Buda Rabblerouser -- Part 3

"It's What the SEC Does"

2010-03-04T07:50:00.000-08:00

That was my conclusion in a recent blog posting on the New York Times' DealBook blog. I was responding to a posting called "Questions for Harry Markopolos." Markopolos, of course, was the whistleblower who tried for many years to get the SEC to investigate the $50 billion Barnard Madoff Scandal -- all to no avail.

Mr. Markopolos (of whom I think highly) pointed out that the SEC investigators are mostly lawyers, and suggested that their lack of proficiency at math was a fundamental cause for the Commission's investigative failures.

With all due respect, that's a bunch of baloney. My response (full posting here):

The SEC’s failure to investigate financial fraud is much more fundamental than just a problem of their investigators’ proficiency at math. The fact of the matter is that the SEC itself is intimidated by high-profile investigative targets like Mr. Madoff, so it deliberately avoids going after such targets. That was never made more clear than by the sad case of SEC investigator Gary Aguirre, who was fired by his management for pursuing a case involving John Mack, who recently resigned as CEO of Morgan Stanley (but remains as Chairman of the Board). Mack had likely provided inside information to the CEO of the hedge fund Pequot Capital, which in turn made millions from their timely investment. Aguirre wanted to interview Mack under oath, but his managers would have none of it. Aguirre’s story was on the front page of the NY Times back on June 23, 2006. A Senate investigative panel and the SEC’s IG ultimately vindicated Aguirre (but much too late, of course).

My own experience in trying to get the SEC to investigate malfeasance by a recent Cabinet Secretary parallels that of Mr. Markopolos. (This Cabinet member received up to $1 million in extra stock options from a major technology company under the SEC’s radar, and for years afterward pushed federal policies and programs designed to benefit the company. Both he and the company almost certainly violated federal securities and ethics laws.) Even after sending a dozen tips to the SEC’s Enforcement tip line during Chairman Cox’ regime, no one every followed up. After Ms. Schapiro assumed the top SEC post I wrote to her and her top enforcement counsel (Stephen Cohen), and after reviewing the evidence I provided both said that they would look into this matter. Many months later and nothing. Apparently they’ve swept this matter under the rug, too. It’s what the SEC does.

Just so there's no confusion, the "recent Cabinet Secretary" I referred to was Norman Mineta, and my forthcoming book The 'Smart Road' Scam goes into great detail about Mr. Mineta's ethical and legal transgressions.

ITS corrupted: intelligent racketeering slowly unravels over traveler data monopoly

2010-03-04T07:36:00.000-08:00

That's the title of the piece that my old friend Peter Samuel and I wrote for Peter's newsletter, tollroadsnews.com. (Read it here.)

We were motivated to write it after the U.S. Dept. of Transportation's Office of Inspector General (OIG) finally issued their final report about what I call (in my forthcoming book) the 'Smart Road' Scam.

The OIG took the easy way out, coming down hard on the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Operations (my old bosses) about the FHWA's flawed oversight. (Read our piece for more details. As you'll see, we pull no punches.)

There's no other way to say it, the OIG's findings were simply a cop out. As we concluded in our piece:

The FHWA was an easy target, but was just doing what it was told to do by corrupt legislators. The OIG at USDOT clearly decided the legislative shenanigans - the real story behind the Traffic.com racket - were too hot to touch.

As I detail in my new book, the corrupt legislators include Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, Alaska Congressman Don Young, and former Pennsylvania Congressman (and Young's predecessor as Chairman of the House Transportation Committee) Bud Shuster. Corrupt Executive Branch officials include former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and former DOT and DHS Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson.

Transportation Secretary Mineta's (Almost) Invisible Fingerprints

2009-07-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

Today there's an article in the New York Times, entitled "U.S. Withheld Data on Risks of Distracted Driving," that's a real eye-opener. In a nutshell, back in 2003 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was pressured from the top levels of the U.S. Department of Transportation to not make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the hazardous use of cellphones by drivers. Quoting from that piece, by investigative reporter Matt Richtel:

The former head of the highway safety agency said he was urged to withhold the research to avoid antagonizing members of Congress who had warned the agency to stick to its mission of gathering safety data but not to lobby states.

Critics say that rationale and the failure of the Transportation Department, which oversees the highway agency, to more vigorously pursue distracted driving has cost lives and allowed to blossom a culture of behind-the-wheel multitasking.

At one point, NHTSA had even drafted a letter for Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta to send to the states, warning them that their hands-free laws might not solve the problem. Again, quoting from the Times piece:

Dr. Jeffrey Runge, then the head of the highway safety agency, said he grudgingly decided not to publish the Mineta letter and policy recommendation because of larger political considerations.

The fate of the research was discussed during a high-level meeting at the transportation secretary’s office. The meeting included Dr. Runge, several staff members with the highway safety agency and John Flaherty, Mr. Mineta’s chief of staff.

It turns out that not only did Secretary Mineta not (supposedly) know about that meeting, but he (supposedly) didn't even know that the cellphone safety research even existed. Again, quoting from the Times piece:

Mr. Mineta, who left as transportation secretary in 2006, said he was unaware of the meeting.

“I don’t think it ever got to my desk,” he said of the research.

Mr. Mineta's professed lack of awareness of this issue is almost impossible to believe -- particularly since this topic was discussed in his own office by his own Chief of Staff. He clearly wanted to leave the impression that was completely out of the loop on this important issue. However, his own quote in an Associated Press story in February 17, 2003 seems to strongly contradict that intended impression. "I'm a delegator, but I want to know what the details are," Mr. Mineta was quoted of saying in that piece.

Then too, who would be more sensitive to the "political considerations" of upsetting Congress and/or the cellular industry than the long-time politician and former Congressman and Chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee?

Mr. Mineta is extremely adept at orchestrating things behind the scenes without ever leaving his fingerprints. Excerpting from the section entitled "Candidates for the Hidden Payoff" from Chapter 23 of my forthcoming book The 'Smart Road' Scam:

Former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta was the consummate "inside man" who quietly put the underpinning for Traffic.com's monopoly in place. Despite the fact that the Federal Highway Administration [another administration, like NHTSA, under the USDOT's umbrella] wanted to openly compete the ITIP program's expansion from a two-city pilot to a national program, Mineta seized the opportunity to continue the sole-source arrangement for Traffic.com...

Mineta would continue to support Traffic.com's monopoly behind the scenes. He directed the reassignment of Dr. Christine Johnson, the FHWA manager whose department managed the ITIP program and who saw through this scam early-on, to a field position in which she could no longer threaten Traffic.com's monopoly. After the passage of SAFETEA-LU in August, 2005, the Mineta-led USDOT simply ignored the new "Part II" provisions Senator Hatch had put into the bill to break up Traffic.com's ongoing monopoly.

Mr. Mineta's own failure to disclose the details of his capital gains income from Trimble Navigation stock options of up to $1 million -- as is required by federal law -- suggests that he unethically received money "under the radar" for another company.

The truth about former Secretary Mineta's behind-the-scenes manipulation and orchestration of federal policies to benefit private-sector interests over the public's interest, and his clear breach of federal ethics/false claims laws is bound to come out eventually.

As William Shakespeare said way back in 1600 in the Merchant of Venice: "Truth will out."

Jerry

Finished!

2009-03-06T08:32:00.000-08:00

The first draft of The 'Smart Road' Scam: A Whistleblower's Odyssey in Exposing Big-Time Government Corruption, that is. The draft comprises 27 chapters, almost 120,000 words, and over 400 references to correspondence, financial disclosures, white papers, etc.

Unfortunately, the final chapter, "Sustaining the Culture of Corruption," suggests that the same games that have gone on for years will continue into the new Administration.

I wish that the book ended on a more positive note, but the factors that allowed this scam to flourish (greed and unethical behavior by high-level "public servants," practitioners' apathy, and the "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" modus operandi in Congress) continue unabated.

Hopefully I'm wrong, and things will get better. I believe that exposing the details of The 'Smart Road' Scam will help.

I've already shared this new expose with a number of friends and colleagues. If you'd like to read it, shoot me a note (jerrycw at attglobal.net).

Jerry

Couldn't Leave Well Enough Alone

2009-01-29T08:38:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I know something is wrong deep down in my gut, I can't just let it go without a response. So was the case with former Commerce/Transportation Secretary and current Hill & Knowlton Vice Chairman Norman Mineta's recent posting on Hill & Knowlton's Ampersand blog, entitled "The Changing Face(s) of K Street."

K Street, of course, is home to many of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington, DC. Mr. Mineta himself is a high-paid consultant/lobbyist as Vice Chairman of the big international PR firm Hill & Knowlton, and his own company's office in DC is just a short five block detour off K street.

Mr. Mineta's Ampersand posting talks all about how, to quote him directly, "this change [to the Obama Administration] is going to extend to the way that we, as consultants and lobbyists, conduct business on behalf of our clients."

I found his remarks both condescending and arrogant, especially in light of his own serious ethical lapse that I discovered by accident in digging into his and others' involvement in the whole Traffic.com debacle. He was, in effect, lecturing his audience about the impact of the Obama Administration's attempt to institute more ethics and honesty in the federal government.

(To be sure, the jury is still out as to whether these new ethics rules will "take" or not. While President Obama announced some very significant ethics reforms, he immediately circumvented these rules with the proposed appointment of the new Deputy Secretary of Defense, a recent Raytheon lobbyist -- see this recent alert from POGO. Not a very good precedent.)

I noticed that the Ampersand blog invited comments to its postings, so added a short one of my own to Mr. Mineta's piece: "Interesting commentary. One hopes that the changing terrain that Mr. Mineta talks about includes a new and more ethical government than we've seen in recent years." I included a link to my invited guest editorial last June in HawaiiReporter.com in which I laid out the facts of Mr. Mineta's ethics problem.

Much more publicly available evidence is laid out in four chapters of my new book, The 'Smart Road' Scam, including details of how the U.S. Office of Government Ethics apparently tried to lose Mr. Mineta's key CY2000 disclosure in which he was required by law to disclose his stock options income of up to $1 million (but didn't). It's very likely that Mr. Mineta violated the same federal disclosure laws for which Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens was recently convicted, except that more money may well be involved in Mr. Mineta's case.

Here's a PDF of Mr. Mineta's Ampersand piece showing my comments. I'm not holding my breath to see if they approve it.

Jerry

My Complaint to the DHS Inspector General

2008-12-02T06:54:00.000-08:00

To: DHSOIGHOTLINE@dhs.gov
Subject: Fraud/Corruption Involving Former Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson

To the DHS OIG Hotline,

I would like to make you aware of fraud and corruption within the Department of Homeland Security involving former DHS Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson. Mr. Jackson was long involved behind the scenes, both at the U.S. Dept. of Transportation and most recently at DHS, in securing a federal monopoly and business for a company called Traffic.com, which is part of NAVTEQ (which was recently acquired by Nokia). Mr. Jackson almost certainly had a substantial hidden financial interest in Traffic.com's success, which accounted for his efforts to push policies and business to benefit the company.

A very probing Freedom of Information Act request from the non-profit Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to DHS last fall very possibly led to Mr. Jackson's unexpected resignation as DHS Deputy Secretary. By resigning and removing key records, the materials POGO requested detailing his connections to Traffic.com would be unavailable by the time that DHS staff got around to filling that FOIA request. It's also very possible that Jack Tomarchio, a senior DHS manager who had a direct impact over DHS' potential business with Traffic.com, also resigned because of this FOIA request. An in-depth search of the department's email records by the Inspector General's office might well reveal Messrs. Jackson's and Tomarchio's relationships with Traffic.com.

Mr. Jackson was directly involved in creating this federal monopoly and promoting business for Traffic.com in his earlier role as Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Dept. of Transportation, as well. For background on this scam, I encourage you to review this white paper:

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

A shorter version of this white paper without footnotes/references (called "The 'Smart Road' Scam) was just published in the current issue of Regulation magazine, and is attached.

The more I dug into the details of this scam from my former insider's perspective, the deeper I have found it goes. Because this is not the way that our federal government should function, I decided to write an expose about all of the fraud and corruption I discovered. I have now nearly completed a draft of that expose, entitled: "The 'Smart Road' Scam: A Whistleblower's Odyssey in Investigating and Exposing Big-Time Corruption in Our Federal Government." Chapter 19 (attached), "The Homeland Security Connection," very specifically details Messrs. Messrs. Jackson's and Tomarchio's connections to Traffic.com. It also links (through footnotes) to numerous related pieces of supporting material, including POGO's FOIA correspondence with DHS that I believe ultimately led to both individuals' departures.

Mr. Jackson was almost certainly "on the take" for Traffic.com for years, as Deputy Secretary for both the USDOT and USDHS. I'm sure you agree that this is not appropriate behavior for trusted "public servants." I would be glad to share additional evidence I have collected (much of it detailed in related chapters from my new book) with the DHS Inspector General's Office, if you would be willing to investigate this matter further.

The integrity and honesty of the federal government rests in your hands.

Thank you.

Jerry

Jerry Werner
(formerly Editorial Director of the National Transportation Operations Coalition, www.ntoctalks.com)

The 'Smart Road' Scam

2008-10-02T15:38:00.000-07:00

That's the title of the new article that just came out today in Regulation magazine, which is published by the Cato Institute. I co-wrote it with my old friend Peter Samuel, the long-time publisher of TollRoadsnews.com. I've known Peter at least a dozen years.

Even though our article in Regulation is brand new, Peter has already received some interesting feedback from his own contacts. One well-known transportation consultant sent him a note that said: "Very interesting piece Peter. I hope it will get picked up more broadly. But don't expect a Xmas card from the ops office."

There's actually an interesting "back story" related to the publication of this article, which I'm writing right now in Chapter 21 of "Outing Traffic.com." That story involves Traffic.com's successful efforts to threaten another magazine that had already accepted our article for publication with legal action should they publish it. The working title of Chapter 21 is "Intimidating the Trade Press."

I imagine that Traffic.com will be quite surprised when they find out that the article has been published in a different magazine that is particularly well read among DC policymakers. (My guess is that they especially won't like Regulation's cute custom graphic very much.)

Yesterday morning I finished the draft of Chapter 20, "Pay-to-Play," which details Traffic.com's connection (lobbyists, political donations) to key legislators, particularly to Cong. Don "Bridge to Nowhere" Young. This chapter explains how Cong. Young helped sustain the company's monopoly over the years when their original lead benefactor, Cong. Bud Shuster, "retired" after being the subject of an expose on 60 Minutes and a rebuke from the House Ethics Committee. It details the interesting proximity in time between Traffic.com's and its lobbyists' contributions to Young's reelection campaign and PAC, and his actions on the company's behalf. (Hence the "Pay-to-Play" title.)

Jerry

Latest Piece of the Puzzle

2008-08-11T13:03:00.000-07:00

Just this morning, in researching information for Chapter 10 of "Outing Traffic.com," I came across yet another piece of key information related to former Commerce/Transportation Secretary Mineta's likely violation of the federal Ethics in Government Act. Here's an excerpt:

The good news was that both of Mr. Mineta's confirmation hearings had been conducted by the same Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. So January 16, 2007 - just after returning to Austin -- I called that committee and asked Margaret Spring, the Committee's Assistant Staff Director, about the availability of much more detailed financial disclosures than the ones Mr. Mineta had filed with the OGE. Ms. Spring said that she was new on the job, but would check into it and get back to me. A couple days later she called to let me know that the OGE's "new entrant" reports were, in fact, the financial disclosures used in the confirmation process. Mason Alinger, one of our government's leading experts on the financial disclosure process, had apparently been mistaken.

The Library of Congress' excellent Thomas online archive lists both Mr. Mineta's July 17, 2000 Secretary of Commerce confirmation hearing (Nom. No. PN1140-106), as well as his January 24, 2001 Secretary of Transportation confirmation hearing (Nom. No. PN104-107). However, only the latter listing links to a hearing transcript. That transcript reads almost like a group testimonial to Mr. Mineta's past achievements (which are many), rather than an objective and rigorous questioning of the individual who would soon be CEO of a federal department with over 60,000 employees and an annual budget in the tens of billions of dollars.

Amazingly, even though Mr. Mineta served on the Board of Directors for NYSE listed Trimble Navigation just 6 months earlier and reported a capital gains income of up to $1 million from Trimble Stock options on the financial disclosure he filed with the OGE the day prior to the hearing, the word "Trimble" doesn't show up anywhere in this 116 page document. In section A, entitled "Biographical and Financial Information Requested of Department/Agency Nominees," Mr. Mineta lists well over a dozen business relationships, but there's nary a mention of Trimble. While Mr. Mineta could certainly claim that on January 24, 2001 he did not have an "official" business relationship with the company, many of the relationships he did provide (e.g., Santa Clara County Council) clearly appeared to be in his past. Perhaps he could argue that there "is no business relationship with Trimble Navigation," taking a cue what his former boss President Clinton had once said, "that depends on what 'is is'". However, it's clear that Mr. Mineta should have listed his recent business relationship with Trimble and let the Senate nomination panel decide whether or not it was relevant.

