The computer system that was supposed to modernize the FBI record keeping and information sharing, doesn’t work and isn’t ever likely to do what the bureau needs. Very old news in the computer world.

A large organization has no IT resources in-house and refuses to pay for professionals to write a requirements document. They specify what they want and the day after the contract is signed they have to start making changes because they left major requirements out of their “Request For Bids”. Small contractors generally have to suffer the costs of the changes and go broke, but the big players know this will happen and make their profits from the change orders.

The biggest problem seems to be the sudden interest in counter-terrorism after September 11, 2001. There were no provisions for counter-terrorism activities prior to that time.

An independent $2 million review of the system has concluded that it would be cheaper to start over that to try to patch what has been done up to this point. Some people claim that the vendor, SAIC, took advantage of the FBI, knowing that the system would never be what they needed.

Having been there and done that with government contracts, I can tell you that you will never be awarded a contract if you don’t follow the bid to the letter, even when you know the bid is stupid. SAIC knows the rules of government contracts and I know a number of programmers who work on these projects. You know going in that nothing you write in the first two years will be in the final product.

The new VA computer system is about to be dumped, the Florida Children and Families system was a total failure, and the list goes on. You have to follow the contract to the letter to get paid, and the contract is always garbage.

The Children and Families system was a classic. The contract specified that all information be stored based on the client’s name. Apparently, whoever wrote the specifications didn’t consider the possibility that there might be more than one person named John Smith.

The last test of the missile defense system didn’t work because the attack vehicle didn’t launch. The Air Force general in charge said the problem was a minor software glitch.

It turns out the software monitors for errors and communications “drop-outs” during the launch cycle and aborts the launch if there are too many errors. The “fix” was to increase the number of permitted errors.

Let’s not find out why there are so many errors, errors that might make life exciting for airline passengers, because the data being sent to the attack vehicle before launch are the target tracking data, we’ll just let the vehicle launch with even less information than before.

This is so typical: our missile can’t pass when a “C” is 70%, so we’ll make a “C” 50%.

No Obscenely Expensive Defense Project Left Behind.

Let’s plug in some real numbers: under Bush, a real world growth mutual fund [Jennison Growth and similar] that would be typical for retirement savings has lost in excess of one-third of its value. During the same period Treasury bills have been paying in excess of 5% per annum. Social Security is invested in Treasury bills.

So at the start of Bush’s term a $100K in a private fund is now worth $66K, but the same money in Social Security is now worth > $120K. Treasury bills have a guaranteed return, while there are no guarantees with stocks.

Buying stocks is a gamble, buying Treasury bills is not. Do people really want to gamble with their retirement?

There is a possibility that you can make much more money in the stock market, than buying Treasury bills, but you can just as easily make less. In a single year, 1995, that growth portfolio made 26%, and then from 2001 to 2005 it dropped 33%.

If you bought the Dow Jones Industrial Average your $100K would still be worth approximately $100K after 4 years. Bush has pushed most of the traditional “buttons”: tax cuts, deficit spending, etc. and it hasn’t worked. If you don’t create jobs, people can’t spend money. Two-thirds of the GDP is based on consumer spending, and once everyone has maxed their credit cards, the spending is over and the GDP drops.

Another suggestion is that when you retire you can take your retirement account and buy an annuity that will provide you with a stable monthly income. Maybe, but in the case of Pacific Lumber retirees whose fully funded retirement was replaced with annuities after a leveraged buy-out, they lost it all when the insurance company that provided the annuities went bankrupt.

The current Social Security system is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. This privatization plan is backed by the full faith and credit of large businesses, like Enron, Tyco, MCI, Halliburton. Who do you trust with your retirement?

BTW, if you were wondering why Bush seems so interested in the asbestos lawsuits, guess what brilliant business visionary, while CEO of Halliburton, bought a company with a massive asbestos liability?

In the early hours of January 13^th, 1969 I was forced to accept something that I had known for a while, but had pushed to the back of my mind: I was mortal and was going to die.

This was the first of several incidents when my chance of survival was a good deal less than 1 in 2. This wasn’t the scariest, but it was the first, and following on the heels of the terrible events of 1968, it had the biggest impact.

In the end the only “death” was an airplane, Rivet Ball, the Air Force’s only RC-135S. The military version of the Boeing 707, the fuselage broke in half, like an eggshell, on impact. A very talented pilot, John Achor, the aircraft commander, was responsible for that miracle.