Brickbat: It Doesn't Add Up

Alexan24 / Dreamstime.com

Auditors have found, once again, that the city of Baltimore does a lousy job of tracking how it spends state and federal grant funds. The city gets about $448 million in grants. Previous audits have come to the same conclusion, and each time, city officials vow to correct the problems.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

Also that year, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ordered the city to repay $3.7 million from a grant awarded to serve homeless people. The city had dispersed the money to anti-poverty organizations that didn't properly document how it was spent, federal officials said.

The administrators of those organizations no doubt used the grants to make sure they themselves stayed well above the poverty line.

[Cyto]

Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion...

I've been doing it wrong all these years. Can someone get me a pamphlet on starting one of these organizations that suckle at the government teat?

[gaoxiaen]

There's probably a website. Or you can use Tony Soprano's method. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfcgwxPH7Rc

[Jerryskids]

"The city is not able to establish accurate balances of grant accounts," city Auditor Audrey Askew told Baltimore's spending panel Wednesday.

One possible result, Askew said: "The city could lose its much-needed [grant] funding."

We don't know where the hell we're spending this money, but we're certain it needs spending.

[BigT]

OT:

London mayor wants to ban knives. Common sense knife control comes to London! How many times have prescient commentors predicted this!?

https://preview.tinyurl.com/yd3rwks8

[Adans smith]

You could have stopped at 'common sense control'.

[Telcontar the Wanderer]

Eeeexcellent.

if they really ban them properly, they'll force black market suppliers to smuggle and/or illicitly manufacture their own wares... and if they're already going to be forced to smuggle and/or illicitly manufacture their weapons instead of buying them wholesale at Ye Old Cutlery Shoppe, why not go for the gusto and get theirselves something a little louder? This could well be the beginning of illegal firearm reintroduction to the UK in earnest.

Certainly, at minimum, long knives are extremely easy to mass-produce with sheet metal, dremels and angle grinders, so even if my gun prediction is incorrect, this will not work.

[Fuck you, Shikha (Nunya)]

"illegal to possess zombie knives and knuckledusters in private" ? "zombie knives" are those defined as being manufactured for the purpose of being used as a person-to-person weapon"

At least they are consistent since they want to really stop assault knives. And have then in low capacity. And I'm sure they'll also say 'no one is coming after your knives'.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

"zombie knives - a knife with a cutting edge, a serrated edge and images or words suggesting it is used for violence"

You see, it is the "intent" displayed by the object, more than the object itself. Those words and images have just got to go.

[SQRLSY One]

"London has seen a dramatic uptick in murder rates, surpassing even New York City in the number of homicides every month since the beginning of 2018. It has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, and, technically, knives carried "without good reason" are off limits to anyone under the age of 18."

"Good reason", I bet, TOTALLY excludes ANY ideas about self-defense. We must ALL depend on Government Almighty for EVERYTHING, to include self-defense! Self-defense = criminality!

[Telcontar the Wanderer]

Well, duh: if everybody shot everybody who'd shot somebody, twice as many people would die!

[SQRLSY One]

And then there'd be peace! Relative peace, at least! And the costs of judges, jails, and jailors would drop like a rock! I'm on board with it!

[SQRLSY One]

But I do have to admit there's a slight "rub" in there...

That is, this could all work out OK, ***IF*** no one comes and shoots me, just because I shot the shooter! Else it could become a run-away process, out of control!

[Quo Usque Tandem]

He wants to ban knives beyond this?

https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives

[gaoxiaen]

I'd fall back on the tire iron that I just used to check if my wheels were loose or the baseball or cricket bat that I just used in playing. Baseballs, softballs, and mitts should be carried in your car, just in case.

[John C. Randolph]

Khan is doing his level best to take wrest the title of "single most useless tax dependent in the entire UK" away from the Royal Family.

-jcr

[Libertarian]

To be honest, I'd have trouble spending more than $1 million a day, too.

[gaoxiaen]

I wouldn't. Look at Forgotten Weapons on Youtube, while you still can.

[This Machine Chips Fascists]

Baltimore city officials were shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, to learn that 2 plus 2 does not equal 5. The Board of Estimates is working on the numbers and hopes to produce some smoke, if not actual mirrors, before Trump murders us all.

[Ride 'Em]

And yet the Feds continue to give them money. It won't get cleaned up until the funds are cut off. Why change what you are getting away with when the penalty is less than 1 percent.

[Libertarian]

^ What he said. It's similar to when a politician or bureaucrat gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar. They aren't imprisoned; they pay back what they stole (or at least a payback schedule is prepared) and the result is "no harm, no foul."

[Longtobefree]

And which party has ruled for the last decades?
Maybe I skimmed to fast, but I do not remember the part where each time the incompetent bureaucrats got fired. Anybody else see that?

[Brian Dixon]

I'm commenting on Hit & Run in order to buy sex.

Anybody got a problem with that? I'm asking you, FOSTA/SESTA!

[gaoxiaen]

I don't have a problem with that. Especially with a toothless hooker.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Previous audits have come to the same conclusion, and each time, city officials vow to correct the problems.

Does "vowing to correct the problems" mean "bribing the auditors more than they did the last time"?

[?rboles de la Barranca]

"Sheeeeit!"