New Hampshire Rejects All Private Prison Bids

New Hampshire officials rejected all four bids to privatize its prisons, citing prison operators’ insufficient understanding of court-mandated standards of inmate care, and proposed wages that are half what prison security staff now earn. The decision comes following a recent vote by the state House of Representatives to prohibit private prisons in the state. For-profit prison operators’ interest in profiting off inmates leads to perverse incentives, and many private facilities have been cited for human rights abuses and violations of state law. The Concord Monitor reports:

“The proposals exhibited a lack of understanding of the overarching legal requirements placed upon the (corrections department) relating to the court orders, consent decrees and settlements which, in large part, dictate the administration and operation of their correctional facilities and attendant services to the inmate populations,” read the report. It concluded that meeting those requirements for inmates’ medical and mental health care “appeared to be too great a burden for the vendors.”

The state’s decision to cancel the bid puts prison privatization off the table for now unless Gov. Maggie Hassan or the Legislature directs the state to reissue the bid, said Michael Connor of the state Department of Administrative Services. That seems unlikely. […]

State corrections and administrative service officials began investigating prison privatization in 2011 at the direction of former governor John Lynch and the last Legislature. Four companies submitted 17 proposals that were so voluminous and complex that state officials hired a private consultant, at a cost of $171,000, to help them evaluate the bids.

New Hampshire’s now-governor has been vocal in opposition to private prisons, and her spokesman said this week that “the track record of such arrangements in other states has not demonstrated success in terms of protecting taxpayer dollars while maintaining the highest level of public safety.” The state could, however, solicit new proposals in future years if the House bill to prohibit the facilities is not also approved by the Senate.

Earlier coverage of the bids reports that the three national private prison companies each have at least two lobbyists in the state, reflecting the nationwide efforts of prison firms to lobby for privatization of prison facilities, prison health care, and laws that incarcerate more people in a country that already has the world’s highest incarceration rate. Legislators who support private prisons, many enriched by campaign contributions from these very companies, have claimed that they are a way to save money. But New Hampshire’s report confirms the experiences of other states – that these prisons cost more. New Hampshire spent $171,000 for a consultant to pore through proposals that, in spite of being too unwieldy to be reviewed in-house, failed to address basic state criteria. What’s more, New Hampshire’s report is the latest evidence that private firms’ attempts to cut costs come at the expense of adequate inmate treatment and good wages.

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Private Prison Firm Pulls Funding For College Stadium Naming Rights

Florida Atlantic University’s football stadium will no longer be named after a notorious private prison corporation, after GEO Group announced Monday it would withdraw its $6 million pledge to the university, saying it has “surprisingly evolved into an ongoing distraction.”

The announcement in February that the university would rename its stadium garnered immediate outcry and protests, and the reaction should not have been so surprising. GEO Group, the second-largest operator of U.S. private prisons, has become known for reports of juvenile abuse, deaths, and riots at its facilities, and has poured money into Florida politics as the legislature considered proposals to privatize the state’s prison health care. GEO executives escalated the controversy over associating college football with prison by falsely denying reports that GEO had overseen a facility that a federal judge described as a “cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts.” The $6 million pledge paid out over 12 years would have been the largest one-time gift in the history of FAU athletics, signaling both the monetary influence of the private prison industry, and its willingness to wield that influence to secure a better reputation. Instead, the company said it would make one $500,000 donation toward the school’s scholarship program.

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World’s Most Powerful Private Supercomputer Won’t Cure Cancer, But Will Find Oil Super Fast

Twice a year, a group of experts release a ranked list of the world’s most powerful computers called TOP500. It is likely that the new list in June will have a new member of the Top 10 of the Top 500: a computer dubbed Pangea. Its output is is 2.3 petaflops. A petaflop is a quadrillion “floating-point operations per second.” Today’s desktop computers deal in gigaflops, or billions.

The system is the fastest commercially-owned computer in the world. The other faster computers on TOP500's list are owned by governments or academic institutions and therefore used for research.

Pangea is owned by Total SA, the fifth-largest oil and gas company in the world. So the supercomputer will not be changing the future of health care IT like former Jeopardy champion Watson or revolutionizing climate projections and weather research like supercomputers at NCAR and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It will be searching for oil and gas, according to Reuters.

