privatization

Big Government Republicans in Raleigh are on a roll, having succeeded in passing legislation that would illegally seize Asheville's municipal water system. Now the city is in the sad position of counting on Pat "Duke Energy" McCrory as their last line of defense. Anybody want to bet on what hizzoner will do when the bill lands on his desk?

Details below, via email from PARC. PARC stands for People Advocating Real Conservancy.
web site: http://www.ashevilleparc.com

NC Legislators & Governor: We Oppose the Forced Taking of Municipal Water Systems! Sign up for the fight here.

Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans:

It began well over a year ago when the representative from NC’s 116th district filed a bill that would forcibly merge the City of Asheville’s public water utility with the Metropolitan Sewerage District. He didn’t bother to tell Asheville’s elected officials about it, even though they were in his office the day before. Quickly backpedaling, the representative reformatted the seizure into a “Study Committee” process. The “Study Committee” went through the motions, ignored the opposition, and came up with a recommendation that mirrored the original seizure bill. The bill itself was filed this past Thursday, HB488. It is an outright taking, offering no compensation for loss of the asset.

During the post-September 11 panic, the radical right-wing pundits like Mark Steyn peddled fears that Muslims with their high birthrate might overrun western civilization and forcibly convert America to Islam. Now that they've gained the upper hand in the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA), radical right legislators (and their oligarch backers) are determined to forcibly convert state property and services purchased with public money into private profit. (Remember Russia?) For a quick buck, carpetbagging worshipers of the Golden Calf are flexing their muscles in Raleigh to demolish what North Carolinians built over the last half century.

For all their contempt for “the 47 percent” and “makers and takers” framing, Michael Lind explains that rent-seeking monopolists in the private sector are the real parasites:

In today’s rentier-friendly conservative ideology, somebody who makes payday loans at usurious interest rates, gouges businesses with high insurance rates, or gets paid tolls from a privatized toll road is as much a “maker” and an “entrepreneur” and a “capitalist” as someone who puts together a team of inventors, engineers, workers and investors to apply 3-D printing to printing replacement body parts. All money-making enterprises are supposed to be equally productive and socially useful, for no other reason than they make somebody rich.

It's hard to know where the most damage would occur if Pat McCrory's dream of being governor were to become reality. North Carolina's majestic natural environment would become a dumping ground for polluters. Women's vaginas would become a playground for theocrats like Skip Stam. And public schools would become a battleground for a constitutional crisis.

Today I got a letter from NC Quick Pass that pointed out some of the problems and pitfalls of toll roads and privatization of government services.
...
And while i do make it to the Triangle area once or twice a month on business, I wasn't there on May 15. The closest toll road to Haywood County is in Greenville, SC.

Welcome to the United States of Scam-erica. Or Griftopia, as Matt Taibbi calls it in his book on the Wall Street meltdown. "There are really two Americas," Taibbi writes. For the grifter class, government is "a tool for making  money," while "in everybody-else land, the government is something to be avoided."

Not anymore. Here is the lesson Americans gleaned from the financial meltdown on and bailout of Wall Street: If the feds won't prosecute 'em, join 'em. Corruption has trickled down.

What do former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and North Carolina state Rep. Tim Moffitt have in common? They both take a rather dim view of public education.

A Buncombe County Republican and a member of the state's House Select Committee on Early Childhood Education Improvement, Moffitt received a flood of election-year criticism for recent comments about public education. Moffitt is one of over three dozen North Carolina politicians affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-funded organization that promoting its ghost-written model legislation in states across the country and whose goals in education are, according to critics, "ideological — creating a system where schools do not provide for everyone — and profit-driven." The Charlotte Observer quoted Moffitt saying in the education committee on which he sits, "I am very suspect of early childhood education. I am very suspect of education in general."

FEDEX PLUNDERING AND THE PIECEMEAL PRIVATIZATION OF THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE
Global Revolution 1: American Revolution 2: Day 62: Communication 1
IronBoltBruce's Kleptocracy Chronicles for 17 Nov 2011 (g1a2d0062c1)
How many examples of greed and corruption must you see before you act?

The massive amounts of money America’s rich spend to keep from paying taxes seems as irrational as it is obsessively ideological. There’s something creepily cultish about it. This week’s massive leak of corporate-written model legislation from the Koch brothers-financed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has further exposed the depth and breadth of the corporate capture of what was once billed as government of, by, and for the people.

New study on privatization claims it simply does not work, and documents it. In fact, privatization sucks.

Here are some impacts the Cornell University Hebdon Report found that result from privatization:

-diminished quality and access to services

-lower employee morale, productivity and training

-worker exploitation through lower wages and benefits

-increased discrimination against minorities and women

-loss of government control and sovereignty

-lost constitutional and other legal rights

-decreased efficiency as a result of difficulty monitoring and administrating contracts

-loss of accountability and control

lost infrastructure

-increased corruption, bribery, kickbacks, bid-rigging, campaign donations, low-ball bids, and contractor bankruptcy

-higher direct costs or hidden costs to pay for the loss of pensions and benefits of public employees

-increased conflict, strikes, grievances, and arbitrations