The Federal Acquisition Regulation, the FAR, is the “bible” for federal procurement practices.  It is how you do business with agencies and departments of the federal government.  Since the advent of contract bundling you can forget about the FAR.  It has been twisted and turned and has become very much ineffective.  Big business is doing what it wants to do and the federal agencies are, more or less, saying “Yessa Boss”.  We now have a virtual coup in the procurement practices of the United States Government.  Big business, particularly the Military Industrial Complex, is running the operation.

Go over to the Army Corps of Engineers and you will see it before your eyes.  Halliburton, the current leader of the Military Industrial Complex, is running the show.  I mean setting policy; making decisions; assigning the contracts (mostly to itself).  The contracting activity of Afghanistan and Iraq belongs to them and their cronies.  The construction giant Parsons can build an army barracks in Iraq that begins leaking like a sieve from the beginning.  Their response to federal inspectors – if you want improvements you have to pay us more.  It is totally corrupt and dangerous to the future of this nation.  It is they who pushed us into Iraq and that, in fact, is murderous.  We see it as a lot of destruction and deaths but they see it as a whole lot of sales and profits.  We are in trouble!

It was this hi-jacked procurement system that caused the majority of the devastation in the Katrina debacle.  Our government couldn’t react with urgency because they had to wait on the new owners of our procurement system to cut up the contracts and territories of the affected Gulf Region.  Besides the longer the wait, the greater the devastation and  that, like Iraq, means greater sales and profits.  Damn the people!

Where do small and minority businesses fit into all of this?  They don’t.  For the most part less than 2% of all business is done by racial minorities.  The Small Business Administration, SBA, is supposed to collect the data and report it.  They don’t have a clue.  They are accepting data that they know is false and then report it to Congress and release it to the public.  Here’s a living example from one of our businesses:  “I had acquired an $8 million contract with the Immigration & Nationalization Service.  After approximately 8 months, I discovered that the INS was diverting my contract to non-minority contractors claiming to be Minority Disadvantaged Businesses.  On January 7, 1997, I sent a letter to the Office of the Inspector General for the SBA, INS and Justice Department stating that several large white firms misrepresented themselves as being small and disadvantaged businesses in order to obtain contracts set-aside for my firm.  On August 7, 1997, the Justice Department OIG issued a Report confirming my allegations.”   

Yes, another confirmation of abuse but once again not a darn thing was done about it.  It appears here that the government agencies, SBA and INS, must be in on the corruption.  They report the false numbers as minority and when the sham is exposed they turn and walk away.  DO NOT BELIEVE A MINORITY BUSINESS PARTICIPATION REPORT FROM ANY FEDERAL AGENCY UNTIL THE ABOVE IS CLEANED UP. 

There was a time when the Office of Inspector General for each agency was the “Sheriff” who would come and investigate any claim of fraud and/or abuse.  But now the Sheriff has left town.  In fact, the new Administrator of the General Services Administration has admonished the GSA IG as being too aggressive and is attempting to cut his funding by $5 million which would lessen his effectiveness.  Wrong has become right and honest, sincere minority businesses are being shown the door in a formal, systematic way.

When the new 110^th Congress starts in January, I will be asking the new Chairs of the Senate and Congressional Small Business Committees, Sen. John Kerry and Congresswoman Nydia Velasquez to confront this awful situation.  The Federal Government’s procurement system is as corrupt now as it has ever been.  Minority businesses have been squeezed out and are doing probably less that the levels of 1960.  We just don’t know because no one has an accurate report.

The nation is weakened by the above.  We are going to stupid wars we cannot possibly resolve and fine young soldiers are dying or being maimed for life needlessly.  Victims of natural disasters are dying and/or suffering by the deliberate actions of the greedy.  Greed has no end and this won’t stop until some leaders step forward and fight those who make or let it happen.