Wine Train Stimulus Scam Gets Even Uglier With No-Bid Set-Aside Swindle
Fiscal conservatives have been howling in protest over the $54 million earmarked by Obama’s Stimulus Package to finance something called “The Wine Train” in California’s scenic Napa Valley. The notion that the government was squandering millions of taxpayer dollars to prop up a private tourist attraction seemed to epitomize everything that was wrong with pork-barrel politics masquerading as sober economic policy. I mean, while we’re subsidizing tourist traps, why not give a couple hundred million to Disneyland to build a new “Pirates of the Potomac” ride?
But the howls are about to get a lot louder. Because an investigation just published by California Watch and reprinted in the San Francisco Chronicle shows that the Wine Train scam was far worse than you imagined. The $54 million wasn’t just spent on an overpriced not-a-thrill ride for tipsy tourists: it was thrown down the toilet on a no-bid contract handed to a shady Alaskan front corporation which deviously abused race-based “set-aside” laws to land a vastly overpriced deal — which they then proceeded to subcontract at a much lower rate to a different company, while pocketing a cool $20 million for doing no work whatsoever.
The article merits a full read (and kudos to author Lance Williams at California Watch for actually doing some real investigative journalism), but these excerpts (with key sections highlighted) should make you nauseous enough:
…The main action today is in Napa, where, without competitive bidding, this unusual construction company won a $54 million federal contract to build a new railroad bridge and other structures for the famed Napa Valley Wine Train tourist attraction.
This is the world of Suulutaaq Inc. of Anchorage. Because the company was founded by Alaska Natives, it enjoys special access to federal contracts.
…
A Walnut Creek construction executive whose firm built a previous phase of the flood-control project said the government probably overspent by millions when it negotiated a contract with Suulutaaq rather than seeking competitive bids.
Meanwhile, investors aggrieved over the bankruptcy of the South Carolina dot-com Sailnet said they were surprised to learn of former CEO Samuel Boyle’s new job as CEO of Suulutaaq. Boyle did not mention having construction experience or ties to Alaska tribes, they told California Watch. Some said Boyle’s involvement in Suulutaaq boded ill for the Alaska firm.
…
Suulutaaq is one of dozens of Alaska Native corporations that have emerged as players in federal contracting via measures crafted in the 1980s and 1990s by former Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, a powerful lawmaker whose career ended with a contracting scandal.
For decades, the U.S. Small Business Administration has run a preferential contracting program to aid disadvantaged businesses. Qualifying firms can get federal contracts worth up to $5.5 million by negotiation, rather than competitive bidding.
The Stevens measures gave corporations that were set up by Alaska Natives special access – with no cap on the size of contracts they can obtain.
…
“Alaska Native corporations don’t have to prove that they’re socially or economically disadvantaged,” Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said at a 2009 hearing. “They don’t have to be small businesses. And they can receive no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars.”
The companies employ few Alaska Natives and “rely heavily on non-native managers,” she said.
McCaskill also contended that some of the companies “may also be passing through work to their subcontractors.” In those cases, the companies were collecting a profit simply because they had special access to federal contracts, she said.
McCaskill proposed putting a cap on the no-bid contracts, but the measure stalled in the face of intense lobbying by tribal corporations.
…
The price tag might have been significantly lower but for the Wine Train, a private rail line established by the late Vincent DeDomenico, the wealthy creator of Rice-A-Roni pasta. Sixteen times each week, according to the Wine Train’s Web site, the train transports tourists from Napa to St. Helena aboard restored dining cars. A champagne dinner on the Vista Dome car costs $129 per person. About 125,000 people ride the Wine Train each year.
…Brosamer, the Walnut Creek contractor, said the public was paying a premium for the Wine Train project, saying, “It would have been a hell of a lot cheaper if they had put it out to bid.”
But the quality of the construction is first rate, Brosamer said, because Suulutaaq subcontracted much of the job to the giant Peter Kiewit Sons Inc. engineering firm, which also is a contractor on the Bay Bridge.
“The reality is, Suulutaaq isn’t doing much,” Brosamer said.
Federal records show that Suulutaaq is paying Kiewit $28.1 million – 53 percent of the total stimulus contract. Suulutaaq is keeping about $20.4 million, or 38 percent of the total. The rest, about $4.7 million, goes to other subcontractors, all from the lower 48 states.
Wow, sounds about like the way most “Indian” casinos are actually run. I recently discovered that my maternal grandmother was at least partially Indian, and I feel like I’ve just hit the jackpot for protected identity status; this article is just brimming with ideas.
