Who am I... and WHY AM I HERE???
ohh, yeah... THE PORK!!!
Posted on 12/30/2007 1:15:03 PM PST by rightwingintelligentsia
WASHINGTON -- The National Defense Center for Environmental Excellence opened its doors in 1991 with a $5 million earmark from a powerful lawmaker. Operating in Johnstown, Cambria County, the privately run center has received at least $671 million worth of federal contracts and earmarks since then to research and develop pollution-abatement technology and other systems for the Defense Department.
The center's researchers have examined scores of software systems and other gear, including groundwater monitoring equipment, gun cleaners and ultrasonic devices, according to its managers. They said the center had delivered nearly 500 technology products and tools to protect the environment, improve safety and cut Pentagon costs.
But a months-long examination by The Washington Post, including a review of documents and interviews with Pentagon officials, found that little of the center's work has been widely used or deployed by the Defense Department.
Only nine systems developed by the center since 2001 have been put into use at more than one installation -- a standard auditors use for measuring the success of technology transfer, Army officials said. That includes such equipment as compost-monitoring technology, bullet-trap technology and hand-held computers for collecting information in the field about unexploded ordnance. Just one system made the leap from the center's labs to multiple locations in the 1990s, Pentagon auditors found.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Didn’t John Murtha fade away in sync with good news out of Iraq? : D
It would be more cost-effective to just give everyone in Johnstown about a quarter of a million dollars and cut them off from any future funding. More money gets flushed down the toilet there than any other place.
I think you can safely refer to him as “Come-with-the-Cash Murtha.” Whether anyone ever uses anything from the center is irrelevant to CC. The vital part is that dollars keep on flowing, more each year.
“That includes such equipment as compost-monitoring technology, bullet-trap technology and hand-held computers for collecting information in the field about unexploded ordnance. Just one system made the leap from the center’s labs to multiple locations in the 1990s, Pentagon auditors found.”
My friends created some of this in their basement for about 200 bucks. The software cost a bit more because they had to buy a microsoft access license.
Precisely what term limits would do away with. Why does our government have to be a spoils system ?
Those of you reading this post might be interested in the early post of the same story:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1945802/posts
Murtha’s of little use to the Pentagon, too.
Sorry; didn’t see that because of the obvious difference in title.
When the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reprinted the story, they apparently altered the original title to give it a (sort of) local spin.
Keep in mind that Jack Murtha maintains a chain of more highly developed “constituent service” offices in his home district than most Congressional members, in some way rivaling that of Robert Byrd, of West Virginia. And it is maintained while covering a much smaller geographic area and fewer constituents.
This “earmark” money is just the means by which more of the largesse of the Federal Treasury is transferred back to the home district.
There used to be a character in Al Capp’s “Li’l Abner” comic strip, about the denizens of Dogpatch, in a generic small rural district in some hick state location, who continued to re-elect “Jack S. Phogbound”, the quintessential perpetual US Representive, a post long held and considered to be a matter of right.
I see certain parallels here.
He needs to have both hands severed at the wrists; grubby thief!
Ping to another copy of the WaPo story, in Murtha's Pittsburgh paper.
A product of a lost mind.
Thanks for posting! The more exposure of the corrupt Murtha, the better. It’s good a paper in his district picked it up
Thanks for the ping, brityank.
Actually, the Post-Gazette ran it as the lead story on the front page of their late Sunday edition.
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