ProgressOhio sues to block OH prison privatization

Corporate stooge Ohio Gov. John Kasich wants to privatize five Ohio prisons.
He won't if ProgressOhio gets its way.

Yesterday, ProgressOhio went to court and sued to prevent Kasich from selling taxpayer property to private prison companies. These prison companies will not only gouge the government, they will lobby for laws to put more nonviolent offenders in their cages.

Here's what Brian Rothenberg, executive director of ProgressOhio, had to say about the lawsuit:

...we believe strongly that this case preserves a safe environment for these communities that house dangerous felons and preserves good jobs in an Ohio economy wracked by income deflation. In effect this action protects both safety and economic security for Ohio communities whose residents would see profit over safety and layoffs and pay cuts that will devastate consumer spending.

Clearly these provisions both violate the single subject law of the Ohio Constitution, deprive Ohioans of the right to a citizen veto and violates the Constitutional prohibition of the state in using its full faith and credit to invest its assets in a private corporation.

Here are a few things you need to know about prison privatizaton, courtesy of Dissenting Leftist:

Wells Fargo owns 4 million shares in the Geo Group, the second largest private prison corporation in America, and 50,000 shares in the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison corporation in the country. These shares combined are valued at more than $120 million...

Companies such as the Geo Group and CCA do not earn their money by providing goods or services to customers. Rather, they make their money solely from the government, and solely for locking human beings in cages, mostly for non-violent offenses. Further, these companies actively lobby for unjust laws, largely using the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporatist conservative political group.

We've had plenty to say about the Koch-funded legislative roach motel known as ALEC in the past few weeks. It's a big reason why these Governors Gone Wild don't seem to have an original thought in their heads. They just do whatever ALEC tells them to do.

Here's a good summary of the kinds of laws ALEC pushes in order to fill the prisons and the pockets of the prison profiteers, thanks to Bob Sloan and Mike Elk at the Nation:

ALEC helped pioneer some of the toughest sentencing laws on the books today, like mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders, “three strikes” laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws. In 1995 alone, ALEC’s Truth in Sentencing Act was signed into law in twenty-five states. (Then State Rep. Scott Walker was an ALEC member when he sponsored Wisconsin's truth-in-sentencing laws and, according to PR Watch, used its statistics to make the case for the law.) ...

ALEC arranged secret meetings between Arizona’s state legislators and CCA to draft what became SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious immigration law, to keep CCA prisons flush with immigrant detainees.

You wonder how these people sleep at night.

WI Dem rep infiltrates ALEC in NOLA

You don't have to be an extremist Republican to join ALEC, the legislative roach motel that generates so many harmful laws. Most members are hard right-wingers. But a few Democrats do join. Wisconsin state Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat, did join to find out what it was all about. He's in New Orleans at the ALEC conference, reporting on what he sees.

This is just too much. Pocan writes,

I really thought it would take more than five minutes in New Orleans before I realized the conservative movement had landed.

But it didn’t.

As I was waiting for my bags, I heard a mid-thirties woman talking on the phone. “Yah, I’m down in New Orleans for the American Legislative Exchange Council meeting. We write legislation, and they pass our ideas. It’s the free market.”

natasha at the Fighting Chance community page on Daily Kos explained why ALEC got Arizona to pass its "Show Me Your Papers" law. It isn't pretty. Private prison companies (the ones that want Florida's business right now) are big supporters of ALEC, and they wanted more immigrants locked up so they'd have more business. Writes Natasha:

ALEC costs us public safety, education, health, energy modernization, access to the courts, transportation and good-paying jobs. ALEC costs the country its dignity, as we're transformed from a broadly prosperous, democratic society, into a place where tax dollars are siphoned off by a lawless aristocracy. ALEC costs too frakking much.

Read the whole thing here.

Power and money of ALEC exposed

The corporations behind ALEC spent at least $370 million influencing state elections over the past decade. They've gotten a good return for their money: public schools are starved, unions are busted, prisons are privatized and voting is suppressed. The corporations, of course, get big tax breaks.

The good folks at Common Cause revealed all that today in a report released in tandem with the newser in New Orleans during ALEC's annual meeting. (In case you haven't been following, ALEC -- the American Legislative Exchange Council -- is a secretive corporate-backed lobbying group that writes model legislation for state lawmakers. We call it a legislative roach motel.)

Pro Publica has also jumped on the Expose ALEC bandwagon. They've printed a handy guide to the amounts ALEC corporations dumped into each state lawmaker's campaign here.
Common Cause notes that two of ALEC's biggest successes in 2011 were in Wisconsin and Ohio,

...where newly-elected Republican governors and legislators attacked budget shortfalls with legislation that sharply restricts the bargaining power of public worker unions. The bills were passed just a few months after companies in ALEC’s leadership put more than $304,000 into the campaigns of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Wisconsin state legislators, and spent more than $563,000 on Ohio Gov. John Kasich and lawmakers in the Buckeye State. Both Walker and Kasich are ALEC alumni.

Nicole Schulte from Wisconsin spoke at the news conference. She's a Wisconsin mom who took her 19-year-old son to the DMV to get his free voter ID. You'll recall the video where her son showed the clerk his bank book as proof of residence. The clerk said he didn't have enough bank activity to get an ID. (They found some activity and he got his card.)

