Headline, August17, 2013

''' YOU DA MAN : !!! BLUR THE PUBLIC 

& THE PRIVATE !!! YOU IZ DA MAN'''

Representative Bob Ney, implicated in the Abramoff scandals, resigned his Congressional seat, having been reportedly warned by his majority leader that if he stayed and lost his seat for his party, he  ''could not expect a lucrative career on the K street''  -that is, he would jeopardize any future as an influence peddler,  -what the Romans called a Suffragator.

(All for naught in Ney's case; he went to jail) And as in Rome, privatization still includes turning over government departments to incompetent cronies, empowering private individuals at the expense of public intentions. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, staffed by inexperienced political appointees and unable to cope with Hurricane Katrina disaster, is only the most prominent recent years instance.

But the dominant form of Privatization today is something relatively new, at least in its dimensions. Government on its stupendous modern scale  -regulating every industry; re-distributing treasure from one sector of society to another, forecasting the weather and mapping the human genome  -simply did not exist in the ancient Rome. Because the extent of the government is larger, privatization has more scope. Its most pervasive form is perfectly legal; the hiring of profit making companies by the thousands to do government jobs.

The ostensible motives may be pure, but the result is to diminish government's capacity. For one thing, government loses the ability to perform certain functions; its hard to un-privatize. Moreover, the effect in every case is to insert an independent agent, with its own interest to consider and protect, into the space between public will and public outcome  -a dynamic that represents a potential  ''diverting'' of government essential force'' far more systemic and insidious than outright venality.

Privatization along these lines has recurred most decisively in America and Britain. In 1976 a book was published in the United States called The Shadow Government, written by Daniel Guttman and Barry Willner; its subtitle spoke ominously of  ''the government's multi-billion-dollar giveaway'' of decision-making authority. Government agencies, the authors warned, were farming out various functions to high-priced consultants, secretive think tanks, and corporate vested interests  -accountable to no one!!?

And ''outsourcing''  was not the only issue. Some parts of the government, they went on, might even be sold off completely  -turned into private business!!?  The process was  ''cloaked in contractual and other formal approaches by the various executive departments''  but make no mistake: it amounted to nothing less than a  ''drive to merge Government and Business power to the advantage of latter.'' !!!?

A little more than a decade later, the shadow government was out of the shadow. There is a plausible rationale for privatization  -one that often makes sense in the short run and for specific tasks. Private contractors may be able to operate more efficiently than government agencies do. Marketplace signals may prove to be more direct and powerful than bureaucratic ones. And why shouldn't the government hire outside specialists for help with certain chores, the way any household or business does?

In the 1980s Ronald Reagan created a presidential commission on privatization to study not how the boundary between public and private might be bolstered but how it could be pushed out of the way even further, to give private interests even more opportunity to move in. 

The same idea surfaces in the  ''re-inventing government'' movement taken up by the Clinton administration; ''We would do well to glory in the blurring of public and private and not keep trying to draw a disappearing line in the water,'' wrote one proponent writer. Since then privatization has effected every aspect of American public life.

The most visible surge in government outsourcing has come in the realm of the military. Rome hired barbarian soldiers to make up for its acute manpower shortages -(not a good long-run solution, history would show). America is hiring private military companies for the very reason  -not the Visigothi or the Ostrogothi but the Hallburtoni and Wackenhuti. In fact every facet of  ''personal security'' is increasingly in the hands of private business!!?

This unique post continues. Do remember to share it forward!

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of Turkey. See ya all on the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless : ''The Un-Killable!''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless