Posts Tagged ‘corruption’
“Follow the money”*…
The Trump administration’s immigration policy has been a bonanza for the private prison sector– as Vanessa Romo reports, for two companies with ties to the administration in particular…
America’s two largest private prison companies, CoreCivic and GEO Group, are reporting a combined $1.4 billion in quarterly revenue over the spring as immigration detention closes in on record levels.
Those revenues announced Thursday do not include net proceeds of $1.6 billion made by CoreCivic after the recent sale of four of their facilities to the Department of Homeland Security. Patrick Swindle [!], CoreCivic’s President and CEO, told investors on an earnings call that that works out to an average rate of $307,000 per bed.
The earnings — from April through June of this year — come as the U.S. is holding almost 66,000 people in immigration detention, nearing record levels not seen since January, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research center. Both companies say they’re also finding other revenue opportunities, like ankle monitors for Haitian immigrants who recently lost their protected immigration status.
Swindle said that CoreCivic’s total revenue went up by just over 27% this spring compared to the same quarter last year, for a total of $684.9 million. CoreCivic exceeded expectations in a period that included the government shutdown, Swindle said. This was accomplished in part by lowering operating costs — meaning the business of detaining people is becoming cheaper — and because of more people being put in detention.
CoreCivic’s sales of detention centers to the government won’t be reflected until next quarter — but they are part of a larger strategy to meet President Trump’s goal of having 100,000 people in detention at once. CoreCivic made a deal to continue operating the detention centers and also hopes to build more. Meanwhile, GEO Group says they’re also in talks to do the same.
GEO Group CEO George Zoley said in his company’s earnings call also on Thursday that thanks to 2025 contracts, total revenues are up to $732.1 million — an increase of nearly $96 million or 15% — over the same period last year.
GEO Group’s government ties run deep. Former GEO Group executive David Venturella is the acting director of ICE. In a recent letter, he told lawmakers he has divested his GEO Group stock.
President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan was also a paid consultant for GEO Group before joining the government, and former Attorney General Pam Bondi lobbied for GEO Group before she was appointed.
President Trump also has financial stakes in the two companies, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. An analysis of Trump’s most recent financial disclosure by CREW last month found that the president’s brokers have made 29 trades of private prison stocks since he returned to office. According to the study, the first purchases were made on the 10th day of his second term. The total amount bought and sold was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars split between GEO Group and CoreCivic.
In Thursday’s call, GEO Group noted that their ankle monitoring sales are up. The electronic devices are part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program contract it has with ICE, along with smartwatches and the SmartLink phone app that help the government keep tabs on immigrants outside of detention, Zoley said.
Zoley also told investors that GPS-tracking ankle monitors in particular will likely keep climbing now that Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants has ended.
“Because of this new policy shift as to who will be subject to this immigration enforcement like … the Haitians, we could see a significant increase in the number of people in the ISAP program,” Zoley said, adding “most of them, we believe, would be placed under the ankle monitoring supervision.” He noted that “the app is far less expensive than the ankle monitors.”…
On those “sales of detention center to the government”: it appears the administration has retreated from overpaying for warehouses needy of retrofitting in area that don’t want them, opting instead to buy currently-operating facilities.
The misery market: “Private prisons announce $1.4 billion in revenue as immigration detentions climb,” from @npr.org.
* “Deep Throat” (subsequently identified as Mark Felt), William Goldman in the screenplay for All the President’s Men
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As we grapple with graft, we might recall that it was on this date in 1724 that Johann Sebastian Bach led the first performance of his Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott, BWV 101, a chorale cantata based on “Vater unser im Himmelreich“ (Our Father in Heaven), a Lutheran hymn, a paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer in German by Martin Luther.
See/hear it here.
“Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence”*…
Scheduling Note: as a consequence of long meetings scheduled to start very early, (Roughly) Daily will be off tomorrow/Monday and Wednesday. There should be a post on Tuesday, and regular service should resume on Thursday…
Corruption in the U.S. has a long and costly history, intertwining both government and corporations. Our current moment is feeling especially “dirty“– and disfunctional— at both levels.
Eric Ries was a founder of the Lean Start-Up movement and the founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange. His new book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad (highly recommended), tackles the issue head-on. Here, a short excerpt, explaining why…
Not all forms of making money are equal. Some create wealth; others destroy it. Over the centuries, when people have gone searching for the moral logic of capitalism, they always hit this same bedrock principle: Fully informed, uncoerced, voluntary transactions create surplus value because both parties end up better off.
