Oh, concentration camps, are they? You mean like Auschwitz and the other Nazi camps where people were shipped like cattle for the express purpose of murdering them and disposing of their bodies in ovens?
Our detention centers, where people being detained without a change of clothes or a shower or a toothbrush or a comfortable bed, and yes, separated from their parents, are in a terrible shameful state. But mislabeling like this only hurts your cause. It's like when people start tuning out when they hear an over the top comparison to Hitler.
5
Private prisons were used during the Clinton and Obama administrations. Stop making this all about Republicans; plenty of Democrats have also been complicit:
https://www.latinorebels.com/2016/03/04/the-democrats-uneasy-connection-to-private-profit-deportation-jails/
5
The privatization boom in the 1980's contributed, significantly, to the demise of the middle class. Many of the jobs that were outsourced to private companies had been better compensated positions when the government -- federal, state or local -- provided the services. More important, the benefits -- generous health insurance, defined benefit pension plans, reasonable time off policies -- enabled people to live reasonable lives without needing second and third jobs. Enter private contractors, which not only did not save money, in the long run, but sucked funding from employees to execs and shareholders. There may have been some initial savings, but once government work forces were disbanded, these governments were relegated to continue their Faustian bargains. At that point, the private contractors could and did, effectively, charge what they wished. And instead of taxpayer money benefiting the workers who actually provide the services, it is siphoned off to they companies' execs and shareholders. I agree with Elizabeth Warren. Bring back the direct provision of government services by the government. Get rid of private prisons, and private contractors for most military operations, and private trash collection, and private anything that is taxpayer funded. Use the money that is no longer going to overpaid execs and shareholders, and pay workers living wages, with good benefits. See how quickly our middle class is reconstituted and thriving.
15
Corruption kills. It always has, it always will.
10
I am shocked...truly shocked that our criminal in chief has used the most powerful position in the world to financially benefit himself...his corrupt family...and his rich donors.
Might I assume that his "base"...thinks this is great ?
12
TRUMP PROUDLY RULES OVER DISGRACEFUL PRIVATE GULAG He has established for his friend and cronies, in the form of private prisons, of which the illegal, immoral and abusive immigrant retention centers are arguably the worst iteration of some of the worst ethnically and racially motivated abuse in US history. Private prisons are a huge tax ripoff. Moreover, many prisons are overcrowded with people who have committed nonviolent crimes. Persons of color are over-represented in prison. So in theory a person of color could be serving a 30 year sentence for possession and/or use of marijuana in a state that just legalized its recreational use this year or last. And who pays the bills for this racial discrimination? The US taxpayers! Also there's an interesting connection between Betsy DeVos's brother and private prisons. She oversees charter schools and he's involved with prisons. That's like cradle to grave tax ripoffs from one stinking rotten corrupt family of robber barrons! Welcome to Trumplandia!
9
Yet another debacle that is deserving of impeachment to fix. Impeach Trump, now.
2
Trump was born into a white collar crime family and has been a white collar criminal all his life.
Why would anyone be surprised by his behavior?
8
The pursuit of profit in the realm of public affairs is a category mistake, of a moral nature. We do not get to place a profit middleman between the taxpayer and an essential public duty, namely the caretaking of desperate minors, while also calling ourselves a decent nation. Profit and service are in direct competition.
In related news, moral scold Ken Starr was one of Epstein's attornies. What a despicable irony.
3
I get the impression that Trump approves of the idea of murdering dissidents in general, not just journalists who criticize him. It’s why he’s so jealous of Kim Jong Un.
Apparently Tucker Carlson is onboard with that too, since he feels governing a country means “killing people.”
6
"And the same goes for the atrocities the U.S. is committing against migrants from Central America. Oh, and save the fake outrage. Yes, they are atrocities, and yes, the detention centers meet the historical definition of concentration camps."
(Why is no attention being given to those in Congress whose legislation created this mess?)
4
Who knew that the EC would give the election to such a brutal and conniving con artist?
Trick question.
Everyone.
2
I am positive these private companies would just love to hire the detainees at say...five or six bucks an hour!
3
The famous phrase, “speak truth to power” really has to be up-dated in the era/error of faux-Emperor Trumpius I to the following, “speak truth to lies”.
3
Take a higher level view. Low literacy can lead to higher rates of crime. Gut public education, fill private prisons. DeVos, Prince and the GOP know what they are doing. Filling their pockets at the expense of working people...
8
Professor, let’s boil Trump down to his essence. In ONE word: Greed. This entire Presidential charade is about Money. For Trump, his Mafia Family, His Brand, His friends and Collaborators, and his customers. If He was a Billionaire, before his “ election “, then I’m a twenty year old Swedish supermodel.
It has always been about collecting MORE money. Fees, commissions, gifts, grafts and scams. He makes Bernie Madoff look like a rank amateur, and Al Capone a benevolent community organizer. Born and bred to lie, cheat and steal.
Thanks, GOP. 2020. I can hardly wait.
7
I've addressed him here for two years as President Grifter... and referred to the Trump Criminal organization, often.
1
When Donald Trump is involved Cruelty and Corruption are interchangeable.
The outrage of the detention system, like the Acosta feature of the Epstein case, is just another illustration of Trump's penchant for trolling in the slime at the bottom of the barrel to find the most corrupt, inept, and obeisant actors for his administration. By pulling them to the surface, up from the muck and mire of their dark worlds, he gives them light and oxygen, the elements of Democracy, which, of course, they steal from us. Ross. DeVos. Barr. Pruitt. Perry. Zinke. Mnuchin. Whitaker. Price. Carson. Nielsen. Chao. Mulvaney. And now Acosta.
But we will get the last laugh when their pungent legacies are indelibly written in our nation's history.
1
Two things:
1. will we soon learn Erik Prince shifted his attention from Blackwater and its successor, to private for-profit prisons and immigrant "detention" centers? Surprising only if it's not the case.
2. Trump's love for Bibi and any Israeli occupation and subjugation, explains his copy cat bludgeoning approach to illegal immigrants (put them in deprivation "camps," separate babies from parents, ensure not enough food, clothing, health services/medicines, let things fester) - crush them till they break - let's see, 50 years and counting on Israeli subjugation of Palestinians - let's see how long illegal immigrants from South/Central America can hold out.
Lovely.
Look at us world. We are "the" model. We'll never tire of telling you that. If you tire of listening, you're socialists (or worse). Simple.
5
It costs about $500 a day per person to put children in jail. If we're going to privatize, why can't we just rent out some Ritz Carltons so they can get all the hygiene products they need thrown in.
6
Trump & his cronies feed off extreme cruelty & profit by it. And his base LOVES it.
Right on Mr. Krugman. I agree with you 100% as far as privatization goes. And as far as this administration; the third world magnitude of the corruption in this administration makes me go through the 5 stages of grief every single day over and over again. I hope we'll be able to revive democracy after all the assaults it's enduring right now.
5
So that's why $700 per person per night isn't enough to cover a toothbrush, soap and blanket! It would cut into the profit margin.
ICE admitted to having the supplies, but detention guards haven't passed them out. The situation on the border is a perfect storm where the administration's goal--to deter asylum seekers through tales of child separation and horrendous conditions--coincides with the interests of the private prison company, which only wants to make a profit.
Since Congress signed over a blank check of $4.6 billion to the administration, I wonder how much of it will go to improving conditions. Are those additional billions going to be used to conduct ICE raids and imprison those caught?
8
Clearly one of the most profitable concepts of the last 40 or 50 years has been profit itself, turning the public sector into a Klondike of possibilities for corporate interests.
But none of this is new. Modern private prisons and detention centers are part of a long American tradition that includes chain-gangs-for-hire, the Southern peonage systems, and in-prison labor contracted to manufacturers.
An alternate definition of chattel slavery rejects classifying it as a labor system and calls it any setup where life-or-death decisions about an individual are made by a person or organization whose potential profit is affected by those decisions. This would cover private health insurers, too, and many of Prof. Krugman's arguments here would apply.
Thus, the peonage systems of the post-Reconstruction south
12
Betsy DeVos is Erik Prince's SISTER?
Sure. There can only be so many billionaire families. They have billionaire children. Their billions run the Republican machine and funnel more taxpayer funds into their businesses than the billions they win by outright purchase of the tax cuts they now enjoy. What a country. No wonder the Republicans are patriots to the core. It's the system that feeds and houses them.
9
@larkspur; more importantly Erik Prince is the guy who had arranged for offshore meetings with Russians and other mafiosi with Trump campaign people. And voila, his sister gets an admin job. If she were at least even a bit competent! Her only agenda is increasing charter schools and weakening public ones.
4
In 1513 when Giovanni de'Medici was elected as Pope Leo X, he is alleged to have said, "God has given us the Papacy, now let us enjoy it". Although the current resident of the White House, most likely has no idea who Pope Leo the X was, his philosophy for using the office for as much personal gain as possible meshes quite nicely with Leo's. The two of them would probably become have become quite a pair if Trump would have been born 450 years ago. I can see Trump tapping the Medici money to fund his investments.
69
The law of greed prevails wantonly in the mindset of President Donald J. Trump. This is the sport for the consumer lusting world of opulence and lust for their are only winners that are the true capital engine and any and all causalities are just part of the game - losers are expendable for in the fruit of victory the winner rules in the name of materialism's superiority and that make everyone great - as well forgetting the jurisprudence and whatever morality of the times for the day reeking avoidance and power to those the winners that's never enough purely...
8
Time for another military parade along the lines of the 4th of Trump. That should fix the problem.
5
Trump is busy transforming America into an oligarchy much like his hero Putin who he fawns over in public even vs his own INtel Agencies. Republicans seek to have one party rule using the supreme court to achieve their goal. Privatizing govt functions for profit is similar to Russia's becoming an oligarchy and Jared gets a billion from Qatar to bail him out based on who is father in law is corruption in plain sight. McConnell takee in millions from his wife's family in China in the transportation biz , she is Sec of Transportation. Republicans are quite content with a kleptocracy and a dictatorship of republicans is just fine with the GOP. Barr was sent in to save Trump and his kleptocracy to get tax cuts and deregulations so they can loot away and pollute at will.
16
Trump is also urging the VA to buy overpriced Ketamine (overpriced around ten-fold) and give it to depressed and shell-shocked veterans. Look up: "Spravato Trump".
6
Privatization of public services can be traced to Ronald Reagan who declared government to be the problem. That statement has caused numerous public ills from abuse in private prisons/detention centers to suppression of votes. (If government is the problem, why participate?) The damage to our democracy has been lasting.
7
It is cruelty, and is it corruption. This is what Trump wants. He wants to hurt people. Giving this man the power of the presidency was the worst thing I can imagine. Our Allies think we've lost our minds. I wonder how this will end.
9
Prof. Krugman does a good job explaining one facet of why our federal government has made itself so dependent on contractors. But of course there are others.
One is that outsourcing hides the true size of the government. Politicians both liberal and conservative can find this useful, and the media dutifully report only the number of civil servants. This often helps politicians pretend that their programs require fewer employees than they actually do, burnishing fictions that they are hawkeyed overseers of programs.
Another benefit to many politicians and some bureaucrats is that outsourcing can cover their posteriors in case things go wrong. “We hired the best people available” becomes a convenient refrain – as though hiring contractors absolves the responsible bureaucrats from actual responsibility. (Sometimes there’s a grain of truth to the plaint: regulations may prohibit the civil servants from giving instructions to the contractors, who, in such a telling, have been hired to do their jobs as they see fit, without “interference”.)
Performed intelligently, some outsourcing can be beneficial (Medicare, for example, is basically contracted-out). But when outsourcing becomes an all-purpose “solution” for executing government programs, many things can – and often – go awry.
3
Privatization of military support services is the biggest and worst privatization which has occurred. It has raised costs, weakened the military, and harmed society and economy.
If the military provides its own support, the labor cost is less, the management cost is much less (ratio of officer pay to senior executive pay is miniscule), and the workers learn vocational skills without going into debt at a for profit "university". It's a valuable bridge between high school and college or a job in the field for which the soldier has been trained like aircraft maintenance, piloting, institutional food service. The skills required to support troops transfer directly to the the civilian world. The military is stronger because all troops receive basic combat training and that cook, mechanic, heavy equipment operator, and so on can perform a combat role if necessary.
1
And sadly, amongst the people who have the power to stop any of it, how many of them care? Why is there no moral outrage? WHY?
They go to church, they make "nice-nice" at the country club. They think of themselves as doing good.
They lie. They hide. They deny. They enable.
You write, Dr. Krugman, and those of us who already know most of this cringe. Aside from vote and give donations to helpful organizations, what is an average person to do?
2
On top of everything else, we have kids being labeled "unaccompanied" if their parents can't produce birth certificates on the spot or if they are traveling with grandma instead of mom.
The kids are put into detention and sometimes into foster care and then off on a road to adoption; often with minimal or no paper trail to get them back to their birth parents or other relatives who want them.
Imagine if you were a child trafficker at any step in this poorly managed process. Are kids being sold not by the people crossing the border but by corrupt U.S. people within the profit prison system?
3
On top of everything else, we have kids being labeled "unaccompanied" if their parents can't produce birth certificates on the spot or if they are traveling with grandma instead of mom.
The kids are put into detention and sometimes into foster care and then off on a road to adoption; often with minimal or no paper trail to get them back to their birth parents or other relatives who want them.
Imagine if you were a child trafficker at any step in this poorly managed process. Are kids being sold not by the people crossing the border but by corrupt U.S. people within the profit prison system?
2
We have the right pushing for the "market place" to do everything. There is clearly a racist element as well. The left has decided open borders and mass immigration aided and abetted by the immigration lobby/industry will be central to their platform this year. It would be nice if someone were to lay out the numbers and decide what is best for the citizens of this country first. our asylum laws are out of date for the world we face. We should not be detaining people in camps and we should not be turning them loose in this country either. The numbers are just too big. We need a time out from the tidal wave of people and the over whelmed system. Send everybody home and formulate new rules that reflect the 10s of millions wanting to come here that clearly cannot all, or even a fraction of, be accommodated. People and the country and its future depend on finding a new path as difficult as it will be.
@Al, I agree that we can't detain people in camps. I disagree that we can't release them into the general population until their asylum court hearing. The Obama administration instituted the Family Case Management Program, under which asylum seekers and their families were released but monitored by ICE. We could save taxpayers a lot of money and still have people show up for their court dates. (According to ICE records, 99 percent of asylum seekers showed up for their regular ICE check-ins, and 100 percent showed up for their court date.)
We need to reinstate aid to Northern Triangle countries to combat gang violence and climate change so that people won't want to leave. We need to stop metering asylum seekers at the border so that Border Patrol isn't overwhelmed by periodic waves of immigrants.
No one in the Democratic Party is in favor of open borders or mass immigration--those are red herrings pushed by rightwing propaganda that wants you to think there are no reasonable options. Voters can choose to return to humane asylum policies while still maintaining strict control of our borders through 21st century technology.
4
The ability to reason demands truth which is for all intent and purpose non-existent within this administration.
For the sake of the children who are our nation's future I hope we come to our senses and throw this man and his enablers out on their ears.
I can only trust we recover from the selfish harm they have brought and never make this mistake again.
4
Corruption and cruelty, at the start, middle and end of the trump administration. Done with a smile and blamed on the Democratic Party because they forced them. And still the same % of gullibility.
2
Don't forget about the on-again off-again tariff threats that move the stock markets in a big way. Trump knows about these movements before everyone else. Do you think he would pass up the chance to make a killing in the market by betting on a sure thing?
3
New York City’s homeless shelter profiteers also made fortunes providing dreadful accommodations to the homeless.
1
Want healthier food? Add a public option to Mac Donald's.
The key is to privatize services (or parts whereof) where there is a market. Thus, while there is no market for prison services; part of the service is catering. Another part is janitorial. Another part could be building/facility maintenance. All those parts have a market and there are vendors who can do those pieces better than the Department of Corrections.
@anatlanta, why would prison catering have a market if private prisons don't? Wouldn't the government also hire the catering services, just as they hired Halliburton in Iraq?
I think we'd be dealing with crony capitalism even if we divvied up the catering and janitorial services. The buyer is the federal government.
This sentence alone should have been the final straw for everyone: "Prison operator stocks fell sharply last month, when Elizabeth Warren laid out a plan to eliminate the industry."
The fact that investors can buy stock and earn dividends off things like prisons and schools in America, should tell us all we need to know about what really matters in this country.
I did not feel in a celebratory mood this July 4th.
10
"...the detention centers meet the historical definition of concentration camps..." People do not travel voluntarily to arrive at concentration camps. They arrive in locked railroad boxcars.
29
@Charles Becker
Or in the Homestead case, chartered buses.
Also see Japanese-Americans, WWII.
29
@Charles Becker What difference does it make how they got there when they are being involuntarily detained under inhumane conditions?
41
@Charles Becker
Better buy some railroad stock then, it’s not far.
13
It’s not a good idea to dehumanize anyone but, not being able to perceive why private prisons are the worst idea in the world, puts one on the spectrum of inhumanity.
4
I don't understand the logic here --- if the government is the sole customer, how does that limit competition? More than one company is capable of running a prison. Wouldn't they compete to win the contract?
1
@DMC it is actually simple. If you are providing a service or product and have to take it to a "market", you would hope (and work) to get at least a few customers. You would listen to them, and figure out what your competition is doing, and you would improve your product and invent better mousetraps. When there is only ONE customer for your service, you are not in a "market".
2
Just look at what privatization did for the food in Michigan's prisons. Perfect example - corporate profit over human decency.
2
"Every betrayal of American principles also seems, somehow, to produce financial benefits for Trump and his friends."
Thank you, Mr. Krugman, for summarizing the whole sorry history of a criminal that's usurping the nation's highest office.
17
@Wilder. Then who ran the detention centers under Obama?
Private prisons are a special concern as taking of another humans freedom is a fundamental right and should only be done by the government ordering the restriction of freedom as they are the only ones that can legally order ones freedom restricted. Imagine if Trump owned the company that ran one of these prisons, how bad could it get.
7
Another spot on article. The rush towards privatization began in earnest under the Reagan administration. Shrinking government oversight through privatization was one aspect Grover Norquist's admonition to strangle the government so the "free market" could function unimpeded. The bottom line for corporations is profit, not the health and well being of American or any country's citizens.
12
The reason that our national infrastructure is failing is due to mass privatisation. Urban renewal at the hands of Robert Moses being a perfect example of planning without no concern of ultimate ramifications to affected populations. Overcrowding of cities, poor public transportation, unaffordable housing; all thanks to privatisation.
Margins of profit do not allow for the remediation of social ills or necessities.
9
@Big Tony. Bridges are privatized? Subways are privatized? Roads are privatized?
The privatization of prisons and detention centers is indeed bad in part because there is no competition, but it's also bad because there is incentive to skimp on services and even necessities--soap and showers-- to increase profits.
But some privatization of government services can go well, when it's done through private, non-profit entities. In the 1980s and 1990s, I managed several treatment facilities and their adjuncts that helped addicts and alcoholics get clean and get jobs. It was probably cheaper than having the state build treatment facilities. The non-profits served their own communities and accepted payment from insurers as well as the state. A win-win.
5
@Barbara
You bring up an important distinction -- between "private" not-for-profit groups and the private, for-profit sector. Most not-for-profit organizations aren't truly private, in that retaining that tax status does require at least some reporting and openness.
4
@Grennan Yes, good nonprofits are registered for tax advantages, but that does not mean they are not private in the sense that their operations are not controlled by the government, other than meeting standards required for contracts.
1
As usual from Prof. Krugman, an intelligent, thoughtful and insightful article, well documented and to the point. It hurts though that the this tragic wave has been going on for decades and it seems only to grow.
10
I almost always agree with you. Even here. Except for "concentration camps".
Spare me a dictionary definition stemming from the 1800s. Concentration camps are what the Nazis created in WW2 in order to detain and murder the inmates. They were not the first. They are however the most infamous. The Serbs created very similar camps in Bosnia, etc.
An no - I am not confusing concentration camps with death camps. WW2 Nazi death camps murdered the prisoners immediately upon arrival; the concentration camps did so more slowly - forcing some to work, doing medical "experiments" on others, etc. "Work them to death" is still death and was part of the "Final Solution".
NOTHING the US is doing in the detention camps comes close.
And yes - I agree that the detention camps are cruel, horrible and a national disgrace. However, death is not a goal (stated or unstated) and they are *not* "concentration camps".
