If You Ask Me, Vol. 2: Privatization
Posted on
Friday, March 16, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
One of the oft-repeated political platforms I've heard in my life has been that the US government has become so inefficient that only privatizing certain government operations can allow those operations to provide their benefits effectively again. Over and over the neocon and conservative agenda has tried to hammer the point home, over and over again suggesting various governmental functions would be better performed by outsourcing those functions to the private sector, or even worse, allowing the private sector to provide those services in a competitive, free-market environment. We've heard this shrill meme about health care, utility deregulation, Social Security, military logistics, education, disaster relief, you name it, the neocons under Bush have probably suggested everything except their own jobs would be better served by privately-owned businesses. If you ask me, that's total horseshit, and here's why.
Now, I'm hardly going to trumpet the track record of government organizations with regards to efficiency. About the only department that even comes consistently close is the Internal Revenue Service, and that's just because they are taking our money. I've had plenty of professional dealings with government agencies, either as a beneficiary of their services or as an employee at a company that has won a government bid. Those government agencies are masters of bureaucracy and political infighting, lethargy and inertia. But I've also worked in corporate environments from retail to advertising to the media.
It ain't just the government.
In fact, corporations are just as susceptible to inefficient, idiotic courses of action. The only difference between corporate and government efficiency is that corporations focus on turning a profit, while the government focuses more on meeting a set of legal and bureaucratic criteria within their allotted budget before the next budget appropriations are decided. It's as important to the government employee that their budget be spent, because if the money isn't spent, they might not have a job during the next budget cycle, whether the money is spent well or not. Corporate employees should be focused on profit, spending the least amount of money budgeted to achieve the most profitable results.
Sounds simple, right? Corporations do things more efficiently, getting more done for less money. Such things are not so simple, because human beings are involved. If you ask me, there is nothing inherent in either corporate or government structures which makes one more efficient than the other, because those structures are only as good as the person running them. It's the old computer saying "Garbage in, garbage out." If you put a functional, incompetent moron in charge, say someone like Mike Brown, you get a complete cockup in operations the agency has handled thousands of times before. I'm quite sure Pets.com couldn't be lauded as a model of corporate efficiency anymore than Bush, Jr.'s FEMA. So what good is trumpeting privatization as the savior of effective government when such outsourcing is only as good as the company outsourced to? How would one explain the eagerness with which the neocon movement embraces privatization?
If You Ask Me #1: Accountability
The word accountability is an important one, and it's one that's been almost completely absent from the government since Bush, Jr. was installed into his imperial office. Whether public or private, no organization will operate efficiently without accountability, because without accountability, leaders will not know who to fire when the inevitable fuckup results. Trimming the stupid from an organization is vital for establishing and maintaining efficiency and efficacy, which means firing the people directly and indirectly responsible for such demonstrable fuckups as Katrina relief, the theft of Iraqi Reconstruction funds, or the Walter Reed scandal. We're not talking screwups that result in a few dollars being lost, we're talking about monumental cluster fucks that were either deliberately achieved or the result of awe-inspiring incompetence on levels heretofore unimaginable.
Trimming the fat from a government budget isn't just about cutting dollars, but cutting dollars being used badly. How is it that a company like IAP was given the job of administering Walter Reed hospital for $120 million AFTER they'd failed to provide ice to Katrina victims in their previous government contract? Was Jerry Lewis not available that week? And why, after seeing the deplorable fuckup that IAP has achieved at Walter Reed, why is this company not being fined, their contract torn up and their administrative people being arrested? There may be no law against existing as an idiot, but there's got to be laws against taking government money and doing fuckall with it.
If You Ask Me #2: Snuggling with the Vice-President
I should call this the Haliburton principle. If the #2 man in the government was an executive in a company within the last decade, that company shouldn't be allowed no-bid contracts. It doesn't matter if Dick Cheney had something or nothing at all to do with Haliburton getting such sweetheart no-bid contracts in Iraq. Government needs transparency, and even the hint of impropriety on such a large expenditure of government money smells like corruption.
The smell worsens when one sees the number of fuckups and improprieties performed by a company like Haliburton. Overcharging for soda, providing US soldiers with contaminated water and then covering up the knowledge of said water supply, failing to provide food to the troops at the front lines because it's too dangerous, running empty supply trucks so that gas can be charged (or I should say overcharged) and other illegalities have run rampant throughout Haliburton's government contract work and yet no one is on the dock for it. The Vice-President hasn't been called to Congress to clear the stink of corruption surrounding the whole affair. And #1 above hasn't even been approached, as Haliburton still has those contracts and are not barred from future government contract work.
If You Ask Me #3: Guaranteed Money is the Cash Cow
At the grunt level of corporate life, government contracts are what I lovingly refer to as "a ginormous, wasteful pain in the ass." Working for a government agency is a nightmare of paperwork, arcane regulations, and over-demanding louts. Invariably, half the agency you work for is competent at their job and willing to help, while the other half can barely chew gum while answering their email. Often, political dick-waving between mini-fiefdoms within the agency can derail a project for months while feathers are unruffled and petty prejudices are catered to. So as a grunt, I often wonder why the fuck a company wants to put itself through that hell for government work which is often not overly profitable due to the amount of extra work involved?
