Budgets & Funding – Page 17 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/06/132011/06/13

US Billions in Cash Stolen in Early Days of Iraq II

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence

US: $6.6bn in Iraq aid ‘may have been stolen'

By David Usborne, US Editor

Tuesday, 14 June 2011

Years after American auditors said they had lost track of vast sums of reconstruction cash for Iraq in the wake of the ousting of Saddam Hussein they are now admitting for the first time that much of it was almost certainly stolen.

In a revelation that is stirring anger both on Capitol Hill and among Iraqi officials in Baghdad, the office that was created by the Bush administration to monitor efforts to get Iraq on its feet after the 2003 invasion is saying that $6.6bn (£4bn), all delivered in cash, cannot be accounted for.

Just how much of the missing money was pocketed either by US contractors or Iraqis is not clear, nor is it likely that a full picture of what happened will ever be painted. Even so, Stuart Bowen, who runs the monitoring office, says that the errant billions may represent the “largest theft of funds in national history”.

Read full article….

Phi Beta Iota: This is old news and it was much more. By one account, Paul Bremer was unable to account for over $10 billion in shipped cash (12 airplanes, $2 billion each, rough estimate $24 billion. That is completely apart from the fact that we paid tens of millions to US contractors when local engineers who built the originals were asking for hundreds of thousands.

2011/06/13

DOT&E Documents and Tony Capaccio Story

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Standards, Technologies

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

There are a set of documents at the DOT&E website which offer DOT&E insights into the reason for why about 40 programs have experienced delays — and costs. These documents relate to a Tony Capaccio story in today's Bloomberg News (below).

The document titled “Updated DOT&E Input on Program Delays” (at the DOT&E link shown above) identifies various specific reasons for the problems programs experience — different from most of the explanations from contractors and other system advocates in and out of the Pentagon. (Eg. for the F-35: Fly rates per month lowered to more realistic projections (from 12 max for all variants and venues to 10 max for CTOL/CV flight sciences, 9 max for STOVL flight sciences, 8 max for all mission systems); increased planning factors for re-fly and regression (up 15% for flight science, 10% for mission systems); more time required for software development and incremental builds.”)

Beyond the F-35, the various systems described in the analysis are typically more obscure programs (eg. AIM-9X 8.212 Software Upgrade) but there are also a few better known ones, such as LCS, which is described in “fly before buy,” Congress and the Navy want to rush ahead of testing to buy 4 LCS in the 2012 HASC DOD Authorization bill for $1.8 billion in production costs.

Availability of complete mission packages will be delayed until at least 2015.

Instead of withholding production of untested systems with clear and obvious development problems, Congress and the Pentagon are intent on business as usual. The LCS is a good example: instead of “fly before buy,” Congress and the Navy want to rush ahead of testing to buy 4 LCS in the 2012 HASC DOD Authorization bill for $1.8 billion in production costs.

Some will think the DOT&E analysis and documents to be obscure and too “in the weeds” to pay much attention to. Instead, they offer a major part of the explanation for why hardware costs and delays are so out of control, and they offer a stunning view into how little is being done about that.

BloombergNews.com, June 13, 2011

Weapons Testers Found Not to Blame for Procurement Delay

2011/06/112011/06/11

Mother Jones: How Not to Withdraw from Iraq

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

How Not to Withdraw from Iraq

Even as we withdraw troops, the enormity of the US embassy compound in Baghdad sends the wrong message.

— By Peter Van Buren

Mother Jones, 11 June 2011

EXTRACT:

Eight disastrous years after we invaded, it is sad but altogether true that Iraq does not matter much in the end.

embassy baghdad — Click on Image to Enlarge

It is a terrible thing that we poured 4,459 American lives and trillions of dollars into the war, and without irony oversaw the deaths of at least a hundred thousand, and probably hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis in the name of freedom. Yet we are left with only one argument for transferring our occupation duties from the Department of Defense to the Department of State: something vague about our “investment in blood and treasure.”

Think of this as the Vegas model of foreign policy: keep the suckers at the table throwing good money after bad. Leaving aside the idea that “blood and treasure” sounds like a line from Pirates of the Caribbean, one must ask: What accomplishment are we protecting?

The war's initial aim was to stop those weapons of mass destruction from being used against us. There were none, so check that off the list. Then it was to get rid of Saddam. He was hanged in 2006, so cross off that one. A little late in the game we became preoccupied with ensuring an Iraq that was “free.” And we've had a bunch of elections and there is a government of sorts in place to prove it, so that one's gotta go, too.

What follows won't be “investment,” just more waste. The occupation of Iraq, centered around that engorged embassy, is now the equivalent of a self-licking ice cream cone, useful only to itself.

