Absolutely. And the game has been tried even before that, with little success. The big push, however, and the subsequent implementation of most of this sop to big business, came in the early part of the first decade. Neely is only the visible part of this mess; it’s much more widespread. I agree with the OP that Neely’s puzzling use of the 5th amendment makes him look guilty as hell. With any luck, he’ll cut a deal to avoid serious prosecution and implicate all those who need to be in prison, or at least fired.
I should point out that my wife resigned because she was not allowed to do her job according to the rules, but also according to the best business practices. In other words, she was too competent and refused to accept incompetence on any level. It made her some serious enemies in the Alaska administrative chain, and it didn’t help things any that she routinely got rave reviews from her building tenants, and cash awards from the regional office in Seattle. When they ramped up the pressure on her, and hired another layer of management just for that purpose, she said fuck it. It just wasn’t worth the stress.
Actually, it started as an attempt byt he Republicans to kick the knees out from under the Federal Employees’ Union. The argument ws that the Union prevented the separation of ineffective employees, and so the only way to accomplish anything was to outsource to the wonderfully efficient and fast-moving private sector.
The Government then set about winding a sea of red tape around the operations of the private companies doing business for the Federal Government such that we now get things done at about the same rate as they do. The only real difference is that the majority of our omployees make much higher salaries than their Union employees collect.
My wife had an extremely reliable and competent facilities mechanic at one of her buildings. When this service was privatized, he was laid off, then rehired at a higher salary to do exactly the same job, but as a private contractor rather than a government employee. He still gets to collect his pension. On the union side of things, she was required to supervise an incompetent asshole who had been removed from his job in one city because of sexual harassment charges and transferred to one of her facilities, rather than being fired. Getting rid of this pile of donkey pus took over two years of documentation of poor performance and dealing with frustrating pushback from her superiors. The guy who was hired in to be another layer of supervision was somebody who was rendered superfluous in another city. Rather than just retire him or transfer him out of the state, they created an unnecessary position for him in her chain of command. Transparent, my ass.
Why is the waste and arrogance any surprise? Especially right now, when we have to pass the bill to know what is in it. And when any attempt at a reasonable government is called ‘politics’. And anyone who disagrees is a racist.
Ooh - could you say something about Obamacare and how paying taxes infringes on your freedom? I only need two more squares on my talking-points bingo card to win.
Back on point, sadly I’ve seen firsthand the same problems with contract management in the UK government. The rhetoric is that privatisation will outsource the risks while saving money for the public sector. In reality the private sector contractors take all the profits and dump the risks back on the government. And it inevitably costs more to terminate a contractor who isn’t meeting the terms of the contract than to let them continue. At least in the UK the issue seems to be incompetence more than corruption.
So - it costs $200K per hour to fly Airforce 1. We paid more than $4 million for Obama’s Hawaii vacation… Neely is scum, but he is nowhere near as disgusting as some abusers…
That is utter bullshit. We did not “pay for Obama’s Hawaii vacation”. We paid for the relocation of the Office of the President to a location where the President actually was. Is the guy supposed to be a prisoner? He is either a prisoner or he can travel as he desires (within reason). Which one is it? And what sort of quality applicants do you expect to get for the job if the recipient has to become a prisoner?
