How About Contracting Zwerdling?

Holy crap, Daniel Zwerdling demonstrates some of the basics of what NPR ought to be doing all the time: digging up information on government policies, asking probing questions, providing historical context, seeking out varied opinions from those in positions to know information, and providing numbers and data (and pointing what information is hidden from public knowledge or simply unknowable). Perhaps NPR could shut down for a few weeks and hire Zwerdling provide a little in-house training to remind his colleagues that their job is to question and probe the powerful - not just be their loyal spokespersons.

On Monday morning, Zwerdling explores the burgeoning phenomenon of contracting out government services and functions. Amazingly, he puts the privatization of government in a historical context. He notes that some contracting out of government services has always occurred in the US, but "you could say the modern era of contracting began on Jan. 20, 1981, when President Ronald Reagan was sworn into office...Reagan said one of the best ways to solve this problem was to turn over government jobs to private industry. Then, a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, embraced the same strategy....and, actually....did even more to contract out work than Reagan....[and] made it easier for companies to get government contracts without competing. And then came President Bush, who said 'big government is not the answer' and shattered all the previous records for contracting out."

Zwerdling considers the assumptions that underlie privatizing government ("Businesses often know better than government how to do things right — and cheaper.") and then goes to the GAO (nonpartisan agency) for the facts about how so many contracts are completely unsupervised and accountable to no one.

Today, was just as pointed. Zwerdling lays out the vast array of critical government services that are now contracted out, and then he does something amazing - points out the threat that such privatization poses for a democratic society: "federal workers, at least, have to swear an oath to defend the Constitution, just like soldiers do. Not contractors." As a Congressionally appointed oversight commissioner tells Zwerdling, "These contractors, they're not under the normal democratic accountability at all....Contractors are motivated by the dollar."

Zwerdling manages again to go back in time to evoke the warnings of Eisenhower regarding the military industrial complex, and connects it growth to the extensive growth of private contracting.

Imagine if all news reports on NPR had the basic features of this series - I could stop writing this Godforsaken blog! But I doubt that will happen anytime soon. Listening to Zwerdling's reports was refreshing, but ultimately sad for how it stands out as the exception to the usual practice of NPR's news.

(BTW, the graphic is me...of course)

Fair is Fair

Be sure to check out FAIR's critique of a Weekend Edition piece on NPR's dismissive and distorted coverage of an Iraqi press conference.

Of Blackwater and Blackshirts

Tonight, NPR's Brian Naylor covered the testimony - to a House oversight committee - by relatives of four American Blackwater mercenaries who were killed and had their corpses gruesomely desecrated in Fallujah, Iraq back in March of 2004. (Interestingly NPR focused on minimizing and justifying the use of corpse-desecration by the US military in October 2005 in Afghanistan.)

The emphasis of Naylor's report is on the charges made by the relatives: that negligence and profiteering by Blackwater Corporation, and a lack of government oversight over the company, led to the deaths of their loved ones. This is worthwhile, but in some ways is old news that NPR should have been covering earlier; it also is not the most crucial story about Blackwater. The story that NPR news has yet to cover is the insidious nature of the Blackwater enterprise and it's founder, Erik Prince, and how Blackwater is just one element in the rise of a network of reactionary paramilitaries which Chris Hedges convincingly suggests could emerge as a sort of "praetorian guard" for the extremist Christian right. Coupled with the neo-Nazi infiltration of the US military itself, this threat should be getting far more coverage than it is.

I have a modest suggestion for NPR. Given that Blackwater is based in North Carolina, given that the CIA "special rendition" torture flights have a North Carolina connection, and given that North Carolina seems to be a hub for the growing paramilitary empire - NPR should send a reporter or two to North Carolina to check out this phenomenon. I'd recommend Anne Garrels, who might use her husband's CIA connections and his work with Air America to flesh out the whole nature of covert air operations. North Carolina is not all that far from Washington, DC and so expenses could be kept to a minimum. It's just an idea...and it's just a story that has profound implications for the very survival of our democratic institutions and freedoms.

*Blackshirts were the paramilitaries in fascist Italy.