Privatization: isn’t it great?
Isn’t it interesting that a private contractor, USIS,
cleared both Edward Snowden and Aaron Alexis? When I received my security
clearance, the FBI did a background check. In the age of outsourcing, we leave
it up to private security firms.
There are several intriguing (at least to me) aspects of this whole mess.
First, privatization is the darling of the far right; examples including Halliburton no bid
contracts, Blackwater security, and now USIS. How odd that the first to scream
about security issues and threats to the nation are generally Tea Partiers and
their despicably fatuous ilk, and these are the same political hacks who
support these relatively unregulated private firms. Do you think any of USIS’ $200
million annual take went to politicos of the right?
Had Alexis
been granted his clearance (secret, by the way!) under military guidelines by
the FBI, the 2004 shooting of the tires on an auto in a self described “blackout
fit of rage” would have almost certainly resulted in the removal of that clearance.
Even a simple possession and/or use of pot would have done so.
In a
similarly remarkable coincidence, Edward Snowden (remember him, the man without
a country?) also was the grantee of a clearance by the selfsame USIS. I have
been on both ends of FBI background checks and I know the sort of questions
asked and of whom they are asked. I just recently did one for a former student
who was in the Air Force, and it is difficult to believe that Snowden’s acquaintances
would have given him a clean bill on the same sort of questions, considering
his narcissistic personality disorder.
To compound
the felony in Alexis’ case, he actually told police in Rhode Island he was
hearing voices, yet that information was never weighed by someone with
authority to revoke Alexis’ clearance before he was able to remain sane enough
to kill thirteen innocent persons in a place he should have never been able to
enter.
For those of
us with military backgrounds, the shootings at the Navy Yard have a surreal aspect.
I have seen a Navy commander removed from a job requiring Secret clearance
simply for wearing a Scopolamine patch for
motion sickness, but a man with a civilian firm “clearance” in a full blown
schizophrenic rage can walk into a “secure” facility armed to the teeth. What’s
wrong with this picture?
As noted above, privatization is
the darling of the right, and has been used to scapegoat almost every sort of
Government operation. Charter School
initiatives are a good example, except for the fact that most data comes from
(you guessed it) the charter schools. If
ones listens to the charter school lobby and/or watches propaganda films like “Waiting
for Superman” or “The Lottery” you might come to the conclusion
that charter schools cure cancer, shingles, dandruff, and make the blind see. Yet the recent CREDO study
out of Stanford University shows that only 17% of charter school students
outperform their public school counterparts—and 37% perform worse. To declare the success of the charter school
movement based on a 17% success rate is no more sensible than declaring their
inherent corruption based on their incidence of embezzlement and other shady
business dealings...though I guess we can say education has now learned
something from the business world.
Let’s revisit
that “37% perform worse” statistic for a moment. What is missing here, is that charter
schools start with an uneven playing field from the get-go. Most take no
emotionally handicapped students, and
many take only the cream of the academic crop (see “The Lottery”) Behavioral
problem children are disenrolled and shoveled down to the public schools.
Sometimes even National icon charter schools fudge the data when it tells an
unpleasant story. Good storytelling
includes just enough truth to make it believable and drops the contrary
details—high charter school student attrition rates or Geoffrey Canada’s
kicking his low-scoring inaugural middle school class out of the Harlem
Children’s Zone, for instance (their score were too low!) . With all these opportunities to spitshine the
record, one has to conjecture upon what the numbers would show if all charter
school data, “unwashed” were on the table.
37% is probably lower than the reality! On the high side, some charter
schools do well, but then again so do many public schools. I taught in one for
20 years. In the same Florida county as I taught high school , charter schools,
usually run by financial opportunists and purveyors of unfulfillable promises,
failed in significant numbers, usually accompanied by proof of financial
malfeasance and lack of educational expertise.
A concrete
example of privatization failure is Baltimore County, Md. After three years of privatization on
numerous schools in the county, test scores were flat (essentially no
difference) between charter (privatized) and public schools of similar
demographics. Educational Alternatives (EA), the private corporation which ran
the so called “Tesseract” schools in Baltimore, night have claimed to do “as
well as the public schools” but several facts prove the lie of this point.
First, EA was paid 11% more per
student than were public schools and still failed to produce superior
results. Here is a quote from the independent evaluator of the trial: “ Although our finding of no CTBS test score
gain after three years has been publicly viewed as a determining factor in the
decision in December 1995 to terminate the contract, it was the report's
financial information that cut short EAI's effort. While at first glance,
average per- pupil cost seems an appropriate funding basis for alternatives to
public education in which "funds follow the student," school systems
almost universally spend less than their average per-pupil cost for elementary
students and more for secondary and special needs students. The unmasking of
this artifice made a mockery of EAI's promise to improve schools at no extra
cost to Baltimore City. We have since learned that EAI's inference that it
directs a larger percentage of resources to the classroom is also a distortion.” In plainspeak, they were in it for the money,
which seems to be the way of the charter school world.
