HIGHLIGHTS
- Water and the Commons
- Why did private prison execs get public money?
- Happy anniversary, Social Security (and the attacks against it)!
JUMP: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National: In the Public Interest’s Jeff Hagan writes about the common good and Wendy Johnson’s Kinship Medicine: Cultivating Interdependence to Heal the Earth and Ourselves. “The natural infrastructure and the person-built infrastructure are examples of common goods. That such resources are simply part of the landscape–or buried beneath it–makes it easy to forget just how vital they are. That’s why we’ve written many times about the importance of keeping water systems in public hands, including an in-depth report about recent water privatization efforts in Pennsylvania, and a story map about citizens’ campaigns against such privatization. ‘Water is life’ isn’t just a motto, it’s a simple fact, and the care and maintenance of it is far too essential to leave up to the market, whose only interest is to squeeze as much profit from it as possible. Such a common good always must be held in common.”
2) National: States are now pushing to ban stay-or-pay contracts. “The California and Pennsylvania legislatures have passed bills this year prohibiting TRAPS, which are now awaiting signatures by the states’ Democratic governors. The California attorney general’s $1.5 billion TRAP settlement with HCA Healthcare last month, which required the hospital network to stop enforcing all such agreements, points to another path forward for state-level action that, for now, circumvents Donald Trump’s agencies.”
3) National: Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights has filed a federal lawsuit “seeking answers as to why the Trump administration funneled billions in taxpayer dollars to private prison executives for expansion of immigration detention while at the same time quietly dismantling a cheaper, community-based national program that returned a 100% appearance rate in immigration court without detention. The lawsuit follows the federal government’s refusal to provide public records in response to RFK Human Rights’ Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requesting evaluation data of the Case Management Pilot Program (CMPP).” [Read the complaint]
See also Bianca Tylek and Worth Rises’ piece in Truthout discussing their recently released book, The Prison Industry: How it Works and Who Profits. “The private prison model does not differ much from the corrections system to the immigration detention system. Business is still driven by more bodies, longer stays, and low costs. So, much like it does in the corrections system, the private prison industry pushes for harsh immigration policies intended to drive up immigration detention. And private immigration detention centers suffer from many of the same problems as private prisons and jails, but the people held in them have even fewer rights and thus, at times, can suffer even more abuse.”
Also, check out The Majority Report’s interview with Whitney Curry Wimbish, author of the recent American Prospectarticle, “Private Prisons Cash In on Trump’s Mass Deportations.” [Audio, at 44:00]
4) National/Think Tanks: Public Citizen is on the case digging into the Trump’s administration’s efforts to weaken “federal enforcement against lawbreaking by Big Tech corporations. Parroting President Trump’s complaints about ‘weaponized’ government, tech executives cast commonsense protections for consumers, investors, and the public as unfair political attacks. Their goal: to derail enforcement by federal agencies charged with protecting Americans from their misconduct. It’s working.”
5) National: The Heartland Labor Forum, a weekly hour-long podcast on labor leaders on KKFI 90.1 FM Kansas City Community Radio is a must-listen. Last week’s show was on Federal Unions and Workers in the Crosshairs of DOGE. “The Trump administration has attacked the federal workforce with firings, union busting, weakened job protections, reduced telework, and speedups. This week in our continuing labor leader series on the Heartland Labor Forum, we’ll talk to two local federal labor leaders who are fighting for federal workers in the Kansas City area—Jeff Suchman and Treka Henry. Both are with the American Federation of Government Employees locals. He at the Department of Labor and she at HUD. Our feature is Labor Song of the Month with Mark Galus.”
6) California: KQEDO reports that “members of Child Care Providers United (CCPU)—which represents approximately 60,000 home-based child care providers in California—have reached a tentative agreement with the state. The union is a partnership between Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99, SEIU Local 521 and United Domestic Workers of America, UDW/AFSCME Local 3930.”
