You Are On Your Own By: Mark W Adams

When I speak of "Orwellian" nowadays, it's usually referring to George Orwell's classic, 1984, and the manipulation of language and reality as practiced by the Bush administration. But his novella, Animal Farm, is just as relevant today, especially when reading Naomi Klein's latest essay on the California Wildfires -- Rapture Rescue 911, disaster Response for the Chosen.

Just look at what is happening in Southern California. Even as wildfires devoured whole swaths of the region, some homes in the heart of the inferno were left intact, as if saved by a higher power. But it wasn't the hand of God; in several cases it was the handiwork of Firebreak Spray Systems. Firebreak is a special service offered to customers of insurance giant American International Group (AIG) - but only if they happen to live in the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country. Members of the company's Private Client Group pay an average of $19,000 to have their homes sprayed with fire retardant. During the wildfires, the "mobile units" - racing around in red firetrucks - even extinguished fires for their clients.

That paragraph alone brought to my mind the phrase, "Some animals are more equal than others." However, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Not to bend your mind too far astray, but very often the argument for universal health care includes the idea that safety services, police and fire, are not something you outsource to the lowest bidder -- or most connected non-bidder. but in reality, that's exactly what we do, at least those pigs with the means and inclination. For those able to fork out what many in this country consider a half-year, or year's salary, you can purchase your own fire department.

*** And your home alone. "There were a few instances," one of the private firefighters told Bloomberg News, "where we were spraying and the neighbor's house went up like a candle." With public fire departments cut to the bone, gone are the days of Rapid Response, when everyone was entitled to equal protection. Now, increasingly intense natural disasters will be met with the new model: Rapture Response.

We've grown accustomed to the wealthy supplementing the police mission, to protect and serve, with a phalanx of private security, body guards and such. The increased use of literally armies of private security contractors used to supplement the U.S. Armed Services is disturbing on so many levels -- but cutting out fire protection and relying instead on paid contractors as first responders for me, but not for thee, is not a development I imagined.

And what about that medical system that resembles more the law of the jungle than the product of an enlightened civilization? Jealous of their perrogatives, the private health care industry has been battling, sucessfully, against competition from any form of publicly sponsored system.

Even the idea, promoted by John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, of putting in place a public system that could compete on an equal footing with the established private insurance and provider corporations, is being met with wild accusations that they want to transform an entire private industry with some Marxist nightmare. Pure demogoguery which will soon be followed by a well funded disinformation campaign.

Where government services are already established, the weakening of government by the Grover Norquists of the world open up an incompetence gap to be filled by profiteers. Where government has been excluded, like health care, suddenly competition isn't such a great idea to those who've been exploiting the system for generations.

So what happens when the National Guard comes back from Iraq, and what happens when some bright politician in Sacramento or Baton Rouge or Albany proposes an increase in first responder funding -- and (gasp) wants to tickle the marginal rate of some tax or another to pay for more men and equipment to fight the next round of wildfires, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.?

Tax Increase!?! You're kidding, right? The pitchforks and torches will come out, sending this idea running back to the hills.

If AIG' s Firebreak System didn't send off alarm bells for you, it might be interesting to know that AIG is bigger than Exxon. Naturally it's CEO is a Bush Ranger, and it spends over Nine Million Dollars a year in lobbying.

Oh, and it's the company that bought the operations at US ports from Dubai. Disaster capitalism is a pretty good gig it seems.

The folks who run these outfits, like HelpJet and mercenary firm Triple Canopy's, Sovereign Deed are offering premium services to those who can afford it, and see this merely as filling a gap that government failures have opened. I see it as a bit more of a product of conservative ideology's basic distain for all government services, a feature, not a bug of the push towards privatization.

Like so many private disaster companies, Sovereign Deed is selling escape from climate change and the failed state - by touting the security clearance and connections its executives amassed while working for that same state. So Mills, speaking recently in Pellston, explained, "The reality of FEMA is that it has no infrastructure, and a lot of our National Guard is elsewhere." Sovereign Deed, on the other hand, claims to have "direct access and special arrangements with several national and international information centers. These proprietary arrangements allow our Emergency Operations Center to...give our Members that critical head start in times of crisis." In this secular version of the Rapture, God's hand is unnecessary. Not when you have retired ex-CIA agents and ex-Special Forces lifting the chosen to safety - no need to pray, just pay. And who needs a celestial New Jerusalem when you can have Pellston, with its flexible local politicians and its surprisingly modern regional airport?

It's a boon for those that can afford such things, thanks to Bush's tax policy. Instead of funding an infrastructure of protective services that benefit all, if you can afford a $50,000 down-payment and a $15,000 annual fee, you can purchase better police/fire/ambulance rescue services than the government could ever hope to provide -- leaving the rest of us to wade through flood waters, run from burning neighborhoods, or sit helpless as helicopters wisk the elite from an area targeted by terrorists.

I don't know about you, but I don't consider this as representative of the best kind of society we tried to build for the last couple of centuries. Will it come to a choice between local governments fully funding their own police and fire departments versus hiring private firms that make a profit off widespread death and destruction?

This is eugenics, social darwinism gone unchecked.