Everybody in Washington recognizes government waste but still fail to do anything about it, fearing the loss of pork will cost them votes at home. So they say something needs to be done but even if waste is identified, it never gets fixed until after the fact. Hopefully the Tea Party movement with newly elected representatives will help change that but I'm not holding my breath.
Even in the 70's and early 80's I was party to several wastes of taxpayers dollars. The first was when I had back to back assignments at Forts Sill and Hood. Fort Sill had a mobile remote Television studio that would make Monday Night Football proud. It was used to video tape training exercises, training films, etc and would be on the road almost constantly. We had 3 RCA TK 44 studio cameras which were really fun setting up in the middle of nowhere, along with state of the art video and audio equipment..It was capeable of doing anything a network remote studio could do and all in living color. The only problem was, the on-base cable system was still Black and White with no plans to convert. The cost of the remote studio, nearly a half million dollars in 1973 dollars.
After Sill, I was Electronics Media Public Affairs Officer which meant that I dealt with Radio and Television stations in Central and North Texas. Part of our daily routine was a half hour news cast that was carried on base through their COLOR cctv system, and aired on the PBS affiliate in Killeen as well as KTEM in Temple. The studio was color but their remote van looked like a converted Good Humor truck and was Black and White. I had the brainstorm of swapping the vans, and if Sill needed to shoot color, we were only 4 hours a way. Both commands liked the idea except Uncle Sam said otherwise. Hood had two very famous divisions, the 1st Cav and 2nd Armored..They needed the color van more than the Artillery school, but the plan was shot dead.
The second was in Germany when AFN took television away from the Air Force. We had a perfectly large studio that needed little work to convert from radio to television. The studio was used in the past to record concerts and could hold a symphony orchestra and about a hundred people in the audience..It was BIG..But instead, they decided to gut it and totall remove the floor so cables wouldn't be exposed..The only way to do that was dynamite so for 6 months, they did small blasts..Did I mention that my radio on-air studio shared one of the walls. So every time they did a blast, the arm of the turntable would jump an inch or so..Then the equipment, again state of the art..20 million dollars worth..Again TK44's, fabulous control room, and a lighting grid that had every light imaginable..foot lights, Kleigs, fill lights, back lights..When they were installing the grid, I dared to ask where they were storing the replacements..I was told they were at budget and didn't need them as they are expensive, and besides, an emergency requsition to the depot in Sacramento, Ca. would only take a few days.
The first flip of the switch took out half the lights so the huge set became much smaller so the remaining lights would light the set. But bulbs kept popping and the emergency requistion took almost 6 months so before they arrived, we wound up doing "News by Candlelight. Again far more equipment than needed and poor logistics lead to a waste of taxpayers dollars.
The next was the most bizarre. When I was in Italy, I learned that we still had 6,000 dollars left in our supply budget and as it was mid-September, I had to have our supply clerk "spend it". I thought it would be a nice idea to give it back to Uncle Sam and I was read the riot act..If we returned the 6 grand, the bean counters would figure we could live without it in the new budget and, hell, lets cut it 10% as they don't need it. So I sent our supply clerk to the supply depot to get 6,000 dollars of stuff we could use..All he could find was 6,000 dollars in Bic pens and toilet paper. We gave out bic pens like candy.."I need a pen." "Here's 2 cases just in case you run out." I didn't go to our supply office without laughing..Toilet paper piled to the ceileing.
This one doesn't count as my waste as I don't know what happened. For one of my last official duties I was given 20 million dollars to spend on equipment for both radio and television. All I wanted was new studio cameras and a new board for the main studio. So I spent a day and a half ordering dream equipment. I left before I knew what had been approved so I can't take the blame on that one, although I heard later that a lot of stuff had arrived.
So, it's no so much waste and fraud, although there's a lot of that. It's budgets that run amuck with goodies that aren't needed, lack of oversight, and a mentality that you are given too much money and you have to spend it or lose it.
Hopefully the new Congress will start providing oversight, starting with Freddie and Fanny, and go down the food chain and stop some of the funds for some of the more bizarre earmarks. That will probably happen when people in Hell are offered ice water.
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