It was a nice Sunday, weather wise, and the squirrels took advantage of it. They are constructing a nest in the lower branches of the maple that blocks the sun from my balcony high above the pool at Big Pink.

One of the little bastards was actually on the balcony this morning, bold as brass and near the open door. If they furry rodents got in here there would be hell to pay. I remember one of them got trapped in the stairwell, and it took some real thought on how to drive the little guy back out through a strategically opened fire-door out to the deck as other humans circled around to come down the stairs from above.

The squirrels have had a busy summer. They ate Jigg’s tomatoes, shredded Peter’s cushions to make the nests in the trees more comfy, and are doubtless plotting now to gnaw through the 220-volt circuit in the transformer on the pole at the corner of Pershing and the service drive that parallels Route 50.

When they succeed, there is a spectacular “pop” and the power to the building is knocked out for hours.

If we are lucky, that is. Sometimes it is much longer.

Anyway, I shooed the little bandit off the balustrade and the squirrel took a leap for the nearest sturdy branch and disappeared into the remaining fall foliage with his confederates.

I wondered if these were Government squirrels, or independent contractors?

That is a big deal and an important distinction. My pal in Colorado tells me to avoid long screeds on “how the government works,” since first, it doesn’t, and second, no one cares unless something directly affects them.

So, we are going to avoid “how a bill becomes law” this morning. I thought about that as I read the Times. Motoko Rich had an interesting piece on what is happening in Michigan. As you know, government there works even less efficiently than in places like Greece or Italy.

Ms Rich zeroed in on a scheme by which state-run nursing homes were easing out government workers and hiring contractors to provide care while whacking the salaries by a quarter.

The story hit so many issues that are gnawing at me like that squirrel out there working on the 220-volt line, and with the same sort of inevitable end result.

“Pop!”

With Raven now ensconced at the Bluffs, I am naturally concerned with the level of his care. Ms Rich reported on the state Veteran’s Home in Grand Rapids, a fine old brick Victorian-brick town on the Grand River where we lived for a decade.

The central question in the article is this: how expensive public workers are. The new Republican Governor thinks he can squeeze some efficiency out of the state work force, and one of the targets is the nursing home with the aging vets.

Being one, and at least temporarily remaining in an un-assisted living capacity, I am aware that the about-to-be-slashed DoD budget is going to have a direct cost in veteran health care, Commissaries and the all-import Class Six Store where the vodka and the gasoline are sold.

It is not going to be pretty, and I am steeling myself for the storm to come.

This is just the thin edge of the wedge, of course.

The whole who-is-more-expensive argument has been around for a while. Al Gore led the charge to outsource public jobs to the private sector in the second act of the Clinton Administration. We used to worry about OMB Circular A-76 provisions that public workers should have the opportunity to propose creative solutions to changing requirements and stay on the job.

Here is the deal: the Feds have had a longstanding policy of reliance on the private sector for “needed commercial services.” To get the “best value” for the government, the A-76 process results in dozens of exciting meetings by gray-faced officials, by which:

a. All activities performed by government personnel are identified as either commercial or inherently governmental.

b. That the task of the “inherently governmental activities” are preformed by government personnel, so contractors like me cannot construct self-licking ice cream cones.

c. Then, contract everything out that doesn’t require a government body.

The process was deliberate and ponderous back in the post-Cold War era. Then, with the War on Terror, there were battalions of contractors hired for whatever seemed like a good idea at the time.

It seemed out of control, like the squirrels at Big Pink. There was a move afoot a couple years ago to bring the outsourced work back into the government workforce. We lost dozens of our company employees as the Agency started to convert private to public. With the budget crisis, that abruptly came to an end.

The argument is that a government employee is cheaper in current-year dollars than a contractor. However, when you factor in the inability of the government to actually fire anyone, and the cost of the pension, healthcare and other fringes, the contractor comes out ahead every time as a better value.

But of course, that does nothing at all for the human who has to take the pay cut to do the same job.

A group of government squirrels at the Federal Salary Council announced last week that the pay gap between government employees and private-sector workers grew 2.25% in favor of the contractors. The average pay gap in 2011 was about 26.3%, largely due to the two-year pay freeze the Administration imposed of the Feds last January.

Washington (and Miami, for whatever reason) were the only areas that experienced a decrease in the pay gap between government employees and private-sector workers. Go figure.

I am convinced that I could help that balance. I believe that I could bring in squirrels from other more depressed areas and undercut the Arlington County rodents, providing “best value” for shredding things and blowing up transformers.

Granted, there are challenges to this approach, and there are sunk costs in the squirrel force that we have now. But if we are going to get control of rodent pensions and emoluments we have to start somewhere.

I intend to start in West Virginia.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com