Wanna hear POGO's take on Trump's taxes and Hillary's emails?

Listen to POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian, General Counsel Scott Amey, and Open Government Manager Sean Moulton discuss these issues and more in this Campaign 2016 POGO Podcast.

This podcast was recorded on August 31, 2016.

The podcast is moderated by Ari Goldberg and produced by Iulia Gheorghiu. Featuring original sounds from Bombadil.

Campaign 2016: What's a Good Government Advocate to Do?

What is Donald Trump talking about when he proposed lifting the cap on defense spending? Why is a sequester on defense spending important? What does "political engineering" even mean?

Dan Grazier explains it all on the Steele & Ungar Show, on Sirius XM's POTUS channel. Grazier, a former Marine Corps captain, served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan during the War on Terror, joined POGO's Straus Military Reform Project as the Jack Shanahan Fellow.

Steele & Ungar is a weekly two-hour show with friends Michael Steele, former Chairman of the Republican National Committee and current MSNBC political contributor, and Rick Ungar, senior political contributor at Forbes. com and Newsmax TV and a long-time Democrat.

This image is owned by TruthOut.Org

http://www.pogo.org/blog/2016/09/Against-Unlimited-Pentagon-Spending.html?referrer=http://pogo.org/

Military Spending, Debunked (feat. POGO's Dan Grazier)

The Pentagon is about to get even less transparent: the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)bill includes a secrecy clause with a broad exemption for Freedom Of Information Act requests.

If we don't get Congress to change this provision in the NDAA, we may be stuck with a Pentagon that cannot be held accountable for wasting taxpayer money. POGO's Policy Counsel Elizabeth Hempowicz joins us to explain the ramifications of less DoD oversight.

Here is our bipartisan coalition's letter urging Congress to remove the secrecy clause: http://www.pogo.org/our-work/letters/2016/congress-protect-foia-from-pentagon.html

This podcast was recorded on September 15, 2016.

The podcast is moderated by Ari Goldberg and produced by Iulia Gheorghiu, featuring original sounds from Bombadil.

Wait, the Pentagon wants MORE Secrecy?

Did you know that companies are extracting natural resources from public lands without giving taxpayers their fair share of the profits?

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) raises this important issue in our latest podcast. POGO investigator Mia Steinle talks about the woefully outdated royalty programs for the mining and drilling of natural resources on public lands.

POGO and Taxpayers for Common Sense also just released a list of the top five reforms to the natural resource extraction system that were made under President Obama in the last eight years...along with the top five things that still need to be done. Read it here: http://www.pogo.org/our-work/articles/2016/natural-resource-reforms-priorities-progress.html

This podcast was recorded on September 22, 2016.

It is moderated by Ari Goldberg and produced by Iulia Gheorghiu, featuring original sounds from Bombadil.

This Land is Our Land

Military pilots aren’t flying as much as they used to. Rising operational costs and poor choices in the past to purchase aircraft that are too expensive to practically operate mean that many fly less than 10 hours a month. This is contributing to a shortage of skilled military pilots, which threatens our national security. Lt. Col. Carl Forsling USMC, a retired pilot who flew both the CH-46 helicopter and MV-22 tilt rotor recently wrote an article for Task & Purpose arguing pilots need a minimum of 30 hours a month in the air to develop their skills beyond the basics to gain a true mastery of tactics.

When Pilots Can't Fly with Lt. Col. Carl Forsling USMC

Bill Lind, former national security advisor to Senator Gary Hart (D-CO), discusses the once-formidable bipartisan Congressional Military Reform Caucus, its lasting impact and reforms, and why it didn’t last in Washington. He and LtCol Greg Thiele USMC recently published the "4th Generation Warfare Handbook," a guide for U.S. forces when for confronting an enemy whose primary loyalty is not to an officially recognized government.

Bill Lind on the Congressional Military Reform Caucus

The Project On Government Oversight's Dan Grazier recently sat down with Tom Christie, a former Director of Operational Test & Evaluation at the DoD from 2001-2005, to talk about the critical need for realistic combat testing before the Pentagon buys new weapons on this latest POGO podcast.

Fly Before You Buy: Tom Christie on Realistic Combat Testing

Winslow Wheeler, a veteran Capitol Hill staffer, shares his insights about what proper Congressional oversight is and provides tips for today’s young staffers on how they can be most effective in their roles providing national security oversight.

Winslow Wheeler on Congressional Oversight

When the Marine Corps needed a new capstone document to capture its emerging warfighting philosophy in the 1980s, the person chosen to draft it was not a general, but a junior officer, then-captain John Schmitt. He explains how he came to write one of the most widely read military documents in the world today on the latest episode of Pentagon Labyrinth.

Pentagon Labyrinth is hosted by Dan Grazier.
Music: "Without Limits" by Ross Bugden

The Creation of Warfighting, with John Schmitt

Dr. Tim Kane speaks to CDI’s Dan Grazier about his recommendations to modernize the Pentagon’s antiquated personnel system.

No other issue has the potential to fundamentally reform the military than optimizing the way the Pentagon manages the men and women in uniform. Yet little has been done to update a system which has roots deeply set in early industrial age concepts of management science from more than a century ago. Military personnel today are treated by the Pentagon’s bureaucracy as little more than interchangeable cogs in the machine. Dr. Tim Kane, an economist with the Hoover Institution, has written and spoken widely on the need to modernize the Pentagon’s personnel practices. He has recently published a report detailing his recommendations and the necessary steps to ensure the military has the most effective force possible.

Dr. Tim Kane’s Total Volunteer Force

Dan Meyer is a Managing Partner at Tulley Rinckey PLLC and former Executive Director for Intelligence Community Whistleblowing and Source Protection at the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General. He discusses the current landscape of legal protections for whistleblowers in the Intelligence Community. 

Meyer spoke on a panel with Patrick Eddington, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, and former CIA whistleblower.

Our seminars are open to Congressional staff, and are meant to benefit staffers through nonpartisan training.

Understanding Intelligence Community Whistleblowing, with Dan Meyer, October 18, 2019

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is a nonpartisan watchdog that exposes government corruption and fights for reforms in order to achieve a more effective, open, and ethical federal government. Founded in 1981, it is completely independent and espouses no partisan ideology.
POGO is widely praised by Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle for its unbiased, fact-based work, and enjoys a reputation for independence and excellence among federal workers, whistleblowers, nonprofits, and the media.
The group believes the people have a right to know how government decisions are made.
POGO is the People’s Watchdog.
The Project On Government Oversight relies on thousands of small donors and does not accept contributions from for-profit corporations, labor unions, any government, or anyone who stands to benefit financially from its work.