The Problem with Privatization

There's only one thing they care about, and it's not providing that good or service:

The private security firm Blackwater USA brushed aside warnings from another security firm and focused on cost, not safety, before it sent its personnel to escort trucks to Fallujah in 2004, resulting in four American deaths that marked a major turning point in the war, a congressional report said yesterday.

The report comes as Blackwater -- the State Department's prime security force -- faces new scrutiny for its role this month in the killing of at least 11 Iraqis. Citing e-mails, fresh interviews and previously undisclosed incident reports, the report by the majority staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform provides details about how cost considerations appeared to shape Blackwater's decisions that led to the brutal deaths of its employees at the hands of insurgents on March 31, 2004.

For example, the assessment said that Blackwater, then operating under a Defense Department contract, was supposed to use vehicles with armored protection kits, but as of the date of the killings, no such vehicles had been obtained. A Blackwater internal report obtained by the committee quoted an employee who said the contract "paid for armor vehicles" but that "management in North Carolina . . . made the decision to go with soft skin due to cost."

Whatever. Larry Kudlow and Megan McArdle tell me if I don't believe that government's true purpose to is to make lots of money for people who already have lots of money, I'm a treasonous Commie bastard. Because they have megaphones, what they say must be true.