waste – The Burning Platform

OBAMA PISSES AWAY $104 BILLION OF YOUR TAX DOLLARS IN AFGHANISTAN

With Eyes on ISIS, America’s $104B in Afghanistan Is Failing

By Brianna Ehley,
The Fiscal Times
September 15, 2014

While the eyes of the world are on Iraq and President Obama’s plans to defeat ISIS, the chief auditor in charge of overseeing the U.S. reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan has a warning to policy makers: Don’t forget about the other war-torn country that has already cost hundreds of billions of dollars and has serious problems with corruption and sustainability.

So far, the United States has poured more than $104 billion into Afghanistan reconstruction efforts – that’s more than all the money spent on reconstructing Europe after World War II. Much of that money, as auditors have noted, has been lost to waste, fraud and abuse. In 2010, SIGAR accountants told The Fiscal Times they could only account for less than 10 percent of that money.

That’s a shocking sum, especially since Congress has already authorized another $16 billion to spend in Afghanistan in the next few years. Still, despite spending an “unprecedented” amount of money to rebuild this country, it has no strategy to weed out corruption – leaving hundreds of billions of tax dollars vulnerable, John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) told an audience at Georgetown University on Friday.

“This is astonishing, given that Afghanistan is one of the most corrupt countries in the world and a country that the United States is spending billions of dollars in,” the auditor said. He added that “things could get worse with the drawdown” that is scheduled for the end of 2015.

It’s not just corruption that threatens to derail all of the gains the U.S. has made in the country. Afghanistan, as Sopko noted, has a major problem with sustainability.

Right now, the United States and other international donors fund more than 60 percent of Afghanistan’s national budget of around $7.6 billion. Last year, for example, the Afghan government raised $2 billion in revenues; the rest came from foreign aid, mostly from the United States.

Sopko says in the next few years, the Afghan National Security Forces are going to require a force of 374,000 – at a cost of roughly $5 billion a year. “At these levels, if the Afghan government were to dedicate all of its domestic revenue toward sustaining the Afghan army and police, it still could only pay for about a third of the cost. Moreover, all other costs from paying civil servants to maintaining all roads, schools, hospitals and other non-military infrastructure would also have to come from international donors,” Sopko said. “The bottom line is, it appears we’ve created a government that the Afghans simply cannot afford.”

Sopko is known for being extremely critical of the government agencies involved in reconstruction efforts. He told the audience that the U.S. government has failed to address Afghanistan’s corruption and sustainability issues – which threaten to “jeopardize every gain” the U.S. has made. Meanwhile, he said the government’s counter-narcotics effort has also been a failure and if unaddressed could completely derail any progress the U.S. has made.

“The U.S. has already spent nearly $7.6 billion to combat the opium industry. Yet, by every conceivable metric, we’ve failed,” Sopko said.

Sopko and his team frequently churn out scathing reports highlighting the failures of the Defense and the State Departments in Afghanistan – and many of them receive a wide swath of media attention. This has unsurprisingly sparked some tension between the auditors and officials from the departments being audited who routinely have problems with the IG’s findings. They say that responding to IG reports “chews up countless hours, and that the inspector general’s work ultimately undermines the effort to build stronger civilian institutions here by creating the impression that the United States is simply pouring money down the well,” The New York Times reported.

Sopko says, “SIGAR welcomes publicity because publicity gives our reports and work impact in this town and in Kabul and around the world.” He added, “I admit, some ambassadors and generals and nameless, faceless bureaucrats and contractors are unhappy with the fact we get press coverage, even though our two-person press shop pales in comparison to the squadrons of PR people at Embassy Kabul, ISAF, or the Pentagon. But that is the cost of transparency and open government.”
– See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/09/15/Eyes-ISIS-America-s-104B-Afghanistan-Failing#sthash.riTYbKt6.dpuf

WARFARE STATE WASTE

I rail about the welfare state every day. But the warfare state is just as bad. The government just spent 3 months worth of foodstamps for 47 million people on 10 submarines we absolutely do not need. But the neo-cons have the balls to say we are gutting the military. Maybe some of these billions could be better spent taking care of the injured and dying veterans from the previous wars of choice waged on behalf of the corporate interests. In case you were wondering, this is what Eisenhower was talking about in his military industrial complex speech.

Guest Post by David Stockman

Pouring Keynesian Waste Into Davy Jones’ Locker: Yesterday’s $18 Billion “Upside Surprise”

The algos were raging yesterday morning because April durable goods orders were up by an unexpected 0.8%. Well, yes they were: The US Navy inked a gigantic $18 billion order for 10 new nuclear-powered attack submarines during the month. Consequently, the actual 0.8% decline in industrial orders was transformed into a swell “upside” surprise.

U.S. Navy

U.S. Navy placed a record order in April for killer subs.

