Not that embarrassment is going to change anything. Corruption is so rampant and the investments of a corrupt industry so much a part of the economy that it's hard to believe Arizona is about to change. We might want to redraw the border, give the state away to any taker.
But we'd have to do the same to America. Letting corporations write legislation is like a mandate -- it is a mandate. Presidents regularly create and get support for wars now in order to satisfy corporate hunger in the defense industry. This was never more obvious than during the W administration.
So why make a big fuss when Arizona creates a cruel law in order to satisfy the cravings of the private prison industry? That's where SB 1070 -- the law that criminalized undocumented workers came from. That new state law is, above all, "a law [that] could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them."
This story has been around for a while but hasn't received enough attention. Now public radio has picked it up.
Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal.
Glenn Nichols, the Benson city manager, remembers the pitch.
"The gentleman that's the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger," Nichols said. "He's a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman."
What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.
"They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community," Nichols said, "the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate."
But Nichols wasn't buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants?
"They talked like they didn't have any doubt they could fill it," Nichols said.
That's because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona's immigration law.
State legislators, their pockets lined with prison money, caved. NPR has been looking at "campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records."
What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.
Now they're looking to repeat their success in Arizona throughout the US. A prison industry CEO sees big opportunities.
"I can only believe the opportunities at the federal level are going to continue apace as a result of what's happening. Those people coming across the border and getting caught are going to have to be detained and that for me, at least I think, there's going to be enhanced opportunities for what we do."
Americans, whose taxes -- in lean years as well as fat -- pay the prison industry to create prisoners, may catch on and object one of these days. Arizonans seem to have fallen asleep.
