Who is Keeping Tabs on Bushite Profiteering Prison Corporations? The Places Where He Plans to Send Us All!
Do Corporate Prison builders and managers; have nothing going for them but massive Campaign donations to political pals? To these corporations does the term "Free Enterprise," have any meaning; o is the idea of heavy political contributions, rather than efficacy and expertise, more efficient for collecting and stacking away the cash? Are these Prisons the future homes of Freedom Lovers of America?
"For I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, I was in prison and You visited me ..." Jesus The Christ.
Who Is Not His Brother's Keeper? About fifteen years ago as I traveled around the Midwest on business or even to visit, every where I went, even in small towns and in rural areas, (Probably because the land was cheap) I saw courthouses and prisons going up. One day on a business call with an employee, I said, "Isn't it odd how many courthouses and prisons are going up, everywhere you look." He replied, "Revenue from fines is making a profit for communities they aren't about to stop that."
"But why prisons? One would almost think that somewhere down the line someone is planning to put an awful lot of people into them. The question is who and why are they building so many prisons in rural areas? Crime is low there, so who are they for?"
When I got back to the office I decided to look up prisons online. I found that a number of companies (mostly it seemed in Republican areas) were in the prison business for profit.
I began to wonder why so many minor offenses, which used to be settled with an admonition or a fine, and so many minor drug arrests for Marijuana (and even in a few cases for carrying Oregano), were elevated beyond simple misdemeanors, and why there was such a push for "3 strikes you're out!" programs. Why so many of these offences carried long term sentences; five years, 10 years minimum? Were people just getting meaner, more sanctimonious, less charitable, uncaring about ruining a young person's life forever over a mistake? What happened to, "Lord how often should we forgive a person who sins, as many as three, or seven?" "You shall forgive him 77 times 7..."
The more I thought about the increase in prisons, the many new court houses, the private prison systems, the no-bid contracts let In Iraq and elsewhere, the heavy sentences for those who broke the law, beginning with the heartless Reagan administration, and increasing with each successive conservative administration, (even during Clinton's), the more I wondered, where is the charity? Where is the teaching? Where is the mercy? Where is the forgiveness? When is one's debt to society paid in full and where are the Christians? Where is the preparation for those incarcerated to prepare for the job market? Then I finally did get it-those prisons are not for criminals, they are for us! Us, OpEdnews writers, real patriots, real Americans, Citizens of the world, dissidents, prophets, truth sayers, saints, lovers of Freedom, Constitutionalists, Bill of Rights Supporters, True Believers. In other words, whoever voted against and has spoken out against the Bushites. This is war against Americans who vote Progressive-US! These are 21st Century Dungeons for "Political Prisoners." Loyal Americans like you!
Are These No-Bid Prison Profits? For a private contractor prison to be run more efficiently and profitably, than the government, the contractor, if he is profit minded, and cares not how he makes that profit, he will short-cut some essential things; manpower, food, care of the ill, water, education, retraining inmates to avoid lives of crime, all the necessities of life and success.
Were these Privateering Prison corporations all all-sweet heart deals? I went online to find out if any of the companies I'd read about were publicly traded and there were several. Some of them specialized in building prisons, others in that as well as supplying and managing them. They traded mostly in the $20-$38 dollar range, but the stocks were trading in very low numbers of shares per day. That meant, of course, that fewer individuals held most of them. One company, however, Corrections Corporation of America (Symbol CXW) traded an average daily volume of 402,000 shares and was priced today at $57.61. Its 52-week high was $58.00 and 52 week low was $30.40-a leap of 67% in one year is quite unusual, to say the very least.
Another large prison building and maintenance firm was Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC) created by a well-connected former FBI agent. It has been reconstituted and transformed into The GEO Group. George Zoley, CEO of The GEO Group was a large contributor to the Bush 2004 campaign, allegedly more than $100,000 over several years, who allegedly said, 'we don't want to provide guards at the local shopping center. We are looking at a single government payer for our services.'
