Outsourcing Our Government

[one...two...tree 2,762]

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

* 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.

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...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.

From "The Hightower Lowdown," edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer, June 2007.

[Dan J 277]

There is also a public diplomancy argument agaist private contractors.

When a private contractor employed in a warzone, is reponsible for a war crime, they are outside of the juristiction of both the US court system, and the military court martial system. But they will still be perceived as a agent of the US, and it will reflect negativly on the US and there is nothing we can do to hold them accoutable.

[Ban Hammer 13,337]

There is also a public diplomancy argument agaist private contractors.

When a private contractor employed in a warzone, is reponsible for a war crime, they are outside of the juristiction of both the US court system, and the military court martial system. But they will still be perceived as a agent of the US, and it will reflect negativly on the US and there is nothing we can do to hold them accoutable.

don't bet on that.

[Saddle Bronc 124]

Actually, they should outsource Congress and Senate -- to somewhere in Muzaffarpur (where it can run just as crookedly, but with two "0's" less in the budget).

[pedroh 21]

and have american names!!

like when u call the call centers in India.. everybody has names as frank, jerry, jimmy, john, etc

[Ban Hammer 13,337]

and have american names!!

like when u call the call centers in India.. everybody has names as frank, jerry, jimmy, john, etc

ain't that the truth? "hewwo, i is "böwb" weeth teknichel sapport"

never again will i get the tech support package with a dell computer!

[pedroh 21]

and have american names!!

like when u call the call centers in India.. everybody has names as frank, jerry, jimmy, john, etc

ain't that the truth? "hewwo, i is "böwb" weeth teknichel sapport"

never again will i get the tech support package with a dell computer!

A friend also was telling me, man, why they have those dumb names, I wanna hear their real names, not some fukcin bob or jimmy... cuz their name is not bob or jimmy!!!!