from The Daily Bell:

Did you know that in addition to ice cream, Ben and Jerry’s serves up delicious propaganda? Nom, Nom, Nom. Mmmm. I feel informed.

And it is actually pretty good propaganda, in that it contains little chocolaty chunks of truth. You have got to mix some gooey truth morsels in if you want your cold creamy lies to sell.

I was actually pretty surprised to be reading news on Ben and Jerry’s ice cream website. That took me by surprise. And, okay, let me give Ben And Jerry’s a little credit for tackling some issues that need to be brought to light. But they are just such insufferable lefties that even when they bring up a good point, it melts away while they try to sell their progressive vision of the world.

The issue is private prisons. I hate the term. Nothing which derives its entire budget from the government should be considered private. If it wouldn’t exist in its current form without government money, it is not private. And I realize that so many companies now receive government assistance in one form or another that hardly anything is a purely private company anymore. But when the entire budget of the company comes from government contracts, that is most certainly not a private company in any sense of the word.

The article is called Abe Lincoln Would’ve Hated Private Prisons. It brings up some problematic things about the criminal justice system, like the growing number of inmates, and the incentives that “private” prisons have to keep the prison populations growing. In fact, these quasi-private prisons have a large lobbying arm that fights to keep more activities criminalized with a generous topping of stiff sentencing.

When criticizing private prisons, Ben and Jerry’s is basically suggesting that public prisons do not have the same incentives. But they do. Every bureaucratic agency has an incentive to use its entire budget, and request more money. If the director of an agency has more money, he can hire more people, and exert more political control. The more inmates, the more that branch of government is “needed.”

But still, it is right to point out that many prisoners are essentially modern day slaves if they are being forced to work for the profit of others. This wouldn’t necessarily be unjust to force criminals who victimized others to work to pay off their debt to the victim. But the victims are generally not the ones being paid back. Instead, the government and the “private” prisons are keeping the cash.

But Ben and Jerry’s never mentioned the fact that the main injustice is when these modern day slaves are in prison for victimless crimes. And while they lament the private prison industry keeping the profits, they offer no criticism for when the government rather than the victims get the profits of prison labor.

Ben and Jerry’s has a different point to make. They heap on generous servings of racism like they are pouring jimmies–uh sprinkles–all over your delicious propaganda sundae.

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