Privatize it!

I've done some procurement stuff in my work and there's a lot of safeguards against blatant waste of this manner. Most purchases have to come off the GSA website, and for contractors I have to get at least three separate quotes.
The Coast Guard doesn't have money. There's no way we'd allow something like this to happen. Here it looks like Haliburton was given a book full of blank checks and were allowed to spend without any oversight like that kid from the film Blank Check.

I think you meant Freedom Checks.


FREEDOM ISNT FREE!!

Privatization just adds two (or more) management classes to have to deal with. Anybody who has had to deal with contractors in a government position knows all too well what that means. There is zero bonus to efficiency by having private corporations do things for the public. The argument that "competition creates efficiency" is nullified in the public sector by these things called elections and consumer discontent.

My dad was in the junior executive service and had his career blacklisted during the Reagan years because he fired a contractor for delivering a slideshow after years of "work," in exchange for ,000,000 in taxpayer dollars. It was a company that had no business developing software, but had been contracted by who knows who to do so for a waste management utility (the irony). It was not a software company, it was just a sweetheart deal coming from Congress somewhere. It was my dad's giant FUCK YOU to the Federal government, and he never looked back.

In California at least, I've heard that when contractors "compete" (how much actual competition goes on is debatable) for contracts, the local government - at city level I think - is required to take the cheapest contract. This could vary between counties, cities and so on. I'm sure someone here knows more than I do. Then there's over-budgeting and who knows how much other crap.

I totally remember this documentary - especially the burning computer pits.

PegLegPete: I think bidding companies compensate for this by structuring add-ons, time and materials clauses, and so on into the contract to insure a higher than agreed amount by job completion. Basically, this allows for rampant underbidding.

The centuries of religious tensions and violent dictatorships had nothing to do with them. It was all about evil private entities turning a profit. Right.

What I meant was our involvement.

THE MOST profitable war for the MIC was the one started against a secular dictator.

Afghanistan didn't have nearly as much base building, city rebuilding, etc to make the same massive profits.

>>The centuries of religious tensions and violent dictatorships had nothing to do with them. It was all about evil private entities turning a profit. Right.

No actually it wqas about Saddam's Weapons of Mass destruction, right?