>And we thought the previous administration stepped over the line - it just keeps getting worse - each administration goes further after promising to stop this nonsense:
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>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/25/AR2010112503333.html?hpid=topnews
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>Snippet:
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>In summer 2008, the U.S. military had a major problem. More than 2,400 service members had reported being sexually assaulted the previous year, and the number was rising. Congress wanted immediate action.
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>The Army responded by reaching out to a tiny firm in Delaware.
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>It was an unlikely choice for such a sensitive task. The year before, United Solutions and Services, known as US2, had just three employees and several small contracts for janitorial services and other work. It was based in a four-bedroom colonial, where the founder worked out of his living room.
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>But the firm had one quality the Army prized: It was co-owned by an Alaska native corporation (ANC) and therefore could receive federal contracts of any size without competition, under special set-aside exemptions granted by Congress to help impoverished Alaska natives.
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>On Sept. 2, 2008, US2 was granted a deal worth as much as $250 million - 3,000 times the $73,000 in revenue the firm claimed the year before. The contract enabled the Army to quickly fund a wide array of projects, including a global campaign to prevent sexual assault and harassment, without seeking outside bids.
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>US2 could not do the work by itself, though. With the Army's knowledge, the firm subcontracted the majority of it to more established companies, a Washington Post investigation has found.
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>...
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>The US2 deal shows one way federal agencies have increasingly avoided contracting competitions, which specialists say generally get the best deals for taxpayers. And it underscores how small ANC subsidiaries run by nonnatives have benefitted from an unprecedented surge of outsourcing by the military at a time of war.
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>Army officials acknowledged using the firm to avoid competition, saying they did not have enough time or contracting workers to seek other bids.
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>Maybe it's time I returned to my roots, set up an office next to the reservation, and hired my relatives who live on the reservation. I wonder how many contracts we could win?

This is not new. In the 1980s I worked for a company that sold inventory control software to the grocery business. The biggest contract we ever sought was with the Defense Department's commissaries nationwide, which was called the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). We went in with our proposal as a subcontractor, with the official bidders being five Native American guys in DC. Their entire business model was bidding on government jobs like this, since they got preferential consideration. (They were not guaranteed the work but they did have an inside track). We joked that in a way they had the same problem our company did -- too many chiefs and not enough indians.

We didn't get the business. I think it was the Androids who got it.