1/3 of Billion Dollars of Taxpayer Money Wasted - Thanks Dem

Unoccupied Denver LOL wrote: Are liberals justifying government waste?

Nope, just curious why you conservatives think the state governments are any better at running things than the Feds, yet I hear several on here pushing for the Federal Government to relinquish powers to the states. From one devil to the other.

Archer, state governments are far more efficient than federal government - but government in general wastes money.

Archer your point is valid and I don't know an answer for you. Possibly it is because both State and Federal are involved here, and its always hard to hand out billions to many individuals and keep track of it. 10% does not seem like a good waste/error goal to me.

If public companies were 10% off in revenues or profits reporting...the chief executives would be considered criminals.

archer wrote:

Unoccupied Denver LOL wrote: Are liberals justifying government waste?

Nope, just curious why you conservatives think the state governments are any better at running things than the Feds,r.

I do not. Power corrupts at any level, but it is easier to change course on a cruiser than a carrier.

In other words, citizen oversight is closer to the statehouse than it is to Washington. Will that make it any more effective? Maybe not, but it is worth a shot.

Edit, Archer, good question.

LadyJazzer wrote:

How BUSH sent $12bn in cash to Iraq. And watched it vanish
Special flights brought in tonnes of banknotes which disappeared into the war zone

The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.

The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee.

In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover.

Details of the shipments have emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction. Its chairman, Henry Waxman, a fierce critic of the war, said the way the cash had been handled was mind-boggling. "The numbers are so large that it doesn't seem possible that they're true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?"

The memorandum details the casual manner in which the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority disbursed the money, which came from Iraqi oil sales, surplus funds from the UN oil-for-food programme and seized Iraqi assets.

"One CPA official described an environment awash in $100 bills," the memorandum says. "One contractor received a $2m payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency. Auditors discovered that the key to a vault was kept in an unsecured backpack.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1

I'll see your 1/3 of a Billion and raise you 11-2/3 Billion... Thanks Bush.

Here's good news for you! :thumbsup:

It's a rare day when positive news surfaces from the frontlines of Iraq's post-occupation government--or from its troubled economy. However, a U.S. Iraq inspector general report that concluded this week that $6.6 billion in shrink-wrapped cash the U.S. government previously feared had gone missing in the chaotic early days of the Iraq occupation has in fact been safely accounted for.

"The mystery of $6 billion that seemed to go missing in the early days of the Iraq war has been resolved, according to a new report," CNN national security producer Charles Keyes reported Wednesday. "New evidence shows most of that money, $6.6 billion, did not go astray in that chaotic period, but ended up where it was supposed to be, under the control of the Iraqi government, according to a report from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction or SIGIR."

Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, had previously testified that as much as $6.6 billion of the $10 billion the United States shipped to Iraq had disappeared due to "weaknesses in [the Department of Defense's] financial and management controls," Keyes wrote, citing the bureaucratese from a previous SIGIR report.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/once-feared-lost-now-accounted-iraq-inspector-says-153935856.html

archer wrote:

Unoccupied Denver LOL wrote: Are liberals justifying government waste?

Nope, just curious why you conservatives think the state governments are any better at running things than the Feds, yet I hear several on here pushing for the Federal Government to relinquish powers to the states. From one devil to the other.

Partial agreement. States can probably get away with more because the local press doesn't have as many resources to investigate corruption.
But too often, the Feds are just duplicating state efforts, like the Department of Education. It would be better for the students if the state kept education funds instead of having them funneled/diverted through Washington. Do you really think DC helps?

Looks like Hickenlooper is taking steps to correct it. Thanks Dems!