Mr. Mineta's response to item 3. in Section C ("Potential Conflicts of Interest") is even more telling:

3. Describe any business relationship, dealing, or financial transactions which you have had during the last 10 years, whether for yourself, on behalf of a client, or acting as an agent, that in any way constitute or result in a possible conflict of interest in the position to which you have been nominated.

His response:

During the past 10 years, I have had no clients and only three employers. I do not anticipate any conflict of interest being created by any of my past activities. I will disqualify myself from participating in matters concerning Lockheed Martin or organizations with which I have served, as provided in ethics regulations.

Charitably speaking, that answer was either "disingenuous" or a "misrepresentation." Less charitably, it was an out-and-out deliberate failure to disclose vital information. He had failed to mention that he had recently served on the Board of Directors of a company that just 6 months earlier had awarded him a sufficient number of stock options that he had claimed a "capital gains income" on his OGE financial disclosure of up to one million dollars.

Not only did he fail to disclose that "potential conflict of interest," but location technology and GPS - Trimble Navigation's bread-and-butter business - was clearly impacted by federal policies and initiatives pursued by both the Commerce and Transportation Departments. (See the white paper, Mr. Mineta's Support for GPS and Location Technology as Secretary of Commerce/Transportation.) Just six months earlier the company had very likely given him substantial extra stock options beyond its published policy for compensating directors. The "potential conflict of interest" was both huge and obvious. Yet Mr. Mineta failed to disclose any of those details to the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, likely hoping that no one would notice, and no one did. Such details were not appropriate for a political "love-in."

Friedman Nails Another One

2008-08-06T05:29:00.000-07:00

Thomas Friedman nails another Op-Ed piece this morning in the New York Times, with Learning to Speak Climate.

Friedman has a knack for verbalizing what you already intuitively feel, but haven't quite put into your own words yet. I particularly like his characterization of how climate change is already affecting people's pocketbooks:

Most people assume that the effects of climate change are going to be felt through another big disaster, like Katrina. Not necessarily, says Minik Thorleif Rosing, a top geologist at Denmark’s National History Museum and one of my traveling companions. “Most people will actually feel climate change delivered to them by the postman,” he explains. It will come in the form of higher water bills, because of increased droughts in some areas; higher energy bills, because the use of fossil fuels becomes prohibitive; and higher insurance and mortgage rates, because of much more violently unpredictable weather.

Remember: climate change means “global weirding,” not just global warming.

Adding Rationality to the Climate Change Dialogue

2008-08-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

There are two very thoughtful opinion pieces about climate change today in our nation's most prestigious newspapers, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

In the Post, reporter Joel Achenbach has a terrific think piece called:

Global Warming Did It! Well, Maybe Not.

Achenbach does a terrific job in making it clear that "climate" and "weather" are very different things, and that by linking almost any weather anomaly to climate change in the end only confuses the issue and gives ammunition to the global warming "deniers." I think that he makes an important point, even if -- as I believe is the case -- climate change is making our planet's weather increasingly erratic.

In the New York Times, acclaimed Op-Ed columnist and author Thomas L. Friedman (the author of the best-seller The World Is Flat) has an equally insightful piece in:

The Iceman Cometh

In it, Friedman recounts his recent visit with leading Danish scientists, who are studying ice samples that go back tens of thousands of years so as to better understand climate change patterns long ago. Of course, what they find could help us understand (and hopefully mitigate) our current climate challenges.

Friedman's conclusion, to me, is chilling:

In an article just published in the journal Science Express, Dahl-Jensen’s team wrote about how it had discovered from the ice cores that the atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere over Greenland “changed abruptly” just as the last ice age ended around 11,700 years ago.

It seems to have been driven by a sudden change in monsoons in the tropics. The change was so abrupt that it warmed the Northern Hemisphere over Greenland by 10 degrees Celsius in just 50 years — a dramatic increase.

“It shows that our climate system has the ability to make very abrupt changes all by itself,” said Dahl-Jensen.

Some climate-change deniers would say that this proves that mankind is not important in changing the climate. Climate change experts, like Dahl-Jensen, say it’s not so simple: The climate is always changing, sometimes very abruptly, so the last thing that mankind should be doing is adding its own forcing actions — like pumping unprecedented amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Because you never know — you never know — what will tip the balance and send us hurdling into another abrupt change ... and into another era.

Jerry

Getting Some Buzz over at Daily Kos

2008-07-29T16:31:00.000-07:00

In hearing about Alaska Senator Ted Stevens' indictment today on charges of failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars of gifts on his federal financial disclosure, it occurred to me that former Commerce Secretary Norman Mineta's almost certain similar violation may have involved even more money.

Unfortunately, the federal authorities have (so far) refused to even open an investigation into Mr. Mineta's possible wrongdoing.

So to stir the pot some more, I posted an item over on Daily Kos:

Sen. Ted Stevens Got Caught, But It's Not Only Republicans

Wow -- a number of interesting responses right off the bat. Nice!

The guy who posted "You'd make Norm *Mineta* a priority?" clearly doesn't have a clue that this scandal involves (at least) three other top-level Administration officials besides Mr. Mineta, and a systemic breakdown of our federal law enforcement and ethics functions.

He'll just have to read the book.

Jerry

POGO Keeps the Pressure On the USDOT IG

2008-07-25T06:06:00.000-07:00

The non-profit watchdog Project on Government Oversight (POGO) continues to actively pursue the truth and the facts in the Traffic.com scandal, and yesterday sent a letter to U.S. Dept. of Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel, urging the IG to conduct a comprehensive audit into the very counterproductive TTID program.

Both POGO and the Sunlight Foundation have consistently helped investigate this scandal, through the issuance of multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, postings on their website and blogs, and letters like this one urging the authorities to conduct their own detailed investigations into this scandal.

From a description of his background, it certainly appears that Mr. Scovel is an honorable and honest individual. However, the Inspector General's inherent conflict of interest was never more apparent than in this case.

Senator Orrin Hatch and Congressman Anthony Weiner both formally requested (Hatch's letter, Weiner's letter) investigations into this program (as did POGO) primarily because of Transportation Secretary Mary Peters' "non-responsive response" to Sen. Hatch's two very pointed inquiries last year. (See this white paper for background.)

Yet the IG and his office report on a day-to-day basis to the Secretary's office. The IG's staff undoubtedly feels subtle (or not so subtle) pressure to limit the scope of the current audit to "some narrow aspect of the statutory language" as POGO states in its letter, rather than to conduct a thorough and comprehensive audit back to the beginning of this very counterproductive program. After all, the "career staff" knows that it's not the best thing for your career to investigate and possibly even criticize the actions of your own boss.

It's hard to imagine a bigger conflict of interest, and brings up the age-old question "Who Will Guard the Guards?"

Thankfully, POGO is helping fill that void. We absolutely need a whole lot more of this type of courageous, independent oversight.

Jerry

This Congressman is No Flake

2008-07-16T17:09:00.000-07:00

Sometime last year I became aware of the efforts of Arizona Republican Congressman Jeff Flake to reform the out-of-control earmark process. Flake often says that earmarks are the "currency of corruption," and that's exactly what has happened in the Traffic.com scandal.

While Cong. Flake is undoubtedly more conservative than I (as a "progressive/independent") on some issues, every time I hear him talk about the waste and government shenanigans earmarks can cause I find myself nodding vigorously at what he's saying.

This morning while drinking my coffee and watching C-SPAN, I saw that the indefatigable Congressman was at it again, giving a very cogent "5-minute speech" on earmarks in the U.S. House chamber. Once I got in the office I called Cong. Flake's office and asked if they might make that a video of that presentation available on his website.

Just after lunch and -- voila -- an email message from Matt Specht, his Deputy Chief of Staff, with the URL for that speech on YouTube. Here it is.

Enjoy!

Jerry

The Truth about Mr. Mineta's Ethics Problem is Getting Around!

2008-07-08T06:05:00.001-07:00

Ain't the Internet great!

The All Points Blog, subtitled "The Weblog for Location Technology and GIS," picked up on my recent Guest Editorial in Hawaiireporter.com with details of Mr. Mineta's big ethics problem related to Trimble Navigation. Of course, Trimble Navigation is a big player in the location technology market, which is why they were interested in this story in the first place.

Here's the blog piece:

Werner on Traffic.com "monopoly" and Mineta and Trimble Ethics Concern

I particularly liked the way Directions Media Executive Editor Adena Schutzberg concluded the posting: "I encourage interested readers to trace his source materials noted in the article above and his blog."

That's terrific advice. I too, of course, encourage anyone who wants to get to the truth in this matter to fully study the four white papers I've put together that lay out the facts (and there are many) related to Mr. Mineta's very likely violation of our nation's signature ethics law, the Ethics in Government Act. I also encourage folks to listen carefully to my actual discussions with a lady in the U.S. Office of Government Ethics after the OGE apparently "lost" the one financial disclosure on which Mr. Mineta was required by law to provide details of his capital gains income of up to $1 million in Trimble Navigation stock options.

Senior appointed officials in our government should not have a "private agenda" when they come into office but, of course, that clearly appears to be what happened in this case. The citizens of this country deserve and should demand much better.

It has now been almost a month since my Guest Editorial ran, and no response at all from Mr. Mineta. No correction, no rebuttal, no threat to take me to court, no attempt (that I know of) to attack the messenger.

Mr. Mineta is now the Vice Chairman of a very prestigious worldwide Public Relations firm, Hill & Knowlton. Certainly, H&K has the resources to "spin" this story any way they want to, such as to put out a story that I'm just a disgruntled former federal contractor with an axe to grind against Mr. Mineta. Of course, that would not be true, but PR firms often put out spin that isn't true. Their business is "image," not necessarily truth -- very much like politics.

The likely reason that H&K and Mr. Mineta are staying mum is that they know that if they do launch a PR counterattack, that will just focus the public spotlight on the facts of the matter, to my Guest Editorial and four white papers and all the details I have provided online about the Traffic.com scandal.

Back on March 19, 2006, H&K Chairman Paul Taaffe (Mr. Mineta's boss) gave an interview to Australia's ABC Radio in which he said, "There’s nowhere to hide, that’s absolutely right... The reality is, we live in the Google age, there are no secrets."

He was absolutely right.

Ain't the Internet great!

Jerry

It isn't the Thing That I Bought

2008-07-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

This latest song from Max and the Marginalized puts words to something that's been rattling around in my brain lately -- that Barack Obama's positions on a number of issues seem to be "softening." That's a polite way of saying that he doesn't quite seem to be standing on the same principles he espoused in his successful primary run, and that made him my preferred candidate during the primaries.

I have no problem if a candidate openly changes a position on some key issue based on changing facts and his or her honest reassessment of that issue. While sticking to one's beliefs and convictions is usually noble, there are times when circumstances demand reconsideration. But wholesale abandoning of your principles strictly to attract more of "the middle" is blatant pandering, pure and simple.

It boils down to telling people what they want to hear, rather than what you believe. Of course, that's what politicians do, but I thought that Obama was more of a statesman than the typical politician.

Now I'm not so sure. I'm going to be watching both candidates closely to see if I can really tell what they believe as opposed to just what they say. If we can't discern the difference, how can we know what they'll do once they get in office?

We can't afford to have another individual in the White House like the current occupant. Our issues are way too pressing.

Jerry

Not Marginalized in the Least

2008-06-30T19:06:00.000-07:00

I recently came across some very innovative new music by a group called Max and the Marginalized. It turns out that "Max" is Max Berstein, the son of Carl Bernstein (as in "Woodward and Bernstein") and writer/screenwriter Nora Ephron. He obviously has an amazing writing pedigree, and it shows. The band's unique concept is to record a new song about something in the news that they feel strongly about every week, and most of these songs are strongly political.

One of Max's songs is about the Bush Administration's tragically wrong-headed "abstinence-only" concept of fighting AIDS in Africa. Max even put out a video for this song ("Lectures for the Dying") focusing on Uganda:

This issue particularly resonates with me, because in the fall of 2005 I attended a presentation by Uganda President Museveni about his country's efforts to fight AIDS at the Hart Senate Office Building in DC. That meeting preceded my trip to Uganda the following January with University of Texas Professor Gary Chapman -- at the request of the President's office -- to help start up a new computer initiative there. In fact, we were told at one of the seven big "revival meetings" (the 10th slide in the slideshow) that Prof. Chapman and I attended out in the Ugandan boondocks that most of the audience members were HIV positive.

It's funny sometimes how things are connected.

Jerry

My Op-Ed Piece Today in the Statesman

2008-06-24T18:21:00.000-07:00

The Austin American-Statesman today published my Op-Ed piece that takes a swing at Rush Limbaugh and his "ditto heads" on the topic of climate change:

We should've listened to the inconvenient truth a long time ago

This critical topic, of course, absolutely won't go away. Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Dr. James Hansen's original warning to Congress about global warming (Associated Press Story), and Dr. Hansen gave a presentation at the National Press Club and briefed the House Select Committee on Energy Independence & Global Warming.

The good news is that whoever wins the Presidential race will be infinitely more pro-active on this issue than the abysmal Bush Administration.

The bad news is that -- according to Hansen -- it's already too late to avoid major consequences of man-made warming, and he says that if we don't do something major soon to reduce CO2 the consequences will be dire and irreversible. His number one target: coal-based power plants.

My take is that the increase in greenhouse gases (such as CO2 and methane) are an important part of what's causing climate change, but there are clearly other major factors, too (sunspot activity, El Nino, etc.) These factors all conspire to create what many respected scientists call an "energy imbalance" that truly does threaten our planet's future in a big way.

We clearly need to reduce our (human) contribution to the Climate Change problem as aggressively as we can, because that's the part that we can control. These changes will take a long time to impact things (as Dr. Hansen often says, more radical climate change is already "in the pipeline"), but we need to do it for future generations.

This problem begs for national leadership on climate change, something that has been not only lacking, but has been undermined by the Bush Administration.

I can't wait for a new Administration and Congress.

Jerry

Guess What a "Google News" Search Will Find!

2008-06-15T15:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday and today, if you search Google News for either "Traffic.com" (search) or "Norman Mineta" (search), the first thing that will show up is my guest editorial Friday in Hawaiireporter.com, entitled "Former Transportation Secretary Mineta and the Ethics in Government Act."

The Internet is an amazing tool for exposing serious fraud and corruption for all to see. My friends over at the Sunlight Foundation are absolutely on the right track.

Jerry

On the Right Track

2008-05-31T17:33:00.000-07:00

This week I sent out about 300 more email messages about former Transportation Secretary Mineta's possible violation of the Ethics in Government Act to long-time contacts and friends in the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) field.

One friend responded with this note:

Good job. If he doesn't take you to court, you will know you are on the right track.

I'm definitely on the right track.

Back in 2005 John Collins, Traffic.com's Vice President, threatened to sue me for libel when I first challenged the Traffic.com scam on NTOC's Talking Operations Forum. I told him back then that he was of course free to sue me, but that might not be the smartest thing he's ever done because it was my understanding that the truth is an absolute defense against libel and slander. He didn't follow through.

The same concept applies now. If Mr. Mineta takes me to court now it will only open up Pandora's box and further expose the details of his involvement for all to see, and I have the truth to back me up -- everything that I alleged in my four white papers is based on fact and truth. The press would likely be all over a story about a recent Cabinet member suing a former contractor who has provided federal authorities with details about ongoing fraud and corruption in a major federal department. Just the news of such a lawsuit would likely spur investigative reporters to look further into the serious shenanigans that were and are going on within the USDOT.

I'm more than willing to take the heat. This scandal involves serious federal fraud and corruption by Mr. Mineta and his high-level collaborators. It needs to get exposed and shut down, because this is not the way our federal government should work.

Jerry

Were Mr. Mineta's Favors for Trimble Navigation Unethical or Illegal? Both!

2008-05-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I sent an email message to numerous Federal Highway Administration staff members that described former Transportation Secretary Mineta's problematic connection to Trimble Navigation. My message linked to my four white papers that lay out the details of this connection in great detail.

(In the event you're a newcomer to this blog, I discovered Mr. Mineta's apparent shenanigans related to Trimble Navigation in reviewing the Public Financial Disclosure Reports of several high-level USDOT officials I suspected of collaborating with Mr. Shuster in the Traffic.com scandal.)

I sent a copy of this message to a long-time friend of mine (I'll call him "Bill," not his real name), a conservative who regularly comments on our nation's transportation policies and who has close philosophical ties to the Mineta and Peters regimes. Over the past two years I've sent him many details about the Traffic.com scandal, and he regularly responds that he found the information interesting or applauds me for making an impact. However, while I think he accepts the fact that former Cong. Bud Shuster is a big-time crook, he has (so far) refused to believe that Mineta or Jackson have collaborated with Shuster in this scandal.

This was Bill's response to my forwarded message yesterday:

Thanks, Jerry. I note that you do not accuse Mr. Mineta of any illegal or unethical practices. Or do you?