The point here is that a concentration camp is beyond cruelty; it includes mass murder
5
@Ed Watt
I’m not so certain that death is not an unstated goal of these camps—at least a few deaths, to maximize the camps’ effectiveness as a deterrent. Deterrence is a stated goal of these camps, after all, and what could provide a greater deterrence than some deaths of detainees? If they aren’t outright counting on a few deaths, the people responsible for these conditions are callously indifferent to the possibility. The people running these camps obviously do not see the detainees as humans. That fits the definition of a concentration camp as far as I’m concerned.
3
When people die in a concentration camp by definition it is mass murder. We ought not be so sensitive about calling these things out for what they are or that each of us is complicit in these atrocities and crimes against humanity. Yes. That is what they are.
2
@Bruce Crabtree
Yes, agree. The trumpees have no concern whatsoever. My neighbors have a cage in their yard w dolls of different colors.
A phone line recorded 50/50 results, actually pretty good for being in the middle of trumpee land. These folks are sick and I would call them murderers and torturers.
I think the use of subcontracting is the basic
business plan throughout out our economy.
Avoid all labor related headaches by making
it someone else’s problem. No need to invest
in the workforce because the company will
be sold and whatever equity monetized. For
government entities, unions are marginalized
and made irrelevant and work is entry level
forever and ever.
3
If you got rid of prevailing wage the Labor Unions would lose their mind especially in California and New York.
when I did hazmat asbestos cleanup for government buildings we got paid 3 times more than what we would have got for a residential abatement. Again it was thanks to the Unions in CA. The unions are the Democrats bread and butter.
2
What Mr. Krugman describes is corporate fascism best known in the US as the Republican Party. The US government underwent a right wing coup in 2016, paid for by corporatists like the Kochs and Mercers who seek to run this nation for their own personal gain. Trump is the face of this extreme inhumane greed that is destroying our democracy. They are traitors, one and all.
20
Much of what is being stated here suggests a terrible situation. Yet, sadly, much of what is missing is not mentioned. Give it time. While many of these people are better off than where they were before, it’s very difficult to implement radical new strategies to put all these people safely into an economic system where they can survive, thrive and recreate themselves. Even worse, we haven’t successfully done that for millions of people already in the United States.
4
Everyone should read this excellent NYT op ed:
"There Should Be a Public Option for Everything
Despite the recent trend toward privatization, the idea has been popular throughout American history."
By Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne L. Alstott
The authors are law professors.
July 6, 2019
Mr. Sitaraman is an informal advisor to Elizabeth Warren's campaign.
5
Prof Krugman,
Thank you for this article.
Just as Bush tax cuts were the boon and free money to uber rich, this admin and Mitch M are working together to rob real people and put all the wealth into 0.01%; so that other can never rise up.
They're here to create a permanent slaves to feed their ego.
9
Seems like it's time for the International Criminal Court to lean in. Trump's treatment of immigrants is tantamount to crimes against humanity. Also, the goons that run the camps deny entry by UN observers.
5
Throughout history there are those who profit off the pain and suffering of others. They proclaim self righteousness in order to justify their immoral actions. Our nations history has been one of a long, painful, violent struggle out of the swamp of this behavior. What is occuring at these "facilities" is a crime against humanity . It is is as plain as that. There is no papering over the malfeasance of the Trump administration. Each day that he is in office Trump degrades the soul of our country through his bigotry & disregard for the law. The lack of a moral compass is perhaps the worst in our history. Whether it is throwing paper towels to stunned victims in Puerto Rico, stating an equivalency between those who protested against hate in Virginia & those who promoted it or caging people like animals the depravity of Trump & his henchmen are all too visible. It is more than disturbing that his faithful flock cannot see the truth that stands before them. This portends a dark omen for our future.
9
"But there’s also money to be made, because a majority of detained migrants are being held in camps run by corporations with close ties to the Republican Party."
The Republican Party! Can we just state the obvious about the current state of the Republican Party: it is a greedy, nationalistic, hate-filled, hypocritical, fact-denying group of people who produce and represent the absolute worst traits of America. This seems to be so obvious to so many that it is amazing that any person in America would care to be labeled a Republican.
Clearly there is a legitimate debate about what portions of the economy should be in the hands of the private sector and which should be in the hands of the public sector. But the Republican Party has gone far beyond this debate into a realm of nasty and despicable behavior, a realm of behavior that any society should proclaim as being without merit and shameful.
And shame has its place. Isn't it about time that the average American calls out the greed, the self-centered and hateful behavior of Republicans for what it is? It is time that the Republican Party went into dissolution as a great example of what America should never be: an extremist mob that veers dangerously close to fascism.
8
@Tom Krebsbach
Everyday I struggle with the fact that over 40% of my fellow Americans seem to be beyond shame. In my lifetime I've never seen a more despicable public figure than Trump. And yet.....
2
To be fair, detention center conditions have been a serious issue for previous administrations— perhaps worse under this one but a significant issue all the same. As well, suggesting crony corruption by citing one individual and insinuating same by implicating Devos as corrupt based on a completely unrelated issue of a siblings relationship with Blackwater seems petty.
Like most here I’m no fan of POTUS behavior, but chasing arguments without good research and or data makes it hard to respect the piece, opinion or not. This in particular due to OACs back-walking her comments — now saying the conditions existed in prior administrations and that using the characterization of “concentration camps” was an “academic” definition. Whatever.
2
I don't know how polls can be relied upon in a nation where everyone with some brains does not answer anonymous phone calls.
5
Inflicting misery on innocent people has been a revenue stream for the modern GOP for a long time now. Trump is just the latest ratchet.
6
When fascism is mentioned regarding the t rump administration there is some push back because people tend to equate fascism with tyrants and dictators; we forget that the definition of fascism includes corporate ownership of government, or parts of government.
Since the '80's when Reagan proclaimed that government is the problem we have seen the republican/fascist party turn government from the problem to the enemy.
We have allowed the republican party (it has been mostly them) to auction our commons, our public trusts, and our very democracy to their donor class and owners.
We might have one more election to begin the reversal of this trend, yet I hear pundits and others bewail the idea that the Democrats are moving to quickly to far to the left.
In approximately a year and a half We the People have the opportunity to send t rump and mcturtle off to the sunset, if not prison. If we do not there will not be enough left over of America to even recognize it.
6
The bottom line is that Republican care about profits, while Democrats care about people.
4
@Wayne. Not entirely. Some of us remember a certain democrat bailing out banks and Wall Street and the crooks who worked there, while "people" lost their jobs and homes.
Krugman must discuss the underlying corrupted political credo.
America has a distorted notion of what elected govt owes its citizens. Can our govt regulate big business, or does business actually regulate our govt---the govt we stand in long lines to elect?
Turning our elections over to private profit corporate mega donors for financing obviously increases trends in ongoing privatization.
Politicians have competed for big money donors, who accumulate power to call the shots in our lawmaking. Thus a spiral of increasing power and wealth for elites, and reduction of public services.
The calculated demonization of Big Government interfering in 'American Freedoms' is the propaganda used for this transfer of power from the public to the private.
The more wealth piling up with privatization, low taxes and weak regulations, the increased amounts of donations our politicians can get from the rich, looking for return on investment.
Krugman's column should trace back the issues to legalized big money in politics. blessed by the S. Court using the Trump-type lie of unlimited money as protected 1st Amendment 'free speech'.
Political 'speech' of average citizens is muffled, the public is disrespected, and criminal justice is corrupted.
We could ask---what did the colonies overturn King George for, if we end up with a 21st C aristocracy of big money dominating politics, and effectively colonizing America for its gain and our loss?
4
A full accounting of the child detention centers is needed and should be available to the public. We need to know who is benefiting financially from child abuse.
12
Private sector prisons may run on corruption (bribes) and over stated costs and was a bad idea in the first place, but tell us more about "public-sector unions" and their costs compared to the free market union world. Any yardstick here beyond "wildest dreams"?
For decades Republican spin has been saying, private business runs better than the federal government. They would find examples of inefficiency to make their point. But when the work was given to private industry corruption soared, like at Haliburton with hundreds of millions missing.
Add to that private workers got less than federal workers and the work, in general, is poorer and we see why the 1% hovers around the Republicans who have their hands out. They are making a fortune off the taxpayer.
The Trump administration has made this even worse. There is a law for low-income housing in urban areas that his family and cronies are salivating to take advantage of which will create no risk payload of profits.
2
It's like trump is using the Presidency as a cash cow for himself and his capitalist cronies.
9
This article is a perfect example of an irrelevant truth. You said as much yourself by stating the issue is "is literally walled off from public view". So then why are you wasting ink on it? Trump will continue to control the narrative until democrats are willing to confront the DIFFICULT issues like immigration and globalization.
1
@Johnny What a specious argument. Mr. Krugman has not wasted ink. It is journalism's job to shine a light on what the government is doing, most particularly when what it is doing is "walled off from public view." The reason the border actions are hidden is that they are so shameful the administration fears the public reaction. Trump controls the narrative by hiding the truth.
And your solution is that we should just let him get away with it? At least until the Democrats have a viable national policy on immigration? What arrant nonsense.
Knowledge is power. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. That's why we need articles like this.
3
Private prisons donated millions of dollars to (overwhelmingly Republican) candidates during the 2018 election cycle, and have actively supported policies such as mandatory minimum sentences and "three strikes" laws. As a result, the Prison rates in the US are the world's highest, at 724 people per 100,000 (compared to Russia at 615, Mexico at 191, or Kenya, the highest rate in Africa, at 130). The conflict of interests is obvious, and it's anathema to everything the United States is supposed to stand for.
7
Certain things need to be left to the private sector. One poster asked if the government would have developed the I-phone. On this issue he-she is 100% correct. But certains should never be privatized. Study the case of private armies and you will know why we should cherish our government run apolitical armed forces. When education was left to the market we had a large population that only received rudimentary forms of education. And on Health care we have a private market that reaps profits until the age of 65 and then, when the medical costs would diminish the profits of their companies, they gladly hand over the responsibility of medical costs to the dreaded government. Why? Because taking care of the elderly is a money loser and they want no part of it. Then they are all for government health care.
5
Historians may one day look back and conclude that the lack of a capitalist system ended the Soviet Union, and a rapacious capitalist system ended the US.
12
The social safety net is meant to protect middle-class people from falling into poverty and homelessness, losing their homes and health care when the economy takes a turn for the worst, as does happen. They should have enough safety to live with dignity until things get better again. We don't have that, unemployment is not enough to pay the mortgage, COBRA is unaffordable, just as unpaid maternity leave is for lower-income women, health insurance should be good enough to prevent bankruptcy because of medical bills.
The government can do that if it WANTS to do it. Republicans will make sure it will not happen, they advocate predatory capitalism and the gospel of privatizing social services to make a profit.
Public services should not be privatized, good government can do it, the New Deal worked when the private sector failed. Where there is a will there is a way, but Republicans don't have a will to govern, they want to make more money.
7
I continue to be saddened by the lack of knowledge and understanding of a civil society so prevalent in the USA. We are our own worst enemy with our misguided beliefs that we can have and do whatever we want without some shared and collective resources. The American Experiment ended with the Reagan Administration, when greed and corruption became accepted public policy. Now we have resurrected racism and xenophobia, as well. We are like a Chinese dynasty - after a few hundred years, we are collapsing, overrun by our failure to deal with 21st Century invaders in the form of technology, economics, and human resources.
6
What our president is doing is locking people up for looking for food. Dig deep and you'll find that this is at the bottom of the rise in immigration from Central America (just as in Syria).
I wonder how folks from Michigan will treat folks from Kansas in 2040 when they start showing up at the state line in droves because they can't grow food there anymore. Wait! I know the answer to that. During the Dust Bowl they called them "okies" and forced them to live in shacks with no water or other facilities (just like a prison).
We might want to reconsider this approach before it hits us too (again).
6
Thank you, Dr. Krugman. These are points that we need to keep in mind. Donald Trump's racism and nativism, Donald Trump's exploitation of his office for personal gain, Donald Trumps cultivation of cronies ("friends" implies a degree of caring that doesn't seem to exist) who can help him: these things are all of a piece. It's also worth keeping in mind that once Ronald Reagan was picked up as their preferred politician by a group of rich backers, he stopped carrying money or credit cards. The problem does indeed go back to the 1980s. It's just that, as with so many things, the problem has become more intense and blatant under Donald Trump.
5
Robert Reich wrote in the Guardian about Oligrarchs vs Democracy. It made me wonder who are the oligarchs, and are they colluding together and if so for what purpose? The permutations are numerous. Oligarchs are just rich business people who support Republican business friendly policy. Or, Oligarchs are a cohesive group of conspirators who have finally figured out how to overcome their small though influencial population in a democracy by adding those they can manipulate through the media, "its on TV it must be true". Or oligarchs are rich by cheating the rules, partners and principles, are inherently dishonest, and in this paradigm, both define and benefit from corruption, bribery and misuse of the judicial system etc. I think there is a range of behaviors in our society. You could call that last group Oligarchs, and mean that they are the rich who are inherently corrupt. All rich are not corrupt, but before Trump we rarely got to see it up close. Now there is Epstein, Cohen, Erik Prince, DeVos, Manifort and a slew of others associated with Trump who magically gets away with stuff. It would be unfair to paint all business people and all rich people with the same brush, but this group is corrupting our system. So what about Barr? what does he want? What did Paul Ryan want, they aren't rich, but they want an oligarchy? doesn't make sense.
3
Once upon a time the General Accounting Office used to let us know when the Department of Defense was paying exorbitant amounts of money for toilets, etc. I would like to know when we're going to get a full accounting of how this $700+ per day is being spent. It is clearly not being spent for the benefit, comfort, and health of the detainees. I would like to know who, specifically, is pocketing this money, and how we can make it stop.
7
Sorry, Paul, but it is not going too far to say that the private prison business is a contributor to the viciousness of Trump's border policies.
I have been a criminal defense lawyer for 36 years and have had much too much experience with privately run prisons. Studies have shown that for-profit prisons skimp on such essentials as food and health care. And why would they not? The vast majority of people will consistently choose their economic well-being over the welfare of others, especially when those others have no political power and minimal public support.
When corporate giants like the Corrections Corporation of America sign contracts to run jails/prisons with a city, county or state, they require a minimum guarantee from the government. The city or state promises to deliver no fewer than X number of people to the prison. If the government falls short of the guarantee, they still have to pay the full amount. This is one of the key driving forces behind the appalling over-criminalization of our legal system in recent decades. The powerful prison companies lobby for more criminal laws so they can have more people to lock up. The corrections officers' union also lobbies for more criminal laws so that there will be more jobs and more union members.
I don't have any inside knowledge of the migrant detention centers, but I would be very surprised if there were not a similar dynamic in operation.
5
It strikes me that behind virtually every policy Trump has initiated, there is or has been a backdoor payoff. He bragged about being a business man before coming into office. His electorate should have seen the handwriting on the wall, but, of course, they did not.
Big business put him into office, and big business is profiting from his being in office. If Trump is not getting payoff directly, no doubt he got them out front. The man is a crook, like too many big businessmen he is a blatant megalomaniac only in it (whatever he is into) for personal gain.
Anyone with a brain has to be able to see that private corporations with their money in detention facilities of any kind, have no profit motive for improving conditions. in fact, the opposite is true in the case of prisons.
Recidivism helps the companies stay in business, so the less an institution is focused on rehabilitation in the form of more humane facilities where inmates can learn skills and get other kind of help - roughly 40% of inmates are mentally ill.
Who is hurt most by privatization of detention facilities? The inmates, yes, but the society at large when they are retuned to the streets suffers the costs most egregiously.
7
The private prison thing is nothing but outrageous. We are paying over $700 a day to under feed and mistreat children at the benefit of some greedy Trump advocate. The time has come to recognize the fact that Donald Trump has done everything in his power to destroy this country. We need look only at his lengthy list of totally ill equipped appointments to recognize he has been out to disintegrate our economy and ecology. In the foreign world he has broken nearly every international agreement we are part of and managed to alienate us from historical allies who no longer can trust our word. In trade he has entered a tariff laden trade war that no intelligent economist can support. In short the man is the worst thing on the face of the earth for this nation.
5
We need to take care of the children. Have we lost all of our human decency?
8
Apparently those $200,000.00 Mar-a-Lago initiation fees are worth it.
4
Over the past 2+ years I've posted many articles from mostly the NY Times which point out or uncover the hidden consequences and corruption behind lyingdonaldtrump's administration. Sometimes, when I've believed the article to be of high importance for people to be aware of, I've copied and pasted significant segments from these articles so those who don't subscribe can read the information. I was considering doing the same with this article and excerpting a key paragraph to include at the beginning of my post. Then I realized, for the umpteenth time, that aside from 3 or 4 FB friends who will click the "like" or "angry" or "sad" emoticon the other 200+ just scroll on past presumably thinking oh there's Bob again and his trump derangement syndrome--so sad he used to be less political. And this is where it is today. We have all this craziness on going and, for the most part, nobody cares. Short anecdote: my wife and I watched the movie Yesterday with 2 family members of an advanced age. One of them thought it was a true story and that the main character was the greatest songwriter ever and the second person thought it was a dream which the main character awoke from. Both of these people voted for trump. And that's the point--for the most part trump supporters either don't understand the main plot of our time or else they live in a dream in which everything will turn out ok in the end. Why? Because they fail to understand history and the connection with current events.
6
And yet the author remains a very lonely voice regarding the corruption of the Trump Administration. Unless McConnell and AG Barr are struck by lightening nothing will change.
And I have always believed that for profit prisons are a big No No.
It is the federal or state governments that through the judicial process locks up a person convicted of a crime. It should be the federal and state governments that see to the incarceration. Keep it real. It is troubling enough that the judicial system could be seen to be in cahoots with prosecutors to fill the jails in the first place, let alone now private corporations and their CEO's.
Getting rid of for profit prisons at least removes one element of the rot of corruption.
4
Privatization simply means privatizing profits rather than that money being put back into the system.
Privatization means, "I'm going to take 30% off the top for not doing anything".
Privatization means, "This essential service will only be available to rich people now".
Privatization is what Donald Trump has done to the office of the Presidency.
Privatization is when something costs twice what it used to, and is half as good.
Privatization is the primary mechanism by which the "have's" increase their profits, while simultaneously increasing the number of "have-not's".
3
Oh, the myth of free market capitalism! There are no free markets............ Only rigged markets. That's the scam of the Republican Party.
5
How nostalgic to remember how we all agreed that John Kelly was going to bring stability, morality and leadership into the WH. He's just another co-conspirator. Why would you feed children something other than frozen burritos if feeding them something else costs you money? You don't. These people only care about the money they can make. If some children die you can tell yourself it's their own fault because you're morally bankrupt.
4
Okay, Trump and his friends.
Cotton, Cornyn, Graham all want to get military contracts in their control.
Orrin Hatch wanted excavation of National Monuments.
Chuck Grassley wanted his billions protected from taxes after he died.
Jeff Sessions sure wanted to privatize jails in his plantation dream of social justice.
Mitch McConnell might be a friend, but his half baked ideas about health and pharma cannot produce the friendship with Trump. Explain health to Trump as if he as a ten year old and then maybe you'd be a friend.
As far as Stephen Miller, Kelly Ann Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, these people have personal issues they enjoy playing out in public, and being a friend to the president gets them the playpen they need to torture us.
But the real friends are the Saudis and Erik Prince, people who write the biggest checks, Putin and his protection goons.
This country is about to be rocked with a combination punch I suppose Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi knew all about as the roomfull of revolvers continue to go off, our Trump landscape of favors and friends masking atrocities of incarceration, torture and abuse widens to rape charges swamped in Florida.
At least, the praetorian guard is not selling out the job of imperator to the highest bidder.
Oh wait!! The GOP is already in that business.
1
This is my kind of fake news, meaning real news about the Fake in the White House/on the golf course.
Good to point out that Trumps cruelty is not fake, it's his opioid.
2
As usual, Republicans = tricksterism for criminal PROFITEERING on the backs of not-rich taxpayers.
2
Of course it's FL, our home of two mass shootings and the bomber....only FL.
For those who argue that public sector does things better.... what do you think a government iPhone would look like? Would it be cheaper... probably. Would it be better... no way in hell.
15
What do you think a cell phone would look like and cost if there were only one provider? Let suppose that Apple made the only cell phones and had the exclusive market? Do you think they would invest in the product? Do you think they would try to market at the lowest possible cost?
Are you old enough to remember when there was only one telephone provider (AT&T)? Remember how much long distance cost?
I suspect you need to separate your love for private entities when you dream of them providing government services. As Paul correctly points out there is no competition which breeds corruption and overpricing.
94
Creating and making an iPhone does not have the moral implications of punishing for profitWhat do you think a free market prison, one that seeks to maximize profit and increase its ‘customer’ base looks like?
