WP: Bush's 'Competitive Sourcing' Worries Disabled Workers

[Pirate Smile]

Bush's 'Competitive Sourcing' Worries Disabled Workers
Initiative May Put Employees With Special Needs At a Decided Disadvantage, Their Advocates Say

By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 18, 2005; Page A15

David Goodman, a clerk at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, is caught between two conflicting federal policies, one that helped him get his federal job 14 years ago and another that soon may take it away.

Goodman, 34, has autism, a developmental disability that affects the brain and impairs a person's social skills and reasoning. He landed his job in NIH's Occupational Health and Safety Division in 1991 as a "Schedule A" appointee, the beneficiary of long-standing government policies that promote the employment of people with disabilities in federal agencies.

"It's a nice job. I like the people that work there. They are nice to me," said Goodman, who works from 8 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. every weekday and lives independently in an apartment in Rockville.

Last month, his family learned that Goodman is among tens of thousands of federal employees, the vast majority of them not disabled, whose agencies are evaluating whether their jobs could be performed better and more cheaply by a private contractor. It is all part of President Bush's "competitive sourcing" initiative, which requires civil servants across the government to prove they can do their work more efficiently than private contractors, or risk seeing the work outsourced.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61079-2005Apr17.html

[mmonk]

1. Once the republicans get their judges through,

by the nuclear option or whatever, autistic persons most likely won't have jobs anyway since they will have all their legal protections removed and could be discriminated against at will. My son is autistic and currently in college. Our family is about to be set back many years when these people get through screwing up our laws.

[rodeodance]

2. i can only hope that for you and your family that it does not come to that

[mmonk]

12. Thanks for your concern

We are watching events and will react as they unfold to ensure a better future for one of my sons (whatever it takes including moving if we have to for what better purpose does a parent have?).

[rodeodance]

3. my god, what are we becoming?

[Robert Oak]

6. slave economy of course

Bush Administration propaganda translator:

"competitive sourcing" means
offshore outsourcing.

Grover Norquist literally wants to outsource the government
and this is what they are out to do.

all of the work of the last 100 years towards a government
that regulates, makes equal opportunity, a society ...
in essence a nation, is being dismantled.

[MisterP]

14. heck, Washington is hiring private collectrolls to harry auditees for the

IRS

[DulceDecorum]

4. ...and the collapse of medical insurance hasn't yet hit Main St.

In Kansas City, Kan., another doctor, Joel N. Schroeder, is considering filing for bankruptcy. He is unable to pay a $750,000 malpractice claim that a state judge levied against him on behalf of survivors of an elderly stroke victim. Before the case went to trial, Dr. Schroeder, who contested the accusation, learned that his malpractice insurer, the same as Dr. Slemp's, had imploded.
Both men had coverage from a company called Reciprocal of America. Their lives, and those of thousands of other doctors and lawyers in the South and the Midwest, have been in flux since Reciprocal cratered about two years ago amid a tangled web of business transactions that regulators describe as fraudulent.
<snip>
IN a startling turn of events, the Reciprocal investigation produced information that led to the ouster of Maurice R. Greenberg, the iron-fisted chairman and chief executive of American International Group, the insurance giant.
Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company of Warren E. Buffett, acquired General Re in 1998. This January, as Berkshire lawyers scoured General Re's accounts to respond to Justice Department queries about Reciprocal, they disclosed a questionable insurance transaction that A.I.G. used to improperly spruce up its books.
<snip>
Virginia regulators say they have uncovered improper transactions between General Re and Reciprocal dating back to 1990. But the most significant deals, they said, began in early 2000, after General Re determined that Reciprocal had underpriced its malpractice coverage and was going to be slammed with heavy losses.
<snip>
In the fall of 2001, Reciprocal was confronting nine-month losses totaling $90 million. So the company made its computer programmers work overtime, regulators say. On Nov. 7, 2001, they say, the programmers spent an entire night reducing scores of anticipated claims by about $19 million and then backdated the doctored accounts.
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050417/ZNYT01/504170424/1001/BUSINESS

Osama bought them a few more years of peace and quiet
which is why you do NOT hear these insurance companies complaining bitterly about September 11.

