Take Two Aspirins . . .
If you want a perfect example of just how creeping corporatism has taken over our lives, I offer the following AP story: “Regulators admit they didn’t try to collect Blue Cross fine.”
Remember in’ 07, when the Department of Managed Health Care, a STATE regulator, funded and created by the STATE OF CALIFORNIA to protect the PEOPLE of the STATE of California from predatory companies and consumer rip-offs and murderous health care practices that kill people?
Like the practice of “rescission,” wherein an insurance company takes all your nice money for years and when you get deathly sick, pulls the policy out from under you on the bogus basis that you accidentally misspelled your middle name on the application or forgot to mention on the same application that you had the flu in 1957 when you were 13 and so you’re left with no coverage, bankrupt, and soon dead. And so forth? And the STATE said, Nuh-huh, that kind of crap is ILLEGAL, you can’t do that. And a few smaller companies complied but Blue Cross didn’t so the STATE sued Blue Cross for millions of dollars in fines but hasn’t collected a penny.
Why? Here’s what the AP notes: “The [managed health care] department’s director, Cindy Ehnes, told the Associated Press on Thursday that, when it comes to rescissions, the agency has had success in forcing smaller insurers to reinstate illegally canceled policies and pay fines, but Blue Cross is too powerful to take on.
“’In each and every one of those rescissions (Blue Cross has) the right to contest each, and that could tie us up in court forever,’ Ehnes said of the approximately 1,770 Blue Cross rescissions between Jan 1, 2004, and now.
“They have the largest number of rescissions, so as a practical matter for the department it does present some practical challenges that are different from a Health Net (of California) or a Pacific Care,” referring to providers who, along with Kaiser Permanente, have made settlements with the state to reinstate health care coverage.
“That means that although Anthem Blue Cross has the highest number of alleged illegal rescissions, it may face the least regulatory consequence simply because of its sheer size, and aggressive legal defense.
Even though the STATE has been at the negotiating table with Blue Cross for a year, attempts to reinstate those ILLEGALLY rescinded policies had failed. I’m sure a lot of the policyholders have failed (died or gone bankrupt) also. And now the state has promised to pursue “vigorous enforcement.”
Bwa-hahahah. Sure. Maybe the STATE could ask the two suit boys from the AG’s office to drop the really, really, important case against the hapless Los Osos 45, and have them help out on a case that has trashed thousands of people most in need of real help.
And for the rest of us, a question: Just how did it come to pass that we citizens allowed ourselves to become corporate pawns, suckers ripe for corporate fleecing, with a government too weak to protect the interests of its own citizens? Worse, why do we citizens accept such behavior? Do we have low self-esteem issues? Self described, chest-thumping, Red-Blooded Americans with the mentality of abject serfs?
And Blue Cross is just the tip of the iceberg.
Flyyyyy Meee to the Moooonnnn. . .
Speaking of ordinary citizens, the ordinary citizens of SLOTown who want to fly somewhere have to finangle a seat on the only airline and flight left leaving this joint. High fuel costs have sent several air carriers scampering for financially healthier climes.
HOWEVER, if you’re very, very rich, and live in SLOTown and want to fly to Riyadh to visit your nice oil money, or bank money, the Tribune reports that “San Luis Obispo-based Le Bas International has expanded its private charter flight services with a new branch if Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
“The company said it hopes to cultivate a new elite client base of high-net-worth individuals, royalty, heads of state and corporations base in Saudi Arabia.” Who apparently might want to fly into and out of beautiful SLO town on a wonderful private air charter to visit their grape vineyards and or get an order of incredibly delicious Belgian fries at Bel Frites. Complete with a selection of yummy dipping sauces.
As for the rest of us chumps, if we want to leave town, better stick out our thumbs and stand by the side of Highway 101.
And now your Saturday Poem, from the March 10 New Yorker
History
By Stephen Dunn
It’s like this, the king marries
a commoner, and the populace cheers.
