Protesters obstruct an entrance to Bath Iron Works where a christening was taking place for its 41st guided missile destroyer, USS Patrick Gallagher, on July 27, 2024.

 (Staff photo by Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)

With Regards to the Christening of the USS Patrick Gallagher

Because we strongly believe, nay absolutely know, that the U.S. does not need another warship.

To Whom It May Concern:

Because I have twice visited the West Bank and know the personal stories of 40 year-old Palestinian men who were imprisoned as boys for simply yelling at Israeli soldiers—and beaten and dehumanized for months before being released without trial;

And because I now know that those horrific, forever haunting experiences were and remain commonplace for Palestinian youth and are symptomatic of a world where, “we (Israelis) believe they are worth more than they” (Palestinians);

And because by paying close attention to non-main-stream American and foreign media I know the horrific truth of Gaza;

And because I have a good sense that when thousands are killed under months of ceaseless bombing and thousands more remain buried under the rubble yet to be found, the crime rises beyond war to become, inarguably, a “genocide”;

And because I know of the influence of AIPAC and U.S. defense industry corporations on U.S. Congress members and, hence, on American foreign policy;

And because I know well that the siege of Gaza could not continue without U.S. cover and support;

And because, as not much more than an adolescent, as a consequence of the fiction fed me by a conventional education, I volunteered to go off to Vietnam;

And because I know that, as a consequence of that war of choice, two to three million Vietnamese were killed in defense of their country---and that 2-3 million others are institutionalized today unable to take care of themselves as 2nd and 3rd generation victims of Agent Orange;

And, because I also mourn the 58,281 Americans commemorated on “the wall”, lost in that war, generally, perhaps, believing the same fiction I had;

And because I know that millions, yes millions, of innocents have died in my lifetime, arguably victims of American wars of choice, endorsed and promoted by the American defense industry, in Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Panama, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Syria, Yemen, etc., (hardly an all-inclusive list);

And because I and others, on many occasions since the Berrigan brothers, in a Prince of Peace Plowshares action on February 12, 1997, have returned again and again to protest other
christenings” at Bath;

And because we strongly believe, nay absolutely know, that the U.S. does not need more warships, but rather that General Dynamics ought to be “converting” to the manufacture of “green” technologies.

It is for these reasons, in the spirit of the “Plowshares” movement, we chose to inconvenience the so-called “christening” attendees on July 27th—that they might give pause to consider the merits of our actions. That they too, might join us in a virtual revolution—to turn away from violence, to demand that our country do the same, to be a force for cooperation among the brotherhood of nations, rather than endorsing endless militarism.

For these reasons I chose to join like-minded fellow citizens in our efforts to make more widely known our nation’s reckless conduct. I proclaim my innocence and will be very pleased to have the opportunity to defend that position in court.

Not in my name!

Dud Hendrick
Deer Isle, Maine
USNA Graduate —1963
USAF Officer — 1963-1967

COMMON DREAMS

WIN WITHOUT WAR: The Pentagon does not need any more money.

The Pentagon is seeking BILLIONS and BILLIONS from Congress in the next COVID relief stimulus package. Why? To protect the mega-profits of arms dealers and defense contractors. 

Yes. That’s right. As we lose tens of thousands of loved ones here, and hundreds of thousands around the world, to COVID-19 — the Pentagon wants even MORE money on top of the $750 billion+ it already wastes every year on unnecessary, dangerous weapons, defense contractor giveaways, and Trump’s racist border wall.

We say ENOUGH. That’s why Win Without War, along with 61 of our partners are going toe to toe with the arms industry, and demanding Congress not give the Pentagon a PENNY MORE in the next coronavirus relief package. 

Will you ask your members of Congress to demand we bail out the people, not the Pentagon and arms dealers in the next coronavirus relief package?

We don’t need more nukes, militarized borders, armies, or drones — because war doesn’t keep anyone safe. We need more masks, nurses, ventilators, stimulus checks for unemployed, poor, and undocumented people, Black communities and communities of color, and healthcare and housing for all — because that is what keeps us all safe.