But the national news is far more bleak, AFSCME reports. “The livelihoods of home care providers and the well-being of their clients are under threat. The Department of Labor is considering a change to a rule that would prevent home care providers from earning the minimum wage, as well as overtime pay. (…) Behind this rule change is an effort by the private home care industry to rake in profits at the expense of both providers and the people for whom they care. Providers will be forced to leave the industry, and patients will struggle to find care options that allow them to avoid costly institutionalization.” [Submit a comment]
7) Hawaii: The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports that Honolulu City Council “has formally accepted Central Pacific Bank’s donation of more than $1.63 million in real and personal property for use by the city Department of Community Services near Aala Street and the H-1 freeway. DCS, tasked with helping at-risk families and individuals in need of low-income housing, job training, or battling homelessness, has been in talks with CPB as well as the Atherton Family Foundation over the potential real estate transaction involving the donation of one property and the sale of another to the city.”
8) New York: Greenpointers.com’s Emma Davey reports on scenes from Leonard Library’s reopening celebration. “At a time when rampant local business closures have devastated the community, we’re here to bring you some positivity for once. The Leonard Library (81 Devoe St.) reopened on August 5, after renovations required the branch to close for more than two years. The library installed a new roof, a new HVAC system, and restored the historic ceiling, a project totaling $4.8 million. The city’s Department of Design and Construction completed the repairs.”
9) National: Writing in Unlimited Hangout, John Klyczek maps out a dystopian private fintech/AI linkup in educationaimed at social control. “From Project 2025 to the PayPal Presidency: School Choice Fin-Tech for a Blockchain Social Credit Economy.” “Trump and his Tech Barons are on course to upgrade school choice fin-tech from digital wallets to blockchain DLTs that log students’ learning algorithms and transfer programmable stablecoins which can be tracked and traced by AI to calculate predictive social credit analytics based on correlations between corporate-government financial inputs and education outcomes. Dawning the ‘Golden Age’ of the 4IR, the social credit merger of ed-tech, fin-tech, and AI-tech is the endgame Trump card that will manifest a techno-fascist dream come true for the PayPal Mafia and the Koch-SPN syndicate. Welcome to the School World Order.”
10) National: The Hechinger Report reports that student veterans say Veterans Administration cuts are derailing their education. “Many are also concerned about the potential for reduced scrutiny of the for-profit college sector, which critics contend has taken advantage of veterans’ tuition payments without providing the promised educational benefits. (…) Veterans and advocates are concerned that ongoing Education Department cuts will erode oversight of education institutions that take GI Bill benefits but leave veterans with little in return—primarily for-profit colleges that were found guilty of, and have been punished repeatedly for, defrauding students.”
11) National: The Hill reports that a U.S. District Judge “permanently blocked two memos issued by the Trump administration that threatened schools with funding cuts for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. (…) The American Federation of Teachers, Democracy Forward and others sued over both of the memos, arguing the administration did not go through the proper procedures and violated the rights of schools.
12) National: Commenting on a New York Times story about Mark Zuckerberg running a private school out of his house, @ColoBenji says “this is what the rich taking back education away from the working classes looks like. Break the public option till it fails, then break it more, while privatizing real education to be hoarded by them, like it was before the 20th century.” Jennifer Berkshire writes, “this is actually a hot new trend called a *micro school.* The part where they ignored all the city codes is trendy too—that’s called *permissionless education.*”
13) Colorado: Writing in the Colorado Times Recorder, Manuel Solano, a former law professor at Metro State University and an attorney specializing in civil rights, consumer rights, and public education advocacy, calls for the termination of Colorado’s statewide charter school authorizer. “On July 25, 2025, Colorado Skies Academy — a charter middle school with a unique aviation-focused curriculum—closed its doors just 16 days before the school year was set to begin. The announcement blindsided families, left teachers unpaid, and exposed a devastating truth: the Colorado Charter School Institute (CSI), the school’s authorizer, failed in its most basic duty—oversight.”
14) Florida: Public education advocates say private schools need more accountability, Florida Politics reports. “‘We actually even found schools where there were teachers who didn’t have a high school diploma.’ Orange County public schools are losing more than $200 million this school year as the state diverts taxpayer money to private school vouchers, School Board member Stephanie Vanos said. Meanwhile, those private schools face little transparency and accountability, Vanos and others complained. (…) Since private schools are not legally required to accept all students. That makes the mission of public schools even more important, the public education advocates argued.”
