Posted on 08/21/2016 7:05:23 AM PDT by rktman
The new comedy War Dogs tells the true story of two cynical young men who took advantage of bureaucratic failures to become successful weapons dealers. These two men — who sold weapons to the government during the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq —ultimately secured a $300 million contract with the United States military.
The film, which was inspired by a true story, operates as both a comedy and a hard-to-imagine drama that shows how these two guys in their twenties were able to take advantage of a lax governmental policy.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Not to excuse Pentagon waste, but the odds are a million to one that this film portrays the actual events accurately.
So, in other words, it’s a tutorial.
We saw it yesterday; I suggest you go see it too.
“What’s good for Milo Minderbinder, is good for the country”
At some point in 2011....while still a gov’t employee...I was given a fair sum of money to finally replace all of the office chairs in the agency that I worked for. I talked to people about the failure of the old chairs that people had....which their big thing was some improvement for ergonomic features. I did around 10 hours of research and came to find this really great chair which was highly rated on ergonomic features and discounted on GSA’s catalog to around $450 (normally it was $750).
I thought this would be simple. I was given two pots of money. One was in the range of $40,000 and the other over $100,000 to pay for all these chairs. So I spent two hours writing up all the forms and details. I provided analysis papers to show price comparison. And I intended to buy all of these chairs at the $450-rate.
A month goes by and the budget finance people come back to tell me....”NO”. They would allow me to spend the $40,000 pot of money on the GSA deal of $450-rate chairs. But because of regulations....I needed to spend the other pot of money with a woman-owned or minority-owned company. So, they were telling me to buy a $600 chair instead. I went back to our agency budget people and wasted a whole afternoon having to beg for extra funding to do something that I disagreed with.
As the deal was concluded, I sat and looked at the address of this higher option chair. Basically, it was a farm-house address in Penn. This was some woman who’d figured out an angle to gov’t purchases and she simply contracted out the purchase via a Canadian company to look like she owned the company, but she was just a one-person company.
There were a hundred reasons that I finally said enough and left government employment but this forced regulation deal was definitely one of the hundred reasons I retired eventually.
The MBE/WBE “pass thru” scam has been in place for a LONG time. I don’t think it can even be considered a scam anymore. Everyone in all levels of “big business” deals with it. It’s a legal nightmare when deals go bad. But it is as you say.
1) There is some requirement that some % of business is “awarded” to a MBE/WBE business.
2) The MBE/WBE markets itself to buyers (not providers).
3) When the buyers need to meet requirements but can’t find the right MBE/WBE contractor, they will pay the “pass thru” company to contract the work/product. Then the buyer deals directly with the provider.
I own an LLC that my wife is 51% owner of. This reminds me. That business has been around long enough. I think it now qualifies as a WBE. I should do the paperwork for her to sign and get it registered. My wife has deposited a couple checks for the business in the past 5 years. Sometimes I even show her the finances.
I worked with some guy in the 1990s who had created a firm out of thin air...maybe twenty employees, and on paper....it was totally owned by his wife. I knew his wife....she did have a business degree and was a very pleasant person. But in terms of cut-throat business negotiations and hard decision making....he was the driving force of this wife-owned company.
I made a comment to him one day....that if he ever passed on...this company would fail in one year. He kinda agreed, but noted that she was the ethical character of the company and would keep accounting legal and avoid IRS troubles down the line. For all of his strengths, he would have easily walked past the line of good accounting and gotten into trouble with IRS. This arrangement in his mind, was the only way to get gov’t contracts and profit off the system.
Shhhhhh! It’s at my house. LOL! Or, maybe it’s being converted to euros and swiss francs just in case someone needs some, uh, “leverage” in the future.
$5.00 Tuesday sounds good to me.
bkmk
Been there, done that. Fedzilla is run amok with this crap. Good stewardship of funds gets you nowhere. Playing to the minorities quota gets you everything.
Check everyone in the Obama administration. It will turn up.
I left halfway thru the movie, while parts are funny it is nothing more then a leftwing propaganda film.
Lefty propaganda out of hollywood? WHAT!
If we believe throwing money at the war on poverty incentivizes corruption and waste, why should we believe the neo-cons when they want us to throw money at the military?
Trump should require all his advisors to read the story of Gideon, the story of 300 at Thermopylae, etc.
The movie while it may be based on facts ends up being nothing more then a bad Hollywood propaganda movie slamming conservatives.
As I said I left halfway thru the movie.
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