The Insanity of the Federal Witch Hunt Against Lance Armstrong and US Postal Cycling

A fascinating article in Fast Company this month about the future of Livestrong with more accusations being made against Lance Armstrong, specifically during his days as a team member of the US Cycling postal cycling team. Now that Floyd Landis has been stripped of any pride he had connected with professional bicycle racing, he looks at the million of dollars coming with a tell all book and other opportunities. He's leaving no stone unturned as he makes the US Postal Cycling team out to be a bunch of performance enhancement drug junkies. In doing so, he has the federal government ready to come down hard on Lance Armstrong, which may have real implications in Armstrong's successful Livestrong Foundation--a cancer awareness and research charity showcased by the famous yellow bracelets.

Where does federal authority come in to investigate athletes who spend most of their time racing in Europe? That's a very good question, but it seems to come down to sponsorship and the desire to recoup sponsorship money, which was quite minimal, with the United States Postal Service.

There appears to be a much larger political force driving the investigation. It appears Congress may be willing to cover up their own crimes in order to make Lance Armstrong and the US Postal cycling team the bad guys. You see the federal government raped the postal employees pension plans, and now the United States Postal Service, which operated efficiently without debt at one time now runs in deeply into the red thanks to Congress raiding these pension plans. One has to wonder what motivates the Federal Government to prompt Landis up in hopes of bringing Armstrong down for the USPS investment in the team.

The investigation began last May, when Floyd Landis, who had been stripped of his 2006 Tour title after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, told prosecutors that he and his former U.S. Postal Service team, including Armstrong, cheated and even sold their bikes to pay for drugs. Now Landis has filed a whistle-blower suit that could help his credibility and net him millions if the government recovers ill-gotten sponsorship money. "This news that Floyd Landis is in this for the money reconfirms everything we all knew about Landis," Fabiani said in a statement about the suit. "What remains a complete mystery is why the government would devote a penny of the taxpayer's money to help Floyd Landis further his vile, cheating ambitions. And all aimed directly at Lance Armstrong, a man who earned every victory and passed every test while working for cancer survivors all over the world."

That's right, Landis story is so outrageous, that Lance Armstrong, a man who knows the comforts of life, needed performance enhancing drugs so badly that he sounds more like a broke heroin addict, according to Landis, than multi-millionaire. While I am not convinced that Armstrong is innocent, this description of the US Cycling team selling their bikes to pay for drugs seems a little out there. I don't think the drugs in professional sports are that hard to come by. For crying out loud, we are told every day there is a national epidemic of high school kids acquiring these same drugs for high school sports.

Landis is a man in desperate need of money for his own legal battles resulting when he tested positive and made a mockery out of one of the greatest sporting events in the world. The article continues.

The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, reported that investigators are exploring possible drug distribution, fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering.

While I don't know anything about that, as they are just rumors surrounding the story, there does seem to be a motive.

Cycling Weekly suggests, this case will hit the buffers because of a lack of proof and a tightening of cycling's rule of omerta which makes it almost impossible for individuals to tell the authorities what they know for fear of being abandoned to their fate.

They point out what federal investigators really want to know is how the US Postal Service money was used. It obvious, this is about money and possibly recouping the investment the US Postal Service made in the team. One has to wonder, if the United States Postal Service wasn't running in the red after years of Congressional abuses and possibly wrong doing with postal pensions, would this even be talked about.

Which brings us back to this one sentence from the Fast Company article: Now Landis has filed a whistle-blower suit that could help his credibility and net him millions if the government recovers ill-gotten sponsorship money.

Landis will be awarded money if the government find Armstrong and team used money illegally, and Landis will not only make money from book deals and media events, it appears the United States government is luring him with some attached to a carrot.

It's all very interesting. Our federal government can steal from the postal employees pensions, and when the postal service starts operating in the red year after year because of it, the federal government goes out of its way to find a villain. It seems quite shameful to me. Perhaps, it's time to investigate Congress for the billions they took from the Post Office and let Lance Armstrong continue his good work of being an ambassador for cancer. This idea that Lance Armstrong is the real criminal in this story is simply absurd.