A Red State Privatization Horror Story

a reply to: FyreByrd

First off liberal states should be red. Not sure how they mixed that up, but commies are red. What ever. Let's use the accepted convention. Blue states are democrat and red states are republican.

Second, last I checked, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan voted for Obama.

And no, conservatives and libertarians don't want to do away with government. They want the federal government to shrink and stay out of state affairs as the Constitution granted.

So no truth from truth-out.org. Lies! They're all lies!

originally posted by: intrepid
a reply to: butcherguy

A sale of commodities is extremely different than running a prison. One is a tax benefit, one a tax drain. Or should be. Once you privatize jails for profit you are opening the doors to rioting. What suffers? Everything. Food is subpar. The guards are probably not properly trained. Goons. The gov. has to realize that not everything can be run for profit.

Education is a commodity, like any service. One problem with this is that was not really "privatization." The government was just paying a different group of people to do the same job with the same constraints. There was nothing free market about it, really.

AS for the "F" grade, it was given by the education department, who has a vested interest in government schools, so can we really call that "F" and objective "F?"

The real objective grade really comes from the fact that we spend the most per student with some of the worse grades in math and science as anyone in the industrialized world. That is a real problem and doing the same thing over and over gain (IE just throwing even more and more money at it) obviously is not working.

originally posted by: intrepid
Cripes it's like conversing with prepubescents. It was an easy question. Do corporations do things out of "fellow feeling" or for profit?

Of course they do for profit. That's the whole point and that's what makes the private sector usually more efficient and cost effective than the governmental sector. Waste equals failure in a business. Waste is not relevant to a politician as long as it's waste that gets him re-elected.

Private schools compete and if they do not provide a good service (IE, educated children) the parents will just take their money elsewhere and the private school will fail. If they provide a good product and have a great reputation, such as a large amount of academic scholarships given to it's graduates, parents will send their kids there.

In the case of Florida, there was no change in the market. The government just contracted out it's monopoly on education and it did just as poorly because the dynamic of the system didn't really change at all.

originally posted by: xuenchen

originally posted by: buster2010

originally posted by: Tusks
Crony-capitalism/corporatism is even more rampant in the Democratic Party, the Pres and his Solyndra and similar contracts being examples.

You may want to do a little fact checking before complaining about Obama and Solyndra. The DOE didn't need permission from Obama to loan them money that loan was already set up by the previous administration.

Hmmm.

The results of the Congressional probe shared Tuesday with ABC News show that less than two weeks before President Bush left office, on January 9, 2009, the Energy Department's credit committee had voted against offering a loan commitment to Solyndra.

Even after Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, analysts in the Energy Department and in the Office of Management and Budget were repeatedly questioning the wisdom of the loan. In one exchange, an Energy official wrote of "a major outstanding issue" -- namely, that Solyndra's numbers showed it would run out of cash in September 2011.

Bush Admin. Voted AGAINST Solyndra Loan

Hmmm....

Did the program that funded the Solyndra loan start under George W. Bush? David Plouffe says so

The Energy Department's loan guarantee program was created as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by Bush.

In his signing speech, Bush lauded the bill's support for clean technology, though he didn't specifically mention the loan guarantees.

The loan guarantees were designed to "support innovative clean energy technologies that are typically unable to obtain conventional private financing due to high technology risks."

Republicans, including Bush, emphasized the program's benefits for nuclear energy and biofuels. The president touted the new energy law in his 2007 State of the Union address. His energy secretary, Samuel Bodman, regularly mentioned the loan guarantees in speeches on renewable energy. The Energy Department issued its final rules for the program in 2007, along with a list of 16 companies that made the cut for to apply for its first round of awards, and Solyndra was among them.

House Republicans investigating Solyndra have claimed that the Bush administration ultimately rejected the Solyndra loan, but that's not quite the case. Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and news media point out that Bush energy officials wanted to get the loan closed on their way out the door — it was listed as the first of their "three highest priorities through January 15." (Obama took office Jan. 20, 2009.) But the Energy Department's credit committee held things up for more analysis.

