Cicero

Sigh, I guess your right, only a few hammers-worth of money.

I also remember the Chief Sargent coming around and stuffing surplus office supplies in everyones offices at the end of the fisical year... if we didn't use up all allotted to us in one year, we wound't get the same amount next year.

if you don't use it, you loose it.

corrocamino

I once worked as subcontractor on a USAID project (i.e., boondoggle) in Egypt, which putatively was for the purpose of marshaling information/data on Egyptian mineral resources so as to increase foreign investment and improve trade balance and influx of hard currency (this at a time when commodity prices were rock bottom, and the biggest mining companies were downsizing drastically to merely survive). But, the other waste bit:

Under a separate project, the US Government had paid, a few years before, $750,000 to the American Petroleum Institute to prepare a report to the Egyptian government on how to better exploit Egypt's rather meager petroleum resources. We tried to find a copy of said completed report at the Egyptian Geological Survey, but no one had heard of it. We tried to find a copy at the Egyptian petroleum office, but no one had heard of it.

Again, though -- less than a mil wasted (not counting cost of bureaucracy to generate the phantom report, which was likely much more!). Washington chicken feed.

Lucius

Yes, smelly and "on the mark" both - as in "real life."