Congress has to bail out the people, not the Pentagon and its arm dealer friends. 

This was true before coronavirus. But it’s flat-out undeniably and STARKLY blatant today, as our family and neighbors die, struggle to put food on the table, or keep a roof overhead.

The thing is, the Pentagon and Trump’s White House don’t get to decide whether the Pentagon gets billions more. Congress does. And that's why we are throwing down to create a wave of public pressure, a storm in the media, and move as many members of Congress to get congressional leadership to reprioritize funding in the next stimulus package, and beyond.

And to create this gigantum wave, we need your help. 

Will you demand your members of Congress do everything they can to block the Pentagon and arms dealers bail out today?


In the horrors of today’s pandemic, the choice has never been more simple. Do we continue with business as usual of funneling trillions into the Pentagon and stuffing the pockets of arms dealers and weapons manufacturers, while gutting funding for public health and other human needs — or do we bail out the people?

Thank you for working for peace,
Tara, Mariam, Erica, and the Win Without War team

 

 

 

© Win Without War Education Fund 2020
1 Thomas Circle NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005
(202) 656-4999 | info@winwithoutwar.org 

Terrified

Mismanagement, threats, and acts of retaliation have sown fear in the VA’s whistleblower protection office. "Terrified” of Retaliation Inside Veterans Affairs Whistleblower Office Leaders of a Department of Veterans Affairs office dedicated to increasing accountability and protecting whistleblowers appear to have retaliated against several employees who raised concerns about the office’s mismanagement, according to a Project On Government Oversight (POGO) investigation. Read More The Chairman of the Revolving Door Dunford’s consistent cheerleading of the F-35 and his subsequent hiring at its manufacturer create the perception of a conflict of interest. Read more Creating a National Insecurity State At $1.21 trillion, the actual national security budget is essentially twice the size of the announced Pentagon budget. It’s also a compendium of military-industrial waste and misspending. Read more Simple Reforms to Improve Transparency and Public Trust in the Federal Judiciary The public is best served when it has access to each branch of its government. The judiciary is no exception. Read more Enhancing the House’s Oversight Over Classified Information We must modernize how Congress conducts oversight, and that must include responsibly expanding access to classified information. Read more Addressing Federal Vacancies Through Fundamental Transparency Reform Persistent federal vacancies are contrary to a direct constitutional mandate, and they force taxpayers to settle for opaque, unaccountable, and ineffective leadership in the highest levels of government. Read more Amicus Brief: Congress Needs Information to Do Its Job A bipartisan group of 17 former members of Congress filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to rule in the House of Representatives’ favor in two cases with enormous implications for congressional oversight. Read more NEW: The Bunker Introducing: The Bunker After nearly 20 years of winless wars following 9/11, and a Pentagon budget that is well above the Cold War average, U.S. national security spending has never been a more target-rich environment. That is why the Project On Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information has launched The Bunker, a precision-guided e-newsletter targeting your inbox most every week. Sign up now! Sign up for The Bunker POGO in the News     The Washington Post Trump again nominates Rep. John Ratcliffe to be director of national intelligence   “The Vacancies Reform Act was not written with our current situation in mind,” said Liz Hempowicz, the public policy director at Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group. “It is riddled with loopholes exactly like this. It’s really on Congress to fix it. It’s absurd.”