She doesn’t even know how to curtsy,
but he loves her manners in bed.
Why doesn’t the king do what his father did,
the king’s mother wonders –
those peasant girls brought in
through that secret entrance, that’s how
a kingdom works best. But marriage!
The king’s mother won’t come out
of her room, and a strange democracy
radiates throughout the land,
which causes widespread dreaming,
a general hopefulness. This is,
of course, how people get hurt,
how history gets its ziggy shape.
The king locks his wife in the tower
because she’s begun to ride
her horse far into the woods.
How unqueenly to come back
to the castle like that,
so sweaty and flushed. The only answer,
his mother decides, is stricter rules –
no whispering in the corridors,
no gaiety in the fields.
The king announces his wife is very tired
and has decided to lie down,
and issues an edict that all things yours
are once again his.
This is the kind of law
history loves, which contains
its own demise. The villagers conspire
for years, waiting for the right time,
which never arrives. There’s only
that one person, not exactly brave,
but too unhappy to be reasonable,
who crosses the moat, scales the walls.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Friday, July 04, 2008
Calhoun’s Cannons, The Bay News,Tolosa Press, SLO, Ca for July 3,08
A Visit from “Uncle Phil”
It wasn’t my fault. Honest. It wasn’t.
I first noticed something was wrong when I grabbed a branch of my huge, beautiful pale pink mallow bush and the whole thing fell over. The main trunk looked like it had been gnawed off by a beaver. Then the mounds appeared in the front yard and I knew who had arrived – gophers.
I couldn’t use poison for fear the sick or dying creature would escape its burrow to become a deadly meal for my canine crew or any passing crow or hawk. Plus, poisoning is an ugly business, even if the critters are trying to eat up my front yard, so I thought I’d try a different tack.
For some reason, the gophers didn’t seem to bother the salvias, so I started planting salvias. Chemical warfare -- a no-kill method of discouraging the gophers while also xeriscaping the front yard with plants that were not only drought resistant, but came in an endless variety of colors and sizes. And lavender plants, too. Apparently, those didn’t appeal to the gopher’s palate either.
Oddly enough, neither did geraniums. Or rock roses. Or the giant four o’clocks, with their sweet-potato-sized tubers. And so our battle of the edibles continued until the furry beasts upped the ante by downing another mallow.
Then, out came the wallet. No more Mrs. Nice Person. “Kill’ em painlessly in their burrows,” said the package of smoke bombs. “Koff-Koff-Koff, ” said the gophers, gleefully digging more holes. “Environmentally safe castor oil spray drives ‘em away,” guaranteed the environmentally safe castor oil spray bottle. The gophers didn’t drive anywhere, but more of my money sure did. “Use those beeping gopher stakes. They work like a charm,” assured one of my blog posters. Pounding dollar bills into the ground would have worked better, since one gopher even pushed up a huge mound right next to the beeping stake. Clearly, my gophers were into heavy metal music.
Like some awful uninvited obnoxious drunk at your nice weekend party, no amount of less-than-lethal hints that maybe it was time to move on worked. Not smoke, not sprays, not loud music.
And then the gophers went too far. Coming out in the early morning to get the paper, I noticed a huge gopher mound right smack dab in the middle of one of the old wine-barrel planters. The arrogant, rotten little scoundrel had come right up through the bottom of the planter and there on the walkway lay a huge pile of gnawed off yellow nasturtiums.
Well, that was that. Nobody messes with my yellow nasturtiums. Nobody.
That’s when my neighbor Phil got a phone call. Soon his tall, lanky figure ambled down the dirt road. Was that High Plains Drifter music I heard wafting in the background or merely the metallic clank from a pair of evil-looking, deadly metal gopher traps dangling from his hand?
He gazed earthward with Clint Eastwoodian narrowed eyes, and with slow, practiced movements he probed the ground with an enormously long screwdriver, then dug and carefully placed the traps. All while counseling patience since, as he noted, it often takes a while to round ‘em up and head’ em up to Heaven.
