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“Comedian” is not the first word I think of when I think of, and if I think of. Jon Stewart. I usually think “insufferable” and “arrogant. Fair is fair though and he has spent years of his life speaking up for First Responders, injured and ill because of September 11, and service members and their families. Total props to Stewart. He does the work and is passionate about it. In a discussion with Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, she tried to blow Stewart off and it didn’t end well for her. Who knew that “audits” could spawn so much passion, other than CPA’s?
Since accountability has been on our minds regarding the military, before we begin, you should know that the Department of Defense has FAILED its fifth straight audit. Now, from “Task & Purpose”:
The former The Daily Show host spoke to Hicks at a symposium put on by the War Horse at the University of Chicago on Thursday, April 6. The conversation spanned just over an hour, discussing “The Human Impact of Military Service,” but the most rancorous moment came when Stewart brought up the Department of Defense’s trouble keeping track of its funds and equipment.
In the most recent Pentagon audit, the chief comptroller found that the military could not account for more than 60 percent of its assets. That is where Stewart, a long-time advocate for veterans, said that results like that reflect “waste, fraud and abuse.”
The two exchanged tense remarks over the framing, with Hicks arguing that the results of the audit do not show corruption. She called his assertion completely false, while Stewart countered, noting that even though so much is unaccounted for, “we got out of 20 years of war and the Pentagon got a $50 billion raise.”
Let’s go to the videotape:
And the TKO goes to Jon Stewart. Here is part of the transcript:
GIVING YOU FINANCIAL INSIGHTS AND NEWS FOR FREE AND LIVE
Jon Stewart says, “The audit that is in the military does not look if there is efficacy.”
Hicks: “That is any audit.”
Stewart: “… there is a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Hicks: “… the fact that the DOD has not passed an audit is not an example of waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Stewart: “… that is waste. If you can’t tell me where a billion dollars went, how is that not waste?”
DOCTOR Hicks then goes on to intimate that Jon Stewart doesn’t know what an audit is. Holee smokes. The twatty-snotty arrogance. There are not many areas of work life where audits don’t occur, but if you are engaged in one, audits CAN look for waste, fraud and abuse:
The difference between fraud, waste and abuse is a matter of degrees. Only fraud is a reportable condition under Yellow Book standards.
If the auditee exhibits any of the following three conditions, and these conditions are significant or material, the auditor should describe them in their audit report in the form of a “finding” and recommend corrective action:
Internal control weaknesses
Noncompliance
Fraud
But those aren’t the only less than stellar conditions an auditor may come across; the auditor may also see that the auditee is abusing their power or wasting government resources. In years past, the GAO considered abuse as a reportable condition and did not mention the concept of waste.
This female has the nerve to speak down to Jon Stewart and it seems she doesn’t know what an audit is. She is soooo high-elitist that she insinuates that Stewart doesn’t understand food insecurity. Look, I have problems with dependas breeding to get more benefits. I have problems with predatory lenders waiting outside military gates on payday. Those are facts. Dr. Hicks sits in her office at the Pentagon and goes to cocktail parties in Georgetown. She has no idea what life is like for military personnel in Biden’s Inflation America.
Just over a quarter of US service members have experienced food insecurity in recent years, according to a new report from the RAND Corporation.
The report, released this week, said that 25.8% of Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard personnel were food insecure. More than half of that percentage – 15.4% – were active duty troops.
“We were surprised at the estimate. … I mean that’s a lot of people,” Dr. Beth Asch, a senior economist at RAND and the lead author of the report, told CNN.
RAND’s research was requested by the Defense Department, the report says, after the DOD was mandated by Congress in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act to report on food insecurity among service members.
The report from RAND looked at data from 2016 and 2018 reports from the Pentagon over the active duty force to come to their estimate, which Asch said was virtually the same as the Defense Department’s 2020 estimate. While they were unable to include the 2020 report in their own study, Asch said the estimate of around 25% of service members is the most current assessment available.
DOCTOR Hicks with her snooty-booty attitude must have gone to the same school as DOCTOR Jill Biden. Speaking of snooty-booty, CNN’s Don Lemon’s infestation isn’t getting any better:
Don Lemon seemed unaware that his mic was live when he tossed out an aside about Jon Stewart: “He gets a lot of leeway with the comedian thing."https://t.co/6gwpKu2ALV
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) April 10, 2023
Better to be “just a comedian” than a permanent twat. Ask DOCTOR Hicks or Don Lemon.
Featured Image: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons/Montclair Film Festival/Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0
liz says: Think social media has ‘poisoned the well” a bit into making folks believe that if anyone disagrees with anyone else on any point whatsoever they are the enemy.
I’m not an “anything or nothing” adherent and I appreciate Stewart’s perspective, and disagree sometimes.
He is one of the rare people with independence of thought. I especially appreciated his perspective on the Colbert show a couple of years ago when he asserted that the coronavirus obviously came from a lab in China.
That was true, yet could not have been easy.
He is on the money here as well.
I looked at several articles on the subject of the DOD audit. It is not clear what cannot be accounted for. My guess is that DOD has a lot of stuff still on the books that has been used or retired. If we are talking about any new equipment and supplies, especially high value and easily sold items like firearms and computers, some people should be going to jail. The headache is holding the thieves accountable. Our society seems to have lost track of how to do that.
The secret with inventory management, which is what we are really talking about, is tracking stuff as close to real time as possible. So, if something is missing, that fact is immediately detected. That requires routing inspections and someone with enough clout to get people’s attention.
The payback for real time inventory management is that shortages of important supplies can be immediately detected, and those supplies can be replenished. That is a readiness issue, and it should be identified as such.
American Human says: It used to be, back in the 70s when I was an Army SGT stationed in West Germany, that anyone in the Company who was in charge, CO, XO, 1st SGT, Platoon Leaders, Platoon SGTs, were responsible for what was in their area. During a change of command in my company, the new CO spent a week visiting every nook and cranny of every building and area, making sure that Platoon SGTs knew where there tools were, Platoon Leaders knew who their soldiers were and where they were, and every I was dotted and every T was crossed before he signed anything having to do with change of command.
If a commander of a division, brigade, battalion, or company didn’t know where all of his/her stuff was they were “signed” for it and had to make account.
That’s how you get rid of fraud waste and abuse.
I seems as if no one in charge in the military is held to account any more.
Octochicken says: 60% of the US military’s assets are unaccounted for and it isn’t waste or fraud, so you’re left with incompetence, corruption, or outright crime to explain the situation. Are any of these outcomes better??
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