Source: http://www.jimhightower.com/
"No matter how cynical you get, it's almost impossible
to keep up." -- Lily Tomlin
The Bushites Have
Outsourced Our Government to Their Pals
By Jim Hightower
The Hightower Lowdown
Wednesday 20 June
2007
The sprawling
$43 billion homeland security department (HSD) is
known chiefly for being the agency in charge of
America's color-coded terrorist-threat alarm
system ("Good morning, Americans. Today is Yellow.
Be vigilant. Report all suspicious people.") It's
boogeyman nonsense, of course, doing absolutely
nothing to make our country safe. But such
falderal helps those in charge obscure HSD's real
mission: to serve as a giant federal cookie jar
for corporate America. Go to HSD's website, and
you'll find a prominent section called "Open For
Business." There, on any given day, corporate
shoppers can scroll through the hundreds of
contracts and grants available to them. Just dip
in and grab some cookies, each one worth from
$50,000 to more than $80 million. Like the
department's color codes, the vast majority of
these projects do nothing to make our country
safe. Instead, they are make-work studies, silly
technologies, and useless systems that essentially
serve as mediums for transferring billions of our
tax dollars to a few corporate big shots. Ever
helpful to its clients, HSD also maintains a
private-sector office, headed by an assistant
secretary who is not a security expert but a
former banker from JP Morgan Chase. This office
provides concierge service for cookie grabbers.
For example, it recently held a corporate seminar,
entitled "The Business of Homeland Security,"
offering "tips, hints, and directions" on how to
grab the latest contracts and grants. Lest you
think that patriotism or even national security
might be the motivating force behind these
government-industry confabs, a Sikorksy
Helicopters executive who attended the session
bluntly explained why he was there: "To us
contractors, money is always a good thing."
Government by
Corporation
A
monumental shift has quietly and quickly been
taking place in the way the public's business is
done - and We the People have not even been
informed about it, much less been asked to discuss
and okay it. Corporations are taking over our
government. No longer is it just a matter of big
business's lobbyists and campaign donations
perverting public policy. Now, politically
connected corporations are also seizing day-to-day
governmental operations for their own profit.
Since the Carter years,
Washington has drifted toward more and more
outsourcing of public functions to private
contractors, but Bush Incorporated has turned that
gradual increase into a fullblown, jet-powered
rush to privatization. The shadowy and highly
lucrative world of government contracting has
boomed under George W, rising 86% since he's been
in office and now totaling nearly $400 billion a
year. Get this: There are now more people doing
federal jobs under corporate contracts than there
are people employed directly by the government. In
other words, in today's government, corporate
servants outnumber civil servants.
Bush likes to claim
that he has cut the federal bureaucracy. In fact,
he's increased it, but most of the people working
in his government wear corporate logos. The New
York Times recently reported that contract
employees are in practically every agency, not
merely doing perfunctory chores, but sitting in on
policy sessions and drawing up agency budgets.
"Even government's online database for tracking
contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System,
has been outsourced," says the Times.
This phenomenal change
is the product not of managerial rationality, but
of nonsensical anti-government ideology. Like the
Iraq invasion, which was on the international
agenda of the rabid neocons from Day One of Bush's
tenure, privatization has long been on the
domestic agenda of the laissezfaire ideologues. A
January 10, 2001, report from the right-wing
Heritage Foundation provided the roadmap. Titled
"Taking Charge of Federal Personnel," it showed
the Bushites how to storm into office and seize
control of every agency. It stressed that they
"must make appointment decisions based on loyalty
first and expertise second," that "the whole
governmental apparatus must be managed from this
perspective," and that they should use
"contracting out as a management strategy."
The official rationale
for this privatization surge is that corporations
are inherently more efficient than government and
save the taxpayer oodles of money. Nice theory,
but they aren't ... and they haven't. Start with
this ideological assertion's most obvious flaw: By
their very nature, corporations are loyal to their
own bottom line, not to the country or to the
common good. Any "efficiency" that they produce is
derived from paying workers less (hardly a morale
booster) and by taking shortcuts on the services
or products they deliver. These "savings" are more
than eaten up by the high profits, extravagant
executive salaries, and other compensation that
corporations demand - costs that are not incurred
when government does the job.
Another flaw in this
privatization push is that Bush & Company are
unabashedly running it as a crony program. An
analysis by the Times found that more than half of
their outsourcing contracts are not open to
competition. In essence, the Bushites choose the
company and award the money without getting other
bids. Prior to Bush, only 21% of federal contracts
were awarded on a no-bid basis.
Also, if privatization
is so good, why is there no ongoing analysis of
the costs and quality of service being delivered?
This is an administration that demands a
cost-benefit analysis of even the smallest
government regulation of business, yet it is
throwing trillions of our tax dollars into the
coffers of corporate contractors without
monitoring whether the outsourcing is costing us
more and producing less than if the work were done
by government employees.
Meanwhile, as the
number of contracts has skyrocketed, the number of
contract supervisors in federal agencies has
remained the same, which means that the supposed
overseers can't keep an eye on the performance of
the profiteers. Whenever agencies or members of
Congress do try to probe, the corporations simply
claim that their financial and performance records
are proprietary. While agencies are accountable to
the public and subject to the Freedom of
Information Act, corporate contractors are
not.
