CHESSNOID

This is just not normal.  Still fun to watch and the dog looked like she was enjoying the attention.

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I remember working for a collections company that had this weird policy.  At the end of the month, regardless of what day of the week it fell on, we worked a 9am to 9pm shift.  Honestly it wasn’t productive and the company wasted a lot of money on overtime.  The first EOM I had to work was a Sunday.  How crazy is that?!

I worked there for about a year and the company grew by leaps and bounds.  At the peak of the company’s growth, there seemed to be almost a 1,000 collectors in this call center.  I saw collectors I hired and fired throughout my 20 years in the collections industry at this one location.  Many I recognized by face but not by name.  Luckily, I didn’t run into any crazy ones that wanted revenge.

This is another good opinion piece by Congressman Ron Paul.  It is in regards to our withdrawal in Iraq where he offers more insight than the average American is allowed to see.

Ron Paul:

Amid much fanfare last week the last supposed combat troops left Iraq as the administration touted the beginning of the end of the Iraq war and a change in the role of the United States in that country. Considering the continued public frustration with the war effort and with the growing laundry list of broken promises, this was merely another one of those administration operations in political maneuvering and semantics in order to convince an increasingly war-weary public that the Iraq war is at last ending.

However, military officials confirm that we are committed to intervention in that country for years to come, and our operations have in fact changed minimally, if really at all. After eight long draining years I have to wonder if our government even understands what it is to end a war anymore. The end of a war to most people means all the troops come home, out of harm’s way. It means we stop killing people and getting killed. It means we stop sending troops and armed personnel over and draining our treasury for military operations in that foreign land. But much like the infamous “mission accomplished” moment of the last administration, this end of the war also means none of those things.

50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and they’re still receiving combat pay. One soldier was killed in Basra just last Sunday, after the supposed end of combat operations, and the same day 5,000 men and women of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Division at Fort Hood were deployed to Iraq. Their mission will be anything but desk duty. Among other things they will accompany the Iraqi military on dangerous patrols, continue to be involved in the hunt for terrorists, and provide air support for the Iraqi military. They should be receiving combat pay because they will be serving a combat role. Of course the number of private contractors who perform many of the same roles as troops, but for a lot more money, is expected to double. So this is a funny way of ending combat operations in Iraq. We are still meddling in their affairs and we are still putting our men and women in danger and we are still spending money we don’t have. This looks more like an escalation than a draw-down to me.

The ongoing war in Iraq takes place against a backdrop of economic crises at home, as fresh numbers indicate that our economic situation is as bad as ever and getting worse. Our foreign policy is based on the illusion that we are actually paying for it. What we’re doing is borrowing and printing the money to maintain our presence overseas. Americans are seeing the cost of this irresponsible approach as our economic decline continues.

Unemployed Americans have been questioning a policy that shifts hundreds of billions of dollars overseas while their own communities crumble and their frustration is growing. An end to this type of a foreign policy is way overdue. A return to the traditional American foreign policy of active private engagement and non-interventionism is the only alternative that can restore our moral and fiscal health.

The LA Times had an insightful article about the wasteful spending our government has done in the War in Iraq.  I always knew our government under the George Bush administration  was lying to the American people.  There were contradictions in their statements and it seemed they wanted to invade no matter what the inspectors or the Iraq government said.  I also thought based on the New Pearl Harbor idea written by that administration 10 years prior, it was obvious this was being done for other reasons.

The funny thing is we spent money bombing the place.  Then we wasted more money trying to fix the damage we created.  All for the purpose of spending money on our military contractors.  If you don’t know what I am referring to, then here is a link to an old post where you can educate yourself: Iraq for Sale– the war profiteers.

LA Times:

Construction began in May 2004 at a time when U.S. money was pouring into the country. It quickly ran into huge cost overruns. Violence erupted in the area, and a manager was shot dead in his office. The Iraqi government said it didn’t want or need the prison. In 2007 the project was abandoned, but only after $40 million of U.S. taxpayer money had been spent.

The prison is just one of the more vivid examples of what is likely to be “a significant legacy of waste” in the reconstruction program, said Stuart Bowen, the head of the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which audited the project as well as many others littering the battered Iraqi landscape.

As U.S. combat operations officially end this week and Washington’s reconstruction effort winds up, Iraqis complain that America is leaving little behind to show for an investment that President Bush promised in 2003 would parallel the post- World War II Marshall Plan in its scope and accomplishments.

“I am very sorry because America spent a lot of money without any tangible results,” said Ali Baban, Iraq’s minister of planning, who is responsible for overseeing the projects now being handed over to the Iraqi government. “The Iraqi people heard a lot about American assistance, but really they didn’t touch it or feel it.”

Many things went wrong, officials say, looking back on seven years of missteps and successes that could offer lessons for similar efforts in Afghanistan, where reconstruction expenditures are expected to surpass those of Iraq next year.

Under pressure to produce results quickly, the U.S. awarded no-bid contracts to companies with little knowledge of the country they were hired to help. Projects were haphazardly planned and poorly executed. As the insurgency erupted, projects were either destroyed or the costs of providing security to continue them ballooned. And perhaps most important, officials say, Iraqis were not consulted as to which projects actually would be useful.