[geeks] Re: [rescue] OT taxes

[wa2egp at att.net]

> > >Then the army should stop paying $xxxx per toilet seat.  Seriously,
> > >Imagine how much lower our taxes would be if we eliminated the massive
> > >fraud, waste and abuse that persists throughout everything our 
> > >government touches.
> > 
> > The $500 toilet seat started life as a misunderstanding, IIRC.  The 
> > Navy needed seats to outfit a certain class of P3 Orion, there were a 
> > limited number of birds, and they had to  meet some extraordinary 
> > requirements for crash worthiness.  That's the story I head, ymmv.
> 
> 
> I'm also told a lot of the $200 hammers are line-items that have been
> padded to hide the cost of black projects that Congress isn't trusted to
> know about.  (Personally, the whole idea of military black projects that
> the government itself is not allowed to know about bothers me in the
> first place, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.)

My parents had a small electronics business and once did some "work" 
for the Navy making power supplies.  One of the requirements was that
they had to disassemble every fifth unit in front of a Navy inspector
to insure that it was constructed correctly.  Do you think my parents
were going eat that loss of 20%?  BTW, they were not allowed to reuse
any of the components from a disassembled unit, so those were just
"junked"...total "loss".  That could explain some of the extra cost.