Don Zavodny, director of AFSCME Council 72 Missouri/Kansas, is speaking out against attempts to privatize mental health services.

In a letter to the editor published in yesterday’s Kansas City Star, Zavodny writes:

Privatization has become a dirty word. And for good reason. Imagine where we would be today if George W. Bush had gotten his way and gambled away our Social Security on the stock market. …

More than 87,000 Missourians have lost their jobs in the last year. For the affected families those job losses are accompanied by a spike in mental stress and anguish and an increased demand for public services. …

Every Kansas City area resident should be able to count on mental health services in good times and bad. We cannot do that if delivery of these services is contingent on how they affect a corporation’s bottom line. That will not guarantee them in tough times.

Read more here.

Last week, President Obama ordered new guidelines for contracting in federal agencies. In a memorandum sent to the heads of all executive departments and agencies, he ordered a government-wide review of federal contracting procedures to be completed by July 1 with new guidelines to be in place by September 30.

The president declared, “We will stop outsourcing services that should be performed by the government,” noting that annual spending on private contracts had doubled to more than $500 billion during the Bush administration.

The new guidelines will set criteria for contracting out public services, limit allowable circumstances for no-bid contracts, and assess agencies’ ability to properly manage contracts given the shrinking federal workforce tasked with contracting oversight. Read more on the White House blog.

Some contractors who design and build the nation’s highways wrongly charged taxpayers $73 million for ballooning executive compensation, lavish perks and other unallowable expenses, according to an article by Robert O’Harrow Jr. in last Saturday’s Washington Post.

One firm alone charged $950,000 in unallowable costs, included a political contribution, spa resort bills and alcohol. The auditors estimate that in 2003, executives at design and engineering firms with highway contracts overpaid themselves by as much as $73 million.

Contractors also charged federal and state governments for sporting events, luxury cars, and golf shirts, according to a report by the inspector general of the Department of Transportation.

The Post reports that contracting out failed on numerous levels, with design and engineering contractors being “generally hired without competitive bids” and those contractors sometimes hiring “accountants that were not qualified to perform the reviews required by state and federal regulations. In many cases, they ‘hired firms with whom they had existing relationships.’”

With the nation’s economy in tatters, we cannot afford the fraud and abuse that this report indicates is rampant in contracting out essential government services.

After decades of government experiments with contracting out, we now know that the private delivery of our vital public services does not work. Contracting out often results in higher costs, poorer service, increased opportunities for corruption and diminished government flexibility, control and accountability. Contractors who design and build our nation’s highways have illustrated why our vital public services shouldn’t be privatized.

From the Economic Policy Institute (EPI): Fears about the future of Social Security were allayed on Friday by a new report issued by the independent Congressional Budget Office. The report finds that not only can future beneficiaries keep counting on receiving benefits in retirement, they can expect those benefits to be larger – even after adjusting for inflation – than those being paid to today’s retirees.

Bush and company in 2005 failed miserably to convince the American public that Social Security privatization was the holy grail of retirement security. Doomsayers will continue to claim the sky is falling, but the facts tell a different story.

EPI outlines the CBO’s findings in a new Policy Memo.

Last week, those of us who believe in health care for all celebrated an important – and all too rare – victory with the passing of a Medicare bill that puts seniors and the disabled ahead of profits and privatization.

“To a rousing ovation from his colleagues, Senator Ted Kennedy arrived back in the Capitol to vote on the Medicare bill, which passed by a veto-proof 69 - 30 margin. Kennedy’s vote could have been critical. Senate Republicans had blocked movement on this legislation by just one vote a couple weeks ago. (Read more from AMERICAblog.)

“Ostensibly, Wednesday’s vote was about restoring cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. What it was really about, however, was the fight against creeping privatization,” wrote Paul Krugman.

Said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of President Bush and his support of Medicare Advantage:

“If you had to list car salesmen, members of Congress and insurance companies, insurance companies would be at the bottom of the list. I’m personally comfortable with the president casting his lot with insurance companies and HMOs. We’re comfortable casting our lot with the American people.” (from Firedoglake)

The President vetoed the bill, but Congress moved quickly to override his veto. As the New York Times editorialized:

“President Bush’s veto was easily overridden as Republicans in droves abandoned his misguided effort to help the insurance industry hold on to its large subsidies.”