Read long article rich with details….

2011/06/112011/06/11

In “borderless” cyberspace, nation states struggle — M4IS2 Anyone?

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Geospatial, History, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Key Players, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Real Time, Reform, Research resources, Serious Games, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, Whole Earth Review

Intelligence Maturity Fixed — Click on Image to Enlarge

Analysis: In “borderless” cyberspace, nation states struggle

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent

Reuters LONDON | Thu Jun 9, 2011

EXTRACT:

“The nature of cyberspace is borderless and anonymous,” R. Chandrasekhara, secretary of India's telecommunications department, told a cyber security conference in London last week organised by a U.S.-based think tank, the EastWest Institute. “Governments, countries and law — all are linked to territory. There is a fundamental contradiction.”

Read full article….

Tip of the Hat to Chris Pallaris at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: The national secret intelligence communities mean well, but they are cognitively and culturally incapacitated in relation to both the global threats and the global infomation sharing and sense-making possibilities. It may just be that the solution has to come from a private sector service of common concern that can provide the integrity now lacking in governments and most corporation. Scary thought. M4IS2 is inevitable….delay is costing trillions.

2011/06/08

Kenya Advances with Participatory Budgeting

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Open Government, Real Time, Serious Games

face michael ostrolenk — Michael Ostrolenk

Participatory Budgeting in Kenya: Finance Minister invites Suggestions through Social Media

Marvin Tumbo, Contributor:

The Kenyan Government has been getting quite tech savvy in the recent past, becoming more pronounced as Kenyans join the civil service. This has resulted in subtle, but solid, movements towards a better connected Government as was showcased during the Connected Kenya Summit in Mombasa in April.

Read full article….

Search: “participatory budgeting”

2011/06/06

Open Source Anonymous Banking….Here Now!

03 Economy, 11 Society, Advanced Cyber/IO, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, InfoOps (IO), IO Technologies, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Reform, Tools

What Happens When Anonymous Gets a Bank?

Dominic Basulto on May 18, 2011

bigthink

The same people who brought you Wikileaks are back, and this time, they've created a virtual currency called Bitcoin that could destabilize the entire global financial system. Bitcoin is an open-source virtual currency generated by a computer algorithm that is completely beyond the reach of financial intermediaries, central banks and national tax collectors. Bitcoins could be used to purchase anything, at any time, from anyone in the world, in a transaction process that it is almost completely frictionless. Yes, that's right, the hacktivists now have a virtual currency that's untraceable, unhackable, and completely Anonymous.

And that's where things start to get interesting. Veteran tech guru Jason Calacanis recently called Bitcoin the most dangerous open source project he's ever seen. TIME suggested that Bitcoin might be able to bring national governments and global financial institutions to their knees. You see, Bitcoin is as much a political statement as it is a virtual currency. If you think there's a shadow banking system now, wait a few more months. The political part is that, unlike other virtual currencies like Facebook Credits (used to buy virtual sock puppets for your friends), Bitcoins are globally transferrable across borders, making them the perfect instrument to finance any cause or any activity — even if it's banned by a sovereign government.

You don't need a banking or trading account to buy and trade Bitcoins – all you need is a laptop. They're like bearer bonds combined with the uber-privacy of a Swiss bank account, mixed together with a hacker secret sauce that stores them as 1's and 0's on your computer. They're “regulated” (to use the term lightly) by distributed computers around the world. Most significantly, Bitcoins can not be frozen or blocked or taxed or seized.

Read full article….

See Also:

Open Money

2011/06/062011/06/06

DoD Inflation Fraud Costs Taxpayers Billions More

Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Military

UPDATED to Add The Hill 06/06/11.

A new Straus Military Reform Project paper that I have just finished explains how the Pentagon has tailored measures of inflation for itself that generate added billions of dollars — each year — and additional (hidden) “real growth” for its budget. As just one example of the consequences, during the span of President Obama's $400 billion “savings” in the security budget over 12 years, I calculate that $167 billion of that amount is for inflation that the most widely accepted measure of inflation says will not exist.

It's an arcane subject, and some will remember a scandal and studies about this in the 1980s, but despite the complexities of the Pentagon's budget labyrinth, hundreds of billions are at issue. I urge you to read the summary below, as well as the paper itself.

The paper's summary is below; the full text is online.

Summary

The Pentagon uses a specially tailored measure of inflation that masks past budget growth and induces Congress to appropriate excess funding for inflation that the most commonly accepted inflation index says will not occur.

Continue reading “DoD Inflation Fraud Costs Taxpayers Billions More”