Think about your last genuinely good purchase. You valued the product more than the price you paid, so you are better off. But the seller, too, is better off (otherwise they would not have sold). Both parties are wealthier. When this happens, it’s a bit of a magic trick. In an instant, new value exists that did not a moment before. This wealth was not stolen; it was generated.
But this only works when the exchange is truly voluntary and informed. Remove any of these conditions and the mechanism breaks.
This is why embezzlement, coercion, fraud, bribery, and deception are wrong. It’s not only because they are illegal or even immoral. It’s because they corrupt the fundamental premise of our entire economic system. They transform transactions meant to create value into ones that destroy it.
This trajectory is so common these days that we hardly know what to call it. The answer is simple. Since every version of it shares the same value-destroying logic, regardless of whether the violation is illegal or even immoral, we should use the same word to describe them all: corruption.
Our modern sense of “corruption” has become catastrophically narrow. What I’m talking about is something much broader than bribery or embezzlement. (After all, the Latin corrumpere means “to break completely.”) Corruption breaks the logic of capitalism itself.
Every Ponzi scheme, every hidden externality, every unit of extracted value is a drag on our whole economy’s potential. These corruptions don’t just harm their immediate victim; they erode trust, increase transaction costs, and destroy the civic infrastructure that makes efficient markets possible. The hidden economic costs are staggering. The truth is that capitalism succeeds not because of these widespread violations but despite them…
As the “father of capitalism” himself, Adam Smith, said: “Justice… is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society… must in a moment crumble into atoms.” (Theory of Moral Sentiments, Chapter III)
Diagnosing the disease that threatens us: “Corruption, Defined,” from @ericries.bsky.social.
* Thomas Jefferson
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As we grapple with graft, we might recall that on this date in 2002, three days after being found guilty of obstruction of justice for shredding the thousands of documents and deleting emails and company files that tied the firm to its audit of Enron, accounting firm Arthur Andersen was preparing its appeal.
Legal department member Nancy Temple and David Duncan, the lead partner for the Enron account, were cited in the legal action as the responsible managers in the scandal because they ordered subordinates to shred relevant documents. Duncan himself pleaded guilty in federal court in Houston to obstruction of justice on April 10, 2002, saying that he had ordered the destruction of documents and also personally destroyed documents.
The conviction was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court (on the grounds that the jury had not been properly instructed on the charge against Andersen). The Supreme Court ruling theoretically left Andersen free to resume operations. However, the damage done to the Andersen name was so great (not just from the Enron scandal but also from others involving Andersen accounting malpractice, such as WorldCom a year after Enron) that it did not return as a viable business even on a limited scale in the years after the ruling.
Although only a small number of Arthur Andersen’s employees were involved with the scandal, the firm was effectively put out of business; the SEC is not allowed to accept audits from convicted felons. The company surrendered its CPA license and 85,000 employees lost their jobs.
“Everything is destroyed by its own particular vice: the destructive power resides within”*…
Government graft in the U. S. has a long (and unbroken) history; but there have been especially corrupt periods, for instance in the Jacksonian era and the Gilded Age… and again today.
Profiteering and insider trading, “pay-to-play”/influence peddling, foreign emoluments, conflicts of interest, regulatory and policy favors, purchased pardons (and commutations)– we’ve got it all, and at epic levels.
The estimable Cory Doctorow uses a telling comparison to drill down on one of the dominant strands: Trump’s (ironic) campaign to fight (what he identifies as) corruption…
… It’s a story about boss-politics anti-corruption, in which anti-corruption is pursued to corrupt ends.
From 2012-2015, Xi Jinping celebrated his second term as the leader of China with a mass purge undertaken in the name of anti-corruption. Officials from every level of Chinese politics were fired, and many were imprisoned. This allowed Xi to consolidate his control over the CCP, which culminated in a rule-change that eliminated term-limits, paving the way for Xi to continue to rule China for so long as he breathes and wills to power.
