targeted for cancellation by both the administration and the Congress has gotten a new government check for a quarter of a billion dollars — and, if the Pentagon gets its wish, will get another $400 million soon.

But that’s what happened with the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS), a putative replacement for the Patriot missile defense system. It has been plagued with so many cost overruns and delays that DoD and Congress both agreed last year to pull the plug — although conflict remains over the timetable.

The Pentagon decided to keep paying until the program attained a “proof of concept,” a status that falls well short of production and deployment but would in theory allow the U.S. or its foreign partners to restart the project later if they chose. DoD requested a total of $804 million over 2012 and 2013. But Congress disagreed, and agreed to fund only the first year.

Two developments have brought MEADS back into the news. The first was the Pentagon’s contractual payment of another $250 million for the project to finish the first year (hat tip to Tony Capaccio and Roxana Tiron of Bloomberg News for reporting this). In addition, the Pentagon has now asked again for another $400 million to finance the second year of work, setting off renewed objections from lawmakers opposed to pouring more funds into a weapon system unlikely to play a real-life role. The House Armed Services Committee has in fact rejected additional funding for the program, a decision that evoked strong objections from the White House in a statement Tuesday evening.

Pentagon officials have said a key reason for keeping the program going is help project partners Germany and Italy, providing “a meaningful capability” for them and “a possible future option for the U.S.” Since the project began in 1995, the U.S. has contributed 58 percent of the funds, while Germany provided 25 percent and Italy 17 percent. The venture is led by Lockheed Martin, in collaboration with a German firm, LFK-Lenkflugkörpersysteme, and the international MBDA-Systems Inc.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon did not return a request for comment, but Frank Kendall, the acting under secretary for acquisition, defended the costs at a March hearing as “not just a contract” but rather “an agreement with two of our … closest international partners.” The White House statement said cancelling it "would be perceived...as breaking our commitment...and could harm our relationship with our allies on a much broader basis." It also could inhibit the harvesting of technology from the program to use elsewhere, the statement said.

Kendall's argument at the hearing did not hold much water with Senator Mark Begich (D-AK), who acknowledged the importance of good international relations, but asked why “we are paying the tab” for “a system we are not really going to use fully.”

Begich and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) earlier called for the program to be cancelled before the proof of concept phase has ended. “The Department of Defense has stated that it does not intend to procure MEADS,” the senators wrote in a March letter. “Facing a serious fiscal crisis, we cannot afford to spend a single additional dollar on a weapons system such as MEADS that our warfighters will never use.”

A request for comment from Lockheed, a main MEADS contractor, was not returned. But their homepage contains a number of press releases defending the project, including an editorial from retired Maj. Gen. James Cravens, a former Commandant of the Air Defense Artillery School hired by Lockheed in 2004. He denies a cost overrun and scoffs at the idea that Patriot systems, produced by both Lockheed and rival Raytheon Corporation, are enough to protect troops.

“Today’s threats have outgrown the Patriot missile-defense system — just ask a soldier,” writes Cravens, who says upgrading the Patriot is a bad investment “because of its Cold War architecture and technology limitations.” (There has been speculation that technology developed for the MEADS project could be used to upgrade the Patriot.)

Unlike the Patriot system, widely deployed around the globe by both the U.S. and other countries, MEADS was supposed to be more mobile and be able to target missiles coming from all directions. According to the MEADS contractor website, the new system would cover “eight times” the range of the Patriot missile defense systems, with a focus of targeting low to medium altitude missiles, drones and other airborne vehicles and weapons.

Initially projected to cost $3.4 billion to develop, a 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report put the total cost of procuring the 48 systems at $16.5 billion, almost five times the initial projection. The report said the project was “at risk of not meeting several technical performance measures, including assembly, disassembly, and emplacement times, especially in extreme temperatures.”

The report went on: “Requirements satisfaction, software maturity, and cost growth continue to be concerns” among Pentagon officials. in addition, the vehicles used to move the launchers failed to “meet all NATO road requirements, putting their ability to be deployed in question.” Its problems were not constrained to hardware — “the battle management software is delayed and the multifunction radar still faces hardware challenges,” according to a more recent GAO report.

Critics have also depicted the program, conceived in the wake of the Cold War and the first Gulf War, as unnecessary. Thomas Collina, research director of the Arms Control Association, said a number of short-range missile defense systems are already working, including the Patriot land based systems and SM-3 launchers equipped on sea-faring vessels. “If you’re looking to cut budgets, [MEADS] is an obvious target. ... It’s redundant, over-budget and hasn’t met performance expectations,” Collina said.

New GOP super PAC aimed at attracting youth vote

2012-05-14T16:28:50-04:00

Three Republican groups have formed a super PAC called “Crossroads Generation” and given it $750,000 in seed money in an attempt to attract the youth vote, a population that has traditionally eluded the GOP.

Announced Monday, the group was created by the American Crossroads super PAC, the College Republican National Committee and the Young Republican National Federation. Each of the three groups gave $250,000.

The organization says it wants to bring in young voters disillusioned by high unemployment and the national debt.

“Crossroads Generation aims to give a voice to a generation of Americans who are much worse off than they were four years ago,” said Derek Flowers, formerly of the Republican National Committee, who serves as the group’s executive director.

The Republican Party has not done well lately attracting young voters.

In 2008, young Americans favored Barack Obama by a two-to-one margin. Youth voters tend to favor Democratic presidential candidates over Republican candidates, though the gap was unusually large in 2008. Since 1992, the majority of voters ages 18 to 29 have voted Democrat in presidential elections, according to Surbhi Godsay, a researcher at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), a research center based at Tufts University.

American Crossroads has raised $28 million for the 2012 election for spending on Republican candidates. The group was created by Republican operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie. Super PACs can raise unlimited funds from wealthy individuals, corporations and labor unions to spend on advertising.

The other two founding groups report a membership of 350,000.

The super PAC debuted a website along with a Facebook page and Twitter handle. Monday, it launched a $50,000 online campaign with ad buys in eight states targeted at young swing voters. It also plans to take advantage of the College Republican group’s presence on 1,800 campuses to promote its message.

Branded, “XG,” the splashy website asks, “Are you part of the Crossroads Generation?” and invites visitors to upload videos, photos and text stories about what it’s like being a young person in today’s economic environment.

As of late Monday, the Federal Election Commission had not posted a record of the group’s registration.

OPINION: Palin's rhetoric torpedoed Medicare savings

2012-05-14T12:37:38-04:00

We’ll be hearing a lot from politicians this summer and fall about the urgency of dealing with Medicare spending, which will begin to rise sharply in the coming years as increasing numbers of the country’s 75 million baby boomers turn 65.

If we’re fortunate, some courageous candidates will call for renewed debate on a provision of the health care reform bill that had once enjoyed bipartisan support. The one that spineless Democrats decided had to be yanked when a certain former vice presidential nominee claimed, falsely, that it would create government-run “death panels.”

Medicare expenditures now total more than half a trillion dollars annually, representing 15 percent of federal spending. The only programs to which the government devotes more dollars are Social Security and national defense, both of which consume 20 percent of yearly federal outlays.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that the average annual growth in Medicare spending will be 5.8 percent between 2012 and 2020. It would have been one percentage point higher than that, according to the CBO, if not for the cost-constraining provisions of the Affordable Care Act, most notably the one that will gradually eliminate the bonuses the government pays private insurers to participate in the Medicare Advantage program.

The Affordable Care Act might have been able to curtail spending further if it hadn’t been for Sarah Palin’s reckless rhetoric. It was Palin who charged that a provision of the law allowing Medicare to pay doctors for having end-of-life discussions with their patients would lead to government-run “death panels.”

That provision was important because, according to the Congressional Research Service, about one-fourth of total Medicare spending is for the last year of life, and a lot of that spending could be avoided if more folks received counseling from their doctors on what they should do to ensure that their wishes are carried out when the grim reaper comes calling.

No one understands this better than Dan Morhaim, an adjunct professor in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and deputy majority leader of the Maryland House of Delegates. Morhaim, who also has been an emergency room physician and internist, has seen many cases in which people were hooked up to machines in vain attempts to restore their health — so many, in fact, that he wrote a book that should be required reading on Capitol Hill.

After reading Morhaim’s book, “The Better End—Surviving (and Dying) on Your Own Terms in Today’s Modern Medical World,” you’ll want to be sure you have a living will or advance directive in place—for your own good, for your family’s good and for your country’s as well.

Advance directives, which allow you to specify the kind of care you want as you approach the end of life, “offer something rare and important in our modern medical system,” Morhaim wrote. “They provide an opportunity to exert influence.”

And that’s never been more important, Morhaim contends. “As the baby boom generation reaches its senior years, as new lifesaving medical treatments are announced almost weekly and as our health care system confronts a crisis of affordability, the need is urgent for ordinary people to demand participation in end-of-life decisions.”

Another physician lawmaker who once shared Morhaim’s passion on this issue is Rep. Charles Boustany of Louisiana. Boustany, a heart surgeon, was one of three Republicans who cosponsored a bill in 2009 that formed the basis of the provision Palin maligned and mischaracterized.

When other Republicans began adopting Palin’s talking point, Boustany was forced to defend his support of the original bill. He was quoted as saying that he knew of many situations in which a critically ill patient hadn’t made his wishes known, leaving family members with the burden of making end-of-life treatment decisions. “This happens every day, multiple times, in hospitals across the country,” he said. “It’s a very important issue.”

The principal sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said he was stunned when the controversy erupted. “It’s just beyond bizarre,” he told reporters at the time, noting that his bill had broad bipartisan support before Palin posted the death-panel charge on her Facebook page.

What was a good idea then is a good idea now, but Palin so poisoned the well that not a single Republican, not even Boustany, will go near it, certainly not in an election year. Blumenauer has reintroduced the measure as a stand-alone bill, and it has several cosponsors. But as you might imagine, all of them are Democrats. And because Republicans now control the House, Blumenauer hasn’t even been able to get a hearing on the measure.

There is still some hope that the bill might someday become law. Boustany indicated in a 2009 interview that he and other proponents might be willing to back it again “at some point when the temperature has cooled down.”

Many families—and the Medicare program—will be better off if that moment comes sooner rather than later.

Package from Yemen leads to worker illness, government stonewalling

2012-05-14T06:00:01-04:00

Paz Oquendo, a worker at the U.S. Postal Service’s Orlando sorting facility, smelled the noxious odor first. It was Feb. 4, 2011, and the foul stench was coming from one of the large mailbags hanging near the package-conveyor belts.

She ran over to Jeffrey A. Lill, the 44-year-old shift supervisor who was monitoring the sorting from a platform, and reported the smell.

“I can’t breathe,” Oquendo told Lill.

Lill headed toward the center of the sorting floor — an area workers call “the belly” — to investigate the odor.

Then he smelled it — a strong chemical stench he couldn’t identify. It was coming from a bag wet with a brown viscous substance. Lill looked in the wet sack and saw a broken package with tubes and wires sticking out. He remembers reading the return address with surprise: Yemen. Four months earlier, two bombs from Yemen had been sent through FedEx and UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service had alerted everyone to be on the lookout for packages coming from the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.

Fearing the package was a hazard, Lill ordered the 40 postal employees out of the belly and immediately opened the large bay doors to ventilate the facility. Lill then moved the bag to a cart and pushed it for nearly half a mile to the hazmat shed.

After the package was out of the building, Lill radioed his manager to notify her of the suspicious spill. She told him the next on-duty supervisor would finish handling the incident.

Lill’s throat burned, and the gas had given him a headache. He called his mother in Rochester, N.Y.

“I want you know what happened at the Post Office,” Janet Vieau, 64, a real estate agent, remembered him telling her. “It might be on the news.”

But the incident never made the news. In fact, USPS did not investigate the suspicious package as a security or health threat and did not report it to the Department of Homeland Security, as is the protocol.

The package, now missing, has created a mystery — and solving that mystery could be the key to saving Lill’s life. In the weeks after his exposure to the package, Lill fell devastatingly and inexplicably ill. He suffers from extreme fatigue, tremors, and liver and neurological problems consistent with toxic exposure. He has become so sick that he cannot work and now must be cared for his by mother in New York. Lill’s doctors say they have no way to treat him without knowing what chemicals were inside the package.

All the while, USPS has refused to investigate, stating through lawyers that the incident never occurred. But the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, in partnership with the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley, uncovered related documents and interviewed two whistleblowers who confirm what happened on Feb. 4, 2011 — proving that USPS has refused to investigate not only the potential cause for the illness of an employee, but also what could have been a chemical weapon in Florida.

“I think they’ve just been protecting themselves,” said George Chuzi, a Washington, D.C., lawyer, who is helping Lill and his family pressure USPS to investigate. “If we’re right, they didn’t do something they were supposed to do.”

* * *

Today, Lill lives with his mother in Rochester, N.Y. In a bedroom painted blue, with lights off and curtains drawn, Lill sleeps up to 16 hours a day in a hospital bed.

