Kabul Press calls Massachusetts more corrupt than Afghanistan

My wife and I were discussing the issue of the "Government Critters" on both sides of the world, and that there really is no real difference as the Government at home and the Government here are inhabited by the same level of ineffective and overpaid staff. They aren't very effective and are highly overpaid for the work that they do. It doesn't matter if you are in Afghanistan or the USA, these fools have taken over the Government that is supposed to work for us. Instead they have made it all about themselves.

Here's a point-of-view from the AFGHN side where the local press in Kabul describes how they see the State of Massachusetts as corrupt (if not more so)than those in Afghanistan.

With DEVAL PATRICK in charge in the State of Massachusetts, I can kinda see this guy's point. Governor Patrick is the best buddy with the President, who is the epitome of ineffective, bloated, overpaid Government. They are a pair of inept frauds who scammed their way into elective office. We would be much better off with both of them out of office and going back to some other line of work.

Massachusetts Corruption Dwarfs Afghan Corruption

International corruption statistics are distorted to protect Western nations and China - Saturday 18 August 2012, by Matthew J. Nasuti - Kabul Press http://kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article120954

Government corruption in the United States is hundreds of times more pervasive and costly than in Afghanistan. Every day American newspapers recount the scandals. One day it involves U.S. Customs officials, the next day it is the Secret Service, then the General Services Administration, then the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. Every month there are new scandals involving foreign aid and other funds administered by the U.S. Department of State, the latest involved the waste of billions of dollars in “global warming” funds squandered by Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones and her predecessor, Claudia A. McMurray. Despite the State Department being perhaps worst administered agency in the Federal Government, no one dares utter even a whisper of criticism at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, so the corruption continues.

While billions of dollars in domestic spending and foreign aid are misappropriated, corruptly awarded and mismanaged each year, that corruption is easier to conceal, because the U.S. is a wealthy country with many distractions. Despite the publicity, few members of the public seem able to grasp the size and scope of the cancer of corruption and nepotism that is eating away at the country.

Internationally, government corruption is ranked under a flawed system established by such groups as “Transparency International.” They rank corruption in countries like Afghanistan and the United States based on subjective “perceptions” of corruption. Because the rankings are not based on the actual volume of corruption, this system unfairly maligns developing countries. If the system were based on the dollar amount of corruption, it would list many Western, Arab and Far East nations as the most corrupt.

Supposedly non-profit groups such as Transparency International are anything but transparent. Its co-founder, Michael Hershman, is a former official with USAID and he is also the chairman of the Fairfax Group. Fairfax makes it profits from the corruption that Transparency International “discovers.” Fairfax holds itself out as an expert consultant on foreign government corruption and as a result it has been awarded numerous U.S. government anti-corruption contracts. Transparency International’s U.S. Board of Directors and Advisory Council is filled with former government officials, lawyers for major Washington, D.C. law firms, government consultants and other representatives of organizations affiliated with the U.S. Department of State. Many of these people make money from or advance their careers by pointing the corruption finger overseas, rather than where it belongs, which is at the Federal, State and local governments in the United States.

In the United States, the systemic government corruption is not limited to the loss of public funds and cronyism, but extends to a wide range of dishonest and illegal practices which shield those with political connections. American is literally a land of two peoples; those to whom the law applies and those who are above the law. The problem is too large for a single article to examine, so just one of America’s 50 states (Massachusetts) was chosen for this article and even for that state, there is only space to summarize a tiny percentage of its public corruption.

Timothy Murray Scandal: The current state government in Massachusetts is called the Patrick/Murray Administration after Governor Duval Patrick and Lieutenant Governor Timothy Murray. On November 2, 2011, at 5:26 a.m. Murray was driving his State-owned Crown Victoria automobile in Sterling, Massachusetts, when he crashed the vehicle, completely destroying it. Murray told the police that he was driving at the legal speed limit of 55 miles per hour and lost control of the vehicle. He claimed to be on official business inspecting (in the dark) storm damage in the area. The police determined that he was driving at 108 miles per hour and fell asleep at the wheel. Every statement made to police by Murray was false. Despite that and Murray’s lack of remorse, local prosecutors refused to prosecute him for his false statements or for reckless endangerment. As a reward, Governor Patrick gave Murray a new $40,000.00 State automobile to replace the one he destroyed. Murray had previously been cited in 1992 and 2006 for speeding. Attempts by the Boston Herald to further investigate this scandal have been blocked by lawyers in the Governor’s Office, including E. Abim Thomas, who claims that the records are exempt from public release. ,br />
Chelsea Housing Authority Scandal: Massachusetts has 242 public housing authorities and some of the top jobs within these agencies have historically been patronage appointments, a system prone to abuse. For most of the past year, the Chelsea (Boston) Housing has been rocked by sandals. On June 15th of this year investigators questioned Lieutenant Governor Murray about allegations that Chelsea officials were illegally fundraising for him. Murray has refused to brief the people of Massachusetts regarding any of these allegations. Since then there have been no public updates. The concern is that this criminal investigation, like so many others, has been quietly dropped.

