The nightmare scenario when public services are privatized

[Baron Scicluna]

The New York Times is doing a series on New Jersey's halfway houses, with a special focus on the Bo Robinson center in Trenton, which is a private facility that receives government money.

What the Times found is Exhibit A on the pitfalls of letting private businesses making money off of social services.

Multiple inmates and workers describe a place that is so bad, inmates are begging to be sent back to prison because they feel prison is ... of all things ... safer.

The Times described...

* Inmates being raped by workers and fellow inmates, with no prosecutions
* Drug and alcohol counseling that is being run by gangs
* The counseling being run by workers with just a high school diploma
* A 73 percent rate of drug testing failure among one group studied
* Inmate to staff ratios that are about 300 inmates to one or two staffers
* Having a sole woman staffer try to guard hundreds of inmates
* Guards (and that term can be used very loosely) being trained for eight days, as opposed to those socialistic-inspired union correction guards, who get trained for 15 weeks.
* Guards (yeah, right), being paid $10.50 an hour to risk their lives, as opposed to those lazy Commie correction officers.
* Falsified reports that the company sends into the government
* Guards who are practically gang members themselves

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/18/nyregion/at-bo-robinson-a-halfway-house-in-new-jersey-bedlam-reigns.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Yep, those government services provided by those lazy government workers with good benefits are just soooo inefficient. ::)

 

[Stitch]

Any judges being bribed like they were in Pennsylvania to send kids to private juvenile facilities?

 

[Starman]

Like the tub-thumpers for privatization give a single solitary droplet of **** about any of this.

Once again it comes down to: they don't want to pay one rusty nickel in taxes for anything, at all, period.

 

[britwrit]

In such a corruption-free state, who could've ever foreseen this happening?

 

[silent_h]

Like the tub-thumpers for privatization give a single solitary droplet of **** about any of this.

Once again it comes down to: they don't want to pay one rusty nickel in taxes for anything, at all, period.

Disagree. They're quite happy to pay many, many shiny nickels for weapons systems and defense contracts. Veterans' care not so much.

 

[Ace]

If you don't want to get raped in a gang-infested halfway house, don't jaywalk or whatever.

Or if you do commit a crime, do it at Zag's house. He'll put you out of your misery straight away.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

I know it will be insane when the postal service, which hemmorrhages money, actually could turn a profit like FedEx or UPS.

 

[Azrael]

To be fair, a government entity like the postal service was never meant to show a profit.

And a profit is much easier to show when you're charging ten times more per ounce for the same service.

 

[Ace]

To be fair, a government entity like the postal service was never meant to show a profit.

And a profit is much easier to show when you're charging ten times more per ounce for the same service.

Yeah. That's why it's called the "postal service." It was designed from the outset to provide a service, not make a profit.

 

[Azrael]

To be further fair, government wasn't all that great at administering institutions like the Bo Robinson Center, either.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willowbrook_State_School

 

[Ace]

To be fair, a government entity like the postal service was never meant to show a profit.

And a profit is much easier to show when you're charging ten times more per ounce for the same service.

Yeah. That's why it's called the "postal service." It was designed from the outset to provide a service, not make a profit.

I doubt it was designed to lose billions of dollars each year, though.

And yet people complain when the cost of stamps go up.

 

[Zeke12]

The post office loses money on paper because a Republican congress rigged it to look that way.

You could, as they say, look it up.

 

[Zeke12]

The part where the same bill that requires them to pre-fund their retirement plan for workers who haven't even been hired yet -- something no other organization, governmental of private, has to do -- also makes it nearly impossible for them to raise rates.

Congress passed a bill that makes it impossible for the post office to show a profit or break even. So they could come back and get rid of it later.

 

[waterytart]

You gotta love Republican grasp of cause-and-effect. Abolishing the USPS hurts whom?

Maybe older voters who still live in rural areas?

 

[Zeke12]

You gotta love Republican grasp of cause-and-effect. Abolishing the USPS hurts whom?

Maybe older voters who still live in rural areas?

Just so.

Also, too, it's a relatively simple solution, without Congress rigging it.

We can operate the post office at a loss of five billion a year -- which is really a drop in the bucket, as important government services go -- or they could raise the rates a nickel and break even on paper.

We're all paying for it either way.

One of the sillier right-wing tropes out there.

I don't think I was saying I want to abolish the USPS. Just pointing out the ridiculousness of the "private = good, government = bad," "government = good, private = bad" argument apparently being made here.

The post office is never a good rebuttal to either side of that argument. It's unique. That said, you could raise the rates to cover the yearly loss and the post office would still operate much more efficiently than private mail delivery companies. It's not even close.

 

[RickStain]

When those private companies are forced to serve every single address in the country, no matter how remote, without using the USPS for the expensive ones, then we can compare their profitability to the USPS's.

Until then, apples and oranges.

 

[RickStain]

It is, really and genuinely, an absurd political trope. Right-wing interests in government cut or hold down revenues for a governmental entity, then crow that it isn't showing a "profit" so it must be inefficient.

It's the reverse of when liberals tout the results of a program but act horrified if you ask about the cost.

 

[Zeke12]

It is, really and genuinely, an absurd political trope. Right-wing interests in government cut or hold down revenues for a governmental entity, then crow that it isn't showing a "profit" so it must be inefficient.

Yes.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

To be further fair, government wasn't all that great at administering institutions like the Bo Robinson Center, either.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willowbrook_State_School

That also was a different generation in which mental deficiences were treated as if the people were just nuts and should be locked away with a minimum of care.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

If you don't want to get raped in a gang-infested halfway house, don't jaywalk or whatever.

Or don't buy cable, buy DirecTV.