“He was so vital, so energetic and so personable,” said Vieau, his mother. “He would play basketball and the drums.”

But now Lill is bedridden. “He can watch a DVD, and that’s about it,” Vieau said.

Within two weeks of the Feb. 4, 2011, incident, Lill came down with flu symptoms. He also had insomnia and was disoriented. “It would go away, but each time it came back, it would come back longer,” Lill said, lying in bed with thick curtains blocking out a sunny afternoon in late March — more than a year after the incident.

By June 2011, Lill’s symptoms intensified. He had lost 25 pounds from his trim frame. His liver and appendix were inflamed. He wound up in the hospital with a bleeding ulcer and esophagus. The next month, Lill sat in the dark in his home in Lady Lake, Fla., unable to get out of his recliner and spend time with the two teenagers under his care: his own 17-year-old son and the son of a friend under his guardianship. Lill is divorced.

In his decade of working for USPS, Lill rarely missed a day on the job. But by August 2011, he began what’s become a permanent medical leave.

The next month, Lill’s gallbladder was removed in an attempt to give him relief from his nausea and stomach pain. Days after the procedure, his symptoms returned. Doctors couldn’t explain why. By the end of September, Lill’s mother realized her son could not take care of himself anymore, and she brought him to New York.

Vieau now works in a home office next to Lill’s bedroom, constantly listening in case he is stricken with tremors. “I’ll hear things shaking,” she said. “I have to comfort him, to hold him.”

Lill’s exposure to the suspicious package is the only answer left to his unexplainable health problems. He’s seen more than two dozen doctors, including toxicologists and neurologists, and none has been able to diagnose his illness.

“Unless we know exactly what Jeff was exposed to, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack,” said Richard Aguirre, one of Lill’s doctors. “If we knew what the toxin is, we could work back and try to find a cure.”

But to this day, USPS denies that Lill was exposed to a potentially toxic package from Yemen.

In a March 9 letter to Chuzi, USPS lawyer Isabel M. Robison wrote: “A review of Postal Service records and multiple inquiries at both the Area and District levels has confirmed — as we previously indicated — that there was no hazardous spill on February 4, 2011 at the Orlando MP Annex.”

* * *

After her shift at the USPS facility in Orlando on an April evening, Paz Oquendo sat on a couch in a hotel room on International Drive. Next to her was coworker Yolanda Ocasio. At the risk of losing their jobs, Oquendo and Ocasio said USPS is lying and covering up the incident. They were there when Lill removed the noxious package from Yemen.

“I don’t understand why the Post Office won’t admit that it happened and do something to help Jeff,” Oquendo said.

In interviews with FCIR, Oquendo and Ocasio confirmed in detail Lill’s recounting of what occurred in Orlando on Feb. 4, 2011. FCIR also obtained a time-stamped email Lill sent to his supervisor, Cynthia Hickman, reporting the exposure to a potentially toxic substance that day. (Hickman did not respond to requests for comment.)

Why, despite paper records and two whistleblowers’ accounts, USPS refuses to investigate the incident is something of a whodunit. But it’s also a national security concern, demonstrating how USPS may not have investigated a potential terrorist attack in Florida.

In October 2010, four months before Lill came in contact with the package, authorities intercepted two packages from Yemen with bomb materials hidden inside printer ink cartridges. One was discovered in Britain aboard a UPS cargo plane and the other was found in a FedEx warehouse in Dubai. USPS briefly stopped accepting mail from the country. Yemeni police then arrested a suspect in the case, and deliveries from Yemen to the United States resumed.

But USPS being on the front lines of counterterrorism is nothing new. Since the 2001 anthrax attacks — during which anthrax-laced letters were mailed to news media and two U.S. Senators, killing five and infecting 17 others — USPS has been on alert for the next attack.

That’s why U.S. Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle, R-N.Y., wants answers about what happened in Orlando on Feb. 4, 2011. Buerkle, whose district includes Lill’s new residence in Rochester, has pressured USPS to investigate what she views as a credible report of a possible chemical weapon.

“We are not satisfied with the level of responsiveness from the Postal Service,” said Timothy Drumm, Buerkle’s chief of staff. “We want to see if the appropriate steps were taken by the Post Office, to see if the employees are safe. But since they say the incident did not happen, we can’t even get that far.”

USPS officials in Washington, D.C., and Florida declined to comment on Buerkle’s call for an inquiry and on the two whistleblowers who have come forward.

* * *

When Lill is awake and lucid, he expresses frustration that his employer won’t acknowledge the incident that may have made him so ill.

Squeezing his eyes shut, his hand trembling, Lill admitted he didn’t follow protocol for handling a spill. Rushing to protect fellow employees, Lill did not follow USPS rules that required him to put on a protective suit before handling the parcel. Because of that, he said, liquid from the package touched his skin. It was brown, syrupy and difficult to wash off.

“I wanted to make sure they got out because one employee had gotten a headache and I got mine pretty quickly,” Lill said. “If I had followed the rules, I guess we would have had a lot more people exposed to it.”

Lill has good and bad days. During the bad ones, he struggles to distinguish reality from dream. “I’ve heard him speaking Spanish in his room, to nobody,” Vieau said, referring to how her son learned Spanish while working at USPS. “Sometimes he’ll laugh and smile and gesture. But he’s not there.”

Lill’s doctors say his symptoms are consistent with exposure to a neurotoxin. To identify which neurotoxin, Lill needs USPS to acknowledge the incident, determine whether the package is in USPS’s possession or was transferred from the hazmat shed to a third-party contractor’s landfill in Kentucky, and then test its contents.

He’s hopeful that if they can find the package, he could be well again.

“I just want my health to be the way it was,” Lill said.

The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit news organization supported by foundations and individual contributions. For more information, visit fcir.org.

Interactive: Gov. Walker's calendar

2012-05-14T06:00:01-04:00

VIDEO: What kind of defense budget would the American public make?

2012-05-11T11:11:33-04:00

Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation; Matthew Leatherman, analyst, Stimson's Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense project; and R. Jeffrey Smith, managing editor for national security, Center for Public Integrity discuss the findings of their defense spending poll on May 10, 2012, at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.

About this story:

2012-05-10T16:40:31-04:00

This story was reported by J.J. Barrow and Trevor Aaronson for the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting.

Watchdog 5/10/12

2012-05-10T17:32:57-04:00

New International Investigations Website

Crime and corruption don't stop at national borders. That's why the Center launched the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 1997. This unique group is comprised of 160 member journalists in 60 countries who investigate bad actors and trans-global issues across the world.

This week, ICIJ unveiled a new website showcasing its award-winning work. I invite you to take a look. There you'll find the full Looting the Seas investigation on worldwide overfishing; Dangers in the Dust, an expose of the deadly international asbestos trade; and Island of the Widows, an ongoing investigation of a mysterious kidney ailment afflicting farm laborers in Latin America. The site also includes information on a new ICIJ investigation of international tax havens.

With deep reporting cutbacks in media outlets in the U.S., the intrinsic value of the Center and ICIJ's global investigative work grows daily. We dig into the toughest and most important stories other media simply aren't able to cover.

Until next week,

Bill Buzenberg
Executive Director

Public supports cuts in defense budget to address deficits
Three-quarters of Americans support cutting the defense budget as a way to reduce the deficit, according to a new poll sponsored by the Center for Public Integrity, the Stimson Center and the Program for Public Consultation. The conclusion is bipartisan: 80 percent of Democrats and 66 percent of Republican respondents supported the cuts. Respondents were presented the defense budget broken down into nine major areas, presented arguments for and against cutting each area, and asked to change each area up or down as they saw fit. Majorities made cuts in all areas. Overall, spending was cut an average of 18 percent, with Republicans trimming an average of 15 percent and Democrats 22 percent.

Lugar loses to super PACs
Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar lost in the Indiana Republican primary on Tuesday to Richard Mourdock, a tea party favorite who enjoyed huge backing from super PACs. According to the most recent campaign finance filings with the Federal Election Commission, outside groups supportive of Mourdock spent about $3 million, $1 million more than Mourdock's own campaign.

ALEC exempted from lobbyist status in three states
It could take several years for the IRS to decide whether the American Legislative Exchange Council is indeed a lobbyist required to register with that label and disclose how much it spends on influencing legislation. But in three states — South Carolina, Indiana and Colorado — it turns out that ALEC has quietly, and by name, been specifically exempted from lobbyist status.

Governor cites Center integrity investigation
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad signed a bill last week creating the Iowa Public Information Board, a nine-member commission that will oversee and enforce the state's open records laws. Branstad noted that the lack of enforcement was highlighted by the State Integrity Investigation and affected Iowa's overall grade. Iowa ranked 7th among the 50 states and earned an overall grade of C+.

About this story

2012-05-15T15:05:08-04:00

This story was reported by Kate Golden and Amy Karon for the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. Check back Wednesday and Sunday for parts two and three of the series.

Public overwhelmingly supports large defense spending cuts

2012-05-16T11:41:37-04:00

While politicians, insiders and experts may be divided over how much the government should spend on the nation’s defense, there’s a surprising consensus among the public about what should be done: They want to cut spending far more deeply than either the Obama administration or the Republicans.

That’s according to the results of an innovative, new, nationwide survey by three nonprofit groups, the Center for Public integrity, the Program for Public Consultation and the Stimson Center. Not only does the public want deep cuts, it wants those cuts to encompass spending in virtually every military domain — air power, sea power, ground forces, nuclear weapons, and missile defenses.

According to the survey, in which respondents were told about the size of the budget as well as shown expert arguments for and against spending cuts, two-thirds of Republicans and nine in 10 Democrats supported making immediate cuts — a position at odds with the leaderships of both political parties.

The average total cut was around $103 billion, a substantial portion of the current $562 billion base defense budget, while the majority supported cutting it at least $83 billion. These amounts both exceed a threatened cut of $55 billion at the end of this year under so-called “sequestration” legislation passed in 2011, which Pentagon officials and lawmakers alike have claimed would be devastating.

“When Americans look at the amount of defense spending compared to spending on other programs, they see defense as the one that should take a substantial hit to reduce the deficit,” said Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation (PPC), and the lead developer of the survey. “Clearly the polarization that you are seeing on the floor of the Congress is not reflective of the American people.”

A broad disagreement with the Obama administration’s current spending approach — keeping the defense budget mostly level — was shared by 75 percent of men and 78 percent of women, all of whom instead backed immediate cuts. That view was also shared by at least 69 percent of every one of four age groups from 18 to 60 and older, although those aged 29 and below expressed much higher support, at 92 percent.

Disagreement with the Obama administration’s continued spending on the war in Afghanistan was particularly intense, with 85 percent of respondents expressing support for a statement that said in part, “it is time for the Afghan people to manage their own country and for us to bring our troops home.” A majority of respondents backed an immediate cut, on average, of $38 billion in the war’s existing $88 billion budget, or around 43 percent.

Despite the public’s distance from Obama’s defense budget, the survey disclosed an even larger gap between majority views and proposals by House Republicans this week to add $3 billion for an extra naval destroyer, a new submarine, more missile defenses, and some weapons systems the Pentagon has proposed to cancel. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has similarly endorsed a significant rise in defense spending.

When it comes to military forces, respondents on average favored at least a 27 percent cut in spending on nuclear arms — the largest proportional cut of any in the survey. They also supported, on average, a 23 percent cut for ground forces, a 17 percent cut for air power and a 14 percent cut for missile defenses. Modest majorities also said they favored dumping some major individual weapons programs, including the costly F-35 jet fighter, a new long-range strategic bomber, and construction of a new aircraft carrier.

“Surveyed Americans cut to considerably deeper levels than policymakers are willing to support in an election season,” said Matthew Leatherman, an analyst with the Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense Project at the Stimson Center, a nonprofit research and policy analysis organization that helped develop the survey.

While Republicans generally favored smaller cuts, they overwhelmingly agreed with both independents and Democrats that current military budgets are too large. A majority of Republicans diverged only on cutting spending for special forces, missile defenses, and new ground force capabilities.

The survey, which was conducted in April, was designed differently than many polls on defense spending, which have asked respondents only if they support a cut. Its aim was instead to probe public attitudes more comprehensively, and so it supplied respondents with neutral information about how funds are currently being spent while exposing them to carefully-drafted, representative arguments made by advocates in the contemporary debate. The respondents then said what they wished to spend in key areas.

The survey’s methodology and the number of respondents — 665 people randomly selected to represent the national population — render its conclusions statistically reliable to within 5 percent, according to the Program on Public Consultation, which conducted it.

Somewhat surprisingly, all of the pro and con arguments about cutting defense spending attracted majority support, suggesting that respondents found many elements in the positions of each side that they considered reasonable. It also suggests that the survey fairly summarized contrasting viewpoints.

