Slave Labor, Prison Privatization, Prison Industry - ALEC Conservatives push this agenda nationwide!

Privatize, privatize, privatization of anything owned or controlled by the public or taxpayers is again being applied by Conservatives from coast to coast.  Sadly through the manipulations of ALEC and their thousands of legislative and corporate members, this agenda that began way back in the 80's is once again being used to usurp more public assets.  These assets include publicly built prisons, work-release centers, medical care facilities, schools and a myriad assortment of other buildings, programs and initiatives that now exists due to public funding.


ALEC claims that corporations can run and operate these necessary programs and prisons more efficiently than public employees.  They claim this will reduce government staffing and thus government payrolls and somehow make us all safer (corrections), smarter (school voucher programs), our kids better trained to enter the workplace (repeal of child labor laws) and help reduce municipal, city, state and county costs (using inmates in place of public employees).


Like any other pyramid scheme turned lose on society, this one is well funded by the likes of Koch Industries and their owners, Charles and David Koch, AT&T and other communications and telecom companies, PhaRma and related pharmaceutical manufacturers.  It is well advertised to the public through Republican and Conservative PAC's such as Heritage Foundation, Reason Foundation, Americans for Prosperity Foundation,  and includes the professional opinions of researchers and scholars provided by such as the CATO Institute, Manhattan Institute,Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy and the Tax Foundation.
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Privatization Threatens Open Government

Saturday, 24 March 2012 12:01  
By Donald Cohen, 
In the Public Interest | 
News Analysis 

On July 4, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) into law, establishing the public's right to access to government information.   Surprisingly, Republican Congressman Donald Rumsfeld helped deliver Republican votes to pass the groundbreaking law.

Since then, state governments followed suit and began passing open government laws across the country to ensure the public would have "sunshine" and access to information about the way public services and tax dollars are managed.

But the laws are out of date and need an overhaul. The explosion in the use of government contractors at every level of government -- from local trash services to security contractors in Iraq - has exposed weaknesses in sunshine and open record laws.

In some cases, conservative governors are even trying to weaken existing transparency requirements to make it easier to privatize.  Florida Governor Rick Scott's failed proposal to privatize prisons in eighteen counties included a provision to eliminate the requirement for a cost-benefit analysis before moving ahead with the deal.   Coincidentally, Florida-based GEO Corporation, one of the largest private prison companies, is a major contributor to GOP campaigns in the state.

Under existing law private contractors in states throughout the country are evading oversight by exploiting loopholes in transparency protections.  Most existing state laws don't pierce the corporate veil and now policy makers, journalists and advocates no longer have access to basic financial, performance and workforce information that is essential to government accountability.

For example:    READ MORE