Gotta Pick A Pocket Or Two

Ayn Rand In Hollywood

The Bush II regime was the place of propaganda urging for all things to go private. Thus, "privatize!" was their mantra, yet incompetence was their trademark in everything, except perhaps propaganda.

Dick "Chain Lover" Cheney is heavily invested in private prisons in Texas because he thinks private, for profit, prisons are the answer.

He misses many realities, in this case he is missing the reality that some things must be utilities instead of being for-profit enterprises.

The privatization movement is not working so well, because like health care and social security for profit, there is an inherent conflict of interest.

The reality of this came to the forefront during recent riots in some Texas private for-profit prisons:

Leaders of the rebellion were demanding a meeting with the Mexican Consulate, the FBI and the warden to discuss a number of grievances that they said GEO Group, the prison company that manages the 3,700-bed facility, had refused to address.

The evening of the uprising, the inmates sent a delegation of seven men—a Venezuelan, a Cuban, a Nigerian, and four Mexicans—to meet with the authorities.

They explained that the uprising had erupted from widespread dissatisfaction with almost every aspect of the prison: inedible food, a dearth of legal resources, the use of solitary confinement to punish people who complained about their medical treatment, overcrowding and, above all, poor health care.

The delegates pointed to a string of deaths (according to public records, five men died in Reeves between August 2008 and March 2009, including two suicides) they attributed to the prison’s inattention to medical needs. The riot had been sparked by the death of Jesus Manuel Galindo, an epileptic, who had been carried out of the prison’s Special Housing Unit in a body bag that same day. “Suspect(s) are talking about the guy being out of the shoe [SHU],” the Odessa Police Department report said. “Someone should have been there with him. Special housing was not the place for [him].”

...

Twenty-four hours after it began, the uprising was over. More than $1 million worth of damage had been done to the prison. Less than two months later, on Jan. 31, the prison would be under inmate control again—and this time the rioting would last for five days and end with one building destroyed and some $20 million in damage.

(Texas Observer). It is easy for bean counters or greedy stock holders to drift into wanting more for them, less for their prisoners.

How difficult is it to grasp that more profit is made by denying medicine, good food, and decent housing? How difficult is it to grasp that, like health care for profit, this is not the realm for profit motive to play a part?

It is easy for investors, like bailed out banksters, to become cruel under those circumstances, especially when those making the demands do not see or feel the results that their greed and lust is having on millions of other people.