According to recovery.org, in August 2009, $98,779,940 of ‘stimulus’ funds was awarded to the Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm in exchange for helping out with the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. This sum of money is in exchange for “General Management Consulting Services”. I’m already flabbergasted, but I think a little more detail is warranted.
The Broadband Technology Opportunities Program was designed as a program to handout 4.7 BILLION dollars to cable companies. This money would pay for them to put down broadband lines in ‘underserved’ areas. (i.e. If your internet is a little slow and there’s not enough demand in your area to justify the cost of putting in high-speed lines, never fear Big Government to the rescue.) Besides the fact that its not the government’s job to ensure citizens in rural areas can stream youtube videos and tweet at the speed of light, its clear that this program is a massive money dump.
Although the program itself is horrendous, it’s the Booz award which I find most intriguing. As they say themselves, ”the objective of this award action is to develop, administer, and integrate a program to ensure timely and efficient distribution of funding to qualified applicants.” In english, that means this program is so huge and handing out so much money, our federal government simply can’t manage the task on its own. Instead, we are giving a large corporation a big pile of taxpayer money (nearly a hundred million dollars) to help hand out an even bigger pile of taxpayer money (4.7 billion) to other corporations.