Pentagon Official Paid for not Working

      It is one of those stories that should be all over the news but one must look hard to find the story filed by The Washington Post. The Post reported that a now senior official for the U.S. Air Force was given a job with a defense contractor for two months that required he do nothing including not having to even show up for work. What should make us all upset is the fact that the gentleman and the U.S. Air Force do not see anything wrong with this arrangement.

      Charles D Riechers, while waiting to be confirmed by the White House for a high position in the Air Force bureaucracy was temporarily given a job with a company called Commonwealth Research Institute. The firm which is a major supplier of intelligence on surveillance and force readiness has, according to the Post, received hundreds of millions of dollars to create more paperwork and reports that no one actually pays much attention to.

     Riechers, who now holds the title of principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisitions with the Air Force (that title alone should show the extent of our being bogged down in  over-abundant payroll) told a Post reporter he did attend a Christmas party where he met the owners of the company he received two months pay totaling $26,000. although he never worked for them.

     CRI astoundingly is reported to be considered a not for profit by the Internal Revenue Service. How a company that files reports on national security and collects ludicrous sums for these reports can have tax exempt status shows just how broken our entire governmental procurement system actually is. To make matters all the more ridiculous, CRI, according to the Post, has received over 100 million dollars in special earmarks including $45 million to create reports for the CIA and the NSA. Now those are real not-for-profit situations are they not?

     The Post also stated that CRI records show spending $302,000. on lobbying efforts which obviously have paid off handsomely for the company. This entire report exemplifies how the Pentagon’s bureaucracy has run away from all reason and fiscal sanity.

     The story is simple. Lobbyists dole out money to legislators and wine and dine Pentagon staff and then they are awarded lucrative jobs at prices far exceeding anything resembling reason. Then government officials tell tax payers they need more money because of how expensive it is to provide for our national defense. According to my principal deputy assistant secretary for government waste, the enormous Pentagon building, considered the largest office building in the world, could be revamped down to the size of a decent size bowling alley. All that would have to happen is to have no more principal deputy assistants, no more secondary deputy assistants, no more deputy assistants or no more assistants. Instead someone just runs the place and hires help at a fair wage without a title requiring heavy six figure salaries. 

     Wait, I just received a check from a lobbyist in the mail. Yeh, now I can see how all of this makes sense. Never mind what I said before.