9
9 Trillion Dollar Republican Natio
Guest
The Bushites Have Outsourced Our Government to Their Pals
By Jim Hightower
Wednesday 20 June 2007
Government by Corporation
A monumental shift has quietly and quickly been taking place in
the way the public's business is done - and We the People have not
even been informed about it, much less been asked to discuss and okay
it. Corporations are taking over our government. No longer is it just
a matter of big business's lobbyists and campaign donations perverting
public policy. Now, politically connected corporations are also
seizing day-to-day governmental operations for their own profit.
Since the Carter years, Washington has drifted toward more and
more outsourcing of public functions to private contractors, but Bush
Incorporated has turned that gradual increase into a fullblown, jet-
powered rush to privatization. The shadowy and highly lucrative world
of government contracting has boomed under George W, rising 86% since
he's been in office and now totaling nearly $400 billion a year. Get
this: There are now more people doing federal jobs under corporate
contracts than there are people employed directly by the government.
In other words, in today's government, corporate servants outnumber
civil servants.
Bush likes to claim that he has cut the federal bureaucracy. In
fact, he's increased it, but most of the people working in his
government wear corporate logos. The New York Times recently reported
that contract employees are in practically every agency, not merely
doing perfunctory chores, but sitting in on policy sessions and
drawing up agency budgets. "Even government's online database for
tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been
outsourced," says the Times.
This phenomenal change is the product not of managerial
rationality, but of nonsensical anti-government ideology. Like the
Iraq invasion, which was on the international agenda of the rabid
neocons from Day One of Bush's tenure, privatization has long been on
the domestic agenda of the laissezfaire ideologues. A January 10,
2001, report from the right-wing Heritage Foundation provided the
roadmap. Titled "Taking Charge of Federal Personnel," it showed the
Bushites how to storm into office and seize control of every agency.
It stressed that they "must make appointment decisions based on
loyalty first and expertise second," that "the whole governmental
apparatus must be managed from this perspective," and that they should
use "contracting out as a management strategy."
The official rationale for this privatization surge is that
corporations are inherently more efficient than government and save
the taxpayer oodles of money. Nice theory, but they aren't ... and
they haven't. Start with this ideological assertion's most obvious
flaw: By their very nature, corporations are loyal to their own bottom
line, not to the country or to the common good. Any "efficiency" that
they produce is derived from paying workers less (hardly a morale
booster) and by taking shortcuts on the services or products they
deliver. These "savings" are more than eaten up by the high profits,
extravagant executive salaries, and other compensation that
corporations demand - costs that are not incurred when government does
the job.
Another flaw in this privatization push is that Bush & Company are
unabashedly running it as a crony program. An analysis by the Times
found that more than half of their outsourcing contracts are not open
to competition. In essence, the Bushites choose the company and award
the money without getting other bids. Prior to Bush, only 21% of
federal contracts were awarded on a no-bid basis.
Also, if privatization is so good, why is there no ongoing
analysis of the costs and quality of service being delivered? This is
an administration that demands a cost-benefit analysis of even the
smallest government regulation of business, yet it is throwing
trillions of our tax dollars into the coffers of corporate contractors
without monitoring whether the outsourcing is costing us more and
producing less than if the work were done by government employees.
Meanwhile, as the number of contracts has skyrocketed, the number
of contract supervisors in federal agencies has remained the same,
which means that the supposed overseers can't keep an eye on the
performance of the profiteers. Whenever agencies or members of
Congress do try to probe, the corporations simply claim that their
financial and performance records are proprietary. While agencies are
accountable to the public and subject to the Freedom of Information
Act, corporate contractors are not.
Even when it's known in advance that a privatization project will
be a rip-off, ideology has trumped integrity. Last fall, for example,
Congress rubberstamped a Bush initiative requiring the IRS to
outsource the collection of certain taxes to three private debt
collectors. The collection agencies will pocket about 24 cents of
every dollar they recover. But if the IRS were simply allowed to hire
more revenue agents, it could collect these same debts for only 3
cents of every dollar brought in. Over 10 years, the three companies
expect to reap $330 million from this deal.
A Corporatized War
As we've learned during the last four-plus years, George W's Iraq
war is run by a bumbling triumvirate composed of the White House, the
Pentagon, and the Department of Halliburton.
