Ed Buss was hired about five months ago by the Snyder administration to oversee the work of Aramark, a for-profit vendor who the Snyder admnistration outsourced prison food services to. Buss was brought in to clean up some messes that Aramark had made. What messes? These messes: Running out of food Making unauthorized food substitutions in violation of their contract […]

This whole “privatize government services to a for-profit corporation” thing is just going so well isn’t it? Prison food vendor Aramark has stubbed its toe a few times, but, hey, we have to “work with them”, as Governor Snyder put it. And by stubbing their toe, I mean: Running out of food Making unauthorized food substitutions in violation of their […]

Gov. Rick Snyder may have thought the drumbeat of scandals with for-profit prison food vendor Aramark was behind him in the last two weeks of the election. But he was wrong. A former Aramark employee has come forward to talk about serving raw meat and undercooked meat and meat-based food to inmates. Even after she brought the situation to the […]

Maggots!!! Progress Michigan announced this week that they would be running a television ad called “Maggots” highlighting the Snyder administration Aramark scandal. Their press release indicated that their press conference featured “small tanks filled with live maggots.” Aramark isn’t very happy about this and sent them a “cease and desist” letter the same day of the press conference: October 9, […]

Progress Michigan announced today that they are running a new ad highlighting the Aramark scandal that has rocked the Snyder administration. The myriad failings of the for-profit prison food vendor bring the issue of privatization/profitization of government services into sharp relief and this ad is a powerful reminder of that. The ad will run for a week in Grand Rapids, […]

Ed Buss, the corrections official hired to oversee the scandal-ridden for-profit prison food vendor Aramark has figured out what caused Aramark employees to engage in sex acts with inmates, smuggle heroin, cocaine, and other drugs to prisoners, allow maggots in food service areas in the prisons, and attempt to hire a prisoner to kill another prisoner. You might think it […]

This isn’t GETTING ridiculous, this IS ridiculous Seems not a week goes by that an employee for the for-profit prison food vendor Aramark isn’t busted for some illicit activity or another. In all, nearly 100 Aramark employees are now banned from Michigan prisons for having sex with inmates, delivering cigarettes and drugs like cocaine and heroin to inmates, and for […]

This guest post was written by Donald Cohen, the Executive Director of In The Public Interest, a “comprehensive resource center on privatization and responsible contracting”. They are committed to equipping citizens, public officials, advocacy groups, and researchers with the information, ideas, and other resources they need to ensure that public contracts with private entities are transparent, fair, well-managed, and effectively […]

When Michigan Department of Corrections Director Dan Heyns told Rick Snyder’s Chief of Staff Dennis Muchmore that he was “concerned about [Aramark] losing control of a joint” in FOIAed emails released by Progress Michigan, he was predicting the future, it appears. This morning, the Detroit Free Press is reporting that an Aramark employee has been arrested for bringing drugs into […]

I’ve written plenty about Aramark in Michigan, the company that rakes in piles of your tax money as governments outsource key services to this for-profit corporation. I’ve also talked about how their for-profit prison food contracts have had problems in other states, as well. But Aramark isn’t just in the prison food business. One of the other things they do […]

This new video from Progress Michigan is their best effort yet. It tells the story of Aramark coming to Michigan in a very smart and clever way. Privatizing our prison food services to a for-profit corporation is an experiment. But, as the the video shows, it was an experiment that was already proven to be a failed and flawed model […]