Say Anything Blog

Over the last week or so a major story of national interest (John Kerry certainly seems interested in it) has broken in North Dakota.  It involves a business owned by the Spirit Lake Sioux Indian Tribe out of Fort Totten, North Dakota, knowingly selling our government faulty helmets.  Helmets that were used by our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This business, called Sioux Manufacturing, was forced to pay $2 million back to the government as a result of a federal lawsuit over the faulty helmets, but then received a new $74 million contract to replace the faulty helmets it had previously sold to the government.  A curious situation which, I’ve already noted, is attracting national attention.  John Kerry is calling for an investigation, and the New York Times has covered the story, but in the North Dakota media there has been next to no coverage.

The federal lawsuit itself was covered in a perfunctory manner, but the state’s editorial boards have been silent on the manner.  The Minot Daily News, for instance, even published an editorial today about wasteful spending on defense contractors but do you think Sioux Manufacturing was mentioned?  Do you think anyone at the Minot Daily, or at any media outlet in the state, has asked which politicians (Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad) brought Sioux Manufacturing these cozy government contracts?  Do you think they’ve asked why Sioux Manufacturing didn’t lose its government contract after its dishonesty was exposed instead of getting a brand new contract worth tens of millions of dollars?

Nope.  Not one single question from anyone in the state media.

Pathetic, isn’t it?  This is a major story with national implications.  You’d think local reporters, who are in the perfect position to cover it, would be chomping at the bit to fill our newspapers with stories about this graft.  But it isn’t happening.