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Tag(s): Blackwater; Crime; Fascism; Lies; Prison Violence; Prison-Prisoners; Prisoners; Prisons - Penal System; Statistics
Group(s): Capitalism – a threat to life on EarthAdd to My Group

March 1, 2008 at 10:13:59

Headlined on 3/1/08:
Gulag Nation: Over One in One Hundred Americans Are in Prison

by Len Hart Page 2 of 2 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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Those stats confirm a trend of at least two years. Yet, Justice Department flack, Brian Roehrkasse, called the report "good news", a lie not unlike "we are winning in Iraq". I wonder how Roehrkasse felt about the FBI summary of 2006 indicating that robberies had increased 9.7 percent nationwide, arson 6.8 percent, murders 1.4 percent! It is the situation in Texas, Bush's so-called "homestate", where the effects of the GOP's medieval policies have fallen to Rick Perry.

Reflecting a surge in crime in Texas after the dislocations of Hurricane Katrina, Houston recorded a sharp increase in homicides, to 202 for the first half of 2006, up from 158 in the comparable pre-storm period last year. Three Texas cities ranked among the nation's top 10 in crimes per capita.

Homicides in Dallas were down to 101 from 106 but it still ranked as the nation's most crime-ridden big city, with 3,985 overall crimes per 100,000 population, followed by Houston with 3,444. After Phoenix with 3,436, San Antonio was 4th with 3,422.
--An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State

FBI statistics prove that since Bush seized the White House, crime rates have jumped. Violent crime increased at 2.5 percent in 2005, the highest rate in 15 years. Nevermind! Bush favored a 52 percent cut in law enforcement funding. That's not the worst of it. Bush and the GOP will never admit that GOP policies prove the utter failure, the moral paucity, the complete intellectual inadequacy of the GOP as a party, as an institution. Utterly predictable, the GOP will cite every fact proving their endemic failures as reasons to compound the problem. Having replaced ideas with propaganda, plans with platitudes, the GOP will simply roll out more of the same old GOP eyewash, claptrap, and bullshit!

We would call a doctor an idiot who tells you to just keep on doing whatever it is that's making you sick. Yet the GOP does that repeatedly, mistaking the illness for the cure and making it worse with greed and incompetence. Confronted with rising crime and swelling prisons, the GOP will propose even newer programs guaranteed to raise crime rates even as they enrich cronies with privatized prison systems, privatized Blackwater storm-troopers, a robotized surveillance system.

It is but a small step then to privatizing the state police or even the various metropolitan police departments. Blackwater, I am sure, would love to get the juicy contract, the license to kill and get paid for it. In that event, the march toward fascism will have been completed. Life in America will have become a nightmare for everyone but an elite of about one to five percent of the population. The streets will be patrolled by armor-plated Blackwater goon squads and other gung ho gun nuts for whom human life means little to nothing.

In the meantime, the words of the late Molly Ivins seem prescient, a plaintive warning about the breakdown of law and order that follows from the complete and institutional breakdown of the rule of law. We will have the right-wing to blame for having made of America the ugliest police state in the history of the world.

The notorious inability of prosecutors to admit that they are ever wrong is a fact of life. What is far more horrifying is the refusal of judges and courts to look at evidence that proves innocence. Can you imagine how that must feel - to be in prison for a crime you didn't commit and to finally be able to prove it, only to have a court refuse to consider the evidence? Most of this is a consequence of a noxious law that Congress rushed through after the Oklahoma City bombing. Called the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, the law was aimed at the ability of federal judges to second-guess state courts and at the ability of prisoners to file endless habeas corpus claims challenging the constitutionality of their convictions.
--Molly Ivins

A day after the United States Supreme Court halted an execution in Texas, that medieval state made public more plans to murder more people in the name of state and justice.

Though several other states are halting lethal injections until it is clear whether they are constitutional, Texas is taking a different course, risking a confrontation with the court.

"The Supreme Court's decision to stay convicted murderer Carlton Turner's execution will not necessarily result in an abrupt halt to Texas executions," said Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for Attorney General Greg Abbott of Texas. "State and federal courts will continue to address each scheduled execution on a case-by-case basis."
--Texas Planning New Execution Despite Ruling, New York Times

This latest outrage points up an interesting and apparent correlation between Bush's failed "war on terrorism" and the equally failed "war on crime" in Texas. Now, of course, Texas' prison virus will spread across the prison nation that Bush and his ilk --the GOP --has made of America.

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7 comments

I have consciously decided to join the majority of Americans who have chosen not to vote. I refuse to participate in the lie that voting in the U.S. is participation in a democratic process. While the credibility of the U.S. political system is almost non-existent it still manages to survive - one non-violent way it to put it out of its misery is for all liberation loving folks to join in abandoning the system completely. When only the goose-steppers show up at the polls we will have arrived at ...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Cameron JamesI have consciously decided to join the majority of Americans who have chosen not to vote. I refuse to participate in the lie that voting in the U.S. is participation in a democratic process. While the credibility of the U.S. political system is almost non-existent it still manages to survive - one non-violent way it to put it out of its misery is for all liberation loving folks to join in abandoning the system completely. When only the goose-steppers show up at the polls we will have arrived at ...

to see more of bio, click on member name

your connection resonates

Len,

By the way you might be interested in checking out the page for the OpEdNews political discussion group called "Capitalism - threat to life on earth".

by Cameron James (0 articles, 4 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 19 comments) on Saturday, March 1, 2008 at 7:33:43 PM

Len Hart is a Houston based film/video producer specializing in shorts and full-length documentaries. He is a former major market and network correspondent; credits include CBS, ABC-TV and UPI. He maintains the progressive blog: The Existentialist Cowboy
Len HartLen Hart is a Houston based film/video producer specializing in shorts and full-length documentaries. He is a former major market and network correspondent; credits include CBS, ABC-TV and UPI. He maintains the progressive blog: The Existentialist Cowboy

The GOP brings back slavery

I see the same general connection you do between big business (or what I refer to as the barons of capital) and the proliferation of the gulag in the U.S. Sure, its growth is intimately joined with the corporate drive to squeeze profits from any source it can. As we've learned anything that turns a profit can be marketed in a way to artificially create a continuing need.

