Public Employee Press

Book Review
Contracting out: tool of the right-wing wrecking crew

In “The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule,” Thomas Frank tells the tragic story of the policies that undermined America’s social safety net beginning in the Reagan era.

This three-decade assault caused today’s forest of foreclosures, layoffs, bankruptcies and corporate bailouts — ultimately paid for by the victims of the chaotic, yet calculated, destruction of the social fabric by the crew that came to power preaching “family values.”

While Frank wrote at the precipice of the ongoing financial crisis caused by the recent orgy of free-market corruption, his trenchant warnings are a call to action wherever the discredited notions of privatization and contracting out prevail — such as in the current government of New York City.

Frank argues that this policy revolution stemmed from the cynical, pessimistic worldview of the conservative movement that sees government as the enemy and believes business best serves the nation.

Many of the right-wing true believers who implemented the destruction of the social fabric built by the New Deal and Great Society were lobbyists for corporate interests — wolves gathered for the kill. They aggressively degraded public services, shredded regulations that protected Americans from corporate greed and led a relentless assault on workers, particularly public employees, for the profit of a would-be oligarchy.

Frank focuses on the real action in the Republican casino, its embrace of “free-market government,” where public services were handed over to the very corporate interests that wanted to replace them to favor a business/political class with the mentality of wartime black marketeers.

His prime example is the failed administration of occupied Iraq, by ideologues with no experience providing basic services who contracted out even military functions.

Frank includes a fascinating description of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, tracing his origins as a “political hit man” for the South African apartheid regime, through his nefarious efforts on behalf of corporate sweatshops. While Abramoff’s dramatic fall helped defeat the Republicans in the 2006 Congressional elections, he was only one symptom of the cancer that until recently infected all aspects of the American economy and politics.

“The Wrecking Crew” is available in the DC 37 Education Fund Library in Room 211, and the paperback sells for $15.

— Mike Lee,
Public Employee Press