Shahin Shabanian
Illustration from Columbia Economics Review
Privitazation
A disease has stricken the land
Privatization is drawn in the sand.
For air and water, nature is not enough
Corporations created them!, so pay them off.
Father, you charge your kids for the lunch;
Mother, for your milk, the infants must pay a bunch.
The seeds are privatized, farmers can’t grow
Unless they pay the Agri.[1], a lot of dough.
Food that we eat is “modified” with genetics,
But corporate ads say, it is full of kinetics;
When we get cancer, it is our family trace,
GMO food is good nevertheless!
Going for picnic on Fourth of July:
Your public park is no more,
Pay the piper, or say good-bye.
Public education is the world’s mistake!
Free Market is drawing its remake:
Education should serve for the Business sake,
The Private sector will correct the old fake.
For a health care our nation asked, which was fair
And that was the Universal health care.
But the Legislators placed the public in despair,
While corporations celebrating their profit share,
And the Government posed with victorious glare,
Alas, the “Single Payer” evaporated in the thin air,
And the public shall have a heavy burden to bear.
For the public library, there is no need
The public must pay, or not to read;
Blessing of the Privatization would cleanse the “bad” books,
While corporations with their tentacle hooks,
Promote Montag [2] like characters to ban some books
And, perhaps, burn “harmful” books.
And the spirit of my dear departed librarian chum,
Would haunt me with anger, if I am to stay mum.
Road that we ride on to work, or to visit the kin
Now, are auctioned off, to pay for politicians’ campaign.
Public transportation pollutes less and is a social mode,
But that is seditious and capital will loathe.
After forty years of inequity in tax and wage
Privatizing pension, too, has done its damage;
Many dreams of retirements were lost in the Market speculations,
Casino Capitalism is always subject to manipulations.
Social Security served our nation well
While opposing it from inception, they tried to send it to hell.
Now, the Market sees it as a “prime meat,”
And jackals howl around it; wanting to eat.
But a CEO[3] is a “job creator” and his life is tough,
For his talent, millions of dollar doesn’t pay off.
His money is off-shored and he won’t pay tax,
While rascals in government are serving him max.
And a distorted “efficiency” myth,
Dug out of the Privatization pit,
Decries Public values and human needs are unfit.
While Robber Barons of the time, promulgating as a writ:
Greed for money and lust for power be the universal wit.
Our sense of reality is blurred by the Privatization fog
While the Market is selling us the dictum, “dog eats dog.”
If we embrace this perversity as the panacea drug,
We have reduced human beings to profit making cogs,
And when we are destitute and despondent, they’ll give us pious shrug.
Ultimately, our human bonds collapse like a house built of rotten logs.
Privatization is the “bosses’ prize,”
Life gets better when we stop this demise.
Our financial security has taken a nose dive,
And for our economy and human dignity to revive,
We must change the game, or we won’t survive.
1. Agricultural corporations
2. Montag is the protagonist in Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451. The novel depicts an advanced western society controlled by a dictatorial government. Montag is with a special Fire unit responsible for burning all sorts of books since books have been found to be harmful and causing “anti-social” behavior in the population.
3. Chief Executive Officer