You cut off the art, you cut off the soul

Kos of Daily Kos discussed how much the nasty guy idolized and seemed to be controlled by Putin of Russia. Things are changing.

Yet a funny thing has happened. Trump slobbered over Putin, believing that he and Russia are strong and mighty, serving as an example for his own imperialist and undemocratic designs. But Russia is not strong and mighty. In fact, Russia has run out of tools to prop up its failing economy. And out-of-control inflation, sky-high interest rates, and lower global energy prices have put Putin in a precarious position. Somehow, Trump noticed this, and his disdain couldn’t be clearer. We just might have somehow lucked into a pro-Ukraine Trump presidency.

The disdain shows up in the nasty guy’s tweets and calls for Russia to end the war in Ukraine. Kos quoted a passage. I won’t. Kos goes into why Russia’s economy is so bad. Putin has used up resources needed to pay for the war and inflation is now high. His groveling before Kim of North Korea for war aid doesn’t help his image. China seems hesitant to invest in Russia, but wants the war to continue because that keeps Western eyes off Taiwan. So the nasty guy might become pro-Ukraine. Some Republicans might too. Kos says if he really wants to make a difference in that war he should give Ukraine the long range weapons Biden wouldn’t. Morgan Stephens of Kos wrote that a memo from the Department of Justice shows how the nasty guy intends to force sanctuary cities and states to comply with his deportation agenda. Having the DoJ carry it out (rather than Homeland Security?) seems to be the plan. And this may be why:

The memo asserts that state and local officials must comply with the department under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, otherwise they could face criminal prosecution or civil violation charges. “Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands and requests,” the memo said. “The U.S. Attorney’s Offices and litigating components of the Department of Justice shall investigate incidents involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution.”

Stephens offers a bit of hope:

On Tuesday, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who has been a vocal Republican critic of Trump, shared some profound advice on how to handle the president. “If you stand up to Trump you intimidate him and he will back down,” he wrote on Bluesky. “If you crawl to him (like his sycophantic politicians) he will not respect you and will eventually throw you under the bus.”

I hope Democrats are able to acquire spine strengtheners. There are weaknesses to be exploited. Congress has passed the Laken Riley Act with several Democrats voting for it (which is several too many). The nasty guy will no doubt sign it. The act says that if an undocumented person is accused of a crime they should be detained for deportation. Walter Einenkel of Kos has a few things to say about that bill and deportations. Pardoning the 1500 criminals who attacked the Capitol has blown up the reason for deportations to “keep criminals off the street.” Back to the bill. Note the word accused. That means noncitizens may lose the right to due process. Another source said a landlord could use the threat of an accusation to keep noncitizen renters in line (as in over charging them or under maintaining the property).

"So when a private prison camp opens in your town and they say ‘we didn't know this was going to happen,’ know that they did, and they voted for it,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “When a dreamer is disappeared from your classroom, when the president of the United States destroys what is left of the Constitution—as he's announced in his attack on birthright citizenship—they will all say, ‘we didn't know this was coming,’” she concluded. “And I want the American people to know that they did. This vote represents it."

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted the Harvard Business Review’s article on how deportations could be disastrous to the US food supply.

Most people probably assume the undocumented group is unskilled labor, but our interviews with four growers with operations in Florida and California and people at industry associations suggest the opposite. “We would lose a lot of our skilled workers,” said one California strawberry grower. “Some of our more skilled people have been here for 20 or 30 years, and they speak English.” One profile that he shared was that of a highly skilled supervisor who makes important daily decisions on planting and harvesting. Another was a skilled mechanic. A third was a crew boss with decades of experience. “These are people who came over in the mid-1980s and 1990s. They have been paying taxes and social security, but they never went through the citizenship process,” the grower said. Labor was 40% of his costs, and Trump’s statements have filled these workers and their employers with anxiety over their uncertain futures.

Dworkin also included a tweet by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick:

Leaked documents from the Trump admin show that ICE wants four new detention centers with 10,000 beds each, and fourteen smaller facilities with 700-1,000 beds each. That would likely mean tens of billions in taxpayer funds sent to private prison companies. They are salivating.

Reichlin-Melnick also included a tweet by Aaron Rupar:

AOC: “I want folks at home to look at what members of Congress are invested in private prison companies, and look at the votes on this bill. It is atrocious that people are lining their pockets with private prison profits in the name of a horrific tragedy.”

In the comments are memes and cartoons to share. A cartoon by Matt Reuter showing a man talking to his wife while pointing to the weather app on his phone, “It says it’s nineteen degrees out, but the general lack of empathy in our current political climate is making it feel colder.” A cartoon by Mike Luckovich showing a woman and man encountering several men labeled “GOP” lying on the ground. She asks “Where’re your spines?” A man on the ground responds, “Trump’s insurrectionists needed ’em to beat cops with.” A cartoon by RJ Matson shows a truck with an elephant driving. In the bed looks like manure labeled “Jan. 6 blanket pardons.” On the tailgate are “The Party of Law and Order” and “Back the Blue.” A cop has stopped the truck and is saying, “I’m going to have to ask you to remove those bumper stickers.” From a meme posted by Middle Age Riot:

Donald Trump: I will pardon the January 6 rioters. Police Unions: We endorse Donald Trump. Donald Trump: I have pardoned the January 6 rioters. Police Unions: What?

