Sorry but that's reality. I make more than your Congressperson. And I am worth it. And if you have a problem with that then I suggest you take a 35% pay cut and move to a place that's one of the most expensive in the nation. And for the Federal government there are thousands of employees in exactly the same boat. They lose people because they're not even in the same ballpark for salaries.

Another problem with Federal contracts is driven by MILSPECs. MILSPECs are the thousands of detail specifications that stipulate how things should be built and operate. The proverbial $800 hammer problem. The reason you wind up with the $800 hammer is because a) the specification requires something to be built from scratch to very unusual specifications and b) they only need a small number of them. What you don't realize is that that 'hammer' is really a custom alloy of a very specific shape, size weight and tolerance. It has to be made out of a specific material. It has to be made by a certain date and oh by the way, they only need 563 of them. Because the MILSPEC tells you to. So by the time you set up the machining tools, the jigs and moulds and spin out a tiny production run of 563, the total sunk costs of $375,000 plus 15% markup leaves you with that proverbial $800 hammer.

Sure, NRO Keyhole and Lacrosse satellites cost a billion dollars each. How many are there? 14? How long did the specifications take to develop? 5 years? How many people worked on them? A thousand? And so on.

That's an insanely broad statement. Do you believe that the guys who are awarded contracts under minority ownership set-asides are all criminals? All of them? Everyone from the firms that cut the grass at Federal monuments to the Sedexo Cafeteria services in the Pentagon basement? The USPS IT environment is almost entirely outsourced as is AMTRAK. Are you saying that the reason they came to private industry to cut their overhead by 40% was in reality a secret plot to steal money?

C'mon save the soapboxing for your weekly Marxist kaffeklatch.

It was in NYC and there was a protracted transit strike. Women started wearing Nikes and thick fluffy socks to hoof it over the Brooklyn Bridge.

It's probably a toss-up.

Or was there some other point you were trying to make?

Candidates who don't pander to penises and pop shock shit won't get the gigantic empty screaming head of Mancrush Matthews paying any attention to them at all. As it is, everyone is talking about this add. There is no such thing as bad PR.

Or Starbucks. Or Apple. Or the Jews. Or Bush. Or Google. Or someone. Anyone.

So what?

Salaries and benefits and the imputed costs of them are forever. Contracts are not. Am I the only person here who's ever had to deal with contracts in the real world? I'll give you a real world example. The Federal government cannot afford me. My employer has a 3 year contract with a Federal agency with penalties and bonuses on both ends. At the end of 3 years it's open for renegotiation. If the Federal government took that work in house they'd have to pay me for the next 20 years.

Day 1557 of I promise, I guarantee, bet the whole farm that we absotively no doubt 1 billion percent for sure we're going to bomb Iran tomorrow morning 8am sharp. And fuck the Jews.

Never mind reality.

It's quite another to have extremely specialized skills, several advanced degrees and years of experience on a civil service employee's grade. An living in and around Washington, NOVA or Maryland.

Johnson alludes to this a few different times. The government hires contractors because it can't pay them as civil service employees. I'm sorry if that pisses people off but that's just reality.

Just because a firm is a contractor to the Federal government, doesn't mean or prove on its face that there's waste and fraud. If you work in private industry, your firm's payroll is probably done by ADP. Does this mean that by definition there was some sweetheart deal and money under the table in an effort to do it LESS efficiently? No probably not. Similarly, the Federal government would have a hard time hiring and keeping the PhD's at the NRO (Chantilly VA, one of the most expensive places in the US). So the mere fact that they're provided by Lockeed or some other contractor is by itself, representative of nothing.

How's that identity theft going?