reflectivepundit

A Contracted Government

By David Epstein
Thanks so much to Brigitte for letting me add my voice to her excellent blog. To begin with, let's start with a subject near and dear to my heart: delegation. Don't miss this front page article from the New York Times about the increasing use of contractors by the federal government. A choice excerpt:

Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.

Contractors still build ships and satellites, but they also collect income taxes and work up agency budgets, fly pilotless spy aircraft and take the minutes at policy meetings on the war. They sit next to federal employees at nearly every agency; far more people work under contracts than are directly employed by the government. Even the government’s online database for tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been outsourced (and is famously difficult to use).

 

“For the Latest on the Coming War with Iran...”

By Brigitte L. Nacos
It seems like a replay of 2002: When it was undeniable that the military actions in Afghanistan had not achieved the objective of getting Osama bin Laden “Dead or Alive,” President Bush and other high administration official turned their attention to Saddam Hussein as the number one evil doer and target in the “war on terrorism.” Except for the vice-president’s tale of America’s successes in Iraq, it is clear for a while that the U.S. has little control over “an increasingly perilous situation” in Iraq according to the Washington Post's description of a National Intelligence Estimate, Senator McCain, still a stance supporter of the war, described the situation today as “dire and deteriorating.” Therefore, President Bush and other administration officials speak rather about their new number one enemy and problem—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his country’s anti-American activities in Iraq and its nuclear program at home. By moving a second aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf, the Pentagon has fueled concerns about an American-Iranian confrontation. It was nevertheless quite shocking, when former Congressman Joe Scarborough ended his conversation with Pat Buchanan and Mort Zuckerman on CNBC’s “Scarborough Country” last night with the cheerful remark, “And for the latest on the coming war with Iran, check out our Web site, joe.mscnc.com."