Great catch! Maybe some of us should develop a high-speed ferry service for wine-drinkers to cross the Monterey Bay between Pebble Beach and Santa Cruz. That way passengers could zip back and forth watching whales and sipping Pinots and Chardonnays. To do this the taxpayers in middle America could pay Inuits to find a Finnish shipbuilder and hire Indonesian crew members to wait on folks while remaining almost invisible as the hoi poloi enjoy their leisure time and consume wine. Sounds reasonable to me. Can I sign you up to serve on the board? Should be worth a cool $20 mil, too, spread out — of course.
I’ve been on the Wine Train once. It’s very nice, but as you state, publicly subsidizing such a luxury is the worst sort of waste.
Just because a blog says it is wasteful spending doesn’t mean it is. My guess is Zombie and others with an axe to grind against the fiscal stimulus will not conduct interviews with the people who run the program, you will just jump to conclusions.
Anyway, $54m really is a drop in the bucket compared to the fraud that has taken place the last 8 years in Iraq.
Sounds like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and the Democrat party’s SUBPRIME lending debacle that allowed their crooked banker friends to get rich while the global economy melted down.
NO ONE judges the libs on their RESULTS only their INTENTIONS.
It’s sick and disgusting. Guess what fake Alaskan has $20 million to donate to liberal candidates???
Throw these incompetent crooks out!
Who will benefit from this train? Follow the money….Nancy Pelosi and her husband own some of that wonderful St Helena property, actually a vineyard. Oops, were the little people to know that?
If someone amped up the Invisible Man angle, the story might get legs in the MSM.
“Just because a blog says it is wasteful spending doesn’t mean it is.”
I couldn’t agree with you more. Thanks for your support!
Way to go Barry!
So, “jarjar”, nothing but personal attacks and an attempt to change the subject?
You lefties love corporatism, don’t you? Warms your fascist little hearts to see government stealing the lives of working people to line the pockets of the well-connected.
Sen. Ted Stevens case was dismissed with prejudice, it never happened, and what caused the Federal government to drop the case after Sen Stevens lost his seat in the Senate…….Hmmmmm..Federal prosecutors hid evidence, hid witnesses, made deals for testimony and a laundry list of illegal activities and this case arose from a supposed error on a Senate form about work performed on his vacation home…
The native corporations were granted special rights by law (Alaska Native Lands Claims Settlement Act)in the 1970′s, a lot of these corps run as General Contractors(Administrators of Contract) and do no real on the ground work of the contracts they acquire(this is legal action for GC)and often have a higher than average profit.
Nothing seems to be out of place here other than this money was awarded on a No Bid basis… this is also common practice in government contracting circles, these are companies that have done prior work for the Feds and are on a short list of pre-appoved contractors, while this is usually done on small contracts we have seen some large no bids as well(building of Iraq bases and utility re-builds in Iraq).
With all of this said, what actually makes us made is that this project goes to an area that has a above average income level, in the area of Ms Piglousy’s state, done by contractors(or their CEO’s)with obvious ties to this corrupt Admin. So they pissed 54 million down the drain and we want to hold someone accountable…..it should not always be the folks at the bottom who this Admin likes to let take the blame or the companies who are in the system or a ex Alaska Senator or an Alaska corp…….lets put the blame where it should be…….corrupt politicians of the Obama Admin and the Democrat Party….
Thank you for your time…
Pass through minority business enterprises have been used by many governments for years to “help” disadvantaged minorities. The problem is that they don’t benefit many people except the few “certified” people who give lots of money back to campaigns.
This has become less and less about disadvantaged minorities, and instead it has become the vehicle for the minority of people who think supporting local Democrat party hacks will bring in more of the same. I know of some local governments that have had such arrangements struck down by the courts not once, but several times in several different ways –AND THEY STILL KEEP PERPETRATING THE SAME DEEDS UNDER A DIFFERENT NAME.
I’m all for giving disadvantaged minorities a hand up for getting a better education, improving schools and so forth. But when we get to the business world they have to stand on their own merit, and they need to know that.
This is horrible Democrat pandering to the Jesse Jacksonian view of extortionist equality. Have they no shame?
The scam sounds like something written for “The Sopranos!”
Reminds me of a lot of contracting businesses. A project for (xxx)dollars gets stepped on twelve times until the poor shmuck doing the actual work makes (x).
