Oil Sex and Cocaine: Another Bush Administration scandal

[exlrrp]

Well, now we have ANOTHER Bush administration scandal, they just keep coming.

DRILL BABY DRILL!!! yeah. Poke that thing way down in the hole---and pass the cocaine and booze while youre at it!!

We always knew the Bush administration was in bed with the oil companies but we didn't know how true that was. Now we know: its a fact!.

The incredibly corrupt Bush administration has been found, literally, with its pants down. it turns out that no matter what rate the oil comanpanies were being taxed at, they didn't have to pay it, as long as they could feed the Bush interior departm,ent sex and cocaine.

this scandal is rocking washington and will have a big impact on the election---MccAin wants to continue Bushs's oil policies but I'm not suire the American people want their government in bed with the oil companies so literally. Will John and Sarah get in and toot some coke with the Bushies too? No wonder the repugs want a Free Trade deal with Colombia!

The Bush administration: Corruption "R" Us!
Watch that coward in the Whiter House run away from responsibility for this!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/wa...11royalty.html

WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.

In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes.

“A culture of ethical failure” pervades the agency, Mr. Devaney wrote in a cover memo.

The reports portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch.

The highest-ranking official criticized in the reports is Lucy Q. Denett, the former associate director of minerals revenue management, who retired earlier this year as the inquiry was progressing.

The investigations are the latest installment in a series of scathing inquiries into the program’s management and competence in recent years. While previous reports have focused on problems the agency had in collecting millions of dollars owed to the Treasury, and hinted at personal misconduct, the new reports go far beyond any previous study in revealing serious concerns with the integrity and behavior of the agency’s officials.

In one of the new reports, investigators concluded that Ms. Denett worked with two aides to steer a lucrative consulting contract to one of the aides after he retired, violating competitive procurement rules.

Two other reports focus on “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” in the service’s royalty-in-kind program. That part of the agency collects about $4 billion a year in oil and gas rather than cash royalties.

Based in suburban Denver and modeled to operate like a private sector energy company, the decade-old royalty-in-kind program sells oil and gas on the open market. Its employees are subject to government ethics rules, such as restrictions on taking gifts from people and companies with whom they conduct official business.

One of the reports says that the officials viewed themselves as exempt from those limits, indulging themselves in the expense-account-fueled world of oil and gas executives.

The reports provoked immediate outrage in Congress. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who is chairman of the Public Lands and Forests Subcommittee, accused the Minerals Management Service on the Senate floor Wednesday of “a pattern of abuses and mismanagement” that is costing taxpayers billions.

And Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, suggested that Congress should not lift its ban on offshore drilling — a hot-button issue in his state — because of the problems identified.

The report says that eight officials in the royalty program accepted gifts from energy companies whose value exceeded limits set by ethics rules — including golf, ski and paintball outings; meals and drinks; and tickets to a Toby Keith concert, a Houston Texans football game and a Colorado Rockies baseball game.

The investigation also concluded that several of the officials “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”

The investigation separately found that the program’s manager mixed official and personal business. In sometimes lurid detail, the report also accuses him of having intimate relations with two subordinates, one of whom regularly sold him cocaine.

The culture of the organization “appeared to be devoid of both the ethical standards and internal controls sufficient to protect the integrity of this vital revenue-producing program,” one report said.

The director of the Minerals Management Service, Randall Luthi, said in a conference call with reporters that the officials implicated in the reports had violated the public’s trust.

“When you come to work for the federal government, the American people expect the best of you,” he said, adding, “I am not going to leave this post in January without addressing this problem.” Mr. Luthi, who became the service director in July 2007, said that the agency had requested the investigation after receiving whistle-blower complaints in the spring of 2006, and that it had already made several changes. A spokesman for Mr. Devaney declined to comment.

