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Can Francis End The Church’s Civil War?

Ross Douthat hopes so:

Ever since the Second Vatican Council, the church has (as most people know) been locked in a kind of low-grade institutional civil war, between a liberal/progressive/modernizing viewpoint that had its moment in the 1960s and 1970s, and the more neoconservative perspective that set the tone for John Paul II and Benedict’s papacies. (I say neoconservative because this was essentially a quarrel over the meaning and implications of Vatican II’s liberalizing reforms, between factions that had both supported them, with critics of Vatican II confined to the sidelines and the fringe.)

For my generation of Catholics, wherever our specific sympathies lie, this inheritance of conflict has created a hunger for synthesis – for a way forward that doesn’t compromise Catholic doctrine or Catholic moral teaching or transform the Church into a secular N.G.O. with fancy vestments, but also succeeds in making it clear that the Catholic message is much bigger than the culture war, that theological correctness is not the only test of Christian faith, and that the church is not just an adjunct (or, worse, a needy client, seeking protection) of American right-wing politics. This desire has been palpable in the Catholic blogosphere for some time, and I think you can see it percolating in many of the publications in whose pages the old intra-Catholic battles were so often fought.

Me too. And that is why Francis’ insistent emphasis on the faith as a way of life – and not an ideology – is so brilliant a way out of this debilitating conflict. And that way of life demands a humility that is simply not consonant with the harsh rhetoric of, say, Cardinal Dolan, over comparatively trivial matters, or, for that matter, the iconoclastic over-reach of some reformers in the wake of the Second Council. Would a humble faith like Saint Francis’ be aligning with the Republican right in a culture war? Is the calm gentleness of Jesus compatible by the rigid enforcement of total obedience to a set of increasingly detailed doctrinal non-negotiables that we are somehow supposed to will ourselves into believing, even when our own lives belie them? The questions answer themselves.

I see Francis increasingly like Jesus in the Gospel story of the woman caught in adultery. I wrote about this last year in this way:

She is about to be stoned. Does Jesus uphold the law he came to fulfill against the woman? No. He demands that those without sin cast the first stones. And he forgives the woman – while insisting she not sin again. Actually, he does more than forgive. He says: “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”

This is the Christian model of sexual morality, it seems to me, as it is of morality in general. Jesus poses an impossible standard and then refuses to condemn an actual tangible human being who fails to reach it. Since we are all completely ridden with sin, we equally have no right to condemn anyone else, even if we are living the most upright lives according to the law.

Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

And in this classic scene in which religious authorities stand ready to deploy their power to punish sin, Jesus does something strange. He physically defuses the dynamic. She is cowering; they are threatening; they demand he uphold the law. What does he do? He sits on the ground and doodles in the dust. He is neither condemned nor condemner. He breaks that circle. He does not condemn. He forgives.

So I am a sinner.

Francis is defusing the binary dynamic and the authoritarian dynamic. His first words in the America interview were: “I am a sinner.” In the standing-only battle lines of the church’s civil war, Francis has sat on the ground, breaking the cycle, neither condemned nor condemner, just a sinner.

And it is increasingly clear this is not just public relations. The Papal Nuncio to the US just told the US bishops the following:

Pope Francis, Vigano said, “wants bishops in tune with their people.” The pope “is giving us by, his own witness, an example of how to live a life attuned to the values of the gospel. While each of us must take into consideration our adaptability to the many different circumstances and cultures in which we live and the people whom we serve, there has to be a noticeable life style characterized by simplicity and holiness of life. This is a sure way to bring our people to an awareness of the truth of our message.” Vigano quoted liberally from Pope Paul VI’s Evangelii Nuntiandi, which, he noted, Francis has called “the greatest pastoral document written to date.” It was promulgated in 1975.

“The first means of evangelization,” Paul VI wrote, “is the witness of an authentically Christian life, given over to God in a communion that nothing should destroy and at the same time given to one’s neighbor with limitless zeal. As we said recently to a group of lay people, ‘Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers. and if it does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.”

Or in the words of Saint Francis: “Preach the Gospel everywhere. If necessary, with words.”

