Billions of Defense Dollars Lost to Incompetency and Failure of Oversight
Opinion by Berry Rosenberg on Huffington Post
Defense contractors failing to deliver on their contracts have routinely victimized every branch of military service. This is certainly not a new phenomenon. It has, however, been allowed to sink to new lows under Pentagon leaders like acquisition chief Kenneth Kreig and Republican leaders like Sen. John Warner and Rep. Duncan Hunter, who until recently chaired their respective chamber's Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Ted Stevens, long-time former chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Under their stewardship, hundreds [of millions] if not billions of defense dollars were squandered on cost overruns, program delays and/or technical failures. At the same time, the contractors responsible for those failures were recording record profits. This is white-collar crime on the order of Enron, except the losers are our troops and the ultimate security of our nation.
Read the rest ...
Government becomes THE PROBLEM when we put people in charge who believe GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM and believe that the way to fix the problem is to sabotage as much of government as possible. There is a difference between "The government IS the problem" and "there are problems with government. The former is destructive (based on empirical experience with the Bush administration), the latter at least presents to possibility of hope that the problems might be fixed without throwing the baby out with the bath water.
We The People - we ARE the government and, if there is a problem with government,n it is of our creation through the people we've elected and the policies we support.
But getting back on track ... free-marketers believe that a totally unrestricted market will cure all of our troubles. If this were even somewhat true then we should abolish educational requirements for Doctors ... because the market will eventually weed out the incompetent ones.
We should do away with the Transportation Safety standards that require specific maintenance protocols for commercial airlines. The market will eventually weed out those who skimp on maintenance. Right?
Highway traffic signs are regulations. Perhaps we should dispense with those as well. After all, regulation is an anathema.
But I'm confused ... how do Republican supported "no bid" contracts fit into a market economy?
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