Trump used Pentagon budget for personal gain, Amazon alleges

[MTAtech]

Your post makes me want to share whatever it is that you're having.

I'll have what she's having - - Video Search Results

You can't just blow off the complaint. The government isn't allowed to skew requirements so as to exclude a bidder. "According to Amazon, the Pentagon rejected the company’s plan to use its existing data centers that had been already cleared to handle classified data. Instead, it required Amazon to build new data centers dedicated to handle classified Defense Department information. Amazon claims that there was no technical basis for the change and that it was the only bidder that could be burdened by the shift, since it was on the only one with existing sites that could handle classified data." Bid selection is supposed to be unbiased and the winner is supposed to be the lowest capable bidder who has the means to provide the goods or services.

It's alleged that Trump influenced the process against Amazon. It's up to the plaintiff to prove.

 

[MTAtech]

Is there anyone left in the country that so stupid that they don't realize that Donald Trump is using the government for personal gain?

Or to carry out vendettas -- reward companies that praise him and punish those that don't. Many businesses are being threatened with policies that would hurt their bottom lines -- especially, but not only, tariffs on imported goods crucial to their operations. But they are also being offered the possibility of exemptions from these policies.

And the implicit quid pro quo for such exemptions is that corporations support Donald Trump, or at least refrain from criticizing his actions. As an example, Trump toured an Apple manufacturing plant together with Tim Cook, Apple’s C.E.O. Trump used the occasion to make a political speech, taking credit for this "just opened" plant, which has been operating since 2013. Cook praised Trump.

 

[code1211]

You can't just blow off the complaint. The government isn't allowed to skew requirements so as to exclude a bidder. "According to Amazon, the Pentagon rejected the company’s plan to use its existing data centers that had been already cleared to handle classified data. Instead, it required Amazon to build new data centers dedicated to handle classified Defense Department information. Amazon claims that there was no technical basis for the change and that it was the only bidder that could be burdened by the shift, since it was on the only one with existing sites that could handle classified data." Bid selection is supposed to be unbiased and the winner is supposed to be the lowest capable bidder who has the means to provide the goods or services.

It's alleged that Trump influenced the process against Amazon. It's up to the plaintiff to prove.

Is there ANYTHING in this that indicates to you that anything you wrote is an unbiased, fair statement of fact?

 

[jmotivator]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...e-scenes-attacks-over-massive-cloud-contract/

"President Trump’s “repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks” against Amazon led the Pentagon to choose a lesser bid from Microsoft for a massive cloud computing contract that officials have labeled a crucial national security priority, Amazon alleged in a complaint made public Monday."

"The question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of DoD to pursue his own personal and political ends."

—————————————————-

Remember "Pecker Gate"? Trump exacts his revenge!!

If Amazon is correct, this is another abuse of power, and another, separate, impeachable offense! Trump just can’t stop himself from being a f***up.

It's always fun when my job crosses paths with DP fearmongering.

Amazon is full of ****.

The DOD has had its sights set on Office365 integration since Obama was President.

 

[jmotivator]

Here is the deal, as far as anyone involved is allowed to say...

Government Cloud will go Microsoft at all levels for a few key reasons:

1) The Skill base of the government employees in Microsoft by a wide margin due to decades of Microsoft install base.

2) End user applications (SharePoint, Office, SQL, Windows, Exchange, Active Directory) are all Microsoft nearly 100%

3) File sharing is SMB based, so native to Windows..

These Gov Cloud solutions, in the end, are tasked with building File Sharing, collaboration, mail and database services all of which must be compatible with the customer install base. That isn't to say that Amazon and Google can't build cloud instances that are compatible with these applications, they can, but Microsoft has an ace in the hole in that their entire support staff is focused, trained and expert in the Microsoft install base that the Government wants to move to cloud. That is a rather big ace in the hole.

Amazon is forced to fight the decision because losing this bid cost them huge in stock price. It was such a hit that Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos switched places in the richest people on the planet.

But Amazon didn't lose because Trump had some vendetta against Amazon, the Government chooses Microsoft because it's what they know.

I have been around DOD and Civilian government agencies for 30 years and Microsoft has been the hands down choice since forever.

 

[Pound4abrown]

You're trying to get people who religiously support someone who takes money from children with cancer to care about dishonesty?

How Donald Trump Shifted Kids-Cancer Charity Money Into His Business

Good luck.

It is in cases like this, where I kinda wish I believed in a heaven and hell.

 

[Pound4abrown]

From the article:

"The filing cites direct intervention from Trump in early August. Amazon alleged that, at the time, Trump directed new defense secretary Mark T. Esper “to conduct an ‘independent’ examination” of the cloud contract award, citing several news articles."

If the DOD then found a better product that was safe and cheaper, good.
If they went with cheaper, but not better or as good, just because POTUS was in a sandbox fight with the owner of Amazon, then, maybe not so good.

