By Roldo Bartimole
Give Republicans like Gov. John Kasich one inch and they’ll be taking your Social Security and Medicare. We know that’s their agenda. Short term and long term.
Let’s put everything within Wall Street and insurers reach, they say. The policy is a crack at your every penny by the sharpies. The ones who put us in the wringer we’re in.
It’s class warfare by the upper class. And we have few weapons.
Kasich wants badly to reward profit-seekers, i. e. friends and grabbers, with the turnpike you paid for with public dollars.
Plus he wants to call it progress. He’s got bridges he wants to sell you. And consultants with rigged reports: Great deal. Sell it.
Privatization is the Republican answer and scheme to serve the eager profiteers that would like to take over all public functions.
Privatization means PROFITIZATION.
I’ll tell you how this movie plays. The $1 to $3 billions collected from the turnpike leaseholder will go to reduce the income taxes of wealthy Republicans, i. e., his donors.
The turnpike toll rate increase will go – well, to you. Isn’t that the way this works?
You know it is.
Republicans these days are into making everything a business. A business that can fill the pockets of profiteers.
The only things Republicans apparently want to remain public are the taxes to support these schemes.
He wants your highways. And then your schools. Your prisons. Your fire departments. Why not? Why even your libraries will be fair game. Next stop: Parks.
The trend to peddle all functions of government so private interests can become richer represents a serious threat to the public life of all communities and a way of life that has served us well.
It’s worse than being invaded by an enemy.
It’s the move to make profit the end of every human function.
It’s what Republicans today see as the answer to problems that don’t exist.
They want it all.
They also want you to pay for every human function. Why?
So someone can make a profit. Profit is their God.
It’s the party of profiteers. The real Takers. Pure and simple.
The only thing the public will get under this philosophy is the bill.
Gov. Kasich believes turning over the Ohio Turnpike to private interests will be a bonanza for Ohio. What a joke.
In the Plain Dealer’s Tipoff column this week Kasich is quoted telling us that his privatization plan will leverage $1 billion. For us.
“This could take care of a lot of our infrastructure needs for about a decade,” he’s quoted as saying.
Guess what? A decade is a minute in time in this instance.
If Kasich could outsource to private hands your funeral he’d do that, too.
This is all part of the Republican ideology to make every human function something somebody can make a profit doing.
The Public Good has no meaning to Republicans these days.
There needs to be a hefty public outcry that exceeds the outburst against Senate Bill 5.
With the national election soaking up attention, Kasich and the Plain Dealer will try to sneak this one by us.
Shame on us if we allow it.
Roldo Bartimole has been reporting since 1959. He came to Cleveland in 1965 to report for the Plain Dealer where he worked twice in the 1960s, left for the Wall Street Journal in 1967. He started publishing his newsletter Point of View in 1968 and ended it in 2000.In 1991 he was awarded the Second Annual Joe Callaway Award for Civic Courage in Washington, D.C. He received the Distinguished Service Award of the Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland chapter, in 2002, and was named to the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame, 2004. [Photo by Todd Bartimole.]
3 Responses to “ROLDO: Stop Kasich & Corporate Greed From Taking Your Highways, Schools & Even Your Libraries”
IndyCA35
Roldo, you have some good ideas but your message would be more credible if you weren’t so partisan. With Obama having all these $40,000 per plate fundraisers and palling around with the HollyTrash crowd, neither party has a monopoly on greed. Who did Wall street support financially in 2008? And have you forgotten how recently Jimmy Dimora ran the Democratic Party in this county?
Kasich did not think up privatizing the turnpike. I believe it’s been tried–or at least proposed–in other states. If tried, what has their experience been? Public ownership is no guarantee of the public good, as recent exhorbitant increases in turnpike tolls have demonstrated.
Roldo Bartimole
Indy: I hope no one ever accuses me of being nonpartisan.
The money game is disgusting on both sides but remember who made
it the worst of the worse – those Republican Supremes.
I think if you gave them a chance they’d privatize our city streets.
Greed has no bounds.
Thanks for commenting, as always.
POM
Republicans are all about creating jobs. Jobs on Wall Street in investment houses, jobs in banks, jobs in the insurance industry. Jobs for the non-47%ers. And big pay-back profits for the 1%ers.
As for the turnpike, the people voted for it, the people should have a vote on whether it gets turned over to ODOT like it was intended, or continues as a turnpike, or is sold off.