The Republican Party swallowed that philosophy whole as it was clearly a repudiation of liberal America where government had for fifty years been the arbiter of so many policies that tried to level the playing field; to protect Americans from the overwhelming power of Big Business.
While no genuine liberal ever said that government was the solution to anything, the years since FDR’s liberal, government-oriented solutions to a depressed America had chipped away at the arbiter role and too often made it seem as if more government dollars could fix anything.
As conservative elements used the Reagan legacy to crush the very name ‘liberal’ – Democrats have swung sharply to the center with only a very few attempting to offset the heavyweight lifting that has found the answer to government intervention – to privatize every single element of government programs in every area of American life.
Despite the endless stalemate in Congress (where’s the public outrage that these golden parachute ‘officials’ have essential no-show jobs at our expense at a terrible time in American history) – one likely to continue after the Presidential elections – this privatization policy has continued to grow with ball-wrecking abandon capturing as many areas of public life as it can with little opposition.
It must be made crystal clear that no matter what is said, the real purpose of privatizing as many government-oriented programs as possible – is making money. Money/profit is the single most essential result of privatization – no matter what field is involved.
Because this is so, the deregulation (removing government) of the financial services industry – banks, investment houses, mortgage companies etc – has resulted in an unprecedented number of foreclosures and homeless people. So much white collar crime from so many ‘banks too big to fail’…so much fraud already recounted in the media…that there’s no reason to say it again here.
In New York City the continuous privatization of government programs has resulted in a series of fraudulent activities (five scandals) in which fines are levied (nowhere near the illegal profits made) and no one goes to jail. New York’s silicon Mayor escapes all blame (the guilty are found and punished…so never mind) and is never asked whether privatization really pays…never mind the budget-breaking cost overruns – it’s part of doing business with a profit-making entity.
In the pharmaceutical industry, there are three pharma giants who’ve recently paid extraordinary fines for grossly illegal activities…and again the fines came nowhere near the billions of dollars of profit made illegally. Here, clear time-tested regulations exist – but are simply ignored because the risk-benefit calculation of big business indicates that fines are all the punishment they will face and the profits well exceed the cost of fines.
What all this means is that now in the early years of the 21st Century we have come full-circle to the early years of the 20th Century where big business ruled – Big Steel, Big Finance, Big Railroads etc – and America was all about the few ‘haves’ and the many ‘have-nots’.
We consumed, built private housing, sent our kids to college for a decent education, had jobs and a future waiting for them as never before in our history.
Today the opposite is true.
The policies of Reagan, the Bushes parenthesized around the triangulation years of Bill Clinton where the programs and principles of Republicans and Democrats were synthesized and homogenized to produce excellent short-term results for the nation but at a cost of focus that would produce the seeds that are now destroying the middle class for the first time in our history.
THE CRUSHING OF PUBLIC EDUCATION
If there is any one important field that is feeling the horrendous results of privatization more than any other – it is our once world-leading system of public education.
The principle indicators of this destruction can be found in our public schools, the cost of a college education and in the hedge fund-fueled growth of alternatives to campus-based higher education.
Briefly our public schools have been controlled by the testing activities conducted by the multi-national, monopolistic Pearson Company. As we have said in other essays, public education today is all about testing. Pearson provides the tests.
No matter the sad results of this system as America slides from first place to way down the list of industrial nation’s educational accomplishments, testing continues unabated. The names of national programs change…but testing remains paramount.
Now in another coup for Pearson, they are selling school systems on the idea that they have a test to better indicate how well a teacher can teach – as they graduate from a School of Education.
They have a new testing system based on essays not short-answers to indicate content mastery and several video-tapes that are supposed to reveal a graduate’s ability to teach. They and not the School of Education, are the test-givers and test evaluators.
There are 62,000 graduating teachers right now in America. This is another very lucrative program for Pearson. Washington State and 24 other States are going to be buying this program. It is slated for New York in 2014.
The existence of this new testing program and the attempt to take the evaluating role away from the Schools of Education who actually provide the license to teach , indicates that educators now – at last – question the value of what is being taught at Schools of Education. No one ever mentions the Report of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, which we have written about in detail and which says that the education of our teachers is totally inadequate.
But will this testing program change the way teachers are taught to teach? No. This is an after-the-fact test.
All it will do is make money for Pearson. Should the results of their tests prove that Schools of Education are NOT preparing their students to teach…Pearson will do what they do with test results on the elementary level…change the tests to produce more passing grades.
The tests exit to make money for Pearson and to give all concerned another easy way out of a predicament that will be difficult to change. The results will be the same. Failed teaching at Schools of Education. Failed teaching in our public school system.
Does anyone believe that the rising costs of a college education to staggering levels would be possible without the collusion of banks and colleges? Could Middle Class America afford the costs of college today without a bank loan? Colleges have a ‘license to steal’ and banks have an unending cash flow from tens of thousands of bank loans.
Is there an answer that will come from private industry? No. The system works the way it is supposed to work. Colleges and banks make money. That’s the idea.
And it is the idea behind all of these brand new TV/computer driven private colleges in which our tax money is being used by students who don’t even have to attend a campus or a class. Their entire ‘education’ comes from their computers.
Tens of thousands of young people who should be in a community college are signing up and while results are horrendous – and the system is a scandal ready to happen – this privatization presently runs free. And whatever the eventual damage, the profits will far exceed the costs of fines and damage control.
It would seem that nothing can be done to stop the privatization of America.
Our political “leaders” are purchased. Winning elections is all that counts. Our systems are overburdened…big business simply steps in and controls.
But there is always a point of ‘no return’ and we’ll discuss where that is soon.
Martin I. Hassner
Executive Director
Managing Editor
It has been said that the reason Republicans want less government is the same reason crooks want fewer cops.