This is the end

If you have not heard of the two judges in Pennsylvania who were found guilty of taking bribes to send juvenile offenders to privatized juvenile prisons then please click here to read all about it. Go on, I'll wait while you go read it.

Oh, you're back. Wow, that was quick! You're a fast reader, actually it's one of the reasons why I like you so much.

Now, tell me, after reading that story were you surprised at all? I sure as hell wasn't, however I was shocked. I'm shocked that it doesn't happen more often. What those corrupt judges did is the logical end of the privatizing of our government. A private jail or juvenile facility makes no money if it sits empty, so why not bribe a judge to send a few hundred kids your way? There's no need to let a little thing like due process of law get in the way of a company's Gawd given right to make a profit is there? Heck, that jail was just sitting there costing the taxpayers money before, now it's full up and making some lucky stiff a few bucks, and that's the American way isn't it?

Ever since St. Reagan held our country hostage while his buddies plundered our treasury there has been a head long rush to privatize the essential services that our government provides. His toady Bush the elder continued it. So did Bill "I never met a corporation I didn't like" Clinton. And Bush the younger nearly perfected it in his years as governor of Texas and while he was flailing about as our President. They were all part of the sickness known as "the free market."

Someone got the bright idea that profit should be made off of government services and if the government was going to do it then we should let private industry take over that function of the government. So we basically auctioned off bits and pieces of our federal, state, and local governments over the past thirty years. The proponents of privatization say that the private sector can do things more efficiently than the government can. They say that not only can private industry do it better, they can do it and make a profit at it. However there two problems with that theory.

First of all private industry can't do the job of governing better than the government. The motive for profit will color every decision that's made. Tough decisions that should be made in the public interest and with the public's best interest at heart will come in a distant second to the need to make money at any cost. The need to make profit will trump the need to do what's best for all of us every time.

Secondly, the profit made in the privatization does not go back to the community or to the government. It goes instead to the bank accounts of the people who work for the companies who now do the job of our government. And the result of that is that your community suffers, as does mine. If your local government contracts with a private company to do the firefighting in your area the company is not likely to invest in top of the line fire trucks because they are not cost effective, so they buy less effective fire trucks so that they can maximize their profits. The sole purpose that private fire fighting company is in business for is to make money. But the sole purpose of a government funded fire station is to fight fires and to benefit your neighborhood. There's no profit motive and so they can focus on getting the best equipment and not have to worry about the bottom line.

The logical end of privatizing our government is that our government ends up being a government for the corporations that's run by the corporations and if you can't afford to help them make a profit then you don't get any of the benefits. As I said before, a private jail makes no money if it is empty therefore people must be arrested and imprisoned in it. A private fire fighting company makes no money by helping to prevent fires, so sooner or later they'll resort to starting them. If a private company is in charge of deciding who gets food stamps then they'll make damn sure that hardly anyone gets them because they'll no doubt be paid a bonus for trimming the fat off the food stamp rolls.

Our current system of health care is privatized. And how that's working out for us? Well, millions of Americans can't afford the expensive insurance that's out there and the ones that can afford it find out that their health care is rationed and controlled tightly by insurance companies who want to make a profit no matter what, even if it means denying life saving procedures to people who need them.

The privatizing of our government has been nothing short of a fiasco that has made our communities less safe and on the whole poorer while it makes the bank accounts of the corporations fatter and fatter. Hopefully now that America has rejected conservative politics it will also reject the privatization of our government as well.