Regards,
Bill

My reply:

Bill,

I'm not a lawyer, of course, I'm an engineer. However, according to Jack [not his real name, the Chairman of a DC-based government corruption watchdog organization], who is a lawyer, it's very possible that Mr. Mineta violated the federal Ethics in Government Act that requires senior federal officials, including sitting Cabinet members, to fully disclose details of their financial transactions while in government service.

Clearly, Mr. Mineta failed to disclose how many Trimble Navigation stock options he cashed in just after he became Commerce Secretary. I think he did so deliberately (and fraudulently), because he knew that things wouldn't look right if he were to publicly disclose that a company gave him a whole lot more stock options than he should have received by company policy just before assuming a Cabinet position in which he would have a major influence over federal policies that would impact that company.

Jack sent me a bunch of information related to a violation of the Ethics in Government Act by Ronald Blackley, who was Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy's Chief of Staff during the Clinton Administration. Blackley was convicted of failing to disclose $22K of income from an agri-business company, and was sentenced to two years in prison, as I recall.

I believe that Mr. Mineta almost certainly received stock options worth many times that amount of money, and that he favored numerous policies and initiatives designed to benefit Trimble Navigation while both Commerce and Transportation Secretary. E9-1-1 is one of the most obvious ones he championed when he became Transportation Secretary. One FHWA insider and a long-time friend of mine told me -- unprompted -- that shortly after Mr. Mineta became Transportation Secretary the word came down to JPO [the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office] that they had to divert $7 million of their existing funding into this new initiative. This person told me that everyone was scratching their heads about why the USDOT should be leading a communication initiative, not a transportation initiative, that logically should have been spearheaded by the FCC and not the USDOT. In hindsight, I think that USDOT led it because their leader at the time (Mineta) was doing a favor as payback for a company that gave him a whole lot of extra stock options under the table.

So, yes, I believe that he violated the Ethics in Government Act in a big way, which is a felony. I don't know how you feel about this, but I don't think that our federal government's top leaders should be "bought and paid for" by special interests in this way. I think it's reprehensible behavior.

The only question I have is whether the authorities, including the SEC and the OIG, have sufficient integrity and independence to get to the bottom of this matter. The SEC surely could, if they wanted to.

[snip]

Jerry

Do What You Gotta Do

2008-05-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

That's the title of one of my all-time favorite songs, which was written by Pat Flynn and originally recorded by New Grass Revival almost 20 years ago. More recently, Garth Brooks made it a hit.

Sometimes you've got to take the heat
If you're gonna walk down on the mean street
Take the heat and you see it through
'Cause sometimes it comes down to
Do what you gotta do

Sometimes it goes right down to the wire
And you might have to walk through the fire
Walk on, boy all the way through
Sometimes it just comes down to
Do what you gotta do

Well, there's people that'll tell you
It's just no use
And there's people that'll tell you
That you're gonna lose
People that'll tell you
Anything you're gonna listen to
Do what you gotta do

Someday they're going to call your name
They'll come looking for some one to blame
What's your name, boy
Hey, you just tell them true
'Cause they can't take the truth from you
So do what you gotta do

Well, they'll call you a hero or a traitor
But you'll find out that, sooner or later,
Nobody in this world is gonna do it for you
Do what you gotta do

There ain't nobody in this world
That's gonna do it for you
Do what you gotta do

Here's a version recorded off TV where Brooks sang it, accompanied by New Grass Revival (songwriter Flynn is the guitarist in the red shirt):

I agree with some of the YouTube reviewers that NGR's original version is much better, in large part because their lead singer (John Cowan) has a much better voice than Brooks. Heck, I have a much better voice than Garth Brooks.

"Do What You Gotta Do" is really an anthem for those who believe -- no, who absolutely know -- that they are doing the right thing. That's the way I feel about trying to "out" the whole Traffic.com scandal. It's the right thing to expose major fraud and corruption in our federal government and to shut down a program that works strongly against the public's interest in many of our nation's most traffic congested cities. It's also the right thing for the crooks, particularly those high-profile "public servants" who have betrayed the public's trust, to find justice.

I'm quite sure that as a result of my recent mailings to over 300 people in the ITS field (including over 80 to FHWA staff), some of my colleagues consider me a "traitor," as the song says. From their own narrow perspectives, they see me as attacking the federal ITS program (and thus, their own livelihood), rather than trying to fix a major wrong in the program so that it actually works in the public interest. They choose to just look the other way and ignore such major fraud and corruption, so long as they can continue to feed at the federal trough. They're all about the status quo.

Pat Flynn has clearly been there, and knows how people react when someone rocks the boat and threatens their self-serving position.

Too bad, that boat is going to continue rockin'.

Jerry

Following Up...

2008-04-30T14:46:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-22T08:10:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

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!"

2008-04-08T19:18:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-08T15:03:00.000-07:00

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"

2008-04-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

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

The "Great Global Warming Swindle" Swindle

2008-03-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

I find the debates between so-called "scientists" about whether or not the climate change we're clearly experiencing is primarily man-made or not fascinating. The most interesting debate I've seen so far was a discussion on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) TV about the "documentary" The Great Global Warming Swindle, which was first shown on UK television in March, 2007.

ABC showed a revised version of that film on Australian TV in July, 2007, and followed up with a very interesting panel session/debate moderated by acclaimed Lateline reporter Tony Jones. Jones, as you'll see, is a terrific interviewer and moderator. He's cool and calm, but "doesn't play," as my friend Connie likes to say about people who won't back off from what they believe is true. I encourage everyone to watch all nine segments of this debate, which are available on YouTube:

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Jones' very pointed and unrelenting questioning of UK filmmaker Martin Durkin on Parts 2, 3 and 4 is a modern classic. Clearly, Durkin chose to only show data or include quotations or references in his film that would support his contrarian -- and dangerously off-base and misleading -- view of the whole climate-change issue. The more Jones probed Durkin's deliberate failure to show the key climate data from the last 20 years, the clearer it became that Durkin is simply someone trying to profit from a very controversial topic -- he could care less whether his movie is accurate or positively contributes to the important dialogue about climate change.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of climate change naysayers (such as Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe) who will contend that Durkin's film substantiates their view that the whole global warming issue is just something trumped up by politicians like Al Gore. These individuals will likely not choose to see Tony Jones' probing questions and especially Durkin's inartful dodges, because people who already have their minds made up often don't want to be "confused by the facts." Durkin's clear effort to play to these neanderthals is the real swindle in "The Global Warming Swindle."

Jerry

Addendum: A few weeks back I sent a note to Dr. James Hansen, who heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is a world renown climate change scientist, inviting him to read my earlier blog piece on the topic (An Inconvenient Truth -- 36 Years Ago). His response:

Jerry,

Thanks. I get the most threatening e-mails from Texas, but also some of the most thoughtful.. Must be an adventure to live there.

Jim

My response:

Jim,

That was an interesting observation. I've been here (Texas) for 24 years, via San Jose, CA (grew up just south of Chicago, went to U. of IL in engineering).

It turns out that there's the Austin area (I live in a little
southern suburb), and then there's pretty much the rest of Texas. Austin is generally pretty open minded and progressive (the local slogan is "Keep Austin Weird"), and of course it's a big university town and the state Capitol. My guess is that many of the most thoughtful comments you receive come from the Austin area. I don't mean to color everyone with the same brush, but indeed there are a lot of Texans in other, more isolated cities whose attitudes are driven by their philosophy rather than reality.

Compelling Evidence of the OGE's Attempt to Lose Mr. Mineta's CY2000 Financial Disclosure

2008-03-20T07:54:00.000-07:00

If you read the four white papers described in yesterday's blog posting (especially this one ), you know that I believe that the U.S. Office of Government Ethics tried to help Mr. Mineta out by "losing" his Calendar Year 2000 Public Financial Disclosure report, only to "re-find" it after the Project on Government Oversight called them on it in POGO's FOIA appeal letter. That particular disclosure, of course, was the only one for which Mr. Mineta was required by law to provide details of his profit of up to $1 million in Trimble Navigation stock options.

Think that maybe I'm just making all this up? Think again. Listen to these two recorded conversations I had with Ms. Denise Shelton, an Ethics Assistant with the OGE whose job is to fulfill requests for copies of financial disclosures of government officials and legislators:

1. February 23, 2007 (recorded discussion) -- I called Denise shortly after I received a copy of the OGE's initial response, dated Feb. 12, 2007, to POGO's Freedom of Information Act request, in which the OGE seemed to say that they no longer had Mr. Mineta's CY2000 disclosure. As you'll hear, Denise tried very hard to find that disclosure but couldn't, and didn't know why it wasn't anywhere in their records. She also confided that she was the person who destroyed disclosures that were over six years old, and kept a list (which I called a log) of those documents. She also said that she had no record of ever destroying Mr. Mineta's CY2000 disclosure. In other words, she found no record that the CY2000 disclosure had ever even existed. I immediately relayed this information to Scott Amey, POGO's General Counsel, who mentioned this amazing admission in his March 12, 2007, FOIA appeal letter to OGE.

2. April 26, 2007 (recorded discussion) -- After the OGE responded in a letter dated April 12, 2007, to POGO's FOIA appeal letter, I wanted to check with Denise to make sure that she could now find the CY2000 disclosure. Listen to what she says now about not keeping a record of what disclosures are destroyed, and how she got in trouble for saying that. Think maybe that someone at OGE was pretty upset by POGO's FOIA appeal letter, and Denise's admission to me that she kept a list of the disclosures she destroyed?

By the way, I don't think for a minute that Ms. Shelton did anything wrong, ethically or legally. These shenanigans are the responsibility of someone much higher up in the OGE chain of command. It's especially ironic when the very agency chartered with ensuring we have an ethical government plays such unethical games.

Jerry

P.S. For those "geeks" among my readers, these conversations were recorded using a voice modem on my computer in combination with the excellent TRx Recorder software from Australia. While editor of a twice-monthly newsletter for the National Transportation Operations Coalition for seven years, I recorded hundreds of similar discussions. Doing so is entirely legal in both Texas and Washington, DC, both of which legally permit one party consent recording.

The Complete Scoop about Former Transportation Secretary Mineta's Violation of the Ethics in Government Act

2008-03-19T07:33:00.001-07:00

In digging into the public financial disclosures of top USDOT officials I suspected were collaborating with former Cong. Bud Shuster in the Traffic.com monopoly/scam, I stumbled upon former Transportation Secretary Mineta's likely fraudulent failure to disclose the details of his capital gains income of up to $1 million in Trimble Navigation stock options back in 2000.

The reason for his failure to disclose this information? Because he very likely received a whole lot of extra stock options under the table from the company than he was otherwise entitled to, which may have influenced Mr. Mineta to later propose and support federal policies and programs designed to specifically benefit Trimble.

The combination of a willful failure to disclose required information about a financial windfall, combined with later action to favor the source of that windfall, is a clear violation of the federal Ethics in Government Act. This Act clearly has teeth, too, if those who are responsible for ensuring ethics and honesty in our government will use it. Just ask Ronald Blackley, former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espey's Chief of Staff, who in 1999 was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for "failing to disclose $22,000 from Mississippi agribusiness interests on his 1993 public financial disclosure report," according to press reports at the time.

Mr. Mineta's possible violation of the Ethics in Government Act is likely much more egregious, both because the amount of the income he failed to report is likely many times greater than Blackley's omission, and the fact that the U.S. Office of Government Ethics apparently tried to "lose" the one financial disclosure on which he was required by law to provide details of his Trimble Navigation stock options transactions.

While I've shared most of the facts in this matter earlier, I've posted those facts in bits and pieces. In order to provide a more complete account of what likely transpired to the authorities with whom I'm in frequent contact, I've now compiled that information into a much more coherent package. This matter is quite complex, so I encourage interested readers to review these documents in the following order:

1. Signficance of Mr. Mineta's Financial Disclosures in 1999-2002.

2. Further Insight from Mr. Mineta's Commerce 'New Entrant' Financial Disclosure in 2000.

3. The U.S. Office Of Government Ethics' Effort to Lose Former USDOT Secretary Mineta'a Calendar Year 2000 Public Financial Disclosure Report

4. Mr. Mineta's Support for GPS and Location Technology as Secretary of Commerce/Transportation

I hope you will find this information as eye-opening as I did when I first discovered it.

Jerry

The IG's Audit is a Real Hot Potato!

2008-02-06T13:10:00.000-08:00

A friend and longtime contact in the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) field sent me a copy of an email message entitled A Message from ITS America's President and CEO that was sent to ITS America's members. ITS America is the primary trade association that represents many private and public sector organizations, including traffic data and traveler information companies. Way back in 1992 I developed the initial operating plan for this association, which was then called "IVHS America."

The message, from Scott Belcher, ITSA's new President and CEO, was seemingly a routine update ("Week That Was - February 4, 2008") of recent news in the ITS field. The following news item was provided in the report's "Misc" section:

I also want to make you aware of one of the latest announcements from the U.S. Department of Transportation. An audit of the Transportation Technology Innovation Demonstration (TTID) Program was launched last week. The TTID was designed to help ease traffic congestion in U.S. cities by assisting in the deployment of a transportation surveillance infrastructure and providing traffic data from sensors to government transportation agencies. The sensor information is also provided to the public to aid travelers and commercial highway users.

According to SAFETEA-LU, the TTID program should: build and integrate an infrastructure of measurement; provide commercial initiatives to generate revenues for reinvestment in the intelligent transportation infrastructure; and aggregate data into reports for distribution. The objectives of this audit are to assess: (1) whether the TTID has met the statutory goals of building a traffic measurement infrastructure, providing commercial revenue generation initiatives, and aggregating and reporting surveillance data; and (2) whether the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has met the competitive procurement requirements in Part II, which were intended to expand the number of firms providing surveillance services. For a copy of the memorandum, visit http://www.oig.dot.gov/StreamFile?file=/data/pdfdocs/TTID.pdf.

My guess is that Mr. Belcher saw this news item in their Industry & Member News section and thought, rightfully so, that it was important industry news that impacted many of ITS America's member organizations. So -- not knowing the sordid history of this controversial program -- he routinely included it in his weekly news update to members.

Then all hell apparently broke out! It's clear that Mr. Belcher found out how explosive the OIG's announcement is in short order. Just three minutes later Sabrina Quirarte, ITS America's Director of Communications, sent out a follow-on missive to those same recipients with a subject of Recall: A Message from ITS America's President and CEO and the terse message "Sabrina Quirarte would like to recall the message, "A Message from ITS America's President and CEO".

Apparently some email systems actually let messages be "recalled" that the senders didn't realize would get them in big trouble. Ironically, this follow-on message likely just brought the OIG's announcement to the attention of a whole lot of folks who might not have otherwise paid any attention to it. Oops!

I asked my friend to see if the latest weekly eBriefing on ITSA's website (available only to members) contained the same OIG announcement that was in Mr. Belcher's message, and he said that it didn't. The publicly viewable Industry & Member News web page likewise has no mention of the OIG's announcement, even though it is undoubtedly big news to many ITSA members.

So it appears clear that the controversial nature of this announcement caused ITSA to almost immediately try to recall his otherwise routine update. It would be very interesting to know exactly what transpired in the scant three minutes between the original emailing and the recall. In any case, the whole episode was undoubtedly quite embarrassing to ITS America and made ITS America's President look pretty foolish.

Rightfully so. It's very unfortunate if a trade association that exists to serve its members deliberately keeps vitally important news from those members. After all, this announcement is important news to a bunch of ITS America's members -- including traveler information companies than are unable to access data because of Traffic.com's monopoly, consulting companies, and state/local transportation agencies that already participate in the TTID program (or, like Minneapolis and No. New Jersey/New York) are being recruited to participate by Traffic.com and/or the USDOT).

Thankfully, this announcement is getting out through many other routes, including:

1. Via my posting on the NTOC's Talking Operations Forum that I moderated for many years. (Just this morning this announcement was also emailed to all the Forum's subscribers, which likely number around 1,000.)

2. In the online version of Federal Computing Week.

3. In a blog posting by the Project on Government Oversight, entitled "Hon, I'll Be Late for Dinner."

4. In a news item on the industry blog Traffictechnologytoday.com, which is the online relative to the popular Traffic Technology International magazine.

5. In the Sunlight Foundation's posting ("Inspector General launches probe of Traffic.com contracts") on their "Real-Time Investigations" blog.

Hot potato or not, the word is getting around.

Jerry

An Inconvenient Truth -- 36 Years Ago!

2008-02-04T13:56:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, entirely by accident, I came across a 1972 book in a little old antique/curio store in downtown Buda that's owned by my friend and terrific artist (and former Univ. of Texas art instructor) Jeanette. It's entitled Only One Earth -- The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet, and it's written by Barbara Ward and Rene Dubos. This book predated Al Gore's book, Earth in the Balance, by a full 20 years.

I thought it might be interesting to see if such topics as "climate change" and "global warming" were even in our lexicon thirty five years ago, because I suspect that many people believe that Al Gore is the first to really figure out the whole global warming conundrum.

