METRO ACCESS PROBLEMS (WMATA) - ARE THERE ANY IMPROVEMENTS YET?

METRO ACCESS PROBLEMS (WMATA) - ARE THERE ANY IMPROVEMENTS YET?

IS THE COMPANY STILL PLAGUED WITH RARE ON-TIME DISABLED PASSENGER PICK UPS, ACCIDENTS AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT ISSUES?


IS SUCH CHAOS THE RESULT OF USING PRIVATE CONTRACTORS WHO ARE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY??


Sources: WTOP, Washington Post


****** MetroAccess riders, drivers join forces to voice their complaints


Disabled riders and MetroAccess drivers have joined hands to complain about the transit service that they say could use a lot of improvement.

Both riders and drivers complain that they are victimized by poor service, and they gathered together at Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist Church on Friday to air their complaints.

“It’s totally unreliable, totally unreliable … I have been abandoned more times than you can imagine,” says Gloria Jones Swieringa of Fort Washington, who is blind.

Unionized drivers, who are members of the Amalgamated Transit Union, say that dispatchers don’t welcome their input, that the policy of collecting fares outside the vehicle is unsafe and low driver pay produces high turnover rates.

“We need to make changes as far as the drivers, clients, the dispatchers, it needs to be a better service,” says Genoa Greene, a MetroAccess driver for the past eight years.

The complaints have drawn the attention of Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker.

“[I’m] very much concerned,” he says. “It was part of our budget hearing and so we want to hear what the problem is. I know a lot about people with disabilities trying to get back and forth so it’s a big concern of mine.”

Afghanistan War To Continue! Gen. John Allen, John McCain & Condi Rice Say No Early Withdrawal

As long as some members of Congress such as John McCain & Mitch McConnell, have a Vested Financial Interest in War i.e., Government Contractors, our Men & Women in Uniform will continue engaging in Tribal Conflicts we can NOT Win.

The Afghan War is a Tribal War.

It has NOTHING to do with Al-Qaeda because even after Bin Laden's Death, the Taliban's presence still rules that region of the Middle East.

And since President Karzai is a Willing Partner in that Scheme, why are we Wasting Billion$ of U.S. Dollars annually in Resources & Human Lives?

Remaining in Afghanistan for another 3 mos, 6 mos or 12 mos will NOT make a difference!

We've killed Osama Bin Laden so the U.S. Mission is Complete!

Let's just get out & let Karzai govern his Own Country!






U.S. General Sees No Sudden Afghan Drawdown


The top allied commander in Afghanistan told Congress on Tuesday that he had no intention of recommending further American troop reductions until late this year, after the departure of the current “surge” forces and the end of the summer fighting season.

That timetable would defer one of the thorniest military decisions facing President Obama — how quickly to get out of Afghanistan — until after the November elections.

Gen. John R. Allen, a Marine who commands the American-led allied force in Afghanistan, said that he remained optimistic about eventual success there but that it was too early to begin shifting forces. He also acknowledged the deep sensitivities, especially given the current diplomatic crisis with Afghanistan, of handing over complete security control to Afghan forces — including over the commando night raids that American commanders say are critical to the war effort. These are the subject of intense negotiation, he testified.

General Allen said that only after reviewing the results of the next six months of fighting — at the end of which there will be 68,000 American troops remaining there — would he turn his attention to the pace of further reductions in the force.

But he repeatedly said that by the end of next year, Afghan forces would have taken over full responsibility for the fight, allowing NATO’s combat role to be finished by the end of 2014, as currently scheduled.

His testimony came after a troubling, violent period on the ground, beginning with public protests — and a series of murders of American troops by Afghan security forces — following the burning of Islamic holy books by United States military personnel. That was followed by an American soldier’s rampage that left 16 civilians dead, most of them children.

General Allen said that in addition to the criminal inquiry into the massacre, there would be an administrative investigation into the command climate and headquarters organization of the soldier’s unit.

In his opening statement, he did not stray from the line taken by the White House and the Pentagon in recent weeks: that the progress toward what the Obama administration calls and “orderly and responsible” transfer of the fight against insurgents from the American-led alliance to the fledgling Afghan Army is going smoothly and that the schedule should not be altered.

