Thursday, July 19, 2007

Why doesn't this surprise me?


From USA Today:

Government auditors discovered something odd last year when they reviewed KBR Inc.'s annual cost estimate to provide support services for U.S. troops in Iraq. The contractor proposed charging $110 million for housing, food, water, laundry and other services on bases that had been shut down.

KBR got a contract extension for $3.7 billion, but it agreed to drop the proposed $110 million spending on closed bases and an additional $50 million of duplicate charges and math errors, according to Defense Department records obtained by USA TODAY under the Freedom of Information Act.

Linda Theis of the Army Sustainment Command, the agency that oversees KBR's troop-support contract, downplayed the errors. They amount to just 4.3% of the contract amount, she said. "This percentage does not indicate a systemic weakness in business systems."


Nice of them to agree to drop the fraudulent charges after they were caught charging them. Gee thanks, guys!

Now can you imagine how the administration would come down on a cheating welfare mother if she got caught with an extra cupla hunnerd bucks?

5 comments:

Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein said...

I was going to leave a comment that siad, "So true!" Or, "Right on girl!" But then I saw your tag that said, "Dick Sucks." Too damn funny.

Fran said...

That is hilarious - Dick sucks.

Too bad this isn't hilarious at all.

It is all just effed up isn't it?

Yoga Korunta said...

The poor woman would be sent to Guantanamo Bay Prison--for life.

Johnny Yen said...

"Steal a little and they throw you in jail/Steal a lot and they make you king"- Bob Dylan, Sweetheart Like You

My son and I were talking about that the other day-- one of my ex's brother-in-laws is a whacko right-winger, and Adam was talking about his uncle's perception that everyone on welfare is on welfare because they don't want to work, and that the Republican Party is his Grand Protector, keeping thos people from taking all his money.

I pointed out to my son that corporations, particularly military-related ones, are the biggest cheats in the world-- that the piffling amount of money that welfare cheats make is tiny compared to the vast fraud perpetrated by the military-industrial complex. Prime example-- the B-2 bomber program-- $40 billion on 20 bombers that the Air Force begged them not to make-- with the end of the Cold War they had no mission for them, and they're prohibitively expensive to operate. But good ol' boy Newt Ginrich forced in down their throats because his district had large amounts of pork rolling in from it.

Jess Wundrun said...

dr and fran maybe I should make a line of Dick Sucks tee shirts?

yoga sadly, in my state that is nearer the truth than not. Though not Guantanamo, we are trying to incarcerate alot of poor people. Poor people of color? even more.

johnny Can you imagine if the government took pallets of cash into say, the southside of Chicago? Or dropped those pallets off at a school? But yeah, nine million in cash on pallets and I don't think your avg. American really even cares. And thanks for the Dylan.