From 2002 through early last year, the Pentagon conducted 11 flight tests of the nation's homeland missile defense system. The interceptors failed to destroy their targets in six of the 11 tests -- a record that has prompted independent experts to conclude the system cannot be relied on to foil a nuclear strike by North Korea or Iran. Yet, as The LA Times reports, over that same time span, Boeing, the Pentagon's prime contractor, collected nearly $2 billion in performance bonuses for a job well done...
Furthermore, The Pentagon paid Boeing more than $21 billion total for managing the system during that period.
An LA Times investigation by David Willman also found that the criteria for the yearly bonuses were changed at some point to de-emphasize the importance of test results that demonstrate the system’s ability to intercept and destroy incoming warheads.
Early on, Boeing’s contract specified that bonuses would be based primarily on “hit to kill success” in flight tests. In later years, the words “hit to kill” were removed in favor of more generally phrased benchmarks, contract documents show.
L. David Montague, co-chair of a National Academy of Sciences panel that documented shortcomings with GMD, called the $2 billion in bonuses “mind-boggling,” given the system’s performance.
Montague, a former president of missile systems for Lockheed Corp., said the bonuses suggest that the Missile Defense Agency, the arm of the Pentagon that oversees GMD, is a “rogue organization” in need of strict supervision.
The cumulative total of bonuses paid to Boeing has not been made public before. The Times obtained details about the payments through a lawsuit it filed against the Defense Department under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Times asked the Missile Defense Agency in March 2014 for information on bonuses paid to GMD contractors.
Boeing objected to release of the data, and the agency denied the newspaper’s request, saying disclosure might reveal “trade secrets and commercial or financial data.”
The Times then sued in federal court last year, asserting that the public had a right to know about the payments. The government’s lawyers later agreed to release the information if Boeing would not intervene in the litigation “or otherwise take steps to prevent disclosure.”
Boeing eventually acquiesced, and the Defense Department settled the suit with a single-page letter listing the sum total of bonuses paid to Boeing from Dec. 31, 2001, to March 1, 2015.
The figure: $1,959,072,946.
The precise criteria for bonuses could not be obtained for each of the relevant years. However, documents on file with the Defense and Treasury departments show that the missile agency at some point altered a central criterion.
“In recent contract terms, the words ‘hit-to-kill’ have been changed to support the more detailed documented objectives of each respective flight test. For intercept flight tests conducted under the current design and sustainment contract, a successful intercept remains a key performance objective.”
Whatever their rationale, by characterizing the test as a success, the agency and the contractors may have bolstered the prospects for performance bonuses, according to missile defense specialists.
Boeing, in its most recent annual report, underscored the significance of GMD to its finances. The company could face “reduced fees, lower profit rates or program cancellation if cost, schedule or technical performance issues arise,” the report said.
Timothy Sullivan, a former federal contracting officer who examined GMD financial documents at the request of The Times, said the bonus provisions were extraordinarily complex.
“How you administrate something like this is mind-boggling to me.… It is an administrative nightmare,’’ said Sullivan, an attorney who represents defense companies and other government contractors in Washington for the law firm Thompson Coburn LLP.
Montague, the former Lockheed Corp. executive, said the intricate bonus system reflected the missile agency’s lack of rigor in engineering and contracting. If the goals for managing GMD had been adequately defined at the beginning and spelled out in contracts, there would be little need for lucrative incentives, he said.
By relying on bonuses, Montague said, the missile agency has effectively told Boeing: “We don’t know what we’re doing, but we’ll decide it together and then you’ve got to work toward maximizing your fee by concentrating on those areas.”
[9/4/16] One in six American malls are expected to disappear in the next decade. That’s scary news for many communities.
Visits to malls declined by 50% between 2010 and 2013, according to real estate research firm Cushman & Wakefield. Analysts expect upcoming data will show an even steeper drop in mall traffic.
Mall closures could have terrifying implications for communities, Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a national retail-consulting and investment-banking firm, told Business Insider.
About 15% of malls will disappear in the next decade, according to a study by Green Street Advisors. That means hundreds of malls will close down, potentially affecting thousands and thousands of jobs.
“When a mall closes, it’s a blight in the community for a very long time,” Davidowitz said in a telephone interview. “Empty stores mean ugly holes where jobs are lost and taxes aren’t paid.”
While there has been speculation that shuttered department stores will be replaced by new businesses like e-commerce warehouses, medical clinics, and gyms, Davidowitz says it will take a decade for these spaces to be filled.
“The jobs that will be lost will take 10 years to replace,” he said. “In the mean time you have people who are out of work, which…CONTINUE READING
US taxpayers have paid more than $1 million for the pleasure of Pentagon officials, who were able to get away with wasting public funds. Radio Sputnik discussed the issue with Ivan Eland, Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute in Washington.
According to Tuesday’s report by the DoD’s Inspector General, government charge cards were used to dish out a total of about $100,000 at strip clubs and about $1 million in casinos.
unt of money, but they didn’t correct it and the big problem at the DoD is that they can’t keep tabs on what has been going on for decades. We are talking about trillions of dollars unaccounted for. The accounting problem at the Pentagon is really huge, and it doesn’t get much publicity,” Ivan Eland noted.
He said that there have been some articles in the foreign press, but the American press does not really cover this. “We have a huge defense budget, but they don’t have an accounting system to keep track of it. It doesn’t mean that all that money was put in somebody’s pocket, but I don’t understand why they can’t fix this problem.” Ivan Eland said that the Pentagon should use this money to fix its accounting system or just give the money back to the taxpayers. When asked whether there are any laws on a breach of national security, he said that people just can’t be allowed to use government funds to go to casinos and strip clubs, that he was sure that the people who do this will be held accountable. “But this is just small pittance compared to the entire defense budget and the accounting problem they’ve got. I mean it’s not a secret. We had an article about the US Army unable to find trillions of dollars, so the situation is getting worse over time, but this is not really a secret, it’s been out in the press, but no one seems to care,” Ivan complained. When answering a question whether this was jeopardizing national security, he said that yes, you really don’t know where your money is actually going. “You could have expenses like these even on a greater scale. Suppose you’ve bought a weapon that you don’t really need, so the problem is that we don’t know where all this money is really going,” Ivan Eland said in conclusion. For 2017, the US Defense Department has requested a total budget of $583 billion. The current level of US defense spending is more than 3.5 times as large as China’s military spending, and more than 12 times as much as the Russian defense budget.
Note: You may wish to print an article like this: a “Black Swan event” is coming that will shock perhaps 2/3 of the population, but not we who have taken care to learn our most important factual histories. If the event is an economic crash, our .01% “leaders” might do their best to remove documentation of economic reforms, like this, from public access in order to herd We the People into a reset parasitic debt system owed to them.
A 1-minute glimpse (full documentaries here and here, among many) into available technology we have today (and here) for architecture, transportation, and beauty that are cheaper and far more efficient than today’s designs, that should be fully tested in at least one pilot project with connected facts fully communicated to Americans (and never will be as long as corporate media is a tool of existing rogue-state wanna-be dictators):
I wrote about Labor Day in 2014 being an Orwellian “holiday” because:
Please read the above sentence again to fully feel the tragic-comic reality of US labor today.
Unemployment is a cruel and parasitic practice to keep people as work animals by having the employed serve a .01% rogue state empire in relative satisfaction that “at least I have a job,” rather than the alternative of poverty-murder that kills ~1,000,000 human beings every month in gruesome, excruciating slow-motion in ongoing Crimes Against Humanity.
All willing could have living-wage employment if we fully invested in the best infrastructure available (consider this as the best showcase-modeling I find). People are welcome to work in the free market as they do now, and that said, government can become the employer of last resort for hard and soft infrastructure investment. This provides triple benefits for employment, the best infrastructure we can imagine, and falling overall prices to the extent infrastructure investment contributes more economic output relative to costs of inputs. History demonstrates infrastructure investment does reduce overall prices in the current debt-funded model that typically adds ~50% of the projects’ nominal cost to its total cost. Monetary reform with infrastructure means the cost of debt-funding disappears, making this employment even more attractive.
Additional anticipated benefits are reductions of crime and other social costs related to human despair as people see and participate in creating a brighter future for all.
Data, discussion:
The top three benefits each of monetary reform and public banking total ~$1,000,000 for the average American household, and would be received nearly instantly. Fed Chair Janet Yellen publicly acknowledges monetary reform as described below, but continues a history of criminal fraud in her lawful fiduciary responsibility to truthfully provide what you’re about to read. The data below include evidence of a .01% oligarchy criminally looting tens of trillions of our dollars.
