Just Notes:

The Pros and Cons of Unions – An Overview for Business Owners and Managers 04/12/11 (G Neil)
"Some of the most successful non-union companies have adopted policies that discourage employee unionization, not with threats or rule-making, but rather with a structure that makes a union unnecessary to its employees.
Building a corporate culture that values and cares for its employees as valuable and necessary to company success is a powerful way to take union organizing off the table in your organization"

FB Friend: "Collective bargaining has a ripple effect" in benefitting non- union employees

Irresistable Quotes

Franklin D Roosevelt "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power" (the growth of private power could lead to fascism)

Dwight Eisenhower's farwell address: "the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage."
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. "

Irresistable Quotes

Jeb Bush (R)“Ronald Reagan would have — based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, similar to my dad — they would have had a hard time if you define the Republican Party — and I don’t — as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement,”  “Back to my dad’s time or Ronald Reagan’s time, they got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan support that right now would be difficult to imagine happening.”

Privatization of Government: Democracy for Sale

Privatization is appropriate in many settings and can be the fiscal answer to meet budgetary objectives. It should be limited in its use and accountability and oversight must be maintained to have successful outcomes. Historically our government has always contracted out work to private companies. However, the current trend of the last 30 years has been to demonize government as inefficient, costly and too big. Selling this idea has paved the way to privatize every feasible portion of government.  Technology and policy demand we be innovative and remain flexible with the changing landscape. The big fallacy is that privatization translates into smaller government. What we do not understand is the taxpayer pays the bill whether government runs it or the private industry does.

We have seen a steady increase in privatization since the late 70's and early 80's, but since 2006, privatization has doubled. Many studies and reports are now weighing in on the outcomes of privatization of government and the data has not been favorable to the private industries who cannot meet deadlines, projected budgets or delivery of services. Convictions of fraud are commonplace as many of our government services and implementation of policy are now controlled by the private industry.  Republicans are pushing to privatize everything from Medicare and Social Security to education. Even the Connecticut DMV is now partially privatized. It is easy to blame government about lack of service, but you may not even know you are dealing with a private company with a government label. What if you send your registration renewal in to the “DMV” and it was headed for Bank of America? Has anyone tried to work with BofA lately?

                                Pros and Cons of Privatization

Arguments for privatization:

·         private companies are more efficient in cost containment
·         reduction of government wastes
·         improve quality of services
·         improve innovation
·         private companies better equipped to provide services
·         improves choice
·         decreases bureaucracy

Criticisms of privatization:

·         lack of accountability to taxpayers who pay the bill
·         high levels of corruption to win contracts from government officials
·         higher costs from cost over runs, price gauging, waste and fraud
·         primary obligation is to shareholders, not American taxpayers
·         undermines government power and democracy
·         lack of sustained senior leadership in government positions insures dependence              on private subcontractor
·         the for profit  model incentivizes misappropriation of funds
·         decrease in quality of services
·         lack of public interests in outcomes
·         net loss in worker pay and benefits
·         decreased job opportunities for women and minorities
·         waste and fraud
·         high costs and delay of services when subcontractor is fired

                     Medicare and Big Pharm: The Intimate Connection

The Medicare Prescription Part D is a government program subcontracted to Big Pharm. It is well documented that Big Pharm was heavily lobbying Congress to affect policy. The Washington Post reported they spent over 900 million in lobbying between 1998 and 2005 and 90 million in campaign donations favoring republican over democrats 3:1.

The end result is a trillion dollar program that charged Medicare recipients up to 200% more than other bargaining groups primarily because the policy (under influence of Big Pharm lobbyists) prohibited Medicare from the ability to negotiate lower prices. According to the Center for Public Integrity the result of such influence on policy is 61% of Medicare spending on prescription drugs is pure profit for Big Pharm".

In Dec. 2011 Merck and 12 other Big Pharm companies were found guilty of Medicaid fraud to the tune of 240 million in the state of Massachusetts alone. Subcontracting gives access not only to policy, but taxpayer pocketbooks as well. It is not about pharmaceutical companies getting a return on their investment for developing drugs, it is about them using their political influence to make policy and gain contracts that are tailored to unfairly enhance their bottom line.