This massive military contractor has done awfully well the past
few years, thanks to its old CEO, "Buckshot" Cheney. Since the
BushCheney regime took office, Halliburton's government contracts have
increased by a stunning 600%, including more than $10 billion in
Pentagon contracts - many of them awarded without the fuss and muss of
competitive bidding.
In return, Halliburton has delivered gas-price gouging,
contaminated food and water, and a consis- These are our "savings"
from privatization A 2006 federal audit of $1.7 billion in Pentagon
purchases found that taxpayers were soaked for excessive fees from
contractors and for tens of millions of dollars in waste. One reason
was "poor contracting practices." Such as? The audit reports that 92%
of the contracts were awarded without verifying that the contractors
provided accurate cost estimates, and 96% of the work was inadequately
monitored. 2 Hightower Lowdown June 2007 tent pattern of overcharges.
It has been caught hiring Third World laborers to do its grunt work in
Iraq, paying them as little as $5 a day, and then billing Uncle Sam
more than $50 a day for each worker. In a February analysis of $10
billion in waste and overcharges by various contractors in Iraq,
federal investigators found Halliburton responsible for $2.7 billion.
The corporation's 2006 profits were $2,348,000,000, and its
overall profits have increased over 368% since the Bushites have been
in office. Meanwhile, Halliburton has now outsourced itself,
announcing this year that its top executives will move from Houston to
palatial new corporate headquarters in Dubai. But don't worry - the
executives are keeping enough of a corporate presence in the good ol'
USA to qualify for more government contracts.
People see Halliburton as the face of the privatized war in Iraq,
but that's hardly the whole story. Indeed, there's a dirty little fact
that Washington's warmongers don't tout: Bush has put almost as many
private contractors in the Iraq war as U.S. troops.
Prior to Bush's "surge," there were about 140,000 American troops
in Iraq and about 100,000 contract employees there. Contrast this to
only 9,200 privatized troops sent to the Gulf war by George's daddy in
1991. And the 100,000 number doesn't count subcontractors, which would
add an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 more private troops (no one knows
for sure, since the Pentagon doesn't keep track of them). In addition,
while the surge will put another 22,000 military troops in Iraq, it
will also increase the private forces by an untold number.
Outfits like Halliburton, DynCorp, Blackwater, L-3, Titan, Custer
Battles, Triple Canopy, and Wackenhut are reaping billions of our tax
dollars doing military work that the Bush-Cheney Pentagon has
outsourced. Not coincidentally, nearly all of these corporations are
big-dollar donors to Republicans and/or are run by executives with
tight GOP ties.
In part, corporate Iraq assignments provide support services -
laundry, meals, delivery of water and gasoline, etc. But a huge part
of the military function itself has been privatized in this war - such
things as interrogating prisoners (including in the infamous Abu
Ghraib prison), training the Iraqi army, guarding the Green Zone and
the Baghdad airport, protecting military convoys, analyzing
intelligence, and providing paramilitary security forces.
The personnel performing these tasks are not soldiers but hired
hands, most of whom lack the training needed to make proper combat
judgments, and they operate independently of the military command.
"They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath,"
says a frustrated U.S. officer.
They also get shot, bombed, maimed, and killed. Yet the Bushites,
wanting to downplay the negatives, don't count such people in casualty
reports. The official number of 3,400 troops killed in Iraq doesn't
include any from Bush's contract army. How many of them have died? No
one knows the real number, but the Labor Department, which tracks
workers compensation claims, has silently recorded 917 contractor
deaths. More than 12,000 have been wounded in battle or on the job.
These casualties are a hidden toll of this awful war, another measure
of its deceit and immorality.
Contractors Galore
Washington is under assault by hordes of corporations that are
eagerly dicing up our government into digestible segments and then
consuming them through either contracts or outright privatization.
Here are some examples:
WALL STREET BANKING conglomerates leer lasciviously at our
Social Security Fund, eager to grab the hundreds of billions of
dollars in fees they could assess for "managing" our accounts in a
privatized system.
BUSH HAS REDUCED FEMA, a onceproud and strong government
responder to natural disasters, to a haven for political hacks hurling
billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to Halliburton and its ilk for
the rescue and rehab of New Orleans - only to see the money disappear
and the wreckage remain.
