{"id":977,"date":"2012-03-26T08:21:13","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T12:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/alec-trayvon-martin-ccas-private-prisons-and-charter-schools.html"},"modified":"2012-03-26T08:21:13","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T12:21:13","slug":"alec-trayvon-martin-ccas-private-prisons-and-charter-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/alec-trayvon-martin-ccas-private-prisons-and-charter-schools.html","title":{"rendered":"ALEC, Trayvon Martin, CCA’s private prisons, and charter schools?"},"content":{"rendered":"What’s the connection between\n\nthe Florida law that’s letting\nthe killer of Trayvon Martin hide<\/a>, the\n\nprivate prisons CCA<\/a>\nruns in Georgia and other states, and HB 797, the Georgia charter schools\nbill \nthat’s on the floor today<\/a> for Senate debate today?\n\nALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.<\/a>\n

\nPaul Krugman wrote yesterday for the NYTimes,\n\nLobbyists, Guns and Money<\/a>,\n

\nALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization\n\n<\/a>\n— that is, on turning the provision of public services, from\nschools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the\nmost prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online\neducation company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections\nCorporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved\nwith the organization.\n

\nWhat this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for\nlimited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large\nextent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized\ngovernment, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer\ndollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In\nshort, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is\nabout expanding crony capitalism.\n

\nAnd in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC\npromotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories,\nwhat we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools,\nfor example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the\nway of educational achievement.\n<\/blockquote>\nSame as private prisons.\nThe only real benefit goes to\n\nprivate prison company executives and shareholders.<\/a>\n

\nThink about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony\ncapitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal\njustice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to\nprotect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap\nfrom a larger prison population.\n<\/blockquote>\nMartin Luther King Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail in 1963:\n
\nInjustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd today we have an organized threat to justice everywhere.\nThat threat is called ALEC.\n

\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What’s the connection between the Florida law that’s letting the killer of Trayvon Martin hide, the private prisons CCA runs in Georgia and other states, and HB 797, the Georgia charter schools bill that’s on the floor today for Senate debate today? ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. Paul Krugman wrote yesterday for the NYTimes, […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,140,1113,14,15,70,203,8,2,19,72,20,1867,21,22,3],"tags":[8744,8817,1371,2584,8705,8751,8701,8730,2696,2695,2838,8845,2826,2839,75,1188,2535,2551],"class_list":["post-977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-alec","category-cca","category-economy","category-education","category-ethics","category-florida","category-georgia","category-government","category-history","category-incarceration","category-law","category-mlk","category-planning","category-politics","category-transparency","tag-alec","tag-cca","tag-charter-schools","tag-crony-capitalism","tag-education","tag-florida","tag-georgia","tag-incarceration","tag-injustice","tag-justice","tag-martin-luther-king-jr","tag-mlk","tag-murder","tag-paul-krugman","tag-prison","tag-privatization","tag-taxpayer","tag-trayvon-martin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-fL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}