Crooked military contractors gave Bonnie Watson Coleman $32,500

The federal government routinely awards contracts to companies with histories of misconduct, including contract fraud and other violations, and Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman accepted at least $32,500 from military contractors that cheated taxpayers dozens of times.

Lockheed Martin was cited for 88 cases of misconduct and paid $767.8M in penalties since 1995, while Honeywell International Inc. paid $741.8M in penalties for 66 instances of misconduct since 1995, but their money was good enough for Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman.

Federal Election Commission records show that Bonnie Watson Coleman accepted $27,500 from Honeywell International Political Action Committee (HIPAC) plus $5,000 from Lockheed Martin Employees' Political Action Committee (LMEPAC) despite their 154 acts of contract fraud, over billing and other crimes.

"Voters should ask the Congresswoman why she takes money from military contractors that routinely cheat taxpayers," said James J. Devine, who is managing the campaign for her opponent.

"Lockheed Martin is committed to participating in the political and public policy process in a way that serves the best interests of our stockholders," said Robert Rangel senior vice president for Lockheed Martin Government Affairs. "We operate in the highly regulated global security industry, and our operations are affected by the actions of elected and appointed officials at many levels of government."

In other words, military contractors have to grease palms for elected officials in order to stay in business, and that culture of pay-to-play politics is commonly accepted by machine politicians , like Bonnie Watson Coleman, an establishment Democrat who is closely connected with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

A Kentucky Republican who served on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee for over 18 years before becoming the special assistant to the Secretary of Defense from June 2005 to June 2011, Rangel did not say what Bonnie Watson Coleman gave his company in exchange for those big donations.

Company records show that the New Jersey politician started getting paid by the firm's PAC almost as soon as she arrived in Washington.

In 2010, Honeywell displaced AT&T as the biggest federal corporate political action committee, a position it has held since.

Jonathan D. Salant, of NJ Advance Media, the Star-Ledger and NJ.com, reported in a story entitled: This N.J. company gave $5M to political insiders. Here's what it may get that the U.S. House passed legislation imposing new rules for class action suits against corporations facing asbestos claims. That bill was supported by the Morris Plains-based Honeywell .

"Five million dollars ought to be able to buy a floor vote, and I'm sure Honeywell expects that," said Craig Holman, Ph.D., Public Citizen’s expert on campaign finance rules, governmental ethics, and the impact of money in politics. That measure passed without Watson Coleman's vote but she accepted the company's money and could have been influenced on other legislation.

Lockheed Martin held $36.3 billion in federal contracts for fiscal year 2015, which was more than any other company. According to the U.S. General Services Administration, Honeywell's federal contracts totalled $1.7 billion that year.

More damage comes from money we cannot see like when corporate PACs make donations.

According to data compiled by the Business Industry Political Action Committee, since Citizens United, the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed unlimited political spending by corporations, employers are increasingly urging workers to fundraise, lobby and campaign in ways they never have before.

The number of employers engaged in nudging employees to write letters, donate, campaign or vote - has risen 45 percent to 7,317, according to BIPAC. Bonnie Watson Coleman and her political operation have never disclosed information about hidden corporate support and campaigns pretend that the work of so-called 'independent expenditure committees' are not done in coordination with official outreach.

Employees at the nation’s top firms are also contributing more money than ever before to company PACs controlled by CEOs and senior management, according to documents disclosed to the Federal Election Commission.

In exchange for that kind of invisible political support, President Donald Trump and Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman are keeping corporate welfare well funded.

An analysis of FEC filings of 122 of the top company PACs shows employees raised a median 25 percent more in one quarter versus the same period four years earlier. For the PACs analyzed, the median amount of contributions collected was $130,842.

At companies that depend heavily on government contracts, the giving is especially high.

For example, employees of Honeywell International, the aircraft electronics manufacturer whose PAC contributed $25,000 to Bonnie Watson Coleman, gave more than $1 million in the first quarter of 2015 - up 52 percent since the same period in 2011.

Honeywell, along with Lockheed Martin (a $4,000 Watson Coleman donor), BP and Halliburton, says its employee contributions are 100 percent voluntary and legal and that no pressure is put on employees to become more politically active.

Just as Wall Street supports Bonnie Watson Coleman because she has consistently supported the kind of corporate welfare that makes it hard for global businesses to lose money, financial support from the industry built on death and destruction shows that the Congresswoman ia protecting military contractors.

Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman recently supported the CARES Act, legislation that created a $6 trillion slush fund controlled by President Donald Trump, distributed billions to corporations and put a paltry $1200 in the pockets of some Americans, even though millions of needy people are still waiting for their checks.

Defense contractors, polluters, Wall Street and private prison companies all know that Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman will never harm their profits because she is loyal to party bosses and power brokers. She has taken more than $2 million in special interest money.

“If it’s done right, there’s nothing illegal about it,” said Greg Casey, president of BIPAC.

That is a sentiment that would be disputed by Lisa McCormick, the Democratic candidate opposing Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman in the July 7 mail-in election.

Like her counterpart in New York, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, McCormick refuses to accept corporate PAC contributions and other 'dirty money donations' -- a policy she started the year she earned 159,998 votes in a primary challenge to U.S. Senator Bob Menendez, who was indictment for bribery and corruption led to a hung jury.

Lisa McCormick wants to outlaw bribery in all forms, including money used as those corporate campaign contributions collected by the Congresswoman, but she has not demonstrated much interest in feeding the establishment hungry for military adventurism.

McCormick has vocally expressed opposition to out-of-control military spending, she regularly includes the Military-Industrial Complex among the entrenched interests worth figthing and she supports a withdrawal of some American forces from Japan, Germany, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

McCormick has proposed a national rollout of the Democracy Vouchers program that is employed in Seattle, Washington.

In that city, vouchers are distributed among all citizens and candidates collect them in lieu of money. The vouchers are then used to buy advertising, organizational tools and staff salaries. McCormick says such a program could be made cheaper on a national level because taxpayers already own the airwaves, a mail service, the Internet, and voter registration records.

So instead of begging for money to buy TV or radio time, postage, emails and digital display ads, or contact lists, candidates could get all these assets from the government for free.

"When politicians are not forced to seek money from big donors, they will value the voters more and that can make them responsive to constituents who are routinely ignored," said McCormick.

While some political observers have dismissed McCormick, she spent less than $5,000 two years ago but finished the race with 159,998 votes, or 38 percent of the Democratic primary total. That is greater than the total number of votes cast in the 2015 Democratic primary.