Why are my command line utilities running so slowly on my Mac?
I actually figured out the issue today. It was caused by a piece of anti-malware software called Sourcefire AMP (Advanced Malware Protection). All of my issues went away after I disabled/uninstalled it.

I'm guessing that it was doing something like putting a delay on things in /bin, /usr/bin, etc. for "security reasons"... I'm guessing the GNU tools were not delayed because they weren't in the "blacklisted" directories.