The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Privatizing warfare, prisons and security clearances-a recipe for disaster

    By jollyroger on Fri, 09/27/2013 - 2:58pm |

    Today's news explicating in part the ostensible shortcomings in the process by way of which Edward Snowden and Aaron Alexis received their security clearances ought to give pause to the insane stampede of contracting out government that began during the Reagan years.

    Even as the escalating value of private prison companies signals their generation of lavish profits (hint-this means lavish costs to the taxpayer), and private armies skim off the best trained (at taxpayer expense) soldiers only to rent them back to the government at tidy multiples of ordinary military pay, the contract outfit that was chosen to perform (yet another vital function) the background checks for a burgeoning security state is revealed as a corner-cutting, profit-not-quality driven operation.

    If the contracting out produces not savings but lavish returns on investment, not public involvement in (and oversight of) military adventurism but wildly escalating costs, and not security but shoddy scrutiny of *leakers and nuts, may we not wonder, cui bono?

    *Not that there's anything wrong with that...

    Comments

    Aside from disasters in failing to do their jobs, contractors act as money launderers for taxpayer funds, using the money to buy influence and special treatment from politicians, which is why the GOP loves outsourcing. It enlarges the pot of dollars from which they can extort funds, or exact patronage.

    The Social Security administration, or those who run it, for instance, cannot start a special interest PAC with the money they handle.  But if running Social Security was cut loose from the government and contracted out, private Wall Street operators could use SS receipts to lobby and sponsor ads supporting candidates who agreed to, say, reduce regulation on how they invest the money, or how much they pocket each year from retirement accounts.


    by NCD on Sat, 09/28/2013 - 11:04am

    The oddest thing about the privitazition fetish is that it is evident (from the value placed upon the stock of the resulting enterprizes) that a huge profit is being extracted at the same time as the performance of the various duties is shoddily done.

    Thus we have brutalization of prisoners, corners cut in security clearances, and rogue agents whose cowboy tactics blowback onto us, the general population.


    by jollyroger on Sat, 09/28/2013 - 12:05pm

    And the politicos getting the graft can just blame it on some nameless low level employees of the given private company, and wash their hands of it all. As your second link states 'accountable to no one'.


    by NCD on Sat, 09/28/2013 - 1:13pm

    Failure of accountability coupled with the collective responsibility that accrues to (nominal) elective democracies=the Bin Laden Doctrine (I'm blowing up your towers because you voted for the politicians who are basing troops-t-shirt wearing sluts!-in the Hejaz...)


    by jollyroger on Mon, 09/30/2013 - 3:37pm

    Precisely stated, NCD. It's the catch-22 of the Grover Norquist theory of drowning the Federal government to get taxation and its effects closer to where the people paying live. Instead, taxpayers end up with even less transparency and less accountability. In a way, it's adding more layers of bureaucracy instead of removing them, and, of course, it goes without saying, introducing a lot more payola factor.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 09/28/2013 - 12:50pm

    The scariest words ever spoken: "I'm a Republican, and I am here to outsource your government services".


    by NCD on Sat, 09/28/2013 - 1:16pm

    The "money quote":

     

    But the Iraqi government has finally caught up with Iraqi civilians: They're pissed at all the well-armed guards storming around the country in big SUVs, licensed to kill and accountable to no one—not the Iraqis, not the U.S. military, not the U.S. courts. Indeed, an enormous part of the U.S. occupation—that is, an enormous part of American foreign policy—has been outsourced to corporations accountable only to their bottom lines. A year ago, GQ explored how fighting a war with hired guns was both a disaster and a tragedy.

     
    hence, when we sniveled years later for a status of forces agreement providing immunity from local court oversight, the Iraqis (wisely) told us to step off.

    by jollyroger on Sat, 09/28/2013 - 11:49am

    Seems as if there should be some criteria governing what the hell can be outsourced---security clearances,  obviously not. I suppose by outsourcing security clearances the increased costs could be buried so deeply in the defense budget that no individual Senator would have to take responsibility for spending more of our gummint money. 

    And will the executives who gave orders to "flush", etc., ever see the inside of a jail, public or private,?  


    by Oxy Mora on Sat, 09/28/2013 - 3:16pm

    the verb in question, "flush", is reminiscent of the use of the verb "purge" when (outsourced) mortgage modification paperwork was destroyed so that supplicant homeowners could be gulled into irredemable default.

     

    Jail is appropriate, but unlikely in both events.

     

    Bottom line: Government functions should be restricted to government personnel--only they are ultimately accountable via elections-as-oversight.

    O/T, nice to see you back 'round, Oxy.


    by jollyroger on Mon, 09/30/2013 - 3:35pm

    45% of security clearances were fraudulent..." Flushed everything like a dead goldfish "

    An aggrieved government files suit against the private firm chosen since 1996 to oversee security clearances. Case backlogs were solved by "flushing".

     

    Shit, even I coulda' gotten cleared! If only I had known, I wouldn't have turned my back on nuclear physics after I got elected president of the Student Peace Union at Brown.


    by jollyroger on Thu, 01/23/2014 - 3:16pm

    The fraud is alleged to be straight from the top and was hugely broad, according to the A.P. report:

    According to one internal company document, a USIS employee said, "They will dump cases when word comes from above, such as from" the president of the investigative service division and the president and chief executive.

    The background investigations that were dumped spanned most government agencies — including the justice department, the department of homeland security, the defense department, the defense intelligence agency, the department of health and human services, the transportation department and the treasury department.


    by artappraiser on Fri, 01/24/2014 - 4:55am

    Bringing to the fore the questioin:"who the fuck got the idea that what we really, really needed to do was put the private sector in charge of vital governmental functions?"  Oh yeah, Ronaldus Maximus, iirc.  The Alzheimer's president.  Slick move, right wingers, slick move...


    by jollyroger on Fri, 01/24/2014 - 8:41am