Privatizing the Horrible

Sometimes it's better for your government to do the dirty things, like committing war crimes and trying to rehabilitate 12 year-old arsonists.

Today Blackwater announced that it's changing it's name to Xe. This is its idea of becoming more friendly, because, "The company's name -- Blackwater -- was inspired by the dark, brackish water on the land [where its headquarters are located], near the Great Dismal Swamp." And also because of that other thing.  Along with changing its name to Xe, the company hopes to change its image with new management and a change of location. It has named Destro managing director and is moving its headquarters away from the Great Dismal Swamp, to a base in a secret mountain in Antarctica.  

Yesterday, two Pennsylvania judges pleaded guilty to various kind of fraud for taking millions in kickbacks from private juvenile detention centers, in what sounds like an excellent use of taxpayer money.

"At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.

Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.

She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by."

These videos commissioned by the ACLU in the early 1990's show the potential and inevitable abuses that come when you privatize any part of the judicial process.




(I think they made a nice creative choice, unnecessarily adding Dutch or Danish subtitles to this one.)

Government is best able to handle guarding our own diplomats and running kiddie prisons because it can ram so many rules and regulations down the throats of soldiers and prison officials that nothing happens without protocol. It is impossible for government to cut corners with life and liberty in order to make a profit, because we force it to put principles over profits. This is good because it's very hard to profit from the horrible without violating some rights.

Bonus: I don't think any of us would have had to go through that damn election if we'd known that this existed.