Sixty-one percent agreed, for example, with a statement that the U.S. has special defense responsibilities because it is an exceptional nation, while 72 percent said the country is “playing the role of military policeman too much.” Fifty-four percent agreed that cutting defense spending is problematic because it will cause job losses, while 81 percent — in one of the largest points of consensus — agreed with a statement that the budget had “a lot of waste” and that members of Congress regularly approve unneeded spending just to benefit their own supporters.

The survey suggested, in short, that most people do not see the issue in starkly black or white terms, but instead hold complex views about the appropriate relationship between defense spending and America’s role in the world. “Most Americans are able to hold two competing ideas in their mind and, unlike Congress, thoughtfully recognize the merits of both,” Kull explained. “And then [they] still come to hard and even bold decisions.”

The survey also showed that Americans react differently when given data on the current defense budget in different contexts — providing some insight into how partisans on each side of the debate might tailor their arguments to attract support.

When framed, for example, in the context of military spending by other countries, or the portion of the so-called annual discretionary budget devoted to defense, or the amount of money spent for defense during the Cold War, most respondents said they were surprised by how large the U.S. budget is now. But when compared to the overall size of the U.S. economy, or the size of the other two leviathans in the federal budget — U.S. spending on Medicare or Social Security — most respondents said they were not surprised.

By far the most durable finding — even after hearing strong arguments to the contrary — was that existing spending levels are simply too high. Respondents were asked twice, in highly different ways, to say what they thought the budget should be, and a majority supported roughly the same answer each time: a cut of at least 11 to 13 percent (they cut on average 18 to 22 percent).

In one exercise, a larger group chose to cut the defense budget (62 percent supported this) than to cut non-defense spending (50 percent) or to raise taxes (27 percent). They then chose to cut deeply as a means to address the deficit. In yet another exercise, respondents first read pro and con arguments for the nine major mission areas that now compose almost 90 percent of the budget; then a majority of Republicans and Democrats selected lower levels in eight of the nine areas.

For example, two-thirds of the respondents, including 78 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Republicans, and 57 percent of independents, cut spending on nuclear arms. Respondents on average also sought to cut ground forces the largest dollar amount. The sole program that attracted average support for more spending was the Pentagon’s effort to develop new capabilities for ground forces, but the suggested increase was slight and mostly embraced by Republicans and independents.

Majorities took these steps even though they expressed slightly higher support, on average, for statements in favor of these programs than critical of them. Most notably, they said they were convinced that air power is important (77 percent), special forces are valuable (79 percent), and missile defense efforts are worth pursuing (74 percent), while giving arguments for the Navy and ground forces less backing (69 percent and 57 percent, respectively).

While most programs got either a trim or a buzz cut in the public salon, several won outright support. A majority opposed cutting the controversial V-22 Osprey, an aircraft that takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane. Even after being told its cancellation would save $1 billion, a clear majority backed its continued production. And even while most respondents favored killing the new strategic bomber, they solidly backed continuing to use bombers to carry nuclear arms as part of a “triad” of forces, alongside land and sea based missiles.

Whether the weight of public attitudes will be felt in Congress and the White House is unclear. As close students of Washington know, legislative outcomes here are often determined not by average views, but by the passionate convictions of noisy minorities. As a result, it’s worth noting which arguments attracted not just support from solid majorities but high rankings as “very convincing.”

These are summaries of some of those arguments: It is time to let the Afghanis fend for themselves (43 percent called this very convincing). There is a lot of waste in the defense budget (39 percent very convincing). Special forces are useful and effective (36 percent very convincing). We are playing the role of world policeman too much (29 percent very convincing). Missile defenses could help defend us (27 percent very convincing). Air power is critical (26 percent very convincing). Nuclear arms serve little purpose now (26 percent very convincing). Defense spending weakens other parts of the economy (25 percent very convincing).

“Americans’ views as expressed in this survey are a big reason why policymakers — after the election — are likely to tighten the Pentagon’s strategy and cut national defense spending more deeply,” said Leatherman, the Stimson Center analyst.

Public offers mixed support for military healthcare changes

2012-05-10T10:00:01-04:00

The military has long prided itself on the medical and other benefits it supplies members, both active duty and retired. They have been a major selling point for the all-volunteer force. But with new budget austerity pressures, the military has been forced to consider cutting these benefits.

The public has mixed feelings on this, according to the results of an innovative, new, nationwide survey developed by three nonprofit groups, including the Program for Public Consultation, the Center for Public Integrity and the Stimson Center.

Military personnel costs have nearly doubled since the start of fiscal year 2001, according to calculations by Lawrence J. Korb, a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress and a former assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan. If the costs are not controlled, Korb says, they will eat away at the military’s budget, forcing vital training and modernization programs to the side.

Dealing with this issue was a challenge for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who opposed expanding TRICARE to National Guard members in 2003 and in 2006 pushed for raised fees similar to what the Obama administration has called for in its latest budget. The problem also haunted Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who said of the problem in 2010 “Everybody knows that we’re being eaten alive by health care.”

Under the Obama administration’s 2013 budget, non-active military employees in TRICARE, the main health system, would see an increase in co-pays for medicines among as well as enrollment fees for special TRICARE programs. The administration believes these extra fees would save $34.5 billion in discretionary funds and $16.5 billion in mandatory funds over the next ten years.

The President’s budget proposal also includes a 1.7 percent increase in military pay, which would kick in for fiscal year 2015; it is meant to offset some of the new fees.

But House Republicans have indicated they intend to do away with the TRICARE fee increase, and the issue is expected to be a point of heavy debate during budget markups. The issue has also been raised on the campaign trail. Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has seized on the TRICARE cuts as a potential political issue. “Right now the president is cutting back on spending. And that's something that has to happen,” Romney said during a March debate. But he's only cutting back in the military. He's going after Tricare. Saying ‘OK, we're going to — we're going to raise the co-pays. We're going to cut the benefits.’ Why is it we go after military families?”

According to the survey, however, increasing the co-pays is supported by a solid majority of the American public — 59 percent. This change, which would not impact active duty military personnel, would save around $3 billion a year. A solid majority of the Republicans surveyed, moreover, expressed strong support for cutting military healthcare expenses and other personnel expenses — expressing a higher preference in many cases for that than cutting other military programs.

But overall, a proposal by the Obama administration to raise the annual premium on the families of military retirees younger than 65 from $520 to $1100 was rejected by those surveyed, 53% to 44%. That plan would save another $3 billion a year. A third proposal, changing the cap on military retirees out-of-pocket costs from $3,000 to $7,500, was also rejected by respondents, 63% to 34%, even though it would save an estimated $11 billion a year.

Health care costs were not the only benefit that survey respondents were asked to consider cutting. Currently, military families receive tax-exempt allowances for housing and food. These allowances are growing at a faster rate than basic military wages. Sixty-one percent of the respondents voted to slow the growth rate of these allowances, which resulted in $6 billion saved a year.

A narrower majority (52 percent) supported changing the pensions of new recruits to save $9 billion a year. Currently, military personnel can retire after 20 years and receive a pension, worth 50 percent of the average of their last three years of salary, for the rest of their lives. The respondents supported changing that pension for new recruits so that it begins only at age 60, and is worth 40 percent of the average of the last five years’ worth of salary.

The respondents also rejected a cap on military pay raises that would have saved $2 billion a year. Overall, respondents to the poll voted for cuts to military benefits of around $18 billion.

Korb, the author for a recent study on military benefits, argues that the Obama budget is not really making cuts to TRICARE, but rather is bringing costs “back into the agreed upon accepted standards.” When co-pays and fees were set in 1996, the government agreed that retirees would pick up 27 percent of the cost, with the government shouldering the rest. But with no fee increases in the ensuing years, the percentage that retirees are paying has dropped to around 10 percent; Obama’s budget proposal would raise it to around 14 percent.

Dive into defense survey documents

2012-05-10T10:00:01-04:00

Pour over survey results and analysis from the Stimson Center

How this survey was conducted

2012-05-10T10:00:01-04:00

This study was fielded over the internet from April 13th - 19th with 665 American adults selected as a representative sample of the American public. They are part of a nationwide panel of Knowledge Networks, a company started by two Stanford professors.The Program for Public Consultation, affiliated with the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, conducted the survey.

The panelists were recruited through a scientific process of selection using two methods: a random selection of possible US telephone numbers (also called random digit dial sampling, or RDD); and a random selection of residential addresses using the United States Postal Service's Delivery Sequence File (a complete list of all U.S. residential households — including households that have only cell phones, and are often missed in random-digit-dial sampling).

Persons were then invited by telephone or by mail to participate in something called the KnowledgePanel. Those who agree to participate but do not have Internet access were provided a laptop computer and Internet service. A representative sample is then chosen from all the panelists for a specific survey. Once that sample completes a survey the demographic breakdown of the sample is compared to the US census. Any variations from the census are adjusted by weighting.

Conducting surveys with this type of representative sample on line has proven superior to standard telephone surveys, because it is drawn from a pool that is more complete demographically. Also respondents can take as much time as they like to read and respond to questions, thus increasing the thoughtfulness of their answers. This method has increasingly become the preferred method for academic and government-sponsored surveys.

A recent study by the American Association of Public Opinion Research concluded that while 'opt-in' Internet panels have limited reliability for general population studies, probability-based Internet panels produce high quality data. This particular survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.8%.

More technical information is here.

Key defense survey charts

2012-05-10T10:00:01-04:00

Graphic visualizations of survey information and results.

Key findings:

2012-05-10T08:57:24-04:00

Americans want to cut the defense budget deeply to help deal with the deficit, more than they want to cut other programs or raise taxes.
There is broad consensus on this goal, including large majorities of Republicans, Democrats, young, old, males and females.
Around three-quarters of Americans think spending should be cut for air power, ground forces, and naval forces.
Nuclear arms were given the biggest proportional hit, while ground forces took the biggest dollar hit; special forces had the most support.
More than eighty percent of Americans are convinced “there is a lot of waste in the national defense budget.”

Is defense spending a budget priority for Americans? Stay tuned for survey results

2012-05-09T22:20:33-04:00

How close are congressional lawmakers to pursuing what Americans want in a defense budget? Is the Obama administration closer, or farther away, than Republicans?

Three nonprofit organizations — the Program for Public Consultation (PPC),* the Stimson Center, and the Center for Public Integrity — collaborated on a unique survey meant to answer these questions. The results of this innovative survey are set to be disclosed on Thursday morning, May 10. You can tune in to this website at 10 am EST, when a summary of the results will be posted, as well as the full survey, all the answers, and some graphic depictions of public attitudes. Or you can attend a press conference being held by all three organizations to discuss the results (details below).

As a third option, you can join us for a live Web discussion at 2:00pm EST, where you’ll be able to chat with Steven Kull of the Program for Public Consultation, Matthew Leatherman of the Stimson Center and R. Jeffrey Smith of the the Center for Public Integrity. Just enter your email address in the CoverItLive box on this page to get a reminder before the chat starts. We'll be taking questions live, but if you already have something you'd like us to talk about, feel free to email Cole Goins: cgoins [at] public integrity [dot] org, or leave it in the comments below.

We can’t tell you all the results just yet. But we can say with confidence that what Washington is doing is not what the American people say they want. This may or may not surprise you. But if you come back here tomorrow, you’ll find out what your neighbors, friends, and colleagues — on average — think about national security spending, and you’ll learn precisely all the ways that Washington has gotten off-track in this debate.

See details for the press conference here.

*The Program for Public Consultation is a joint program of the Center for Policy Attitudes and the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland.

ACCOUNTABILITY: Senators demand answers on behalf of military whistleblowers

2012-05-16T11:41:37-04:00

Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) want more information from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta about an inspector general's report criticizing the Pentagon's treatment of whistleblowers — a report first disclosed by the Center and the Project on Government Oversight.

Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and McCain, the panel's ranking member, made their feelings known Tuesday in a letter to Panetta.

"Last Sunday, the Washington Post reported on an 'internal Pentagon report' finding that the Department of Defense Inspector General unit responsible for protecting military whistleblowers had failed to do its job," wrote the Senators, referring to the Center story that was reprinted in the Post. "According to the article, the May 2011 report found 'persistent sloppiness and a systematic disregard for Pentagon rules meant to protect those who report fraud, abuses, and the waste of taxpayer funds.'

"We understand that this report was initiated and conducted by the Inspector General, and that the Inspector General has made a number of changes in an effort to address the problems identified in the report," the letter concludes. "Nonetheless, the systematic failure of the Department to protect military whistleblowers from reprisal is a matter of grave concern. Accordingly, we ask that you provide us with a copy of the report and advise us of the actions that have been taken and will be taken to address the problems identified in the report - including steps to re-open any reprisal cases that were inadequately investigated or erroneously dismissed."

The Center's report also elicited a response from Lynne M. Halbrooks, the acting inspector general for the Department of Defense. Halbrooks submitted a letter to the editor for Tuesday's Post defending her office, a letter noting that the review was conducted at her request and was conducted by staff from the inspector general's office.

