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DOJ Names Dozens of IT Vendors in Kickback Scheme
grantus writes "Today, the U.S. Department of Justice joined three whistleblower lawsuits against Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Accenture alleging a massive kickback scheme on government contracts. Among the IT vendors listed in the lawsuit as Accenture partners are Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Dell and Oracle."
The corruption in question isn't in the government, it's in the vendors that sell products and services to the government.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If you had RTFA, you would have seen that the corruption wasn't with the govt. but with other companies. The other companies received money from Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Dell and Oracle, among others for preferential treatment when it came to govt contracts.
RTFA, the US government was the ones that where getting scammed.
Effectively with government contracts all the companies would agree to estimate far higher then it would ever take to fill the order. Step two, the contract winner would take the amount of money for the contract, subtract how much it really would have taken(this being raw "bonus" profit) and split that amongst the group since it involved the entire group to go along with it for it to work. Wait for the next contract and do it all over again, scamming millions if not billions from the US government who thought that it was getting a good deal off of each company fighting for the deal when really it was getting scammed by a pseudo-monopoly.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
I guess you see only what you want to see.
...blah, blah, blah, OUTSIDE!, blah, blah...
Reminds me of that Far Side cartoon "What a dog hears"
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
As if. IBM's head intellectual property attorney once bragged (under an NDA'd room that included Vint Cerf and Dave Farber) that they'd spent all $60M of their DC lobbying budget to make sure no new tlds were created.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Imagine this being a normal person. Like, someone cheating at taxes. What does immediately follow a revelation like this? I mean, besides the lawsuit that strips him to his bones and beyond (though I doubt the same is gonna happen to Cisco, MS and the rest of the organized cri... I mean honorable corporations).
Right. New laws that should increase "transparency". Read: Make you more transparent for the powers that be, and any complaints from the ACLU would be shot down with reference to those crooks that dared to cheat Uncle Sam and his poor children (i.e. the citizens of the USA), how dare you be against laws protecting them?
So... I'm now waiting for the corresponding laws, or at least suggestions, to make corporations more transparent and make them better manageable and taxable.
Though... I think I better not hold my breath. Suffocating is one of the worst ways to die.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I see your point, but if you look at the two parties involved, buisness and goverment. Buisness (capitalism) is doing what "it is", makeing sure it obtains a surplus of funds and market, where as the goverment (democracy) fails to be ruled by the people and follow a few select people.
A democracy that is allowed direct contact with special interest groups and lobbyism will drift towards an oligarchy, unless both (goverment and buisness) have a strong morale and/or rules (law) that are upheld. An oligarchy can, of course, only happend if the people let it, but I will let that be up to you (plural) to judge if that will happen.
Note to self: Don't try to write political posts at 5AM when you haven't been to bed yet. XD
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Yeah, yeah. And some say "new Senate majority leader makes shady real estate deals in Las Vegas and hides the income" or "the Democrat congressman from Louisiana with $90,000 of bribes found in his freezer was just put by Pelosi on the committee overseeing Homeland Security affairs" too. Are you really prepared to assert that none of the thousands of career agency and departmental procurement people that have their hands in the administration of federal IT contracts weren't hired during the previous administration, or don't consider themselves to be Democrats? Wake me up when the party you clearly prefer doesn't, while wagging its finger at the other party and promising to cut down on pet project funding once they got control of congress, graft almost $4 billions in pork onto a defense appropriations bill (peanut storage? giving tax dollars to spinach growers that weren't insured against e coli losses?) to buy supporting votes from their otherwise skittish fellow party members. Nah, never mind. Cuz, that would require some honesty about your double standards. Want to bitch about politicians? Fine. Me too. Just don't pretend that your preferred political camp isn't also a fabulous source of shallow, grasping, corrupt twits and the inevitable resulting satire.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Usually, governments don't order a dishwasher or a fridge. They order power plants and recycling centers. And there are only so many companies who can offer those.
Also, as the government you can't only take price and quality into consideration. There is a reason why the feds drive around in US built cars and not in BMWs. Simply 'cause one of their goals is to increase the own infrastructure and business power and rely as far as possible on goods built in the country.
Military hardware is even more complicated, since you have to trust the companies far further than with some ordinary civilian stuff.
So your choices become very, very narrow. You usually only have a handful of companies to pick from, if that. So it's easy for them to form a cartel, if only a "secret" one, by fixing prices and splitting the revenue. And that, in turn, is illegal.
So you can't simply assume there is someone "outside" the cartel. The company would have to be in your country, it would have to be large enough to be able to offer the service requested. And if it isn't part of the cartel, they would quickly find a way to acquire and split that competitor.
Business is a shark's world. Don't think they would accept a competitor without fighting him with claws and teeth.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
you don't get it at all do you? let me break it down some more. company A and company B secretly agree to quote a lot more then what they would normally quote, and which ever one of them wins the contract sub contracts the REAL price out to the other, with the winner skimming the fat off the top of the "arranged" price and the loser getting the work(which would still be a very healthy profit). everyone wins - except the tax payer which gets screwed with artifical prices.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Show of hands if you are surprised that the voters don't give a damn* and continue to re-elect said corrupt politicians and buy from corrupt corporations.
*to the point of being just as corrupt if the politician brings home a sufficient amount of bacon. Dan Rostenkowski has always been my favorite example since he also exemplified Chicago politics as well. Monkey see, monkey do. Can't blame the politicians when they have full public approval.
What?
CNN doesn't have a prayer of the week? Both sides are equally corrupted. There is a saying the Republicans Take the money out of your right pocket, the Democrats stand to your left and take the money out of your right pocket. They are all just as corruptible. Republicans favor the rich by giving them tax breaks. Democrats say they want to help the poor by using tax money for government services that seem to help the poor but they are so complex to access that only the rich seem to get the services. The fair and competitive bidding process is just a joke, they are particularly written so only one company can win the bid. It is just we are so blind sided and think if we choose a side it will lead us to a perfect life that we miss that our side is just as corrupted as the other. So what if the link has a "prayer request of the week" just because they are openly religious and most likely right wing doesn't make the fact that corruption in the democrat party doesn't exist. Just as the more liberal sources just because they are Atheists or Support Gay rights it and most likely left wing doesn't make the fact the Republicans corruption doesn't exist.
We like the 2 Party system because it make us believe that there is a good and evil party. If one side agrees and the other disagrees then you figure that one side needs to be right and the other needs to be wrong. While the truth can be both are right or both are wrong or right about some parts and wrong about others. Stop following party lines and think for yourself.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.