It scrimps on basic services in the name of efficiency and seeks to increase customer base by increasing the number of people incarcerated and keeping them in longer.
It disconnects justice from punishment.
We should not pay someone to punish others and base their profit on the amount of punishment they are able to mete out.
81
@Mystery Lits
To be fair, Krugman was quite clear that he agrees that privatization is the right answer whenever there is the possibility of competition - and the Android/iPhone competition is an excellent example of his point.
I find it worrisome that so much of the criticism directed at the economic thinking of mainstream Democrats (and note that Krugman is somewhere to the left of that mainstream) is in fact attacking a strawman and a caricature.
56
Its the Putin model. Direct money to your oligarch friends and expect loyalty in return.
4
Vice President Pence announced Monday that he and his wife, Karen, would travel to McAllen, Tex., with both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday.”—Washington Post
That doesn’t give officials in McAllen much time to convert their detention center into America’s Theresienstadt.
It’s Summertime for Twittler and ‘Mockracy.
The GOP idea of communism is to have everything possible privatized and in the hands of the GOP's donors and other buddies. This is how they plan to own all of us and keep the money flowing upward to them. And Americans are stupid enough to believe that either it won't happen, or they will somehow magically be one of the ones at the top owning things. Thank God I'm old and don't have to put up with this much longer.
3
American should prove they have a conscience by rising up against this cruel, venal plutocracy's concentration camps. At the very least, vote for candidates who promise that everyone associated with the maltreatment of children in these facilities from the CEO to board members to the guards will be prosecuted for any role they had in the maltreatment of children. Following orders is no excuse for immoral actions.
1
Dogs and cats waiting for adoption in the kennel are treated better than these human refugees .
3
Private contractors are in business to make a profit, nothing more than that. The government has no such profit motive and could do the job more cheaply. One problem with taking the less expensive route if that the Republican propaganda machine has convinced a lot of people that government employees can't walk and chew gum at the same time. The Republicans always did favor the market over the welfare of the people.
1
How could you write an article like this and not name current corporate names? Try GEO Corporation for one. It’s political power is enormous.
4
excellent article
1
of course! This is most likely the simple reason for the immigrant crack down by this president...there's a way to make money...I seem to remember Chris Christie also has something to do with privatized prisons...
this abusive cruelty is all happening in our names..
2
Our government has also been paying private contractors for computer systems that manage arrests, warrants, jails, etc. and share information with local law enforcement agencies such as state and city police and local dog catchers. We share "software solutions" with prisons around the world. Our government has not updated the System of Records Notices required by 5 USC 552a for criminal justice information systems but is relying on SORNS for previous systems of records that are not accurate in the name of the systems manager, description of the system architecture, routine uses of the system etc. In fact, JDIS is mentioned in 2004 but 15 years later there is still no SORN as required by 5 USC 552a. DoJ publishes stuff about JDIS but not what, when and where required by 5 USC 552a (e)(4). The "author" of what they do publish, William E. Bordley, was actually just a scanned signature of a blind man with a years long case of terminal cancer that DoJ stuck on documents to make them look more complete.
This is the type of Socialism the GOP bathes in — commonizing costs and privatizing profits.
8
This is how fascism looks. Right before it gets even uglier.
3
One thing Trump seems to have learned from the past attempts to impeach Nixon and Clinton is the smaller the offense, the easier it is to bring it into focus. Trump's sideshow of outrages and potentially impeachable offenses basically functions to smoke the atmosphere in which the Democrats must come forward with some sort of cogent political platform for the 2020 election. Every hour of negative attention Trump brings to himself is one hour taken away from the attention his opposition candidates might glean.
4
@Carl: People who hold beliefs solely on the basis of "faith" are not very capable of learning and growth, or reasoned judgment.
The rot is so complete, disgusting, and immoral to boot.
This, my country, is my country no longer.
5
Donald Trump's end game is to erase the lines between government and private companies and turn the federal government into a corporation where a board elects the president, shares are sold, and democracy be damned as a fool's enterprise.
1
It seems quite clear to me that the number of people incarcerated in for-profit private prisons and detention centers is clearly a collaborative effort between the justice system at all levels and the owner-operators of those facilities. Just as with a hotel, a minimum level of occupancy is needed on a daily basis to generate a profit. Naturally, if there’s money to be made, Trump will find a way to benefit from it.
That said, the cruelty is pure Trump. Please take notice that this cruelty is focused on people of color, for whom Trump bears a special animosity. Who else would try to claim that detainees don’t require basic personal hygiene supplies such as soap or a toothbrush? Who else would say that an aluminum-coated Mylar “space blanket” on a bare concrete floor is an adequate bed? Or that a reasonable maximum number of people in a given facility is infinite? Or that it’s acceptable to believe ten year olds are appropriate caretakers for newborns?
And who else would at the same time do everything he could to worsen the conditions in the detainees’ home countries by cutting off all foreign aid, thus ensuring a constant supply of new “customers” for those for-profit detention facilities?
5
President Reagan privitized the evaluation of new prescription drugs by closing the outstanding FDA labs. Instead , pharmaceutical companies submit their potential product to private independent labs for evaluation of safety and efficacy. They submit a report to the FDA for review.
Prior to Reagan closing the FDA labs there was never a drug recall. Now we don’t go a month without several recalls. Some tasks just belong in the hands of government regulators not private firms
5
@Steve Reznick
The FDA has always been a paper shuffling organization and keeper of statistical reports. Companies seeking FDA approval hire independent labs to conduct tests and the FDA reviews the results. The FDA has never conducted the tests themselves.
1
"Every betrayal of American principles also seems, somehow, to produce financial benefits for Trump and his friends."
Krugman lost his objectivity here. In fairness, he should have written "...Trump and/or his friends." It makes a big difference.
5
I've observed "privatization" of various federal government services from a lot of different vantage points. In every case I can think of, the privatized functions cost more than the government-run ones, despite privatization being pitched as an improvement by Republicans. Most of my observations predate Trump. Add Trump's decades-old habits in business of taking advantage of and abusing many business partners, and the suggestion that this administration is lining their pockets via corrupt privatization and corrupt deal-making should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention.
12
In the US every government program, regardless of its ostensible purpose, is required to justify itself by serving the primary goal of providing opportunities for private profit. The resulting closed feedback loop between private corporations and political decision makers would be called corruption in any rational ethical system(and for that matter, if Americans saw it in another country), but in America it’s just politics. “The business of America is business,” as Calvin Coolidge said—or as someone else put it, if you want to understand a problem in America, don’t look at who suffers from the problem, look at who profits from it. We’ve become so accustomed to the rot that we can barely smell it anymore.
8
No privatizing of government functions. I have not seen one instance where privatizing saved money-the supposed rationale- or enhanced services. The first contract is usually a good deal but subsequent ones-after internal resources are done away with- jack the price up noticeably and services tank.
6
A brave and bold J'accuse regarding Corporate America, which proves that freedom of the press still exists, unless Dr. K gets picked this afternoon or laid off from the NYTimes.
Why don't some psychologists and sociologists create a rational, humane, functioning prison? It may take some time, of course, to do so, but since crime and punishment are massive, eternal problems for all countries, why not sic science on them for a solution, in this case, the ideal prison (if that's not an oxymoron)?
Perhaps some criminologist has already provided such a blueprint. But has it been put into operation and tested?
As it is, it seems that we just stand back and say, "Boy, that's a problem," and move on.
3
The Kushners are also up to their eyeballs in pay to play.
11
Thank you for this op-ed and for your last sentence.
"Every betrayal of American principles also seems, somehow, to produce financial benefits for Trump and his friends."
Trump is destroying our country.
14
The first job of government should be seeing to the well being of the people governed, to provide the needed services such as education and medical care, however when these services are privatized the profit incentive easily elbows out service incentive. Armies, prisons, education, housing, the medical and immigration system are all functions of government and can not serve the needs of the people if their first interest is profits.
Part of the reason privatization has been popular is that government is supported by taxes and the idea that letting the private sector take charge shifts the risks associated with costs to investors and it is assumed that they will naturally push for efficiencies. It is also assumed that it will bring down the cost of government.
If you are making toys efficiencies may allow for a lower cost toy, but in real life lower cost privatized medical care is usually at the expense of the patient's health, a lower cost privatized army cuts ethical corners, and privatized education takes funds out of public education making it poorer not better. Privatized prison systems have proven themselves to be horror stories. The effect of privatization has been to relieve the government of its most important responsibility and to take out of the hands of elected officials the job they have been elected to do and which can not be delegated to people whose real interests are the turning of profits !
239
@Walter Nieves
But how will the bribes, kick backs, dark political money and lavish crony capitalist parties be funded?
5
@Walter Nieves
As for toys most of the manufacturing of them was shifted off shore to people who work for slave wages,yet we've seen no corresponding drop in the price of toys over all these years.
3
@Walter Nieves
Bankrupt out of the gate. Where have we gone and what are we coming to? A zero sum game I fear.
5
Privatization ruined the UK. It was the brain child of Margaret Thatcher who used it mercilessly to bolster her popularity and keep the Tory party on top and prospering for three consecutive terms. That is 12 years of unrelenting privatization of anything she could lay her hands on.
It destroyed the social fabric and cohesion of the country and ultimately impoverished the UK for all the reasons so eloquently described by Dr. Krugman and several commentators like Bruce Rozenbilt.
It provided the country with second class, inefficient and costly replacements of countless essential services, the railways being the first to go. It was an unmitigated disaster and the reason she was such good friends with 'the Great Communicator'
311
Perhaps that's why the Brits have the second highest rate of maternal deaths in the world.
4
@RHR Indeed. Privatization is crony-capitalism pure and simple: it produces no better service at a higher cost. It is a straight up con.
But what it does do, via sweetheart deals, is to create our very own oligarchs, who then use taxpayer money to bribe, sorry - make contributions to - politicians who smooth the way for more public money to flow into those private pockets: socialism in reverse.
And having snagged a congressional pension and healthcare for life, what's not to like about retiring to a seat on the board and a sweet dividend check every year: keep those revolving doors spinning.
We are already on our way to becoming just like Brazil, and if we keep it up we'll be right up (down?) there with Trump's best buddy.
29
@Analyst Your claim that the Brits have the second highest rate of maternal deaths in the world is ABSOLUTLEY false.
The highest rate of maternal deaths in 2015, for example, was in Sierra Leone, with 1,360 deaths per 100,000 live births. Followed by the Central African Republic with 882. The rate for the U.K. in that year was 9 deaths per 100,000, placing them at rank 30 out of the 183 countries included in the analysis. The United States placed worse than the U.K., at rank 46, with 14 deaths per 100,000.
Next time, do a little research on the actual facts before you post. The truth is out there for anyone who wants to find it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_maternal_mortality_rate
10
Some American voters wanted a businessman elected President because HE would know how to run an economy that would create jobs and economic security. As a successful "rich" man already, HE wouldn't be influenced by special or corporate interests. He would put the public's needs first.
What those voters forgot is WHAT jobs and HOW they would be created. And WHOSE economic security would benefit. Or WHOSE special interests would have the influence.
Not ours.
306
@Darsan54 ah, yes, and make sure that "businessman" would be started by daddy's money and use bankruptcy as a business strategy....what a great model for the US. (With our recent tax bill seems like the bankruptcy part is well on its way.)
46
@Darsan54
Trump is running the nation the way he ran all his failed businesses. He is using the nation's wealth the way he used the wealth of his partners, he drives the business into bankruptcy and walks with full pockets while throwing his partners under the bus. He is poison to everything he touches.
26
@Susan. And lawsuits. Trump had a part in 3500 lawsuits before he was ever nominated. 3500! USA Today checked it out! Ask anybody if they would hire such a "businessman" to even build a dog house for him and they'd say no. Then tell them it's Trump you're talking about and a bunch of them would suddenly change their minds. We are a sick society whom, I'm afraid, will get what it deserves.
19
"As I suggested at the beginning, cruelty and corruption are intertwined in Trump administration policy. " Yes, and the cruelty is usually extreme as is the corruption. What is truly shocking is how many of Trump's supporters agree with this cruelty and ignore the corruption or claim that it's not corruption. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that Americans who supported and voted for Trump aren't upset at any of this. In fact, judging by what some of them post on social media, they prefer this form of "governing".
More amazing than the cruelty and corruption and its tolerance by the American people is where its targeted. Most of us can trace our presence here to immigrants. Many have a past with someone who was poor, didn't speak English, may have depended upon the kindness of the government to establish him/herself here, and someone who emigrated here because of persecution. Others came here because of a corrupt government in their home countries or one that practiced persecution of religious and ethnic minorities. How quickly we forget!
Trump, like W, decided to undo or ignore as many accomplishments of his predecessor as he could. 9/11 was one result of W's ABC policy. Trump on the other hand is plunging this country, especially the working classes, into complete disarray with the able assistance of the GOP. This is not patriotism. This is plundering and destructive for all of us. But no matter: Trump won't pay. We will.
7/9/2019 12:13pm
10
Lucid, incendiary, blistering. Thank you Dr. Krugman.
147
This is what Republican 'socialism' looks like - private gain at the public expense. Government by people with the mentality of looters is not pretty.
94
One of the convenient aspects of being a Grand Old Profiteer is the lack of a human conscience while happily cashing checks made on human misery.
You see it in America’s right-wing greedy healthcare (wealthcare) system, for-profit education, for-profit military-industrial-war complex, for-profit prisons and detention systems.... and most importantly, its deeply corrupt for-profit campaign finance system.
Immigrant activists say ICE secrecy has enabled the detention industry to grow with little oversight even though our taxpayer dollars fund private profits.
"If there's one throughline between every single component part of the ICE detention system, it is opacity; it's like intentional lack of transparency," said Heidi Altman, director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center.
CoreCivic and GEO Group's - two of the largest private prison and detention center companies- totaled a combined $4.1 billion in revenues last year, and detention contracts made up about a quarter of that. Both companies are contending with increased competition and declines in their prison businesses, but that has been offset by growth in the detention business.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, CoreCivic and GEO Group spent$1.6 million and $2.8 million, respectively, on political contributions and lobbying in 2018, overwhelmingly to Republican candidates.
Greed Over People and cruel Christianity.
Nice GOPeople
467
@Socrates
When Obamacare was established, Obama refused to approve the ten year old Tennessee expansion of Medicaid to childless adults because the successful program required individuals to pay affordable premiums and affordable co-pays. It did not comply with Obamacare because women had to make co-pays for contraceptives.
When Obamacare was crammed through even though Democrats only had 59 Democrat Senators, the highly successful SCHIP was defunded. After all, everyone would have Medicaid or subsidized Obamacare policies. Pre-Obamacare, there was not a single child in the country whose parents did not have access to affordable health insurance.
Oops, there were middle class families who had private insurance and were also caring for children at home who needed services not covered by private insurance or by Medicaid, like respite and home care. So those parents were able to care for their children at home rather than institutionalizing them. Medicaid will pay for a child in a nursing home but will not pay for a home health aid for a child [or the elderly for that matter.] SCHIP was covering services that made it possible for parents to keep their children at home without being impoverished. Obama defunded all of those programs in both expansion and non-expansion states.
Programs for the most vulnerable were defunded by the one-size-fits-all technocrat solution created by "experts" so that drug companies could raise their prices.
@ebmem
Tennessee could easily have changed that program to comply. They had no medical reasons not to - (care is neither hurt nor helped by forcing people to pay big co-pays). However our Red State legislators instead decided to refuse the 100% federal government funded expansion of Medicaid and leave people uncovered. As a result the state is now facing a loss of many rural hospitals (or their takeover by corporations milking the people for all they have). All that because it was so important to "resist" what that black man in the white house was doing to help poor people. Stupid is as stupid does.
10
@ebmem
Is that the best you can do?
4
I think that the underlying problem is who does the government work for? In an age of Citizens United, crony capitalism run amok, the Greed Over People party, it's obvious that the government has been taken over by an overclass that sees it as just another way to make money. It has nothing to do with the good of the country, or long term viability, or anything except the next quarterly dividend.
I thank Mr. Krugman for once again pointing out that government and business serve different purposes and once can't, and shouldn't, be run like the other.
75
@Fredd R
Former mayor Bloomberg decided he wanted to sue Exxon for global warming but lacked standing to so because he had never been personally harmed. So he hired the NY attorney general to sue using cover of government authority.
You can thank Hillary for the Citizens United decision. It overturned the provision of the McCain-Feingold law that unconstitutionally required only conservative leaning organizations to turn over their membership lists to Democrats so that they could target anyone not complying with Democrat orthodoxy.
As happened in the 1960's, when Democrats demanded the release of NAACP donors, SCOTUS slapped down Democrats.
Hillary demanded that Citizens United either turn over their membership to the FEC or be silenced. She did not similarly demand that moveon.org. ACORN, Media Matters or any other left wing organization turn over their donor list to the FEC.
Before you rant about the GOP, consider that the 0.01% is overwhelmingly Democrat owners of the government. Bloomberg has purchased the NY AG to do his bidding.
Hillary spent three or four times as much as Trump in 2015-2106, most of it dark money as well as Clinton Foundation funds [as a charity, it is not allowed to engage in any political activity.]
Cronyism is not an element of capitalism. It is a design feature of socialism, where the private ownership of the means of production is still permitted, but where the government controls businesses and is able to designate the favored.
"But the case for free markets isn’t a case for private business where there is no market: There’s no reason to presume that private firms will do a better job when there isn’t any competition, because the government itself is the sole customer."
And there's every reason to presume that they will do a really worse job, and at higher prices.
We never see those prices--the administration stonewalls congressional oversight. Unfortunately, we do see the results thanks to courageous lawyers and fed-up patrol agents.
I've often wondered if these private companies have any kickback schemes in play. Most certainly, I suspect, these are no-bid contracts.
Given the level of absolute corruption in this administration, nothing--absolutely nothing--would surprise me. Here you have the president going off on the reports of child abuse conditions arrogantly saying, "the camps are well run, well equipped, and caring of children's needs."
Just throw that on the pile of presidential lies--after all, what's one more lie, even if a whopper, in the grand scheme of even grander cruelty?
96
As always with the GOP, it’s follow the money. Wealth transfer is the underlying motivation of almost all Republican policies. For example, its racist positions of the past 50 years have served mainly to garner the votes of people whose pockets it’s been picking the entire time.
40
Mr. Krugman is ever gullible about Republican motivation. Trump doesn’t care about deterring immigrants. He does care about helping wealthy donors profit from them. Politically, cruelty to migrants is less about reving up a racist base than spurring Democratic outrage, which abets the GOP narrative that Democrats only care about “other people,” not you. In the tightly woven world of Republican politics & media, anything can mean anything.
Cruelty is not just sadism. Cruelty is using the lives of other, less powerful, people as a means to your own ends. By any measure, the Republicans are grotesquely cruel to their voters, cashing in their impoverishment & their devotion for pocket change. “Privatization” was never anything but a transfer of wealth from the public to the donor class. It works politically because the less competently the economy works for the public, the more our anger can be directed against our only means of power: our government. Suffering is a matter for Fox news to spin, not for conscience.
151
@Martin
"the less competently the economy works for the public, the more our anger can be directed against our only means of power: our government. "
The anger is directed and comes out towards any people with less power: the poor ("welfare queens"), Blacks and other minorities, etc. Coin Controls the Conversation, Dollars Direct the Discourse, and the uber-rich have done a thorough job at directing attention away from their own corruption.
10
And “Truth” is not “Truth”.
3
@Martin
Interesting? Can the detainees walk away? should be consider them incarcerated and are the incarcerated by definition enslaved? They are unwittingly perhaps enriching all kinds of people. And frankly, there need to be inspectors paid for by Congress on site.. monitoring the situations daily until we know what is going on.
Let's keep up this conversation despite the Epstein and friends sex scandal.
I believe there is to be a ruling on DACA next month.
There is a simple explanation; the Republicans are using our own tax dollars against us.
44
@SHAKINSPEAR: This is "socialism" for organized criminals.
6
Nothing regarding Trump and his making money from his properties will happen until the House is able to conduct a thorough investigation of the president's financial affairs. Until the House can go to court and obtain Trump's taxes, etc. all of this will continue. Either the House wins the ability to investigate, or the election of 2020 and a new president.
23
Thank you Dr. Krugman. Once again you expose another outrage perpetrated by the Trump administration and give us a clear understanding of the reasons and outcomes behind it. Thank goodness for a free press and journalists like you. There is still hope.
45
It is so ironic, and depressing, that so many allegedly conservative (small government folks) politicians and voters care not that many of our government's most important duties are being delegated to for profit businesses.
