Following Up...

If the Federal Highway Administration headquarters folks got a bit hacked off by my message a few weeks ago urging FHWA ITS specialists and others to share their insight into the TTID program/Traffic.com monopoly with the USDOT Inspector General's audit team, you may see steam coming out of their ears when they find out about the one that's going out as we speak. -- JW

Dear FHWA ITS Specialist,

As I mentioned in my email message back on April 3, the more I have found about the history of the ITIP/TTID program and what Sen. Hatch calls a "monopoly on traffic data collection" (link), the more I have come to believe that this is not the way that a federal program should work in the public interest.

My white paper, "The U.S. TTID Program: When Politics, Competition, and the Public Interest Collide" (link), traces the history of this controversial program from the passage of TEA-21 to the present day. I hope you have found this white paper, and the many documents and resources it links to, eye opening. I would like to share just a few of the many additional facts that I have learned from my research into this program:

- Fact: Both Traffic.com Vice President John Collins and former USDOT (and later DHS) Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson were Senior Vice Presidents of the American Trucking Associations in 1997, during the period when numerous people and organizations were working on the language for the forthcoming TEA-21 transportation authorization bill. Mr. Collins was Senior Vice President for Governmental Affairs at ATA (link1, link2, link3) and Mr. Jackson was Senior Vice President for Policy Matters at ATA (link). During this timeframe Congressman Bud Shuster from Pennsylvania, then the Chairman of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, was one of the principle supporters of language authorizing the ITIP program in TEA-21.

- Fact: an article in the New York Times in June, 1997 includes the following quote: "Mr. Collins assured him [ATA CEO Donohue] that the chairman of the Transportation Committee, Representative Bud Shuster of Pennsylvania, was at that moment writing a hot letter to Mr. Archer, whose committee is in charge of tax writing" (link).

- Fact: Jack Schenendorf, the Chief of Staff for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee during Cong. Shuster's tenure as Chairman of that committee, served on the Bush/Cheney Transition effort where he was Chief of the Transition Policy Team (link). Mr. Schenendort's law firm, Covington and Burling, acted as counsel for Traffic.com's initial public offering in early 2006 (link).

- Fact: Cong. Shuster's son, Robert L. Shuster, was also a member of the transportation transition team (link). Robert L. Shuster was a registered lobbyist for Traffic.com in 2006 (link), and was also involved in a lease arrangement for the company (link). In January of this year, "Robert Shuster Jr." and an associate at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC registered as lobbyists for Traffic.com (link).

- Fact: In May 2001, Michael P. Jackson became Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. Dept. of Transportation (link), rejoining USDOT Secretary Norman Mineta, with whom he had worked for several years at Lockheed Martin IMS’s Transportation Systems and Services Division. At Lockheed Martin IMS, Jackson served as Chief Operating Officer, while Mr. Mineta served as Senior Vice President (link). The June 2001 newsletter of the Center for Public Integrity called the situation where two executives from a single company were taking the top two slots at the USDOT "unprecedented at DOT" (link).

- Fact: In 2001, after Cong. Shuster retired from Congress several months after being rebuked by the House Ethics Committee for ethics violations and the subject of an expose on 60 Minutes (link), Cong. Shuster's former Chief Counsel, Roger Nober, became counsel for USDOT Deputy Secretary Jackson. Mr. Nober, who according to his own words in an interview was the principal Transportation Committee staff person responsible for drafting TEA-21, had been asked by USDOT Secretary Norman Mineta "to serve in a sort of senior capacity there as counsel to Michael Jackson at the time" (link).

- Fact: Traffic.com has long been trying to leverage its "ITS infrastructure" (subsidized through the ITIP/TTID program in many of nation's most traffic congested cities) into homeland security business, a fact substantiated by multiple reports in the press (link1, link2) as well as Traffic.com's own press release (link). David Jannetta, the long-time President of Traffic.com and former mayor of the largest city in Cong. Bud Shuster's old congressional district (link), Altoona, PA, made this statement in a hearing of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee's Subcommittee on Highways and Transit on Sept. 10, 2002: "We are developing ways to leverage our existing ITS infrastructure to enhance homeland security efforts in our deployment areas."

- Fact: Mark Holman, a Principal with the lobbying firm Blank Rome Government Relations (link), was formerly the Chief of staff for then PA Governor Tom Ridge, who later became the first Homeland Security Secretary. Mr. Holman was a registered lobbyist for Traffic.com (Mobility Technologies) both before (link) and after (link) serving as Deputy Assistant to President Bush on Homeland Security (link).

- Fact: On March 10, 2005, former USDOT Deputy Secretary Jackson was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In this role, he also served as Chief Operating Officer (link).

