Stop me if you've heard this before

By saying this I do not mean to disparage Ramsay MacMullen (1928-2022), a late, great historian of antiquity. Three of the four long chapters in his book are titled “Power effective,” “Power for sale,” and “The price of privatizing government.”

He traces the development and dissolution of a republic founded upon presumably shared values, that decayed (or advanced?) into scrambles for money and power, and how to corrupt the legal system: all of which became the empire’s real “shared values.”

MacMullen seems to have read practically every document and inscription that survives from the Roman Republic and early Empire, in Latin and Greek, including letters to, from and about the emperors and governors and minor magistrates. His book (Yale University Press, 2008) is an awesome intellectual achievement.

And you know what? It’s the same today. “The price of privatizing government” says it all.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United * v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010)* made it official: Money is speech. Money talks. Poor folks kneel, and if they know what’s good for them, grovel.

Sorry, Supreme Court: Money is not speech. Money is money. Speech is speech.

If I write a poem, and recite it in a public forum, say, at a bar, and no one publishes it, do I have money? No, I do not.

And when Donald Trump sued ABC News and won $15 million from it for describing him as a rapist, rather than a sexual abuser, did he sue ABC to make it correct its words, or to make it give him money?

Citizens United was the worst Supreme Court ruling since Dred Scott v. Sanford , (1857), which affirmed that slaves are property, and slave owners should not be deprived of their property. It took a Civil War to straighten that out.

Now, it’s surely true that some civil governments govern through words: laws, regulations, tax codes, court rulings, constitutions.

The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, essentially overturned Dred Scott; it begins: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Last week Trump claimed that he can violate the 14th Amendment by executive order, denying birthright citizenship to babies. This racistorder is clearly aimed, above all, at Latinos.

Trump does not have the authority to violate the Constitution. Yet who will hold him to account? A Quisling majority on the Supreme Court? A Quisling Congress?

Many of Trump’s acts in his first week in office subvert the rule of law, subvert Congress, and subvert the Constitution. His executive orders are direct appeals to his racist voters, to his campaign contributors and to racist members of Congress. His de facto revocation of the 14th Amendment has been challenged in court by more than 20 states. And Trump will lose this one.

So why did he do it?

For the money.

Not directly into Trump’s sticky pockets, but to send billions of dollars to his campaign contributors — and to private prisons.

Private prisons are a blot upon our nation, and upon every state and county that allows them. They are a modern form of slavery. They force prisoners to work, if they want to work, for a dollar an hour or less. To whose profit? The private prison corporations.

I have firsthand experience with private prisons. I helped represent refugees, as a paralegal in the Corrections Corporation Company of America’s immigration prison in Laredo. It was the first private prison constructed specifically to incarcerate mothers and babies. (CCA was renamed CoreCivic after reports, like mine, brought it into ill repute.)

In Laredo, prisoners, including babies, were strip searched, including “cavity searches,” before and after each visit with a legal representative — and only before and after visits with a legal representative.

One client, a 14-year-old girl, was forced to remove and show a guard her sanitary pad during her first menstrual period. Another client, a 3-year-old baby, had her anus and vagina inspected by a doughty prison guard, who was only following orders.

But, really, how much “contraband” could a little baby stuff up her anus and vagina?

Later, as a news reporter and editor, I saw many government entities — cities, counties, states and the federal government — “privatize” their “services” because privately run companies, unlike our governments, need not respond to Freedom of Information Act requests.

Not that private prisons have anything to hide. Right?

Here are some recent reports:

“Stock prices for the two largest private detention contractors, GeoGroup and CoreCivic, are up 74 percent and 55 percent,” Forbes Magazine reported in January. “The COO of CoreCivic recently crowed to shareholders about the historic “value proposition” from these government contracts. And on cue, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have asked for an additional $3.2 billion to pass along to their prison executive cronies if the Laken Riley Act passes,” which it has.

Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney general, was a lobbyist for GEO Group. Finbold, a financial news outlet, reported that GEO Group’s stock price actually “soared approximately 142% since the election and is up 22.43% year-to-date.”

Private, profit-seeking prison companies incarcerate 8 percent of the 1.8 million prisoners in the United States today: 144,000 people — more than the population of Peoria.

Apologists for private prisons call this “a small percentage” of U.S. prisoners. Still, how would it play in Peoria if the whole town were thrown into private prisons?

That’s where we are today. The federal government, which Herr Trump promises to cut down to size, without oversight, encourages profit-seeking private companies to imprison people and make them work, for a dollar an hour, for the corporation’s profit.

When I worked at the Laredo private prison, one brave kid climbed the fence and jumped over the razor wire, cutting himself, and limped away, leaving a spoor of blood.

Now, if a guard at the CCA/CoreCivic prison had shot that kid on the fence, and killed or paralyzed him, who would have been responsible? The federal government? The immigration service? The private prison company? The guard it had, allegedly, trained?

You tell me.

Privatizing government services is a slimy dodge. In the case of immigration prisons, it’s an attempt to hide from us the fact that our tax dollars pay to imprison and strip-search babies and mothers.

“Where law ends, tyranny begins,” according to John Locke.

Ever heard of him? His books and essays are being banned in our public schools. Oh, and we’re also imprisoning Ukrainian refugees, who fled Russia’s war.

Our New Colossus: “I lift my handcuffs beside the golden door.”