Soviet-Style Privatization vs Actual Shared Sacrifice

Yesterday the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN) issued a joint statement on the unconscionable Walker power grab in Wisconsin:

These dead-of-night tactics are a common theme in the Republican war on working families. Just as Washington Republicans passed their slash-and-burn budget bill at 4:40 a.m. on a Saturday morning, Wisconsin Republicans passed their anti-working family bill last night without a single Democrat in the room.
 
The New York Times tells the story: a tiny group of Republicans acted against the will of the people, without debate and without public representation. Last night they demonstrated their disrespect for Americans who only want to do good work, support their families and pay their bills. Instead of creating jobs, which they promised the nation they would do, Republicans have spent the last three months firing hard-working Americans and taking away their rights and freedoms.
 
The Republican war on working families is far from over. The Progressive Caucus is standing with everyday Americans every step of the way, fighting to stop Republicans’ shameless power grabs and layoffs.
 
To the working people of America we say: Stay strong. We stand with you. This is only the beginning of a long road that leads to a better America.

Another CPC member, Vermont independent senator, made a speech on the Senate floor yesterday explaining his bill for balancing the budget. It's a proposal that actually puts forward the whole idea of "shared sacrifice"-- which everyone inside the Beltway somehow has come to think means a bunch of middle class non-campaign donors/non-lobbyist hirerers sharing the sacrifice among themselves. Please take a couple of minutes to watch Bernie introducing his bill:



It would raise $50 billion annually from a paltry tax on the wealthiest of Americans who have been made even wealthier in recent years by unfair tinkering with tax policy by their conservative shills in both parties. There are so many multimillionaires in Congress and the media that the chances of this commonsense, popular approach will never be taken seriously, let alone enacted. Instead, the wealthy will soon have an opportunity to buy the valuable "commons" Americans have built up over decades. The Republicans and Blue Dogs want to sell off as much infrastructure as they can to their cronies-- just the way corrupt Russian hacks did in the dying days of the Soviet Union. There are now more billionaires-- all of them criminals-- living in Moscow than anywhere else on earth. All got that way through the kinds of unfair sales of publicly owned assets. Of the 101 Russian billionaires 79 live in Moscow, all of whom "built their empires during the country's anarchic 1990s." They bought up state-owned-- meaning people-owned-- resources from the collapsing Soviet Union for pennies on the dollar. Russian citizens have fared very badly under these arrangements and their standard of living has gone markedly down. Will the same thing happen in states controlled by Republican Stalinists like Ohio, Florida and Michigan? It certainly looks that way.

According to InThePublicInterest.org privatization in America is a very risky business... for most of us, if not for the well-placed very rich looking, through political cronyism, to become mega, super-rich.

Since the 1980s, governments from the local to national level have experimented with privatizing public services and assets. The trend has been spurred by the belief that the private sector can achieve efficiencies and cost savings for government budgets. Unfortunately, numerous examples demonstrate that these supposed benefits of privatization are merely myths. Privatization has often moved forward without adequate public deliberation or oversight. Poorly conceived and constructed contracts have resulted in cost increases, as well as diminished service quality, and have failed to protect against corruption, profiteering, and loss of the accountability and openness required of government processes.

Privatization involves turning over previously governmental functions to private entities. It takes two basic forms:

• The government receives money for the purchase or long-term lease of revenue-producing infrastructure, facilities or other assets.

• The government pays a contractor to provide public services.

Many complex variations have evolved, including various forms of public-private partnerships, known as P3s.
 
Concerned with the loss of democratic accountability and control, many groups and communities are reconsidering privatization. They are working with lawmakers to provide protections against contracts that are against the public interest by promoting fair and responsible contracting standards, and requiring full public deliberation of decisions to sell or lease public assets.

Without proper protections, putting public services and assets in private hands can result in lost accountability and transparency, increased costs for  government and taxpayers and degraded quality.

Other common risks of privatization include: corruption, reduced access, reduced labor standards, lost public capacity for core functions, environmental harm, and human and civil rights violations.

Wisconsin is now in the process of privatizing everything Scott Walker can sell off before he can be recalled by outraged Wisconsinites next January-- including the state's power plants, public parks and Wisconsin's beloved state university system. And Wall Street predators are jumping for joy, unable to contain themselves, over Michigan's quieter, but even more deadly, lurch down the same path Walker is dragging Wisconsin. They're already passed heinous legislation that will enable the state to turn over local government entities to private corporations, and will also enable union contracts to be broken, pension boards to be overturned... a right-wing wet dream. Turning elected government entities over to corporations is the height of anti-democratic privatization. It's a whole new concept in both sharing and redistributing the wealth... it's the Republican way.