(Photo: Alessandro Di Meo/AFP/Getty Images)

The Reality Of Serious Weight Loss, Ctd

A reader writes:

One aspect of substantial weight loss that hasn’t been brought up in your discussion thread is the effect it has on your sex life. Yes, once the euphoria has worn off, you have to come to terms with the disappointment that your new body is not what you envisioned. But you also have to face the fact that even a modest amount of excess skin may actually make you less physically attractive than before. Those who have not found love or a secure relationship may see weight loss as a key to finding new social and romantic opportunities. This was certainly true for me, but I was shocked to discover that my body after weight loss appeared to be more repulsive to potential lovers than it had been before. I have experienced the look of disappointment and shock on the face of a new lover – even after I had been open and honest about my body. For me, the realization that I may never again be physically intimate and experience the joy of being held, caressed, and loved is actually worse than the health and social problems of obesity.

The above photo from Julia Kozerski is entitled “Lovers Embrace”, from her (NSFW) series Half. Another reader:

It’s been over four years since I started getting my life and weight under control. I joined a support group and the weight just slid off. It’s been three years now since I lost the last of 170 pounds. Those first months in my “new” body were disconcerting.

I carried a photo of the “old” me around to show people I met. I was telling them they weren’t really talking to this normal-looking person, but rather that fat guy. It took a long time for me to shake that habit.

The second thing I remember was a feeling of instant vulnerability. Having been used to being the biggest person in any room, I never felt physically threatened. Ever. Suddenly I was 200 pounds, not 370. A guy I used to outweigh by over a hundred pounds now had be by 40 or 50. What would happen if he turned on me? I’d never feared that in my life.

Hugs are strange too. That bulk I carried around was a great barrier to keep people away. Now they’re RIGHT THERE.

Lastly … intimacy. I’ve been 100 pounds overweight since adolescence. Needless to say, I didn’t get a lot of attention from women. I went my entire thirties without a single sexual partner. Now women check me out regularly. It’s still weird. I wish I could say I’m getting used to it, but I’m not.

Reddit had a great discussion a month or so back on weight loss and the struggle to quiet the inner fat guy/girl. I saw myself in a lot of it. Thanks as always for the discussion.

Richard Cohen, In Context

TNC’s take-down deserves a wider audience:

The problem here isn’t that we think Richard Cohen gags at the sight of an interracial couple and their children. The problem is that Richard Cohen thinks being repulsed isn’t actually racist, but “conventional” or “culturally conservative.” Obstructing the right of black humans and white humans to form families is a central feature of American racism. If retching at the thought of that right being exercised isn’t racism, then there is no racism.

Context can not improve this. “Context” is not a safe word that makes all your other horse-shit statements disappear. And horse-shit is the context in which Richard Cohen has, for all these years, wallowed. It is horse-shit to claim that store owners are right to discriminate against black males. It is horse-shit to claim Trayvon Martin was wearing the uniform of criminals. It is horse-shit to subject your young female co-workers to “a hostile work environment.” It is horse-shit to expend precious newsprint lamenting the days when slovenly old dudes had their pick of 20-year-old women. It is horse-shit to defend a rapist on the run because you like The Pianist. And it is horse-shit to praise a column with the kind of factual error that would embarrass a j-school student.

Richard Cohen’s unfortunate career is the proper context to understand his column today and the wide outrage that’s greeted it.

Weigel tackles Cohen’s excuses. My thoughts here. A reader writes:

As the parent of biracial children, I am naturally attuned to the cultural shift regarding interracial couples and biracial children that has occurred in this country.

When my ex-wife and I had children, I perceived that my kids would face situations in both black and white communities where their particular status would cause them grief and I tried to determine when it would be best to address it with them; deciding that it was probably best when something triggered the need. To my pleasant surprise, my now high-school aged kids have never had an incident of any note as biracial children and no identity problem for themselves, because quite frankly their status isn’t much of a status. They just don’t stand out very much. If you go to any suburban or urban grade school or high school today, you will find many kids whose origin you couldn’t identify and if given a list of names, would be unable to match the surnames to the kids. My kid’s soccer team has an Asian looking kid with a Greek name, a Black looking kid with a Jewish surname a vaguely Latin looking kid with a generic Anglo name and my own Irish surnamed kid who looks vaguely Black or Latin.

Reading Mr. Cohen is like listening to the old relative at Thanksgiving dinner who is so far out of touch with the actual conventional thinking of his own world that rather than be outraged, you blush and then pity the man. His own newspaper reported on this shift a couple of years ago, but who reads papers anymore?