Pangea helped analyze seismic data from Total’s Kaombo project in Angola in just nine days, instead of the four and a half months it would have taken with its previous computer, Philippe Malzac, IT director at Total’s Exploration division, told Reuters:

Total trumps British rival BP with the 2.3-petaflop supercomputer. BP said last December it was building a 2 petaflop supercomputing facility in Houston, Texas.

“Our competitors are also working on these kind of algorithms, but we think this is giving us a head start,” Malzac said.

The price of the system is undisclosed, but it will cost nearly $20 million per year just to run Pangea. The technological achievement may be impressive, but the reality is that oil and gas reserves are finite and getting more expensive to extract, while renewable fuels like wind and solar are getting cheaper to utilize.

Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, a lead author on the third IPCC Assessment Report, explained last month in Slate that it is getting harder and more expensive to squeeze oil out of the ground.

Oil production technology is giving us ever more expensive oil with ever diminishing returns for the ever increasing effort that needs to be invested. According to the statistics presented by J. David Hughes at the AGU session, we are now drilling 25,000 wells per year just to bring production back to the levels of the year 2000, when we were drilling only 5,000 wells per year. Worse, the days are long gone when you could stick a pitchfork in the ground and get a gusher that would produce for years.

That is when an oil company knows where to drill without the help of a historically fast supercomputer. Global oil and gas exploration and production costs are expected to rise again to $644 billion in 2013, according to an annual survey by Barclays. These fuels are getting increasingly expensive and difficult to produce, requiring massive computational power to find a way to squeeze more dinosaur juice out of the Earth’s crust. The climate clock is ticking, and it is worth asking if such investments in oil & gas extraction are worth it. Pierrehumbert again puts the scenario plainly:

Whales were driven to the brink of extinction before petroleum replaced whale oil, and we may well fry our planet—and bankrupt ourselves while doing so — before we’re finally forced to kick the fossil fuel habit. It will be hard to muster the resources to develop replacements for fossil fuel energy if we wait until both the economy and climate are in ruins. We are in for a hard landing if we don’t use our current prosperity to pave the way for a secure energy and climate future.

That includes using recent powerful technological advances to get ourselves off fossil fuels and onto renewables.

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Private Equity Eyes Returns in Doc-in-the-Box Boom

Walk-in clinics are popping up in shopping malls and main streets across the United States, and private equity is helping fund the expansion.

At least a dozen private equity firms have in the last few years plowed millions of dollars into urgent care clinics, which have become popular with people who do not have regular doctors or who like the convenience of their extended hours of operation.

Several private equity executives told Reuters they are eager for more acquisitions in this sector because they expect profits to grow as healthcare reforms boost the number of Americans with health insurance by more than 30 million over the next decade.

"If you think about where healthcare is headed, urgent care is very clearly part of the solution, said Stan Blaylock, a former executive at drug store chain Walgreen, who left to invest in and head the urgent care chain Physicians Immediate Care.

The number of such clinics in the United States climbed almost 20 percent to 9,400 in the last four years, according to the Urgent Care Association of America. Almost 40 percent of clinics surveyed by the trade group expect to expand their facilities or add new clinics this year, up from 18 percent in 2010.

After poor management caused many walk-in health centers to close in the 1970s and 1980s, today's clinics are much improved, thanks to investor money and customer demand. They are in more convenient locations, open earlier and close later, and offer online billing. Some also sell snacks and dispense medicine to boost profits.

"We borrow a lot from the restaurant industry," said Zach Wooldridge, co-founder of Elm Creek Partners, a Dallas-based equity firm, which in 2011 bought a majority stake in Millennium Healthcare Management, an urgent care chain with clinics in Louisiana and Mississippi. "We have to be good, fast and kind to be successful.

Wooldridge declined to say how much Elm Creek paid for Millennium Healthcare. The firm — like others — plans to remain invested for several years, before selling the company or taking it public. He expected that his chain and others would generate EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) margins of about 20 percent when fully operational.

Private equity firms invested $4 billion in 2012 in health and medical services, which include urgent care, up from $3.5 billion in 2011, according to Thomson Reuters data.

One of the first in the recent wave of investments was in 2010, when venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and private equity firm General Atlantic bought MedExpress, the country's No. 3 urgent care chain. They did not disclose the size of their investment.

