Justice Dept. Investigates Pa. Contractor Tied to Murtha

[tomm2thumbs]

Source: Washington Post

Over the past five years, a local defense contractor with close ties to Rep. John P. Murtha, a Democrat who has represented southwestern Pennsylvania for three decades, has selected several small police departments in the region to receive $10 million in Justice Department grants.

The company, Mountaintop Technologies, was selected by the lawmaker in a series of earmarks to hand out and monitor the grants. As it distributed the money to the departments, the firm would explain each time that it was arriving through the largess of Murtha -- often just before fall elections. Once she learned from the investigators that Monongahela's police department was getting money outside of normal channels, City Clerk Carole Foglia was disturbed.

"I wasn't happy with the situation at all," Foglia said. "I didn't want to be involved in anything that was done improperly, because that's not the way I work in my office. And this was improper. No question about it."

The tale of how a defense company ended up getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to distribute federal police grants is a chapter in a larger story of Mountaintop Technologies, its far-flung operations and its dependence on Murtha. The Johnstown firm has received at least $36 million in the past eight years in earmarks and military contracts, without competition and with the backing of Murtha, the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. It also hired the lobbying firm where Murtha's brother worked.
. . .

Over the past eight years, according to the White House budget office, the company has faced open competition in only 11 percent of its federal contracts, which make up most of its business.
. . .

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/24/AR2009052402947.html?hpid=topnews

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Three page article so didn't want to try to post too much.

[vadawg]

1. if hes dirty then he should be done, but we all know the pols look after each other

[annabanana]

2. Good.. Will we go after the Cheney/Halliburton graft now?

Oh wait... we just gave them the contract to do more wiring in Iraq.

[polichick]

3. And Halliburton has moved to Dubai so they'll never be held accountable.

[MADem]

4. Those fatcat corporate executives are taking a bath, though!

It's about the only thing that one can smile about when thinking about the duplicitous nature of the Halliburton enterprise.

They bought pricy homes at the height of the Dubai bubble....and now, since the UAE economy has tanked, they're sitting on assets that are worth not a hell of a lot more than half what they paid.

I suppose they can stroll along the shit-filled beaches (they've got serious sewage issues, too) and think about either paying on those notes, even though they're a hideous and probably unrecoverable expenditure, or not pay them and either risk debtor's prison (they have that, there) or flee the country to avoid it.

[MasonJar]

5. I am so glad that AG Holder has so much time for this penny ante

"stuff" since he certainly cannot seem to find time to investigate the injustice done to Governor Seigelman and the war crimes of the Bushista.

[BCCM]

6. Mountaintop Technologies

It's called Mountaintop cause they're sitting on a mountain of cash. It's not about public service, it's about the money for elected politicians. Anything less would be sacrilegious.