Paul Krugman: The Green-Zoning of America

[cal04]

One of the best of the many recent books about the Iraq debacle is Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s “Imperial Life in the Emerald City.” The book tells a tale of hopes squandered in the name of politicization and privatization: key jobs in Baghdad’s Green Zone were assigned on the basis of loyalty rather than know-how, while key functions were outsourced to private contractors.

Two recent reports in The New York Times serve as a reminder that the Bush administration has brought the same corruption of governance to the home front. Call it the Green-Zoning of America.

In the first article, The Times reported that a new executive order requires that each agency contain a “regulatory policy office run by a political appointee,” a change that “strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts.” Yesterday, The Times turned to the rapid growth of federal contracting, fed “by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.”

These are two different pieces of the same story: under the guise of promoting a conservative agenda, the Bush administration has created a supersized version of the 19th-century spoils system.

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http://donkeyod.wordpress.com/2007/02/04/the-green-zoning-of-america/

[eleny]

1. More young college grad members of wingnut think tanks?

Two years is going to feel like a lot longer.

[bonito]

2. These same thoughts keep passing my mind as well

What kind of Iraq can one expect to arise but a corrupt one from this maladministration. :dilemma:

[HappyWeasel]

3. I have a dark thought that we should just see how bad this thing gets...

I mean, that's the only time we even get around to do something, isn't it?

[SharonAnn]

4. Yes, I think we're like alcoholics. We may have to hit bottom beforee

we realize we've got a proboem and decide to do something about it.

Stupid, but that seems like how we do things. The hard and painful way.

[aquart]

5. Which was why the civil service was created, right?

Here's my thought: we void all legislation passed in the past six years, every effing line of it, and then require that political appointees be ineligible for consideration until THEY have passed competency tests for their specific job. The constitution won't let us institute competency tests for elective office, but appointed? Oh, it's so time.

[BR_Parkway]

6. What did they used to call the Political Officer that served with each

Russian military unit to make sure that everyone was properly loyal to the government? IIRC, he could even tell the commanders what to do because everyone was afraid of getting turned in.

And they call us the pinko-commies!

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. Building in inefficiency and incompetence.

When government failed in the past due to it multi-layered set of rules, it was called bureacracy. Now, when it fails due to cronyism and privatization, what should we call it?