AR- This is partially true. Clinton did refuse to send it to Congress and the 1997 Senate refused to ratify it. But Bush also came out against Kyoto. Both Clinton and Bush should be blamed. Clinton was worried about the economic impact of the agreement. Al Gore signed the unratified agreement in protest. But Bush has actually punished government scientists for agreeing with the concensus on global warming.

I get your point CS, but the Liberals can also make that claim about the failed “Great Society� programs also. My feeling is that bureaucracies are inherently inefficient but at the same time necessary to implement policy. I have yet to see a way around that contradiction and I don’t see privatization working in every case, but would not rule it out as a possible solution.

Yes, the conservative principle of eliminating government employees in favor of farming government functions out to contractors is complete and utter BS. It comes from utter blind faith in business and executives.

You say that there are government functions that shouldn’t be contracted out but the truth is that the current administration that you love so much hasn’t found much that they won’t contract to outsiders. They’ve even eliminated so many government employees that they are contracting out the responsibility to investigate contractor corruption. They are firing the IRS investigators who were effective at recovering unpaid taxes from their wealthy friends. Look how much security in Iraq has been turned over to contractors. How many vital support functions are being done by private companies who are overcharging the government for the services rendered. Frankly, I think the fact that anyone still believes in this junk is yet another proof of the efficiency of ideological lobotomy.

First, Bush is responsible. It goes with the job title and it was discovered on his watch, period. End of discussion (imho) on tht point. However, fault is a different matter entirely.

Exactly, that’s almost the Dutch style really. We call it political responsibility. In essence it means that while one cannot say that something is the other person’s personal fault, that other person is responsible for what happens under his or her watch.

That said, if you add up whats been said

1) W and crew cut cut most of the department/agency in charge
2) Its a Haliburton subsidiary
3) Cheney + Haliburton
4) An adminstration that actively blocks legal action angainst contractors for consequnces of war profiteering

Well, you do not get a flattering picture. Okay, I mean its not like bad stuff does not happen regarldess of who’s watch it may be. But the old W crew has such a well demonstrated wanton disregared for anything resembeling decency and accountility that this sort of thing could easily stick as purposeful, rather than ‘simple’ negligence.

And, I will admit that there is a problem with being a repeat offender like W. We do tend to automaticlly assume this is just one more case of purposefull / negligent behavior. I suppose lets let the hearings/investigations ensue to see what can be seen. It may indeed not be a fault isssue, although I would have more than reasonable doubts in that regard. But, if we grant that sam resonable doubt to Jose Padillia, we can grant it to W, even if we have to hold my nose to do so.

Hopefully the situaiton will be made better as a result of this revelation. If nothing else, maybe the VA will get some more cash flow. As to actually learning what went on where and being able to connect the dots? I have my doubts. Afaik their are a lot of dems with Haliburton stock too ya know. The issue will have to be kept alive for quite a while for that to happen. Hopefully people will car enoguh that it does.

I think what has/is happening at Walter Reed is a systemic problem of the military medical system, and the bureaucracy that runs it. I served in the late 70′s through the mid 80′s, and we all feared the hospital’s and doctor’s competencies then.

I have a lot of friends that have been career or lifers since, and none of them go around talking about how great military medical care is, I guarantee you.

The problem is endemic to military medicine, and transcends our country, century, and millennium. does that mean we should ignore it? No, and despite the unwillingness to give credit, the Bush administration is at least making a start, for this case.

Will that attention last? Very unlikely, and that is true no matter who you put in the White House. Why? The sad reality is that it isn’t a Presidential-level issue, it is a military Staff-officer level problem, and always has been. Also, when push comes to shove, the money earmarked for improvements gets shifted as soon as the heat is off.

Ask the Veteran groups – when was the golden age of the government taking care of its wounded and aged soldiers? Just make sure they aren’t armed when you ask.

So I can gather that while you blame Bush for the Mess in Mesopotamia, trying to deprive Americans of fundamental civil liberties and botching the federal response to Katrina, he gets a pass on soldier/veteran medical and benefit issues because it is sort of kind of like the blame he has gotten over Kyoto?