You are describing a feature not a bug. Waste and profiteering were the goal of the stimulus package. Scrape the surface of any project, and you will find some one dialed into te Democratic Party making cash without working.
I worked in DC and I saw right away that the Stimulus Bill was simply everyone’s unjustifiable old cats and dogs projects that could never get funded otherwise.
The normal way of doing Pork in DC is to find something “wrong” with a real, needed effort that has an actual requirement and take out of its budget just enough money to fund the urgently needed but unjustifiable Pork. They simply do not add in additional money but instead come up with reasons to steal it from somewhere else. When I was up there the Congress even started saying “Go find the money somewhere. You have plenty of it in your budget.” (and by the way, John McCain was in on that). The Stimulus was a dream come true, free money that you did not have to go find other things to defund.
Just what I’ve always said — never trust an Alaskan!
Nancy Pelosi owns a winery in the region…hummm could that be related?
She is the one who also saw Obama’s records afterall and sworn that they were legit.
Could this be what i am thinking?
Hello! This is how all 8A set aside federal jobs are given out. Minority wins the job, hires out for 40 to 60% of the value of the job to the sub-contractors who actually know how to do the job. Pockets the proceeds……
Money not for the Wine Train. Part of the Flood Control Project. Complaints? Contact Mike Thompson, 1st Congressional District – CA.
You should dig a little deeper on your characterization of this as a subsidy for the Wine Train. The project is actually part of a much larger flood control project that has been going on for 10 years in Napa. The elevation of the train tracks (which the Wine Train rides on but are actually a public utility that could support commuters, freight, etc., if and when the world returns to using trains) is a necessary part of this flood control work. The Wine Train could care less that the tracks are elevated but the residents of Napa will benefit greatly when this flood control work is completed, a community that has been innunndated numerous times by significant flooding over the last 100 years. I know it is inconvenient to get the whole picture and much more fun to say that wine drinkers are benefiting from Stimulus money, but those are just not the facts!
The wine train actually has almost nothing to do with this project. They just happen to use a rail line that runs through a flood control district that needs work. The rail is being moved so the flood control work can be completed. Zero dollars of this fiasco goes to them.
Reminds me of a low income housing project going up here in Houston. According to one of their legal postings, the total budget divided by the number of units comes out to $550,000 per unit. And they will be build out of fiberboard…
22. Napa Zombie and 23. Matt:
If you actually bother to read the linked article, it goes into that very aspect. Yes, the project is deemed to be a subset of the overall flood-control scheme, but the $54 million we’re talking about is specifically designated for the Wine Train track re-location and the Wine Train bridge rebuilding. If you want to talk about the whole flood control scheme, that goes into the hundreds of millions and is on a totally different financial scale — and one which is not part of this particular discussion.
For reasons unknown, the train-track relocation was parsed out as a separately funded (and unnecessary) aspect of the flood control, and the only one which got these absurd Stimulus funds. If the voters of Napa wanted the tracks relocated, then they should have (and in fact did) include it in the bond they voted on to fund the flood control project. Why the rest of the country has to foot the bill for this one particular aspect is anyone’s guess. It should be funded by the local bond funds, not by the Feds.
As to your fantasies that the tracks “could” support other trains at some unknown point in the future: Dream on. Currently, there are ZERO plans to use those tracks for anything other than as a tourist attraction. Yes, many people pine for the glory days of old with a functioning passenger train system in the northern Bay Area, but it ain’t happening any time in the next several decades at best, if ever — and most likely never. And if they ever did get around to such a concept, it would be so far in the future that these particular tracks would be useless — just as the existing tracks in central California are useless for the new SF-LA bullet train. Whether any fantasy train system in the future is an extension of BART, or a high-speed train, or a maglev train, or whatever, the odds are these particular tracks will be unusable and will just be in the way.
Nice story: a real “poster child” for Porkulus. Blogged here:
http://spinstrangenesscharm.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/the-wine-train-a-poster-child-for-stimulus-pork-barreling/
This “stimulus” is stimulating only two things:
* the wallets of those connected to the 0bama administration
* the prostate of Uncle Sam
Madam Pelosi owns a vineyard in Napa Valley. They need to check also on the flood control project there as well…..
The Wine Train should be renamed the “Barry ooops sorry Barack, you can call me HUSSEIN now I won , ‘BC I dont need no stinkin BC’ Soetero oops sorry Obama “PORKULUS AND GRAVY TRAIN”". You know it makes sense and its the CHANGE the left wing, libtard, PC , MC, Islamophile moonbats voted for in droves.