But folks, the US Warfare State doesn’t need no more stinking nuclear attack submarines. It already has more than 70 in service, and several more beyond yesterday’s huge order were already in the pipeline.

The reason we don’t need them— beyond the vast redundancy in firepower already extant— is that attack submarines have one primary mission. Namely, to kill nuclear-powered submarines carrying the ICBMs of hostile powers who may have them aimed at US cities.

Here’s the deal. China has just three ICBM capable submarines which have a range under 5,000 miles and which have never been deployed in the blue water; and Russia’s rusting legacy fleet of 10 subs left over from the cold war (that would be the one which ended a quarter century ago) is basically mothballed in port.

During the most recent year, the Russian Navy’s operating tempo was so anemic as to amount to one SSBN submarine on the water at any given time. So even though they theoretically have 160 submarine launched ballistic missiles on their 10 ships compared to 656 for the US, 90% of Russia’s SLBMs could never be launched.

Stated differently, during the peak of the cold-war in 1983, the Soviet Navy conducted 105 patrols compared to 5 in 2012. Yet back then we have far fewer attack subs on the water and what we had were far less lethal than today’s US fleet. Stated differently, the 70 attack subs we already have are advanced technology killers purchased at the peak of the Reagan build-up— and at a time after the current Russian fleet of aging SSBNs were already on the water!

Since the strategic nuclear stand-off ended decades ago, the attack submarine fleet has been given an additional mission to serve as a deterrent against surface ships and especially aircraft carrier battle groups of hostile industrial powers. Needless to say, China has one re-conditioned nuclear aircraft carrier it bought second-hand from the Ukraine! And Russia has one, and yes, it too patrols the languid waters of its homeport.

So the 10 new attack submarine order announced yesterday is just mindless waste. The order amounts to a preposterous exercise in military Keynesianism that adds nothing to the security and safety of the American people, but will result in the drastic waste of fiscal resources in a nation that is already drifting rapidly toward insolvency.

This modern day exercises in sub-sea pyramid building, however, does smoke out the abysmal economic ignorance of the so-called financial press. The writer of the story below, one Jeffry Bartash, had no trouble with the idea that pouring steel and electronics into Davy Jones’ locker was a sign that the American economy is coming back to life.

By Jeffry Bartash at Market Watch

U.S. nuclear subs surfaced in a big way in the April durable-goods report. A record Navy construction contract powered a 0.8% gain in durable-goods orders last month when Wall Street was actually expecting a 0.8% drop.

In April, the Navy inked a $17.6 billion contract for 10 nuclear-powered attack submarines. Contractors General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Newport News Shipbuilding will handle construction. The deal could reach as high as $17.8 billion under certain conditions.

The huge contract led to a 39% increase in defense orders in April, using seasonally adjusted numbers. Orders for defense capital goods rose to $12.89 billion from $9.3 billion in March and $7.8 billion in February.

Of course, the subs won’t all be built right away, so the benefits to the economy will be spread out over the next five years.

The boom in demand for military equipment spruced up an otherwise drab durable-goods report. Booking for big-ticket U.S. goods actually fell in April if defense is excluded. Orders often fall in the first month of a new quarter….

Click here for complete article:

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/capitolreport/2014/05/27/this-one-order-made-durable-goods-bookings-grow-in-april/

– Jeffry Bartash

DYING FOR SOCIAL SECURITY

The Federal government certainly is a well oiled machine. Do they ever do anything right? They can’t figure out they have been paying a dead person for 23 years? All you Boomers should be happy. You’re going to get your Social Security payments even after you die. So stop bitching.

And now we are handing over our healthcare to these government drones. What could possibly go wrong?

NOTHING TO CUT: Meet the Multi-Millionaire Who Collected His Dead Mom’s Social Security Checks for 23 Years

Guest post by Laura Trueman

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/
The 2014 omnibus bill contains an increase in funding for running the Social Security Administration (SSA). Maybe now they can stop paying Social Security benefits to dead people.

According to a December Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, SSA systems do not accurately note and confirm the deaths of beneficiaries, resulting in payments being made to dead people—sometimes for decades. The flawed system doesn’t just impact Social Security payments, either. Multiple other federal agencies that pay benefits—from federal pensions to payments to farmers and the disabled—rely on SSA’s flawed death data.Collecting Dead Mother’s Social Security for 23 Years. Raymond O’Dell made news this week when he was sentenced for collecting his dead mother’s Social Security benefits for 23 years. O’Dell collected $188,000 in benefits, while building a successful Taco Bell franchise. His accountant put his net worth at $4 million (including $431,000 in cash). This week, he was sentenced to pay back the benefits, along with a $20,000 fine, and will serve six months in prison.

O’Dell is not unique. In Washington state, U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan convicted five people for collecting a dead parent’s Social Security benefits. One man personally disposed of his mother’s body in a rural area and never reported her death; he collected her benefits for 9 years. More examples are cited in the SSA’s “Deceased Payee Fraud; Strange But True,” released this month.