I believe you suffer from a form of BDS yourself – nothing is ever, ever this man’s fault

Well then, you obviously don’t read everything I post. I have repeatedly said the post-fall occupation of Iraq has been one of the worst handled operations ever, I have no use overall for the Patriot Act and the attacks on our (supposedly) protected rights, and I think Bush has led the charge to spend money like a drunken sailer (and as an ex-Navy man, my apologizes to drunken sailors).

I do not think Bush is infallible, and I do think he has been an overall ineffective President. That doesn’t change the fact though that the left continually wants to blame him for things beyond his control, or that he did not say, and place the blame for everything in the world directly at his feet.

The Katrina/New Orleans/Brown is a classic example. That there were real failures by FEMA and the Federal government is undeniable. However, the direct and immediate proximate cause of the failure was a combination of Army Corps of Engineering failures dating back decades, and a readiness and initial response failure that was clearly at the State level. But Bush takes all the blame.

Bush gets blamed for the Kyoto treaty, even though it was the Clinton Administration that refused to send it to Congress, and the 1997 Congress that voted 95-0 that it would not sign it in its current form. But the fact that Kyoto is not signed and ratified is Bush’s fault.

The damned thing is, even though I was a strong Bush supporter, and have cooled severely on him over the past couple of years in particular, I still find myself defending him, because people seem ready to blame for everything up to and including Brittany Spears’ meltdown.

BDS

CSTAM;EU seems to feel that ‘private’ is better by definition. I don’t know, because I’ve yet to see a valid analysis. What I have read always leaves out the cost of contracting that the government underwrites.

For an efficient, quality privatizad system to work, the government would need to fund an appropriate staff to oversee the contracts and to oversee and evaluate the results. These costs are not cpmsidered in the reports I’ve seen. In fact, I get the impression that contract oversight itself is severely underfunded. Ironically, it requires a layer of government bureucracy in itself to manage the privatization.

Statistics get spun by all sides. It’s very hard to get to the bottom line in cost effectiveness analysis because the numbers are presented in horribly convoluted ways. Then each side picks out the numbers that fit its argument.

The whole process is convoluted, with the government part and the contractor and subcontractor part meshing at different points at dofferemt times. Sometimes I think it’s all a political game, and no one seriously cares what it all means, as long it sounds right to the voters.

Unlike, Shaun, the chickenhawk charge doesn’t bother me as much as what I perceive to be political corruption at the expense of taxpayers and our troops.

As I have noted previously, the Clinton administration also cut back on benefits. It is unlikely that the first ceiling tile fell or first rat scurried through a billet or the first suicidal case was neglected at Walter Reed after Bush was elected.

But it is impossible to not connect the president’s words with his deeds, or in this case lack of deeds.

As noted, he and his aides have had going on seven years to make sure that their umbrella of compassionate conservatism was keeping the rain off the heads of the many needy soldiers and vets. As we are now well aware, compassionate conservatism was merely a concept that tested well with voter focus groups.

Theoretically, what you are saying should work, but its not working that way now. Most of the time no one looks into who is getting these contracts, and it takes a catastrophe like this one to reveal cronyism, graft and war profiteering. I would prefer to make the bureaucracy more efficient, if we have such poor oversight on privatization.

If theoretically what I’m saying makes sense to you, then why not call for more oversight of private contracts? Why would you think that we’d be better off asking for more efficient bureaucracy (which would still require more oversight, but would make it less likely that the oversight could actually result in improvements anyway because of the nature of the bureaucratic beast)?

There are some services that shouldn’t be privatized and it’s important that the processes be open to competition and that they are transparent. It’s also important that even if govt isn’t providing the service directly, that there is a govt official who’s directly responsible for overseeing the contract with the private company. That seems so elementary that I can’t understand why it doesn’t happen that way, except that the public hasn’t demanded it and that means the situation is ripe for exploitation and corruption. So let’s try to fix it, but let’s not say that we need to trade back one exploitative and corrupt system for the old way which was even more unmanageable.

In a lot of the cases where no bid contracts are awarded, there aren’t any competitors and I think we need to look at why that is. If there are conditions of graft that create monopolies for these types of service providers, then those are the problems that need to be addressed.

It should have happened much sooner, but I applaud Gates for addressing the situation. It seems to me that Walter Reed has been a festering wound which has opened up under the pressure of increased patient burden. That should have been anticipated and addressed, and for the lack of proaction, I do fault the highest levels of the Bush administration but if they begin the remedy now then good on them.