MBTA Scandal: On August 6, 2012, the Boston Globe reported that there were only two bidders on a $1 billion State MBTA transportation contract. Initially, 25 companies expressed an interest in bidding but except for the favored contractors (Mass Bay) and a little known French company, all the rest of the bidders ultimately declined to bid. The reason that 23 companies withdrew from the process is that there is a wide-spread belief that State officials had rigged the bidding in favor of Mass Bay. Governor Patrick has done nothing to dispel this apparently accurate assessment. Due to the lack of competition and in order to try and restore public confidence, Governor Patrick should withdraw bidding authority from MBTA General Manager Jonathan R. Davis, assign the bid evaluation to an independent panel and order that panel to rebid the work. This of course will never happen because the Governor seems quite content with the present corruption.

Deerfield River Levee Scandal: In the Fall of 2011, a group of wealthy agri-businesses in Deerfield, Massachusetts created several kilometers of sand levees along the Deerfield River in an attempt to prevent future flooding of their low-lying farm fields. The 10-15 foot levees, in some places push into tree-lines and right up to the river’s edge. The legal issue is that State law prohibits any construction work within 200 feet of a river without a permit, which the farmers failed to apply for. The Massachusetts River Protection Act is very clear and it mandates that the levees be removed. According to informed sources, inspectors for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recommended in 2011 that enforcement action be commenced against the violators. A letter was sent on December 15, 2011 to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley from Cynthia M. Pepyne of the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office requesting a State review of these potential environmental violations. To-date however nothing has happened. The reason is that the agri-businesses involved have close political ties to the Patrick-Murray Administration and party loyalty matters more to these State officials than the environment or the law. It is not clear who within Ms. Coakley’s office or the DEP quashed the enforcement action. The case is presently sitting on the desk of Brian Harrington, Assistant Administrator for DEP’s Western Region. It has been sidelined with the support of DEP attorney Kathleen Delaplain, but the real decision authorities may have been DEP Director Kenneth L. Kimmell and Western Regional Administrator Michael Gorski. In contacts with these officials, they claim that the enforcement action is still under “active consideration” but it is impossible to obtain the truth from any of these individuals.

Department of Revenue Scandal: An investigation in early 2012 revealed that the Massachusetts Department of Revenue has a new tactic that it is using against the poor. It is called the “desk audit.” For wealthy and corporate taxpayers, the Department will conduct field audits in which revenue agents travel to the home or place of business of the wealthy to review the taxpayer’s records. However, for indigent taxpayers, the Department misuses a device called the desk audit and it orders the taxpayer to copy all of his or her records for one or multiple years and mail all of them to the desk auditor. If the taxpayer cannot afford to do this, the Department labels them as “refusing to comply with the law” and rejects all their deductions, imposing large penalties on them. If the indigent taxpayer tries to appeal this unjust assessment, he or she is hit with the one-two punch by the Massachusetts Appellate Tax Board (ATB). The ATB has ignored rulings from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and decided that it will not waive filing fees for the poor. As a result of this misconduct, some indigent taxpayers are barred from appealing State abuses. Even if the indigent could somehow obtain the required filing fees, the ATB requires that all hearings be held in Boston, a long trip for the elderly and in some cases an impossible trip for the poor. The ATB refuses to travel around the State in order to hear cases locally, however, the ATB will travel the circuit for wealthy parties who are contesting property tax assessments. It will hold court for property tax cases for the rich in such upscale western towns as Northampton, but it will not accommodate the poor by holding income tax hearings in Springfield or Greenfield. One of these indigent taxpayer cases is currently being prosecuted by Department of Revenue attorney John DeLosa. Commissioner of Revenue Amy Pitter and ATB Chairman Thomas W. Hammond, Jr. apparently are quite comfortable with these abuses, as they have done nothing to correct them. USDA - Massachusetts Scandal: There is an investigation currently underway by U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz and the FBI into the corrupt awarding of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Bill funds in Massachusetts. The case has been briefed to top officials in Tom Vilsack’s office. Mr. Vilsack is the Secretary of Agriculture for the United States. The evidence is that USDA officials in Massachusetts have been awarding grants primarily to friends, family members and to a small group of wealthy farmers with close ties to the Patrick/Murray Administration. The grants are under two programs called the Emergency Conservation Program (ECP) and the Environmental Quality Improvement Program (EQIP). The public has not heard about this case and it will not be hearing about this case for a while because, unfortunately, the U.S. Attorney’s investigation appears to be on hold until after the November election, so as not to embarrass President Obama. Corruption at the Federal, State and local levels within the United States varies from agency to agency, from State to State and from town to town. Overall, the sheer magnitude of abuses outstrips anything present in Afghanistan. The American metrics far outpace Afghanistan on the dollar number of funds misappropriated, number of instances of corruption and number of people and companies who are immune from and above the law. This is not to condone the level of corruption within Afghanistan, which is believed to be considerable and unacceptable. Hypocracy has always been a staple of international diplomacy and therefore Afghanistan will have to live with the condescending arrogance of American diplomats who see corruption everywhere but in their own back yard

As the flood approaches....