Jarjar is presumably named after ‘Jarjar Binks’ in the Star Wars prequelles and was voted the most inane pointless annoying creature in the whole series. A distinction Jarjar shares on here with the content of and his blogging quality.
Talking about LEFT WING libtard moonbat SCAMS as we are the Green NAZIS AGW SCM continues to unravel before their eyes the SCAMMERS continue to tie themselves in knots and further LIE upon LIE. This from Melanie Philipps in the pretiguous Spectator Magazine in UK.
“Not waving but drowning
Tuesday, 2nd February 2010
The climate change zealots continue their free fall into utter ridicule. Yesterday, the government’s former Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, told the Independent that the
highly sophisticated hacking operation that led to the leaking of hundreds of emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was probably carried out by a foreign intelligence agency.
Ah! Reds under the sea-bed! But by today King had retreated. The Guardian reported:
Sir David King admitted he possessed no inside information about the leaks of embarrassing emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, and had merely been speculating on material already in the public domain. His remarks to a journalist had been a ‘side-issue’, he said. But it emerged that he had been misinformed about key facts. One of his grounds for believing a high-powered team of professionals were behind the leak, he said, was that there had been a wide spread of emails going back decades ‘between very different people’. He told the Independent: ‘The emails date back to 1996, so someone was collecting the data over many years.’ In fact, as UEA confirmed today, all the files and emails were archived on a single backup server on the Norwich campus. Once access was gained, it would have been simple to copy all the material.
Sir David King FRS is a former professor of physical chemistry and one of this country’s most distinguished scientists. Yet he has shown himself here to be sloppy with facts and prone to wild conspiracy theorising. Is it any wonder therefore that he is a climate change zealot? This frighteningly closed-minded individual was a key force in shaping Britain’s science policy from 2000 to 2007.
The Guardian’s take on all this today is fascinating. It splashes on the apparent discovery of yet another global warming academic scam, once again involving Phil Jones of the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (the one at the centre of the dodgy emails saga). The story reveals how Jones and a collaborator have been accused of scientific fraud for attempting to suppress data that cast doubt on a key 1990 study, on the extent to which cities contributed to and thus distorted global warming statistics, by covering up flaws in the data from Chinese weather stations. In a fuller account, the paper reports:
…when, in 2007, Jones finally released what location data he had, British amateur climate analyst and former City banker Doug Keenan accused Jones and Wang of fraud. He pointed out that the data showed that 49 of the Chinese meteorological stations had no histories of their location or other details. These mysterious stations included 40 of the 42 rural stations. Of the rest, 18 had certainly been moved during the story period, perhaps invalidating their data.
Keenan told the Guardian: ‘The worst case was a station that moved five times over a distance of 41 kilometres’; hence, for those stations, the claim made in the paper that ‘there were “few if any changes” to locations is a fabrication’. He demanded that Jones retract his claims about the Chinese data.
But as both Andrew Bolt and Philip Stott point out, this Guardian ‘exclusive’ is not actually new at all. Stott writes:
Indeed, ‘exclusive’ is hardly the case, for the serious allegation of fraud was first investigated in the academic journal, Energy & Environment, as early as 2007 [see: ‘The fraud allegation against some climatic research of Wei-Chyung Wang’ by Douglas J. Keenan, Energy & Environment 18: 985–995 (2007): doi: 10.1260/095830507782616913]. Here is a .pdf version of the original paper, and here is what the Abstract states:
‘Wei-Chyung Wang has been a respected researcher in global warming studies for decades. I have formally alleged that he committed fraud in some of his research including research cited by the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC (2007) on “urban heat islands” (a critical issue). Herein, the allegation is reviewed, and some of its implications are explicated.’ We should further note that this allegation was also taken up at the web site, Climate Audit, on June 18, 2007.
… Moreover, and more worryingly, we must note that this allegation was published in Energy & Environment, the very journal that we now know was being traduced in the revealing UEA e-mail exchanges. Here is just one example, dated 14.00 04/12/2007:
‘I don’t read E&E, gives me indigestion – I don’t even consider it peer-reviewed science, and in my view we should treat it that way. i.e., don’t cite, and if journalists ask us about a paper, simply explain its not peer-reviewed science, and Sonja B-C [Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, University of Hull], the editor, has even admitted to an anti-Kyoto agenda!’
Now this is dreadful. Here we are witnessing the dangerous downside of peer reviewing, in which a cabal try to enforce its own view of ‘the science’ by trashing a critical journal and/or by attacking its editor ad hominem.
