Republican Philosophy Of Government Inaction [sic] And My License Plates

It must have happened in my childhood and early teen years, but I literally cannot remember a time when the Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector or the Harris County Clerk was a Democrat. And so it is today: these elected county officials are Republicans. I'm sure they would tell you, as would every GOPer who bothers to tell you anything, that "less government is better" and "government costs too much." When they are in office, GOPers simplify the combination of these two statements into "less government service is better." And act accordingly.

(not mine)

I received a notice that it's time to renew my auto registration. The state, at long last, is doing the sensible thing and combining registration and inspection status into a single sticker. I can't blame Repubs alone for that, though it's been a long time since Dems had the power to legislate it. Anyway, my notice contained a statement telling me "* NEW PLATES REQUIRED *" and telling me in a very few words my options for obtaining the plates. The short version: the notice arrived too late for me to do it online or by mail with any reasonable expectation of plates arriving before my current ones expire. As undiligent as county officials are about notifying, that's how diligent HPD is about stopping people with out-of-date stickers; I am not the only person I know to whom they've done that (never mind that the state failed to send me a notice that year). So today I have to go to the county tax assessor's office to pay my registration fee and get my sticker (now only one) and plates.

In the past, the lines at the closest branch tax assessor's office have been so long and slow that they confirm every GOP stereotype of government inefficiency. I'd be very surprised if that has changed. So my day is cut out for me.

The GOPers will not succeed in making me loathe government; they only succeed at that when their government officials try repeatedly to illegalize or otherwise interfere with a woman's constitutionally protected right to choose abortion, which of course they do several times a year here. If the goddam gummint lets me get back home soon enough today, I'll write an article about the recent execrable hostility of Repubs in Congress and the state Lege to the very existence of Planned Parenthood, which is many women's only source of health care of any sort.

Once more into the fray queue...

The High Cost Of Privatizing Governmental Functions

Before I retired, or rather, was retired by the Great Recession, I spent approximately half my career as an employee and half my career as an independent contractor. In both roles, I spent, again, about half my time working for government entities and half my time working for private corporations. This not only gives me more perspective than usual on both sides of the great government/private enterprise divide, but also leads me to an observation:

I was the same worker, whether employee or contractor, whether working for government or working for private enterprise. In the four possible categories, there was effectively no difference in the quality of my work or the diligence of my approach. And the same is true of the workers I saw around me. There is no basis in typical employee quality to prefer a private enterprise over a public effort.

So it was with considerable interest that I read an opinion piece by Truthout's Ellen Dannin, "Who're You Rootin' for - Team Public or Team Private?" The piece is long enough and well-documented enough throughout that it is almost an insult to call it an opinion piece. Among other things, Ms. Dannin explores OMB's Circular A‑76, the root document addressing government's official position on privatization:

At the federal level, privatization takes a number of forms that are regulated by the Office of Management and Budget's Circular A‑76. Its basic principle is:

In the process of governing, the Government should not compete with its citizens. The competitive enterprise system, characterized by individual freedom and initiative, is the primary source of national economic strength. In recognition of this principle, it has been and continues to be the general policy of the Government to rely on commercial sources to supply the products and services the Government needs.

What this means is that each federal agency or department must devote time and money to A‑76 competitions, the process that determines whether work will stay in-house or be privatized. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's process, which is typical, is used here to illustrate the process and philosophy of federal privatization.

The key concept of A‑76 is that competition enhances quality, economy and productivity. OMB Circular A‑76 provides procedures to conduct managed competitions between public and private sectors. Such competitions will determine whether it's more efficient for a function to be performed by the private sector, by an in-house government workforce, or through an inter-service support agreement with another government activity. In A‑76 competitions, agencies and contractors are equal and viable competitors.