 

[jmotivator]

Moreover, the government bidding process is entirely transparent and works like this:

1) Government decides they need to contract a private enterprise to provide a service

2) Government staff submit the requirements that must be met by the service provider

3) Government develops a list f items that the service provider must provide and guidance of how services will be scored

4) Potential Service providers take that list and write a detailed proposal on how they will meet each requirement

5) Government takes all proposals and conducts a review of the proposals, scoring each item in accordance with guidelines

6) The scores are tallied and the Provider that scores the highest wins the bid

7) Government releases full evaluation and scoring justifications for all service providers to review

The end.

Also, if there was some vendetta against Amazon it would show up in unfair scoring, but in my experience the reason everyone tends to lose to Microsoft is in support... nobody knows Microsoft like Microsoft.

 

[MTAtech]

If the DOD then found a better product that was safe and cheaper, good.
If they went with cheaper, but not better or as good, just because POTUS was in a sandbox fight with the owner of Amazon, then, maybe not so good.

The way government procurements work is the government writes a specification for an Request for Proposal (RFP) which invite bidders to prepare their proposals to meet the spec. Generally, they can't write the spec so narrowly that makes it a sole source contract or write it so that qualified bidders can't bid on it. What Amazon is charging is that the Defense Dept required Amazon to meet conditions not required by other bidders.

There is lots of case law on federal procurements and I am sure this will be properly adjudicated in court.

Would anyone be surprised if the court found that the guy who claims he's "draining the swamp" had his thumb on the scale so that a company owned by his critic, Jeff Bezos, didn't get the contract award?

 

[jmotivator]

If the DOD then found a better product that was safe and cheaper, good.
If they went with cheaper, but not better or as good, just because POTUS was in a sandbox fight with the owner of Amazon, then, maybe not so good.

The Government has been moving to cloud computing for over a decade now, and they all want a system that does exactly what Exchange, SharePoint and Active Directory provide.. and nobody provides it more seamlessly than the creators of ... Exchange, SharePoint and Active Directory.

 

[MTAtech]

Moreover, the government bidding process is entirely transparent and works like this:

1) Government decides they need to contract a private enterprise to provide a service

2) Government staff submit the requirements that must be met by the service provider

3) Government develops a list f items that the service provider must provide and guidance of how services will be scored

4) Potential Service providers take that list and write a detailed proposal on how they will meet each requirement

5) Government takes all proposals and conducts a review of the proposals, scoring each item in accordance with guidelines

6) The scores are tallied and the Provider that scores the highest wins the bid

7) Government releases full evaluation and scoring justifications for all service providers to review

The end.

Also, if there was some vendetta against Amazon it would show up in unfair scoring, but in my experience the reason everyone tends to lose to Microsoft is in support... nobody knows Microsoft like Microsoft.

That's all, except if there is a powerful official corrupting the process. In that instance, they will write your 2), writes the spec to exclude bidders.

 

[TomFitz]

Moreover, the government bidding process is entirely transparent and works like this:

1) Government decides they need to contract a private enterprise to provide a service

2) Government staff submit the requirements that must be met by the service provider

3) Government develops a list f items that the service provider must provide and guidance of how services will be scored

4) Potential Service providers take that list and write a detailed proposal on how they will meet each requirement

5) Government takes all proposals and conducts a review of the proposals, scoring each item in accordance with guidelines

6) The scores are tallied and the Provider that scores the highest wins the bid

7) Government releases full evaluation and scoring justifications for all service providers to review

The end.

Also, if there was some vendetta against Amazon it would show up in unfair scoring, but in my experience the reason everyone tends to lose to Microsoft is in support... nobody knows Microsoft like Microsoft.

I wish it were anything like that transparent.

Your general outline is correct, but it’s a lot more complex and opaque than that.

Spend some time on Sam.gov if you have any doubts.

 

[TomFitz]

That's all, except if there is a powerful official corrupting the process. In that instance, they will write your 2), writes the spec to exclude bidders.

As a general rule, that is not legal.

 

[MTAtech]

As a general rule, that is not legal.

Like, duh.

 

[jmotivator]

That's all, except if there is a powerful official corrupting the process. In that instance, they will write your 2), writes the spec to exclude bidders.

I am working within the DOD closely with this project and they have been working on the Microsoft project for years and years. As I said in another post, Microsoft generally wins these bids because the government is nearly 100% Microsoft, and almost nobody on the Government side knows AWS or Google Cloud and are not interested in upturning the apple cart to save a few dollars. Also, Microsoft has a no-Compete for contracting services to the DOD to support the Microsoft install base, and many of those contractors have been working with the gov reps for decades. It's hard to over state how averse those gov reps are to large scale turnover.

While it is true that the Government can create an unfair playing field with these bids (in fact, one Bureau was locked in a 2 year legal battle back when I contracted to them because they decided to add scoring items after the bids were submitted). Another recently did a product bake off and let one of the bidding parties pick their own test environment while not allowing the others to do so.