In the same year, health insurer Humana bought the largest U.S. walk-in chain, Concentra, with 330-clinics, for $805 million. And LLR Partners and health insurer WellPoint invested last summer in 12th ranked Physicians Immediate Care, a chain of 20 urgent care clinics based in Chicago for an undisclosed sum.

Investor Interest

Most urgent care chains are privately run and investing in them is not risk free. Too many clinics in close proximity can saturate a market, and low insurance reimbursements can cut into the bottom line.

Consumer advocates also say they worry investors will drive clinics to focus more on profits than on quality of care.

Private equity firms say they help clinics standardize procedures and consolidate overhead costs like billing. Scott Perricelli of LLR Partners said his firm also spends a lot of time helping clinics look for new branch locations and recruit doctors — two tasks physicians are usually too busy to tackle.

When Aaron Money, an executive at FFL, a San Francisco-based private equity firm, saw the potential in urgent care, he teamed up with physician Lee Resnick to start WellStreet, a chain of walk-in health clinics in Georgia. FFL owns 70 percent of the business.

WellStreet's clientele are mostly privately insured, said Money, who expects business to grow as health reforms under the U.S. Affordable Care Act kick in.

"We thought it would be mostly people who would otherwise go to the emergency room. But it's equal parts E.R. and primary care physician-type appointments," he said.

Health industry experts say urgent care centers should keep their services simple to maximize profitability. They are better equipped to treat a kid with an ear infection, than a diabetes patient who needs ongoing, complex care, for instance.

The clinics could lose money if they spend time with patients or take on complicated health problems because insurance companies generally reimburse at a flat rate for each visit, said Franz Ritucci, president of the industry group American Academy of Urgent Care.

Mike Williams, who heads the Abaris Group, a consulting firm that advises urgent and ambulatory care clinics, said, "It's not complex, critical-care medicine. It's a low-tech, high-touch business."

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Republicans With Influence On Immigration Debate Are Top Recipients Of Private Prison Contributions

As the immigration reform debate heats up, private prison executives have made it clear that they are monitoring how it will affect their rates of incarceration. During a call with investors last week, Corrections Corporation of America CEO assured investors that there will “always be demand for beds”, reflecting concern that incarceration rates will actually go down. With many elements of reform left on the negotiating table, the Columbia Journalism Review is showing just how much money the two major private prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, have invested in the outcome:

Some of the politicians who have benefited most from this largesse are influential Senators who are now playing key roles in shaping proposed immigration reform legislation.

Among members of Congress, the top two recipients of contributions from CCA are its home-state senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker of Tennessee. The Republican lawmakers, each of whom has received more than $50,000 from CCA according to data compiled by the Sunlight Foundation, represent important swing votes for advancing a reform bill through the Senate. Another top CCA recipient is Arizona Republican John McCain, who has gotten $32,146 from CCA and is a member of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” that is working to draft legislation. His fellow Gang of Eight member, Marco Rubio, ranks among the top recipients of contributions from the Florida-based GEO Group, receiving $27,300 in donations over the course of his career.

In recent years, each of these senators has sponsored bills that would have increased the detention and incarceration of immigrants. Legislation put forward by Alexander in 2009, for example, would have provided for “increased alien detention facilities.” And a 2011 bill cosponsored by McCain and Rubio sought to expand Operation Streamline, a federal enforcement program that makes illegal entry a criminal offense in some jurisdictions.

Skyrocketing immigration detention numbers are attributable in part to programs like Operation Streamline and Secure Communities, which link criminal activity to immigration status. But they are also linked to record deportations, as many facing removal subject to mandatory detention while proceedings are pending, leaving judges no discretion to decide whether to release them.

A McCain spokesman told CJR that McCain stands by Operation Streamline, and that he expects it to continue whether or not comprehensive immigration is implemented “because it works.” According to ColorLines, Democratic staffers are concerned that negotiations will lead to an expansion of Operation Streamline and other programs that detain and criminalize immigrants in exchange for support on other core elements of reform.

Immigration detention has more than doubled private prison profits since 1995, and these corporations have not been shy about using their influence to lobby for incarceration-friendly policies, despite claims from both Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group that they do not take official positiions on issues. Those sentenced for immigration offenses make up one of the fastest-growing segments of the United States’ overflowing federal prison population.

