NOTES FROM AROUND THE WATCHDOG BEAT:
Did you know that when the U.S. House of Representatives’ Armed Services Committee marks-up the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), it does so in public, with the debate and voting livecast on the panel’s web site, and the text of the bill that is ultimately written is posted on the Internet.
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It’s a very different story on the Senate side where the Senate Armed Services Committee goes through the same process but behind closed doors. Amendments are kept secret and debate on the bill in the committee cannot be observed by the public. Journalists are also barred from covering the sessions, and it can be days before the bill text is made public.
Susan Dershowitz of the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) reports that a coalition of 45 groups spanning the ideological spectrum is asking the Senate committee to follow the same procedure as the House defense panel in doing the NDAA in public.
For more from Dershowitz on the issue, go here.
If Medicare fraud makes you sit up and listen, Sarah Whitmire at the Center for Public Integrity has a handy update of CPI’s Manipulating Medicare Series that includes background information on how the highly successful Medicare Fraud Strike Force jointly formed in 2007 by the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. It was expanded in 2009 and rechristened as the Health Care Fraud and Prevention and Enforcement Action Team.
According to Whitmire, “the strike force has busted more than 1,300 people accused of billing the Medicare program for at least $4 billion (during FY2011 alone) in medical services that never happened.” Go here for more from Whitmire.
Remember the controversy surrounding those super-secret meetings held by Charles and David Koch? Activists groups on the left have a field day picketing Koch meeting sites and filling their blogs with speculation about the sinister things being planned by participants in the gatherings.
Now it’s the turn of George Soros and other mega-bucks donors on the left to convene in a super-secret meeting that is closed to the media and virtually certain to spark speculation on the right side of the blogosphere about the sinister things being planned in the gathering.
Here’s the top to the story filed by the Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Stiles:
“A secretive network of left-wing billionaires and their political operatives descended on the luxurious Biltmore Hotel in Miami over the weekend to discuss strategy for the coming elections.
“The location of the conference had been kept a closely guarded secret by the members and guests of Democracy Alliance (DA), a collection of ultra-wealthy liberal donors formed in 2005, and is reported here in a Washington Free Beacon exclusive.
“Attendees roamed the grounds at the 150-acre tropical resort on their way to cocktail gatherings, salsa dance lessons, and workshops such as ‘Occupy the Voting Booth’ and ‘The 1 Percent Rule.’ Local police guarded entrances as members attended a ‘partners only’ meeting in the hotel’s Country Club Courtyard.”
Even though Stiles was barred from attending any of the meetings – non-participating members of the media are similarly not allowed to attend the Koch assemblies – the WFB reporter managed to gather a great deal of information about who attended the “secret” meeting and what they talked about. Go here for more.
