I find a lot of things frustrating.  Of this I know I am not alone.

What really brings this to the forefront of my mind is this article.  Everyone recognizes there are a lot of bad things going in our world.  This includes people who ran Enron, created predatory mortgages and run Ponzi schemes.  What bothers me about this article is that the NY Times has gone out of their way to point out misappropriation of funds under CNCS.

Why?  Well the obvious answer is free press exists, a wrong had been done and it should be pointed out by said free press.  I don’t have a problem with that.  But why is the NY Times wasting their ink?  It’s easy to write an article about CNCS putting a sanction on the money that was going to Sacramento.  That’s probably pretty public information.  It requires little to no investigation, and honestly it probably reveals very little.  CNCS put all of the work in, discovered what was being done and stopped it.

Yet, what does the citizens of our country get?  We get a recession.  We get job loss.  But the part that really bugs me is that this article is not the only misappropriation of money happening in the US.  In fact, it’s probably nominal in comparison to all the money that’s being wasted between contractors, companies and even the government itself.

Instead we put the non-profit group that misused money out for all to see.  Why do we do this?  Maybe because the non-profit world exists as charity.  People see the contributions they make to us as charity and are mortally offended when things don’t go as exactly as we requested.  But maybe just maybe this happens in EVERY industry.  Maybe the Department of Defense should do as good of a job surveying what their contractors are doing with their money, and maybe they’d put a sanction on some groups they work with for misappropriation of funds.

Maybe if all branches of government were watching as closely as CNCS does with what happens to their money the New York Times could report on those.  But instead we’re left wondering where billions of dollars are disappearing to for the economy, the military and other government projects.  Ask yourself if $800,000 misspent over the last 3 years is something that even merits a conversation in comparison to what our government spends each year.

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