Only One Earth is fascinating to read, even if it is somewhat dated. Looking through the index you won't find the phrase "global warming" anywhere -- maybe Al really did coin that phrase. However, you will find an entry for "Climate, global interdependence and" that points you to Chapter 13, "The Shared Biosphere."

Let me quote a key excerpt from that chapter:

In the field of climate, the sun's radiations, the earth's emissions, the universal influence of the oceans, and the impact of the ice are unquestionably vast and beyond any direct influence on the part of man. But the balance between incoming and outgoing radiation, the interplay of forces which preserves the average global level of temperature appear to be so even, so precise, that only the slightest shift in the energy balance could disrupt the whole system. It takes only the smallest movement at its fulcrum to swing a seesaw out of horizontal. It may require only a small percentage of change in the planet's balance of energy to modify average temperatures by 2 degrees C. Downward, this is another ice age; upward, a return to an ice-free age. In either case, the effects are global and catastrophic.

Sound familiar? Remember, this comes from a book written 36 years ago! This chapter is literally filled with other observations and predictions that are extraordinarily prescient. The climate change issues we're talking about all the time now were known about a long time ago by a whole lot of people in a whole lot of countries.

The co-authors of this report, who worked with 152 consultants from 58 countries, give real meaning to the word "distinguished" (check out their bios on Wikipedia: Barbara Ward, Rene Dubos). Ms. Ward was a pioneer of the field of "sustainable development" and also a strong proponent of "Christian values." Mr. Dubos was a microbiologist, environmentalist, humanist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

Amazon.com lists the paperback version of this book, but provides very little information about it. There's only one review, from 1998, with a heading of "Eco-disaster book which struck me as unduly pessimistic." The reviewer only gave the book two out of five stars. I wonder what rating and comment he would give the book today, ten years later?

I guess if you're not ready yet to believe that something is true -- even if it is true -- the natural tendency is to write it (and the messengers) off as either alarmist or overly pessimistic. On this topic, some self-entertaining blowhards may even go so far as to label the information bearers "environmental wackos."

One thing I've learned from my "amateur Zen master" Jeanette, however, is that if something really is true it will eventually be shown to be true. (As William Shakespear said in the Merchant of Venice, "Truth will out.") In this case we're talking about Mother Nature whom, as the old axiom goes, you just can't fool.

It's just too bad -- for all of us, including the ditto heads -- that we have to wait that long to collectively figure out what's really going on before we can apply our creativity and inventiveness to this potentially catastrophic challenge.

Jerry

USDOT Inspector General's Office Comes Through

2008-01-30T14:54:00.000-08:00

Today, the U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General (OIG) made the following announcement on its website:

Audit Initiated of the Transportation Technology Innovation and Demonstration Program (TTID)

Date: January 29, 2008

The Office of Inspector General is undertaking an audit of the Transportation Technology Innovation and Demonstration Program (TTID). The objectives of this audit are to assess: (1) whether the TTID has met the statutory goals of building a traffic measurement infrastructure, providing commercial revenue generation initiatives, and aggregating and reporting surveillance data; and (2) whether the Federal Highway Administration has met the competitive procurement requirements of Part II of the program, which were intended to expand the number of firms providing surveillance services.

More information is included in a two-page letter available here.

This announcement is just a first step, but a very good one. The real test will be if this audit truly goes into the underpinnings of this monopoly/scam, and the role that both elected officials (e.g., former House Transportation Committee Chairmen Shuster and Young) and top USDOT officials (former Secretary Mineta and Deputy Secretary Jackson, and current Secretary Peters) clearly played in setting up and sustaining Traffic.com's monopoly.

I hope that the OIG will quickly partner with other Federal oversight agencies to find out the details of Mr. Mineta's windfall in Trimble Navigation options and his and Mr. Jackson's likely substantial hidden financial interest in Traffic.com. Key agency collaborations will include:

1. The SEC and IRS, to get to the bottom of Mr. Mineta's very likely excessive and unreported under-the-table profit in Trimble Navigation stock options.
2. The SEC, to find out who really owns/owned the equity that was hidden in offshore venture capital funds, very inexpensive stock warrants, and early preferred stock issues.
3. The Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), which has the authority to look into the National Electrical Benefit Fund's (NEBF's) huge financial windfall from Traffic.com stock. (As a huge national pension fund, the NEBF would normally be expected to invest in blue chip securities rather than startup companies like Traffic.com) The NEBF was also issued almost 2 million penny stock warrants that wound up worth many millions. The EBSA needs to find out who specifically received the proceeds from those warrants.

This is a very comprehensive scandal that will ultimately require the OIG's collaboration with these other watchdog agencies to find all of the "financial smoking guns." The OIG's announcement today is a great first step, but now the real work begins. At the very least, the confidence I expressed earlier in the integrity of USDOT Inspector General Scovel and his staff has been fully validated for now. Let's hope that they continue to search -- and search hard -- for the truth underlying this big national scandal.

Jerry

USDOT IG Scovel on the Hot Seat

2007-12-28T06:43:00.000-08:00

The key question at this point is: Will USDOT Inspector General Scovel vigorously pursue an objective and comprehensive investigation into the ITIP/TTID Program and Traffic.com monopoly/scam or -- because of intense pressure from his boss (USDOT Secretary Mary Peters) -- will the IG's audit be just a cursory review of this program?

Mr. Scovel, a retired Brigadier General in the U.S. Marine Corps. with an impressive record of accomplishment, is undoubtedly feeling intense pressure right now. By design, the IG for any federal department faces a potentially huge conflict of interest because he or she reports to two masters, the department to which they are assigned (e.g., the USDOT) as well as to Congress. However, there's little doubt that day-to-day the IG reports to the departmental secretary and, of course, that's where the rub comes in with the Traffic.com scam, because USDOT Secretary Peters' failure to adequately respond to Senator Hatch's very pointed letters relative to the USDOT's continued support for Traffic.com's monopoly is the main reason for Sen. Hatch's and Cong. Weiner's calls for an IG investigation in the first place.

At this point, all eyes are on the IG's office. Congressman DeFazio, the chairman of the House Highways and Transit Subcommittee that has oversight responsibility for the TTID program, recently told Congressman Weiner that he was awaiting the IG's investigation into this matter. The IG's Legislative Counsel told Sen. Hatch's legislative assistant that they have already assigned staff to conduct a comprehensive audit of the TTID program. More importantly, they said that they would be reviewing the program both "pre-SAFETEA-LU" and "post-SAFETEA-LU," which means that they are going to look closely at all the shenanigans that went on early in the program that created the underpinning for this monopoly. I have little doubt that if they truly do conduct a comprehensive investigation/audit into this program, they'll find that former USDOT Secretary Mineta, former USDOT Deputy Secretary Jackson, and current Secretary Peters (who was formerly Federal Highway Administrator under Mineta and Jackson when this whole scheme was gaining momentum in 2001-2003) all have inordinately pushed Traffic.com's monopoly, to the point of actually "reassigning" a senior career manager in the FHWA who saw through this scam and refused to go along with it. If the OIG is willing to work with the SEC, DOL, and IRS in this investigation, it's likely that they'll also find that at least Messrs. Mineta and Jackson did so because they had a substantial hidden financial interest in Traffic.com's success. (I remain hopeful that Ms. Peters has supported Traffic.com's monopoly out of loyalty to Mr. Mineta rather than her own financial interest in it, but time will tell.)

Interesting, the bipartisan Inspector General Reform Act of 2007 -- if it passes soon -- could strengthen Mr. Scovel's ability to spearhead a comprehensive investigation into senior USDOT officials' roles in this nasty and long-running scandal.

My gut feeling is that the OIG will do the right thing whether or not that bill passes in time. It's time that folks with real integrity -- and from all I've read about him Mr. Scovel appears to be one -- started cleaning up the mess in DC.

Jerry

Some Good News for the Truth (but Bad News for Former USDOT Secretary Mineta)

2007-12-09T09:25:00.000-08:00

This week, the Center for Responsive Politics finally received a copy of Mr. Mineta's CY2000 Public Financial Disclosure report from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, thanks to CRP's persistence. This is the disclosure in which Mr. Mineta checked the box marked "none" regarding any equity transactions that year, despite the fact that in Schedule A ("Assets and Income") of that disclosure he reported a capital gains income from stock options in Trimble Navigation of up to $1 million. I believe that he clearly lied on that disclosure to hide the fact that he received many more stock options in Trimble than he would have been entitled to by the company's official compensation policy for directors.

You can access those disclosures here.

(The key CY2000 disclosure is called the "2000 Amendment.")

Now that the "official unofficial source" of these disclosures has received this key disclosure and made it available online, it really won't make any difference if OGE destroys this disclosure next April -- the disclosure will still be in the public domain via CRP. This disclosure is key because it is the only one (of three) covering his 2000 finances in which he was required by law (the Ethics in Government Act) to disclose the details of his transaction(s) in Trimble Navigation stock options. His failure to do so, coupled with his support of policies designed to benefit Trimble (see below), clearly constitutes a violation of federal law.

As I've said in this blog several times before, I believe that Mr. Mineta very likely received a whole lot more stock options in the company than he should have been entitled to as a Board Member for just 13 months, and that he then biased his leadership of national policies when he was Commerce Secretary under President Clinton and Transportation Secretary under President Bush to benefit Trimble. In effect, they paid him up-front to push policies that would have long-term benefit to them. Hardly what you would expect an honorable, high-level "public servant" to do.

If you want to understand the nitty gritty detail that led me to believe that Mr. Mineta was "bought and paid for" by Trimble, read this white paper that I have provided to the authorities. This white paper is by now somewhat dated, as I have since discovered more specific information about why Trimble would have wanted to have the Commerce Secretary on their side back in mid-2000.

Interestingly, just last week I talked with a long-time friend of mine in the USDOT who (unprompted by me) recounted that former USDOT Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson (Mr. Mineta's second in command) demanded that the USDOT's ITS Joint Program Office (JPO) give Jackson $7 million for the new E-911 initiative, which confounded the folks in JPO and FHWA because it wasn't a transportation-related initiative at all. So-called "location technology" in which Trimble in a market leader is a key to make E-911 work, and it's clear to me that the E-911 initiative was one (of several) Mr. Mineta was pushing to pay Trimble back for their earlier generosity.

I have provided detailed information about this violation to the authorities, including the FBI, OIG, SEC, and IRS. Will these "guards" ultimately have the courage and integrity to fully investigate my allegation (which I'm quite certain is true)?

I'm betting that they will.

Jerry

We Will Guard the Guards

2007-12-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Translation: "The Guards will guard us, but who will guard the Guards?"

From Satires by Juvenal, Roman poet and satirist (55 AD - 127 AD)

The answer to that time-honored question is probably more important than ever today, with all of the scandals that are sprouting up in our nation's capital.

In theory, the FBI, the Justice Department (especially U.S. Attorneys), departmental Inspector Generals, the Office of Government Ethics, Congressional oversight committees, the Office of Special Counsel, the General Accounting Office, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and other agencies and departments all guard our government's operation by investigating unethical and unlawful activities and prosecuting those involved in fraud and corruption.

That's the theory. In practice, however, the objectivity and integrity of these "guards" is often compromised these days by political pressure (especially from this White House, which I believe will likely go down as by far the most corrupt in our history). For example, it's been well documented how political considerations drove former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- an incompetent and amoral sycophant, if there ever was one -- to fire a number of top-notch U.S. Attorneys for purely political reasons because they would not do the political bidding of Karl Rove and other political operatives in the White House.

Another "guard" -- Scott Bloch, the head of the Office of Special Counsel -- just recently got exposed by the Wall Street Journal destroying evidence on his computer and two subordinates' laptops by hiring "Geeks on Call" to completely wipe out the content of the hard drives on all of these machines. According to a recent article in the Journal (Head of Rove Inquiry in Hot Seat Himself), Block claims that he wiped out those hard drives to such a level that the data could never be reconstituted to get rid of a pesky virus. You don't have to be a geek yourself (and I are one) to know that his stated reason is a bunch of bullshit, there's just no other way to accurately describe it.

John Wilke, the Wall Street Journal investigative reporter who filed that story, is in fact one of the guards who are guarding the guards, and he does a pretty good job of it. From what I can see, he is entirely apolitical -- he has broken stories about both Republicans and Democrats. He's particularly known for his efforts to "out" suspicious earmarks (see this blog item, as well as this story about Cong. Murtha's earmarking largess), as well as stories about legislators who use favoritism and earmarks to end up filthy rich. He knows fraud and corruption when he sees it.

I met John over coffee during my trip to DC last January, and have continued to communicate with him and send him information about the Traffic.com scandal as I have unearthed it. I know that he's swamped with all kinds of fraud and corruption story leads and only has a certain amount of time to investigate each lead, but I suspect that he'll be writing about this one soon. He's particularly interested in the recent developments in this story, particularly the pending IG investigation.

As long as we have reporters who are driven by the belief that exposing fraud and corruption in our government can help make things better -- and it can -- there's at least a chance that some of that corruption can be stymied.

Over the past 2+ years I've talked and worked with a number of these "guardians of the guards," including:

- Investigative reporters, not only with the "established press" but "new age" Internet publications and bloggers, too.

- Other whistleblowers, rabblerousers, and muckrakers (like me).

- Elected officials with a combination of courage and integrity, particularly Senator Orrin Hatch and Congressman Anthony Weiner, who put doing what's right ahead of political expediency.

- Non-profit government watchdog organizations, like the Sunlight Foundation, Project on Government Oversight, National Legal and Policy Center, Center for Responsive Politics, and on and on.

New technology -- particularly the Internet -- is making it much easier for anyone to uncover wrongdoing. Much of what I have learned over the past two years about the Traffic.com scandal -- including my first inkling that DHS/DOT Deputy Secretary Jackson is up to his neck in it, the extent of Bud Shuster's connections to it, and Traffic.com's widespread "influence peddling" through lobbying and political donations -- I've learned from searching the Internet.

The Sunlight Foundation, which has continued to assist me in digging into this scam, is spearheading the development of new Internet tools that will make it even easier for "John Q. Public" to investigate and impact the business of our nation's policymakers. One of the most interesting projects they're sponsoring is called EarmarkWatch, which lets anyone comment on pending congressional earmarks. In a real sense, this tool lets anyone become an investigative reporter for an issue they feel is important to themselves and/or our country. The recent ethics law changes mandating earlier disclosure of intended earmarks make the EarmarkWatch concept potentially even more powerful.

My bottom line is that the "official guards" -- FBI, OIGs, SEC, oversight committees, etc. -- could investigate and expose the seemingly runaway corruption in both Congress and the Executive Branch, but often don't and won't instigate those investigations because of political influence -- unless and until there's sufficient public pressure so that they have no choice.

That means that the rest of us -- "we," including all the groups I mentioned above -- need to drag these so-called "guards" into these matters, "kicking and screaming" if necessary.

Jerry

More Press Coverage about the Traffic.com Scam

2007-11-21T17:16:00.000-08:00

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

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

2007-11-17T10:13:00.000-08:00

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

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

2007-11-02T12:07:00.000-07:00

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

Hogging the Road

2007-11-01T15:28:00.000-07:00

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

News Piece Today in "The Hill"

2007-10-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

Weiner calls for hearings, IG probe on traffic program

More coming.

JW

POGO Urges USDOT Secretary Peters to Investigate the Traffic.com Scam

2007-10-15T14:53:00.001-07:00

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) just posted a very pointed letter that they are sending to U.S. Dept. of Transportation Secretary Mary Peters (and copying key legislators), urging the Secretary to request an investigation into the USDOT's support for Traffic.com's ongoing monopoly.

This letter strongly supports the earlier efforts by Senator Hatch to open up this earmarked program to competition, and Congressman Weiner's recent letters to USDOT Inspector General Scovel and Congressman DeFazio, formally requesting an investigation and oversight hearing, respectively.

Onward and upward.

Jerry

Congressman Weiner Formally Requests Two Investigations into the Traffic.com Scandal

2007-10-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, New York Congressman Anthony Weiner got back into the fray, and formally requested both an investigation by USDOT Inspector General Scovel and an oversight hearing by Cong. Peter DeFazio, who Chairs the House Highways and Transit Subcommittee.

Scovel letter

DeFazio letter

As you'll see, his letters are both highly complimentary and supportive of the efforts that Senator Orrin Hatch has made (particularly since January) to challenge Traffic.com's monopoly.

This whole scandal is the worst example of behavior I can think of on the part of current or former elected and appointed officials, and will not stand.

JW

Another Prediction Comes True: DHS Deputy Secretary Jackson Resigns

2007-10-02T13:19:00.001-07:00

It seems that I'm two-for-two in the prediction department, as it relates to former top management of the U.S. Dept. of Transportation. (If you recall, I had earlier predicted that then USDOT Secretary Norman Mineta would resign several months before he actually did resign.)

Today I just found out that Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Michael P. Jackson actually resigned a week or so ago. I had predicted his resignation over a year ago on this blog. At the time, I said that I had no idea what reason would be given for his resignation, but that it may have been driven by Mr. Jackson's participation in a big scandal in the U.S. Dept. of Transportation involving the company Traffic.com and a big earmarked federal program.