Those in the "lifeboat" care very little about those who are not...All is well for them, so why should they concern themselves with the troubles of others?

Like in Massachusetts where the number of state employees earning over $100,000 a year has jumped 40% since Governor Deval " Cadillac " Patrick has taken office, with approximately 7000 state employees reaching this level of annual compensation.

Sebastian Junger - "Everyone's against war, any sane person's against war, and yet everyone goes to see war movies..."

An acquaintence of mine from Middleboro, MA recently inquired about the "tone" of my comments here, especially regarding my rather spirited bashing of POTUS & his administration, The Governor of Massachusetts and many of those held dear by the Left. He stated that I was regurgitating Fox News.

In my defense, I rarely, if ever have cited FOX News on this blog....I read many different sources and try to gain a multi-faceted view. Hate to say it, our Nobel Prize Winner in the White House and his lefty ilk were the ones spouting " Protest is Patriotic" for years....seems a little hypocritical for any Lefty Leaning person to now say it is uncalled for as the shoe is on the other foot... Can't take the "heat", stay out of the kitchen.

For the record, I am "unenrolled" and follow neither party as I vote the Man/Woman and NOT the party.

Actually, I digress. Enclosed is a copy of an article written about a person whom I have much respect and admiration for, Massachusetts native and War Correspondant Sebastian Junger.

He admits to being a Lefty politics wise but supports the Afghanistan War. He has felt the heat of battle and understands what most of the Lefties back stateside have no clue on....Do He & I agree on all things ?? NOPE. Then again, I disagree with one of my Heroes in life, US Senator John McCain but that doesn't stop me from supporting him either. The difference is Sebastian Junger & John McCain both make intelligent arguements and have HONOR. They are thinking and caring passionately about what they are espousing.

OBAMA, Pelosi, Deval Patrick, Geitner, Napolitano, Biden ??? NOPE....None of them are worthy to stand next to Sebastian Junger or Senator McCain as the only thing they care about is controlling your life and your money. They are devoid of honor and integrity as a group. My opinion, and solely based on my observations. Many agree with me and many disagree. If I had to go somewhere "hot", I'd trust John McCain & Seabstian Junger long before I would consider trusting any of the aforementioned bunch.


OK - I digressed a 2nd time. Now the words from Sebastian Junger. Read on as it is worth your time to hear what he says. I hope one day to meet Sebastian just as I have met John McCain. I would really like to get to know him better.

Sebastian Junger reflects on friendship, war and peace

After the death of photojournalist and friend Tim Hetherington in Libya, Junger resolves to cease front-line reporting. But war, he says, remains one of humanity's master narratives.

By Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times
June 9, 2011


Last Oscar season, author Sebastian Junger and photojournalist Tim Hetherington walked the red carpet together.

Their documentary "Restrepo," recorded while they were embedded with a U.S. Army platoon in Afghanistan's remote and dangerous Korengal Valley, was nominated for an Academy Award. For months the two men had lived with the troops, sharing the same food, the same stifling quarters, and the same long stretches of boredom punctuated by moments of adrenaline-fueled terror.

Barely two months after the Oscars, on April 20, Hetherington was killed in a mortar attack in Misurata, Libya, where he was covering the rebel uprising against Moammar Kadafi's regime. In the months since, Junger has resolved to pull back from combat journalism.

"I'm not going to do any more front-line reporting, because I don't want to put my wife through what I went through with Tim," he said during a recent stopover in Los Angeles to promote the new paperback edition of his 2010 book "War," which Junger was compiling while he and Hetherington were filming "Restrepo."

"It was a very obvious thought to come to in the wake of all this. Tim's death made war reporting feel like a selfish endeavor."

It's a startling concession from an author whose eyewitness accounts from Liberia, Afghanistan and other global hot spots can make readers imagine they're inches away from the mortar blasts and AK-47 rounds.

Written in sinewy, stripped-to-the-waist prose, "War" not only paints vivid profiles of the U.S. soldiers Junger met, and the harrowing conditions they endured, it also penetrates deeply into the strange, terrifying allure of combat and the motivations of the young men who mostly wage it. The book has drawn critical comparisons with such canonical literature as Michael Herr's Vietnam-era "Dispatches" and the World War I and Spanish Civil War reflections of Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell.

