Mounting evidence that privatizing public services costs us more money

[marmar]

from OnTheCommons.org:


Its Been a Very Bad Month For the Private Sector
Mounting evidence that privatizing public services costs us more money

| by David Morris


The private sector has had a very bad month. Its most widely publicized failure occurred when UPS and FedEx fumbled their Christmas deliveries while the U.S. Postal Service scored a touchdown.

“An unlikely Star of the Holiday Shipping Season: The U.S. Postal Service” is how Business Week described the clear victory of the public over the private. “The government-run competitor was swamped with parcels just like UPS and FedEx were, with holiday package volume 19 percent higher than the same period late year. But there were no widespread complaints about tardy deliveries by USPS. The postal service attributes its success to meticulous planning.”

Less publicized but even more damning has been the spate of articles regarding the epidemic of snafus and high costs of private contractors . A recent Op Ed in the New York Times by David A. Super, Professor of Law at Georgetown University offered a litany of private contractor failings, including a flawed Colorado Benefits Management System that took four years to fix. When first implemented it reportedly refused food stamps to anyone who did not have a driver’s license from Guam! In mid October a contractor’s glitch made food stamps inaccessible to recipients in 17 states.

Then there was what the Times deemed a “disastrous rollout” of a privately created and managed system to oversee unemployment benefits in Florida by Deloitte Consulting. In December Florida penalized the contractor $6 million and begin fining it $15,000 a day until the problems are fixed. Privately managed systems from Massachusetts to California have experienced dramatic delays and enormous cost overruns. ............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/magazine/its-been-very-bad-month-private-sector#sthash.lNffQmC4.dpuf

[daleanime]

1. K&R....

[SamKnause]

2. Evidence

We have an avalanche of evidence that 'trickle down' was a fraud.

Why is it still being pushed by lawmakers and media ?

We have an avalanche of evidence that the 'Iraq invasion' was illegal and launched on known faulty intelligence and evidence.

Why does the media allow the politicians that voted for this debacle a pass ? Hillary is a prime example.

We know that Wall Street committed illegal acts and fraud on a monumental scale.

Why were citizens forced to bail them out, why have they not been held accountable, and why have they not been reined in ?

Why did president Obama refuse to hold the Bush administration accountable ? Looking forward not backwards has done a terrible disservice to the U.S. and all countries involved.

Facts, data, charts, grafts, research, science, math, biology, archeology etc. are ignored on a daily basis in this country.

We have an uniformed citizenry being bamboozled by politicians whose only interest in gaining more money and power.

The push for privatizing everything that is humanly possible will continue to be touted as the right path by those who benefit from the privatization.

[kairos12]

9. Privatize everything and you have the Golden Rule--who has the gold rules.

The free market is a fraud. It is a rigged market at best. Yeah-I really want Enron to manage the Nation's energy supplies, Target to oversee our national security computer grid, and Blue Cross to run the VA. Make me retch.

[cosmicaug]

13. Precedent

Why did president Obama refuse to hold the Bush administration accountable ? Looking forward not backwards has done a terrible disservice to the U.S. and all countries involved.

Doing such a thing would set a disagreeable precedent.

[Overseas]

3. K&R. It has also brought corruption it was touted to prevent. Contractor misconduct database

on the Project on Government Oversight website. Shows many instances of misconduct by very famous private contractors.

http://www.contractormisconduct.org/

[abelenkpe]

4. Of course they cost more!

And the article didn't even mention defense contractors. Privatization is and always has been a scam that robs the public to benefit political cronies. It needs to be stopped.

[sulphurdunn]

5. When exactly did government

become an employment program and cash cow for the Chamber of Commerce?

[malthaussen]

6. Before Jesus rode dinosaurs.

Government has always been about keeping the marks in line and helping out your buddies.

-- Mal

[loudsue]

28. This is one of the best videos on the subject....it explains a lot.

Everyone in the USA should watch it. The internet MIGHT be able to help combat some of the rule by the 1% -- which might be why the 1% wants so badly to control it.

[Dustlawyer]

7. This will continue because our government is run by the 1%!

Until we change the paradigm this is what we should expect.
If you do what you have always done, you will get what you always got!
IN ORDER TO CHANGE THE PARADIGM, WE NEED:
Publicly Funded elections;
Complete Campaign Finance Reform;
Break up the oligopolies in Banking (Wall Street); media; and the MIC!

[Laelth]

27. +1. n/t

-Laelth

[catbyte]

8. Can you imaging the water scalping that would be going on in Charleston if public

services were privatized?

[Zorra]

10. Privatization is another word for fail. nt

[Buns_of_Fire]

11. But... but... who could have foreseen that Christmas was coming

or that it might be cold in December or that shoppers might be doing last-minute-shopping online instead of schlepping down to the mall?

, as usual...

[marmar]

31. LOL

[xchrom]

12. du rec.

[ancianita]

14. It's also incontrovertibly evident that privatizers refuse accountability for 'externalities'.

They chisel and overprice in stealth, run when damage is done, refuse guilt when caught, pay their fines and move on to repeat their destruction as 'the cost of doing business.'

[loudsue]

29. That is it in a nut shell.

Very well said...it should be a bumper sticker or a highway billboard.

[marmar]

33. Noam Chomsky on the Environment, Corporate Propaganda and Externalities

[ancianita]

39. Thanks! The manufacturing of our consent has really become the stealth theft of our house.

[MNBrewer]

15. Of COURSE it does!!

Profit motive!

