Bill Moyers: The Privatization of the State (The takeaway from...

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

...Hillary's email)

In the recent coverage of the Hillary Clinton email flap, you can find endless references to the Clintons of yore in wink-wink, you-know-how-they-are-style reporting; and yes, she did delete a lot of emails; and yes, it’s an election year coming and, as everyone points out, the Republicans are going to do their best to keep the email issue alive until hell freezes over, etc., etc. Again, the coverage, while eyeball gluing, is in a you’ve-seen-it-all-before, you’ll-see-it-all-again-mode.

However, you haven’t seen it all before. The most striking aspect of this little brouhaha lies in what’s most obvious but least highlighted. An American secretary of state chose to set up her own private, safeguarded email system for doing government work; that is, she chose to privatize her communications. If this were Cairo, it might not warrant a second thought. But it didn’t happen in some third-world state. It was the act of a key official of the planet’s reigning (or thrashing) superpower, which — even if it wasn’t the first time such a thing had ever occurred — should be taken as a tiny symptom of something that couldn’t be larger or, in the long stretch of history, newer: the ongoing privatization of the American state, or at least the national security part of it.

Though the marriage of the state and the corporation has a pre-history, the full-scale arrival of the warrior corporation only occurred after 9/11. Someday, that will undoubtedly be seen as a seminal moment in the formation of whatever may be coming in this country. Only 13 years later, there is no part of the war state that has not experienced major forms of privatization. The US military could no longer go to war without its crony corporations doing KP and guard duty, delivering the mail, building the bases and being involved in just about all of its activities, including training the militaries of foreign allies and even fighting. Such warrior corporations are now involved in every aspect of the national security state, including torture, drone strikes and — to the tune of hundreds of thousands of contract employees like Edward Snowden — intelligence gathering and spying. You name it and, in these years, it’s been at least partly privatized.

All you have to do is read reporter James Risen’s recent book, Pay Any Price, on how the global war on terror was fought in Washington, and you know that privatization has brought something else with it: corruption, scams and the gaming of the system for profits of a sort that might normally be associated with a typical third-world kleptocracy. And all of this, a new world being born, was reflected in a tiny way in Hillary Clinton’s very personal decision about her emails.

Though it’s a subject I know so much less about, this kind of privatization (and the corruption that goes with it) is undoubtedly underway in the non-war-making, non-security-projecting part of the American state as well.

http://billmoyers.com/2015/03/25/new-american-order/

[IDemo]

1. Attention, everyone under the bus

Scootch over a bit to make room for Bill..

[appalachiablue]

2. K & R. Corruption USA, the Privatized Corporate State. Bravo Bill Moyers!

[Enthusiast]

15. Exactly!

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. So, now that the Corpocracy owns the military, and the Gov't

seems to me they aren't gonna let a Constitution stand in their way if we have serious citizen opposition.

Goes to prove there has been a draft all along.
Not our bodies, just all our money to buy THEM an obedient army.

[Octafish]

4. What Neil Barofsky, TARP IG, said...

For the non-paupers in spirit, a pot of gold awaits...

Neil Barofsky Gave Us The Best Explanation For Washington's Dysfunction We've Ever Heard

Linette Lopez
Business Insider, Aug. 1, 2012, 2:57 PM

Neil Barofsky was the Inspector General for TARP, and just wrote a book about his time in D.C. called Bailout: An Insider Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street.

SNIP...

Bottom line: Barofsky said the incentive structure in our nation's capitol is all wrong. There's a revolving door between bureaucrats in Washington and Wall Street banks, and politicians just want to keep their jobs.

For regulators it's something like this:

"You can play ball and good things can happen to you get a big pot of gold at the end of the Wall Street rainbow or you can do your job be aggressive and face personal ruin...We really need to rethink how we govern and how regulate," Barofsky said.

CONTINUED... http://www.businessinsider.com/neil-barofsky-2012-8

"Integrity is for paupers." -- traditional saying, ABCNNBCBSFixedNoiseNutworks

[hifiguy]

5. .. . .

