Reform Government Contracts and Restrict Privatization

Intuit, a private firm that manufactures TurboTax, has pushed California lawmakers to eliminate the popular, successful, and cost-effective public tax filing services, ReadyReturn and CalFile. These two programs offer millions of low- and middle-income Californians a free and reliable method to calculate and file taxes.

Since he took office earlier this year, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has waged an ideological war on state employees and programs, and advocated for unsustainable and costly privatization schemes.  Even in light of overwhelming public opposition to privatization and the significant pitfalls associated with these types of initiatives, the Governor established a privatization task force by executive order in early April, seeking to identify $50 million in savings.

On June 15, voters in Trenton, New Jersey, soundly rejected a proposal to sell a majority of Trenton Water Works' infrastructure, including pipes, water towers, and tanks, to a private company. For several years, Trenton Mayor Douglas Palmer argued that water privatization would generate immediate revenue for the cash-strapped city and end its obligation to maintain aging infrastructure in surrounding townships. Community activists, unions, and the Stop the Sale campaign, successfully challenged the Mayor's plan. In the weeks leading up to the vote, polling indicated that 95 percent of city residents disapproved of the initiative.

Who benefits from hyping criminal enforcement as the solution to the immigration issue? 

As a Service and Employees International Union (SEIU) campaign highlights, one key player profiting off the nation's broken immigration system is the private prison firm, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).  CCA operates and profits significantly from private prisons across the country, many of which house immigrants in detention, a kind of legal limbo in which immigrants are imprisoned while their cases are being considered, or who are in the process of being deported.

Last week, the Massachusetts House unanimously passed the Revenues and Expenditures Transparency Act, H 2972, to create a searchable, online database that details state spending and revenue sources.  Lawmakers also approved an amendment to create greater taxpayer accountability by providing increased transparency around some business tax credits.  As House Chairman of the Joint Committee on Revenue Rep. Jay Kauffman explains, "[p]ublic access to the way we raise and spend money is essential, enabling us to make more-informed decisions for the tax-paying constituents who elect us to serve on their behalf."

According to the American Journalism Review, state house news reporting is down 30 percent nationally.  New Jersey may be adding to the problem by reducing funding for and privatizing functions of the New Jersey Network (NJN), the only non-partisan public television and radio news source that exclusively covers the state. 

Last month, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie unveiled his $29.3 billion FY2011 budget proposal -- an extremely regressive plan that would only exacerbate the economic pain for the state's working and middle class families. 

This past week, the Dallas Morning News revealed that a key figure who contributed to the privatization of Texas' food stamp eligibility program is now receiving taxpayer dollars to help fix the problems that the private system created.  regg Phillips, who was Deputy Commissioner at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) and led the push for privatization a few years ago, now heads AutoGov Inc., a company that has received $207,500 from the state government in the past four months to assist in eliminating the errors in the provision and eligibility determination of the state's food stamp program.

Portending a sharp increase in corporate political spending, the Supreme Court has ruled (Citizens United v. FEC) that corporations enjoy the same speech rights of citizens when it comes to advocating the election or defeating political candidates. Elected officials, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have denounced the ruling as striking at the heart of our democracy by putting corporations on an equal footing with real people when it comes to basic constitutional rights.

In a meeting with Texas officials last week, Kevin Concannon, Under Secretary of Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), claimed that there had been a drastic reduction in the timeliness and accuracy of food stamp provisions in the state following the implementation of a privatized system.  In fact, Texas now has the worst performing food stamp program in the entire country.