The problems of America’s prison system are extensive and diverse. Prisons are overcrowded and expensive. The justice system disproportionately locks up black and brown Americans from poor communities. America’s prisons are filled with down-on-their-luck veterans, drug addicts, mental health patients, and repeat offenders incapable of finding work with a criminal record. The bulk of America’s 2.3 million prisoners are locked up for non-violent crimes, and once released from prison more than half return within the next three years. Real rehabilitation programs are few and far between, and prison-to-work programs are even less common. 

Since its formation in 1971, Amtrak has been criticized for catering to neither the traveling public nor the taxpayer. Amtrak is unique in that it has cost the government over $45 billion in subsidies over the last 44 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a non-partisan agency. Matthew Sabas of the Manhattan Institute concluded that much of the waste is due to “unprofitable routes, overstaffed trains, and the mismanagement of its food services.” Sabas was not the first to point out Amtrak’s excessive spending and waste. In 1985, Tom Wicker wrote in the New York Times that David Stockholm (then-Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)) “threw a tantrum the other day before a Senate subcommittee.” Stockholm said, “If senators did not have ‘the courage, the foresight, the comprehension’ to ‘pull the plug’ on what he called an ‘irredeemable’ Amtrak rail passenger system,” American taxpayers would have to continue to foot the bill. Stockholm was right. Amtrak still relies on public money. 

Citizens United has become synonymous with too much money in politics, corporate personhood, the abolition of democracy, and the Koch brothers. This is a misunderstanding. The heart of the decision is that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.