USA Spending .Gov

[JTH]

Keeping this politically nonpartisan (please).

As an Airman, one of the many hats I wore, was working Financial Management, and IT contracts. I didn't care for the job, but I was adamant that all monies spent was allocated to getting the job done. At Fiscal EoY all excess monies went back up the chain for the Wing to re-allocate to underfunded projects. Point being, when I see funds allocated for perceptively frivolous contracts, it causes me concern for how deep this goes.

The EPA has awarded 9 contracts to Politico for POLITICO PRO SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES.

Basically 526K which is more than $1200 per employee. I'm trying to understand how we can trust a media outlet to objectively report the news on a government which is potentially one the their largest customers.

POLITICO Contracts

The EPA was just a small sample.




It's interesting to see that apparently this started to ramp up in 2016, and more than doubled by 2024.

 

[voodoostation]

You can add AP and Reuters to the list as well.

 

[tsptalk]

It's shocking, but not surprising.

 

[Jackbnimble]

Locally we have very little discretionary funds, which is nice. We had a local monthly business newspaper that we used at work, but it was an act of congress to get the$50 annually to pay for it. We finally gave up a few years back due to the pushback we received on it.
It looks like some areas are pennywise while others were pound foolish.

 

[Khotso]

Actually, using your figure of $526,000, it's $34.76 per employee -- almost 1/35th of the $1200 per you stated?

Newspaper Politico subscription is $200/year. Politico Pro is not the newspaper -- it's a suite of information, technical reports, data, legislative and regulation tracking, etc., related to all sorts of federal government programs, issues and -- of course -- political environments surrounding those.

 

[rangerray]

“Everything’s counts in large amounts” — Depeche Mode


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[voodoostation]

Can add the BBC, too.

 

[JTH]

Actually, using your figure of $526,000, it's $34.76 per employee -- almost 1/35th of the $1200 per you stated?

Newspaper Politico subscription is $200/year. Politico Pro is not the newspaper -- it's a suite of information, technical reports, data, legislative and regulation tracking, etc., related to all sorts of federal government programs, issues and -- of course -- political environments surrounding those.

Sry, I was going to post this earlier, but got side-tracked. To address the 1st point, these are the contracts they listed.
The 1st & 3rd contract comes out to $1,260 per user.

For the 2nd point, I find it concerning for our government to be a customer of any media outlet. It would concern me if Politico took a pass on writing a story that was unflattering to a US agency, because they didn't want to risk losing a contract. Or worse if they purposefully suppressed a story they had information on. Or a European owned media corporation that either has influence on us, or our government on them, or the government uses Politico to influence us.

Ha, I'll try stay out of all those pesky conspiratorial rabbit holes

 

[tsptalk]

I wonder if they'll pay for TSP Talk subscriptions. I'd be onboard!

 

[JTH]

I wonder if they'll pay for TSP Talk subscriptions. I'd be onboard!

"We the Feds" need tools to track regulations and other ever-changing policy decisions. I just find it hard to believe we must contract this out to a media corporation. We're paying someone to tell us what we're doing or thinking.

According to the WIKI which cited... an article in 2015 "Our challenge is to extend our dominance in this space and expand our reach − in Washington, key states and the world,”

It gets deeper than I want to go, but Politco gave editor Susan Glasser "full authority" to run Politico.com, Politico Magazine, and Politico Pro. She has serious influence across the media-spectrum as does her husband Peter Baker.

Here's a small sample of some articles written by Susan, to her credit she doesn't hide the fact she hates Trump:

Elon Musk’s Revolutionary Terror, Donald Trump’s Cabinet of Revenge, King Donald and the Presidents at the National Cathedral​

---

It gets even crazier when we understand German media house Axel Springer purchased Politico in 2021 for 1B (5X it's worth). "Widely referred to as Germany’s Rupert Murdoch"

 

[FAAM]

I wonder if they'll pay for TSP Talk subscriptions. I'd be onboard!

That can happen in this upside-down USA/World -- when you declare unflappable loyalty and contribute hugely to YKW & DOGE and they toss the TSP-board and install you as the TSP-TZAR!!

 

[tsptalk]

Read my lips. No noon deadlines!

toss the TSP-board and install you as the TSP-TZAR!!

 

[evilanne]

Sry, I was going to post this earlier, but got side-tracked. To address the 1st point, these are the contracts they listed.
The 1st & 3rd contract comes out to $1,260 per user.

For the 2nd point, I find it concerning for our government to be a customer of any media outlet. It would concern me if Politico took a pass on writing a story that was unflattering to a US agency, because they didn't want to risk losing a contract. Or worse if they purposefully suppressed a story they had information on. Or a European owned media corporation that either has influence on us, or our government on them, or the government uses Politico to influence us.

