Privates Exposed

The Colbert Report Feb 21, 2013

The GEO Group naming of a public-university stadium is a true story that exceeds the kinkiest fantasies of Grover Norquist's twin fetishes of low taxes and privatization.

A public university is underfunded, so it turns to a private company for funds. It allows it to put the private company's name on a public building in return for providing funds that should have come from tax revenues in the first place. And where does the private company get all this money? From tax revenues that now add a layer of private profit to the public expenditure that would normally go to fund prisons directly.

The myth of privatization is that it creates efficiencies. The opposite is true, of course, since both services and profits must be funded, with money once used only for the services. In this case, so much profit was taken that it flowed into an increasingly common form of corruption -- the private naming of public properties.

I am usually pleased to see references to geography,
but in this case it is creepy.

Lagniappe

July 23, 2015: The GEO group is in the news again. Alexandra Starr reports on Morning Edition that GEO Group is the largest employer of undocumented workers in the United States. It pays them to operate the prisons in which they are held, maximizing the profits it makes from their detention..