Certainly one of the most popular forms of corruption among the federal civil service in Washington consists simply of arranging for contractors to do one’s work in order that one have six or seven hours a day free at the office to make money doing something else. When that is accomplished, there are a number of things that federal bureaucrats do with the time; any line of business a person with a cell phone can run from a desk is a candidate. As I have mentioned in my previous posts, federal contractors are, by and large, complete and total whores who will do anything a government employee tells them, whether it’s legal or not. So, if one is a member of the federal civil service above a certain pay grade, it’s no great challenge to arrange for a “support” contract that pretty much describes what one is expected to do in return for one’s paycheck and just charge the taxpayers again to have that work performed by a fawning, spineless, obsequious contractor. One “manages” that contract for an hour or two a day, and is thereafter forever free to spend the rest of one’s time collecting one’s full federal salary and accruing full federal benefits while making even more money doing something else.
All of that is completely illegal, of course, and likewise completely ignored. Prohibitions against “personal services,” or even the appearance thereof, occur in every one of the requests for proposal that whore federal contractors fight over tooth and nail, but as soon as one of them wins the work, who cares? As any honest members of the civil service or the federal contracting community soon learn, often the hard way, every federal agency’s Office of Inspector General exists specifically to cover this kind of thing up and see to it that anybody who mentions its existence is duly and severely punished. The federal civil service has a sweet thing here, folks, and they don’t want any interruptions while stealing your tax money.
Real estate is a can’t-lose proposition here in DC, where they print the money, so plenty of people in the civil service run that racket out of their offices. An example would be one of my ex-girlfriends, Diane, who shills properties on Capitol Hill to bohunks from the provinces and wide-eyed foreigners here on diplomatic missions of various sorts; and, of course, the usual bozos from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other such cesspools of worldwide financial shenanigans. Her husband Frank, who is also in the civil service, likewise spends at least five hours a day on his cell phone, wheeling and dealing. But real estate isn’t exciting enough for Frank, Would-Be Captain of Industry. No, Frank likes commodities, both the kind traded on markets as futures and the real thing. When we have met over the years, as on occasion one would, at the theater or a downtown bistro, Frank always made a point two things – gloating over taking Diane away from me and spouting on at great length about the exciting deals and obscene profits he had made lately, being so shrewd with his little cell phone all day at the office when he should have been working. Because work, as Frank, and every other member of the United States Civil Service knows, is for contractors and suckers – contractors to do Frank’s job for him and legions of toiling suckers outside the Beltway who pay federal taxes on the income they derive from working – all so people like Frank can get a fat federal paycheck even as they grab still more big bucks being shrewd with their little cell phones all day long. But it wasn’t Frank who called me at home today as I was enjoying some time off thinking of our nation’s great presidents, it was his wife. So I expected bad news, because if, for example, Frank had just won two hundred million dollars in the lottery, then Frank would be calling to brag about it; if his wife was calling instead, it could only mean trouble:
Tom: Hello, this is Tom Collins.
Diane: Tom, this is Diane. I need your advice about something.
Tom: Sure, what?
Diane: Peanut butter.
Tom: Not one of my favorite foods, really.
Diane: Can it be harmful to eat?
Tom: Yes, usually from a contaminant called aflatoxin. It’s a compound produced by a fungus called Aspergillus flavis. Anything over 20 parts per billion is banned from any human food in the US. There can also be other stuff in peanut butter that’s pretty gross, but not harmful to eat, technically, at least.
Diane: Like what?
Tom: Oh, you got your insect pieces and droppings – the FDA allows up to 30 visible pieces in every 100 grams, or about 3 ounces of peanut butter. Then there’s rodent hairs and droppings; that’s one piece in every 3 ounces or so. And, of course, plain old dirt, which the FDA calls “grit;” they allow about 25 milligrams of that in 100 grams of peanut butter. Then, of course, there’s peanut butter itself, which derives about 75 percent of its calories from fat; and some brands contain trans-fats, too…
Diane: Not Peter Pan?
Tom: Not Peter Pan, what?
Diane: Trans-fats?