Xi’s purge exclusively targeted officials in his rivals’ power-base, kneecapping anyone who might have blocked his power-grab. But just because Xi targeted his rivals’ princelings and foot-soldiers, it doesn’t mean that Xi was targeting the innocent. A 2018 paper by an economist (Peter Lorentzen, USF) and a political scientist (Xi Lu, NUS) concluded that Xi’s purge really did target corrupt officials.
The authors reached this conclusion by referencing the data published in the resulting corruption trials, which showed that these officials accepted and offered bribes and feathered their allies’ nests at public expense.
In other words, Xi didn’t cheat by framing innocent officials for crimes they didn’t commit. The way Xi cheated was by exclusively targeting his rivals’ allies. Lorentzen and Lu’s paper make it clear that Xi could easily have prosecuted many corrupt officials in his own power base, but he left them unmolested.
This is corrupt anti-corruption. In an environment in which everyone in power is crooked, you can exclusively bring legitimate prosecutions, and still be doing corruption. You just need to confine your prosecutions to your political enemies, whether or not they are more guilty than your allies (think here of the GOP dragging the Clintons into Epstein depositions).
14 years later, Xi’s anti-corruption purges continue apace, with 100 empty seats at this year’s National People’s Congress, whose former occupants are freshly imprisoned or awaiting trial.
I don’t know the details of all 100 prosecutions, but China absolutely has a corruption problem that goes all the way to the upper echelon of the state. I find it easy to believe that the officials Xi has targeted are guilty – and I also wouldn’t be surprised to hear that they are all supporters of Xi’s internal rivals for control of the CCP.
As the Epstein files demonstrate, anyone hoping to conduct a purge of America’s elites could easily do so without having to frame anyone for crimes they didn’t commit (remember, Epstein didn’t just commit sex crimes – he was also a flagrant financial criminal and he implicated his network in those crimes).
It’s not just Epstein. As America’s capital classes indulge their incestuous longings with an endless orgy of mergers, it’s corporate Habsburg jaws as far as the eye can see. These mergers are all as illegal as hell, but if you fire a mouthy comedian, you can make serious bank.
And if you pay the right MAGA chud podcaster a million bucks, he’ll grease your $14b merger through the DoJ.
And once these crooks merge to monopoly, they embark on programs of lawlessness that would shame Al Capone, but again, with the right podcaster on your side, you can keep on “robbing them blind, baby!”
The fact that these companies are all guilty is a foundational aspect of Trumpism. Boss-politics antitrust – and anti-corruption – doesn’t need to manufacture evidence or pretexts to attack Trump’s political rivals. When everyone is guilty, you have a target-rich environment for extorting bribes.
Just because the anti-corruption has legit targets, it doesn’t follow that the whole thing isn’t corrupt…
On the practice of selective enforcement and prosecution: “Corrupt anticorruption,” from @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy.
For thoughts on what we can do about all of this, see “Building political integrity to stamp out corruption: three steps to cleaner politics” (source of the image above)
* Menander
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As we decide on disinfectants, we might recall that it was on this date in 37 CE, following the death of Tiberius, that the Roman Senate annulled Tiberius’ will and confirmed Caligula, his grandnephew, as the third Roman emperor. (Tiberius had willed that the reign should be shared by his nephew [and adopted son] Germanicus and Germanicus’ son, Caligula.)
While he has been remembered as the poster boy for profligacy and corruption, Caligula (“Little Boots”) is generally agreed to have been a temperate ruler through the first six months of his reign. His excesses after that– cruelty, self-dealing, extravagance, sexual perversity– are “known” to us via sources increasingly called into question.
Still, historians agree that Caligula did work hard to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor at the expense of the countervailing Principate; and he oversaw the construction of notoriously luxurious dwellings for himself. In 41 CE, members of the Roman Senate and of Caligula’s household attempted a coup to restore the Republic. They enlisted the Praetorian Guard, who killed Caligula– the first Roman Emperor to be assassinated (Julius Caesar was assassinated, but was Dictator, not Emperor). In the event, the Praetorians thwarted the Republican dream by appointing (and supporting) Caligula’s uncle Claudius as the next Emperor.
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”*…
Of course, we don’t have to choose… but, if only by default, we are choosing. Local news is collapsing– and that’s a problem of just the sort that Thomas Jefferson (author of the quote above) feared. A recent report from Muck Rack and Rebuild Local News unpacks the scary details…
In 2000, many Americans lived in a community with journalists — people whose job it was to cover school board decisions, announce small business openings and closures, root out corruption at city hall, warn commuters about road work and trumpet the exploits of the high school teams. Today, most of those journalists are gone. The evaporation of local news coverage has hit small towns and big cities, suburbs and rural areas. Even as the country has grown, we’ve lost journalists.
