When you hire somebody to pack your parachute, perform open-heart surgery or be your official this-is-your-life food taster (because people are trying to kill you), you usually don’t go with the lowest bidder. When it comes to services for other (as in ordinary) people, economy is the name of the game. We must all sacrifice for the greater good. Hah!

Up to a point, of course. When  your assets are on the line, you want the best, not the cheapest! Hmmm….

All of the above may explain why, when politicians claim to want to save money and make government services better, they suggest those services and jobs be privatized. Turn the work over to contractors, the politicians say, who can do it better, faster and cheaper. It also helps if the contractor(s) donated to their campaigns, hired the the senator’s idiot nephew as a vice president, or are based in the state or congressional district the privatizer represents.

When proposing that government services be privatized — the Internal Revenue Service, the Postal Service, and now the nation’s (currently federal) air traffic control system — politicians and government officials draw certain lines. They make sure that privatizing won’t touch them. That they will continue to be served and guarded by sworn, highly trained personnel (the Secret Service and the U.S. Capitol Police, Supreme Court police, etc).  Politicians don’t mind privatizing security operations for rank-and-file feds (who often face the greatest danger). But when it comes to their personal security (which you pay for) they want the best. They want — and they get — well-trained, closely monitored and sworn federal people to guard their offices and homes, service their aircraft and, when necessary, taste their food. Just in case.

When President Harry Truman and his family moved into the Blair House in 1950 (while the White House was being refurbished) armed terrorists tried to storm the building at 17^th St. and Pennsylvania Ave. NW. White House guards (I think they were GS-5s) killed at least one of the attackers.  One of the guards, 40-year-old Leslie Coffelt,  a fed, died too.

In July 1998, Capitol Police detective John Gibson and officer Jacob Chestnut confronted an armed attacker. They were on protective detail, watching the offices of House Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and future House Speaker Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) Although mortally wounded by the armed gunman, the two cops returned fire and stopped the attack. Just a couple of feds doing their jobs.

When the Clinton administration eliminated a couple of hundred-thousand so-called “overhead” federal jobs, it didn’t touch any functions or people that provide services, support or protection for top elected and appointed officials. The jobs that were farmed out to the private sector included things like HR, which only deals with the little people, the actual workers, in government.

Rent-a-cops could certainly do many jobs at less cost, if they replaced the Capitol Police, the Supreme Court police and the Secret Service, too. It isn’t likely the contractor would spend as much in total compensation — things like annual leave, vacation, all those holidays and of course a good pension plan — as Uncle Sam does. Ask one of the nation’s premium package movers to deliver a letter —from D.C. to Sitka, Alaska — for 49 cents, and see what kind of service you get.

Bottom line: By some estimates there are currently six government contractors for every federal worker. In many cases the government couldn’t do without them. But the next time somebody proposes contracting out something that touches so many of us — air traffic control, the mail, meat inspection, chasing down tax deadbeats — maybe somebody should suggest that the politicians making the push should have a little skin in the game too.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Meredith Somers

Former Romanian ruler Nicolae Ceausescu was so paranoid about being poisoned that he brought his own food taster on a visit to Buckingham Palace, and washed his hands with alcohol. After the trip Ceausescu was suspected of stealing items from the palace.

Source: American Repertory Theater

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