Sunday Open Thread [6.23.13]

Here are some long reads for Sunday:

Bloomberg Businessweek takes a look at the business of private consultants working in the US spy business, by taking a look at Booz Allen. Big Government spending indeed:

Even so, spending can spin way out of control. According to the ODNI, a typical contractor employee costs $207,000 a year, while a government counterpart costs $125,000, including benefits and pension.

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security computer systems contract awarded to Booz Allen around the same time had similar issues. Over the course of three years, costs exploded from the original $2 million to $124 million, in large part, auditors at the Government Accountability Office would later report, because of poor planning and oversight. But even when the problems came to light, as the Washington Post reported, DHS continued to renew the contract and even give Booz Allen new ones, because the agency determined it couldn’t build, or even run, the system on its own.

Anyone seen any of these small government teajadis screaming about this misuse of taxpayer funds? Didn’t think so. I’ll make this point again — there is a great deal of Big Government that is housed in the buildings you see around the DC Beltway. And they are doing incredibly sensitive work actually running huge bits of the Federal government, while government employees are the ones held up as overpaid and incompetent. While Federal government employees haven’t had raises for awhile — you can bet that their contractors are getting raises AND the government is paying every bit of it. And that doesn’t even get into the question as to whether or not spying ought to be done by contractors.

One of the decisions we are waiting for from the SUpreme Court this week is the so-called affirmative action case that Abigal Fisher brought to rectify her non-admission to UT Austin (one of the most selective state insitutions in the country). ProPublica did a deep look at the details of this case back in March — A Colorblind Constitution: What Abigail Fisher’s Affirmative Action Case Is Really About:

Race probably had nothing to do with the University of Texas’s decision to deny admission to Abigail Fisher.

In 2008, the year Fisher sent in her application, competition to get into the crown jewel of the Texas university system was stiff. Students entering through the university’s Top 10 program — a mechanism that granted automatic admission to any teen who graduated in the upper 10 percent of his or her high school class — claimed 92 percent of the in-state spots.

Fisher said in news reports that she hoped for the day universities selected students “solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it.” But Fisher failed to graduate in the top 10 percent of her class, meaning she had to compete for the limited number of spaces up for grabs.

She and other applicants who did not make the cut were evaluated based on two scores. One allotted points for grades and test scores. The other, called a personal achievement index, awarded points for two required essays, leadership, activities, service and “special circumstances.” Those included socioeconomic status of the student or the student’s school, coming from a home with a single parent or one where English wasn’t spoken. And race.

Those two scores, combined, determine admission.

Even among those students, Fisher did not particularly stand out. Court records show her grade point average (3.59) and SAT scores (1180 out of 1600) were good but not great for the highly selective flagship university. The school’s rejection rate that year for the remaining 841 openings was higher than the turn-down rate for students trying to get into Harvard.

As a result, university officials claim in court filings that even if Fisher received points for her race and every other personal achievement factor, the letter she received in the mail still would have said no.

Sandal of the Week!

The US Navy says that Cap’n Crunch is not really a Captain!

The Cap’n was unmasked on June 14 by a food blogger, who noticed the uniform he wears on cereal boxes had the stripes of a commander, not a captain. That is: A captain has four stripes on his sleeve, while a commander has three.

As the story spread, the Navy confirmed what you might be fearing: Cap’n Crunch is a fraud, tricking innocent children since his introduction in 1963.

What interests you today?