He said he recognized the challenges, and deplored the Koran-burnings and the massacre. But he and members of the committee both described those events as isolated, if unfortunate, and there was little discussion of them at the hearing.

Instead, it focused on the schedule and the mechanics of the withdrawal that lies ahead, a subject that is being reviewed by NATO, whose member states are assembling their leadership in May in Chicago, and in talks between the Karzai government and Washington.

On one sensitive subject, the night raids carried out by Special Operations forces that have unsettled the Afghans but are credited with weakening the Taliban’s command structure, General Allen said the Afghans would be taking over control of them, too, eventually. Twelve Afghan teams are being trained for that purpose, he testified.

But he refused to discuss, when asked, a report in the Wall Street Journal that in negotiations with the Kabul government, the United States was considering subjecting American operations to review by some kind of Afghan tribunal.

He said it was important not to rob the surprise raids of “their momentum, which gives them their effectiveness.” And he said it was “very premature” to say what would be the outcome of the talks.

Ultimately, he said, as the Afghans take control of operations, the requirements of the Afghan constitution would need to be respected.

“Throughout history, insurgencies have seldom been defeated by foreign forces,” General Allen said. “Instead, they have been ultimately beaten by indigenous forces. In the long run, our goals can only be achieved and then secured by Afghan forces. Transition, then, is the linchpin of our strategy, not merely the ‘way out.’ ”

The possibility of an accelerated withdrawal order by President Obama has angered senior Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee. The chairman, Rep. Howard McKeon of California, said, “With our eyes at the exits, I am uncertain whether we will be able to achieve the key tenets of president’s own strategy, due to the constraints that the president, himself, has put in place.”

He made the case that “with friend and foe alike knowing that the U.S. is heading for the exits, our silence is likely viewed as a preamble to retreat. And, in warfare, when the mission becomes redeployment, rather than mission success, the outcome can quickly become disorderly.”

But General Allen emphasized that Afghan security forces are growing stronger, having reached 330,000, and that their buildup remains on track. And James N. Miller, Jr., the acting under secretary of defense for policy, testified that attacks initiated by the enemy continued to fall. They were down 22 percent in the first two months of this year compared with last year, he said, after falling 9 percent in 2011.

“We have seriously degraded the Taliban’s ability to mount a spring offensive of their own,” General Allen asserted. “This spring, they will come back to find many of their caches empty, their former strongholds untenable, and a good many of their foot soldiers absent or unwilling to join the fight.”


Sources: CBS News, CNN, NY Times, Youtube, PBS

GOP's Government Contractors Benefited From Bush's "War On Terror"

What Do Companies Balfour Beatty, Blackwater (Now Xe) & Dyncorp All Have In Common?

They All Have Strong Ties To The Republican Party (Via George W. Bush's Administration) And All 3 Companies Have Fat Bottom Lines Thanks To Being Government Contractors.

In Fact George Bush's Administration Relied Heavily On Government Contractors.

I'm Talking Billions & Billions Of Dollars That Went To Government Contractors!!

Not Just Any Government Contractors Might I Add!

But Contractors Who Benefited Because Of W. Bush's "War On Terror"!

You See No War = No Government Contractors In Iraq Or Afghanistan.

Perhaps Another Reason Why G.W. Bush Seemed To Be In NO Hurry To Capture Or Kill Osama Bin Laden.

Can You Say Political Favors To Loyal GOP Campaign Contributors???

What's The Big Deal You Ask?

Well Nothing Except Many Of Those Government Contractors Are Now Being Investigated For Having Possibly Discriminated Against Veterans Who Were Employed By Such Government Contractors, Mainly Disabled Veterans.

In Addition Its Also A Possibility That More Federal Funding For Government Procurements Were Awarded To White-Owned Government Companies Than To Minority-Owned Companies.

And.....

That Under Pres. George W. Bush's Administration Federal Contractors Did Sometimes Deny Their Employees The Right To Form On-Site Labor Unions Or Join Labor Unions.

Could It Be That George W. Bush's Administration Was Aware Of Said Discrimination However Turned A Blind Eye & A Deaf Ear To The Situations?

So You See The Obama Administration Is NOT Playing Political Games By Choosing To Look Into How Much Money Has Been Awarded To Government Contractors.

No!

