Pombo Brings In Duncan Hunter To Boost His Campaign

Lest there be any question exactly where Richard Pombo stands on the allegations of corruption that have swirled around him, he will be spending the last day of his campaign on the road in CA-11 with another one of the most corrupt Congressmen in the US, Duncan Hunter. And to add to the full irony quotient, they will spend the day visiting veterans’ groups, veterans' memorials and veterans' hospitals.

If you’re not familiar with Duncan Hunter, here’s a post that Howie over at Down with Tyranny wrote about Hunter last winter, entitled “Duncan Hunter — Even Worse Than Randy “Duke” Cunningham”:

Duncan's local paper, the SAN DIEGO UNION, in an article last week called LEGAL LOOTING: CUNNINGHAM CASE ONLY HINTS AT EXTENT OF ROT there is the beginnings of what is sure to earn Hunter the nice long prison sentence he's been working towards so diligently.

Cunningham and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, worked closely with two local companies – ADCS Inc. of Poway and Audre Inc. of Rancho Bernardo – to make the Pentagon pay for converting printed documents to computer files. They and a few other lawmakers got Congress to allocate $190 million for "automated data conversion" projects from 1993 to 2001. Did the Pentagon want this "help"? No. As a 1994 General Accounting Office report noted, it already had the tools for such work. But Cunningham, Hunter and their House allies didn't care. Audre and ADCS were generous with contributions.

Hunter's graft and corruption led to incredibly wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars-- MILLIONS of dollars that should have been used for armor for our front line troops dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. The UNION points to what they call "absurdities" like "a $9.7 million contract for ADCS to digitize historical documents from the Panama Canal Zone that the Pentagon considered insignificant. This isn't governance. This is looting." Indeed and the looters and war profiteers should be severely punished, although under Bush they are, of course, always protected until their greed and avarice goes beyond the pale and they wind up like Cunningham. In the twisted, self-serving mind of Duncan Hunter "if the Joint Chiefs of Staff think the military's bucks should go toward protecting soldiers and not the pointless preservation of old documents, well, tough luck." The pay-offs to criminal scoundrels like Cunningham, Jerry Lewis, and Duncan Hunter were from Wilkes and if Wilkes needed a multimillion dollar unnecessary contract to preserve useless documents while Army vehicles went unarmored in Iraq... well, making sure it happened was the job of the best friend a corrupt contractor could ever have: the all powerful Duncan Hunter. [Emphasis added]

So Richard Pombo and his pal Duncan Hunter will go out today and campaign among the very people whom they have betrayed time and time again. They have absolutely no shame.

Tags: CA-11, Richard Pombo, Duncan Hunter, lies, greed, bribery, ethics, corruption, veterans, veterans benefits, Jerry McNerney