by David Leslie, Corvallis
I write to raise a few points that would increase my interest in our local conversations conducted via letters to the editor.
First, consider fraud, waste, and abuse (FWA). Most of our commentary feels like “big hand; little map,” an idiom for an overly generalized view I learned during my Army career. Brain surgery with a chain saw also seems an appropriate metaphor.
Over my working life, I spent decades in and around the federal government in one capacity or another. And while I agree that FWA on the demand side of handouts is real, it is pennies on the dollar compared to the supply side of FWA. Example: big Pharma spends millions to prevent competition from lowering the price of any drug. Consider how hard it was and how long it took for the federal government to negotiate and drive down insulin prices. Some call it fair-market capitalism. I call it moral abuse. The result is undeniable: we pay an extraordinary amount more for medicine than any other industrialized nation. Period.
Fraud, however, is a different matter. It should always be referred to the Justice Department for prosecution.
It’s a fact of life that much federal work is done by private sector contractors. Many, but by no means all, game the system constantly to expand the services they offer, lengthen their contracts, raise their prices, and reduce competition. While federal procurement rules impede many of these shady activities, they get overrun by political deals and serious lobbying. Again, moral abuse to me.
So, let’s talk about FWA more surgically, who’s doing it, why, and how to rein it in. Cutting agencies and firing civil servants is the chain saw approach. We can do better. After the bloodletting, how do we decide what services benefit the common good and how to pay for them?
Secondly, I tire of the “What about’ism… Biden’s, LTGBQ+, trans issues,” and all the other red herrings dangled before us to distract, obfuscate and confuse. Biden is gone; Trump got elected, and he and his team are running the country. They own it all now. What they do is an appropriate topic for discussion.
For example, Mike Mercer, in a comment to a Dana Hendricks Feb.12 letter to the editor in the Bitterroot Star, said “For the sake of argument let’s say everything goes well for the next four years and we get America under full sail, what then?” Great question. That is something useful and important to explore. I would love to hear Ravalli County writers’ opinions about how our country might look and function under a second Trump administration; how day-to-day life will go; and how our economy will thrive or falter. Will we be smarter, richer, and healthier? In other words, what does the next phase of America look like?
Anybody else ready for that?