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Kansas is Trying to Unload $10M in Unused Computer Equipment (apnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:
Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer's administration is seeking a way to donate or sell at a steep discount as much as $10 million in unused computer equipment that has been stored in a state office building since 2016. The state still owes $2 million on the equipment, which it bought in 2016 as part of a failed plan to develop a centralized storage system, call Kansas GovCloud, for computer information. That idea was canceled by state IT officials who said it was too expensive. Instead, the state contracts with an outside company to store data on remote servers.
Attempts to sell the equipment failed to attract bidders, leading to discussions about finding someone to take the equipment before its value dropped to the level of scrap metal, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported. Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, said the state allocated $17 million, including $10 million for the equipment, before dropping the storage idea. Selling it for pennies on the dollar or donating it to someone has merit, he said. "The point is, equipment after a while just becomes obsolete. If somebody can use it, great. If you can get some money out of it, fine," Holland said.
Attempts to sell the equipment failed to attract bidders, leading to discussions about finding someone to take the equipment before its value dropped to the level of scrap metal, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported. Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, said the state allocated $17 million, including $10 million for the equipment, before dropping the storage idea. Selling it for pennies on the dollar or donating it to someone has merit, he said. "The point is, equipment after a while just becomes obsolete. If somebody can use it, great. If you can get some money out of it, fine," Holland said.
$17 million is cheap compared to the cost of data breaches on "third party clown" systems, and the cost of giving private data to the likes of Scumazon and Scroogle to play with.
State had $17 million to waste on useless computers while their teachers were getting paid so little they had to work second and third jobs. I read about some teachers working at McDonalds after they finished teaching school. Keep in mind Kansas had a budget surplus before a trickle down economic ideologue became a governor. After what happened in Kansas should be death knell for myth of trickle down economy.
And the geniuses at the state level have or have not considered donating this to other public entities in the state, e.g., the public school systems, state universities, etc. that probably all receive some level of state funding?
Sales pitch: Quick! Buy it before it becomes worthless.
It's just dust in the wind.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Same contractor for healthcare.gov seems they are trying to unload the equipment to a school . https://www.seattletimes.com/n...
Back in the early/mid 80's my company bought 4 DEC PC clones for something like $3500 each (PC at the time were about $2k, depending on options). They sucked on multiple levels. The one I remember is the OS (MS-DOS) didn't come with the format program, you had to buy formatted discs from DEC for like $2 each. Or get one of your engineers to format a $0.25 disc at home and bring it in. Whatever. The managers that got them soon gave them to senior engineers, who soon gave them to team leads, who soon realized nobody wanted them. At that point every engineer worth a damn had their own PC at home that cost half as much and was twice as powerful.
Company ended up donating them to a charity or school, and deducted the full purchase price from their taxes. How do I know this? The president of the company, in a company wide meeting, said so.
'Computer equipment' could mean anything. If it were practical things like disk drives, SSD, or tons of memory that could be easily used in other hardware then I think they could have gotten some decent bids on it. The fact that they couldn't attract any bids tells me either it is all junk, or they are not giving out proper information so they can unload it for pennies on the dollar to some crony friend who will make a killing on the deal at taxpayer expense.
It's not anarchy, but Democrats swept the Kansas statewide office elections.
To give you an idea of how bad the Kansas GOP is, the people of Kansas elected a Native American lesbian to Congress over a Republican guy that Donald Trump campaigned and did rallies for and endorsed, and in a district that has been Republican for just about ever.
You are welcome on my lawn.
and not median. I suspect the numbers are heavily cooked. I make good money in IT and I don't spend my evenings at McDonalds. Yet we know for a fact many teachers in Kansas are doing just that. Too many for it to be the occasional workaholic.
I know that in my neck of the woods schools in wealthy neighborhoods have much, much better pay. That's because schools are funded by property taxes, so wealthy districts have wealthy schools. That would, of course, screw up the averages. I can't find any sources for the $44k and $56k figures being but I wouldn't be surprised to find University research professors mixed in there with their $100k+ salaries. Again, anything to inflate the average.
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and they're trying to cover that up. e.g. it was all just a grift. Kansas has gotten really, really corrupt these last 8 years or so.
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Incompetent. Just like the government of whatever blue state you live in.
Kansas is particularly bad though. The drooling fool Brownback pretty much bankrupted the joint with his "aggressive experiment in conservative economic policy".
It shows just how stupid Republicans are when it comes to running an economy.
Maybe you missed it but Kansas is a red state already taking hand outs from blue states