'Revolving Door' Spins Between AT&T, Government 61
An anonymous reader sends this quote from the Center for Public Integrity:
That AT&T just won an eight-figure contract to provide the federal government's General Services Administration with new mobile devices isn't itself particularly notable. What is: Casey Coleman, an AT&T executive responsible for "delivering IT and professional services to federal government customers," oversaw the GSA's information technology division and its $600 million IT budget as recently as January. ... While there’s no evidence anything illegal took place, the public still should be aware of, and potentially worried about, Coleman’s spin through the revolving door between government and companies that profit from government, said Michael Smallberg, an investigator at the nonpartisan watchdog group Project on Government Oversight. ... Federal government employees leaving public service for lucrative private sector jobs is commonplace. The Project on Government Oversight has called on the federal government to — among other actions — ban political appointees and some senior-level staffers from seeking employment with contractors that “significantly benefited” from policies they helped formulate during their tenure in government.
Re:Buying new "mobile devices" from AT&T? (Score:4, Insightful)
You really didn't need the rest of those words.
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They are not 'wasting' anything. That money goes to the finest hookers and coke on the planet.
We don't care. We don't have to. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:We don't care. We don't have to. (Score:4, Interesting)
Take a look at the technician in the background. Does he look familiar? He should. It's Al Franken.
Too bad he didn't go on to be elected to the Senate or anything like that.
sometimes regrettable, somewhat necessary (Score:4, Insightful)
TFS does a fine job of pointing out the potential drawbacks of the fact that people at the top of their field tend to remain in that field as they change jobs. Since the potentially negative side is somewhat clear, I won't say more on that, just acknowledge it.
On the other hand, suppose you're hiring someone to negotiate contracts to build roads. Wouldn't it be a good idea to hire someone who knows something about road-building projects, and the contracts involved? A former manager of a road-building company is uniquely qualified to understand the issues, the ways a road company
company might try to screw over the taxpayers. They are far better able to protect the taxpayers' interests than I would ben for example, because I don't know anything about road contracts. So I WANT my taxpayer interests represented by someone with high level experience in the industry.
Re:sometimes regrettable, somewhat necessary (Score:4, Insightful)
What exactly are you doing on slashdot?
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Re:sometimes regrettable, somewhat necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
the real solution here is to put pressure on the govt employees so there has to be a "cool down" time after they conclude their govt service and before going to a regulated company. For example 12 months. This way you can't be the lead govt guy, then jump to a private company when it's time to negotiate a multi-lucre contract. NOTE: the best way to put pressure on somebody is to have them sign to a "cool down" clause when they are hired. Typically you do this by $$$, i.e giving someone an extended vacation.
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So you give someone a bunch of money for a year long vacation, and THEN they can start collecting their payola? Sounds like a sweet deal. I'm not sure I understand how this is supposed to solve anything. A year-long cooldown won't make much of a difference in the long term for them. It's also a bit unfair, because it blocks entry into the private sector with a pretty onerous restriction - presumably on the employer, as it would be insane for the government to have to cover that. That means only the top
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I'm not sure I understand how this is supposed to solve anything.
ok, here's the deal. A senior govt person has gained experience that can be valuable for decades. He should be able to switch to a top private job where he can make use of that value. The person has lots of insider knowledge of how a company can win big deals. But this knowledge has a very short shelf life. it is like having an inside scoop on who will win the next horse race. A commonsense solution, take the head honcho out of the game for a bit, and then he rejoins when any insider-type knowledge is stale
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I think perhaps you're overestimating the value of *what* they know, and underestimating the value of *who* they know. The latter knowledge is not going to be obsolete in a year, and the former can be easily gained by inviting an old colleague out to a nice lunch (at company expense, of course), and discussing out what's going on back at the old office.
Re: sometimes regrettable, somewhat necessary (Score:1)
What we do about it is compensate government people well and protect their jobs from political interference. We did that before in this country and while it wasn't perfect it worked better than what we have now (kind of like our economic policies, come to think of it)
The idea was if you worked for government as a career that you would be comfortable but not rich, and you'd have stability in employment. In return, you don't engage in politically motivated behavior because politicians can't fire you.
This we
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So you give someone a bunch of money for a year long vacation, and THEN they can start collecting their payola?
I agree, make it 5-10 years.
It's also a bit unfair, because it blocks entry into the private sector with a pretty onerous restriction
for who, the employee, or the rest of the country? I also don't see that being a giant hurdle to employement in the private sector. Unless of course the only skill someone has is being a paid shill. In that case, fuck 'em.
Presumably everyone else would have to take temp jobs at McDonalds to get by for a year, because they can't get a job in their actual field of expertise.
not really. Thats an overreaction.
. If you restrict or eliminate lobbying via draconian laws, you're essentially limiting access to our representative government, and that's probably unconstitutional anyhow.
Look, as much as we hate to admit it, the person you'd want to hire at a private firm would be the person that knows the ins and outs of the government agencies your company deals with.
I think thats the point. I could imagine that a private firm could pay this man handsomely, but this hurts the rest of society greatly. What we don't want, is someone who's career niche is simply helping private intrests manipu
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Unfortunately, depending on the nature of the job, a full year out of work in that industry might make difficult to remain relevant.
There really isn't a good solution. Either one accepts that those that have extensive knowledge of an industry are going to, from time to time, be able to translate their
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Yeah? And by what method do you expect to apply this 'pressure'?
