There’s such a sea of chaotic information we’re all drifting through in these days that it is terribly difficult to find out precisely what is going on, to find the patterns that can bring the larger story into focus. I want to point to one of those patterns I noticed or which was brought to my attention last night. I think I’m the first to highlight this, though I may be wrong about that. Not trying to claim an exclusive; I want to point to the significance of the detail.
Let’s start with my story from last night about the abrupt and reckless cancelation of upwards of a thousand VA contracts totaling roughly $2 billion and covering a huge variety of work VA does, everything from funeral care to doctor recruitment. As I reported last night, VA contract officers were sent an excel spreadsheet of almost a thousand contracts in the early morning of February 21st, told that all of these contracts should be canceled and that if anyone wanted to make a case to spare individual contracts they had till the end of business that day (2.21.25) to make their case. My sources noted that the contract code on all of these contracts was NAICS – 541611, which is “Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services.” It’s very clear they pulled up everything under that label and slated it to be cut. My sources’ impressions are that the DOGErs making these decisions read that label as basically, McKinsey/MBA consulting type bullshit, easy stuff to cut. At VA, most of it wasn’t that at all. But they didn’t seem to make any attempt to look under the hood at what those contracts were.
