The Conservative Cave
Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: franksolich on January 01, 2010, 01:13:08 PM
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7372369
Oh my.
panader0 (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:14 PM
Original message
My new job on the army base and government waste
Some old friends of mine from Cal are in the commercial furniture business. They landed a contract on the base here in Az to take the old furniture out of the barracks and replace it with new stuff. Two beds, mattresses, desks, wardrobes, chests of drawers, nightstands and lamps in each room. Maybe a thousand rooms.
It's a good paying job and will last until mid-February. But it's not the hard work that bothers me. It's the fact that 90% of the stuff we take out is in good condition, some nearly new. The old furniture is hauled to a huge outdoor storage lot and left to rot from the weather, and is eventually crushed.
I had the same job for 6 weeks last year and repeatedly asked the officials if I could purchase 3 sets for my kids' rooms. No way. The stuff could be donated to charity or auctioned, but no. Throw it away. If there is unspent money in the budget, they must spend it or risk having their monies cut next year. What a waste.
Since when have the primitives worried about waste in governmental spending, be it military furniture or the subway cat?
Dappleganger (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:20 PM
Response to Original message
1. You should post this on reddit.
geckosfeet (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:25 PM
Response to Original message
2. You are right. Someone needs get the cajones to make the decision to donate this stuff.
I am sure the local Salvation Army would take it if it's in sale-able condition.
Stinky The Clown (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:29 PM
THE SPARKLING HUSBAND PRIMITIVE
Response to Original message
3. An oft-repeated story, it is so emblematic of government waste.
Sherman A1 (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:30 PM
Response to Original message
4. Might be worth a letter to the editor of your local paper and contacting your Congressman and Senators.
panader0 (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:33 PM
Response to Reply #4
7. I have considered that quite a bit
The rub is that it's my friends' business and if I rock the boat it would be bad for them. (the suppliers)
msongs (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:30 PM
Response to Original message
5. job security for paper pushers and more military/industrial complex welfare
spooky3 (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:32 PM
Response to Original message
6. write your congressperson, but I hope you don't get retaliated against or your friends lose business as a result. Maybe you can suggest a way to spend the funds that would be better for all concerned rather than just cut.
wolfgangmo (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:49 PM
Response to Reply #6
13. Have your friend or you put together a business plan for the congress critter.
That would include donating or recycling or reusing the materials. Create an ongoing job/company for yourself.
madokie (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:39 PM
Response to Original message
8. You should have seen what I seen shortly before I left VN in late '70
the army had excavated a hugh hole in the ground that was a good 40 maybe 50 feet deep , hard to say for sure now, that was a good half mile on each side and they were putting all kinds of war machines in there, said it was cheaper than transporting it back to the states. I'm sure that as soon as we were gone the Vietnamese dug all that stuff up. Jet engines still in the shipping containers sealed up, jeeps still in cosmolein. I was blown away by it all but I was a short timer by then and all I really cared about was coming home.
mrcheerful (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:42 PM
Response to Original message
9. It's not just furniture that gets mothed balled by the military complex
there are areas around the country where out dated weapons such as air craft, tanks and the like or stuck out in the middle of no where and left to rust or oxidize away, scraping them for their metals would give the government some extra cash, though it would drive down the resale price of metals to the scrap yards. At one time you could by military vehicles for pennies on the dollar, friend of mine bought a 1945 Willeys jeep for $500 in 1980 from uncle Sam, the only problem, it took him 3 years to assemble it. That was the only draw back, you had to put the cars, jeeps and motorcycles together after you bought them.
tridim (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:42 PM
Response to Original message
10. I thought the GSA was supposed to sell this kind of stuff at government auction.
I used to go to GSA auctions all the time and bid on wacky military equipment.
tblue37 (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:43 PM
Response to Original message
11. It's like that in all bureaucracies. I teach at a university, and departments and programs all rush to unload their money before the end of a fiscal year to prevent cuts in the next year.
A friend of mine who worked for a different government agency than yours told me that his main job was to make sure all their allocated money was spent in time.
Gregorian (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:47 PM
Response to Original message
12. The whole military is a big one way chute from manufacturer to the dump.
They pushed aircraft off the decks of boats after world war 2. We leave equipment everywhere. Bullets are the best example. They go from manufacturer to the dirt. And accomplish nothing.
It's a money machine. We pay them, and they dispose of their stuff as fast as possible so we will continue to pay them. We are suckers.
I'm not afraid to say this, nor to paint it with a broad brush. I'm certain to get dumped on my those who believe in the military. That doesn't change the fact that what they do is incredibly wasteful.
How about the whole government, giving us a one-way chute from distributor to the junk-heap?
Alenne (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 01:14 PM
Response to Original message
14. The base I lived on used to pave the same street every year.
The base was always "fixing" things that didn't need to be fixed because if you don't spend it, you lose it. Everyone knows about it but no one stops it.