Days passed, traps were triggered but empty, then moved and moved again. Finally, Phil and his wife Candy walked down early one morning to check the lines. A firm tug and out popped a dead, sickly-sweet smelling, thoroughly decomposing gopher, his damp fur matted, his huge incisors gleaming yellow in the sun.
Before I could even get in a quick prayer for the rotten little guy’s soul, the sight of my mallow-chomping enemy suddenly turned me into a goggle-eyed, growling, fist-pumping Tusken Raider from Star Wars. “ Rrrooooaaggghh, Rrroooaagghhh!” I howled, jerking my arms skyward. Then to add insult to mortal injury, I bent down to the tunnel to evilly croon in my best Baby Jane sing-song, “Yooo hoo, Oh little gopheeees, Uncle Phil The Gopher Killer is here. Sweeeet dreeeeeems. Heeee-heeeee-heeee.”
“Careful,” said Candy, sipping on her coffee. “Or PETA will come pay you a visit.”
“Let them,” I snarled, unrepentant. “I gave those rotten crummy little varmints every chance in the book to take the hint and go away. But did they listen? They did not.”
“I’ll be back,” said Phil, resetting the traps.
“Heh-heh,” I replied, taking my smelly dead prize to the garbage can.
Like I said. It wasn’t my fault. They made me do it.
A Visit from “Uncle Phil”
It wasn’t my fault. Honest. It wasn’t.
I first noticed something was wrong when I grabbed a branch of my huge, beautiful pale pink mallow bush and the whole thing fell over. The main trunk looked like it had been gnawed off by a beaver. Then the mounds appeared in the front yard and I knew who had arrived – gophers.
I couldn’t use poison for fear the sick or dying creature would escape its burrow to become a deadly meal for my canine crew or any passing crow or hawk. Plus, poisoning is an ugly business, even if the critters are trying to eat up my front yard, so I thought I’d try a different tack.
For some reason, the gophers didn’t seem to bother the salvias, so I started planting salvias. Chemical warfare -- a no-kill method of discouraging the gophers while also xeriscaping the front yard with plants that were not only drought resistant, but came in an endless variety of colors and sizes. And lavender plants, too. Apparently, those didn’t appeal to the gopher’s palate either.
Oddly enough, neither did geraniums. Or rock roses. Or the giant four o’clocks, with their sweet-potato-sized tubers. And so our battle of the edibles continued until the furry beasts upped the ante by downing another mallow.
Then, out came the wallet. No more Mrs. Nice Person. “Kill’ em painlessly in their burrows,” said the package of smoke bombs. “Koff-Koff-Koff, ” said the gophers, gleefully digging more holes. “Environmentally safe castor oil spray drives ‘em away,” guaranteed the environmentally safe castor oil spray bottle. The gophers didn’t drive anywhere, but more of my money sure did. “Use those beeping gopher stakes. They work like a charm,” assured one of my blog posters. Pounding dollar bills into the ground would have worked better, since one gopher even pushed up a huge mound right next to the beeping stake. Clearly, my gophers were into heavy metal music.
Like some awful uninvited obnoxious drunk at your nice weekend party, no amount of less-than-lethal hints that maybe it was time to move on worked. Not smoke, not sprays, not loud music.
And then the gophers went too far. Coming out in the early morning to get the paper, I noticed a huge gopher mound right smack dab in the middle of one of the old wine-barrel planters. The arrogant, rotten little scoundrel had come right up through the bottom of the planter and there on the walkway lay a huge pile of gnawed off yellow nasturtiums.
Well, that was that. Nobody messes with my yellow nasturtiums. Nobody.
That’s when my neighbor Phil got a phone call. Soon his tall, lanky figure ambled down the dirt road. Was that High Plains Drifter music I heard wafting in the background or merely the metallic clank from a pair of evil-looking, deadly metal gopher traps dangling from his hand?