Well, it turns out that Mr. Jackson cited personal reasons for his departure, and particularly that his paltry salary as Deputy Secretary ($168K/year) just wasn't enough to make ends meet. I've reviewed his Public Financial Disclosure Reports that were submitted to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, and can tell you that he certainly is no pauper. Further, I strongly suspect that he profited mightily for his strong support for Traffic.com, so his stated reason for departing makes little sense. (Translation: I believe that he is lying through his teeth.)

An interesting article about Mr. Jackson's resignation appeared today (Lawmaker seeks more detail on DHS deputy secretary resignation) in the Federal Times. Apparently, Congressman Bennie Thompson, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, doesn't quite buy DHS' and Mr. Jackson's reasons for resigning.

Let me add this twist: do you think that the Project on Government Oversight's August 24 Freedom of Information Act request, that clearly implies that Mr. Jackson was and is involved in shenanigans related to Traffic.com, could have played a role in his resignation?

Time will tell.

Jerry

Sensors and Insensibility

2007-08-29T14:44:00.000-07:00

That's the title of a very nice opinion piece today in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the Traffic.com scam. Read it here.

Based on this, I think I'll start calling it a "con" instead of a "scam" or a "scandal."

JW

Out of the Closet

2007-08-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot going on in the background since early July related to my efforts to "out" the Traffic.com scandal, but a few of these activities are public:

1. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution today ran an article about the implications of this scam on the availability of traveler information (and particularly travel times on the new 511 "nationwide traveler information number"):

State to get only part of data from new traffic sensors

That article quotes me several times near the bottom, so I am truly "out of the closet" now.

2. A few weeks ago, the National Journal Technology Daily ran a story about Senator Hatch's efforts to break up the Traffic.com monopoly, which was picked up on the NJ's sister website govexec.com:

Senator pans federal contract for traffic information site

3. Before that, the Sunlight Foundation posted a couple of related items on the foundation's "Real-Time Investigations" blog:

FHWA discouraging FOIA requests from potential contractors?

SF-LLL Update: Not for public inspection?

Of course, these articles and blog postings are just the "tip of the iceberg" related to the bigger scandal that involves several top people in the Bush Administration.

There's a lot more going on in the background that would be premature for me to talk about, but suffice it to say that things are moving along on a bunch of different fronts, if much slower than I ever expected. Nonetheless, things are moving.

I sent an email message today to a very conservative friend of mine (I have friends from all political stripes) to tell him about the Atlanta piece, and his reply was "Your persistence is paying off! Keep at it." He actually was a member of the Bush Administration's Transportation Transition Team that back in 2001 brought in many of the crooks who are involved in this scam, and finds it impossible to believe that the top management of the USDOT is complicit in this scandal. He's going to be floored when he realizes that what I've been saying for almost two years is absolutely true, that several high-level people in the Bush Administration (including Mr. Mineta and Mr. Jackson) are partners with Mr. Shuster in this scam.

By the way, the head of the Transportation Transition Team was one Jack Schenendorf, formerly Bud Shuster's Chief of Staff on the House Public Works and Transportation Committee. Schenendorf is also "Of Counsel" for the same firm (Covington & Burling LLP) that led the effort to bring Traffic.com public early last year. Amazingly, in his presentation at the recent Texas Transportation Forum (which I did not attend) he offered the following sage advice on slide 10: "When all else fails, do the right thing -- Bud Shuster."

Of all the people to quote on ethics issues, this certainly takes the cake. Quoting a guy about "doing the right thing" who was "outed" on 60 minutes for moral and ethical transgressions and rebuked by the House Ethics Committee has to make Lewis Carroll role over in his grave.

It's only a matter of time for this all to come out. I just wish I had more patience.

Jerry

How I got into this (Traffic.com) mess

2007-07-07T09:21:00.000-07:00

Many people have asked why I continue to investigate and try to expose the whole Traffic.com scam, and how I got involved in it in the first place. Some assume that someone -- one of Traffic.com's competitors, most likely -- must be paying me for this "rabblerousing." Others assume that I must have a score to settle, either with the company or with former USDOT Secretary Mineta.

None of these assumptions are true. I have not received a penny related to my efforts to expose this scandal. In the past, before I started digging into the Traffic.com scam, I had always thought that Mr. Mineta was an honest and honorable person. In fact, he did me (and the State of Texas) a favor many years ago -- around 1993 or so -- when he wrote a letter in support of what is called "Dallas Phasing" to the FHWA's Director of the Manual for Uniform Traffic Control (MUTCD). That letter, for a while, legally authorized this unique type of traffic signal control, which was being opposed by mostly northeastern states that didn't use or understand it.

Let me explain how I got involved in digging into the Traffic.com scam in the first place. I consulted in the "intelligent transportation systems" ("ITS") field for fourteen years, the last seven as a subcontractor for the FHWA and Editorial Director of the National Transportation Operations Coalition (NTOC). In that role, I authored a twice-monthly email newsletter that went out to 9,000 or so professionals in the ITS field, and in the process interviewed hundreds of people (sample 1, sample 2) over that seven year period. I also moderated two different discussion forums, as well as monthly "Talking Operations" webcasts on a number of topics.

Many ITS professionals I associated with knew that something fishy was going on with Traffic.com in early 2001, when an industry newsletter called "Inside ITS" first broke the story about the legislative shenanigans that went on to create a program with $50 million in earmarks that were dedicated to only one specific Pennsylvania company, Traffic.com. Then House Public Works and Transporation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster (R-PA) clearly spearheaded this earmark, and the President of Traffic.com (then called Argus Networks and later Mobility Technologies), David Jannetta, was not a transportation expert at all, he was an old political crony of Shuster's and former Mayor of Altoona, PA, the largest city in Shuster's congressional district.

By the way, Shuster was and is clearly not a very honest and ethical person. (I would characterize him as a "scumbag," but I'm just too polite to do that.) He had a particularly bad year in 2000, when he was "outed" in an expose on 60 Minutes and rebuked by the House Ethics Committee, and chose to "retire" early the following year. I'm quite sure, however, that he has remained involved in many of his unethical deals (like Traffic.com) since then, just in private and "under the radar."

In July, 2005 I posted a question on the NTOC's "Talking Operations" Forum asking whether or not transportation planners were taking full advantage of the ITS data they were receiving. As the moderator of that forum, for years I posted questions like this one to spur the transportation community into thinking about emerging issues and sharing their insight with their peers.

A number of people in the field chimed in on this thread, including John Collins, Traffic.com's Vice President both then and now. John kept talking about how "our contract with the FHWA requires" as if the FHWA were leading this effort, but I knew that the FHWA had been pulled kicking and screaming into this earmarked program by Shuster, so I continued to challenge what John was saying. At one point I clearly pissed him off, and he threatened to sue me for libel. I responded by essentially saying, in part, bring it on since my understanding was that the truth was an absolute defense against libel.

John chickened out -- as bullies usually do -- but that whole episode inspired me to dig into the Traffic.com scam further. A long-time friend who works for the USDOT first told me about then USDOT Secretary Mineta's role. He said that "HQ" (meaning the FHWA Office of Operations "headquarters" that I used to work for) had been telling state and local governments who were thinking about signing up for this earmarked program "buyer beware," but were receiving enormous pressure from senior USDOT management -- all the way up to Mineta -- not to do so. That was very intriguing.

So I continued to dig, particularly to do Google searches into the history of Shuster, Mineta, and their associates, and to look into Traffic.com's registered lobbyists and which politicians' palms the company had greased over the years. About this time Traffic.com was getting ready to go public and put a draft "red herring" (prospectus) on the Internet, which hinted at possible places Shuster's and his pals' financial interests in the company could be hidden, such as overseas venture funds and penny stock warrants that would be worth millions once the company went public.

In February of last year I went to the FBI Austin, TX office and made a complaint against both Mr. Shuster's and Mr. Mineta's roles in the whole Traffic.com scam. At the time I gave over 100 pages of information supporting my allegation to the Special Agent who took notes. A few weeks later my complaint, including the Special Agent's summary, was transferred to the FBI Washington, DC Field Office Public Corruption Unit which, because of then USDOT Secretary Mineta's involvement, was exactly where it should have gone. Five months later Mr. Mineta resigned, and never really gave a reason. By the way, I predicted his resignation on this blog back on April 10, 2006, almost three months before the actual event.

The more I dug into this scam, the deeper I found it went. Along the way I contacted several DC-based non-profit government corruption watchdog organizations and shared what I knew and what I had learned with them. These organizations could see that this was a major ongoing scandal and readily offered to help, filing multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, doing their own research as resources permitted, and advising me where I might look for the financial "smoking guns." They, particularly the Sunlight Foundation, are still helping in a big way to this day.

I continue to dig into this scandal and to share information I find with the authorities (both the FBI and the USDOT Inspector General's Office), Congressional staffs (including Senator Hatch's staff and key committee staffs) and the press (including "The Hill" and others, including a major "new age" Internet-only publication).

Why do I keep pushing it, when I'm not making a dime for my efforts? Many people, including my own family and friends, ask me that. My answer is simple: This is a big scandal that involves (at least) four senior people in the Bush Administration. Until I started digging into it and finding out what was really going on, the whole concept of government scandal seemed very abstract. This scandal, conversely, is very real to me. I personally know many of the players in it, and know how it works from my experience as an "insider" for many years.

I know that a senior FHWA manager whom I greatly respect was "reassigned" by Mineta in 2002 to what her subordinates thought was "Siberia" because she knew this earmarked program was a bad deal for the traveling public, and balked at signing the contract with Traffic.com. She's one of the heroes of this whole sordid mess. However, her reassignment had a definite chilling effect on anyone else in her department who might have said "hey, something's not quite right here." Nonetheless, I know that some people in her old department have tried to do the right thing and have told state/local agencies who were thinking of signing up with Traffic.com in this earmarked program "beware," which has brought on pressure and intimidation from both by their own (senior USDOT) management as well as Traffic.com's management.

I know that if I don't continue to pursue this scandal nobody will, and a whole bunch of crooks and unethical elected and appointed officials will get away with it. This scandal will also retard the usage and growth of next-generation traveler information tools in many of our most congested cities -- where they are sorely needed -- for years to come.

I know this will sound either silly or stupid to most people, but "outing" Traffic.com and the people who set up and sustain this scandal is the most important thing I have ever done. And I will not quit.

Jerry

USDOT's Pathetic Response to Senator Hatch

2007-07-04T16:54:00.000-07:00

I figured that U.S. Dept. of Transportation Secretary Mary Peters would have to respond in some way to Senator Hatch's May 10 letter about the continuing Traffic.com monopoly, but the actual response (delivered for Ms. Peters by Acting USDOT General Counsel Rosalind Knapp) was "underwhelming" to say the least.

The rationale that Ms. Knapp cited for the USDOT's continuing support of the Traffic.com monopoly in the face of new language added by Hatch in SAFETEA-LU designed to break it is based upon pure fiction. Nowhere in Section 5508 does it come anywhere close to "requiring" that USDOT fulfill the original contract and thus continue the monopoly and -- even if it did, and it doesn't -- two-thirds of the agreements signed since the passage of SAFETEA-LU are for cities that were never even mentioned in the original contract anyway. Ms. Knapp's response is pure b.s.

A key Hatch staffer indicated to me a strong willingness to continue working with Senator Hatch to push this matter. To quote him: "We'll be happy to follow up, but we need enough to nail them." That, of course, is right in line with my own thinking. I had almost thought that such integrity and willingness to pursue the truth wherever it leads (especially to a corrupt Republican Administration by a conservative Republican Senator) was long gone in our federal government, but I'm very happy to know that it is (apparently) not.

I'll come right out and say what I alluded to in my previous posting: it's clear from her obfuscation in responding to two different very blunt inquiries from Hatch that current USDOT Secretary Peters is and has been pushing Traffic.com's monopoly. Either she's doing that as a favor to her former boss and mentor Mr. Mineta, or she too has a hidden financial interest in the company.

Time will tell, but she makes it four very senior officials in the Bush Administration (two Cabinet Secretaries, one Deputy Secretary, and a Deputy Assistant to President Bush) who are directly involved in this scandal.

JW

Article in Tomorrow's "The Hill" about the Continuing Traffic.com Monopoly

2007-06-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow an article is coming out in "The Hill" about Senator Orrin Hatch's efforts (which I assisted) to find out why the Traffic.com monopoly is continuing despite his and other legislators' efforts to open up the ITIP/TTID program for competition. Here's a link to an online version of that article:

‘Monopoly’ continues for Pa. company, says Hatch

Of course, this is only the "tip of the iceberg" related to this major scandal involving four current or recent senior officials in the Bush Administration, but it's a start. More will be coming in the weeks ahead. Perseverence is the watchword.

Jerry

Letter to a Whistleblower

2007-05-15T07:51:00.000-07:00

I've been communicating with Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (aka "The Insider"), who blew the whistle on the tobacco industry's knowledge of the addictive nature of their products, since last August. He has passed on information I've sent him about the Traffic.com scandal to his media contacts, and has suggested folks for me to contact.

Yesterday he gave a luncheon talk at a conference in DC designed to support whistleblowers and promote new whistleblower support legislation, which prompted my email message to him this morning.

Dr. Wigand,

I caught much of the DC "whistleblower conference" yesterday on C-SPAN3, including your very thoughtful post-luncheon talk. I could relate to much of your experience and many of your observations, particularly the part about how you got your ass kicked, which in turn silenced others who might have been contemplating going public with similar concerns.

FYI -- this is the third major time in my life I've been a whistleblower, and the first two times I indeed got my ass kicked. The first time I was an engineer at Motorola (back in the late 70s) and decided to tell top management why morale was so low and other engineers were leaving in droves. (I knew that very few of the people leaving were telling the real reasons, because they didn't want to "burn their bridges.") In my naivete I decided that I was going to try to change the organization, but would have to leave if I couldn't. So I and a college friend of mine bypassed 12 levels in the hierarchy to vent our spleens about the stifling working conditions with the Exec. VP of the company, who had been an engineer in our division 25 years earlier. I won't bore you with the details, but when no changes resulted from all my efforts after six weeks or so I resigned. The very next day, my boss held an all-hands meeting with 50 of my co-workers, and announced that the company had put me on "mental leave." Of course, all of my co-workers who thought that perhaps things might change for the better realized that the only successful strategy was to shut up. I was so pissed that I flew to New York to meet with the Editor in Chief of the top electronic engineering newspaper to see if he was interested in a whistleblower story. He wasn't, but was so impressed by the writing in my memos to Motorola management that he offered me a job as West Coast editor for the publication. Nonetheless, I had to change both location and avocation because of the company's efforts to discredit me.

The second time I was an internal whistleblower I was a senior manager at a ground-breaking computer research consortium in Austin (where I moved from California). The consortium's support had been declining for several years because no one had a unifying vision for why we existed in the first place. So I offered to head up a little skunk works project to come up with that vision. Shortly thereafter, a new President was hired and, although I actually reported to a Vice President on his staff, the new President invited me to participate in his staff meetings. As the consortium was continuing to decline, one of the technologists in my part of it sent around a goodbye email message announcing that he was returning to his parent company, but that he was sure that everything in the program was "poised for success" (his words). I knew that wasn't at all the case, and that the part of the organization he worked in was going down the tubes very rapidly. I sat on his email message for a day or so, and then decided I couldn't let it go unchallenged. So I responded to it with specific information about how that part of the organization was being mismanaged, and copied over 100 people on that email message (including all the top executives). My theory was that a "truth nuke" would rapidly change things for the better, since the slower approach I had tried years earlier at Motorola hadn't worked. My email response was primarily targeted for the new President, who I thought would immediately look into my charges. Unfortunately, my "truth nuke" had only one casualty: me. I was fired within two hours of sending that message by the Chairman (who was still CEO) and the VP of Personnel. Unfortunately, the President was out of town and wouldn't see my message until the next day, when I was long gone. Of course, virtually all of the points I made in that memo were true (and most people who worked in the program knew it, but also knew that criticizing management was a terminal offense), and the whole program went out of business a few years later. By the way, I am quoted about many of these points in a book called "R&D Collaboration on Trial" that was published by the Harvard Business School Press a couple years later.

It took me eight years to get back to where I had been economically at that research consortium. I had to once again change careers and change employers, ultimately becoming a consultant to the U.S. Dept. of Transportation in DC. So I know what can happen when one is foolish enough (and has enough integrity) to tell the truth in a bureaucracy where most people -- particularly the ones in control -- don't want to hear it.

And now I'm doing it again, based largely on the knowledge I've gained in working for the USDOT about a very egregious ongoing scandal involving both elected and appointed officials. This time I'm taking on some really big fish -- several senior people in the Bush Administration, including a Cabinet Secretary and Deputy Secretary. If/when this scandal becomes public, I very likely will get my ass kicked once again, big time.

Such is the lot of the whistleblower/rabblerouser.

