Government is NOT a BUSINESS_ Not Good Government Anyway

Bear with me on a little rant, about which I know a lot, which effects all of our wallets, and also some comments I got from a knowledgeable authority and author. 

We are being inundated with the idea of the panacea of privatization-- prisons, regulatory functions--government law practice--the idea being that government shouldn't do pretty much anything and it should be outsourced to Halliburton, or Con-Agra, or WalMart, or some other GOP owned stronghold, and made into a profit-seeking enterprise. This is time-tested untrue, unworkable and a recipe for disaster--unless your goal is to make government impotent, so you can do whatever you want and make a bunch of money.

My personal experience, which includes many years of law practice, in and out of government, is that these privatizations are generally ineffective substitutes for real government, they create a milieu where no one answers to anyone you can find and they hide the expense between the lines, but the privatization is more expensive than just having the government do the task. Things like farming out personnel departments, law practice and others, to name a few, I have seen waste tons and TONS of money; personally. 

Some things, like janitorial services, window washing, maintenance, security guards (most of the time),  and parking lot painting--fine. Better done with contractors.

And still on the other hand, we are over-regulated with total bullshit government, and the more that goes on, the more fuel it adds to the fire of how crazy and wasteful we nanny-state liberals are. I am no fan of government and it's nonsense. I am a criminal defense lawyer at heart. i do not trust the police or government generally. I also understand that government, at it's most pristine and useful, does a few things that only the government should do, in a functioning democracy like ours. If you do not want it to function of course, you might believe otherwise. 

Anywhoooo -- I lifted some ideas from Mr. Cesca's Huff Post article yesterday to consider-Why should I rewrite what he said so well?: 

He wrote... In fact, government should never be run like a business. Ever. Because it’s not a business. Businesses exist to create profit. Government should never run a profit. Businesses come and go all the time. Government should be around forever. Without it, there’s no America. It’s We The People, after all. Government exists to do things that businesses simply can’t do. Fight wars, for example. Government can run high deficits and debt unlike businesses because, for one, government can print money. Businesses are run by a small group of people who decide who else controls the business. Government is composed of people hired and fired by the people.

So this idea of running a government like a business is total nonsense — obviously invented by doofs like Mitt Romney who are clueless (or pretend to be clueless) about the role of government in society. It’s these types of people who are a real threat to America. They’re the ones who’d like to drown government in a bathtub and let the wealthiest one percent and increasingly fewer competitive businesses run our lives. When that happens, the idea of We The People dies and is replaced by one or two global corporations and one or two families. All in cahoots to turn a profit without regard to why government exists in the first place.

About: Bob Cesca

Bob Cesca has been a featured columnist for the Huffington Post since August, 2005. His posts appear on the front page every Wednesday. Bob's Huffington Post entries are among the most popular on the site, averaging between 50,000-250,000 views each. Bob has also contributed to Manhattan Magazine, OP/ED News, and AOL's Walletpop. Bob has been featured on the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Current TV, SkyTV, The Rachel Maddow Show, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Ed Schultz Show, MSNBC Live with Cenk Uygur, and The Young Turks.