Why Exactly Does Romney Want Fewer Firefighters, Police and Teachers? (by Bob Cesca)

Why Exactly Does Romney Want Fewer Firefighters, Police and Teachers?
by Bob Cesca

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While they insist they're the party of "first responders," "law and order" and so forth, Republican leadership really doesn't like the idea of police and firefighters working for state and local government -- in other words, they don't like law enforcement and the like working directly for We The People. As we've seen in privatized neocon utopias like Iraq, they'd prefer that these services be run by corporate profiteers. Republicans prefer that every government service be handed over to private industry. Let the marketplace handle the services, allowing unaccountable corporations to charge a fee to either the government or to the people on, say, a pay-per-arrest or pay-per-fire basis. What could possibly go wrong? Can't afford to have your burning house extinguished? Sorry. Get a job, freeloader.

As for education, conservatives are well on their way to privatizing it. School vouchers and charter schools are actively -- right now -- sucking money out of public education and pumping it into private services, leaving public education in a deeper hole, and momentum remains in favor of more charter schools and less funding for everyone else.

For-profit education, security and rescue are growing larger in the window. The danger, of course, in this agenda is that private corporations are solely in business for the sake of profit. If it makes financial sense to, for example, ban disabled or slower children from school because they pull down test scores and drive away higher income students, then so be it. If it makes sense to only rescue homes owned by people who can afford the fee, then so be it. Profit is the only result worth measuring in the corporate world. Fact. We've already witnessed what happened when network programming and the profit-motive transformed broadcast news, much to the chagrin of Americans across the political spectrum.

This is the Republican leadership agenda. Bleed the government to death, "drown it in the bathtub" and hand everything over to KBR, Monsanto and Walmart.

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