- Fact: Jack Tomarchio, co-founder and lobbyist for Hill Solutions in Wayne, PA -- the same town in which Traffic.com's headquarters is located -- was a registered lobbyist for Traffic.com (Mobility Technologies) in 2004 (link) and 2005 (link). In October, 2005, Buchanan Ingersoll acquired Hill Solutions (link).

- Fact: In early 2006, Mr. Tomarchio assumed a new senior position at DHS as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence & Analysis (link). In his role, Mr. Tomarchio helps lead "information sharing" efforts (link).

- Fact: On August 24, 2007, the non-profit Project on Government Oversight sent a very detailed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (link) to DHS, requesting a variety of different materials (email messages, meeting notes, calendar entries, etc.) related to both Mr. Jackson's and Mr. Tomarchio's connections with Traffic.com.

- Fact: On September 24, 2007, exactly one month after POGO's FOIA request, DHS Deputy Secretary Jackson announced that he was resigning from that position (link). The Federal Times reported that this announcement was unexpected, because DHS Secretary Chertoff had recently assured House Homeland Security Chairman Cong. Bennie Thompson that "no senior leadership would be leaving" (link).

- Fact: According to press reports, Mr. Jackson's resignation as DHS Deputy Secretary was to be effective October 26, 2007 (link). On October 17, 2007, POGO's General Counsel Scott Amey sent an email message to DHS, putting that department on notice that they needed to make sure that Mr. Jackson didn't remove any information from their files that would be responsive to POGO's FOIA request when he left that job. Just two days before that email message, Mr. Amey and POGO sent a formal letter to USDOT Secretary Mary Peters (copying top transportation legislators and USDOT Inspector General Scovel) urging an investigation into the TTID program/contract (link).

- Fact: DHS has thus far sent two letters to POGO related to its FOIA request (link1, link2) but has yet to provide any of the materials specified in that request.

I thought that you might find these facts interesting, as I did.

Jerry

Pay-to-Play

That's what was clearly involved when on July 29, 2005 former House Transportation Committee Chairman Don "Bridge to Nowhere" Young placed a statement in the House record designed to starve funding for the new provision that Senator Orrin Hatch had just spearheaded in the big transportation authorization bill that was designed to break up Traffic.com's monopoly. A check of the company's contributions to Young's reelection fund and PAC shows several strategically placed contributions, right around the times that Traffic.com needed Cong. Young's influence. They paid, he played.

More recently, Young has gotten embroiled in yet another "pay-to-play" scheme involving a new Coconut Road interchange along I-75 in Florida, hardly in his "district" that encompasses the entire state of Alaska. It seems that if you throw a fund-raiser and raise $40K for his campaign you can get the Alaska congressman to put a new exit road pretty much anywhere you want. You pay, he plays. No wonder Young is widely regarded in Washington, DC as one of our nation's premiere "coin-operated politicians."

Of course, Young is in good company. "Pay-to-play" was the game that Trimble Navigation was playing when they likely gave former Congressman and future Commerce and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta a whole lot of extra stock options under the table back in 2000, as Mr. Mineta was about to become Commerce Secretary. (More details here and here.)

Their "pay" was likely up to $900K in extra stock options that Mr. Mineta failed to disclose on his Public Financial Disclosure report covering the period he was Commerce Secretary. Such disclosure is required by the Ethics in Government Act, but of course that Act is only useful if the authorities (including the FBI, USDOT Inspector General's office, and SEC) are willing to enforce it. Things have gotten so corrupt in our nation's Capitol these days that none of these authorities have been willing to dig into this almost certain major ethics violation by a recent senior Administration official.

Ironically, Mr. Mineta, who was likely "pre-paid" by Trimble Navigation to benefit their cause, exhibited something that almost seems in some strange sense to be honorable behavior in his willingness to follow through with his part of the bargain, the "play." Mr. Mineta not only supported policies that would benefit the GPS/location technology arena in which Trimble Navigation was a market leader when he was Commerce Secretary in the Clinton Administration, he continued to support additional policies and initiatives that would benefit that market after he became Transportation Secretary in the Bush Administration. For years Mr. Mineta fulfilled his part of this Faustian bargain.

It seems that once a high-level "public servant" crosses over to the pay-to-play modus operandi and sees how enormously profitable this game is, there's no turning back. Mr. Mineta is now the Vice Chairman of one of our nation's largest public relations firms, Hill & Knowlton, and he's now at the top of his "pay-to-play" game. He has mastered the ability to cash in on his carefully honed reputation that derives from being the nation's longest serving Secretary of Transportation.