15) Pennsylvania: Education Voters PA, pointing to a PennLive report, says “Pennsylvania’s largest cyber charter school, CCA, just slammed the door on public transparency. For more than a decade, anyone attending a CCA board meeting could request documents that detail what the board is voting to pay for—down to the check number and vendor name. Now? The public gets a vague 7-line summary. Anyone who wants to see how CCA is spending tax dollars must file a records request (and wait a month or more) to see where millions of tax dollars are going.”
16) Texas: ProPublica and The Texas Tribune find “more than 60 instances of nepotism, self-dealing and conflicts of interest among 27 private schools that likely would have violated state laws had the schools been public. (…) Such practices would typically violate laws governing public and charter schools. But private schools operate largely outside those rules because they haven’t historically received direct taxpayer dollars. Now, as the state moves to spend at least $1 billion over the next two years on private education, lawmakers have imposed almost none of the accountability measures required of the public school system.”
17) National: Dean Baker, Senior Economist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Economic Policy Research, says the Trump administration is trying to make it more expensive to buy a home by privatizing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “As with many of the moves undertaken by Trump, it is not clear what problem this is meant to solve. For the period they have been in conservatorship, Fannie and Freddie have been securitizing mortgages at a low cost and have not faced any substantial management problems. There is of course one problem that privatizing Fannie and Freddie would solve. This is yet one more way that the financial industry can run up some profits and high pay for top executives at the expense of the rest of us.”
18) National: NPR’s Morning Edition reports that the Trump administration is seeking to eliminate or privatize the Energy Star appliance energy efficiency program. “Calls for privatizing the program have come mostly from libertarian and conservative groups such as Heritage Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. But at that May hearing, Administrator Zeldin also appeared set on privatizing Energy Star (…) Eliminating or privatizing Energy Star also would be disruptive for many in the real estate industry. Energy Star includes a program called Portfolio Manager that helps building owners track energy and water consumption. That information is then used to comply with local conservation regulations.”
19) National: The energy industry is counting on an AI boom to boost its shaky performance, says Politico. “So far, data centers have only increased total U.S. power demand by a tiny amount (they make up roughly 4.4 percent of electricity use, which rose 2 percent overall last year). But the two industries’ fates are already linked. When Chinese firm DeepSeek unveiled an AI model in January that it billed as 10 to 40 times cheaper and more efficient than U.S. models like ChatGPT, the stock of tech giants like NVIDIA and Oracle plummeted—as did that of power providers like Constellation, Vistra and GE Vernova.”
20) Maine: “Maine’s national parks, public lands and coastal programs are under threat — and we should all be alarmed,” writes Elizabeth Nitzel of Farmingdale in a letter to the editor of the Portland Press Herald. “These cuts don’t just endanger wildlife and ecosystems—they put Maine people and livelihoods at risk. Public lands are not political bargaining chips. They are our heritage, our economy and our responsibility to future generations. I urge our elected officials to fight for full funding of Acadia, protect Maine’s refuges and coastlines and reject the sale or privatization of any public lands. We can’t afford to lose what makes Maine ‘the way life should be.’”
21) Missouri: St. Louis Business Journal says the EPA is reporting that the cleanup of the Superfund site in St. Charles has not been as effective as hoped. “‘They found some pretty high levels of contamination in the soils,’ EPA Remedial Project Manager J.P. Curry said. ‘And so, that is something that we’re looking to get addressed and hopefully knock those levels down.’ Curry clarified that more data is needed to assess the ecological risk, but not the human health risk. (…) Of more immediate concern to residents is OU-3, a plume of contaminated groundwater that has migrated from the Findett property toward the Elm Point Wellfield, the primary source of drinking water for St. Charles. The EPA report found that this plume is getting closer to the city’s wells and deemed the cleanup for this area only ‘short-term protective.’” [See also KSDK video news report, about four minutes].
