Back in the days when the market was a kind of secular god and all the world thrilled to behold the amazing powers of private capital, the idea of privatizing highways and airports and other bits of our transportation infrastructure made a certain kind of sense.

Above all else stands the burning question of bipartisanship. Whatever else the politicians might say they’re about, our news analysts know that this is the true object of the nation’s desire, the topic to which those slippery presidential spokesmen need always to be dragged back.

Presidential legacies are valuable things, too valuable to be left up to historians.

Privatizing bits of the prison industry was a step in the right direction, but what we didn’t have – until recently – were proper instruments for incentivizing the judiciary. That’s what the ‘kids for cash’ judges were apparently experimenting with.

Republicans run the machine when it’s their turn, and then hand the wheel over to Democrats when the public has had enough.