Blackwater Never Disappoints

[Michael Tee]

Not only is this army of mercenary thugs now accused of double-billing and over-billing the U.S. State Department to the tune of $55 million, but of charging them for a salaried prostitute under "recreation and morale."

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/02/11/lawsuit-blackwater-overbilled-state-dept-for-millions/

This is instructive not only because Blackwater's CEO is a major GOP donor and former intern in the Bush White House but also because of the lessons it holds for those who believe that private enterprise can do the job better.  Yeah, it sure can, if "the job" is ripping off the consumer, in this case, the government.

[BT]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22184921/

[Christians4LessGvt]

lessons it holds for those who believe that private enterprise can do the job better.  
Yeah, it sure can, if "the job" is ripping off the consumer, in this case, the government.

lets see did gvt or private enterprise....invent and produce

the washing machine?
the clothes dryer?
the automobile?
the plane?
the television?
the refrigerator?
the telephone?
who supplies the clothes we all wear?..the gvt or private enterprise?
who supplies the furniture you are sitting on right now?.....gvt or private enterprise?
who supplies the food you will stuff down your pie-hole today?....gvt or private enterprise?
who supplies the car you will drive this weekend?.....gvt or private enterprise?
who supplied the computer that enables you to access this message board?....gvt or free enterprise?
who built the roof over your head?....gvt or private enterprise?
who built the bed you will sleep in tonight?....gvt or private enterprise?
who built the shower you will take a nice warm shower in this winter weekend?...gvt or private enterprise?
who builds the airplanes that will fly people all over the United States today?...gvt or private enterprise?
need a tool this weekend?...where you going to get it?....the gvt? or Lowes or Home Depot?
need some fire wood this weekend? where ya going to get it?...private enterprise or the gvt?

sure the gvt is needed for emergencies, some safety netism, national defense, and some refereeing.
but who makes a basketball game...Kobe Byrant or the refs?
yeah the refs are needed....but the producer....the importance....is Kobe.

Look at countries where business hardly exists & you will see miserable results.
There's no business/corporations in North Korea...only gvt....look at it!
Compare North Korea and Japan...Japan where gvt encourages business.
Look at China....as soon as it allows business it flourishes...after decades of anti-business near starvation failure

Look at the map below....light is were business is....darkness where business is frowned upon
Sad...very sad...human achievement is stymied by anti-business fools!



did private enterprise or gvt

Massacre the American Indians?
Round up & imprison Japanese Americans?
Conduct secret nuclear tests where 60 years later residual radiation at the site still measured about ten times higher than normal?
Who is the single largest polluter in the United States? The US Government....yes exempt from the pollution laws they pass for others! SWINE!
Was it private enterprise or the gvt that conducted the disgraceful "Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment" using human beings as laboratory animals?
Was it private enterprise or gvt that kept sending young americans to Viet Nam after they privately admitted "this war is unwinnable"?

The gvt/politicians/Obama bitch about Wall Street/Business/Bankers..."wasting money"..hell looks who runs the biggest deficits in human history!
How dare Obama and his band of thieves talk about Wall Street/Business/Bankers....when they are the biggest thieves ever!
Gvt has been "wasting" more money...spending others money...on a drunken binge for decades....like no others!
Before they judge AIG...they need to look in the mirror...who's the bigger thief?

[Xavier_Onassis]

So, according to your logic, Blackwater should be allowed to swindle the taxpayers at will.

[Plane]

So, according to your logic, Blackwater should be allowed to swindle the taxpayers at will.

But, according to your logic, the government should be allowed to swindle the taxpayers at will.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Being as I said nothing about the government, that is malarkey.

[sirs]

It was inferred by your support of everything-government

[Michael Tee]

Look at countries where business hardly exists & you will see miserable results.
There's no business/corporations in North Korea...only gvt....look at it!
Compare North Korea and Japan...Japan where gvt encourages business.
Look at China....as soon as it allows business it flourishes...after decades of anti-business near starvation failure

============================================================

Some of the most impoverished areas of the world have never seen communism AND the World Bank/IMF seem bent on lending money to the elites for projects that the population will never see the benefit of.  China was brought to the degree of influence it enjoys in the world through the benefits of communism, necessary to raise the workers and peasants of that great country from the virtual state of serfdom to which they had been reduced by local capitalism and foreign capitalist imperialism.  China is still communist today, just with a little incentive given to entrepreneurs.  Other communist governments have tried incentives before, and they are definitely useful, as long as the Party remains in firm control.

The article on insurance fraud was hilarious.  Here in Ontario, we have private insurance in charge of rehab and medical treatment of the injured, so the same system of "off the charts" fraud occurs, patients walk into clinics, get whiplash collars and are prescribed for thousands of dollars of unnecessary clinical treatments etc., only here it seems it is the Vietnamese exile community rather than the Cubam exile community where the fraud is most prevalent.

This gives us two insights, (1) into the real nature of "freedom-seeking" self-exiled "refugees" from communism, who are basically greed-driven scum whose hatred for communism apparently stems from the lack of opportunities it provides to get-rich-quick artistes like themselves, and (2) that the frauds that BT is so horrified by will be perpetrated on whoever administers the system, whether that be the government or the private insurance industry.  The fraud is going to follow the dollars - - if anything, the story favours government-run plans since the government is better able than private enterprise to prescribe the draconian punishments needed to put a stop to this kind of parasitism.  Under communism, these guys would be pushing daisies by now.

