- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- news
- us_news@lemmygrad.ml
- africa@baraza.africa
Until 2010, Boeing charged an average of $300 for a trash container used in the E-3 Sentry, a surveillance and radar plane based on the 707 civilian airliner. When the 707 fell out of use in the United States, the trash can was no longer a “commercial” item, meaning that Boeing was not obligated to keep its price at previous levels, according to a weapons industry source who spoke to RS.
In 2020, the Pentagon paid Boeing over $200,000 for four of the trash cans, translating to roughly $51,606 per unit. In a 2021 contract, the company charged $36,640 each for 11 trash containers, resulting in a total cost of more than $400,000. The apparent overcharge cost taxpayers an extra $600,000 between the two contracts.
In another case, Lockheed Martin hiked the price of an electrical conduit for the P-3 plane as much as 14 fold, costing the Pentagon an additional $133,000 between 2008 and 2015.
Jamaica Bearings — a company that distributes parts manufactured by other firms — sold the Department of Defense 13 radio filters that had once cost $350 each for nearly $49,000 per unit in 2022. The apparent markup cost taxpayers more than $600,000 in extra fees.
The revelations come as major arms manufacturers boast record revenues. Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Raytheon Technologies have each reported all-time highs in demand following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, allowing the companies to give shareholders nearly $20 billion last year through stock buybacks and dividends. And the CEOs of the top five weapons makers each make between $18 million and $23 million per year.
“All that military budget’s going there for a reason!”
The reason:
Every time a NAFO idiot posts that dumb "you're about to find out why we don't have free health care" meme, I think about the $50k trash cans and laugh.
How much of the US' obscene military budget is going into absurd stuff like this, I wonder
After the revolution we should audit the Pentagon, not just because its the right thing to do, but also just to see how much we could theoretically crunch the budget while still purchasing the exact same amount of stuff because it would be funny
Former auditor here: the problem is that you need some kind of a trail of what goes to x y and z. Like if someone is embezzling money into a bank account - I just need to find those transfers and be able to link the bank account to the person. Ez pz.
The Pentagon is such a fucking black box there will never be a successful audit besides putting a number on how much can not be accounted for and going
100% waiting for the only other dork as big as me to come along and say "an auditor's job is not to find fraud it's to give reasonable assurance there are no material misstatements"
If you're out there,,, hello
some stuff it's 10x a reasonable price because the part has a 3 year service life but they want to use "one" for 30 years so they pre-pay to get "warranty" replacements, sometimes paying to keep production equipment that could be making 100,000 somethings per year when they might only need 50 and all this cost is paid instead of just buying (in this case) 500 trash cans and the military warehousing and eventually surplus what's left when the plane gets replaced.
seems like an incredibly stupid way to do things and this price gouging is even worse somehow
It's all intentional. Government procurement is one of the legal mechanisms of corruption in our country - the big contractors are all basically permanent partners of the US government and the whole edifice is designed to get them paid.
Jamaica Bearings — a company that distributes parts manufactured by other firms ... [sold radio filters that] once cost $350 each for nearly $49,000 per unit
doing a heckin' 100x plus markup
call it hypercapitalism
wow capitalism is so cool
divulgâche
is this even capitalism at this point? or a looney tunes version of it? wtf is going on
A lot of small businesses somehow manage to attract the attention of the pentagon. Part of me wants to sell the CIA some piece of junk marked up to like $100,000 per unit. But the other part fears that maybe my product will be too good, and I’ll end up being killed like the guy who
sold the DODinvestigated the DOJ’s theft of the PROMIS softwareThey were able to screw him over so badly because they were the DoJ. He’s still alive, at least according to the Ghost Stories for the End of the World series on it from last year, which I highly recommend, but he hates talking about it.
Sometimes it’s graft, other times it’s hiding Secret shit.
The fun part is - the only people who can tell the difference are all friends with each other
Trade offer:
I receive 2 stinger missiles
You receive 1 trash can
The trash can is worth $2,000 more...I'll take it!
i remember some chud on twitter trying to tell me that no price is too high for "defense"
51,606 per unit
I wonder how much it would have cost to make it out of solid gold.
When I was a young radlib I heard the story of the $500 screw and I knew at that point that the entire MIC was fucked and needed to be taken out of private hands. I still kind of believe that, but I would rather cut the arms off America entirely.
Honestly it's pretty great that the great satan is wasting it's budget for killing brown people on literal trash cans