The Department of Homeland Security is a Conduit for Crony Capitalism

As if we needed more evidence.  Not only is Big Sis’ Department of Homeland Security (DHS) taking away our civil liberties, but we now find out it is a conduit for crony capitalists to make more money off the U.S. taxpayer.  The story I am referencing today concerns the Federal Protective Service (FPS), which is an agency within the DHS that is “charged with overseeing a force of approximately 13,000 private sector security guards, employed by 38 contractors, who protect nearly 9,000 federal buildings.”

So in 2008, FPS awarded a $21 million contract to Booz Allen Hamilton to develop the Risk Assessment and Management Program (RAMP), a computer program intended to streamline the management of security contracts and oversight of guards.  Well, the rest is another made in America story of crony capitalism, sanctioned at the highest level by our Liar in Chief, Barack Obama: The King of Crony Capitalism (after all he is best buds with government welfare baby Uncle Warren Buffett and outsourcing heavyweight Jeff Immelt of GE).

I will simply allow quotes from the article tell the rest of this story…

Despite systemic problems with RAMP and a series of warnings and criticisms from auditors and whistle-blowers, government bureaucrats in both Republican and Democratic administrations kept the program alive.

Separate reports, by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in July 2011 and DHS’s Office of Inspector General in March 2012, found that agency bureaucrats, led by FPS Risk Management Division Director Susan Burrill, overspent on RAMP and were far behind schedule — with nothing to show for the $21 million outlay, spent in its entirety after just two years.

Yet Booz Allen won a second award to work on RAMP. “In May 2010, ICE awarded the original developer a second contract, called a logical follow-on, to continue RAMP development and prepare for the transition to NPPD,” the inspector general reported.

In September 2010, Obama appointed L. Eric Patterson to lead FPS, a position he has held until now. Patterson is a former principal at Booz Allen, according to his biography on the DHS website.

The inspector general determined that upon taking the job, Patterson apparently decided to stop developing RAMP. Still, he authorized further payments to Booz Allen to maintain the RAMP system containing all the agency’s data until either a replacement is found or FPS determines how to redeploy the information into a new system.

Patterson’s inaction has now continued for nearly two years, enriching Booz Allen in the process, without a viable solution on the table. GAO’s Mark Goldstein told Homeland Security Today this month that problems inside FPS “remain outstanding and continue to challenge them.”

Get the joke yet?

Full article from the Daily Caller here.

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