{"id":67355,"date":"2016-08-09T11:35:34","date_gmt":"2016-08-09T15:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=67355"},"modified":"2016-08-09T12:06:50","modified_gmt":"2016-08-09T16:06:50","slug":"20-million-for-art-pfft-thats-peanuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=67355","title":{"rendered":"$20 Million for Art? Pfft. Merely Peanuts."},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose everyone\u2019s heard the recent news about the VA spending $20M on art<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 Well, as far as VA \u201cmanagement excellence\u201d goes, it turns out that\u2019s peanuts.<\/p>\n

During the period 2010-2013, the VA began implementation of 15 solar energy projects.\u00a0 They were projected to take on average of 7 to 12 months, and to all be completed by now.<\/p>\n

I suppose you can guess what\u2019s coming.\u00a0 And if you guessed \u201canother sterling example of the VA\u2019s excellence in managing the use of its resources\u201d – you\u2019d be right.\u00a0 (I trust the sarcasm in the previous sentence is obvious.)<\/p>\n

Instead, the projects are taking an average of 42 months to completion.\u00a0 Further, most aren\u2019t yet fully operational.<\/p>\n

In aggregate, the projects were projected to cost $95M.\u00a0 So far, the VA has spent approximately $408M \u2013 which is \u201conly\u201d 329+%<\/strong> <\/em>over budget.\u00a0 And some of the projects haven\u2019t even begun to produce electricity, let alone reach full operating capacity.\u00a0 In fact, of the 15 projects investigated by the VA OIG only two were operating at design capacity by March of this year.<\/p>\n

The Washington Free Beacon<\/u> has a good article giving more details<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s worth a read.\u00a0 So is the VA OIG report on the subject (PDF format<\/a>)<\/em>.\u00a0 Be forewarned:\u00a0 both just might p!ss you off.<\/p>\n

\u201cSaving the environment\u201d? Yeah, right.\u00a0 IMO \u201cpolitical payback using tax dollars\u201d sounds more like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suppose everyone\u2019s heard the recent news about the VA spending $20M on art.\u00a0 Well, as … $20 Million for Art? Pfft. Merely Peanuts.<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,220,213,98,238,143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teh-stoopid","category-the-floggings-will-continue-until-morale-improves","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-global-warming","category-government-incompetence","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}