No Conspiracies, Just Basic Incompetence and Greed
One of the the things that frustrates me the most about many who are more liberal than I am is the perception that I have that they believe much of the Republican agenda is a vast conspiracy. There are conspiracies for everything in their minds, but one of their favorites is Halliburton. This evil company, formerly run by Dick Cheney, is some sort of evil empire incarnation like something out of a movie.
I don't believe Dick Cheney could give a flip about Halliburton. I do believe they are one of a handful of defense contractors that have too much power in the new defense structure, but I believe they have gotten that on their own without undue influence from the administration. However, the following story just goes to show why almost all government spending is a bad idea. If it's wasteful for the government to spend millions of dollars on pet projects in the U.S., it's grossly wasteful to do the same thing in Iraq. Government is just ill-suited to spend money appropriately.
For those of us in the business of managing projects, the following article makes me sick to my stomach. I blame Halliburton. I blame the Army Corp of Engineers, and I blame the Department of Defense for not thinking through this mess more carefully. Who in the heck are these clowns spending our money?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/world/middleeast/25pipeline.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=06dbad0d8a941bb0&hp&ex=1146024000&partner=homepage
posted by Carl Spackler @ 8:35 AM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
Frankly, Mr. Spackler, I am somewhat taken aback.
Centerline is often called a radical when he spouses his ‘slippery slope’ theory on government spending – or government managing anything for that matter. The problem with most government programs is that they exist – not how they are managed.
Take something that most people think of as an unqualified success – Social Security. And let’s look at where it comes from, to illustrate my slippery slope theory.
In 1789, the Federal Government started paying pensions to disabled veterans of the Revolutionary War. The program was discontinued and then re-started in 1862 for the Civil War veterans. By 1909 the first federal old-age pension Law was enacted by Congress. In 1935, we passed the Social Security Act. Four years later, in 1939, FDR and the rest of the visionaries congratulated each other on their success and said ‘wow, it looks like we’re gonna have surpluses for as far as the eye can see, so let’s include dependent and survivor benefits.’ So now, people who had never contributed were getting benefits.
In 1950, we extended the Act to cover those who were disabled. In 1954 we established cost of living increases, as well as a disability “freeze” to ensure that disabled workers did not have diminishing benefits. In 1956 we included children and dependents of people who were under 18, even if they survived someone who had never contributed. In 1961, JFK reduced the voluntary retirement age to 62. In 1965, LBJ signed Medicare into law. After all, how much could a little medical care cost?
In 1972, Richard Nixon passed the Supplemental Security Income.
Now, unpredictably, the trust fund is in trouble.
I am proposing a new law in the same spirit. I have a sister who lives in Holmes Beach, FL. Holmes Beach is right South of St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg has the highest average and median age in our country. Most of its citizens receive social security pensions. Is it a stretch to say that I should be entitled to some kind of benefit because of this? I think not.
Mr. Nasser, does Cheney get the money from Halliburton if we leave Iraq? I would bet the answer to this is yes. I'm fairly sure that Cheney's contract does not say, "Only to receive this compensation if he feeds billions of government dollars into the company." How many other former CEO's receive considerable pensions once they leave the CEO position?
Let me clarify my position on companies like Halliburton for you. They are a new breed of defense contractor focused on services versus manufacturing equipment. That being said, they are still just a defense contractor. Do I trust them implicitly? Heck, no. I don't trust Lockheed Martin either, but I don't see people protesting them. The simple fact is that for all of the mistakes they make, I still trust private enterprise to do a better job managing money ON CERTAIN ACTIVITIES than the government. This phenomenon is no different than the outsourcing phenomenon that is affecting private business as well. The story I referenced shows how inefficiently companies like Halliburton AND government agencies like the Army Corp of Engineers still operate.
Scary at this reads, I would have posted a statement much like Mr. Spackler's. I would only leave out the part that reads "ON CERTAIN ACTIVITIES."
I will agree that there may be no direct private interest in conducting some activities (national defense is looking unsuccessfully for a companion in my list of activities private companies would not perform better), but even those certain activities Mr. Spackler’s feverishly leftist inclinations feel the government should undertake are performed dismally inefficiently. For all its raw power, the U.S. military uses dollars at a prodigious rate, incommensurate with results or capabilities.
As to the USA being the largest corporation – one can only wish. If the U.S. was the largest corporation, as Mr. Nasser proposes, we would:
1. Attract talent to the top corporate levels. Executive, legislative and judicial branches would be promotions for most people and results would be measurable.
2. Shareholders would vote as a function of their wealth and income. One man one vote would change to one dollar in taxes, one vote. Bill Gates’ votes would count more than mine and those of the junky at Camillus house.
3. Lack of performance would get people fired. Oops, sorry, I thought they had WMD’s in Iraq would result in immediate dismissal.
4. Stakeholders’ standard of living would increase significantly. Most corporations I know provide a channel through which people’s talents create the synergies to improve their lives through productivity they could not achieve on their own.
5. Creativity, innovation, productivity and efficiency would be adequately compensated. Inefficiency, laziness, incompetence and apathy would likewise be adequately compensated.
As to the thirst for conspiracies, it is unfortunately a part of our nature to think of dark motives on others. Companies like Haliburton, however, are managed by people such as those contributing to this blog. I have had an opportunity to make contributions to policy and to observe others making policy through the years. Perhaps the experience of this group is different, but I have yet to hear anyone in a policy making capacity, anywhere I have worked over the past 20 years, implicitly or explicitly spouse anything that would be a violation of my rather strict code of ethics. That is not to say that there will not be exceptions to prove the rule – MCI, Tyco and Enron come to mind. But, most fortunately, we have a system of checks and balances that, while it may be inadequate in sufficiently punishing the evildoers, it most certainly works by making the stakeholders more vigilant to transgressions.
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