Crony Capitalism -- your tax dollars at work

multiple agencies have quietly commissioned artists to paint official portraits of Cabinet secretaries and other top appointees — an expenditure often seen when officials are on the way out the door or already gone.

The Environmental Protection Agency spent nearly $40,000 on a portrait of Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, while a painting of Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley will cost $41,200, according to federal purchasing records. The price tag for a 3-by-4-foot oil portrait of Agriculture Department Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack: $22,500.

This isn’t something that’s been widely covered because most media lost interest after the last U.S. troops left Iraq in December of 2011.

At least $8 billion in Iraq reconstruction funds has been wasted because of contracting abuses and mismanagement, according to the final report released by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR). The transitional watchdog has published hundreds of scathing reports over the years and this month released the grand finale, a painful 186-page exposé that includes many examples of the corruption that’s plagued U.S.-funded Iraq reconstruction efforts.

Congress appropriated a whopping $51.4 billion to help the country recover from the war by, among other things, training local police, building schools, hospitals and transportation systems, but much of the money has literally vanished.

Over the years probes have revealed that lucrative contracts never got finished, weapons and sophisticated communication equipment can’t be accounted for and that an unused police housing camp with an Olympic-sized pool and lavish trailers still sits empty in Iraq.

A few years ago the Pentagon admitted that lost 6.6 billion in cash that had been flown into Iraq in turboprop military cargo planes for post-invasion reconstruction! The money was bundled in chunks of $100 bills with each aircraft carrying about $2.4 billion. The inspector general referred to it as “the largest theft of funds in national history.”

In other words, defense spending will increase in every year, even with sequestration cuts.
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But assume that U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan does end in the next year or so, and that war spending goes down or even disappears altogether. Even in that scenario, defense spending is scheduled to increase in every year except one, even with sequestration cuts.

So under a scenario of continued war in Afghanistan and under a scenario of no war in Afghanistan, and everything in between, defense spending is scheduled to rise steadily in the next decade, even with sequestration cuts.

Joe Biden runs up bill of $585,000 for just ONE NIGHT in five-star Paris hotel (and taxpayers will pick up the tab)

What's the cost to run those White House tours again?

So VP and the security detail should have haggled for better price?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/a...5-000.html


What's the cost to run those White House tours again?

60 Completely Outrageous Ways The U.S. Government Is Wasting Money
http://endoftheamericandream.com/...ting-money