A cartoon posted by paulpro (author not displayed) shows a person with a rainbow shirt on the ground as three men beat the person with their bibles, creating a pool of blood. The caption says, “If your religion makes you hate someone, you need a new religion.” When I wrote about Bishop Mariann Budde yesterday I misspelled her name – I was working from a source that misspelled it. This is the correct spelling. A meme posted by exlrrp shows that I had written about her before for doing something quite loving.

Did you know that for 25 years, Matthew Shepard, who was brutally tortured and murdered for being gay, had no permanent resting place due to concerns his grave would be vandalized, and when Reverend Budde learned of this, she invited the Shepards to inter him inside the Washington National Cathedral. She co-officiated the service that welcomed Matthew to a forever home in the church and told the gathering, “20 years of mourning was not enough for someone who is loved. Nor can 20 years heal the grief of such a loss.”

My admiration grows. I’ve been involved with the Reconciling Ministries Network for close to two decades. They’re the group working to make the United Methodist Church more inclusive of LGBTQ people. Many conservative congregations have left. The current denomination rules are much better, though they say a congregation can fully include LGBTQ people, but that they don’t have to. So more work needs to be done. I still get their email newsletter and I’m planning to attend their next convocation this summer. Of course RMN is aware of the political climate and in today’s email has things to keep in mind: + The chaos and terror are the point. They’re designed to make us feel afraid and alone. We’re afraid because the harm is real. But we are not alone. Pastors are preaching courageously to soften hearts of stone. You are worth fighting for. + In times of crisis humans come together. Love recklessly and fiercely. We get creative about resistance and don’t let despair have the last word. + Take lessons from those who’ve experienced apocalypse before, the ones who’ve been through colonialism, political uprisings, natural disasters, genocide, food scarcity, and silencing. + We get free when we all get free. Look to the intersections of your communities. + Do not cancel one another so swiftly that no one is left standing in your circle. Practice gratitude and extend grace. We need one another. Brittany Luse of NPR talked to Colman Domingo, the star of the moving Sing Sing, which just received a few Oscar nominations. Much of the rest of the cast is real-life formerly incarcerated actors. The story is about incarcerated people working together to stage an original musical. Last week it was rereleased and this second time it will be screened in more than a thousand prisons. Luse noted the movie shows examples of healthy masculinity, the men are vulnerable with each other. Domingo explains that to create anything together, including something artistic, people have to leave behind something personal to gain something communal. One thing to leave behind is ego.

LUSE: The other thing that I noticed too is the film - it reminded me how masculinity is not necessarily always inherently defined but enforced. And the way that the men in the film communicated with each other enforced vulnerability as a value and did not enforce that those things made you weak or less than or deserved social punishment. DOMINGO: That - what you just said there was the light bulb for all of us as we were exploring making this film. These men are saying that this is part of our survival, to have all of these feelings, to have all this softness and tenderness. And it has nothing to do with sexuality whatsoever. It's more about mental health. It's about being good and kind to yourself and acknowledging your feelings and acknowledging your heartache, acknowledging your trauma, acknowledging what you feel.

Domingo added they hold each other accountable to actually be vulnerable, to say it’s OK, go there. The men also understood the necessity of art. Domingo said:

I remember when I first started out, I was touring around to junior high schools and high schools performing. And I would note that arts programs were severely cut. The first things to go - art. I thought, why is that? Well, I grew up with arts programs. Why is that? I mean, you cut off the art, you cut off the soul. You cut off people understanding how to be human with each other. You cut that out of schools, there's - I feel like there's a path to the prison industrial complex. Art is not frivolous. Art connects us, and we need it in our society. We need it in our schools. You know, a lot of these men who went through this program, they say, you know, if I had something like this growing up, I probably would never have been here. I would have another way to get out what was inside of me.

Politics of revenge are exactly what the base craves

Yesterday evening the House was getting ready to vote on the Build Back Better Bill – the human infrastructure bill. Then Republican leader Kevin McCarthy used his prerogative as head of his party to talk as long as he wanted. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported that turned out to be eight hours. When I heard that McCarthy spoke I thought there might be some phrase I could rebut in this here blog. But no go. Sumner explained:

The result was a speech where “rambling” would doesn’t begin to cover the incoherent and disconnected claims, stitched together by occasional arm waving and table-pounding designed to show that McCarthy is just as angry, vindictive, and nonsensical as Trump. As Rep. Jaime Raskin reported mid-way through this event, McCarthy managed to speak for over four hours without producing “a single memorable phrase, original insight, or even a joke.” And then he did it for four more hours. Which makes it even more … is there a word that means something is remarkable for being absolutely unremarkable?

