UAV's

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, one of the lastest technologies put into use for border control. I am just so annoyed with the bullshit our government spends ridiculous amounts of money on. By the way the first one crashed, but DHS is ordering 3 more. But while I was trying to get cost and use information on this 2100 pound flying drone which is basically used for surveilence over desert terrain, I came across another site The Center for Public Integrity and part of that site talks about the windfalls of war.

As I was looking over the various contractors and $$$ that are being spent in Afghanistan and Iraq I came across Dell Marketing (Dell Computers in disguise). The contract was given to them for $500,000,000

to provide the U.S. Army with PCs, servers, storage systems, networking equipment, operating systems, commercial software and accessories. The contracts also provide for biometric devices like fingerprint recognition and wearable computers.

Now most people know that you can get a pretty fancy laptop for around $1,500, but even if we assume an average cost of $3,000, which would include 100% premium for the cost of corruption, the contract would provide for roughly 166,666 computers but yet even if every deployed soldier was given a laptop there would still be left over computers.

On top of that, Dell was not the only computer firm to be awarded contracts for computer equipment. There were also contracts awarded to HP, GTSI Corporation, and Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems.

These are the "things" that just gall the American public. The lack of consideration of spending our tax dollars. When most Americans can't afford to have their own laptop and our government just has no cosideration for the effort of the American public to generate the money they spend. And what happens to these computers after the war? I mean why didn't our forces already have the necessary equipment prior to the war? Do we really need to purchase all new equipment every time we get involved in a conflict? And with all the governmental websites that abound none of them explain true value of these easily spent dollars. It's always a contract that list some vague non-quantifiable item. When the American public enters into a contract we are very aware of the terms and conditions prior to signing the bottom line. For example the contract would specify:

• 1 Dodge RAM, purchase price $35,000


• Trade-in reduction $ 5,000


• Remaining balance $30,000


• Financed over 5 years at 10.00%


• for a total of $33,000


• and a payment of $ 550 a month

So I hope I've made my point.

But remember this, right now the PA Legislature is considering transparancy rules concerning lobbyist disclosure. Although it seems that there may be a twice a year disclosure (which in this day in age is ridiculous - it really should be made available as it happens) they have not yet agreed to identify the reason the lobbyist has "taken them to a ball game". But without the identifying the organization, the $$$ and the reason we will have no more information to legitimize their actions than we do today.