Mr. Krugman is exactly right; giving these for profit entities our tax payer money along with contracts with no real competition or oversight leads to incompetency, waste, and corruption. That's why it's so ironic that the GOP supports these efforts. They claim to be the guardians of free enterprise, but their policy proposals contradict this at every turn.
Same for GOP voters. Decades of the Faux News propaganda machine and other misinformation outlets have convinced them that for profit is always better than government administration. "The government is the problem", their deceased master put it. Now we have privatized military forces, privatized prisons, privatized concentration camps for immigrant children, and if they have their way, privatized social security and Medicare.
Medicaid, for example, at the state level of administration is already heavily privatized. Here in Salt Lake City, it's ran by a wing of United Healthcare, called "Optum". I work with them daily, and they are a joke. They routinely deny urgent care for people so they can maintain or improve their profit margins for themselves and their shareholders.
This privatization of gov is only going to worsen. The Citizens United decision all but ensures that it will...
73
All right wing authoritarian regimes collude with corporate business friends in the early stages of their growth, when the norms of democracy are still apparently being observed. Later when these are dispensed with, the corporations become embedded in the state apparatus, employ slave labour of immigrants and other designated 'enemies of the people', and directed towards creating a self sufficient state with only enemies outside it. This dystopian vision was once a fantasy in American, but is it still?
32
I don’t know whether to laugh about the absurdity of it all or cry about the depths of perfidy to which this administration stoops. The more I hear, the more the corruption Trump condones starts looking like a rancid onion in which the peeling layers reveal the corpse flower.
40
Countless millions know how cruel and corrupt and hostile to American principles of governance and justice the Trump administration and its president are, but no one seems to be able to do much about it. The Congress seems helpless. The Courts seem to be able only to moderate the greatest evils, but the situation certainly seems fragile at the S.C. Trump believes that he has the high court in his pocket, thanks to McConnell.
The military seems increasingly compromised and corrupted as one lobbyist after another get to be acting secretaries. The committed press does what it can, but as with much else, Trump is always ready with a counter-narrative. Obama conspired with the Russians to commit treason against Trump!
This episode of this illegitimate president has surely shown the weakness of the Constitution. It provides no way to disarm a conspiracy by a wide-enough array of individuals who gain power and have no intention of protecting and defending the Constitution. It assumes good faith on the part of most of those invested with power. It did not imagine the Republican Party of the 21st century.
110
@Soquelly,
This is possibly the best comment of the year.
3
it appears the Constitution is still working exactly as it was crafted to do: while enshrining a sugary coating of eloquent Enlightenment ideas about the generalized rights of man in an equalized and shared democratic framework, it actually protects the economic security and social position of a very small crust of landholders, planters, and wealthy hangers on. political power is vested almost exclusively in the wealthy class, at the expense of everyone else, and rural voters of almost every economic level enjoy outsized power in the federal government. it seems the further you live from your neighbor, the more valuable your vote is, so superannuated farms are good, apartment houses not so much (excluding a few doorman buildings in rarefied urban neighnorhoods).here's a fun math problem: how many people does Mitch McConnell actually represent way down South in Kentucky that he gets to control Congress with an iron fist and a Christian Bible? talk about taxation without representation, did anyone ever ask you if you wanted your government contracging for private prisons or Prince's Hessians?
2
When will the lower middle class figure out that the Trump Administration and the Republican Party have been waging a war against the non-millionaire class? Most Trumpsters seem to be so caught up in the hate and anti non-white rage cultivated by the Trump movement that they can't even see how tariffs, tax cuts for the wealthy, etc. are against their self-interests. Even the FOX News propaganda machine must at some point realize that Trump's personal exploitation of his position and the ineptitude of his Presidency and cabinet are a danger to this Country.
1
Philosophically speaking
The issue would appear to be simple: folks who are here illegally, are illegally here and should not be thought of as welcome to stay for a day, a week, a month or a year.
Only if one, somehow, opts to believe that being illegally here is quite OK, could any notion other than repatriating them ASAP be entertained in the U. S. of A.
And only members of the Church of Anthropogenic Causation
could believe that agnostics want to parboil the planet!
Cruelty and corruption is all there is to this administration.
5
It is worse than that, Paul.
1
Yawn. More of the same from...more of the same. Either he is re-elected to continue the reformation or we become the worst nightmare a socialist regime and their apparatchiks in the media can ever imagine. It's a promise.
Unfortunately all too true.
1
The LA Times is reporting today that there are "asylum seekers" from all over the world amassed at the Mexican border. Many have crossed any number of countries where they could have asked for asylum. Did they? Of course not.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-refugee-camp-rio-grande-migrants-border-20190708-htmlstory.html
The US, thanks to the Democrats, is sending out the signal that now is the time for any garden variety economic immigrant or illegal "immigrant" to take a shot at getting into the US, making a mockery of any kind of formal immigration system.
2
Thank you for bringing up DeVos because the privatization of schools is sureptitiously happening through the proliferation of charter schools which finally are being called out for--in many cases--fraud.
4
As usual Dr. Krugman, you are a voice of reason and clarity!
Thank you.
1
Crimes against humanity. Where is the UN? And why will they not be monitoring our elections?
2
The U.S.A. is the most corrupt and most self-destructing 'democracy' on this planet. The privatisation of public services, the outsourcing of the military and other scandals, prove that the U.S. strain of capitalism (yes, it is a virus) is "by the rich" and "for the rich."
"For the people"? What a joke.
Today's Editorial Board report on the scandalous leniency granted to Jeffrey Epstein, for serial sexual abuse and trafficking of minors, and the blatant and shameless cover-up by Alexander Acosta (now the Labor Secretary), are breaking the faith of those born and bred on the concept of 'American Exceptionalism'.
Domestic and foreign policy abuses (the latter symbolised by the incessant presidential grovelling before the murderous Wahhabi leader Salman), are destroying the fabric of the nation.
Your one saving grace is the (still) free press, and I hope it will continue to fight the rising tide of corruption in the stealth dictatorship that once was truly an exceptional nation.
3
After several days of shock and tears at the revelation of what is going on in our name at the border, Congress has finally issued a raft of subpoenas to the federal agencies responsible.
We will get to the bottom of this inept policy that Trump has bumbled his way through -- seeking ever less principled people to violate national and international laws -- but not before many, many children will suffer lasting mental health issues.
Who is going to care for these kids when we finally come to our senses?
1
Prof. Krugman: Please say again—concentration camps run and staffed by Federal Employees are benign, if not beneficial whereas concentration camps run and staffed by private corporation employees are evil?
Trump is about to engage in a massive dragnet to detain and deport immigrants. It seems likely that many citizens will be caught in this effort. There is no doubt that Trump loves the show of power. The aggressive belligerent use of power which the US gives to the president. Iran is a case and point. An unprovoked use of economic sanctions and intimidation. Clearly the Europeans are intimidated. None of which has been even remotely be presented for public debate.
So what can we do? What can average people do?
Everyday there are a new list of despicable, horrible, corrupt, illegal practices.
What can we do to get these people to pay?
2
Vote blue, state and federal elections. Get your friends to register to vote and check their registrations. Contact Sister District and Swing Left to volunteer. Explore the integrity of your local election apparatus. Write your congressional representatives - and check out Resistbot. It’s up to us ordinary people at the grassroots level to get involved and act. No one will rescue us.
1
How much are these companies making and how does it breakdown per detainee?
This is not Trumps money but our tax dollars!!
I am ashamed!!
1
“Justice, justice you shall pursue!” (Deuteronomy 16:20)
I live in peace knowing that after Trump leaves office, New York State will strip him of his ill-gotten assets, which are most of them. Simultaneously, he'll undoubtedly have a date at the World Court at The Hague for crimes against humanity. That will strip him of his freedom.
“Justice, justice you shall pursue!”
3
So the Border detention centers are mistreating illegal aliens. Where is the moral outrage at NYCHA housing American citizens in fungus and rat invested squalor? De Blasio is running for President (shudder the thought!) and AOC is show boating at border detention centers while their own constituents are mistreated. Perhaps Mr Krugman was thinking of Rikers Island as a model of government run efficiency and effectiveness. $200K a year to detain one person.
Spare us the hypocrisy…
1
Whatsboutism. Classic deflection. Yes, whole groups of Americans are dedicated to ensuring humane conditions in prisons housing citizens.
This is not the issue under discussion.
The U.S. government has taken custody of persons including young children who are legally here under the asylum laws. The government camps are generating profits for the rich (often GOP donors) while failing to meet legal and moral standards of care.
One obvious solution is to vastly increase the numbers of asylum judges so the population subject to detention per the current policy is reduced. But Trump et al. love the “border crisis” and have no interest in solving it before the election.
2
@Julie B
Trump has been asking for funding. AOC voted against it. Total hypocrisy on the part of the Dems. The illegal aliens can go home. The poor citizen in NYCHA housing and Rikers island cannot. They are home.
Thank you. Truth to power.
2
I like your blunt honesty in these articles. You don't neuter the impact of your words with euphemisms or moderated language. It's atrocities at concentration camps, not "immigration policy" at "detention centers."
When things actually are extreme in this country, it's important we confront that directly, instead of hiding behind vagueness
3
Yes yes yes! But please stop stop stop!
Paul - You are as always preaching to the choir. Please please please - take your articulate message to the red states.
Find a way dude. You have the voice. Please.
2
the essence of fascism is the merging of an autocratic government with corporate interests.
None of this matters to the Trump base as long as he keeps throwing them the red meat of cruelty to migrants and news reporters. Ignorance is a wonderful thing if you live in Trump-land.
1
"John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, joined the board of Caliburn International, which runs the infamous Homestead detention center for migrant children."
This is disheartening.
1
But privatizing is the GOP brand. For anything "socialist"- education, highways (corporate toll roads are the answer), Medicare...
Stop and think- why doesn't Medicare cover it ALL anymore? How did private insurance ever sneak into that (and why don't geezers need eyes and teeth)? Well, 2020 may be the best time to revisit that, as geezers (I get to use the "G" word, I am a card carrying member) wake up to the fact that "kids"- underpaid, under debt, and forced into private insurance- (and those Obama Care subsidies are for insurers, after all, the clients are just an excuse to pump federal tax $$$ to the corps)- will look to cut geezer benes in time...
with the help of GOP propaganda.
& maybe there is a lesson with Obama Care generally... a complicated plan for everything that had way too many moving parts. In the sausage factory these weaknesses get exploited advantageously to "privatizer" interests. Best to go Big, and KISS. Like any good Socialist would.
The gun lobby too does not care if people die, as long as gun makers profit.
1
Yes, because we all know that for-profit prisons didn’t exist under Obama.
Probably the bast comparison of public vs private is Medicare(3%overhead) vs private insurance(20% overhead).I've been on both during during separate bouts with cancer.Medicare was much less stressful while private insurance put up constant road blocks such as denial of certain tests,large co-payments and a dollar cap. If I hadn't been relatively well off, depending on private insurance would have bankrupted me, as it has many of the less fortunate.By the way..only Elizabeth Warren,among the candidates,seems to understand this problem.
8
Very insightful column, and informative too. I did not know that Betsy DeVos's brother was Eric Prince of Blackwater infamy, but of course it makes so much sense. The one nit I would pick is that unlike Dr. Krugman, I do not think it would be "going too far to claim that the private-prison industry — merchants of detention? — has been a driving force behind the viciousness of Trump’s border policy. " I think this is probably exactly right. Just as Big Oil and Big Coal are driving his "environmental" policy and Ms. DeVos herself is driving his support for for-profit universities and student loan scams that steal GI Bill money from veterans without giving them any training that can land them a decent job. Where is the outrage from the "conservative" commentators who raged for years about the Obama administration's support for renewable energy and the relatively minor by comparison Solyndra debacle? Well, their patrons and advertisers are benefiting when the Trump administration "picks winners and losers" so they are just fine with it.
3
Crassus was the richest man in ancient Rome. He made his money in real estate. He had a private fire fighting force that perfected the "fire sale". You could sell to him or let it burn.
Crassus was also the money behind Julius Caesar and the Triumvirate which ultimately led to the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire.
It all sounds too familiar....
1
Widespread privatization of public services occurred toward the end of the Roman Empire. Public law and public roads gave way to private law and tolls wherever the feudal lords could impose them on travelers. The process of privatizing previously public functions is the definition of feudalism (at least in the textbook I used in my history courses). There is nothing new about it. It simply means that the res publica, the Latin term for the public sector, is disintegrating under the pressure of private interests. Eventually you have little private armies fighting each other. Oh, wait (a Krugman-ism), it's already happening.
2
What I always wonder about private prisons is where they derive their authority to detain people. Private prisons are staffed by private citizens who hold people captive. How is that legal? Has it been tested in the courts? There may be some deputization process for guards, but maybe that should be challenged in the courts, as the guards would still be paid by a private company rather than the government.
1
This is America....prison incorporated!
2
Erick Prince and Betsy DeVos are brother and sister?!? Holy smokes! that explains a lot.
Republicans love private contractors because they use public funds to reward loyal cronies, who, in turn, contribute some of their public loot to the Republican party to help maintain the gravy train--all this at the taxpayer's expense.
284
@tencato,
Boom. Exactly, while decrying the "tax and spend liberal", they exemplify the "spend and spend conservative". After providing tax cuts to the ruling class, they provide further oligarch welfare by giving the remaining tax revenue over to their buddies via loutsourcing/service bureau/private contractors.
Want to bid? Sorry --> Those not already in the pay to play system, need not apply. Established accounts only.
31
@tencato
Reminds me of Erdogan in Turkey and Orban in Hungary (among others). Of course, that sort of outright corruption can't happen here. ("It Can't Happen Here" -- Sinclair Lewis.)
8
@tencato That comment looks like a description of a truly devastating cartoon. I can see the picture as you describe the situation.
4
Would Trump and his cronies sell their souls and the welfare of the nation for a profit? You bet!
This well documented article by Paul Krugman is only one in many illustrations that for Trump and his administration, for many in the GOP and in big corporations, money is more important than compasssion, honesty or integrity.
Values that once were important in the American society are quickly being flushed down the drain.
It is high time for a reboot, before democracy and civil society are completely in ruins.
Please vote out the grifters in 2020!
46
Should Trump be brought before the Haig upon charges of crimes against humanity? Clearly the treatment of migrants and the many deaths that have resulted can form the basis for charges.
If we cannot charge him then maybe we need to go to a different venue. The fact that we, of all nations, are not members of the international court, should not be a impediment. He needs to be held accountable.
30
@Den
Just to clarify, it is The Hague or in Dutch Den Hague
Yes, we the United States should be just as accountable for our crimes against humanity as other nations, especially if we want our country to be great, or even decent
4
Donald, the Reality-show host, is all about money, and more money brings more power, more power brings more "friends".
the saddest thing is so many poor people voted for him despite of knowing who he is. Why would anyone believe a New York Developer, born with a silver spoon and spent his entire life in the city, have any intention of improving their lives?
35
As in everything Trump, "follow the money". It may be called "campaign contributions" or "free political speech", but a bribe is a bribe is a bribe.
Until we have strict campaign finance limits, a return of the 'fairness doctrine', public financing of campaigns, and strong oversight of private "civic interest" PAC's, we will have the 'wink-wink' system of bribery.
This is one area Trump is familiar with... some may remember him discussing 'buying politicians and access' and, "of course, expecting results". The plutocracy entrenches is privilege and wealth through buying access and influence, though it is always carefully couched as 'political interest'.
We need look no further than the Koch brothers and their wholesale funding of the Tea Party and other "grass roots" organizations... or Rupert Murdoch's Fox "News" Republican propaganda machine.
Get the big money, the dark money, the anonymous money out of our politics, before the wealthy take our individual freedom and liberty away from us, (no doubt in the name of "national security"), and take over our government entirely.
336
@Jim Brokaw
And how about George Soros and his largesse directed toward all things progressive?
1
As Prof. Krugman points out, the United States has been on this path of cutting taxes, reducing government and increasing privatization of public services (e.g., prisons and migrant detention centres) since the Reagan era. Donald Trump is only the logical extension of long established Republican policy. The unasked questions in this matter are : What do we owe to other people in society? Does ordinary human decency extend to non-citizens, especially to children who haven't chosen to come to the United States of their own accord? If privatization of government services is inherently good, why not privatize police and fire services so that only those who can afford to pay the cost will receive the benefit? Why should anyone pay taxes for public schools if he or she doesn't have school-aged children? Why should anyone pay taxes so that the poor will have food and shelter?
221
@James, Toronto, CANADA
Several years ago I met a couple from a smallish Ontario town. Their economy had been hit hard and the man had kept his job by agreeing to short term cuts that would keep the company afloat until the economy recovered.
The most difficult thing was that he did not have health care. I was shocked. What about the Ontario Hospitalization Insurance Plan? He told us he had health insurance, but there were few physicians in town. He explained that a group of people who had no children in school or did not use some city services fought to keep local taxes low. They were successful. Then, when young doctors came to look for a new position they saw a town that was poorly cared for. They did not want to raise their families in a place that was falling apart with the consent of the residents. Those young doctors never stayed. As the older doctors retired there were no young ones to take their place.
If we ignore the moral reasons for caring for each other we will soon run into very practical reasons. No one can make it thru life without some help. The country of origin, skin color, gender, wealth, ... should not matter. For those who believe that America is exceptional, we must show that we understand what that means. Helping others is the right thing to do and makes us better people.
54
@James, Toronto, CANADA
People forget the long arc of history... Police and fire services used to be privatized -- and the result was crime that was much higher than current, and cities that burned because the fire service only protected certain homes.
We live in an interconnected world. No one came into this world on their own -- witness the mother whose uterus worked to make them able to be here, then all the others who helped feed, clothe and nurture that being. I don't grow all my own food or pave my roads, many others do that for me. When we consider all others in our society, fundamentally we are caring also for ourselves. And as I am currently finding out, we will all be hurt or elderly and need assistance at some point -- and the care given to the least amongst us is the care we would wish for ourselves then.
43
Yes, fantastic article! You didn’t say this directly in your piece but this privatization scheme in general constitutes a “taking” upon the taxpayer. You do point out that we get less benefit at greater cost but it also increases the power of corporations to hold sway over public policy. I’m very glad you pointed out the obvious fallacy of privatization vs the government providing the direct services, cruelty and corruption sums it up just right. Who are we as a people? When is enough, enough?
272
@Fred I hear ya Fred, but evidently not enough yet, because we're not seeing the same response as what just happened in Hong Kong, which is what SHOULD be happening in a healthy democracy. I moved overseas after the last general election, for mostly economic reasons but also just a sense of despair about how ignorant and complacent Americans have become to the now weekly atrocities and attacks on our democracy. What IS it going to take?
23
Why no Hong Kong turnout? Partly the complacency of having sufficient “bread and circuses” (foodie food and Netflix) to quell desperation. Partly the blitzkrieg of Republican outrages. Partly exhaustion and a sense of powerlessness.
In short, exactly what the Trump-Miller-Fox master manipulators have orchestrated and count on.
What’s it going to take? Leadership and an organizer. Democratic leadership is MIA. Their failure to inspire and mobilize feeds feelings of impotence and exhaustion among those appalled at the Trump/GOP corruption and war on good governance.
My vote is for a mass Women’s March for America in January 2020 - but this requires focus and organization, and that element seems missing right now.
11
@Julie B
"...this requires focus and organization, and that element seems missing right now."
So provide the focus and start organizing. You, Julie B, you do it. Figure out what you want to happen and how to make it happen. then call friends, family, local organizations, government officials, anyone who might possibly be willing help. Get each of them to do some small thing to help, then use their contacts to get more people to each do some small thing. You be the catalyst. Please, do it.
4
Personally, I don't see much difference between privatized prisons and privatized healthcare; they are both ghoulish enterprises, fueled by perverse incentives and run by impeccably groomed parasites. Healthcare workings are no less opaque than what goes on behind prison walls, with the victims presented with the same lack of recourse.
364
@stan continople
Diet, exercise and tranquility minimize one's need for the so-called healthcare industry. But like incarceration, bad luck may compel involvement. So, in addition to being disciplined, it's important to be lucky or at least not be unlucky.
18
@stan continople
Well, that assumes there is no difference between a doctor and a prison guard. A pretty big assumption. You can have an individual prison guard who is decent, kind. Or indifferent. Or sadistic. They are not educated and sworn to protect, as are doctors.
12
@stan continople
I totally support Medicare for all but my current insurance gives me a large choice of doctors to use. Every hear of a prisoner getting to choose which prison they serve their sentence in?
