Republicans defunded the police we need (and might be glad to PRIVATIZE police departments)

[Mark Crispin Miller]

Let me preface this with my own take on the call to "defund the police"—a meme 

that certainly would not have taken off like this (the New York Times is covering it 

respectfully) if there were not a worse alternative to municipal police departments 

in the wings. 

It's one thing to demand less funding for police departments with disgraceful records, 

and more for education, transportation, healthcare and other public needs; but the

more extreme demand to close police departments down entirely isn't likely to bring

on an anarchist utopia, as Max Parry pointed out (on Facebook) the other day:

"Have any of the well-intentioned people advocating "defund the police" even bothered to do the slightest bit of research on the position they are taking? No, that would be too much to ask. It may have a nice ring to it but it has been a known free-market libertarian policy for years to "defund the police" which is inevitably a pretext to privatize law enforcement in the same way that Blackwater (now Academi) and other security contractors make up a quarter of the military personnel in the Middle East."

That possibility is not at all far-fetched, considering the radical "defunding" of the

sort of cops we need, as David Sirota points out here.

MCM

Republicans Defunded The Police We Need

Trump and the GOP pretend they love law enforcement -- but they eliminated the cops 

that protect us from the world’s most dangerous and powerful criminals.

David Sirota 23 min 4

https://sirota.substack.com/p/republicans-defunded-the-police-we

After a weekend of police violence and protests, Washington Republicans spent Monday pretending to have a fainting spell over the phrase “defund the police.”

“There won’t be defunding,” said a pearl clutching President Trump, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy similarly faked outrage over protesters pushing public officials to reevaluate the nation’s bloated $115 billion police budget.

Republican leaders would have us believe they love law enforcement and cops, but that is belied by an unmentioned fact: These are the same greedheads who have eagerly pushed to defund the police charged with protecting us from the world’s most dangerous and powerful criminals. 

Specifically, they have pushed to defund:

• The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which polices major industrial accidents.

• The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which polices corporations’ compliance with civil rights laws.

• The Consumer Products Safety Commission, which polices industries to make sure their products don’t harm or kill people. The agency now acknowledges that its “funding level has been insufficient to keep pace with the evolving consumer product marketplace.”

• The Internal Revenue Service, which polices the tax system and which is responsible for making sure the wealthy and large corporations pay the taxes they owe. Thanks to this successful effort to defund the police, the agency “conducted 675,000 fewer audits in 2017 than it did in 2010, a drop in the audit rate of 42 percent,” according to ProPublica. With 30,000 fewer tax cops on the beat, a recent Treasury Department report found that 800,000 high-income households have not paid more than $45 billion in owed taxes. 

• The Department of Labor, which polices employers and makes sure they aren’t stealing wages, breaking workplace safety rules, ignoring overtime laws, and/or violating workers’ union rights. Amid this particular GOP effort to defund the police, there are now fewer cops scrutinizing employers than ever before and workplace inspections have plummeted -- as workplace injuries, deaths and disasters have increased.

• The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which polices the accounting industry.

• The Securities and Exchange Commission’s reserve fund, which was established after the financial crisis to bolster the agency’s work policing Wall Street. The agency reports that the number of law enforcement staff “supporting our investigation and litigation efforts remained almost 9 percent lower” today than it was at the start of Trump’s term — and now white collar prosecutions have hit an historic low.

• The law enforcement agencies that police corporate mergers. This effort to defund the antitrust police has come as mergers have accelerated (and there has been some recent effort to reverse the defunding).

• The independent law enforcement agency that policed agribusiness monopolies.

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which polices the financial industry and works to protect consumers from fraud. 

Click on the link for the rest.