He gazed earthward with Clint Eastwoodian narrowed eyes, and with slow, practiced movements he probed the ground with an enormously long screwdriver, then dug and carefully placed the traps. All while counseling patience since, as he noted, it often takes a while to round ‘em up and head’ em up to Heaven.
Days passed, traps were triggered but empty, then moved and moved again. Finally, Phil and his wife Candy walked down early one morning to check the lines. A firm tug and out popped a dead, sickly-sweet smelling, thoroughly decomposing gopher, his damp fur matted, his huge incisors gleaming yellow in the sun.
Before I could even get in a quick prayer for the rotten little guy’s soul, the sight of my mallow-chomping enemy suddenly turned me into a goggle-eyed, growling, fist-pumping Tusken Raider from Star Wars. “ Rrrooooaaggghh, Rrroooaagghhh!” I howled, jerking my arms skyward. Then to add insult to mortal injury, I bent down to the tunnel to evilly croon in my best Baby Jane sing-song, “Yooo hoo, Oh little gopheeees, Uncle Phil The Gopher Killer is here. Sweeeet dreeeeeems. Heeee-heeeee-heeee.”
“Careful,” said Candy, sipping on her coffee. “Or PETA will come pay you a visit.”
“Let them,” I snarled, unrepentant. “I gave those rotten crummy little varmints every chance in the book to take the hint and go away. But did they listen? They did not.”
“I’ll be back,” said Phil, resetting the traps.
“Heh-heh,” I replied, taking my smelly dead prize to the garbage can.
Like I said. It wasn’t my fault. They made me do it.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Adios, Mike!
On the next to the last posting comment section, regular commenter, Mike Green, is bidding buh-bye. Mike, (one of the few people to actually sign on and add his sane, sweet, often funny, sensible comments while posting his real name, instead of hiding behind some anonymouse persona) and his wife are going to "become vagabonds," for a "2 year meander across America, Canada and Mexico." They'll be renting their house out (so if you live near Mike, keep an eye on the place!) so they'll have a place to return to in a few years.
Maybe by that time most of the Hideous Sewer Wars will be over and while the streets will all be torn up and dust everywhere, life will be returning to "normal." Maybe.
Meantime, Bon Voyage, Mike. Do let us all know if you set up a blogsite to keep us informed about your rambles.
O.K. Bee Count
Been trying to spend as much time as I can in Kifani's Corner of my yard (koff-koff with all the sour smoke smell drifting down from Big Sur. State's burning, a taste of our future. Not good). And while out there, I've noticed about two or three bumblebees having a wonderful time rambling around on the lavender spears and tumbling about in the mallow blooms.
BUT so far this summer, I've counted maybe three honey bees doing the same. Scientists and beekeepers are all alarmed (and rightly so) with colony collapse, an as-yet unknown malady that's killing off the bees. This is truly an alarming problem since so much of the earth's plants depend on bees.
I've seen bee hives now out along the farms out on Los Osos Valley Road, but unlike a few years ago, there are almost no bees poking around in my yard.
So, Dear & Gentle Reader, let's have your bee reports. How's you garden doing, bee wise?
O.K. Trigger, Blow Into The Mouthpiece
Finally, racehorses will now be tested for steroids and other drugs. Well, sort of. Right now it's voluntary. Big Brown's stable has stepped forward to declare that their horses will run clean.
Notes the L.A. Times (6/24/08) "Whether other owners come forward and take a similar stance might not matter. The NTRA [National Thoroughbred Racing Association] and the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium are pushing the 38 racing states to adopt a model rule that would ban all but four steroids considered theraputic in nature.
"Under the model rule, which could be in place in each of the states by the end of the year, horses that are administered one of the four approved steroids -- including stanozolol--would be prohibited from racing for 30 days. Once they return to the track, they must test under the allowable threshold for the drug or the trainer and owner would be subject to penalties and fines.