Politico Morning Shift Can DHS reissue invalidated Cuccinelli orders?   On Sunday, a federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump's appointment of Cuccinelli violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, thereby canceling two policies Cuccinelli implemented as acting USCIS chief. Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf told lawmakers Tuesday that the administration will appeal the decision and that Cuccinelli remains the "senior official performing the duties of the director.” DHS, Wolf said, is “determining what to do” about the two invalidated policy directives, while on Monday, Cuccinelli told Fox News that they will be "effectively reissued and validated." “The law specifically says that an agency can't do that,” Rebecca Jones, policy counsel at the Washington-based Project on Government Oversight, told Morning Shift. The vacancy law says “an agency may not ratify any acts taken in violation" of it, according to a report by Congressional Research Service legislative attorney Valerie Brannon. Sunday's ruling leaves other Cuccinelli orders vulnerable to legal challenge, Jones said.       The Washington Examiner The F-35 and Afghanistan War both show waste plaguing Pentagon   In the world of government waste, there’s shrimp on a treadmill, and then there’s the F-35. Both have become synonymous with the proverbial phrase “waste, fraud, and abuse,” though there’s one very important difference between the two: their cost. Even the most generous estimates of the widely mocked “shrimp on a treadmill” government-funded study put its total cost at $3 million over the course of 10 years. That’s not chump change, but, in the context of the federal budget, it’s also barely more than a rounding error. In contrast, the F-35, which is supposed to be the latest, greatest tactical fighter ever produced, runs more than $100 million per plane [according to reporting by the Project On Government Oversight]. Including development costs, as well as operations and maintenance, the F-35 fighter initiative is estimated to cost well over $1 trillion during its lifetime.       The Hill Congress must diversify its subpoena enforcement arsenal to counter escalating executive branch obstruction by Morton Rosenberg, Constitution Fellow with The Constitution Project at POGO   The effectiveness of congressional subpoena power, already severely damaged over the past 15 years, has plummeted to a dangerous new historical low after a relentless and successful scheme of obstruction by the Trump administration during the House impeachment inquiry and last week’s devastating D.C. Circuit Court ruling that Congress lacks standing to seek judicial enforcement of subpoenas in federal court. The White House, four executive branch departments, and nine current or former administration officials refused to comply with subpoenas upon instruction from the president throughout the impeachment process. Dozens of other administration officials and associates defied subpoenas at the direction of the White House prior to impeachment. A total of at least 82 congressional information requests, including 42 subpoenas of executive branch personnel and their associates, have been obstructed by the Trump administration. Keep reading.       Government Executive Experts Call for Reform of Vacancies Act Following Trump’s Intelligence Director Nomination   “Abuse of federal vacancies is not unique to the Trump administration. However, this kind of gamesmanship feels unprecedented, as does the president's blatant admission that he prefers acting officers to confirmed ones,” said Project On Government Oversight Senior Investigator Nick Schwellenbach. Persistent reliance on them is “an unconstitutional disregard of the Senate's obligation to evaluate and vote on the president's nominees,” he said, which could “risk taxpayer dollars with potentially ineffective leadership [and] risk our national security with extended unqualified leadership.” Schwellenbach argued that Congress should shorten the length of time acting officials can serve to disincentivize presidents from circumventing the formal confirmation process. Additionally, Congress should consider requiring that acting directors, like permanent directors of national intelligence, have national security experience, he said.       Press statement released by Representatives Quigley, Nadler, and Johnson Quigley, Nadler, and Johnson Introduce Legislation to Increase Judicial Transparency   “For decades now it has been apparent that the federal judiciary operates with too much opacity and secrecy,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, Policy Analyst with the Project On Government Oversight. “The 21st Century Courts Act will provide a long-overdue jolt of accountability and transparency to the federal courts by implementing a range of common sense reforms, including directing the Supreme Court to write an ethics code for itself, modernizing financial disclosures, providing insight into recusal patterns by requiring that judges explain their recusal decision, and enhancing public access to the judiciary by providing live audio streaming of court proceedings and increasing the public’s ability to access court records. Representative Johnson, Quigley, and Nadler should be commended for leading the way on this transformational legislation.”       Compliance Week CFPB’s leadership structure, SEC’s authority on SCOTUS docket this week   Others, like the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), say the court should uphold the limits on the president’s ability to fire the CFPB director at will. “Even in its weakest interpretation, petitioner’s arguments would render unconstitutional critical elements of the federal government, including the Social Security Administration, the Office of Special Counsel and the Federal Housing Finance Agency,” POGO said in an amicus brief. It would also “fly against” the court’s own precedent and Congress’ historic power to determine how the President carries out its will.