A Promise The Administration Is Likely To Break

The WaPo reports that Healthcare.gov is unlikely to be ready by the end of this month:

Software problems with the federal online health insurance marketplace, especially in handling high volumes, are proving so stubborn that the system is unlikely to work fully by the end of the month as the White House has promised, according to an official with knowledge of the project.

James Capretta, an Obamacare opponent, argues that the law is in major trouble, even if the administration hits its deadline:

The immediate problem for the administration is that even with a perfectly functional enrollment and data transmission system, it would be challenging to process new insurance enrollments of 4 million or so people in a two week period. Given the track record of healthcare.gov to date, it is highly unlikely that the system will be able to handle that much volume in that short of a time frame.

Moreover, it is also completely unrealistic, not to mention unreasonable, to expect so many Americans to suddenly become comfortable again with healthcare.gov, enter their personal financial information into it, and then select an insurance plan—in just a two-week period. For starters, contrary to the president’s assertions, many of the current enrollees in individual market plans will not be impressed by the premiums, cost-sharing requirements, and provider networks of the exchange plans. If and when the web site becomes more operational, the administration will face another political firestorm from the rate shock that is built into Obamacare’s cost structure.

And yet, the administration would like us to believe that, once the tech wizards work their magic, it will all be smooth sailing. In effect, the Obama administration wants us all to believe that the system is going to be prepared to go from today’s dead stop to 100 miles per hour in a matter of days, with no risk whatsoever of a crash. Who wants to take that bet?

Avik Roy, another Obamacare critic, wants the website shut down until it works properly

Based on what we’ve seen to date from the administration, it appears likely that the website will take four to six months to function properly. The Obama administration should take the advice of the Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus (D., Mont.) and shut the thing down until they can fix it.

But the administration appears hell-bent on keeping the exchange open, because they want to enroll as many people into Obamacare before the President’s term is up. That way, the law will become harder to repeal, even if Republicans win in 2016.

Will Obamacare Divide The Democrats?

Douthat thinks it’s possible:

To the extent there’s any policy issue with the potential to actually scramble the 2016 primary season for Democrats, it’s probably the one that’s scrambling 2014 for them right now: Obamacare. That’s because if the law still isn’t working out as promised in two years time, and if President Obama ends up locked in some sort of agonized struggle with a Republican Congress over various controversial “fixes,” it isn’t clear exactly what the sweet spot for a Democratic candidate in 2016 will be. In Bill Clinton’s recent comments on how the law should be amended to let more people keep their plans, you can see a hint of one tack that his wife might take — essentially focusing on whatever looks like the least popular aspect of the fully-implemented law and promising to fix that.

But what if there isn’t an obvious, plausible fix for whatever might still be going wrong? And what if a piecemeal critique of the law from candidate Clinton ends up echoing whatever the G.O.P. talking points of 2015 happen to be? Could she then be attacked effectively as a sellout and a compromiser by a left-wing challenger who essentially campaigns against the insurance industry, and promises that the solution to Obamacare’s faults is the single-payer plan of liberal fantasy?

I still think the answer is, “no, probably not.” But if I were tasked with planning an anti-Hillary insurgency right now, I’d be thinking a lot more about how to pitch Medicare For All than about the exact details of my plan to blow up Wall Street.

Chait, on the other hand, argues that Wall Street regulation could be a major factor in the primaries:

It’s odd that a staggeringly lopsided issue has played so little a role in national politics the last five years. The initial 2008 bailout vote took place in emergency conditions, with the cooperation of a Democratic House and a Republican president, and so close to the election that neither party had the chance to tailor its campaign message to take advantage of the public backlash. Republicans subsequently benefited from the backlash against the financial bailout merely by being the opposition party, but they never crafted a serious agenda against Wall Street. President Obama fought for and passed a legislative response, the Dodd-Frank regulations, which placed him in the position of defending the status quo. That, in turn, helped provoke a wild, paranoid backlash on Wall Street, memorably chronicled by Gabriel Sherman, that drove the industry into a full alliance with the GOP. By the 2012 cycle, Wall Street had titled its donations heavily to Republicans, who were pledging to repeal Dodd-Frank while nominating a financier at the top of the ticket.