In this month's Vanity Fair magazine, Junger eulogizes Hetherington's valor and vision in conveying the world's suffering to others. Another photojournalist, Chris Hondros, was fatally wounded in the same Libyan attack that killed Hetherington, and two other photojournalists were injured.

Before Hetherington's death, Junger said, the perils of war reporting had always felt abstract. He's not judging other journalists' decisions to place themselves in harm's way, but he's had enough.

"I thought it couldn't happen to me, and I'd never known anyone who had got killed — couple guys that got shot. You know, there's a lot of denial. I mean, denial works."

A trim 49-year-old with intense storm-gray eyes, Junger has the demeanor of a youthful college English professor who moonlights as the track coach — an Ivy League mind outfitted in solid blue-collar principles. He projects a restless curiosity, a touch of rah-rah adventurism, a dash of low-key machismo.

The author and his wife of six years, Daniela, a Bulgarian native to whom "War" is dedicated, have no children but are discussing starting a family.

Junger said that his father, a theoretical physicist, opened his mind to science and the idea that the physical and human worlds "can be understood and should be understood." His mother, a painter, gave to her son a more aesthetic and spiritual mode of understanding. Journalism merged his left- and right-brain tendencies "in kind of a nice way."

Despite his own vow to pull back from the trenches, Junger still not only considers war to be a great journalistic subject, he regards it as one of the three or four master narratives of human life — or, at least, guys' lives.

"Look at the cave paintings in France. What do they show? They show the game animals that they've hunted — a form of warfare, in a way, violence. They show warfare, they show men fighting each other. They show fertile females. I mean, what topics preoccupy men? You want to look into the male brain? It's like, OK, I need to kill game, I need to sustain myself — basically, career. Conflict and combat, manliness and proving yourself. Hot chicks. And the final one is shamanism, connection to the divine. That comprises the entirety of what's on the walls of the caves in France. That's the male brain, that's human society in a lot of ways."

Stories of violent conflict and men acting gracefully (or otherwise) under duress have been the alpha and omega of Junger's writing career, in books such as "The Perfect Storm" (1997), about a fishing boat disaster, and "Fire," about men who earn their living, and sometimes their deaths, by doing perilous jobs in places like Sierra Leone and Kosovo.

As a writer, Junger credits Hetherington with "opening my eyes up" to the rich complexity of visual experience. When he was trying to organize "War" around a unifying principle, Junger asked himself, "What would Tim do and how would Tim think about this material?"

Junger concluded that his friend "wouldn't be organizing it in an event-driven, linear way, he'd be looking for some deeper structure that reflects the human experience." That helped Junger eventually build "War" around three thematic blocks. "Fear" elucidates the primal emotions and human frailties that combat unleashes. "Killing" illuminates military tactics, political gamesmanship and the grotesque seductiveness of high-tech weaponry.

The book's final section, "Love," explores the ties of loyalty and affection that bind soldiers to one another far above any mere ideology.

"Everyone's against war, any sane person's against war, and yet everyone goes to see war movies," Junger said. "All my lefty friends — and in case you hadn't picked up on it I'm pretty left-wing — went to see 'Saving Private Ryan.' They're going to see 'Saving Private Ryan' because war is dramatic and compelling and important and reveals tremendous things about the human soul. And you get it on oil rigs, you get it in logging camps, you get it on fishing boats, you get it in platoons."

If all war is insane, and yet horribly compelling, in Junger's view there are good wars and bad wars. Afghanistan, which he has reported on since the 1990s, is among the former, he believes. Even before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, drew the U.S. deeper into the country, he said, it was clear that only the international community could end Afghanistan's endless civil wars.

Junger believes that if the U.S. and its allies can ever pressure Hamid Karzai's corrupt government to reform so that the people will support it, U.S. forces can withdraw and Afghanistan can achieve peace, security and at least a form of "middle-ground" democracy between the failed state it was in the 1990s and "democracy like we see it in Iowa."

By contrast, invading Iraq was an error, he thinks, and he refused to cover it because "I don't want to risk my life covering a mistake."

There's one other dangerous assignment that Junger shuns: writing fiction. In his early 20s, inspired by the brainy tough-guy holy trinity of Raymond Carver, Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff, Junger tried his hand at a few short stories, but they rightfully ended up buried in a closet, he said.

"I mean, a bad novel is hard to write," he said. "A brilliant novel, like I don't even know how that happens. So that's why I don't do it. Writing fiction feels like it would be like going off the diving board into a swimming pool that has no water in it.

"Maybe one day I will, and the pool will be filled with water and it'll be nice, but right now it doesn't feel that way."