Project On Government Oversight (POGO) 1100 G Street NW Suite 500, Washington, DC

[Pentagon update]: We won't give up

You, like other Americans, work hard and pay your taxes. And sometimes, you get audited. And if you don’t pass your audit, bad things can happen. So why isn’t the same thing true for the Pentagon?

The Pentagon has never passed an audit. But it keeps getting rewarded: The most recent budget that the president signed is the largest ever—and we’re already spending more on defense than any other nation in the world.

That’s why POGO is here working every day to hold our government accountable to the taxpayers. And now, while the rest of the country—and the world—is distracted by the 2020 elections, POGO will continue to sound the alarm on this malfunctioning system. Read the brief analysis on our website now.

Daisy, we don’t have to tell you why we should be worried that the most recently approved budget is our largest ever. It’s more money than we’ve ever spent—and far too much of it is lining the pockets of contractors who charge the Pentagon astronomical amounts for products and services that could be provided much cheaper. It’s clearly a system that continues to benefit the contractors who are paid by the Pentagon.

Mandy Smithberger, director of POGO’s Center for Defense Information, even wrote, “both parties of Congress continue to vote in near unanimity for increases in the Pentagon budget, despite 18-plus years of losing wars and the never-ending gross mismanagement of weapons systems.” But we refuse to allow this to continue—we will keep fighting for Congress to confront a system benefitting contractors and abusing tax dollars.

We need you to be part of the informed public who won’t stand for mismanagement and wasteful spending any longer. Read Mandy’s analysis on just how broken this system really is.

Thank you for not allowing waste to go unnoticed,

Keith Rutter
Chief Operations Officer
Project On Government Oversight

Contribute

 

Project On Government Oversight (POGO) 1100 G Street NW Suite 500, Washington, DC

Upheaval as 2020 census looms

According to more than two dozen whistleblowers who’ve spoken to Congress, the office of the Commerce Department’s internal watchdog is plagued by mismanagement, misconduct, and low productivity, caused in part by plummeting morale. Upheaval as 2020 Census Looms: Senate Chairmen Scrutinize Commerce Department Watchdog According to more than two dozen whistleblowers who’ve spoken to Congress, the office of the Commerce Department’s internal watchdog is plagued by mismanagement, misconduct, and low productivity, caused in part by plummeting morale. In response, three powerful Senate committee chairmen are demanding that the watchdog’s Obama-appointed leader, Inspector General Peggy Gustafson, allow Congress to question eight of her top aides and two executive assistants about the whistleblowers’ complaints, according to a pair of previously unreported letters signed by the senators and obtained by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). Read More Double Standards at DOJ While our Constitution guarantees equal protection of the law, as a nation, we have done a pretty terrible job of living up to that promise. Read more Recommendations for Reclaiming Congress’s War Powers It will not be easy for Congress to stop unauthorized uses of force and reassert its constitutional authority. But a growing number of members of Congress from across the political spectrum recognize the necessity for action. Read more A Century of Airpower Propaganda Was Just 'Blown Up' by an Air Force Think Tank It turns out that when we need to send a message of deterrence, nothing works better than the humble main battle tank. Read more Sexual harassment by judges operating with impunity shows courts need their own #MeToo The branch of government charged with enforcing federal discrimination and harassment laws does not police its own. Read more POGO Opposes the Nomination of Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve It’s crucial the Fed remain independent when crafting and implementing America’s monetary policy. Without its autonomy, the Fed would be focused on achieving short-term economic gains to benefit political candidates’ upcoming reelections and not on the future wellbeing of our nation’s economy. The Senate must reject Shelton’s nomination. Read the letter NEW: The Bunker Introducing: The Bunker After nearly 20 years of winless wars following 9/11, and a Pentagon budget that is well above the Cold War average, U.S. national security spending has never been a more target-rich environment. That is why the Project On Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information has launched The Bunker, a precision-guided e-newsletter targeting your inbox most every week. Sign up now! Sign up for The Bunker POGO in the News Associated Press Homeland Security waives contracting laws for border wall Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, said waiving a law for contractors to provide the government with certified cost data — such as how much they pay for labor or parts — could lead to grossly inflated prices. “It’s equivalent to buying a car without seeing a sticker price,” Amey said. “This could be a recipe for shoddy work and paying a much higher price than they should.” The Washington Post Pentagon shaves $6.5 billion by selling obsolete equipment, overhauling bureaucracy Dan Grazier, a former Marine Corps captain who now studies defense spending at the Project On Government Oversight, a watchdog group, said the savings announced this week should be replicated elsewhere. “It’s kind of a drop in the bucket, but it’s a starting place, so I applaud that,” Grazier said. House Speaker's Office Pelosi Names Shanna Devine First Director of Whistleblower Ombudsman Office of the U.S. House of Representatives “I am elated at the news that Shanna Devine will lead the newly created House Office of the Whistleblower Ombudsman,” said Danielle Brian, Executive Director of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). “The office was created to address a lack of consistent understanding across House offices on how to best work with whistleblowers, who can serve as a tremendous resource to Congress. I've worked with Shanna for over a decade and know her to be a tireless advocate for whistleblower and worker rights. Her deep understanding of the importance of whistleblower-congressional communications will surely lead the office to be a resounding success felt for years to come. On behalf of POGO, I look forward to seeing this office succeed under her leadership and vision and commend leadership on this excellent choice.” National Law Review Trump Budget Proposes Folding the PCAOB into the SEC by 2022 Then, last September, a nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight report criticized the PCAOB by pointing out that since 2002, it had only brought 18 enforcement actions against the Big Four accounting firms, despite having found 808 instances of defective audits and only imposed $6.5 million in fines, despite its authority to levy as much as $15 million per violation.

