Murtha does business with Druggies
Jun 6, 2009 Political
Rep. John Murtha, you know the guy with the “Airport to Nowhere”, the same Representative who calls his own constituents “Rednecks and Racists”, just keeps on digging himself deeper, although this situation is not a new one, just recently revealed. But the roots of his newest troubles go back at least fourteen years, as he has steered over 50 million dollars to a firm that allegedly does some sort of work for the Defense Department. That is not necessarily the problem, but the owners of this “business” are convicted felons with a past replete with drug convictions.
Before Bill Kuchera produced electronics and robotic equipment for the Pentagon, he helped run thousands of pounds of marijuana and some cocaine from Miami to sell in Racine, Wis., according to criminal records and accounts of others involved in the drug operation. Bill Kuchera pleaded guilty to a single and lesser felony distribution charge in 1982 after cooperating witnesses implicated other Kuchera family members in helping store drugs at the family home. Ron Kuchera and the boys’ parents were never prosecuted.
Childhood friend Peter Whorley suggested to Bill that he could make more if they teamed up to run marijuana from Miami, according to court and criminal records.
Business was lucrative until Whorley and Bill Kuchera were arrested in 1981, Wisconsin criminal records show. They were sentenced to several years in federal prison. Kuchera served 11 months.
washingtonpost.com
After the drug convictions, Bill Kuchera worked as a clerk until he asked his uncle if he could enter the family business, Kuchera Industries. This act of kindness by Bill’s uncle would later prove that no good deed goes unpunished.
“He said, ‘I want to make a fresh start,’ ” Michael Kuchera said. “He was family, and I wanted to help. I made him my full partner: 50-50.” The uncle put Bill in charge of running the plant. Ron joined them.
Also fresh out of prison, Whorley provided names of government contracting officials he learned about from fellow prisoners. Whorley said he invested $50,000 in KII for a share of the profits and steered the Kucheras to his contacts at the Census Bureau, where they won federal work.
But Whorley continued selling drugs, earning a 10-year prison sentence with his next federal conviction. He later filed a lawsuit claiming that Bill Kuchera cheated him out of his share of the firm’s profits, but it was unsuccessful.
For a long time, business hummed along. But new tensions arose within KII. Michael Kuchera said he grew upset when customers warned him that Bill had paid them cash “gifts” to retain their business. In 1993, Michael Kuchera said, Bill persuaded his uncle to sell the company to a local buyer Bill had found. Months later, Michael Kuchera said he discovered that he actually had signed over his company to an entity controlled by his nephews. He said he consulted a lawyer, who told him there was little he could do.
washingtonpost.com
Don’t you just admire the family that has such little love or loyalty, that they stab the uncle in the back, after he had given these brothers not just a job, but partnerships. What a family. It becomes apparent just why John Murtha would be attracted to these people.
Now, along comes Murtha, a Pennsylvania Representative who just loves calling our troops murderers without cause, a man with a troubled past of his own, and an airport that is his pet toy, courtesy of us, the taxpayers.
By 1994, the Kuchera brothers had moved their operations to Windber, Pa., 11 miles east of Johnstown, with hope of winning defense contracts that Murtha said he wanted to bring to the district. They partnered with Hughes Aircraft as part of a Defense Department mentor-protege program. Kuchera Defense Systems qualified as a small, disadvantaged business, because it reported that at least 20 percent of its employees were disabled, meeting the government’s standard. Raytheon became Kuchera Defense Systems’ mentor after it acquired Hughes, a partnership that Murtha’s office said the lawmaker encouraged.
“Without Raytheon and without Congressman Murtha, there would be no Kuchera Defense,” Bill Kuchera said in a 2000 interview.
Kuchera also hired a high-powered lobbying firm, Ervin Technical Associates, whose chairman is longtime Murtha friend and former congressman Joseph M. McDade (R-Pa.). Kuchera employees and their spouses have donated more than $106,000 to Murtha’s political action and campaign committees.
washingtonpost.com
So, the firm, with taxpayer money, grew larger under the patronage of John Murtha. Trouble was, however, on the horizon, as the Kucera brothers couldn’t begin to justify their billing practices- where did the money go? To Murtha? who knew?
Last year, acting on tips from people with information about company operations, investigators began scrutinizing Kuchera’s billing and whether federal funds had been used improperly, including for renovations and laptops. The investigators also are looking into invoices submitted by corporations run by Kuchera family members and friends, one source said.
In the raid of the ranch, federal investigators confiscated nine guns, Bill Kuchera’s rifles and shotguns. While the Defense Department had signed off on the executive controlling tens of millions of dollars in defense work, his felony conviction made it illegal for him to possess a firearm.
washingtonpost.com
This just begins to underline the problem here, and why people don’t trust the government- because we have s***bags like John Murtha giving millions of tax dollars to drug runners for God knows what. When you add to this the airport with the 80 million dollar radar no one knows how to operate, or the $150,000 repaving job done on the runway- a runway that handles around twenty people a week, all from Washington, you have to wonder at the character, or lack thereof of this alleged “Representative” of the people, John Murtha.
And you damn sure have to wonder at the company he keeps.
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Tags: drugs, felons, graft, Murtha, slush fund