I was thinking the other day about the outcome of all the “privatization” which has been imposed on America since the days of Ronald Reagan.  If you’re as old as I am the words “Government is the problem, not the solution” is indelibly etched in your mind as either the “root” of all the decline of the past 30+ years (if you think as I do) or the “call to arms” in the right wing attempt to dismantle the New Deal of the FDR years.  (and the New Deal’s aftermath, which included the great work of Eisenhower in creating the amazing interstate highway system and the “60’s” when we got Medicare, the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964)  America’s great middle class was on the upswing during the post WW II years up until the 80’s with many of us “seniors” today being the beneficiaries of the sacrifices of our parents and grandparents through the years of the Great Depression and the second World War.  Somehow, we’ve allowed ourselves, as a nation, to let the right wing politicians (beginning with Reagan, but moving progressively farther to the right each decade since) to convince “we the people” that the government is not us.

The truth is that “we” are the government and, at least in my case, I continue to watch in amazement at how “we the people” keep electing people into government positions whose main objective is to destroy the very institutions they’re pledged to protect.  Reagan brought in the idea of “privatization” so that now we have private hospitals (up until the 80’s virtually all hospitals were “non profit”), private utilities, private security forces, private schools, private parks, private armies, private war contractors, and private prisons – just to mention a few of the results of this phenomenon.  There are many outgrowths of this type of policy thinking, and in my view most of them lead to further divisiveness in our nation.  That is, further separation of the “haves” from the “have nots.”  And, ultimately, if we continue down this path I believe civil unrest is inevitable.

The issue that brought this topic to my mind was a conversation I heard on the radio the other day (I had to subscribe to XM satellite radio because our local “liberal” talk radio was canceled for another dose of the Fox nightmare) regarding the alarming number of Black adults in the prison system of the U.S.  What was really startling to me was the discussion regarding “private prisons” that caused me to think in a way that would never happen if I was trusting the so-called “mainstream media” to provide me with information.  The discussion I tuned into was about how the operators of the private prisons are able to make sure that inmates are returned to their prison through political deal making with local politicians and law enforcement personnel through incentives that really amount to obscene examples of corruption.  Really, when you think about it, the purpose of prison “time” should be rehabilitation, but with a private prison the incentive is to keep the inmate incarcerated as long as possible because the operators of the prison don’t make money with “empty beds.”  This is crazy to me, just the idea that we would allow this to happen.

The hospital and health care system in America has evolved in the sense that medical procedures have advanced tremendously since my youth, but the availability of hospitals and medical services is dwindling as I write.  Despite the so-called “Affordable Care Act” I find a seemingly endless campaign to try to stop “health care reform” by the very people who’ve lost the last two elections in which health care reform was a major issue both times – the first time (2008) Americans saying they wanted “affordable healthcare” with a “public option” and the second time (2012) the voters saying they want “Obamacare” despite the FACT it is far less than what was envisioned during the initial campaign in 2008.  (I believe it will be painfully obvious how important the so-called “public option” was when this was all coming “down” as we see the private insurance companies attempting to gouge the public as the government “gifts” them 30 MILLION new customers)  I’ve seen reports where insurance companies (who, as I just said, are going to get millions of new customers) are threatening to raise rates even more substantially than they have over the previous 4 years and I’ve heard all sorts of other complaints about “socialized medicine” that sound to me as if they’re (the complaints) coming directly from the mouths of the Fox “news” bloviators or the right wing mouth pieces like Rush Limbaugh or Lars Larsen.  The brainwashing coming from the so-called “liberal media” (outlets like Fox “news,” The Wall Street Journal, CNN, etc.) even have acquaintances of mine who have no insurance and can get no insurance due to their previous medical issues believing that “Obamacare” is a bad thing.  The absurdity of this is beyond palpable.

