Ricketts Hates State Workers

Have you ever wondered why someone who hates “big government” decides they would like to run it? They have absolutely no incentive to make government work for the average person, and in fact, they purposely defund and create red tape in order to create inefficiencies and burdens so that they can prove to their constituents it doesn’t work. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy they are happy to fulfill. They don’t do this just to torture people, although they really love that part of it. Their main motive is to dismantle social programs so they can raid government coffers to line their own pockets. Thus, “big government” hating Republicans have no incentive to govern well, and they are completely inept at governing efficiently at all, especially during times of crisis. This explains what we call the COVID19 shitshow at the federal level and in red states like Nebraska.

Billionaires like Ricketts call their systematic dismantling of public institutions “privatization.” They have never met a public institution that they didn’t want to ravage in order to sell to the lowest bidder, who in turn skims a profit off the top of our taxpayer dollars, all in order to provide the cheapest services, and to punish and humiliate the most vulnerable people in society. Here are just a few examples:

• Child welfare privatization was a huge failure and the fallout continues to this day. (See abused kids who sleep in waiting rooms because the lowest bidder will always provide the shittiest services.)
• Public schools (See past Seeing Red blogs here, here, and here.)
• Prison privatization was and is the sole reason Frakes was hired by Ricketts. (See here.)
• Public health / COVID19 testing privatization: Instead of investing $27 million in the State of Nebraska’s Department of Public Health and our local health care facilities, Ricketts thought some startup techbros from Utah with no healthcare experience deserve Nebraska taxpayer dollars.

And finally, today’s example: Ricketts’s 1.7-million-dollar giveaway to Nelnet to process unemployment claims. The numbers in the U.S. and in Nebraska have reached historic levels not seen since the Great Depression, and this means that we needed to increase the capacity for filing unemployment claims at the Nebraska Department of Labor (DOL) fast. For context, In the last six weeks, the number of Nebraskans filing for employment has topped 100,000.

Enter inept Peter Ricketts who simply cannot pass up an opportunity to shit on state agencies and state workers to enrich his billionaire family and friends.

Read more: http://seeingrednebraska.com/fuckpetericketts/ricketts-hates-state-workers/