Privatization and Politics (10/16/2007)

Privatize, privatize goes the Bush drumbeat. Many jobs, once held by civil servants and our military, are now handed out to private firms. Federal no-bid contracts swell, and rules for competitive bids are bent to favor certain contractors. In one case, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security paid $579,000 to a private consulting firm to show it how to hire through a no-bid contract. The Bushies claim that such contracts are speedy and efficient, but government auditors found they often cost us more and put undue reliance on a very limited number of contractors.

A New York Times editorial points out, , “In a preliminary glimpse, 118 contracts worth $745 billion were found by government auditors to be rife with questionable award procedures, mismanagement, overcharging and skimpy to nonexistent oversight. Not incidentally, privatization has been a cash cow in stirring campaign donations from successful contractors.”

Halliburton shows us how privatizing works. The company employs many Bush/Cheney pals and is involved in several overseas projects, such as the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. From 2001 through 2005, Vice President Cheney received so-called deferred salary payments from Halliburton. Halliburton’s political action committee has been generous to the Republicans: in the 2004 federal campaign, it gave $189,000 to Republican campaigns, but only $18,000 to Democratic candidates; it was 16 times likelier to give to a Republican than a Democrat over the last 4 election cycles; and 97% of its individual board member donations went to Republicans, for a total of $344,717. Not surprisingly, Halliburton’s government contracts increased by 600% during the Iraq war.

In another example, Blackwater, the State Department’s main private security contractor in Iraq, has received more than $1billion in federal contracts. Its lavish no-bid contracts and killing of innocent Iraqis are now, finally, under investigation. Blackwater charges $1,222 per day for each private military operative, more than 6 times the pay of a soldier, but its operatives are not subject to the same rules as our military. Erik Prince, founder and chief executive of Blackwater, was a White House intern under President George H.W. Bush. He has donated over $225,000 to the Republicans, and has close ties to conservative Christian groups. His sister, Betsy DeVos, former chair of the Michigan Republican party, raised $100,000 for the Bush/Cheney 2004 race. Her husband Richard was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for Michigan governor in 2006. Columnist Maureen Dowd comments that we’ve gone from a military-industrial complex (which President Eisenhower warned us about) to a “mercenary-evangelical complex.”

- Judith Kohler

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