A former official named in the report, Jimmy W. Mayberry, pleaded guilty to a felony conflict-of-interest charge in August and faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

[exlrrp]

This is trully outrageous and whats even more outrageous is that many of these people are going to get away with this corruption due to the fact that the "Justice" Department is refusing to bring the charges specified in the Inspector general's report.

i'm going to post some good examples of repuglican corruption----don't forget, these are all repuglican members of the BUsh administration

"...In late 2002, when he was about to retire, Mr. Mayberry drafted a “statement of work” for a consulting contract to perform essentially identical functions to his own. He then retired, started a company, and in June 2003 won the contract with the help of Ms. Denett and Milton Dial, another friend at the agency.

Danny Onorato, the lawyer representing Mr. Mayberry, said his client had a sentencing date in November, but added that “we are not interested in having Mr. Mayberry speak.”....."


"...But two of the highest-ranking officials who were subjects of the investigations will apparently escape penalty. Both retired during the investigation, rendering them safe from any administrative punishment, and the Justice Department has declined to prosecute them on the charges suggested by the inspector general.

One of them is Ms. Denett, who oversaw the Denver-based royalty-in-kind program from Washington. The report contends that she manipulated the contracting process to steer the consulting work to Mr. Mayberry, her friend and former special assistant.

Six other companies submitted bids for the contract, spending more than $90,000 on their proposals. The report said an Interior Department procurement lawyer described the arrangement as one in which “the fix is in throughout — this is tainted from the beginning, that is totally improper.”

Ms. Denett did not return a message left at her home on Wednesday with her husband, Paul A. Denett, who was the top procurement official in the White House Office of Management and Budget until he resigned this month. He declined to comment...."

Wow, the repugs sure like to make corruption a family affair.

"...The other high-ranking official the Justice Department has declined to prosecute is Gregory W. Smith, the former program director of the royalty-in-kind program. Mr. Smith worked in Colorado and reported to Ms. Denett. He retired in 2007.

The report said that Mr. Smith improperly used his position with the royalty program to get an outside consulting job helping a technical services firm seek deals with oil and gas companies with which he was also conducting official business.

The report accused Mr. Smith of improperly accepting gifts from the oil and gas industry, of engaging in sex with two subordinates and of using cocaine that he purchased from his secretary or her boyfriend several times a year between 2002 and 2005. He sometimes asked for the drugs and received them in his office during work hours, the report said.

The report also said that Mr. Smith lied to investigators about these and other incidents, and that he urged the two women subordinates to mislead the investigators as well.

In discussions with investigators, the report said, Mr. Smith acknowledged buying cocaine from his secretary and having a sexual encounter with her at her home, but he denied discussing drugs at work. He also denied telling anyone to lie, saying that he only told people that “no one has a right to know what I do on my personal time.”....."

"....The report also detailed cozy relationships between energy companies and other officials in the royalty-in-kind program office. Some 19 officials — a third of the staff — took gifts from oil and gas executives, some with “prodigious frequency,” it said.

On one occasion in 2002, the report said, two of the officials who marketed taxpayers’ oil got so drunk at a daytime golfing event sponsored by Shell that they could not drive to their hotels and were put up in Shell-provided lodging. Two female employees “engaged in brief sexual relationships with industry contacts,” the reports’ cover memo said, adding that “sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms’ length.”

On one occasion, the report said, the royalty-in-kind program allowed a Chevron representative who had won a bid to purchase some of the government’s oil to pay taxpayers a lower amount than his winning offer because he said he had made a mistake in his calculations. A report from Mr. Devaney’s office earlier this year found that the program had frequently allowed companies that purchased the oil and gas to revise their bids downward after they won contracts. It documented 118 such occasions that cost taxpayers about $4.4 million in all....."

Wow, this is corruption taken to the extreme-----and they probably felt great about doing it because they knew there was absolutely NO oversight at all. Whooopppeeeee!!!! The taxpayers are the paying for it all!!

The list of Bush administration crimes is extensive.

Palin/McCain= Bush III ! Count on more of this if Palin is elected president,ooops, I mean McCain.

