Jim Hightower: The Bushites Have Outsourced Our Government To Their Pals

http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=12346

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."

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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.

...more...

My federal agency tried to cancel a Regional fleet management (Bush Crony company) contract for 2 years because of safety violations. Finally it took a near catastrophe with both our federal employees and the public's safety to do it, but because of who the Contractors were, we paid them $5 million dollars and said it was "at the convenience of the government" to get rid of them and so they were able to bid again within the US government. That's all they would let us do out of DC because of who they were and who they knew. I won't even mention the other A-76 outsource fiascos out there.

and a belated welcome to DU

:hi:

I get very angry about this topic as a Federal Employee. Since Bush has taken office, he has been trying to 1) Outsource employees (A-76 process) and 2) Do more contract work versus hiring new civil servants to replace those retiring or transfering. Number 1) has been a fiasco. It has cost the taxpayers $$$ and has not provided efficiencies. In my particular agency, outsourcing has not been that successful (for Bush).....2 contracts in 6 years, one going out of house (the fleet management failure I mentioned above) and one won by in-house employees (though not without great consternation to all involved). It's all a facade. While IT downsized, it moved a ton of people, increased salaries, left a phantom residual organization ($$ hidden) and employees are spending an estimated 2-5 days a month (more $$ hidden) on IT issues that were previously managed by IT employees. My own position was to be studied for outsourcing this year, but it looks like the Democrats have stopped the funding for studys (oh, btw, more $$$ for "studying"). That doesn't stop Bush from going directly to oursourcing and bypassing cost studies. I'm waiting to see if I will have a job by next year at this time.

In the meantime, my federal agency probably suffers what all others are in the era of Bush. Not enough funding to carry out mandates, a crumbling infrastructure, employees who don't know what to tackle next due to understaffing, etc., etc...

like unpatriotic carpet baggers, we'll have the force of public outrage to undue what they did during the Bush criminal era.

From the same article.


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.

if just for this post...