One of my friends had a heart attack and needed quadruple bypass surgery to save his life.  The bill was over a quarter of a million dollars – an impossibility for him to pay.  Essentially, the hospital knowing that payment was impossible, “forgave” the debt.  A great thing for my friend (although I don’t think the doctor was as gracious – probably leading to some form of bankruptcy) but not so great for those of us who have been (and are) paying for health insurance (and, lucky enough to have it I might add).  I happen to be a person who has health issues and fortunately my insurance can’t be cancelled because I’m a member of a union and we have a large “group” that gets insurance through our employer.  (republicans want to destroy my union as well as all the remaining unions in America – God help us if they succeed)  I was recently in the hospital for around 24 hours for a surgery on my cervical spine.  The hospital bill was in excess of $40 THOUSAND for those 24 hours.  When my first daughter was born – back when hospitals were “non-profit” – my wife had a “C section” delivery (which is a major surgery) and she was in the hospital with my daughter for 4 days.  I had no insurance at the time, but the bill was $3000 which I was able to repay in less than two years (back then the prevailing wage was something less than $5 per hour).

I could go on with a list of examples where the “right wing” would have us believe we’re so much better off because of “privatization” that, in reality, are at best debatable – and, at worst – like the private prisons – a MAJOR sham on our society that is causing grief for the “least of us” (using the words of Jesus Christ) and a lot of profit for the wealthy among us who will do anything for money.  Since the days of Reagan our society has been on a steady course toward measuring success by money.  The result is clearly a widening of the gap between the rich and poor, a disintegration of America’s “middle class,” a disintegration of American families, a widening of the racial divide that so many have worked so hard to narrow, and what appears to me to be the creation of – or the attempt at creating – a permanent underclass through the undermining of the public education system.

The people pulling the republican “strings” are very sophisticated and, in my view, always one step ahead of the general public (and the democrats) in their actions.  When they are saying one thing out of one side of their mouths, it seems to me what they are really up to is what isn’t coming out of the other side of their mouths.  Take for example education, which I have a little knowledge about as a teacher for 20 years.  Once the Supreme Court had anointed George W Bush as president he immediately sought the passage of the so-called “no child left behind” legislation which was supposedly designed to bring all children to the same level of achievement by 2014.  To the unassuming person who believes our politicians are transparent and genuine I’m sure this sounded great.  Bush even got Teddy Kennedy to go along with his scheme (Kennedy realized he’d been snookered before he died, but it was then too late to “fix” the problem).  To educators the absurdity of the legislation was apparent from the 1st day.  For example, it’s unreasonable to expect a student with learning disabilities to be at the same level as a student who is fully capable.  If “parity” between the two different levels of students was realistic then the identifying of “special needs” (like autism, mental retardedness, dyslexia, emotional disorders, etc.) would be unnecessary.  However, the reality is that schools such as the one I work in have populations of “special needs” students with as many as 15 -20% of the students.  With “life skills” students, the teachers are, in some instances, teaching a student how to communicate the most basic of human needs.  These students shouldn’t even be taking tests.  Yet, Bush’s “no child left behind” legislation required EVERY student to be judged based on a single test each year – and, the result of that legislation continues to erode our education system as I type this.  I believe the legislation was intended to erode our public school system – that was actually its purpose. (with the intended result – private schools)

Schools are judged on whether their students are meeting “adequate yearly progress” and the standards, at least for schools such as mine, are virtually impossible for some students to meet.  It’s just a matter of time until my school, and most other public schools – are “failing.”  Yet, I see miraculous examples of students who are coming from generational poverty pulling themselves OUT all the time – so, to me the school I teach in is not a failing school no matter what the test scores say.  I’m not opposed to testing the students – it’s a way for me to measure whether my own students have grown appropriately over the course of a school year in the subject areas I’m teaching – but, the state mandated “high stakes” testing is causing too many schools to focus on test results and not on what is best overall for their students.  Aside from my contention that I believe “no child left behind” was part of the scheme to eliminate public schools and “privatize” education in America (again, God help us if the republicans succeed at this) – which will exacerbate that divide between the “haves” and “have nots” even more – I’ve come to believe that another “offshoot” of the bill could be what I see as the attempt to create a “permanent underclass” of workers willing to work for less – the large number of young Americans who are dropping out of school because of the focus on testing and going to college that apparently makes graduating from high school seem less important to so many.  I’ve got sixth graders who are already “giving up” because they can’t see a “light at the end of the tunnel.”  They believe the testing is identifying them as the “losers.”