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panader0 (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:14 PM
Original message
My new job on the army base and government waste
Some old friends of mine from Cal are in the commercial furniture business. They landed a contract on the base here in Az to take the old furniture out of the barracks and replace it with new stuff. Two beds, mattresses, desks, wardrobes, chests of drawers, nightstands and lamps in each room. Maybe a thousand rooms.
It's a good paying job and will last until mid-February. But it's not the hard work that bothers me. It's the fact that 90% of the stuff we take out is in good condition, some nearly new. The old furniture is hauled to a huge outdoor storage lot and left to rot from the weather, and is eventually crushed.
I had the same job for 6 weeks last year and repeatedly asked the officials if I could purchase 3 sets for my kids' rooms. No way. The stuff could be donated to charity or auctioned, but no. Throw it away. If there is unspent money in the budget, they must spend it or risk having their monies cut next year. What a waste.
I think I'm missing the connection. They bought new stuff with the budget money so the money was spent regardless of what did or didn't happen to the old furniture. Knowing all the stupid little regulations congress puts on everything, the military probably isn't allowed to do anything resourceful like donating to charity. Or maybe they do...how would this idiot know for sure?
Cindie
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Shit, what base is that? Then again, I wonder what the DUmmies would do if they had to live on board ship, with their entire world stuffed into their rack pan and MAYBE a sliver of locker space. And oh yeah--three-high racks.
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The stuff might also be infested with bedbugs; only a true idiot (or a DU'er, no real difference) would take discarded furniture like that without even checking for bedbugs or other nasties.
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Shit, what base is that? Then again, I wonder what the DUmmies would do if they had to live on board ship, with their entire world stuffed into their rack pan and MAYBE a sliver of locker space. And oh yeah--three-high racks.
The bosun/COB would probably eject 'em over the side once the ship reached the 12-mile limit, he having gotten fed up of the ****in' whining about their 'rights' and 'fairness' 9 miles ago.
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The stuff might also be infested with bedbugs; only a true idiot (or a DU'er, no real difference) would take discarded furniture like that without even checking for bedbugs or other nasties.
Even if it ain't, it's at most a full-sized mattress, hardly luxurious.
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I think it's a bouncy and not a very good one. For the one thing the base probably got some extra funding through an ear mark from a congresscritter, so they have to use it or the congresscritter would not get that earmark again, (maybe).
Secondly the military sells off quite a bit of their old stuff. Even empty brass casings are sold to ammunition makers for reloading.
Then there is this site.
http://www.drms.dla.mil/sales/generalinfo.shtml
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I think it's a bouncy and not a very good one. For the one thing the base probably got some extra funding through an ear mark from a congresscritter, so they have to use it or the congresscritter would not get that earmark again, (maybe).
Secondly the military sells off quite a bit of their old stuff. Even empty brass casings are sold to ammunition makers for reloading.
Then there is this site.
http://www.drms.dla.mil/sales/generalinfo.shtml
Bingo. I was just going to post this.
http://www.drms.dla.mil/turn-in/usable/furniture.shtml
Been there, done that.
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Good catch--I knew there was an agency that did that, but forgot what it was. If you don't mind old/sorta beat up test equipment, there's no better place to get good tools, etc., CHEAP.
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Good catch--I knew there was an agency that did that, but forgot what it was. If you don't mind old/sorta beat up test equipment, there's no better place to get good tools, etc., CHEAP.
I still have some tools from my boat. For whatever reason, when a socket or wrench was lost out of a set, we couldn't get just the one one we needed, but had to req a complete set. Due to space limitations/regulations we were only allowed so many of each , the QM allowed the old ones to be grabbed by whoever wanted them.
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I probably shouldn't tell them about the 25 Apple dual processor G4's and the 5 Apple XServes, all in perfectly good working order, that the govt. just ordered us to DESTROY.
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I probably shouldn't tell them about the 25 Apple dual processor G4's and the 5 Apple XServes, all in perfectly good working order, that the govt. just ordered us to DESTROY.
Computers were always a pain to dispose of. Monitors? Hazmat. Hard drives? Degauss and destroy but make a copy of the serial numbers for perpetuity. Ah the good ole days.
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There's another issue that has to do with the asinine methods of federal budgetting and appropriations. Some smaller offices frequently find themselves at risk of having all of their funds cut across the board (capital as well as operational expenditures) unless they continue to put in budgets that equal or exceed their original budgets (e.g., when the office was first set up). In order to do that, many of these offices find themselves in the position of having to continually requisition new capital equipment just in order to make sure that their operating budgets aren't cut to the point where they cannot continue to function.
When I was in H.S., my mother had a friend who worked in just such a small federal office that was involved with photography. According to this friend of my mother's, every year the office would throw out several brand-new, very expensive SLRs and request replacements in the budget request for next year, just to make sure that the office got enough operating funds to keep its operations going.
