Angie Nixon says billionaires WANT your kids poorly educated — deliberately feeding them into prison for cheap labor

BS BULLETIN:

Angie Nixon says billionaires and elected officials benefit from children getting a bad education.
Her theory: poorly educated kids enter a “school-to-prison pipeline,” where their labor can be exploited.
Nixon says she wants to abolish for-profit prisons, not all prisons.

Well, that didn’t take long.

Florida Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon spent part of the weekend insisting that although she joined the Democratic Socialists of America, she is definitely not a socialist.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, perhaps she’d like to explain the billionaires who apparently want your children poorly educated so they can make money off them in prison.

Because that’s what Nixon just said.

The newly minted Democratic nominee sat for an interview with Democracy Now! following her stunning primary upset over Alexander Vindman and was asked about her policy priorities.

Nixon started conventionally enough.

She talked about health care, housing costs and universal childcare. As a mother of five who spent 12 years as a single mother, Nixon said she understands the enormous burden childcare places on working families.

Then we took a turn.

Nixon argued that universal childcare doesn’t merely help parents work. She said it can help keep children out of what progressives call the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

And then she explained who she believes is benefiting from that pipeline.

“That also allows our children to be diverted from the school-to-prison pipeline, which, you know, these for-profit prisons, these elected officials, these billionaires, they want our children to have an ill education, a ridiculous, a horrible education, right?” Nixon said.

Why would billionaires and elected officials want American children to receive a horrible education?

Nixon had an answer for that too.

“Which is why they’re defunding public schools, because they want to usher them into the school-to-prison pipeline,” she continued. “Why? Why make sure that our children have a good-quality education, when they know they’ll make more money off of them going to prison, and exploiting their labor?”

There it is.

Not simply that bad schools can increase the likelihood that disadvantaged children wind up in the criminal justice system. Not simply that private prisons create questionable financial incentives. Those are arguments people can debate. Nixon said “these elected officials, these billionaires” want children to receive a horrible education because they’ll make more money when those children wind up incarcerated and their labor is exploited.

That’s quite a charge.

She’s running for the United States Senate in Florida, a state that has aggressively expanded school-choice programs under Republican leadership.

If Nixon genuinely believes powerful interests are deliberately allowing children to languish in bad schools, Republicans have a fairly obvious follow-up: Should those children’s parents be allowed to take their child—and the education money attached to that child—and leave?

Nixon’s broader position on prisons also deserves some context because she’s flopped all around on that front.

She says that it isn’t true. “I know there’s a rumor going around saying that I want to abolish prisons. I don’t,” Nixon told Democracy Now! “I want to abolish for-profit prisons.”

She also denied wanting to defund police. “There’s also a rumor going around saying that I want to defund the police. I don’t want to defund the police,” Nixon said. “I want to defund Flock cameras, so that bad cops don’t have the ability to stalk their ex-girlfriends or their ex-boyfriends.”

And she continued with another comparison involving the justice system, saying she wants “a justice system that works for everyone, not just for the billionaires and co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein, who actually are treated more fairly than a single mom who got caught stealing formula to make sure that her child had food.”

There’s plenty packed into that answer.

Nixon has previously made the more conventional argument that for-profit prisons “exploit labor” and help usher children into the school-to-prison pipeline. In an August interview about DSA positions, she said she supported “comprehensive criminal justice reform to make sure we are addressing some of the root causes of people leading into a life of crime.”

Her campaign platform similarly calls for fully funded public schools, Medicare for All, free childcare, a national rent freeze and a universal jobs program, with some of that spending funded by taxing billionaires.

But this weekend Nixon went considerably further. The problem isn’t merely a dysfunctional system, according to her description. The people at the top want it dysfunctional because there’s money to be made at the bottom.

And remember: Nixon isn’t an activist hoping somebody hands her a microphone outside the Capitol. She’s the Democratic nominee for United States Senate in Florida.

She faces Republican Sen. Ashley Moody in November.

MY QUICK TAKE:

I’m trying to follow the business model here. Apparently America’s billionaires got together with elected officials and decided:

Step 1: Destroy Johnny’s education.
Step 2: Wait for Johnny to commit a crime.
Step 3: Put Johnny in prison.
Step 4: Exploit Johnny’s labor.
Step 5: PROFIT!

That’s not an argument that bad schools have terrible consequences. That’s obvious. It’s not an argument that private prisons can create perverse financial incentives. That’s worth debating.

Nixon specifically said billionaires and elected officials “want our children to have” a horrible education because they’ll make more money when those children go to prison. That’s one heck of an accusation. And we’re only one week into the general election.

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