The reason we don't privatize

It has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with profit.

Private prisons demand states maintain maximum capacity or pay fees

Falling crime rates are bad for business at privately run prisons, and a new report shows the companies that own them require them to be filled near capacity to maintain their profit margin. 

 A new report from the advocacy group In the Public Interest shows private prison companies mandate high inmate occupancy rates through their contracts with states – in some cases, up to 100 percent.

The report, “Criminal: How Lockup Quotas and ‘Low-Crime Taxes’ Guarantee Profits for Private Prison Corporations,” finds three Arizona prisons must be filled to capacity under terms of its contract with Management and Training Corporation. 

If those beds aren’t filled, the state must compensate the company. 

The report found that occupancy requirements were standard language in contracts drawn up by big private prison companies. 

One of those, The Corrections Corporation of America, made an offer last year to the governors of 48 states to operate their prisons on 20-year contracts. 

That offer included a demand that those prisons remain 90 percent full for the duration of the operating agreement.

Bryan of Why Now? gets to the very essence of our capitalistic system.

“People don’t seem to understand that corporations are required by law to prioritize profits over everything, and can be sued by their shareholders if they don’t. Corporations are required to be evil, which is why they need to be heavily regulated for their government bestowed gift of limited liability and existence. Corporations are creations of government, not the market.”

Exactly. Greed may be 'good', but human nature being what it is, regulations are better.

I still need to be reminded...

Just why we have for-profit health insurance companies involved in our health care.

Top five health insurers posted 56 percent profit gains in 2009.

Update 2/16:

Fox News Scolds WellPoint Rate Hike, Not For Hurting Consumers, But For Energizing Health Reform Advocates.

*Gasp* Now people will REALLY want health care reform!!1!1

The water profiteers grab for California water

State bond lets firms profit from water:

Private companies could own, operate and profit from reservoirs and other water-storage projects built with billions in taxpayer dollars under a little-noticed provision of the $11.1 billion water bond that was approved by the Legislature and goes before California voters next year.

Lawmakers barely discussed the provision while considering the bond, and water experts who were asked about it by The Chronicle said they knew little about it or why it was a necessary part of the plan to overhaul the state's water system.

The bond bill's author, state Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, and other backers of the proposal said the provision provides the state with flexibility for how water storage projects can be financed.

Critics, however, said it opens the door to the privatization of the state's most precious resource as California's population grows and water becomes more scarce. California historically has retained control of publicly financed water projects. Privatization could allow companies to profit by selling back to the public a resource that is essentially the lifeblood of the state economy, or using it for their own profit-making interests like agriculture.

What's wrong with this picture?

Compare and contrast:

HOUSTON – Exxon Mobil Corp. on Friday reported a profit of $45.2 billion for 2008, breaking its own record for a U.S. company, even as its fourth-quarter earnings fell 33 percent from a year ago.

To this:

At least 1.3 million homes and businesses were without power across a wide swath of the country. Utility companies struggled through ice-encrusted debris into Friday morning as they worked to restore power, but warned it may not return until Saturday at the earliest. It could take until mid-February for some to come back online.

At least we have our priorities straight...

Get insurance out of health care

Bill Moyers:

RICK KARR:Rose Ann DeMoro is executive director of the CNA. Under her leadership, the union launched an ad campaign that's designed to shock: It claims that if Cheney were just a regular American, he'd probably be dead by now. The ad has run in newspapers across the country and on the internet and it calls for radical change in the country's healthcare system so that everyone can have access to the kind of care that saved the Vice President's life.

ROSE ANN DEMORO:What the nurses are saying is, there shouldn't be a double standard. There should be an excellence in care that applies to all people. We, as the public, pay for Dick Cheney's care. Why not-- why is the government not providing the same type of care to all Americans?

RICK KARR:The Vice President isn't the only government employee who gets what the nurses call "Cadillac healthcare." It's all government employees — members of Congress, workers at the Justice Department, and Interior, and the EPA — a total of more that two million people on the federal payroll. Like Vice President Cheney, they get to choose from a wide selection of health plans — and you, the taxpayers, pay about seventy percent of their monthly premiums. Everyone within a plan — no matter how sick they are — is charged the same rate. There's no waiting period before coverage kicks in. And perhaps most importantly, no one can be denied coverage because of a pre-existing medical condition. Rose Ann DeMoro says compare that to the approximately forty-seven million Americans — that's one in six of us — who are uninsured or the ninety million with insurance who say they've had trouble getting the healthcare that they need.

RICK KARR:The California Nurses Association is one of the few union success stories these days. It's been growing: It now represents some eighty thousand members in all fifty states, not just California. Like other unions, it fights for better wages and benefits and working conditions. But its members don't think the union's mission stops there: They believe it's their duty to fight for better health care for all Americans, which means that along the way, they've picked fights with some huge corporations, and powerful politicians, like they did with their ad about Vice President Cheney.

[snip]

It can't be said anymore clearly than this: (my bold)

GERI JENKINS:I think when you interject into the middle of the delivery of healthcare an entity whose sole purpose is to make a profit, it totally skews the whole intent of what insurance is supposed to be, or what care is supposed to be.