"If they're not going to do it properly, it's going to be imposed upon them," said California Horse Racing Board chairman Robert Shapiro. "I applaud anybody who can see the writing on the wall."
Of course, when it comes to Big $$$$$$, the writing on the wall usually gets so erased or covered over with loopholes, there ends up little or no wall, let along any writing on it.
So, we'll see.
Better To Move To France Than Change Your Internet
Provider
Oy, France is looking good right now. Been weeks since getting a re-done, updated computer and a new provider, and I'm still spending endless hours futzing with the new email program, still have to fully complete my address book, am still pulling my hair out over a program that's downright snotty -- follow its prompts to set up something, click all the proper boxes only to have it suddenly claim absolute ignornance of all that went before -- "Nuh-huh, I don't know anything about "categories," what are you talking about, don't look at me, Nuh, huh."
Or just gets balky and goes "Pfffttttt, ain't gonna, doan hafta, I'm busy go away."
Saw a card once with an enraged duck attacking a computer and keyboard with a sledge hammer. Open up the card and it said, simply, "To start, hit any key."
Right.
Where's mah ax?
On the next to the last posting comment section, regular commenter, Mike Green, is bidding buh-bye. Mike, (one of the few people to actually sign on and add his sane, sweet, often funny, sensible comments while posting his real name, instead of hiding behind some anonymouse persona) and his wife are going to "become vagabonds," for a "2 year meander across America, Canada and Mexico." They'll be renting their house out (so if you live near Mike, keep an eye on the place!) so they'll have a place to return to in a few years.
Maybe by that time most of the Hideous Sewer Wars will be over and while the streets will all be torn up and dust everywhere, life will be returning to "normal." Maybe.
Meantime, Bon Voyage, Mike. Do let us all know if you set up a blogsite to keep us informed about your rambles.
O.K. Bee Count
Been trying to spend as much time as I can in Kifani's Corner of my yard (koff-koff with all the sour smoke smell drifting down from Big Sur. State's burning, a taste of our future. Not good). And while out there, I've noticed about two or three bumblebees having a wonderful time rambling around on the lavender spears and tumbling about in the mallow blooms.
BUT so far this summer, I've counted maybe three honey bees doing the same. Scientists and beekeepers are all alarmed (and rightly so) with colony collapse, an as-yet unknown malady that's killing off the bees. This is truly an alarming problem since so much of the earth's plants depend on bees.
I've seen bee hives now out along the farms out on Los Osos Valley Road, but unlike a few years ago, there are almost no bees poking around in my yard.
So, Dear & Gentle Reader, let's have your bee reports. How's you garden doing, bee wise?
O.K. Trigger, Blow Into The Mouthpiece
Finally, racehorses will now be tested for steroids and other drugs. Well, sort of. Right now it's voluntary. Big Brown's stable has stepped forward to declare that their horses will run clean.
Notes the L.A. Times (6/24/08) "Whether other owners come forward and take a similar stance might not matter. The NTRA [National Thoroughbred Racing Association] and the Racing Medication and Testing Consortium are pushing the 38 racing states to adopt a model rule that would ban all but four steroids considered theraputic in nature.
"Under the model rule, which could be in place in each of the states by the end of the year, horses that are administered one of the four approved steroids -- including stanozolol--would be prohibited from racing for 30 days. Once they return to the track, they must test under the allowable threshold for the drug or the trainer and owner would be subject to penalties and fines.
"If they're not going to do it properly, it's going to be imposed upon them," said California Horse Racing Board chairman Robert Shapiro. "I applaud anybody who can see the writing on the wall."
Of course, when it comes to Big $$$$$$, the writing on the wall usually gets so erased or covered over with loopholes, there ends up little or no wall, let along any writing on it.
So, we'll see.
