Finding conservative wisdom in the pages of the Washington Post is a lot like finding objective reporting in the pages of the New York Times … it’s a needle in a haystack experience, people.
But it happens every once in a blue moon … which is why we felt compelled to draw your attention to a masterful article written in yesterday’s WaPo written by reporter Robert O’Harrow.
Entitled “If Spending Is Swift, Oversight May Suffer,” O’Harrow’s front-page gem delves into the recent history surrounding rushed and reactionary government interventions, specifically invoking the botched government response to Hurricane Katrina and post 9/11 security measures.
From the story:
After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the government allowed a contract to hire airport screeners to grow to $741 million from $104 million, while failing to follow federal regulations designed to prevent fraud and abuse. Government contractors interviewed job applicants at five-star resorts and hotels, where auditors found they paid $1,180 for 20 gallons of Starbucks coffee, $1,540 to rent extension cords at one hotel and $5.4 million for nine months salary to the head of the event-planning firm that ran the show.
After Homeland Security officials acknowledged that they boosted the contract by $343 million without the paperwork necessary to justify the increase, they blamed the lapse on the need to move quickly.
In the rush to respond to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, federal authorities issued more than $10 billion in contracts, only about 30 percent through full-and-open competition, studies have found. The government ended up spending $2.7 billion on mostly no-bid contracts for 145,000 trailers and mobile homes, including 8,000 that were never used and 41,000 now being sold at 40 cents on the dollar.
“Overcharging has been frequent, and billions of dollars of taxpayer money have been squandered,” a congressional study of federal contracting concluded two years ago. “Multiple causes — including poor planning, noncompetitive awards, abuse of contract flexibilities, inadequate oversight and corruption — have all played a part.”
Think about it like this … for the second time in four months, the federal government is embarking on the greatest intervention in the free market since the New Deal.
That’s right … the second time in four months.
And once again it’s doing so without a shred of accountability or responsibility, to say nothing of the intellectual larceny associated with the assumption that government can stimulate anything other than more debt.
All this, of course, is after the first attempt failed miserably … even as we were told that our leaders had to act immediately in order to prevent an “economic Pearl Harbor.”
Just like Obama is telling us we have to “act immediately” now.
Don’t y’all get it? The sense of urgency is part of the squeeze …
By Red Bank Bar February 10, 2009 at 7:01 am
Awww, folks, still upset at FDR winning in ’32, are ya?
That argument’s over, folks. You lost miserably. Keynes works, folks. Tax cuts don’t work, folks.
Still intellectually AND morally bankrupt, folks. Pimping for a regional party of angry white men is not becoming, folks. Chao, folks, you’re now irrelevant.
By mijeel February 10, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Although I’m white and a man, I’m not angry. But I am pretty doggone outraged!
To call the President’s “Spending Bill” Keynesian (or bipartisan, for that matter) is ridiculous. Trying to pass off the socialistic, pork-laden, government power play as stimulus is an intellectually and morally bankrupt argument. Government simply spending money (it doesn’t have) does not equate to stimulus and to claim the bill is anything but social engineering is intellectually dishonest. Having no clue or confidence that it will have any stimulative effect whatsoever and foisting on future generations the invoice for yet another liberal experiment in socialism is just plain immoral.
Few, if any, of the people sent to Washington to represent “We the People” have actually read and understood everything in the legislation which proposes to spend nearly a TRILLION dollars. In less than a week’s time, the government has decided to spend more money than the cumulative debt amassed by the country between the Revolutionary War and the Carter Administration. If that isn’t being intellectually bankrupt I don’t know what is.