Money for Nothing (and No Free Chicks!)

Do you remember back before the dark clouded settled over the world and Mr. Bush and company were touting how it was about time the government was run like a business. How many times have you heard your tighty-righty friends (asumming you have any) have mouthed how the GOP is the party of fiscal conservatives? How many times since 2000 have you seen this demonstrated? They've failed miserably at everything and have proven themselves to be frauds wwhen it comes to running government like a good business. Management of just about every significant project (Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, DHS) has been "ricochet rabbit" and has produced predictably disastrous results. It was quite obvious before he was elected that Mr. Bush was an incompetent businessman who could not point to one past business success. The current results of his misadministration should really come as no surprise. We now have another boondoggle to add to the growing list of fuck ups.

In addition to the insane no-bid contracts for Halliburton that continue to be so lucrative for the company(think Cheney) and a wildly raw deal for US taxpayers we now have DHS expanding the idiots club. Scope creep (the bane of any project) has ballooned a project with Booz Allen, the pricey Washington consulting firm, from $2m up to an incredible $124m in just a couple of years. This is what I do for a living. I manage projects and I am a consultant. Reading this article just absolutely floored me. You can't even describe this as mismanagement which it might be if we overran by a half million or so. This is gross incompetence on the part of the government and almost criminal on the part of Booz Allen.

This is a common thread with this administration. They farm out work that should be done by a Federal worker to some consulting company with minimum controls on the contract. The average citizen doesn't realize what this means for his or her tax money. Even a moderately paid consultant paid to take the place of a government worker is going to cost you at least twice and probably more like three times as much as it would if you had paid a government worker. Even low end consults are going to cost the government $250,000 a year and Goddess only knows what if they have to travel to the gig. Read the article and get pissed.