Just last week, Mr. Mineta was in Hawaii promoting the use of steel rail technology to the Oahu City Council. Of course, he was once again cashing in on his sterling reputation as a national transportation leader. As I've said before, he's done some very good things over the years. However, he has also likely violated our nation's signature federal ethics law, and collaborated with several other high-level "public servants" to create and sustain a federally sponsored monopoly that works against the public interest in many of our nation's most traffic-congested cities.

In Hawaii, according to news reports, Mr. Mineta was paid $120,000 for providing his "objective" advice that steel-rail technology was the best way to go for Oahu's new 20-mile long fixed guideway system. My guess is that Mr. Mineta would have told the City Council pretty much anything that his client (the Oahu Mayor's administration) wanted him to say, because he's become a very successful hired gun, pure and simple.

Pay to play.

Jerry

Circling the Wagons

In the last three weeks I have sent hundreds of email messages to long-time friends and contacts in the "intelligent transportation systems" ("ITS") field, alerting them to the USDOT Inspector General's new audit and urging anyone with first-hand knowledge of the details of this scam to contact the OIG's team. This message linked to the OIG's audit announcement, as well as to my latest white paper and other documents about this scam that I've put online. It also included this paragraph:

Just so you know, I do not believe that the administration of the TTID program involves any wrongdoing on the part of anyone within the FHWA Office of Operations, for whom I used to work. I know that FHWA staff have been aware of the severe shortcomings of this program for years, but have been pressured to go along with it. Recently, a number of email messages between FHWA staff and Traffic.com were provided by the FHWA to the non-profit watchdog Sunlight Foundation in response to its Freedom of Information Act request, which confirm that staff members in the FHWA Office of Operations have long been raising concerns about this program, particularly how the program's data usage restrictions might impact the state/local partners.

Over 80 of those messages went to folks in the Federal Highway Administration, both at headquarters and in the field. I added the above paragraph in an attempt to protect the reputations of those with whom I used to work, who I know have long been dragged kicking and screaming into this scam by Shuster and his associates (including the top management of the USDOT).

So I was surprised to hear that one of the FHWA managers who has succumbed to that pressure for years put his own message out to FHWA staff, in an apparent effort to discredit me and what I was saying. A classic example of "cover your ass" if there ever was one.

The dynamics of how bureaucracies "circle the wagons" when they perceive that they are being attacked is fascinating, especially in circumstances where key people there deep down must know that they're right in the middle of a big scam like this one.

Truth will out.

Jerry

"Hair is Overrated!"

That's what the young fellow who checked me out at the HEB grocery store said this evening, right after he asked me "would you like to purchase our special today, hair gel?" and my response was "what the heck would I do with hair gel?"

He not only asserted that hair was overrated, but he tried pretty hard to convince me that his thesis was correct. "Sure, it can keep you warmer in the winter, but it's a real nuisance in the summer," he said, adding "I usually cut it all off when it starts getting really hot," which it certainly does here in central Texas.

His comments, I'm sure, were meant to make me feel less self-conscious when I asked about how I might actually use the product they were featuring in their daily special. But I found his remarks mildly condescending.

Did he really need to give me an explanation of how hair can be useful in the winter, but a pain in the ass in the summer? Didn't he realize that I once had hair, albeit and admittedly a while ago?

For one fleeting moment I wished I had brought a print of the black and white picture from 1952 I came across at Judy and Bill's place last Christmas that proved unequivocally that I indeed once knew what having hair on the top of one's head was like.

Jerry

A Sad Realization: The Executive Branch is Incapable of Investigating Corruption in Its Own Ranks

Today I received a letter from Charles H. Lee, Jr., the Assistant Inspector General for Investigations for the U.S. DOT Inspector General's office, saying that "we [that is, the IG's Office of Investigations] will not be conducting any further investigation into those issues." He's referring to the issues that I raised in January 2007, when I spent two hours with Special Agent Malik Freeman and his supervisor from the IG's Investigations Division at the OIG's offices in DC explaining the Traffic.com scandal.

Over the next six months or so I would talk with SA Freeman multiple times, and receive 10 email messages from him. He was particularly interested in my allegations about Mr. Mineta's ties to Trimble Navigation. I believe that SA Freeman could have gotten to the bottom of this scandal if his supervisors had supported him in that action. However, that was clearly not the case.

To be honest, I'm getting a little tired of receiving letters like this from bureaucrats trying more to protect their asses rather than to do what's right and dig into what is clearly serious fraud and corruption in our federal government.

