The military budget is $700 billion, as stated in the article. They probably spend more than $15mm on toilet paper for a single Airforce base.
Overnight, the defense contractor assembled a team of 20 people that were on the bench, so they could bill for the project. 20 random people that had never worked together before, all to work on an experimental java project the agency didn't need until that Monday (and I'd argue, didn't need even after that Monday). I suggested in that meeting "why don't we just return the money to the taxpayer?" and got glares from at least two senior executives.
Right there is 1/3 of the $15 million that is spent on Stars and Stripes.
With a $700bn budget, based on what I've seen of the defense industrial complex, I'd suspect at least 10% of that goes to complete waste (and toilet paper isn't waste. I mean things like IT projects that don't see the light of day, etc).
Unfortunately there is no longer any good way to report this crime. Official whistleblower channels are compromised or ineffective, and going directly to the public... well, there are plenty of cautionary examples of how poorly that tends to go.
So I wouldn’t say I witnessed it. I was called into a brainstorming session for “how can we spend this money? We need to come up with something quickly.”
> A few days ago they also ran a story about a poll showing Trump lagging Biden among the military.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-stars-...
> In February, the Trump administration proposed eliminating all of the publication’s federal support in 2021. That’s more than $15 million a year, about half its budget. “I can’t think of a graver threat to its independence,” the paper’s ombudsman, Ernie Gates, told me recently. “That’s a fatal cut.”
Sucks that you've been downvoted for pointing out a fact.