Why can't I get a job like this?

[flamin lib]

It must be nice to be a defense contractor. Take Sioux Manufacturing of Fort Totten, North Dakota. They make helmets for the Pentagon. Seems like they shortchanged the armor in 2.2 million helmets including those issued to troops sent to Afghanistan and to both wars in Iraq. I don’t know what the Pentagon paid for these helmets but you can buy one on-line for about $200. The company and the Department of Justice reached an agreement and settled for a $2 million fine, about a buck a helmet. Then the Pentagon gave them a $74 million contract to replace the old stuff with new stuff.

Hmmm, when I was a mechanic and I screwed up the repair was free. While I was in electronics sales if a product failed it was repaired or replaced for free. If you’re a defense contractor and your product may have killed or injured soldiers (we don’t know because the Pentagon doesn’t release those figures) you get an itty-bitty fine and a new contract. Sweeeet!

Not to worry though ‘cause Bush’s new defense budget is now the largest since WWII. $518 Billion, half of all discretionary spending, and that doesn’t include the cost of fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (about a $ trillion spread over the life of the wars). It doesn’t include replacing all the National Guard stuff that got blown up in Iraq. It doesn’t include the cost of treating returning vets with various and sundry body parts left in some dusty street half way ‘round the world.

All this and we still can’t win a war in a country that doesn’t have an army.

No place but America . . .

[Hydra]

1. Oh, we're winning the war

Bush is funneling money out of the US in a way most people can't even fathom. In Iraq, we are slowing killing their entire population while blaming it on "Al-Qaeda" and Islam.

We are successfully conducting genocide. We are now just like the USSR in so many ways, it's scary. Mission accomplished.

[Solly Mack]

2. Because you have integrity :)

Amazing isn't it?

Corporations often get fines that in no way become a detriment...the fines are usually so low it's worth the dirty-dealing and being caught...and then it's business as usual...more contracts.

[SoCalDem]

3. They "build in" the potential fines into their cost of doing business

that's why they have lawyers.. they appeal and appeal and somewhere down the line, they end up in a friendly court, who signs off on the whole deal :grr:

[Solly Mack]

4. Yep

and we get screwed over and over and over...and then told it's "just how it is"

[flamin lib]

6. That's why I failed at Real Estate during the boom.

While everybody else was raking in the commissions I was talking people out of buying houses. A half dozen buyers came to me who couldn't possibly afford a home. The conversation went something like this:

How much do you pay in rent?

'bout $650.

Ok, your payment will be about $1200. Show me you can put $600 in a savings account every single month and I'll find you a house. No savings, find another agent.

[Initech]

5. That's because we have the "blame everybody but yourself" crowd in charge.