The Fraudulent nature of Privatization

Given the new developments in the BC Rail scandal implicating Christy Clark, we need to examine the fraudulent nature of privatization. The left and the right can argue private versus public until the cows come home. If you want ICBC to be private, fine. If you want it to be public, so be it. I don’t care.

What I do care about is when public assets are sold off at fire sale prices to political insiders who in turn destroy that public company and then start ripping off consumers while giving their corrupt political friends a kickback.

The other concern I have about the fraudulent nature of privatization is turning a publically accountable company private for the sole purpose of removing public accountability. That is wrong. We have seen how excessive deregulation on Wall Street and in the banking industry has opened the flood gates to investment fraud wide open. That is a colossal concern that affects all of us.

BC Hydro is the prime example. That should be retuned to a public company. The Campbell government incurred massive taxpayer debt by privatizing the part of BC hydro that sells power to BC Hydro at inflated rates. I don’t care about Terasen gas. That was dumb because of duplication but it wasn’t as devastatingly corrupt as the fraudulent billing of Gordon Campbell’s private power companies that sell power to BC Hydro at inflated rates.

These are the ones who were charged with Enron for false billing in California. Speaking of false billing, front page of the Vancouver Sun yesterday was about private medical clinics overbilling. Schools, militaries and hospitals should not be private and mandated to make a profit. When a private company is mandated to make a profit it gravitates towards obtaining a monopoly on the market and ripping off consumers. That is exactly what the big oil companies are now doing.

So here we have breaking news that private medical clinics were involved in false billing. Big surprise. We also see complaints of the Clark government perpetuation the fraudulent nature of privatization by selling off liquor distribution rights to their insider friends. Yet that is nothing compared to Harper’s insider trading jets. That guy should be in jail for that one but no one seems to care.