THE PROBLEM OF PRIVATIZATION
May 8, 2015e
The final 20-minute segment of
today’s www.democracynow.org
broadcast features Lisa Graves presenting the Center for Media and Democracy’s
(www.prwatch.org) report on charter
schools. Graves points to lack of access
to charter school records as the primary obstacle to monitoring the performance
of for-profit enterprises. Privatization
of education entails lack of accountability for use of taxpayer funds. Most glaring to this viewer of the Democracy
Now! Is graves example of how high “administrative expenses,” including subcontracting
student services can be, to say nothing of lobbying expenses.
Graves traces the root of the
growth of privatized k-12 education to the American Legislative Exchange
Council (see the Center’s report at www.alecexposed.org),
and to a couple of ALEC’s founding members, the Koch brothers (www.kochexposed.org), and theorist Milton
Friedman. ALEC pays legislators across
the country to gather with business leaders to draft model legislation. ALEC’s first major project, under leadership
of the Corrections Corporation of America, was to write laws to privatize
prisons, jails, and juvenile detention centers, which have thrived and become
notorious for underpaying and staffing, and for barring even legislators from trespassing
on their properties, let alone seeing their financial records.
In prisons as in education and
indeed in performance of any public service, privatization prevents oversight
of service providers whose primary corporate duty is to maximize profit. Denial of public accountability is the
primary cost of privatizing government services.
During my tenure at Indiana
University, I became able (with help from a state representative and the state
attorney general) to view the IU financial record of my choice, in this case
the president’s office account) on request.
The university subsequently opened promotion and tenure files to
candidates’ inspection. IU staff and
students were all entitled to due process in decisions made about them, and in
consideration of their grievances. The
difference being a public institution and working or living in a private
institution when I tried helping faculty in promotion and tenure cases and
grievances at private institutions.
Margaret Thatcher started the
global movement to privatize government services when she became British Prime
Minister in 1979. The problems today’s
democracynow.org interview with Lisa Graves raises about privatizing public
education apply to privatizing all public services. In principle, public services ought to be performed
and managed publicly. That’s the problem
of putting government enterprises up for sale.
Love and peace, hal
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