Quote of the Day

"Never mind what privatization does or doesn't do to state budgets; think instead of what it does for both the campaign coffers and the personal finances of politicians and their friends. As more and more government functions get privatized, states become pay-to-play paradises, in which both political contributions and contracts for friends and relatives become a quid pro quo for getting government business. ... [What The New York Times discovered about prison privatization in New Jersey is] almost surely a glimpse of a pervasive and growing reality, of a corrupt nexus of privatization and patronage that is undermining government across much of our nation."—Paul Krugman, in a must-read piece about centering prison privatization, and the resulting horrors, within the context of privatization generally, and the false associations with privatization and free market enterprise.