THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE CON GAME

Some of the Davos Elite

Ronald Reagan's presidency was a turning point in U.S. politics. The Citizens United ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court is the essence of Reaganomics. The irony of Reagan's posturing at the Berlin Wall as victor against Soviet Communism is lost on most Americans. The fall of the U.S.S.R. was the beginning of the rise of internationalist oligarchs. These puppet masters of global politics do not intend to liberate the masses. They hope to enslave them in a velvet cage of consumerism. 

Apple, Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Facebook ... these are ruled by international oligarchs who control information, as well as disseminate their versions of it. Information in The I.T. Age is power over billions of people who have no real say in the wielding of that power. It is immune to any democratically regulated oversight by governments. 

Warren Buffet, George Soros and Rupert Murdoch were among the first-generation oligarchs of the Reagan-Thatcher Era in The West. Putin and his cronies are the Russian equivalents. Minor oligarchs rule all over the world. Some are actual political dictators. Others, most, are shadows behind the governments they manipulate through media and finance.

Contrary to the Free Market Myth, these oligarchs are not engaged in head-butting competitions. They are consolidating power over the global masses. Davos (World Economic Forum) is their annual congress. From those Swiss mountaintops the international oligarchy dictates to the United Nations and The World Bank. These oligarchs finance purchases at the same international armament shows. They are all gearing up with the same riot-control accessories and tactics. Ever wonder why the riot police in every video from everywhere look the same? Global government will not be democratic.

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In the 1980's, Reagan sold Americans and allies abroad on the notion of public-private partnership as a way of avoiding government responsibility and financial liability for infrastructure, health care and education for the masses. This scam has worked beautifully for those who hate paying taxes. It has failed miserably for those masses who would be served by government.

Charter schools are a good example. Another good example is the closing of mental hospitals and facilities for the intellectually-impaired in favor of group homes, shelters and mass homelessness. Commuter rail here in Massachusetts is another good example. The most glaring example in recent times is Obamacare.

Charter schools have gutted the public education system by extracting from it the best students and the parents most likely to be engaged as student and school advocates. They resulted in part from the strains on public education caused by massive illegal immigration by people who did not speak English and had children whom they raised with their native languages in the home.

ESL classes could not possibly keep up with demand. Communities could not simply double school budgets. Students and teachers were forced to cope with the strain. Alongside this strain, the demands to integrate students with special needs and accommodate gender-equivalent sports, mandated by Federal laws, placed an unsupportable burden on many public school systems. The accompanying decrease in the availability of competent teachers, due to the shift in social-economic status to I.T. jobs and finance jobs for the more intelligent, accelerated the decline of public education.

Sports programs, arts programs and even core humanities curricula were eliminated in poorer communities where the stresses took the greatest toll. Minority graduation rates fell and drug-related imprisonment rose. A correlation that some on The Left unwisely attribute entirely to for-profit prisons. In fact, this had as much to do with suburban Liberal collusion with the Reaganomics model of private-public partnerships.

This trend can only work in the favor of oligarchs, who pose as Liberal but are indeed ruthless, fascistic capitalists. 

Obamacare is the bastard child of the marriage between Liberal-Libertarians and Reaganomics Conservatives. Obama had ample support in the populace in 2009 and a Democrat Congress. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize before doing anything about America's chronic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That was a carte blanche from the international oligarchs, plain and simple. 

Yet, with all this support, Obama declined to push a single-payer health care system in the U.S.. Instead, he colluded with the private insurance industry and Wall Street to produce worse health coverage for the working middle class to buffer the cost of care for those on Medicaid and Medicare, then the most solid base of his popularity. 

Private-public partnerships are often a way for corporations to double-dip into public funds. Often these partnerships entail government collusion with non-profits. Non-profits have become the middle class answer to aristocratic foundations (well established tax dodges). They are often small businesses which have no tangible product, but provide a steady income for their administrators and staffers. 

When infrastructure projects are private-public partnerships, the private partner receives upfront capital or guaranteed tax considerations. This ultimately comes from the pockets of taxpayers, of course. Then the taxpayers also pay out of their pockets for the service rendered. Our Massachusetts commuter rail is now run by a private French corporation, for instance. Its services have not drastically improved. And fares have risen.

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Oligarchs have reasons to belittle government efficiencies. This is the consistent and misleading message against universal health care in the U.S.. Oligarchs eye a future where governments subcontract everything to them at double cost to the masses. 

Government insurance has not been inefficient or unreliable. As a beneficiary of Social Security and Medicare, I can attest to this. I have also been a beneficiary of private health and private disability insurances. And, I briefly worked in the health insurance industry as a utilization reviewer. 

Private disability insurance, as I experienced it, was much less reliable than Social Security. Once I qualified for Social Security, my benefits have flowed without interruption and with minimal red tape. My private disability insurance, part of my employment package, was horrendous. I was challenged repeatedly, despite having a documented severe prognosis. I was forced to submit piles of paperwork, often repetitious, every six months. My insurance contacts were often rude or unavailable. 

My private health insurer recently refused to pay for a medication I must take daily. The medication had been covered without problems for several years. However, the insurer used recent research to determine the medication dose should be halved, without consulting my physician. Instead of consulting my physician, they denied payment to my pharmacy, which in turn did not fill my monthly prescription. I was placed in the middle of an intrinsically economic issue between my doctor and my insurer. 

This scenario is exactly what Conservatives use to dismiss proposals for government health insurance. That scenario, in my experience, has never occurred with government insurance and has only occurred with private insurance. And, when I worked in the private health insurance industry, my job was to interfere with treatment to save the insurance company dollars. That is why I left after a year and returned to caring for patients.

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Global oligarchy in the near future seems inevitable. The global oligarchs will be drawn closer and closer together by technology and their need to insulate themselves from occasional awakening among segments of the vast populations they will dominate. Symptoms of this reactive oppression are already obvious. Fake news and limitations on free speech are elements of today's media and employment landscape. Online media is the news. Small independent presses are an endangered species. Social media have replaced community news outlets. 

Ronald Reagan's puppet masters conned my parents' generation. That was thirty years ago. That generation has all but passed away. Most politicians in power in America today have bowed to the Reaganomics myth of an unrigged, free-market system. But they have also sold their souls to the oligarchs who finance their elections. And, it seems, those oligarchs, many in social-justice-warrior disguises, have pulled the wool over the eyes of the sheep who have become addicted to the consumerism which fuels oligarch power.