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My favourite and simple example of government waste articles is way back at a G7 summit, I can't remember which national news agency it was published an article about how the RCMP had sold or was in the process of selling like hundreds of Chevrolet Suburbans after using them for 2 months for the G7 at a loss to taxpayers of some massive sum of money.
For sake of argument, let's say GC Surplus was selling them for $60,000 each.
The person who wrote the article looked up the MSRP of a Chevrolet Suburban on the GM website, which again for sake of argument was $80,000 and deduced that the government was eating $20,000 on each one they sold, with them all being pretty much brand new. Hundreds of thousands if not a million+ of waste. Anyone reading that would, rightfullly so, think what this is an absolute travesty.
The problem is, that person is using the wrong data. What actually happened is that the government bought them all off standing offer directly from GM, which is nowhere near MSRP, and at the time Suburbans were ~$50,000 a piece. So the government was actually MAKING $10,000 off each one they sold. In fact, at that time, GM got so pissed at the government for flooding the market with brand new cheap Suburbans, they pulled out of the standing offer that year and wouldn't rejoin unless there was a minimum ownership/retention period instituted.
Just goes to show how a reporter simply not understanding or bothering to try and figure out how a process really works can cause a national frenzy over government waste that didn't even exist. You can guarantee that rag never posted a retraction either.
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