[rickford66]

16. I'm waiting for John Stossel's column about this.

I won't hold my breath.

[cantbeserious]

17. Privatization - The Work Of The Chicago School Of Economics - Objective - Make The 1% Wealthy

eom

[Egalitarian Thug]

18. The difference is intent. The USPS is a brilliant large system developed with the goal

of moving the largest volume of mail and parcels in the most effective and efficient way at each step in the process from A to B.

The so-called private companies* have developed their systems to generate the maximum income and profit, resulting in built-in inefficiency and organizational dysfunction.

This comparison works across the spectrum, is the intention to make or do something as well as possible and sell it at a profit, or is it to make as much profit as possible by doing or making something?

[librechik]

19. duh--it's like forgotten knowledge from before the Dark Ages.

The death of the social safety net in the US, such as it was, is the most successful propaganda effort of all time, including the Iraq invasion. Quite a few people doubted the WMD story. But EVERYBODY believes that the poor are stealing money from "us" Thanks, Lee Atwater...

[sulphurdunn]

20. It's about like

the voucher and charter school rackets. The corporate "takers" aim to suck the public coffer dry and blame the poor for it, again.

[TRoN33]

21. I've seen many small towns in the midwest America...

That have retorted their own public service to private companies. It literally bankrupt these towns with higher cost of service along with sheer scale of incompetent service unseen since European Dark Age. But the good news is that these towns' good folks already rebelled and forced the leaders to restore the service back to public with higher wage along with greater reduction in incompetence.

Some folks has discovered that those very same private company who once serve them have strong financial connection to Koch brothers. That probably explains how, one of many reasons, Koch brothers' net worth grew from W. Bush era ($15.7 billion each) to Obama era ($40-something billion of dollars each).

[Orsino]

22. Privatization is profiterring from the Commons.

If a for-profit corporation came along that really did revolutionize service delivery, its leaders would deserve a tidy profit, I suppose.

Privatization starts with fail, however, when it has to buy its way into the Commons by paying off politicians. Starting in the red doesn't bode well, and of course the execs and shareholders will demand a much quicker return on their investments than does a government. I can only assume that corps' business plans are shite, made-up crap that serves only to placate the public long enough for them to get their hooks into us.

[Blue Owl]

23. All hail GWB, the ex-privatizer in chief

[RoccoR5955]

24. Well DUH!

ANY service that is privatized costs more money!
When the heck are people going to learn that the government does not work for profit, they work for service.
Whenever a government entity decides to privatize ANYTHING, it will cost more, because they are paying a for profit company, who must pay their executives higher pay than those supervisory, and management positions within government.
Whenever government does public works projects, education projects, or any other projects, if they are done properly, they will ALWAYS cost less.

Counties used to pave roads for far less than their private counterparts, but now these for profits cost the taxpayers more money for worse roads. The same holds true for education, computer services, and most anything else.

I believe part of this move towards privatization is because elected officials must pay back their donors to their campaigns. When they get elected, they put services out to contract, and the lowest contract generally goes to one of these contributors. Multi-year contracts go over the contract price, and get paid by us, the taxpayers.

It's a scam, I tell you, it's a scam.

[a2liberal]

37. +1

"Well duh!" is exactly what I thought when I read the headline

[marmar]

25. from The Corporation......"Externalities"

[liberal N proud]

26. The reason public services are public is because they are. necessary but not profitable.

Private organizations run on the premises of profitability.

[bbgrunt]

30. k and r

[marmar]

32. Socialize Costs, Privatize Profits ..................

The Great One, Two Punch
Socialize Costs, Privatize Profits

by DAVID ROSEN


There’s a truism about the U.S. political-economy, one being shared by an increasing number of people from all walks of life and political persuasions: the game is rigged!

There are two aspects to the rigged game. One involves the privatization of public services, the outsourcing of public needs to private contractors. Parallel to privatization has been a second con, one more hidden and far more insidious, the rigged roulette – the privatization of profit — that ensures that corporations win and the public get’s stuck with the consequences, the long-term bill.

Privatization is brilliantly simple and has been working efficiently for generations. The ordinary U.S. taxpayer gives up a portion of his/her take-home pay in the form of taxes, whether at the job or at the pump. Like a great vacuum cleaner, “government” at every level of the state apparatus sucks up these dollars. In turn, it doles out the dollars to private contractors who, like pigs at the trough, never stop sucking-up the dollars.

Parallel to the privatization scam is a con that has long been hidden yet is far more insidious. Under this version of Russian roulette, corporations have easily gotten away with the consequences of their deeds. Land was cheep, air and water unlimited, minerals abundant, workers expendable, a sucker was born everyday and you always had friends in government to bail you out when the house of cards collapsed. Who cared about industrial waste, polluted groundwater, ill workers or failed banks, everything was replaceable. Someone else will foot the bill. ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/01/socialize-costs-privatize-profits/

[ctsnowman]

35. Nailed it.

[blkmusclmachine]

34. ,

,

[aquart]

36. Privatization is a license to steal.

And in national security matters, it's a license to kill.

[joanbarnes]

38. Don't forget West Virginia 'American' Water Co.

How much will taxpayers get bilked cleaning up that mess?

[AlbertCat]

40. What's the date of this article?

Because I remember reading and talking about how privatizing government tasks costs about 3 times more.... in the 1970's