There is of course an obsession voiced constantly by conservatives that even the most intrinsically public functions of government should be privatized, both for their efficiency of performance and the resultant cost saving to the taxpayer. The implicit assumption... I've seldom seen it explicitly expressed in anything but the broadest handwaving arguments; more typically, it is simply assumed a priori by conservatives... is that privatization intrinsically always results in those efficiencies and cost savings. Ms. Dannin undertakes to examine that typically unstated assumption... and finds it wanting.

Ms. Dannin's conclusion puts paid to the whole conservative position on privatization:

At What Cost?

The goals of increased efficiency and cost savings are not unreasonable. But if the OMB were to identify and consider all costs relevant to deciding who will perform the work, the price of the analysis regularly would exceed any costs saved through privatization.

The Circular A‑76 process does a disservice to the nation by taking such a narrow, adversarial view of the relationships among government, the private sector, public servants and the public itself. By promoting the liberty concept of freedom from government only, Circular A‑76 ignores the government's many roles in promoting unity, justice, domestic peace and the public's welfare, not just for ourselves but also for those who come after us.

In other words, the whole conservative position on privatization is a consequence of pure ideology, having little if any basis in the reality of how work is done and how business is transacted. Even apart from the human costs, and those are not inconsiderable, privatization is an exceptionally expensive approach to those functions that are intrinsically governmental.

Conservatives should just get off their high horse about privatization. Not that I'm holding my breath awaiting their dismount...

Krugman On What's Inherently Important

Krugman, after quoting Raymond Chandler's The Simple Art of Murder, offers his reasons for not writing about the really important things lately, and then offers a couple of paragraphs about one really important thing:

...

In the short run the point is that Republican leaders are about to reap the whirlwind, because they haven’t had the courage to tell the base that Obamacare is here to stay, that the sequester is in fact intolerable, and that in general they have at least for now lost the war over the shape of American society. As a result, we’re looking at many drama-filled months, with a high probability of government shutdowns and even debt defaults.

Over the longer run the point is that one of America’s two major political parties has basically gone off the deep end; policy content aside, a sane party doesn’t hold dozens of votes declaring its intention to repeal a law that everyone knows will stay on the books regardless. And since that party continues to hold substantial blocking power, we are looking at a country that’s increasingly ungovernable.

...

Hyde Park Bar & Grill, Austin, TX
"At the Fork in the Road"

No wonder he titles the post, "Chaos Looms." For the record, I am not enjoying the Republican-dominated process, and I shall still not enjoy it even if it leads to the demise of the GOP. It is difficult for me to admit that America is somewhat fragile at the moment, but my beloved nation is at a fork in the road (and not the one in Austin, TX). The GOP can decide to inflict its bitterness about the unpopularity of its policies on the entire nation, or it can ditch its most radical wing and resume a legitimately American way of resolving differences; either way, there's no assurance the nation is sturdy enough to survive the process. If the downfall of the GOP forces the formation of a legitimate American conservative party in opposition to my currently rather pitiful Democrats, it may be worth the pain and suffering. But I wouldn't bet money on the members of today's GOP choosing that route.

The One Imperial Power Left Standing, And The Planet It Is Standing On

Tom Engelhardt is, of course, pitching his book, The End of Victory Culture. But I believe he is also saying some profound things about a fundamental change in history, from the story of the rise and fall of empires, to the story of a single empire dominating the only planet humanity has... and contributing to the physical decline of that planet.

With luck, HPL will have the book. If not, it may be a while before I read it. Meanwhile, the linked essay is a good start.

House Votes To Extend Federal Worker Pay Freeze

In a gesture typical of today's nutjob-controlled House, the House voted to extend the pay freeze on federal workers, already almost three years long, for another nine months. From Bloomberg Businessweek:

“We have to make tough choices,” said Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “But let’s remember these are civil servants who are paid pretty darn well.”

A Miami Herald AP article cites freeze supporters as claiming the average federal worker's wage plus benefits amounts to "nearly double the median US household income." Note the use of the same old ploy, comparing "average" to "median": a few exceptionally well-paid federal employees can tweak the average pay quite high. Comparing median income to median income would be honest, but this is Darrell Issa and company we're talking about here...

