Titanic Post

Government by itself is not always the problem
by Denise Lang

Government should not be too big. But if it is too small, it can’t protect its citizens from abuses of power. President Theodore Roosevelt said, “The limitation of governmental power means the enslavement of the people by the great corporations.” This is happening now.

The libertarian notion that privatizing services traditionally performed by government is unrealistic. In 1992, Dick Cheney, as defense secretary, spearheaded the movement to privatize most of the military’s civil logistics activities.

Under his direction, the Pentagon paid $9 million to a Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, to conduct a study to determine whether private companies like itself should handle all of the military’s civil logistics.

Is anyone surprised that KBR’s study concluded that more privatization of logistics was in the government’s best interest?

This means soldiers would no longer peel potatoes, but KBR employees would be paid instead (reports of the government being charged for a hundred soldiers being fed when only three were actually fed go uninvestigated).

When Walter Reed was privatized, medical personnel like doctors, nurses and med techs were let go so greater profit could go to executives of KBR. No-bid contracts for Halliburton and its subsidiaries and large-scale fraud are costing taxpayers billions of dollars, but perpetrators are not being held accountable. In 1995, Cheney became CEO of Halliburton.

I remember a time when war profiteering was considered immoral. What happened? If government is bad, why not do away with it altogether? Why not dispense with government totally, as in Somalia? Or why not have severely limited government like Rwanda or Peru where only the richest can attend school or be protected by private police?

If Somalia seems unimaginably remote, remember America in the 19th and early 20th centuries the “Gilded Age.” Didn’t we try laissez-faire capitalism then, and wasn’t it a disaster? Filth in our meat, shantytowns, slavery, racism, child labor, company towns, unsafe working conditions in factories and mines with people working 16-hour days, armed union-busting goons, monopolies, corruption scandals, massive unemployment, all culminating in the Great Depression.

This was a time when the disabled and old folks lived in grinding poverty, banks failed, Boss Tweed ran New York, and the entire rural community were deprived of electricity because electric companies didn’t make enough profit to extend lines out in the boonies.

The solution to most of those problems was government: food and drug regulation, public education, antitrust laws, banking regulations, labor laws giving organized labor a voice, Social Security, the Rural Electric Administration; the CCC, WPA and civil rights laws, to name just a few.

Taxes were paid by my parents’ and grandparent’s generations both to pay for services provided, and as an investment in our country’s future. They sacrificed to give us the best public schools, libraries, legal system, fire departments and protecting agencies at that time. Our parents and grandparents made those sacrifices, expecting us to pass it forward.

During the Eisenhower years, the top marginal rate of federal income taxation for married couples was 91 percent. People recognized it was the existence of roads, public education for employees and consumers, fire departments, a regulated banking system and a strong but costly legal system of courts and police that allowed those individuals to be so successful.

I mistrust the government and appreciate that our governmental agencies must be audited, that nothing should be hidden. But I trust large corporations even less they aren’t accountable to citizens, only to their stockholders and the executives who run them.

Our country’s greatest moments, for me, include all of those times we protected the weakest from the most powerful. I came to believe that Christianity’s call to care for the poor, the stranger, the sick, our brothers in prison, to see Jesus Christ in these mirrored the best efforts our of our nation to protect our least powerful.

I think it is unrealistic, short-sighted and lacking in knowledge of history to demand “small government.” I want one that is not too big, not too small. I want the one that’s just right for protecting all citizens for the greater good.

Denise Lang is a local activist and writer working out of La Luz, NM