WHEN THE PENTAGON DECREED a few years ago that the esteemed
Walter Reed Army Medical Center was to be substantially privatized,
the treatment of wounded vets quickly deteriorated to scandalous
levels. The politically connected IAP Worldwide Services company - run
by two former Halliburton executives and boasting of having Dan Quayle
on its board - was handed a $120 million contract to manage the place
(even though IAP had previously botched the delivery of ice to the
Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina - a job that it was contracted to
do by FEMA).
THE CURRENT COLLEGE-LOAN scandal is not merely a matter of some
financial-aid offices at universities taking gifts, consulting fees,
and stock from big private lenders. Rather, the entire system is
scandalous - it's an artificial, privatized lending structure that
adds nothing of value to students but greatly increases the cost and
complexity of getting student loans that could be made cheaply,
simply, honestly, and directly by the Department of Education.
FEDEX, UPS and the giant corporate mailers are trying to
privatize the U.S. Postal Service piece by piece by deregulating the
entire postal market, outsourcing the most lucrative postal functions,
and abandoning America's principle of universal service for everyone.
Lurita's Lurid Tale
Lurita Doan, who ran a federal contracting company in Virginia and
who has been a six-figure donor to Bush and the GOP, was chosen by
George last year to head the General Services Administration (GSA).
This agency doles out some $56 billion annually in federal contracts
and is in charge of policing the contractors. At her confirmation
hearing, Doan said she wanted to prove she can run a federal agency
like a business - and she has. She's run GSA like Enron.
Just two months after taking office, Doan made a robust attempt to
hand a $20,000 no-bid contract to a friend and former business
associate, even going so far as to sign the deal personally.
Ultimately, GSA's general counsel had to step in and nix this obvious
conflict-ofinterest gaffe.'
But Doan kept playing loose with the people's money. Last year,
when a technology contract with Sun Microsystems was up for renewal,
two GSA contract officers rejected it on the grounds that the
corporation was overcharging taxpayers. Doan personally intervened,
suggesting that one of the officers was "stressed." She brought in
another officer, who promptly approved the renewal - and got a long-
coveted transfer to GSA's Denver office.
Then Doan got paranoid, apparently feeling that the agency's
independent inspector general (IG) was foiling her enthusiastic
efforts to "streamline" the contract-awarding process and to loosen up
audits on corporations getting contracts. She chided the IG and,
according to notes taken in a staff meeting, compared him and his
staff to terrorists! Doan has now proposed cutting $5 million from the
IG's audit budget, which is used to detect corporate fraud and waste,
and shifting some of his duties to - are you ready for this? - private
contractors.
Coalition of Greed
Why is this happening? Paul Light, a New York University professor
and expert on public service, points to a coalition of the greedy
fueling the growth of what he calls "the hidden workforce of
contractors." The contractors, of course, love privatization. Many
corporations have been formed (often by former officials in the
military or government) just to sup at the federal trough and many
subsist wholly on government contracts. Pentagon contractors have
grown especially fat on our tax dollars, with the largest, Lockheed-
Martin, now receiving more federal funds than the Department of
Justice.
At the same time, a huge lobbying force has been built to keep the
cash flowing. Each corporation has its own lobbyists, and the
contracting industry as a whole has an additional lobbying group, the
Professional Services Council, which pushes for still more
corporatization of government.
Then there are the politicos in both parties who're eager to show
that they are reigning in big government. They shove public tasks into
corporate hands in order to create what Light calls "the illusion that
[government] is smaller than it actually is." And, of course, there
are the political ideologues who push privatization simply as a matter
of faith and political correctness, even though there's no evidence
that it is cheaper - much less better.
It's on this last point that corporatization ultimately founders.
For contractors, the concept of "better" applies strictly to their
bottom lines - not to the country. They are out to get theirs, no
matter what happens to the rest of us. This is why they've kept the
size and scope of the corporate takeover hidden from us. It's also why
there's no accountability, no public scrutiny, no analysis of public
benefits built into the privatization push - the contractors know that
corporatization is not better for America.
Our government is not meant to be a marketplace. It is intended as
a democratic forum where the needs and aspirations of ALL the people
are addressed. The corporations' grab-all-you-can, survival-of-the-
fattest ethos is about serving their interest, not the public's. This
is why We the People must expose, challenge, stop, and reverse the
corporatization of our public institutions.
Not only are corporations taking over government functions, they
are also moving rapidly to take over our essential public assets -
from highways to airports. In next month's newsletter, we'll give you
the lowdown on who's selling America to whom ... and why.