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Since September, America Has Lost One Government Job For Every Five Private Sector Jobs Created

The public sector lost another 13,000 jobs in December, bringing the post-recession job loss total for federal, state, and local governments to more than 600,000. Those job losses — many of which have hit teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public safety officials — have had a devastating impact on the economic recovery. If public sector job creation had kept its pre-recession pace, the unemployment rate would be a full point lower.

Government job losses began to slow earlier this year, but in the last three months, the public sector has shed another 89,000 jobs. And as Demos’ David Callahan noted in a blog post today, that means the public sector has lost one job for every five private sector jobs created in that time:

But here’s a statistic that jumped out at me: 89,000 public sector workers lost their jobs in October, November, and December—with most of those losses, 66,000, occurring in October.

Large-scale layoffs of government workers continue across the United States. Such layoffs undermine local economies and stymie the recovery. For every five workers who were hired in the past three months, one was laid off by government.

Government job losses have come as a result of crunched budgets at the state and local levels, where a vast majority of the losses have occurred. They’ve been exacerbated by spending cuts at the federal level. Efforts to alleviate those losses through stimulus measures like the American Jobs Act, which would have provided aid to states and localities to rehire teachers and public safety officials, were repeatedly blocked by the GOP.

That has terrible consequences for the overall economic recovery. Fewer government workers means fewer workers overall, which means that less money is being spent throughout the economy. A study from the Economic Policy Institute, in fact, found that the shrinking public sector has cost the overall economy at least 750,000 private sector jobs.

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Strange Bedfellows: Unions Protesting For The Right To Target Private Residences Get Tea Party Approval

Union thugs protesting outside the homes of their targets has become a weapon more and more unions have added to their already-large arsenal. Now that the State of Georgia may become the first state to outlaw the offensive tactic, oddly enough, unions are getting support from an unlikely source–the Tea Party Patriots.

Last year, when 45,000 union members struck telephone carrier Verizon, IBEW union radicals showed up outside the home of Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam’s House causing a disturbance in McAdam’s neighborhood (see video below). In another incident, up to 3,000 CWA protesters conducted a mock funeral outside the home of Verizon’s chairman.

Though it shouldn’t be necessary for any legislature to even have to consider the protection of private residences from protesters, these incidents (and others like it) have drawn the attention of Georgia’s legislature, which has moved to pass Senate Bill 469 to prohibit the targeting of individuals at their private residences.

Related:

While the original bill was aimed at prohibiting unions from protesting outside private residences, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jim Galloway, the Georgia House altered the bill last night to include all private residences:

The change doesn’t show up on the Internet version of the bill yet, but we’re told that the House Rules Committee last night altered SB 469 so that it would ban demonstrations at or near all private residences in Georgia.

[snip]

Pickets targeted at any home – whether belonging to corporate CEO, union executive, crack dealer, child molester, or even newspaper columnist – would be off-limits under the latest version of the bill. Which, according to one constitutional scholar we talked to, has a much better chance of surviving a court challenge.

As usual, however, union bosses view their collective rights as superior than individual rights and have been protesting the bill with rhetorical fury reminiscent of last year’s Madison madness.

Related:

What makes this issue more interesting is the fact that unions have found an ally in the Tea Party Patriots:

Julianne Thompson, Georgia state director for Tea Party Patriots, told The Huffington Post that she and her fellow organizers don’t see SB 469 as a political issue so much as a free-speech issue. Thompson spoke out against the bill at the state capitol Monday.

“When we’re talking about the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution, we’re not talking about political right-versus-left. We’re talking about right versus wrong,” Thompson said. “If it’s a violation of free speech we’re going to be on the side of the Constitution. I’m happy that we’ve reached across party lines with regard to this issue.”

[snip]

Charlie Flemming, president of the Georgia AFL-CIO, told HuffPost that the state’s unions are happy to see Tea Party activists coming down on the same side as them.

Apparently, the Tea Party Patriots believe, as do their new collectivist union allies, that targeting the homes of their opponents is something that falls under the guise of Constitutionally-protected activity.

By those standards, noise ordinances should be stricken, anti-harassment laws erased, and the ability of municipalities to allow parades, marches or protests by permit only should be done away with.

Then, every American can enjoy this spectacle outside their front doors:

__________________

“Socialism has no place in the hearts of those who would secure the fight for freedom and preserve democracy.” Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labor, 1918

Cross-posted at LaborUnionReport.com

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