Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Our MBA President (continued)

Audit Faults KBR's Repairs of Hurricane Damage
Report by Pentagon Inspector General Cites Substandard Work, Overpayments
By Derek Kravitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Efforts by defense contractor KBR to repair hurricane-damaged Navy facilities were deemed shoddy and substandard, and one technical adviser alleged that the federal government "certainly paid twice" for many KBR projects because of "design and workmanship deficiencies," the Pentagon's inspector general reported in an audit released yesterday.

Note: I do not blame KBR. I blame W.

As noted frequently on this blog, private enterprise is in business to make money. Publicly traded companies have basically one obligation: fiducial responsibility to their shareholders... i.e., making money.
This does NOT necessarily translate into the imagined "efficiency" W and his cronies seem to accept as axiomatic.

Yes, in an ideal free market, efficiency may be a tactic adopted to attain a competitive advantage. In the absence of this ideal free market there is really little or no incentive for a company to be efficient.

In the absence of a market, a mechanism for ensuring that you get what you pay for is writing contracts with strict, enforceable controls... and this is something W's minions seem unable to achieve.

Stop the madness!

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