Political matters

Barney Frank (D-MA) says that politics is the name we give to the things we do together. Unfortunately, that logic has been much frayed by the right-wing's silly market messianism.

The best current illustration of this is that Blackwater USA, the private "security contractor" that is in trouble in Iraq. As you probably know, Blackwater and other "security contractors" provide guards for American diplomats, as well as for businesses and the like.

Now, if there's a task that should be what political scientists call a core government function, protecting the lives and well-being of public employees ought to be it. What justification can there be for farming that job out to a for-profit company? Do we really pretend that a private contractor can do a better job of protecting our diplomats and civil servants than the United States military or the State Department's own security arm?

It's true that Blackwater takes pressure off of the military in Iraq, by reducing the number of American troops needed for security missions. But that is merely another way of illustrating the foolishness of the whole mission in that country. And, because hiring Blackwater is a lot more expensive than assigning soldiers or Marines, doing so is wasting the taxpayers' money. (In the billions and billions of dollars dropped down the rat-hole, it's all to easy to dismiss the cost as a drop in the bucket.) At the same time, however, using private companies also takes casualties among the "civilian" contractors or, as the lovely Diane calls them, mercenaries, "off the books." We hear about military deaths every day. The deaths of "contractors" seldom make the news.

Blackwater's activities in Iraq are hardly the sole example of government functions farmed out to private enterprise. There are the privately-run prisons that dot the landscape. How can we, in good conscience, turn over the care of people who are in the custody of the public to private businesses? By doing so we insure that the care that prisoners get will be worse than in a well-run prison system--or that the private system will cost much more; profit has to come from somewhere. We also make certain that the prison administration--being responsive to management, not the citizenry--will be more isolated from public pressure than a proper government-operated system. It is shameful that ides like this are even up for serious consideration.

And don't get me started on the idea of handing public roads over to private companies......