So what may be the most powerful issue in American politics has lay unused by either party since the crisis. Either party could pick it up. A bill to break up the big banks has the sponsorship of liberal Democrat Sherrod Brown and conservative Republican David Vitter. Warren has a tough regulatory proposal of her own, which has the support of John McCain. A Warren campaign could force Clinton to follow suit, and possibly even pressure the Republican nominee.

Obamacare Needs GOP Support

Harold Pollack wants the administration to do everything within its power to get buy-in from “Republican state office-holders who have actual responsibilities to govern who will eventually own their state’s version of health reform”:

Liberals like me may be disappointed by compromises the White House is likely to make to provide GOP governors with a dignified path to accept Medicaid expansion. Some states wish to impose (modest) co-pays for non-generic drugs or for emergency department use. Others ostensibly maintain the right to opt-out of the Medicaid expansion if the federal government lowers its matching rates. Republican governors require such concessions. After all, they have spent the past five years bitterly opposing health reform. Maybe HHS will follow the Arkansas compromise and allow more poor people into exchanges rather than Medicaid in states that request that option.

The administration always seemed willing to negotiate on medical malpractice, too. This proved to be a moot point in 2009 and 2010, as Republicans preferred to trumpet this issue politically rather than to negotiate any deal. But perhaps we have another chance for movement.

We may also be wise to revisit just how minimal the most minimal insurance packages should be.

In 2011, an Institute of Medicine committee was asked to clarify what the “essential health benefits” under the new law. The IOM recommended a package based on what the typical small business would cover, and noted the importance of such restraint to keep premiums low. It was a much more limited plan than many advocates support, and the committee was sharply criticized. But this month’s backlash underscores the wisdom of the IOM’s approach. I don’t know yet what can be done without compromising public health components such as substance abuse and mental health coverage, but these matters deserve a real look.

For liberals, these may be painful concessions. Yet this isn’t November 2008, when Democrats could plausibly look forward to imposing their legislative will. Democrats need Republican buy-in for health reform to secure public legitimacy and to help millions of needy people. Democrats also need the administrative capacity of state governments, willingly deployed, to make health reform actually work.

Don Taylor suggests other reforms. A big one:

For 2015, replace the individual mandate with the auto-enroll provisions envisioned by Rep. Paul Ryan’s Patients’ Choice Act. Strong auto-enroll policies enacted while allowing an opt out (presumably with some consequences, correct Libertarians?) could actually pool risk better than the weak individual mandate we now have. We will also have to develop a default insurance option to make auto-enroll work, which is the one thing I would add to the ACA if I could do just one thing.

Bugged Out

Jeffrey Lockwood is an entomologist-turned-entomophobe who investigates the fear of insects in his new book, The Infested Mind. In an excerpt, he describes his first brush with bug fear, in a canyon in Wyoming:

Grasshoppers boiled in every direction, ricocheting off my face and chest. Some latched on to my bare arms and a few tangled their spiny legs into my hair. Others began to crawl into my clothing — beneath my shorts, under my collar. They worked their way into the gaps between shirt buttons, pricking my chest, sliding down my sweaty torso. For the first time in my life as an entomologist, I panicked.

In a review of the book, Michelle Nijhuis reasons that “entomophobia seems pretty rational”:

There may be some hard-wiring involved, but we learn a lot of our entomophobia — from unfortunate childhood experiences with beehives or anthills, from our parents, or from the culture at large. ”We are weevils/We are evil/We’re aggrieved/Since time primeval,” begins a poem in Douglas Florian’s Insectlopedia. Read that at bedtime for a few nights, parents, and you’ll have a thriving little entomophobe on your hands.

While Lockwood thoroughly dissects the biology and psychology of our infested minds, he can’t explain away his own fears. In the years after his encounter in the Wyoming canyon, he moved out of traditional scientific research and into work that combines science and the humanities — an intellectual evolution that he credits in part to his phobia. He has come to a sort of peace with his fear, learning to see it not as a handicap but as a reaction to the sublime. For most of us, he points out, a skittering insect is as alien as the open space at the edge of a cliff, and we’re repelled by it and drawn to it in a similarly paradoxical way. So next time you floss a cricket leg out of your molars, remember: It’s not disgusting. It’s sublime.