---------
By Jim Hightower
Wednesday 20 June 2007
Government by Corporation
A monumental shift has quietly and quickly been taking place in
the way the public's business is done - and We the People have not
even been informed about it, much less been asked to discuss and okay
it. Corporations are taking over our government. No longer is it just
a matter of big business's lobbyists and campaign donations perverting
public policy. Now, politically connected corporations are also
seizing day-to-day governmental operations for their own profit.
Since the Carter years, Washington has drifted toward more and
more outsourcing of public functions to private contractors, but Bush
Incorporated has turned that gradual increase into a fullblown, jet-
powered rush to privatization. The shadowy and highly lucrative world
of government contracting has boomed under George W, rising 86% since
he's been in office and now totaling nearly $400 billion a year. Get
this: There are now more people doing federal jobs under corporate
contracts than there are people employed directly by the government.
In other words, in today's government, corporate servants outnumber
civil servants.
Bush likes to claim that he has cut the federal bureaucracy. In
fact, he's increased it, but most of the people working in his
government wear corporate logos. The New York Times recently reported
that contract employees are in practically every agency, not merely
doing perfunctory chores, but sitting in on policy sessions and
drawing up agency budgets. "Even government's online database for
tracking contracts, the Federal Procurement Data System, has been
outsourced," says the Times.
This phenomenal change is the product not of managerial
rationality, but of nonsensical anti-government ideology. Like the
Iraq invasion, which was on the international agenda of the rabid
neocons from Day One of Bush's tenure, privatization has long been on
the domestic agenda of the laissezfaire ideologues. A January 10,
2001, report from the right-wing Heritage Foundation provided the
roadmap. Titled "Taking Charge of Federal Personnel," it showed the
Bushites how to storm into office and seize control of every agency.
It stressed that they "must make appointment decisions based on
loyalty first and expertise second," that "the whole governmental
apparatus must be managed from this perspective," and that they should
use "contracting out as a management strategy."
The official rationale for this privatization surge is that
corporations are inherently more efficient than government and save
the taxpayer oodles of money. Nice theory, but they aren't ... and
they haven't. Start with this ideological assertion's most obvious
flaw: By their very nature, corporations are loyal to their own bottom
line, not to the country or to the common good. Any "efficiency" that
they produce is derived from paying workers less (hardly a morale
booster) and by taking shortcuts on the services or products they
deliver. These "savings" are more than eaten up by the high profits,
extravagant executive salaries, and other compensation that
corporations demand - costs that are not incurred when government does
the job.
Another flaw in this privatization push is that Bush & Company are
unabashedly running it as a crony program. An analysis by the Times
found that more than half of their outsourcing contracts are not open
to competition. In essence, the Bushites choose the company and award
the money without getting other bids. Prior to Bush, only 21% of
federal contracts were awarded on a no-bid basis.
Also, if privatization is so good, why is there no ongoing
analysis of the costs and quality of service being delivered? This is
an administration that demands a cost-benefit analysis of even the
smallest government regulation of business, yet it is throwing
trillions of our tax dollars into the coffers of corporate contractors
without monitoring whether the outsourcing is costing us more and
producing less than if the work were done by government employees.
Meanwhile, as the number of contracts has skyrocketed, the number
of contract supervisors in federal agencies has remained the same,
which means that the supposed overseers can't keep an eye on the
performance of the profiteers. Whenever agencies or members of
Congress do try to probe, the corporations simply claim that their
financial and performance records are proprietary. While agencies are
accountable to the public and subject to the Freedom of Information
Act, corporate contractors are not.
Even when it's known in advance that a privatization project will
be a rip-off, ideology has trumped integrity. Last fall, for example,
Congress rubberstamped a Bush initiative requiring the IRS to
outsource the collection of certain taxes to three private debt
collectors. The collection agencies will pocket about 24 cents of
every dollar they recover. But if the IRS were simply allowed to hire
more revenue agents, it could collect these same debts for only 3
cents of every dollar brought in. Over 10 years, the three companies
expect to reap $330 million from this deal.
A Corporatized War
As we've learned during the last four-plus years, George W's Iraq
war is run by a bumbling triumvirate composed of the White House, the
Pentagon, and the Department of Halliburton.
