Google Executives Globetrotting on Taxpayers' Dime
Source: NBC Bay Area
A year-long examination of federal government documents shows that a company owned by the founders of Google has purchased millions of dollars’ worth of jet fuel at below-market prices from NASA and the Department of Defense. The records show the company, H211, whose principals are also the principals of Google, used the fuel to fly their private airplanes around the world.
Local officials in Santa Clara County confirm that the company owned by the Google founders, H211, pays no property taxes on the airplanes that are housed at Moffett—a potential loss to local tax rolls of up to $500,000 per airplane per year.
Nearly $8 million worth of jet fuel that sold for as little as $1.68 a gallon was put into a fleet of seven different airplanes and two helicopters that are kept on taxpayer-owned land at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field. The same jet fuel sells for two to four-and-a-half times that amount, up to $8.05 a gallon, at fixed-base operators at nearby airports in the Bay Area.
... “This may have been the greatest sweetheart deal in the history of NASA,” said Jamie Court, the president and chairman of Consumer Watchdog. “This is giving the keys to the NASA gas station to executives, who clearly are not using it for scientific purposes, when their contract spells out that’s what they have to do.”
Read more: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/tech/Google-Executives-Globetrotting-on-Taxpayers-Dime-224933642.html
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