[Plane]

Being as I said nothing about the government, that is malarkey.

What was the third element?

[Michael Tee]

As a matter of fact, quite a few of the "benefits of capitalism" listed by CU4 were benefits of government.    The food I eat is government inspected so that crooked businessmen can't sell bad stuff, the home I live in is built to code, GOVERNMENT code, the internet we use to communicate over was developed by government, etc. etc. etc.

CU4 correctly attributes such things as the Japanese internment to government.  OK government isn't perfect either.  But suppose the internment had been given to private enterprise, Blackwater, for example.  How many Japanese-Canadian or Japanese-American internees  would have survived their internment, given those murderous thugs as their "guardians?"

[Christians4LessGvt]

As a matter of fact, quite a few of the "benefits of capitalism" listed by CU4 were benefits of government.    The food eat is government inspected so that crooked businessmen can't sell bad stuff, the home I live in is built to code, GOVERNMENT code,

we did ok for hundreds of years without those crooked bureaucrats inspecting food and homes.....where I intend on building a lake house I checked with the county and there are "no building codes". Yep Michael and all them houses look ok and mighty comfortable to me...they aint all burning down....they aint all falling down....the free market is working without Barney Fife gvt code inspectors.....the point being....just like the analogy with Kobe Bryant and the refs....we could live without home codes....in fact we do in some areas even in 2010....but we cant live without homes...again the point being one is much more important than the other....you try to equate the trash man with the brain surgeon....sure picking up trash is important...yes it would be quite messy if no one picked up our trash....but to equate a trash man with the importance of a brain surgeon seems rather far fetched like your attempt to equate a home builder with the gvt bureaucrat code inspector. one is producing...providing jobs....providing a product....the other watches...produces nothing....creates zero taxpayers....it's the ref and kobe.....not even close.....in fact no pun intended it's a.....SLAM DUNK!

[Michael Tee]

<<we did ok for hundreds of years without those crooked bureaucrats inspecting food and homes.....>>

Well, obviously you did not.  You probably never heard of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City or hundreds of other sweatshop, nightclub and hotel disasters which took the lives of hundreds of workers.  Developers cut corners, bribe inspectors and generally try to evade the law for the sake of saving a few lousy bucks (or truckloads of lousy bucks.)  You probably weren't aware of the fact that the World Trade Center Towers collapsed due to failure to follow codes which reguired the steel skeletons to be embedded in concrete rather than spray-on insulation. 

<<where I intend on building a lake house I checked with the county and there are "no building codes". >>

Oh for christ sake.  Why don't you go down to Florida after the next big storm and see how many of these DIY palaces survive the storm.  Never happened yet that dozens of homes weren't blown away. 

<<Yep Michael and all them houses look ok and mighty comfortable to me...they aint all burning down....they aint all falling down....>>

Some will, some won't.  The regulations are made to insure that most will survive fire and storm, sort of getting beyond the "some sink, some swim" philosophy of the unregulated industry.

<<the free market is working without Barney Fife gvt code inspectors.....>>

Yeah, it worked just dandy for the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.

<<the point being....just like the analogy with Kobe Bryant and the refs....we could live without home codes...>>

Some would survive, some would not.  Sorry, CU4, that is just not good enough.

<<.in fact we do in some areas even in 2010....but we cant live without homes...again the point being one is much more important than the other....you try to equate the trash man with the brain surgeon....sure picking up trash is important...yes it would be quite messy if no one picked up our trash....but to equate a trash man with the importance of a brain surgeon seems rather far fetched like your attempt to equate a home builder with the gvt bureaucrat code inspector. one is producing...providing jobs....providing a product....the other watches...produces nothing....creates zero taxpayers....it's the ref and kobe.....not even close.....in fact no pun intended it's a.....SLAM DUNK!>>

CU4, once I wade through all of that BS about who is producing and who is not, the end result is that some schlockmeister who wants to get rich quick building shit-houses is going to make a killing (no pun intended) in an unregulated market and because of his limited liability corporations is going to evade all responsibility to his victims when one of his masterpieces collapses or burns to the ground.  Something which just will not happen in a well-regulated market.

[Amianthus]

Developers cut corners, bribe inspectors and generally try to evade the law for the sake of saving a few lousy bucks (or truckloads of lousy bucks.)

I'm confused; are you arguing that regulation is needed or not? Because if there is no regulation, there is also no need to "bribe inspectors" or "evade the law" to save money.

[Amianthus]

Oh for christ sake.  Why don't you go down to Florida after the next big storm and see how many of these DIY palaces survive the storm.  Never happened yet that dozens of homes weren't blown away. 

You mean dozens of homes that passed inspections and meet the local zoning ordinances?

[Michael Tee]

<<I'm confused; are you arguing that regulation is needed or not? Because if there is no regulation, there is also no need to "bribe inspectors" or "evade the law" to save money.>>

Actually I was trying to anticipate and answer the argument that we still have building collapses even with government inspection and regulation.