Livinglies's Weblog

 

Privatization: Selling Out America

GAO Report Details Many Abuses of Government Trust

See report on how to privatize (outsource) government functions at 

http://www.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=gao&docid=f:gg97048.txt

 

Many of my readers have been asking about PRIVATE TAXATION: Private “taxation” is the charging of fees by a private entity for public services that have historically been provided by government. The reason they were always provided by government is that in every case, the service or product is something that every person MUST have to survive in our society. 

One test is to to see what happens if someone doesn’t get it — like fire service, or health care. If someone does not get fire service, their house burns down and so do the houses around it. If someone drops to the ground with a seizure outside the the emergency room, they lie there and die unless someone takes them in and treats them. 

If someone gets hit over the head and robbed we want police to either stop it or have an infrastructure to capture the culprit — regardless of whether the individual involved has paid their taxes. That’s the key. Where we all have an interest in making sure that services are delivered to people other than ourselves, it is a social function and therefore absolutely and exclusively within the scope of government function or regulation.

As a society we make sure that certain things are done because of the dangers to the property of others, the health of others, the competence of others (education) or the maintenance of our infrastructure and investment in modernizing our roads and transportation systems. 

Government’s role, most of us would agree regardless of ideology, is to make certain that services are distributed in such a way that society performs in peace, safety, and prosperity. 

Whether this is done through private enterprise or public agencies is a policy decision. Obviously where the service can be produced at the lowest cost to society and highest quality, THAT would be an indicator of whether the government should provide it or private enterprise should provide it under government regulation to assure that services are in fact delivered, and that the owner of the private enterprise doesn’t take the money and run.

PRIVATIZING IS SNEAKY WAY TO INCREASE YOUR COSTS, LOWER THE QUALITY OF THE SERVICE, AND CREATE THE APPEARANCE OF LOWER TAXES, WHEN IN FACT THEY HAVE INCREASED SUBSTANTIALLY. BY MERELY CALLING THEM FEES FROM PRIVATE ENTERPRISE GOVERNMENT LEADERS CAN CLAIM THAT TAXES HAVE NOT BEEN INCREASED.

While we voters were sleeping for the past 30 years, plans have been in development for privatizing just about everything in America. The words are slippery. The politicians who have been bought and who are now owned by the proponents of this idea are able to pivot from what it IS to how they want it to APPEAR to the American public. 

You would be amazed at how many privatizing events have already occurred and astonished at the number of events coming. Prisons are run by private industry who thus have an interest in seeing to it that they are full, which they are: The U.S. has the highest prison population of any country per capita including most dictatorships. In order to keep the prisons full and the prison owners rich they lobby for criminalizing behavior and enforcement of laws in the most “productive” way for them. 

Think about it. The “War on Drugs” is essential to the prison owners who must keep all drugs criminalized, and essential to drug cartels who would suffer collapse if their “products” were commoditized instead of criminalized. 

Of course further examples abound. The sale of Pennsylvania toll roads virtually guarantees higher tolls and lower maintenance, high traffic fatalities, and lower national security. 

In recent times past, I joked that we would one day outsource (privatize) our military to China, because we could spend $25 per year and hire a hundred million soldiers. Now it isn’t funny. Functions that were and have been sacredly guarded as government functions are being “outsourced” (privatized) for fun and profit while the rest of us suffer from SERIOUS BREACHES OF OUR NATIONAL SECURITY, rotting infrastructure, train stations that look like WE lost World War II (go on the net and take a look at the train stations in Germany and Japan), etc.

I call to your attention the following list published by the Government Accounting Office (GAO):

GAO PRIVATIZATION PRODUCTS RELATED TO STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS
Child Support Enforcement:  Early Results on Comparability of Privatized and Public Offices (GAO/HEHS-97-4, Dec.  16, 1996). 

Airport Privatization:  Issues Related to the Sale or Lease of U.S. Commercial Airports (GAO/RCED-97-3, Nov.  7, 1996). 

Child Support Enforcement:  States’ Experience With Private Agencies’Collection of Support Payments (GAO/HEHS-97-11, Oct.  23, 1996). 

Private and Public Prisons:  Studies Comparing Operational Costs and/or Quality of Service (GAO/GGD-96-158, Aug.  16, 1996). 

Child Support Enforcement:  States and Localities Move to Privatized Services (GAO/HEHS-96-43FS, Nov.  20, 1995). 

District of Columbia:  City and State Privatization Initiatives and Impediments (GAO/T-GGD-95-194, June 28, 1995). 

District of Columbia:  Actions Taken in Five Cities to Improve Their Financial Health (GAO/T-GGD-95-110, Mar.  2, 1995). 

Filed under: currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, inflation, Investor, Mortgage, politics | Tagged: GAO, GAO Report, infrastructure, OUTSOURCING, prisons, private taxation, PRIVATIZING, war on drugs |