Our ruling Plouffe said that the loan guarantee program that awarded half a billion dollars in guarantees to Solyndra "was supported by President Bush." The program was created on Bush's watch by a law he signed and promoted. The program grew under the Obama administration, which ultimately awarded Solyndra's loan guarantee under a new section of the law created by the stimulus. The Bush administration, though, promoted the loan guarantee program, and Bush himself touted it on his way out of office. There's also evidence his administration specifically prioritized Solyndra's project. We find Plouffe's statement Mostly True.

As you said Hmmm.

a reply to: intrepid

Generally one goes ad hominem when they have nothing else.

Do doctors drive fancy cars because their motives are altruistic?

Notice that I am not reduced to referring to you as prepubescent-like.

Also please take note that I never stated that corporations are altruistic. I am questioning whether your examples exhibit altruism. Take education for example... where do you suppose that learning materials used by teachers come from? Do the computers and books fall from the sky... gifts from the 'learning fairy'? Evil corporations make, market and profit from those things. Just like health care.. hospitals, doctors, nurses, pharma... all for profit.

originally posted by: FyreByrd


Are you including all the private military contractors that make 1000 times more then a GI for participating in our endless wars. Are you including the private constractors that spy on us 24/7?

No - they work in the private sector - we pay for them but have no control or recourse over their actions in Our Name.

I don't agree with the preponderance of black project and military spending in the private sector either.
It's not as if anyone who makes average pay is going to be a cheerleader for the 1% that controls 40% of the income in the US.
Or even the 10% that get 90% of the income.
The problem is that the left and right are divided and manipulated over about 5 or 6 percent of the income in the US.
The politicians tell the bottom 2% of income that the next 3% up are the rich, evil capitalists that want to keep them down.
The top 90% laugh at both sides of the aisle.
They are ultra rich beyond the concepts of capitalism or socialism.
They live in the world of imperial wealth.
We are not even on their radar.

I see it as certain things being better to be privatized and other things should be public. The dividing line is if an industry is a social service or not. Social services shouldn't be for profit. That's things like jails, utilities, roads, and education. If companies want to offer competing services that are for profit in that area I think it's fine but they shouldn't get any competitive advantages to doing so, and they should have to meet quality tests. In a world where people are competent the for profit option can never match the not for profit option as it always has an additional layer of costs associated with it, no matter how efficiently it runs... then again, we don't live in such a world.

Other things like goods (those wine shops for example) should be 100% privatized. The state should either be empowering people to sell or getting out of the way so that people can sell (whichever is needed in an area) but not doing it directly itself.

Privatization is a means of shifting money from normal people to rich people. Housing, water, food, medicine...If it wasn't worth stealing, the rich wouldn't want it. The govt. claims they have to sell everything because there isn't enough money to provide services, while the rich are richer than ever before and $640 billion of tax-payers' money is spent on arms annually (used to buy arms from rich people's arms manufacturers) and Israel gets it's own $90 billion (Israel has national health care and Americans are paying for it.) The sad and remarkable thing is, some of the very people who will be impoverished by these policies have been brain-washed into supporting it. There's no cure for dumb.

originally posted by: ScreenBogey
Privatization is a means of shifting money from normal people to rich people. Housing, water, food, medicine...If it wasn't worth stealing, the rich wouldn't want it. The govt. claims they have to sell everything because there isn't enough money to provide services, while the rich are richer than ever before and $640 billion of tax-payers' money is spent on arms annually (used to buy arms from rich people's arms manufacturers) and Israel gets it's own $90 billion (Israel has national health care and Americans are paying for it.) The sad and remarkable thing is, some of the very people who will be impoverished by these policies have been brain-washed into supporting it. There's no cure for dumb.

