The U.S. Ambassador to an African nation asked his facility manager to order four flower pots for the embassy; nothing fancy, just four plastic flower pots. He came back and said, on second thought; order a truck load of them since there is a lot of money left in the facilities budget and it should all be spent. The facility manager ordered the pots, and when they arrived, four of them were placed where they were needed around the embassy compound. The rest were unloaded and placed out of sight behind a building, where they were left to slowly crumble in the blazing African sun.
The Rural Broadband Boondoggle
In the 2009 stimulus bill, Congress allocated $2.5 billion to the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) to fund its Broadband Initiatives Program (BIP), all of which was supposed to be spent by the end of June 2015. This was a massive influx of money for a small agency whose previous annual average budget for broadband programs was approximately $290 million in direct loans and grants.
F-35 Approved for Combat, Problems Persist
The acquisition misadventures of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program have been well-documented. In development for nearly 15 years and four years behind schedule, the program is currently projected to cost $391.1 billion for 2,457 aircraft, or 68 percent more than its original estimate of $233 billion. An April 2015 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report noted that the lifetime operation and maintenance costs of the most expensive weapon system in history will total approximately $1 trillion.
A Billion Here – A Billion There
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as ObamaCare, has chucked more money down the memory hole than Agent J’s Neuralyzer in Men in Black. More than $5.3 billion has been doled out to 48 states and the District of Columbia, ranging from planning grants to establishment grants by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), to create state-based online exchanges; $2.4 billion in start-up and solvency loans have been provided to establish 23 Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OP); and as of September 2014, $2.1 billion was spent to build the Federally-facilitated exchange, Healthcare.gov.
Obama’s Clean Power Plan: All Pain, No gain
During a January 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, then-Senator Barack Obama remarked that under his ideal energy plan, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” He further noted that by capping greenhouse gasses, producers of energies like coal would need to make vast changes and, “that will cost money. They will pass that money onto consumers.”
Five Free-Wheeling Follies of the Federal Housing Administration: What Taxpayers Need to Know
It is very interesting how swiftly Washington can move when taxpayers aren’t “in the know.”
The IP Transition Is Coming
An innovative and ever changing communications landscape benefits everyone. This is one of the reasons the IP transition is an important component to the future of communications. While the evolution of the transition from copper to fiber may not necessarily be on everyone’s radar screen, how this transition is managed will have ramifications for years […]
Bigger is not Better
News broke on Friday, July 24 that Anthem, the largest for-profit managed health care company in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, will purchase Cigna for $48.4 billion. The total deal, which includes purchasing Cigna’s debt, is worth $54.2 billion. Cigna is known primarily for administrating health insurance coverage for large employers. The Wall […]
More Proof the 340B Program Needs Reform
A July 6, 2015 GAO report confirms that reform of the 340B program is necessary.
Congress’s Claim to be a Small Business Brings on an Ethics Complaint
According to the Small Business Act of 1958, “a small-business concern … shall be deemed to be one that is … independently owned and operated and which is not dominant in its field of operation.” Under the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 13, Chapter 1, Section 121.105, “a business concern eligible for assistance from SBA as a small business is a business entity organized for profit, with a place of business located in the United States, and which operates primarily within the United States or which makes a significant contribution to the U.S. economy through payment of taxes or use of American products, materials or labor.”