re: We have ethanol because farmers in Iowa want your money

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If they were in "public" run prisons you think that would be cheaper and not cost more per prisoner?

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I don't see how it would be more expensive. And don't give me that vague BS about how all government-run things cost more than businesses that are taking profits. It's also ludicrous that you could defend something like that considering our tax dollars pay for it and that it's a very scary conflict of interest when a business profits more from more people being locked up.

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Well, it would be a problem if they wrote laws and enforced those laws. But those functions are filled by public servants

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Public servants that can be bought off by a privatize industry money. If it was a public run prison there would be no incentive to do that

I’ve never been able to figure out how or why Iowa managed to make itself so important to the primary process. But whatever it was they did to make it happen, it made them a fortune.

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They started putting that shite in our food and it's way worse than sugar.
It's exactly equally bad as sugar.

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No it is worse than sucrose (aka cane sugar or regular sugar). HFCS tricks the body into thinking it is sucrose, but during metabolism it gets bypasses the key regulatory step of glycolysis and it gets broken down straight into fat instead of being burned in glycolysis, the TCA cycle, and oxidative phosphorylation. Since it tricks the body into thinking that it is glucose it causes insulin to be released from the pancreas, but it is not glucose so the glucose transporters in adipose and muscle tissue that get activated by insulin do not take it up. This eventually causes those glucose transporters to down-regulate themselves and lose sensitivity to insulin. That means that the body needs more insulin to control blood sugar and that is the basis for insulin resistance aka type II diabetes mellitus.

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You're completely unhinged and incapable of debating this on merits.

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Says the guy that completely avoided the debate all together. Attempting to discredit me without providing any substance isn't going to help you.

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You ever wonder how a toilet on a bomber costs $23,000?

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So you want to talk about military industrial complex expenditures now? That's another thing Republicans love to do... spend a bunch of our taxpayer dollars helping out weapons contractors. I know that's not the point you were going for but you failed miserably.

You still haven't approached the subject at all. It is morally reprehensible to put so many people in prison when it benefits the pocketbook of a specific few using our tax dollars. I don't think you understand how corrupt the Republican privatization movement actually is.

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Generally - anything that can be run by business for a profit will be better run than anything else. I

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Do you really think prisons should be a business? I think you keep avoiding that argument and I'm not sure why.

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This is like saying that there is no reason to allow folks on welfare benefits to vote, because of inherent conflict of interests. Surely you don't agree with such an absurd proposition, do you?

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I'm sorry but that's just not a very good point. People who are wealthy thought to lower their taxes too. See how slanted your point of view actually is?

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Ethanol is a boondoggle as much as the kooky, left wing ideas that solar and wind can provide our power needs in the foreseeable future (like within 50 or 60 years, which is nonsense). 

And, ethanol has the added burden of increasing costs of car ownership and actual toxic pollution (not the mythical CO2 boogeyman of the AGW folks, which is not a pollutant at all.) 

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You are such an incredible shill and you are blind to it. Was it liberal fantasies that caused oil companies to buy up patents over the years that could have helped with renewable energy? You and others like you in this thread are trying to make it seem like it's some left-wing conspiracy to rob us of our dollars when the oil and gas industry has had his bent over a barrel for a hundred years.

Corn is incredibly easy to grow and there's always a surplus. I don't really believe ethanol is the answer but for you to sit here and act like it's some scam when Republican oil men have been robbing us blind for years.... well its very telling.

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I get that contractors want to make money and there probably is too cozy a relationship between contractors and the Pentagon.

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So you accept this but not this:

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You wanted to talk about "for profit" prisons, implying that because they're for profit, the operators *somehow* write laws and arrest/imprison people. We've tried to explain to you how they don't have those powers. They're just vendors.

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First off first off it's really disconcerting that you think businesses should be vendors over other people's freedom and livelihood. Secondly, you're woefully naive if you dont think that lobbyists exist for this very reason or that cash payments couldnt be made under the table. There have been several judges arrested in the last 5 years for taking cash payments to incarcerate more people. Private Industry should not be involved in certain things and definitely not freedom and livelihood of people. Not to mention that it cost the taxpayer more money because they're gaining profits.

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Or the judges for every person they found guilty. Etc.

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It does actually happen. It's pretty obvious that the Republican Party and its voters do not care about adult humans and definitely don't care about lining their pockets at the expense of others. Not to mention that you guys always act like the government is so oppressive but want the most potentially corrupt imprisonment situation.

The way that you think shows a complete lack of self-awareness and someone as intelligent as you should know better.

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If a contractor can do so for $X per day and that is cheaper than doing it with civil servants, then I don't see the problem.

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That's a big assumption you're making. In my experience, Republicans love to privatize things and help their buddies make more money at the expense of the taxpayer. What I see is lobbyists who have influenced mostly right-wing politicians enter private sizing something that holds human lives in the balance and does it at the taxpayers expense. For you just to assume that it's being run cheaper is blindly loyal to Your Puppet Masters.

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robbing who? nobody is making you drive a car.

If you don’t like gas prices get a bike or make your own refinery

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They've been eliminating the competition since Rockefeller. They slow down down progress because it hurts their bottom line. Then they brainwash people like you to defend them