Government at all levels spends our money.
Unlike businesses, government for the most part does not make a profit on the services it provides. Any service provided by government, is funded by guess who? That's correct, you and me. We fund the day to day operation of government.
Do you think that government overspends, and that it does not use your money wisely? You are not alone in thinking this way, but we [ you and i] have allowed this to happen over years. We have permitted government to grow into areas better served by private industry.
Why should government provide services, with our taxpayer dollars that a private or publically traded business can provide? Government at all levels must start to evaluate their delivered services and maybe, just maybe, allow business people to operate them. Imagine, privately run sewer plants, parks, waterfronts and beaches, just to name a few.
The facilities could still be owned by the taxpayers but operated by somebody other than the government. This outside entity, would pay the government an annual fee for the privelege of running any one of these aforementioned programs, and hopefully they would do so at a profit. This would remove the operational costs of running these facilities or services from the government as it lowered our tax burden.
Private operation of government services is not a novel idea. It is an idea whose time has come, as government does not belong in places where business can provide the same or better services for less.
The fault lies in the electorate that votes the ignorant into office and allows them to get away with what happens. Time and again we see that too many elected officials are only in it for themselves, making decisions that are intended to improve their re-election chances...the public be darned.
What the author of this piece advocates is just what America needs - ever wider disparity between the rich and the poor!
I didn't realize that Enron was a government operation, and I guess that you must be suggesting that WorldCom was too, and Tyco, and Global Crossing, and Countrywide Mortgage, and AIG, and WaMu, and...how many other private sector failures that cost their employees dearly, and their stockholders dearly, and for many of these private sector failures also cost the US taxpayers dearly to payoff private sector creditors? Any time that private sector owners can get personally rich by cutting corners and sticking it to the rest of us, it will undoubtedly happen. Private sector wisdom is not superior to public sector wisdom; each has their place, and there must be a balance. But I will put more faith in governmental regulation, if judiciously created and rigorously enforced, than I will in personal greed, any day of the week. Try reading something besides the NY Post, and try watching objective news programs and tuning away from the Fox Propaganda Network.
I don't know how you can call yourself an American and despise democracy so much. Mr Kehoe is a plutocrat, plain and simple.