This massive military contractor has done awfully well the past
few years, thanks to its old CEO, "Buckshot" Cheney. Since the
BushCheney regime took office, Halliburton's government contracts have
increased by a stunning 600%, including more than $10 billion in
Pentagon contracts - many of them awarded without the fuss and muss of
competitive bidding.
In return, Halliburton has delivered gas-price gouging,
contaminated food and water, and a consis- These are our "savings"
from privatization A 2006 federal audit of $1.7 billion in Pentagon
purchases found that taxpayers were soaked for excessive fees from
contractors and for tens of millions of dollars in waste. One reason
was "poor contracting practices." Such as? The audit reports that 92%
of the contracts were awarded without verifying that the contractors
provided accurate cost estimates, and 96% of the work was inadequately
monitored. 2 Hightower Lowdown June 2007 tent pattern of overcharges.
It has been caught hiring Third World laborers to do its grunt work in
Iraq, paying them as little as $5 a day, and then billing Uncle Sam
more than $50 a day for each worker. In a February analysis of $10
billion in waste and overcharges by various contractors in Iraq,
federal investigators found Halliburton responsible for $2.7 billion.
The corporation's 2006 profits were $2,348,000,000, and its
overall profits have increased over 368% since the Bushites have been
in office. Meanwhile, Halliburton has now outsourced itself,
announcing this year that its top executives will move from Houston to
palatial new corporate headquarters in Dubai. But don't worry - the
executives are keeping enough of a corporate presence in the good ol'
USA to qualify for more government contracts.
People see Halliburton as the face of the privatized war in Iraq,
but that's hardly the whole story. Indeed, there's a dirty little fact
that Washington's warmongers don't tout: Bush has put almost as many
private contractors in the Iraq war as U.S. troops.
Prior to Bush's "surge," there were about 140,000 American troops
in Iraq and about 100,000 contract employees there. Contrast this to
only 9,200 privatized troops sent to the Gulf war by George's daddy in
1991. And the 100,000 number doesn't count subcontractors, which would
add an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 more private troops (no one knows
for sure, since the Pentagon doesn't keep track of them). In addition,
while the surge will put another 22,000 military troops in Iraq, it
will also increase the private forces by an untold number.
Outfits like Halliburton, DynCorp, Blackwater, L-3, Titan, Custer
Battles, Triple Canopy, and Wackenhut are reaping billions of our tax
dollars doing military work that the Bush-Cheney Pentagon has
outsourced. Not coincidentally, nearly all of these corporations are
big-dollar donors to Republicans and/or are run by executives with
tight GOP ties.
In part, corporate Iraq assignments provide support services -
laundry, meals, delivery of water and gasoline, etc. But a huge part
of the military function itself has been privatized in this war - such
things as interrogating prisoners (including in the infamous Abu
Ghraib prison), training the Iraqi army, guarding the Green Zone and
the Baghdad airport, protecting military convoys, analyzing
intelligence, and providing paramilitary security forces.
The personnel performing these tasks are not soldiers but hired
hands, most of whom lack the training needed to make proper combat
judgments, and they operate independently of the military command.
"They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath,"
says a frustrated U.S. officer.
They also get shot, bombed, maimed, and killed. Yet the Bushites,
wanting to downplay the negatives, don't count such people in casualty
reports. The official number of 3,400 troops killed in Iraq doesn't
include any from Bush's contract army. How many of them have died? No
one knows the real number, but the Labor Department, which tracks
workers compensation claims, has silently recorded 917 contractor
deaths. More than 12,000 have been wounded in battle or on the job.
These casualties are a hidden toll of this awful war, another measure
of its deceit and immorality.
Contractors Galore
Washington is under assault by hordes of corporations that are
eagerly dicing up our government into digestible segments and then
consuming them through either contracts or outright privatization.
Here are some examples:
WALL STREET BANKING conglomerates leer lasciviously at our
Social Security Fund, eager to grab the hundreds of billions of
dollars in fees they could assess for "managing" our accounts in a
privatized system.
BUSH HAS REDUCED FEMA, a onceproud and strong government
responder to natural disasters, to a haven for political hacks hurling
billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to Halliburton and its ilk for
the rescue and rehab of New Orleans - only to see the money disappear
and the wreckage remain.