The Obama Administration Just Wants To Ensure That Federal Funding For Government Procurements Is Being Wisely Allocated, That Government Contracts Are Awarded Fairly To Both Minority-Owned And White-Owned Companies & Most Important Of All That Veterans Employed By Government Contractors Are NOT Victims Of Discrimination Or Receiving Low Pay For Their Hard Work.

You Know The GOP Has Frequently Accused Pres. Obama's Administration Of Playing Dirty "Chicago Politics", But As 2012 Approaches It Looks Like The Republican Party Is Using More Dirty Politics Than Obama Ever Think Of.

VOTE OBAMA IN 2012!!








The New Obama Administration Releases Rules for Government Contractors


One of the biggest Democratic complaints over the last eight years has been that the Federal Government has used too many contractors. President Obama on Friday, FederalTimes.com reports, released three new executive orders related to the use of contractors.

All are related to strengthening the rights of contract employees over their corporate employers.

One that is actually very good for people working as contractors is that companies winning a contract must try to hire the qualified employees from the old contract.

This is only for service contracts but that is a pretty broad definition of work.

Many times in the past the new company would try to hire many of the old workers, especially if the government asked them to, but there was no guarantee you would keep your job. The other two rules relate to unionization of the workers. One makes it required for companies to notify their employees of their rights including that to unionize.

The last order ends the ability of companies to bill the government for costs related to fighting attempts to unionize. Obama was definately going to be friendlier to the unions and these orders are the first in many more to come.



DHS reducing reliance on contractors

The Obama administration has sought to reduce the government's dependence on contractors that the Bush administration relied upon so heavily during the formation of DHS; DHS has reviewed approximately 100 service contracts to see which should be assigned to an internal department rather than an outside vendor; the contract review project will serve as a template for future evaluations of all the department's approximately 10,000 service contracts

DHS has reviewed approximately 100 service contracts to see which should be assigned to an internal department rather than an outside vendor. The primary goal of insourcing is to ensure that contractors are not doing inherently government tasks while considering the quality and cost of work, and whether using contractors put the department’s mission at risk.

Jeff Neal, DHS’s chief human capital officer, would not comment on how many jobs might be insourced as a result of the review which is still being scrutinized by the Office of Management and Budget.

The contract review project will serve as a template for future evaluations of all the department’s approximately 10,000 service contracts. DHS plans to use the process to study whether new missions should be outsourced, done in-house, or done with a mixture of contractors and federal employees.

The program’s implementation corresponds with the Obama administration’s order to slash federal contract spending by $40 billion by the end of FY 2011. Experts say other agencies will be following suit to find the proportion of contractors and feds that will let the government best accomplish its mission.

“Everybody’s doing it to some degree or another, but I don’t know if anyone’s done it as formally as DHS,” said Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council. “They’re almost looking job-by-job.”

The Obama administration has sought to reduce the government’s dependence on contractors that the Bush administration relied upon so heavily during the formation of DHS.

In 2009, former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Peter Orszag ordered agencies to cut contract spending by insourcing government work and restoring the balance between federal and contract employees.

The government’s efforts to consolidate 3,500 contractor positions into federal employee positions were deemed inadequate by Deputy Secretary Jane Holl Lute.

DHS components that are particularly contractor-heavy include the headquarters, Customs and Border Protection, and the Transportation Security Administration.

In 2009, the Defense Department announced plans to replace many of the 33,000 contractor positions with civilian workers and last year announced that 16,000 new Defense civilian jobs were created through insourcing. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the insourcing had not yielded the savings expected while the Professional Services Council labeled the effort a “quota-drive exercise based on questionable cost assumptions.”

Stan Soloway, president of the Professional Services Council, said DHS’s balanced work-force effort is off to a better start than Defense. “I haven’t heard anything that suggests they’re doing a radical overhaul, but a strategic look,” Soloway said. “They really are looking to see if they have the right balance, the right skills and in the right place.”

Nine months ago, the Balanced Workforce Program Management Office was established by Jeff Neal to come up with a repeatable, data-driven process to review outsourced duties.

The department is looking at whether a particular mission is inherently governmental, whether the government, private sector, or a mix of the two can do it better or cheaper; if DHS has managers that can oversee the insourced work and whether the government has or can recruit people with the experience and skills to do something in-house.