So, no text to dissect. Instead, we can enjoy the tweets from Democratic members as they sat through it all, gathered together by Dfh1 of the Kos community. From Adam Schiff:

If you took the worst orator in the world Gave him the worst speech in the world And made him read it for the longest time in the world That would be a lot like listening to Kevin McCarthy tonight. Except, probably better.

Andrew Solender of Axios wrote about one quotable line and the reaction it got:

"Nobody elected Joe Biden to be FDR," McCarthy says in his floor speech. "I did!" one Democrat pipes up. "Me too!" says another.

That first Democrat has been identified as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Sumner quoted Eddie Vale who noted that instead of Democrats passing the bill in the evening McCarthy’s performance meant it was passed the next morning “at a much better time for press coverage.” Frank Pedraza commented on the post by Dfh1:

Trump has ripped McCarthy’s spine and keeps it in his closet at Morgue-a-Lago. Kevin takes comfort in knowing that the former [guy] has his back.

Alas, McCarthy can demonstrate he’s a big bag of wind, yet remain a threat to the country and democracy. Laura Clawson of Kos discussed the censure of Rep. Paul Gosar, mentioned yesterday, and McCarthy’s response:

The fact that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy not only opposed the censure of one of his members for blasting out a depiction, however fictional, of himself murdering a coworker and attacking the president of the United States, but threatened retribution against Democrats if and when Republicans take the majority in the House, shows the extent of the problem. McCarthy wasn’t just voting against the censure of his member—he was saying that the censure was so illegitimate as to justify him in planning, well ahead of time, to exact retribution against Democrats. “You censured our guy and removed him from committees for the murder-fantasy video, so we’re going to do the same to your members for … whatever.”

Kerry Eleveld of Kos added more:

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made it exceedingly clear on Tuesday that he not only won't hold his caucus accountable for making violent threats against other members of Congress, but he will actively seek revenge against anyone who insists on the accountability he refuses to provide. ... But these GOP threats of retribution are all par for the course now. The party is effectively filled with a bunch of lawless gang members who foment violence, flout the law, and trample the Constitution, and when anyone threatens to rein them in, the GOP's knee-jerk responses are promises of revenge. ... The game is all about training their voters to believe they have been slighted and disrespected, that Democrats have committed an unforgivable abuse of power, and that Republicans will make them pay for it. That is the GOP platform, and Republicans keep running that play over and over again because their low-information voters aren't capable of seeing past it. In fact, the GOP's politics of revenge are exactly what the base craves—it's among their main reasons for living, breathing, and voting. ... But this is the kind of punitive and twisted leadership Republicans are promising as they eye a potential takeover of Congress next year. They are putting forward no policy solutions for the American people or aspirational bills they hope to enact. Instead what they’re offering is plain and simple: It is the politics of revenge. And that is very clearly exactly what GOP base voters want.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer who discussed a scenario that might play out in the late winter of 2023:

There’s a climate of disbelief in the nation’s capitol as the GOP-dominated House of Representatives wraps up debate over the impeachment of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., 46th president of the United States. It was little more than five months since the Republicans gained 43 House seats in the 2022 midterms, many in newly gerrymandered seats, and since the incoming chair of House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, started studying a menu of equally off-the-wall options — Hunter Biden’s laptop, the Afghanistan withdrawal, or something unprecedented about the president’s mental acuity — for Biden impeachment hearings. In the end, Jordan and his colleagues — including the radical QAnon conspiracy theorists who’d replaced GOP moderates Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — decided that the pretext didn’t even matter that much.

Dworkin also quoted Greg Sargent of the Washington Post:

In much of our discourse, Trump-backed GOP primary challenges to sitting Republicans tend to be cast mainly as retaliation for personal disloyalty to the former president. There’s something to that, but the full truth appears to be darker. What this really suggests is that large swaths of Republican voters appear to want to elect people to office who would have been willing to overturn the election on Trump’s behalf, and will be willing to overturn a loss in the future.

Leah McElrath tweeted a quote from an article in The Atlantic about the risk of bipartisanship undermining democracy:

“Biden’s…emphasis on his ability to cooperate with Republicans has stirred concerns…he is obscuring the threat mounting against democratic institutions…More Republicans appear to be radicalizing by the week and Biden is making the GOP seem normal.”

Rebekah Sager of Kos reported that just a few hours before Julius Jones was to be executed in Oklahoma, Governor Stitt commuted his sentence from death to life in prison without parole. That should have been clemency because there is evidence that Jones did not commit the murder for which he was convicted. I’ll let you wade into the details. One reason for mentioning this is to quote a tweet by Leah McEnrath. She quoted a tweet from Marc Lamont Hill:

And please believe that Governor Stitt knew he was going to commute the sentence yesterday. Still, he had Julius Jones undergo all the rituals and rites of execution. This is part of the cruelty and perversion of an immoral state with unmerited power to decide who lives and dies.

