Trump's cabinet

[sho]

It's like Trump and his buddies have no idea that we have territories...

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

3 hours ago, zoogs said:

How this administration rolls:

 

A madman at the controls.

 

Just another example of pulling crap out of his ass to be said to make Obama look like the worst President in the world and him to be the savior "telling it like it is".  After all....remember, he's smarter than all the generals and knows lots of words.

 

BUT....problem is.....all the adults around him are saying to themselves.....this guy is friggen clueless.

Edited October 13, 2017 by BigRedBuster

[Danny Bateman]

Do these two count as cabinet members? They've been oddly clinging on (for publicity?) for a long time.

 

 

[schriznoeder]

A company with $200,000 in sales last year lands a $300,000,000 contract to restore power to Puerto Rico. Seems legit.

 

 

Spoiler alert: The energy company is based in Whitefish, Montana, hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, whose son worked for its CEO.

 

 

Edited October 24, 2017 by schriznoeder

[BigRedBuster]

I'm confident Puerto Rico is going to have power quickly.

[Danny Bateman]

The more I learn about this Zinke guy...I just don't know. This amounts to a gigantic bilking scheme built of the backs of individual conservative donors.

 

I refused to believe we can't do better than this. We have to do better than this next time.

 

 

[schriznoeder]

9 hours ago, dudeguyy said:

The more I learn about this Zinke guy...I just don't know. This amounts to a gigantic bilking scheme built of the backs of individual conservative donors.

 

I refused to believe we can't do better than this. We have to do better than this next time.

 

 

 

Zinke is a shady character. But then again, so is most of the Cabinet. It used to be that, even though you didn't care for the president and/or vice president, most of the people in the presidential line of succession were at least tolerable. Not anymore. Other than Gen. Mattis, and maybe one or two others, no one on that list is qualified to run a 7-Eleven, much less the executive branch of the United States. Like you said, we have to do better than this next time.

[BigRedBuster]

 

[Nebfanatic]

Trump just doing anything he can to be like his idol Vlad.

[BigRedBuster]

 

[BigRedBuster]

I find it funny that nobody can just look at the contract to see what governmental agency and person in that agency wrote this contract. 

 

But, everyone sure is denying it. 

 

 

[Danny Bateman]

47 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

I find it funny that nobody can just look at the contract to see what governmental agency and person in that agency wrote this contract. 

 

But, everyone sure is denying it. 

 

 

 

That clause that said as soon as they signed it the government couldn't audit it sure seemed pretty fishy...

 

Does anyone know if that kind of thing is common in big government contracts?

[BigRedBuster]

I’ve had some decent sized government contracts (nowhere close to this) and I’m not sure exactly what it means by not being able to audit it. 

[Danny Bateman]

2 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

I’ve had some decent sized government contracts (nowhere close to this) and I’m not sure exactly what it means by not being able to audit it. 

Just found some more reading in a WaPo story from tonight that mentions that bit:

 

Quote

The House committee is planning a hearing on the Whitefish contract. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is hold a hearing on hurricane response Tuesday.

 

Whitefish’s pay scales — as high as $462 an hour for a foreman under the contract — were much higher than is typical even in an emergency like the one facing Puerto Rico. The rate was $319.04 an hour for a lineman. Those rates include Whitefish’s costs, administrative expenses and profits.

 

While the conditions in Puerto Rico are difficult and the work is dangerous, there are companies and agencies seeking to do the work for substantially less, according to people familiar with figures from four companies from the mainland.

 

The Corps of Engineers is doing essentially the same work as Whitefish in Puerto Rico and has been offering to pay firms as much as $195.04 an hour for a journeyman lineman and $230.32 an hour for a general foreman, according to a document provided to The Post. The average rate Florida paid for linemen who helped restore electric power after Hurricane Irma was $165 per hour, according to a person who works closely with the energy industry and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve his business relationships.

 

The Whitefish contract contained a clause that said that the pay rates and other terms of the agreement could not be audited or reviewed by FEMA, the commonwealth, the comptroller general or PREPA. The contract also required PREPA to confirm that FEMA had reviewed and approved the agreement to ensure that money spent would “qualify for funding from FEMA.”

 

FEMA said Friday that it had not approved the Whitefish agreement. “Based on initial review and information from PREPA, FEMA has significant concerns with how PREPA procured this contract and has not confirmed whether the contract prices are reasonable,” the agency said in a statement.

 

In a news conference Sunday, PREPA chief Ramos said he learned of those contract clauses from the media.

So the contract stipulated that FEMA had approved it. FEMA says they did not. Apparently this guy that heads PREPA didn't even know about those clauses until he heard if from the news. Then there's that clause about no one auditing or reviewing the contract.

And they're making exorbitant rates almost twice that what people working in Florida were pulling.

 

It seems like somebody, somewhere tried to get cute and float this garbage contract to some buddies and hope no one noticed. Either that or we've got the most incompetent negotiator hammering out contracts for emergencies I've ever seen.

[BigRedBuster]

12 hours ago, dudeguyy said:

The Whitefish contract contained a clause that said that the pay rates and other terms of the agreement could not be audited or reviewed by FEMA, the commonwealth, the comptroller general or PREPA. The contract also required PREPA to confirm that FEMA had reviewed and approved the agreement to ensure that money spent would “qualify for funding from FEMA.”

 

 

This makes no sense.

 

What I'm guessing this has to do with is all government contracts typically have pay scales that are required for contractors.  It's basically a union sort of thing where say a plumber is required to pay union level wages.

 

Those wages are always possibly under scrutiny from the government to make sure you are actually paying those wages.  Here's an example.

 

I lost a large project on a military base in Missouri.  Right in the specs for the job, it said what the minimum wages for all workers should be.  Everyone knows it when bidding the job so it's just worked into the cost.  (one of the reasons why government contacts are so expensive).

 

Anyway, I lost the job when I thought I was being really really competitive.  Later, I find out the general contractor on the project was out of Utah.  The subcontractor who beat me on my portion of the contract was from Salt Lake City.  I thought that was fishy...but...what ever.

 

About 6 months later I find out the sub contractor got in a HUGE amount of trouble because it was found out that he wasn't paying wages commensurate to what the contract required.  There are huge fines for this along with paying back wages. ....plus losing the project.   Basically, he went in and lowballed the contract to get it knowing he was going to make up for it by not paying workers what was required.  Unfortunately, by that time the project was so screwed up I didn't want anything to do with it.

 

This is what appears this is talking about.  But....it's strange because this is usually used to find out if you are not paying your workers enough.  This situation almost makes it sound like they don't want the government auditing this contract to see if they are getting paid TOO much.