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Op-Ed
March 20, 2008
Liberty and freedom cannot coexist along side hypocrisy and corruption
I recently ran for Ohio's 7th District U.S. House seat that will be vacated in January by Dave Hobson. I received about five percent of the vote in the March 4th Republican Primary. The winner of the primary, Steve Austria, received a clear majority against three other candidates. Austria ran on the track record, not to mention the endorsement of Hobson, the 9-term incumbent. However, you wouldn't have known it if you were sitting in the Editorial Board interview with journalists from the Dayton Daily News, who also endorsed Austria, and the Springfield News Sun.
The two most significant differences between the Hobson record and the Austria rhetoric were NAFTA and earmarks, Steve Austria distancing himself from Hobson's track record on both. Let's start with NAFTA. A few voices from the wilderness predicted before 1994 the disastrous consequences of NAFTA, and we were right. Outsourced jobs, transfer of sensitive military technology to potential adversaries and hard currency in the form of trade deficits to China used to upgrade their military all accelerated with the rush to "free trade" that began in earnest in the early 1990s under Bill Clinton's watch. The chickens came home to roost in early March when a foreign company, European Aeronautic and Space Defense (EADS), won a $35 billion Pentagon contract to build 179 airborne refueling aircraft. The real story is not that Boeing protested with the Government Accountability Office, but the hypocrisy and corruption exposed now that the unintended consequences of free trade have hit Boeing's boardroom and their stock price, as well as politicians like Hobson who never once met a free trade deal he didn't like. Hobson assailed the contract award despite that it was made within the boundaries of free and open competition he and the rest of Congress forced upon the Air Force procurement community.
Boeing, like most corporations and virtually all politicians, hate free and open competition, and there's a strong argument they believed the Pentagon was simply going through the motions to mollify Congress's need to show U.S. taxpayers were getting the biggest bang for the buck. But now that a foreign company out-bid Boeing, which probably fattened their bid because they assumed they would win, free trade isn't what it's cracked up to be. The losers complain EADS gets government subsidies, which is true, but what has Congress done lately to eliminate U.S. taxpayer subsidies to Boeing and other corporations who receive subsidies in the form of tax write-offs for relocating offshore, not to mention direct financing from taxpayer-funded Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the Export Import Bank? And let's not forget the earmarks that are by definition no-bid, noncompetitively awarded subsidies that serve no other purpose than to rake in campaign cash for incumbents like Hobson or aspiring career politicians like Steve Austria.
Take for example, the no-bid contract the Dayton Development Coalition awarded to Congressman Mike Turner's spouse's public relation's firm. Some critics, including the Dayton Daily News, claimed this was more of a sweetheart deal with the Congressman's wife rather than a legitimate "branding" campaign for Dayton and the Miami Valley. In any case, the earmark to Lori Turner's company was a walk in the park compared to Dave Hobson's and Steve and Eileen Austria's intervening with The Dayton Development Coalition to misappropriate $1.9 million from Greene County and other Ohio taxpayers. On the receiving end were The Greentree Group and Paul Magliochetti and Associates (PMA Group), a local defense contractor and a Washington lobbyist, under the pretense both private corporations were required for BRAC support. At least Mrs. Turner provided meaningful work for her company's $300,000 payday. For nearly a year I've been trying to learn exactly what Greentree and the PMA Group did to earn $1.9 million. While campaigning for Greene County Commission before the March 4th primary, Marilyn Reid took all the credit for Wright Patt's BRAC success, but never once mentioned the $1.9 million earmarked for BRAC support by herself and two other Greene County Commissioners (Madden and Harper) in 2003. A question Ms. Reid should answer is, "If the Commissioners were that successful in attracting and preserving jobs for Wright-Patt, what did the $1.9 million to Greentree and PMA accomplish?
After being pressured by the Dayton Daily News, Mrs. Turner rightfully backed away from the no-bid DDC contract, but the Dayton Daily News continues to stonewall the Dayton Development Coalition's sweetheart deal with Greentree and the PMA Group. That's a clear violation of the media's responsibility to hold the non-profit accountable to the same standard they applied to Mrs. Turner's company, the Turner Effect. It's also dereliction of duty on the part of local, state and federal watchdogs who have repeatedly been asked to investigate these serious allegations.
Perhaps I'm wrong. Maybe the evidence I've uncovered leads to nothing more than frivolous allegations. But if that's the case, what would it hurt to peel away just the outer skin of the onion? A brief review of "Who will guard the guards?" archived at www.reformcongress.com may help answer that question. It's my guess that just the shallowest inquiry into the Greene County Commissioners' 2003 earmark for the Dayton Development Coalition and their no-bid contracts to Greentree and PMA would expose hypocrisy and corruption so wide and so deep that when the dominos start falling, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's liaisons with the Empire Club prostitution ring will look like a Sunday School picnic.
John Mitchel
Beavercreek, Ohio
(937) 427-8442
www.patriotpressohio.com
www.reformcongress.com
Note: John Mitchel is an Air Force veteran and former fraud, waste and abuse investigator for the Department of Defense. He wrote and self-published America at the Abyss: A View from the Heartland.
Paid for by Americans for John Mitchel
