Have We Got a Deal For You: Let's Privatize Government!

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http://counterpunch.com/


Have We Got a Deal For You: Let's Privatize Government!
The Fire Sale of America


At a time when the corporate leaders of America have demonstrated an incurable proclivity to blaze a trail of scorched earth and looting across the banking, trading, housing, and mortgage industries, the public is now catching the whiff of a new smoldering stench just over the horizon.

If corporate America has its way, everything from our parking meters, zoos, airports, toll roads and drinking water will be privatized in the biggest fire sale in the history of the industrialized world. In other words, let’s send a powerful message to our children that the reward for corporate greed, incompetence and criminal behavior is to hand over what’s left of the country’s assets.

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Out in Green Bay, Wisconsin this week, officials tried to hold a closed door meeting to discuss privatizing the Brown County planning department. (Isn’t a key function of a planning department to police corporate interests? This sounds like the U.S. Treasury model, also known as regulatory capture.)

In Grand Rapids, Kent County commissioners are weighing a recommendation from the Sheriff, Larry Stelma, to privatize the food service at the county jail.

Following a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study at the end of October, finding it would be a waste of taxpayer dollars, the Army is backing off a plan (at least for now) to privatize carpentry, plumbing, grounds maintenance and other staff positions at West Point.

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From sea to shining sea, it’s all up for corporate grabs: the prisons of Arizona; the libraries of Nevada County, California; the Milwaukee County Zoo; the tree cutters of Detroit; the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans; a youth shelter in Cape May, New Jersey; a sewage treatment plant in Marin County, California. The parking meters in Chicago have already been privatized.

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In 2006, Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana privatized the state’s welfare services, handing a $1.34 billion contract to IBM. A computer company, engaged in gigabits and memory chips, was entrusted with getting food stamps and Medicaid and welfare payments into the hands of the hungry and the poor. The previous Indiana system of face to face meetings with case workers was sacked for automation and call centers. After legislators heard endless stories of life-saving prescriptions not being filled, people with less than $100 in assets not receiving food stamps in the legally mandated response time, call centers not picking up the phone or losing the calls, paperwork disappearing, together with a class action lawsuit being filed, Governor Daniels finally sacked IBM last month.

But what about the people who may have died or been injured from this abhorrent judgment call. Should Governor Daniels be able to simply make the same sheepish admission, “I got it wrong,” like Alan Greenspan and walk away. Hopefully, the voters will provide some accountability.
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an insanity that we all will end up paying for and cleaning up

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1. kicking back to pg. 1 because this awfulness is happening NOW

nt

[izzybeans]

2. Thanks for posting.

[Celebration]

3. Instead of having Congress

We could just have Indian call centers take polls.

[AwakeAtLast]

4. Mitch Daniels was reelected - no accountability in IN

It may have gone for Obama, but it is still very red underneath. x(

[BR_Parkway]

5. Can we buy the GOP and then outsource them? Or replace them with

workers here on visas because I'm sure sick of seeing that group in pasty white face lockstep, they gotta get some diversity in there