Andrew Bolt wrote about the Keenan/Wang imbroglio last year. Bolt comments:
For all this time, the Guardian kept up its alarmist campaign on global warming, and ignored this particular scandal. But today I read that the Guardian has a ‘scoop’ thanks to its ‘investigation’ and ‘today reveals’ what it last year wouldn’t… This example actually suggests how complicit the media has been in keeping the global warming scare alive by failing to report what was actually under its nose. But now there’s a great change. There is now a race on to uncover the next big IPCC scandal, and I doubt the great climate change scare can survive. The papers will, of course, take the credit.
Of course. Who now remembers the names of all those in the British progressive intelligentsia who endorsed Stalinism during the inter-war years – and which particular newspaper was their cheerleader, I wonder?
Meanwhile, with spectacular timing the new green Tory party has chosen this of all moments to announce that they have poached from the government one Sir Nicholas Stern to advise them on
the creation of a Green Investment Bank to drive the development of climate-friendly technology.
Yet Stern’s 2006 report on the economics of climate change was not only discredited by serious economists but its fundamental premise of man-made global warming is currently in meltdown. With even the Guardian now trying to distance itself from the climate change madness it has done so much to create, the Tories now risk being the last people stranded on the melting floe of ideology as it calves into the sea of denial.
You’d have to have a heart of ice not to laugh.”
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5747281/not-waving-but-drowning.thtml
Zap that #32 troll, Zombie!
# 33 49erDweet: So what pray is TROLLING by exposing that ANYTHING left wing moonbat libtards touch ends up as a SCAM.
This is great. What we call a pilot project. 54 million well spent. It is a test for “scalability”
The high speed rail will start with 54 billion and slush funds and buddies will skim the 20 billion on the front end before it starts also.
It is the Dissoriented Express.
Today the CTA for example loses 7 dollars for every fare in the form of subsiidies. Rail will go from one place to another where people don’t plan to travel. It assumes people will park their cars and take a train. Ever tried lugging suitcases and camping equipment from your car to a train and the renting a taxi or car at the destination?
6 jar jar “My guess is Zombie and others with an axe to grind against the fiscal stimulus will not conduct interviews with the people who run the program, you will just jump to conclusions.”
Here you go dolt, from the inspector General of TARP itself. Full of info on what a failure “stimulus” is.
What’s that you say? You knew Bush’s program was a failure. Obviously he’s a Republican and he’s eeeevilll, you were talking about Obama’s stimulus. Here, let Politico.com tell you that one’s a scam too.
If no one has ever told you this before, Its better to have people think you’re a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Zombie, in response to the last point you make in comment #26, I urge you to closely read the last part of the Napa Valley Wine Train’s article in Wikipedia.
“” Handouts to shysters as economic theory? “”
Sure.
It’s called “Democratic” potty politics.
And it’s called feral-gummint “contracting” and “supplying.”
Except in the Europeon Neo-Soviet’s squalidly-fascissocialist offshore satellite state formally known as once great Britain and its several all still enslaved to various degrees former colonies. (Australia and Canada, EG)
Where it’s called “Labour” potty politics. And “contracting” and “supplying.”
The wine train bridge is part of a project to control flooding in Napa Valley. Fine. Please explain why it is my responsibility to fix flooding in Napa Valley.
DaveC writes, “Reminds me of a low income housing project going up here in Houston. According to one of their legal postings, the total budget divided by the number of units comes out to $550,000 per unit. And they will be build out of fiberboard…”
Absolutely. The actual construction, in materials and labor, surely came to much less than half that figure. Someone is making off with the rest. The same holds for the stimulus program as a whole. Given the hundreds of Billions spent, but only a million or two jobs “saved or created” and we’re talking some $200,000 per job. How many of those workers are making anywhere near that? Someone else is walking away with the rest. Any time the government puts out a pot of money they’re just asking to be ripped off.
Zombie:
This scam has been going on for years. While in the Marines, had to deal with these types of contracts from time to time as Project Officer. These Contracts were often referred to as ‘Section 8A set-a-sides” for minority, female, and handicapped small businesses. I believe that 10-25 percent of Pentagon contracting was set aside for this program. The SBA would select the company, identify the contract they would get and subsidize if not bankroll the entire effort to produce the product or service whether it was delivered or not, or in spite of the urgency of the need. The military service had little to no say in the matter. Your narrative is a fairly egregious example of what has been going on since the establishment of this program from sometime in the 1970s. A typical example of congressional arrogance in their misuse of the taxpayer dollar.
