Public Official, Graft

[Crap Throwing Clavin]

25 minutes ago, Foxx said:

Still blonde here...

 

I think part of the original point of the Tweets was graft and corruption.

 

$62 dollars for a toilet seat, $632 for a hammer, $436 for a six-pack of Coke, is corrupt. 

 

Although I always preferred the Independence Day excuse for that spending: that's where the secret budgets are hidden.

 

And as I recall, the toilet seat was hundreds, the hammer was thousands.  But keep in mind, too: Pentagon accounting is so screwed up that the cost of items can vary widely depending on how you crunch the numbers.  The mythical hammer, for example, was part of a bulk purchase of a slew of different items that for some reason included R&D overhead...which was amortized across all the items.  So the $11 dollar hammer, itemized on the purchase order for $11, goes in to multiple accounting systems, in one of which picked up an additional $621 in "R&D" costs that actually had nothing to do with the hammer.  

 

And that's actually my current project: materials budgeting management, including this sort of amortized cost.  And it's actually that screwed up.  So much so that there's a huge bureaucracy in place to make sure it's not exploited, and a huge bureaucracy in place to check on that bureaucracy.  A large chunk of the federal budget goes in to making sure there is no waste, fraud, and abuse...so much so that it would be cheaper to accept a small measure of waste.  The federal government will spend $10k to make sure a dollar isn't wasted.

 

And yes, that also creates a system that is subject to corruption.  But again, as I keep harping on, it's not a feature.  It's a side-effect of bureaucratic inertia and gross incompetence.  For it to be intentional, many mid-to-high level GS people would have to be actively participating and hiding it from everyone else.  Hell, I would have to be actively involved.  

 

That always ends up being the problem with these conspiracies: people at the hands-on worker level would have to be complicit, without deriving any benefit from it and taking all the risks.   

[Foxx]

2 hours ago, Crap Throwing Monkey said:

 

Although I always preferred the Independence Day excuse for that spending: that's where the secret budgets are hidden.

 

And as I recall, the toilet seat was hundreds, the hammer was thousands.  But keep in mind, too: Pentagon accounting is so screwed up that the cost of items can vary widely depending on how you crunch the numbers.  The mythical hammer, for example, was part of a bulk purchase of a slew of different items that for some reason included R&D overhead...which was amortized across all the items.  So the $11 dollar hammer, itemized on the purchase order for $11, goes in to multiple accounting systems, in one of which picked up an additional $621 in "R&D" costs that actually had nothing to do with the hammer.  

 

And that's actually my current project: materials budgeting management, including this sort of amortized cost.  And it's actually that screwed up.  So much so that there's a huge bureaucracy in place to make sure it's not exploited, and a huge bureaucracy in place to check on that bureaucracy.  A large chunk of the federal budget goes in to making sure there is no waste, fraud, and abuse...so much so that it would be cheaper to accept a small measure of waste.  The federal government will spend $10k to make sure a dollar isn't wasted.

 

And yes, that also creates a system that is subject to corruption.  But again, as I keep harping on, it's not a feature.  It's a side-effect of bureaucratic inertia and gross incompetence.  For it to be intentional, many mid-to-high level GS people would have to be actively participating and hiding it from everyone else.  Hell, I would have to be actively involved.  

 

That always ends up being the problem with these conspiracies: people at the hands-on worker level would have to be complicit, without deriving any benefit from it and taking all the risks.   

Easy solution and one where you would get people to do the work for you, for nothing.

 

Blockchain. 

[Koko]

3 hours ago, Crap Throwing Monkey said:

And that's actually my current project: materials budgeting management, including this sort of amortized cost.  And it's actually that screwed up.  So much so that there's a huge bureaucracy in place to make sure it's not exploited, and a huge bureaucracy in place to check on that bureaucracy.  A large chunk of the federal budget goes in to making sure there is no waste, fraud, and abuse...so much so that it would be cheaper to accept a small measure of waste.  The federal government will spend $10k to make sure a dollar isn't wasted.

 

'The bureaucracy must expand to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.'

[Uncle Joe]

I need to watch that Dick Cheney movie  (I'm sure it's all true/).

But how can a VP under Bush Jr and Halliburton supplying almost everything in Iraq exist without corruption. 

[Foxx]

...

 

...

 

 

[Fansince88]

On 3/11/2022 at 5:44 PM, Crap Throwing Monkey said:

 

Although I always preferred the Independence Day excuse for that spending: that's where the secret budgets are hidden.

 

And as I recall, the toilet seat was hundreds, the hammer was thousands.  But keep in mind, too: Pentagon accounting is so screwed up that the cost of items can vary widely depending on how you crunch the numbers.  The mythical hammer, for example, was part of a bulk purchase of a slew of different items that for some reason included R&D overhead...which was amortized across all the items.  So the $11 dollar hammer, itemized on the purchase order for $11, goes in to multiple accounting systems, in one of which picked up an additional $621 in "R&D" costs that actually had nothing to do with the hammer.  

 

And that's actually my current project: materials budgeting management, including this sort of amortized cost.  And it's actually that screwed up.  So much so that there's a huge bureaucracy in place to make sure it's not exploited, and a huge bureaucracy in place to check on that bureaucracy.  A large chunk of the federal budget goes in to making sure there is no waste, fraud, and abuse...so much so that it would be cheaper to accept a small measure of waste.  The federal government will spend $10k to make sure a dollar isn't wasted.

 

And yes, that also creates a system that is subject to corruption.  But again, as I keep harping on, it's not a feature.  It's a side-effect of bureaucratic inertia and gross incompetence.  For it to be intentional, many mid-to-high level GS people would have to be actively participating and hiding it from everyone else.  Hell, I would have to be actively involved.  

 

That always ends up being the problem with these conspiracies: people at the hands-on worker level would have to be complicit, without deriving any benefit from it and taking all the risks.   

About 25 years ago a good friend of mine owned a computer programing business. He was approached about a system here at our local military base Fort Drum. He had done some much smaller networking systems. The system he was asked to bid was a much larger scale and he stood to make 20k personally with this system. He went in at 125k for all of the work. He was the only bidder. They told him they had 145k in budget and he had to bring it up or they would get the next years budget cut. So his profit was 40k.