8
During a lengthy federal career, I oversaw numerous government operations that were subjected to contracting out. In each case, we conducted a should-cost analysis so we had an objective economic measure to compare proposed costs to existing costs. We also evaluated proposals based on proposed solutions to meet performance goals and whether the bidder had a record of quality delivery. When responses to the proposal came in, it was obvious which exceeded the "should" cost or failed to explain how the contractor would meet performance goals. If an operation was contracted out in this process, the contractor was routinely measured against the performance goals and held accountable for remaining within the proposed cost.
That said, whether work is inherently governmental is a more complex and thus much more critical issue; one is well-advised to separate that from cost and performance measures-of-merit in determining the "goodness" of contracting out.
1
This describes a uniquely American cultural belief: "Every activity should be an occasion for someone to make a profit".
The profit motive is a driver for invention, competitiveness and exertion. But there are many activities that don't require that driver. Prisons are one example one that should function well without the "profit motive". So is the military. For Profit Entrepreneurs, who take risks, do help push a thriving economy. But there are also over one hundred million American who perform excellently on a salary; No Profit.
5
When these private Detention Centers can bar the press and some of Congress members to do a proper inspection of their centers, one has to ask are these private owners living up to their contracts? It certainly appears that the have full control of Federal policies regarding how to manage these systems.
By the way, how can they restrict the Congress members. Aren't they supposed to be able to conduct oversight?
Under the Freedom of Information Act, can't the media get copies of the contracts that were signed between the private contractors and Homeland Security and other Federal Agencies that play a part in decisions concerning Prisons and Detention Centers?
Transparency is key and there certainly not much sunshine here.
It is time for all of us to know just what kind of Contracts are being signed. And whether or not the private sector is violating them.
Just think about the Blackwater and the disaster that i. And now Devos, Prince's sister, is trying to push for paying more Federal monies to For-profit Education facilities without any strings to assure a quality education for those who attend. And she claims to be a Christian who really cares about young people.
When private enterprise has stockholder, their only concern are their stockholders, not prisoners, immigrants or anyone for that matter.
Is this the most corrupt Administration ever or what?
12
@Jean The press and Congress can't even get the time of day from the Trump administration. The Trumpers will end up making the Teapot Dome scandal look like good government.
4
@Rob Kneller
I agree
It occurs to me that disaster relief has excellent potential as a growth industry too.
1
I just love it when economists blandly state the free markets are best in most cases. Why? Because they're good at generating capital? Capital is meaningless unless it's put to good use. If one economy generates 100 billion dollars, and 99.9 billion is in the bank accounts of 10 people, is that better than an economy which generates 5 billion which is evenly shared among the population? People's health and well being are what's important.
5
After 35 years of banking as a commercial real estate lender, I never saw a public-private partnership where the tax payers got a fair shake. Instead, I saw developers enrich themselves at public expense and politicians take credit for being visionary and creative. It's an unholy alliance. The private sector is a single minded endeavor made efficient by the profit motive. It doesn't need public support. The public sector has a broader mission that requires transparency to be efficient. The two sectors don't mix well. When the private sector requires public money we should be suspicious.
16
Krugman jumps the shark when he writes that "Donald Trump [probably] basically approves of the idea of killing critical journalists". The Trump administration has actually shown more respect for freedom of the press than the Obama Administration which, for example, spied on at least one journalist (James Rosen of FOX News). The only thing that Trump has done to the press is throw words at them. Judging by the constant squeals of outrage, it's obvious that the press can dish it out, but they can't take it.
2
Thanks.
And here I could have sworn I recalled the Saudis hacking a reporter to bits and Putin having reporters shot in the back of the head, without Hizzoner letting out more than a sneer.
But then, I also thought I recalled Trump’s constant attacks on “fake news,” calls for censorship, and interfering in private financial deals involving CNN.
Must just be me.
2
@Christopher Arend: If Trump is so respectful of the media, when was the last time you saw him hold a formal press conference, like....Obama?
The media can dish it, but can't take it?
Oh, please! What about Trump? Could it be, that if Nancy Pelosi can get under his skin, he's afraid of the risk of having to answer questions he'd rather not, for fear of seeing him sweat?
As Bugs Bunny used to say, "Mmmnnnnnyeeeeaaah, could be!"
Privatisation has been around for years now, and it doesn't get any better. For example, people in Britain used to complain about the nationalised railway system, but now they complain even more about the privatised rail companies. And if roads are privatised (in the US I believe they are called "toll highways") that means that from the money paid by motorists a large proportion must go to the owners, whether a few big stakeholders or many small shareholders (after all, why else would they bother?). While prisons and schools are clearly part of the nation's collective responsibility, as are policing and the military, there are still more than enough fields of action for private enterprise (why do golf courses spring to mind?)
2
I'm all for giving Trump his due in the effort to dismantle good gov't, but he didn't do it alone. The Republicans in congress have aided and abetted him every step of the way. The fact is that Trump is getting away with stuff that conservatives have dreamed about for decades but thought they couldn't do.
14
As we sip our morning coffee, the cruelty in US detention facilities continues unabated. Let that thought sink in for a few seconds. It will persist as long as the detention procedures, which have been consciously designed by the Administration in order to generate physical and emotional harm, are allowed to continue without any outside monitoring by domestic and international observers. Even prisoners of war are entitled to humane treatment with monitoring by outside organizations like the Red Cross. I wonder how many more lives will needlessly be destroyed before the Red Cross, the UN or the International Court in The Hague start making demands for non-governmental monitoring. Time to wake up.
15
Good column, Dr. Krugman. There is, I believe, where American press and other media outlets have not done the best job, educating the American public, ( with the exception of the New York Times and a limited number of other press members), and that is the area of conflicts of interest. These are at an extraordinary level within the Trump administration. The Post Office Building in Washington D.C., the Betsey DeVos network , etc. Too many too mention here. Certainly the American public is not fully naïve to the impact of "crony capitalism". I believe that this is an area where the failing and corruption resulting from this should get much broader explanation within all forms of communications media. Most citizens can be educated to understand this problem, as they have seen it, at some point perhaps within their respective state or local governments. Perhaps such efforts could demonstrate to most Americans, how the Trump administration is likely the most corrupt in modern Presidential history. Hopefully then, Americans will more fully realize that Mr. Trump's promise to "drain the swamp" was far from reality.
6
We need to see trump’s tax returns, his family’s tax returns, a roster of maralago members/influencers, a roster of “visitors” to the White House, etc. Sunshine will help shrink that swamp owned and controlled by trump.
24
@Sally
Sally, I totally agree, however with Nancy Pelosi in charge of the House you’re NEVER going to see these documents. She is so afraid of taking action. Fine any official $35,000 a day if they refuse a subpoena and arrest them if they refuse to pay. All you see from the Democrats are “strongly worded letters.” Congress is supposed to be a co-equal branch. Pelosi and Schmer’s time has passed. Until the Democrats get some new unafraid leadership Trump and his administration will continue to mock Congress and do whatever they want.
1
Great article. For Republicans in power, and Trump cultists, losing connection to a sense of being a part of the human race dies if it was there to begin with. The embrace of cruelty, violence against children is repulsive.
18
Is it cruelty or is it corruption? Yes.
18
Who are the merchants of this modern day slave trade?
Undocumented immigrants is a euphemism for modern day slaves. The merchants, those who profit from selling them to do the jobs no Americans will do.
What's your take in all this, Mr. Krugman?
2
Professor Krugman again connects the dots and teaches us brilliantly yet again. But what a disgraceful nation we are, when a large, powerful minority (Red State Republicans) have commandeered our government to use it for their vile purposes, which intertwine ignorant racism, bullying cruelty and abject corruption.
We -- all of us Americans -- we fund these efforts, and they are done in our name. How foul, how abject, how intolerable!
24
The one difference between Donald Trump and a tyrant such as Putin or Kim is that Trump happens to serve as the head of a country that prevents him from attaining unlimited power. I have no doubt that Trump would do to "fake news" journalists what Putin or Kim do. On the financial side, Trump is actually thriving making a mockery of the constitutional emoluments clause. His coffers are being filled by Saudis and Russians paying boatloads of money to his hotels and clubs. Remember when he promised that he would turn over all his business interests to Don Jr. and Eric? If you believe that, then you may also be interested in lovely oceanfront property for sale in Kansas.
12
Government officials are afraid to standup to Trump's illegal activities.
No one is protecting the whistle blowers or the officials who have spent a lifetime in serving this country like McCabe who opened a case against the criminal residing in our White House.
Tom Steyer and Bloomberg and other like minded millionaires should establish an organization to provide monetary assistance for the whistleblowers and others who would standup /report Trump illegal activities throughout our government.
Right now officials are simply fired or drum out of their job by Trump and his cult.... people are afraid to speak up because they have to provide for their families(no job, no pay, no food , no house , no car , no health insurance). It is extremely hard to fight against a criminal enterprise led by Trump, McConnell and Barr.
National media must evaluate this dilemma and realize we are definitely sliding towards a dictatorship when Barr is investigating the CIA and FBI per the instructions of the Criminal in Chief
14
"Vicious treatment of refugees might deter future asylum-seekers, and in any case it helps rev up the racist base. "
When you are fleeing your country, leaving behind everything you have, taking your children away from their lives, all because the chance of survival is near-zero. Do you really think about the "vicious treatment of refugees" in the USA? All you care about is survival and a life for your family.
Make no mistake, this abhorrent cruelty only serves the GOP racist base. It doesn't prevent refugees from seeking asylum in the USA. If you want to solve that problem then invest in the region where the refugees come from. Take away their reasons to fear for their lives. Helpt them build a live in their own country.
What did Trump do with budgets dealing with that? That's right, he stoped them, ensuring the "crisis" at the border would deepen. This government is shameful.
Denying people access to your country is your right provided the law is followed. Putting them in concentration camps is not. That is just abhorrent, inhumane and criminal.
17
As an economist, Mr. Krugman well understands the importance of statistical analysis in formulating perspective and informed opinion- this piece, however heartfelt, provides not a scintilla of factual, verifiable information with which to buttress his opinion- in our current journalistic age, he should appreciate the value of substantive, objective context - unfortunately, he provides none, and without it, his argument remains unpersuasive .....I share his concerns in this area, but he has given me nothing with which to arm myself in evaluating this troubling situation....less 'probably', more substance please, Mr. Krugman.....
In a State that has so many very rich people (Jeffrey Epstein might be a good example) why haven't the people of South Florida made a loud outcry about the conditions at the Homeland concentration camp? Because they spend there time like Trump on the golf course on the beach without a thought to what is happening under their noses.
How sad this is because many of the people who live or are Snow Birds, come from immigrant families or who lost families in camps during WW II.
They could at least bring tooth brushes, diapers or anything that would make the life of these children just a bit BETTER.
9
The International Standard of Quality Management, or ISO 9001:2015 agrees with your analysis here, because one of the major components is meeting detailed customer requirements.
In the operation of profitable concentration camps for asylum seeker or their dependents just who is the customer?
Not the inmates, but us the taxpayers.
And what are our requirements?
With whom do they compete, and what are the results of reduced costs?
More net profit and greater suffering.
3
There is nothing more heinous than private prisons for children! They combine the priority for profit, which means hellish conditions with the fact that these are human children.
I'm really beginning to think there is no God.
6
All of this privatization nonsense started with St Ronnie. Reagan and his cronies and his, for profit liars, have gotten us into this twisted mess. “The Great Communicator” lied through his teeth but the American public ate it up. He looked sincere and at one point he pretended he was FDR, until Ted Kennedy called him out. Our hope is that the Dems can recover the WH, maintain the House and capture the US Senate, in 2020. Then perhaps we can right some of the wrongs. If not...we’ll be doomed to second rate status in the Western world.
6
So, this is how the Trump's GOP drains the swamp. Illegitimate though he is, Trump's corruption is blindingly obvious - yet, his approval rating is well over 40% and 50% think he's doing swell on the economy. Stupidity in the oval office + the trumpist's base surely will doom us all.
6
Great piece. Thank you.
4
Republicans don't believe in free markets. They believe in feeding the greed of the monopolists who fund them. Graft is the only type of trickle-down that actually works.
5
Yes, Krugman is always right, but
1) The real Saudi crime is the killing of tens of thousands of Yemenis, not the butchering of one journalist, and
2) The DoD is the prime example of what Krugman was criticizing: Private contractors with the US government as the sole consumer. Note too that every aspect of military business is classified!
6
I despise Trump, I didn't vote for him in 2016 and I won't vote for him in 2020; he is the antithesis of every value that I respect. But constructing a strawman to bludgeon him only further corrodes the public discourse. Virtually every immigration-related thing that has gone wrong at the border either was already in place or was in motion before Trump had control. The one legitimate criticism of Trump and one of the things I despise about him is the stupid cruelty of his statements ... but that doesn't translate to tangible responsibility.
Further, "... the detention centers meet the historical definition of concentration camps ..." is a hair-splitting rationalization, seemingly for the purpose of simultaneously excusing the perpetrators of this slander and as a further means of attacking Trump. The fact is that that my father's family did not voluntarily travel great distances to cross a border without so that they could be interred. They were taken by force from their homes in Lodz, put on trains and sent to Warsaw, where they were held in the ghetto until it was time to put them against their will on trains to the concentration camp(s) where they were exterminated. Exquisite intellectualizations don't change those facts.
So please, just stop it.
3
Paul,
I came across this in an official document from 1916. It appears that the Secretary of Charities and Prisons of the state of South Carolina, recommended that the prison system stop "leasing of inmates" due to the "treatment of convicts by contractors". And and the document wasn't talking about the treatment being too gentle.
So this is an old "solution" to an old problem. Conservatives always fail to learn the lesson experience teaches.
https://dc.statelibrary.sc.gov/bitstream/handle/10827/24843/Evolution_of_the_Penal_System_of_SC_1866-1916.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
5
Imagine how quickly these non-government centers would close up if people stopped breaking the law.
1
@Objectivist It is not illegal to cross the border at an entry point and ask for asylum. So which law are you referring to? Most of the people in the concentration camps crossed at entry points.
1
@Mira Ka
Concentration camps ?
Grow Up.
Spend a little time looking through history books and get your arms around what a real concentration camp is like.
These are overcrowded facilities, certainly, but only because the Democrats get more political mileage out of suffering than from allocating resource to solve this specific issue - which they have not.
Only a small percentage of those who have been detained entered the country legally. An illegal immigrant may request asylum but will be detained as an illegal immigrant pending determination of the validity of the attestation that they submit.
@Objectivist
Yeah Right - they'd set the penalty for jay walking or illegal parking to life without parole too ensure profit.
1
I wonder who it was that endangered the lives and persons of thousands of kids by turning them into "open sesames" for adults to get expedited entry into the US.
2
A never more truer statement from Don jr. during the 2016 campaign, “the only color my dad cares about is green.” And he’s taking it in folks, your tax money to Don’s pockets.
4
Would be nice if we could get some UN human rights inspectors in there to shine even more light on these abuses.
5
Read Kurt Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus. Very prescient, as well as funny.
From a NY Times review of the book : "...When he is dismissed, ostensibly for sexual misconduct, Hartke finds employment just across the lake at the former state prison, run by a Japanese corporation that operates it much more efficiently and profitably than the state did. ''Color-coded'' prisons have become a growth industry, in part because most productive domestic industry has disappeared. ''Poor and powerless people, no matter how docile, were no longer of use to canny investors.'' The prison where Hartke works, near the college town of Scipio, is populated entirely by black inmates, the Supreme Court having decided that it was cruel and inhuman to confine one race with another. America has been largely resegregated -black insulated from white, rich from poor. "
(http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/97/09/28/lifetimes/vonnegut-hocuspocus.html).
1
Paul - this is all fine but I think that this construction minimizes the horror and wrongness of our country imprisoning minors. We must not let this stand.
I don't really understand why your paper and our representatives are talking about anything but this....everyone thinks it is wrong, but it continues. WHY???
Lets have compassion and stop our country we love from doing something so so wrong.
1
Profit is the point of this ersatz administration. There is no pro-America or patriotic impulse.
This was completely evident in 2015. Those who missed it need to ask themselves why.
3
Many commenters here and elsewhere quote a figure of $700 per day per child being held in captivity. That is a stunning figure! Please NYT, get to the bottom of this. Are we really paying some private company this exorbitant rate to keep children in dirty clothes without soap and toothpaste? In which case, what sort of contract/supervision is in place?
Or are these federal employees who have let this happen? If so , did they report the situation up the line? We need to know how this happened!
That President Trump does not care about abused children is clear and we can expect no help from the White House. But as taxpayers, we deserve to know who is doing this, where the failures are, and who is - horrific as it is to contemplate - profiting from this cruelty.
5
@Dismayed Taxpayer
Among the companies getting $700 per day per refugee child is Bethany Christian Services, which has links to the family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. According to a recently updated article on Snopes, Bethany has fostered out 81 children over the past year. The foster families and the agency are probably making good money on the border crisis.
And I'd bet that the foster families are "approved Christians" who regularly will be taking these refugee children to their own religious (most probably evangelical) services, no matter what religion the child's family was. It reminds me of how the Argentinian government took away the children of "the disappeared" political dissidents in the 1970s and gave the children to army and government leaders to raise.
I suppose that we’re going to have to wait until Trump is out of office before justice is properly applied in all the cases where democratic norms have been trashed and the proper application of laws weakened by the profligate misuse of “presidential privilege.” And especially the criminal detention of small children on the border with Mexico. It’s a long time to have to wait, but the wheels of democracy do turn excruciatingly slowly. Right now our democracy is a mess, but it will revive and is still the best system we can have.
1
Trump has not made a bigger issue of Khashoggi's death for the same reason other countries have not, Saudi Arabia's position in the world - there are too many connections on too many issues to blow up the relationship over this death.
The migrants have overwhelmed the available facilities, the Democrats have refused to approve the funding needed to improve the situation, and have thus discredited themselves. What is Trump supposed to do?
The public vs private debate is never-ending, there are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, there have been great successes and great failures with both approaches.
This all comes down to whether you approve of Trump or not, and obviously PK does not. The references to cruelty, corruption, crony capitalism, approval of killing journalists, are examples of inflammatory rhetoric, directed at a base, just as Trump directs his own inflammatory rhetoric at his base.
I think the American people are looking at results, not personality. Much could happen between now and the next election, but I think Trump will win it going away. What will you say then, Paul?
I've been on both sides of this issue: 30 years as a government employee and 10 years in the contractor world. I won't argue the merits of one over the other because, as in all things, it depends. The role of Congress in the privatization trend, however, often goes unexamined. The habit of authorizing "one year" money for key programs leaves the government no choice but to hire contractors. When there is no "tail" for outyear funding for personnel-intensive tasks, the government simply cannot hire a bunch of GS-whatevers, train them, provide benefits, and then cut them loose if second-year funding doesn't materialize. This is one of the significant "hidden" costs of our near two-decade old perversion of the Congressional authorization and appropriation process.
390
@Sumac
The government does hire term limited employees. A good example is the Census Bureau, which employs the majority of its workers every decade only for 1-2 years.
20
@Sumac If there was no government oversight of government contracts there would be even more corruption and waste. Congress and K Street do everything to kill the funding for these oversight activities . I also worked on both sides of the fence. My last 27 years with DOE. I was disgusted with the amount of politics within the DOE organization, especially the backbiting. I saw very little of that in the private sector where I worked as an engineer.
8
This sort of arrangement has also led to companies that do not pay their contractor workforce properly, and they often do not get benefits for health and retirement.
9
Prisons for Profit work hard to keep the beds full. And here we have holding cells for men that have no beds. These are standing room only cells. How do they sleep, in shifts? This is justification for not being able to work them in chain gang fashion? The women and children are given enough room to lay down just to make things look good. All this to make a profit. I find it amazing the varied ways the Gop can come up with to provide a profit motive out of the pain and suffering of the less fortunate. Prisons and health care are just two of them.
6
the end of Thatcher/Reagan revolution has arrived, bringing the same result in both countries. Farrage there, Trump here. Plutocrats are hopeful. Their utopian dream of plutocratic reign seems just within reach ...
7
Why hasn't the Pope come out strongly against Trump's crimes against humanity. He's as afraid of Trump as the Dem's are. We are watching the implosion of a republic and no one cares. Disgraceful!
5
Autocracy, plutocracy, oligarchy, call it what you will. My name for it is kakistocracy, defined as government by the corrupt and inept. Whatever it is, it's a far cry from democracy.
Human suffering for those victims of any of the above in the name of corporate profit is nothing more than collateral damage and simply a cost of doing business.
Vote.
3
Everything Trump touches he corrupts. And the Republicans are fine with it.
5
Free enterprise abhors "regulation and red tape", but these are the primary means of counteracting "waste, fraud and abuse".