A few weeks back I received another letter from a Senior Counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission, with whom I had talked on multiple occasions and to whom I had sent substantial information about where Shuster's, Mineta's, Jackson's, and others' financial interest in Traffic.com very likely could be hidden. The SEC's investigators, of course, could also play a key role in ascertaining how many extra Trimble Navigation stock options Mr. Mineta almost certainly received under the table back in 2000.

That SEC letter appears to be a form letter. The tipoff is where it says "Although the Commission is always eager to be of service to investors..." I never even remotely intimated that I was an investor in Traffic.com or Trimble Navigation (and I never have been), so that reference is particularly inappropriate. ("Let's send form letter No. 313 to Mr. Werner -- that should get him off our back!")

The only conclusion I can draw from these latest letters is that the people in the Executive Branch who are ultimately responsible for ensuring that our government is honest and ethical will not investigate major fraud and corruption in their own branch. The reason? Because these individuals either report directly to the crooks themselves or to other senior officials in this Administration who absolutely don't want news of more scandals getting out. We're seeing a failure of the "authorities" to investigate all kinds of scandals in our federal government these days, so I probably shouldn't be surprised. It's a very sad state of affairs, and doesn't at all bode well for our future.

In the case of the whole Traffic.com scandal, a thorough investigation by the OIG's Office of Investigations would ultimately and undoubtedly lead to the top executive suite in the USDOT, to both to the current occupant and her predecessor. However, the "investigators" ultimately report to the people who occupy that office, and clearly don't see it as helpful to their career aspirations to even start an investigation that could very likely lead there. Much safer from a personal standpoint not to open up Pandora's box in the first place.

I used to think that "career executives" in the big federal bureaucracies, as opposed to "political appointees," helped ensure that their agencies remained ethical and honest, because they weren't overtly pursuing political agendas that might obscure what is truly in the public interest. But the flipside is that these career executives are by definition concerned about their career growth, and investigating corruption on the part of your boss could very likely be a career-stunting -- if not career-ending -- exercise. Again, better to just not open this can of worms at all.

It's all pretty discouraging and disappointing, but I will not quit. As one of my key advisors from a non-profit government corruption watchdog organization recently observed, "you sure have a lot of torpedoes in the water, and I think at least some of them are going to hit."

I think he's right.

Jerry

Why I Didn't Like "No Country for Old Men"

I've long enjoyed movies from the Coen Brothers, and "Fargo" is one of my all-time favorites. What a great film, combining suspense, humor, gore (the "wood chipper" scene) and satire in one very compelling movie. Did I like it a lot? You betcha!

Over the Christmas holiday during my visit to Northern California I saw "No Country for Old Men" with my sister Judy and brother-in-law Bill. I know that "No Country..." won all kinds of awards, including the Best Picture Oscar. The picture certainly had its redeeming qualities. The bad guy in that film, Anton Chigurh, is one of the most fascinating and at the same time terrifying characters in movie history -- at least among the movies I've seen, and I consider myself at least an amateur movie buff. (For almost 15 years my ex-wife and I had a standing date to see a movie every Friday night.)

In the end, however, the movie was an incredible downer, which is why I do not recommend it to others. The lawman, played by Tommie Lee Jones, acknowledged that he wasn't strong or powerful enough to combat Chigurh, and ultimately just faded off into the sunset, a defeated "old man."

I go to movies to be inspired, not to be discouraged. I want to see stories where the good guys ultimately succeed. I want the folks wearing the white hats to prevail. That's why I like Frank Capra's movies, and especially "It's a Wonderful Life." It's why I think Dean Koontz's recent book, "The Good Guy," will make a terrific movie. That book has a bad guy every bit as sinister as Anton Chigurh, but a really "good guy" who refuses to fade off into the sunset. (You can probably guess how the story turns out; I don't want to entirely spoil it for you if you haven't read the book.)

I know that in real life, honest and ethical people often don't succeed, although they may have plenty of talent and noble goals. I also know that crooks more often than not -- especially these days -- get away with their crimes. I have first-hand knowledge of a case in which some very powerful and influential people have gotten away with a major scam for years.

But I also know that there are plenty of stories -- real stories -- where good people do overcome both the odds and the crooks and cheaters. Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, whose story is the focus of the movie "The Insider," is a case in point. (As an aside, I've written to and talked with Dr. Wigand on multiple occasions.) He's definitely one of the folks in the white hats who had to overcome incredible obstacles when he decided to tell the truth about the tobacco industry's clear knowledge of the addictive properties of nicotine. Check out Dr. Wigand's recently revamped website. He may not be drawing his $300K+ yearly annual salary anymore as the head of research for a Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, but he's undoubtedly sleeping pretty well these days. And he's definitely an inspiration.

Jerry