The Bankruptcy of Privatization Exposed

Contractors the Only Winners in Iraq

An article by Trudi Rubin in the Post-Crescent on April 4, 2012 illuminates the bankruptcy of the Radical Right’s policy of privatization, which is the solving of public problems by giving money to private business instead of working to improve our public agencies.  Ms. Rubin’s piece points out that the only winners in the Iraq War are the private contractors who were paid tens of billions of dollars. Ms. Rubin also points out that “a hefty chunk of those billions was wasted due to overbilling, shoddy work and fraud.” Why was the work given to private businesses instead of being handled directly by the US Military as it had been in previous wars?

The Radical Right Has a Religious Faith in Private Business to Solve All Problems

One reason is that giving the work to private companies allowed Bush and Cheney to pursue to the war without reinstating the military draft, but a more important reason was the Bush administration’s  doctrinal, indeed almost religious, commitment to the idea that money paid to private business is always well spent because private businesses are always honest and efficient.  Why can we count on their honesty and efficiency? We can count on them because the discipline of market competition keeps them honest and efficient.

Private Contractors Were Corrupt and Inefficient in Iraq

Unfortunately, the “discipline of market competition” does nothing of the kind. As Ms. Rubin’s article shows, many of the contractors in Iraq were neither honest nor efficient. Fraud and inefficiency were widespread. Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq has documented “scores of scams,” and Dick Cheney’s company KBR paid $559 million to the US government to settle corruption charges.

In Wisconsin, The Right’s Faith Remains Undimmed

None of this has made even a little dent in the Radical Right’s religious faith in the honesty and efficiency of private business. Here in Wisconsin, Governor Walker’s administration has given millions of dollars to companies with very little oversight on the theory that doing so would create lots of jobs. The jobs have not appeared, but the governor’s faith in private business remains undimmed. The recent mining bill relaxed environmental restrictions to allow Gogebic Taconite to operate a strip mine without proper environmental oversight. After all, why would we need oversight when businesses are always honest and efficient? The discipline of competition guarantees that. Right?

Private School Vouchers Are the Latest Expression of the Faith

Now, we have private school vouchers, the latest expression of the rightist faith that private businesses – in this case private schools – will solve our problems.  Proponents of vouchers tell us that competition among schools will insure that the schools improve. No matter that in other parts of the country, children have been victimized by fly-by-night schools that opened to take public dollars and provided inferior education to their clients. No matter that school vouchers have not improved education in Milwaukee.

It is Time to Expose the Faith in Private Business as a Failed Religion

It is time to confront the Radical Right’s faith in privatization directly. It is time to stand up and say that giving public money to private businesses is not always the best solution to every problem. Private businesses are not always either honest or efficient. Sometimes, they are fraudulent, sometimes they are inefficient, and sometimes they are completely ineffective. Outsourcing military functions did not win the war in Iraq, and school vouchers have not improved education in places where they have been tried.  Privatization is a failed religion, and vouchers are a failed solution.