Privatization Quotes - page 2
Austerity measures constitute retrogression in human rights, in contravention of articles 2 and 5 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, imposed top-down and never legitimized by popular referendum. Moreover, the "bail-out” of the banking system was undemocratic and inequitable because a "private debt” was rescued through public money, namely, by increasing the public debt, at the expense of social justice. The general feeling of malaise was expressed in the statement that Governments seem to have adopted the elitist view that "banks are too big to fail and bankers too big to jail”, concern being expressed about the dangers of privatization of essential services, including water, and the widespread phenomenon of privatizing profit and socializing cost.
Alfred de Zayas
If the Bank really has development at heart, it will change the conditionalities away from privatization, deregulation and lower corporate taxation and put the emphasis on reducing military expenditures, ensuring that progressive tax legislation is enacted and enforced, that tax havens are outlawed, and that a financial transactions tax is adopted and the revenues used to build "A World Free of Poverty” through international solidarity.
Alfred de Zayas
Grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated then ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.
Thomas Frank
Deregulation freed corporations from legal constraints, and privatization empowered them to govern areas of society from which they had been previously been excluded. By the end of the century, the corporation had become the world's dominant institution.
Yet history humbles dominant institutions.
Joel Bakan
While there are periodic calls from libertarians and others for the privatization or elimination of the program, given the first political opportunity to dramatically influence the Medicare program, a conservative White House and Congress sought to strengthen, not weaken, the program. To be sure, debates will linger about whether Medicare is too large or too small. Debates remain about the allocation of Medicare dollars. But December 8, 2003, demonstrated that there is no debate on this most fundamental fact: Medicare must survive.
Michael Johns
When I first met him, we had dinner together, and he said, "Well, you know, 25 percent of these kids are never going to be anything. They're never going to amount to anything. And I'm not throwing money at it.” And I was like, "Wow! You know, even if you believe that, you can't say that to me.” So, I just watch how he has used black and brown and poor children as props to push an agenda that is all about privatization and all about so-called accountability, but it's really the status quo, because once schools get put on probation here in Chicago, the Chicago Public Schools takes over, takes away the democratically controlled local school councils, takes that power away from them to hire and fire and evaluate principals and to spend discretionary funds. So, we see this culture of punishment and culture of disinvestment, and it is rampant and obviously spreading throughout the country.
Rahm Emanuel
