This doom and gloom bullshit from both sides regarding the impending budget cuts.. It's a testament to how stupid, or apathetic, the government thinks we are.
This thread is going to be where examples and discussion of waste on all sides (both money funneled out to business, and money funneled out to welfare) is killing us.
For example.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...t-virginia-library-runs-a-20000-cisco-router/
West Virginia created a program to make almost all of their infrastructure locations capable of providing internet access.
As a result, they ordered the purchase, and installation of 1,164 Cisco model 3945 branch routers. Some are wasting away on shelves, uninstalled
There was no open bidding. No site surveys. They didn't even contact the people these routers were going in to make sure there was compatability. Instead, $24 million was funneled to Cisco, who has no excuse as, being who they are, they knew some of these routers were extreme overkill.
This thread is going to be where examples and discussion of waste on all sides (both money funneled out to business, and money funneled out to welfare) is killing us.
For example.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...t-virginia-library-runs-a-20000-cisco-router/
West Virginia created a program to make almost all of their infrastructure locations capable of providing internet access.
As a result, they ordered the purchase, and installation of 1,164 Cisco model 3945 branch routers. Some are wasting away on shelves, uninstalled
The state Office of Technology contends the massive routers might save the state money in the long run by supporting cheap VoIP systems instead of standard telephone lines. But the legislative auditor notes that each of the 3945 routers can handle 700 to 1,200 VoIP lines, which means that the 1,164 routers purchased by the state could support up to 1.39 million lines. As the auditor's report dryly notes, only a single library in the entire state has more than eight phone lines; most have one or two. (None use a VoIP system anyway.)
Ironically, the routers can't even be used for VoIP in some key cases. The state police already have a VoIP-based phone system, but the new 3945 series routers did not come with "the appropriate Cisco VoIP modules" to work with the system. The state now has to spend another $84,768 to purchase those modules; without them, the state police can't use the routers, only two of which are actually installed and operating. (For those keeping score at home, this means that 75 $20,000 routers are depreciating in a state police warehouse somewhere in West Virginia.)
There was no open bidding. No site surveys. They didn't even contact the people these routers were going in to make sure there was compatability. Instead, $24 million was funneled to Cisco, who has no excuse as, being who they are, they knew some of these routers were extreme overkill.
Consider, for instance, how routers were purchased for the state police. When the West Virginia State Police purchased their own routers a few years earlier, they chose Cisco model 2xxx machines at a cost of only $5,000 or so apiece, with only a single Cisco 3xxx model purchased for the largest deployment. In 2010, when the state received its grant money, no one asked the State Police what they wanted or needed; indeed, the police were "never contacted" at all by the Grant Implementation Team. (This was a widespread problem; the report notes no capacity or user needs surveys were ever done before the money was spent). Instead, the team simply ordered 77 Cisco 3945 routers at a cost of $20,661 apiece—that's one $20,000 router for every 13.7 state police employees—and sent them off to the police. (Each router can handle several hundred concurrent users.)