Privatization Of Public Services = 40% Cut In Service Dollars.

[TheMastersNemesis]

When public services are privatized up to 40% of the money goes to overpaid CEO's and profits. Services rendered are reduced significantly as are the wages of the worker providing them. And accountability is also lost when these long term contracts are signed. There are really NO savings in privatized services at all. They are just another form of patronage. And the chief goal of privatization is to eliminate public sector workers who are replaced by underpaid and overworked associates who are not even considered employees by contractors.

Virtually all former maintenance workers who were once federal employees with middle class pay are now low paid contractors with few or no benefits much less any job security. Even workers decontaminating ebola contamination sites are low paid contract employees and not necessarily trained hazmat workers.

The GOP wants to privative all government services and eliminate virtually all public employees. Privatization must be stopped and reversed.

[PDJane]

1. Precisely. All privatization ever does is increase costs and decrease quality of service.

That includes utitlities (we're still having a fine time with pensions and golden handshakes in Ontario), medical care, and even garbage collection.

[Faux pas]

2. Only 40%?

I'm sure it will be 100% by the time they're done pillaging.

[valerief]

3. Privatization makes richer people richer and that's all that matters.

Fuck the people. The only people who matter are the corporations.

We're told this in so many ways, day after day, by our "leaders."

[logosoco]

4. This is definately something that we need to pay attention to.

I think most people assume it means savings, but it does create a huge loss and inferior services. I fear what will happen as communities start privatizing things such as parks and the users will need a permit to use what was once a community area.

There is a reason for many things to be in the public eye: because those getting in on privatization are only in it to make a buck, not provide better services. Feeding people in prison costs money, and anyone who can do it cheaper is giving bad food which will lead to harming the health of those who eat it, which will cost taxpayers even more the longer that person is in prison.

I hope the people and the powers that be wake up before it is too late.

[Rod Beauvex]

5. Privatization.

Privatization: Twice the costs and half the results.

Keep is simple for the plebes.

[TheMastersNemesis]

6. Good Short Meme.

[woo me with science]

7. K&R But no more pretending it is only the GOP doing this.

Corporate money, corporate policies, and the corporate Third Way are a raging cancer within our party, too. Corporate corruption is SYSTEMIC now and must be fought in both parties.

Time to fight privatization from both parties:

"Deregulation, Privatization, and Cheap Labor, Obama's Corporate Plantations" ("Promise Zones&quot
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024319390

Ted Mitchell, Leader in Privatization Movement, Confirmed as Obama's Undersecretary of Education - May 2014
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014804404

Obama and Education: Bring in the Private Companies!
Arne Duncan complicit as forces of privatization take over public schools.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024752043
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024363202
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024393444

Obama administration approves Pennsylvania plan to privatize and eliminate Medicaid as an entitlement
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/09/04/penn-s04.html

Introducing the New Federal Program That Will Further Privatize Public Housing April 2014
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024876493

Obama Administration Pushes to Privatize Poultry Inspection
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002529000

The Obama administration is aggressively growing private prisons
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022568681

Unions Rail Against Obama Proposal to Privatize Tennessee Valley Authority
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/03/11/unions-rail-against-obama-proposal-privatize-new-deal-success-story

Obama administration decides: Foreclosed houses to be sold to and rented out by private equity firms
http://metamorphosis.democraticunderground.com/11164913

Obama Administration Offers More Than 20 Million Acres, All Available Unleased Areas, in the Western Gulf of Mexico to Major Offshore Oil and Gas Sales Corporations
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021896005

US sending private "boots on the ground" To Iraq
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=thread&address=10025415694

Obama ends moon program, endorses private spaceflight - 2011
http://www.cnet.com/news/obama-ends-moon-program-endorses-private-spaceflight/

Obama's Public-Private Partnerships July 2013
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/07/obamas-master-class-in-demagogy-101.html

Obama, who once championed government as effective, now more critical of its role
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/11/obama-as-critic-big-government/

[Dustlawyer]

17. Until enough of us wake up to this and realize

Democrats are bought off too! You don't get into the Senate or the White House unless they own you now days, with few exceptions. Bernie Sanders is one of those exceptions, but he won't make it as long as there are Democrats who still believe their candidate is the one to shake things up. Would a Republican be worse than a Democrat, sure, but things will continue their downward spiral either way and we are running out of time with Climate Change.
Get the $$$ out of politics should be our only focus!!!

