GUTTING THE BUREAUCRACY:

In Washington, Contractors Take on Biggest Role Ever (SCOTT SHANE and RON NIXON, 2/04/07, NY Times)

Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.

Contractors still build ships and satellites, but they also collect income taxes and work up agency budgets, fly pilotless spy aircraft and take the minutes at policy meetings on the war. They sit next to federal employees at nearly every agency; far more people work under contracts than are directly employed by the government. Even the government's online database for tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been outsourced (and is famously difficult to use).

They woke up one morning and the government had actually been reinvented.

MORE:
Box box, round two (FRAN SPIELMAN AND DAVE NEWBART, 2/04/07, Chicago Sun-Times)

When Mayor Daley used his first-ever veto to squash a big-box minimum-wage ordinance, labor and business retreated to their respective corners to fight another day.

Round 2 is the Feb. 27 aldermanic election -- and so far, it looks like a mismatch. [...]

Not only have four major city unions punished Daley by denying the 18-year incumbent their endorsement: The Chicago Federation of Labor, the Service Employees International Union, AFSCME Council 31, the Laborers, Teamsters, United Here and Chicago Teachers Union are vowing to pump $3 million and a blitzkrieg of troops into a handful of wards in hopes of electing a City Council more independent of Daley.

By which they mean totally dependent on Labor. Those Second Wayers do hate the Third.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 4, 2007 8:53 AM