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i said it above. when a govt muckety muck signs a contract, include a clause with "forced paid vacation" after vacating your post. The duration of the vacation can vary depending on the mucketyness of the muck. as a result, nobody can jump from govt to industry to snap up a quick contract.
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You said nothing. Where is this 'clause' going to come from? Under what section of the U.S. Code can I find this? Who will enforce it? And how? Absent any legislation, what incentive is there to include such a clause if there is no perceived benefit to any the affected parties?
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you're unbelievable! An employment clause! you know, you start a new job and you sign an agreement that says you'll get paid X, you'll get X weeks of vacation, X days of sick leave, and X weeks of paid cooldown when your employment is terminated. it's all completely legal, and there is benefit to both of the "afflicted parties".
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You still provide no legal incentive or mandate to insert such a clause into the contract. Nobody is going to do it. You are living a fantasy. Besides your idea is dumb and harmful to the person. Everybody has the right to work when and where they please. I wouldn't let you take that away, not in a million years. The best thing to do is to make sure no company is granted a monopoly contract that locks out competition. That also will require legislation, but we won't get it with the present crowd in congress
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That is a valid point, but it overlooks that it doesn't have to be the exact same company. The question is, did ATT get the contract over another provider because of his involvement or because it was the best deal for the people? That question would not be there if a different carrier got the contract.
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On the other hand, that experience also makes it easier to screw over the taxpayers. I can't think of any good reason why a company would think it more important to look out for taxpayers than to look out for their own bottom line.
Your argument works much better going the other direction, but you don't see a whole lot of people going from high level private sector jobs to the public sector.
regulations for procurement fairness very complex (Score:3)
Going the other way, from government (back) to industry, our procurement systems are such that it takes a degree of expertise to navigate the process and actually get, then maintain, a contract. Often, the government could save money by just ordering from Walmart.com, but to avoid having a bureaucrat order from his brother, there's a huge procedure with a shit load of rules. So if you're trying to work out a contract with say, the FCC, there are real and legitimate reasons to hire someone intimately fam
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I think it was Milton Friedman who explained there are 4 ways to spend money.
1) Spend your own money on yourself.
You look for a compromise between cost and quality
2) Spend your own money on somebody else.
You look mostly for cost
3) Spend somebody else’s money on yourself.
You look mostly for quality
4) Spend somebody else’s money on somebody else.
You really don't care.
What a shock (Score:5, Insightful)
This article and the one before it about hollywood vs google are indicators of the same problem. When government and industry collude, the public becomes the enemy.
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I never expected my statement on slashdot to have those effects. For what little it's worth these days, I do vote that way when and where I can.
Damned Republicans (Score:1)
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Hmm... let's check if there are any democrites on the bribe list [followthemoney.org]. It looks like AT&T has only a small bias towards repugnicans.
Where else can they go for service? (Score:2)
Verizon and AT&T are the only two reasonable choices if the coverage area is the whole of the United States. If they drop down to Sprint or T-Mobile, they're making significant compromises in coverage. After that, you're getting into the range of Cletus' Phone Emporium.
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Verizon and AT&T are far from the only two reasonable choices for providers of mobile devices.
This is how it works (Score:1)
I've said this before, the corps that work with the government on spying get favored status, and quite a few of them collaborate with the government to facilitate NSA espionage and other "things".
I'm certain Apple, Microsoft and Google do the same.
This isn't a democracy or a republic, it's an oligarchy and a borderline fascist one at that.
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Those are all corporate, and MIC stands for Military Industrial Complex, of which all the categories you mentioned are subsets.
The people are something to be fed of off, we are cattle to them and for the record, here's Eisenhower warning us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Don't let the door ... (Score:2)
Corruption (Score:3)
Yeah, Revolving Doors are Cool (Score:5, Funny)
They always seem to be trying to make up their minds. On Star Trek doors go sheesh! but we have revolving doors that go Whump! Whump! Whump!
I'd have three revolving doors, two on the outside rotating in opposite directions and one in the middle that changes direction at random times, even when a person is in it. I'd put wheels on a potted plant and have it bumping along. I'd have one in a shaded area with a bright strobe light in it. I'd have a revolving door with mirror panels surrounded by a curved mirror and a curved, mirrored sliding shells that advance with the door on opposite sides and stop, to close off the tube completely and trap them for three full rounds, then advance again to present an opening as if it had always been there. I'd have a revolving door with rising and falling wedges that 'arrive' at the far end one step down or up. I'd have a camera at the top of the wedge looking down, and a bright LCD display set into the floor that is re-playing the top-down view from the last occupant, including a glimpse of the screen with the one previous, et cetera. I'd have a message that says, "say Hello!" and play back the hellos of previous occupants at random. I'd have a glass floor with a hypnotic spiral disc spinning quickly in the opposite direction. I'd have a narrow brightly lit aquarium with fish as door panels. I'd have a gauntlet of a dozen revolving doors synchronized to pass occupants on, each one lit with a progressive hue of the rainbow. And ping pong ball releases.
Next up at Slashdot: 'Escalator' Trundles Between Verizon, Government
Damn those Infrastructure Guys! (Score:2)
So, this isn't really news, is it? (Score:2)
After all, the government is corrupt as hell and AT&T... Well, we don't need to rehash that.
Maybe if there was something, so sort of code or something. Some specification for proper and honest behaviour that would forbid dishonest or harmful actions... I wonder what we could call them?
The only solution when something has decayed to this point is to start over. It's time to reboot by using politicians and corrupt bureaucrats as landfill.