, November 21, 2013
Business Is Booming in the Halls of Government
Two congressional aides on their way to the office. / risastla
Lobster and oysters? Oh, how I hate this buffet—so hard to decide. I guess we’ll just talk over our choices with the buffet concierge, again. What a rough life.
Congressional aides are also struggling with the health care exchanges, the poor things. They are, the New York Times reports, “confused by the large number of options,” a problem the rest of us are unlikely to have. Health insurance companies have created special programs to provide insurance to congressional employees, including a “dedicated congressional health insurance plan assistance line.” And there you have it, a complete solution to the problem of obtaining health care coverage through a system that is intended to fail twenty percent of its users as a best-case scenario. If we all just go work for Congress, we’ll be totally good.
Come to think of it, let’s all just move to the suburbs of the District of Columbia, where the problem of income inequality has met its brilliant solution: just give everybody craploads of cash, a phenomenon exemplified by the fact that the area is now home to six of America’s ten wealthiest counties.
The great privilege-producing machine of American government rolls on, picking up speed, as the hand-in-hand centralization of power and resources makes its own containers of capital. Awash in free cash, the nation’s political class is the belle of the ball, endlessly surrounded by blushing suitors. Ohh, let me hold that door for you, Senator. Please, please let me!
As a terrific piece of reporting in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch—reporting! in a newspaper!—recently showed, the uncapped gusher of federal cash makes the national security state America’s favorite venture capitalist, and access to the angels costs money. What is the “private sector” in 2013? It’s a corporate adjunct of the state, a governmental entity that runs public funding through one end and private profit out the other. Among the companies profiled by the newspaper is Centripetal Networks, yet another Internet security company, which “got its start with about $1 million of research money from the Department of Homeland Security.” Funded from a pool of state capital, Centripetal is looking to score the Big Switch to the world of private cash: “Now the company is trying to sell its device, which packs the computing power of about 60 laptops, to big Internet service providers and the financial services industry.” You didn’t know that was the function of the Department of Homeland Security, did you? In 2013, Gordon Gekko is a deputy assistant secretary, and greed is still just fine.
Serving the potentates of Capitol Hill’s many lush duchies, congressional courtiers guard the door to the vault full of cash, or can position themselves to be perceived as the guards to the vault. Of course they get special access to resources; they sit at the point of special access to resources, trading X for X, free stuff for free stuff. A senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee controls more wealth than any mere Tudor king — why would their senior staff have to wait to log into a fucking website to buy health insurance like some peasant?
If you don’t like it, don’t complain. Just get your own pile of four trillion dollars to distribute every year, and you can be equally privileged.