An interview with Lockwood is here.

(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

Blockbusted, Ctd

Readers continue the thread:

One comment I think deserves to be made about the demise of Blockbuster is that it was specifically their aggressive late-fee policies which gave Netflix its beachhead into the market. People tend to forget that Netflix started out as a mail subscription service where physical disks were sent to the customer. On the face of it, that sounds like a crazy business. Why would I wait several days to get a movie when I can just go down to the local Blockbuster and get one immediately? The answer, of course, is the hassle and cost of the late fees. Netflix’s no-late-fee policy was a critical differentiator that gave them a toe-hold in a market that Blockbuster was dominating.

Another:

I wrote a paper in college on Blockbuster and how their management was a classic example of a reactionary business strategy. It’s really not their business model that sank Blockbuster, but rather their poor management style. Let’s not forget they had an opportunity to buy Netflix several times for as low as $50 million (currently valued at $20 billion) back in 2005. By the time Blockbuster launched their own dvd mail service in 2007, Netflix had started streaming video online.

I’m afraid it only gets more ridiculous from there. Blockbuster was actually on the cutting edge of video-on-demand back in the late ’90s and even set-up a partnership with one of the largest companies in the world in order to provide video-on-demand service via a nationwide broadband system. One problem though: that company was Enron. So that didn’t work out so well …

Another:

I’m going to be closing my fifth and final Blockbuster store this holiday season and I am sad – but also relieved.

I joined the company right around the time when Jason Bailey worked there (2005). And I have had a much, much different experience than he has. Most of the managers I’ve worked with, especially these past two years, have shared my enthusiasm for movies and do not treat their work as just collecting a paycheck. I make sure all my employees love movies and we’ve had a great relationship with our regular customers since I took over my store recently. We even had an awesome Halloween party last month with a lot of kids and it reminded me how much families did enjoy coming into the store and relying on our service to help find the best movies for them. Ironically, we finally learned to turn ourselves into the mom-and-pop stores that Blockbuster drove out of the communities so long ago.

Most employees would tell you this has been a slow death – we had over 1,500 stores when Dish Network bought us back in 2011 and they’ve been shedding stores since. But they would also say they thought we had time through the holidays to try to turn things around. I don’t even think most at the corporate level in Blockbuster knew that Dish Network would deliver the axe so swiftly. We were gearing up for the holidays and had a giant holiday guide ready to go!

I don’t get upset that much anymore when people bring up Netflix or Redbox bringing about our doom. I actually think small, independent stores (much like the book industry) can thrive in this market. If you look at Family Video, a growing chain in the Midwest, they are consistently busy. They don’t have to pay rent (the company owns the plazas they’re in) and they’re busy enough to keep the lights on.

I would like to echo that sentiment that going to the video store is a communal experience. If the right people are in place, video stores can provide the right place for people to share their love for movies and that obscure horror film about zombie Nazis or share quotes from Princess Bride or just take in the spectacle of Joss Whedon’s Avengers playing on the nearby TV.

Another hated those TVs:

They would play previews for all sorts of movies on several large screens with the sound jacked up. The problem was that many of those previews were inappropriate for the children that I sometimes had in tow. When previewing a slasher movie they may cut out the worst, but taking a four-year-old through a store to a soundtrack of screams and explosions was not merely unpleasant, it was entirely inappropriate. The managers said that they had no authority to shut the previews down. Once when I complained, a manager replied, “How do you think I feel? I have to listen to this crap all day.”

The good thing is that in many communities there are still small independent video stores, just like there are small bookstores. My favorite is staffed by dyed-in-the-wool movieheads who are basically curators and are able to direct me to good flicks far more effectively than Netflix et al.

The One Word To Survive Babel

“Huh?” is near universal:

Researchers traveled to cities and remote villages on five continents, visiting native speakers of 10 very different languages. Their nearly 200 recordings of casual conversations revealed that there are versions of “Huh?” in every language they studied – and they sound remarkably similar. … The languages studied were Cha’palaa, Dutch, Icelandic, Italian, Lao, Mandarin Chinese, Murriny Patha, Russian, Siwu and Spanish. (English wasn’t included in the study.) Across these languages, they found a remarkable similarity among the “Huhs?” All the words had a single syllable, and they were typically limited to a low-front vowel, something akin to an “ah” or an “eh.” Sometimes this simple word started with a consonant, as does the English “Huh?” or the Dutch “Heh?” (Spellings are approximate.) Across all 10 languages, there were at least 64 simple consonants to choose from, but the word always started with an H or a glottal stop – the sound in the middle of the English “uh-oh.”

