The water is with the with the Oh, uh, I'm not. This is hell. This week it's villains waste and contagion because this is not the media this is hell and today we begin with the

villains and what better way to describe people and entities that profit from things like police violence.

Yes, here in the United States, we even allow police violence profiteers.

I mean, what could possibly go wrong other than incentivizing more police

violence rather than deterring abuse by law enforcement it's all part of the

weird and wacky way in which cities are funded.

Weird and wacky because it seems to be intentionally confusing, mired in obfuscation,

as if it's not meant to be understood.

And the identity of those benefiting from it is often left unknown.

When our city's budgets fall short, as they always do, and the state isn't willing to step in to fill those gaps,

municipality sell bonds, which are essentially loans

to the private sector who can then help cover the bills

for the city while making a tidy profit, even when those budget shortcomings are due to civil

lawsuits brought against the police. In this way, bonholders profit from police abuse.

In a few minutes, we'll speak with award-winning independent journalist Clark Randall who

posted the Boston Review article Bond Villains.

How a little understood feature of urban finance, municipal bonds, fuels racial inequality.

Clark studies systems and histories of race, housing, and municipal finance, his work is concerned specifically with the consolidation of the urban planner

profession and the creation of budgetary norms at the local level, as well as low-income housing

policy and the historical processes of segregation and suburbanization.

Recently Clark has written extensively on large landowners in the Midwest and the politics

and funding mechanisms of the Section 8 Housing Choice voucher program.

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