ALEC got such a dandy voter-suppression law in Wisconsin that people have to ask for a free voter ID, Schulte said. If they don't think to ask, they have to pay $28. For some people, that would be enough to discourage them from getting the ID (and voting) -- or if they do pay it, it's a poll tax.

Heckuva job, ALEC.

Florida prison privatization ALREADY open for bids

Florida just can't privatize its prisons fast enough.

This week the state formally sought plans from private companies to run prisons in an 18-county region in South Florida. Bidders must produce documentation and visit all 30 prisons planned for privatization by August 16. Skelator Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature have set January 1, 2012, as the deadline for privatization to go into effect.

The state will only hire one company to run all of the prisons. Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Edwin Buss said about hiring one vendor:

You’ll get a better price. More volume, better price. This is going to be some of the most competitive bidding the country has ever seen for private prisons.

Potential bidders include corporate prison giants Corrections Corporations of America (CCA), based in Nashville, and Geo Group, based locally in Boca Raton. Both companies already operate prisons in Florida and both are members of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC is a corporate front group that not only promotes privatization, but also policies that give prison companies more business (i.e., locking up more prisoners).

The private vendor that wins the bidding process must offer programs designed to successfully reduce recidivism. Recidivism is good for business, you say? Better yet, locking up immigrants for corporate profit, as CCA discovered with ALEC's help.

Both potential bidders have –surprise—close ties to the governor and legislature, having given millions in political contributions. GEO Group was recently found to have exceeded state contribution limits.

A body of 14 state legislators will ultimately award the final bidder.

It’s all too close for comfort.

Trouble at FL private prison

Here's a disturbing story from South Florida:

State corrections investigators couldn't get into a prison one night when they tried to conduct a drug sweep. Worse, there was no independent oversight of the private company that runs the prison. So it's unclear what actually happened that night.

The Palm Beach Post describes the incident at South Bay Correctional Institution.

No guard was stationed at the front gate, according to state Department of Corrections reports obtained by The Palm Beach Post. No one answered an alert button that the inspection team pressed twice. And no one responded after the team shined a flashlight at a security camera to try to get the attention of guards who were supposed to be in the privately run prison's control room.

After 20 minutes of waiting and a phone call to their supervisor, the drug interdiction team left without trying to call anyone in the prison, operated by Boca Raton-based GEO Group Inc.

And:

...the corrections department did not officially investigate because it does not oversee the state's six private prisons.

That's handled by the state Department of Management Services, which relied on GEO to investigate its own staff...

Isn't that delightful? And now Florida wants to privatize more prisons, something the Teamsters have been fighting.

No doubt the state's lawmakers have been influenced by the corporate front group ALEC, of which GEO Group is a member. ALEC doesn't just promote prison privatization, it promotes policies to give prison companies more business -- in other words, locking up more prisoners.

(If you haven't been following ALEC, John Nichols at The Nation describes ALEC, the corporate front group that is

...a critical arm of the right-wing network of policy shops that ... has evolved to shape American politics ... ALEC’s model legislation reflects long-term goals: downsizing government, removing regulations on corporations and making it harder to hold the economically and politically powerful to account. Corporate donors retain veto power over the language, which is developed by the secretive task forces.)

And here's a shock: GEO Group violated campaign finance law. Reports the Florida Independent,

The GEO Group Inc., a South Florida-based private prison firm, has scrapped its state-level political action committee after an audit by the Florida Department of State found it was taking in contributions that exceeded state limits.

ALEC on the attack in AZ

ALEC strikes again. The American Legislative Exchange Council has reached its tentacles deep into the pockets of Arizona’s taxpayers. State politicians are taking part in this insidious power grab. A commission set up by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is recommending ways over the long term to stuff corporate pockets and screw workers deliver government services at a lower cost.

The panel has recommended making changes to state employee pensions, making it easier to fire public employees, changing how the state funds schools, privatizing the lottery and privatizing prisons.

State Gaming Director Mark Brnovich was chosen by Brewer to head the panel, which consists of state agency directors, elected officials and business interests. Mark Brnovich comes from the ALEC-connected Goldwater Institute. He is also a former senior director of state customer relations for Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a prison company that is seeking to benefit from privatization legislation across the country, including the state of Florida, where in May, Skelator Gov. Rick Scott and the state legislature signed off on privatizing prisons in 18 counties.

ALEC member, CCA, is also behind drafting Arizona’s illegal immigration bill, a potential windfall for private prison companies.

The Arizona commission also includes as its member Leonard Gilroy, an activist for the Koch brothers-funded Reason Foundation.

It doesn’t get more incestuous than this. Or more anti-middle class.

Arizona’s East Valley Tribune reports one of the commission’s recommendations is to eliminate protections for about 80 percent of the 33,000 state workers, which includes hiring, probationary periods, discipline and firing. "Pension reform" would scrap the defined benefit system in lieu of a defined contribution plan.

This week, four anti-worker bills became law in Arizona, as The Arizona Republic reports:

• House Bill 2644 and Senate Bill 1403, which stop union contracts if the federal government requires them on construction or public-works projects.
• Senate Bill 1363, which includes new regulations on picketing and protesting private property and makes it illegal to make false allegations against an employer.
• Senate Bill 1365, which prohibits deductions from employee paychecks for political purposes unless employees provide annual authorization.

In the past few years, commissions on “efficient government” have been introduced in Virginia, Maryland, Arizona, Kansas Oregon, Illinois and South Carolina.

Brace yourselves, boys and girls. We're going to see a lot more of this.