The Myth of Privatization:

Everybody knows that government is inefficient, right? No competition, jobs going to the person who has the most minimal of qualifications, high pay, great benefits, and the average citizen is the one person who never benefits.

This myth has existed for many years, growing out of the old, pre civil service system of allowing elected officials to appoint cronies to government jobs. Bush came to power preaching privatization. He wanted us to give our Social Security money to the stock market. (Have you checked out the stock market lately?) He wanted us to abandon our public education system and send our kids to private schools, many completely untested.

The government doesn't even protect its own officials anymore in places like Iraq, where private contractors who got their contracts without even offering competing bids, more often than not, now ride like hired guns in 1950s Hollywood westerns, and with no oversight, through war zones, killing civilians without restrictions of any kind.

Yesterday's Washington Post reported on other areas where Bush and his ilk attempted privatization within the Federal Government. In this case, the Feds had to compete to prove that they were more efficient than the private sector. The results are interesting.

The civil service boys have been beating the private sector in the vast majority of cases:

Let's face it, the Bush push to privatize has never been about improving things for Americans any more than the baseball stadium he and his cronies profited from in Texas had anything to do with improving the lives of the Texans within the community there. It was about a few people making large amounts of money by conning the tax payers. Just ask the average person in New Orleans.

Naomi Klein on The Charlie Rose Show:



McCain Panders to Republican Base:

Back in 2001, John McCain voted against the massive Bush tax cuts that helped move the country from solvency to massive debt. Now he's offering to make the tax cuts permanent. He'll save money, he says, by keeping earmarks out of bills. But the truth is that earmarks at most amount to only 1 percent of the national budget, a drop in the bucket of red ink. (See the Washington Post story.)

The American Theocracy:

The Bush administration's open support for evangelical Christianity has empowered fanaticism within the U. S. military forces where officers and non-coms feel perfectly free to harass soldiers who accidentally reveal religious beliefs that don't fall into line with theirs. The American Constitution, it appears, does not apply to soldiers serving in Iraq. (See The New York Times' story. So much for bringing democracy to the Middle-East. It will be interesting to see how the military tries to cover up this story.)

John McCain on why he is opposed to equal pay for women:

What women really need is "education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else. And it's hard for them to leave their families when they don't have somebody to take care of them."

Uh, yeah, right? Whatever.

The Dude chimes in on the economy: "It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade, there's more commerce." — George W. Bush, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, April 2001. (And PhD. stands for "pile it high and deep.")

China Stats: "Three in ten Chinese families have grandparents living in the same household." (Source ngm.com)