POGO Uncovers Government Waste BY THE PRIVATE SECTOR

Next time you hear someone trying to sell you on smaller government - think again.  When we privatize, when we shrink government resulting in reduced services like fewer teachers, fewer police, less infrastructure or poorly maintaining infrastructure......remember that privatizing services costs more, not less.  Civil service employees are not the enemy.  Politicians who transfer government provided services to more expensive private providers ARE the enemy of frugal and responsive, responsible government. I would encourage our readers not only to check out the POGO web site and their studies and reports, but also to follow up with other independent studies as well as the reports available online from the respective Inspectors General.

Project On Government Oversight

Bad Business: True or false? 
The U.S. government relies on contractors to do work because the private industry is cheaper than in-house staff.
If you guessed true, think again. POGO’s latest investigation busts this myth by showing that using contractors actually increases costs to taxpayers.

In fact, on average, contractors charge the government almost twice as much as the annual compensation of comparable federal employees. 

Tell your Member of Congress we can’t afford to pay twice as much for service contracting.

Of the 35 types of jobs that POGO looked at in its new report—the first report to compare contractor billing rates to the salaries and benefits of federal workers—it was cheaper to hire federal workers in all but just 2 cases.

Given that Congress’s special “Super Committee” has the goal of cutting $1.5 trillion from the deficit by December 2, we can’t let this kind of government waste continue. Tell your Member of Congress that it’s time to take a closer look at what service contracting costs taxpayers.

In some occupations, POGO found that the difference in price was so dramatic that anyone could easily see the government was getting ripped off. When the government hired a claims examiner for example, it paid contractors nearly five times more than if it had gone with a federal employee.

Even worse, the government doesn’t have the mechanisms in place to do basic price checks. Would you spend $320 billion a year without doing a cost analysis of the services you were paying for? Probably not.

You can help the government stop paying too much for contractors by bringing this problem to the attention of your Member of Congress. We simply can’t afford to be paying double if we don’t have to.

More Privatization Corruption

This is pretty bad as far as doing evil things to get a dirty dollar, sending kids to jail for money.  However long these jerks get behind bars, I can only wish them even longer burning in hell when that time comes.

Beyond that, I hope every one of these kids sent to jail by this bad judge sues the bastard so that he ends up penniless as well. 

From the AP by way of MSNBC.com:

Ex-judge gets 17 years in 'kids for cash' scandal

'I am sorry you were victimized,' he tells children he sent to detention centers

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM

updated 9/23/2011 12:16:29 PM ET

SCRANTON, Pa. — A former county president judge who took part in a massive kickback scheme involving for-profit juvenile detention centers was sentenced Friday to 17 1/2 years in prison. Standing in a federal courtroom in Scranton, former Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan, 59, apologized to the incarcerated youths, the legal community and the public.
"The system is not corrupt," he said. "I was corrupt."
To the children sent to a pair of facilities from which he received kickbacks, Conahan offered a direct apology.
"My actions undermined your faith in the system and contributed to the difficulty in your lives," he said. "I am sorry you were victimized."
Conahan pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy last year. He and former Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. were charged with taking bribes from the builder of a pair of juvenile detention centers and extorting cash from the facilities' co-owner.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned about 4,000 juvenile convictions in the wake of the so-called "kids for cash" scandal.

Ciavarella was convicted of some of the charges at trial. He was sentenced last month to 28 years in prison.

Assistant U.S. Attorney William Houser acknowledged that, unlike Ciavarella, Conahan had cooperated with prosecutors. But he requested a substantial sentence anyway.
"Mr. Conahan abused his power to enriched himself and his friend, Mark Ciavarella," Houser said. "The justice system in Pennsylvania was shaken to its very foundation."
U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik recommended Conahan be placed in a federal prison camp in Florida so he can be close to his family.