"The increase in hiring of staff in support of military reprisal investigations and the changes to practice subsequently initiated were based on my review of the internal report," Halbroks concludes. "I am committed to continuing on a path to establish a model whistleblower program for the Department of Defense. "

HHS IG report highlights docs' questionable billing of Medicare

2012-05-09T08:30:01-04:00

Thousands of doctors across the country are billing Medicare for routine medical care at rates far above their peers, potentially costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in overcharges, according to a new government report.

The audit released today by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General stopped short of accusing the high-billing doctors of ripping off the government health plan for the elderly. But it stated that Medicare’s payment scales for doctors have been “vulnerable to fraud and abuse” in recent years.

The doctor payment scales are known as “Evaluation and Management” or E/M codes. Doctors choose from five escalating payment levels for treating patients based on the “amount of skill, effort, time responsibility and medical knowledge required for the service.” In 2010, almost 370 million E/M services were provided by about 442,000 doctors nationwide.

The code the doctor chooses can make a big difference to the bottom line. For instance, the Medicare fee for treating a new patient in 2010 ranged from $36.62 to $190.56, depending on the level of service provided by the doctor, and the code chosen for billing.

Using these codes, Medicare paid doctors and other health professionals $33.5 billion in 2010 for services ranging from routine office care to hospital or nursing homes visits.

That billing total represented a 48 percent jump since 2001, though the number of services delivered over the same time period grew only 13 percent. What the data reveal is that many doctors have been gravitating toward the codes that pay them higher fees for these routine services, a practice officials have struggled to understand and curb.

While billing for a higher code than warranted—a practice known as “upcoding” in medical circles—can be a crime, most of these cases are settled by asking the doctor to refund any overpayments. And given the sheer number of Medicare E/M claims, officials say they can do little more than trust the bills they receive are accurate and honest.

The inspector general’s audit suggests that officials have much work to do in policing the system and protecting tax dollars from doctors who take advantage of the lax oversight, however.

For instance, Medicare paid almost $108 million to some 1,669 physicians who billed the highest possible code for almost all of their visits in 2010, according to the audit. That amounts to a payment of $43 more than the average per service —even though there was little difference in the ailments they treated or the sickness of their patients, according to the audit.

In the same report, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it had identified 5,000 physicians across the country who have “consistently billed for high level” codes and would notify them this month in hopes of preventing “improper billing and payment in the future.”

Yet CMS officials noted that their inquiries were “not intended to be punitive, or as an indication of fraud.”

The inspector general audit, though it mentioned previous cases of fraud involving the E/M codes, offered no explanation for the upward shift in billing by so many doctors.

“We did not determine whether the E/M claims from these physicians were inappropriate,” the report said. It said that later evaluations “will determine the appropriateness” of these payments.

The auditors found abnormally high billing doctors in all parts of the country, but said they were most common in California, New York Florida and Texas.

The audit comes amid growing controversy over how to compensate doctors, particularly those who provide routine medical services in their offices.

In 1989, as Congress was struggling to control rising physician fees, it set up a Medicare physician payment schedule that used a complex formula to hold spending in check. The rates are adjusted to reflect differences between spending targets and actual outlay.

But every year, in what is known as the “doctor fix” Congress steps in to prevent doctor fees from being reduced. Many critics argue that Medicare should move away from the system that pays doctors a fee for every service they provide and begin paying them based on the quality of care they provide.

The Center for Public Integrity is conducting an in-depth reporting project examining Medicare spending and its consequences for the quality of medical services to the elderly.

Medicare fraud: What you need to know

2012-05-09T10:48:35-04:00

Since 2010, our Manipulating Medicare series has taken a hard look at the problems plaguing one of the nation’s most expensive public programs. This year's investigative pieces from iWatch News will look at questionable billing practices and political interference that directs Medicare spending in often-inefficient ways.

The big story in Medicare fraud last week was an unprecedented bust of 107 doctors, nurses and social workers who allegedly billed $452 million of fraudulent medical expenses to the taxpayer-funded program, as reported by the Associated Press. Though the crackdown was huge, Medicare fraud is believed to cost up to $90 billion annually, the scams associated with the recent arrests only represent a fraction of the overall problem.

Brief history:

Back in March 2007, agencies within the Department of Justice teamed up with the Department of Health and Human Services to create a Medicare Fraud Strike Force. It is a collaboration that became part of a larger initiative known as the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (H.E.A.T.) in 2009. Now with about two-dozen prosecutors in nine U.S. cities, the strike force has busted more than 1,300 people accused of billing the Medicare program for at least $4 billion (during FY2011 alone) in medical services that never happened.

Places to learn more:

“Medicare fraud rampant in South Florida”, by The Miami Herald, August 3, 2008
“111 charged with Medicare fraud in 9 cities” by The Washington Times, February 17, 2011
“Feds Fight Rampant Medicare Fraud in South Florida” by NPR’s "All Things Considered", November 6, 2007
“Senior-citizen volunteers fighting Medicare fraud” by the Associated Press, December 29, 2009
“52 arrested in sweeping Medicare fraud case” by The Los Angeles Times, October 14, 2010
“Rockwall doctor accused of fraud has long history of patient harm” by The Dallas Morning News [PAYWALL], February 28, 2012

SLIDESHOW: Looking at 4 years of H.E.A.T.

2012-05-09T09:31:10-04:00

Looking at 4 years of H.E.A.T.

Iowa governor cites State Integrity Investigation at bill signing

Iowa,United States — 2012-05-08T15:33:21-04:00

Iowa’s only F grade on the State Integrity Investigation was in the category of public access to information, partly due to a lack of strong enforcement measures.

But Governor Terry Branstad signed a bill last week that would create the Iowa Public Information Board, a nine-member commission that will oversee and enforce the state’s open records laws. The governor noted that the lack of enforcement was highlighted by the State Integrity Investigation and affected Iowa’s overall grade. Iowa ranked 7^th among the 50 states and earned an overall grade of C+.

“Hopefully this will move us up from [C+] to a better grade,” Branstad said at the signing on May 3.

On the scorecard’s public access information section, Iowa received low marks on questions about whether citizens could easily resolve appeals when requests are denied and whether there is an agency that effectively monitors the laws, initiates investigations, and imposes penalties on offenders.

Branstad hailed the creation of the new board as an “important and significant step forward” for government transparency and accountability. The board, which will consist of local advocates and journalists, will not only have the authority to hear complaints and negotiate settlements, but levy fines and order corrective action if necessary. Branstad said the board could be ready to operate July 1.

Good government advocates and journalists in Iowa applaud the new legislation, but also point out that the board would not have authority over the governor’s office, legislature, or judiciary. Most of its work, therefore, will involve state agencies of the executive branch.

ALEC exempted from lobbyist status in three separate states

Indiana,United States — 2012-05-08T15:26:01-04:00

This spring has brought constant controversy for the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative group of legislators and corporations that pushes free-market model legislation in the states — but it may not be over yet.

The tumult began with pressure from progressive groups Common Cause and Color of Change that caused 14 ALEC members, including Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Procter & Gamble, to drop out of the group. Thirty-four legislators have also quit.

Then ALEC announced in April it would shelve the task force that approved controversial voter identification laws and “stand your ground” gun laws that spread quickly in the states. And on April 20 Common Cause submitted a whistleblower complaint to the IRS, claiming ALEC is “a corporate lobbying group masquerading as a charity” that promises its donors a tax deduction.

It could take several years for the IRS to decide whether ALEC is indeed a lobbyist required to register with that label and disclose how much it spends on influencing legislation. But in three states — South Carolina, Indiana and Colorado — it turns out that ALEC has quietly, and by name, been specifically exempted from lobbyist status.

The laws in those states allow ALEC to spend millions annually hosting corporate lobbyists and legislators at three yearly conferences, send “issue alerts” to legislators recommending votes on pending legislation, and draft press releases for legislators to use when pushing ALEC model bills — all without registering as a lobbyist or reporting these expenditures.

Legislators can receive scholarships from ALEC’s corporate donors to attend conference events, or they can legally go on the taxpayer dime.

These exemptions are just now coming to light. In South Carolina, for instance, Rep. Boyd Brown (D-Fairfield) recently discovered a 2003 state law that exempts ALEC from registering or disclosing its lobbying expenditures. One of the South Carolina House bill’s sponsors was ALEC member James Harrison (R-Richland).

As reported in the Columbia Free Times, Brown introduced a bill in late April that would remove ALEC’s designation as the only organization in the state’s legal code that is exempted by name from lobbying rules.

“I can’t get in a car with a lobbyist and drive up the street,” said Brown in an interview. “But ALEC can give me a scholarship to fly across the country.”

The state’s lobbying law prohibits lobbyists from paying a legislator more than $400 a year for lodging, transportation, entertainment or food. At its task force meetings, ALEC covers two nights in a hotel and reimburses travel expenses up to $350. It also draws on corporate money to fund scholarships for legislators’ conference registration expenses, which range from $150 to $500.

In Colorado, the late state Rep. Thomas Ratterree successfully introduced a bill back in 1991 to amend ethics laws to exempt ALEC from lobbyist status. As a result, for ALEC legislators, “the expenses of such members for travel, board, and lodging related to such attendance [at ALEC events] may be paid from appropriations,” the state law reads.

The law also stipulates that if taxpayers are to foot the bill, then delegations to ALEC events “shall reflect equally the percentage of members from each party of the General Assembly.” All 18 of the state’s members, however, are Republican. Only a tiny fraction of ALEC’s 2,000 legislative members are not in the GOP, though the organization insists it is bipartisan.

Unlike the South Carolina law, the Colorado and Indiana statutes exempt several groups, not just ALEC. In Colorado, three other groups, including the Council of State Governments and the National Conference of State Legislators, are exempt.

In Indiana, six groups are expressly “not considered lobbyists”: the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, Women in Government, the National Conference of Insurance Legislators, the Council of State Governments, and the National Conference of State Legislatures, as well as ALEC.

ALEC member and Republican Speaker of the House Mike Murphy co-sponsored a 2010 Indiana ethics bill with Minority Leader Pat Bauer that laid out rules for lobbying disclosure. The original bill did not exempt any organizations by name. Bauer, a 42-year veteran of Indiana’s state House, says the Republican-led Senate Legislative Rules Committee amended the bill to exempt six organizations — including ALEC — before it came to a vote.

He supports revising the law to exclude ALEC. “Since the tsunami of 2010,” which gave Republicans new command in dozens of state legislatures, says Bauer, ALEC has pushed its legislation in Indiana more aggressively. “At the time this bill passed, they didn’t have that profile.”

But Julia Vaughn, director and lobbyist for Common Cause’s affiliate in Indiana, says any challenge to ALEC’s exemption would die quickly in the state’s heavily GOP legislature.

ALEC has deflected the negative press, arguing that the organization provides an educational, non-partisan resource for often understaffed state officials — and is no different from another exempt organization, the National Conference of State Legislatures. As corporations continue to drop their membership, ALEC’s press representatives claim they’ve been unfairly singled out by a left-wing “intimidation” campaign.”

The Denver-based National Conference of State Legislatures is a research and advocacy group that pools the resources of state legislators nationwide. Every state legislator is a member, making the group “as bipartisan as possible,” says Jon Kuhl, an analyst for NCSL. “Our president rotates every year between the parties.”

NCSL also endorses laws, but they face a high bar for NCSL’s seal of approval: legislators from across the political spectrum must pass them by a two-thirds majority. When NCSL does promote a law, it is usually something that members across party lines can agree on, like preserving state authority and battling unfunded federal mandates.

Both organizations do take corporate donations, but only in ALEC do corporations have voting rights. Alongside state legislators, representatives of corporate members propose and vote on the laws they want to see passed in states. Documents released this month by Common Cause show an overwhelming number of ALEC model bills get approved unanimously by task forces comprised of private and public sector members.

ALEC’s model laws and membership lists are kept private; NCSL’s endorsed laws are available online. These distinctions have led Common Cause affiliates in the states to demand that their attorneys general review and remove ALEC’s non-profit charity status.

Common Cause spent $190,000 last year as a registered federal lobbyist for campaign finance reform and President Obama’s jobs bill. Vaughn’s Indiana affiliate spent almost $11,000 in 2011 on lobbying, a figure it made publicly available in its filing with the state.

“ALEC spends a lot of time encouraging passage of laws, and everyone has a right to do that,” she says, “but they should have to disclose how much they spend doing it, just like us and the Chamber [of Commerce] and the AFL-CIO.”

Representatives of ALEC did not return multiple calls for comment, but its attorney Alan P. Dye told CBS News that the complaint to the IRS is “a tired campaign to abuse the legal system, distort the facts and tarnish the reputation of ideological foes.”

ALEC meetings have been conducted mostly behind the scenes for decades, but its conference later this week in Charlotte will likely draw more attention. Among the documents recently released by Common Cause is a schedule and agenda for the get-together. ALEC member think tanks from Michigan and Arizona will sponsor a slew of controversial model bills aimed at public sector unions. One would make it easier for public employees to call an election to decertify their union, and another would make it more difficult for unions to deduct dues from member paychecks.

