Congress passed a funding bill last week to avoid a government shutdown. The stop-gap spending bill funds all government programs at their current levels through December 20.
Those levels were established in a combined $1.66 trillion package of two spending bills passed in March. The larger of those bills, totaling $1.2 trillion, funded Defense, Homeland Security and State departments and other aspects of general government. More than 70% of the funding of that package was earmarked for the military. Meanwhile, non-military programs decreased.
The stop-gap spending bill simply extends and locks in the current spending inequities across the federal government.
Who (or what) benefits from current federal spending? Increasingly it’s corporations as governments increasing “privatize” (or more accurately “corporatize”) what previously were public functions performed by public employees whose work was publicly transparent driven by public service vs. corporate profit.
Authors Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaeliann state in The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back that for four decades both Republican and Democratic administrations increasingly handed control to private corporations what had been public management of “health care, public water supplies, infrastructure and transportation, criminal justice, education, prisons, parks, policing, sanitation, libraries, [and] the weather service.”
They assert that privatization and anti-government beliefs led to a damaged, demoralized, and distrusted government:
“Damaged because 40 years of privatization has resulted in the evisceration of state capacity. Demoralized because the talented individuals needed in government to address society’s significant challenges have been less likely to seek public employment. Distrusted because people don’t believe government helps them even when it does. Almost half of people who received such state benefits as home mortgage interest deductions, student loans, or the Earned Income Tax Credit reported that they had not used a government social program. And according to the Pew Research Center, public trust in government, despite a slight uptick since Joe Biden’s election, remains near the lowest levels since the survey began in the late 1950s.”
They accurately describe that “privatization must be understood as a political strategy to shift power toward unaccountable business interests and away from governments, communities, workers, and citizens.”
How did this happen? No surprise here: the deliberate corporate strategy of ‘lobbying' and making 'campaign contributions' (more like investments) to public officials to gain wealth and power.” Some might characterize this as very lucrative 'business investments’; others might characterize this more bluntly, directly and ironically as 'legalized bribery.'
How will it change? The public is increasingly fed up with corporate power and increasingly aware that much of our government has been captured by corporate interests. While there's been some commitment from the Biden Administration over the last year to increase corporate accountability, the ultimate commitment to end corporate rule and to establish self-determination and democracy must come from us.
In engaging with candidates or voters between now and the election, ask them whether they believe basic public functions should be public/democratic or private/corporate and to vote accordingly.
Additionally, (re)commit after the election to pass the We the People Amendment (HJR54) to end First Amendment “free speech” rights for corporations that will significantly reduce their ability to capture government and privatize/corporatize what were public functions.
It’s Up to Us to be heard and to wield people power to ensure that governments at all levels serves public interests over corporate interests.
It’s Up to Us to make it happen!
Onwards toward creating a real democracy we all deserve,
Jason, Tara, Cole, Shelly, George, Daniel, Kelsey, Jennie, Michael, Katie, Margaret , Keyan, Alfonso, Jessica, & Greg
- Move to Amend National Team