Even when it's
known in advance that a privatization project will
be a rip-off, ideology has trumped integrity. Last
fall, for example, Congress rubberstamped a Bush
initiative requiring the IRS to outsource the
collection of certain taxes to three private debt
collectors. The collection agencies will pocket
about 24 cents of every dollar they recover. But
if the IRS were simply allowed to hire more
revenue agents, it could collect these same debts
for only 3 cents of every dollar brought in. Over
10 years, the three companies expect to reap $330
million from this deal.
A Corporatized
War
As we've
learned during the last four-plus years, George
W's Iraq war is run by a bumbling triumvirate
composed of the White House, the Pentagon, and the
Department of Halliburton.
This massive military
contractor has done awfully well the past few
years, thanks to its old CEO, "Buckshot" Cheney.
Since the BushCheney regime took office,
Halliburton's government contracts have increased
by a stunning 600%, including more than $10
billion in Pentagon contracts - many of them
awarded without the fuss and muss of competitive
bidding.
In return,
Halliburton has delivered gas-price gouging,
contaminated food and water, and a consis- These
are our "savings" from privatization A 2006
federal audit of $1.7 billion in Pentagon
purchases found that taxpayers were soaked for
excessive fees from contractors and for tens of
millions of dollars in waste. One reason was "poor
contracting practices." Such as? The audit reports
that 92% of the contracts were awarded without
verifying that the contractors provided accurate
cost estimates, and 96% of the work was
inadequately monitored. 2 Hightower Lowdown June
2007 tent pattern of overcharges. It has been
caught hiring Third World laborers to do its grunt
work in Iraq, paying them as little as $5 a day,
and then billing Uncle Sam more than $50 a day for
each worker. In a February analysis of $10 billion
in waste and overcharges by various contractors in
Iraq, federal investigators found Halliburton
responsible for $2.7 billion.
The corporation's 2006
profits were $2,348,000,000, and its overall
profits have increased over 368% since the
Bushites have been in office. Meanwhile,
Halliburton has now outsourced itself, announcing
this year that its top executives will move from
Houston to palatial new corporate headquarters in
Dubai. But don't worry - the executives are
keeping enough of a corporate presence in the good
ol' USA to qualify for more government
contracts.
People
see Halliburton as the face of the privatized war
in Iraq, but that's hardly the whole story.
Indeed, there's a dirty little fact that
Washington's warmongers don't tout: Bush has put
almost as many private contractors in the Iraq war
as U.S. troops.
Prior to Bush's
"surge," there were about 140,000 American troops
in Iraq and about 100,000 contract employees
there. Contrast this to only 9,200 privatized
troops sent to the Gulf war by George's daddy in
1991. And the 100,000 number doesn't count
subcontractors, which would add an estimated
20,000 to 40,000 more private troops (no one knows
for sure, since the Pentagon doesn't keep track of
them). In addition, while the surge will put
another 22,000 military troops in Iraq, it will
also increase the private forces by an untold
number.
Outfits
like Halliburton, DynCorp, Blackwater, L-3, Titan,
Custer Battles, Triple Canopy, and Wackenhut are
reaping billions of our tax dollars doing military
work that the Bush-Cheney Pentagon has outsourced.
Not coincidentally, nearly all of these
corporations are big-dollar donors to Republicans
and/or are run by executives with tight GOP
ties.
In part,
corporate Iraq assignments provide support
services - laundry, meals, delivery of water and
gasoline, etc. But a huge part of the military
function itself has been privatized in this war -
such things as interrogating prisoners (including
in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison), training the
Iraqi army, guarding the Green Zone and the
Baghdad airport, protecting military convoys,
analyzing intelligence, and providing paramilitary
security forces.
The personnel
performing these tasks are not soldiers but hired
hands, most of whom lack the training needed to
make proper combat judgments, and they operate
independently of the military command. "They shoot
people, and someone else has to deal with the
aftermath," says a frustrated U.S. officer.
They also get shot,
bombed, maimed, and killed. Yet the Bushites,
wanting to downplay the negatives, don't count
such people in casualty reports. The official
number of 3,400 troops killed in Iraq doesn't
include any from Bush's contract army. How many of
them have died? No one knows the real number, but
the Labor Department, which tracks workers
compensation claims, has silently recorded 917
contractor deaths. More than 12,000 have been
wounded in battle or on the job. These casualties
are a hidden toll of this awful war, another
measure of its deceit and immorality.
Contractors
Galore
Washington is under
assault by hordes of corporations that are eagerly
dicing up our government into digestible segments
and then consuming them through either contracts
or outright privatization.
Here are some
examples:
- WALL STREET BANKING
conglomerates leer lasciviously at our Social
Security Fund, eager to grab the hundreds of
billions of dollars in fees they could assess for
"managing" our accounts in a privatized
system.
