Grover Norquist's dream comes true?

When the public sector has apparently been laid low to the point where it cannot even carry out its core function within the social contract, i.e. providing security for its citizens/subjects, and has to defer to corporations instead, it truly is in a position where it can be "drowned in the bathtub".

Key quote:

"We would question who is in a financially better position to police the likes of YouTube - those in the private sector, who are earning huge amounts of money, or police forces which are currently having to stretch budgets."

Great idea, because it's about as desirable for unaccountable corporations to be responsible for policing crime in the virtual world as it is for them to be responsible for policing crime in the physical one. Hmmm...

Of course, it may just be that the police actually do have the resources to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour but have other priorities instead. How much did hosting the G8 a couple of years ago cost the British taxpayer again? Or George Bush's pub lunch in Sedgefield? Or maintaining the massive surveillance state?

Information Landmine says that the real problem with the likes of the police, the security services and the military is that they don't exist to "serve and protect" the country but to defend wealth and privilege above all else. The fact that much of this remit is now being outsourced to private corporations, unaccountable to any nominally democratic processes, is merely a natural development given the Capitalism Gone Wild times in which we live.

The corporate takeover marches on

Not content with having privatized and outsourced much of the military, police and penal responsibilities previously the remit of the public sector, it seems that our right-wing, market fundamentalist overlords in the White House and Congress are now handing over significant amounts of responsibility for intelligence and national security to "private contractors" as well. Lo and behold, the public is only discovering the extent of this by accident.

Ironically, one of the touchstone issues that initiated the rise of conservatism to its dominant, mainstream position in US politics during the 1980s and '90s was, of course, the notion that "liberals" had not just allowed but actively encouraged a number of reckless entitlements, allowing "special interests" to "feed at the public trough" at the expense of hard-working taxpayer/citizens. Ronald Reagan once, (in)famously, told audiences on the campaign trail an apocryphal tale about an inner-city "welfare queen" in order to illustrate the incompetence and injustice fostered by "big government". That one wasn't even true, whereas the corporate sector's increasingly-extravagent free breakfasts, lunches and dinners at the public's expense are now (unwittingly, in the case of the Director of National Intellgence's PowerPoint presentation) a matter of public record.

So when does the left - or what passes for the left in the US - start hammering away at this as relentlessly as the cranky old conservatives did during their rise to power? And will the message be heard as loudly and as often this time, considering that pretty much next to every media outlet is controlled by corporate interests these days?

Private security...

In a bold new approach to finding "market solutions" for public problems, the International Olympic Committee has decided that only big sponsors of the event can do the security.

Insert your Halliburton-related joke about this not being all that new here...