John Murtha, "Public Servant"

King Pork
"Who dares to question me about earmarks?"



Representative John Murtha is back in the news again, and as usual, for all the bad reasons. Once again, Murtha's earmark and pork activities have come to the fore, this time with the cancelling by the Department of Defense of any and all contracts with Kuchera Defense Systems-a favorite client of the Pennsylvania congressman. In January, Kuchera was the focus of an FBI search warrant as part of a misuse of corporate funds investigation.

What has all this to do with Murtha? Plenty. Murtha has received over $65,000 in campaign contributions from the company led by Bill and Ron Kuchera-even more raised by Kuchera-hosted fundraisers. Coincidentally, Murtha has steered millions in government defense projects their way-14.7 million in the last two years alone.

Murtha at a Kuchera Defense Systems demonstration of their latest robot
"And this robot can even pay money to politicians"


This of course is the same John Murtha who saddled the federal government with a drug intelligence center in his home district of Johnstown, PA-even though they already had one in El Paso. This is the same John Murtha who steered millions to build the John Murtha Aerodrome near Johnstown. This white elephant basically serves John Murtha when he flies back and forth between Washington and Johnstown and hardly anybody else. This is the same Murtha who got caught on tape discussing a bribe from an FBI undercover agent during "Abscam". Now it's Kuchera.

Not that Murtha should be concerned about the controversy swirling around his friends at Kuchera. As he angrily told a nosy reporter a few days ago who dared to ask him about the matter; what's it got to do with him. That's a DOD decision.
Asked about Kuchera’s troubles, Murtha said, "What’s that got to do with me? What do you think, I’m supposed to oversee these companies? That’s not my job. That’s the Defense Department’s job." (This is the guy who chairs the House Defense Appropriations Sub-Committee.)




Where does a congressman like Murtha forget that he is supposed to be a public servant? In Murtha's case, he lost sight of that fact a long time ago. Not only is he brazen, but he gets highly indignant when a reporter simply asks for a comment.

Is this the "culture of corruption" that Nancy Pelosi was always talking about when the Republicans were in charge? Will this finally be the downfall of John Murtha?