Letters to the Editor
Sean P.
Published Letters: 44 Editor's Choice: 12
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Some of these arguments I buy, and some I don't
[Read the article: The corporate takeover of U.S. intelligence]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Because of the cloak of secrecy thrown over the intelligence budgets, there is no way for the American public, or even much of Congress, to know how those contractors are getting the money, what they are doing with it, or how effectively they are using it.
So in other words, it's exactly the same situation we're in when government employees do the work - we don't know what the money is being spent on or how effective it is. The secrecy doesn't have anything to do with the fact that there are contractors involved.
The DNI also found that "those same contractors recruit our own employees, already cleared and trained at government expense, and then 'lease' them back to us at considerably greater expense."
It's hard to know for sure without seeing the figures, but I'd take this with a large grain of salt. I strongly suspect that although each person in question is likely making a higher salary than he was before, he's getting sufficiently fewer benefits and lower overhead rates that the actual cost to the government is lower than if he was still a gov't employee. Lower costs are why you go to contractors in the first place.
Faced with arbitrary staffing limits and uncertain funding, the report said, intelligence agencies are forced "to use contractors for work that may be borderline 'inherently governmental'" -- meaning the agencies have no clear idea about what work should remain exclusively inside the government versus work that can be done by civilians working for private firms.
This I think is totally true. Spying work, maybe not so much the intel analysis, but the management of covert agents and covert activity itself, seems absolutely "inherently governmental" to me. But this also points out another reason why you use contractors - "uncertain funding and staff limits". When you don't know how much work or how much money you're going to have, you go with contractors - they're a lot easier to bring on and off your task than civil servants. When you're done with a contractor, you just remove funding. When you're done with a civil servant, you either have to find him another job or let him go, which can be difficult.
Bottom line: I agree that turning over huge amounts of the nation's spying business to contractors is bad policy. But there needs to be a happy medium struck between too much government and too much privatization.
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There's a false choice set up here
[Read the article: I let my friends stay with me and now they're evicting me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cary writes as if the choices in this matter are either a) LW goes or b) LW throws out roomies. This is not, in fact the case. The third choice here is c) LW refuses to leave. And if I were him/her, that's exactly what I'd do. However shaky the legal ground is for LW to evict the roomies, it's at least as shaky for the roomies to evict the LW. Just refuse to leave. Hopefully the dirtbags would take the hint and find their own damn place.
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I'm a duck hunter...
[Read the article: Condors vs. the NRA]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... and this kind of crap is why I dropped out of the NRA. These arguments are all exactly the same as when they banned lead shot in waterfowling. After all the boo-hooing about how duck hunting as we knew it would come to an end, the only real result has been an explosion in the availability of different types of non-toxic shot - including steel, tungsten (and alloys), and tin-bismuth (and similar alloys). And for all that, lead shot is STILL AVAILABLE! It's just that you can't use it for duck hunting.
Hunters, wake up. We're far more likely to face hunting bans by appearing insensitive to environmental concerns than by embracing environmental concerns. Let's get with the program.
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On firefighting boats...
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For what it's worth, firefighting boats don't actually hose down incoming ships. They just spray water into the air to form a fountain - and always at a considerable distance from the inbound ship. I was in the Navy for most of my adult life and witnessed this several times.
It never had anything to do with someone onboard retiring, either. The only time I ever saw it done was when the return to port was part of some big ceremonial event - return from deployment, ship visits in support of national holidays, etc.
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Shailagh Murray is the devil
[Read the article: Jim Webb as V.P. candidate?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yet another reason why Ms. Murray is the devil.
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_10_14_archive.html
Sean
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Whereas before this drug...
[Read the article: Viagra for women?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's also the potential to invalidate women's sexual complaints; if her private bits aren't working properly, it can be seen as simply her -- rather than her lover's -- fault.
Whereas before this drug, it was impossible to see this problem as her fault. Because now, when a woman has low desire, it's automatically seen as her partner's fault. Right.
Seriously, why are we even concerned about whose "fault" it is? If a woman wishes she had a higher sex drive, and this stuff provides it to her, why shouldn't she be able to get it? I think we're overanalyzing this.
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Good article
[Read the article: The witch ain't dead, and Chris Matthews is a ding-dong]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree with a lot of what Rebecca is saying here. I'm not a Hillary fan either (although I'll vote for her in the general if it comes to that) for mostly the same reasons, and I agree that level of schadenfreude displayed after Iowa was revolting - I felt a lot of Hillary sympathy too. But I think it's important to make the distinction between irrational Hillary-hatred and unbiased political analysis. Hillary really did come in third in Iowa, and the polls really were showing her significantly behind in New Hampshire. That's a legitimate news story, and I don't think reporting on the implications of this data is out of bounds. If it looks like the one-time front-runner in the race for the nomination is about to flame out, I want and expect to hear about it.
But geez, I want my news with about 100% less smirking assholery. The continued anti-Clinton bias of some of these "news" personalities makes me want to puke. Whatever happened to unbiased reporting?