Jerry

P.S. Thankfully, I have found support for investigating this scandal from seemingly amazing places. Even though this scandal involves the Bush Administration, conservative Republican Senator Orrin Hatch is so far willing to pursue the truth no matter where it leads -- see the attached memo he just sent to USDOT Secretary Mary Peters last Thursday.

Strange Political Bedfellows

2007-05-13T18:02:00.000-07:00

It's interesting sometimes how people with entirely different political persuasions can be on the same side, the right side, of an issue. That's the case with the Traffic.com scam. Both conservative Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and liberal Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) are on exactly the same side of this issue, trying to shut down the monopoly set up for Traffic.com years ago by former House Transportation Committee Chairman Bud Shuster and his partners (including former USDOT Sec. Mineta and sitting DHS Dep. Sec. Jackson).

Last Thursday Hatch sent a very pointed letter to USDOT Secretary Mary Peters, demanding an explanation for why the Traffic.com monopoly was continuing despite his and other legislators' efforts back in 2005 to add wording in the big transportation bill (SAFETEA-LU) to open up the Transportation Technology Innovation and Demonstration (TTID) program to competition.

I met with Sen. Hatch's legislative assistant during my trip to DC back in January, and pointed out -- much to his surprise -- that the monopoly was continuing despite the new language Hatch added in SAFETEA-LU to break it. Sen. Hatch shortly thereafter sent his initial letter to Secretary Peters asking why the monopoly was continuing, and her response essentially ignored the fundamental question in that inquiry. Thus the rationale for last Thursday's letter, which leaves very little wiggle room for another non-responsive response.

Rep. Weiner has also been deeply involved in this issue. Back on June 20, 2005, when the conference committee was finalizing the language for SAFETEA-LU, Rep. Weiner teamed with ten of his House colleagues to send a letter to the Chairmen and Ranking Minority Members of the primary House and Senate transportation committees, urging the leaders to adopt the Senate's (that is, Hatch's) language for the TTID (earlier called ITIP) program. On July 29, 2005, after the passage of SAFETEA-LU, both Hatch and Weiner issued press releases (Hatch's release, Weiner's release) highlighting their efforts to break the Traffic.com monopoly.

Unfortunately, at that time they didn't take into account -- because they didn't know -- that the monopoly would continue undeterred due to strong support for it from top USDOT management because Mineta and Jackson were and are, in fact, hidden partners with Shuster in the whole Traffic.com scheme.

Now, after both individuals are long departed, the USDOT led by Ms. Peters is still biasing its efforts toward the monopoly and against open competition.

What does that tell you?

Jerry

The OGE Coverup Is Exposed!

2007-04-21T08:21:00.000-07:00

On Thursday the Project on Government Oversight sent me a letter dated April 12, 2007 from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics (OGE) responding to POGO's March 12 FOIA appeal letter regarding Mr. Mineta's calendar year 2000 public financial disclosure.

The OGE's latest response is based on an outright lie. The OGE's April 12 letter says: "As we stated in OGE's initial response letter of February 12, 2007, that report (copy enclosed) remains on file here and copies can be obtained in accordance with the public access procedures of the Ethics in Government Act."

That statement is patently untrue. The OGE's Feb. 12 FOIA response states, and I quote: "Our file review has not located any such other copies or versions of that schedule or the CY 2000 report itself" (emphasis added). In other words, they clearly stated that "the CY 2000 report itself" was not on file. When I called the OGE shortly after I received a copy of OGE's response from POGO, Ms. Denise Shelton (who is responsible for both sending out reports to the public and destroying outdated reports) confirmed to me over the phone that she could find no record at all that Mr. Mineta's CY2000 report ever existed. Her remarks about the non-existence of that report were included in POGO's FOIA appeal letter of March 12.

The OGE's response to POGO's initial FOIA request tried very hard to imply -- without exactly coming out and saying -- that the OGE could not find Mr. Mineta's calendar year 2000 financial disclosure because it had been destroyed, since reports are only retained by OGE for six years.

However, POGO's appeal letter called them on that excuse, which wouldn't hold water because the calendar year 2000 financial disclosure that OGE sent me last October was dated April 19, 2002, which means that it should not have been destroyed until April 2008. POGO's appeal letter pointed out that Ms. Shelton, who sent the package of reports to me last October, had told me over the phone that not only did she not have a record of destroying Mr. Mineta's CY2000 disclosure, she could find no record of that report at all.

The OGE's latest response to POGO's FOIA appeal indicates that Mr. Mineta's CY2000 has magically reappeared, just as it had magically disappeared earlier.

The OGE's latest response also tries to blame the agency's incompetence for the anomalies related to their initial acquisition of that disclosure. The OGE now says that the "source of confusion" regarding the April 19, 2002 date on Mr. Mineta's CY2000 disclosure stems from the fact that until April 2002, almost a year after that report was due in to OGE, nobody realized that he hadn't filed that CY2000 report. Thus, as their story goes, the assumption that the April 2002 version was an amended version wasn't the case because the report in fact wasn't even filed until someone noticed almost a year after it was due that it hadn't been filed. Of course, assuming that this explanation is the truth points out monumental incompetence on the part of the very agency that is supposed to be a watchdog on our federal officials' ethics. After all, how much effort can it require for the agency to make sure that all fifteen Cabinet members' financial disclosures are received by the due date (May 15 following the calendar year)? Their excuse is: "oops -- we just forgot to notice for almost a year that he didn't send in his disclosure." A truly amazing excuse for a government ethics watchdog agency.

The OGE's letter also points out a second example of serious incompetence related to that same disclosure. It points out that the OGE did not require Mr. Mineta to formally submit the CY2000 at all, that it simply photocopied his earlier "New Entrant" disclosure and added a new page for Schedule B while bypassing the normal review/signature approval process for the disclosure itself. As an acknowledgement of that shortcoming, footnote 1 says "OGE staff have been instructed that they are no longer to employ such procedures and must obtain a full submission from each filer." One wonders if that "instruction" was a result of POGO's FOIA appeal letter that exposed this amazingly lax process.

If we assume that the April 2002 date on Mr. Mineta's CY2000 financial disclosure is, in fact, due to the agency's serious oversight and/or incompetence and not because the disclosure was amended, the fundamental question about Mr. Mineta's CY2000 financial disclosure remains: how did he report an income of up to $1 million in stock options on Schedule A (assets and income) of his CY2000 disclosure, yet mark "none" on Schedule B as to any equity transactions he had during the calendar year. Clearly, if he made an income from capital gains of up to $1 million in stock options, he had transactions in stock options and the underlying stock that should have by law been reported on Schedule B.

The only possible explanation is that he exercised his Trimble stock options before becoming Commerce Secretary in the Clinton Administration. However, according to information provided by both Trimble Navigation and the U.S. Commerce Dept. that is readily available on the web, Mr. Mineta was a member of Trimble's Board until July 24, 2000, and began as Commerce Secretary on July 21, 2000, so there was a 3-day overlap. The fact that he was either on the Board of Trimble or Commerce Secretary throughout calendar year 2000 is important, because both responsibilities would have required that he disclose the details of his Trimble stock transaction. If he exercised those options and made the capital gain while on Trimble's Board, he was required by law to provide the details on an SEC Form 4 covering insider transactions. (Board members, of course, are considered "insiders.") However, the SEC earlier informed me (and FAXed me information to show) that the only SEC forms he filed related to insider trading in Trimble were related to his original stock option award in 1999, and that there's absolutely no record on file with the SEC of his sale of Trimble options or stock in 2000. Therefore, he apparently exercised his Trimble options during the 30 day period after he left the Board (another requirement stated on Trimble's proxy). Of course, if that was the case Mr. Mineta exercised those options while Commerce Secretary, and that information should have been provided -- and it was not -- on Schedule B of his CY2000 Public Financial Disclosure Report.

There are really two separate and distinct coverups at work here. First is Mr. Mineta's failure to disclose the details of his profit in Trimble Navigation stock options on either SEC Form 4 or the OGE financial disclosure, as is required by law. I believe that this failure was very likely deliberate, because he likely received many more stock options than he should have been entitled to by the company's own published policy as a Board member for just 13 months before becoming Commerce Secretary. The second coverup involves the OGE's original implication in response to POGO's FOIA request that they could not find Mr. Mineta's CY2000 disclosure because it was over six years old, followed by the amazing reappearance of that disclosure when confronted with proof of its actual existence.

The OGE essentially cited their own incompetence as the "source of confusion." While from my experience it does seem that the OGE is largely incompetent, I also believe that it's likely that someone within the agency tried to magically lose Mr. Mineta's disclosure, but that ploy didn't work when they were called on it.

I guess I never really believed that so many well-educated public servants, many of whom are lawyers, would be involved in such widespread subterfuge and downright lying. Mr. Mineta, who has carefully cultivated a reputation for honesty and integrity over the years (although that reputation was at least questioned by some when he went to Lockheed-Martin for big bucks over a decade ago), is at the head of the pack of those involved in fraud and corruption. My guess, which certainly is substantiated more and more by news reports, is that this type of scandal is almost routine in the Bush Administration, which I believe will go down as the most corrupt in history. (Even conservative groups are more and more saying that!)

As Lewis Carroll observed in Alice in Wonderland: "it was a world in which up was down and down was up."

I and the folks I'm working with will keep the pressure on to expose this scandal, and (hopefully) we can help create an environment where up actually is up.

Jerry

POGO Challenges the U.S. Office of Government Ethics

2007-03-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) wasn't fooled by the OGE's response to their earlier Freedom of Information Request, in which the OGE essentially said "oops -- we can't find any of former Secretary Mineta's 2000 financial disclosures."

In POGO's appeal letter sent last week, General Counsel Scott Amey calls OGE's FOIA response a "non-responsive finding" and requests additional information, including the logs of the lady who is responsible for destroying outdated financial disclosures (which Mr. Mineta's 2000 disclosure was decidedly not!)

As I mentioned earlier, there's a major coverup going on here, very likely spearheaded by former USDOT Secretary Mineta. He, of course, fraudulently covered up the size of his transaction in Trimble Navigation stock options, because to disclose the truth would have shown everybody that Trimble, in effect, "bought themselves" a Cabinet member. The facts are that Mineta pushed a number of new technology initiatives for their benefit when he became Secretary of Transportation, and I have passed on details to both the FBI and USDOT OIG. No matter how you couch it, he was on the take. Our nation deserves much better.

POGO's appeal letter clearly indicates my involvement in driving this investigation, so any anonymity I may have enjoyed is out the window. That's OK, as I'm quite sure that the folks who are in on the Traffic.com scandal already knew who was chasing them.

Jerry

How Do You Spell Coverup?

2007-02-22T15:00:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the crooks do such stupid things that you just have to smile! Today, the Project on Government Oversight received a response from POGO's second Freedom of Information Act request dated January 17, in which POGO asked to get copies of former USDOT Secretary Norman Mineta's original and earlier copies of his CY 2000 Public Financial Disclosure Reports.

The reason for this request was that the CY 2000 disclosure that I obtained several months ago from OGE had an obvious and glaring problem -- Mr. Mineta disclosed an income of "$100,001 - $1,000,000" in stock options for Trimble Navigation, yet checked the box saying "none" related to any transactions for calendar year 2000. Clearly, if he made money in stock options he had transactions in stock options.

It's also clear that the latest disclosure on file is an amended version, both by the dates you can see on the front page as well as the fact that these reports are due on May 15 of the following year -- which would mean May 15, 2001 for CY 2000, and the version OGE sent me is dated April 19, 2002. Hence, it's clearly an amended version.

Those dates show up huge. In the OGE's response, they say "Our file review has not located any such other copies or versions of that schedule or the CY 2000 report itself." Huh? They can't even find the report itself? Maybe I should sell my version back to them!

The OGE's response letter also talks about the six year deadline for such reports: "Please note that copies of SF 278 reports are available to the public for six years after receipt pursuant to the special access procedures of section 105 of the Ethics in Government Act..."

But the CY 2000 report they sent me a few months back is dated April 19, 2002, which means that they should keep it on file until April 19, 2008, more than a year from now.

How much do you want to bet that former Secretary Mineta, with all his contacts and clout in the Administration, pulled some strings so that OGE would conveniently "lose" all of the Calendar Year 2000 reports, because he knew that what they disclosed would be embarrassing to him or worse -- it would show that he unduly profited from Trimble stock options?

I don't know about anyone else, but I spell it "C-O-V-E-R-U-P", and somebody's going down for these shenanigans. I've already contacted members of the press who have opened investigations into the Traffic.com scandal, and am in the process of contacting both the FBI and the USDOT OIG.

This is actually getting fun, like Molly Ivins said.

Jerry

Another Corruption Watchdog Enters the Traffic.com Fray

2007-02-12T11:25:00.000-08:00

As I've mentioned before, I've found that non-profit government fraud/corruption watchdog organizations have been very interested in the Traffic.com scandal, no matter what their political persuasions.

The latest watchdog to dig into this scandal is the Sunlight Foundation, whose goal is:

...using the revolutionary power of the Internet and new information technology to enable citizens to learn more about what Congress and their elected representatives are doing, and thus help reduce corruption, ensure greater transparency and accountability by government, and foster public trust in the vital institutions of democracy. We are unique in that technology and the power of the Internet are at the core of every one of our efforts.

Once I came across them I intuitively knew that they would be both interested in this scandal and potentially helpful, because many of the most incriminating details of this scam can be found on the Internet if you just know where to look.

In just a few short weeks, the Sunlight Foundation has really begun to dig into this scam. Late last week they issued yet another FOIA request to the USDOT about it, this time a very comprehensive one.

Senior Fellow Bill Allison is a former investigative journalist, and has already put together a major piece on Sunlight's Blog about it, entitled Tracking Contractors and Lobbyists, and a Congressional Intervention.

The founders of Traffic.com, as well as the USDOT, are now getting hammered from multiple fronts, from non-profit watchdogs, from legislators (Senator Hatch sent a pointed request to USDOT Secretary Mary Peters a couple weeks ago), from the FBI, from the USDOT OIG, and from the press.

I'll repeat something I've been saying for some time: The sordid details of this scandal, which reaches into senior levels of the Bush Administration, are going to be exposed to daylight eventually.

I just can't quite tell when, but at least I'm learning about patience.

Jerry

Molly Ivins Left Too Soon

2007-02-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

Perhaps Texas' most famous liberal muckraker of all time, Molly Ivins, died recently, and much too soon. While she was almost universally called "liberal" and attacked President George W. "Shrub" Bush unmercifully, she certainly didn't spare her criticisms of anyone whom she thought was not morally true. She was unfailingly on the side of "right," no matter what.

I almost met Molly back in mid-November, when she was giving a talk entitled The Future of Journalism: Slow Death or Suicide? at UT's Hogg Auditorium. I wanted to hear her in person, of course -- she could spin a yarn better than almost anyone I've ever heard -- but I had a larger purpose. I wanted to tell her about this big scandal that reaches all the way into senior levels of the Bush Administration. I knew that if I could convince her that this scandal was both real and important, she would without a doubt have the courage to highlight it in her syndicated column.

When I got to Hogg, I asked the UT folks how I might chat with Molly after her talk. They didn't know, but said that her nephew had come to listen to her and was sitting in the Balcony, and they told me what he looked like. So I went upstairs, asked the usher where a young man of that description who had just came in might be sitting, and located him at the very back of the balcony.

I sat down next to him, introduced myself, and gave him a 30-second synopsis of the scandal. "Would that be the kind of thing that Molly would be interested in?" I asked. "Absolutely," he said. Would he be willing to pass on some background information to her about it? "Be glad to," he said. I gave him a manilla envelope filled with past articles about the scandal (that describe what I call the "tip of the iceberg"), copies of several of the 28 FAXes I've sent to the FBI with details of the scandal, POGO's FOIA request, and other stuff.

He said that he could tell that Molly was very weak just by how slowly and deliberately she was talking, and that she would probably be absolutely exhausted afterward, but he would likely have the chance give this information to her within the next few days.

I don't know if he ever got the chance to tell Molly what I had told him and to pass that information about the Traffic.com scandal on to her. I do know is that I never heard back from her about it. My guess is that she was just too weak from the cancer and chemotherapy by that time to spend the considerable energy required to understand how this complicated scandal works.

Molly just left this world too soon. Two very different individuals, both of whom I like and respect, have written very wonderful tributes to her.

Ralph Nader wrote a wonderful piece, called Molly Ivins Remembered, on his website. I particularly like a quote that he attributed to Molly:

So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after you how much fun it was.

Molly's fellow Texas humorist, Kinky Friedman, wrote an equally touching piece entitled Molly Ivins -- a truth-seeking missile. Kinky's piece is likewise wonderful, and in it he gives just a hint of his outragious sense of humor when he says:

Molly was a truth-seeking missile. She was a devil and an angel and a spiritual chop-buster who went after anybody who got in the way of a better world. Quite often she towered above the people she wrote about. They, as likely as not, were merely the slick, lubricated heads of well-oiled political machines; she was a dreamer, a little girl lost at the county fair, who somehow grew up to be a brave and bawdy and brilliant ball-buster in a state where men have always been men and emus have always been nervous.