Using data that’s never been tapped before, we now know just how severe this local journalist shortage has become. Less than a quarter-century ago, the United States had about 40 journalists per 100,000 residents on average. Now, the equivalent number is 8.2 Local Journalist Equivalents, about a 75% decline. (Local Journalist Equivalent is a new measure we’re introducing, akin to a Full Time Equivalent or FTE).
This means that big chunks of the country have severe shortages. Stunningly, more than 1,000 counties — one out of three — do not have the equivalent of even one full-time local journalist. And the “better off” parts of the country are in lousy shape, too. About two-thirds of the counties — home to 217 million people — are below even that already-catastrophic national average of 8.2 Local Journalist Equivalents.
To put that statistic in perspective, that means that if you live in a county of 10,000 people, there wouldn’t be even one full-time reporter to cover all of the schools, the town councils, the economic development projects, basketball games, environmental decisions, local businesses, and local events. There are 97,000 cities, towns, counties and other units of government. This report shows that there are the equivalent 27,000 local journalists. Most governments, most neighborhoods, and most residents are being covered poorly or not at all.
We also cannot assume the local news crisis is largely a rural phenomenon. The new data shows the extent to which the layoffs of journalists over time have left acute reporting shortages in many urban and suburban areas. If you’re in a big city like Los Angeles, which has a mere 3.6 Local Journalist Equivalents per 100,000 people, your neighborhood might be covered if there’s a serious crime but not much else. You may get little reliable information on local candidates in many of L.A. County’s cities, whether the schools in your neighborhood are improving, whether the hospital nearby has a bad mortality rate, or how inspiring people might be working to repair your playground.
The crisis is more severe and widespread than previously thought…
A map of how many local journalists cover each U.S. county reveals in stark detail the stunning collapse in local reporting: “Local Journalist Index 2025,” from @muckrack.com and @rebuildlocalnews.bsky.social. Eminently worth reading in full.
And note that many of the journalists who have survived are toiling under private equity ownership… which is effectively managing further decline.
Please consider supporting your local, non-profit public media organizations. They face threats from the Trump Administration (and several states, e.g.), and beyond those, face the challenges of continuing to adapt to a changing media environment. Despite that, they continue to do the work sessential to an effective democracy.
* Thomas Jefferson
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As read all about it, we might recall that it was on this date in 2003 that Robert Novak violated journalistic ethics when he used his column in the Washingtom Post to “out” Valerie Plame as a CIA operative…
Plame was the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a career diplomat that had been the US Ambassador to a few minor countries and had served other diplomatic roles. Plame, who was already a CIA agent when she married Wilson, was used to good advantage by the CIA with her husband providing diplomatic cover.
All that changed when Wilson angered the administration of George W. Bush by publicly opposing the expected invasion of Iraq, explaining that on a fact finding mission to Africa he had discovered the alleged attempt by Iraq to acquire uranium was false.
Information was leaked to [conservative columnist] Robert Novak of the Washington Post about Plame’s job as a CIA agent, and he dutifully published the information. Plame’s position as a CIA agent was compromised, and having been outed made her useless to the CIA, resulting in her resignation and the end of her 18 year career in the CIA. This vindictive act of political dirty tricks undermined the security of the United States, but apparently the perpetrators cared more about their own politics than the good of the country. Plame was clearly sacrificed to get at Wilson for having the gall to (honestly) undermine the false case for invading Iraq.
Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a high ranking Bush administration official was not charged with illegally revealing Plame’s position with the CIA or with also revealing secret intelligence estimate information to the New York Times. Libby was indicted, however, for various counts of lying and obstructing justice. He was convicted of 4 of those counts and received a 30 month prison sentence. President George W. Bush commuted the sentence, removing the jail time but leaving the fine and probation and allowing the conviction to stand. It was later revealed that Richard Armitage, a deputy secretary of state, was the actual source of the leak to Novak.
After the trial, baffled jurors wondered to the press why Karl Rove and vice-president Dick Cheney had not been on trial. Many observers wondered the same thing. Wilson and Plame found federal courts to be unsympathetic to their lawsuits and the Obama administration was also unsupportive.