Tom: I’m not sure, probably not trans-fats. And who knows? Peter Pan peanut butter might be cleaner than the FDA allows with respect to insect parts, rodent filth and dirt. I’d really have to go look that kind of stuff up. But until today, I haven’t had any reason to, because I don’t eat peanut butter. What’s your sudden interest in peanut butter about, anyway? Is there some kind of new peanut butter diet or something? “Eat peanut butter four times a day and lose weight,” yeah, makes sense – if all I could eat was peanut butter four times a day, I’d probably lose weight myself. But how can a person possibly force themselves to do something like that for weeks, even months? And what happens to your weight when you finally stop? If you’re thinking about eating nothing but peanut butter, why not consider eating nothing but grapefruits instead? It’s no more insane an idea and grapefruits are better food.
Diane: Tom, what I really called about is something Frank did.
Tom: Dropped some of that hot plumbing he’s so fond of on his foot, maybe?
Diane: Oh, come on, Tom, you know Frank only deals in legally obtained scrap copper pipes and wiring; and besides, he never actually goes near any of it.
Tom: A federal bureaucrat buying scrap metal from companies that hire homeless people to strip buildings in the Rust Belt and then selling it to companies who ship the scrap metal to China. Frank’s a living example of globalism and the new world order, that boy is.
Diane: It provides jobs for people in the United States, doesn’t it?
Tom: Jobs scavenging on the rotting carcass of American industry; how appropriate. Okay, so what did he do, then? Did he trip over his manly endowment and fall down the basement stairs? Blind himself while shining his ego? Throw his back out hoisting sacks of hundred dollar bills?
Diane: Tom! What Frank did was buy peanut butter; a lot of it.
Tom: Oh really? Let me guess – about ten days ago, he got an exclusive, hush-hush, very inside tip on an incredible deal. A semi-truck full of Peter Pan in jars, wrapped and stacked on rack pallets…
Diane: Eighteen boxcars of Peter Pan in jars, wrapped and stacked on rack pallets.
Tom: And they were really, really cheap…
Diane: Yes…
Tom: …just like Frank.
Diane: Tom!
Tom: And, about three days afterwards, you heard on the news that Peter Pan peanut butter in batches with lot identifiers beginning in “2111” were being recalled because of salmonella contamination.
Diane: It was four days later. But otherwise, that’s exactly what happened.
Tom: Have you determined how much of the peanut butter Frank bought was in the recall lots?
Diane: He tried to sell it on Valentine’s Day. The buyer sent a couple of guys out to inspect the shipment. They said they couldn’t find a single pallet that wasn’t marked as a twenty-one-eleven batch. Tom, is there any way this could be some kind of mistake? I thought salmonella was something people got from eggs and chickens; there’s no egg in peanut butter, is there?
Tom: No, there aren’t any eggs in peanut butter. But rodents make ca-ca in the peanuts and that gets ground up in the mix, and that rodent business can contain salmonella. It’s supposed to be killed when the peanut butter mix is cooked at, oh, what is it, something like 170 degrees Fahrenheit.
Diane: My God, we’re eating rodent droppings in our peanut butter?
Tom: Well, no more than what the FDA allows. And the bacteria in it are killed and rendered harmless by the heat when the peanut butter is cooked. Scientifically speaking, there’s no reason why autoclaved rodent droppings wouldn’t be safe to eat. Why don’t you try a plate on Frank sometime – toss some autoclaved rodent droppings with al dente penne pasta and some twenty-dollar-a-bottle olive oil flavored with white truffles; top it off with shaved asiago. Call it “merde d’souris a la Toscane.” He’s always pretending to have class; give it a French name that references Tuscany and he’ll not only eat it, he’ll tell you why it’s superior to a grilled prime rib-eye steak. Yeah, and serve it with some of that merlot he has down in that overblown wine cellar of his – it should be a perfect match.
Diane: Okay, so what happened, was the peanut butter cooker not hot enough to sterilize the mouse poop in the Peter Pan mix?
Tom: Possibly. But it’s more likely the salmonella was introduced after the heating step. As the peanut butter cools, there are other, ah, opportunities, so to speak, for contamination in the processing.
Diane: Could you be more specific?
Tom: There might be workers in the peanut butter plant who don’t wash their hands after they use the potty.
Diane: Christ Almighty, Tom! What possible reason could people working in the food processing industry have to behave like that?