WHEN THE PENTAGON DECREED a few years ago that the esteemed
Walter Reed Army Medical Center was to be substantially privatized,
the treatment of wounded vets quickly deteriorated to scandalous
levels. The politically connected IAP Worldwide Services company - run
by two former Halliburton executives and boasting of having Dan Quayle
on its board - was handed a $120 million contract to manage the place
(even though IAP had previously botched the delivery of ice to the
Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina - a job that it was contracted to
do by FEMA).
THE CURRENT COLLEGE-LOAN scandal is not merely a matter of some
financial-aid offices at universities taking gifts, consulting fees,
and stock from big private lenders. Rather, the entire system is
scandalous - it's an artificial, privatized lending structure that
adds nothing of value to students but greatly increases the cost and
complexity of getting student loans that could be made cheaply,
simply, honestly, and directly by the Department of Education.
FEDEX, UPS and the giant corporate mailers are trying to
privatize the U.S. Postal Service piece by piece by deregulating the
entire postal market, outsourcing the most lucrative postal functions,
and abandoning America's principle of universal service for everyone.
Lurita's Lurid Tale
Lurita Doan, who ran a federal contracting company in Virginia and
who has been a six-figure donor to Bush and the GOP, was chosen by
George last year to head the General Services Administration (GSA).
This agency doles out some $56 billion annually in federal contracts
and is in charge of policing the contractors. At her confirmation
hearing, Doan said she wanted to prove she can run a federal agency
like a business - and she has. She's run GSA like Enron.
Just two months after taking office, Doan made a robust attempt to
hand a $20,000 no-bid contract to a friend and former business
associate, even going so far as to sign the deal personally.
Ultimately, GSA's general counsel had to step in and nix this obvious
conflict-ofinterest gaffe.'
But Doan kept playing loose with the people's money. Last year,
when a technology contract with Sun Microsystems was up for renewal,
two GSA contract officers rejected it on the grounds that the
corporation was overcharging taxpayers. Doan personally intervened,
suggesting that one of the officers was "stressed." She brought in
another officer, who promptly approved the renewal - and got a long-
coveted transfer to GSA's Denver office.
Then Doan got paranoid, apparently feeling that the agency's
independent inspector general (IG) was foiling her enthusiastic
efforts to "streamline" the contract-awarding process and to loosen up
audits on corporations getting contracts. She chided the IG and,
according to notes taken in a staff meeting, compared him and his
staff to terrorists! Doan has now proposed cutting $5 million from the
IG's audit budget, which is used to detect corporate fraud and waste,
and shifting some of his duties to - are you ready for this? - private
contractors.
Coalition of Greed
Why is this happening? Paul Light, a New York University professor
and expert on public service, points to a coalition of the greedy
fueling the growth of what he calls "the hidden workforce of
contractors." The contractors, of course, love privatization. Many
corporations have been formed (often by former officials in the
military or government) just to sup at the federal trough and many
subsist wholly on government contracts. Pentagon contractors have
grown especially fat on our tax dollars, with the largest, Lockheed-
Martin, now receiving more federal funds than the Department of
Justice.
At the same time, a huge lobbying force has been built to keep the
cash flowing. Each corporation has its own lobbyists, and the
contracting industry as a whole has an additional lobbying group, the
Professional Services Council, which pushes for still more
corporatization of government.
Then there are the politicos in both parties who're eager to show
that they are reigning in big government. They shove public tasks into
corporate hands in order to create what Light calls "the illusion that
[government] is smaller than it actually is." And, of course, there
are the political ideologues who push privatization simply as a matter
of faith and political correctness, even though there's no evidence
that it is cheaper - much less better.
It's on this last point that corporatization ultimately founders.
For contractors, the concept of "better" applies strictly to their
bottom lines - not to the country. They are out to get theirs, no
matter what happens to the rest of us. This is why they've kept the
size and scope of the corporate takeover hidden from us. It's also why
there's no accountability, no public scrutiny, no analysis of public
benefits built into the privatization push - the contractors know that
corporatization is not better for America.
Our government is not meant to be a marketplace. It is intended as
a democratic forum where the needs and aspirations of ALL the people
are addressed. The corporations' grab-all-you-can, survival-of-the-
fattest ethos is about serving their interest, not the public's. This
is why We the People must expose, challenge, stop, and reverse the
corporatization of our public institutions.
Not only are corporations taking over government functions, they
are also moving rapidly to take over our essential public assets -
from highways to airports. In next month's newsletter, we'll give you
the lowdown on who's selling America to whom ... and why.
---------