Live chat: The public's agenda for military spending

2012-05-11T00:08:48-04:00

How would the American public shape the Pentagon's budget? Find out this Thursday, May 10, at 2pm EST as we discuss the findings of our new survey with the Program for Public Consultation and the Stimson Center gauging citizens' priorities for military spending.

Joining the live chat: Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation; Matthew Leatherman, analyst for Stimson Center's Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense project; and R. Jeffrey Smith, managing editor for national security at the Center for Public Integrity.

Enter your email below to get a reminder for the event. We'll be taking questions live, but if you already have something you'd like us to talk about, feel free to email Cole Goins: cgoins [at] public integrity [dot] org, or leave it in the comments below.

<a data-cke-saved-href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=640a218b8f" href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=640a218b8f" >Discussing the public's agenda for military spending</a>

What would your Pentagon budget look like?

Washington,United States — 2012-05-08T15:40:11-04:00

How would you cut military defense spending?

Super PACs outspend favorite candidate in Indiana Senate race

Indiana,United States — 2012-05-08T15:42:05-04:00

Super PACs and other outside groups are on track to spend more on tea party favorite Richard Mourdock in his battle to unseat Sen. Richard Lugar in Indiana’s Tuesday Republican primary than Mourdock’s own campaign, records show.

Lugar, a moderate known for his expertise in foreign affairs and national security, is in danger of seeing his 36-year run as a senator come to an end. Mourdock, the Indiana state treasurer, was leading Lugar by 10 points in a Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll released Friday.

Through the most recent campaign finance filings with the Federal Election Commission, outside groups supportive of Mourdock have spent about $3 million, $1 million more than Mourdock’s own campaign.

A total of $4.5 million has been spent on the race on independent expenditures so far, the most on a congressional race this season and a possible preview of elections to come.

“It's difficult to believe that Mourdock would have seriously threatened a six-term senator had he not had strong backing from the super PACS and other outside groups,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Sabato added that outside groups such as super PACs can be more influential in a U.S. Senate or U.S. House race than they can be at the presidential level.

“Voters get tons of free news coverage about the presidential candidates,” he said. “But often their only frequent sources of information about congressional candidates come from TV ads.”

Super PACs and certain nonprofits are permitted to accept unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals and spend the money on advertising to help elect or defeat a candidate. They were made possible thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and a lower court ruling in 2010.

They are not permitted to coordinate their spending activities with the candidates but can run ads that are virtually indistinguishable from those run by the candidates — except for the disclaimer at the end.

The top spender by far supporting Mourdock has been super PAC Club for Growth Action, an anti-tax organization unafraid to attack Republicans it considers to be too liberal on spending. It has spent about $1.5 million attacking Lugar and supporting Mourdock.

Barney Keller, the communications director of the Club for Growth said the organization was supporting Mourdock because he would “vote to cut taxes, eliminate wasteful spending and shrink the size of government.”

Club for Growth Action’s top supporter is Virginia James, an investor from Lambertville, N.J., who gave the group $1 million in January. James was personally thanked for her donations to conservative causes by the billionaire Koch Brothers, according to Mother Jones magazine at an event in 2011.

Other big donors include investment adviser Robert Arnott of Newport Beach, Calif., who gave $500,000 and tea party favorite Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who transferred $500,000 from his campaign to the super PAC in February, as the Center for Public Integrity previously noted.

The National Rifle Association spent nearly a half-million dollars helping out Mourdock. The NRA spending comes from its regulated political action committee. Unlike a super PAC or nonprofit, donations to the PAC are limited and must come from members of the organization. And no corporate or union money is allowed.

A Club for Growth ad says Lugar “voted for bailouts, tax hikes and Obama Supreme Court justices.” The NRA says Lugar is the only candidate in Indiana with a grade of “F” from the group.

The pro-tea party super PAC FreedomWorks for America spent about $580,000. A new group, called “USA Super PAC,” spent nearly $100,000 on a mailing supporting Murdock. This new super PAC is connected to GOP super lawyer Jim Bopp — who hails from Terre Haute, Ind., and has made a career out of challenging campaign finance regulations.

Democrats consider Lugar to be a more formidable opponent than Mourdock as evidenced by a Democratic super PAC called “Majority PAC” that spent $32,500 on online ads opposing the incumbent senator.

Lugar, meanwhile, has also had support from super PACs, having seen $1.5 million in outside spending by his allies, records show. Moreover, his campaign has outraised Mourdock’s, having brought in $5.9 million over the past six years.

Two super PACs materialized to support Lugar’s candidacy: “Indiana Values Super PAC” and “Hoosiers for Jobs.” Despite their names, neither is from Indiana. Indiana Values has a Washington, D.C. address while Hoosiers for Jobs is in Sacramento, Calif.

Nor has either PAC relied on money from Hoosiers. According to a Center for Public Integrity analysis, 90 percent of the Indiana Values Super PAC’s money has come from donors outside of Indiana, and out-of-staters are responsible for two-thirds of the money Hoosiers for Jobs has collected.

In an act of political hubris, Hoosiers for Jobs (formerly Hoosiers for Economic Growth and Jobs) ran an ad criticizing Mourdock and his support from outside groups. Two fifty-something, flannel-clad actors accuse Mourdock and “some D.C. special interest group, Club for Growth” of “trying to buy our Senate seat."

Hoosiers for Jobs received a $25,000 contribution from 7-Eleven Inc. on April 17. Corporations are permitted to fund super PACs, but such donations have been relatively rare. It may be tied to Lugar’s support of retailers in a battle with banks over debit card swipe fees last year and the fact that his daughter-in-law is a lobbyist for a retail trade association on whose board the president of 7-Eleven also sits.

7-Eleven spokeswoman Margaret Chabris said Lugar “understands our issues” and has a strong record for supporting small businesses. “Plus, he is popular among our Indiana franchisees,” she added.

For his part, Mourdock has been fueled by enthusiasm from tea party activists, as well as money from the banking industry, which is getting some payback for Lugar’s vote.

Bank political action committees have donated $19,550 to Mourdock’s campaign. Lugar, meanwhile, has gotten PAC contributions from the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), the National Association of Convenience Stores, the National Retail Federation, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Walgreens and Target.

The Indiana Values Super PAC has spent more than $450,000 on TV ads bashing Mourdock, and Hoosiers for Jobs has spent about $175,000 — also all on negative ads against Mourdock.

In addition to 7-Eleven, other big donors to Hoosiers for Jobs include former lobbyist Roy Pfautch of St. Louis ($50,000); Sam Fox, the St. Louis-based GOP fundraiser who served as President George W. Bush’s ambassador to Belgium ($25,000); and Jim Morris, the president of the Indiana Pacers NBA basketball team ($25,000).

Meanwhile, the top donor to the Indiana Values Super PAC is hedge fund executive Mark Dalton of Greenwich, Conn., who has donated $100,000. The No. 2 donor to the super PAC is its treasurer, Andrew Klingenstein, whose wife, Julie, is a former aide of Lugar’s. Klingenstein has donated $25,395 to the Indiana Values Super PAC as of the most recent filings with the FEC.

Former Goldman Sachs executive John Whitehead has given $25,000 to the super PAC, as has Andrew Klingenstein’s father, investor John Klingenstein. Andrew’s brother, Thomas Klingenstein, has given $10,000.

Two politically active nonprofits have also spent money on ads designed to aid Lugar’s re-election quest: the “American Action Network,” which is headed by former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), has spent more than $645,000, and “YG Network, Inc.,” a group started by former aides to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), has spent more than $200,000.

Unlike super PACs, nonprofits are not required to publicly disclose their donors.

ANALYSIS: False quick fixes for American health care

2012-05-09T09:39:09-04:00

You’ve heard it before. Let’s deep six ObamaCare and replace it with a trio of sure-fire free-market solutions to the problems that plague our health care system. All that’s really needed, we’re told, is to pass tort reform, allow insurance companies to sell policies across state lines and encourage people to set up health savings accounts.

Here’s the problem: there is mounting evidence that all three of these strategies not only are ineffective but may actually be making matters worse.

Let’s start with those health saving accounts (HSAs), which folks can establish if they enroll in a high-deductible health plan. With backing from the Bush administration and the insurance industry, Congress passed legislation in 2003 to encourage people to enroll in high-deductible plans by giving tax-exempt status to the money policyholders contribute to their HSAs to cover out-of-pocket expenses.

Proponents argued that Americans would be more prudent “consumers” and take better care of themselves if they had to spend more of their own hard-earned money for health care and their insurers had to spend less. HSAs, they said, would bring down the cost of care because people with more “skin in the game” would shop around for doctors and hospitals that charged less.

It sounded good. But one of the reasons I left the insurance industry was because of irrefutable evidence that high-deductible plans were great for insurance firms but not so great for many of the people enrolled in them.

Here’s what I mean. The median household income in this country is less than $52,000 a year (lower than it was 10 years ago after accounting for inflation), meaning that most families simply don’t have the cash after paying the mortgage and buying groceries to fund an HSA. Yes, HSAs can be just what the doctor ordered for the young, healthy and highly compensated among us, but many others who enroll in these plans find out when they get sick that coverage is far from adequate. So inadequate, in fact, that growing numbers of Americans in these plans who do get sick are losing their homes and filing for bankruptcy.

As more young, healthy and well-to-do people enroll in these plans, the cost of more comprehensive or even adequate coverage is skyrocketing. This means that even though many Americans should steer clear of high-deductible plans, they can’t afford anything else. Insurance companies, meanwhile, are reporting higher profits because they don’t have to pay out nearly as much as before in claims.

As for tort reform, just look at Texas, where it was ineffective in holding down medical costs and improving access to care. Lobbyists for physicians and insurers sold the idea that a big reason for medical inflation is an epidemic of multi-million dollar jury awards that have led doctors to practice defensive medicine so they won’t get sued. Texas legislators in 2003 enacted a law that caps non-economic (pain and suffering) damages at $250,000 against physicians and at $750,000 against hospitals. Sponsors of the legislation promised it would attract doctors to Texas and lead to lower premiums and, consequently, to more affordable coverage.

None of that happened. Texas has actually lost ground to other states on the number of doctors per capita since tort reform was enacted. And while the cost of malpractice insurance did drop initially, there has been no evidence doctors have passed along any savings to patients. In fact, the average premium for family coverage in Texas in 2010 was $14,526—$655 higher than the U.S. average. And tort reform has not made a dent in bringing more Texans into coverage. Texas had the highest percentage of residents without coverage (one of every four) in 2003, and it still does.

To the east, policymakers in Georgia are finding out that the third silver bullet — allowing insurers to sell policies across state lines — is also a dud.

Last year Georgia enacted legislation allowing insurers licensed elsewhere to sell policies in the state. The expectation was that Georgians would suddenly have a plethora of new policies to choose from as insurers in places like Alabama and Tennessee set up shop in the Peach State.

Political leaders last week had to fess up that not a single out-of-state carrier had expressed any interest in selling policies in Georgia. “We’re dumfounded,” Georgia Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We are absolutely dumfounded.”

Advocates tried to blame the fact that lawmakers had decided out-of-state policies should be regulated by the Georgia insurance department. They also speculated that insurers were unwilling to “change their business models” and market their policies in other states before the Supreme Court decided whether ObamaCare is constitutional.

What if Georgia legislators had given up regulatory oversight of policies originating outside of the state’s borders? Georgians who had problems with their out-of-state carrier would have to seek help from regulators miles away. Having served as a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, I know how inadequately resourced most state insurance departments already are. If they have to take on additional responsibilities of monitoring the behavior of insurers based in their states but operating in other jurisdictions, they will be spread even thinner. Good luck getting anyone to answer the phone or return an email if your insurer is refusing to pay for needed care.

Good luck on all those silver bullets too. The next time someone tries to convince you that this trio of solutions will benefit most consumers, be skeptical. There is no evidence they will.

Pentagon failed to protect whistleblowers

2012-05-07T14:58:39-04:00

The Defense Department has inadequately protected from reprisals whistleblowers who have reported wrongdoing, according to an internal Pentagon report, and critics are calling for action to be taken against those who have been negligent.

The report, dated May 2011, accuses the officials, who work in the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General, of persistent sloppiness and a systematic disregard for Pentagon rules meant to protect those who report fraud, abuses, and the waste of taxpayer funds, according to a previously-undisclosed copy. The report was obtained by the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit watchdog group.

A three-person team of veteran investigators at the Pentagon, assigned to review the performance of the “Directorate of Military Reprisal Investigations,” concluded in the report that in 2010 the directorate repeatedly turned aside evidence of serious punishments inflicted on those who had complained.

The actions included threatened or actual discharges, demotions, firings, prosecutions, and even a mental health referral. At least one of the alleged reprisals was taken because the complainer had written to Congress, an act that Pentagon regulations say is a “protected communication” immune from retaliation. Some of the other whistleblowers had alleged discrimination, travel violations, and “criminality,” the report states.

