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A former senior Peace Corps official agreed to cooperate with any law enforcement investigations surrounding a scheme that funneled millions of Department of State dollars to a nonprofit founded and run by former Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter, recently published court documents show. Warren “Buck” Buckingham agreed to cooperate as a condition of an agreement with the Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney’s Office that would keep him from facing prosecution for a related illegal lobbying charge, court documents filed Thursday and made public Tuesday show. (RELATED: Former Peace Corps Official Who Steered Contracts To John Kerry’s Daughter May Avoid Prosecution)...

Launched in December 2007, USASpending.gov was meant as a way of tapping modern technology to hand the American public the means to track what the federal government spends. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office found that, in 2012 at least, more than $619 billion in federal awards that should be accounted for on the site weren't. Agencies, GAO found, are generally reporting on the contracts that they hand out. What's missing from the site are grants and awards, a range of federal spending that covers everything from agricultural development to research on new naval reconnaissance. The absent...

"A powerful United States Senator’s husband is standing by, all ready to make millions from a U.S. taxpayer funded enterprise."

A recent spike in air traffic control errors is likely attributable to a change in the Federal Aviation Administration’s chosen contractor for training air traffic controllers, The Daily Caller has learned. That change was likely the result of an government contracting shuffle orchestrated by an FAA official and her lover -- a former FAA official who worked for Raytheon at the time the contract was awarded. Raytheon won the contract, worth nearly $1 billion. Potentially deadly aircraft incidents attributable to control tower mistakes have increased dramatically in recent years. Professor Jack Williams of Georgia State University told The Daily Caller...

When the economy slowed down and construction jobs started drying up, Warren K. Parker had an idea for getting more business. Pretend to be a wounded war hero, create a company called Silver Star Construction and bid on jobs reserved for companies owned by true service-disabled veterans, narrowing his pool of competing bidders. For a while, the plan worked, nabbing Parker multiple million-dollar construction contracts — including three at Fort Leavenworth. That’s how U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom described Parker’s scheme on Thursday, when he announced that Parker and three others had been indicted on charges of defrauding a federal program...

House Education and Labor Committee Republicans yesterday held a forum to examine Big Labor political cronyism permeating the Obama administration’s agenda. Hosted by Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), senior Republican on the committee, witnesses included Steve Forbes, President and CEO of Forbes and Elaine Chao, former U.S. Secretary of Labor. “While the administration focused in 2009 on appeasing its organized political allies, job creation ground to a halt,” Chao said in testimony. “Current job figures are abysmal. The dearth of job creation during this administration distinguishes this recession from other downturns.” “In the best of years, millions of jobs are lost,”...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama on Monday touted a plan to cut back on wasteful spending on federal government contractors, a plan he said is on track to save 40 billion dollars per year by 2011. "Between 2002 and 2008, the amount spent on government contracts more than doubled. The amount spent on no-bid, non-competitive contracts jumped by 129 percent. This is an inexcusable waste of money," Obama said. Shortly after taking office in January, Obama set a goal for federal agencies to save up to 40 billion dollars per year in contracting costs by 2011. Since then, "24...

WASHINGTON, July 2 — Exasperated by his party's failure to cut government spending, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, is seeking cyberhelp. Mr. Coburn wants to create a public database, searchable over the Internet, that would list most government contracts and grants — exposing hundreds of billions in annual spending to instant desktop view. Type in "Halliburton," the military contractor, or "Sierra Club," the environmental group, for example, and a search engine would show all the federal money they receive. A search for the terms "Alaska" and "bridges" would expose a certain $315 million span to Gravina Island (population 50)...

<p>There was a media firestorm when it was "discovered" that the United States was only going to allow American and allied companies to bid on $18.6 billion of Iraq reconstruction projects. Yet, this was old news. When the Pentagon set up its Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, its mandate was to make contracts only with American firms. The U.S. Agency for International Development had similar rules. As USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios said in April, "Some countries have complained that they were not invited to bid for these projects, which are funded by U.S. taxpayers." He then noted that "foreign aid agencies in most countries try to award contracts to their own companies, supporting business at home while delivering assistance abroad -- just as Americans want to see their tax dollars support jobs at home."</p>

"Hundreds of blacks rallied in front of the Capitol on Saturday to demand slavery reparations, saying that compensation is long overdue for the ills of that institution."

How Ortiz influenced a Navy contract A Hispanic, woman-owned company got two years of help from Ortiz - other firms didn't get a chance BY TARA COPPScripps Howard News ServiceJune 9, 2002   Outsider's struggle:Mary Lupe Arana says minorities need federal work to break Corpus Christi's tight-knit construction network. Read her story>> WASHINGTON - The Navy buckled to pressure by U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz in March and awarded a $12 million contract to a Corpus Christi minority-owned company, despite internal Navy recommendations against the award, according to documents obtained by the Caller-Times. On its face, Ortiz was just doing...