Silly me. I thought the idea of privatization, as central to right-wing philosophy as tax cuts and teaching creation in public schools, was that the private sector was more efficient at running things than the government. I guess I'd even have believed that Rs would welcome auditing of their contracts in order, you know, to prove their assertion. Fact followers as they are...
The escape and murders that followed raised some serious questions about private prison safety standards and whether new policies should be put in place to prevent prison breaks from happening again.
Two years later, Arizona lawmakers have decided to go in a different direction.
Buried in the $8.6 billion budget proposal passed at the state Capitol this week is a plan to "eliminate the requirement for a quality and cost review of private prison contracts."
It means there would no longer be an annual review of how private prisons operate.
House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, voted against the new provision.
"It's insanity, that's the only way to describe this, removing the ability for the state to do a cost and quality analysis of the private prison contracts that are being funded by taxpayer dollars makes absolutely no sense whatever," said Campbell.
Arizona, it seems to me, is the living laboratory of today's Republicanism. Can anyone doubt, if Rs got control of all branches of the US government, that their zeal for oversight would disappear like torture tapes? Privatization = handouts to donors = continuing power = closed case. Unlike budgetary numbers, there's some math teabaggRs can accept, for sure.
From the same state that in 2011 adopted a gun as the state's symbol(the Colt Single Action Army).
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