From: malQRMassimilation@gmail.com   
      
   On Wed, Jan 11, 2023 at 08:52:14PM -0700, Harold Hallikainen wrote:   
   > I think competitive bidding on supplying prison telephone systems with   
   > kickbacks being prohibited would help.   
      
   I think it would not help, and would probably hurt.   
      
   “Competitive Bidding” isn’t an enforceable method. The “Competition”   
   almost always turns out to be between three or four straw men who   
   are, in fact, actually all the same company, or between two or three   
   or four executives having drinks around a table where they divide up   
   the available bids and highest-profit contracts so that they’re only   
   “competing” with startups and offshore rivals that aren’t in the game   
   anyway.   
      
   As for “kickbacks,” there aren’t any. Prison administrators and their   
   political bosses muscled into the game very early on, and they’ve   
   never been stupid enough to ask for bribes. They get their cut via   
   checks in the mail, with the amounts and the timing already public   
   information. The money goes for “essential” supports like extra jobs   
   for the Warden’s wife’s friends, for the politician’s idiot in-laws,   
   for the friends of the legislature that arranged the deals in advance,   
   and, very occasionally, for equipment repairmen who are trying to make   
   a living the old-fashioned way.   
      
   Of course, it’s a three-way street: the providers receive benefits from   
   the taxpayers and pass some of that largesse on to their friends in   
   the prison bureaucracy: free high-speed Internet links to carry the   
   calls via VoIP trunks, free space, free electricity, free background   
   checks on prospective employees, and (of course) free security for   
   their equipment, and thus negligible insurance costs.   
      
   >From the lofty heights of government power, those who care about the   
   high prices and the ways inmates squeeze their lovers, wives, and   
   relatives to pay them are seen as a small minority of do-gooders whom   
   are not in touch with the fact that none of the decision makers care   
   about the powerless or the poor.   
      
   Bill Horne   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)