Ok smart guy, if "some rich people" didnt spend their money to start companies that make houses, water treatment plants and equipment, food, farm equipment and packing equipment to grow, produce food, chem labs to research , design and manufacture the medicine. oil companies to produce the fuel for the trucks that get raw materials to these manufactures etc, etc on down the line...where exactly will these commodities come from for you to obtain?
How will to obtain these commodities if you do not have an instrument to facilitate the transaction? Do you think someone would want to trade some organic granola from your co op for some malaria drugs? Sorry, probably won't happen.

a reply to: FyreByrd

Wow, say it aint so......"actually got an “F” from Florida’s education department."

And I would be equally surprised if the Teachers Unions were against this as well.

Collectivists are responsible for HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DEAD in the last century alone.

originally posted by: Idahomie
a reply to: FyreByrd

Wow, say it aint so......"actually got an “F” from Florida’s education department."

And I would be equally surprised if the Teachers Unions were against this as well.

Collectivists are responsible for HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DEAD in the last century alone.

HMMMM - I wonder what number I should make up for all the dead due to privatization (previously called fuedlalism).

Since you're good with totally unsubstantiated numbers , what do you think?

originally posted by: Aazadan
I see it as certain things being better to be privatized and other things should be public. The dividing line is if an industry is a social service or not. Social services shouldn't be for profit. That's things like jails, utilities, roads, and education. If companies want to offer competing services that are for profit in that area I think it's fine but they shouldn't get any competitive advantages to doing so, and they should have to meet quality tests. In a world where people are competent the for profit option can never match the not for profit option as it always has an additional layer of costs associated with it, no matter how efficiently it runs... then again, we don't live in such a world.

Other things like goods (those wine shops for example) should be 100% privatized. The state should either be empowering people to sell or getting out of the way so that people can sell (whichever is needed in an area) but not doing it directly itself.

If you add in health-care both public and private, general science research, roads and public transport and 'regulation' of private business, I agree wholeheartedly.

It used to be this way - government farmed out things that were not in their domain of the "public good' - largely specific design and development of large engineered systems. The creep began with outsourcing basic scientific research during WWII. Production of goods in part of the private enterprise realm and should be - but basic specifications and standards for that production is a governmental function (for public and private safetly).

It's not an either-or proposition. It's a both propsition. And the definition of a fanatical ideolog is one that can imagine only one solution to all problems. Hmmm - I wonder where you here that mostly????

A related thread on the more general ideaology that priviatization is based on can be found here:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

It references a well articulated intereview with Henry Giroux on the rise of neo-liberatism (which passes for neo-conservatism and libertarianism as well) on truthout.

truth-out.org...

...and posits:

We're talking about an ideology marked by the selling off of public goods to private interests; the attack on social provisions; the rise of the corporate state organized around privatization, free trade, and deregulation; the celebration of self interests over social needs; the celebration of profit-making as the essence of democracy coupled with the utterly reductionist notion that consumption is the only applicable form of citizenship. But even more than that, it upholds the notion that the market serves as a model for structuring all social relations: not just the economy, but the governing of all of social life.

Yes - just the world I want to leave to my children (if there is a world left.

The very first statement is incorrect. The only Libertarians who would consider complete abolition of government would be the anarchist types. I think Noam Chomsky is a self-described Libertarian anarcho-socialist.

Everyone else is usually for limited government, not no government.

No government is extreme anarchism. I don't personally know anyone who believes in that. Chomsky is anything but conservative.
I find it odd that anarcho-communists believe that you can have communism without some kind of authoritarian control, but that is another subject I guess.

Even Chomsky contradicts himself when he says that there has to be control from below. I'm guessing he believes in the "dictatorship of the Proletariat" which represents the control of the Proletarian workers. So he may view that as no authoritarian government, but it is still communism. and he still says that there has to be a structure. Well anarchism destroys structure. So there's the dichotomy right there.

a reply to: SM2

Ok smart guy, if "some rich people" didnt spend their money to start companies that make houses, water treatment plants and equipment, food, farm equipment and packing equipment to grow, produce food, chem labs to research , design and manufacture the medicine.

