Contractors

Reuters is outsourcing News to India and our defense contractors are outsourcing technical writing to the Ukraine?  Soon, when we do nothing in the US, we will be "nothing".............

When Kathy Hanten's employer began outsourcing some of her work to Ukraine last year, she could see the writing on the wall. After three years of working for a Carlsbad defense company as a technical writer, her responsibilities were gradually scaled down to a part-time position.

>From the NY Times:

In Washington, Contractors Take on Biggest Role Ever
By SCOTT SHANE and RON NIXON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — ..........
Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.

Contractors still build ships and satellites, but they also collect income taxes and work up agency budgets, fly pilotless spy aircraft and take the minutes at policy meetings on the war. They sit next to federal employees at nearly every agency; far more people work under contracts than are directly employed by the government. Even the government’s online database for tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been outsourced (and is famously difficult to use).

The contracting explosion raises questions about propriety, cost and accountability that have long troubled watchdog groups and are coming under scrutiny from the Democratic majority in Congress. While flagrant cases of fraud and waste make headlines, concerns go beyond outright wrongdoing. ..........(article)..

Molly Ivins (1944-2007)

Molly Ivins Quotes
From Jone Johnson Lewis,Your Guide to Women's History.

Selected Molly Ivins Quotations

• The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging.
• What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking
respect given to authority.
• Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.
• The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly,
or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.
• Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.
• There are two kinds of humor.
One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity
-- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to
public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is
traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only
aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not
only cruel -- it's vulgar.
• I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one
knows the truth.
• You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to.
• It is possible to read the history of this country as one long
struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to
everyone in America.
• What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the
system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people
get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in
Washington and our state capitols.
Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can
decide you don't much care for.
• There's never been a law yet that didn't have a ridiculous consequence
in some unusual situation; there's probably never been a government
program that didn't accidentally benefit someone it wasn't intended to.
Most people who work in government understand that what you do about it
is fix the problem -- you don't just attack the whole government.
• I believe in practicing prudence at least once every two or three years.
• It's hard to argue against cynics -- they always sound smarter than
optimists because they have so much evidence on their side.
• Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant - it tends to
get worse.
• I still believe in Hope - mostly because there's no such place as
Fingers Crossed, Arkansas.
• One function of the income gap is that the people at the top of the
heap have a hard time even seeing those at the bottom. They practically
need a telescope. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt probably didn't waste a
lot of time thinking about the people who built their pyramids, either.
OK, so it's not that bad yet -- but it's getting that bad.
• It's like, duh. Just when you thought there wasn't a dime's worth of
difference between the two parties, the Republicans go and prove you're
wrong.
• In the real world, there are only two ways to deal with corporate
misbehavior: One is through government regulation and the other is by
taking them to court. What has happened over 20 years of free-market
proselytizing is that we have dangerously weakened both forms of
restraint, first through the craze for "deregulation" and second through
endless rounds of "tort reform," all of which have the effect of cutting
off citizens' access to the courts. By legally bribing politicians with
campaign contributions, the corporations have bought themselves immunity
from lawsuits on many levels.
• Any nation that can survive what we have lately in the way of
government, is on the high road to permanent glory.
• During a recent panel on the numerous failures of American journalism,
I proposed that almost all stories about government should begin: "Look
out! They're about to smack you around again!"
• I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In
the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him.
A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical
fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives
don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives.
• The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The
government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not
American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We
want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions
other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with
our children's blood.
• from her last column, January 11, 2007: We are the people who run this
country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of
us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war.
Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous.
Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there.
• I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point --
race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to
question everything.
• If you grew up white before the civil rights movement anywhere in the
South, all grown-ups lied. They'd tell you stuff like, "Don't drink out
of the colored fountain, dear, it's dirty." In the white part of town,
the white fountain was always covered with chewing gum and the marks of
grubby kids' paws, and the colored fountain was always clean. Children
can be horribly logical.
• In Texas, we do not hold high expectations for the [governor's]
office; it's mostly been occupied by crooks, dorks and the comatose.
• Good thing we've still got politics in Texas -- finest form of free