Why would “huh?” take on similar forms in unrelated languages? The researchers’ theory:

In conversation, we are under pressure to respond appropriately and timely to what was just said; when we are somehow unable to do this – for example, when we didn’t quite catch what the other person just said – we need an escape hatch. This particular context places constraints on, and functional motivations for, the form of the word. The signal has to be something maximally simple and quick to produce in situations when we’re literally at a loss to say something; and it has to be a questioning word to signal that the first speaker must now speak again. In language after language, we find a word like ‘Huh?’ that fits the bill perfectly: it is a simple, minimal, quick-to-produce questioning syllable.

We propose this is a form of convergent evolution in language. Convergent evolution is a phenomenon well-known from evolutionary biology. When different species live in similar conditions, they can independently evolve similar traits. In a similar way, the similarity of huh? across a set of widely divergent languages may be due to the fact that the constraints from its environment are the same everywhere.

Can Three Geeks Save Obamacare? Ctd

A reader writes:

Not to pooh-pooh the efforts of these guys, but it’s worth mentioning that their “strong suit”, California, has its own exchange and website, and the CA site has had none of the problems of healthcare.gov. It’s long had an easy way to preview plans with subsidy information. So, to the extent that these dudes are making things easier for non-Californians, good for them. But presenting this as a “fix” and using California as an example does CoveredCA.com a disservice.

Another points out:

Go to https://www.healthcare.gov/find-premium-estimates/ and you can do exactly what Health Sherpa does. This feature was functional from the start but no one knows about it. Also the big issue is the back side compatibility with the insurance companies and their systems. That’s where the big problems are. Also, HealthSherpa isn’t getting anywhere near the traffic, but that’s really an early launch issue at this point. Now why did they decide not to display shopping options upfront (which IS a big design flaw)? Two reasons:

1) ID verification: This is necessary for the “conservative” means-testing so that there won’t be fraud by people getting extra discounted insurance

2) Subsidies: In an attempt to avoid sticker shock, they want people to know they aren’t going to pay full price.

You can’t show people the discounts (aka subsidies) they get without the ID verification. So you want people to see that they aren’t getting a raw deal? Well, you have to verify. If anything this is showing the flaw of conservative reform, which in any version was based upon exchanges and subsidies.

Another reader:

The Health Sherpa has received some good press over the past couple weeks, mostly along the lines of “3 geeks built a better Obamacare in almost no time”. This is not a very complete or accurate picture of what’s going on here. Here are a few things to note:

* This site would not be possible without heathcare.gov because it uses data directly off https://data.healthcare.gov – a freely available service provided by the government. CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and their contractors did the hard work of getting, and approving, the rates from the insurance companies, often through processes regulated by the states, and building out infrastructure to store and deliver that data.

* The data provided by data.healthcare.gov is out of date and does not contain accurate plan specifications such as deductibles, coinsurance rates, OOP maxes and copays. All it gives for each plan is an estimated premium for a single adult aged 27, a child of unspecified age, an older adult aged 50, a couple of unspecified age, a single-parent household where the parent and child’s ages are unspecified, and a family of unspecified size and ages. Tobacco is not factored in, as it would be if you actually applied for insurance. So, if you are a smoker aged 49, you’re getting the same estimate from this data as if you’re a nonsmoker aged 21. Premiums and Metal Ratings alone are a bad way to shop for insurance. Depending on the cost of the care you need, a Bronze plan could end up costing you less overall than a Silver plan, depending on the deductibles and coinsurance rates.

* Since the data was released in mid-October, building apps to make use of it was a logical step. Here are a few your readers might enjoy: a search engine using the same data (including subsidy calculations), another search engine using the same data (including subsidy calculations and support for Idaho and New Mexico), and http://www.healthdig.info (disclosure: I am the author of this site).