“You have to work through budget cycles, you have to work with contracts and when contracts expire,” Neal said. “We certainly don’t have any intention to go out and terminate contracts midcycle. That costs too much money.”

Last week, Army Secretary John McHugh suspended ongoing insourcing actions and said senior Army leaders must review and approve all new insourcing proposals. McHugh also called for a tighter documentation and analysis of all possible alternatives to hiring federal employees to do the job.

“We have said all along that all sourcing decisions for clearly commercial work — whether insourcing or outsourcing — must be done strategically with the best interests of the government mission and American taxpayer in mind,” Soloway said. “Policies requiring decisions [to] be fully documented and justified and based on ‘an analysis of all potential alternatives’ should be adopted across DoD and other federal agencies.”











Agency watchdog wants more power to target contractors

A small Labor Department office is giving companies another worry about tough oversight by seeking more power to investigate federal contractors about potential pay discrimination, primarily against veterans and disabled people.
Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) plans to do away with George W. Bush administration-era guidelines on checking companies' equal pay because it says the guidelines are too restrictive or simply not used.

“The rigidity of the current standards represents a significant departure from OFCCP’s traditional tailoring” to investigations, according to Jan. 3 Federal Register announcement to rescind the rules.

The Bush administration in 2006 set up a statistical approach to their reviews. Under those rules, discrimination must show a pattern or practice of disparate treatment and use a multiple regression analysis to identify compensation discrimination.

However, the Obama administration says those rules impose “overly narrow investigation procedures that go beyond what is required by law.” In addition, OFCCP officials say companies haven’t used guidance laid out by the previous administration on companies doing voluntary self-analyses of their compensation.

OFCCP officials now intend to get rid of the restrictive rules and use their own discretion to develop procedures to investigate contractors. Their plan is to continually refine the procedures to make them most effective.

"OFCCP will reinstitute the practice of exercising its discretion to develop compensation discrimination investigation procedures," officials wrote in the notice.

The small office has already been checking out government contractors.

Rebecca Springer, counsel at the Crowell and Morning law firm, said eight of the last 10 companies’ audits that she worked on included checks by the OFCCP.

Despite the office’s increased efforts to expand its authority to act, contractors won’t have as much information on how OFCCP will go about reviewing compensation and wages to veterans and individuals with disabilities. By doing away with the detailed statistical analyses, she said officials will take a more simple approach to reviewing companies based on the resources available to the office.

“I think we are potentially headed back to an era of much greater secrecy as to how they are analyzing compensation,” Springer said during a webinar this month.

She also expects more regulations this spring and summer about OFCCP. There could possibly be new legislation to expand OFCCP’s authority in investigating companies.

Springer recommends companies should aggressively push back against the OFCCP if they have evidence of equal compensation and no discrimination against to certain people.


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Sources: Bnet, CNN, DHS, Federal Times, Fox News, Global Regulatory Enforcement Law Blog, Homeland Security Newswire, Huffington Post, Twitter, Washington Technology, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

Pelosi Rejecting Obama's Freeze Plan?

Nancy Pelosi Cool To Obama's Freeze Plan


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that defense spending shouldn’t be exempt from President Barack Obama’s proposal for a three-year freeze on federal spending.

In his State of the Union address Wednesday night, Obama is expected to address worries about the federal deficit by proposing a three-year freeze on all “non-security” spending. But just hours before the speech, Pelosi told POLITICO that any spending freeze should be “across the board.”

“Everybody has to make a sacrifice,” the San Francisco Democrat said in an interview conducted as part of POLITICO’s “Inside Obama’s Washington” video series. “If you’re asking everybody else in the country who has an interaction with the federal government — and that means our states and cities and all the rest, too — to cut back, then I think we have to subject every federal dollar to the very harshest scrutiny.”

Pelosi, an early Iraq War opponent who has championed increases in domestic spending programs, told POLITICO that it’s “hard to make the case” to completely exempt the Pentagon from a spending freeze, saying that there has to be “some room” to cut “5 percent” from the defense budget by targeting waste among contractors and the sprawling defense bureaucracy — provided such reductions had no direct impact on troops in the field, commanders or veterans.