Government work is the ultimate corporate cash cow. See, consumers and private clients are fickle, as likely to buy your competitor's produce as your own based on price, performance or just a fit of pique. But government work is guaranteed money. Once you sign that contract, corporate CFO's know that revenue is coming within a certain time frame. You can put it on the books as certain as the sun will rise in the morning. And based on what I've seen in the last six years with groups like IAP or MWI or Haliburton, that's a truism at all levels of government, regardless of performance, competence or efficiency. The money is spent and the job may or may not get delivered on time, on budget or on goal, but by damn the corporation will get its money. Barring an act of Congress, the money is already theirs. Congress being what it is, the chances of losing the contract, or losing any of the money from the contract are slim and none. If Haliburton execs can't be brought up on charges before they move their HQ to Dubai, if the IAP boardroom can count most of that $120 million on the books after the fines have been levied, and MWI gets paid the full $26 million for non-functioning pumps in New Orleans as well as an additional $4 million for portable pumps to help the non-functioning pumps, how could anyone expect that private businesses will do any better at a government function than the 30-year government veteran with the gum-chewing problem?
If you ask me, guaranteeing money is a really bad idea. Paying companies even after their fuckups are public is an even worse idea. Not only should the corporation who performs such egregious mistakes have all the money from the contract confiscated, they should be barred from government contracts for a decade at least. If there exists no other corporation who can perform the job, the government should do it for its damn self. All of it goes back to #1, corporations with government contracts have to be held more accountable for their actions.
But that's really the fly in the entire government ointment, isn't it? The overriding theme for the Bush administration's term has been dodging accountability. If Cheney and Bush can't be held accountable for the mistakes and deceptions of the Iraq War, why should private contractors be held accountable either? Privatization is a great buzz word, but what it really means is corporate welfare. The neocon movement's driving motivation for privatization isn't effective government, it's enlarging the government tit so that big money can get more big money, directly from the taxpayer's breast. Poor people have been enjoying a free ride for too long. It's time for corporate executives who are also campaign contributors to get some of that easy, guaranteed money. They are rich, so they deserve it. These vomitous leeches on the underbelly of America have convinced themselves that they are the new nobility, the chosen few born with the divine right of kings to plunder and pillage the serfs.
You might think I'm exaggerating, but look closer. There are kernels of truth in even the most grandiose hyperbole, and the truth is there if you look hard enough. If you ask me, we don't need more privatization, we need more accountability. That's something which has been rarer than oxygen in space these last few years.
Now, I'm hardly going to trumpet the track record of government organizations with regards to efficiency. About the only department that even comes consistently close is the Internal Revenue Service, and that's just because they are taking our money. I've had plenty of professional dealings with government agencies, either as a beneficiary of their services or as an employee at a company that has won a government bid. Those government agencies are masters of bureaucracy and political infighting, lethargy and inertia. But I've also worked in corporate environments from retail to advertising to the media.
It ain't just the government.
In fact, corporations are just as susceptible to inefficient, idiotic courses of action. The only difference between corporate and government efficiency is that corporations focus on turning a profit, while the government focuses more on meeting a set of legal and bureaucratic criteria within their allotted budget before the next budget appropriations are decided. It's as important to the government employee that their budget be spent, because if the money isn't spent, they might not have a job during the next budget cycle, whether the money is spent well or not. Corporate employees should be focused on profit, spending the least amount of money budgeted to achieve the most profitable results.
Sounds simple, right? Corporations do things more efficiently, getting more done for less money. Such things are not so simple, because human beings are involved. If you ask me, there is nothing inherent in either corporate or government structures which makes one more efficient than the other, because those structures are only as good as the person running them. It's the old computer saying "Garbage in, garbage out." If you put a functional, incompetent moron in charge, say someone like Mike Brown, you get a complete cockup in operations the agency has handled thousands of times before. I'm quite sure Pets.com couldn't be lauded as a model of corporate efficiency anymore than Bush, Jr.'s FEMA. So what good is trumpeting privatization as the savior of effective government when such outsourcing is only as good as the company outsourced to? How would one explain the eagerness with which the neocon movement embraces privatization?
If You Ask Me #1: Accountability
The word accountability is an important one, and it's one that's been almost completely absent from the government since Bush, Jr. was installed into his imperial office. Whether public or private, no organization will operate efficiently without accountability, because without accountability, leaders will not know who to fire when the inevitable fuckup results. Trimming the stupid from an organization is vital for establishing and maintaining efficiency and efficacy, which means firing the people directly and indirectly responsible for such demonstrable fuckups as Katrina relief, the theft of Iraqi Reconstruction funds, or the Walter Reed scandal. We're not talking screwups that result in a few dollars being lost, we're talking about monumental cluster fucks that were either deliberately achieved or the result of awe-inspiring incompetence on levels heretofore unimaginable.