Better To Move To France Than Change Your Internet
Provider
Oy, France is looking good right now. Been weeks since getting a re-done, updated computer and a new provider, and I'm still spending endless hours futzing with the new email program, still have to fully complete my address book, am still pulling my hair out over a program that's downright snotty -- follow its prompts to set up something, click all the proper boxes only to have it suddenly claim absolute ignornance of all that went before -- "Nuh-huh, I don't know anything about "categories," what are you talking about, don't look at me, Nuh, huh."
Or just gets balky and goes "Pfffttttt, ain't gonna, doan hafta, I'm busy go away."
Saw a card once with an enraged duck attacking a computer and keyboard with a sledge hammer. Open up the card and it said, simply, "To start, hit any key."
Right.
Where's mah ax?
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Uh, Breaking News From The Rock
Gotta email from Ed Ochs, below:
Re: "Breaking News From The Rock"
THE ROCK SHOCKS PUBLIC ACCESS TV
WITH "BREAKING NEWS FROM THE ROCK"
LOS OSOS -- For anyone who truly gives a damn about accelerating
change in what Howard Jarvis once called "the most corrupt county in
California," the revolution is now being televised.
The Rock, the only Los Osos-based newspaper, has launched "Breaking
News From The Rock" on Public Access Channel 2. "Breaking News" airs
Mondays at 11:30 p.m., Wednesdays at 10 a.m. and Thursdays at 5 p.m.
The first edition of the show features an in-studio interview with Morro
Bay clean water activists Marla Jo Bruton and Richard Sadowsky on the dire
condition of the Morro Bay/Cayucos wastewater collection system, and
exclusive, dramatic videotape of the serious damage.
"Breaking News" is written by creator Ed Ochs, editor of The Rock,
produced by Cinthea Coleman's Boffo! Productions, and filmed and edited
by Dave Duggan for Charter Communications.
Said Ochs, "Don't try to adjust your expensive TV if you should
stumble on to the opening seconds of 'Breaking News From The Rock' on
Public Access Channel 2 -- your picture isn't broken. True to the
no-holds-barred, fiercely independent voice of The Rock newspaper,
'Breaking News' blazes new media trails that previously did not exist
on the Central Coast.
If you like The Rock, you'll love 'Breaking News.' If
you hate The Rock, you will love to hate 'Breaking News' for all the
reasons you hated it before, but now even more than ever on television.
"Anyone interested in the Los Osos sewer dilemma will want to know
how serious the sewer problem is in Morro Bay and Cayucos and what it
could mean for Los Osos -- and make a real effort to watch the show.
Unless, of course, they just don't want to know how heavy it is. The
show is definitely not for those with low self-esteem, no sense of
humor, inbred biases, or extreme political beliefs."
Just in case viewers didn't get the message the first time, Ochs
said, the next two editions of "Breaking News" are in production and
will air in August.
For more information on "Breaking News" write Ed at
rockofthecoast@yahoo.com.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Conservatives and Their Carnival of Fraud
The following opinion piece appeared in the Wall Street Journal (of all places) on June 25, 2008, written by columnist Thomas Frank,”The Tilting Yard” -- Thomas@wsj.com-- and bears taking the time to type out and post here. When I’ve written about the Devaluation of the Commons, that “conservative wet dream,” this is the end game. The question, of course, is simple: Have enough people finally figured this shell game out? As for his calling for another Grace Commission, who would serve? The majority of Congress, both Demos and Repubs, have their fingerprints all over this little scam.
I wonder if, back in the rosy-fingered dawn of our conservative era, all those Adam Smith-tied evangelists of “limited government” had any idea that they were greasing the skids for a character like 22-year-old arms dealer Efraim Diveroli?
Mr. Diveroli, whose tousled slightly confused visage recalls the perpetually stoned Jeff Spicoli from the 1982 film “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” was the improbable recipient of a 2007 government contract to supply ammunition to our allies in Afghanistan.
The trouble was the munitions he sold were, like, seriously bogus. Old and partially defective, the stuff apparently originated in China, which is a Pentagon no-no. Mr. Diveroli was indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida on Friday on numerous counts, including allegedly attempting to defraud the government.
