As President-elect Trump, that titan of private industry, moves forward with the transition process, it's becoming easier to see which campaign promises he intends to keep.

(Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke for Homeland Security? Surely every immigrant—documented, undocumented, prospective—will be rounded up and thrown in a privatized work camp?) 

So Trump's weekend golf course meeting with Michelle Rhee, the education "reformer" who failed to reform Washington D.C.'s school system but successfully fucked over its teachers union, is not encouraging to those who support a decent education for all students. On the campaign trail, Trump endorsed the false promise of "school choice." I.e., cutting funding for public schools and redirecting it to private companies and religious groups without much oversight, as sponsored by ALEC. Should Rhee be appointed to an administration post, she'll likely influence him further to the right on the issue.

That being said, she does support right-wing bugbear Common Core.

As Diane Ravitch, a frequent Rhee foe and debater, writes in the New York Review of Books, "There is no evidence for the superiority of privatization in education. Privatization divides communities and diminishes commitment to that which we call the common good."

Perhaps the most egrigious privatization plan of President-elect Trump is that for the VA, which, despite freqent accusations that it's one of the most broken parts of the federal government, largely provides quality health care. 

Trump has proposed privatizing the department's entire medical care. And his pick to run the agency, a Congressman and former TV weather man, has ties to a Koch Brothers-funded group that… advocates for the privatization of veterans' health care.

As Rep. Mark Takano wrote in a Military Times op-ed, the government already allows for-profit education companies to target and exploit vets. 

As many have pointed out, Trump's $1 trillion dollar plan to privatize infrastructure development and financing would be a disaster. Private industry is loath to finance projects like sewage systems that won't make it more money down the line, Paul Krugman points out. He also calls the proposal a "scam."

The Washington Post notes that private developers rarely build outside major urban areas, which won't do much to change the lives for the millions of rural Americans who voted for Trump. Finally, the math really isn't there behind the proposal.