Headline, August19, 2013

''' !!! THE SACK OF WORLD : 

YOU IZ DA MAN !!!'''

As the recent revelations about ''Torture''  have made clear, even official interrogations for national-security purposes have been outsourced  -in this instance to other countries through the process known as  ''extraordinary rendition''. The sales of naming rights for public facilities and other amenities attracts notice mostly for the ungainly nomenclature that results  -mutants such as the Mitsubishi Wild Wetland Trail, at New York's Botanical Garden, in the Bronx and Whataburger Field, in Corpus Christi.

To attract more corporate underwriting, the Department of Interior had proposed that America's National Parks be liberally opened up to the sale of naming rights. No one is suggesting that there will soon be a J.Crew Cape Cod National Seashore. But might there be a Sherwin-Williams Painted Desert Trailhead??! An analyst at John Hopkins observed : ''Contractors have become so big and entrenched that it's a fiction that the government maintains any control.'' 

One obvious recent example is the rebuilding effort in Iraq. To supply the army or provide other services, traders and contractors often traveled with Roman legions; Julius Caesar had such a person with him during the Gallic Wars, explicitly ''for the sake of business.'' There may have been no alternative to giving the reconstruction job in Iraq to private corporations, including giant combines such as Bechtel, and Halliburton, but the result has been an effort that defies management of accountability. The evidence of widespread corruption in the Iraq rebuilding effort is beyond dispute.

Corruption aside, private companies are exempt from many regulations that would apply to government agencies. The records of private companies can't be obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. They can use foreign subsidiaries to avoid laws meant to restrain American companies. before the war, Halliburton itself used subsidiaries to do business with Iran, Iraq, and Libya, despite official American trade sanctions against all three countries.

More and more secret intelligence work translations, airborne surveillance, computing, interrogation, analysis, reporting, briefing  -is being farmed out to private entities. Not only is the intelligence community becoming farther fragmented, but, because the new jobs pay so well, a  ''spy drain''  is drawing officers out of the public sector and into the private market. And the drain isn't restricted to spies; at least 90 former top officials of Homeland Security and the White House Office of Homeland Security are now working for private companies in the domestic security business.

Meanwhile, the government seemed poised to turn the job of border police over to multi-national contractors, a task that will in turn be sub-contracted out to dozen of smaller companies, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman were among the corporations that indicated that they would submit bids to build a high-tech  ''virtual fences'' along the Mexican border, with an array of motion detectors, satellite monitors, and aerial drones. Boeing eventually won!  

A Homeland Security official conceded the abdication of government leadership, saying to the companies, ''We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business.'' And then one study from the 1990s suggests that the  ''privatization rate''  the rate at which public functions are being outsourced  -is roughly doubling every year. On paper the federal workforce nationwide, leaving the military aside, appears to total about two million people. But if you add in all the people in the private sector doing essentially government jobs with federal grants and contracts, then the figure rises by 10.5 million plus.

The commercialization of government probably explains why so many Washington entities are referred to as the shops: ''lobby shop, ''counterterrorism shop.'' there's no question that in certain ways that the private sector can outperform the public sector. Users of Federal Express. U.P.S. and DHL would sooner renounce citizenship then go back to relying only on the U.S. Postal Service. The problem is the cumulative effect of privatization across the board  -projected out over decades, over a century, over two  -and the leaching of management capacity from government.

This is the same ''misdirection'' of government force that McMullen discerns in Rome, easier to observe in retrospect, when the whole film is available, then in the brief, real-time clip any one of us allowed to see. The activities of the government, are in fact, being franchised out. You can't help lingering over the concept of ''franchise,'' wonder what a later day Geoffrey de Ste. Croix would make of it. Like Suffragium, the word originally had to do with notions of political freedom and civic responsibility. Derived from the old French word franc, meaning ''free,'' it later came to be associated with the most fundamental political freedom of all:

To exercise your franchise meant to exercise your right to vote. Only much later, in the mid 20th century, did the idea of being granted  ''certain rights'' acquire its commercial connotation: the right to market a company's services or products, such as fried chicken or Tupperware. Today, to have a franchise is in effect to have control over it.

Looking at the history of the word, it's tempting to write this epitaph: Here in miniature - for now and in the  foreseeable future, is the political history of the world :  All set to go the way of Rome.

! You Iz Da Man !  

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors, and Teachers of Cuba. See ya all on the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless: '' The Youthquake. ''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless