What's could be worse than former Diebold Chairman and Bush "Ranger" Wally O'Dell counting our votes?
Big time military contractor United Technologies Corp. (UTC) made public on Sunday an unsolicited $3-billion bid
for Diebold. According to the NY Times, UTC initially
made the $3 billion offer in private on Friday. The bid is $40 a share in cash,
or a 66 percent premium over Diebold’s Friday closing price of $24.12.
The Times reports that UTC first approached Diebold two years ago and has made several advances that have been rebuffed.
EI member, Jerry Policoff, reports that UTC recieved $22.5 billion in military contracts between 2002 and 2006, ranking them #7
among all defense contractors and they have been involved in controversy over shady bookkeeping, especially with their Blackhawk
helicopters. Its CEO recieved $70 million in salary and options in 2003. The
company is also a major GOP campaign contributor. Its Board has included Howard
Baker former Senate (R-TN) Majority Leader; Charles Duncan, Jr., former
Secretary of Energy; Jamie S. Gorelick, former Deputy United States Attorney
General; William J. Perry, former Secretary of Defense; Christine Todd Whitman,
former Governor of NJ (R) and Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Richard Myers,
former head of the Joint Chiefs.
This, alas, is not the first large-scale involvement of military contractors in our nation's vote-counting systems according to research from Lynn Landes and Bev Harris indicating that defense contractors were prime lobbyists for HAVA. I'll be writing more about this as time permits, but it's difficult to trace and track down. If any of you can contribute any information, please post it.
