39,000 New Pentagon Civil Servants are to be hired in the next five years , according to Defense Sec. Gates' plan. Many would replace private contractors overseeing military acquisitions --allegedly on the theory that this will help prevent over-budget, under-performing weapons systems. But not all the new full-time civil servants will be in acquisitions. Reports WaPo : 

Of the 13,000 private contractors to be replaced in the coming year, 2,500 of them would be in the acquisition workforce.

What about the other 10,500? ... Contractors can be fired, remember. Full-time civil servants are forever. Yet replacing the former with the latter seems to be a consistent theme of the new administration. Is this really Gates talking? Or is it Obama talking through Gates? Or is it AFSCME** talking through Obama through Gates? ... P.S.: The Post 's ed board says "Democrats who say they support the president's expensive health-care and education programs" should support cuts in weapons systems that would free up money to pay for those programs. But, on the same grounds, shouldn't they also oppose permanent Pentagon bloat? ...

**--Or, when it comes to Pentagon workers, AFGE . ... 12:42 A.M.

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The rehabilitation of Andrew Cuomo has been a heavy price to pay for the return of a few AIG bonuses. HuffPo 's Thomas Edsall and Robert Dowling do their best to cut him back down, suggesting Cuomo may have tacitly approved, or at least enabled , the bonuses he later dramatically got returned. ... 12:24 A.M.

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'Employee Free Choice' Still on the Move! Yet another Democratic Senator, Michael Bennet of Colorado, declares "card check" unpassable . He also calls it an impediment to enacting health care reform-- a potentially convenient "frame" for other wobbly Dems , Greg Sargent notes. ... P.S.: At some point doesn't the near-stampede of moderate Democrats to renounce the unions' top agenda item cut into labor's leverage when it comes to negotiating a compromise? Just asking! These Dems are defying labor. Are they paying a big price for it, or do they know labor needs them as much as they need labor? Lesson learned? ...  P.P.S.: Didn't Robert Reich try to warn Andy Stern that this would happen ? ... P.P.P.S.: Or is labor angling for a pity vote--they're about to be so humiliated, Dems will have to do something to help them? ... Update: Udall and Warner (!)  seem to say they will vote for cloture . Of course, that's a bit of a 'free' vote now since cloture on the full-strength bill seems unlikely to get the necessary 60 votes (or even come up). Still, it makes it less of a stampede. ...  Campaign Diaries ' headcount seems a bit Ambinderesque --that is, optimistic, from labor's point of view. If they can get Feinstein and Bennet on cloture, then they only need two out of five other senators who "oppose the current version but haven't closed the door to compromise." Why would a senator 'close the door to compromise'? The question's still "which compromise?"  ...   12:03 A.M.

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Tuesday, April 7, 2009

60 in two? Really? Jennifer Rubin (citing Jay Newton-Small ): Are we sure 2010 is a year for Dem Senate pickups? ... 11:40 P.M.

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Variety Was His Blog: Amy Wallace, whose 2001 profile of Peter Bart in Los Angeles M agazine  became the sort of "industry" sensation the L.A. Times seems to never achieve, jumps in on Bart's upstairs-kicking with a juicy lunch anecdote (see end of page 1)  that demonstrates why Bart had no business running Variety . . ... P.S.: It's another question whether a man who's a bag of conflicts and biases--and who gives them free range in his writing--should be covering anything anywhere. The answer is of course he should. But those ethics aren't the ethics of a man running a large conventional reporting staff. They're the ethics of a blogger. In the coming days it will probably become a cliche to suggest that Bart's Variety was been done in by lone Web operators like Nikki Finke . But Bart actually had more in common with Finke (who also doesn't seem to keep her ad hominem impulses from shaping her reporting ) than you might think. ... [ Via L.A. Observed ]  11:38 P.M.

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