‘Get Rich Cheating’

Posted on Jun 2, 2009

Harper Paperbacks

Jeff Kreisler

Editor’s note: Truthdig is pleased to present an excerpt from comedian Jeff Kreisler’s new book, “Get Rich Cheating,” a satirical how-to guide that uses real scams in business, sports, entertainment, and politics to show how we got into the mess we’re in.

Lest there be any confusion, please note that this is a work of satire intended for entertainment purposes only.

View the infomercial here.

“Get Rich Cheating” Excerpt 1:

Chapter 20 The Scam from U.N.C.L.E

I Want You! To Get His Money
Once you have government connections and influence, you must use them—and abuse them. Now that you’ve convinced Uncle Sam to let you do whatever you want, it’s time to start doing whatever you want. These hard-earned contacts may only last until the next election, so get cheating.

Even George Bush knew about the fleeting nature of government hookups. He sucked every last penny he could out of his presidency, passing last-minute energy, environmental, and financial rules that benefited his buddies, even as a nation obsessed with campaign ’08 forgot he existed. If he can use the government to get rich, can the rest of us? Yes We Can.

“Win” Government Contracts
Government contacts will get you government contracts. In the alternate universe of $400 hammers, a government contract is a fountain of gold that never stops flowing. Good buddy Halliburton is the king of government deals, often no bid and high-pay. They’ve had about $18 billion in contract work in Iraq alone. How did they do it? Well, it probably helps that their former CEO is “your hero.” Even if you’re not that lucky, connections all along the contract process can help direct the work your way.

•Former Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson steered hundreds of thousands to friends for work in post-Katrina New Orleans and the Virgin Islands. Um, it’s called vacation planning.
•Ninety percent of the Small Business Administration’s budget in high-unemployment areas went to VBP Group, an Arizona company with zippo small business experience. The company was run by former Bush Agriculture appointee Vernon Parker. He got the contracts just four months after forming the group, even though it normally takes two years to get certified by the SBA, let alone receive money.
•Moving Water Industries Corp. recently won a $32 million New Orleans drainage contract from the Army Corps of Engineers. The company’s bid matched up nicely with the specifications of the Army’s request for bids, which just happened to have been taken verbatim, typos and all, from the catalog of . . . ding! . . . Moving Water Industries Corp. Hey, it’s not their fault the Army can’t afford to hire competent employees.
•New York State claims that investment firms paid friends and relatives of comptroller Alan Hevesi cash money in exchange for getting a pension management contract. And you thought a “comptroller” was what came with a Nintendo Wii.

No Bid, No Problem
The really accomplished Great Cheaters can get their government contracts without even trying, through a process called no-bid. Spending on contracts awarded without “full and open” competition has tripled since 2000—and that doesn’t include the ’08 bailout. That’s a lotta cash to be cheated. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft got an eighteen-month, $52 million no-bid contract simply to monitor a legal settlement between the government and an Indiana medical supplier. No public notice, no bidding—the Justice Department just gave it to him.

The no-bid process is designed for speed and limits the ability of government crybabies to put up safeguards to prevent waste and fraud. Hey, they don’t have to worry. You’re not going to waste any of the money you fraud your way into.

The Best Defen$e Is a Good Offense
You know who’s making nice money off the government? Honeywell, General Dynamics, United Technologies, and all the nicest defense contractors. The State Department spent about $4 billion per year on private security and law enforcement agencies alone from 2003 to 2007. The Coast Guard hired Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to supervise a $17 billion modernization project. Sorta. DynCorp International got $1.1 billion to train police in Afghanistan. Well, they got their money, but there’s no trained police force. Hey, they say they’re on the job, so let’s just take their word for it. Defense contracting: Good work if you can shoot it.

In$piration: “Defense procurement has disintegrated into an incestuous relationship between the military, politicians, and contractors.” —Walter Braswell¹ 

Our armed services don’t like paperwork; they like blowing things up. Michael Cantrell, a mid-level Defense Department guy, extracted $350 million from the Pentagon for projects it didn’t want and for services he never provided just by gaming the system. Army officials didn’t want to get in budget fights with Cantrell’s Senate friends like Trent Lott, so they just gave him contracts with no scrutiny. It was easier that way. Incest is best.
Best of all, most of these war-related contracts are . . . drumroll, please . . . NO-BID!

“Even before the first shots were fired in Iraq, the Pentagon had secretly awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a two-year, no-bid contract to put out oil well figures and to handle other unspecified duties involving war damage to the country’s petroleum industry. It is worth up to $7 billion.²” 

Companies like Bechtel, Halliburton, KBR, and Crest have connections to the government cash dispensers. Neil Bush—yes, another of the President’s brothers—helped get contracts for his friends. (The kind of friends who paid him about $60,000, i.e., good friends.) Shocking, I know. Cheating, you should.

Some hippies claim that the Iraq war has resulted in the “largest case of war profiteering in history.” Well, you have to account for inflation, liberal media. I mean, in 2008 dollars, the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC would have been, well, absurd.
“A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq . . . To date, no major US contractor faces trial for fraud or mismanagement in Iraq³. ”

There’s a multibillion-dollar Development Fund for Iraq paid for by oil revenue just begging for you to exploit it. Great Cheaters are reselling old equipment or submitting invoices for millions in salary without any documentation whatsoever . . . and getting it!⁴

I mean, come on, young cheater, do I have to spell it out for you? People are literally dying for you to get rich. You owe it to them to make sure their sacrifice is not in vain.

 

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