[rtracey]

8. sources

where are your sources.....I want to read more on this.....are the above sources the ones quoted for this post?....thanks

[Rilgin]

10. Bumping

I think the theme of the OP is very important and one of the worst trends in the US since Reagan.

I would love links to where these numbers come from as well.

[rtracey]

13. actually...

I found this. Have not read it yet, but may be good.......

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/10/15/outsourcing-public-services-governors-push-privatization-disastrous-results

[TheMastersNemesis]

15. I Was Not Quoting A Source On This OP. Here Is Why I Believe I Am Not Far Off.

I worked in the private sector before I worked for DOL where I retired from after 24 years as an employment specialist. I was a traffic manager for a large liquor corporation for a while. I worked for a wholesale house and learned a lot while working with our controller and other accountants. It was customary to write in a margin on our prices that guaranteed at least a 20% profit margin after our laid in cost. Also had to figure in about 20% for expenses as well. There was always a guaranteed profit we worked to get no matter what. Discounts and other sails were kind a myth in some ways. Even with supposed sales we wrote in a guaranteed profit.

When I worked at DOL I ran into a lot of labor contracting. It was in the form of temp agencies and such. When it came to billing on hourly costs contracting companies might charge as much as $15 an hour even though they might be paying $5 and hour to the laborers. And there were no benefits to the workers usually. I also saw the same kind of billing when I was a traffic manager and had to hire laborers to unload scotch containers from overseas.

I doubt the formulas changed very much. Also when I interviewed unemployed applicants I learned a lot about how labor costs were dealt with by employers. I also saw a lot of contracting and I understood what Reagan was doing when it came to labor. It was during his first term that privatizing began and the attack on the public sector began. Just based on what I was seeing when services began to be privatized that it became obvious that it was a money tree for contractors. The idea that private firms would do it better was and is such a lie. All contracting is is another form of "patronage" for corrupt cronies.

I also interviewed a lot of previous employees of contractors and learned how they cut corners every way they could. The workers always suffered. And I also talked to previous government workers who went under contracts and their wages dropped as much as as 50% and they lost a lot of benefits. Under contracting contractors drop pensions, benefits, wages and cut corners on supplies, training and other expenses. The amount of skimming was atrocious and even criminal.

The biggest abuse by contractors today is mis classifying employees as contractors so you can dump social security, medicare and unemployment insurance payments. The other abuse if forcing people to work off the clock and NOT paying overtime pay where it is due. And now that most wage and labor enforcers are gone these contractors get away with their criminality.

Many contracts are loaded with conflicts of interests where employers are policing themselves with their own people. The fox guarding the chicken coop so to speak.

I guess my source is my own personal experience over time. What is going on is like a rotten fish. You can tell by the smell.

[freshwest]

9. And for the public, privatization equals economic apartheid, denying them the Commons and services.

This is what decades of people unwilling to go into government has wrought. And the anti-government (the one of the people, but only those who vote and participate year round) meme how it can never do anything good and that private is always better. Or just that it's no good or the source of our oppression, when the necessities of life are in private hands and always have been. The vultures who want to use government as cash cow are always going to be there at the trough. The public allows this to go on, largely indifferent to what they are losing.

[MontyPow]

11. Funny how that salient fact never gets reported.

And then you get these private corporations negotiating minimums, like the prison industrial complex. We'll do the job, but you must guarantee 95% fill rate or pay the equivalent. How is that a free market?

But then private corporations doing work for the government are really just welfare queens, what with anti free market no bid contracts and such.

[blkmusclmachine]

12. The GOP works for the 1%, 100% of the time.

The DEMS work for the 1%, 95% of the time.

[catrose]

14. Yes. eom