         Homeland Security and the Defense Machine: Fear buys opportunity

One of the greatest government expansions and subcontracting to private companies is Homeland Security that started in 2003 under GW Bush after 9/11. It has become so secretive and large it is a challenge to estimate its cost. Nearly 2000 private companies are engaged in counter terrorism activities. Many of the activities are duplicated throughout the system creating some 50,000 reports per year. The consequence is there is so much noise and complexity that filtering out viable intelligence is the greatest challenge. Liberty Crossing is one of the largest most secretive collections of government and private companies that are largely disconnected. The financial incentives are to provide intelligence whether it is good or bad intelligence. Fear for your safety is one of the strongest sells for any program successful or not.

The Defense Machine is another example of privatization. Lockheed- Martin has been convicted 11 separate times for fraud against the government and holds top fraud agent against the USA as well as top money contractor. Halliburton and Blackwater have also been convicted of fraud against the USA. The consequence of large scale fraud by such companies is the enormous costs to the government, but our hands are tied by our dependence on them.

Bernie Sanders (I) Vermont sites a report by the Office of Accountability that hundreds of defense contractors who have committed fraud against the USA have received over 1 trillion in contracts.

First we ended the draft. When I express sympathy for a soldier’s death, I get a response like "they volunteered". We now hire mercenaries whose deaths and casualties go unchecked. Perhaps this is one more step away from public awareness of the human cost of war. This detachment allows the freedom to influence national defense priorities by defense contractors or even Big Oil when they need security for their oil fields in a foreign country. No one will notice. Ted Koppel did an in depth investigative piece on the inevitability of private companies to use both American soldiers and government hired private mercenaries to protect their private interests abroad.

     Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: A comparison to government run Ginnie Mae

Everyone loves the story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In 1968 Mae and Mac were 'privatized' and in the crash of 2008 were given disproportionate demonization for the mortgage balloon rupture. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were only responsible for some 25 percent of mortgage failures due to subprime lending scams. This is because they had been sanctioned and banned from participation early in the subprime build up due to CEO Franklin Raines' bad behavior. The 75 percent of mortgage failures were from the private lending industry.

Ginnie Mae remained a government run and owned Mortgage Company. Ginnie May has been both profitable and self sustaining because of its government oversight. Mae and Mac executives got caught up in creating and distorting balance sheets to generate more ‘profits’ to give bigger payouts to its executives. The profit motive can corrupt these privatized companies with the taxpayer holding the bag of financial consequence.

                                  Be careful of what you wish for

Privatization has its benefits when used conservatively with necessary oversight, but the idea that privatization will guarantee net benefits to the fiscal bottom line is not supported by our ballooning deficits. The consequence is public policy being generated by private companies who seek to unfairly enhance their bottom lines and whose first loyalty is to their next bonus and their shareholders. The only guarantee is that the taxpayer is the one who pays the bill either way. How does it feel when you begin to understand that it is the taxpayer subsidizing the out of control executive pay and bonuses in our hurry to ‘downsize’ government? Makes me feel damn uncomfortable.

Franklin D Roosevelt "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism—ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power" (the growth of private power could lead to fascism)

Dwight Eisenhower's farwell address: "the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage."
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. "

 .

Washingtonpost Investigation: by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin “A hidden world, growing beyond control”

Privatization Myths Debunked http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/node/457

United States Government Accountability Office, "Department of Labor, Better Cost Assessments and Departmentwide Performance Tracking Are Needed to Effectively Manage Competitive Sourcing Program." November 2008. GAO-09-14.

Economic Policy Institute, "Outsourcing Poverty: Federal contracting pushes down wages and benefits." EPI Issue Brief #250. February 11, 2009

Things Said:

"If we took care of our bodies like we are taking care of our democracy and prioritized only one organ(the wealthy and their interests)....we would STILL end up in MULTISYSTEM failure."

Irresistable Quotes

Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein "One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition," Mann and Ornstein posit that democracy in America is being endangered by extreme politics. From the first day of the Obama administration, Ornstein says, our constitutional system hasn't been allowed to work.
Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute(a conservative think tank)