Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national resource center on privatization and responsible contracting, sends us this.

It seems there’s no public service or piece of property that private companies are not eyeing as potential revenue streams.  While funding anti-government think tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), companies like Corrections Corporation of America, Waste Management, Maximus, Intuit, Laidlaw, Northrup Grumman, Koch Companies, Macquarie Capital Advisers, Pinnacle West, and UnitedHealthcare are hoping to use government as their candy store.

In letters to President Obama, more than 500 small business owners serving the Avondale (La.) Shipyard community compared Northrop Grumman’s plans to shut down the Avondale  shipyard to “pirates in earlier era who scuttled ships to keep their foes from using them.” The giant shipyard is closing to maximize corporate profits, not because it is losing money.

Northrop Grumman is preparing to spin off its shipbuilding business next month, putting 4,000 skilled workers at the Avondale Shipyard in Louisiana out of work. The layoffs would devastate the Gulf region’s economy and the communities dependent on the shipbuilding industry.