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Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
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There's an old Chinese saying (there really is 
) quoted in Seven Samurai, but indirectly attributed by some sources to Ssu Ma I: "You don't worry about your beard when your head is about to be taken."
When I worked for USG in 2004-2005, I learned, among other things, that there were cost plus contracts from the Carter administration that hadn't been closed out. Nowadays, we've finally got those done, but there are still contracts from the first Reagan administration not closed out. Why? Well, to do a contract closeout, you have to get final data from the contractor, AND when Reagan came into office, as a "cost cutting" measure, he started reducing the number of warranted Contract Officers in USG service. Most of what a CO does is legally an "inherently governmental function" so by law, the really high-value stuff is reserved to the CO, not to contracted staff. You also need auditors to do cost plus closeouts, and the USG has about half the number of contract auditors it had during Reagan's tenure. Agency IG staffs have been hit just as hard, so there's no capacity to provide effective oversight. When I was in USG, I worked with one other CO, and a contracted administrated staffer, and we oversaw a book of just under 10 billion in existing procurements. With three people. How many purchasing and audit staff does a private sector company have for 10 billion in active contracts?
The ultimate reasons closeouts aren't done on cost plus contracts (what a coincidence, they're not an issue on T&M or fixed price) is because the contractors receive forward year cost adjustments based on projections of what their incurred direct and indirect costs will be. Then they get the "plus" portion allocated on top. So if you don't close it out, you don't have to worry about paying back all that money to the government once your "real" costs (inflated to the extent justifiable) are determined vis-a-vis your forward year adjusted cost claims (inflated more aggressively).
So looking at "fat lesbian studies" is just one big red herring to get people to jump all over it, while the real spending problems get ignored. It's like tossing a couple of pieces of kibble to a dawg so you can eat your Porterhouse steak without being bothered.
So I'm just tellin' you dawg, ignore the kibble and jump up on the procurement reform table - there's good eatin' to be had.
) quoted in Seven Samurai, but indirectly attributed by some sources to Ssu Ma I: "You don't worry about your beard when your head is about to be taken."When I worked for USG in 2004-2005, I learned, among other things, that there were cost plus contracts from the Carter administration that hadn't been closed out. Nowadays, we've finally got those done, but there are still contracts from the first Reagan administration not closed out. Why? Well, to do a contract closeout, you have to get final data from the contractor, AND when Reagan came into office, as a "cost cutting" measure, he started reducing the number of warranted Contract Officers in USG service. Most of what a CO does is legally an "inherently governmental function" so by law, the really high-value stuff is reserved to the CO, not to contracted staff. You also need auditors to do cost plus closeouts, and the USG has about half the number of contract auditors it had during Reagan's tenure. Agency IG staffs have been hit just as hard, so there's no capacity to provide effective oversight. When I was in USG, I worked with one other CO, and a contracted administrated staffer, and we oversaw a book of just under 10 billion in existing procurements. With three people. How many purchasing and audit staff does a private sector company have for 10 billion in active contracts?
The ultimate reasons closeouts aren't done on cost plus contracts (what a coincidence, they're not an issue on T&M or fixed price) is because the contractors receive forward year cost adjustments based on projections of what their incurred direct and indirect costs will be. Then they get the "plus" portion allocated on top. So if you don't close it out, you don't have to worry about paying back all that money to the government once your "real" costs (inflated to the extent justifiable) are determined vis-a-vis your forward year adjusted cost claims (inflated more aggressively).
So looking at "fat lesbian studies" is just one big red herring to get people to jump all over it, while the real spending problems get ignored. It's like tossing a couple of pieces of kibble to a dawg so you can eat your Porterhouse steak without being bothered.
So I'm just tellin' you dawg, ignore the kibble and jump up on the procurement reform table - there's good eatin' to be had.
now we're talking, why don't scientists do interesting stuff like that?
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