Buda Rabblerouser -- Part 3

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Location: Buda, Texas, United States

Technologist, entrepreneur, writer, idealist, activist. A lot of things in our country and world are screwed up right now (government corruption is a prime example), and we can either just watch things get worse or tackle the problems head-on. We need to choose the latter path.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

More Press Coverage about the Traffic.com Scam

No sooner had I put out my "white paper" about the big ongoing scandal in the U.S. Dept. of Transportation than I found out about even more coverage about this scandal in the press -- in this case, the transportation-specific press.

Dan Rathbone, the Editor of the popular Urban Transportation Monitor, told me in an email message last Saturday that he featured this scam as the lead story in his October 26 issue:

Government Watchdog, Congressional Leaders Outraged That Fed Program Gives Unfair Advantage to Traffic.com

I'm also co-authoring an article about this scam that should appear in the December/January issue of the leading publication that covers the field I used to consult in, Traffic Technology International. My co-author Peter Samuel, an old buddy who's an Aussie with major cojones and a wicked sense of humor, has been involved in the "intelligent transportation systems" field almost as long as I have.

TTI likes the subject so much that they'll be featuring a shorter version of it on their blog. The Editor of that blog made the article available to me early (it will be available online on December 3), and here it is:

Traffic.com or Traffic.con?

Honestly, I'm truly amazed that this scam is still going on, with all the very negative -- and accurate -- press about it that's come out in the last six months or so.

To repeat my mantra: it's only a matter of time before the crooks get taken down.

And to my loyal readers: Happy Thanksgiving!

Jerry

Saturday, November 17, 2007

New "White Paper" on the USDOT/Traffic.com Scandal

This week I put together a white paper that "connects the dots" in the ongoing Traffic.com scam. I originally wrote it for publication in the leading traffic/transportation magazine, but it ended up more than twice as long as the publication wants. So I created a "live" PDF version on the web that links to all of its citations (e.g., communication between Sen. Hatch and USDOT Secretary Peters, various articles that have appeared):

The U.S. TTID Program: When Politics, Competition and the Public Interest Collide

You'll notice in it that Senator Hatch has formally requested an investigation of this monopoly/scam, and that the USDOT Inspector General's office has confirmed to Sen. Hatch's staff that a comprehensive audit is underway. Let's hope that the IG -- who partially reports to USDOT Secretary Peters -- has sufficient integrity to do a detailed investigation and chooses not to sweep this scandal under the rug because of the clear involvement in it by USDOT top management (possibly including Ms. Peters).

I've been sending this white paper to key people in the ITS/transportation field, including consultants to the Federal Highway Administration, so I'm sure that both the USDOT and Traffic.com are aware of it. That's absolutely fine with me, since everything in it is truthful and factual. An abridged version of it will hopefully be published in that magazine within the next few weeks, too.

Frankly, with all the information that's now in the public domain about this scandal, I'm amazed that it's still going on. Hopefully, that situation will change soon.

One of the latest elements of this scandal is that USDOT General Counsel D.J. Gribbon has been sitting on a bunch of emails between the FHWA and Traffic.com for months now. They were promised to the Sunlight Foundation months ago in response to an earlier FOIA request. My guess is that these messages clearly implicate senior USDOT management in this monopoly/scam, which is why Mr. Gribbon is being an obstructionist (possibly at the direction of Ms. Peters). The Sunlight Foundation is now considering, if the USDOT doesn't comply soon, filing suit in the D.C. District Court to force the department's compliance.

Stay tuned, because the USDOT is now getting hammered from all sides (legislators, investigators, non-profit watchdog organizations, and the press). At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this scam is going down.

Jerry

Friday, November 02, 2007

Will You Take This One? No? How about That One?

This is starting to get really funny. The Center for Responsive Politics has been trying for months now to get a copy of former USDOT Secretary Norman Mineta's calendar year 2000 Public Financial Disclosure report. If you recall, that's the only one of the three disclosures he filed related to his 2000 finances where he was required to provide the details of his profit of up to $1 million in stock options in a company (Trimble Navigation) that has ties to Traffic.com.

I had earlier received this disclosure, and noticed that Mr. Mineta checked "none" in terms of any equity transactions that year on Schedule B, which doesn't make much sense when at the same time (on Schedule A) he disclosed up to a megabuck in capital gains profit from those options. I believe that he hid these details because he received a whole lot more stock options "under the table" than he should have received as a Board member of Trimble Navigation for just over a year before he became Commerce Secretary in the Clinton Administration in July, 2000. In effect, I believe that Trimble "bought themselves a Cabinet member" with this arrangement, and that Mr. Mineta paid them back by espousing federal policies as Commerce Secretary and later Transportation Secretary that would potentially benefit the company.

I have since received another copy of that disclosure, and POGO also received a copy of it in response to their FOIA appeal letter to the OGE.

Despite the fact that this report clearly exists, CRP has not been able to obtain it for many months. First, the OGE sent them the 2000 transportation "new entrant" disclosure that didn't require Mr. Mineta to provide those details. After stalling for literally months, the OGE recently sent CRP the calendar year 2002 report.

They're clearly doing everything they can not to send CRP the correct disclosure. Why? Because CRP is an independent and trusted archivist of such disclosures, and they don't have a six-year statute of limitations in terms of archiving these reports. OGE does have such a statute of limitations, however, and would destroy this disclosure through their normal process in April, 2008.

Clearly, Mr. Mineta would like this disclosure to just fade into the sunset, at which time he'll likely breath a big sigh of relief. I am more and more certain that someone in OGE is trying their best to help him out and to not send it to CRP, where it will live on indefinitely.

Dan at CRP, who manages the acquisition and archiving of these reports, is very frustrated at his inability to acquire the correct disclosure and I certainly understand his frustration. However, I still think that it's pretty funny how hard Mr. Mineta's friends are working not to send the correct disclosure to the CRP.

A message for the slimy bastards in the OGE: It won't work!

Jerry

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Hogging the Road

That's the title of a brand new article about the Traffic.com scam that appeared this afternoon in MotherJones.com. The subtitle of this piece is: How a company called Traffic.com landed an exclusive government contract worth millions to gather data on the nation's highways—and then sold the information back to us.

I knew that Jim Ridgeway was working on this piece, but had no idea as to when it would appear. I originally met with Jim and told him about this scandal last January, during my trip to Washington, DC. It's truly amazing how long it takes for things to happen sometime, but I think he did a good job in explaining the importance of this scandal.

I'm quoted in Ridgeway's piece as saying "Local participants are increasingly aware that this program is a scam." That's true, of course, and I'm even more out of the closet now.

However, what is truly the "big story" here -- the explicit involvement of former USDOT Secretary Mineta, now former DHS Deputy Secretary Jackson, former Special Assistant to the President Holman, and current USDOT Secretary Peters -- has not been told... yet. Stay tuned -- at least three other investigative reporters are actively looking into this scandal, including a major new-age, Internet only publication.

This scam has gotten a lot of press in the past five months or so. The real question is whether or not the USDOT Inspector General or Congressman DeFazio (who chairs the House Highways and Transit Subcommittee) will fully investigate this scandal and expose its details to the light of day, or just sweep it under the rug.

If this scandal involved all Republicans the Democrats would jump all over it (and vice versa), but because it involves Mineta, the Democrats seem unwilling to pursue the truth. As it turns out, it was a brilliant strategy for Shuster and his associates to recruit Mineta for their team early-on. Sadly, he's just as crooked as the rest of them.

Jerry