Ha, I'll try stay out of all those pesky conspiratorial rabbit holes

View attachment 67948

This looks like it is just one IDIQ contract, do you by chance have the contract number or agency? It could be this one https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_IDV_68HERH19D0025_6800 but couldn't find this one in sam.gov

There are many more purchase orders and contracts awarded to politico see https://sam.gov/search/?index=opp&page=1&pageSize=100&sort=-modifiedDate&sfm[simpleSearch][keywordRadio]=ALL&sfm[status][is_active]=true&sfm[status][is_inactive]=true&sfm[awardeeDetails][awardedName][0][key]=politico&sfm[awardeeDetails][awardedName][0][value]=politico&sfm[typeOfNotice][0][key]=a&sfm[typeOfNotice][0][value]=Award Notice that do not match up to any of the orders above.
I do have an issue with many sole souce justifications for left leaning news outlet. We have multiple military and intelligence agencies that monitor worldwide events and lawyers that should be keeping an eye on legislation impacting their agencies throughout the government so I find it hard to believe that we have multiple agencies that need a political magazine/service such as Politico to effectively do their job.
You can get the magazine subscription for $200/year or $350 for 2 years. Typically if you are purchasing larger quantities or longer time period, the government generally gets discounted pricing but Politico does not list their pricing for their other services (they will let you have a one week trial free).

usaspending.gov has even more listed: https://www.usaspending.gov/search/?hash=b281d7c0ee0ba2d3632f4600d73532c4
pricing varies based on a few samples of those stating quantities:
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_29FTC122C0002_2900_-NONE-_-NONE- $169K/14 = $12K POLITICO PRO PLUS FY22
POLITICO PRO PLUS FY 24 $42,540/14=$3,039 https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_12639524P0356_12K3_-NONE-_-NONE-
FY24 $18700/15=$1720 each E&E https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_89303025PIG000148_8900_-NONE-_-NONE-
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_89303025PMS000007_8900_-NONE-_-NONE- $26,600/10=$2,660 FY 25
$388,720/172=$2,260 POLITICO PRO RENEWAL FY25 https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_89303025PMA000335_8900_-NONE-_-NONE-

 

[JTH]

This looks like it is just one IDIQ contract, do you by chance have the contract number or agency?

You probably found the same contract numbers I was looking at. To be fair, this isn't normally a topic I'd bring up. It just so happened I came across a podcast where it was mentioned. I thought this might blow up into a bigger headline, so I wanted to research the topic for myself. But at the same time I had zero clue we were funding media outlets to this extent.

In defense, the EPA have an estimated 18K employees, so even just 200 Politico PRO user subscriptions is a very small .011% of the workforce. The EPA's budget is estimated at $10.994 billion so 500K's like 0.00454793524%

This might prove to be a superficial win for Trump, and the sad fact is it doesn't even need to be true, it just needs to be plausible.

What I find most interesting is what will Politico do when he cuts the contracts? How will hundreds of reporters respond to a potential pay-cut or layoff? He thinks the news is bad now, he'll regret unleashing the full might of media against him.

 

[evilanne]

Came across this substack article regarding how they are using coders & algorithms to map government systems and identify waste...we live in interesting times

OVERRIDE​

INSIDE THE REVOLUTION REWIRING AMERICAN POWER​

OVERRIDE

INSIDE THE REVOLUTION REWIRING AMERICAN POWER

eko.substack.com

 

[FAAM]

Came across this substack article regarding how they are using coders & algorithms to map government systems and identify waste...we live in interesting times

OVERRIDE​

INSIDE THE REVOLUTION REWIRING AMERICAN POWER​

OVERRIDE

INSIDE THE REVOLUTION REWIRING AMERICAN POWER

eko.substack.com

Hmmm, I'm glad to have read this; reading stuff like that reminds me that I don't know for sure in many cases who or what to believe anymore. This piece sounds good & encouraging to some degree - in some aspects, yet my "spidy-senses" started to tingle & the wholeness of it came across to me as lot's of puff-&-fluff, spin-laden, propaganda-laden. With eyes wide open, brain set to Objectivity-mode & plenty of dashes of salt available... I am guided by the Holy Bible, by the US-Constitution and Articles of Confederation mindful of the context of the times in which and the imperfect patriots by which it/they were written, discussed, voted upon and ratified (the qualifiers apply not to the Bible, but do apply to those who teach/ interpret/ write of it). I also trust more those of good character based on "reasonable" determinations based on traditional factors of honor, trustworthiness, truthfulness, evidence of a soul that is compassionate, caring for others especially those less-fortunate & down-trodden, fair & statesmanlike -- and such (oh, I definitely add the needs of humbleness & humility). To me, these seem difficult to find, certainly so of the majority of the majority now-a-days. Yet I say some prayers for them, & for us all. G'day & good luck to you all.

 

[James48843]

Note: “Politico” subscriptions are not necessarily what they seem. I understand Politico is the publishing company, and there are a wide variety of publications that different government offices subscribe to.

Politico just handles the billing for most. It’s not necessarily a subscription to the Politico newsletter or website.




Sent from my iPhone using TSP Talk Forums