Video: Rep. Tammy Duckworth slams witness over shady veterans disability claim

[Valin]

Hot Air

Mary Katharine Ham

6/26/13

 

I do not care what you think of Rep. Tammy Duckworths politics. Please watch all of this. It takes a moment to get going, but she incisively, fairly calmly, and with more authentically hard-earned moral authority than most of us can imagine, eviscerates a guy claiming a high-school football injury as a way to get preferred treatment meant for wounded vets in government contracting.

 

Castillo, president and CEO of an IT company called Strong Castle, reported a foot injury he sustained in 1984 at the U.S Military Academy Preparatory School, according to a report released by the committee. He was honorably discharged in his first year at the school, and later went on to play football at the University of San Diego as quarterback and linebacker.

 

Seeking to acquire a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business credentialdesigned by the Small Business Administration to help veterans apply for federal contractshe listed his injury as his qualification. After reporting ongoing pain and treatment for his foot, Castillo was granted a 30% disability rating by the Department of Veterans Affairs, with the highest rating for injuries below the knee being 40%.

 

 

Castillo had come under the suspicion of the House Oversight Committee for his involvement in yet another instance of IRS incompetence and malfeasance with our money. He seems to have gotten a $500 million IT contract thanks to shady claims, outright deceptions, and a close relationship with IRS brass. Castillos case also brings into question the very nature of the federal governments set-aside programs for contractors, which in the past have incentivized setting up veterans, women, and minorities as straw owners to get contracts, and havent been subject to great oversight. Even worse, it seems, despite his obvious exaggeration of his injury and his service, he actually did qualify for a set-aside. Setting aside ones philosophy on set-asides, I think we can all agree the most worthy among such programs are the ones that seek to help those who have been willing to give all in the service of this country. Because the federal government is inherently clumsy, sloppy, unaccountable, and often corrupt, we are unable to deliver on promises even to those to whom we owe most.

 

(Snip)

 

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If I may....

 

This article is based on remarks made to the Air Force Cadet Wing at the United States Air Force Academy on 17 November 1993, as part of an education program sponsored by the academy's commandant of cadets.

A QUESTION OF ETHICS

 

 

THE BREAKDOWN of character is the number-one crisis in America.

 

I am not in politics anymore. I have done my time, literally and figuratively, but I can't help watching with dismay what is happening in our country. Watergate was a great shock because so many of us close to the president got in trouble. Now it is routine. Witness what has happened in the last decade. For the first time in history, 10 senators at once were called before the Ethics Committee. A Speaker of the House was forced out of office. Sen Robert Packwood (R-Oreg.) resigned. The Department of Justice bragged that 1,150 state legislators had been successfully prosecuted in one year--the biggest year the department had ever had, as if it were good news. I think it is tragic.

 

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Character is formed by the largely unwritten rules that govern a society's behavior and the way in which those rules are inculcated into individual behavior. As a society, we create restraints upon people that hold in check their baser instincts, and then we encourage virtue. Virtues--such as duty and charity, responsibility, honor, commitment, love of family and country, discipline, delayed gratification, and compassion--have to inculcated into us as individuals. Our consciences have to be trained from the day we are born and throughout our lives. Our consciences are continually informed by the values of the society in which we live--the cultivation of habits of the heart, as Alexis de Tocqueville called them.

 

(Snip)

 

 

 

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CHARLES W. COLSON