Plame had a book published about the incident titled Fair Game in 2007, and in 2010 a movie by the same name was released…
“By gold all good faith has been banished; by gold our rights are abused; the law itself is influenced by gold, and soon there will be an end of every modest restraint.”*…
Timely etymology from Dan Lewis…
If you follow politics (or, more likely, a politics-themed TV sitcom or drama) you’ve probably heard the term “slush fund” — and usually, it’s tied to something shady. A slush fund is money set aside for unofficial, often unethical, and sometimes illegal uses. It’s the kind of fund that no one really wants to talk about, and if they do, they don’t want to explain too much about it. If someone has a slush fund, you could say that there’s something fishy going on.
And you’d be right — literally speaking.
The word “slush” dates back to at least the mid-1600s, referring to the cold, wet muck that is formed when snow begins to melt. It’s unpleasant texture must have made an impression of the people of the day because a century or two later, “slush” took on a new, second meaning — at least, if you were on a boat.
Salt pork — salted (for preservative reasons) pieces of pork belly — was a staple on fishing and whaling ships of the early-to-mid 1800s. Crews aboard those ships spent a lot of a time at sea, and salt pork was a good, long-lasting protein source in an era before refrigeration. Salt pork was typically fried, and as the ship’s voyage continued onward, fat, grease, and other waste products would build up in the cooking vats. This residue became known as “slush,” likely because of its similarities to the melted snow seen back on land.
But this pig-created slush wasn’t just thrown overboard as waste — it turned out to be useful; as One Word a Day notes, “sailors used it as a lubricant and to waterproof the rigging and sails on their ships.” So they kept it around, and when their whaling or fishing expeditions ended, they typically still had a large amount of slush left over. And it turned out, there was a market for the stuff. Other ships could also use it to help their sailing efforts (before they started cooking up their own salt pork). As The Straight Dope notes, it could also be used by candle and soap makers. Once back on land, there were plenty of people who would gladly buy the slush off the ship’s cooks or other sailors.
That turned out to be a boon for the crew. Because the slush was a byproduct of the efforts to feed the crew, ship owners rarely, if ever, cared about the value of the slush itself — to them, it was waste created by the cost of doing business, not an asset. So when the sailors sold off the slush, they kept the money for themselves and their crewmates. Per Merriam-Webster, “The money from the sale of slush was reserved for the crew of the ship, and would be used to purchase items, such as musical instruments or books, which were not considered necessary enough that a country’s navy, or a ship’s owner, had to provide them for a crew.”
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, as a result of this usage, the phrase “slush fund” first appeared in our collective lexicon in 1839. It would take a generation or two before it gained its current, negative connotation often implying bribery. And with that came another term for financial shenanigans, which also comes from the use of salt pork byproducts to fund sailors whims: “greasing,” meaning “bribing.” The Etymology Dictionary explains “The extended meaning ‘money collected for bribes and to buy influence’ is first recorded 1874, no doubt with suggestions of ‘greasing’ palms.”
The term “slush fund” didn’t originally imply anything untoward — the association with bribery came later, as noted above. And the same is likely true for the word “bribe” itself. Per the Online Etymology Dictionary, “bribe” comes from the Old French term of the 14th century of the same spelling meaning “a gift,” and specifically, “bit, piece, hunk; morsel of bread given to beggars.” It took 200 or so years before the modern, sketchy meaning developed, and it’s unclear why…
“The Original Slush Fund” It was greasy. Literally. @nowiknow.com
(Image above: source)
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As we lament lawlessness, we might recall that it was on this date in 1972 that an 18-1/2-minute gap appears in the tape recording of the conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and his advisers regarding the recent arrests of his operatives while breaking into the Watergate complex.
Still, the tapes were damming. The White House released the subpoenaed tapes on August 5. One tape, later known as the “Smoking Gun” tape, documented the initial stages of the Watergate coverup. On it, Nixon and Haldeman are heard formulating a plan to block investigations by having the CIA falsely claim to the FBI that national security was involved.
It’s a measure of how different those times were from ours that, once the “Smoking Gun” transcript was made public, Nixon’s political support practically vanished: the ten Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who had voted against impeachment in committee announced that they would now vote for impeachment once the matter reached the House floor.
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