Government Contracts, Contracting & Contractors Quotes
The George W. Bush administration was a throwback to an earlier era where such a spoils system was operational. Reforms had almost eliminated this type of contractor political favoritism but a culture of political corruption had developed in Congress and the Executive branch in the early 21st century that was more reminiscent of a more than a hundred years earlier. See {589738} for one of the examples that triggered the editorial.
He was referring to the famous Eisenhower quotation of 1961. See {641114}.
Most Americans agreed with this policy upon which Cleveland had run, but it was not favored by the companies that had been benefitting from monopolies, protective tariffs, corporate subsidies and corporate welfare, and government largess. Ironically, at the time, large American business was generally opposed to free trade and were supported by the Republican Party. The Democrats wanted free trade—just the opposite of the beginning of the 21st century.
The production of military equipment and supplies during WWII was little short of miraculous. The military procurement and contractor delivery was one of the major factors in our winning the war. However there were mistakes and one of the worst was the engines of the B-29 heavy bombers. Many American airmen died or were injured as a result of these defects. One of the worst was that to save weight so more bombs could be loaded, many of the parts of the B-29 engines were made of magnesium. The unanticipated consequence was that if the engines caught on fire, there was no way to put the fire out—in the air or on the ground. The magnesium was very flammable and burned at such a high temperature that there was no remedy for the fire which spread faster than fires in engines without magnesium. However, in the midst of the war, those planes had to fly with the risky engines. Fortunately the atom bomb was detonated ending the war and the B-29s could then be retrofitted.
Fogleman came out of retirement at the request of Air Force General Bernard Schriever, Commander of Air Force Systems Command, which was responsible for acquiring all missiles. He oversaw 40 percent of the Air Force budget most of which was spend on procurement contracts with companies. Schreiver wanted an experienced business man to oversee his procurement. In 1964 Foglemen volunteered to start up and train the procurement department for Sargent Shriver, President Johnson’s designee to direct the War on Poverty. 210 Job Corps Centers had to be constructed and corporations hired to operate the largest ones—all within a two year span. Fogleman faced the same problem where the Federal officials responsible for the Job Corp had very little business experience. He was very successful and persuaded Shriver and his key staff to hire a cadre of people with business experience and pay them at the high end of the Federal pay scale. The unit met the President’s deadline and obtained great prices, making exemplary use of taxpayer’s money. Fogleman retired for the third time, and after a few years the Job Corps was transferred to the Labor Department and the typical government procurement staff and norms began to operate. Forlleman and General Schreiber were unable to institutionalize Fogleman’s methods and after the General retired, the command that had been so effective for a few years, reverted to standard DOD procurement. See {634893} for a quotation of one of Fogleman’s trainees on military procurement.
Acronis successfully sells sophisticated software all over the world. Ironically, Russia had a plethora of brilliant, well trained scientists and engineers, most of whom could not find jobs in their field in Russia. Many emigrated to the United States, Israel, the UK, Canada, Germany and Australia. Only recently have Russian businessmen started technology companies.
There has been no war in US history where we ever knew who was getting the contracts during the war.
This included even the contracts that had nothing to do with the war, like the contractor who provided transportation for returning veterans or services to soldiers families when they were overseas. Individual contracts come into the open but the government has never supplied a list of the contracts to the public could see who was making money from the war and determine if the administration in power was selected the best and least expensive contractors or just rewarding donors and cronies.
In many countries throughout the world, corruption is rampant and any contractor to the government has to pay and often offers to pay the appropriate government officials. In the most corrupt countries like Nigeria, corruption is rife in all levels of government but is technically illegal. While in Saudi Arabia, the government has institutionalized the bribery and corruption but limited the amount to 6 percent. Corruption of this type is not only existent on government contracts but often operates for private money where government approval must be obtained. World Bank contracts for example are notorious for the percentage that must be paid to government officials despite the fact that the World Bank officially claims to be against corruption.
Rocky Flats was operated for the government by Dow Chemical Company, which unfortunately violated the terms of their contract and improperly buried nuclear waste which ended up producing so much radiation that the plant had to be closed down and the government had to buy up property around the nuclear plant as a buffer zones so that private people would not receive high radiation doses by being too close to the plant.
The notion of government subsidies to private companies that performed valuable pubic services—public-private partnerships was used extensively by Clinton and was one of reasons that New York developed faster than the other Colonies. At the formation of America, Virginia and Pennsylvania were much bigger and wealthier states than New York. In large part, Clinton led the rapid growth and development.
What was remarkable was that all the Defense Department and military witnesses agreed with Lynch on this point.
This quotation illustrates a political phenomenon that used to be common in American politics—the spoils system where government activities, positions, contracts and grants were awarded to the supporters of the winning party and not to the opponents. In modern times government contracts were supposed to have been awarded on the basis of qualifications and price and not conditioned on political support. In this rare quotation, the secretary admitted to violating his own Department’s regulations and using politics as a criteria where existing laws prohibited that.
Amazingly the newspaper castigated Cunningham for making obscene gestures and saying “Fuck You” to constituents who would tell the Congressman that there was too much Defense spending. The reason this was amazing is that the San Diego Union supported Cunningham every single time he ran for election and never wrote a word about his illegally swinging contracts to firms. He had been taking bribes all along and when the Federal judge sentenced him to jail called him the ‘most corrupt congressman in American History.’