Monetary reform is the creation of debt-free money by government for the direct payment of public goods and services. Creating money as a positive number is an obvious move from our existing Robber Baron-era system of only creating debt owed to privately-owned banks (a negative number) as what we use for money. Our Orwellian “non-monetary supply” of adding negative numbers forever causes today’s tragic-comic increasing and unpayable total debt. You learned these mechanics of positive and negative numbers in middle school, and already have the education and life experience to conclude with Emperor’s New Clothes absolute certainty that accelerating total debt is the opposite of having money. As a National Board Certified and Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teacher, I affirm this is also exactly what is taught to all economics students.
The public benefits of reversing this creature of Robber Barons are game-changing and near-instant. We the People must demand these, as .01% oligarchs have no safe way to do so without admission of literal criminal fraud by claiming that debt is its opposite of money.
The top 3 game-changing benefits of monetary reform:
We pay the national debt in proportion to removing private banks’ ability to create what we use for money as debt in order to prevent inflation. We retire national debt forever.
We fully fund infrastructure that returns more economic output than investment cost for triple upgrades: the best infrastructure we can imagine, up to full-employment, and lower overall costs.
Public banking creates at-cost and in-house credit to pay for public goods and services without the expense and for-profit interest of selling debt-securities. North Dakota has a public bank for at-cost credit that results in it being the only state with annual increasing surpluses rather than deficits.
CAFRs (Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports) stash “rainy day” funds no longer required with a credit line from a public bank. In addition, the so-called “retirement funds” currently deliver net returns of just a few percent on good years, and negative returns on bad years (here, here). California’s ~14,000 various government entities’ CAFRs have a sampled-data total estimate of $8 trillion in surplus taxpayer assets ($650,000 non-disclosed assets per household, among California’s ~12.5 million households).
$1,000,000 of benefits per US household:
California’s CAFR data of ~$650,000 of assets per household is evidence of huge cash assets of similar magnitude in every state.
Ending state taxes in California to pay a budget of ~$170 billion saves each household ~$15,000, with similar savings in every state.
~$30,000 per household savings annually: the American public would no longer pay over $400 billion every year for national debt interest payments (because almost 30% of the debt is intra-governmental transfers, this is a savings of ~$300 billion/year). If lending is run at a non-profit rate or at nominal interest returned to the American public (for infrastructure, schools, fire and police protection, etc.) rather than profiting the banks, the savings to the US public is conservatively $2 trillion (1). If the US Federal government increased the money supply by 3% a year to keep up with population increase and economic growth, we could spend an additional $500 billion yearly into public programs, or refund it as a public dividend (2). This savings would allow us to simplify or eliminate the income tax (3). The estimated savings of eliminating the income tax with all its complexity, loopholes, and evasion is $250 billion/year (4). The total benefits for monetary reform are conservatively over three trillion dollars every year to the American public. Three trillion is $3,000,000,000,000. This saves the ~100 million US households an average of $30,000 every year. Another way to calculate the savings is to figure those amounts per $50,000 annual household income (for example, if your household earns $100,000/year, you save ~$60,000 every year with these reforms). This savings represents a 60% raise for every US household’s income.
Please understand that I represent likely hundreds of thousands of professionals making factual claims with objective evidence anyone with a high school-level of education can verify.
The Emperor’s New Clothes obvious pathway out of these mechanics of our “debt system” is to start creating debt-free money (a positive number) for the direct payment of public goods and services, and create public credit for at-cost loans (a negative number). I have three academic papers to walk any reader through these facts; an assignment for high school economics students, one for Advanced Placement Macroeconomics students, and a paper for the Claremont Colleges’ recent academic conference:
Daily and never-ending Orwellian criminal-complicit lies of corporate media.
US college Class of 2015 students average $35,000 in debt, with the total for 2015 graduates nearly $70 billion: more than ten times the amount from just 20 years ago. The average time to pay this debt is now 15 years (think paying until age 40).
1) Of $60 trillion total debt, a conservative current interest cost of 5% is $3 trillion every year. Two trillion dollars of savings if the profits are transferred to the American public rather than to the banking industry is probably low. St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank: https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TCMDO
2) The US GDP is ~$17 trillion. Three percent growth is moderately conservative.