How could a kid barely able to buy beer secure a nearly $300 million defense contract? It will be interesting to find out. Maybe Mr. Deveroli’s story will be the one that finally fixes public attention on the carnival of fraud, waste and profiteering that characterizes our system of government-by-contractor. Maybe it will finally persuade us to ask our politicians why it is that they hire Blackwater to do the job of the Marines and pay Kellogg Brown and Root to arrange the logistics for the Army wherever it goes.
And maybe it will finally call into question one of the greatest shibboleths of conservative governance. Although contracting out has been celebrated by the big thinkers from both parties and although it has been practiced in some for or other since the earliest days of the republic, an ideological commitment to outsourcing is one of the signatures of conservative rule.
The ostensible justifications for it, in the early days, were thrift and efficiency. The 1984 “Grace Commission” in which a battalion of corporate executives ransacked the government looking for waste, recommended privatizing federal operations as a way to save money. With the government plunged deep into deficit, government needed to hire out its duties to business in order to save itself.
The ideological assumption was only barely concealed: Whatever “big government” could do, the private sector could do better, cheaper and faster.
There was another unspoken ideological angle: Every federal job privatized was a job pried from the grip of the hated Washington bureaucracy. Every dollar contracted out meant that much less for bureaucrat unions and that much more for friendly companies, well-connected lobbyists and corporate political action committees.
In the Bush era, the idea was pushed to a sort of extreme, with each of our great national initiatives – the Iraq occupation, Katrina reconstruction and the Department of Homeland Security – largely entrusted to private contractors. We now often read abut federal employees quitting to work for private contractors to do the same job as before for twice the pay.
We also read bout efforts to shut down or outsource the agencies charged with scrutinizing outsourcing. Last week, the New York Times reported on the travails endured by one of the Army’s chief contracting officials who says he became suspicious of huge, sketchy expenses being run up by KBR in Iraq. When he threatened to withhold future payments from the company – harsh toke, dude! – he quickly found himself out of the loop; the Army contracted out his job to a company that accepted KBR’s numbers.
One fact about government outsourcing is settled: It sure doesn’t save money. A Washington Post reporter who scrutinized Katrina reconstruction contracts in 2006 found that “the difference between the job’s actual price and the fee charged to taxpayers ranged from 40 percent to as high as 1,700 percent.” To cover damaged roofs with tarps, certain contractors billed the government $1.50 a square foot of roof covered; some of the people who actually did the work got under 10 cents per square foot. Guess who kept the difference.
Privitization also constitutes a fundamental change in the constituency to which government answers. Journalist Tim Weiner estimates that, by 2006, about half of the people working for the CIA in Iraq and the National Counterterrorism Center were contractors, former CIA personnel accountable not to the American public but to their employers. “The spectacle of jumping ship in the middle of a war to make a killing was unremarkable in twenty-first century Washington,” he writes n his book, “Legacy of Ashes.” Among the CIA’s new hires, he reported, the saying is, “Get in, get out, get paid.”
The days when conservatives railed against red tape and shrieked for efficiency in Washington now seem like a lifetime ago. When they finally got the opportunity toput their theory into practice, conservatives contrived instead on of the most wasteful systems ever seen.
It is time for a new Grace Commission, this one examining the sordid history of privatization in all its details. President Barak Obama should launch it on day one.
The following opinion piece appeared in the Wall Street Journal (of all places) on June 25, 2008, written by columnist Thomas Frank,”The Tilting Yard” -- Thomas@wsj.com-- and bears taking the time to type out and post here. When I’ve written about the Devaluation of the Commons, that “conservative wet dream,” this is the end game. The question, of course, is simple: Have enough people finally figured this shell game out? As for his calling for another Grace Commission, who would serve? The majority of Congress, both Demos and Repubs, have their fingerprints all over this little scam.
