THE SECRET GOVERNMENT ELLEN NAKASHIMA, WASHINGTON POST: The Bush administration has ordered that more than 40,000 federal workers compete for their jobs with the private sector, a first step toward President Bush's goal of making about 425,000 government jobs eligible for private contracting. The move will swell the contract corps, a shadow-government workforce whose numbers are estimated to be more than three times as large as the 1.8 million-strong civilian federal workforce. "Competing out" work is not new, but Bush wants to vastly expand the practice . . . There are an estimated 5.6 million contract employees doing everything from mowing lawns on federal property to analyzing nutrition programs, writing computer programs and building space shuttles . . . "We're really talking about a basic change in the constitution of our government," said Dan Guttman, a fellow at the Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University. "It's not just a couple $600 hammers. The basic change is that we can no longer assume that the actual work of government is being done by officials subject to the rules that we have placed on officials to protect the public." No government official knows the actual size of the contract workforce. The best estimate comes from Brookings Institution government specialist Paul Light, whose figure of 5.6 million dates to the end of 1999. The total has likely risen since then, he said. "Neither Congress nor past presidents have ever really wanted to know the true size of government," Light said. "The driver for contracting out has often been to make the federal government look smaller than it otherwise would, to hide the jobs." MORE http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38933-2001Jun7.html DRUG BUSTS PHILIP J. HILTS, NY TIMES: A Wyoming jury has awarded $6.4 million to the family of a man who killed three relatives and himself after taking the antidepressant Paxil. Though many lawsuits have claimed that antidepressants in the same class of drugs, which includes Prozac and Zoloft, have caused suicidal or violent behavior, this is the first case a plaintiff has won, lawyers in the case said . . . The drugs have been shown to successfully treat depression and reduce the risk of suicide that comes with severe depression. The issue in lawsuits has been whether the drugs themselves or the illnesses they are meant to treat are to blame for patients' violent or suicidal behavior. The drug makers say that when a patient has become violent or suicidal, it has been because the illness has overcome the effect of the drug and the patient's natural inhibitions. But researchers who have testified in the cases have said that, even though the drugs are effective in most cases, in some patients the drugs cause agitation and violence . . . The family's lawyers, James E. Fitzgerald of Cheyenne and Andy Vickery of Houston, told the jury that the fault was not so much in the drug itself but in the company's failure to sufficiently warn doctors and patients that the effects of the drug could include agitation and violence. Mr. Vickery said in a telephone interview that in Germany, warnings are included on the packages of at least two drugs in this class, Prozac and Paxil. The Prozac package warns that the drugs could lead to suicide attempts. The Paxil package says a sedative should be taken with the drug. Those warnings are not on packages in the United States, but the insert for doctors says, under the heading "suicide," that "close supervision of high-risk patients should accompany initial drug therapy." MORE http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/08/health/08VERD.html NOTE: The catch with these drugs, some observers argue, is that while they are generally effective, in a small number of cases they can produce dangerous and destructive results. This story has particular importance since a number of widely publicized mass school killings involved youth who were on anti-depressant drugs. This aspect of the story, however, has been largely unnoted by major media. NORML: Nevada legislators overwhelmingly approved legislation to dramatically reduce Nevada's toughest-in-the-nation marijuana law and authorize pot's medical use. Nevada's legislature is the first in 24 years to eliminate jail time and criminal records for minor marijuana offenders, and the ninth state since 1996 to legalize the use of medical marijuana under a doctor's supervision. CHANDRA LEVY NY POST: Missing Washington intern Chandra Levy called Rep. Gary Condit several times the day before she mysteriously vanished, according to her cell-phone records. Investigators say Levy repeatedly called the California Democrat at a special answering service that bypassed his congressional office . . . The disclosure of the calls follows a Washington Post report that Condit admitted to cops that the attractive intern slept at his apartment in Washington's trendy Adams Morgan neighborhood. The newspaper also quoted a close relative as saying Levy had confided she was romantically involved with the married congressman. Condit has denied having a romance with Chandra. MORE http://www.nypostonline.com/news/nationalnews/27487.htm REVIEW E-MAIL: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] REVIEW INDEX: http://www.prorev.com/ UNDERNEWS: http://www.prorev.com/indexa.htm REVIEW FORUM: http://prorev.com/bb.htm UNDERNEWS SUBSCRIBE: Reply with "subscribe" as subject UNDERNEWS UNSUBSCRIBE: Reply with 'unsubscribe' as subject SAM SMITH'S GREAT AMERICAN POLITICAL REPAIR MANUAL (WW Norton) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0393316270/progressiverevieA/ For a free trial subscription to Undernews and the hard-copy Progressive Review send your postal address with zip code. Copyright 2001, The Progressive Review. 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