The Free Zone Board

[Indy708]

By Mark Wilkinson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige on
Friday announced a series of initiatives to tackle mismanagement and
fraud that have cost the department $450 million since 1998.

Responding to a recent audit showing these funds had been misused,
Paige said the initiatives included setting up a task force to solve these
problems and more external monitoring of the department's efforts.

...
so here we have 450 million in 3 yrs>
so far so good.
about 8 paragraphs down we get this:
Of the estimated amount the Education Department lost, $250 million
was duplicate payments that were eventually recovered, according to
Jack Higgins who will head the new team.


...
now we are down to 200 million.

what's missing from this article that was in earlier versions is that this dept handles about 55 billion or so a yr.

dig out your calculator here folks...

multiply 55 billion * 3 = 165 billion
now divide 200 million/165 billion = .12% loss. most corporations would pretty happy with that. 6 mill was later found to come from about 4 people. the rest was probably ink pens in the pocket. what a bunch cheezball hype.