outrage fatigue, i has it

[acroyear]

Effect Measure : Bush administration passport to stupidity:

So here's the bottom line. The Bush administration outsourced to multiple foreign companies the production of blank US passports complete with embedded computer chips and shipped them without proper safeguards back to Washington, where the State Department proposed to use contract security guards to protect them.

And the money? They charge you and me $100 but it only costs the GPO $7.97. They in turn charge the State Department $14.80 for each blank (possibly compromised) passport. And the difference -- $85 -- the GPO keeps. It is using a portion of this money to build a production facility in the US. But most of the money is GPO profit, a violation of the letter and the spirit of the law, which mandates charges only to cover costs. In essence the extra money is a tax.

So what does the Bush administration always do when confronted with an impropriety, not to mention an illegality? They just say they have determined it isn't either one