DownWithTyranny!: What Did Romney Have In Mind When He Said We Have Too Many Policemen And Firemen?

Saturday we tried doing justice to Romney's screwball comments about how what ails America is that we have too many teachers, firefighters and policemen. He seems to believe that because the Koch brothers saved his girlfriend Scott Walker's scrawny neck by spending $30 million, America hates teachers, firefighters and policemen as much as Republicans do. He's wrong, very wrong-- and it's that kind of flawed strategic assumption that's going to lose him his last chance to take over the White House on behalf of Mormonism, his life's dream.

There are already pundits who are saying he didn't really mean he wants to get rid of firemen and cops. But it's exactly what Republican extremists who have captured him do want. It's part of Paul Ryan's dystopian Ayn Rand blueprint for America-- no public employees! NONE.

Last year, when Santorum, Gingrich, Bachmann, Perry and a gaggle of other right-wing freaks thought they could overcome Romney's millions with extremist rhetoric, Stephen Goldstein was still working on his book, Atlas Drugged! Ayn Rand Be Damned!, which is set in a CSA (Corporate States of America) that the Romney-Republicans have already transformed into the perfect (and crumbling, of course) John Galt hellhole.

And in that dystopian hellhole, if you're rich, you have private security and body guards. Otherwise... you're in trouble, since the Romneyoids or whatever they call themselves, have indeed privatized the police force-- and everything else. Let's take a peek at how NYC is doing 67 years after a Romney-Ryan type vision for America has kicked in:

The Central Park Cooperville has turned into a city-within-the-city, a full-fledged commune. Everywhere you look are tents, cardboard boxes, lean-tos, sleeping bags-- anything that can serve as a shelter or a bed. Several shacks are made out of scrap metal. In “Cooper-speak,” they are mansions, the homes of the park’s longest and most creative and resourceful residents. Some have even been “sold” when their owners have moved on. There are through-streets and cul-de-sacs, named and numbered. There are playgrounds for kids. Some people have moved close together, making makeshift row houses. Ten huge feeding tents are in the middle of the park, spaced about every four blocks from 60th Street to 110th.

According to a study by the social research firm of Bates & Rich for the deHaven Foundation, an estimated 7,500 squatters actually live in Cooperville at any given time. The average age of residents is forty-five. Forty percent have lived there for three years or more. Thirty percent had been small business owners. Thirty-five percent had worked in manufacturing jobs. Another thirty-five percent were mid-level managers in mid-size corporations. Sixty percent are married or have been married. Thirty percent have a family member with them. The researchers observed, “If the talent in Cooperville resided in one business, it would have one of the most educated and experienced workforces in the nation and would easily be a Fortune 50 Company.”

Thirty percent of residents are sixty-five or over. But because Medicare and Social Security were discontinued twenty years ago, they are destitute. Almost everyone in Cooperville has been thrown on the street by circumstances beyond their control-- the series of recessions that have gutted the economy in the past ten years. The pattern of dislocation, researchers found, is almost always the same: They couldn’t find work after they were fired when their employer shipped jobs overseas. They used up their savings. They lost the equity in their house when the real estate market tanked. Because they owed more than it was worth, they couldn’t afford to sell and, eventually, the bank foreclosed on it.

...As the Cooperville crowd disperses after Mr. B’s talk, from her penthouse on Fifth Avenue, Misti Chase shakes her head and sneers as she looks down on Cooperville. Angela Fitzsimmons, president of her co-op, is with her. “Damn homeless,” Angela says. “They’ve turned our beautiful view into a garbage heap.”

“I haven’t been able to have a dinner party on my terrace in years,” Misti adds. Everyone knows Misti is the eyes and ears of the building. She keeps a written log of what’s going on in Cooperville. She asked Angela to come up so she could report what Mr. B had told the crowd. No one more publicly condemns the takeover of the park than Misti.

If anything out-of-the-ordinary happens, “the chaser”-- as everyone calls Misti behind her back--immediately notifies the doorman, who calls building security. Since the city’s police force has been privatized, the only way a building can protect itself is to sign a contract with a private agency. Full-time, armed guards patrol Misti’s co-op twenty-four/seven. They clear the sidewalk if anyone who looks suspicious so much as stops in front of the building. They shoo them on their way or escort them back into the park-- anything so they’ll move completely out of sight. But as Misti Chase told the doorman when she went out to walk her dog, “No matter where they go, you know they’re always there, always capable of coming back. There’s no living from them. They haunt us.”

“Times are tough,” he replied.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Misti counters. “My dog gets groomed only twice a month. I only have my dog walker six days a week now. We’ve all had to cut back.”

...Central Park West has always been the ugliest and most volatile side of Cooperville, the hardest to patrol and keep safe-- not from the homeless, but from muggers preying on older men and women. They only want cash. But they can become physically violent if they don’t get what they want or if someone foolishly resists. Since the city police force was disbanded, anyone walking on the street is an easy target. No one knows by exactly how much crime has increased, because there is no longer a government agency to maintain records and statistics. Private security forces hired by individual buildings are only responsible for policing the area around them. Between buildings, everyone is fair game. The richest of the rich can afford to pay for personal security and have gotten used to having body guards and bullet-proofing vehicles.

“We live in a jungle,” CPW residents now complain. “It’s survival of the fittest.” Some of the loudest voices anguishing about the deterioration of security were people who had been the biggest proponents of reducing the size of government. “We don’t want to pay for a city police force,” they insisted. “We don’t want our money to go for other people’s security. It’s nothing but waste, fraud, and abuse. We can do it better ourselves.” Now, a group of CPW residents meets regularly to try to find a solution. Someone suggested creating their own police force, even hiring people from Cooperville, to patrol from 59th Street to 96th Street and from the CPW to Broadway. But no one knew how they could get everyone to pay their fair share for it.

Two weeks ago, in the early evening, a homeless man was set on fire at the corner of 79th Street and Central Park West. Miraculously, he survived without any serious injury. A man came to his rescue, using his jacket to smother the flames. The security guard at the nearest building skulked away into the lobby, pretending he saw nothing. John C., a resident of Cooperville, had been returning from work. Two or three days a week, he was usually lucky enough to find work through a day-labor pool. When three young men demanded he give them his wallet, he told them he had only one dollar. But when they discovered twelve-- he had just been paid-- for spite, two of them held him down, while a third threw cigarette-lighter fluid on him, then a match. “I can’t blame them,” he told the man who saved him. “They’re young. All they know is the hate they hear. I’m nothing to them. Other people are nothing to them. I don’t think they think we’re human.”