Then McElrath added:

Agree. Pushing the announcement until mere hours before execution was scheduled is purposeful cruelty. I’m grateful the decision was made, but the cruelty inherent in the timing and the inclusion of a denial of Jones’ rights to be considered for parole or pardon are undeniable.

Stella Levantesi and Giulio Corsi, writing for DeSmog discussed four major scare tactics climate deniers are using to stop climate action. These tactics were found through an analysis of 300,000 tweets posted since after the Paris climate summit in January 2016. Efforts used to be aimed at undermining the science. Now they’re aimed at attacking solutions, creating fear, and the usual misinformation to polarize people. 1. Doomsday scenarios, in which global economic systems are wrecked by climate change policies. Of course this obscures the global economic systems that are already being wrecked by climate change. These scenarios include the possibility of energy blackouts and shortages. 2. Claims that climate policies aren’t really about fixing the climate but about being a Trojan Horse that would turn America and the world into communist or socialist regimes. 3. Efforts to reduce the methane released by cows are interpreted to mean they will “take away America’s burgers” and force us all to be vegan, then reclaim all that unused pasture land and use it for low-income housing. 4. The full-on conspiracy theories, such as governments manipulating the weather. Learn about this strategy so you can neutralize it. Michael Harriot posted a long thread about Alabama having the deadliest prisons in America. They’re overcrowded, some of them five times capacity. There is a lot of violence between inmates (mostly black) and a lot more violence from the guards (mostly white). They’re terrible at protecting inmates from COVID. And they want to use $400 million of COVID relief money to build prisons – instead of releasing non-violent offenders or training guards, or spending the money on education or health care.

Will the Biden Administration give our money to a racist, corrupt, violent organization to LITERALLY continue slavery? Have you ever MET America?

Maggie Koerth, writing for The Fuller Project, told the story of Roberta Steele to explain why there is a shortage of people to drive school buses. The short version is the title: “Would You Manage 70 Children And a 15-Ton Vehicle for $18 An Hour?” Shortages existed before the pandemic, though are more severe now. The pay at $18 an hour seems decent (fast food workers are fighting for $15), but it is only four hours a day, nine months a year. And because of shortages drivers are covering more routes and not getting bathroom breaks. And some routes aren’t being covered, stressing parents in long lines of cars at schools. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that Ronna Romney McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee announced an effort to recruit LGBTQ voters. The effort would be in partnership with Log Cabin Republicans, who are LGBTQ conservatives who try to be a part of a party that keeps kicking them. But McDaniel got a great deal of pushback and had to clarify the effort wasn’t about giving LGBTQ people a safe space in the party. Certainly not. She just wants their votes. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a cool video on how the COVID vaccines work. This video was made by the Vaccine Makers Project. And in last Friday’s post Bill quoted some late night commentary:

Aaron Rodgers says he's an independent thinker who doesn’t want to be told what to do with his body. You ever notice how all the 'independent thinkers' are doing the exact same thing? “I'm an independent thinker—what are my thoughts, Joe Rogan?” —Trevor Noah

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Julia “Hurricane” Hawkins set a couple records at a track and field event. First, she set the world for the 100-meter dash for her age group. Second, she defined that age group as 105+. Her time was just under one minute, three seconds. Not as good as the forty second record she set at age 100.

Profit handsomely

The June edition of The Washington Spectator has only one article in its eight pages, rather than the usual 3-4 articles. This one is “Modern-Day Gulags In the Golden State” by Barbara Koeppel. It explains quite well why prisons should not be run for profit.

Back in 1997 the Supreme Court says that civil commitment is legal. Since then 20 states, including California, passed laws allowing for its use.

A criminal, in this case a sex offender, can continue to be incarcerated after the completion of his prison term if two psychologists can state the man *might* be a threat to society. The man isn’t held on criminal charges, but for civil reasons.

California opened the Coalinga State Hospital in 2006. Though it may not be owned by a for profit corporation, it is set up in such a way that the employees and those connected to the hospital profit handsomely from it.

Overall, employees and others get money for each man committed to the hospital. Which means, once a man is in it is very difficult to get out.

The hospital is paid by the number of men it holds. The men are evaluated by psychology technicians. They come up with all sorts of ways to recommend that a patient is not yet ready for release. And they can use that threat to coerce their patients. The hospital is able to keep up its numbers of incarcerated.

When a man needs medicine or tests the state is billed at exorbitant rates. The men are charged a lot extra for special food and “authorized” computer tablets.

Lawyers are paid by the action. A very lucrative action is to ask the court for a delay in a release hearing. Some men have been waiting 15 years for an actual hearing.

Even the correctional officers have rigged things so that transporting a man to a court date needs three officers and lots of overtime.

And all these employees and others usually record lots of overtime. They do it because nobody checks.

Of course, lots of money is spent keeping politicians in line. Voters love politicians who proclaim how they’re keeping citizens safe – even though this continued incarceration makes no difference in public safety.