Trimming the fat from a government budget isn't just about cutting dollars, but cutting dollars being used badly. How is it that a company like IAP was given the job of administering Walter Reed hospital for $120 million AFTER they'd failed to provide ice to Katrina victims in their previous government contract? Was Jerry Lewis not available that week? And why, after seeing the deplorable fuckup that IAP has achieved at Walter Reed, why is this company not being fined, their contract torn up and their administrative people being arrested? There may be no law against existing as an idiot, but there's got to be laws against taking government money and doing fuckall with it.
If You Ask Me #2: Snuggling with the Vice-President
I should call this the Haliburton principle. If the #2 man in the government was an executive in a company within the last decade, that company shouldn't be allowed no-bid contracts. It doesn't matter if Dick Cheney had something or nothing at all to do with Haliburton getting such sweetheart no-bid contracts in Iraq. Government needs transparency, and even the hint of impropriety on such a large expenditure of government money smells like corruption.
The smell worsens when one sees the number of fuckups and improprieties performed by a company like Haliburton. Overcharging for soda, providing US soldiers with contaminated water and then covering up the knowledge of said water supply, failing to provide food to the troops at the front lines because it's too dangerous, running empty supply trucks so that gas can be charged (or I should say overcharged) and other illegalities have run rampant throughout Haliburton's government contract work and yet no one is on the dock for it. The Vice-President hasn't been called to Congress to clear the stink of corruption surrounding the whole affair. And #1 above hasn't even been approached, as Haliburton still has those contracts and are not barred from future government contract work.
If You Ask Me #3: Guaranteed Money is the Cash Cow
At the grunt level of corporate life, government contracts are what I lovingly refer to as "a ginormous, wasteful pain in the ass." Working for a government agency is a nightmare of paperwork, arcane regulations, and over-demanding louts. Invariably, half the agency you work for is competent at their job and willing to help, while the other half can barely chew gum while answering their email. Often, political dick-waving between mini-fiefdoms within the agency can derail a project for months while feathers are unruffled and petty prejudices are catered to. So as a grunt, I often wonder why the fuck a company wants to put itself through that hell for government work which is often not overly profitable due to the amount of extra work involved?
Government work is the ultimate corporate cash cow. See, consumers and private clients are fickle, as likely to buy your competitor's produce as your own based on price, performance or just a fit of pique. But government work is guaranteed money. Once you sign that contract, corporate CFO's know that revenue is coming within a certain time frame. You can put it on the books as certain as the sun will rise in the morning. And based on what I've seen in the last six years with groups like IAP or MWI or Haliburton, that's a truism at all levels of government, regardless of performance, competence or efficiency. The money is spent and the job may or may not get delivered on time, on budget or on goal, but by damn the corporation will get its money. Barring an act of Congress, the money is already theirs. Congress being what it is, the chances of losing the contract, or losing any of the money from the contract are slim and none. If Haliburton execs can't be brought up on charges before they move their HQ to Dubai, if the IAP boardroom can count most of that $120 million on the books after the fines have been levied, and MWI gets paid the full $26 million for non-functioning pumps in New Orleans as well as an additional $4 million for portable pumps to help the non-functioning pumps, how could anyone expect that private businesses will do any better at a government function than the 30-year government veteran with the gum-chewing problem?
If you ask me, guaranteeing money is a really bad idea. Paying companies even after their fuckups are public is an even worse idea. Not only should the corporation who performs such egregious mistakes have all the money from the contract confiscated, they should be barred from government contracts for a decade at least. If there exists no other corporation who can perform the job, the government should do it for its damn self. All of it goes back to #1, corporations with government contracts have to be held more accountable for their actions.
But that's really the fly in the entire government ointment, isn't it? The overriding theme for the Bush administration's term has been dodging accountability. If Cheney and Bush can't be held accountable for the mistakes and deceptions of the Iraq War, why should private contractors be held accountable either? Privatization is a great buzz word, but what it really means is corporate welfare. The neocon movement's driving motivation for privatization isn't effective government, it's enlarging the government tit so that big money can get more big money, directly from the taxpayer's breast. Poor people have been enjoying a free ride for too long. It's time for corporate executives who are also campaign contributors to get some of that easy, guaranteed money. They are rich, so they deserve it. These vomitous leeches on the underbelly of America have convinced themselves that they are the new nobility, the chosen few born with the divine right of kings to plunder and pillage the serfs.
You might think I'm exaggerating, but look closer. There are kernels of truth in even the most grandiose hyperbole, and the truth is there if you look hard enough. If you ask me, we don't need more privatization, we need more accountability. That's something which has been rarer than oxygen in space these last few years.
Labels: Government Corruption, If You Ask Me, Privatization
posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:14 AM
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