"Underlying this lack of accountability are the real motives for turning government functions over to private companies, which have little to do with efficiency. To say the obvious: when you see a story about failed outsourcing, you can be sure that the company in question is a major contributor to the Republican Party, is run by people with strong G.O.P. connections, or both.
So what happens now? The failure of privatization under the Bush administration offers a target-rich environment to newly empowered Congressional Democrats — and I say, let the subpoenas fly. Bear in mind that we’re not talking just about wasted money: contracting failures in Iraq helped us lose one war, similar failures in Afghanistan may help us lose another, and FEMA’s failures helped us lose a great American city.
And maybe, just maybe, the abject failure of this administration’s efforts to outsource essential functions to the private sector will diminish the antigovernment prejudice created by decades of right-wing propaganda."
* cannon has more on Turki al-Faisal's resignation:
"What if the Administration backs the Shi'ites? This was "Option 2" in the leaked Hadley memo.
Word has it that Dick Cheney favors this option. No doubt, he discussed it at some length during his recent visit to Saudi Arabia. If you feel, as I feel, that Dick Cheney still makes American foreign policy, then growing evidence of a Saudi-U.S. rift takes on very ominous overtones.
Why? Because if we favor conquest by Iraq's Shi'ites, then Saudi Arabia would feel obligated to protect Iraq's Sunnis. Objectively speaking, Saudi Arabia would be at war with the United States.
We might not be fighting Saudi troops directly. But the rulers of Saudi Arabia possess some very formidable weapons which they could use against us: High oil prices, and an avoidance of all American investment.
That kind of warfare could destroy the American economy."
* kathleen:
"The Iraq discourse drives me clean up a wallllll. It is such unadulterated gobbledy-guck a kind of gibberish sausasge, no matter what you put in, it comes out political nonsense, with lumps of talking points here and there to make it look like there's some real meat in there. "
i couldnt agree more. i can barely even read the gibberish anymore - let alone comment on it.
1 comment:
Krugman said,
"...maybe, the abject failure of this administration’s efforts to outsource essential functions to the private sector will diminish the antigovernment prejudice created by decades of right-wing propaganda."
I thought there was a policy throughout Latin America, at least, for governments to privatize whatever they could. This was done, supposedly, because it was recommended by the World Bank and other international lending organizations, associated with the United States. Wasn't the effort to sell off city water supplies part of this effort, and part of why Ecuador or Bolivia now has a more leftist government.
I thought the effort to privatize and otherwise sell off what could make any money to support government functions has occured in countries that, no surprise, have failed economically and politically. So, in Russia, for example, the sell off of government assets has made services collapse and people suffer.
I thought the story was not that the privatization and sell off of assets was a problem, but that the people suffered from the activities of thieves. The problem with the Bush policies gutting U.S. government assets won't be that we will find the privatization wrong, and government assistance to the poor, the old, the uneducated, or the sick, a benefit. Instead, we will be told that certain individuals took advantage of us, so that when they are "brought to justice," there won't be any additional scrutiny of the mess they've left to us.
I have been under the impression that the right wing has thought government assistance to people is something of a sin. It's wrong because it sucks their will to do for themselves. I am not sure of the details, but, the collapse of government seems to be the goal of this kind of thinking.
I don't think the failure of outsourcing will rehabilitate government because we will still have right-wing efforts to ruin it.
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