Note: I make all factual assertions as a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History, with all economics factual claims receiving zero refutation since I began writing in 2008 among Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teachers on our discussion board, public audiences of these articles, and international conferences. I invite readers to empower their civic voices with the strongest comprehensive facts most important to building a brighter future. I challenge professionals, academics, and citizens to add their voices for the benefit of all Earth’s inhabitants.
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Carl Herman is a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History; also credentialed in Mathematics. He worked with both US political parties over 18 years and two UN Summits with the citizen’s lobby, RESULTS, for US domestic and foreign policy to end poverty. He can be reached at Carl_Herman@post.harvard.edu
Note:Examiner.com has blocked public access to my articles on their site (and from other whistleblowers), so some links in my previous work are blocked. If you’d like to search for those articles other sites may have republished, use words from the article title within the blocked link. Or, go tohttp://archive.org/web/, paste the expired link into the box, click “Browse history,” then click onto the screenshots of that page for each time it was screen-shot and uploaded to webarchive. I’ll update as “hobby time” allows; including my earliest work from 2009 to 2011 (blocked author pages: here, here).
[9/4/16] We have forensically picked apart Deutsche Bank in a way that no other entity ever has, likely including Deutsche Bank itself. While we may not know all of its secrets, we likely now know more than almost everybody else. We will publish our findings to Veritaseum Knowledge clients early this week, but in the meantime we will put little teasers out to the public for the sake of conversation. “Why?”, you may ask. Well, everybody already knows that Deutsche Bank is a basket case, but we are showing our clients that the real short opportunities and true systemic risks lie within DB’s counterparties, whom have identified and are in the process of putting share price targets on. The first forensic report on the most proximal counterparty with an elevated share price is done, and the first counterparty share price target will be published to European Bank Contagion Assessment, Forensic Analysis & Valuation subscribers within 48 hours. There are several more to follow. In the meantime and in between time, let’s discuss Deutsche in detail that you will find nowhere else on the web or on Wall Street.
Last week we illustrated what appears to be a slam dunk finding of Deutsche Bank fraud under the UK Fraud Act of 2006, reference “Veritaseum Knowledge Exposes Frightening Counterparty Risk At Deutsche Bank for “Gold Investors”“. In said piece, we tracked down DB’s alleged failure to deliver physical gold upon demand redemption of one of it’s subsidiary’s gold derivative instruments and superimposed it against DB’s counterparty risk and blatant contradictions between it’s marketing material (ie. website) and it’s prospectus (which itself actually had material and confusing contradictions) – as excerpted:
…”an investor is, from an economic point of view, invested in gold”, but
“No correlation with the gold price“, and
and “The value of the Notes is a function of demand and supply regarding the Notes as such and not of the demand for and supply of gold”, but
“For potential purchasers of the Notes the pricing may, apart from the gold price, also be determined by other factors (e.g., the creditworthiness of the Issuer, the evaluation of these risk factors or the liquidity of the Notes).” – keeping in mind that Deutsche Bank believes
There’s no movement in counterparty risks yearly, or cumulatively, due to collateralization (where said collateral is wide open to market forces and valuations) for instruments.
No control of genuineness or fineness of the physical Gold Neither the Issuer nor the Depositary Agent or any other agent of the Issuer will control the genuineness or fineness of the physical Gold held in custody on behalf of the Issuer by Clearstream Banking AG in its capacity as Depositary Agent.
Oh, there’s more, for those of you who believed that line “an investor is, from an economic point of view, invested in gold“.
The purchasers of the Notes will only acquire the rights securitised by the Notes. The purchasers of the Notes will not acquire any title to, or security interests or beneficial ownership in, the physical Gold held in custody on behalf of the Issuer. An investment in the Notes does not constitute a purchase or other acquisition of Gold.
This comment excerpts the requirements of the UK Fraud Act of 2006, since the DB derivative issue was sold to UK investors. It clearly shows the material uncovered in our article can garner the label of fraud in the UK. There”s actually much more in the article if you click the aforereferenced link, but I believe many can get the message. So, where does this leave us? Well, it appears as if DB is prepping for a rash of fraud and litigation exposure. Looking at numbers buried deep within DB’s more than 650 pages of financial reporting…CONTINUE READING
