Thursday, April 09, 2009
Big weapons commanded the big letters in the headlines relaying the policy shift in the Pentagon.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates would de-emphasize outer-space missile defense in favor of defenses on terra firma. He’d emphasize smaller ships over big ones. He would phase out the F-22 fighter and cancel a $13 billion splurge for a new class of presidential/vice presidential helicopters.
As significant as the announcement was, a matter just as weighty was buried in the coverage or hardly even reported. Bulletin: Our government has fallen out of love with big-ticket private contractors.
At the same time, it has come to appreciate again what civil servants do.
Within reforms of a procurement process under which weapons prices have shot into the stratosphere, Gates will hire “tens of thousands of civil servants to do the work,” reports The New York Times, “since contracting that out to the private sector has not proven efficient.”
Oh, really?
You mean, “contracting out” isn’t necessarily the best way to meet the needs of the military and taxpayers? You mean we’d rely again on “bureaucrats” whose only interest is the public interest?
What? A motive other than profit?
This does not compute within the robot-like march over eight years to privatize everything our government does.
Let’s say the robot did a heckuva job.
Months before Hurricane Katrina, FEMA hired a Florida firm to coordinate evacuations after hurricanes. It subcontracted and subcontracted.
You know the drill.
Post-Katrina, an investigation found that the subcontracting chain popped a sprocket, or maybe its commandants were on the golf course. The American Bus Association had an armada of buses ready to stream to the gulf. They never left the lot.
In Iraq, contracted security firm Blackwater USA really showed us what you can get away with if you aren’t tied down to impediments like public accountability and/or scruples.
Blackwater did its job so well that it had to change its name, to Xe. A practice pioneered by renamed tobacco giant Phillip Morris (now Altria), it’s a corporate version of the witness relocation program.
You see, corporations can morph and merge and divest and rebrand and relocate.
Our government, however, remains, well, ours.
Lone Star debacle
One of the too lightly reported stories in Texas is the debacle of privatizing of human services dating back to the 2003 Republican takeover of the Legislature.
A host of privatization initiatives either fizzled or blew up in policymakers’ faces. The most prominent was the attempt to contract out enrollment and access to a host of human services including food stamps and Medicaid. Not only did Texas end up offering jobs back to great numbers of “bureaucrats” Gov. Rick Perry said we’d not need, but, with Texas’ experience as inspiration, the U.S. Senate passed a bill (ultimately watered down) that would have barred privatizing food stamp programs.
Privatized schemes that didn’t provide better services were part of the abomination. Another was the obscene sums made by contractors and middle men. In 2003 when Texas was dropping thousands of children from the Children’s Health Insurance Program in the supposed name of austerity, an auditor found that the state overpaid a vendor $20 million to administer the program, including millions for individual consultants.
This brings us back to those much-reviled figures: civil servants. You know, like soldiers, and engineers, and public health workers. Oh, and teachers.
Who needs ’em? Can’t a machine do what they do? Can’t we devise one that does government? A drone craft, say, that Westinghouse or GE or Lockheed can build and operate?
I’ll bet they’d say they could. For a price.
John Young’s column appears Thursday and Sunday. E-mail: jyoung@wacotrib.com.
Comments
By Anthony Guarco
Apr 12, 2009 11:44 AM | Link to this
Undoubtably, Republicans are for Big Business and Democrats are for big government. The resident power will determine what of either initiative will be the course of political decision regarding outsourcing or keeping government services in house.
I am waiting to see the next time our nation gets an eight year Republican administration. Imagine the five service academies around the year 2020 or 2024? A possible United States Military Academy at West Point now becoming the United States Mercenary Academy, where the entry criteria will be son or daughter of Halliburton or Blackwater or employee there of?
Government is by the people, for the people and of the people!
By Robbie
Apr 10, 2009 12:10 AM | Link to this
John,
Agreed. There is something to say for a timefull response to a disaster such as Katrina. But Katrina is not the only disaster to merit such a political response. Recently, the floods in Fargo and across that area required a resonse as such. As did the floods in the Midwest last year.
The government gives us a great service, but they work for us, on our dime. Don't get me wrong... government plays a crucial role. But to leave it up to their hands, and theirs alone, is a disasterous play for the American people placed at their disposal. There is so much that the American People can do for themselves and their neighbors that no government can match.
The American people are more than capable of rushing to their neighbors' aid. We are a neiborly people. We care about those around us. We are strong amongst ourselves. That is freedom. Relying upon the delays of FEMA, leaves us beholden upon their response as opposed to the amazement of what we can do for ourselves.
Too much reliance upon government leaves us with the mentality of what happened with Katrina, where that reliance led to complency an ultimately, the disaster that followed while waiting for the government's reaction.
We can do better without that reliance, as is witnessed by the reaction of communities during last year's flooding in the Mid-West.
In the long run, this represents a small portion of what government thinks that they can do for us. They think that they can subsidize our health car, our retirement, our jobs, our cars, our mortgage, etc. I say the American People are more than capable of doing that for ourselves.
By John Young
Apr 9, 2009 9:15 PM | Link to this
John Young replies
Well, Robbie, there may be a problem with too much federal government. Then again, if Katrina is our guide, it's a worse situation to have no government.
By Victor Blum
Apr 9, 2009 11:39 AM | Link to this
There are many areas in government and military service where contracting out makes great sense. In the military, we train war-fighters for months, and then asked them to retain those skills while we send them to kitchen duty or mail room duty for six months on a support billet.
The rise of FEDEX is an example of how a company can do it "better, cheaper, and faster" than the government. Blackwater has been moving tons of cargo in Afghanistan each year for same cost as buying One aircraft for the USAF to do the same mission.
And remember, as long as they are using US citizens, that money does go back into the economy.
By Robbie
Apr 9, 2009 8:44 AM | Link to this
All hail the government!! They can do no wrong! Let's put all our faith in a system "whose only interest is the public interest!" The government has no other motivation!
My goodness! How naive can someone be? Yes, John, you're right. Those bureaucrats at the Social Security Administration "whose only interest is the public interest" have done a fine job keeping the Social Security balances in check and ensurng that all Americans' for generations to come can rely upon them... Oh wait... They don't do that? You mean the Social Security coffers are empty? How can that be with good and faithful bureaucrats "whose only interest is the public interest" running the place? Does... not... compute...
Medicare, though. Medicare can't be having the same issues?!?!? Can they? You mean that system has failed seniors and the disabled as well? Even with all those good and faithful bureaucrats "whose only interest is the public interest?" Nooooooo. Say it ain't so!
SCHIPS... people never fall through the cracks of that program, though... could never do such a thing... not with all those bureaucrats "whose only interest is the public interest?" Nah...
How much further should I go on, John? How many other goverment programs "whose only interest is the public interest" has the government and their bureaucrats not broken once touched?
At what point do we return to relying upon the same American Spirit that built this great country? That spirit of entrepreneurship. That spirit to succeed and build a life for yourself, relying upon your own intuition, goals, and achievements? Where did it go? At what point did we replace that with government? What a mighty fine job government has done for us. Let's get back to the American Spirit. Government is not the answer. We are.
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