entertainment ever invented.
• [on Texas politics] Better than the zoo.
• I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless
perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.
• As a veteran of many an electoral defeat at the polls, may I remind
you of the proper Texan attitude toward slaughter at the polls?
A few years before Billie Carr died this September at age 74, a friend
called to ask how she was doing. "Well," she said, "They just impeached
my boy up in Washington, there's not a Democrat left in statewide office
in Texas, the Republicans have taken every judgeship in Harris County,
and yesterday I found out I have cancer."
Pause.
"I think I'll go out and get a pregnancy test because with my luck,
it'll come back positive."
• Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to
discerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes one
hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise
the question: Why bother?
Oh, it's just that your life is at stake.
• It's a low-tax, low-service state--so shoot us. The only depressing
part is that, unlike Mississippi, we can afford to do better. We just don't.
• Texas' performance, or lack of it, on Medicaid is already the subject
of one federal court order and is likely to attract another as we
continue to lag in providing health insurance for poor kids.
• As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their
whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em
anyway, you don't belong in office.
• What is a teenager in San Francisco to rebel against, for pity's sake?
Their parents are all so busy trying to be non-judgmental, it's no
wonder they take to dyeing their hair green.
• I know vegetarians don't like to hear this, but God made an awful lot
of land that's good for nothing but grazing.
• The problem with those who choose received Authority over fact and
logic is how they choose which part of Authority to obey. The Bible
famously contradicts itself at many points (I have never understood why
any Christian would choose the Old Testament over the New), and the
Koran can be read as a wonderfully compassionate and humanistic
document. Which suggests that the problem of fundamentalism lies not
with authority, but with ourselves.
• The Israelis and the Palestinians are not condemned to some eternal
hell where they have to kill each other forever.
• Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are
in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in
salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent
salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing
that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of
their hearts.
• Conservatives have been mad at the Supreme Court since it decided to
desegregate the schools in 1954 and seen fit to blame the federal bench
for everything that has happened since then that they don't like.
• You want moral leadership? Try the clergy. It's their job.
• ...Phil Gramm, the senator from Enron...
• ...you could have knocked me over with Michael Huffington's brain.
• Say, here's an item: A group of right-wing journalists famed for their
impartiality has set themselves up as the Patriotism Police. No less
distinguished a crowd than Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, The New York Post
editorial page and the Fox News Channel -- quite a bunch of Pulitzer
winners there -- are now passing judgment on whether media outlets that
do actual reporting are sufficiently one-sided for their taste.
• I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience
somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but
it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.
• If he gets even more sedate, we will have to water him twice a week.
[Molly Ivins about then-President Ronald Reagan]
• If ignorance ever goes to $40 a barrel, I want drillin' rights on that
man's head. [Molly Ivins on Dick Armey]
• There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that
politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity.
Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion,
we say, "Poor dear, it's probably PMS." Whereas, if a man behaves in a
hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, "What an asshole." Let me
leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia, Sheesh, what an
asshole. [Molly Ivins about Camille Paglia]
• She bellies up to the gourmet cracker-barrel and delivers laid-back
wisdom with the serenity of a down-home Buddha who has discovered that
stool softeners really work. [Florence King on Molly Ivins]
• When Ivins writes, there has to be a jalapeno in every line. [critic
James Thurman on Ivins]
• I should confess that I've always been more of an observer than a
participant in Texas Womanhood: the spirit was willing but I was
declared ineligible on grounds of size early. You can't be six feet tall
and cute, both. I think I was first named captain of the basketball team
when I was four and that's what I've been ever since. [Molly Ivins about
Molly Ivins]
• Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the
United States, please pay attention."
• Everyone knows the man has no clue, but no one there has the courage
to say it. I mean, good gawd, the man is as he always has been: barely
adequate. [on George W. Bush]
• Let me say for the umpteenth time, George W. is not a stupid man. The
IQ of his gut, however, is open to debate. In Texas, his gut led him to
believe the death penalty has a deterrent effect, even though he
acknowledged there was no evidence to support his gut's feeling. When
his gut, or something, causes him to announce that he does not believe
in global warming -- as though it were a theological proposition -- we
once again find his gut ruling that evidence is irrelevant.
• Last week, I began a sentence by saying, "If Bush had any imagination
..." and then I hit myself. Silly me.
• [On then-candidate George W. Bush, in a 2000 book on his "short but
happy political life"] If, at the end of this short book, you find W.
Bush's political resume a little light, don't blame us. There's really
not much there. We have been looking for six years.
• [On George W. Bush (and George H. W. Bush)] If you think his daddy had
trouble with "the vision thing," wait till you meet this one.
• [Molly Ivins quotes George W. Bush in one of his "Bushisms"] "What I
am against is quotas. I am against hard quotas, quotas they basically
delineate based upon whatever. However they delineate, quotas, I think
vulcanize society. So I don't know how that fits into what everybody
else is saying, their relative positions, but that's my position."
• [On then-President George H. W. Bush] Personally, I think he's further
evidence that the Great Scriptwriter in the sky has an ovrdeveloped
sense of irony.