Hill liberals, including Pelosi, have responded coolly to Obama’s proposal, which could save as much as $250 billion over the next decade by freezing spending on discretionary domestic programs that are close to Democratic policy priorities.

On the flip side, congressional Republicans have blasted the move as a political window-dressing that will reduce the aggregate deficit by about 1 percent and do nothing to impede the explosive growth of entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

For her part, Pelosi questioned the fairness of Obama’s proposal, which is intended to shield spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars without arousing opposition from hawks.

“Well, I think that if there is going to a spending freeze, it should be across the board. That is to say, we all want a strong national defense, and we want to fund it in an appropriate way,” she said. “But we’re not here to protect defense contractors. … And the fact is, if we have to cut spending, we should subject every dollar to that same scrutiny.”

The full interview will be available Thursday morning at http://www.politico.com/insideobamaswashington/.


Sources: Politico, MSNBC

Obama Vows To Crackdown On Corporate Tax Cheats

"In a time of great need, when our families and our nation are finding it necessary to tighten our belts, and be more responsible with how we spend our money, we can’t afford to waste taxpayer dollars. And we especially can’t afford to let companies game the system."









N.C. Tax Negotiations Yield $427 million, End Business Disputes


N.C. Tax Collectors brought in a Christmas bonus of $427million for the state in December.

That's how much the N.C. Department of Revenue recouped through a program aimed at settling tax disputes with corporations and businesses. The agency estimated it could bring in $150 million when it started the program in August but ended up with an extra $277 million beyond what was factored into the state budget.

"It couldn't have come at a better time," Revenue Secretary Ken Lay said.

The bonus collections will more than wipe out what was a shortfall of $110million at the end of November, compared to projections.

But the good news may not linger. Barry Boardman, the legislature's chief economist, said revenues in December still appear to fall behind what was budgeted.

"I'm not seeing any big turn toward the positive," Boardman said.

The Revenue Department last summer started the corporate tax resolution program. It included waiving penalties for those who settled and 400 corporate taxpayers who were disputing their tax bills. Of those, 300 tried the program, and 236 cases were settled by Dec. 15. Some cases were new; some covered more than a decade.

"We kind of exceeded our wildest dreams," said Linda Millsaps, the department's chief operating officer.

The agency targeted businesses whose disputes involved the state franchise tax, tax reporting for multiple components of the same company and credit card companies contesting how much of their operation was in North Carolina.

Officials said they could not name the corporations involved because state law prohibits departmental disclosure of taxpayer information. Those that chose not to participate remain in the normal dispute resolution process. .

Lay described the negotiations as a business-to-business dialogue in which each side offered its view of the tax debt and the evidence to back it up. A few companies got a tax refund.

The credit card company disputes involved whether the companies maintained enough of a presence in North Carolina to pay state tax, such as offering a credit card in the name of a North Carolina company. Some cases involved the franchise tax, a tax on what a company is worth as opposed to what it makes, and what should be counted toward that value.

Other cases centered on "combined reporting," and whether a company's various appendages can pay taxes separately or whether it has to file as one corporation. Wal-Mart is among the companies that have fought North Carolina in the courts over combined reporting. Officials would not say whether Wal-Mart was among those who settled.

The department did not start out with a grand total of what it thought the companies should pay and bargained down to the $427 million, Lay said. The discussions focused on the method of tax that was in dispute instead of the dollar figure - the rules of the game, rather than the points.

An incentive for the companies was that they didn't just settle a money dispute, they reached an agreement on the guidelines for paying future taxes. The Revenue Department doesn't have to expend the resources to fight legal battles over dozens of tax bills.

"The corporations win," Lay said, "and we win."

Individual taxpayers who don't have a corporation's bullpen of lawyers may wonder why they don't get a chance to settle quarrels over their tax bills.

They do, Lay and Millsaps said. The agency operates several programs that offer individuals the opportunity to settle their tax disputes. The programs typically require that the applicants have a history of paying their taxes.

"I don't know that they're doing anything different (for businesses)," said Elaine Mejia, director of the N.C. Budget & Tax Center, which advocates on behalf of low income families.

Lay said individual taxpayers should not feel they have been "left out in the cold."


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Sources: Politico, WRAL, wraMcClatchy Newspapers, Charlotte Observer, Google Maps