And if a researcher shows what is up their results are quickly buried and funding is pulled.

Those that don’t profit: taxpayers and the incarcerated men.

This is me speaking now: Every person involved, from food concessions to lawyers to politicians, is saying I’m better than the incarcerated men. That’s real easy to do when talking about sex offenders. And because they’re so low on the social hierarchy I have no problem keeping them locked up so that I can continue to make hundreds of thousands of dollars off their misery.

More money off a criminal than a scholar

The Supreme Court has accepted three cases on LGBT discrimination. They are all based on whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination on the basis of sex, also bans discrimination on sexual orientation or gender identity. Lower courts have said that it does. The combined cases won’t be heard until sometime after the Court reconvenes in October. And this court isn’t as liberal as it used to be.



Twitter user Indigenous shared a quote from Henry Rollins:

The Prison Industrial Complex is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he’s a criminal instead of a scholar.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has an observation about what is playing out in the big field of Democrat candidates:

It will never cease to fascinate me how it's the marginalized people who fight for inclusion every day, and our allies, who are called "divisive" by the people trying to keep us out, under the auspices of "unity."

Just get behind this wealthy straight white able-bodied cis man this time, and we promise we'll get to you someday.

Yeah. So I've heard.

And when I stop buying that line of shit, it's me who's "divisive" because I refuse to "unify."

Sure.

To which FloraFlora commented:

How about we unify behind a queer disabled black woman? What, you think that's not someone who can represent your "normal" needs? uh .....huh. *biggest side-eye in the world*

Another gerrymandering win! Even though citizens of Michigan approved an amendment to end gerrymandering in Michigan it doesn’t have any effect until the 2022 election. Similar to recent lawsuits in other states, the League of Women Voters in Michigan filed suit saying the current maps – to be used one more time in 2020 – are unconstitutionally gerrymandered. A panel of three federal judges, from the 6th Circuit, and eastern and western districts of Michigan (no idea what prompted this combination), agreed. The ruling affects 15 (out of 110) state House districts, 10 (out of 38) state Senate districts, and 9 (out of 14) Congressional districts. Probably several districts around these will also have to be redrawn. The judges said new maps will have to be submitted by August 1. They also said the state senators in those redrawn districts will have to run again in 2020, even though their term isn’t up until 2022.

Republicans said they will appeal to the Supremes. If they take the case it doesn’t look so good – the Court has never ruled against partisan gerrymandering. We’ll get a better sense soon. Two such cases are already before the Court with rulings expected by the end of June.

Even if the Supremes overturn this decision, it only affects the 2020 election.

Profiting from misery

This one is scary: The Washington Post did a survey and asked would you support postponing the 2020 election if the nasty guy were to say it “should be postponed until the country can make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote.” More than half of Republicans – 52% – agreed.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville says to keep in mind the guy who would be making that call has consistently lied about widespread voter fraud.

Other numbers from that survey: 47% of Republicans believe the nasty guy won the popular vote, 68% believe millions of illegal immigrants voted, 73% believe voter fraud happens somewhat or very often.



Alison Parker of Shareblue reports that big GOP donors are annoyed with the collapse of the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and are withholding at least $2 million in contributions to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Democrats feel energized.



The incoming freshman class at Harvard University is 49.2% white. Yes, white students are not the majority. Asian Americans are 22.2% of the 2,056 freshmen. African Americans are 14.6%, Hispanic and Latino are 11.6%, Native American and Pacific Islanders are 2.5%.



What happens when a for-profit prison company doesn’t get a steady supply of criminals? What if it doesn’t have enough inmates to turn a profit? It threatens to lay off employees. It begs state and federal prisons to transfer inmates. It volunteers to be a deportation detention center. It tries to invent new crimes or increase punishment for existing crimes. All is a way of saying prisons should not be trying to make a profit of other people’s misery.

Stroke his worst campaign instincts

Donald Trump expanded? shook up? his campaign staff. The new guy at the head of the campaign staff is Steve Bannon. His most recent job was to run the Breitbart News website. And Breitbart News is a hard-right site that promotes conspiracy theories. It even makes some of them up. Bannon and Trump should get along just fine. Hunter of Daily Kos said the move

is tailor-made to stroke Donald Trump's worst campaign instincts, most ridiculous claims, and most reckless behaviors.

Many conservatives are wondering if this is an admission that the campaign is over and for the next two months Trump will take out as many friends and foes as he can. There will be conspiracy-peddling, hostility towards immigrants, howls of election rigging, and all the rest, carried at a much higher volume.



Ian Millhiser, in a series of tweets, takes a look at GOP myths. First myth: conservatives make up a majority of voters (so who is in the White House now?). Second myth: Speaker Paul Ryan has a mandate to implement his ruinous budget even though he is essentially supported by only corporations. Third myth: The winner runs the show and everyone else is a loser. There is no such thing as a coalition.



