Better than Owning a Casino

Earlier this month, Shee Atika Languages services received a five year, $250M contract from the Special Operations Command for language translation services. The Government’s official announcement states:

In accordance with FAR 19.805-1(b)(2) (8(a) Alaska Native Corporation program), Shee Atika Languages, LLC, 94 River Street, Suite 300, Rumford, Maine, is being awarded a requirements contract with an estimated ceiling of $250,000,000 million.

Translation: The contract was awarded without competition.

And you thought uncompeted federal contracts were only in the realm of Halliburton?

Welcome to the world of Tribal and Alaska Native Corporations (ANC).

Shee Atika Languages is one of an increasing number of federal sector companies bought or incorporated by Indian Tribes or Alaska Native Corporations. Back in 1986, before Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was cooking up the bridge to nowhere, he led the effort to give Native American corporations permanent small disadvantage status (a typical minority or women owned firm only gets eight years of such status). Federal contracting officers can issue contracts to such firms, known as 8(a)s without competition. Senator Stevens instituted one more perk – for a tribal or Alaskan Native owned corporation there is no dollar limit to the award that can be made without competition. A typical set-aside must be competed among 8(a) contractors if the total value is above $5.5 million. One can get a lot of campaign contributions from a quarter of a billion dollar contract.

Shee Atika has done pretty good for a company that has only been in business for less than two years.

Now I don’t have a lot of time to do research on this but some of you enterprising folks with blogs of your own might just want to see what kind of relationship exists between Ted Stevens
campaign coffers and Alaska Native Corporations.

RELATED:
While googling info for my post I ran across this related story: What Ted Stevens, Bolivian cocaine and Halliburton have in common,

Prisoners of War

Guantanamo is only an issue because of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Imagine Roosevelt Derangement Syndrome sufferers filing Habeas Corpus briefs for German and Japanese POWs in the 1940’s. Being an illegal combatant doesn’t change a terrorist's POW status but the BDS afflicted claim they should be given lawyers and entered into the American judicial system. James Taranto points out:

Legitimate prisoners of war enjoy no such rights. The primary purpose of holding enemy combatants during wartime is not punitive but preventive--to keep them off the battlefield. No one disputes that a country at war can hold POWs without charge for the duration of hostilities. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority in Hamdan, reaffirmed the government's authority to do the same with the unlawful combatants at Guantanamo.

The left really hasn’t thought through the alternative, less humane method of keeping combatants off the battlefield. They also need to think about the effect of extending constitutional privileges to detainees. Taranto has:

In the long run, it could also imperil the civil liberties of Americans. Leniency toward detainees is on the table today only because al Qaeda has so far failed to strike America since 9/11. If it succeeded again, public pressure for harsher measures would be hard for politicians to resist. And if enemy combatants had been transferred to the criminal justice system, those measures would be much more likely to diminish the rights of citizens who have nothing to do with terrorism.

Apparently a symptom of BDS is myopia.

Weak Government and Iranian Sponsored Jihadists

The Boston Globe faults Israel for the Hamas inspired violence in Gaza because of their troop occupation pullout. Seems Israel should have known better than to leave a weak Government exposed to an Iranian backed Islamic Jihadist group.

Does this mean the Boston Globe thinks U.S. troops should stay in Iraq to provide stability?