The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) released its final major audit over the weekend, delivering quite a bottom line: it cannot say how much U.S taxpayers lost while trying to rebuild Iraq, but it was a lot. The U.S. government Iraq relief and reconstruction program had serious internal control weaknesses that put billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk of fraud, waste, and abuse. The precise amount lost to fraud and waste may never be known, but SIGIR’s audits and investigations have demonstrated that the amount could be substantial.

Suspicions of fraud surrounded missing precincts in Clark County that, regardless of the various deadlines, had not reported when they were supposed to, and in fact, underwent a number of recounts, some of which took place behind closed doors.

Paying to use a debit card was unheard of before this year and is still a novel concept for many consumers. But several banks have recently introduced or started testing debit card fees. That's in addition to a spate of other unwelcome changes checking account customers have seen in the past year.

...I do some Googling around and confirm that in some multi dwelling units they run fiber to the building but not to the apartments. They use VDSL and the existing phonelines to get the data connection to the unit. I ask the installer why not use the existing coax. Especially since they had to run it anyway and it is spec’ed appropriately. He didn’t know.