$20 Ice-Cube Trays

The Pentagon is wasting taxpayer money again by paying $20 for ice-cube trays and $81 for coffee makers it once purchased for $29, according to an investigation by Lauren Markoe and Seth Borenstein of Knight Ridder Newspapers. In their story, "Pentagon purchases: Millions in markups," they analyze data to show how a purchasing program called "prime vendor," which uses middlemen rather than buying directly from manufacturers, costs taxpayers 20 percent more than the previous system.
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2002578085_pentagon23.html