Right On The Right

It's been a while since I last called for a special panel of outside auditors to go into the Defense Department and look at spending. Here and there we hear outrageous tales of military spending, and I'm not talking about millions for missiles, I'm talking about thousands for hammers and other mundane items. Here's a horror story about spending from that dreaded "military-industrial complex":

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to a Texas base, U.S. officials said.

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.

That's ridiculous. If we want to get serious about cutting pork, and if we want to properly fund our military, we need to cut down on things like this. Like I said, hire a special panel of auditors (like special prosecutors except without the witch hunt mentality), to go into the military and figure out where money's being spent on our defense and where money's being funneled into a black hole.