Patronage has existed as long as government. The two go hand in hand. Sometimes, the worst is rooted out by the media but usually only after an appointee demonstrates utter incompetency (see Michael Brown/FEMA) or commits egregious crimes and such becomes just impossible to ignore or cover up (Kenneth Tomlinson/Corporation For Public Broadcasting).
As with so many things, the Bush Administration has taken the awarding of jobs and positions to a low heretofore unknown. But this typical to-the-victor-goes-the-spoils system has also been re-worked as a construct of the political/idealogical philosophy saluted by the I-Hate-Government crowd, the Bush Administrationists.
See, not only is the Bush Administration rewarding it’s cadre of loyalists and purchasing new foot soldiers with figurative diamonds and gold–it is also quietly doing its best to be the worst government entity ever in order to reinforce the meme that all government is bad and that private enterprise is the one and only indisputable saviour. Granted, sometimes, such as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, spin control spins out of control but then its simply time to blame anyone and everyone else and order your corporate media sycophants to broadcast just such.
How else can the number of completely unqualified and inept ‘bush leaguers’ placed in charge of important agencies, entities that could do great public good if led correctly and allowed to, be explained? Granted, placing the kool-aid imbibers throughout the levels of government has also taken place because of the desire to implement no-questions-ever-asked as part of the official modus operandi and to have brutish enforcers at the ready.
A scurrilous example is the hiring of contractors to do much of the dirty work in Iraq. Not just hiring them but making sure to annoint them free of ANY liability for ANY action while on Iraqi soil. We have so-called enforcers earning thousands more a month than the typical soldier—aye, there’s a real cost savings for you—with zero ultimate responsibility. Kill an iraqi because you want to and the worst thing that will happen is being put on a plane ASAP to the United States.
Also, look at who was hired to work in the Green Zone in Iraq. From my earlier review of “Imperial Life In The Emerald City” came this:
“A vast majority of the advisory staff in the Green Zone were there because of allegiance to George Bush and the Republican Party. Financial contributors and those having other connections were the chosen. Aadherence to Bush’s vision for Iraq was mandatory. Those uncertain about Bush’s vision were rejected. Also, key hiring questions were an applicant’s stance on Roe v. Wade and which presidential candidate did you vote for in the last election? An attempt to headhunt was shut down by those in D.C.despite Bremer’s pleas for bodies to fill positions. A galvanizing example: Bremer’s budget chief asked to be sent ten go-fers so a search was made, primarily focused on entry level Heritage Foundation job applicants. After ten were hired, six were then assigned to manage Iraq’s 13 billion dollar budget although none had any previous financial experience. The CPA was for Bush zealots–similar to a cult.”
Does this sound like George Bush wanted or even cared about succeeding? Allegiance before all else is blatantly treasonous. How many people, Iraqi and American, have died because George Bush is too weak and infantile to brook any debate or differing views?
It’s one thing to boldly announce your true and actual political philosophy and lay out how you will operate if elected. It’s obviously totally another to secretly operate as a Fifth Column. But when you are as badly malformed as George W. Bush…
Paul Krugman wrote a spot-on column recently that highlighted all this:
The Green-Zoning of America
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times
February 5, 2007
One of the best of the many recent books about the Iraq debacle is Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s “Imperial Life in the Emerald City.” The book tells a tale of hopes squandered in the name of politicization and privatization: key jobs in Baghdad’s Green Zone were assigned on the basis of loyalty rather than know-how, while key functions were outsourced to private contractors.
Two recent reports in The New York Times serve as a reminder that the Bush administration has brought the same corruption of governance to the home front. Call it the Green-Zoning of America.
In the first article, The Times reported that a new executive order requires that each agency contain a “regulatory policy office run by a political appointee,” a change that “strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts.” Yesterday, The Times turned to the rapid growth of federal contracting, fed “by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.”
These are two different pieces of the same story: under the guise of promoting a conservative agenda, the Bush administration has created a supersized version of the 19th-century spoils system.
The blueprint for Bush-era governance was laid out in a January 2001 manifesto from the Heritage Foundation, titled “Taking Charge of Federal Personnel.” The manifesto’s message, in brief, was that the professional civil service should be regarded as the enemy of the new administration’s conservative agenda. And there’s no question that Heritage’s thinking reflected that of many people on the Bush team.
How should the civil service be defeated? First and foremost, Heritage demanded that politics take precedence over know-how: the new administration “must make appointment decisions based on loyalty first and expertise second.”
Second, Heritage called for a big increase in outsourcing “contracting out as a management strategy.” This would supposedly reduce costs, but it would also have the desirable effect of reducing the total number of civil servants.
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