4
Private prisons are also a good way to get rid of political opponents. Some accusations, a blind judge and that's it.
2
The privatization bait-and-switch extends beyond the president to the collective political interests of the Republican party:
- It kills off one of the few remaining organized forces for the D's (federal employee unions)...
- While simultaneously creating a whole new class of voters for the R's -- private sector workers in the new contractors.
The evil genius of the GOP in stacking the election process continues to amaze me.
6
Honestly, private prisons are just an outrage.
2
Every one knows John Kelly is involved in companies that are running these detention centres. Every one knows Trump, Kellyann, Sessions, Miller and others are financially benefitting from these centres. Everyone knows the corruption that is rampant in this admin. The UK Ambassador exposed the dirt because he can. He can't be silenced like Trump's former employees who are threatened by Trump. Hope Hicks won't even tell where her office was located.
6
Another example of the truth about Trump that also was the axiom for Watergate and Deep Throat: Follow the money.
3
It is the military-industrial complex pushed on the homefront. Pure evil.
2
Everything the republicans do is aimed somehow to line their pockets, and the implicit racism is just a vehicle to achieve it with the blessing of the inherently racist, bigot conservatives. Tariffs you say? well, they are a sales tax that we all have to pay, so that the gaping hole they made in the budget becomes a tad less noticeable, which seems to be working well enough for them to salivate over a capital gains tax cut. Will we ever wake up from this nightmare?
2
If we continue to allow Trump, the GOP, the 1% and Fox News to call the shots, we are headed for the “perfect” Darwinian/Dickensian society- survival of the richest combined with squalid working and social conditions for the rest of the citizenry.
6
Hillary Clinton should never have apologized for her comment about "predatory" youth, she just needed to be more inclusive in her condemnation. It is obvious that predators come in all shapes and sizes; races and ages.
I have said for a very long, long time: Congress members are not dumb - the only explanation for their seeming stupidity and/or hypocrisy is graft, i.e. corruption.
Thank you, to the Free Press. Keep up the good work.
7
I am so grateful you wrote this Opinion piece. I know that people comment at times on the blatant corruption in the government, but I feel the tenor of the NYT is to gloss over it or not speak of it. See I think it is so important if NYT is to discuss the merits of different candidates to factor in who the candidates' donors are. Be strait up about it and say the candidates who are funded by big Pharma and insurance companies will not lower drug prices or be in any position to fight for Medicare for all. ( though I get the feeling NYT is against Medicare for all and a living minimum wage and free college and lower drug prices anyway) But still wouldn't it be nice to have fair reporting and not status quo biases ? If you report on Biden, you gotta say that he out and out told big donors that if they invested in him, he would listen to them, and planned to change nothing. Really it is only decent reporting to let the public know of the corruption level of all the candidates so they can make an educated decision. Anyway thanks again for revealing what is really going on in the debacle with the concentration camps and the Trump administration and the greed and cruelty fueling it. How do the people who participate in the cruelty live with themselves. How did the Sackler family do it, knowingly destroying lives and killing people for profit? Oh how I wish for good Samaritans to storm those camps and rescue those kids and then the adults.
1
Paul you're one of my heroes, but this analysis, while partly true misses the key point.
The hatred of "other" is the driving force here. My deplorable friends on Facebook are fine with this: "don't like it, don't come."
The key to Trump's popularity is driven by hate of the left, brown folks and fact based media that points this out.
2
Private prisons are the fuel that keeps the vicious and counter productive war on drugs grinding up millions of Americans.
2
One of the worst privatization examples for me was Bush’s “No Child Left Behind”. Obama followed it with “Race to the Top”. Childhood should not be a race, and our public schools should not be profit centers.
1
What are we going to do when this gets taken to the Hague for crimes against humanity?
For trump, this is just business in the ordinary course. Cramming down on tenants of their properties then funneling the cash through schemes like were reported here in the Times to make profits disappear is how the trumps made their money. They really don't see anything wrong with it. Further, they think anyone who doesn't is not just a sucker but their next victim.
Now we're letting trump make the country over in their own image. I for one would welcome the Hague.
5
When you replace government workers with private entities, you still must pay other government workers to monitor those entities. Government workers must verify deliverables, work accomplished, etc. There is a large contingent of the federal workforce engaged in "contract administration". Contracted workers must be paid, and their management as well, after all, the company is not at the gravy train for its workers alone. And there are cost overruns. Using private companies and cost comparison is not as simple as it might seem, nor as cost saving as the free enterpriser rhetoric would suggest.
4
Interesting fact: chain gangs, as bad as they were, were an improvement over what they replaced, convict labor. The governments in the South took over from private companies because of public outcry: the conditions were so bad that to fall into the hands of the companies running convict labor for any crime was a death sentence. So, the idea of private=bad is not new. Our government should not outsource some functions.
4
Republicans have long argued that government "should be run like a business." We were supposed to believe they were talking about efficiency and cost savings. Now that Trump is in office, it's all too clear what they really had in mind.
16
Privatization of public services is counter to everything that public services should aspire to be. Corporations profiting from jobs that should be non-profit services offered to citizens is a crime in itself. There is a clear conflict of interest and it is ludicrous for us as a society to imagine otherwise. It doesn't even look good on the surface. Not everything is meant to be monetized. It is ridiculous to think that these services are about helping people or "rehabilitating" people in the hope that they can at least come out of these places better than they went in. Prison has never been that way. Prisons as we know them have done more damage than good and now we have corporations with deep pockets willing to make prisoners worse and less capable of re-entering society. There is no justice in this system. It is a cruel cynical sham.
12
A lot of this cruelty and corruption was fueled by President Reagan when he said "Government isn't the solution; it's the problem." That one narrative promotes a whole world of corruption by suggesting that business is good and government is bad. "Smaller government" is another potentially evil construct.
Donald Trump's presidency is further evidence that competence is overrated, at least in the minds of Republican zealots, since a corrupt, feckless non-politician is running the country and it seems to be not falling off a cliff. The party is constantly promulgating the notion that government is the problem, therefore we need non-politicians to keep it small and in check.
We shouldn't underestimate the importance and power of the narrative. It sets the table for a lot of corruption and incompetence.
15
Unfortunately the privatization models touted by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and then Ronald Reagan in the United States are definitely a trend that was born in the 1980's. What I don't understand is why they think selling a large highway such as the Ohio Turnpike is good for the citizens that have to travel on these roads. The first thing that is going to be "value engineered" is the maintenance of bridges and roads. The private corporation is always going to be looking for ways to destroy quality so that they can put more money in the bank. The other reality is most of these roadways are assets that employ people and produce a profit to save the taxpayers money. Privatization in many things is just stupid.
11
The concept of a private prison industry is corrupt on its face. No citizen should profit from another’s incarceration.
16
You ask a great question, is it cruelty, or its it corruption? Your answer is that it is both. I believe that you have left out voter indifference. American voters are just indifferent to cruelty and corruption and they accept crony capitalism as inevitable. You mention American principles. The guiding principle most evident in American government is crony capitalism.
Voters won't end crony capitalism until they take government out of the hands of the crony capitalists, aka The Republican Party. Frankly I doubt that will happen until we suffer a national catastrophe equivalent to the Great Depression followed by World War II.
8
@OldBoatMan
WW III or Trump dictator will be too late to change your vote or to vote.
"If a town hires a private company to provide garbage collection, voters can tell whether the trash is, in fact, being picked up. But if you hire a private company to provide services in a situation where the public can’t see what it’s doing, crony capitalism can lead to poor performance as well as high costs." This, together with the point that there is only one customer for their services, hence no competitive bidding, sums up the sham and disgrace. Dr. Krugman, you've done it again: you've made your point luminously clear.
14
On a daily basis, the American public is asked by the Trump Administration and the Republican Party to have an almost religious belief in coincidence.
We hear and read about terrible conditions for immigrant children suffering from the botched operations of Trump-mandated detention centers, and we learn that private companies which are large donors to Trump and the Republicans operate the centers.
Coincidence.
As Paul Krugman chronicles, there are many examples of the ways in which Donald Trump demands that we take his word for things which obviously are not true. He acts as though the American people are stupid.
We actually are stupid if we let this selfish, cruel man remain in the White House.
11
The evil behind all of this corruption makes me sick to the pit of my stomach. I suppose it's nothing new, but it saddens me to think that some Americans are stooping to this level of viciousness and greed, and that there are Trump supporters out there ready to elect this man for another four years. It's ludicrous and very, very sad.
10
Dishonest government contractors is certainly not a new phenomenon. During the Civil War those who supplied the Army cared little that their goods ill served the men in the field. Profit seeking without competition has always been a prescription for disaster. Add in a bit of graft and the system totally breaks down. President Truman made his reputation going after crooked war profiteers during World War II. We seem never to learn.
5
Private prison administration is a most corrupt enterprise, as it benefits for every new 'prisoner' caught in Trump's raids, the profit motive, if not greed, is the only incentive, while misery abounds in asylum seekers who fell from the frying pan (escaping their violent home situation) into the fire. Shameful, corrupt and cruel to no measure. This, with republican complicity.
4
Why Professor Krugman believes it would “be going too far to claim that the private-prison industry — merchants of detention? — has been a driving force behind the viciousness of Trump’s border policy”, is beyond me. I understand about not making baseless allegations, but any president who makes a mockery of the emoluments clause of the constitution the way Trump does would have no qualms about steering policy to reward friends in industry as well.
As far as viciousness, Sheriff Joe and the encouragement he got from Republicans and their base proved they are not above inhumane treatment of prisoners, either. All indications are that racism is the primary force driving Trump's border policy, but greed and corruption of the private-prison industry and the viciousness of their operations have been driving forces as well, and Trump deserves no benefit of the doubt otherwise.
6
I can help but think that the crime of asylum seekers, including children in cages is similar in many aspects to the now famous Stanford prison Experiment. They are put into prisons, horribly overcrowded, having things as simple as tooth bushes and meals almost unavailable to them. Asylum seekers are not illegal migrants, They are simply people who are abandoning horrible conditions where they may be maimed or killed. The US has asylum laws and they should be abided by. Trump is nothing more than the jailers in the Stanford Prison Experiment.
1
Americans have been taught to equate freedom with capitalism, prosperity with capitalism, hotdogs and apple pie with capitalism. And true enough, capitalism is a powerful economic engine that maximizes productivity and benefits people...until its profit motivation is pushed too far. And Republicans can't push it far enough.
Republicans are not satisfied with making a profit, they are after the last penny that can be wrung from the pockets of the poorest. Greed is their god.
But that's not all. For Republicans everything is a profit opportunity, an opportunity to stuff their pockets. So they want everything privatized: the military, healthcare, Medicare, Social Security, education, law enforcement, prisons, roads and bridges...you name it. If a dime can be squeezed out, Republicans are there salivating.
So who is surprised that Republicans have found a way to make cruelty a for-profit business?
Capitalism can generate great good, but in the hands of Republicans capitalism is legalized theft, their religion of greed.
12
Not only the Saudi influx of money in Trump-related real estate but Trump'circle dealing in nuclear technology with the Saudis. I predict Kushner will sit on those board of directors and, become a true billionaire. Same goes for his participation in the Palestinean fund. It does not have to do with peace in the Middle East. It has to do with greed.
But ultimately, making money out of suffering and death of children is a new frontier in the Trump corrupt reality show.
Why this is not stopped? Are the enablers also getting rich by allowing this? Mitch? That is double the tragedy.
4
Is it a payoff/bribe or simply a campaign contribution? We got our answers when numerous elected officials told us they voted for the GOP tax bill "to pay back their donors." If you look at the stats, our Congressmen get the majority of campaign money from out of state.
Our own Sen. Susan Collins raised $9,000 from 17 donations in Maine, but raised more than 1 million in total. (Less than 1 percent came from her constituents; we know why she voted for the tax bill now.)
All elected Congressmen are corrupt if they are more beholden to out of state donors than to their constituents. (But then our GOP Senate has publicly become acolytes of the most corrupt president ever.)
3
And Trump would have us believe that because he’s not a career politician, he is a trustworthy outsider. Oh, please!
The Trump administration has been shockingly corrupt, with conflicts of interest, nepotism and cronyism at every turn.
Drain the swamp, indeed! Vote out Trump and all his cynicism.
3
Trump’s cruelty is a symptom of a long simmering aspect of the Republican Party which now has come to a head. Republicans have always denigrated those they disagree with, like “welfare queens” looking for “free stuff.” What could be more cruel than the fight against Obama Care? What kind of people would actively try to prevent people from getting health care? Or an abortion, or social security? Republicans. They’ve always claimed their Scroogeness was for the purpose of fiscal responsibility. Now that the party has embraced Trump and the resulting higher debt, we now know that was just a sham. Republicans are just plain cruel.
3
Just say it, Paul--What we now have is a kleptocracy masquerading as legitimate government.
7
The rolling Trumpster fire is not the cause, but is rather a symptom of Anerica's malady. Crony capitalism is rampant. I saw it first hand in my 35 years of government service. Like Job Corp for the professional class, we privatized services performed by mid-level, moderately paid bureaucrats to private attorneys and top-heavy companies where ex-government employees knew how to exploit the system. Many were proud to don the mantle of "beltway bandits," as they were known. Seems like we really do somehow have a government of, by and for the corporations, rather than the people. Trump is just a fetid embodiment of that ugly fact.
4
Coming to power by promoting ethnic hatred and populism after an economic disaster; when in power promoting the close partnership of big business and government; profiting from the discriminatory treatment of low status groups - who does this remind us of?
3
President Trump is still not getting the credit he deserves for improving the economy.
Take a good luck around.
Everywhere you go these days there are security guards.
Call them by other names like ICE or border patrol agents if you want to, but they are still security guards.
Detention facilities for migrant children along our Southern border, airports, schools, hospitals, banks, shopping malls, theaters, sports stadiums, parking lots, ice rinks, garbage dumps, guarding Mar--a-Lago and Trump’s golf courses, you name it, there they are there.
Momma, don’t let your children grow up to be cowboys or cowgirls.
Or doctors. Or nurses. Or teachers. Or computer programmers.
Security guards: great looking badges, always plenty of guns, nice uniforms, steady salary, undemanding work largely consisting of telling lost desperate souls to move along, enormous amounts of overtime, hands down the fastest growing industry in the country,
Constantly making the country great again.
4
Capitalism allows for the exponential increase in what can be bought for money. No longer are service and goods the only things transacted for cash. Now, we can deconstruct humanity with "AI" and therefore control more and more of what makes us human.
Cruelty and death can be bought, paid for and supplied on an industrial scale by private enterprise and government institution.
"I was only following orders" bemoans the ICE operative or the operative of a private child prison.
How quickly we forget.
6
Again and again I feel that Professor Krugman is laying bare the essential foundations of our appalling historical moment. We are due a major and equally essential reckoning--and I've come to feel that Elizabeth Warren is the right person to see us through.
17
I don't think Warren can win. Sad to say. She is by far the best and cleanest of them all.
1
@karen'
Well, I'm going to work for her
1
Something that is not mentioned here: many of those inmates are "rented" to private companies as cheap labor. They receive only a fraction of the payment a regular worker gets, benefiting those "hiring" them (what I don;t know is if the prison gets a cut as well).
13
National Park concessions are another example of the failure of private monopolies. The only lodging available within Yellow Stone Park during a visit last month cost $350/night for a clean two star motel-like room in Mammoth. Guess our National Parks are off limits to working class Americans.
19
What Dr. Krugman has failed to demonstrate are the actual concrete facts of these private prison operations. Recent news reports reflect that the private contractor running some of the migrant concentration camps are being paid some $700 per day per inmate and for that they do not provide even minimal sanitation, space, medical care, nourishing food, bedding, and more.
What we have here is intentionally imposed system of physical and emotional cruelty in an environment in which public funds are channeled to favored private sector contractors and without any competitive bidding process. How could the public sector, the government, possibly do worse?
This makes me ashamed to be an American.
37
"Trump and the merchants of detention" Great title, Dr. Krugman: it goes directly to the hearth of the question.
Privatization for the sake of privatization is crony capitalism nd corruption, and it steals from us, taxpayers, delivering low quality services to the society.
12
The detention of migrants in private prisons is a compelling example of why we do NOT need a businessman as president.
Accountability to shareholders used to be the model of good capitalism, but it no longer exists. Wall Street is nothing but a casino with the rich and superrich (citizens and 30% foreigners) gambling on bidding up, short-selling and profit taking as the game.
Government workers--you may disparage them as elites and the establishment--but they are more likely to be dedicated to their jobs as professional public servants and mindful of spending the taxpayers' money rather than motivated by profit taking.
Politics is the art of the possible, not the art of the deal.
21
Another way private prisons profit, not mentioned in this article, is to prolong the period of an individuals incarceration by minimizing the impact of that individuals rehabilitative efforts. Negative reports to the parole board can prolong incarceration, and all that need be done is to set expectations so high as to be unreachable, in the name of community safety. How can we trust that a private prison has community safety as it's primary concern, when profits are a part of the equation?
16
Another good example the author could have used are the numerous settings in which families place older people, sick older people, dementia patients, and so on. Who checks or sees what they have for food, care, treatment, sanitary condition? Reverse that and you have these children in cages, covered by aluminum foil, covered in dirt, disease, and most of all tormented by child-parent separation.
10
Correct Mr Krugman. Private prisons and detention facilities inherently create incentives to unjustly imprison people. The Trump administration finds ways, by blocking the normal asylum process, for example, to exploit innocent people for profit.
25
As usual, excellent and insightful article.
But important to note that the cruelty and greed are not side-by-side phenomena. They are the key to Trump's electoral success and coalition (however narrow). The cruelty (racism, white supremacy, misogyny, anti-semitism, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, and on and on) maintain his support with his base. The greed, corruption, crony capitalism and state seizure provide the funds.
Weaken, split off or set one constituency against the other and Trump becomes a one-term President.
Vote in 2020.
23
Sen. Warren's plan to move away from private prisons is a definite step in the right direction. However, its only a start and is far from perfect. But, the good should never be the enemy of the perfect and so any reasonable person should support it.
But it is my belief that the entire way we view prisons in this country is wrong. Prisons ought to be run in such a way that they provide the greatest benefit to society. There are two primary benefits. Removing those who are unwilling or unable to live peacefully in society. The second is providing a place where those people are rehabilitated to the point that they can be reintroduced back into society safely.
We do a great job when it comes to removing people from society. But we seem to stop there and view punitive punishments as being the beginning and end of the sentence. We do a shamefully poor job at rehabilitating people to make sure that when they come out of prison there is a reasonable expectation that they won't end up going straight back. As far as our capacity for rehabilitation goes, it seems like we've forgotten the conventional wisdom that "if you treat some one like an animal, don't be surprised when they turn around and start acting like one".
20
The practice of converting govt employees to private employees was begun under Reagan and continued under Clinton. It was always a fraud. Reagan's OMB used the practice to claim they were reducing the size of government. Clinton's Reinventing Govt success was mainly based on claimed efficiencies obtained by reducing federal employees when they did not count the new private employees or the increased cost.
13
Another example that is being pushed by this administration, with likely the most disastrous consequences is privatization of the storage of high level nuclear waste. Rather than bite the bullet and develop a federal facility, that will always be the responsibility of the federal government to maintain safely, private contractors who will minimize safety concerns and who can go bankrupt are being given this task. The alternative supported by most who oppose these efforts is to leave the waste where it is- in private hands subject to the same vagaries as a private contractor. That is not a workable solution. There are some things that government cannot leave to private enterprise, but must do.
18
The original stain of slavery is also key here, with prisons becoming a tool for effectively modernizing this...
Turning prisoners into profits greatly accelerated incarceration rates since the 1980s (US ranks among highest here), also disproportionately targeted blacks and hispanics, eliminated their voting rights in many states sometimes for life, and provided cheap labor (currently about 10c to $1.14 per hour) for major corps inc IBM, Starbucks, AT&T, on and on...
We need a new Civil Rights movement...
21
State and Federal prisons try to get prisoners outside because prisoners cost taxpayers money. Private prisons make money on prisoners. The longer they keep them the more money they make.
17
Sometimes I wonder how many government employees with at Medicare. Most of the work is done by contractors who likely are paid much more. My big question is who owns Catawba and Palmetto and the other contractors? No wonder there are financial problems.
1
“Benefitting the Common Good” should be the litmus test to determining which societal functions are appropriate for privatization and which are not. Healthy democratic societies depend on appropriate government investment in those things that protect and enrich us all, not just the privileged few. This is why education, for example, should never be structured as to enrich the shareholders over the students. Betsy DeVos doesn’t agree.
