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Today's Washington Post includes an article titled "Fox in the Henhouse Government," the gist of which is summarized in this short quote from that piece:
(If your faith is more in the operations of the private sector than in the capacity of government, if you have scant commitment to the laws you are pledged to enforce, if you see government less as a trust to be administered than a force to be used for the benefit of political and ideological allies, then this kind of behavior is the inevitable result.)
Two years ago, a book was published with the title "The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threats Democracy" (by Kahn & Minnich 2005). I'd like to introduce today's Washington Post article with the following passages, quoted from this book. These come from the section titled "Tactics for Privatizer Wannabes".
PREPARATION:
 First, you must undercut the people's respect for and trust in their government and public employees...
Say that the public goods, services, protection that you want to run for your profit are 'failed systems, 'broken,' 'in crisis.' Repeat as often, as unambiguously, as publicly as possible. You want people to believe that providing adequate funding, effective job training, and more incentives for public employees to do better can't possible succeed. You want people to believe that the reason provisions and protections for the public goods have problems, and problems at all, in that they are run by public agencies, staffed by public employees.
ACTION:
Meanwhile, go ahead and break those public systems. Many of the public services you want to take over were underfunded to begin with, so cut their fund even more and they'll barely be able to function. That will make the public get really mad at the people and agencies that provide those services, which is what you want. At the same time, impose costly new requirements on them. Support private, for-profit alternative, offer to reward people for using these services, and of course, do not make up for the fund this takes away from the public services. In short, starve them of money while requiring more of them.
Offer yourself as the only possible savior of what you have broken. Stress your efficient and accountability. If problems in your own operation are exposed, put more money into image advertising.
If people still refuse to believe that the public system you want to run for profit needs rescuing by your, tell then that your takeover plan is really just a responsible effort to find a better way to run public services. Float possible fix-it plans that privatize at least some aspects of the system. Back off (but only temporarily) from anything that arouses significant opposition.
Continue creating facts on the ground by privatizing whatever you can. The more little bits you get, the easier it will become to get bigger bits later.
To read how this is being applied of outdoor recreation management on Federally managed public lands, click here and read an article written in 1997 and titled "The Future of Public Lands Recreation."
Welcome to the future.
Scott
---begin quoted---
April 4, 2007
Fox-in-the-Henhouse Government
Ruth Marcus - Washington Post
The Bush administration's House of Straw seems to be blowing apart,
buffeted by alternating gusts of scandal and incompetence. The tornado
of disastrous headlines -- a Pentagon that can't take proper care of
its wounded, a Justice Department that can't be trusted to follow the
law or tell the truth to Congress, a top White House aide who lied to a
grand jury-- has been so overpowering that the day-to-day outrages of
life in the Bush administration tend get overlooked.
So it's worth pausing to pay attention to some recent events that
similarly underscore the failings of this administration and illuminate
one of their root causes: a contemptuous attitude toward government
itself. These episodes illustrate the administration's
fox-guarding-the-henhouse personnel plan, the disdain of its appointees
for the laws they are sworn to enforce and their spoils-of-war attitude
toward the government they are entrusted with overseeing:
· The president's amazing-even-for-this-crowd choice to oversee the
federal family planning program, Eric Keroack, resigned after Medicaid
officials in Massachusetts, where he had a private medical practice,
questioned his billings. Keroack's suitability for the family planning
post, in which he was responsible for overseeing the distribution of
contraceptives to low-income women? He was director of a group that
finds contraception "demeaning to women" and won't distribute it --
even to married women.
· President Bush nominated Michael Baroody, a top official at the
National Association of Manufacturers, to head the Consumer Product
Safety Commission -- the agency charged with protecting consumers
against the dangerous products of, yes, manufacturers.
Perhaps Baroody would be a great chairman, but he's spent most of the
past two decades looking out for the interests of manufacturers, not
consumers. The manufacturers association recently pressed the CPSC to
relax its rules about when manufacturers must report incidents of
defective products. (It did.) The group argued, again successfully,
against a petition to require makers of cribs, strollers and similar
items to include registration cards with their products to be able to
help notify consumers in a recall.
· The Interior Department inspector general reported that Julie
MacDonald, the official who oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service but
who has no academic background in biology, overrode the recommendations
of agency scientists about how to protect endangered species. MacDonald
also shared internal documents with industry officials and groups that
lobby for weakened environmental protections, not to mention an online
gaming buddy, the IG found.
An Interior lawyer called MacDonald's involvement in one endangered
species matter "the most brazen case of political meddling" he had seen
in more than 20 years in government. Nor, it seems, is such
politicization limited to MacDonald. "Policy trumps science within the
Assistant Secretary's corridor on many occasions," another department
lawyer told the IG.
· J. Steven Griles, a coal lobbyist who became the No. 2 official at
the Interior Department (in other words, his job description didn't
much change), pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his
relationship with lobbyist/felon Jack Abramoff. Griles's
then-girlfriend introduced him to Abramoff and ran a lobbying group
that received $500,000 in Abramoff-generated funds; in turn, Abramoff
sought and received Griles's help on client matters.
· Griles's new significant other, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who helped him
fend off ethics charges when they both worked at Interior, resigned as
head of the Justice Department's environmental section. Wooldridge and
Griles bought a $1 million beach house with the top lobbyist for the
oil company ConocoPhillips; then Wooldridge -- supposedly with the
blessing of ethics officials -- signed off on a move to ease up on
anti-pollution requirements imposed on ConocoPhillips as part of a
settlement.
· Lurita Doan, a GOP mega-donor turned head of the General Services
Administration, attended a luncheon on agency premises at which Scott
Jennings, a top aide to Karl Rove, briefed political appointees on GOP
targets for the 2008 election. According to six people present, Doan
asked GSA employees how they could "help 'our candidates' in the next
elections." Doan, displaying an Alberto Gonzales-like memory, told the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week that she had
"absolutely" no recollection of that statement.
It's wrong to paint with too broad a brush here: Most administration
officials are decent, honest and hardworking; the Clinton
administration, like others before it, had its share of scoundrels and
hacks. But there is something in the "loyal Bushies" mind-set of this
administration and its fundamental scorn for government that
contributes to this arrogant misbehavior.
If your faith is more in the operations of the private sector than in
the capacity of government, if you have scant commitment to the laws
you are pledged to enforce, if you see government less as a trust to be
administered than a force to be used for the benefit of political and
ideological allies, then this kind of behavior is the inevitable result.
In short, if you identify so completely with the foxes, it's no wonder
that you end up with a henhouse that is so thoroughly, tragically
trashed.
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- Privatization 