I don't see that Amazon has a case here, though. They pretty much have to challenge the bid for the sake of their shareholders, but this was one of the cleaner bids I've been in proximity to. When this DOD cloud project was announced years ago it was planned to support the Microsoft install base, the only surprise in such a bid would be a Microsoft loss. Amazon can bitch that the bid was biased against them, but it has been from the start given the fact that the Infrastructure moving to the cloud was almost entirely Microsoft managed to begin with and the Gov contracting base is already familiar with Microsoft Cloud.

 

[jmotivator]

I wish it were anything like that transparent.

Your general outline is correct, but it’s a lot more complex and opaque than that.

Spend some time on Sam.gov if you have any doubts.

Well, yes and no. I'm just giving the framework by which the bids and created and managed. I happen to know a great deal about this particular build as it has been a tangential project to my business for the last 6 years.

I actually lose quite a bit on this bid as a collateral impact, but this was about as clear cut an open bid as there is. Amazon's determination that Microsoft was a weaker bid invariably ignores the weighting of the very real disadvantages that AWS had going into this bid against Microsoft who literally runs the customer infrastructure already and has for over a decade.

In fact, I was also part of that Microsoft conversion some 15 years ago now.

 

[TU Curmudgeon]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...e-scenes-attacks-over-massive-cloud-contract/

"President Trump’s “repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks” against Amazon led the Pentagon to choose a lesser bid from Microsoft for a massive cloud computing contract that officials have labeled a crucial national security priority, Amazon alleged in a complaint made public Monday."

"The question is whether the President of the United States should be allowed to use the budget of DoD to pursue his own personal and political ends."

—————————————————-

Remember "Pecker Gate"? Trump exacts his revenge!!

If Amazon is correct, this is another abuse of power, and another, separate, impeachable offense! Trump just can’t stop himself from being a f***up.

At a guess, approximately 90% of all "Republicans" (whatever that means) will say

"Yes, PROVIDED that the President is not a 'Democrat'."​

while, again at a guess, approximately 90% of all "Democrats" (whatever that means) will say

"Yes, PROVIDED that the President is not a 'Republican'."​

and what that says about the political milieu in the United States of America I leave up to you to decide.

 

[MauiMan]

Can you tell me why you think it is wrong for Trump to tell the new defense secretary to conduct an examination of the contract?

Wouldn't a new secretary do that anyway?

Now please tell me how Trump personally profited from this transaction as you allege in your title.

He did it to spite Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post—which Trump hates.

 

[MauiMan]

It's always fun when my job crosses paths with DP fearmongering.

Amazon is full of ****.

The DOD has had its sights set on Office365 integration since Obama was President.

We’ll see. If, as you say, "Amazon is full of ****,” then the lawsuit will be thrown out.

 

[Mason66]

He did it to spite Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post—which Trump hates.

How is that relevant to your OP?

he told the secretary to exam the deal. That is a good way to do things.

Also, you didn't explain where the personal gain was for Trump.

Please try again with what you think the personal gain was, or admit your title is a lie.

 

[American]

Other than denigrating me, do you have an argument? Or are you just angry?

Shoveling **** in Louisiana; are you good at it?

 

[dixon01767]

It has nothing to do with Democrat/Republican! It’s the United States Constitution! Rule of law! Come on.

Look. If you really were in the 1st Cav—and I’m not saying you weren’t—you must understand the importance of an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. FYI, I’ve sworn the same oath, so don’t tell me I don’t care!

The President must obey the law and serve all Americans, not just the ones he thinks voted for him while wiping his fanny with our most hallowed document.

What law has he broken?

 

[dixon01767]

Back on point:

"Trump used Pentagon budget for personal gain, Amazon alleges"

Emphasis is mine in the following quote from the article:

"President Trump’s “repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks” against Amazon led the Pentagon to choose a lesser bid from Microsoft for a massive cloud computing contract that officials have labeled a crucial national security priority, Amazon alleged in a complaint made public Monday.

"The e-commerce giant’s protest of the $10 billion, 10-year contract alleges that Trump’s stated efforts to “screw Amazon” led the agency to opt for a proposal from Microsoft with “clear failures.” Amazon pointed to alleged errors and an 11th-hour policy change as evidence that the Defense Department failed to follow the rules. And it said Trump’s alleged meddling with defense spending for personal gain threatens the integrity of the government procurement system itself."

Once again, Trump May have abused his position as President for a personal reason, and not in the national interest.

That is an impeachable offense. He keeps doing it—he continues to put his personal interest above the national interest.

What does Trump personally gain with a Microsoft contract?

 

[dixon01767]

So, you think it’s ok for a President to do whatever he wants, and ignore constitutional duty?

What constitutional duty is violated by a Microsoft contract?

 

[dixon01767]

If you are right, it will be thrown out of court. If not...who knows. Another impeachment? I doubt it. Future Presidents, whether Republican or Democrat, will do whatever the **** they want.

This is America. The President and anyone else can "do whatever the **** they want" even if it displeases Bezos.