Talk:DRC, Inc.

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This is a fascinating company completely surrounded in all sorts of controversy. I've written several school papers on them, and would be interested in learning more from anyone with first hand information. They are pretty infamous here in Mobile, but not sure if any of you have heard of them outside the Southeast.

March 2, 2007 - This page has apparently become the vehicle for unsubstantiated attacks on DRC, Inc. and its owners. Neither DRC nor its principals have ever been the subjects of any indictments or criminal charges. The current disputes with USAID and USDOJ have two sides and my edits reflect that balance. Neither DRC nor its principals are targets of the Operation Coon Dog. DRC's contracts following Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana are without reproach. Allegations and innuendo similar to those aired in the original versions of this page are similar to those circulated to several small newspapers recently by rivals or former associates of DRC. These untruths are tantamount to libel with intent of harming someone's financial interest, the easiest form a libel to win a judgement on. Blogs, online publications, and websites are in no way exempt from the same legal obligations as other forms of print media. Minewpjames 02:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)minewpjames

As the originator of this article, I have carefully reviewed the recent edits made by user: minepwjames and user: 207.195.252.47 . It is clear that Minepwjames is an employee of DRC and has attempted to improve the article for the benefit of his company in direct contravention of Wikipedia policy. Consequently, I have undone his changes. However, some of the suggested changed Minepwjame did bring up are very relevant and I have incorporated these updates. If there is any more sourced information (ie, status of investigations or protests) then these should definitely be incorporated and sourced. Likewise, if there is any sourced information in the public record that is contrary to the current article or that adds more information to this article then these should be incorporated immediately.

This is not the forum for employees of companies to market their companies, nor is it appropriate to attempt to keep public information from being published by threatening libel. Like all my posts, the original article that was written was done simply by putting together the public documents found from a Google search of this company and rewritten in a manner appropriate for a Wikiepedia article. If you have future additions, please ensure that they are sourced properly. Sheenap205 12:55, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

This is also not the forum for detractors of companies or individuals to unfairly smear and besmirch them, nor to attempt to harm their financial interests. On the original versions of this page, accounts of legal disputes presented heavily one-sided accounts and other descriptions come complete with multiple subjective tags such as "mired in controversy" or "edge of bankruptcy." Moreover, incomplete timelines truncate accounts of these matters before they were resolved in DRC's favor, as in the case of the Wastetech protest. I repeat that there is nothing untoward or "controversial" about DRC legally winning bids for important work which it then successfully performs. Further, DRC is not in any way the target of any investigation related to Operation Coon Dog. Including it here is an atttempt to smear by associtation. Finally, it should be noted that all citations involving the Amherst Times piece are invalid as the article has been retracted by the Amherst Times after it was found to be substantially false. Minewpjames 13:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)minewpjames

Sir, please read the wikipedia guidelines for posting to an article. You are out of line. If you would like to mike constructive posts to an article, then source it!!!! Just because you don't like a statement, doesn't mean you can change it arbitrarily. A fact is a fact. I was unaware of the Amherst Times retraction, if you have that public retraction then I agree that any references should be deleted. Your other deletions are clearly deleting information that is properly sourced. Likewise, your additions are unsourced. Read the wikipedia guidelines and then make your contribution accordingly. This page is not an attempt to defame anyone, it is simply an attempt at consolidating the public information about this company. You are clearly an insider, so it should be no issue for you to provide factual, relevant information regarding this company. I wholeheartedly agree this is not a forum to disparage a company, but neither is it a forum to tout your own. This is your final warning.Sheenap205 14:08, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Sir, please understand that if you are sourcing and repeating material that was retracted by a publication because it was found to be potentially libellous it is your legal responsibility to remove it, not mine and not Wikipedia's (see: Fuzzy Zoeller). There are New York Times and Times Picayune and public record sources for all of my edits which I will provide. (I had not planned to spend the weekend writing a footnoted history of DRC, nor do I intend to.) Meanwhile, you persist in including subjective tags in the defininition of DRC and in section headings, e.g. "Defrauding USAID" is misleading as DRC has not been convicted or proven to have done any such thing. "Dispute with USAID" is much more descriptive and neutral. Why do you resist edits such as these? You need to re-review your post for language, inconsistencies, and incompleteness that are contrary to encyclopedic, journalistic, or historiograhical approaches. If you are claiming that you have no bias concerning this company, your writing about it offers a clear contradiction to that claim. I would suggest that you have an agenda or a personal or legal dispute with DRC and/or its principals and are attempting to use this forum to shape the public perception of them. Finally, your attempt to "consolidate public information about this company" is severely lacking and one-sided. I again refer to the Custer Battles and Wastetech issues. These are issues which have been resolved in DRC's favor. Information about these resolutions has been published in places like the New York Times or is FOI from the Louisiana Office of State Purchasing. If you are serious about contributing to Wikipedia's mission of a complete and neutral public encyclopedia, you should convert your article in to something more neutral, rather than a negative campaign, by presenting a more complete historical account.Minewpjames 14:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC)minewpjames

