Take a guess how corrupt the $300 million Whitefish-contract for Puerto Rico actually is...

[DetlefK]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/small-montana-firm-lands-puerto-ricos-biggest-contract-to-get-the-power-back-on/2017/10/23/31cccc3e-b4d6-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html?utm_term=.d0bb4df8c5e6

or the sprawling effort to restore Puerto Rico’s crippled electrical grid, the territory’s state-owned utility has turned to a two-year-old company from Montana that had just two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria made landfall.

The company, Whitefish Energy, said last week that it had signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to repair and reconstruct large portions of the island’s electrical infrastructure. The contract is the biggest yet issued in the troubled relief effort.

...

The company acknowledges it had only two full-time employees when Maria struck but says its business model calls for ramping up rapidly by hiring workers on short-term contracts.

Spokesman Chris Chiames dismissed criticism about the company’s qualifications. “We are taking personal risks and business risks working in perilous physical and financial conditions,” Chiames said. “So the carping by others is unfounded, and we stand by our work and our commitment to the people of Puerto Rico.”

...

Under the contract, the hourly rate was set at $330 for a site supervisor, and at $227.88 for a “journeyman lineman.” The cost for subcontractors, which make up the bulk of Whitefish’s workforce, is $462 per hour for a supervisor and $319.04 for a lineman. Whitefish also charges nightly accommodation fees of $332 per worker and almost $80 per day for food.



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$300 per work-hour.
That's 10 times what one of these workers usually makes.
https://bizfluent.com/info-8720871-average-wage-helicopter-electrical-lineman.html

$332 per night.

$80 of food per day.
A nice ribeye steak is $13 per pound, raw. A restaurant would charge you triple that (to account for side-dishes, cooking and service). And even then we're still not at $80 per day.

[Achilleaze]

1. Um, republican-scale corrupt?

what do I win?

[awesomerwb1]

2. Wow.

So $42k a month for a site supervisor? Sounds legit.

[Brother Buzz]

6. LA Dodger 3rd baseman, Justin Turner, makes $70,000 a game. Sounds legit

What's someone worth? What someone is willing to pay.

This firebrand mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz, is, like, the only person grounded in this mess

San Juan's mayor calls for canceling 'alarming' contract for Puerto Rican power repairs

Hunter Walker
White House Correspondent
Yahoo News October 25, 2017

WASHINGTON—A $300 million contract to fix Puerto Rico’s hurricane-damaged power grid that was given to a tiny Montana company should be voided, says San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who said the process of awarding the no-bid contract raised ethical and legal questions. In an interview with Yahoo News on Tuesday evening, Yulin described the contract as “alarming.”

As of Tuesday morning, over 75 percent of Puerto Rico does not have power as a result of damage from Hurricane Maria. The storm hit the island, which is a U.S. territory, on Sept. 20.

Puerto Rico’s utility, PREPA, signed the contract with Montana’s Whitefish Energy last month. At the time, the firm had just two full time employees. The contract was awarded without a competitive bidding process. Yulin, the mayor of Puerto Rico’s largest city, described the Montana company as inadequate and said there appears to be a lack of “due diligence” behind the contract.

“The contract should be voided right away and a proper process which is clear, transparent, legal, moral, and ethical should take place,” Yulin said.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/san-juan-mayor-calls-cancelling-alarming-contract-puerto-rican-power-repairs-132636239.html

[MyOwnPeace]

3. Nepotism.......

is alive and well in the Trump administration.

Check out:

Small town
Neighbors
Internship
Follow-the-money

Just call me "shallow-throat!"

[Vinca]

4. Jeez - I should have applied for a contract since I can rewire a lamp.

Guess you have to be buddies with one of the noxious grifters in the administration though.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Owner is buddies with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Zinke is from Whitefish...

[benfranklin1776]

14. Not surprising at all

Zinke probably arranged it on one of his taxpayer funded, wretchedly contemptuous of we few people flights back to Montana. This is par for the course for the orange fool mafia, they rip off the taxpayers any way they can as evidenced by the fact this peckerwood is also trying to boost admission fees to national parks so only his swamp creature coconspirarors can afford to use it. Will be curious how much of the 300 million gets kicked back to this capo and the orange Don.

[dixiegrrrrl]

19. Good news... the Dems in Congress are already looking at the contract.

Trump is toxic to the Republican party now.
The die hard Repugs are only holding on so they can pass their puppet master's tax rip off.

[benfranklin1776]

20. Good news indeed.

The corruption here is astounding and they are so contemptuous of we the people they don’t even try to hide it. So I want them to wear prison orange to match their puppeteer’s hair. They are used to functioning in the corporate mafia world where they are never held accountable for their crimes by their boot licking underlings so the concept of humbly serving we the taxpaying public is as foreign to them as an honest thought is to Don Cheetohead.

[IronLionZion]

5. Glad we have such efficient job creators in charge

let's give them some tax cuts too.

[rusty fender]

8. $300 million corrupt

[brush]

9. They left out kickbacks from the list.

[lpbk2713]

10. What is Trump's piece of the action?

We will probably never know.

[DFW]

11. Well, since he is pals with Putin and Erdogan

I'd guess somewhere between 10% and 15%, taking off 1% to 2% for the accountants and middle men through whom the money will be shuffled so that it can't be traced as a direct payoff to Trump.

[chelsea0011]

12. Flat out friggin' corruption. Now where is the Attorney General?

[efhmc]

13. Ryan Zinke from same small town as company.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/10/24/whitefish_energy_from_ryan_zinke_s_hometown_received_a_300_million_contract.html

[TexasBushwhacker]

21. So is Richard Spencer n/t

[miyazaki]

15. Could just about stay at the 4 Seasons every night at that rate. n/t

[peggysue2]

16. The Amazing Thing . . .

is with everything swirling out there--investigations, rumored indictments, criminal probes--the grifters just cannot stop grifting. In broad daylight! Stunning arrogance or stupidity or both.

The mayor of San Juan has said the contract should be immediately voided.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. The actual linemen & supervisors would NEVER SEE that money. But kill the bogus contract. . . nt

[Thor_MN]

18. Those are the rates Whitefish is charging, not what it is paying.

The odds are the workers are not seeing half of that.

"Whitefish officials have said that the company’s expertise in mountainous areas makes it well suited for the work"

What experience? They had two (2) fucking people. Everything else is contractors or people they hired since the hurricane.

[Blue_Tires]

22. Yeah, they're some fucking assholes: