Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) presents its 2019 Pork-Barrel Madness bracket in honor of the NCAA tournament. The bracket features 32 of the worst pork-barrel earmarks of all time. Taxpayers will be able to vote on CAGW’s Twitter account @GovWaste. Voting on the first-round matchups begins on March 11 and the torunament will end on April 1.
DOD’s JEDI Contract Subject to Further Scrutiny
The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud services contract is facing new challenges as the Pentagon investigates potential conflicts of interest by former employees involved in the drafting of the request for proposal (RFP).
Farm Bill Conferees Should Avoid Broadband Overbuild
Broadband overbuild using taxpayer dollars has been an ongoing problem across this country. Some providers will obtain a grant or loan from a federal agency to build out broadband in rural communities and then use the funding to either deploy or upgrade equipment where broadband already exists rather than spend taxpayer resources on unserved communities […]
DOD Auditors Swing and Miss
Auditors at the Department of Defense (DOD) have provided a blueprint for underachieving students everywhere: they may have failed the test, but they never expected to pass! Speaking to reporters on November 15, 2018, Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan stated “We failed the audit, but we never expected to pass it.” While the DOD […]
Congressional Eye Turns to DOD’s JEDI Contract
One wonders if the “Force” is working against the Department of Defense (DOD) with its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project (JEDI). The contract bid request that by some estimates could reach $10 billion to build an enterprise-level commercial cloud solution, including Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service, to support the all defense agencies […]
Lost in Space: New Branch Makes Little Sense
Citizens Against Government Waste has previously covered the idea of creating a sixth military branch. The argument in favor of a Space Force is almost entirely without merit. It will increase bureaucracy, add to overhead costs, and complicate existing command structures, all without providing additional capabilities. For these very reasons, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was […]
DOJ Files Suit Against California’s Onerous Net Neutrality Law
While not unexpected, it was still disappointing to see California Governor Jerry Brown (D) sign into law Senate Bill 822, creating the most restrictive set of rules for internet service providers (ISPs) in U.S. history. California has often attempted to set standards for the rest of the nation in everything from the environment to technology, […]
FCC Commissioner Offers Commonsense Advice to Rural Utilities Service
Publicly-funded broadband overbuild is an ongoing problem across the country. It is far easier to deploy new services alongside existing infrastructure than to build-out to those who remain in unserved areas. On March 23, 2018, President Trump signed into law H.R. 1625, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, which funds the government through September 30, […]
States Must Stop Diverting 9-1-1 Fees
The National Emergency Number Association estimates that 240 million 9-1-1 calls are made each year, with more than 80 percent of those calls originating from wireless devices in some areas of the country. The 9-1-1 emergency systems, including fire and rescue operations, are funded, in part, through fees imposed on consumer telephone bills. Unfortunately, over […]
House Subcommittee Concerned over “Too Big to Fail” Mentality at NASA
On Thursday, June 14, 2018, the House of Representative’s Subcommittee on Space met to discuss the rising cost and schedule overruns at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). These overruns were attributed to what NASA Inspector General Paul Martin described as a “too big to fail” optimism at the agency, lack of consequences for […]