[exlrrp]

gee, no response from the repuglicans about the most corrupt administration in modern history?? About the Bush administration peddling their asses (LITERALLY!) and America to the oil industry? I guess theyre not going to respond untill they figure out how to blame Obama, Ted Kennedy and the Democrats for this.


What I want to know is what that coward in the White House is going to do about this. It's HIS adminsitration we're talking about here, scoring coke at the office and boinking oil companies representatives. So far, that lying coward has ignored it entirely,. almost like it was someone elsee;s administration theyre talking about. No, "I'm Sorry," no "oops, my bad, " not even "Theyre talking about ME?"" Gee: so far, not even the good ol' repuglican "Mistakes Were Made?"

No, Coward & Liar Bush is going to hide in his hole with Dick Cheney pretending to be president while someone else straightens this out, just like all the other huge messes he's leaving.

Are you better off than you were 4 years ago? Not according to John MccAin.

And one thing you really need to realize is that NO ONE is going to be held accountable. Notice how the two major players in the scandal, Denett and Smith are escaping without ANY consequences whatso ever!!! they were allowed to retire during the investigation which put them completely outside all accountability. As Mukasey, head of the Bush Injustice department has aready said--he won't prosecute a repuglkican for a crime short of murder.

So here you have another great snapshot of a repuglican administration in action--snorting coke and boinking their way through the government. And the tax payers wind up paying for it all.

[Gimpy]

Originally Posted by exlrrp

gee, no response from the repuglicans about the most corrupt administration in modern history?? About the Bush administration peddling their asses (LITERALLY!) and America to the oil industry? I guess theyre not going to respond untill they figure out how to blame Obama, Ted Kennedy and the Democrats for this.


What I want to know is what that coward in the White House is going to do about this. It's HIS adminsitration we're talking about here, scoring coke at the office and boinking oil companies representatives. So far, that lying coward has ignored it entirely,. almost like it was someone elsee;s administration theyre talking about. No, "I'm Sorry," no "oops, my bad, " not even "Theyre talking about ME?"" Gee: so far, not even the good ol' repuglican "Mistakes Were Made?"

No, Coward & Liar Bush is going to hide in his hole with Dick Cheney pretending to be president while someone else straightens this out, just like all the other huge messes he's leaving.

Are you better off than you were 4 years ago? Not according to John MccAin.

And one thing you really need to realize is that NO ONE is going to be held accountable. Notice how the two major players in the scandal, Denett and Smith are escaping without ANY consequences whatso ever!!! they were allowed to retire during the investigation which put them completely outside all accountability. As Mukasey, head of the Bush Injustice department has aready said--he won't prosecute a repuglkican for a crime short of murder.

So here you have another great snapshot of a repuglican administration in action--snorting coke and boinking their way through the government. And the tax payers wind up paying for it all.

Don't hold your breath old buddy.

If there's one thing the repubs don't like to do is admit their glorious leaders have phucked up just about everything they've put their grubby, greedy hands on these past 7 and 1/2 years!

It ain't gonna happen...............BUT---keep up the good work of exposing them for what they are anyway!

Stay good,

Gimp

[SEATJERKER]

...

...Yep, anything that happens in this Nation is the President's, and the Republican's fault,...

... He has that almighty crystal ball that reads the minds of all everyone thinking about everything, therfore he should just mind alter them before anything is even thought of,...

...So there were no Democratic personal what-so-ever involved in any processes what-so-ever,...

...So what is the real truth on this, two people in 2002 took advantage @ a golf outing, and got hammered, and others "partied", and had sex, but it was all under the offical shroud of the the organization they "represented",...

...I say it is all the democrat's fault going back to the sixty's when they stated that "life" was to be one big party, and it started @ SanFrancisco, Haight/Ashbury, and free love, and tune in/drop out, let;s just just throw every moralistic value America ever had out the window, let's blow up ROTC offices, and college campuses, let's burn draft cards, and bra's, LSD, Timothy Leary, flower power, rebel against anything just to rebel, "change", yes they changed the world, see where change has brought us to,...

...and now Obama is going to change us again, Don't think so,...

...