Good to see the Department of Justice is recognizing that prisons run by corporations are less safe and less effective in providing correctional services. They also skimp on housing, food, and medical care. In addition the cost savings is a lot less than predicted. Because of all that the DOJ use of corporate prisons will be phased out.

Shares of two corporations that run prisons dropped sharply and became volatile. But don't worry. Most inmates in these places are placed there by the states. And I'm sure a lot of GOP governors are not going to tear up their contracts.

Prisons should not be run for profit. Same for health care and education.



Travis Rieder, a philosopher with the Berman Institute of Bioethics ad John Hopkins University, is working to convince students and other young adults to limit the number of children they have. Zero would be good. He says it is a moral issue. As the climate heats up things will get pretty severe over the next two decades. During that time the human population is expected to grow by a couple billion. The reasons: Do we really want to subject our kids to that kind of a world? We could go a long way towards mitigating the worst effects of climate change simply by having fewer kids. Is it ethical to have an American child, who will use up lots of the earth's resources, when it is a child in a poor country who will face the greater consequences of a world with a hot climate?

It doesn't look good for Americans to tell other countries to not have kids. So some ideas: put family planning ideas in the plots of soap operas. Pay women to refill birth control medications. Replace tax breaks for children with a penalty – a carbon tax on kids.

So what is easier? Engineer clouds and oceans to suck carbon out of the air? Overhaul the global system of capitalism? Make fewer babies? We actually know how to do the last one.

Colombia!

The Constitutional Court in Colombia has approved same-sex marriage! A nice map of the current state of things is here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_laws_pertaining_to_homosexual_relationships_and_expression.svg



The latest development in the GOP refusing to consider Obama's nominee for the Supremes, in two parts. (1) If the GOP prevails in November they want to get rid of the Senate filibuster to prevent the Dems from rejecting one of their nominees. (2) If the GOP doesn't prevail in November they want to hold an indefinite filibuster and leave a vacant seat (perhaps more than one) on the high court. Some have even suggested that they, not the president, should choose the nominee. Contradiction? Double standard? I don't understand.

A commenter reminds us the Constitution says the president appoints judges to the Supreme Court with the advice and consent of the Senate. If the Senate refuses to give that advice and consent the prez. can still appoint.



About a year ago Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal asked the state legislature for a religious freedom (license to discriminate) law. Legislators refused. So Jindal turned it into an executive order. The new governor, John Bel Edwards, has rescinded Jindal's order. It provides protections for LGBT employees in companies doing business with the state.



Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed the state's draconian religious freedom law. The Washington Blade, a gay newspaper, reports that it is an "open secret" the governor's son, Patrick Bryant, is gay and had been a target of an anti-gay attack. With the dad's encouragement the son moved to Austin, Texas to avoid a political embarrassment. Such family values.



In the face of fierce corporate opposition the religious freedom law in Missouri has stalled. Alas, it isn't dead yet.



Soraya Chemaly:

One day last year, I was thinking about the erasure of aging women in our culture and searched for the term 'venerable women.' I was curious about what images of wise and respected women the world produces. Google's seemingly baffled autocorrect responded, tellingly: 'Do you mean venerable men or vulnerable women?'

During the War on Drugs and the get tough on crime campaigns America built lots of prisons. It was also during this time that many prisons were privatized. That was a big way to make money – for the prison corporations, the communities that welcomed the prisons for the jobs produced (and taxes collected), and the state gov'ts too.

But sentencing and drug policy reforms are being taken up by many states and by Congress. This idea even has support among the GOP (that smaller gov't thing). That means there will likely be fewer people being incarcerated.

And that has local and state officials in at least Mississippi beginning to talk about how harmful it will be to lock up fewer people. Harmful to certain wallets too.

Revenge or restoration

Daniel Holtzclaw is a despicable man. He is white and was a police officer in Oklahoma City. He was found guilty of 18 charges of sexually assaulting 13 black women. The jury recommended he spend 263 years in prison. The judge agreed.

This doesn't sit well with Melissa McEwen of Shakesville. She is both an anti-rape advocate and a prison abolitionist.

Yes, it is good that Holtzclaw will be held accountable for his crimes. Yes, it is good the justice system believed the black women over the white man.

But 263 years? That is only punishment and revenge. And that has led to a corrupt, violent, and dehumanizing prison system. More violence is not the solution to violence.

Will such punishment make any difference in our nations rape culture, a culture that consistently defends the perpetrator and subjects the victim to even more abuse? Will this revenge lead to the eradication of rape? No, and no.

But in America we don't have alternatives.

What would justice for these women without revenge look like? I don't know. But we aren't using our imagination to look for it.

It looks like Norway does have that imagination. Their rate of incarceration is one-tenth of what it is in America. Their rate of recidivism is 20% compared to 77% here. Violent crime is mostly confined to drug trafficking and gangs. They're doing something right.

So let's take a look at Halden Prison. A loss of freedom is the punishment. It doesn't include being treated like an animal. The prison maintains as much "normalcy" as possible, including friendships with guards and extensive vocational programs.

