from the quis-custodiet-ipsos-custodes dept.
Pentagon Announces First-Ever Audit Of The Department Of Defense
"The Defense Department is starting the first agency-wide financial audit in its history," the Pentagon's news service says, announcing that it's undertaking an immense task that has been sought, promised and delayed for years.
Of the tally that is starting this week, chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana W. White said, "It demonstrates our commitment to fiscal responsibility and maximizing the value of every taxpayer dollar that is entrusted to us."
"Beginning in 2018, our audits will occur annually, with reports issued Nov. 15," the Defense Department's comptroller, David L. Norquist, said.
The Defense Department has famously never been audited, despite receiving hundreds of billions of dollars annually and having more than $2.2 trillion in assets.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @01:47AM (10 children)
"Pentagon" refers to the building but is also the nick name for DoD.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @01:54AM (8 children)
So it's an audit, usually considered a good thing. This is what happens when you elect a businessman over a bureaucrat.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @02:28AM (3 children)
> ...what happens when you elect a businessman over a bureaucrat.
The fine article does not support your opinion:
No mention of that orange guy until the end of tfa,
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @02:42AM (2 children)
including Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz
including Democratic nominee geriatric criminal and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz robot human like guy.
If you are going to go insulting go all in. FFS...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday December 11 2017, @09:54AM (1 child)
You call that insulting? "That orange guy"?
Compared to all the things one COULD call Donald Trump, I'd say referring to him as "that orange guy" is practically dripping with praise.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @03:23PM
Poster was just trying to find a way to call hillary a crook one more time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @02:58AM (3 children)
Augean Stables.
(Score: 5, Funny) by c0lo on Monday December 11 2017, @01:30PM (2 children)
Don't kid yourself, nobody spoke about cleaning them.
It's an audit only, they'll just attempt to measure the depth of the horseshit heaps; it may turn out there are some gigantic black holes underneath, which will suck up the auditors, never to be heard of them again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @04:14PM (1 child)
You're right. They won't clean them. They'll just re-arrange them and rename them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday December 11 2017, @07:04PM
They'll just ask the NSA for the proper way to redefine "compliance" and "assets".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @02:28AM
FTFY
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @01:52AM (3 children)
The audit passed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @08:36AM (2 children)
No, you're misinformed.
The audit failed, and because of this The President has decided to simply shutter the whole shop - "You're all fired!". All employees will be discharged in an accelerated process (it was discovered that there actually are no funds left to fly them all back to the US) and most of the 137,451 officials will be indicted for various financial and RICOH crimes.
Trials are expected to take years. A replacement organization is not yet planned, at least not until the now-discovered shortcomings have been analyzed throughly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @05:19PM (1 child)
I presume you mean the audit team will be fired. That's the most likely outcome under this president. Audit team fired, new 3 letter spy agency created that reports only to the president "to ensure proper use of funding". Oops looks like we're already getting on of those.
https://trofire.com/2017/12/05/trump-wants-create-private-spy-agency-spy-us-intelligence-agencies/ [trofire.com]
Trump Wants To Create Private Spy Agency To Spy On US Intelligence Agencies
By Farron Cousins -
December 5, 2017
In one of the more bizarre and paranoid actions taken by the Trump Administration, Donald Trump is mulling whether or not to allow Blackwater founder Erik Prince and former Iran-Contra architect Oliver North create a secret spy agency that will be tasked with spying on US intelligence agencies. This is not normal, and it seems fairly illegal, as Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins points out.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday December 11 2017, @06:35PM
The guys at the Onion are jealous they didn't write it first.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @02:25AM (3 children)
September 10th 2001 Secretary of Defense of the USA declared war on the Pentagon bureaucracy over an alleged $2.3 trillion in unaccounted for funds on expenses.
Obviously this kinda got forgotten...
(Score: 4, Informative) by tftp on Monday December 11 2017, @02:57AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @07:55PM
transcript of Rumsfeld's speech [archive.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @09:05PM
CBS News Eye on America report from circa 2002 [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday December 11 2017, @04:32AM (5 children)
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @04:52AM (1 child)
For $400b they'd better be able to fly under the radar.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 11 2017, @04:54AM
send in the ghosts [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday December 11 2017, @06:42AM (2 children)
Erf, yes, well... I'm all for government transparency, but I wish these facile examples of waste would just die. They essentially all stem from the same source: Takes some contract for, say, 3 airplanes and 5 replacement toilet seats. Total cost $X billion, with allowed overhead expenses of $Y million. Take a lazy accountant who divides the overhead evenly across all articles in the contract. Voila: You now have some really expensive toilet seats.
There's plenty of waste out there. Tossing out examples like this is counterproductive though: You allow the projects to say "look no expensive toilet seats", and they're off the hook. The fact that they have a staff of 200 when they need a staff of 20, the fact that they've issued cost-plus contracts instead of negotiating fixed-price contracts - that's all too difficult to deal with. But, nope, no toilet seats.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 11 2017, @07:19AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @11:28PM
Parent has the nugget in this (meta)thread.
...and anyone who thinks it was lone nut with a crappy Italian surplus rifle Lee Harvey Oswald [google.com] who murdered JFK is simply naive.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Monday December 11 2017, @04:43AM (2 children)
You know what this means? Audit? Ethanol_fueled will be forced to find a real job! And in the mean time, while he is soaking in that wonderful Socialist Republic of Californication Unemployment Insurance, we will have to put up with his crap even more than currently! Will no one think of the children? Or of the innocent Soylentils that will be harmed by this audit?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 11 2017, @07:25AM (1 child)
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Monday December 11 2017, @07:39AM
No, no need, my dear fluffy khallow! You are paid by the Department of Agriculture, also know as the Department of the Interior, blessings be upon Zinke and his transportation expense account! So I am not worried about you! Well, I am worried about your mental health and level of education, but at least you will not be homeless and living in a thermal spring, well, at least not until the Republican tax bill passes. Glad to have known you, khallow! As Ronald Reagan said, there a tons of ads for jobs in the newspapers, like for exotic dancers in Vegas, right in your neighborhood, khallow! Work on those abs, my boy!
And, oh, for those of you keeping score, aristarchus could be khallow, because khallow is just too ideologically correct to actually be real. Aristarchus, on the other hand, is a 2353 year old Samian Greek. So there is that.
(Score: 5, Touché) by bradley13 on Monday December 11 2017, @06:38AM (3 children)
Shameful, really.
The entire government should be required to follow precisely the same rules as every company. If companies manage to file a full set of audited accounts every year, with updates every quarter, the government should do the same. If some rules are just too onerous to be useful, well...guess what, maybe they shouldn't exist. Otherwise, the rules are there to provide transparency: These accounts should be public - it's taxpayer money, after all.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @12:34PM
In Soviet Russia the dod audits you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @02:20PM
"The entire government should be required to follow precisely the same rules as every company."
Might want to be careful of what you wish for, as wishes love to twist and distort themselves.
If you got what you wanted, odds are it'd be in the form of most of the rules companies following being revoked.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 12 2017, @12:46AM
"required to follow precisely the same rules as every company".
They do.
Or weren't you around for the 2008 bank fraud epidemic that tanked the world economy, with no criminal charges ever brought?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday December 11 2017, @04:41PM
There was an audit about a year ago by the Inspector General's office for the DoD, that revealed $6.5 trillion worth of accounting problems [warisboring.com]. So the idea that this is somehow unprecedented is just plain wrong.
That there's something very rotten in Pentagon spending, though, doesn't require any kind of accounting audit. One of the first places to look at is the shareholder reports of the major defense contractors, and realize that every single dollar of reported profits is coming out of the federal budget.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.