Tom: It could be unintentional; illegal immigrants from places where hygiene is not generally known. But when you think about it, why would anyone be surprised that someone who ignored a sign that said “United States Border” would also ignore one that said “Wash Your Hands Before Returning to Work,” even if both of them were printed in Spanish? But who knows, it might be disgruntled union workers, putting poop in the Peter Pan to protest poor production policy; although I’m absolutely certain that union ethics bylaws preclude any intentional actions such as that. But failing to wash your hands after you go to the bathroom is not a sin of commission, it’s sin of omission, and, come to think of it, nearly impossible to prove. Anyhow, I can’t say for sure if the ConAgra plant in Sylvester, Georgia is all union, all illegal scabs or some kind of unholy mix so absurd the American public is lucky it got off with a few hundred cases of food poisoning before the whole thing went sour. No chance of Frank just returning his eighteen boxcars of Peter Pan and asking ConAgra for a refund, is there?
Diane: Frank bought the consignment “as-is,” and without warranty. So not only is his investment worthless, Frank’s going to have to spend even more money disposing of all that contaminated Peter Pan. And on top of that, the railroad is charging him a daily fee to keep the boxcars parked on a siding.
Tom: Still think you made the best choice when you dumped me to marry him?
Diane: I love him, Tom, that’s why I married him!
Tom: Right; and love never did have a lick of sense, did it?
Diane: Enough philosophy. What can Frank do?
Tom: Peanut butter wrestling.
Diane: What?
Tom: You’ve heard of mud wrestling?
Diane: Yeah.
Tom: Jello wrestling?
Diane: I saw that once, at a crab house in Maryland.
Tom: Banana pudding wrestling?
Diane: That, too.
Tom: Turkish oil wrestling?
Diane: Ah, no.
Tom: Tomato wrestling?
Diane: Really?
Tom: Sour mash wrestling?
Diane: Sour mash?
Tom: Axel grease and sand wrestling?
Diane: People do that?
Tom: Spooge wrestling?
Diane: What the hell is spooge?
Tom: If you don’t know by now, lady, don’t mess with it. People wrestle in all those things – and they wrestle in peanut butter, too; women, mostly.
Diane: Why on earth would a woman degrade herself by wrestling another woman in peanut butter?
Tom: Oh, I don’t know, maybe she needs money to pay her federal income taxes and get the IRS off her back. Look, I’m aware of a few people who might be able to use that peanut butter. It’s not an application involving human consumption, so I doubt the FDA would be concerned; but I’m going to be up front about the salmonella thing. Therefore, I am going to recommend to these potential customers that they mix ampicillin, gentamicin, trimethoprim, sulfamethoxazole, and ciprofloxacin with the peanut butter before dumping it in the peanut butter wrestling pit.
Diane: What’s all that chemical talk about?
Tom: Those are the antibiotics that the Centers for Disease Control cite as effective against salmonella. I’ll do some dilution calculations and forward those to the potential customers. They will need to consider the cost of adding the antibiotics to the Peter Pan when bargaining with Frank to take those eighteen boxcars of 2111 off his hands.
Diane: I don’t understand. How could that be practical? Aren’t antibiotics really, really expensive?
Tom: Well, here in the US, the cost of nearly every pharmaceutical is through the bloody roof. You mustn’t conclude from those statistics, however, that antibiotics are all that expensive to produce. Some of them are pretty cheap, especially in bulk, and anybody who is going to buy eighteen boxcars of Peter Pan peanut butter knows where to get bulk antibiotics very cheap.
Diane: Where’s that?
Tom: Same place the buyers for the peanut butter wrestling matches are – Mexico.
Diane: Mexico?
Tom: Sure. Antibiotics are cheap as dirt in Mexico. Why do you think they never bother washing their hands? I’ll email you the contacts in a couple of hours.
Diane: Tom, if this keeps us from going bankrupt, Frank and I will be eternally grateful.
Tom: That will be very fulfilling – the gratitude, eternal or otherwise, of two GS-15’s is something very few people have ever had.
Diane: All right, I’ll level with you, Tom Collins – the reason I didn’t marry you is that you are such an incorrigible wiseacre.
Tom: No, that’s the reason you were attracted to me in the first place. Tell Frank that Peter Pan never grew up and neither will he.
Diane: Okay, thanks, Tom. Bye.
According to the calculations I performed a few minutes later, Frank should be able to clear a five to seven percent profit. Since I’m sure Diane would never mention where she got the buyers, I won’t be surprised if the next time I see Frank, he tells me all about how he made a killing off that Peter Pan peanut butter fiasco with the salmonella back in February, 2007, turning a $30,000 profit in less than two weeks. Yeah, all while he was supposed to be working at a job in the federal civil service. So how do you feel about paying your taxes now? Or is that just a case of salmonella coming on? In that eventuality, remember that if you believe in salmonella, you have to believe in Peter Pan.