- BUSH HAS REDUCED FEMA, a
onceproud and strong government responder to
natural disasters, to a haven for political hacks
hurling billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to
Halliburton and its ilk for the rescue and rehab
of New Orleans - only to see the money disappear
and the wreckage remain.
- WHEN THE
PENTAGON DECREED a few years ago that the esteemed
Walter Reed Army Medical Center was to be
substantially privatized, the treatment of wounded
vets quickly deteriorated to scandalous levels.
The politically connected IAP Worldwide Services
company - run by two former Halliburton executives
and boasting of having Dan Quayle on its board -
was handed a $120 million contract to manage the
place (even though IAP had previously botched the
delivery of ice to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane
Katrina - a job that it was contracted to do by
FEMA).
- THE CURRENT COLLEGE-LOAN scandal
is not merely a matter of some financial-aid
offices at universities taking gifts, consulting
fees, and stock from big private lenders. Rather,
the entire system is scandalous - it's an
artificial, privatized lending structure that adds
nothing of value to students but greatly increases
the cost and complexity of getting student loans
that could be made cheaply, simply, honestly, and
directly by the Department of Education.
-
FEDEX, UPS and the giant corporate mailers are
trying to privatize the U.S. Postal Service piece
by piece by deregulating the entire postal market,
outsourcing the most lucrative postal functions,
and abandoning America's principle of universal
service for everyone.
Lurita's Lurid
Tale
Lurita
Doan, who ran a federal contracting company in
Virginia and who has been a six-figure donor to
Bush and the GOP, was chosen by George last year
to head the General Services Administration (GSA).
This agency doles out some $56 billion annually in
federal contracts and is in charge of policing the
contractors. At her confirmation hearing, Doan
said she wanted to prove she can run a federal
agency like a business - and she has. She's run
GSA like Enron.
Just two months after
taking office, Doan made a robust attempt to hand
a $20,000 no-bid contract to a friend and former
business associate, even going so far as to sign
the deal personally. Ultimately, GSA's general
counsel had to step in and nix this obvious
conflict-ofinterest gaffe.'
But Doan kept playing
loose with the people's money. Last year, when a
technology contract with Sun Microsystems was up
for renewal, two GSA contract officers rejected it
on the grounds that the corporation was
overcharging taxpayers. Doan personally
intervened, suggesting that one of the officers
was "stressed." She brought in another officer,
who promptly approved the renewal - and got a
long-coveted transfer to GSA's Denver office.
Then Doan got paranoid,
apparently feeling that the agency's independent
inspector general (IG) was foiling her
enthusiastic efforts to "streamline" the
contract-awarding process and to loosen up audits
on corporations getting contracts. She chided the
IG and, according to notes taken in a staff
meeting, compared him and his staff to terrorists!
Doan has now proposed cutting $5 million from the
IG's audit budget, which is used to detect
corporate fraud and waste, and shifting some of
his duties to - are you ready for this? - private
contractors.
Coalition of
Greed
Why is
this happening? Paul Light, a New York University
professor and expert on public service, points to
a coalition of the greedy fueling the growth of
what he calls "the hidden workforce of
contractors." The contractors, of course, love
privatization. Many corporations have been formed
(often by former officials in the military or
government) just to sup at the federal trough and
many subsist wholly on government contracts.
Pentagon contractors have grown especially fat on
our tax dollars, with the largest,
Lockheed-Martin, now receiving more federal funds
than the Department of Justice.
At the same time, a
huge lobbying force has been built to keep the
cash flowing. Each corporation has its own
lobbyists, and the contracting industry as a whole
has an additional lobbying group, the Professional
Services Council, which pushes for still more
corporatization of government.
Then there are the
politicos in both parties who're eager to show
that they are reigning in big government. They
shove public tasks into corporate hands in order
to create what Light calls "the illusion that
[government] is smaller than it actually is." And,
of course, there are the political ideologues who
push privatization simply as a matter of faith and
political correctness, even though there's no
evidence that it is cheaper - much less
better.
It's on
this last point that corporatization ultimately
founders. For contractors, the concept of "better"
applies strictly to their bottom lines - not to
the country. They are out to get theirs, no matter
what happens to the rest of us. This is why
they've kept the size and scope of the corporate
takeover hidden from us. It's also why there's no
accountability, no public scrutiny, no analysis of
public benefits built into the privatization push
- the contractors know that corporatization is not
better for America.
Our government is not
meant to be a marketplace. It is intended as a
democratic forum where the needs and aspirations
of ALL the people are addressed. The corporations'
grab-all-you-can, survival-of-the-fattest ethos is
about serving their interest, not the public's.
This is why We the People must expose, challenge,
stop, and reverse the corporatization of our
public institutions.
Not only are
corporations taking over government functions,
they are also moving rapidly to take over our
essential public assets - from highways to
airports. In next month's newsletter, we'll give
you the lowdown on who's selling America to whom
... and why.
---------
From
"The Hightower Lowdown," edited by Jim Hightower
and Phillip Frazer, June 2007. Jim Hightower is a
national radio commentator, writer, public
speaker, and author of "Thieves In High Places:
They've Stolen Our Country And It's Time to Take
It Back."
-------
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