Summary Of Drift By Rachel Maddow

Over the course of recent history, the United States Military has become more reliant upon private corporations rather than using military services. This privatization was began mostly for economic concerns, believing that it would be more cost-effective to pay for a private company than be responsible for benefits and family-services of soldiers. In the book, Drift, Rachel Maddow examines the effects of this privatization upon military costs and effectiveness. Despite being based on a desire to save money, the lack of oversight in the cases of private corporations has led to excessive spending and behavior which reflects badly upon America as a whole. First of all, private corporations do not have the same levels of oversight in regards

The most shocking example of this bad behavior on the part of private corporations is the DynCorp involvement with sex trafficking. According to Ben Johnson, a mechanic who worked for DynCorp at the time, DynCorp employees owned sex slaves as young as 12 years old, which they had bought from the Serbian mafia (Maddow 235). This kind of behavior is despicable as well as illegal but due to privatization it was unregulated by the military. However, Maddow points out that as private contractors, they could not be prosecuted under US law, therefore their behavior was not under military control (Maddow 236). Despite the fact that they were not technically the responsibility of the government, their behavior still reflects upon the military and the entirety of the United States. Johnson observes that “’The Bosnians think we’re all trash’” due to the behavior of DynCorp employees (Maddow 238). Another, more

This can be seen in the case of Brown & Root in which they went over $100 million over the allotted budget, most of which in the ‘Management and Administration’ category (Maddow 232). This amazingly large overrun from the initial quoted figure shows that the private sector, not being responsible to the military chain of command, has often made decisions that have cost far more money than thought necessary rather than saving tax dollars as expected. More deliberate overspending can be seen in the case of DynCorp. Ben Johnson explained that there was a large level of fraud on the part of DynCorp when it came to purposely overstating the work that was being done or doing jobs in that were unnecessary just to bill the government (Maddow 233-34). Again, as these individuals are not held accountable to or supervised by the military, their actions represent their own best economic interests rather than those of the government. Beyond not being held responsible, the law allows companies to demand extremely high payments that does not make it more cost-effective. Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy, Joe Jordon, stated that a company can demand up to $763,000 in 2011 as reimbursement for executive salaries and bonuses (Jordan). Although using the private sector may seem more cost-effective due to the lack of family costs,