Sleepers, Wake
Sleep, and capitalism.
Read more...Category Archives: Privatization
Milwaukee Riots Round-up of “Systemic Causes”
Milwaukee riots and disinvestment, segregated housing, and law enforcement for profit
Read more...Privatization: CCA’s No-Bid Family Immigrant Detention Contract Pays Off Whether They House Detainees or Not
A while back I wrote a long piece for Talking Points Memo about the privatization of the criminal justice system. And one thing I learned is that it’s a misnomer to call the two big shots of this industry, Corrections Corporation of America and Geo Group, “private prison companies.” Because prisons are not their most lucrative business line; in fact, they only hold around 8 percent of all U.S. prisoners. In recent years, these companies have diversified into a number of associated businesses, from transportation to electronic monitoring to community corrections.
But their biggest growth opportunity – and if you listen to their earnings statement calls they’ll tell you – comes from federal contracts for warehousing migrants. As much as 45 percent of CCA and Geo revenue comes from the federal government now. And while we don’t normally see the terms of these agreements, the Washington Post unearthed one that is breathtaking in how it slathers private operators in taxpayer dollars.
Read more...A New Low: The New York Times’ Children’s Bedtime Story of Private Equity
The New York Times wraps up a feeble yet costly series on private equity with a cringe-maknig slide show.
Read more...TSA as Example of Privatization Playbook: Make an Agency Perform Badly By Underfunding It….
A case study of how privatization vultures weaken public agencies so as to turn them into their prey.
Read more...Hoisted from E-Mail: “New York Times Article Promotes Price-Fixing in the Drug Market”
A well-argued reader rant on an article arguing that drug makers need higher prices to preserve their profits.
Read more...CalPERS Invests in Toll Road Even Though Those Deals Consistently Lose Money
CalPERS ventures into the looting of local populations via investing into a famous toll road-gone-bad deal that has been restructured.
Read more...After Distancing Herself From Bill Clinton’s Economic Policies, Hillary Wants Him as Mr. Economic Fix It
Like the Bourbons, the Clintons appear to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Read more...Democrat Hedge Fund Investors Underwrite Political Networks to Privatize K-12 Public Education
Who says Democrats and Wall Street don’t get along? Hedge funds promote a war on teachers’ unions to boost school privatizations.
Read more...How Bill Gates and His Billionaire Allies Used Their Wealth to Launch Charter Schools in Washington State
The Gates charter school push as a case study in the Trojan Horse of “charitable plutocracy”.
Read more...A Modest Proposal: Securitizing Loans for Large Health Care Expenses
Health care loans are the equivalent of mortgages for large health care expenses. What could go wrong?
Read more...Campbell Brown: The New Leader of the Propaganda Arm of School Privatization
How a former anchor is helping the billionaire-backed charter lobby misrepresent school privatization as “reform”.
Read more...Online Public Schools Are a Disaster, Admits Billionaire, Charter School-Promoter Walton Family Foundation
Online public schools now assume a surprisingly large role and do a terrible job, providing yet more proof that charter schools are about looting, not education.
Read more...Capitalism Versus The Social Commons
How the struggle over who controls the commons, the monied classes or a broader group of citizens, reveals the fundamental contradictions of capitalism.
Read more...5 of the Worst Examples of Biased and Distorted Media Coverage of Education in 2015
It’s not hard to see that the effort to loot, um, privatize education has an attack on teachers as a big part of its strategy…which undermines support for education.
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