And the added bonus: You can set up a bonus system for these Blackwater types to help fill the privatized prison systems. That way they can really kick the free market into high gear all by themselves. But then we'll need to privatize the courts because not all of them are as attuned to the needs of these privatized government services as Pennsylvania courts are.
Or we can just send all of these people that want "private armies" running their city to Iraq and they can write back telling us all about how they love this idea to death.
As the city and its police union near the two-year mark in contract negotiations, Mayor Richard Daley on Saturday said a proposal to allow private security guards to write tickets is worth exploring.Only Chicago police officers can issue citations, but two far South Side aldermen want armed security guards who patrol business districts in their wards to have that authority as well.
Daley said allowing the guards to ticket people for graffiti, parking violations and other minor infractions could free trained police officers to concentrate on combating violent crime. The move could also generate revenue for the city while enforcing minor ordinances.
4 comments:
You can rap my mayor for a lot of things, but a lot of his privatization has worked beyond expectations.
When I called in a stolen or abandoned auto it would take city crews a week or two to tow it. When it went private it was only a few hours.
If the policemen did what they were paid to do, security guards wouldn't be needed.
It appears that the more public employees get paid, the less work they do
"It appears that the more public employees get paid, the less work they do"
Was that your work experience as public employee or the stupid pills talking? /snark
"When I called" is not a documented statistical fact. It may be possible that they did the job faster or better, but that is not typically the case:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/14-0
"Privatizing government as those with long memories recall, was one of the highest priority items for the Bush administration even if privatization increased the cost of a given service to the federal government and, therefore, to the taxpayer. The important word was "private", not "efficient". Even if private contracting was not fiscally efficient, the inefficiency enabled the private sector to grow and kept the public sector small, an undeniable virtue even if the taxpayer was funding the private sector. So enamored of the private sector was George Bush that according to a report on National Public Radio, private contractors received more than twice as much money under the Bush years than they had ever received before. According to the report, the Department of Homeland Security had so many contractors that it had to hire contractors to supervise them. More than half the employees in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were corporate contractors. And that brings us to the Internal Revenue Service.
In 2006 it was decided that although some IRS employees historically devoted themselves to tax collection, it would be more consonant with George Bush's idea of non-government, if that task were turned over to private collection agencies. That was not a task that would be without cost, but as observed above, since the increased cost benefited the private sector it was a good thing.
When an IRS employee collects taxes, all the money collected is paid to the government. The employee does not get to keep part of what is collected. The Bush plan contributes to the growth of the private sector because the tax collector was permitted to keep 25 percent of the amount collected thus swelling the tax collector's coffers while keeping the federal government from growing. It was a win-win situation except for one thing. The program was a failure. On March 5 it was announced that the IRS is terminating its contracts with private debt collectors. It is doing so because in-house collection is more cost-effective.
Aside from incentivized abuses by the contractors they did the job worse than the public employees ever did, collecting less money that was owed and wasting time trying to collect from people that did not owe.
And at what cost? Privatizing almost any aspect of government has proven to cost the tax payer a lot more:
http://bucknakedpolitics.typepad.com/buck_naked_politics/2007/12/privatizing-int.html
"A recent House-Senate conference report expresses, in part, concern over the cost of hiring private contractors for national intelligence services. The report states that government employees cost, on average, $126,500 a year -- while contractors' employees cost about $250,000.
Translation: we taxpayers pay almost twice as much for private contractors as we would pay government employees to perform the same services. Unfortunately, it's not just intelligence contractors. Examples are below.
In June, the Washington Post reported that homeland-security contractor Booz Allen charged us taxpayers $42 - $383 per hour for employees: the equivalent of $84,000 - $766,000 per year."
Even the presidents salary is only $400,000.00 per year. It was only $200,000.00 until a disaster capitalist with an MBA became the "waste taxpayers money" decider.
It is fiscally irresponsible to turn any aspect of government over to the privatized contractors.
Corporate America wants to line up with their greedy hands out for a government welfare check to subsidize their profits and bonuses? No can do. Much like the bankers should have to learn, their inability to actually produce anything of value is not my problem and they need to learn how to compete in a real free market.
The days of privatized profits and socialized losses are over.
"It is fiscally irresponsible to turn any aspect of government over to privatized contractors".
Privatization is not the problem. If done properly it would compliment and save them money. Like anything the government touches, it has to have political favors included.
If a contract was given on the basis of the best and lowest bid it would be great. But they are given out in lieu of political favors, and there is the problem.
Just as with government jobs which many are given out for political pay back, which results in so much of the waste, since so many are unqualified to fill these jobs.
Just as with the police department which I worked on. It was 33 years of service with 75% of your pay for retirement. They are demanding it be dropped to 25 years of service with an increase to 80% of salary. And the new demand that years of service could be purchased by simply paying the yearly contribution into the fund.
Or one of our county trustees was put into the acting board president position for six months, resulting in her pension going from being based on her previous salary of $90,000 to $160,000 that of a board president.
So government is not the perfectly well oiled machine. Unless you are a recipient of one of those favors.
"Privatization is not the problem. If done properly it would compliment and save them money."
No. That is like the conservatives that had 30 years of conservative rule complaining that it wasn't conservative ideals that failed... It was the politicians. Wrong. Privatization failed and so did extremist conservative policies.
"If a contract was given on the basis of the best and lowest bid it would be great. But they are given out in lieu of political favors, and there is the problem."
There is no such thing as competitive with government when you have to tack on profits, bonuses, etc.. Unless you expect people to work for these corporations for free and investors to take no profit? There is a great business model. And I am certain employees and investors will just be lining up for that.
"Just as with the police department which I worked on. It was 33 years of service with 75% of your pay for retirement. They are demanding it be dropped to 25 years of service with an increase to 80% of salary."
I would rather see them get the benefit (they do a better job of returning money to the economy) than some CEO take all of that and more in a bonus - while plundering our limited resources and giving what is proven crappy returns. That is what they would do and that is how it works. Doesn't matter how the contracts you are dreaming about would be allocated.
You can say all of these nice ideas but no credible study backs up any of these corporatist wet dreams. You are nibbling on right wing propaganda and I am talking the real world and facts.
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