Military

 POGO - This week, we learned from a Pentagon inspector general report that Boeing sold soap dispensers to the U.S. Air Force at a nearly 8,000% mark up. In this most recent case alone, the defense contractor overcharged the taxpayers by nearly $1 million on spare parts, including the soap dispensers.

Defense contractors like Boeing and RTX (Raytheon) have made a habit of price gouging the Pentagon, and the government is letting them. A lack of competition and transparency in contract negotiations has made it so that the government is paying whatever contractors deem is a “fair” price (often as far from fair as they can manage) for what they’re selling. They overcharge the Pentagon on everything, down to the literal nuts and bolts, and the Pentagon obliges by not questioning the prices, wasting billions of taxpayer dollars in irresponsible spending.