Personal enrichment and greed is the foundational principle of the new Republican Party. It’s cruelty is derived from a determination to seek profit and power at the expense of the greater good of the broader society, laying waste to anyone or anything that gets in its way, and Trump is the perfect reflection of that ethos.
The Republican Party once stood for some respectable values. No longer.
32
@RHD therein lies the rub.
With our propaganda machines in place, the fundamental definition of 'what is good' in a given situation can differ drastically.
In the case of detention of 'illegal immigrants', Republicans are convinced that illegal immigration is a greater harm to our society than is their concentration encampment.
Truly, we've been 1984'd. Or at least a substantial enough subset of our population has been...
This administration is not only getting away with prolific illicit and amoral behavior; it is doing so to the avid cheers of its base.
Make no mistake, we are in a civil war right now. That it is a 'soft' civil war makes it no less of an existential threat. In fact, in some ways it's a greater threat than a hard war because it is truly insidious in nature.
Getting rid of corrupt politicians is an almost overwhelming task but we must begin somewhere but let's not deny the root cause, payoffs direct or indirect to corrupt politicians. The Sauds promise to buy billions of our weapons which benefits the munitions and so-called defense industries so they in turn influence our politicians. Administration officials are influenced by their ownership or employment in certain businesses so they do the bidding of those businesses. And so it goes ad infinitum.
20
@R. Anderson
Yet, some, like Krugman here, still think that capitalism is a good enough to structure the whole society.
@Roland Berger
You apparently missed the part where Krugman wrote “Free markets, in which private businesses compete for customers, can accomplish great things, and are indeed the best way to organize most of the economy. But the case for free markets isn’t a case for private business where there is no market...”
18
Well done.
This analysis applies equally well to investor-owned health care systems and insurance companies.
43
@Pat
I'd venture to say it applies to Medicare/Medicaid Managed Care Organization (MCO's) that are non-profits as well.
They shield the government from liability and allow them to dictate the terms of the arrangements. Unfathomable case loads and poor training that results in poor quality of care and often times at higher costs than most realize.
I sure hope the "single payer" or "Medicare for all" crowd plan to do some research and oversight.
8
These are the issues the Democratic candidates for President need to run on. I cringe when I listen to the far lefties just hand Trump another win. Americans don't want far left policy. Yes, we need to work on social justice issues but we're not going to get there by re-electing Trump!
16
It doesn't take an economist to figure this out. You just have to read the newspapers or watch any TV news that isn't Fox (and now, even Fox) to know that this is the most corrupted White House in history, worse than Grant's or Harding's, worse than George W. Bush's.
Private prisons are a utility, like the electric and natural gas companies, and need the same oversight. But they don't get it.
They also tend to not be profitable if they aren't breaking the rules, if their people are properly trained, and the inmates are provided with the same food and amenities as the public prisons, which they are not.
And, as much as they hide data, private prisons aren't that hard to do analysis on, and any decent hospital analyst can quickly adapt--it's a heads-on-beds business and the data is structured nearly identically, and the variables are analogous even though their meaning is very different.
The only reason private prisons make money is when they, as Prof. Krugman points out, cheat.
29
@Dadof2
A very interesting analogy between hospitals and prisons and I suppose that the underlying attitude of those who runs both are much the same - a criminal or a sick person, its all the same to them.
1
Despite all the discussion, the real puzzle is why 40%+ of US voters support Trump and the GOP. Can it be that this large proportion of the population is that cruel? Can it be that so many do not care? And then, how do we proceed if so many tacitly accept such behavior? That is the problem.
90
Yes, that many people can be cruel, ignorant and uncaring. Not a doubt in my mind. The longer I live the more I believe this. Trump has just given license to go public with the hate and cruelty. Our only saving grace here may be Trump's general ineptitude.
9
@BCY123 They do not care because this is happening to people of color. When you peel away all the layers of the support for Tr*mp, etc. the heart of it is racism. It's that simple. If a million people from Norway or Sweden wanted to immigrate to the US (although I can't imagine why) there would be no problem.
7
@Frank, I can recall when public support for the Vietnam War turned to general opposition. It happened when enough families had endured the tragedy of loss and the media had published enough photos and stories of the barbaric cruelty of that war.
Similarly, I believe that when enough of us are disgusted by reports of cruelty at the border, in private prisons, and in political rhetoric, then women, minorities, citizen immigrants and their descendants will flock to the polls to cast decisive votes for reversing the Trumpism plutocracy--but not if the Democrats' chief selling point is "electability." We will need to hear ethical principles, policies, and positions in a candidate committed to restoring national mental health and decency. We need a politician-physician, a healer.
8
As with most things Trump or Republican...follow the money. Who benefits by money or power. That is the driver.
The cake icing is that it is all purportedly done to thwart big government and give individuals more ‘freedom’.
George Orwell would be amazed to see 1984 come to life. Or would he?
53
Of course detention camps are being run by private companies. And they should be. If they were owned and manned by the Federal government, they would be unionized and it would be impossible to ever scale them back no matter what the future need. When California passed Proposition 47 and the prison population plummeted, do you think any prison guards were let go? Right!!
10
@Kurfco
If and when the number of people you lock up is directly related to how much more money you can make when you increase those numbers, surely you see that the carrot (incentive) will be abused, in favor of money.
@Kurfco ever heater of gov employees going through a Reduction In Force (RIF)? Of course the labor force can be downsized.
@Kurfco So your argument is that private contractors which receive government funds are free to fire employees at will because they are not unionized. Sounds like your hero is Reagan, one of whose first acts as president was to fire the Air Traffic controllers who tried to unionize. You must also favor getting rid of the ACA so health insurance companies, to increase their profits, can refuse to accept applicants with prior medical conditions. A fine illustration of Republicanism.
Most Americans welcome LEGAL immigrants, but do not want ILLEGAL immigrants. They recognize that the US cannot afford (or choose not) to support our own citizens: the poor, the ill, elderly, disabled, veterans, et al., and that they and other US taxpayers cannot possibly support the hundreds of millions of foreigners who would like to come here.
US laws allow foreigners to seek entry and citizenship. Those who do not follow these laws are in this country illegally and should be detained and deported; this is policy in other countries, too.
The cruelty lies not in limiting legal immigration, or detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, or forcing those who wish to enter the US to wait for processing. What is cruel, unethical and probably illegal is encouraging parents to bring their children on the dangerous trek to US borders and teaching the parents how to game the system to enter the US by falsely claiming asylum, persecution, etc. Indeed, many believe bringing children on such perilous journeys constitutes child abuse.
No other nation has open borders, nor should the US.
13
@Mon Ray
So, your position is that if asylum seekers fleeing violence in their home country bring children, it’s only fair and morale that we mistreat the children once they’re here?
Also, it seems to have escaped your notice that the majority of detainees aren’t illegal immigrants. They’re immigrants seeking legal entry through political asylum. Since you’re all for legal immigration, by your own admission you should be supporting them.
85
@Mon Ray
Seeking asylum is neither illegal nor a game. For most, it’s not just escaping poverty and deprivation, it is life or death.
Taxes are paid by immigrants, whether or not they have appropriate documentation: federal and state income taxes, FICA taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, etc. In fact, studies have shown that immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in social programs’ benefits. A quick internet search will provide you with links to articles about these studies.
103
@Mon Ray: Your premise is incomplete. What you should have said is that the U. S. cannot afford to support its own citizens and still give over 90% of its money to rich people. Of course the U. S. can afford to support its less-than-wealthy citizens AND provide for humane treatment of migrants AND work to improve conditions that will enable those migrants to survive at home. The U. S. can afford all of those things. It just has to STOP giving so much money to rich people. That's the source of both the cruelty about which you are so concerned and the cruelty you choose to ignore.
83
A little vigorish for Trump, his family and friends is how everything is done in the Trump administration.
It's how Trump has run his businesses for years.
Something for his own pocket with every single deal.
Just ask Mitch McConnell.
So far, McConnell has gotten a $200M Russian owned aluminum plant, $100M from Japan, and his wife fast-tracking about $78M in transportation and roads projects for Kentucky.
Follow the money trail - it stinks to high heaven and is very easy to see.
And don't forget - with a private company, any private company, profit is always the main goal.
Not service. Not consumer satisfaction. Not even meeting legal requirements.
Profit.
Privatization is never good for a government service or function. Your tax dollars go first to provide a profit.
Everything else is overhead to be cut.
38
Function not form is how we should decide whether an activity is privately or publicly operated: What needs to be accomplished and which form creates the right incentives to deliver effectively should be the main considerations.
Economists do not have a model that explains how big the state should be relative to the private sector. In different countries different parts of the economy are nationalised or privatised with differing results.
We should reject all political ideologies that seek to promote form over function and remain vigilant that any change in form is clearly undertaken to improve performance and not support a political ideology.
1
This excellent column highlights my fear, namely that the Trump gang can be bought off, and that they will reward the buyers with US government favors. Every time Trump does something, I ask myself "who paid off Don for this?"
15
I wonder if we might, as relates to illegal immigration, at some point have a discussion of what constitutes an optimum population number for these United States. I wonder further if we might also have a discussion on the skills immigrants will be bringing to the economy and whether their skills are needed. I believe we are arguably already over populated. Migrants from central America will enter the economy at the low end of the economic ladder and compete with those already in country for the supply of jobs available at that level. We live in a world of limited resources. Talk of constant and everlasting growth is not based on reality. So how many additional people, if any , should we bring in? At what point do we begin thinking broadly about sustainability as a factor worthy of consideration in the immigration debate?
2
@fgros
A much more useful discussion would be about the conditions in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras that are causing the mass emigration. For the price of the Trump wall, a carefully-supervised Marshall Plan for this area might reduce the caravans of asylum-seekers much more efficiently than the Trump cruelty plan.
1
Your questions are all good topics for a national discussion. liberal dem though I am, I take quite a narrow view of immigration, so we are somewhat aligned. And yet, these macro issues have nothing to do with this column or the mess at our border. Namely, that in our name, the USA is mistreating our fellow human beings--many of whom are children. And that in a glorification of capitalism, our government allows vultures to profit from a disgraceful situation. Both are wrong, period. No shades of grey, no excuses, no buts, no ifs-- this is simply wrong.
1
@John
I think your estimate of what it would take to convert these nations to functioning and equitable government is very understated. When would be the right time to encourage a national interest in the points I mentioned?
The Canadian Pension Plan sold all shares it had in these companies. That’s something everybody can do: write to the manager of your pension fund.
19
I recall when Al Gore led the charge to reinvent government. Each Federal agency was required to make lists of work activities that were "inherently governmental" and therefore were required to be performed by government employees. The making of the lists took years and caused great internal debates. The end result was a significant boost in "outsourcing" of what seemed to be basic government functions, like prisons and national intelligence. The oft-quoted "magic of the markets" just didn't, and doesn't, work when the reasons for the work are for people, not profit.
12
Mr. Krugman has defined the essence of Trumpism: "Every betrayal of American principles also seems, somehow, to produce financial benefits for Trump and his friends."
80
I left federal service (DoD) earlier than I'd have liked to because of this phenomena. At first contracting out seemed like a handy solution to staffing and specific expertise issues, but soon it morphed into senior executives differing to the contractors needs as sort of featherbedding their retirement plans of say an additional 5 or so years of "consulting" fees. The Senior Executive personnel were lead to believe these candy mountain dreams by their ever increasing number of personal staff that were also contractors either employed directly by the principle contractor or a subsidiary. Soon the requirements of government became subordinate to the needs and preferences of the contractor. And, that's how corruption works folks,
89
Disaster response is another example. Politically-connected insiders get no-bid contracts at inflated prices, and subcontract the work to a chain of sub- and sub-sub-contractors. After Hurricane Katrina, George W Bush’s FEMA awarded emergency roofing contracts to well-connected companies for $20 a square foot. At the end of a chain of subcontractors, the actual work was done for $2 a square foot. A federal review of the contracts found:
“Contractors, who received $300 million in limited-bid deals from the Corps, charged an average of $2,480 per home to nail blue tarpaulins on top of damaged homes. The job typically takes less than two hours and costs only $300, says a Congressional report. Overruns at the three main roofing contractors--LJC Defense Contracting of Dothan, Ala., Simon Roofing & Sheet Metal of Boardman, Ohio and the Shaw Group of Baton Rouge--were inevitable, given the chain of handoffs to subcontractors and the negligence of authorities. (Simon insists it did more than just lay tarps.) Instead of inspecting the work, the Corps allowed prime contractors to sign off on their own work before submitting bills. In some cases the Corps visited sites for which bills had been submitted--and discovered that the roofing work had not been done.”
56
Allowing private firms and investors to make money taking tax dollars for the imprisonment of immigrants, or even convicted criminals is a scheme ready for corruption. There is no reason why any detention facility should be "privatized" and they should never be. There is no justification for it, and Congress should act to ban the practice at all levels of government.
46
It's been going on for so long, I doubt anyone with a bit of insight into where all of the mechanisims in place at the time of Orwell were heading during that point of the British empire would be suprised. Are you? The question remains, how to diminish before it completly compromises the freedom to live and enjoy a life that one imagines possible.
It's deliberate political engineering (often lack of funding) by the Republican-Reptilians that prevents Federal and local bureaucracy from overseeing these privatization initiatives. If government is prevented from looking for evidence of Fraud, Incompetence, self dealing misconduct, etc. it won't be publicized, or it is far less likely to come to the attention of the public.
For example, by underfunding the IRS, they (Republicans) have made it impossible for them to audit any significant portion of high net worth individuals.
The consolidation of local media in fewer, right leaning hands (discussed elsewhere in the paper recently), also plays a role. Old fashioned investigative Journalism is increasingly just not done at the local level.
Every state "Children and Families" organization/agency is in some kind of crisis, usually traceable to a shortage of resources (Money). Republican legislators will talk about anything but raising more revenue to properly fund social activities.
28
Privatization is no panacea, neither are bureaucracies. The bureaucracy that cannot oversee the work of a private entity as Krugman cites is one example.
7
@Hpower
It's deliberate political engineering (often lack of funding) by the Republican-Reptilians that prevents Federal and local bureaucracy from overseeing these privatization initiatives. If government is prevented from looking for evidence of Fraud, Incompetence, self dealing misconduct, etc. it won't be publicized, or it is far less likely to come to the attention of the public.
For example, by underfunding the IRS, they (Republicans) have made it impossible for them to audit any significant portion of high net worth individuals.
The consolidation of local media in fewer, right leaning hands (discussed elsewhere in the paper recently), also plays a role. Old fashioned investigative Journalism is increasingly just not done at the local level.
21
Mr. Krugman seems to think that immigration detention and prisons are all of a piece. But they most certainly are not. Detention centers aren't filled with violent criminals, gang members. and the dangerously mentally ill. Security is much less of an issue than in a state penitentiary. Riots, arson, drug smuggling and rape are pretty much non-existent.
91% of state and federal prisons are public. About 75% of immigration detention centers are private. And that makes sense. The detention center crisis in not much the fault of private ownership. When a detention center is overcrowded and underfunded no one can make it work. Blaming it on private ownership is just wrong.
2
@michjas
If you consider Krugman’s point about the way costs are hidden in these arrangements, it is hard to argue that the detention facilities are underfunded. The whole point of private contractors is to reduce costs, and, therefore, services, in order to maximize profits.
A top to bottom audit is in order.
18
@@ebmem
"...any inconvenience is self imposed.'
It is agreed the world over that refugees and their requests for asylum should be considered in light of the conditions in their home countries, from which they are fleeing. The phrase "self imposed' is a blind behind which anti-refugee sentiment can be self justified and hidden.
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That justifies starving them. A little extreme aren’t we?
"One reason for these atrocities is that the Trump administration sees cruelty both as a policy tool and as a political strategy: Vicious treatment of refugees might deter future asylum-seekers ..."
The European Union, widely acknowledged as a fairly enlightened and progressive institution, uses the very same tactics to achieve the same outcome.
Having been flooded with refugees landing by boats on the Mediterranean coast over the past five years, the EU have resorted to paying countries like Libya to stop boats in their costal waters and to detain and imprison captured refugees in appalling conditions in camps on the mainland.
By these means the EU hopes '...to deter future asylum seekers'. The policy is an outrage and it has been admitted as such by the UN and by high EU officials. It persists nevertheless.
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@RHR Don't generalise across EU, there are vast differences between countries. The more nationalist and crony the leader, the worse the treatment. Hungary at the bottom.
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As I understand it, in the 1990s the USA passed a strong anti-crime bill and "three strikes" laws were passed in many states. This led to a vast expansion of prison populations. At around this time, in California, a powerful lobby of prison guards began to have exceptional influence on policy-makers. These circumstances coincided with the rise of privately-administered prisons. Prisons became a big industry in California as other industries (aerospace) were moving away. (This process is described in Joan Didion's book, Where I was From, about California.) Today, the proportion of prisoners who are Native American, Black or Hispanic is very high - much higher than their proportion in the general population. Private prisons means that there is no real oversight. The potential for human rights abuses is built into the very fact that prisons are being run "for profit." If prisons are run "for profit," then obviously they need "customers."
The USA, unlike many western countries, still has the death penalty (depending on state). However, the legal system can make errors - as shown by many situations where innocent, wrongly convicted people were released after long prison terms, when the true perpetrators confessed. Thus, tolerance of the death penalty means that the US is allowing states to kill innocent people.
These developments mean that the US is a scary place altogether. The most disturbing element of this: it all preceded the arrival of Donald Trump.
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@ebmem
It is agreed the world over that refugees and their requests for asylum should be considered in light of the conditions in their home countries, from which they are fleeing.
The fact that only 10 to 20% are accepted does not mean that the other 80 to 90 % should give up and go home.
What it means is that these people are desperate enough that, even with a very low chance of success, they are prepared to risk the dangers of a long journey. Ask yourself why.
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@ebmem I am sure this solution will work marvelously for all the toddlers in detention.
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@ps
Krugman's last paragraphs (nos. 12-16) are about private prisons. My comment speaks to that part of his column.
Ah,yes, drain the swamp! And bring in more "white men at the trough." Bush/Cheney took us 10 steps back, KBR,Haliburton,Blackwater. I often wondered why,exactly, private security companies were used to "protect" Bremer and his people in the Green Zone. Ironically, these "free marketeers" are the same people who greatly contributed to the "immigration crisis" in the first place; it was these types of "good ole boys" who eschewed union labor, and even "expensive " non-union American labor in favor of exploiting immigrant labor. As Krugman said, this goes back to the eighties, and earlier. It's a game the good old American capitalists have been playing since the founding of the country. The Brits did it to the Irish and every other country they colonized. I guess our great,exceptional experiment is just another imperialist form of government. "We the People". Right!
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Private prisons are a small part of the problem yet we complain about them disproportionately. Market share last I looked was at about eight per cent. State and Federal prisons warehouse far more prisoners. Jails, too, all public facilities, which detain inmates awaiting hearings or trials, hold a large percentage of the total. We live in a violent society that is generally not too taken with orations about prisoners' rights so we now send a large number of offenders away for life. These matters ebb and flow. The permissive sentencing common in the 50s through the 70s, when rehabilitation was still a thing, led to the harshness of 1980s and 90s sentencing, when violent crime per capita was at its peak. Views are more moderate now but life sentences for many violent crimes. even those short of murder, remain de rigeur. As for everyone's favorite story, the detained southern border migrants, deterrence only makes sense at the border itself through turning away everyone. Deterrence by unpleasant or cruel detention was bound to fail, as events have shown. They keep coming.
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The Democrats must do better than this. With current narrative, like Krugman's (who I normally like), you can get the impression that if the Republicans lose power there will be open borders since detaining or deporting illegal migrants is cruel.
If voters get this impression as well, it will mean unnecssary defeats at the polls.
You need to be pairing the moral outrage with some story about how borders will be enforced and illegal migration keps in some kind of bounds if you take power.
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@No one
Mr. Krugman will not be taking ‘power’. Hopefully he will continue giving excellent commentary.
My thoughts.
This essay describes the truth of what our government has become. It is a serious problem in public policy making and needs to be corrected.
Your insightful sentences should be made part of the national debate in our elections. Elizabeth Warren's value has been raised by her proposal to eliminate private prisons.
You know the history of government much better than most of the candidates and their policy consultants so I hope you will do this kind of work for many of the so called free enterprise is virtuous proposals.
I was present in 1979 during Reagan-Carter contest: Grace Commission, OMB rule #11? that provided fuel for the decline of the U.S. government's effectiveness. It was a disturbing sight to behold.
President Carter recently said in an interview that the U.S. had become an oligarchy. And I believe his observations in support were spot on.
More of these policy ethics fouls should be reported in articles written above the fold.
