The standard case for government-run industry runs like this: some goods, by their very nature, are best provided by government . . . to ensure high quality and low cost.
City sewers, firefighting, roads and education are traditionally explained as requiring government operation, organization, and tax funding.
The trouble is, it’s no longer plausible, really, to say that one of the most expensive and omnipresent of these industries, “public education” (government schooling) guarantees much of anything.
Certainly we aren’t getting quality at low cost.
But a few folks do get wealthy.
I wrote about Barbara Byrd-Bennett a few weeks ago. She’s the Chicago public school administrator who had to resign her CEO-ship because of the overwhelming evidence against her scamming Chicago’s schools . . . for over $2 million in kickbacks.
And now, it turns out, she has a prehistory — in the Motor City. “Federal investigators were looking at Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s role in a $40 million textbook contract that was awarded while she worked in Detroit,” explains the Chicago Sun-Times, “long before she became Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s schools chief. . . .”
Republican, democratic government relies upon an alert press and citizenry to catch folks like Byrd-Bennett. Why? Because government, by its nature, is most efficient in delivering wealth from many into the hands of the few. Having it serve the many is difficult, and requires eternal vigilance.
Which is one reason why we need limited government: the more extensive government’s scope, the harder to keep track of all the frauds and exploitative con jobs.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
5 replies on “A Public Fraud in the Midwest”
There are frauds everywhere, but if a private entity is corrupted it still faces competition it is hobbled by the effects of the excess costs of the corruption and must correct its ways, or fail. Not true in the public sector where the revenues are provided by forced,as opposed to voluntary, actions and therefore corruption is not necessarily debilitating to the entity being cheated.
No amount of diligence or oversight will negate that loss of marketplace limitations and therefore the opportunities for corruption in the public sector are greater, to the point it is actually expected and the motivation for campaign finance reforms from both sides of the aisle.
JFB–Excellent clear and concise explanation to what so called economists and politicians spend hours and thousands of written pages evading. Many times the bad actors are so cloistered in government agencies though that their graft is not at all visible. Another ruse is the tangle of some entities who are “privatized” and therefore have more avenues of deceit. (Privatized being the word that shuts up the conservatives who do not recognize it is simply fascism with a nicer name.)
Ms Bloxham, there is no remembrance, or feigned ignorance, that the market is the ultimate regulator. If that premise is accepted all of the governmental economists, and most of the regulators, must admit they have no real, or long term utility. That I term intentionally unenlightened self interest.
Thanks for the compliment.
Her guilt is of not finding and funding a suitable protector on whole coattails she could ride and hide, like slumlord Valerie Jarrett.
Her guilt is of not finding and funding a suitable protector on whose coattails she could ride and hide, like slumlord Valerie Jarrett.