And that, I think, is a key point. The GOP is merely the most convenient, obvious offender, perhaps the easiest target, the most visible enabler. Even so, it must remain a target of criticism for its role in enslaving Americans. GOP policies create and exploit income and opportunity inequalities, factors which, in turn, make crime worse while exacerbating numerous 'social ills'. In a masterpiece of circular logic, the GOP simply cites the results of their own policies as justification to continue them. It works the other way, as well. For example, the GOP has tried mightily to subvert Social Security so that they could cite its 'failure' as reasons to kill it off. A favorite GOP tactic is an old tried and true formulaic response: 'it won't solve the problem'. And the GOP will work to make sure it doesn't.

Yet, I sense there is another way in which the growth of the gulag is connected to capitalism. I haven't yet precisely clarified it but it's related to the imperatives of a socio-economic system based in the exploitation of labor.

Is this what you have in mind? GOP policies most certainly make the rich, richer and the poor, poorer. Crime, easily proven to increase with income inequities, becomes the raison d'etre by which large segments of society are simply rounded up, incarcerated and, in many cases, forced to work for masters. Like the bloodsucking vampires they are, the GOP and its elite, robber baron base, can simply use the apparatus of state (in this case the criminal 'in'-justice system) to harvest those who have for various reasons fallen through the 'safety net'.

Thanks for the paper "Capitalism --Threat to Life on Earth".

by Len Hart (132 articles, 174 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 551 comments) on Sunday, March 2, 2008 at 6:54:23 AM

Currently I'm a cartoonist and contributing writer for The New Orleans Levee. For those wishing to view my work you can see my latest at: nolevee.com
Mr MCurrently I'm a cartoonist and contributing writer for The New Orleans Levee. For those wishing to view my work you can see my latest at: nolevee.com

We haven't seen anything yet ...

Wait another year or two when we're neck-deep in a depression and we have hoards of homeless desperate people roaming the streets and they use these new microwave guns to herd us into the FEMA camps they've build all over the country that are now fully staffed and waiting our arrival. By then we're be wishing for the good-old-days of 1 in 10.

by Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 20 diaries, 1781 comments) on Sunday, March 2, 2008 at 8:58:46 AM

Steven Leser specializes in Politics, Science & Health, and Entertainment topics. He has held positions within the Democratic Party including District Chair and Public Relations Chair within county organizations.

Steven Leser writes for www.opednews.com, an internet only media site that has grown to become one of the highest traffic news sites in America, reaching more traffic, according to alexa.com, than all but the thirty largest daily newspapers in the US. Mr. Leser is one of t...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Steven LeserSteven Leser specializes in Politics, Science & Health, and Entertainment topics. He has held positions within the Democratic Party including District Chair and Public Relations Chair within county organizations.

Steven Leser writes for www.opednews.com, an internet only media site that has grown to become one of the highest traffic news sites in America, reaching more traffic, according to alexa.com, than all but the thirty largest daily newspapers in the US. Mr. Leser is one of t...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Even worse is that as things stand now, their lives are...

... finished. We decry the ricidivism rate in this country but at the same time, we prevent people who have been in prison from getting decent jobs. Then we have the temerity to be surprised when ex-cons commit new offenses. And this is getting worse, people are now not only checking whether or not you have been convicted of a crime, but your credit report can now stop you from getting a job.

Yet another brilliant conundrum. If you are hurting for money and having money problems, you will not be able to get a good paying job. If that isnt one of the more stupid things I have ever heard, I dont know what is.

by Steven Leser (228 articles, 49 quicklinks, 34 diaries, 1647 comments) on Sunday, March 2, 2008 at 10:18:18 AM

Nobody special.
WatchingNobody special.

Three words

CHEAP PRISON LABOR

by Watching (0 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 313 comments) on Sunday, March 2, 2008 at 10:37:19 AM

I live in the heart of America, and am haunted by the saying:
"Evil succeeds because good men do nothing." by Edmund Burke.

Albert Einstein had another way of saying it:
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."

So I do what I can.
Edward Ulysses CateI live in the heart of America, and am haunted by the saying:
"Evil succeeds because good men do nothing." by Edmund Burke.

Albert Einstein had another way of saying it:
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."

So I do what I can.

Sorry I'm Late To The Discussion

Been working on this and finally got it posted.

Crime Pays - For Some

http://GreatRedDragon.com ::

The connections with VP Cheney and Senator Frist amazed even me. The Corrections Corporation of America rhymes right along with Hospital Corporation of America. Where does it end???

by Edward Ulysses Cate (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 221 comments) on Sunday, March 2, 2008 at 7:35:42 PM

SW Texas ultra-liberal
john riggsSW Texas ultra-liberal

A Wackenhut employee told me

that Dubya was a stockholder in the company. It is no wonder that all illegals are jailed. Many misdemeanor crimes are now felony, for example in Texas to place a ficticious licence plate on a car is a felony. Dont spit on the sidewalk or you might get charged with biological terror.

by john riggs (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 441 comments) on Monday, March 3, 2008 at 12:03:55 PM