That may not be what's going on in this circumstance, but I've no doubt that it goes on in a lot of federal offices, and that it constitutes a substantial aspect of the continued growth in federal spending.
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Why do liberals only see waste when they look at the military and not every other part of government?
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Why do liberals only see waste when they look at the military and not every other part of government?
'cause liberals are generally so short-sighted, most of 'em still aren't too sure what the end of their nose looks like.
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Why do liberals only see waste when they look at the military and not every other part of government?
Government to them is for the sole purpose of providing their individual needs,wants and desires.
That the military provides them with a country where they can seek that is too abstract a concept for their immature minds.
Mom not letting a little child have a cookie before dinner sort of thing..it is for their own well being but their childish selfishness refuses to grasp it.
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I think I'm missing the connection. They bought new stuff with the budget money so the money was spent regardless of what did or didn't happen to the old furniture. Knowing all the stupid little regulations congress puts on everything, the military probably isn't allowed to do anything resourceful like donating to charity. Or maybe they do...how would this idiot know for sure?
Cindie
The government policies state that if you have money left over at the end of a fiscal year, you either have to spend the money or return it to the government and have you budget cut by that amount next year....
Government agencies go on a spending spree near the end of a budget year if they have a surplus so their budgets don't get cut, and whatever is bought usually ends up sold at auction or scrapped....
I think "Tip" O'Neil was responsible for this, back during the Nixon administration....
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Hmmm...I know the guy that runs the PAO office at Huachuca.
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The government policies state that if you have money left over at the end of a fiscal year, you either have to spend the money or return it to the government and have you budget cut by that amount next year....
Government agencies go on a spending spree near the end of a budget year if they have a surplus so their budgets don't get cut, and whatever is bought usually ends up sold at auction or scrapped....
I think "Tip" O'Neil was responsible for this, back during the Nixon administration....
Some businesses are ran in a similar way. They have budgets for repair or replacement of equipment. We get quite a few things towards the end of the year that get okayed for repair by customers even though we recommend replacement.
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The government policies state that if you have money left over at the end of a fiscal year, you either have to spend the money or return it to the government and have you budget cut by that amount next year....
Government agencies go on a spending spree near the end of a budget year if they have a surplus so their budgets don't get cut, and whatever is bought usually ends up sold at auction or scrapped....
I think "Tip" O'Neil was responsible for this, back during the Nixon administration....
Thanks for putting my very vague recollection into concrete form. That is the crux of the problem in many instances.
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They landed a contract on the base here in Az to take the old furniture out of the barracks and replace it with new stuff. Two beds, mattresses, desks, wardrobes, chests of drawers, nightstands and lamps in each room. Maybe a thousand rooms.
The Army wishes they got new stuff every year - - there really is no effort at all put into this whopper.
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Hmmm...I know the guy that runs the PAO office at Huachuca.
May I suggest that we do a "walldude" on this POS?
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The government policies state that if you have money left over at the end of a fiscal year, you either have to spend the money or return it to the government and have you budget cut by that amount next year....
Government agencies go on a spending spree near the end of a budget year if they have a surplus so their budgets don't get cut, and whatever is bought usually ends up sold at auction or scrapped....
I think "Tip" O'Neil was responsible for this, back during the Nixon administration....
My point was, regardless what they decided to do with the OLD stuff they were already spending the money. One has nothing to do with the other unless they have to ADD the amount the old furniture was worth back into their budget if they sold it instead of destroying it. Whether they were spending their year-end so as not to lose X dollars in funding or were getting new beds because the old stuff was threadbare, infested, whatever has nothing to do with their reasons for selling or not selling furniture to a contract worker.
Cindie
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I think it's a bouncy and not a very good one. For the one thing the base probably got some extra funding through an ear mark from a congresscritter, so they have to use it or the congresscritter would not get that earmark again, (maybe).
Secondly the military sells off quite a bit of their old stuff. Even empty brass casings are sold to ammunition makers for reloading.
Then there is this site.
http://www.drms.dla.mil/sales/generalinfo.shtml
Generally furniture and items like that go to Govliquidation (http://www.govliquidation.com/) and not to DRMS, I've bought at least 100 auctions through them.
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May I suggest that we do a "walldude" on this POS?
Beat me to it, BC . . . but I second this sentiment.
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If there is unspent money in the budget, they must spend it or risk having their monies cut next year.
This is exactly how the civilian bureaucracies and education systems operate. It's a completely liberal construct.
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panader0 (1000+ posts) Fri Jan-01-10 12:14 PM
Original message
My new job on the army base and government waste
Notice how the first of that sentence validates the last of that sentence?
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May I suggest that we do a "walldude" on this POS?
Will do. First thing tomorrow.
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Knowing all the stupid little regulations congress puts on everything, the military probably isn't allowed to do anything resourceful like donating to charity.
The federal institution where I was employed threw away cases upon cases of Ensure because regulations prohibited donating. I wouldn't doubt that's the case government wide.