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Pentagon Lost Billions, Pennies At a Time
Hugh Pickens writes "MSNBC reports that in 1969, Walter T. Davey, an aeronautical engineer at North American Rockwell, discovered he was being overpaid by roughly 2 cents an hour, or one-third of 1 percent of his pay. Davey submitted the discovery to his superiors and suggested a simple fix. 'It was so simple to correct,' said Davey, a 79-year-old retired Air Force colonel, 'just change a few digits in the coding software.' The Project on Government Oversight, which reviewed Davey's findings last year, estimated the change could save taxpayers $270 million a year. Multiply by 40 years — the length of time since Davey made his discovery — and the figure grows to an astounding $10.8 billion. Legislators ignored Davey's letters, federal auditors deferred to Congress, and lobbyists 'descended on it and tore it into a piece of Swiss cheese' but legislators aren't eager to challenge the powerful defense lobby about a figure that's a relative pittance in the overall defense budget — even if it exceeds $100 million annually. 'A lot of people have taken advantage of the system to reap as much in taxpayer dollars as possible,' says Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight. 'But when you're going up against the contractor lobby — whether you're an individual across the country or a public interest group or a government employee — it's a tough road.'"
he made $6.00 an hour, and he was complaining about being overpaid?
nice.
"Ok! Ok! I must have, I must have put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit! I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail."
In all likelihood, it will be our own military contractors, too politically powerful to reign in, who will eventually destroy our military effectiveness. We can spend as much as we like(and we already do) but, so long as our spending is a mixture of "what Raytheon feels like producing" and "the ultimate weapon against the forces of the evil empire rolling across Europe in alternate-1979" it won't do nearly as much good as we would like.
I wonder if this is how the Romans felt?
You can get the official consumer price index, from 1913 up to now here. $6 in 1969 would translate to approximately $36 today.
For older historical data, plus many other interesting historical data about prices and economic indicators, this site is very interesting.
This issue could be considered more of a scapegoat for the horrendous spending and poor budget management of the many poorly managed defense contracts over the last 40 years. Trust me, 10 Billion pales in comparison to what has been directly wasted. Also, 10 Billion dollars may seem a lot, but given its based around 40 years it cuts it down quite a bit.
aka Richard Pryor Art
Contrary to popular belief, the main purpose of most government spending is simply to create new money. This allows subsequent credit expansion and "growth".
That theory starts to break down when the money your government is spending actually belongs to China...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
This sounds like a "King of the Hill" episode, writ large.
"No, Peggy, you don't understand! They're OVERPAYING ME! I'm stealing from the government, I tell you what! And I can't get them to stop! It keeps me up at night, I tell you what!"
Forty years later: A Colonel shows up at Hank's door.
- "Mr Hill? We've responded to your letter, and it turns out you were right. We have been overpaying you all this time."
- (sighs.) "I always knew this day would come." (hold out his wrists) "I'll come along quietly."
- "No, no, Mr. Hill! You don't understand. We're implementing the fix you suggested. It'll save the government millions of dollars a year. We just wanted to thank you!"
- "Oh. Huh. Well, thank you sir. But in that case, can I at least give you back the money?"
- "I beg your pardon?"
- "Wait here." (Hank goes to his garage, wheels out a 50-gal drum on a hand truck.) "I've been putting the extra pennies in here since 1969, I tell you what. And now I'm ready to return it."
- (smiles) "No, you go ahead and keep that. We're cool." (leaves)
- "Alright! I can go to college now!"
- "Bobby, go to your room!"
- "I'm 45 years old! You can't make me go to my room!"
- "Now, mister!"
- "Aw.."
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Actors:
Arnold Schwarzenegger's salary for The Terminator: $75,000
Arnold Schwarzenegger's salary for The Terminator 2: $15,000,000
Arnold Schwarzenegger's salary for The Terminator 3: $30,000,000 + 20% of the profits (about 117 million).
Arnold Schwarzenegger's salary as governor: $206,500 - which he waived cause he already earned over 230 mil. (that is without these 117 T3-millions) over his 30 years in the movies.
Indicating that he himself felt that he was being overpaid already.
Same guy, same role, 400 times the original pay.
Sure, sequels made a lot more money but still - $147,000,000 for a year's work? That is almost $17000 per hour - including being paid for sleeping, eating etc.
Singers:
Britney Spears makes about $737,000 per month. That comes out to about $1024 per hour. (Is that a kilobuck or megabuck?)
Again - getting paid for sleeping.
HOW is that not overpaid?
And let us not even start with football, baseball, soccer and other enthusiasts who are little more than overpaid manual labor.
Getting millions for kicking a ball around? Fuck that! That is not work.
That is why you never hear about a "job" or "work" or "assignment" of basketball.
What were the words they use? Aaah.. yes!
They PLAY a GAME.
The only group of professional actors/entertainers (IMHO) who are not being overpaid (and are actually underpaid) are porn actors and actresses.
Anyone who does not agree - you try "performing" in front of cameras for hours and then upload that online for all to see.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Bush inherited not only a dot-com crash from Clinton, but also the headache of Saddam and Bin Laden.....I haven't liked any of our presidents since the Ronald Reagan/Bush Senior combo.
For someone who likes Reagan and hates Clinton you don't seem to know much about them. It was Reagan who allied himself with Saddam Hussein and gave him money and weapons. From wikipedia:
The Reagan administration gave Saddam roughly $40 billion in aid in the 1980s to fight Iran, nearly all of it on credit. The U.S. also sent billions of dollars to Saddam to keep him from forming a strong alliance with the Soviets. Saddam's Iraq became "the third-largest recipient of US assistance".
Reagan's support for the Mujahadeen also played a role in giving Bin Laden more power:
Alhough there is no evidence that the CIA directly supported the Taliban or Al Qaeda, some basis for military support of the Taliban was provided when, in the early 1980s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Agency) provided arms to Afghans resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the ISI assisted the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviets. Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing training camps for the foreign Muslim volunteers. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan, and "by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war.
So before you start blaming Clinton for everything, you might want to read up a bit on your history.
I came here for a good argument
Can we just all agree that we haven't had a good president in at least 60 years?
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