Finally, It also concerns me that we are not reporting on the conditions in the countries where conditions are so deplorable that people feel that they must travel to these "detention centers".
I keep wondering about the business operations that transport Central Americans to the border. It would be disturbing to learn that there was U.S. investment in these coyote services. I can't really understand why we are not making coyote arrests and learning more about their business and sources of capital and equipment.
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@james jordan interviews with Central American immigrants in Mexico suggest there may be more American involvement in creating the so-called caravans than we appreciate. Remember they consist of primarily marginalized people with very limited resources and organizational skills. We are expected to believe somehow they organize several thousand people in 3 countries to appear at a specific point on a specific day. Migrants report caravan leaders speaking in English on cellphones, apparently making progress reports. Who benefits from such turbulence at the border?
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Trump turned the united states into an atlantic city casino. By now I believe we have heard enough of trump to get the idea.
When will action arise to put an end to this travesty? The complacency of the “resistance” is mind-blowing. This is not how you instigate change, at all.
Given that we know this will be the gameplan of the republican party going forward. The Republican Party has become the enemy of the people.
It should be easy to run against trump:
1. lets fix what trump has destroyed.
2. Ask the people between new york and san francisco if they are better off.
That trump still has approval ratings at all is mind-boggling.
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@Pete Rogers We should keep reminding people that Trump's casino went bankrupt.
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It has always been amazing to me how well the Republicans have so completely destroyed confidence in public sector employees with nothing to show that it is being done better by the private sector. And just to be clear it was Reagan who said "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help." No one pointed out all the military, post office workers, fire fighters,
and police who are all from the government and do help.
Instead we have the joy of calling Verizon or Comcast who are making billions in profit and have a blind faith that they are doing a better job. This country is generations behind other countries in internet services but they do charge us exorbitant prices for inferior service but at least they aren't the government!
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The comic strip Dilbert is written about a corporation. Oddly, nobody brings this up when arguing for privatizing a government service.
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@Lucas Lynch Thank you, Lucas. I always thought Regan's statement absurd, given how eager he was to lead the government he described as so harmful. Only the gullible believed him, but that was a great many. Can we stop the gullible from multiplying so efficiently?
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@John Huffer
Dilbert's creator is a Trump supporter.
I'm curious as to what Paul would be saying if the Govt. was running all the centers in question. Would it be any different? I doubt it. The system is overwhelmed and nobody was prepared for the chaos. This criticism is low hanging fruit and totally unwarranted.
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@Alfred Sils USBP stations were not built to hold illegals more than 24 hrs. Other facilities were meant to hold adults for longer periods, not children. This current chaos is new and govt. not prepared for it. Agree re. corporate entities. but they too not meant for kids. Obama never did anything about them so what do you expect Trump to do??
@Donald The criticism is low hanging fruit because these centers are so obviously poorly run and cruelly conceived. The criticism is warranted because it is a critique of that poorly thought out system that is separating families and housing little children in privately run inhumane prisons in the name of we the people. If the government ran the centers they would undoubtedly be under congressional oversight and the conditions could not be buried in corporate noncompliance. Simply put, Donald, if the system was overwhelmed we needed a better system. Corporate prison profit motive, as Krugman has pointed out, is incompatible with addressing human needs.
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@Donald The government needs to supply more centers and more judges to expedite the movement of migrants through the bureaucracy that's slowing everything down. But Trump (who never seems prepared for the consequences of his commands) doesn't understand anything more complicated than "wall."
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This is a great article. It reminds me another Times article, by Bill Keller, published on Dec.31, 1988. It described corruption and incompetence of politically connected operators in the important industry with largely involuntary labor force. According to Mr. Keller “The corruption included protection rackets, bribery and sale of government offices”. The Son-in-Law of the National Leader was actively involved. Somehow the term “crony capitalism” was never used, not at all.
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@Sergei
Bill Keller, Dec. 31, 1988:
Breshnev Son-In-Law Get 12 Year Term
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/31/world/brezhnev-son-in-law-gets-12-year-term.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fbill-keller&action=click&contentCollection=undefined®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1208&pgtype=collection
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@Sergei,
Awesome I found it with no trouble, Leonid Brezhnev's son-in-law.
Funny how present day US debacles compare with
cold war CCCP.
But he got 12 years, will any of the perps in this article do time?
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@togldeblox
Yes, he did, but not before his father-in-law was removed from the office by highest authority – the Grim Reaper.
I appreciate Krugman’s criticism of the profit motive of private corporations as a potential cause or symptom of the deplorable conditions in border detention facilities.
I must; however, push back on the impact on that variable.
The bigger variable is that Trump has betrayed his oath of office because his actions violate the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution which prohibits, “cruel and unusual punishment.” This amendment applies to non-citizens in the detention centers.
His conduct in permitting cruel and unusual punishment is impeachable in itself. In fact, it is he and Mr. Miller who are directing it.
They both should be put on trial for their criminal conduct.
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@Ben
The violation of the Eighth Amendment is important.
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@Ben
The intention to inflict punishment comes from Trump himself. He says if the asylum seekers do not like the conditions, don't seek asylum. Thus, deplorable conditions are meant to deter people from seeking asylum under international law. And for those not familiar with the US Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2 states: Treaties . . . constitute the supreme law of the land. So Trump is deliberately defying out Constitution once again.
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@Thomas Zaslavsky
You are correct, the 8th amendment is important. So was the 4th amendment, but that is all but gone. And what about Congress controlling the finances and controlling declaration of war. Where should the line have been drawn because it has been trampled a long time back?
More to the point is that Americans, on the whole, have had a tradition of helping the less fortunate. With 45, this is another norm being trampled, but not the first.
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Why did Speaker Pelosi not delay her recess vacation along with other House members to compromise on those two “migrant relief” bills? Oh, I forgot, she had a luncheon date with Maureen Dowd.
Why are these suffering children and families still unprotected by the standards that would have been afforded to migrant families in the House Bill? These for-profit camps should be closed ASAP and the people cared for with proper health, nutrition and compassion.
I call The Speaker’s office at least twice a week asking for Impeachment Inquiries to begin. With a lawless president becoming more dangerous every day, I am appalled that the House does nothing to stop him now. As long as Trump is president, I fear the migrant suffering will continue under the evil counsel of one Stephen Miller and his cruel, authoritarian boss.
Please, Speaker Pelosi, use your power and your pledge to the Constitution to stop this madness. As time goes on, I don’t see much difference between your inaction and that of the self-proclaimed Grim Reaper in the Senate Wax Museum.
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@Maggie C.
Since the Republican controlled Senate will take no impeachment action against him, any action by the House will play right into Trump’s hands. Pelosi is doing the right things: forestall impeachment and continue investigations.
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@DC,
I respectfully disagree. The house inaction on impeachment is more likely the driver playing into Trump’s hands. Who controls the narrative on Senate refusal to impeach if the House votes to impeach? The Republicans do! They can throw that line out as long as it suits them.
No one knows what can happen before an election sixteen months away. Look what happened just a few days before Trump was elected by a slim majority:
Comey’s letter, the dump of Hillary’s emails minutes after the Hollywood Access tape was released.
Aside from useless predictions, the House has an obligation to uphold the law and the responsibility to provide Constitutional checks and balances on the Executive Branch.
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@Maggie C.
Yep, Pelosi is spending more time criticizing her own people than the elephant in the room.
I am/was a fan, but rapidly losing patience.
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And why, professor, would you think that would be going too far?
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And no better example, perhaps, of "no reason to presume that private firms will do a better job," than in healthcare.
When you have private insurance dedicated to the proposition that the more delivery of the demanded product (healthcare) that you provide, the less money you make, you have lost the market and you have Adam Smith turning in his grave.
What you are talking about is crony socialism, not crony capitalism, the result of corporations getting into bed with corporations, something Smith explicitly warned us about.
Let doctors be doctors, and let them provide (at least in that all-important arena known as healthcare), as they always did, quality healthcare to all, WITHOUT Obama, Sanders, Harris and Trump.
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@Michael Hutchinson
What do you believe is the ratio of capitated payment to fee for service payment in the US today? Please cite empirical evidence, as I wonder if you have missed important aspects of healthcare delivery and financing. Don't forget contemporary use of CPT codes and severity indices.
Thanks.
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@Michael Hutchinson
I understand what you mean, but only without understanding the meaning of socialism can someone say this is "crony socialism". This is pure capitalism. The myth that capitalism is inherently competitive, productive, and resourceful is contradicted by the evidence of crony capitalism throughout the hundreds of years of capitalism. I'm not saying that fair competition never exists, but that capitalism also naturally rewards what a purist would denounce as cheating.
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@Michael Hutchinson
Quality healthcare to all Americans who have the money to pay for it, you mean. (The great majority of countries whose populations enjoy government-supported healthcare for all manage costs as well as care much better than the USA does.)
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Private prisons, what I call the human caging industry, should be abolished. Yes, some people must be isolated from society for public safety, but no one should profit from it. Private prisons lead to higher than necessary rates of incarceration because they sign contracts with governments agreeing that certain numbers of beds will be filled. Perhaps similarly, the immigrant detention centers may receive more money for packing in more people.
The profiteers who seek to privatize and monetize everything convince susceptible government officials that they possess some God-given right to profit, and the government (i.e. ordinary taxpayers) is required to provide that profit.
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I have started referring to detained immigrants as political prisoners because that’s what is going on.
As for private prisons— every few years an investigation turns up abuses at nursing homes due to poorly trained staff and the desire to put profits before patients. If that happens to people who have done nothing wrong but lack lack the opportunity to insist on better treatment, it should be obvious that the treatment of inmates will be as bad or worse.
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@Lawyermom True, but what if the electorate wants to be cruel? The gist is if I'm gonna suffer someone else is gonna suffer more.
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@chairmanj
Why are the electorate suffering so much? I thought we had Made America Great Again. They should be throwing their caps in the air!
Revving up the base and cruelty are certainly two policy goals of Trump. And there is a third. These policies allow him to blame the Democrats for the horrendous conditions of confinement in these concentration camps. If only the Democrats would agree to his immigration policy “reforms”, with “border security” at its heart, none of this would be happening. Oh, and pay for the wall. Trump finds all of this to be a use for cajole with which to bash the Democrats. A significant portion of Americans reject all of this. However, will they turn out and vote? All of this human cruelty mounting up day after day downs to make one pessimistic about the future and discourage some from voting. Trump’s only real chance to be a re-elected is to discourage high voter turn out and he is betting that this moves the needle in his direction.
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I wonder why responsible nonprofits don’t go for the contracts? There are so many amazing caring organizations, it would be interesting to see what they could do for $700 a day.
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@E. Not corrupt. They wouldn't be allowed to win the contracts.
14
@E.
maybe shmoozing with republicans as well as bribing them is something they can't stomach
I wonder about the underage-sex trade pipeline that is getting exposure with the Labor Secretary and Mar-a-lago and how much of an impact that is going to have?
When I studied population genetics at UCSB there was a phenomenon called "the founder effect" where powerful men in movements would spread their own genes in the population of followers and it was welcomed by many of the women or at least tolerated by this subset of the population.
Most of these movements were religious or spiritual in nature.
3
@E. Because it is a dirty business that they don't want to participate in?
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Thank you for speaking the truth. Incarceration of a human being is not to be profited on. Competition? Rebid yearly and you may see a better, more compassionate process for taking care of jailed persons, but only if the government monitors performance constantly. If monitored closely, private companies would not want to participate. Alas, do away with profit motives for running prisons. The treatment and care for the incarcerated is not to be taken lightly if ethics and morals are to be taken seriously.
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I was glad to see Saudi Arabia mentioned at the top of this piece, because I suspect that one of the reasons the president is cozying up to the Saudis is to bolster his own finances. He needs the money, and I think he may actually be selling us out to keep his own financial empire above water. I doubt we'll ever get to see the Trump Organization thoroughly audited, but it's my guess that such an investigation would make Watergate pale in comparison. Follow the money.
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@Boneisha
Hopefully, the SDNY is in the process of a RICO investigation of the Trump family and its organization. This will no doubt include a thorough audit.
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One of the best Dr. Krugman pieces in recent memory. It is hard to say what is worse, a policy of cruelty as a deterrent, or a policy of bilking the taxpayers indifferent that widespread cruelty is a byproduct of the corruption. I tend to think the latter, since the cruelty will be spread to more and more victims as the pursuit of ill-gotten funds proceeds without constraint.
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@Alan
Right. Trump criticizes "catch and release" but that's what he's doing with some profiting and meting out of cruelty in between.
5
The United States Government should be strictly forbidden from delegating any of its police powers to the private sector. Any.
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@Charles Coughlin
Do include any military powers, such as Blackwater, in that.
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@Charles Coughlin
Hear hear! Some things are the direct moral responsibility of the society and its citizens.
9
Agreed
5
Here is how privatization is corporate welfare.
Let's say a government service costs $100. For the sake of argument, let's say federal employees salaries constitute $70 and the rest is overhead.
Now a contractor comes along, and claims he can do the same work for $90. The Republicans jump at the chance.
The contractor replaces the skilled experienced workers with incompetent ones and provides them no benefits at a cost of $40. Then he adds in his overhead of $30 to pay for his executives' salaries. Then he ships $20 off to Wall Street in the form of investor profits.
The public get lousy or no service from the contractor because there is no one there to do the work or those there don't know what they are doing. Salaries to working class people are nearly cut in half and they lose benefits like good healthcare. Wealthy executives make a bundle and the stock traders cash in resulting in a huge transference of wealth from the middle class to the 1%.
Then the contractor complains that they aren't properly funded and get a think tank to justify higher compensation rates which they always get.
This is why Republicans love privatization. They can't get enough of it. Less money and services for the middle class and more profits for the wealthy elite. It doesn't get anymore Republican than that.
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@Bruce Rozenblit
So the only workers who "know what they're doing" are ones employed by the government?
6
@Livonian
Govt hires qualified employees then pays for training, continuing education, and tests them regularly.
At least govt used to.
The example I'll use is one I'm familiar with, water supplies in S. California. I used to conduct water testing for a municipality in Santa Barbara County.
Tests results had to be signed off, that is, if your results weren't approximating the actual amounts of nitrates, nitrites, dissolved solids, pH, priority pollutants like benzene, toluene, and hexachromium (and many others) then you could be prosecuted.
I got a lot of flack from the plant super because I started to find all sorts of tests that came out higher than normal for the plant (and over the allowed limit) after the testing protocols were brought in line with current best available technology, something found in the testing handbooks we were required to have.
The super really liked another lab worker who didn't understand the technology, had no more than a high school education, and once was told to clean up a mercury spill with paper towels but no gloves or any other safety equipment. She could be manipulated into doing anything.
We were testing drinking water for the township. It had some of the hardest water with higher than normal nitrite concentration I'd ever seen. Arsenic gets more soluble when conditions are like that.
That was in California, in the 90s, and typical of the way govt started to behave after Reagan became President.
So ya think LA is any better?
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@Livonian
I'm not talking about the entire private sector. I'm talking about privatization contractors who hire the cheapest people they can get to maximize profits. Do you understand the difference?
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I'm extraordinarily grateful to you, Dr. Krugman, for your complete commitment to the role of public intellectual. This piece is a sterling example of why we need your voice so much. All that said, I have one quibble: you write, "It would, I think, be going too far to claim that the private-prison industry — merchants of detention? — has been a driving force behind the viciousness of Trump’s border policy." When I think of the NRA's pernicious role in gun policy, it seems to me wholly plausible that the "merchants of detention" could be a driving force here, too. Heartbreaking though it is to write these words, when it comes to cruelty for profit, nothing seems to be beyond the range of plausibility these days.
272
Well, you really can't fault these profit excesses created by privatizing functions performed by the gov't. Why, because our economy is based on capitalism, and tell me when was the last time you read the goal of for profit, private companies is to lose money, be concerned about employees' benefits, and insure the company is a major force in promoting good will within the community. An item PK left out of this article was where are the checks and balances in our government to insure excess costs and profits are being reviewed to insure the American taxpayer aren't being ripped off? And I don't recall consumer groups, or GSA, or some other gov't entity reviewing Blackwater's books and preventing the taxpayer from being charged $2,500 for a toilet seat. For some reason I think it is going to be many, many years before the gov't gets into the business of preventing graft, fraud, deceit, payola, with its vendors/suppliers. It would not surprise me if more money is spent paying off gov't employees that the cost of the services being provided.
6
With Trump cruelty is almost always joined to greed.
He is a highly unethical and amoral man who has throughout his life run a business based on corruption and money laundering. Privatization has been used by Republicans to reward supporters of their party with undeserved profit.
Trump has mastered these schemes and uses the Presidency to benefit his businesses and violate the emoluments clause. That he gets away with this blatant and highly visible corruption is an indictment on politics in general and the horrific Republican Party in particular.
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We’re reportedly spending $700 a day to detain children. For that fare, we could send them all to private schools and thence to Harvard. For that fare, they and their extended families could live like royalty back in their countries of origin. They could stay at luxury hotels, complete with laundry and room service.
Instead, we stuff them in cages and warehouses. Golly, I wonder if there’s any profit to be made there?
Is it corruption or cruelty? Hey, kill two birds with one projectile - it’s both! Jackpot!
709
"For that fare, we could send them all to private schools and thence to Harvard."
Or better yet, pay our public schools again and stop paying the money-first education-optional profiteers.
Every time public school funding is cut, DeVos flaunts a smile. I'd rather she cry every day for what she's done.
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@chambolle Please send me a migrant family, for $700 a day, they can have my room and I will do the cooking.
14
@Roy Tolliver $700 a day (= $ 21,000 a month) is just for ONE child! Heck, at that rate, I would take a family of four and move into my basement or the garden shed!
3
Prof. Krugman speculates about "if a private prison operator bulks up its bottom line by underpaying personnel."
The hypothesis that privatization turns good jobs into bad jobs (in practice, if not in principle) is worth more consideration.
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@Joe Ryan
It's not a hypothesis. Alabama prisons for instance show exactly that.
4
Of course privatization costs more-- you have to pay for their profits, or they wouldn't be interested in doing it. And without competition, there's no incentive to do it well or avoid cutting corners.
It all started when the Republican party realized that having an actor play a competent President, making up lovely stories about conservative policy, would be way better than letting the people know what their real agenda was.
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@Miker
To this I would add that the theft described here is the reason so many are so desperate to prop up this administration. Nothing and no one will ever touch their guy now that all dreams of dominance have finally come true in a big way.
Even now, when people know the agenda, the support marches on, right over the top of us.
32
@Miker
"It all started when the Republican party realized that having an actor play a competent President,"
You would think they at least could have gotten someone like Harrison Ford.
12
@Thucydides At the time, I wished for Marlon Brando.
3
Privatization came into its own in the 1980’s. So, would we be talking about the central thesis of Ronald Reagan’s Inaugural Address: “government is the problem?” How can we not be?
St. Ronnie of the Middle-class Rip-off set up his wealthy cronies by fleecing America with his own nefarious “trickle-down” bait-and-switch. He campaigned in ‘76 on “welfare queens,” lost to clueless Gerald Ford, then wised up and rolled out the mega race card in ‘80—in “states rights” Mississippi, to distract the rubes he was fleecing, and steamrolled President Carter.
Donald Trump’s triumph, by contrast, was puny, but he copied heavily from the Reagan racist textbook and rode the evil into the West Wing. His cabinet of misanthropes and carnival barkers has raided the U.S. treasury in the form of tax cuts for the Gladstone Gander class and deregulation of industries which are a clear and present danger to human health and to the environment. No-bid billion dollar contacts are handed out to defense contractors who hire non-union personnel (mercenaries); buy weapons on the cheap from overseas contacts; and hide in the shadows when Mitch McConnell wants to eviscerate a school lunch program as “unnecessary.” It’s necessary, though to hide women and children children in cell blocks and “feed” them candy bars for their chief “meal” of the day. And who doesn’t think that the National Rifle Association isn’t getting fat off the sales of weapons to the “for profit” prisons?
Isn’t America great? Again?
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@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18
How could I have forgotten Gladstone Gander!
9
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18
Gladstone Gander. wow. Even Disney has forgotten Gladstone. Maybe in Disney's case, memory has not failed.
5
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18
Gladstone Gander.... This could be literally a 'phoenix
moment' for a forgotten character........
Move over Colbert......
1
I've read that we're paying upwards of $700 a day per person in those horrible facilities. It'd be cheaper & more salubrious to put them in hotels. Not Trump hotels, obviously, but he probably has pals who run more modest establishments.
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@RKD Well! After you take away the profit line item of $699, there's only so many ways to stretch the remaining $1.00! You can't stay in no Ritz for $1.00!
24