Another despicable aspect of this “privatization” scheme and the “no child left behind” legislation which caused virtually EVERY state in the union to have a need for the “high stakes” tests – is that President Bush’s brother Neil is making a “killing” selling testing materials that are required based on his brother’s “signature” legislation.  This is how the privatization scheme works.  As I see it, there’s a shrinking group of very wealthy Americans/foreigners who are in charge of the multinational corporations which, behind the scenes, control America’s politicians who are legitimizing this turn away from the New Deal toward the idea of privatization.  When congress closes down part of the government and gives the “authority” to another private enterprise – this cabal of wealthy individuals who seemingly have an insatiable desire for MORE money – ALWAYS come out WAY AHEAD – while the American public continues to be the ones “left behind.”  They’re even doing this in war.

If you remember, the Bush/Cheney regime privatized a large portion of the FIASCO in Iraq and Afghanistan – “wars” which were seemingly endless – but, wars where the “cronies” of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld – and, they themselves – made HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of dollars (dollars borrowed by the people who are now whining about our horrendous debt).  I’ve read where Dick Cheney’s holdings in Halliburton (a company that moved it’s headquarters to Dubai in order to avoid American legal scrutiny over their corrupt practices in Iraq – with virtually NO BLOW-BACK from our “liberal media”) increased over $100 MILLION during the Iraq Fiasco, Donald Rumsfeld’s holdings increased a similar amount, and Douglas Feith made a huge “killing” as well (no pun intended).  I believe Richard Perle, a former assistant Secretary of Defense and an associate of Paul Wolfowitz – both men major instigators of the invasion of Iraq – started a company which was set up to profit off of no-bid private security contracts in Iraq)  To me this is unthinkable, but evidently in our age of “privatization” any way you can make money is acceptable.  Halliburton and their subsidiary KBR (Kellogg Brown and Root) have a long history of “allegedly” overcharging the government, kickbacks, bribery, etc. and they continue to receive open ended no-bid contracts from the pentagon with no sign that I’ve seen of any accountability for their corrupt practices or their sloppy work.  It just seems that whenever they want to “privatize” something, someone is getting filthy rich as a result – and, “we the people” are always the losers.

I don’t question whether large corporations provide benefits to the American public, but I question the motivation of the people who continue to insist that private business is always more efficient than government.  The reality, in my view, is that there should be no profit in war, hospitals should be non-profit, the idea of “private prisons” is absurd, destroying public education so that the “wealthy among us” can send their children to private schools with public “vouchers” is a not so subtle attack on our students born into poverty, and we DEFINITELY don’t need private militias (like Blackwater) and private contractors fleecing America’s taxpayers with their will for endless “wars.” (actually, I don’t believe either the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq are officially declared wars)  The people behind this movement for privatization are the same people who support no regulations on Wall Street, they support all the tax havens in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Switzerland, etc., and they are behind the effort to prevent congress from repealing tax loopholes for major corporations which allow many companies (like GE, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) from paying, in some instances, ANY taxes – or in many cases an amount that even approaches the traditional expectation corporations faced for their tax bills (percentage wise) in the years following WW II leading up to the days of “Reaganomics.”  The statistics are undeniable: since the days of Reagan the incomes of the wealthy in America have risen dramatically while the income of the working class (despite huge increases in productivity) has stagnated or declined.  Privatization works for the wealthy and Wall Street, but not for those of us on Main Street.