WHILE POLITICIANS COMPLAIN ABOUT WALL STREET BONUSES, WHAT ABOUT THIS? Hidden Bonuses Enrich U.S. Government Contractors.

U.S. Senator Kit Bond shifted in his chair at a 2005 congressional hearing, poised with a question on national security. He turned to Treasury Secretary John Snow, who was seated at a witness table.

Was Snow sure, asked Bond, a Missouri Republican, that a Treasury Department computer on order for $8.9 million would help detect terrorist money laundering?

“Yes, absolutely,” Snow said.

A year later, in July 2006, the U.S. Treasury Department abandoned the project. The computer didn’t work. The department had spent $14.7 million — a 65 percent increase above the original budget — for nothing.

There was a final ignominy: Under the terms of the contract, Electronic Data Systems Corp., the vendor, collected a bonus of $638,126.

As the federal government’s $700 billion bailout of banks sputters, there’s an object lesson for the new administration of President Barack Obama: Federal departments, including Treasury itself, routinely squander tens of billions of dollars a year in taxpayer money as they farm out public business to private corporations.

Obama, like presidents before him, said during his bid for the White House that he wanted to curtail waste in government. With contracting, he faces a mismanaged system that accounts for almost 40 cents of every federal dollar spent outside of mandatory obligations such as Social Security and Medicare.

Pot, meet kettle. But wait, there’s more:

In many cases, bureaucrats are motivated to give millions of dollars in bonuses to contractors no matter how poorly a company performs because generosity with taxpayer money may help them land better-paying jobs after they leave the government.

Contractors on dozens of jobs at federal departments collected more than $8 billion in what federal auditors said were unwarranted bonuses from 1999 to 2005.

I wonder what 2009 will look like.

A WHILE BACK, I linked to a story on Horse Haven of Tennessee, a charity for abused or abandoned horses that my sister works with. If you vote for them here they can win $10,000, which goes a long way in what they do. Or, if you just like horses, you can donate at their website.

SO, WAIT, ALL THAT TALK ABOUT THE “VANISHING RAIN FORESTS” WAS CRAP?

These new “secondary” forests are emerging in Latin America, Asia and other tropical regions at such a fast pace that the trend has set off a serious debate about whether saving primeval rain forest — an iconic environmental cause — may be less urgent than once thought. By one estimate, for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster.

“There is far more forest here than there was 30 years ago,” said Ms. Ortega de Wing, 64, who remembers fields of mango trees and banana plants. . . . About 38 million acres of original rain forest are being cut down every year, but in 2005, according to the most recent “State of the World’s Forests Report” by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, there were an estimated 2.1 billion acres of potential replacement forest growing in the tropics — an area almost as large as the United States.

The regrowth will take years to turn into mature rain-forest, of course — but it will do so if left alone. (And the new growth is actually better at sequestering carbon.) And, ironically, it’s all because, instead of people staying quaint, primitive, and agrarian, they’ve gotten richer. “In Latin America and Asia, birthrates have dropped drastically; most people have two or three children. New jobs tied to global industry, as well as improved transportation, are luring a rural population to fast-growing cities. Better farming techniques and access to seed and fertilizer mean that marginal lands are no longer farmed because it takes fewer farmers to feed a growing population.”

The word for that is “progress.” And, overall, it’s actually good for the environment.

ANN ALTHOUSE: What if the Iraqis held elections and nobody died — or even got hurt?

Why then it wouldn’t be newsworthy, of course.

BUT, ALAS, NOT NOW: “In my day we were brought up to have a go.”

The corruption of a culture, illustrated.

RAND SIMBERG: Lies, Damned Lies, and “Tax Cuts.”

SAY UNCLE on a group that is:

and I am not making this up, protesting that ROTC offers arms training. Two things leap out at me here. One is that they really think military training is equal to criminal activity. And two that they don’t seem to think learning about arms is educational. Familiarity with arms is a skill that can save lives, in more ways than one.

Indeed.

STILL MORE ON TOM DASCHLE’S TAX PROBLEMS IN CONTEXT: “As a life-long politician, Tom Daschle never earned much money. But he retired from the Senate, after being defeated for re-election by John Thune, as a multimillionaire. He retired to Georgetown, of course, not to South Dakota. This happens a lot in Washington, and Daschle’s case is pretty typical. His wife Linda is or was a lobbyist, and she was the one who reported the family’s income. . . . Another thing that happens a lot in Washington is that when Democrats get appointed to visible, high-ranking positions in the Executive Branch, they suddenly discover that they owe a lot more money in taxes.”

Hope, change, and a new kind of politics!

UPDATE: Reader Dave Bosserman emails:

I hope we get more stories like this; keep ’em coming! I think we all know that not paying over $100K in taxes isn’t a ‘mistake,’ it’s just something they figured they could get away with. The stories have the added benefit of helping the saps figure out that there’s a deal here, and they aren’t in on it.