As Durkan noted, “Cheaters shred the safety net for those that really need it…and need to know prison and hefty fines wait at the end of the scheme.” The SSA has the Office of Inspector General Fraud Hotline for reporting suspected fraud. That’s good, but it isn’t enough.

Getting a Handle on the Problem. The SSA receives and processes death reports from a variety of sources, including states, family members, funeral directors, post offices, financial institutions, and other federal agencies. It’s a big job: In 2012, seven million deaths were reported to the SSA; overall, they manage the death records for some 98 million people.

The GAO reports that the agency does not verify the death reports from all of its sources. The SSA has no clue how accurate the unverified reports are because, according to the GAO, the agency has “never performed an analysis validating the accuracy of the various sources of death reports.”

The GAO checked on a random sample of the SSA’s death reports and found problems:

Notice of about 500 deaths came to the SSA long after the person’s death; in fact 200 were 10 or more years after the fact, meaning that all kinds of benefits could have been flowing unchecked for years.
Another 150 people were apparently engaged in “back to the future” time travel—their date of death was BEFORE their date of birth.
Almost 2000 broke or nearly broke Guinness records—living between 115 and 195 years.

The GAO made some recommendations on how to improve the SSA systems, and maybe things will improve. It should be noted that, while the GAO focused on the SSA’s struggles with the death reports it received, Raymond O’Dell and a slew of others kept their relative’s death from being reported.

In the omnibus appropriations Congress passed this week, they offered their usual solution—more money—increasing the agency’s budget by $651 million. Oklahoma’s Senator Tom Coburn (R) and a few others are pushing the SSA to fix this and other fraud in benefit programs. As The Wall Street Journal notes, these members “are voices crying in the wilderness” as Congress focuses on spending more money, not making existing agencies and programs work better.
Read more at The Foundry.

ARE YOU BLIND?

The story below is a reflection of the entitlement mindset that has proliferated for decades in Europe and the United States. It is a mindset of corruption, laziness, and entitlement that has been encouraged and exacerbated by the socialist welfare policies and programs that were supposed to help the poor and disadvantaged. Instead these programs morphed into a way for politicians to dole out benefits for votes. Generations have now become dependent upon the government for their subsistence from birth until death. The learned helplessness has been a key tactic for liberal/ left wing politicians across Europe and the USA. Keep promising people more free shit and they’ll keep voting for you. It works until you run out of other people’s money. Greece has run out of other people’s money. Now the blind can see.

The story below would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. The cancer of entitlement and corruption is so ingrained in Greece society that the patient can never recover. It’s too late. Southern Europe is dead entitlement states walking. There is no rescue plan big enough to save these people from their debt based delusions. Reality is really going to bite for these people.

We sit here across the pond and chuckle at this story about the island of the blind. But, we are only a couple years behind Greece and the ability to print more fiat currency will not save us. Chris Christie is right – we’ve become a paternalistic entitlement society. The 47 year War on Poverty has successfully enslaved millions into an entitlement mindset of not working, not caring, and gaming the system for everything they can get away with. This behavior and these programs have been actively encouraged by liberals and do-gooders looking for easy votes. The ridiculous solutions implemented since 2008 have made the situation 100 times worse as we have an all-time record of 47 million people on food stamps paying out $72 billion annually. The government has been paying millions of people to not work for 99 weeks. And now that the 99 week gravy train is drying up, millions have just realized they are disabled. The rampant fraud in the SSDI program is actively encouraged by Obama and his minions. The $132 billion per year is well spent for a few more voters. The Federal Government lets you into this lifelong program for depression, muscle pain, or being too fucking fat to get out of a chair. Anyone who doesn’t think millions are gaming this system should look at this little chart. The number of 50 to 55 year olds piling into the SSDI rose by 50% between 2007 and 2011. Wow!!! Our workplace safety must have really gone downhill in the last 4 years.

It is surely just a coincidence that as soon as the FSA got kicked off the 99 week unemployment rolls, the SSDI rolls began to surge. No fraud there.

The amount of fraud, waste and abuse in our Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamp, Social Security, SSDI and the thousand other entitlement programs runs into the hundreds of billions and would equal the national budget of many countries. Our entire country has become a cesspool of fraud. And it isn’t confined to the people of West Philly and old folks. The entitlement mindset extends into corporate America with their farm subsidies, ethanol subsidies, tax loopholes, hedge fund manager tax breaks, and about 60,000 more pages of payoffs and bribery disguised as tax policy. The average schmuck with their mortgage deductions and child tax credits and exemptions is also in on the game. Wall Street and the Arms dealers are extracting their trillion dollar pound of flesh from this bloated pig of a country.

Well guess what? This bloated pig has heart disease and a bad case of gas. The whole world is suffocating on debt that can never be repaid and promises that can never be kept. You’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to understand what is headed our way.