This normalcy allows the inmates to work on restorative justice and on making sure when they are released they are ready to be a fully contributing member of the community.

In Norway a judge is restricted to a maximum sentence of 21 years, though if an inmate isn't rehabilitated in that time successive five year terms can be added. This applies also to Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in a mass shooting. Americans were outraged at such a lenient sentence. Norwegians, including the victim's parents, weren't.

Americans want revenge. Norwegians want restoration.



After all that I think it is time to look at a link that's been sitting in my browser tabs for almost 10 months now (alas, that row of browser tabs only seems to grow). The article is by Mychal Denzel Smith, a black man, and is published in The Nation. It explores an important question: What are police for?

Police are there to stand between upstanding citizens and the violence of the deranged. Right? But from the black perspective they can only provide the illusion of safety to a select few. Most of a cop's job has nothing to do with violence prevention. Only about 10% is devoted to any kind of criminal matters. Most of 90% is dealing with infractions of various codes and regulations. The police are essentially bureaucrats with weapons, inserting the potential for violence were there is cause for none. And for the most common acts of violence, such as domestic violence and sexual assault, police are ineffectual.

The police are not performing the function we say they are, and there are real ways to achieve a world with less violence that don’t include the police. We simply haven’t tried. Until we invest in full employment, universal healthcare that includes mental health services, free education at every level, comprehensive sex education that teaches about consent and bodily autonomy, the decriminalization of drugs and erasure of the stigma around drug use, affordable and adequate housing, eliminating homophobia and transphobia—things that actually reduce the amount of violence we witness—I don’t want to hear about how necessary the police are. They are only necessary because we are all too willing to hide behind our cowardice and not actually put forth the effort to create a better world. It’s too extreme.

And...

What do you do with an institution whose core function is the control and elimination of black people specifically, and people of color and the poor more broadly?

You abolish it.

But replace them with what?

What people mean is “who is going to protect us?” Who protects us now? If you’re white and well-off, perhaps the police protect you. The rest of us, not so much. What use do I have for an institution that routinely kills people who look like me, and make it so I’m afraid to walk out of my home?

My honest answer is that I don’t know what a world without police looks like. I only know there will be less dead black people. I know that a world without police is a world with one less institution dedicated to the maintenance of white supremacy and inequality. It’s a world worth imagining.

Are you scoffing at Mychal Denzel Smith? Larken Rose, in Alternet, lists seven ways in which cops routinely break the law.

1. "Do you know why I stopped you?" You might think you are explaining. They will treat that as a confession. It is a trick to get you to testify against yourself, which the Fifth Amendment says you can't be forced to do.

2. "Do you have something to hide?" This flips the burden of proof with the implication that failure to cooperate with this harassment is evidence of guilt.

3. "Cooperating will make things easier on you." Implying you will be punished for exercising your rights.

4. "We'll just get a warrant." Implying that if you inconvenience the police you will receive worse treatment.

5. "We have someone who will testify against you." Probably obtained through bullying and likely false.

6. "We can hold you for 72 hours without charging you." At this point your concern is release, so this bullying tactic will likely produce a confession of a minor offense the police know will be false.

7. "I'm going to search you for my own safety." By asserting you might have a weapon police can disregard the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches.

Coming from the grassroots

Sarah van Gelder, writing for Yes! Magazine, lists six trends of 2015 that she suggests could be at a turning point in America and in the world.

* Leadership in the health of the climate is coming from the grassroots – activists resisting dirty infrastructure projects, such as mines and pipelines, and state and local ordinances for carbon taxes and against fossil fuel infrastructure. It helps that the drop in oil prices means it isn't such a good investment and that there has been a boom in renewables.

* Black Lives Matter is changing hearts.

* Bernie Sanders has forced the power of Wall Street and inequality into the national debate.

* The politics of vilifying and scapegoating people is running out of people to vilify. Gay people? Mormons march in the Utah Pride. Black folks? South Carolina took down the Confederate flag. Immigrants? Political advisors warn both parties that the Latino vote is critical. Muslims? Beyond the GOP extreme Americans are standing with their Muslim neighbors. Who does that leave? Women. Sigh.

* Yeah, American actions made a mess of the Middle East, but Americans now see it as a quagmire. That prompts a much bigger conversation. What is the global role of the US military? What happens when we reduce our use of fossil fuels and no longer rely in Saudi Arabia? It is a discussion worth having.

* America is turning away from the prison state. Both Dems and GOP are looking for ways to reduce and avoid incarceration.

Extreme to mainstream

There is a new documentary, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution and it gives Carimah Townes a chance to show that their extremism of the 1960s has become mainstream.

The militant methods of the Black Panthers made the white power structure of the time quite nervous, as shown by the FBI campaign to destroy the Panthers. Of course, the Panthers were seen as extreme. Townes lists three ways the Panther message doesn't look so extreme today.

