Did you know that Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein recently resigned from the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee?
No? I’m not surprised. Care to guess the reason?
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.
Perhaps she resigned from MILCON because she could not take the heat generated by Metro’s expose of her ethics (which was partially funded by the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute). Or was her work on the subcommittee finished because Blum divested ownership of his military construction and advanced weapons manufacturing firms in late 2005?
I used a subscription news search service that has more than 30,000 publications in its database and searched the following,
“Military Construction Appropriations and Feinstein”
0 hits today | 0 hits this week | 0 hits this month“Feinstein resigns”
0 hits today | 0 hits this week | 4 hits this month
Of the four hits, two were from the pub that broke the story, Metroactive,one was from Metro-Santa Cruz and one was from something called Bohemian-The West.
In other words, nothing from The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC…you get the picture.
Anyone want to make the argument that if Feinstein was a Republican this would NOT be considered news by the MSM?