{"id":5986,"date":"2004-06-11T14:21:18","date_gmt":"2004-06-11T21:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/06\/11\/fly-me-to-the-moon-2.html"},"modified":"2004-06-11T14:21:18","modified_gmt":"2004-06-11T21:21:18","slug":"fly_me_to_the_m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/06\/11\/fly_me_to_the_m.html","title":{"rendered":"Fly me to the moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pentagon? Wasting money? Say it ain’t so!<\/a><\/p>\n

The Defense Department spent an estimated $100 million for airline tickets that were not used over a six-year period and failed to seek refunds even though the tickets were reimbursable, congressional investigators say.
\nThe department compounded the problem by reimbursing employee claims for tickets bought by the Pentagon, the investigators said.<\/p>\n

Swell.<\/p>\n

Of course, there’s plenty of room for grandstanding in all this.<\/p>\n

“At a time when our soldiers are patrolling the streets of Iraq in unarmored Humvees, and when the Bush Administration is asking for record Defense spending, Secretary (Donald H.) Rumsfeld is letting hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used to protect our troops and our country go to waste,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., one of three lawmakers who ordered the studies.<\/p>\n

Never mind that half of the time period involved in the study was under a previous administration(one can probably blame Rumsfeld for a lot of things, but blaming him for the actions or inactions of Secty Cohen is probably not quite sporting). And never mind that Rumsfeld’s DoD has had a lot of other things for the last few years to do besides clean up internal accounting processes.<\/p>\n

And not to mention that the DoD is one of the largest employers in the world. Not only are there 2.3 million servicefolk out there (some of which end up using civilian aircraft), but there are 700k civilian employees, working in widely dispersed groups and departments, many of which use separate accounting systems and processes. Keeping travel costs under control is a nightmare in most large private firms; I wouldn’t envy anyone trying to tackle the job at the DoD.<\/p>\n

Still, $100MM is not chump change. Having had it hit the front pages, one would hope that Rumsfeld will devote some time and money to get the problem fixed. Hopefully that’s not all he’s working on, though.<\/p>\n

(via Joe Kelley<\/a>, SEB<\/a>, and various others)<\/small> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pentagon? Wasting money? Say it ain’t so! The Defense Department spent an estimated $100 million for airline tickets that were not used over a six-year period and failed to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7786,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/08\/11\/the_ministry_of.html","url_meta":{"origin":5986,"position":0},"title":"The Ministry of Silly Walks","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 11-Aug-05 8:22am","format":false,"excerpt":"This just strikes me as goofy. The Pentagon will hold a massive march and country music concert to mark the fourth anniversary of 9\/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":43247,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/06\/25\/the-house-orders-the-pentagon-to-ignore-the-problem.html","url_meta":{"origin":5986,"position":1},"title":"The House orders the Pentagon to ignore the problem","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 25-Jun-14 7:37am","format":false,"excerpt":"The problem being, of course, climate change. \u00a0Never mind that the DoD has been looking at the risks and impacts of climate change since the George W. Bush years. Never mind that climate change has a direct impact on potential threats, unrest, allies, opponents, logistics, etc. \u00a0Any involvement in gathering\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":240,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/05\/21\/this_strangely.html","url_meta":{"origin":5986,"position":2},"title":"This strangely does not make me feel more comfortable","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 21-May-03 6:46am","format":false,"excerpt":"The Pentagon is busy assuing folks that the Total Information Awareness program -- wherein big government computers link to everyone else's databases about you and collate it into a dossier...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"Brought to you by Admiral Poindexter!","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/darpa-iao.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":27800,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/05\/07\/the-ambiguous-chain-of-command-in-the-avengers.html","url_meta":{"origin":5986,"position":3},"title":"The ambiguous chain of command in "The Avengers"","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 7-May-12 2:06pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Apparently, the uncertainty about under what authority SHIELD is supposed to operate, and how the US military would act in conjunction with it, was just fuzzy enough to keep the Pentagon from allowing US armed forces (aside from some National Guard) from being part of the film.Seems silly -- though\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132806,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/02\/08\/its-good-to-be-the-king-and-lease-space-at-the-palace.html","url_meta":{"origin":5986,"position":4},"title":"It's GOOD to be the King (and lease space at the palace)","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 8-Feb-17 4:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"When the Department of Defense decides it needs space near the President when he's back at his Trump Tower residence in New York (to stash the nuclear football, and for other, unmentioned services), the President himself stands to actually make a few bucks on the deal by leasing them the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1278,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/02\/02\/the_war_that_ti.html","url_meta":{"origin":5986,"position":5},"title":"The War that Time Forgot","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 2-Feb-02 8:51am","format":false,"excerpt":"On 10 September 2001, the Secretary of Defense declared war ... on Pentagon waste. Responding to internal audits that indicated the Pentagon couldn't account for up to 25% of its...","rel":"","context":"In "Fourth Estate"","block_context":{"text":"Fourth Estate","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/fourth-estate"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}