Jerry

Mr. Werner Goes to Washington

2007-01-20T08:39:00.000-08:00

I recently returned from my first trip to Washington, DC since the fall of 2005. This trip was prompted by my need to work directly with my web/database programmer who's putting together the initial commercial version of deliverasong.com. We have a very tight schedule for our new site, which we plan to introduce just prior to the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin this March. Hope we can meet that deadline.

He's doing this job after hours (has a daytime programmer's job), so I filled up the days in DC with visits related to the Traffic.com scandal. I met with several members of the press, several legislative assistants (including a Counsel for the Majority side and Deputy Legislative Director for the Minority side of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform), and staff members from two non-profit government watchdog organizations (POGO and CREW) who I had talked with many times but never met in person. Now I have. I also met for two hours with a Special Agent and Supervisor from the USDOT's Office of Inspector General (OIG) to explain how the Traffic.com scandal works. Because this scandal has been going on since at least 1997 through two transportation bills and involves quite a few different people (including high-profile people), it takes a while to explain.

This week POGO issued their second Freedom of Information Act Request related to the Traffic.com scandal, this one to acquire Mr. Mineta's earlier Year 2000 Public Financial Disclosure Reports that were filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. His most recent filing on record fails to disclose the details of his exercise of Trimble Navigation stock options, which (according to senior members of OGE I have talked with) he should have disclosed. Something fishy is going on here. Trimble is related to the Traffic.com scandal in a couple different ways, and I think (and convinced POGO) that this information is important.

One very interesting -- and almost surreal -- thing happened on this trip that relates to the title of this blog entry. I met with the Washington Bureau Chief of Mother Jones, who's interested in this scandal and just co-authored a related story in the magazine called The Highwaymen. During our meeting, he mentioned to me that Rep. Peter DeFazio (D,OR), who's the new Chairman of the House Transportation Committee's Subcommittee on Highways, Transit, and Pipelines, is very upset about a number of technology-related highway issues, including real-time traffic information. He strongly recommended that I try to meet with DeFazio during my trip. I then called DeFazio's office and tried to set up a meeting, but was unable to do so.

As luck would have it, the next morning, as I was sitting in the cafeteria of the Rayburn House Office Building having a cup of coffee prior to my meeting with legislative staff, who should walk in to cafeteria other than DeFazio! I went up to him and gave him a very quick summary of the Traffic.com scandal and said that I would be glad to drop off a bunch of background information about it (including some of my FAXes to the FBI). He was very receptive, and said I needed to give that information to his legislative assistant Kathy.

So after my meeting with the Government Reform staff member, I stopped by DeFazio's office to meet with Kathy. When I first walked in the door, the first thing that greeted me was -- surprise -- a big poster from the classic Frank Capra movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." It seems that Rep. DeFazio won the award of the same name a couple years ago from the Taxpayers for Common Sense.

If you've been reading this blog, you know that my number one favorite movie of all time is Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," so in some sense I see this whole episode as (hopefully) foretelling. It reminds me of Victor Hugo's classic saying: "There's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come." Getting this very repugnant scandal exposed to the light of day is an idea whose time is coming very soon.

Sayings like that -- which I also happen to believe are true -- give me inspiration to keep plugging.

Jerry

Bye Bye, My Little Girl

2006-12-09T09:10:00.000-08:00

As I write this, I'm waiting for a nice lady mobile vet to stop by and put my little dog Nikki out of her suffering. Nikki's been going downhill for a couple months now. I've had two different vets give me two different answers as to what's the problem. One said that it was a pinched nerve in her back (which has rounded considerably in the past few months), the other said she had a severe case of anemia. I think they're both right, but the sad fact is that the massive fungus infection that led to three major operations early last year likely took it's toll and advanced her chronological clock, and she is 14 years old.

This is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life. I know that a lot of people would say "it's no big deal --just a dog," but I absolutely love this little girl. I remember when we got her at about 6 weeks old. She fit in my hand like this little black hamster. I adored her from the very beginning. She reminded me a lot of Smokey, a little black dog I had as a kid. I don't bond with all animals, but when I do I get very attached.

Nikki was always absolutely headstrong. Life to her was a test of wills. She easily bossed around my stepdaughter's black lab that outweighed her by at least 80 lbs. She was very stingy with her affection, but when she licked my nose it felt like I had received the biggest smooch in the world.

I've often characterized Nikki as my "first born" and that I wanted her to outlive me so that I wouldn't have to face this day. Unfortunately, it has come. I've tried to will her back to health, like I did successfully when she almost died after all those serious surgeries, and I don't give up.

However, maybe Epictetus wasn't entirely wrong when he talked about the necessity to "cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will." I can't will Nikki back to health, no matter how hard I try. My friend Connie, to whom I often turn for inspiration, told me that several days ago. The best I can do is tell Nikki that I love her and have always loved her as she goes into a gentle sleep.

JW

"Corruption is Nonpartisan"

2006-11-25T13:10:00.000-08:00

That's what the research director of what is often characterized as a "liberal leaning corruption watchdog organization" in Washington, DC told me last week. I sent him over a dozen pieces of information about the traffic.com scam. He's still in the process of reviewing this information, but told me that "You're going to be keeping me pretty busy on this one!" Let's hope so.

At this point I am working closely with three different such organizations -- two considered liberal-leaning and one considered conservative-leaning -- and all are very interested in this scandal and are working to both understand it and, ultimately, to expose it to the light of day. That's not surprising, since this scandal involves good and bad guys from both parties -- the scandal itself is nonpartisan.

The problem, of course, is that this very high-profile scandal involves the Bush Administration in a big way, including the recent Secretary of Transportation, the sitting Deputy Secretary of the Dept. of Homeland Security, and a fellow by the name of Mark A. Holman (See information about him on the Texans for Public Justice website) who was a lobbyist for traffic.com (aka Mobility Technologies) both before and after he was a Deputy Assistant to President Bush on Homeland Security. The high-profile nature of this scandal means that everybody (including the press and these watchdog organizations) wants to get their ducks fully in line before going public with this baby, and I fully understand where they're coming from.

I am realizing, however, that having oversight the responsibility of independent third parties like these is a very effective approach, because these organizations are not being dragged into the oversight process kicking and screaming (like U.S. House Committees that are asked to look into the shady dealings of their colleagues), but have a passion for getting to the truth.

It will be real interesting to see what happens to the oversight process when the Democrats take control of the U.S. House in January. I'm particularly interested in what happens with the Committee on Government Reform. I've sent information about the traffic.com scandal to staff members on both the majority and minority side, and both have (so far) been very interested in it but noncommittal at the same time.

The real question in my mind is whether Henry Waxman, who will likely be the next Chairman, will be willing to fully dig into this scandal or will choose not to do so because of his long-standing relationship with his former California Democratic colleague Mr. Mineta. They both came into the Congress in 1974, and I would guess forged a strong friendship in working on the same side of many issues for over 20 years (until Mineta resigned from the House in 1995).

I've seen Waxman in action many times on CSPAN and it always appears that he is relentless in his pursuit of the truth no matter where it leads. I hope that he'll do the same with the traffic.com scandal, and will realize -- as the three non-governmental watchdog organizations do -- that corruption really is nonpartisan.

Jerry

Norman Mineta's Public Financial Disclosures

2006-11-11T17:21:00.000-08:00

This week I discovered what is the closest thing to a "smoking gun" I've found yet related to former USDOT Secretary Mineta's involvement in the traffic.com scandal.

FYI -- the founder of a conservative government corruption watchdog organization in Washington, DC (different from POGO, which I'm also working with) had earlier suggested that I obtain Mr. Mineta's Public Financial Disclosures from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, which I did.

In reviewing these disclosures I found some very interesting things in Mr. Mineta's New Entrant, 2000, and 2001 disclosures, which I've put online here so that others (including the press) could access them easily.

I won't bore you with all the details, but just checkout these things:

1. That Mr. Mineta showed an income of "$100,001 to $1,000,000" in Trimble Navigation stock options in the 2000 report, but didn't provided details in Schedule B, which is where he should have disclosed securites transactions such as the exercise of stock options and sale of stock.

2. That many of Mr. Mineta's asset accounts significantly increased in value from 2000 to 2001, an increase that could not be attributed to any income or financial transactions he disclosed during that period.

3. That the signatures in the New Entrant and 2000 reports are identical, even thought one report was approved in January, 2001 and the other in April, 2002.

Once Mr. Mineta became Secretary of Transportation he very aggressively led the department into several new initiatives that had a major reliance on GPS technology, which just happens to be the technology market in which Trimble is a leader. Think there might just have been some connection between his windfall from Trimble options and his interest in (and support for) the technology Trimble specializes in when he became Secretary?

I've sent my analyses of Mr. Mineta's financial disclosures -- including those suspicious items -- to the FBI, several members of the press (including the Washington Post), the two different government corruption watchdog organizations, and the staff member for a leading Congressman who is known as a bulldog against government corruption and will be the Chairman of a key oversight committee come January.

Stay tuned -- change is coming!

Jerry

I'm So Proud...

2006-10-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

That's the sentiment of Australian Beccy Cole, in her new song, "Poster Girl" as in "Poster Girl on the Wrong Side of the World" that you can see from BlackFive.net.

I have to admit that I tear up everytime I see this video. Becky makes a wonderful case for supporting the Aussie troups in Iraq no matter what you think about the war. In my opinion, those are two completely separable issues -- you can be incredibly proud of our troups over there while believing that this was one of the most ill-conceived wars we've ever been in. At least that's my take.

A lot of the comments on this blog are trashing the Dixie Chicks for their take on the Iraq war. That's very unfortunate. The Chicks are blasting the Administration's phoney baloney story that got us into that war, not our troups. I really wish that more people could realize that support for the troups and support for the rationale that got us into that war are two completely different and separable matters. You can be strongly in support of (and proud of) the troups while blasting the war effort.

Update (10/30) -- The comments about Beccy's song run the gamut, but there's a lot of really stupid bashing of "liberals" (BTW I consider myself a "progressive") and references that the song is, in some way, "pro war." That perspective is pure b.s. J. Jacobs' posting on Oct 27/4:43 pm says what I believe more concisely than I can say it:

Why do people assume that anyone against the war is a liberal or unsupportive of our troops? I support the troops through care pkgs, notes, Operation Homefront, attending funerals, and wearing yellow ribbons but I also oppose this war.

Supporting the troops and rejecting the government's war policy are separate issues. People who think for themselves instead of parroting propaganda can tell the difference.

I'm also personally very proud of my own efforts to expose the traffic.com scandal. I'm perhaps the only one who could do it, with 15 years of experience and personal knowledge of many of the key players in it. Most people would have given up by now, but I won't give up. Because scandals like this one need to be exposed and then to go away, and by getting the details of this one out there perhaps others will come to light. (At least that's my hope.)

FYI -- the Project on Government Oversight has begun an investigation, and last Friday issued an FOIA request to the FHWA in an effort to publicly expose the details of traffic.com's contracts. It will be very interesting to see how the FHWA reacts to that request.

The producer for one of the most recognizable nightly news anchors has spent weeks chasing down the leads I gave him and, in fact, knows more about some aspects of this scandal than I do at this point. I suspect that you'll hear about the report he's putting together in a few weeks. Editors for two top newspapers (including the Washington Post's James Grimaldi) are also digging into this story. I'm finding out that it just takes a long time to get all the ducks in line for a story like this one.

In the past three weeks I've also talked to a number of senior people within the FBI, and expect that their own investigation will be stepping up in the coming weeks.

This is a big scandal, what I called the "poster child of federal corruption" on the Yahoo Finance discussion board, and I can't wait until the details of it are exposed for all to see.

Jerry

Who Inspires Me?

2006-10-14T17:30:00.000-07:00

A lot of people's writings inspire me, particularly poets and songwriters (who really are the poets of the modern world). I once knew a young lady who was such a wonderful poet that she even inspired me to come up with an idea that led to an invention that led to a patent application and could well lead to a very successful new enterprise. Ah, the power of inspiration.

In reading a recent Molly Ivins opinion piece (Molly's from Austin, by the way), I came across an old lady by the name of "Granny-D" who takes inspiration to the next level. I really like her writings and sayings because she simply nails things. I guess that when you get to be 96 years old (although admittedly she isn't 100 years old, which is some people's definition of the threshold of old) you figure "to hell with the consequences -- let the truth fly." It's a similar thought to what my friend, a jazz and blues singer who often inspires me, says her daddy used to tell her: "Tell it like it is, not like it taint!"

Granny D's remarks in Wisconsin during Democracy Week are truly inspirational to me, and I hope that they are likewise to my faithful readers.

One of my faithful readers, however, may take issue to Granny's ideas and attitudes. She likes to quote Epictetus, a Greek philosopher who was very thoughtful and undoubtedly profound, but definitely not a boat rocker. Epictetus cautions people not to take on "things which are beyond the power of our will." Granny D, even through 96 years of wins and losses, ups and downs, is undeterred, and says "there are no impossible causes." I guess that she thinks that there is nothing beyond the power of her will!

Can both sentiments be true, or are they contradictory? I'll have to comtemplate that question over a glass of red wine this evening as I catch a really good jazz band at one of my favorite local restaurants.

Jerry

Two Sides of the Coin

2006-08-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

And now for a bit of my own philosophy.

I've found that while great sayings can provide great insight and inspiration -- and wonderful lessons to live by -- they can sometimes be contradicted by other messages that just might be more appropriate for a given individual or a given situation or a given era.

Here's one I came across recently that I really like:

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will. - Epictetus

... which, to me, says a very similar thing to the old saw I quoted in my immediately previous blog entry:

God give me the courage to change the things I can, accept the things I cannot change, and have the wisdom to know the difference.

But don't the following sage sayings portray the other side of the coin?

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. - Michelangelo

... or this one:

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning (no sexism meant, at least by me)

For me, the first two sayings could be an excuse -- for some -- to give up, to say that they really can't affect very much in any meaningful way, to become cynical about the way things are, to conclude that the vision that they've been longing for is only a pipedream, to succumb to what Jackson Browne calls "the resignation that living brings."

I find the second two sayings much more inspirational. To me, they implore a person to try to make a difference, to tackle important issues, to be a whistleblower if called upon to do so, to keep trying to reach their vision, while all the time realizing that they may never reach it. They're related to a favorite saying my dad's years ago, "go out with your popguns blazing," or when my younger sister Jane says she admires someone who's "dreaming and scheming."

With all the crazy things going on in the world today, I'd rather be motivated by dreams and schemes that I think just might change things for the better, than by the resignation that living brings to most people, but perhaps that's just me.

JW

Another Prediction: DHS Deputy Secretary Jackson Will Resign

2006-07-19T18:56:00.000-07:00

OK, since I'm running one-for-one in the prediction department, I'm going to give another stab at it. My next prediction is that Michael P. Jackson, the current sitting Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS), will resign sometime in the near future.

FYI, Mr. Jackson was previously Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Dept. of Transportation from 2001 to 2003. He is a long-time associate of (former) USDOT Secretary Mineta, having also worked with Mr. Mineta at Lockheed Martin IMS in the 1990s before entering into "public service."

There are many different reasons that may be given about why Mr. Jackson chose to resign at this time, of course, from wanting to spend more time with his family to wanting to get out of a high-stress but relatively low-paying (through salary, that is) government job, to just wanting a change of venue. Some may even attribute his resignation to the criticism he (as "Chief Operating Officer" of DHS) and his agency have had to endure in the fallout surrounding the Katrina disaster.

I have no clue what reason will be given for his departure. It might be similar to what President Bush's press head, Tony Snow, said in response to a question about why Mr. Mineta resigned: "because he wanted to!" However, if Mr. Jackson does resign, that resignation will likely be driven by the same underlying reason that led to Mr. Mineta's resignation, which I explained back on April 10 (and have reinstated that blog entry).

Just wait and see.

JW

Cousin Susan's Ballad

2006-07-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

In checking out music on MySpace (we're looking at possible business connections between deliverasong.com and the over a million artists there), I came across a song called "My Strange Nation." It was written and performed by, of all people, Susan Werner. I think she's even from the Chicago area, so she might even be a long-lost relative!

At first hearing, it sounds kind of like a song from a broadway play, but listen carefully to the lyrics. Just like Kinky's songs and writings, this one cuts different ways, but (also like his stuff) it squarely hits my funnybone. Doubt if it's as funny to George, Karl, and the gang, though.

Enjoy!

JW

Mineta Resigns

2006-06-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

I just saw on CNN that Norman Mineta, the Secretary of Transportation, just this week resigned as Secretary of Transportation. His letter of resignation is located here.

You may recall that I predicted that resignation back on April 10 in this blog. (I removed that prediction because it really got into too much detail, but all of what I said was true.) I strongly suspect that you'll be hearing more about one of the main reasons he resigned in the coming weeks.

JW

My Perfect Lover

2006-05-28T03:32:00.000-07:00

My perfect lover is a wonderful person.

