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The special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in U.S. elections continues to attract politically charged pronouncements and calls for action. As part of the recent debate, government oversight institutions have been invoked by national and party leaders. However, the discussion in Washington, DC, and in the media is hobbled by incomplete knowledge of the various oversight tools and options available for major investigations.
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The ship’s electric advanced arresting gear is supposed to be able to go 16,500 landings between mission failures. So far, the best it can do is 19. The problems with these systems are bad enough that President Trump, in slightly more colorful language, has called for the Navy to return to steam-powered systems.
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Despite months of the President railing against regulations, a new government report concludes that benefits of regulations vastly outweigh the costs. The country reaped at least $287 billion in annual benefits from the last decade of major rules, while only spending between $78–115 billion to implement them.
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Earlier this month, Project On Government Oversight staff toured a major Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supply center in Frederick, Maryland. The visit provided important insights into the nation’s ability to respond to disasters.
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The Pentagon and its allies on Capitol Hill are intent on pumping money into space weapons to keep an American edge up there. Unfortunately, it’s a quest as fruitless as preserving the U.S. nuclear monopoly following World War II (that lasted four years).
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Videos: Unrig the System
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Hear POGO's executive director Danielle Brian break down the revolving door:
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Upcoming
POGO's Danielle Brian will be hosting the annual Ridenhour Prizes on April 18th, 2018. This year's winners are:
- Tarana Burke , founder of the #MeToo movement
- Carmen Yulín Cruz Soto, Mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico
- Lauren Markham, author of The Far Away Brothers
- “Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower,” directed by Joe Piscatella
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POGO in the News
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Weapons acquisition expert Dan Grazier from the US nonprofit organization, Project on Government Oversight (POGO), says that any claims of the F-35's combat readiness are "provably false."
"They are just expensive prototypes," says Grazier, who last week published an analysis of the Pentagon data on the F-35. "They haven't even started the rigorous combat readiness testing which is a really important part of the program."
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Danielle Brian, director of the Project on Government Oversight, a good government group that has worked closely with Grassley’s office, said she was initially optimistic because Grassley and Foster had shown a willingness to take on the White House.
When the Trump administration, for example, allowed federal agencies to essentially stop responding to requests for information from Democrats in Congress, Grassley blasted the decision and said the Justice Department’s legal rationale supporting the policy showed a “shocking lack of professionalism and objectivity.”
“That was Jason,” said Brian. “It’s deeply ingrained in Grassley and his team: They are institutionalists, they remember being in the minority. They care about the institution of Congress.”
But Brian and others have been baffled by what has happened in the months since – by the open hostility between the committee’s two sides, the unusual criminal referral, the seemingly disproportionate scrutiny Grassley and Foster have been applying to those involved in the investigation of Trump and his team.
“It’s impossible for me to reconcile,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
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McClatchy | Stars & Stripes
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“I have no real illusion we’re going to effect any drastic changes to the F-35,” said Dan Grazier, a military fellow at the Project On Government Oversight and one of the program’s leading critics in Washington. “It’s next to impossible to generate enough political opposition to the program.”
[...] “Components (of the F-35) are built in 46 states, and about 350 congressional districts,” said Grazier. “That’s an awful lot of organic congressional support for the program on Capitol Hill.”
[...] “(Trump’s) tune changed rather quickly,” said Grazier. “He’s talking to the generals; he’s talking to the CEO of Lockheed Martin.”
Grazier, who has worked on F-35 issues for three years, says critics of the program have largely given up on matching that effort.
Instead, they’re focused on the Department of Defense’s independent review of the plane’s design, which could begin this fall. That operational test is required before full scale production begins.
Friedman said the F-35 is “nearing completion of its developmental flight testing phase, which represents the most sophisticated, rigorous and comprehensive flight test program in history.”
Grazier said the testing could take years to complete, and will reveal all of the program’s “warts and wrinkles.”
“One of the best things we can do now, the few of us in my position, and just raise awareness of this,” said Grazier. “In 10-15 years when we’re talking about the F-45, hopefully we’re not making the same mistakes.”
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Every now and again, reports come out that a public official has violated The Hatch Act - a 1939 law that prevents federal employees from engaging in certain types of political activity and speech. Today, we'll find out what exactly is and is not allowed under the Hatch Act; who decides when the line has been crossed; and what the penalties are for violations. Our guest is Liz Hempowicz, Director of Public Policy for the Project On Government Oversight.
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Katherine Hawkins, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, said the biographical piece was "not really appropriate" given that the declassification request by Wyden and Heinrich, as well as a separate letter from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), have gone unaddressed.
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Trump calls the F-35 “the most sophisticated aircraft in the world,” but questions remain over its effectiveness, with the Project on Government Oversight reporting the 235 F-35s now in service are only fully mission capable 26% of the time.
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“You’ve got all this momentum, but even if the ball’s really rolling, it’s not clear what direction it’s going to roll,” added Jake Laperruque, a digital privacy specialist with the Project on Government Oversight.
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“[It is] really troubling because we know the Air Force is confronting a number of problems and the best way, usually, to get those problems fixed is to be transparent about them both to the public and to Congress,” Mandy Smithberger, director of the CDI Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight, told Federal News Radio.
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CRS was set up as an extension of congressional staffs, and its 500 employees who work for the Library of Congress produce even-handed, though often customized, reports on a panoply of policy topics. For decades lawmakers enjoyed the prerogative of releasing them selectively, or not at all. But the advent of inexpensive internet posting rather than printing changed the calculus, and transparency groups from the American Library Association to the Project on Government Oversight began pushing for access.
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That’s created a culture of following the letter of the law—which is largely based on norms—rather than its spirit, says Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight.
“Just because you can buy a $31,000 desk, it doesn’t mean that you should,”he says. “That message has to start at the top with the Trump administration and needs to trickle down through cabinet secretaries and then to career public servants: ‘We’re here to clean up Washington, not to expose problems in the system and exploit those gaps.'”
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Center for American Progress
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In a recent analysis, the Project on Government Oversight found that of the 13,212 federal offshore drilling tracts won at auction from 1997 to 2017, more than 76 percent of them were won by a single, uncontested bid. Wednesday’s lease sale took this dynamic a step further: Only 10 of the 148 parcels sold had more than one bidder, meaning that 93 percent of sales were noncompetitive.
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