Ending no-bid contracts won’t stop the budgetary bleeding

Joshua Taylor

As we head into federal budget season, Pentagon officials have indicated a willingness to end no-bid contracts for companies like Blackwater and Haliburton.

A sign of potential change in your government’s priorities? Sure.

A sign of the sweeping reforms and restructuring most Americans now seek?

Not quite.

Ending the “no-bid” contracts is not even a start on the road to a more responsible military budget. There are at least two types of militaries – Offensive and Defensive. Personally, I don’t think we need a military at all and I’m fairly certain that neither Canada nor Mexico will attack us. That said, as a compromise, I’d be willing to give 10% of the budget to a defensive military, but ending no bid contracts? That’s bullshit - sorry, but it is.

If they bid it out and get the “best price” possible, I will still be beheaded if I want to go to Kashmir, the Khyber Pass, or any of 150 other locales, not to mention that no one throughout the last 500-plus years has helped instill peace in Afghanistan or Iraq. Of course, we won’t even bother thinking of the young men and women dead for at best an ideology, or at the worst, revenge? Or their children, their betrothed, wives, husbands, parents, siblings, me - when I have to read about a friend who has died, or meet a guy at the bar who is barely functional and requires alcoholic sedation and weed to medicate away the pain of whatever-it-is-that-is-broken. No, the price of the contract isn’t my issue.

Further, I couldn’t be more disappointed in Obama - four of the most important cases have continued down exactly the same path they were on under the Bush Administration, even after the courts offered time to evaluate the government’s positions: immunity for law breaking telecoms; the denial of the oldest right known to us – habeus corpus (if I remember correctly, it was the Magna Carta sometime in the 1200s) – for people not suffering our wrath on our soil; and the completely deranged idea that lawyers representing charities can be spied upon, and when the treachery is discovered, the system remains in denial as twisted rules of evidence keep the idea of justice away from that seemingly empty and rusting lady of justice with her scales tilted in whichever way seems beneficial to the kings and lords and earls and CEOs.

Don’t misunderstand me - I totally dig that we have a black president. – it gets me lots of points among the intellectuals in Europe (sadly, not the Austrians, but screw them – they delivered Hitler to the world ... and not Spain either – they are as racist as the U.S. has ever been.)

The point is, if you’re black, pink, peach or purple, it doesn’t matter – if you torture, or “render” people to countries that will torture, with that knowledge, I don’t see how you can be any better than a white man with power who does the same thing.

The use of the word render offends me – one renders pork fat into lard, one renders a 3D drawing on a computer, however, one does not render a human being at all, except perhaps in a sublime painting or something equally poetic.

Now is a time to hold power accountable and not be a sycophant to skin color or barriers previously broken – there are real people dying and suffering – either help them or... well, just help them.

I would like it if folks stopped focusing on supporting the president and started focusing on supporting progressive ideas. Presidents come and go and not all of them are good (none have been in my life time – 34 years).

The majority doesn’t care at all about no-bid contracts – they care about over 50% going of the total budget (closer to 70% when you don’t include Social Security, etc.) to the military. They need to stop giving money to banks and give it directly to the people. Can anyone tell me the point of recapitalizing banks when the key interest rate is basically 0%? They can borrow the money from the Fed for free, as it is – they don’t need a special program to get the money. Can we stop with the silliness already? How about creating some legislation to deny the kind of lending practices you can read about in The Jungle - published in, give or take, 1904? Can we stop the savage preying anytime soon, albeit a century later than Upton Sinclair wrote about it?

But for reals – no bid contracts? Swat a gnat while the tsunami is coming and you might be irritation-free for a few moments at best. We need a viable third and fourth and fifth party because we need something more than sycophants and shock jocks to drive our nation where it needs to go.

Perhaps this is a rant, and if it is a criticism, it is only intended to ... well, I’m not sure of my intentions, but I suspect them of being positive – it is certainly not a demand, but a sincere request-challenge, a desire for more than what we’re being offered – an outreach for understanding, really. In the end, these are simply my thoughts at this waning hour of the night, and you should discount all of them if they cause the slightest bit of discomfort or (and see a doctor for good measure, should the irritation continue).