22) Utah: GovTech asks if artificial intelligence can get past its power problem. “Some experts estimate that completing a task via generative AI can gobble up 33 times more energy than other ‘task-specific software.’ Simply put, ongoing growth of AI and data centers will require more than simply running power lines to the facilities and flipping a switch. ‘All these things depend on power,’ Gardner said. (…) Such a rosy view, however, may soon face some harsh tests, assuming trends hold. As AI moves into daily life and tech companies rely more on giant data centers, the energy needs of all that progress are coming into clearer view, with potential hurdles that could influence both the use and reputation of some of the newest tools available to public agencies.”
23) National: As we observe Social Security’s 90th anniversary, we also observe the more than 90th anniversary of right wing attacks on the hugely popular government program. Back in the day, the creation of Social Security was aggressively opposed by the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Liberty League, (funded by wealthy industrialists), the American Medical Association, and politicians who feared it might undermine racial segregation or disrupt the Southern economy.
For the latest iteration of these plutocratic assaults, see Dean Baker’s “Donald Trump Wants to Take Your Social Security to Give Even More Money to Wall Street.” Baker says, “they also hate the fact that the program is so efficient. The money the public saves from an efficient Social Security system could instead be trillions of dollars in fees to Wall Street and the financial industry. This is why privatizing Social Security is a longstanding dream for Donald Trump and his crew.” Baker reports that “the administrative costs of the retirement program are just 0.4 percent of the benefits paid out. By comparison, a private sector pension system would cost more than 40 times as much.”
24) National: Making Services Public. KPFA’s Against the Grain podcast did an interesting segment on remunicipalization, sometimes called insourcing. “The Left has decried the privatization of services like water and electricity. Is it enough to return them to public ownership and control? According to David A. McDonald, the goal should be more equitable, democratic, and non-marketized forms of public services. He considers the role that so-called remunicipalization can play in environmental and social justice efforts.” [Audio, about 23 minutes]
25) National: Labor solidarity supports the public interest. “Members of CWA Local 1101 ended July outside Wells Fargo Bank in New York City calling for an end to threats of privatization of the U.S. Postal Service. They joined members of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) calling for the bank to stop advocating to turn the Postal Service into a private company. In a leaked memo, Wells Fargo analysts describe “harvesting” post office facilities, cutting jobs, and raising prices—a scheme to hand public funds to private investors.”
26) National: Deregulation comes to crypto, Molly White reports in Citation Needed. “The Trump administration cracks down on software to limit surveillance of crypto transactions, while celebrating a “deregulatory blitz” tailored for its billionaire benefactors.”
27) National/California: The private, for-profit GEO Group’s Adelanto facility, which it owns and operates, is the subject of a new report: “They Treat Us Like Dogs in Cages” Inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center: A Report by Disability Rights California. “Overall, DRC found serious issues including: (1) inadequate access to medical treatment, such as life-saving medication and wound care, and exposure to widespread respiratory illnesses; (2) inadequate access to food and water, including extreme delays in meal distribution, provision of food that results in significant health issues, and a shortage of drinking water; (3) inadequate access to clean clothes, with many remaining in soiled clothing for long periods of time; and (4) minimal opportunities to contact family. Further intensifying these issues, many of the people DRC interviewed had never experienced incarceration and felt overwhelmed and terrified by their confinement in a locked, jail-like facility.”
On August 14, at a downtown Los Angeles press conference, the group and others pushed for change.
28) California: Supporting public services by loosening the reins on Airbnb rentals? “Airbnb confirmed that it is involved in Save Our Services but declined to say whether it has contributed any money to the campaign and did not respond to questions about its exact role.”
29) Indiana: Indiana is shaping up to be an ICE detention hub, the Indianapolis Star reports. “Indiana is in line to play an increasingly pivotal role in President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportations, with multiple locations across the state, including the Miami Correctional Facility, poised to house thousands of undocumented immigrants. (…) ‘They’re just setting the stage,’ [Jesse Franzblau, associate director of policy for the National Immigrant Justice Center] said, ‘for really dramatic rights abuses against people by placing them in a prison system.’ Miami Correctional, which federal officials unabashedly dubbed the ‘Speedway Slammer,’ will house up to 1,000 undocumented immigrants as the Trump administration continues to ramp up arrests and expand detention spaces nationwide.”