See, now this is the type of discourse Wikipedia is all about!!! First, I'm a ma'am (I thought using my first name kind of gave that away, but I'll forgive you). Second, I do have an agenda. My agenda is to write honest, well-sourced articles about the hurricane contractors that have been making millions here on the Gulf Coast, yet there always seems to be issues with their contract or their history. I have am not out to get anyone, I simply did a Google search on your firm, spent a couple hours distilling the major information, and tried to portray it in a concise, sourced manner. While you make a good point on the bias of the titles (I will revise this), I can't help it if your company has done all these things that many articles have portrayed. While there are normally two sides to every story, I am portraying the side published in major news articles. If you failed to get your point across there, that is your issue to correct. If a reputable newspaper reports something, you writing in this forum that they were wrong is not appropriate or acceptable under the Wikipedia guidelines. I am going to encourage my peers to continue to research and write about your company, as it appears there is a substantial amount of information that I have not covered, and I welcome you to continue to contribute factual, relevant information to the article. It was not my intention to get into every one of the legal cases your company has been involved in, but simply to portray to the reader that your company has grown substantially from hurricane relief work, and that your contracts have been controversial in many areas. If anyone has more detailed information, please contribute, but I don't want this (or any) article to become a detailed analysis of the past performance of a company...rather an encyclopedic overview in keeping with wikipedia intent. In my mind, the goal of this entire site is to provide insight, spark interest, and hopefully people will go out and learn more about what's going on around them. Let's all any journalist can hope for. Sheenap205 20:45, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Great. It seems we are getting somewhere. Thank you for taking my point on the titles. I take your point on my initial edits. Some of the language was too "promotional" for Wikipedia. I am an admirer and frequent user of Wikipedia and do not wish to distort its purpose. Also, as you suggested, I have begun to review the policies here, having never edited before. I'd like to review a few more points with particular reference to the Neutral Point of View (NPOV) policy. Let's start with your first referenced point. The Eddie Curran/Press Register article refers to both the suits and countersuits between DRC and Custer Battles. Your writing focuses on allegations from the countersuit, in particular regarding the allegations surrounding Mr. Isakson's son (who's age is 14 in the Curran article, BTW). NPOV would dictate detailing the allegations of both sides, no? Moreover, subsequent Press Register and New York Times stories have detailed the resolution and/or dismissal of many of these suits in Mr. Isakson's favor, which would tend to vindicate Mr. Isakson's allegations more than Custer Battles'. Any recent, balanced search should have turned up these articles as well. There has even been a 60 Minutes story about this case which focused on Custer Battles' fraud as part of a larger pattern in Iraq. Next, your third reference, which forms the basis for your sections 2 and 3 is an anonymous letter to the online weekly/blog the Amherst Times. That letter has been retracted by the Amherst Times as it was substantially false and potentially libellous. As you will see, the letter no longer exists at the Amherst Times site, only in a Google cache. Further, an anonymous letter to a blog that contains wild and unsubstantiated allegations, even if not retracted, hardly constitutes a "reliable source" and is not in keeping with NPOV. I reiterate, too, in this regard, that Operation Big Coon Dog does not target DRC as asserted in the anonymous letter and reference to that investigation certainly does not merit a section in this article, if even a mention. Finally, your last two references purport to support your assertions that DRCs post-Katrina work is somehow suspect. The first article (from the Times Picayune) you reference notes that the vehicle recovery project "seemed to improve" when DRC was selected, notes that Wastetech was thrown out for lack of proper bonding (which was the downfall of the first attempt to contract this job by the state), that Wastetech's proposal was disallowed but appealed, and that, according to State Purchasing, such protests are common with large bids. Citation #5 is to Wastetech's own press release on the matter. (That's about as neutral as DRC putting its press release on this page!). Again, I refer to the NPOV standard as it should be applied to the sources you cite. Let's see if we can agree on this before we proceed to the inclusion of new material. I would like to add on a final, somewhat personal note: I am a New Orleans native, now in the Katrina Diaspora. I am myself (together with my family) a victim of Hurricane Katrina, the levee failures, and the inadequate response to same. We lost about 90% of everything we owned. I have witnessed firsthand the bungling and abuses that followed the storm. I have myself reported what I suspected to be contracting abuses to media and government. I would never defend, tolerate, or fail to report any company or individual that I perceived to be participating in such abuses in the wake of that hurricane.Minewpjames 22:55, 3 March 2007 (UTC)minewpjames

Made agreed upon edits and small edits to non-NPOV language as per NPOV guidelines (e.g., removal of adjective "egregious" in section 1 and substituted verb "alleges" in section 2). The major issue that still needs to be resolved here is the use of the anonymous, non-neutral, non reliable letter to the Amherst Times blog as the principal source for this article. As far as I can tell, that is the only discernable source for the claim that DRC is under some kind investigation by "Southern District of Alabama." Since this can't be verified by another source (likely because it isn't true) I have removed it as the starting point toward a more neutral and factual article. However, I don't want to proceed further without the cooperation of the originator of the article.Minewpjames 02:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)minewpjames

After further study of Wikipedia's standards and procedures, it seems clear to me that all of the material sourced from the deleted Amherst Times letter is a violation of official Wikipedia policy concerning Attribution, Verifiability, and Reliable Sources. Moreover, as much of this material concerns unfounded and unverifiable accusations against living persons, Wikipedia policy calls for it to be removed immediately. I will do so. Minewpjames 05:35, 9 March 2007 (UTC)minewpjames

Other changes made today in the interest of neutrality, balance, and clarity: removed non-neutral language from opening overview of company; removed unsourced, unfounded reference to supposed 2004 bankruptcy; clarified language regarding the Katrina car contract based on the already cited article; subsituted the Qui Tam citation for the Amherst Times citation for matters concerning USAID; made some minor spelling and grammatical corrections.Minewpjames 05:56, 9 March 2007 (UTC)minewpjames

Cleaned up Background section and created new Custer Battles section using existing citation and language and adding additional source from the IHT.Minewpjames 21:33, 12 March 2007 (UTC)minewpjames

Removed line from USAID section for lack of reference. Minewpjames 21:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)minewpjames