A politics miscellany
October 3, 2007
There’s lots of stuff going on right now, with Cory trying to learn how to creep, work keeping me busy, gearing up for NaNoWriMo next month and trying to navigate the streets of San Diego at high speed. But a few things are worth noting:
MoveOn ad and Rush Limbaugh — these two things are not the same. Nevertheless, it is not Congress’s job to pass judgment on who is patriotic and who isn’t, or what opinion is acceptable or what isn’t. There’s a VA to fund (that hospital is still in a mess) a President to impeach, health care still needed, two wars to end and one more to prevent.
I think Rush Limbaugh is a big, fat idiot. But we can deal with him just fine. The Congresscritters have more important things to do.
One of those very important things is the investigation into mercenary groups like Blackwater. Privatization went too far a long time ago, with few of the promised efficiency and effectiveness gains that were promised. In the case of hiring armed mercenaries to do a soldier’s job, it seems like we’re paying top dollar for people who undermine our own efforts. I am beginning to think that maybe we could have liberated the Iraqis and set up a democratic government there, if only it weren’t for all the profiteers and high-level government enablers like Dick Cheney. In any case, it seems ludicrous that the Air Force arranged a two month, ~$26,000 no-work contract for a civilian, but Bush still opposes a 3.5% military pay raise.
All of that deserves far more attention than a strongly-worded newspaper ad or a right-wing pander-monkey who accidentally lets slip that respect for our military was never the issue in the first place.
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October 4th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
One thing I don’t get that troubles me is where did this all begin? The amount of money that we pay to the government to take care of their responsibilitiesis more than enough. Well, maybe that is part of the problem, too much money to go around.
Between the official use of these private, qabove the law, mercenary orgnizations and the privatization of prisons, it is totally out of hand. The ability to wage wars (right or wrong) is the domain of the governemt, not a bunch of terribly overpaid and corrput ex-soldiers (I wonder who is most likely to have been able made off with the 8-9 billion missing US dollars in Iraq)… And I think it is quite true that punishment and imprisonment of criminals is no ones job but the governments. When did it becaome ok for a for-profit private corporation to take over the “care” of people who are sussoded to be serving punishment sentences applied by the governemt?
Though it is unlikely, at some point it would be nice for the government to cease being a profiteering arm of the Corporate branch.
October 5th, 2007 at 6:26 am
That’s probably worth a book, actually. But since Reagan there’s been a significant push to not only privatize government services but hire contractors to do the daily work of federal agencies. The argument has been that contractors are more flexible and efficient than government employees, and to a certain extent that may be true — but when you figure in how much those contractors cost and the kinds of risks associated with contracting, managing contracting, etc., that flexibility and efficiency disappears pretty rapidly.
But it’s been radical socialist liberalism for about a quarter century to suggest that government programs can be cheap and effective. Now we’ve dismantled most of what FDR built, and all there is for lucrative new markets for contracting are critical government services like fighting wars and keeping the peace at home. Scary.