Harry Reid: Dark money bad. Black money good.
You remember former Senate Majority and/or Minority Leader Harry Reid railing against the anonymous political campaign contributions? It was in all the papers.
Harry Reid (NYT pix)
“I am here because the flood of dark money into our nation’s political system poses the greatest threat to our democracy that I have witnessed during my time in public service,” Reid said in a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting in June 2014. “The decisions by the Supreme Court have left the American people with a status quo in which one side’s billionaires are pitted against the other side’s billionaires.”
It turns out, according to The New York Times, Reid managed to slip $22 million in the Defense Department budget between 2008 and 2011 and keep 97 of his fellow senators in the dark about what it was being used for — specially, to investigate UFOs. Only Ted Stevens of Alaska and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii were in on it.
“This was so-called black money,” Reid was quoted as saying. “Stevens knows about it, Inouye knows about it. But that was it, and that’s how we wanted it,” referring to the Pentagon budget for classified programs.
The “black money” was funneled to a company owned by Las Vegan Robert Bigelow.
“The funding went to Mr. Bigelow’s company, Bigelow Aerospace, which hired subcontractors and solicited research for the program,” The Times reported. The company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of materials recovered from UFOs sighting and talked people who said they encountered UFOs.
Reid said Bigelow, who says he is convinced space aliens have visited the planet, convinced him to fund the project.
According to FEC records, Bigelow over the years has contributed $15,800 to Reid and one of his political action committees — at least that is what has been reported.
Robert Bigelow (NYT pix)
4TH ST8 
Do away with private contractors.
Problem solved.
So, just have overpaid, unaccountable bureaucrats conduct the snipe hunt? it would never end and never accomplish anything either.
Well, seems like the logical conclusion if what you wrote, unless the real point was just to attack no longer Senator Reid.
Dark money bad. Black money good.
Can I quote you on that?
No, you may quote Harry.
If they had appropriated that money above board and in full daylight, the crackpot contingency would have gone through the roof. TFH’s would have exploded nationwide.
Now that is is known, what they found should be fully released.
As to private contractors, Patrick, here’s a clue for you.
“Using only federal employees should not happen. There are a lot of things the government does extremely well. There are others where government either does not do well, cannot effectively compete for talent to do the work, or where the work is temporary and hiring government employees to do it does not make sense. There are other situations where government needs and wants the flexibility that service contracts provide.We have a mix of federal employees, contractors and grantees and are likely to always have a mix. We can debate what the numbers should be, but no one is arguing that we should insource everything or outsource everything.” (Except for one sided; partisan idiots like you, Patrick, forever the Sham Plea King.)
Jeff Neal is a senior vice president for ICF International and founder of the blog, ChiefHRO.com. Before coming to ICF, Neal was the chief human capital officer at the Department of Homeland Security and the chief human resources officer at the Defense Logistics Agency.
https://federalnewsradio.com/management/2015/03/how-many-contractors-does-the-government-have/
The problem as I see it was that there was no good reason to keep the expenditure a secret. Harry appears to be a sleazebag politician, just like the rest of them. Pardon the redundancy.
Well Surprise Surprise Surprise Sgt. Carter! Harry Greid was a hypocrite?
Who could have EVER seen that coming?
[…] Meanwhile, Politico picked up the story, as did Fortune, CNN, Fox, Newsweek, the New York Post, NPR, USA Today, Salon, a British newspaper, Slate, the New York Daily News, the National Review, CBS, the Dallas Morning News, the Washington Post, Japan Times, National Geographic, countless other publications and bloggers. […]