A follow the money story from MTV


Since I first wrote about him in December (here and here), I’ve been keeping up a bit with MTV’s Tennessee Street Teamer Dustin Ogdin, a Nashville based filmmaker.

Ogdin is part of MTV’s Choose or Lose Street Team ’08 (chooseorlose.com).

Part 1 of a two-part report moved last week on the AP Online Video Network, which is featuring videos from the MTV effort.

Ogdin starts with the February report from the Pew Center on the States that captured attention with its “more than one of every hundred adults are behind bars” headline, but quickly transitions into tackling Nashville-based Corrections Corp of America and it’s sizable political influence in Tennessee.

Ogdin points to Sen. Lamar Alexander’s rumored pimping of the chief corporate attorney for CCA for a Middle Tennessee federal judgeship, noting that Alexander is a huge beneficiary in CCA’s political contribution largesse.

(Having judges with ties to prison operators is an amazing supply-chain innovation.)

Part 2 should be interesting.