Another shifts gears with an epic rant:

This post hits home. I have worked as a government contractor for over 20 years and the system is broken and wasteful. It’s no surprise to me that the Obamacare website doesn’t work. The bigger the project is, the more money at stake, the more the overpaid and unqualified managers fight for work scope within and between companies and the more bureaucratic gamesmanship within the agency. I’ve been wanting to write an article or call a whistleblower group or stand on the street and scream. Instead, I keep collecting my paycheck waiting for someone else to break the story on this huge example of waste, fraud, and abuse – the legal contracting activity right in front of your nose.

There’s so much wrong, I hardly know where to start. First, the federal staff – the more the government relies on contractors, the less the government employee knows how to DO the actual work. They only “manage” the work. After a few years of this, few have kept abreast of changing industry standards and practices. The experience they may have once had becomes increasingly irrelevant. They know the jargon and the history of a project(s) but they rely increasingly on contractor managers to develop strategy, budget, and schedules. These contractor managers’ influence over their federal counterparts derives more from their friendship or their powers of persuasion more than actual skill.

Plus, the federal staff have civil service protections, so if they screw up a project, there are few repercussions. I’ve seen federal staff spend $5-10 million dollars on a project that we knew would not further project goals and in most cases alienated the very players, such as state and local governments, that we needed as partners. No amount of polite warnings (you don’t want to say anything too bluntly because friendly relations keep the task assignments and cash flowing) can dissuade a federal manager from their path if their ego is at stake. And yet, I have never seen consequences for incompetent decision-making. They keep getting their salaries and their promotions and can do so for 30 years all without a track record of success or productivity.

Next is the demented contracting system. Often, a government office responsible for a project will have a “Management & Operating” (M&O) contractor and a “support services” contractor. There are legal differences between these two but in practice the feds simply pit the contractors against each other. The M&O contractor will write a project plan. The client doesn’t like the M&O so they hand the document to the support services contractor to review and comment. The competitor rips the document and tells the client they aren’t being well served. The client asks the support services contractor to draft their own project plan and now taxpayers have paid twice for the same work. Before the 1960s (pick your decade, government contracting has been expanding rapidly since WWII), the federal employee would have written the damn project plan. Now they aren’t competent enough to assess the work on their own.

The world of government contracting is very hard to enter, therefore a few companies get much of the work (just look around DC and the suburbs at the HUGE buildings that go on for miles along each commuter artery with the names of contracting companies). These companies become bureaucracies themselves. I’ve had a few excellent managers who would succeed anywhere but most have one skill – they retired from the agency for which they now contract and have excellent relations with the federal staff. They make six figure salaries for holding meetings with the clients and then their staff to relay the message from the meeting with client. They hold another meeting make sure everyone is trained to the latest irrelevant safety measure, and generally interfere with the work. They seldom do any of the work themselves and often don’t know anything about the subject they oversee.

The staff at the contracting companies, who often have the field experience and actually conduct the work, spend equal amounts of time 1) explaining the work to their managers, and 2) explaining and educating their clients why a project needs to roll-out a certain way. The real work to advance a project is squeezed in around these wasteful responsibilities. In addition, the profit for these companies increases with the number of employees they can directly charge to the project. The surfeit of people on these large multi-million dollar contracts makes me sick. Supposedly they can be fired at will, but sleeping at your desk, harassing other employees, having no skills directly related to the work at hand has never gotten someone fired in my experience – because their presence generates profit. Because of the profit motive, there is no incentive to work efficiently.

For example, the client may need to post material on a website to further public communication. The contractor has no incentive to see if a satisfactory website already exists that meets the client needs. Instead, they will spend millions developing a new site with fancy bells and whistles and populating with their own studies without regard to cost-savings or the needs of the users.

Finally, what drives me the most crazy is the argument that private companies replacing government is somehow supposed to be more conservative??? It is nothing but corporate welfare and inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. If you want to shift responsibility for weapons production or waste management or environmental cleanup, then shift the responsibility to private industry and get government out of it. But if anyone thinks hiring companies to do the work the feds used to do is efficient, they haven’t stepped outside their echo chamber long enough to look at reality. These contracting company officials are so savvy at playing the politicians, the regulatory system, the contracting system, and the legal system, that they’ve taken us taxpayers for a ride. Sickeningly, many of my colleagues are Tea Party sympathizers who see no conflict in their positions. I wonder how they would fare if they were thrown to the street and had to survive without a federal tit.