This is just a small example of the waste and fraud promulgated by our Government. It is what they do best. I have a cousin who is responsible for managing and monitoring a large North Eastern state’s distribution of the Federal Stimulus money (actual state name withheld to protect her from reprisals). Despite being a long time state employee, a liberal and a Democrat, she has been absolutely shocked and perplexed at the waste and ineptness in the program. A “massive feeding trough for the politically connected” I believe she called it.
But I suppose there are a lot of people – and not just left/liberals – who just shrug and think that at least the economy is being stimulated. Perhaps there is some short term impact achieved by yanking money out of some people’s pockets and giving it to others who will spend it like a ten spot that they just found on the sidewalk.
I find it useful to think of our economy as a large pot into which we all put whatever products or services we create in our work. We then take the money we earn and go to that same pot to purchase goods and services. As an auto worker, a waitress, a baker, etc., you can really appreciate the guy who built your new refrigerator and don’t begrudge that he is vying for the same goods and services with the money he earned doing that. But what about the Assistant Deputy Director of the Community Development Outreach Rainbow Program who is making $120k? Feel good about that person outbidding you for the filet mignon and elbowing you into the canned meat aisle? What about those few Alaskan dudes and their hired CEO from the South 48 who show up with $20.4 million? What is their contribution to the big pot? Oh, right, they know how to fill out a minority set-aside applications.
You begin to see that it really matters what the government does with the money. Our free economy has a pretty efficient way of determining what individual contributions are worth and what should go into that pot and what it is worth. The government perverts this enormously. They are in effect very bad contributors to the pot. And if you are not a government worker or an Alaskan minority company, you must sit and watch as a huge number of people come to the big pot to buy things you created -with your money in their hands.
I spent years in the public contracting business. The minority/woman contractor set-asides and affirmative action requirements are some of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on the tax-paying public. They drive costs up, quality down and accomplish none of the things they supposedly were designed to achieve.
Whether or not we should be using federal tax monies to shore up local tourist attractions is, of course, a whole other issue. In my opinion, we should not.
Okay, presumably there is some sort of politician connected with this scandal – someone had to add this to the stimulus bill, right?
And you’re not going to tell us who it is?
I’m betting that a significant chunk of all of the stimulating dollars were spent in just this way, but these things don’t happen in a vacuum. To me, the most important piece of information would have to be, who’s the elected crook who facilitated this theft?
So, to put this in perspective…
An Alaskan company is using a Republican sponsored loophole (Thank you Ted Stevens) to drum up business for their shell company to subcontract all their work out.
I suspect David Thompson would say, it is merely greed which they are guilty of, and that is a human frailty. Or something to that extent.
But I digress. I don’t see the outrage at the Train owner. If the granola eaters want an eco-friendly flood plan they damn well better make sure it doesn’t damage their business.
No one is funding the Wine Train, and yet that is exactly what your headline implies. The real story is the no-bid giveaway that was allowed to happen because Ted Stevens pushed through legislation removing caps from original $5 million limit for no-bid. Then made sure that his Alaskan corporations were eligible.
The moral of the story being that when a Republican rushes to the aid of minorities something is fishy.
Governments and trains don’t mix. Prime example, besides the Wine Train, is Amtrak. This recent internal memo says it all:
“Due to recent budget cuts in Washington, effective immediately, smoke will be eliminated from Amtrak operations. From now on this organization will be run entirely on mirrors.”
So lets start another government train, say a high speed train in Florida.
Just more of your superb work Zombie! It’s a shame that some folks in the comments here either don’t want to talk about the subject of your report (but saw a blank comment box and couldn’t resist) and had a different Axe to grind.
What you dug out about the Wine Train, however, is something that has been going on in many businesses for quite a while now,particularly in the Construction industry. Get a minority owned firm with little to no construction experience to do the bidding (at a substantially higher amount than a real construction company) get the award as a Minority Set-Aside and then the minority owned firm will either “Joint Venture” with a REAL construction firm, or, as appears to be the case here, simply skim whatever they can and they “subcontract the entire project out” to a real construction firm. I can’t remember how long this has been going on; it’s been disclosed in other situations in other parts of the country, but never, EVER on a NO BID basis – at least to my knowledge. Just great investigative work again, Zombie! Thank You.
Don’t let your friends badmouth corrupt 3rd world countries! I’ll bet the faux Alaskans are generous to their politicians.