And now 44 million beneficiaries can count on a more solid Medicare program.

On Monday, July 7, Senator John McCain told a Denver town hall meeting that Social Security, as originally conceived more than 70 years ago, is an “absolute disgrace.” In his latest entry on the Huffington Post, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee says the real disgrace is how little Sen. McCain understands about Social Security and the U.S. economy.

Just like George W. Bush, McCain’s out to destroy something he knows nothing about. When they combine ignorance with power, they leave it to the rest of us to pick up the pieces from the damage they cause. Bush tried to destroy Social Security and we fought him tooth and nail.

If John McCain thinks he can do what we kept Bush from doing, he’s got another thing coming. The American people won’t let him destroy Social Security.

Read the full post.

For 70 years, Social Security has worked for America, providing guaranteed benefits in retirement, and to workers and their families in the event that they become disabled or die before retirement. Sen. John McCain, as noted in the blog Crooks and Liars, is promoting a dangerous and irresponsible scheme to privatize Social Security.

McCain told the Wall Street Journal recently that he still supports President Bush’s discredited 2005 push to divert Americans’ hard earned Social Security into risky private accounts, which failed because of widespread opposition, including from AFSCME. His plan would hurt all of America’s working families, and would lead to huge cuts in guaranteed benefits that workers have earned and are counting on. Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic gets it right when he says that McCain’s proposal is “a lethal combination of bad ideas and total lack of comprehension.”

While he may be a maverick, Senator McCain’s plan would radically transform Social Security from guarantee of retirement security for millions into a gamble.

Folks are up in arms over the plans by George W. Bush’s Texas political heir to privatize the highways, according to the New York Times.

It’s a simple scheme, really. Rather than deal with the state’s transportation challenges, Governor Rick Perry wants to let private companies build roads and then charge Texans and others to use them. While that may lead to profits for the corporate investors, locals like Linda Stall fear they will pay the price:

“The only person who loses is the citizen,” she said. “We’re paying everyone’s profit.” She also said investors would “cherry pick” the most lucrative toll routes, leaving other sections unfinanced.

Driven by wrong-minded public officials and corporate greed, privatization and contracting out all too often fail the tests of cost effectiveness or quality. Time and time again, the public pays more and gets lower quality of services while public workers are laid off and corruption scandals make the news. Perry’s Texas toll-road boondoggle is just the latest – and one of the largest – example of a corporate giveaway. What will they privatize next?

Two years ago, members of AFSCME Council 62 vigorously protested state plans to outsource three Indiana state hospitals in Richmond, Evansville and Madison. The jobs of some 750 RNs, psychiatric attendants and behavioral technicians represented by the council were threatened by the scheme.

Family and Social Services Administration Sec. Mitch Roob ignored those protests. But last month, he finally – and formally – acknowledged what AFSCME has maintained all along: Privatization does not save money.

David Warrick, Council 62’s executive director and an International vice president, says Indiana state officials …

“… had to admit they couldn’t privatize the hospital without costing the taxpayers more money than it would take for the state to run it.”

Read more about the decision to drop the privatization scheme in these stories in The Indianapolis Star and the Palladium-Item.

Project Censored is a media research group that compiles an annual list of important news stories that have been overlooked by the country’s national media. High up on their latest ranking of under-reported stories is the stealth attempt to privatize America’s highways by both federal and state governments.

According to Project Censored:

[S]tates are selling off our nation’s enormous, and aging, infrastructure to private investors. Proponents are celebrating these transactions as a no-pain, all-gain way to off-load maintenance expenses and increase highway-building funds without raising taxes. Opponents are lambasting these plans as a major turn toward handing the nation’s valuable common asset over to private firms whose fidelity is to stockholders – not to the public transportation system or the people who use it.

Driven by wrong-minded public officials and corporate greed, contracts for public services are being increasingly doled out without regard to cost effectiveness or quality. Privatization is an all too often bad idea as the public ends up paying more for lower quality services. That’s why AFSCME continues to fight politicians who want to send public-sector jobs to private companies.

To read more, visit Project Censored’s Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008 and scroll down to number nine.