News

Blood money, killer cops: How privatization is funding the racist logic of America’s police. . . In both New York City and Tulsa, private funding of law enforcement significantly impacts the way local policing is done. In Tulsa, it results in the pay-to-play scheme. In New York City, it allows for large infusions of cash donations whose specific uses do not come under public scrutiny because they are private funds. These forms of neoliberal policing — in which private citizens and private monies impact the culture of policing but escape governmental checks and balances — endanger us all. Salon

Harvard professor reveals why America’s infrastructure is so awful, who is to blame, and how we can finally fix it. Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter has written a new book about this. It’s called “Move.”. . . America’s lousy infrastructure is hurting our economy and all Americans. Unless we want growth to stagnate, we need to fix it. Lots of people are to blame: Washington politicians, local politicians, Americans who elect those politicians, a collective delusion that American exceptionalism means we don’t have to invest in anything, a system that places lots of power in the hands of states that have little incentive to cooperate with one another. The GOP fantasy that everything can be privatized is nuts. You can’t privatize airports, roads, bridges, and rail lines. We can’t leave everything to the states, either. Infrastructure crosses state lines. Business Insider

NC: White parents in North Carolina are using charter schools to secede from the education system. . .Setting aside the drama between charters and teachers unions, or complaints that charter schools lead to the privatization of public education, there has been the persistent critique that charters increase inequality by plucking advantaged students out of traditional public schools. The most recent cautionary tale comes from North Carolina, where professors at Duke have traced a troubling trend of resegregation since the first charters opened in 1997. They contend that North Carolina’s charter schools have become a way for white parents to secede from the public school system, as they once did to escape racial integration orders. Washington Post (blog)

VT: After $282M, VDOT to terminate new Rt. 460 contract. Virginia Secretary of Transportation Aubrey Layne says the state has given notice that it intends to terminate its contract to build a new toll road next to U.S. 460 in southeastern Virginia. The state and private bondholders have already spent about $282 million on the project, with no construction having yet started. Layne said Wednesday the state wants an unspecified amount of money back from the contractor, US 460 Mobility Partners. Work on the project was stopped by Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s administration about a year ago after it became clear the road might not get the permits it needed.   13newsnow.com