30) Iowa: Scott County Supervisors “are considering privatizing its custodial services rather than hire employees in-house.
Scott County wants to outsource custodial services. Employees say it’s the wrong move.” Opposition is mounting. “This will leave my Brother In Law without a job after 20+ yrs, and my Sister with no medical insurance!” says Toni Temple.
31) Kentucky: The Frankfort Board of Commissioners has directed staff to explore the costs associated with charging residents a trash and recycling service fee, as well as privatization. “Richardson brought up privatization, which has already happened at the county level, and asked for Anderson’s opinion. After saying it was an option, Anderson went on to add that she initially thought it would take a long time to make privatization happen, but that it could actually occur in relatively short order—as in 60 to 90 days. ‘I think that the service provided won’t be at the same level. We provide a lot of extra services that probably are not available if we were to go that route,’ she explained.”
32) Ohio: A Columbus man’s list of books shows the value of libraries, says the Columbus Dispatch. “A story about a 92-year-old Columbus man who left behind a 109-page, handwritten list of the 3,599 books he had read in his life since 1962—all of which he borrowed from the Columbus Metropolitan Library—brought feel-good focus on the role libraries can play in someone’s life. His family created the website What Dan Read to share his list.”
33) Oklahoma/National: Oklahoma Watch’s Keaton Ross reports that CoreCivic has advertised jobs at vacant prisons in Watonga and Sayre. “As federal spending on immigrant enforcement and detention soars, a private prison company is advertising detention officer positions at vacant prisons in Watonga and Sayre. Tennessee-based CoreCivic, whose stock has risen 52% since President Donald Trump’s victory last November, is offering $27 per hour to detention officer recruits as it negotiates contracts with the federal government to reopen the idle facilities. That’s $5.50 per hour more than what Oklahoma pays its entry-level correctional officers.”
34) National: Private enterprise? The pro-privatization Reason Foundation has an excellent review of a book exposing “How Elite Special Operations Troops Created a Drug Cartel: A bizarre criminal conspiracy in the ranks of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg.” The book is The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces, by Seth Harp. See also the interview Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman did with Harp. [Video, about 26 minutes]
35) National: Bloomberg reports that Pimco, the fixed income behemoth, is warning that the privatization of Fannie and Freddie, the mortgage giants, will drive up the mortgage rates Americans pay. “‘Don’t fix what is not broken,’ Libby Cantrill, Pimco’s head of public policy, wrote in a note to clients earlier this week. She said that unless the sale can be orchestrated in a way that preserves the government’s commitment to financially support the institutions, investor demand may cool for the mortgage-backed securities that they sell. And this, Cantrill said, would in turn make home loans more expensive for millions of people.”
36) Oregon: The effort to privatize liquor sales in the state is advancing, but it’s unclear who is bankrolling it. “The effort now has a certified ballot title but very little information has been released about who is behind the petition or who might fund a campaign to gather the more than 100,000 signatures necessary to get it on the Oregon ballot next year. (…) The Oregon Beer & Wine Distributors Association and the Department of Justice both have noted that the language in Initiative Petition 43 is a carbon copy of an unsuccessful 2022 initiative backed by the Northwest Grocery Retail Association. (…) Northwest Grocery Retail Association CEO Amanda Dalton says her organization has nothing to do with the measure and did not give the chief petitioners, David John Allison and Kyle LoCascio, both of Portland, permission to use the 2022 language.”
37) Think Tanks: “Where Have Those Champions of Small Government and Private Enterprise Gone?” asks Neil Buchanan. “Those used to be the shopworn, reliable poses by American and British conservatives when they preened about their commitments to deep principles. But the poseurs are no longer bothering to keep up the pretense. (…) ‘Where the **** are all the libertarians who have always pushed this **** down our throats?’ Where indeed? In addition, Professor Dorf pointed out to me privately that there is an enormous constitutional matter involved, because what Trump has done is to impose a tax without congressional authority. He is obviously correct, and the separation of powers continues to wither.”