[Octafish]

8. My favorite sign. Thing is, they'd have pushed most of us over first to soften the pavement.

&t=0

Neil Barofsky: 'Geithner Admitted To Us Privately That Obama's Housing Policy Was DESIGNED To Sacrifice Homeowners In Order To "FOAM THE RUNWAY" For The Banks'

SOURCE: http://dailybail.com/home/barofsky-geithner-admitted-to-us-privately-that-obamas-housi.html

10 Million Americans lost their homes.

http://www.alternet.org/investigations/10-million-americans-foreclosed-neighborhoods-devastated

[Enthusiast]

16. My favorite sign.

[malaise]

6. That simple

They are all for sale

[Octafish]

7. The kind of Democrat I endorse works to support the New Deal.

Those Democrats who've worked against the New Deal, by deregulation and friendly non-prosecution, not so much.

Case in point: The repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999. That spelled disaster in the 2008 Bankster Bailout. The Democratic president who signed it into law was working in a spirit of bi-partisanship with his Republican Senate colleague to encourage new areas of banking by deregulating the financial industry cough gutting the New Deal protections of the Wall Street casino from using taxpayer-backed bank deposits.

See if you can spot some familiar names on this list:



They now work together at UBS -- which received uncounted billions in bailout money -- to specialize in some kind of "Weath Management."

PS: Forensic economist and former Fed regulator William K. Black wrote it reminds him of what happened during the Savings and Loans Crisis of the late 80s and early 90s. At the time, that was the greatest bank heist in history.

[malaise]

9. Seriously Jimmy Carter is right

Oligarchs are running the show - damn the Constitution unless it's Second Amendment 'rights' - the right to buy any weapon.

The only deal these scumbags support is enriching themselves.

[Octafish]

10. O'Malley mentioned Wall Street in San Juan...

From the Moonie Times (seems most dropped mention of "Wall Street&quot :

“Right now, the people of Puerto Rico … are being treated very unjustly by forces on the mainland, forces on Wall Street and the intransigence of this Republican Congress in taking action to restore simple bankruptcy protections,” he said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/1/us-presidential-hopeful-martin-omalley-visits-puer/

Not. One. Bankster...

[malaise]

11. I heard that the bankers told the folks in PR to close schools,

fire teachers, whatever...but give them their money. It's crazy.

[Octafish]

12. The Banksters demand cuts in Public Education and sales of schools and whatever to get paid.

I am so proud of President Obama standing up for the good people of Puerto Rico. Oh??

Creditor group calls for slashing education and social spending in Puerto Rico

By Rafael Azul
World Socialist Web Site, 30 July 2015

EXCERPT...

The hedge fund proposal is in response to negotiations that began on July 13 between officials of Puerto Rico´s Government Development Bank (GDB) and creditors held at the headquarters of Citigroup in New York City. GDB President Melba Acosta presented the assembled representatives of hedge and pension funds a set of austerity proposals and asked for debt relief.

Last week’s response by the creditors essentially rejects Garcia’s claim that the debt is “not payable” and demands that Puerto Rico service and fully repay its outstanding bonds. The Ad Hoc Group laid down a set of dictates, including the collection of an additional $1 billion in taxes, the sale of $4 billion worth of public assets, and the slashing of public education and other social programs.

The group’s focus on attacking the public school system is influenced by a Washington-based neo-liberal think tank, the Centennial Group. It claims that the US commonwealth overspends on education, despite the fact that over 100 schools have been closed so far this year, following the shutdown of 60 in 2014. An additional 500 schools have been downsized.

According to a report by the Centennial Group (“For Puerto Rico, There is a BetterWay”), government expenditures increased by 39 percent while school attendance declined by 25 percent, a direct consequence of the emigration of some 300,000 Puerto Ricans to the US.

This report conflicts with one commissioned by the Puerto Rican government and coauthored by former IMF official Anne Krueger. The government report included its own set of austerity proposals, such as cutting the minimum wage and privatizing parts of the economy. However, it also supported García Padilla’s claim that the bondholders would have to accept a re-negotiation of the debt in order to give the economy time to favorably react to these “supply side” measures.

CONTINUED...

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/07/30/puer-j30.html

These Pirates of the Caribbean belong in jail.

[malaise]

13. The IMF goons and the banksters make the old pirates look honorable

[Enthusiast]

17. Heist

[Enthusiast]

14. Kicked and recommended to the Max!

"Though the marriage of the state and the corporation has a pre-history, the full-scale arrival of the warrior corporation only occurred after 9/11."

This is why LIHOP.

Has the nation changed fundamentally since 9/11 way out of proportion to the actual threat? It most certainly has. This is no conspiracy theory, this is just a fact.

[raouldukelives]

18. K&R Not in my name. nt