When the US Virgin Islands were hit by Hurricane Hugo, the roofs of the hospitals there were blown off. The feds have regulations and will not give money to a hospital with no roof, electricity or running water. It must first come up to code before it can receive federal money.
No insurance company will allow their clients to practise medicine in such a place where they could easily get sued.
This means that the only medical insurance now availible in the USVI is an air ambulance evacuation service to take you off Gilligan's Island.
The entire medical industry in the US is dependent on the insurance companies and they have pretty much collapsed. The publicly-traded HMO are tettering on the brink and MDs are now having a very hard time just making ends meet.

The Javits-Wagner-O’Day (JWOD) Program creates jobs and training opportunities for people who are blind or who have other severe disabilities. Its primary means of doing so is by requiring Government agencies to purchase selected products and services from nonprofit agencies employing such individuals. As a result, JWOD employees are able to lead more productive and independent lives.
http://www.jwod.com/aboutjwodprograms.aspx

The Javits-Wagner-O'Day Act of 1971, 41 U.S.C. 46-48c
is now defunct. ALL jobs are being outsourced.
Coming soon, soylent green.

[Javaman]

5. In a nut shell, we are so fucked.

[DulceDecorum]

8. ... like, OUCH!!

[NYC]

9. Thank you for that information.

Sometimes, I wonder what keeps all this beneath the surface. Will it ever coalesce? When will the feathers hit the fan, and will it be all the feathers at once?

[NYC]

7. Privatizing everything.

And we already know from Halliburton and other fine examples of privatization that it does not have to be better or cheaper.

...evaluating whether their jobs could be performed better and more cheaply by a private contractor. It is all part of President Bush's "competitive sourcing" initiative, which requires civil servants across the government to prove they can do their work more efficiently than private contractors, or risk seeing the work outsourced...

[DulceDecorum]

10. Outsource the US Executive Office

to Venezuela.

That Chavez will do twice the job for half the money.
Heck, if we promise not to try to kill him again, he might even do it for free.

[NYC]

11. That's the one job I would like outsourced.

I wish it would happen NOW.

[underpants]

15. As Krugman called it "Starve the beasters"

This is the whole big picture of the conservatives

http://www.faireconomy.org/econ/taxes/KrugmanTaxCutCon.html


3. Supply-Siders, Starve-the-Beasters and Lucky Duckies


The starve-the-beast doctrine is now firmly within the conservative mainstream. George W. Bush himself seemed to endorse the doctrine as the budget surplus evaporated: in August 2001 he called the disappearing surplus ''incredibly positive news'' because it would put Congress in a ''fiscal straitjacket.''


Like supply-siders, starve-the-beasters favor tax cuts mainly for people with high incomes. That is partly because, like supply-siders, they emphasize the incentive effects of cutting the top marginal rate; they just don't believe that those incentive effects are big enough that tax cuts pay for themselves. But they have another reason for cutting taxes mainly on the rich, which has become known as the ''lucky ducky'' argument.

[KamaAina]

13. You cannot possibly know how hard it was for him to get that job

in the first place.

When you're a person with autism, any sort of professional employment is all but out of reach. Take, for instance, the case of a fellow who's a cum laude Yale grad, with his twentieth reunion coming up next month. People in the class behind him are now members of the punditocracy (Fareed Zakaria, Slate's Jake Weisberg).

And our hero? He's a cubicle rat in a nonprofit agency that serves people with disabilities. He earns slightly less than the median wage in his adopted, rather low-wage state (mid-$30K).

(all right, it's really me :-) )

Congratulations, KamaAina! That puts you at the top of the autism pledge class.

Now imagine what it would be like for David Goodman, who does not have anything resembling an Ivy League degree, to suddenly be plunged back into the job market thanks to Bush**co's naked greed. The interview process alone is a nearly insuperable barrier for a person with autism. Your basic HR professional is highly skilled at detecting people who are too "different" to "fit in" at General Widget. How long do you think it'll take for her to reject David?

My guess: 15 minutes, of which the last 14 and a half will basically be just a courtesy. Next stop, Pizza Hut!

[underpants]

16. Well there goes W's big boost from the disabled crowd

that we saw during the Schiavo ordeal.