Here’s some wasteful Big Government spending. Why isn’t Fox News outraged?

[n2doc]

snip:

So what does this tell us? First, conservatives have a media apparatus that they can use to force certain stories into mainstream awareness when they find those that tell a tale they want people to hear. It doesn’t always work — for instance, their efforts to get everyone to care about the New Black Panthers have not borne fruit — but it works often enough.

Second, if there’s a vivid detail, even one that turns out to be untrue (like the $16 muffin), then all journalists are much more likely to find it compelling and do stories about it. You’d think that the story of the guy who managed to bill for 100 hours of work per day would be pretty compelling. Guess not.

Third, people seem to get angrier about bad behavior from government employees than from contractors, even though contractors at a place like Northrup Grumman are government employees in all but name (according to Northrop’s 2013 annual report, $21.3 billion of its $24.7 billion in sales came from U.S. government contracts). I’d give folks like Fox some credit for that, since they’ve worked so hard to convince everyone that “government bureaucrats” are both slothful and sinister, working every day to crush Americans’ freedom when they aren’t taking 3-hour lunches.

And fourth, the actual magnitude of the waste of taxpayer money is all but irrelevant to whether this kind of story gains traction. You know about the muffins, but do you remember that in Iraq, the Defense Department lost — literally just lost, with no idea where it went — a staggering $6.6 billion in cash? We’re talking pallets full of $100 bills, sent over there to make it rain on the various factions whose support we were trying to buy. Just disappeared. That should have been an earth-shaking scandal, but few people ever heard about it.

the rest

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/05/20/heres-some-wasteful-big-government-spending-why-isnt-fox-news-outraged/?wpsrc=AG0003336

[myrna minx]

1. K&R n/t

[Scuba]

2. Oh, they didn't lose it, that's just the cover story.

Check Cheney's friends. They've got it hidden somewhere.

[GoneFishin]

23. I sincerely believed then and now that they squirreled it away to use it to influence

aspects of the government after the King George administration, which they realized might be a Democratic one.

Since Citizen United, who the hell knows where all the money is coming from (or going to).

That money could be in a virtual trust with some right wing billionaire or think tank.

Who knows how much of the unexplained whack-a-doodle behavior on both sides of the isle is due to simple bribery.

[Scuba]

25. I don't think they needed money to coerce the next administration. The NSA spying ...

... no doubt gave them all the leverage they needed.

[GoneFishin]

27. So they have both a carrot AND a stick.

[DetlefK]

3. $6.6 billion in $100-bills is about 66 tons of money. And it just disappeared?

[Blanks]

18. Or more...

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1

[Hissyspit]

19. You didn't know about that?

See?

[DetlefK]

28. I knew about it, but...

6.6 billion is just a number. 66 tons is about 10 truck-loads. How does the content of 10 trucks simply vanish?

[Thor_MN]

30. It was a highly secret transfer - some people involved don't know what they are transfering

So you pick up the pallets of cash all official like from the Treasury and move it to a nondescript warehouse overnight. Next day, a different trucking firm is used to pick up the now disguised pallets to bring to the cargo planes. Only the second company doesn't know that it picked up covered pallets of soda from the warehouse next door to where the cash was delivered. All they care about is the weight, that is what they are getting paid to move.

Only need to control the (privatized) security force and the people signing for the "classified" deliveries. Or maybe not even the people signing. "Soldier, the contents of these pallets are above your pay grade, just sign the fricking form!!" Black Water or twin handles the security and the transfer in Iraq from plane to the refridges at their base and billions of dollars is missing.

They probably made it more complex than that, but one could probably do it with less than 10 people "in the loop" if you control the process. And if necessary, you have a war going on to disappear a contractor, either by "killing" their old identity in the line of duty or literally killing them "in Iraq."

They should have the serial numbers of every damn bill that went missing, but the Bush admin didn't really investigate and for the good of the country, we are looking forward, or something.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Just added that article to my collection.

[daleanime]

5. K&R....

[Overseas]

6. K&R.

[SamKnause]

7. September 10th, 2001 the day before 9/11.

Rumsfeld held a press conference.

He announced the Pentagon could not account for 2.3 TRILLION dollars !!!!!!!!!!!!

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

9. In the 1990s, the Government Accounting Office tried to audit the Pentagon

After about three years, they gave up.

[Enthusiast]

17. But.

We must cut social security!

[freebrew]

8. I thought it was $9 billion...nt

[GoneFishin]

24. yes, It was $9 billion.

[Fred Sanders]

10. F35. 1 Trillion Dollars down the drain, nary a mention in the co-dependent media. The Sacred Cow of

military must be fed until it explodes.

[Aerows]

22. Funktillion dollars has been poured into the F-35

and all funktillion of them are producing a faulty helmet, a faulty plane and faulty engineering so that AFTER THE FACT they can "fix" the problems that were engineered into them to ensure a steady financial stream.

Here is the thing - If you build something and sell it, that's the end of the money. If you build something and then have the rights to continue profiting off of it, you don't have to do shit except sit back and enjoy the bucks rolling in. It isn't profitable to build a thing. It is profitable to build a thing that requires constant maintenance and a reliance on those who built the thing. Oldest trick in the book.

[colsohlibgal]

11. The Fox Propaganda Station

Having "GOP TV" had been a republican wish for some time, flowing out of the famous far reaching long term "let's take over America" Lewis Powell memo of the early 70's. Once Fox began GOP TV was a reality - and a huge factor in convincing middle and low class people to fight tax increases on people like the Kochs., and that there was a rationale in bombing Iraq.

Back to waste - I'm among those who has serious questions about what went down on 9/11/01. Whatever went down sure knocked the big stories of 9/10/01 out of the news cycle - including Rummy saying he had no idea where 2.3 million dollars was. The timing of the 9/10 announcement is at least curious.

[GoneFishin]

26. I think you meant $2.3 billion. I believe the timing was deliberate, and with the motive to which

you are alluding, to bury the story of the missing money.

[Romulox]

12. This is the sort of distortion that a "team" approach to politics engenders. BOTH types of waste

(and GRAFT) are toxic to the health of this country. I, for one, am not going to defend "MY" government waste as being smaller than "YOUR" government waste. It's a ridiculous sideshow.

[Aerows]

21. +1000 n/t

[hfojvt]

13. 443 to 1

stories about the muffin vs. this story - that's just in a 24 hour period.

But I don't remember the muffin.

[byronius]

14. As Randi Rhodes once famously pointed out, you could see it from space.

[MaeScott]

15. K and R. nt

[groundloop]

16. But but but...... Benghazi !!!!!!!

[Aerows]

20. Because they don't care about graft that benefits them

It is when it trickles out of their hands to the "peasants" that it becomes an issue.

[bonniebgood]

29. Gee how many hearing did the liberal Henry Waxman bring

in subpoenas looking for the missing cash? I think he was the chairman of the house oversight committee. I guess that kind of cash can shut up just about anybody into early retirement. You may think the repub are rotting from within with the teabag BS. The Dems are just as corrupt. Man there needs to be a bagger party on the left to get rid of the establishment cooperate dems.
THEY CAN'T EVEN APPOINT ALAN GREYSON TO A 'FUNDRAISING' BENGAZI HEARING. and they wonder why dems don't vote as in 2008 and 2012. All we hear is repug are just pandering to the base. When do you EVER hear Dems pandering to the base?

[erpowers]

31. Did the Money Really Disappear?

I do not think the money actually disappeared. I think the money was used for things government officials did not want the American people to know about. It was far easier to keep the American people in the dark by claiming the money was lost.