www.lewrockwell.com/orig/felkins1.html
How do you go about making sure your future employer who is waiting for you on the other side of the "revolving door" will receive large and lucrative contracts to compensate him for paying you an overblown salary? Of course, we cannot know the internal details but we can look at the external facts. While Cheney was Secretary of Defense, we had a few occasions wherein the USA felt compelled to go bomb or otherwise harass other countries. Still, there is another rather important third feature of these modern "police actions" - a lot of money can be made. But to reap these large financial rewards, a close relationship between the defense contractor and the politicians (what Eisenhower called the "military/industrial complex") is required. Typically, modern wars are followed by occupation and the repairing of the damage from the "contingency" (military/government code word for military intervention, usually not an emergency). Now in a rational world, you would think that the country that just got whupped would be the one to pay for all this. Not so, the good old American Taxpayer voluntarily (income tax is voluntary, didn't you know) contributes the funds to pay these contractors. The most successful application of this technique is in the Balkans. These people have been at war forever and are very likely to continue that way, no matter what anyone does. We can bomb, we can invade, and then we can patch and build with the generous contribution of the American Taxpayers. As far as step #4, his selection as Bush's VP Candidate confirms that his ties to the existing political power elite is very strong. In fact, he may just be headed for yet another swing around the revolving door. More military equals more opportunities for "police actions" around the world which means even more opportunity for "charitable" reconstruction of any areas we destroy. Well, how well has this bit of staged profiteering paid off for Cheney and Halliburton? Let us look at the record (what we can find - the government is a little shy about making such information easily accessible). A GAO report, "Contingency Operations: Opportunities to Improve the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (Letter Report, 02/11/97, GAO/NSIAD-97-63)", listing the usual but tiresome overruns, 14 is available online. A quote about Bosnia will give you the drift: "LOGCAP cost estimates for the Bosnian mission have increased substantially. They are with the troops from initial landing to departing, doing the work that troops used to do themselves. Now the troops have to protect the civilians in addition to looking after their own butts! Which can be a real pain due to the usual undisciplined nature of civilians. Williamson, USAR, it is reported that Brown & Root is so well entrenched with the government that in 1997 they were awarded a follow-on contract over DynCorp, even though DynCorp was the lowest bidder. Support Contract in the Balkans "The Operation Joint Forge logistics support services contract (DACA78-99-D-0003) was awarded Feb. The one-year contract, with four one-year option periods that can be awarded at the government's discretion, will become effective on May 28, 1999," 18 according to the US Army Corps of Engineers. Initial award amount is $10,000,000 with ceiling amounts of $180,000,000 per year (a "cost-plus-award-fee" contract). Impact of these large American operations on the Native Culture Space does not allow a digression into this issue which is very interesting in its own right. However, the other side is that they are sometimes a little overbearing. For an interesting take on this from the Bosnian side, 19 see this article about B&R's dumping of septic waste in their rivers and moraines. What the heck - Everybody does it The "Revolving Door" problem has been around a long time - possibly from the beginning of the country - but has grown enormously with the growth of the "military-industrial" complex, during and after WWII. It has grown at an even far greater rate in recent years with the large increase in federal control and statism. From the President and Congress on down to the military officers and the civil servants. Some examples: Executive Branch Of course employees of the Executive Branch are not shy about taking lucrative jobs in industry when their services are no longer needed by the White House. Richard Holbrooke (then Under-Secretary of State for East Asia), also participated in that scandal. Gross in his book, 21 The Political Racket, both Michael Deaver and Lynn Nofziger got into some ethics difficulties when they became lobbyists. He further mentions that Susan Thomases, Hillary Clinton's personal lawyer, lobbies for Puerto Rican companies and Morgan and Company. Obviously, their unlimited access to the secrets of the world, make their services extremely valuable! Congress (and their aides) A large percentage of the members of Congress and their aides become lobbyists or "consultants" when they are removed from office. In fact, even if the removal is because of unethical activity or even a criminal conviction, they still take a lucrative position with the "K Street" crowd. A Congressional Aide Consider the well known case of Ann Eppard, formerly an aide to Bud Shuster of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the powerful House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. I quote the following from page 53 of the book, 24 The Buying of Congress by Charles Lewis: "Ann Eppard, an aide to Shuster for more than two decades, has been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly receiving $230,000 in illegal payments and with embezzling $27,500 from Shuster's campaign committee. Within weeks, she became a lobbyist for several interests with business before the Transportation Committee. In so doing, she hit the jackpot: Ann Eppard Associates took in more than $1 million in its first year, including more than $600,000 from transportation clients. Military and NASA While there are thousands who move back and forth between the Military/NASA branches of the government and industry every year, one example will have to suffice here due to limitations of space and the reader's tolerance. Before he was Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger was a top executive at Bechtel, 27 which does massive engineering projects for the Pentagon and foreign clients like Saudi Arabia. Final Thoughts Cheney's "Revolving Door" exercise illustrates a phenomenon of our society that, while lacking somewhat in ethics, is more or less accepted as part of the status quo of the form of government we have. It is no better or no worse than the rest of the lobbyist driven government. Modern political philosophy has grudgingly come around to the concept that the "Public Choice" scholars have promoted that politicians and government employees are selfishly motivated. Given that apparent fact, it is a rather straightforward conclusion that the operators in this sphere of government/industry interaction would set themselves up for the most lucrative rewards they can get. This will often require moving back and forth from one side to the other for maximum rewards. But is that necessarily bad and even if it is, would we want to change it? Addressing the first issue, we have to look at the minuses and pluses. On the minus side, we reasonably believe that when the "revolving door" option is exercised by someone, we taxpayers may end up paying for government purchased services and materials that we probably don't need. We may even pay more money for this stuff we don't need than could have been paid with a more honest environment. This cost is not trivial - those that exercise the privileges of the "Revolving Door" are often doing very well financially - at the expense of the taxpayers. Lobbyists can make nearly a million dollars a year or more. This is part of the cost of doing business in the USA and is paid for by the consumers/taxpayers. Finally, there is the disturbing possibility that this intimacy between the government and industry, with the occasional swapping of positions, may be injurious to the health and welfare of citizens of these "contingency" areas. What I am saying is, I think there may be...
|
http://csua.com/feed/