What happens when the government gives no bid contracts with no oversight to a company closely associated with the Vice President? Yes, cronyism. Yes, corruption. But possibly worse than Republican cronyism and corruption are troops killed by the incompetance and callousness of a company that cares about nothing by profits.

As outlined in a Daily Kos diary, KBR, a branch of Halliburton, a company closely associated with Dick Cheney and favored heavily by the Republican Party for no-bid contracts with no oversight, has so bungled the maintenance of one of our Iraq bases that 12 of our troops have been electorcuted since 2004.

And this company has continued to get no bid contracts even though this problem was known. This is the worst kind of Republican corruption: sacrificing our troops for greed. That's goes even beyond the usual Republican war profiteering.

From a Houston Chronicle article:

Removed by author, for re-evauation, on the advice of counsel

[NOTE: Believe it or not, I was asked to clean up the language in the title...Yeah...on Daily Gotham we are cleaning up our language!]

So, there are some out there who get tired of my railing against "Vito Lopez and his Band of Ill Repute." But the truth is, what is deadly wrong with Brooklyn politics is what is business as usual within the Democratic Party. This year seemed to be a possible exception, but in the end I think it really will CONTINUE to be business as usual in the worst possible way.

One thing that the local political machine, currently headed by Vito Lopez, previously led by Clarence Norman, now in jail, was infamous for was putting comlpetely unqualified candidates up for judicial elections as part of a network of cronyism that would make Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff jealous. Judicial candidates who were rated as outright unqualified would be guided through with ease by Clarence and/or Vito simply to fulfill a favor or generate a favor. Favors were all that mattered, not qualifications, not quality, not actually quality governance.