In our democracy, privatization of public services that have always been part of the government's responsibility to exist for the common good is a rip-off and a predatory not-so-funny joke. Privatization has led to loss of public sector jobs, lower wages, and the selling off of public owned assets and institutions and using tax payers money to fund and create long term revenue-streams and profits for corporations.
Big Business, predatory CEOs, and predatory profit mongers are promoted by corruption, motivated by greed, and have never been responsible to The American Public. Citizens in many countries seem to understand this concept.
But the American consciousness of national identity and national self-preservation apparently has been corrupted and has morphed into a personal selfishness that has no appreciation for the value of real national security and economic security for their families. Nor does it have any conscious appreciation of value or understanding of a democratic government for the common good.
Do Americans really want the privatization of water? Can Americans really trust private corporations to insure the quality of safe municipal water? The privatization of our transportation infrastructure, our education system, prisons, health care, social security, and medicare is a horrific public waiting to happen.
The people pushing for privatization of public services are the same people pushing for the deregulation of Wall Street and industries where predatory behavior and incompetence driven by corruption and greed heap devastation on the American people. Advocates of privatization are very much like predatory drug dealer trying to get America hooked on an economic idea that has no value for America.
Look at the horrific destruction that a lack of regulations in West Virginia and North Carolina has rained on the citizens of those states. Under privatization, with a reduced government and hence less government oversight to protect the public the USA will exist at the mercy of predatory corporations.
The West Virginia Chemical Spill contaminated the drinking water of 300,000 residents in 9 counties. The spill was not a problem for the Freedom Industries, however. Eight (8) days after their negligence produce undrinkable water for 300,000 West Virginia citizens, Freedom Industries filed for bankruptcy.
In North Carolina, more than 35 million gallons of toxic ash poisoned the Dan River producing undrinkable contaminated water of all the citizens in North Carolina where the Dan River is a water source.
Greed and corruption is the primary motivation for privatization. At its ugliest, a judge motivated by greed was found guilty of sending thousands of juveniles to jails run by private firms in order to receive cash kickback from the corporations who received their revenue from the state for housing inmates. The corrupt judge was eventually sentenced to 28 years in prison for his crimes. But that did little to diminish the pain and anger of the mother in the picture above whose son took his life because he was devastated over this greedy corrupt judge's unjust multiple sentences.
The signs are already clear that privatization is a failure in the USA. Many Americans from the working class and the middle class don't seem to understand this. This is especially a social and political affectation of white Americans from the conservative working poor and the conservative middle class.
Somehow they have bought into the rhetoric brought to them by corrupt political sociopaths who have convinced them that the federal government is too big and that citizens live better when corporations are responsible for the public's safety and welfare? What seriously sane person can believe that political B.S.?
Americans are relentless told that the federal govenrment is their enemy. They seem unable to comprehend that the people who repeatedly send them this message are part of the federal government that they want working class white Americans to mistrust. Most of these detractors are in fact conservative congressional members on the Republican side of the aisle receiving financial contributions from corporations seeking to profits from the predatory cash cow known as privatization.
But conservative congressional members who attack the federal government are right about one thing. This particicular group of the federal governmen is too big and cannot be trusted. Beginning in 2014, the American should vote as many out of office as they can, because they cannot be trusted.