The NYTimes carried an article today saying USA Next has been brought onboard to discredit AARP opposition to Private Accounts for Social Security, in manner similar to the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry--same people; by the way, the people Bush was careful to disassociate himself from during the Campaign and Election--something about illegality. We have a mindset here, not particularly Bush alone, but the entire environment of Politics in America today. How did it come about?
Read:
February 21, 2005
Digging Into the Foundations of the Military-Industrial Complex By Robert Novak
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-2_21_05_RN.html
A CULTURE OF DECEIT
By RALPH PETERS
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/40196.htm
we need a strong Air Force, but the service is crippling and bankrupting itself. At a time when we need more aircraft, but affordable ones, the Air Force leadership insists on buying useless, gold-plated junk like that F/A-22, a fighter with no one to fight, but a bonanza for the defense industry.
We're at war, for God's sake. If Air Force leaders can't respect the taxpayer, couldn't they at least respect our troops and their genuine needs?
Every other military service has to make hard choices, but the Air Force has been spoiled for 50 years
Also Read:
Government for Hire
By STEPHEN GOLDSMITH and WILLIAM D. EGGERS
Published: February 21, 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/opinion/21goldsmith.html?
The federal government now spends about $100 billion more annually for outside contracts than it does on employee salaries. Many federal departments and offices - NASA and Energy, to name just two - have become de facto contract management agencies, devoting upward of 80 percent of their budgets to contractors
More than one-third of the federal programs that the Government Accountability Office considers at "high risk" of experiencing significant problems involve large procurement operations or programs delivered mainly by third parties
But not enough attention has been devoted to one of the central policy and management issues of our time: what kinds of systems, organizational structures and skills are needed to operate a government that increasingly orchestrates (rather than owns) resources and purchases (rather than directly provides) services?
Record baby boomer retirements over the next four years - up to 50 percent in some federal agencies - provide an opportunity to transform the public work force without layoffs. But to attract a new kind of public employee, the government has to change outdated seniority rules, narrow job classifications and archaic hiring practices.
Management must move to center stage. Holding providers accountable and measuring and tracking their performance has to become a core government responsibility that is as important, if not more so, than managing public employees.
Public officials must be careful to retain control of outcomes even while their private partners directly manage services. This requires a delicate balancing act, building in the needed flexibility to enable dynamic change, while not becoming a captive of private vendors
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We live in a current environment where Government is considered a 'Cash Cow' by both Democrat and Republican, with an Administration composed solely of Individuals of 'Lucrative Contract' mentality whose prioir Work experience, Associational Friends, and even Family members are devoted to promotion of Corporate Profits. Is it any wonder We possess a Government lacking in Tax revenues, which runs huge Deficits, and provides little real service. These are the People who want to take Social Security Public; excuse me--got to get the rheutric right, want to take Social Security Private! lgl
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