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Latest Policy Publications
POGO’s experts push policymakers to enact commonsense reforms that tackle waste, corruption, and abuse of power; hold those who’ve violated the public trust accountable; protect our constitutional rights; and make the government work for all people.
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Analysis
Winslow Wheeler’s Take on Gates’ Announcements
Straus Military Reform Project Director Winslow Wheeler attended a meeting on August 9 with Defense Secretary Gates following his press conference of DOD spending cuts and offers his analysis.
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Analysis
On Wikileaks: I Wish the Leaker Had Come to POGO
Over the past thirty years, POGO has wrangled with whistleblowers who want to disclose classified information—not 92,000 pieces of information, mind you—but I keep wondering what we would have done if the individuals who shared the classified raw field reports from Afghanistan...
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Analysis
The Perry/Hadley QDR Review
I am a sometime participant in a large group of bloggers at the National Journal. This week's topic for comments caught my eye: what did we think of the "independent" review of DoD's Quadrennial Defense Review, just reported by a herd of former government officials w...
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AnalysisThe Affordability The Pentagon Says It Wants
The July 19 Defense News ran a commentary by DoD's Ashton Carter describing the Pentagon's efforts to achieve what he called "affordability." Those efforts, if successful, will accomplish no such thing. Six other individuals, who are affiliated with six other organiz...
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Analysis
Robert MacLean v. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
In summer 2003, Federal Air Marshal (FAM) Robert MacLean tried to blow the whistle within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on an attempt to remove air marshal coverage of "high-risk" flights amidst heightened warnings based on intelligence that terrorists we...
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Analysis
Budget Nightmare at the Pentagon
An extremely broad right-left coalition may be forming to bring real change to the Pentagon. Such change is not coming otherwise, explains Straus Military Reform Project Director Winslow Wheeler.
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Analysis
Gates, Congress, and Obama: Mutually Assured Debacle
The Huffington Post, find a new commentary by Winslow Wheeler on the unhappy direction now being taken in the debate over the Pentagon budget: mutually exclusive, short-term thinking is reinforcing all the worst in our "business-as-usual" approach.
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Analysis
Small Business Advocate Scores Another Victory for Transparency
Every once in a while, POGO likes to remind everyone that the American Small Business League (ASBL) is still out there fighting the good government fight, kicking butt and taking names—or, in this particular case, FOIA-ing names.
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Analysis
The F-35 Boondoggle
George Kenny runs the Electric Politics website, conducting extended interviews on core issues like the environment, politics, and defense. On May 21, he released his interview with Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project. The subject is the F...
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Analysis
Rep. Issa Issues Report on Systemic Problems at the SEC, Calls for Major Overhaul
As the Senate continues debating legislation to reform the financial regulatory system, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) has issued a new report examining a wide range of regulatory and management failures at the Securities and...
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AnalysisThe Sorry State of Congressional Oversight
Oversight is one of the most important things that Congress does, or rather, these days doesn't do. Straus Military Reform Project Director Winslow Wheeler explains some of his observations on the political theater of "oversight" in the modern Congress.