Popular Mechanics Inside the Pentagon's Secret UFO Program   The idea of using an aerospace research project as a cover for a secret UFO program may seem unscrupulous. “But this all rings very familiar,” Neil Gordon, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight, tells Popular Mechanics. Gordon, whose area of expertise is in federal contractor misconduct, contractor accountability, and government privatization, says running the “commercial in confidence” program through AATIP is consistent with how the DoD deals with programs it wants to keep secret. “Whether it’s right or not is another story,” Gordon says, “but everything sounds very common for how black budget programs run.”       Government Executive Democratic Candidates Defend Their Records on Transparency During Nevada Primary Debate   Regardless if Trump or a Democrat wins in 2020, “I think it’s a fair question, in terms of whether or not this administration is going to move that needle [on transparency], on what's considered normal and what's considered expected,” said Sean Moulton, senior policy analyst at the watchdog Project on Government Oversight. “I do worry that after this administration our expectation levels may be lower.”       Federal News Network How well are agencies actually complying with the DATA Act?   Federal inspectors general are finishing up the testing of their agencies’ compliance with the Data Act. It’s one of three audits required under the 2014 law. But the Council of Inspectors General changed the audit methodology between the current exercise and the one they did two years ago. Some say that could lead to skewed results though. One of them is Sean Moulton, senior policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight. He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to explain why. Read Sean’s article here. Listen to the broadcast       Government Executive Whistleblower Advocates Praise Pick to Lead New House Ombudsman Office   Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog Project on Government Oversight, also said she was thrilled with the selection. “I've worked with Shanna for over a decade and know her to be a tireless advocate for whistleblower and worker rights,” Brian said. “Her deep understanding of the importance of whistleblower-congressional communications will surely lead the office to be a resounding success felt for years to come. On behalf of POGO, I look forward to seeing this office succeed under her leadership and vision and commend leadership on this excellent choice.”       The Regulatory Review Week in review   The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that it will waive federal procurement law to speed up construction of the border wall between the United States and Mexico. Procurement law governs the processes through which the federal government contracts with private businesses to provide goods and services, but under federal immigration law the government may waive those procurement requirements if necessary to prevent unauthorized entry into the United States. Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, reportedly said the government’s use of a waiver “could be a recipe for shoddy work and paying a much higher price than they should.”       Muck Rock This week’s FOIA roundup: Record wins, Detroit’s big, bad neighbor, and taxpayer dollars to Trump   The Project on Government Oversight published a reminder this week that federal FOIA exemption b(5) is still being over-applied, threatening the right of American people to know what their government is doing.       Epoch Times Bipartisan Coalition Unites Behind First Federal Financial Management Reform Since 1990   An ideologically broad-based coalition of advocacy groups concerned with federal spending abuses has also endorsed the reform package, including the Data Coalition, Citizens Against Government Waste, Project on Government Oversight, the R Street Institute, Truth in Accounting (TIA), and Taxpayers for Common Sense.       