waste & abuse

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 27, 2000 | by Sean Paige

News From Lake Weapons-Be-Gone

Dramatic recruiting shortfalls have led some branches of the armed forces to overhaul their advertising campaigns, searching for a slogan zippy enough to stir the patriotic juices of today's most indolent young slackers. So in the interest of doing our part, we proffer this sales pitch, free of charge, for the seagoing branch: "The Navy. It's not just a job; it's an adventure in mismanagement!"

Sure, it may sound, well, a little negative at first, even a bit bookish or boring. But if nothing else, it at least has the virtue of being brutally honest about the service in question -- and can be backed by numerous critiques by the General Accounting Office, or GAO -- at a time at which people are said to be hungry for "authenticity." And it lays down a clear and daunting challenge to the potential recruit: Since the likelihood of actually seeing combat at sea is quite low, they instead will be engaged in seek-and-recovery operations aimed at tracking down at least some of the $3 billion in weapons and equipment that the service listed as "lost in transit" between 1995 and 1998.

The Navy believes that all of the missile launchers, night-vision goggles and other sensitive equipment it lists as missing in transit in fact have made it to their destinations. With bookkeeping this pathetic, the Navy really can't be sure, according to the GAO -- leaving the public to hope that nothing dangerous fell through the cracks and into the wrong waiting hands, or worry that the service is overbuying inventory, acquiring even more of what it's not sure it has in stock.

"This lack of accountability could cause the inventory to become vulnerable to theft or loss and could cause managers to implement inefficient, ineffective decisions and practices regarding purchases that could lead to waste," said the GAO in the most recent of three reports on the problem. Rear Adm. Keith Lippert, commander of Naval Supply Systems Command, speaking good officialese, blamed the situation on "disconnects in our various material-tracking and financial-accounting systems" and of course pledged to make "immediate systems-connectivity improvements" by this fall.

Other branches, including the Army and Air Force, have had problems of their own tracking and warehousing inventory, placing them on GAO's "high risk" list of programs that are particularly susceptible to waste, fraud and abuse.

The Cider House Fools

Sour apples at the U.S. Food and Drag Administration, or FDA, in their ongoing quest to take nearly all the simple pleasures out of life, are proposing new health standards for apple cider that they say will take a bite out of the nasty bacteria E. coli. The standards also may make a mash out of small cider mills in New England and elsewhere, according to a Vermont newspaper.

In reaction (some would argue overreaction) to a 1996 outbreak of the bacteria in Washington state cider, the FDA is demanding a 100,000-fold decrease in the levels of E. coli allowable in cider. Only by pasteurizing their product could mills achieve that goal, experts say, but the added cost in equipment involved likely would put small orchards and operators -- many of which already are facing stiff competition from apple-juice imports from China -- out of business. The product itself also would suffer, according to cider connoisseurs, who say that heat-treating robs cider of "that certain something."

Rustic Vermont has about 40 small cider operations today, the paper reports, but a number of mills already have bowed out of the business in preemptive capitulation to the new regulations. "The number [of cider mills] has gone down because people have said they don't want this [regulation] hanging over them," an industry observer told the paper. "If the FDA does go through with this latest proposal, we would probably be down to half a dozen [mills]."

The FDA already requires that cider jugs carry a label warning of the possible presence of E. coli, generally found in animal intestines -- though in only rare cases has it been associated with fruit. But because modern Americans can't be trusted to read the labels, to understand what they read or to make an informed judgment for themselves, Uncle Sam butted in, even if it means overturning the applecart.

The biggest problem with the FDA's new roles are (surprise!) their rigidity, say experts, and failure to consider less-costly alternatives to reduce an already minor threat, including simply requiring a thorough prewashing of the fruit before pressing, preventing livestock from grazing in orchards or using ultraviolet radiation (or irradiation) to kill E. coli, which could be accomplished without mining the taste.

The former two options are far too simple and commonsensical, however, and so probably never occurred to pinheads in Washington. But the irradiation option also is unworkable at this time -- because of the FDA's endless foot dragging on the approval of this simple process for ridding produce of E. coli and other pathogens.