The Businessweek article offers this:

Republican Frank Wolf, whose northern Virginia district includes the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, yelled on the House floor that the bill would target agents who tracked Osama bin Laden, astronauts, border patrol agents, cancer researchers and Veterans Affairs hospital nurses treating wounded soldiers returning from Afghanistan.

In other words, federal employees are not limited to the overstuffed payrolls of members of Congress. Many of them do things most Americans would agree need to be done, even if they are not employed by the military (the troops are explicitly excluded from the House's federal freeze). But even the worthiest are frozen along with the rest.

In my career, I worked for the state government for about a decade and the private sector for a few decades, concluding with a 20-year period of self-employment, so I've seen the lot. And I can tell you what happens to the most capable of government employees: they jump to the private sector when they have the opportunity. Opportunities may be scarce now, but sooner or later, if Issa and company kick them in the teeth often enough, good federal employees (state employees, too) will leave. Then GOPers can complain about bad government, neglecting to mention that they made it bad...

Fusion... Not Nuclear, Not Musical, But DHS Centers

How far did DHS ultimately go in removing your civil liberties and your privacy, starting (more or less) on 9/11/2001? Gene Howington at Jonathan Turley's blog sketches the sordid picture for us. Few answers will surprise you, but if you grew up in an earlier, freer America, a lot of them will offend you. What can you still keep private from your government? In essence... not a damned thing. Not one. And it's all compiled in databases, crudely indexed and even more crudely cross-referenced, to make sure that what the DHS knows about you that is incorrect, the FBI, CIA, NSA, DoJ and often local law enforcement agencies also know about you... equally incorrectly. Like nuclear fusion, this kind of fusion can so easily get out of hand, become unstable and do more harm than good, that I can't help thinking the term was chosen premeditatedly.

Be sure to read the comments. Most of Turley's readers are attorneys, and many of them have some perspective on the process by which Homeland Security has become personal insecurity. Welcome to our brave new world.

DHS Purchases 450 Million Hollow Point Rounds. And Some Bulletproof Checkpoint Booths. And Riot Gear.

And then they classified the purchase. I suppose opaque black markers would be a good business to be in right about now. The contract for the bullets has already been let, to defense contractor ATK, so you can't sell them those. Hollow-point ammunition is allegedly never used for training, and its use in actual combat is said to be a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

You have choices in reading about the now-"secret" purchase, ranging from the just-a-wee-bit-paranoid to the almost-reasonable and everything in between. If you read several articles, you'll find that DHS is also purchasing bulletproof checkpoint booths with Stop-Go lights on them. That contract has also been let to a company called Shelters Direct; in fact, it is really public knowledge mainly because Shelters Direct announced it on their web site. (Sorry; no link from here.)

Oh, and did I mention the DHS has put out an "urgent" request for riot gear, supposedly in anticipation of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions?

All these articles are dated March through August of this year, so whatever it's for, it's coming right up. Good: I hate that kind of mystery.

I don't even know how paranoid we should be about all of this. For me, it basically comes down to one question:

What kind of agency is DHS?

It isn't military, but it acquires military gear and military expendables. It isn't border security like ICE (Correction: Bryan reminds us in comments that ICE is part of DHS, as is Border Patrol), but it acquires bulletproof checkpoint booths. (Does anyone else remember the Berlin Wall?) It may be law enforcement, but then what is the role of the FBI? It may be intelligence (OK, OK, stop laughing), but then what is the role of the CIA, etc. (insert names of a dozen shadowy agencies here)?

The very name of the agency is all too reminiscent of Nazi Germany. I know; saying that violates Godwin's Law, but tell me it isn't true. Heimatssicherheitabteilung... is that not a name to inspire fear in American citizens? You tell me!

Social Security: Just The Facts, Ma'am

Nail your family wing-nut to a chair and make him (or her, but it's usually a "him") watch this:



H/T ellroon.