Yes there is, and no, they we aren’t.

YEAH, the PJM ad-network model isn’t working. I don’t have much to do with the PJM business side, but online ads just aren’t producing revenue like they were a few years ago, and the blog-network thing was apparently a tough sell. Hence the emphasis on PJTV. How will that work out? Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Thoughts from longtime PJM critic Ann Althouse.

MORE: Further thoughts from The Anchoress. And more at Protein Wisdom.

STILL MORE: Roger Simon: “We disbanded the ad network part of our business for a simple reason: it was losing money and we couldn’t see how in the reasonable future that would change.”

MORE STILL: Some business points from Tim Oren, including this one: “Anyone who’s paid attention knows that the effective CPM for both click-through and exposure ads on blogs s***s. I mean really s***s – like up to an order of magnitude less than run-of-site ads on big, topically diffuse web properties.”

FINALLY: Bob Owens reminds people that it’s just the ad network that’s ending in April, not Pajamas Media.

A DASCHLE TAX PROBLEM ROUNDUP, at TaxProf.

UPDATE: Reader Michael Stein writes: “You think instead of the stimulus bill, Congress might instead pass an initiative requiring Democrats to just pay the taxes they owe?” The way things are going, that would fix the deficit . . . .

MEGAN MCARDLE: The labor movement takes its pound of flesh.

ROGER KIMBALL ON self-indulgent wallowing in economic gloom.

ON PJTV, I talk about lowering the drinking age with John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College, now of Choose Responsibility and the Amethyst Initiative. Free, with no registration required.

SENATE DEMOCRATS WAVERING ON THE STIMULUS: “Sen. Conrad: ‘I’d have a very hard time voting’ for recovery package as it stands.” Likewise for Ben Nelson. If you’re from their home states and don’t like the stimulus, it might be worth telling them.

A LOOK AT statin side effects.

ANOTHER GEITHNER PROBLEM, this time for Tom Daschle:

It seems Tom Daschle recently paid a little over $100,000 in back taxes and interest after failing to tell the IRS that he was receiving a free car and driver from a Wall Street friend for three years. If you’re keeping track, that’s a little over twice the amount Tim Geithner paid in back taxes and interest.

Don’t any of these people pay their taxes?

UPDATE: Athena Runner emails: “Nope, but they sure as heck want to tax the hell out of the rest of us who would not be able to get off so lightly.”

CAR LUST: Remembering the 1969-1973 Dodge Polara. I knew a guy who had one of those in high school — everybody called it his “narc car.” Some commercials at the link.

A BIOFUEL-POWERED Bentley GT.

HMM: Oil rises after better-than-expected U.S. GDP data. Funny, most of the U.S. media reported the GDP as bad news, and you had to scroll way down to see that the data were better-than-expected. I guess the markets pay closer attention to the actual numbers . . . .

UPDATE: James Holloway emails: “GDP of -3.8 was below the -5.5 consensus only because of a buildup in business inventories — ie, stuff that’s gonna sit unsold on shelves and in warehouses. Back out the buildup — a one-time event that won’t be repeated — and GDP was down 5.1.” Okay, so how come oil went up on the news?

CIRCLING THE EAST BY BOAT: “Our Great Loop trip took us from Fort Loudoun Lake to Mobile, Key West, up the east coast to New York City, then across Canada including Montreal, Ottawa, Georgian Bay, the North Channel of Lake Huron, then south across Lake Michigan to Chicago, and down a system of six rivers back to Knoxville. It was a yearlong journey of 6,800 miles.”

HAPPY Earned Income Tax Credit Awareness Day!

PJTV: Leon De Winter on Geert Wilders. Free with registration.

ASKING THE UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS: Reader Cathy Neall writes: “Doesn’t the fall-off in economic growth of the last quarter correspond directly to the gloomy and alarming comments the inexperienced president (president-elect) has been making about the the economy? ‘It’s going to get worse…unemployment could get to 10%!’ We’re all terrified to spend anything – which perpetuates the problem.” Yeah, it’s like they don’t mind the downturn.

COOL: Suntan drug greenlighted for testing. “A drug that stimulates the body’s tanning response — turning pasty skin caramel for up to two months — has been approved for human trials, but not for tanning.”

WHY OBAMA IS TARGETING LIMBAUGH: “Here’s my take: The ongoing bailout of banks and business executives is not only wrong, it is deeply, deeply unpopular. By taking potshots at executives—their salaries, their corporate jets, their redecorated offices—Obama hopes to deflect the unpopularity of his actual policies onto his opponents. . . . Republicans should be the ones making Obama pay for bailing out wealthy business failures with OUR money.”