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mburbank · #1

When the administration suggested we cut hardship pay for combat soldiers in the gulf, having already slashed education assistance to veterans families and veterans benefits (in Massachusetts where I lived, the psych unit at the VA hospital in Jamaica Plain had to be closed and it's patients moved to a unit in Brickton, which was already full) some idiot on this board said it was a bad thing, but unless we cut social programs for the poor, there was no way to pay soldiers benefits. Since then, I've been finding some other sources of money here and there that perhaps our government was wasting.

Here's a dandy little savings we might have had the pentagon had taken bids, encouraging competion, capitalism and free market to do it;s work instead of awarding a big contract.

The following is from Slate:

In mid-May, the Pentagon, without going through any of the normal bidding procedures, awarded a $45 million contract to WorldCom/MCI to build a cellular network. The award prompted much grumbling among industry insiders, since that company—besides having just settled the largest financial fraud case in American business—had no prior experience at building cellular networks. (For a while, MCI had resold AT&T wireless carriers within the United States, but it had recently dropped even that line.)

"Not until July did the cellular network in Iraq start up, and it turned out to be less than occupation officials expected—or needed. According to officials who were there at the time, they could use the phones (which cost a staggering $4,000 a piece) to talk only among themselves. The network did not extend, or link, to Iraqi telephones.

The U.S. reconstruction officials in Baghdad could not even talk with U.S. military officers down the street. The Army had, in June, contracted Motorola to create a separate network for security forces.

According to a Defense Department official, if someone working for the U.S. occupation authority needed to talk with a battalion commander, there was no way to make direct contact. He or she had to call a desk officer back in the Pentagon, who would jot down the message and call the commander himself. If the commander wanted to reply to the message, the same desk officer would jot down the response and call back the occupation authority.

This, some officers say, is why the U.S. authorities in Baghdad so often look like they don't know what they're doing—because they don't. Many of them are smart, talented, and eager. But they can't talk with the Army about security, they can't talk with Iraqi specialists about civil needs—in short, they can't find out what they need to find out—so, for far too much of their time, they sit, paralyzed and helpless."

45 MILLION BUCKS, without bid, to a company with RECENT HISTORY OF CRIMINAL FRAUD that has NEVER DONE THE TYPE OF WORK THEY'RE BEING HIRED TO DO!! $4000.00 per phone. PER PHONE!

And who does that money come from? You and me. Our taxes. This gets me a little more upset than welfare fraud.

El Blanco · #2

If they had used T-Mobile, all our troops would have gotten free color picture phones.

Immortal Goat · #3

Maybe we should just stop paying Bush's salary. Or at least take the cost of all his vacations out of his own pocket and pay that money to the soldiers.

ranxer · #4

is it true that D.C. was shut down for hurricane isabel at a cost of 95 million??! sheesh.. i'm not a gambling person but it would have been cheaper to ask them to show up for work considering the hurricane was going to be out of steam by the time it hit D.C. :/

Abcdxxxx · #5

The One and Only... · #6

Perhaps now you can understand why some of us don't like socialized healthcare. Gubbermint always does things the most inefficient way possible.

mburbank · #7

You're absolutely right. Healthcare is deffinitely pretty much the same as call phones.

I don't mean I don't see what you're trying to say, but that was almost Vinthonian in the sense tat whike this thread may have something to do with Government fraud, it had nothing to do whatsoever with healthcare and you have to be pretty uniminded to turn it in that direction.

We don't have national health. We do have MCI charging four grand for phones that don't work and creeps like Vinth bitching about pennies poor people get.