Your government at waste: State Department spends $16.5 million on 2,500 Kindles

Amazon KindleHere’s the latest government waste that should make you forever question those running the government in Washington, D.C.: the State Department spent $16.5 million on the purchase of 2,500 Kindles.

As Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson put it, “The Obama Administration has become organized looting. This should warrant a Special Investigator”

From The Atlantic:

IPads are too fancy, Nooks aren’t fancy enough, but Kindles are just right for teaching English, the State Department thinks, which is why it bought 2,500 of them from Amazon in a $16.5 million no-bid contract, NextGov’s Dawn Lim reports. That works out to $6,600 per Kindle Touch — a lot more than the $189 retail price.

The plan, according to Kim, is to send the e-readers to “designated libraries and U.S.-friendly educational centers around the world.” Kindles were the only ones that would do because they “come with a built-in English dictionary, support foreign languages, translate text to speech, and receive information securely from a content distribution platform managed by the State Department, procurement documents stated.” The other readers couldn’t bring all those functions, and iPads came with unnecessary bells and whistles that represented a security risk, NextGov reported, via a government procurement document.

The federal government always knows how to kindle the people into not trusting them with their money.

  • krk_krk

    Will Amazon be throwing in a toilet seat with each Kindle?

  • LAR

    See the update by The Atlantic regarding their initial misunderstanding of this contract.  The story as they reported it and you have repeated it is not accurate or true.  I hope you will follow The Atlantic’s lead and correct your report.

  • Djlondon

    Yes … according to the Atlantic …. the state dept got the Kindles for 10% off the retail … the rest of the money went for “administration costs”…

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