On a final
note, the Republican Party, largely hijacked by the Tea Party lobby, has once
again taken aim at the Affordable Health Care Act. Instead of arguing details, let’s ask, and try
to answer the bigger question “Why do
they hate it?”
The answers probably go all the way
back to another Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, a Progressive, and ergo out of
step with some of the far right in his own party. The campaign for some form of
universal government-funded health care has stretched for nearly a century in
the US, and on several occasions,
advocates believed they were on the verge of success. The evolution of these
efforts and the reasons for their failure make for an intriguing lesson in
American history, ideology, and character. During the Progressive Era,
President Theodore Roosevelt supported health insurance because he believed
that no country could be strong whose people were sick and poor, most of the
initiative for reform took place outside of government.
In 1906, the American Association
of Labor Legislation (AALL) finally led the campaign for health insurance
drafting a model bill in 1915. In a nutshell, the bill limited coverage to the
working class and all others that earned less than $1200 a year, including
dependents (sound familiar?). The services of physicians, nurses, and hospitals
were included, as was sick pay, maternity benefits, and a death benefit to pay
for funeral expenses. Costs were to be shared between workers, employers, and
the state. What differentiates this effort to pass universal health care from
the current debacle is the support of one key group. Many of whom support AHCA
today, but many of whom are vocal in their opposition.
In 1914, reformers sought to
involve physicians in formulating this bill and the American Medical Association
(AMA) actually supported the AALL proposal. Some physicians who were
leaders in the AMA wrote to the AALL secretary: “Your plans are so entirely in
line with our own that we want to be of every possible assistance.” By 1916,
the AMA board approved a committee to work with AALL, and at this point the AMA
and AALL formed a united front on behalf of health insurance. Times have
definitely changed along the way.
Exactly as in today’s debate,
the commercial insurance industry (the only industry in America which has never as a whole , even during the great depression, lost money) opposed
the reformers’ efforts in the early 20th century. The backbone of insurance
business was policies for working class families that paid death benefits and
covered funeral expenses. But because the reformer health insurance plans also
covered funeral expenses, there was a big conflict. Reformers felt that by
covering death benefits, they could finance much of the health insurance costs
from the money wasted by commercial insurance policies who had to have an army
of insurance agents to market and collect on these policies. But since this
would have pulled the rug out from under the multi-million dollar commercial
life insurance industry, they opposed the national health insurance proposal.
Again privatization for profit’s sake, never mind the casualties!
Ironically, the sword that slew universal
health care in the early 1900s was WWI. Since the Germans had it, and later,
the Soviets as well, the Financial interests in the USA could now oppose health
care by spewing patriotic tripe such as “If the ‘Krauts’ and ‘Reds’ have it, it
is obviously bad.”
In the years following Communist
takeovers in the Soviet Union and, post
WWII central Europe, efforts by FDR and Truman were shouted down by cries of “Socialism”,
which was immediately linked to Communism. Billy Graham, anti-Semite , racist,
and friend to Presidents claimed during the McCarthy era that “Communism is sponsored
by Satan” This also (in the minds of the
unwashed masses who needed it most) made universal health care somehow unchristian.
The drivel continued through the Clinton years, with Hillary Clinton becoming
the target of scorn for nothing more heinous than hosting town hall information
gathering sessions regarding healthcare.
The financial clout brought to bear
in opposition to health care reform has little to do with anything besides the
industries which might have to readjust to accommodate some government interface.
Big Pharma, some of the AMA, American Hospital Association, Big Tobacco, and especially the insurance
lobby, have marshaled billions to oppose the AHCA. These are not persons of
principal; they are persons of money, who oppose AHCA for the same reasons they
like Charter Schools and privatization of what should be other government
functions (security clearances, etc.) None of
the principal opponents to the AHCA will really be affected by it, which is the
irony (like rain on your wedding day) of the whole debacle. The loudest
opponents already have health care insurance and therefore are unaffected. It
is galling that these hypocrites now pretend to have the interests of the poor
at heart, since they have had precious little use for them otherwise.
As I have exhaustively written
elsewhere, the cost of healthcare for the poor will be paid. Period. It will be
paid by the rest of us. Period. Unfortunately, it will be paid in ER fees and
extended hospital stays covered by government funds at costs far exceeding the
cost of preventive medicine which a reasonable health care plan would make
available. It would mean fewer moms with no prenatal care and the attendant
long inpatient stays at thousands of dollars per day! There are so many more
examples and small wonder that many emergency services providers have no issue
with the AHCA, because they have seen the costs in human misery of the
alternative. How pathetic that those who
would be relatively unaffected are the loudest in opposition. It’s sort of like
men making laws about abortion, isn’t it?
So privatize away! After all what’s
at stake except the welfare of our kids, our health, and the security of the
nation? And if the fat cats get fatter, that’s the business of business in
America.
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