GEO is now the world's largest operator of private prisons, "earning" more than $600 million a year incarcerating inmates. Allegedly, some of its history ranks well with that of the Marquis De'Sade: Allegedly, a Louisiana Republican judge blasted them because guards routinely beat and tear-gassed teenage prisoners. The judge upbraided them for treating the children like four-legged beasts. In my lexicon a Sadist is one who treats even beast of the field in such a manner. In Texas, where male guards molested female prisoners, fourteen-year-old Sara Lowe committed suicide after her release. When Zoley asked by CBS whether the child deserved an apology, (posthumously) he said, 'Not that I'm aware of. I don't know what you meant by that.' It is also alleged that one prison company recently settled a $1.6 million dollar law suite with inmates for abuse.
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have all recently called for investigations into the private providers of prison security, perhaps because they believe that these private prisons are a mockery of the system. Odd, wouldn't you say, that while the national the crime rate has declined, the incarceration rate has shot into the ionosphere.
For a private prison to make money, it must have a guaranteed clientele. For it to make real money, the expected stay of the clientele must be guaranteed. Hotels don't get the sort of guarantees that these prison privateers desire, so to support them with a little corporate welfare, minimum sentences are required-the longer the better... for the prison corporations. Do they lobby quietly for longer terms for trivial misdemeanors? Is the Pope Catholic? Between 33%-42% 0f those now serving in American prisons are for non-violent crimes, and many say that 20%-25% of those incarcerated are innocent of the crimes, which put them into prison. The prison PR systems and perhaps lobbyists spend large sums panicking citizens with the need for longer prison terms for minor crimes, in Orwellian doublespeak, even as crime rates continue to drop or rise at a rate less than the population. Are the Hucksters are quite busy stampeding people into believing that minor misdemeanors are a stepping-stone to greater crimes and that the inmates are beasts and need to be locked up and the key thrown away?
If so, why do people believe them? Is it for the same reasons they voted for the Bushites-evil intentions? The inmates are not trained or taught how to create good lives for themselves, and in fact, everything possible, appears to be to cause them to continue their lives as criminals, even if they were not before. While incarcerations have gone, (sometimes literally), through the roof, crime rates have been on the decline. 1975 to 1985, the hard crime rate decreased by nearly 1.5 per cent while the number of prisoners, including state and federal, doubled. Baiting criminals, is much like baiting Iraqi's and Iranians and Syrians, and Venezuelans, and North Koreans. Bait and Provoke that is the ticket to getting people to do evil things, which you want them to do so you can sell your case-in this case it is Prison Profiteering. Private Prisons should be put out of Business, NOW!
If the Hucksters are quite busy stampeding people into believing that minor misdemeanors are a stepping-stone to greater crimes, then we also have to believe that small lies lead to larger ones, and oppressing prisoners leads to angry prison graduates more likely to become hardened criminals. What would Big-Lies lead to? Big Lies Like WMD's, like Iraq attacking the USA? They'd lead to a group of Industrialists silently destroying the Constitution by passing something like The Patriot Act, destroying the Bill of Rights by passing something like The Military Commissions Act of 2006, and thereby silently overthrowing Democracy and imprisoning on minor matters or framing dissident Americans, The Movie Escape From New York was more than a fantasy, it was Prophecy. Soon you'll need places the size of NY or Texas or Alaska to hold us all, because these demoniacs would just love to have most of us in their dungeons, wouldn't they?
Professor Bagnolo is a Renaissance man: Cultural Anthropologist, Architectural designer, painter, writer, novelist, theologian. As a child prodigy, abed with polio for almost two years, with an off the charts IQ, reading at the graduate level by 5th grade, offered an opportunity to skip three grades at age 8. Later He was a recipient of an Art Institute scholarship at age 11, a Ford Foundation Fellowship in Anthropology and in Painting and a merit scholarship in art, and was appointed a Graduate Research Assistant position in college. He holds a triple bachelor's degree in Painting and Drawing, Anthropology, Architectural Design Advertising. MA's in Cultural Anthro, Painting and more. After being tenured he taught; architecture, anthropology, Theology, advertising, painting and drawing, entrepreneuring and Creative Profit Making. He produced a star-studded Music festival, had a radio talk show in Chicago, and cable TV show. Now, retired from Teaching, he paints, writes, and pursues other ventures.
The above bio harvested from the comments of Deans, colleagues, students, clients and collector's.
We had been for a while. Having a Democratic Governor softened it in recent years, but since the war it has expanded. It is however, more that the AG's are trying to get anyone on misdemeanors and blow them into felonies, from what I have heard. (especially minorities, or those whose ethinic of job status makes them a "profile" for voting Liberal.
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