Buzzflash: Next Will Walker Sell Bank of America Naming Rights to High Schools? Hire Wackenhut Security as Hall Monitors?

March 12, 2011- The corporate overthrow of democracy is becoming so brazen that the Tea Party governor of Michigan is trying to get a bill passed that would give him the right to declare towns insolvent and turn them over to businesses to run, granting the corporate overseers the power to "fire" elected officials.

In Pennsylvania, the Republican governor is giving an anti-regulation energy company executive "supreme" authority over environmental regulations in the state. In Wisconsin, Scott Walker wants to sell off state public utilities to companies like Koch Industries.

The Guardian UK has just run an article headlined: "Scott Walker's real agenda in Wisconsin: The Republican governor's budget plan would open the state up to a corporate asset-grab not seen since robber baron capitalism."

This got BuzzFlash thinking: what would happen to high schools if the Republicans continue to get their way in legalizing corporate government and the privatization of public assets?

First of all, we would see naming rights sold for high schools as we have seen for stadiums. So the Bronx High School of Science would be renamed the Bank of America High School of Science, with, no doubt, a bank branch open next to the cafeteria.

And speaking of the cafeteria, why pay those public kitchen workers when McDonald's can take over and make the whole school obese?

Of course, students at Bank of America High (the naming rights can be "franchised" for high schools around the US, such as Bank of America High School/Oshkosh) can work off those fries and high-caloric foods at the physical education classes, run under contract by Bally's. If students can't afford the "initiation" fee, they can sit out the classes in a detention hall run by the Wackenhut Services security company.

Naturally, the currently free parking at many high schools will come with a price in the future, as a parking lot company buys rights to charge for spaces. The teachers won't be unionized. In fact, most classes will be via computer and administered by a corporate standardized testing firm. Who needs teachers to train kids how to take a test?

And let's not forget hygiene: a private sanitation firm will take over upkeep of the washrooms, and that will necessitate - you guessed it - pay toilets.

What's frightening about this is not that it is silly; what's scary is that it is all too possible, given the corporate coup that has been simmering for years and is now being fully actualized in the US.

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