I wonder if, back in the rosy-fingered dawn of our conservative era, all those Adam Smith-tied evangelists of “limited government” had any idea that they were greasing the skids for a character like 22-year-old arms dealer Efraim Diveroli?
Mr. Diveroli, whose tousled slightly confused visage recalls the perpetually stoned Jeff Spicoli from the 1982 film “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” was the improbable recipient of a 2007 government contract to supply ammunition to our allies in Afghanistan.
The trouble was the munitions he sold were, like, seriously bogus. Old and partially defective, the stuff apparently originated in China, which is a Pentagon no-no. Mr. Diveroli was indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida on Friday on numerous counts, including allegedly attempting to defraud the government.
How could a kid barely able to buy beer secure a nearly $300 million defense contract? It will be interesting to find out. Maybe Mr. Deveroli’s story will be the one that finally fixes public attention on the carnival of fraud, waste and profiteering that characterizes our system of government-by-contractor. Maybe it will finally persuade us to ask our politicians why it is that they hire Blackwater to do the job of the Marines and pay Kellogg Brown and Root to arrange the logistics for the Army wherever it goes.
And maybe it will finally call into question one of the greatest shibboleths of conservative governance. Although contracting out has been celebrated by the big thinkers from both parties and although it has been practiced in some for or other since the earliest days of the republic, an ideological commitment to outsourcing is one of the signatures of conservative rule.
The ostensible justifications for it, in the early days, were thrift and efficiency. The 1984 “Grace Commission” in which a battalion of corporate executives ransacked the government looking for waste, recommended privatizing federal operations as a way to save money. With the government plunged deep into deficit, government needed to hire out its duties to business in order to save itself.
The ideological assumption was only barely concealed: Whatever “big government” could do, the private sector could do better, cheaper and faster.
There was another unspoken ideological angle: Every federal job privatized was a job pried from the grip of the hated Washington bureaucracy. Every dollar contracted out meant that much less for bureaucrat unions and that much more for friendly companies, well-connected lobbyists and corporate political action committees.
In the Bush era, the idea was pushed to a sort of extreme, with each of our great national initiatives – the Iraq occupation, Katrina reconstruction and the Department of Homeland Security – largely entrusted to private contractors. We now often read abut federal employees quitting to work for private contractors to do the same job as before for twice the pay.
We also read bout efforts to shut down or outsource the agencies charged with scrutinizing outsourcing. Last week, the New York Times reported on the travails endured by one of the Army’s chief contracting officials who says he became suspicious of huge, sketchy expenses being run up by KBR in Iraq. When he threatened to withhold future payments from the company – harsh toke, dude! – he quickly found himself out of the loop; the Army contracted out his job to a company that accepted KBR’s numbers.
One fact about government outsourcing is settled: It sure doesn’t save money. A Washington Post reporter who scrutinized Katrina reconstruction contracts in 2006 found that “the difference between the job’s actual price and the fee charged to taxpayers ranged from 40 percent to as high as 1,700 percent.” To cover damaged roofs with tarps, certain contractors billed the government $1.50 a square foot of roof covered; some of the people who actually did the work got under 10 cents per square foot. Guess who kept the difference.
Privitization also constitutes a fundamental change in the constituency to which government answers. Journalist Tim Weiner estimates that, by 2006, about half of the people working for the CIA in Iraq and the National Counterterrorism Center were contractors, former CIA personnel accountable not to the American public but to their employers. “The spectacle of jumping ship in the middle of a war to make a killing was unremarkable in twenty-first century Washington,” he writes n his book, “Legacy of Ashes.” Among the CIA’s new hires, he reported, the saying is, “Get in, get out, get paid.”
The days when conservatives railed against red tape and shrieked for efficiency in Washington now seem like a lifetime ago. When they finally got the opportunity toput their theory into practice, conservatives contrived instead on of the most wasteful systems ever seen.
It is time for a new Grace Commission, this one examining the sordid history of privatization in all its details. President Barak Obama should launch it on day one.
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