CFO Dive Proposal to fold audit watchdog into SEC sparks pushback   "We have a watchdog who is not watching," John Coffee, director of the Center on Corporate Governance at Columbia Law School, told the Project on Government Oversight, which conducted the review last year. "We have a watchdog who looks increasingly like a lapdog."       WGBH MIT Extends Russian Tech Partnership, Despite Scrutiny From Feds   The D.C.-based Project on Government Oversight has been looking at Vekselberg and the MIT-Skolkovo Foundation relationship for some time. Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette is a policy analyst with the non-governmental organization best known by its acronym POGO. “I don't view there being anything wrong with having relationships with entities that exist outside of the country,” Hedtler-Gaudette said in an interview. “There are all kinds of legitimate reasons why. But in this case, this is a foundation that has links to the Russian government. MIT should have known for a long time that there were some problems here, which included allowing the head of the foundation to be on the MIT Corporation board.” [..] In September of last year, the federal government began probing MIT’s financial relationship with the Skolkovo Foundation. A letter from the Department of Education addressed to MIT President Rafael Reif raised questions about whether MIT has properly reported gifts and contracts with Skolkovo and other foreign entities or enterprises. Hedtler-Gaudette of POGO says millions of dollars exchanged may not have been properly accounted for. “When we’re talking about the dollar amount we’re talking about, it appears as though the Department of Education thinks that MIT may not have been in compliance and that’s why they opened up this investigation particularly around the Russian foundation,” Hedtler-Gaudette said.       Epoch Times ‘Zombie’ Federal Programs That Congress Hasn’t Authorized in Years Cost Taxpayers $332 Billion   As a result, continued spending on a program too easily becomes a default position for Congress, according to Elizabeth Hempowicz, Project on Government Oversight’s Director of Public Policy (POGO). “The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) has not been authorized right now for years, but money continues to be appropriated to keep the agency running,” Hempowicz told The Epoch Times. The MSPB’s job is protecting merit-based hiring in the civil service. “So, there’s this idea that authorizing statutes are optional now because in many ways Congress has slowed down to this trickle of legislation and most of them are spending bills. As long as they are appropriating, they can pat themselves on the back for doing their jobs,” she said.       Business Insider Prime Watchdog groups are warning that up to 50% of the audits performed by the Big Four accounting firms are fatally flawed and are calling on Congress to step in to prevent another financial meltdown   "When the auditors aren't doing their jobs or aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing, we've seen the harm that can come," said Tim Stretton, a policy analyst at the Project On Government Oversight, or POGO, an independent, nonpartisan watchdog group. "We don't want another economic crisis on our hands."       Going Concern Let’s See What Some Folks Are Saying About the Proposal to Fold the PCAOB Into the SEC   In the Feb. 18 Cloud Accounting Podcast that he co-hosts with David Leary, Blake Oliver called the proposal to eliminate the PCAOB “the best thing Trump has ever done,” citing statistics from a recent report from Project on Government Oversight. Since 2003, the PCAOB has identified 808 instances in which Big 4 firms performed audits that were “so defective that the audit firms should not have vouched for a company’s financial statements, internal controls, or both,” according to POGO. Yet, despite those 808 alleged failures, the PCAOB has brought only 18 enforcement cases against the Big 4 or employees of those firms. Those cases involved a total of 21 audits.

Project On Government Oversight (POGO) 1100 G Street NW Suite 500, Washington, DC