In all, the team disputed the directorate’s dismissal of more than half of the 156 whistleblowing cases it reviewed, and called for the directorate to revamp its procedures and start enforcing the protective rules.

“This devastating report proves one of our worst fears — that military whistleblowers have systematically been getting a raw deal,” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. Her group obtained the report under the Freedom of Information Act.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa.), the Judiciary Committee’s top Republican, similarly called it disturbing that the directorate had bungled so many cases. “Heads must roll,” he said in an April 24 letter to Acting Inspector General Lynne M. Halbrooks after reading a copy of the report. “The root cause problems identified in the report must be addressed and resolved immediately.”

The creation of the reprisal investigations unit grew out of hearings and legislation in the 1990’s that spotlighted the military’s practice of ordering mental health evaluations for whistleblowers, a move that hindered their careers. The office, which is expanding this year from 31 to 51 employees, is responsible for investigating or overseeing the handling of hundreds of complaints of retaliation annually — those made directly by troops and Pentagon employees to the IG, and those made to the military services.

Under federal law, prohibited reprisals are adverse actions taken in response to protected disclosures, which involve reports of violations of laws, rules, and regulations, gross mismanagement, abuses of authority, and dangers to health and safety. The reprisal investigator’s work is, according to an Oct. 2011 memo by the Defense Department’s deputy inspector general Marguerite C. Garrison, “essential to preventing fraud and abuse — and to promoting economy and efficiency” in the $677 billion national defense budget.

In response to the report, Garrison last year reorganized the office and began an overhaul of its manual. She also imposed a rule that prima facie evidence of retribution should provoke a preliminary inquiry in all cases. “The lessons learned … have proved vital to establishing more robust policies and procedures,” said Bridget Ann Serchak, the chief spokesman for Acting Inspector General Lynne M. Halbrooks.

Independent experts and whistleblower advocates remain skeptical, however. Reports going back a decade have criticized the Inspector General’s office for poorly tolerating whistleblowers; a group of Pentagon-paid outside consultants said in 2002 that even those inside the office who complained of mismanagement were “punished by their chain of command” amid a culture that was hostile to any form of whistleblowing.

In February, a report by the Government Accountability Office said that the reprisal investigators routinely took too long to respond to complaints, exceeding a 180 day deadline 70 percent of the time; the mean processing time was instead 451 days. It also said that investigators frequently used unreliable and incomplete data and case files, and concluded that only 5 percent of closed case files were actually “complete.” Records of testimony by complainants were missing from more than half of the files studied.

Critis have also complained that most allegations of misconduct are simply turned aside by the reprisal investigations office, often without any investigation.

“DODIG closed most complaints before conducting a full investigation and writing the resulting report of investigation,” the GAO said in its February report, adding that the office’s instructions to investigators remained “outdated” or “unclear.” According to Grassley, the GAO made “regular monthly requests” last year for the May 2011 internal review by the three investigators, but was refused a full copy for seven months.

“This report helps to confirm what everyone knew in practice — that the IG has not respected the law’s mandate,” says Tom Devine, legal director for the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit advocacy group that has represented Pentagon employees in lawsuits challenging alleged reprisals. He said the IG’s office — created in part as a refuge of last resort for those whose complaints of wrongdoing are ignored by others — has often been “a Trojan horse,” whose agents are “hatchetmen for agency managers” looking for the smallest infraction to punish their whistleblowers.

The internal reviewers said the office wrongly dismissed complaints by personnel threatened with punitive action on the sole grounds that those actions had not yet been carried out. It also wrongly dismissed cases in which letters of reprimand, counseling or instruction were written against whistleblowers but not placed in permanent files — on the grounds that such “locally held” letters were not “unfavorable personnel actions.”

The reviewers said these decisions were clearly contrary to a provision of the U.S. Military Whistleblower Protection Act of 1988, which bars officers or other superiors from either taking or threatening to take unfavorable actions.

“In some of the cases the Team reviewed, members were threatened with negative fitness reports, termination, and court martial proceedings. Rather than allow the complaint to proceed to the next stage in the process, the reprisal investigators instructed the member that if the action occurs, they could file their complaint again, and thus declined the complaint,” the report said. “These cases should not have been declined.”

The reviewers also said that when the office routinely ignored locally held “letters” that threatened discharge, reassignment, lower pay, or any other change in duties it violated “the plain language” of a 2007 Defense Department order meant to insulate whistleblowers from retaliation. In one instance, investigators wrongly closed a case in which a complainant was denied a NATO job solely on the basis of such a letter; in another case, they wrongly closed a case in which a complainant was forcibly transferred to another unit.

Most details of the whistleblowing complaints, as well as the names of the complainers and the investigators who rejected their cases, were not included in the report. Serchak said that information was protected under the Privacy Act and statutes governing the Inspector General.

But an appendix to the report states that someone whose “protected communication” was a letter to Congress was demoted and had “separation paperwork” prepared. The reprisal investigators nonetheless closed the case on grounds that there was insufficient documentation, a decision that the review team disputed.

One case was closed on grounds that the complainant’s punishment was unrelated to his allegations of wrongdoing, even though an officer had acknowledged it was done in retaliation and the file included a quoted warning to “follow your chain of command or pay the price.” In another case, “bias was found, but not addressed;” in still another, the team said an “allegation of criminality should have been reported/referred.”

In all, the team disputed the office’s decisions to turn aside 82 of the 156 cases in the random sample it reviewed from fiscal year 2010, or 52.6 percent. The widest gap (68 percent) occurred in cases that the office simply refused to open; smaller gaps occurred in cases where some preliminary work was conducted before the cases were shut, and when a full investigation was completed before the allegation was rejected.

In some cases, according to the report, the team disagreed because the files collected by the office simply lacked enough information to decide one way or the other. “The Team thinks that many of the cases would not have been substantiated,” their report said, but there was no way to know.

Fifteen cases — including one in which a soldier was deployed to an active combat zone — were declined by reprisal investigators because the claimant did not provide enough evidence, according to the report. The team said this “appears to be contrary to the intent of the statute and DoD policy” to give whistleblowers the benefit of the doubt in such instances.

In 27 cases, the reprisal investigators declined to open a full probe without first obtaining a statement from the manager accused of retaliating — as Pentagon rules require. Instead, the manager’s intent was assumed, according to the report.

Senator Grassley, in his April 24 letter to acting Inspector General Halbrooks, said the internal report “appears to suggest that OIG officials knowingly ignored the law and showed disrespect for military whistleblowers and the core IG mission.” He asked that Halbrooks tell him whether “supervisors and managers [were] subjected to administrative review or other corrective actions for their failure to adhere” to the rules and regulations.

He also asked that all the cases that the review concluded were wrongly turned aside be reexamined, and that the personnel who alleged punishment be told “that their complaints were mishandled.”

Pentagon spokesmen declined to allow reporters access to Jane Deese, the head of the reprisal investigations office at the time of the review. She currently heads the Inspector General’s Office of Professional Responsibility, responsible for reviewing the operations of each component of the office and assessing its “managerial, operational, and administrative efficiency and effectiveness” — akin to being a watchdog of sorts for the Pentagon’s watchdog.

Halbrooks responded in an April 26 letter to Grassley that the reprisal investigations office now has new leadership; its current director is Nilgun Tolek, the former head of whistleblower complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But Halbrooks added that “I strongly disagree with the assertion” that IG officials knowingly ignored the law. “I stand behind the continued professionalism and dedication of our reprisal investigators, past and present,” she said.

Halbrooks said she would respond to Grassley’s questions in person, not in writing. In response to similar questions from the Center for Public Integrity, Serchak said initially her office decided that the cases of concern “were decided on the basis of the DOD IG policy in place at the time. After further consideration, however, we are now reviewing some of the cases.”

Serchak also did not respond to a question about sanctions for those who had bungled cases, saying that since the report identified “systemic issues … we implemented new policies and procedures to … transform it into a model program.”

Los Angeles students protest school police citations that hit blacks, Latinos

Los Angeles,California,United States — 2012-05-04T14:52:18-04:00

Los Angeles public-school students rallied Thursday against the large volume of court citations they have been issued for seemingly minor infractions, including tardiness, having a marker or “tool” for graffiti and for acting disruptive.

The citations, issued by the Los Angeles Unified School District Police Department, have been the subject of recent stories by the Center for Public Integrity. Television station KTLA in Los Angeles covered the rally, posting on its website that: “The Center for Public Integrity took a closer look at exactly how school policing is being done, and their findings are raising some major concerns.” KTLA describes some of the Center’s findings from an analysis of three years’ worth of citations recently released by the school district police.

More than 40 percent of 33,500 court summonses issued to students between 10 and 18 went to students 14 and younger. African American students, 10 percent of enrollment, were 15 percent of those cited last year and 20 percent in 2010. The district’s school police force, with 340 sworn officers and staff, is the largest in the nation.

Southern California public radio station KPCC, which co-reported a piece on the citations with the Center, also covered the students’ protest rally Thursday. KPCC reported that some community groups believe a moratorium on ticketing should be declared until the district completes a thorough analysis of the data. One of those groups, the Labor-Community Strategy Center has released its own analyses of the new citation data. KPCC reported that school police don’t plan to stop ticketing.

Zoe Rawson, a lawyer representing ticketed students, said she is concerned that planned closures of what are called “informal” juvenile courts in Los Angeles this summer due to budget cuts will end up sending more ticketed students to full-blown delinquency court. Right now, students cited for low-level infractions are typically summoned to informal courts to appear before “referees,” but do not face prosecutors.

Rawson and other student advocates have worked with juvenile court judges, police and Los Angeles’ city council to adopt new standards limiting the practice of citing students for daytime curfew violations when they are clearly on their way to school.

Ticketed students said they had sometimes overslept or arrived on late buses and were only tardy by minutes. They complained they missed more school time while police handcuffed and searched some of them. The police sweeps were concentrated at low-income schools; students were summoned to court — missing more school — and faced fines of more than $250.

Michael Nash, presiding judge of Los Angeles County’s juvenile courts, has told the Center he prefers more of an emphasis on counseling — rather than sending kids to court — to try to prevent low-level fisticuffs and other misbehavior.

Boxes of top secret documents go missing

2012-05-04T14:57:43-04:00

The Justice Department has been increasingly eager to prosecute officials for leaks of classified information, charging six individuals with disclosures that violate the Espionage Act just since the start of 2009. But at the same time, the government itself has lost track of hundreds of boxes filled with classified documents at its main records storage site, the Washington National Records Center.

According to a new report from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Office of Inspector General, more than 1,500 boxes of classified documents have gone missing at the site, located in Suitland, Maryland. While some are “still occasionally being located,” the Archives’s office of records services has stopped its internal searching, the report said, and the affected agencies have been notified.

Among the missing records are 81 boxes with documents labeled Top Secret, Secret, and Restricted Data, among the highest classification categories. They were from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Navy, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the Energy Department, and other agencies. Restricted Data is a special category for data pertinent to nuclear weapons. Each box contains between 2,000 and 2,500 pieces of paper, states the IG’s report, which was first disclosed by The Washington Times.

These records weren’t stolen in an act of espionage. The IG places the blame for the loss of the boxes squarely on mismanagement by the records center, which is controlled by the Archives, an issue described in the report as “systemic.”

That conclusion seems beyond dispute. The new report, which is itself labeled “Official Use Only,” discloses that in two previous inventories there, in 1998 and 2004, boxes of classified materials were found missing. But the results were never written up in a report and “minimal corrective actions” were taken, it states.

An internal report at the records center in 2006 found 1,857 boxes of classified records were missing, including thirty classified Top Secret. NARA Inspector General Paul Brachfeld, the author of the new report, warned the Archivist of the United States in an unpublicized 2009 letter that the situation at WNRC was “unacceptable and potentially dangerous.”

“NARA is the custodian of the nation's most sensitive materials,” Brachfeld’s letter said. “The status quo at WNRC fails to adequately serve NARA' s customers, the taxpayers, or national security.” But as of March 2011, 1,540 boxes of classified documents remained missing, his report states. Many smaller violations have been reported as well, including “Secret” documents found unattended in a hallway, in the trash, or mailed improperly to the Department of the Navy.

The IG’s investigation, conducted between November 2007 and December 2010, was opened due to what the report described as “continuing security violations” at WNRC, which functions like a temporary holding center for documents that government agencies do not have room to store themselves.They are not part of the Archives' permanent holdings. Their age can vary; while they generally are not contemporary, they can still include vital secrets, officials say.

The report assigns much of the blame to the WNRC’s use of a poor cataloguing system, which tracked when documents were moved. But it was not designed to track temporary withdrawals of records or even permanent records of less than “one cubic foot” worth of paper. If anyone borrowed a folder of documents for research, it would go unnoticed by the system. In 2009 the facility switched to a new system, ARCIS, but quickly decided the system did not have the capabilities needed to handle classified records.

