Nickels and dimes

Last month it was $43 million dollars flushed down the government Department of Defense (DOD) “spendthrifting” toilet like worn out play money for a single ordinary gas station in Afghanistan. The same gas station could have been built for no more than $500,000. The U.S. government spends taxpayer money like you and I spend nickels and dimes.

This month the news is that the same DOD stiffed hapless U.S. taxpayers with another $150 million for the construction and maintenance in Afghanistan of a few posh villas staffed with private security and all the amenities for just a “handful” of government employees working in Afghanistan. 

That same “handful” of just 5 to 10 individuals could easily have been housed at the U.S. embassy or on several other secure U.S. military bases for next to nothing.

"We are concerned that this may be another example of U.S. government officials not looking out for American taxpayers' dollars,” a special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), admitted in what must be the greatest understatement of the millennia.

"If [they] had instead lived at DOD facilities in Afghanistan, where housing, security, and food service are routinely provided at little or no extra charge to DOD organizations, it appears the taxpayers would have saved tens of millions of dollars."

The special inspector says he has received "numerous allegations" of criminal activity in this matter from former employees as well as "current and former uniformed officers who worked over there, other agencies and contractors."  

One former employee described the villas as hangouts for senior DOD officials who traveled to Afghanistan, "simply to accumulate flying miles… They just came in and didn’t do anything but hang out in the villa.”

Of course, as I explained last month, this kind of outrage doesn’t happen without corruption and criminal activity at the highest to the lowest levels of government. All of the money is tucked neatly away in the pockets and bank accounts of individual criminals. The money was stolen. 

The criminals have become filthy rich overnight. Yet none of them will be identifies. No one will be fired. No one will go to jail, and the loot will never be returned. All will soon be forgotten until the next outrage; and the next; it never ends.

That’s because, in the corrupted minds of government spender’s it’s only nickels and dimes.