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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (708100)	10/20/2005 6:11:51 PM
From: trouthead	Respond to of 769667

There are hard working poor and rich. It is not an either or, black and white issue. jb

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (708100)	10/23/2005 2:56:09 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Peter, you complain ad nauseum about the poor but you say nothing about the rip offs occurring in the Pentagon as discussed in the article below. Why? The Bush administration is one of the most spendthrift administrations to hit this country and I hear nothing from you re. that except to complain the poor get welfare. You need to get your priorities straight.....they make no sense. You have become penny wise and pound foolish! ********************************************************** Pentagon Program Costing Taxpayers Millions in Inflated Prices** By LAUREN MARKOE and SETH BORENSTEIN Knight Ridder Newspapers WASHINGTON - The Pentagon paid $20 apiece for plastic ice cube trays that once cost it 85 cents. It paid a supplier more than $81 apiece for coffeemakers that it bought for years for just $29 from the manufacturer. That's because instead of getting competitive bids or buying directly from manufacturers like it used to, the Pentagon is using middlemen who set their own prices. It's the equivalent of shopping for weekly groceries at a convenience store. And it's costing taxpayers 20 percent more than the old system, a Knight Ridder investigation found. The higher prices are the result of a Defense Department purchasing program called prime vendor, which favors a handful of firms. Run by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the program is based on a military procurement strategy to speed delivery of supplies such as bananas and bolts to troops in the field. Military bases still have the option of getting competitive bids, but the Pentagon has encouraged them to use the prime vendor system. At the DLA's main purchasing center in Philadelphia, prime vendor sales increased from $2.3 billion in 2002 to $7.4 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. The Defense Department touts the program as one of its "best practices" and credits it with timely deliveries that have eliminated the need for expensive inventories and warehousing. For purchases under the food prime-vendor program alone, DLA claimed a savings of $250 million in five years. But those savings would have happened even without turning to the prime vendor program, competing suppliers say. For years, most suppliers have offered goods on an as-needed basis so that the military doesn't need to store them in costly warehouses. continued................. kansascity.com