Previous tracking systems relied on paper tracking slips, which could detach from boxes during transit, leaving the location of the box untraceable among the hundreds of thousands of boxes stored at WNRC. There is hope that a new barcode system will help prevent the future loss of boxes.

“There does seem to be an honest, good-faith effort to address the deficiencies there,” Brachfeld said in an interview. He said records officials are continuing to try to untangle their cataloguing discrepancies, and that some of the boxes thought to be missing might turn out to be misfiled, or to have been returned to the agencies in question without being logged out.

But Brachfeld added that “I continue to think that building is not suitable” as a records center, describing it as an old warehouse and “a retrofitted factory” that does not meet the government’s need for secure storage. His view was evidently shared by records-keeping officials who told him in 2008 that “segregating classified and unclassified material is not an affordable option” there.

“The situation at WNRC is disconcerting to say the least,” according to Steven Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. “Preservation of the historical record is the primary mission of the National Archives, and misplacing hundreds or thousands of boxes of documents is inconsistent with that function. It’s a disservice to the nation and a violation of the public trust.”

State Integrity Investigation cited in Rhode Island flap

Rhode Island,United States — 2012-05-04T06:02:57-04:00

Rhode Island garnered a respectable ninth in the nation ranking from the State Integrity Investigation in late March, but that was before elimination of the state’s internal auditing agency was proposed as part of the governor’s budget.

Rhode Island’s Chief Auditor, H. Chris Der Vartanian, announced his resignation Wednesday in the wake of Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s plan to cut the Bureau of Audits, citing the state’s ranking as a reason to keep the independent auditing arm in place.

“Ironically, this proposed elimination comes at a time when the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) one of the country’s oldest and largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organizations categorized the Bureau as one of the highest performing state internal audit agencies in the country and one of the major factors leading to the state of Rhode Island achieving a ranking of [9^th] in the nation in terms of preventing corruption,” Der Vartanian wrote in a resignation letter to Gov. Chafee and Richard Licht, the director of administration.

Rhode Island received a B+ in internal auditing on its corruption risk scorecard. It received its highest grade, an A, for redistricting, and scored its lowest, an F, on state civil service management. The state’s overall grade was C.

Der Vartanian, who worked in state government for 21 years, said he thought it was important for public officials to review the report card to determine what policies need improvement.

The proposed restructuring that caused the controversy would transfer the functions of the Bureau of Audits to a different administrative division in the executive branch — one directly overseen by the governor’s office. Der Vartanian said it is unclear how the auditing functions would be performed under the new plan and he is concerned about the objectivity and independence of future audits if the Governor’s budget is approved. The governor’s blueprint, announced in January, is currently being deliberated in the House and Senate Finance Committees, and will be voted on in June.

Der Vartanian said he will meet with the governor’s chief-of-staff this Friday, his last day in office, to go over the duties and functions of the bureau.

What kind of defense budget would the American public make?

2012-05-09T15:21:38-04:00

What would average Americans do if they were informed about the level and purposes of U.S. defense spending and had a chance to weigh the arguments that experts make? Would they boost overall funding, or cut it? Would they spend more on air power or sea power? How much would they say the US should spend on nuclear arms? On major ground forces? On special forces?

Most polls simply ask whether defense spending should be cut or not. But three nonprofit organizations — the Program for Public Consultation (PPC),* the Stimson Center, and the Center for Public Integrity — collaborated on a more useful survey. They provided a representative sample of the American public with neutral information about how funds are currently being spent, and exposed them to various arguments made by advocates in the contemporary debate about defense expenditures. The respondents then said what they wished to spend in key areas.

The results of this innovative survey are now in, and we are inviting you to attend a presentation that will shed new light on the linkages — and gaps — between decisions being made in Washington and what average Americans want. The results will also make clear which arguments in favor of or opposed to current defense spending have the most resonance with members of the public.

Here are the logistics:

Time: Thursday, May 10, 2012 at 10:00-11:30 am

Place: The Stimson Center, 1111 19th Street, NW | 12th Floor, 202 223 5956

Presenters:

Steven Kull, director of the Program for Public Consultation*

Matthew Leatherman, Analyst, Stimson Center's Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense project

R. Jeffrey Smith, Managing Editor for National Security, Center for Public Integrity

Please RSVP for this event here. For additional information, call (202) 232-7500.

*The Program for Public Consultation is a joint program of the Center for Policy Attitudes and the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland

Study: Super PACs aired more ads than candidates

2012-05-03T17:38:46-04:00

Outside groups, including super PACs, have sponsored nearly 60 percent of the ads aired on broadcast television and national cable so far this election cycle, more than the candidates themselves, according to a new study.

During the same stretch in the 2008 election cycle, candidates were responsible for more than 96 percent of TV ads, according to the Wesleyan Media Project, which analyzed advertising data from Kantar Media/CMAG.

Travis Ridout, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, called this shift “eye-popping.”

Unbound by the campaign contribution caps that limit candidates to just $2,500 per donor, super PACs have been flush with cash and provided substantial air cover for most of the top-tier Republican candidates — a trend that is likely continue as Republican Mitt Romney faces off against President Barack Obama in the fall.

Created in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, super PACs are permitted to accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and unions to fund independent political ads that urge viewers to vote for or against candidates.

Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, has spent more than $42 million on advertising according to the Center for Reponsive Politics, with 93 percent of it negative.

Super PACs accounted for more than six out of every 10 ads on national cable and broadcast television that featured Romney and opponents Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman Jr.

The pro-Huntsman super PAC, called Our Destiny PAC, aired nearly 12 times as many ads as Huntsman’s own campaign. Romney and his super PAC aired nearly four-and-a-half times as many ads as his main opponents.

Overall, Romney’s campaign and Restore Our Future, a super PAC run by several former Romney aides, aired 79,700 television ads through April 22, with 62 percent produced by Restore Our Future.

The study found that seven of 10 ads aired so far this election cycle have been negative. That’s a stark contrast from the presidential contest four years ago when only one out of 10 ads during a similar period were negative.

Approximately half of all candidates’ TV ads to date have been negative and 86 percent of outside groups’ TV ads have been negative, according to the study. During the same period of the 2008 election cycle, less than 9 percent of candidates’ TV ads were negative and only a quarter of TV ads by outside groups were negative.

LA school police chief voices reasons for ticketing young kids, radio station reports

Los Angeles,California,United States — 2012-05-03T14:09:57-04:00

In a new report by KPCC public radio and the Center for Public Integrity, Los Angeles’ school police chief voices his thoughts on why officers who patrol the region’s schools issue a large volume of tickets to middle-school students.

“They typically are the age group that we find violates certain things that we enforce more often than some of the kids who are in high school, whether it is possession of (marijuana and cigarette) paraphernalia, vandalism, fighting,” Chief Steven Zipperman told Southern California-based KPCC. “They can be a variety of different things.”

The Center recently obtained and analyzed 2009-2011 data for all low-level citations issued by Los Angeles Unified School District Police Department officers. The department of 340 officers and staff is the nation’s largest school police force.

The Center’s analysis found that more than 33,500 citations were issued in three years, with more than 40 percent going to children 14 years and younger. One of the more frequent reasons for citing a student was an allegation of disturbing the peace, which can range from fisticuffs to disruptive or threatening language. These citations often includes fines, and require students to appear in court, during school hours, along with at least one parent or guardian.

In written responses attributed to Zipperman, the school district told the Center that with citations “hopefully the contact (with police) is positive and the student learns from whatever mistake was made.”

Zoe Rawson, a lawyer with the Labor-Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, told KPCC and the Center she was concerned that behaviors once addressed by school administrators have become police matters. Rawson, who has defended students, told KPCC: “There is such a dramatic increase in the presence and the role of police in relation to student conduct as soon as you enter middle school.”

Research is mounting, Rawson said, that introducing young students to the court system actually increases their chances of getting into more trouble later and eventually dropping out. Michael Nash, Los Angeles’ presiding juvenile court judge, told the Center he was concerned that too many students were being summoned to court, which he said was an inappropriate forum to address many types of behavioral problems.

On the national level, the Obama Administration has also expressed concern about referrals of students to law enforcement. The U.S. Department of Education is requiring that school districts start reporting student arrests and court citations so educators can better understand the scope of the phenomenon. The Los Angeles data, which was not submitted to federal officials, is the first from that region to reveal a range of detail about citations.

The data was released to the Labor-Community Strategy Center and other community groups that have been working with school and city police to reduce daytime curfew tickets that officers were issuing in large numbers to kids arriving tardy to schools mostly in low-income neighborhoods.

The 33,500 citations issued in 2009-2011 were all summonses to appear in one of Los Angeles’ informal traffic and juvenile courts. However, because of budget cuts, those informal courts are slated for closure this summer. Some citations could now be referred to delinquency courts, a forum that Rawson is believes is even more inappropriate to deal with much student behavior.

New questions raised over Aaron Schock's fundraising efforts

2012-05-04T14:23:47-04:00

Two $25,000 donations during the final days of a hotly contested Illinois primary are raising more questions about whether super PACs — the political committees that have seen a flood of money from millionaires and billionaires — are being used to circumvent campaign contribution limits.

Back in March, sophomore Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) wanted to help his friend and fellow Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger survive a rare incumbent-on-incumbent primary by sending some money his way.

Many members of Congress have “leadership PACs” set up for just this purpose — they direct funds from the PACs to their fellow representatives in hopes of earning support for senior leadership positions.

Thanks to redistricting, Kinzinger, rather than face an easy primary, found himself facing 10-term Rep. Don Manzullo.

Schock’s leadership PAC gave Kinzinger’s campaign $5,000 for the primary fight — the maximum allowed contribution. But Schock also managed to direct 10 times that much toward efforts aiding his buddy with help from the super PAC, earning the ire of campaign finance watchdogs.

The super PAC, Campaign for Primary Accountability, like other organizations made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, can accept unlimited funds and use the money to attack candidates in elections.

The nonpartisan, Texas-based organization — which has made a name for itself going after incumbents in both parties — had been running negative ads about Manzullo. According to a story in Roll Call, Schock asked the group if he could designate a donation to be used to help Kinzinger.

They were happy to accommodate.

“I asked if I could specify a donation to them,” Schock told Roll Call about his conversation with the Campaign for Primary Accountability. “And they said I could.”

Next, Schock approached House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who had also backed Kinzinger. He asked if Cantor would “match” $25,000 that Schock would provide for the super PAC’s television assault, ads that likely contributed to Kinzinger’s 8 percentage point victory over Manzullo.

According to Roll Call, Cantor’s contribution would be paired with $25,000 from Schock’s own leadership PAC.

Now here’s the strange part: the Federal Election Commission says that lawmakers and candidates are only allowed to solicit up to $5,000 on behalf of super PACs. That’s the same amount they can solicit for traditional PACs, including their own leadership PACs.

If Schock had only asked Cantor to cough up $5,000, he would have been fine. But his solicitation drew a complaint from the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, election watchdogs in Washington.

And Schock may be facing an additional complaint. As of the end of March, his leadership PAC never gave any money to the super PAC, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of documents filed with the FEC.

Instead, the $25,000 from Cantor — which came via his own leadership PAC — appears to have been matched by $25,000 from the 18th District Republican Central Committee, the local political party committee in Schock’s home district, which reported the expense as “committee advertising.”

Both gifts were earmarked for the Illinois race, according to documents the super PAC filed with the FEC.

Schock, dubbed the "Ripped Representative" by Men's Health, displayed his washboard abs on the magazine's cover last year.

Leadership PACs — like individuals, unions or corporations — are permitted to give unlimited sums to independent expenditure-only committees, also known as super PACs.

But they can only give $5,000 directly to a campaign.

Paul S. Ryan, an attorney at the Campaign Legal Center, said that Schock may now be at fault for making two solicitations for too much money rather than one.

Paul Kilgore, the treasurer of the 18th District Republican Central Committee, said that Schock has “no formal affiliation” with the group, although Schock’s joint fund-raising committee, the Schock Victory Fund, has raised more than $132,000 for the group during the past 15 months, according to its filings with the FEC. That includes about $8,000 during the first quarter.

Asked about the complaint from the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, Tania Hoerr, Schock’s campaign director, said the campaign is “completely confident” that the FEC will determine that “no violation occurred.” But neither Hoerr nor Steve Dutton, Schock’s spokesman on Capitol Hill, responded to follow-up questions about Schock’s involvement with the 18th District Republican Central Committee’s contribution.

Meanwhile, several GOP county chairs in the 18th Congressional District told the Center for Public Integrity that they had not heard about the five-figure donation from the central committee to the super PAC.

Mike Bigger, the chairman of the 18th District Republican Central Committee — and an ally of Schock — has the authority to make such decisions.

“I don’t think any of the county chairmen knew the 18th District was getting involved,” said Pike County Republican Party Chair John Birch, whom Bigger, with Schock’s backing, ousted from the role of central committeeman in 2010. “[Bigger] has got the power and he’s got the right to do it without asking.”

