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tomas posted an update 4 years, 10 months ago
I have to respect the guy; a snippet of an interview with Dennis Kucinich by Matt Taibbi on his new book:
MT: You talk about how the system changes members when they get in. The ask from these financial interests ultimately, whether you call it a franchise or a monopoly or rent or whatever it is — they basically want the government to sign off on risk-free money flows, is that right? The CEI story being representative of this.
Dennis Kucinich: Oh, absolutely. But keep in mind, Matt, that I did not want to expand the scope of the book, but it would be easy to do a sequel that would point out the thousands and thousands of instances of privatization of public assets that are happening all over the world and often without any resistance at all, because people don’t know how to fight back.
When you look at the level of privatization that has been going on not only nationally in the United States, but internationally, with the help of international banks and organizations — the things that are inherently public assets are being chopped up and sold to cartels.
Once the Rescue Plan Act money runs out, you can bet money that there’ll be an attempt to privatize more public assets. You can almost see that coming again, another wave where communities will be looking for more money. Well, we’ll sell our water system, our light system, our parking meters.
There are so many things, and every city has billions, tens of billions of dollars, even more, of assets. And there’s always some interest group that’s looking at those assets to try to get them cheap and capitalize on them, and cause people to pay dearly by increasing the costs of water or electricity or waste collection and in some cases even public safety.
So, privatization is really a move away from democratic governance. And at the core of this, I was standing for democratic governance.
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“In this book, I write where the Democratic party was pushing for the sale of the light system, that the Democratic party was criticizing me for going after the banks, for challenging the banks. I was made to appear to be un-American for raising questions about the right of banks to redline communities. And I don’t forget for a minute that it was the Democratic party that chopped up the 10th District, which I had the privilege of serving for 16 years.”
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“…I also knew that if I had capitulated and agreed to sell, I didn’t own my own soul anymore. I was done. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t, because I had to stand for something. And sometimes in doing that, you might lose the moment.”
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When you’re over your head in debt – and which country is not? – selling the family silver is an attractive option; but how many have used the sale proceeds to reduce net debt, and how many have used them to finance profligate spending? I don’t know the answer; but I can hazard a guess!
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