After reading the report, you will not want to put government officials in charge of anything – even though there’s really no choice if we’re going to try to protect innocent investors from crimes like Mr. Madoff’s.  Had Madoff investigators done the most basic thing – verifying that allegedly profitable trades actually occurred – the Ponzi scheme would have unraveled years earlier.  But none of the SEC investigators – except one who just ignored the results – did this most basic thing.

I did not have a lot of confidence in the SEC before this report; now I have virtually none.  This country’s financial regulatory system needs a serious overhaul.

I choose to describe Troy Body as a prescient observer of the modern-day world, original thinker and bon vivant.   Others may describe Troy as a malcontent, cultural snob and possibly half a bubble off plumb.  Whatever your thoughts, Troy Body is a true original.

Troy explains his blog’s purpose thusly:

This Web site is not going to change the world – only natural disasters and mad men do that. No, this site will make you think, smile, get a little angry (which can be a good thing, at times) and hopefully make you curious enough to further explore a specific topic. That’s it. Period.

The following lines from Troy’s blog will give you some idea of the range of Troy’s knowledge and interests:

The funny thing about the arts is that anyone, anywhere, can declare themselves an artist. Consequently, anything they do is therefore considered art. It can cause a lot of problems and often diminishes art in its purest form to something less than it should be.

Every destination you love, that is set in an historic setting, could easily be set somewhere else. What makes it special is that it isn’t…..it is cradled in the heart of Historic Preservation.

If you are at an event, conference or meeting and someone is standing at the front of the room, reading verbatim, what is exactly on the Powerpoint – stand up, set your drink down, slight bow to the host, then slip out the back.

Istanbul offers visitors the confident locutions of a people and place not linked to history, but is the very definition of civilization’s beginning.

Nothing kills a party faster than someone dragging out a guitar.

Check out Troy Body’s blog.

This reminds me of another technology procurement story a few weeks ago.  In that story, Phil Kabler revealed that the West Virginia Office of Technology was trying to issue a sole-source contract to 20/10 Consulting to provide consulting services for the state’s massive new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.  I had seen the sole-source documents earlier and thought it funny that anyone would assert with a straight face that only one vendor could possibly provide the requested services.

It wasn’t until Kabler’s column that I realized that 20/10 Consulting was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Steptoe and Johnson, a large local law firm, which made the claim all that much more absurd.  The Office of Technology’s sole-source effort ultimately was rejected, and it appears to have placed the human resources portion of the consulting services contract out for bid this week.

I do not know what it is about technology, but I have repeatedly watched state agencies and higher education institutions be taken to the cleaners by vendors selling the latest and greatest technological wonder.  Indeed the State spent at least $20 million in the late 1990s and early 2000s on ATM communications technology, which left the state with little to show for the effort besides a multi-million dollar billing mess that took years to clean up.  I’ve been told West Virginia University has spent more than that trying to make its Oracle financial system work.

I also can’t begin to estimate how many millions of dollars higher education and state government have spent on “glorified websites” (a term coined by Senator Helmick, as I recall).  If you call your website a “portal,” I’ve discovered, the going rate for website development triples, so everyone now has “portals.”

Imagine my amazement last month when I was able to create my own portal/glorified website without paying anyone the $2,500 I had budgeted for it.  I’ll be glad to build a comparable “portal” for someone else for a cool $7,500 ($2,500 x 3 for calling it a portal).

If the State successfully implements an effective ERP system with the $60 million in pocket change that the Legislature so kindly provided, I will be very surprised.