And to be fair to the US government, the only department that has not passed audit is the Department of Defense. It just happens to be bigger than all the rest combined. Apparently, unlike New York City, the DoD has no idea how many buildings it owns, or whether 39 of its Blackhawks still exist, or whether it has either adequate parts on hand to meet its missions (questionable for the USAF), or 1,000 years of parts on hand for its systems (in some parts of the Navy).
Meanwhile, there are trillions of dollars in domestic infrastructure needing to be patched, schools and hospitals deteriorating, and so on. It really is a problem, especially if you care about what a government is supposed to do for its people, as opposed to what it spends money on because of lobbying.
]]>Worst case scenario, you could get a crusading pol railing about "waste" and "inefficiency" in the military and demanding cuts in procurement budgets, staffing, funding... ah, who am I kidding? No-one in public office in the US could do that, not if they didn't want to be lynched.
]]>My take is that, while this has something to do with virtue signaling to the voters, it has as much or more to do with transactional politics and the need to square accounts with people and corporations that donate money to elections via PACs.
]]>I did deep read the New Zealand mosque shooter manifesto (once) shortly after the incident; it was obviously a construct; very weird reading, don't have much to add. There is reference to a much longer deleted version which means a possibility for undelete depending on computer opsec/truth.
Open plan office sucks. Prudence suggests obtuseness. In Laundry language, the last several weeks have been "Field-expedient mind repair / [x] engineering / etc."
I've also been watching what may be the Chalubo botnet since at least early December. Roughly 12K+ distinct IPs so far (to a residential ip), pretty much all from machines with an open (a low percentage now closed) port 22. Behavior changed a few weeks ago to stop hitting the fail2ban threshold though other logs still show it. CBA to set up a proper honeypot to be sure.
]]>Oh give it up.
DoD budget says $500 million for Pacific fleet food supplies for ships. Audits says show us the records for the food purchases. Pentagon/Navy shows a few cancelled checks for $1769 million and says it was in those. The excess was for food in the Top Gun cafeteria, lawn care at Pearl Harbor, turbine repair on some frigates, replacement tires for some carrier based jets, and, uh, we think a new roof on some barracks. Details? We didn't see a need to keep them and they went into the shred bin every 90 days.
THAT'S what people doing military audits get to deal with.
]]>[1]No one in the family believes there was anything nefarious about his death.
]]>It's too bad your father-in-law's stories never made it into writing. They'd be a good corrective...
I should point out for the rest of the audience (Nojay and the moderators) that the ostensible thought behind the budget Congress passes is that when there's $500 million budgeted for supplies, it's because the Pacific Fleet needs $500 million in supplies that year, that costs of supplies will be taken out of that $500 million, and that any surplus will be returned to the Treasury at the end of the fiscal year.
What David's describing is technically illegal in two ways: not only is this budget item being used for things that it's not supposed to be used for (e.g. roof repair) so that the account will be run down and indeed overdrawn, but also Congress appropriates chunks of money for the military for 1-year expenses, 2-year expenses, and 5-year expenses. Supplies are an annual expense, replacing the turbine on a frigate is not, and they're really not supposed to cross those streams. And the DoD created a computer program to automate this kind of swapping, so while it's illegal, it's also SOP.
]]>And who buys food and jet fuel from the same company? Well you get into who is "certified" to sell to the US military so you have a front company who is certified (everyone is cool with this as who wants to certify 10,000 vendors when you can just do 100) buys things from a lot of locals then resells it all to the Navy. So you might get a bill for all kinds of things on one bill. Which gets paid by a check. Which then may or may not be matched up (if possible) to orders.
]]>You and me literally have no idea.
He spend a full year in Iran around 1959/60 dealing with some covert thing. No leave and really gone for a full year with 3 daughters under 6 at home in the US. I'm guessing a listening post for USSR things.
Went to grad school up in Cornell or similar on the US dime.
He was stationed out west on some missile acceptance testing for year.
Spent a year in the Pentagon. A year at the Army war college in Huntsille. A year in both Heildleburg and Stuttgart. 2 or 3 years in Italy likely with that missile program.
A year leading an artillery battalion near Saigon.
All before that time with the NSA.[1]
Above is NOT in order and missing some assignments I can't remember.
But based on the stories of his wife and kids I'm sure direct from him would have been interesting.
[1] I'm a strange attractor for NSA folks. Good friend's father worked there and overseas doing "things" and was a director or some such a while back. Friend go to co-op there while in college and then work there for a while later. Daughter's best friend married a guy who had his MIT education paid for by the NSA in exchange for a 3 year tour when he graduated. 2 other friends are currently working for contractors to the NSA. Was at a bar this week with a guy who said he worked there a couple of decades ago. And I've never lived closer than a 5 hour drive to Fort Mead.
]]>One of my good friends is a military brat; her father was an Air Force veterinarian. I don't know what image comes into your mind when you hear the phrase "Air Force veterinarian" but it's safe to say some bits of the job were stranger than whatever you imagined.
Only a few of his stories involved money but I completely believe that a military accountant would see endless surreal messes, many of them created by other military accountants.
]]>I don't know about "Air Force" veterinarians, but in the Army, one duty of veterinarians is inspecting & certifying sanitation in mess halls dining facilities. The Army does still have a small number of Calvary horses (mostly for ceremonial purposes) and the veterinarians are also responsible for providing medical services to K-9 working dogs.
I don't think anything about military "accounting" would surprise me. I was tasked with straightening out my unit's Property Book when we got back from Iraq (which mainly consisted of identifying a lot of obsolete shit that should have been turned in or written off years before).
The reason I was tasked with the reconciliation was because when the Supply Sergeant was medivaced half way through the deployment, I was the only Platoon Sergeant who could account for all of the equipment belonging to my platoon with signed hand receipts.
Before I was tasked with the reconciliation (in fact before we even went overseas), the Property Book had been computerized - the entire 10,000+ lines x 10 columns had been copied into cell "A1" of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
I did manage to get almost half of the property book transcribed into individual rows before I retired.
]]>Her specialty was emerging diseases, so last I heard, she'd gone to Plum Island...
]]>Unfortunately, our current warmongers, monetarists and so on are too bigoted to be affected when you quote him (or Churchill) at them, despite them idolising those two.
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