Bigger did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Ryan said if the FEC doesn’t take action against Schock for making an excessive solicitation, then the agency would be “green-lighting” candidates’ ability to ask for unlimited amounts of money for super PACs that will do candidates’ “dirty work.”

While Schock only asked for five times the legal limit, Ryan continued, what’s to stop another politician from asking for $500,000 or $1 million for a super PAC from politicians who have large reserves in either their campaign funds or leadership PACs?

“That’s a threat of corruption that concerns the Campaign Legal Center,” Ryan said.

Ryan further noted that Schock could be fined up to the amount that was excessively solicited — or up to double that amount if the FEC found that a “knowing and willful violation” had transpired.

“Candidates should have no involvement in super PAC fundraising,” Ryan said. “If Rep. Schock gets away with this, it would make a bad situation worse.”

Summary points:

2012-05-03T13:59:32-04:00

Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) wanted to steer money to a super PAC running ads in a hotly contested GOP primary.
Schock reached out to a Texas-based super PAC, and in the final days of the primary, the group received $50,000 from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's leadership PAC and the 18th District Republican Central Committee, the local political party committee in Schock’s home district.
The FEC has said lawmakers cannot solicit more than $5,000 for a super PAC.
After telling Roll Call of his maneuvering, Schock now faces an FEC complaint and could face another. Absent the interview, the excessive solicitation may not have surfaced.

Weekly Watchdog 5/3/12

2012-05-10T17:35:23-04:00

Investigating Power

Great investigative reporting is woven into the historical fabric of America. Check out a very cool new website that tells this history and profiles the reporters who made it happen: InvestigatingPower.org.

Investigating Power is a tribute to independent journalism and a testament to the vital role of truth in a healthy democracy. It offers an extensive high-resolution video library of interviews with 23 men and women who have produced fearless journalism that exposes abuses of power throughout society.

The group includes Mike Wallace, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Dana Priest, Moses Newson, Christiane Amanpour and Daniel Schorr. Each gives observations on their careers and the ongoing importance of truth telling.

This website was created over five years by Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity, who now runs the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

Until next week,

Bill Buzenberg
Executive Director

10 donors represent a third of contributions to super PACs
Contrary to expectations, the much-criticized court decision that gave us super PACs has not led to a tsunami of contributions from the treasuries of Fortune 500 corporations. According to the Center for Public Integrity's latest report, of the top 10 donors to super PACs so far in the 2012 election cycle, seven are individuals and the remainder are unions and a medical malpractice group. Four of the top 10 are billionaires. Collect the whole list of "all stars."

Obama nominates fundraiser for top diplomatic spot
Timothy Broas, a top fundraiser for President Barack Obama, is now the nominee to be the next U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.

Take our poll on military spending
A new national poll is coming out May 10th. Question: Can we afford what we spend on the military or is it weakening the economy?

Putting premiums into medical care, not profits
Center columnist Wendell Potter explains how the Rockefeller provision of the health care law will require consumer rebates from insurers who didn't spend enough on care.

Get connected:

2012-05-08T09:07:36-04:00

We'd like your input on our other questions. Answer the rest by clicking the links below.

Day 1: Should the U.S. lead in military spending or share more of the burden?
Day 2: Does current military spending keep us safe or waste money?
Day 3: Can we afford what we spend on the military or is it weakening the economy?
Day 4: Can we afford what we spend on the military or is it weakening the economy?
Day 5: Should we leave or stay in Afghanistan?
Day 6: Is more military air power critical or do we have enough?
Day 7: Can we cut military ground forces or would that create worrisome risks?
Day 8: Can the U.S. navy be cut or would that send a dangerous signal?
Day 9: Should the nuclear arsenal be upgraded or drastically shrunk?

Stay in the know: Get the national defense survey results and related stories sent directly to your inbox.

Corruption still threatens U.S. efforts in Afghanistan

Afghanistan — 2012-05-03T11:44:14-04:00

When President Obama signed a formal agreement in Kabul on Tuesday to withdraw the majority of U.S. forces from Afghanistan by 2014, he spoke of a future Afghanistan, able to stand on its own as a respected member of the international community. “We have traveled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war,” said Obama. “Yet here, in the predawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon.”

A more sobering view of the challenge that lies ahead came in the latest quarterly report published the previous day by the chief government watchdog over the nearly $100 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction efforts since 2002. U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction Steven Trent warned that deep corruption persists in the country, and can easily undermine the success of U.S. development efforts there.

“Corruption remains a major threat to the reconstruction effort,” Trent wrote in his introduction to the 176-page report. He added that the problem may worsen as the United States heads for the door: “Afghan reconstruction has reached a critical turning point. The shift in strategy, decline in funding, and persistent violence and corruption underscore the need for aggressive oversight.”

Trent expressed particular concern about continuing thefts of fuel and cash, the shortcomings of local security forces, bribery of local and U.S. officials, and contractors that fail to deliver what they promised.

He focused on the new Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF), which is expected to provide much of the security for U.S. and contractor sites going forward. “The transition to the APPF poses one of the most significant challenges that the U.S. government and its implementing partners have faced since the beginning of the reconstruction effort in 2002,” Trent said in March 29th testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee

As part of the transition to more local control, the Afghan government has ordered private security companies dissolved in favor of the new APPF, which operates under the Afghan Ministry of the Interior. Trent sees a number of warning signs that APPF may not be able to function at the level needed and warns of “rising costs and the possible disruption or termination of reconstruction projects if the APPF cannot provide the required security.”

A SIGAR audit of APPF found that relying on the highly understaffed Afghan force could drive security costs up by as much as 46 percent in the first year of the transition. During their evaluations, auditors identified six essential tasks and looked at 166 transition-readiness standards for APPF. At the conclusion of the audit in last December, only 46 of the transition standards could be met — and none of the essential tasks could be performed. (An updated audit is in the works but was not completed by the quarterly report.)

SIGAR said it recovered almost half a million dollars in stolen fuel during the last quarter, as well as $175,000 in stolen cash. These investigations led to the arrest of several Afghanis, the termination of a number of contractors, and in one case, possible Department of Justice prosecution for “several” servicemen.

SIGAR also conducted a pair of investigations that led to three arrests for bribery. In March, Desi Deandre Wade, DoD’s Chief of Fire and Emergency Services in Afghanistan, was sentenced to 20 months in prison for soliciting and receiving over $100,000 from a military contractor in exchange for giving the company inside information to help their bids for contracts. (The contractor was not identified.) Based on SIGAR’s investigations, two former military officers were sentenced to 51 months and 31 months in prison, respectively, on charges of bribery.

The inspector general also ordered five contracts voided, saving taxpayers a total of $131 million, he said. Among the reasons: close ties between contractors and companies that had been banned from doing business with the government and “nonperformance and nonpayment of subcontractors.”

In one case, a contractor delivered only 299 of the 456 concrete barriers they were supposed to install at a military base. Those barriers are a key part of base defenses around Afghanistan, and the failure to deliver the barriers as requested “increased the risk of injury or death for civilian and service personnel.” Because of that, SIGAR requested the unnamed contractor be banned from working for the U.S. government in the future.

Americans for Prosperity ad: 'Wasteful Spending'

2012-05-03T10:57:03-04:00

'Wasteful Spending'

Reprisal outcome for whistleblower complaints: 2006-2011

2012-05-08T14:16:36-04:00

A graph of the outcome of Defense Dept. whistleblower complaints from 2006-2011

Costly work ahead for F-22

2012-05-16T09:45:13-04:00

Update: Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's spokesman announced May 15 that Panetta has ordered all F-22 flights to be restrained within a “proximate distance” of an airfield in case pilots begin to feel sick from the ongoing oxygen problems. He also ordered that plans to install a backup oxygen system in the planes be accelerated. His decision appears to rule out any use of the costly planes in combat situations in the near future.

When officials told reporters a few weeks ago that they had deployed F-22 fighter jets in the Middle East for the first time, it was downplayed as “a very normal deployment.” But when it comes to the F-22, there’s very little “normal” about it.

Gen. Mike Hostage, commander of Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va, told reporters Monday that some pilots have asked that they be reassigned rather than be forced to fly the jet. And while he described the concerned group as “very small,” Hostage made a point of telling reporters he would be flying the plane himself in the future to “check out” his pilot’s concerns and try to bolster their in-flight courage.

“I'm asking these guys to assume some risks that's over and above what everybody else is assuming, and I don't feel like it's right that I ask them to do it and I'm not willing to do it myself," said Hostage. (A spokesman confirmed the General would begin his training at the end of the month.)

His disclosure appeared to anticipate the appearance on Sunday of two pilots on the CBS television network "60 Minutes" program, who bluntly said they are not comfortable flying the jet. Maj. Jeremy Gordon and Capt. Josh Wilson, who said they were speaking as military whistleblowers, both described experiencing hypoxia, the persistent in-flight oxygen shortage that has flummoxed the Air Force and the plane's builders.

They said the heightened risk of an accident had caused them to take out extra life insurance. The Air Force, they said, urged them to keep flying so it could learn more about the problem. "We have been told we are data collectors," Wilson said, according to a partial transcript released by CBS.

Based on the jet’s history, the pilots’ reaction isn’t surprising. The F-22’s record is one of breakdowns and planning bad enough to require another decade of repairs, according to the government’s watchdog. Meanwhile, the price tag for one of the most expensive Air Force projects in history will keep going up.

The plane officially rolled off the assembly line in 2003 and supposed to be the premiere jet for the U.S. military, a stealth-enabled, hyper-maneuverable air craft capable of dominating the skies at supersonic speeds.

Six years later, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates asked that production be halted and Congress agreed to pull $1.75 billion in funding for the jet. Why the turnaround? Costs had nearly tripled, reaching $412 million a plane, according to a 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. Production lagged well behind schedule, and the wars in Iraq an Afghanistan required a different type of plane, capable mostly of bombing rather than airborne combat.

The plane has also experienced multiple breakdowns and technical flaws: Since 2005, it had suffered at least 6 major accidents costing over $1 million each, according to Air Force statistics. On its first international deployment, a squad of F-22s lost all computer systems while in flight and had to be brought back to base by their mid-air tankers, according to a retired Air Force general.

In 2010, the entire fleet was grounded due to rusted ejection-seat rods; a year later, the F-22 was grounded for four months after pilots complained that oxygen flow problems were leading to dizziness and, in some cases, blackouts — a problem that may have led to the crashing death of a pilot in Alaska. The loss of oxygen has been an ongoing issue, with 11 cases of “hypoxia” reported since September. Pilots are now required to fly with monitors on their finger to alert them if their oxygen drops to unsafe levels so they can return to base.

The military has yet to use the fighters in combat situations, even though they have officially been cleared for active duty since 2005.

With the last of the 179 F-22s ordered by the military slated to be delivered this week, the GAO says in a new report that “the estimated cost of the overall modernization program has doubled, and the schedule has slipped by 7 years.”

The Air Force now expects to spend a total of $11.7 billion (including money already spent) for four “increments,” or waves of upgrades, that will be completed in 2023 — or about $65 million per plane.

The first increment adding new ground attack capability has already been installed into the planes. Some planes have already received the second increment with enhanced radar and another improvement of air-to-ground strike capability. The third upgrade will improve computer systems and the final upgrade, expected to improve “geolocation, electronic protection, and Intra Flight Data Link capabilities and integrate AIM-9X and AIM-120D missiles,” will begin to show up in 2017. If everything is delivered on time — no sure thing — the F-22 fleet will finally be upgraded two decades after the first production model was finished.

Why will the upgrade process take so long? Unlike the “legacy programs” examined in the report — planes like the F-15, F-16 and F/A-18 — the F-22 was never conceptualized as a plane that would need major modifications, making the upgrades a steeper challenge. The legacy programs anticipated the need for upgrades down the line, with budgets and planning tailored accordingly. In contract, the F-22 strategy was to deliver a plane with top-line technology that would not need major medications or improvements, a decision that in 2003 GAO warned “hamstrung” the program with “significant risk and onerous technological challenges.”

Additionally, the older planes were much simpler platforms, so modifications such as new weapons could simply be bolted on. With the F-22, designers need to consider software, computing power and the stealth equipment when gearing up for modifications.

Which brings up the final kicker in the report: By the time these upgrades are fully implemented across the F-22 fleet, a “large number” of the planes will have already logged 1,500 hours of flight time out of a lifetime of 8,000 hours. In other words, almost 20 percent of the fleet’s lifetime will pass by the time the planes are fully upgraded and operational.

The report was done at the request of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI). His office declined to comment.

According to GAO, DOD had no formal comments they wished to be included in the report, but did provide technical comments that were imported into the report. A call to Lockheed Martin, the primary contractor on the F-22, was not immediately returned.

R. Jeffrey Smith, the managing editor for national security, contributed to this article.

Correction (May 2, 2012, 5:58 PM): The origional posting listed the total cost of the modernization program as $9.7 billion, instead of $11.7 billion. This has been updated.