"Lockup Quotas," "Low-crime Taxes," and the For-Profit Prison Industry - The Huffington Post Business
In 2012, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest for-profit prison company in the country, sent a letter to 48 state governors offering to buy their public prisons. CCA offered to buy and operate state prisons in exchange for a 20-year contract, which would include a 90 percent occupancy rate guarantee for the entire term. Essentially, the state would have to guarantee that its prison would be 90 percent filled for the next 20 years (a lockup quota), or pay the company for unused prison beds if the number of inmates dipped below 90 percent capacity at any point during the contract term (a "low-crime tax" that essentially penalizes taxpayers when prison incarceration rates fall).
10 Innovative Policies That Every City Should Consider -Business Insider
The partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill has killed any real progress and innovation on a national level. In its absence, cities have emerged as the testing ground for real governmental change. Those innovations aren’t always met with showers of approval but they inevitably change the way we live. If you have any doubts, think back to Bloomberg’s controversial 2003 ban on smoking in restaurants and bars in New York. Ten years later, the policy has been adopted by more than 500 cities.
Poverty, Mobility and Policy - The Huffington Post Business
In the Room for Debate feature over at the New York Times, Julila Isaacs makes an interesting linkage between lower child poverty rates and higher rates of income mobility. She points out, for example, that Scandinavian countries maintain both lower child poverty rates and more upward mobility. Correlation not being causation, that's not proof, but it makes sense. It's also consistent with a fascinating strain of recent literature that tracks people from when they were kids into adulthood to gauge the lifetime impacts of anti-poverty measures of policies like food stamps, Head Start, EITC, and so on.
L.A. skyscraper deal raises tax questions - The L.A. Times
Provisions of California's landmark Proposition 13 property tax measure are stoking ire again as reform activists say a high-profile commercial property deal is being structured to avoid tax increases by taking advantage of a loophole.
Government continues 'blame Google for everything' trend with piracy tirade - Techradar
If it's not in trouble for alleged tax avoidance, polluting the minds of our kids with easy access to filth or impinging upon privacy, you can still count on the UK government to be mad at Google for something.