If not for them it would be the Soviet Union.....the control of the means of production by the State. Usually when people attack "privatization" it is because they are for some kind of socialism or communism. But of course we know that eventually they run out of other people's money and such things as collective farming flat out failed in the old Soviet Union.

There are times when local government handling a task is better, more ethical and fair, than a private corporation handling the same task. Corporatism is not an answer for everything. Sadly, many are too brain-washed to not see it that way. They cheers corporations everywhere and end up with deteriorated monopolized private corporate abuse.

originally posted by: eventHorizon
There are times when local government handling a task is better, more ethical and fair, than a private corporation handling the same task. Corporatism is not an answer for everything. Sadly, many are too brain-washed to not see it that way. They cheers corporations everywhere and end up with deteriorated monopolized private corporate abuse.

It isn't only about ethics. There is a very real benefit to the People owning the means of production - profits can go into infrastructure upgrades and other improvements to plant and service (by way of hiring sufficient personal to provide them) rather then into someone's off-shore bank account without any taxes paid into the system.

When 'free market' folk say 'efficient' they mean 'the efficient extraction of public wealth'.

If you Privatization every thing
people can not complain to get things put right.
like UK, we Privatization the trains.
now it is rubbish and costs more than flying!!!

originally posted by: FyreByrd

originally posted by: jtma508
Once again, it's not about privatization, per se, but rather the epidemic of political corruption and cronyism. Until we pass laws that make political corruption a Class C or higher felony nothing will change. Politicians have learned that that are no real repercussions for their actions but a rather impressive financial upside. So the problem gets geometrically worse with each new bus load of politicians.

My avatar says it all: Bring out the guillotines. It worked in France.

So you blame politicians (government) and not big business for the Pillage of We The People.

Is that what I'm hearing you say?

Politicians are corrupted by big business interests not the other way around. But you appear to think that government corrupts business. It is a unique perspective.

You don’t seem to understand how the process works, don’t feel bad most anti-capitalist or progressive leftist don’t get it either. In order for a business to purchase a government official the government must have some power of regulation that the business is interested in influencing. If the government official has no power to regulate. Tax, or pick winners then the business must succeed or fail on the merits of its ability to please its customer alone.
It’s a natural state of affairs for a business to do what it needs to do to diminish the ability of its competition and to normalize its business cycle as much as possible. That means limiting risks and reducing the factors that could contribute to a failure. Government through its power of regulation enables businesses to do just that. You cant change the nature of the business side of the equation. It must be changed on the government side. A system with no regulation or at least as little as possible puts the market back into play within the business cycle. Of course many will lay charges that this will lead to unfettered corporate power. No it will not. The government does have a duty and responsibility to provide a system of courts and independent arbitration of grievances. Companies and corporations will continue to do bad things, they are a human construct and ran by people and people do bad things but you have litigation to settle those disputes.

originally posted by: FyreByrd

originally posted by: eventHorizon
There are times when local government handling a task is better, more ethical and fair, than a private corporation handling the same task. Corporatism is not an answer for everything. Sadly, many are too brain-washed to not see it that way. They cheers corporations everywhere and end up with deteriorated monopolized private corporate abuse.

It isn't only about ethics. There is a very real benefit to the People owning the means of production - profits can go into infrastructure upgrades and other improvements to plant and service (by way of hiring sufficient personal to provide them) rather then into someone's off-shore bank account without any taxes paid into the system.

When 'free market' folk say 'efficient' they mean 'the efficient extraction of public wealth'.

There is no such thing as "public" wealth! Thats the myth of communism. There is no benefit tot he public ownership of the means to production. The drive to profit is what drives innovation and efficency. there is no profit when you have 100 "public" workers to screw in a lightbulb.