My Proposal To Save Two Hundred Thousand Of Your Taxpayer Dollars, As Well As A Lesson In Why White People Are Disliked By People Who Aren't White

It's not news to many of you that the Food and Drug Administration has had its problems. Some of you may even think it's not doing its job. Perhaps because you have the impression that the FDA is responsible for keeping bacteria that comes from poop out of our spinach. Or the hamburger we eat. You might even think the FDA should make sure impurities that might cause a fatal allergic reaction don't make it into the drugs we take.

Actually, you would be right. The FDA has done a pretty shitty job these last few years, and people are dead because of it. 

Don't despair though, as FDA has a solution to what ails it. As reported last month in The  Washington Post, FDA leaders decided to hire a contractor for a public relations campaign that would "create and foster a lasting positive public image of the agency for the American public" Cost to the taxpayers? $300,000.

Dear FDA, 

Here's how you can solve your public relations problem. Make sure:

1)  Poop and food are kept separate. 

2) People don't put crap in our food and drugs that isn't supposed to be there. 

I think you'll be quite pleased that I met your PR needs at a significant savings to your original proposal. Enclosed please find my invoice for $100,000.

Sincerely, 

Drugmonkey

Except we all know I never had a chance at winning this contract. Because even if I were as qualified as the person who got the deal, I don't have a golf buddy or someone I went to college with who ended up working in procurement deep inside the dark underbelly of governmental bureaucracy. Passing along government work to your (lilly white) friends has been a time honored tradition since long before the Drugmonkey took his first breath. 

"Drugmonkey, shut up" some of you are saying. "There are laws that require competitive bidding on federal contracts, with specific exceptions for work awarded to minority-owned firms! We overpay the minorities and make them not try as hard to get work! It's the white people that are getting the shaft!"

And if you're saying that, you're white. Because if you're a minority you know this is how those non-competitive minority set-asides work in the real world:

the F.D.A. official taxed with the image problem already had a friend at a Washington public relations firm picked out for the plum.

The solution, contrived through bureaucratic sleight of hand, adds a whole new facet to the agency’s image problem. The F.D.A. circumvented the competitive bidding process by choosing a minority contractor not subject to low-bid regulations. That “prime contractor” was then supposed to hand the deal off to the preferred Washington firm as a subcontractor.

So, one lucky minority gets a little sugar, but overall, whitey wins again. Don't believe me? Here's a picture of the bigwigs at the firm, Qorvis Communications, that was scheduled to end up with the no-bid minority set aside cash. 

In this case however, they didn't. Because the FDA was shocked, just shocked, to find out about this once The Washington Post ran the story. Don't kid yourself though. I have a feeling most $300,000 contracts aren't getting this level of scrutiny by curious reporters. Or anyone else.

Amazingly, it's never the white trash who are able to see things like this.  The well-connected golf playing people of privilege are incredibly effective at convincing the white trash that it's the minorities that get the unfair advantages in today's society. Spend a little time thinking about this the next time you wonder why that black man you see on the street is so angry. 

Maybe you can ponder it over a little spinach.