GOVERNMENT CONFLICTS, CORRUPTION AND INDICTMENTS

- COLORADO -

Date	Individual / State Agency	Who, What, Where?
06/03/05	Department of Motor Vehicles	Selling Driver’s Licenses for Big Bucks In Denver, motor vehicle clerks have been indicted for creating and selling legitimate commercial and personal driver’s license to people who were unable to obtain the licenses legally (illegal immigrants no doubt). People paid between $1,000 and $1,500 for each license. More arrests are anticipated.
04/01/06	Senate	Aerospace Firm Seduces State Senator According to the Denver Post, a few days after Lockheed Martin donated $100,000 to a charity run by Republican State Senator Tom Wiens, he introduced a bill that directed the state to spend millions to buy commercial satellite service. One of the most prominent players in that business was Space Imaging, a Thornton-based company jointly owned by defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Systems. Wiens' bill wanted the governor's office to provide "adequate funding" to the state forest service to buy space-based satellite imagery to detect wildfires. On May 3, 2004, Lockheed Martin announced that it was donating $100,000 to the Stand in the Gap Project, a nonprofit corporation Wiens created in January 2004 to help financially troubled military families. "This contribution was completely consistent with Lockheed Martin's long-standing practice of providing support to members of the armed forces and their families," a Lockheed spokesman said. After questions from reporters, Wiens released the filing, showing that the group collected $119,336, but passed only $54,472 to needy families. In October 2005, Wiens reported to Lockheed Martin that his group had raised a total $142,395 and had spent $42,498 on salaries and $28,120 on administrative expenses. Skip Edel, the Colorado State Forest Service's expert on satellite-based imagery, said commercial services aren't very helpful. Edel said, "They don't do well on monitoring active fires. They don't see through smoke."