My perfect lover is no longer 20 years old.

My perfect lover is an American through and through, and at the same time a citizen of the world.

My perfect lover gets along with all kinds of people – young and old; white, black, brown, pink, or yellow; Christian, Buddist, Jew, or agnostic. She agrees with Martin Luther King that the content of one’s character is what’s most important. Conversely, she has little tolerance for those who lie or cheat or are insincere.

My perfect lover is an activist. She doesn’t sit around lamenting the sorry state of the world – she goes out and tries to change it for the better.

My perfect lover is a wonderful writer. She can touch your soul with just a few words (which is why she’s also such a terrific poet). She wants to write a book about her recent experiences, and she absolutely should -- it could be a best-seller.

My perfect lover is independent and thinks and decides for herself. She knows that even advice from her closest friends is colored by those individuals’ experiences and biases, and is not necessarily the best advice for her.

My perfect lover is continually learning more about herself and the world around her. She knows that that process must never end for her to get the most out of life and have the greatest impact on others.

My perfect lover has an incredible sense of humor, and even likes jokes with language and themes that could make most truck drivers blush.

My perfect lover always seeks the truth, although she knows it can be elusive at times. She believes in the zen philosophy that says that truth will triumph in the end, although she’s often impatient as to when that “end” is finally going to get here.

JW

Interesting Article in the Uganda New Vision Newspaper

2006-05-22T15:31:00.000-07:00

Kin Kaliisa sent me a note this morning about an article that appeared in yesterday's edition of New Vision, the government-owned daily newspaper in Uganda.

Govt to set up computer industry

Like past newspaper articles about our initiative, this one contains several errors. (What the heck is "Texas City University" anyway?) Nonetheless, things are definitely moving forward.

The ruling NRM party in Uganda has also approved several new Ministerial departments, including one for ICT (information and computer technology). Once the Minister is appointed I expect we'll be getting even more attention.

JW

We Made the Evening News!

2006-05-03T03:58:00.000-07:00

-- As luck would have it, KXAN-TV (NBC local affiliate) reporter Jim Swift got wind of the Ugandan team's exploits, and wanted to do a news piece about it for the evening news. So yesterday morning he came by and recorded interviews with everybody on the team (see picture).

Swift's the guy to my left holding the microphone. Mr. Kin Kaliisa, President Museveni's ICT Advisor, is in the suit in the center of the picture. Kin laughed when he told me after his individual interview that he had told Swift that Dell computers were just too expensive in Uganda, which was one reason why they wanted to have their own computer company.

I haven't seen the news piece yet (it ran last evening), but someone who did see it told me that the Dell comment didn't make the final cut. Not surprising, since Dell is headquartered here (in Round Rock, a northern suburb of Austin), and it's verboten to say anything negative about Dell in these parts.

JW

Prediction: USDOT Secretary of Transportation Mineta Will Resign

2006-04-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

You'all have probably heard all the predictions that more changes will be coming on President Bush's staff, because of his low public approval rating and various gaffs and scandals that have beset the Administration of late.

What you probably haven't heard is a suggestion that Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta will resign, so I'd like to be one of the first to make that prediction.

When he does resign, there'll probably be a lot of the usual accolades about what a great guy he is and what a great job he's done. Actually, he has done a lot of good in his career, but he'll resign in large part because he's a key player in a big scandal in the area called "intelligent transportation systems" in which I consulted for fourteen years before taking off for new opportunities last year. The scandal story involves a company that just recently went public, earmarks, a whole lot of political arm-twisting, offshore accounts, money laundering schemes with retirement funds, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch (who's on the right side of this issue) and who knows what else the press comes up with. It also involves Pennsylvania in a big way.

Want just a preview of what I'm talking about? Read the article

'Monopoly money' for Pa. Company

that appeared a year ago in the publication "The Hill." What you read there is only the tip of the iceberg.

FYI -- I also took the bad guys on in many postings last August on the Talking Operations Forum that I used to moderate. The Vice President of the company in question actually threatened to sue me for libel at one point, and I essentially told him to "bring it on" and, of course, he didn't. (Here's a link to that portion of the discussion.)

So when Mineta does resign (and I have no idea precisely when that will be), remember you heard it here first.

BTW -- in case you think I'm pandering to liberals and Democrats by bashing President Bush because I know a young lady who's both a liberal and a Democrat, you should know that Mineta is actually the only Democrat in Bush's Cabinet. And while I usually side with the Democrats on most issues, I'm not a rubber stamp and consider myself an independent who votes for the right person at the time. As proof I offer some of my past President votes: McGovern, Reagan (against Carter), Perot (the first time he ran), Clinton.

JW

My Claim to Fame

2006-03-16T07:30:00.000-08:00

I've had an "interesting" life so far, at least I think a lot of people would think so. I've had my share of battles -- and even lost my share of battles -- but I don't regret a single one. In hindsight, I would have handled some of them differently, but I don't regret at all what I tried to do. I think that's what Billy Joel meant in his song "Angry Young Man": "he's proud of his scars and the battles he's lost."

But one of the things I'm proudest of is just a little thing that's best described by recounting the story...

A year and a half ago I got an email message out of the blue from a guy I used to know over 20 years ago, when I was Editor-in-Chief of VLSI Design magazine out in Silicon Valley:

"I'm trying to find the Jerry Werner that used to be editor-in-chief of VLSI Design magazine in the early 1980s. Do I have the right fellow? - Gary"

The message was from Gary Robson, one of my friends years ago who was Vice President of a small chip design company in Cupertino and someone who wrote a number of articles for my magazine. I called him up on the phone: "Gary -- great to hear from you. It's been a while!"

He told me that he had given up the rat race in the Valley three years earlier and moved to Montana, where he and his wife have a small ranch and a bookstore. He also said that writing, not technology, had finally become his primary source of income, and that he just finished his 11th book, which would be published the following February.

He told me that he had decided to dedicate this latest book to me, since I was the first person who ever paid him to write, and that he'd send me a copy of the book when it came out. I told him that I really appreciated it, and that it was great to talk with him after so many years.

Cut to the following February.

I got a brown envelope in the mail, containing Gary's latest masterpiece. The title:

"Who Pooped in the Park? Grand Canyon National Park"

It turns out that Gary has written a whole series of kids books, featuring animal crap from different kind of animals that populate various popular national parks, including Yosemite, Rocky Mountain, Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and other parks. The idea is that when kids see certain kinds of "scat" on the ground, they can learn more about the animals themselves. Every time I've shown these books to friends they've died laughing. It's a very creative series.

By the way, I was only the third person to whom he dedicated one of his "Poop" books, after his mother and older brother Bill (whom I also know), but I'm very proud of the honor and that's no shit.

Here's the inscription that's printed on page 2: "To the first editor who decided my writing was good enough to pay for, Jerry Werner. Thanks for kick-starting my writing career at VLSI Design Magazine twenty years ago."

Gary added this handwritten note: "Jerry -- This probably wasn't the direction you thought you were sending me, but you got me started writing as a career, and I've finally gotten there. Thanks! Gary Robson, 2005."

Pretty cool, huh?

By the way, Gary has invited me to spend time on his mini-ranch in Montana, and I plan to do that when I can (no telling right now).

If you're interested in learning more about this series (or ordering a book), check out:

Gary's Who Pooped in the Park website

Amazon ordering form for Grand Canyon book

The West Can't Save Africa

2006-02-13T19:59:00.000-08:00

Prof. Gary Chapman sent me this piece today that appeared in the Washington Post.

The West Can't Save Africa

Locals Must Take the Lead

By William Easterly
Monday, February 13, 2006

It was the year that the West tried harder than ever to save Africa -- 2005. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last January, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for "a big, big push forward" to end poverty -- to be financed by an increase in traditional foreign aid. He put that cause at the top of the agenda of the Group of Eight summit in Scotland in July. The G-8 agreed to double foreign aid to Africa, from $25 billion a year to $50 billion, and to forgive the African aid debt incurred in previous years to fund previous (unsuccessful) "big pushes." Rock celebrity Bob Geldof assembled well-known bands -- virtually none from Africa -- for "Live 8" concerts in nine countries around the world to urge G-8 leaders to "Make Poverty History."

Jeffrey Sachs and Angelina Jolie toured the continent on behalf of MTV, with Jolie asking how we can stand by and let it be destroyed. The world's leaders gathered at the United Nations in September to further discuss ending poverty in Africa, apparently unfazed by yet another voluminous U.N. report highlighting the failure of the grand plans (the "Millennium Development Goals") to make any progress. They repeated a familiar refrain: If aid efforts aren't producing the desired results, then redouble those efforts. The year closed with the rock star Bono being named Time magazine's person of the year (along with the rather more constructive Bill and Melinda Gates) for his efforts to save Africa.

Meanwhile, for a Ghanaian man named Patrick Awuah, 2005 was the fourth year of running a successful private university that he started with his own money: Ashesi University, the "Swarthmore of Ghana." The university reserves half the spaces in its entering class for poor students on scholarship. "We want to train people as critical thinkers," Awuah says. One of his most satisfying moments came when a student sent him an e-mail: "Mr. Awuah, I am thinking now."

Awuah says that he could do more, but like some other enterprising individuals in Africa I know of, he has been turned away by official aid agencies. Everyone, it seems, was invited to the "Save Africa" campaign of 2005 except for Africans. They starred only as victims: genocide casualties, child soldiers, AIDS patients and famine deaths on our 43-inch plasma screens.

Yes, these tragedies deserve attention, but the obsessive and almost exclusive Western focus on them is less relevant to the vast majority of Africans -- the hundreds of millions not fleeing from homicidal minors, not HIV-positive, not starving to death, and not helpless wards waiting for actors and rock stars to rescue them. Angelina, the continent has problems but it is not being destroyed.

Kenyan Robert Keter, a former world-class runner, is busy investing the proceeds of the telecom venture CDR, which he co-founded in 2000 and ran profitably until the Kenyan government abruptly shut him down for no apparent reason. Keter was recruited into business by Monique Maddy, a Liberian entrepreneur with a Harvard MBA (who is now offering advice to Google on global anti-poverty programs). CDR was offering customers voice over Internet protocol long before the service was made mainstream by Skype and Vonage. The company did so well during its brief operation that Keter and his U.S.-based partners decided to raise money to help rebuild a school in his home village of Kericho, located in the tea-growing region of the Kenyan highlands. Keter also used part of his earnings to purchase a tea farm, where he employs more than 400 workers.

The West's focus on sensational tragedies obscures the achievements of people such as Patrick Awuah and Robert Keter, who are succeeding even against tremendous odds. Economic development in Africa will depend -- as it has elsewhere and throughout the history of the modern world -- on the success of private-sector entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs and African political reformers. It will not depend on the activities of patronizing, bureaucratic, unaccountable and poorly informed outsiders.

Development everywhere is homegrown. As G-8 ministers and rock stars fussed about a few billion dollars here or there for African governments, the citizens of India and China (where foreign aid is a microscopic share of income) were busy increasing their own incomes by $715 billion in 2005.

This is not to say that all Western aid efforts in Africa are condemned to fail. Aid groups could search for achievable tasks with high potential for poor individuals to help themselves. To do so, they would have to subject themselves to independent evaluation and be accountable to the intended beneficiaries for the results. Such an approach would contrast with the prevailing norm of never holding anyone individually accountable for the results of traditional government-to-government aid programs aimed at feeding the hubristic fantasies of outside transformation of whole societies.

An example of such achievable and accountable programs can be found in western Kenya, where work by nongovernmental aid organizations to get meals and textbooks to schoolchildren raised attendance and test scores, according to careful subsequent evaluation. Perhaps these well-nourished and well-educated children will be tomorrow's leaders and entrepreneurs. Aid could also be used to support the efforts of promising local social and business entrepreneurs who already have a successful track record, people like Awuah, Keter and Maddy -- letting locals take the lead with their superior motivation and inside knowledge.

Dare one hope that in 2006, it will finally be understood that Africa's true saviors are the people of Africa, and that those who would help them in their task must also be accountable to them?

The writer is a professor of economics (a joint appointment with Africa House) at New York University and author of "The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good," to be published next month.

Back from Uganda

2006-01-21T04:58:00.000-08:00

Our trip to Uganda encompassed the most incredible six days I’ve ever spent anywhere at any time. In many ways the things we saw were surreal, but the trip was, in fact, very successful. I’m convinced that this effort we discussed with the Ugandans is going to thrive.

We spent virtually the whole time working with and being chaperoned by the folks from ACID – the African Christian in Development Trust, which is a relatively new and fascinating organization. ACID paid for all of our (myself, Gary’s, and Rosemary’s) travel expenses. The “Chief Director” of ACID is Bishop Siribaleka, a short, young (mid-30s) unassuming fellow who has a heart of gold and iron constitution. Virtually every time Rosemary referred to him at one of our rallies she called him a “little man with a big heart.” He’s the leader and visionary of ACID, no doubt. In person he is humble and at first impression seems to even lack self-confidence. Over the several days I found out how wrong that first impression was. He, in fact, is a fiery orator when he gets in front of a crowd (and we saw many).

Over the past several months, Siribaleka has taken my preliminary ideas about this computer initiative and started to put them into a legal/operational form that could work in Uganda. He gave us both the articles of incorporation for Uganda Computer Manufacturing Company as well as a planning document for the initiative. Both documents show that a great deal of thought has already gone into how to set up and operate Africa’s first home-grown computer company.

Prof. Gary Chapman from UT -- who was a last-minute addition on the trip -- turned out to be an incredible person and resource. He knows much more than I do about what technology efforts are going on in third-world countries around the world, and as head of the 21st Century Project at the LBJ School is trying to do something about it. He’s also incredibly well plugged in – has personally met several recent U.S. Presidents and the heads of many of the largest computer/IT companies. One of his twelve graduate students this semester is Eddie Sabena, who is a computer science undergraduate from Kampala, Uganda, and who may play an important role in the initiatives that we discussed with the Ugandans.

Over the next few days I’ll upload a bunch of photos of our trip to ophoto.com, so anyone can see the types of things we saw and experienced in Uganda. ACID had an “official photographer” that accompanied us on all the meetings and site visits, and the Bishop said that he would send me a DVD of all his photos, too.

Someone once wrote: "I want to experience the world and hear people's stories. I want to help those who cannot find solutions. I want to tell their stories to others." I had hoped that she could be on this trip, but I blew it and scared her terribly – but, as I’ve said many times, that was not at all on purpose. (My intention was quite the opposite.) I hope she can make the next one -- whenever that happens, and it will happen -- because she's a far better writer and poet than I could ever hope to be.

JW

Off to the Equator

2005-12-30T05:03:00.000-08:00

It looks like I'll be heading to Uganda, with a quick stopover in DC to pick up the visa, on January 8, assuming all the tickets come through. This should be a very interesting trip. I'm currently in Northern California visiting my sister, and will be coming back to Buda just in time to see the Longhorns take on USC in the Rose Bowl. Rosemary had told me that I could get all the vaccinations when I stop by DC prior to leaving for Kampala, but it turns out that you need to get the Yellow Fever shot at least 10 days before you're there for it to be effective. By shear luck I checked with the San Francisco Dept. of Public Health and was told that. I ended up getting all the shots there -- a total of five (including HepA, HepB, etc.) Should be pretty well set. My friend Richard, who lives in the DC area and recently came back from Liberia, suggested that I take Malorone for malaria instead of the older medication, which has more side effects. So I have that medication and one for typhoid, too.

The Presidents office -- finally -- sent us the invitation to come just a couple weeks ago, and said we had to be there during the time slot of January 10 through 17. (Apparently his time is pretty committed, with the election coming up in a couple months -- they've set up a very interesting website at http://www.nrm.ug.) I told them that that wasn't enough time to get some of the key technical folks there -- especially because of the year-end holidays -- but they said it was important that we come. So I, Rosemary, and Gary Chapman from UT (http://www.utexas.edu/lbj/21cp/bio.html) will be going. Gary was the guy that wrote the editorial in the Austin American-Statesman about how we were spending billions in Africa but, despite of that, conditions there were getting worse.

I've done some reading about Uganda -- from the background stuff the Bishop sent me as well as from the Internet, and know that what Gary said is true. For example, the life expectancy has dropped from about 56 to 42 in just the past 15 years or so (don't quote me on the exact figures), due in large part to AIDS. I guess they need to "just say no" to the Nancy Reagan-like message they're using these days. (I thought quite a bit about why they're saying that, and figure it's because of the heavy Catholic influence there.)

Will we accomplish anything there? I think we will, but who knows what the future holds. (I sure don't.) I've said all along that we just want to have a brainstorming session to see if we can identify some opportunities, and then go from there. Actually, I think our session will be very successful. My neighbor Franklin, the Ph.D. researcher from Ghana, told me about a couple technologies (one from his company AMD) that he thinks could make a difference there. I'm in the process of doing some research on those in preparation for the trip and my presentation. Incidentally, Franklin is excited about going there on the second trip, and I think there will be one.

Anyway, that's the latest. Good luck on your own trip, and be safe.

JW