silly string saves lives

[BAT*21{usa}]

saw this on yahoo this morning . it is a great idea!! www.yahoo.com/s/454459

[vinsanity]

While I am glad that this may help out those over there, I find it sad that they are not issued some device that would accomplish the same goal. All of the examples of improvised assistance prove that not enough thought and funds are being utilized to make this effort as efficient as it could be.

[Lamron]

A military issue device that accomplished the same thing would cost $100 per can.

[vinsanity]

True that... but that is another fault of a govermnment that is not a good steward of the people's tax revenues.

[{DOGZ}Herr Klugscheisser]

Go NJ!! It's been mentioned heavily in the paper here as you can imagine. I'm more curious how someone thought of this. Necessity is the mother of invention.

They sell it in the Dollar stores near me. Imagine what those stores are paying for it!

[BAT*21{usa}]

just saw 5 min ago on t.v. that the lady in the article said that she is getting thousands of cans from all over.. Michigan,Indiana to mention a few.they can use every can. awesome!

[BAT*21{usa}]

admin said:

A military issue device that accomplished the same thing would cost $100 per can.

i would think that would think that would be the contractors gouging the government .figuring they have deep pockets ...ours!!

[RedRock]

There are many reasons a common item costs more when produced **for** the military. Usually it's because of rigid standards and testing that require the item to be and perform far better than the common household item. Silly string for my 14 yr old will be used under non-hazardous conditions--not in freezing or 140 degree temps, not after being carried around for days in a pouch or backpack with 80 lbs. of other hard items, not with sand blowing or mud flowing all around it while being used, etc. And if the pressure is suboptimal in the can for 2% of cans, no biggie, I just complain to Walmart customer service (if I actually care enough for a, what, 99 cents product? to spend the gas to take it back and complain, using my valuable time up, too) and get another, but in the field of battle when 2% is a dismal failure rate to protect and save lives, that won't do, the manufacturer has to re-engineer the product or production process to get it down to whatever the government specifies, say 0.2% failure rate, etc., in the beginning. All of this means the very first can of military grade stuff, not the off the shelf Walmart grade stuff, is very very expensive, and hence the government contracts are way up in price. The price doesn't go up just because the government is the buyer, although I'm sure people have the tendency to try to gouge just because of the deep pockets payer. We all know the joke, that the most important structural bolt in the $50 million jet was produced by the lowest bidder, after all. If anything, what this example (silly string) shows is that necessity is the mother of invention, or at least of out of the box (?can) thinking.

[vinsanity]

There is a lot of sense in what you say Red... but the simple truth is that all government contractors RAPE the US taxpayers. And those responsible for accepting the bids and issuing the contracts are squandering our tax dollars. The only reason I can see for this is personal gain. Somehow they are making a killing. Why else would it be reasonable for a plain old hammer to cost thousands of dollars?

[RedRock]

vinsanity said:

There is a lot of sense in what you say Red... but the simple truth is that all government contractors RAPE the US taxpayers. And those responsible for accepting the bids and issuing the contracts are squandering our tax dollars. The only reason I can see for this is personal gain. Somehow they are making a killing. Why else would it be reasonable for a plain old hammer to cost thousands of dollars?

Urban Legend. Internet myths blown out of proportion. Show me documented proof.

See, for example, findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3257/is_n4_v49/ai_17000470

.......In the mid-1980s, an armed forces technician found an invoice for a hammer. Its cost was listed as $450. Shocked by this egregious expense, he reported the invoice to his superiors, and the story leaked to the press. Resulting public outrage increased when subsequent disclosures revealed $600 toilet seats, $7,000 coffee pots, and other high-profile "procurement waste." One senator's staff received media attention by decorating a Christmas tree with scandalously priced repair parts.

Ironically, the public perception of overpricing in these cases was based on incomplete information. For example, $445 of the $450 hammer's cost was, in fact, an accounting illusion. Because of equally allocated overhead costs for all items shipped with the hammer, the $5.00 hammer was assigned the same $445 overhead charge as the $20,000 electronic device in the same box. However, the real issue was public perception, not spare parts pricing.

.......While the cost of alleged - and sometimes real - fraud, waste, and abuse never amounted to more than a very small part of the defense budget, the integrity of the defense industry was severely undermined in the public eye. Whether an organization committed violations or not, public scrutiny could call its corporate reputation into question, distract its management, and create legal defense expenses. The industry as a whole continues to live with the legal and regulatory legacies of its inability to anticipate or respond rapidly to the demands of intense public scrutiny.

Also, don't forget that some expense accounts are padded by the Armed Force purposely to acquire funds for black research that needs to be hidden from public (and enemy, including the New York Times) eyes.

[vinsanity]

In a very quick google search before heading out to work, I found this story in which even the President thinks that a government contractor ripped off the USA for over 61 million dollars on of all things - fuel...

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3751338/

[RedRock]

vinsanity said:

In a very quick google search before heading out to work, I found this story in which even the President thinks that a government contractor ripped off the USA for over 61 million dollars on of all things - fuel...

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3751338/

Typical political type story from the main-stream media.

Halliburton, per the article, explained why the charges were higher:

Last week, Pentagon auditors said they suspected that the Halliburton subsidiary overcharged the department by about $61 million by using gasoline provided by a Kuwaiti firm rather than less expensive imports from Turkey.

Pentagon auditors said Halliburton charged $1.09 per gallon more for gasoline from Kuwait than from Turkey. But Halliburton said the Kuwaiti firm was the only one approved as a supplier by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the contract.

And even MSN didn't say the president accused them of a "rip-off" but instead:

Last week, President Bush said he believed Halliburton had overcharged and he expected the company to reimburse the government.

Overcharge, not rip-off, a business technical detail that can be handled by accountants or attorneys or civil courts.

The MSN article, in essence (and it's why it was written, probably) implies the "excess charges" went straight into the pockets of Halliburton, instead of merely being a larger expense to be paid THAT NO ONE FROM HALLIBURTON PROFITED FROM.

And once again, the mainstream media try to Link V.P. Cheney with today's Halliburton, implying that all of this is corruption at the White House level. It is all so tiresome.

[vinsanity]

"And once again, the mainstream media try to Link V.P. Cheney with today's Halliburton, implying that all of this is corruption at the White House level. It is all so tiresome."

I disagree... it was simply a find from a quick search that clearly states that the holder of a government contract overcharged the hand feeding it. The thing one must ponder is. if undiscovered solely by the supplier, would the supplier have offered an immediate refund? We will never know.

[Lamron]

Where was the overcharging?

Halliburton says "This is how much the gas cost, pay the bill".

Pentagon says "That's way too much, you should have bought from Turkey".

Halliburton says "We couldn't. The contract obligates us to only buy from suppliers approved by the Corps of Engineers. They didn't approve Turkey gas, so we had to buy from (approved source) Kuwait. The bill is correct, pay up!"


Halliburton is billing for actual expenses incurred by them while being compliant with the government contract. Nobody's "overcharging" anything.