Say Anything Blog

Possibly over conflicts of interest I posted about here on Say Anything back in January, and perhaps even in shame over the decrepit conditions of the military clinics also under her committee’s care:

SEN. Dianne Feinstein has resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee. As previously and extensively reviewed in these pages, Feinstein was chairperson and ranking member of MILCON for six years, during which time she had a conflict of interest due to her husband Richard C. Blum’s ownership of two major defense contractors, who were awarded billions of dollars for military construction projects approved by Feinstein.

As MILCON leader, Feinstein relished the details of military construction, even micromanaging one project at the level of its sewer design. She regularly took junkets to military bases around the world to inspect construction projects, some of which were contracted to her husband’s companies, Perini Corp. and URS Corp. . . .

The MILCON subcommittee is not only in charge of supervising military construction, it also oversees “quality of life” issues for veterans, which includes building housing for military families and operating hospitals and clinics for wounded soldiers. Perhaps Feinstein is trying to disassociate herself from MILCON’s incredible failure to provide decent medical care for wounded soldiers.

Two years ago, before the Washington Post became belatedly involved, the online magazine Salon.com exposed the horrors of deficient medical care for Iraq war veterans. While leading MILCON, Feinstein had ample warning of the medical-care meltdown. But she was not proactive on veteran’s affairs.

Feinstein abandoned MILCON as her ethical problems were surfacing in the media, and as it was becoming clear that her subcommittee left grievously wounded veterans to rot while her family was profiting from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It turns out that Blum also holds large investments in companies that were selling medical equipment and supplies and real estate leases—often without the benefit of competitive bidding—to the Department of Veterans Affairs, even as the system of medical care for veterans collapsed on his wife’s watch.

Good thing Dems drained that Republican “swamp of corruption” in Congress.

Partisan sniping aside, however, this is some pretty shameful stuff.  Duke Cunningham-level shameful, in my opinion.  And were Feinstein a Republican like Cunningham I’m sure she’d get the same level of attention about it from the media.

But she’s not.  She’s an outspoken, far-left liberal in good standing so she’ll get a big fat pass.