The Black Panthers made a big deal of watching cops. Their communities were being brutalized by cops, so they studied law and due process, then patrolled the streets, watching the cops to prevent, or at least document police brutality. And now, due to Ferguson and Baltimre, lots of people are quick to whip out their cell phones to record police misdeeds. There are even phone apps to prevent videos from being tampered.

The Black Panthers called for the end of mass incarceration, saying trials were not fair and the justice system was stacked against black people. That was before the prison population ballooned 790%. That call was seen as laughable. Now it is a top topic in American discussion. There are several bills before Congress and state legislatures to aim for smarter sentencing and for restorative justice and rehabilitation rather than simple incarceration. These bills are supported by Democrats and Republicans.

The Black Panthers knew police brutality was only part of the problem. Their holistic vision included full employment, decent housing, education, and free health care. Yes, full social services, such as feeding breakfast to school children. That vision is now called intersectionality and is a hot buzzword. Racial justice is now a progressive idea, no longer considered fanatical and dangerous.

Terrence Heath reminds us there is still much to do. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said:

Our current approach to fighting poverty, though well-intended, is failing too many Americans. This disappointing data, five years into an economic recovery, underscores the need for a new effort to modernize our country’s safety net programs.

Oh, yes, when Ryan says "modernize" he means "eliminate." With that in mind, let's go back to the first part of that statement and turn it around. The current approach to fighting poverty is actually keeping a great number of people out of poverty. Social Security keeps 26 million out of poverty. And then there is food stamps, housing subsidies, Earned Income credit, and unemployment insurance which also keep lots of people out of poverty.

However, Ryan is right. The current system is failing too many people. I'll jump in here and finish the sentence: … because the GOP makes sure these programs are underfunded.

Heath looks at it a different way. He notes:

* Yeah, there are lots more jobs in the economy, three million added last year. But it is possible to have one of these new jobs and still be in poverty. It is time for a raise in the minimum wage.

* Equal pay would mean the poverty rate for working single mothers would fall by nearly half.

* Women's risk of poverty jumps dramatically in her childbearing years. We need guaranteed maternity (and paternity) leave and ensured paid sick leave.

* Mass incarceration hits the families of prisoners hard. The main wage-earner is gone and the family can't afford the costs, such as phone calls and visits to the prisoner. We need to end for-profit prisons and actually pass those smarter sentencing bills.

It isn't just the underfunding of the social safety net. Heath says we also need justice to stop demonizing the neediest. We need to introduce justice into our policies.

Leading the parade

News notes:

I had written about the series of news features on NPR about the trend of courts charging court costs to the defendant, and when they can't pay, tossing them in jail. That news series has prompted the formation of the Ability to Pay Workgroup, appointed by the Michigan Supreme Court. Perhaps reforms will come.



The Department of Defense has approved having a military color guard march in the Capital Pride parade in DC. The guard will present the American flag and flags from each branch of the armed forces. This is a first. Though no policy banned the use of a color guard in pride parades previous requests were met with sorry, the guard is busy that day.



New Heart Community Church in La Mirada, Calif. is a part of the Southern Baptist Convention. It's pastor is Danny Cortez. Danny's son Drew came out as gay. The father is delighted he had already been rethinking his positions on sexual minorities. The son's coming out prompted the father to give the sermon "Why I Changed My Mind on Sexuality." The congregation voted to support the pastor (though a few left) and agreed to study the issues surrounding sexual minorities in the SBC. There's an open question: Will the SBC push the church out of the denomination?



Two years ago language opposing same-sex marriage was removed from the GOP Party Platform in Indiana. That was done to appeal to more moderate voters. But the language is back with overwhelming approval.

Lamp, lifeboat, and ladder

The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal law.

I took that quote out of the June edition of The Washington Spectator. This is from the Speaker's Corner article by Elizabeth Gaynes. She is quoting the filing by the Corrections Corporation of America with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This kind of document is what a corporation uses to notify shareholders how they intend to make money and what might influence their ability to turn a profit.

Translation:

We make more profit when we keep our prisons full. So going easy on enforcing laws means less profit. If a judge is allowed to be lenient in the punishment of a crime we'll make less profit, so we are for laws that mandate minimum punishment and the higher the minimum the better. If a judge is allowed to use mediation or restorative justice techniques we make less profit, so we're against their use. If convicts are more likely given parole we'll make less profit, so we are against sentences that include parole and against laws that increase the possibility of parole. Some of our convicts are there because they used or sold marijuana, so legalizing pot means less profit.

That's the part of Gaynes' article that jumped out at me. It confirms what will happen when jail systems are privatized -- these corporations will lobby for harsher sentencing. This is a big reason why prison systems need to be run by the government.

The rest of the article is pretty good too. She highlights the work of Thomas Mott Osborne who worked for prison reform in the 19th Century. His basic question was:

Shall our prisons be scrap heaps or human repair shops?

Poet Rumi wrote this line 700 years ago:

Be a lamp, a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help people's souls to heal.

Languishing in prison affects more than the inmate. It affects the spouse and children.

There is a bit of movement in Congress and state legislatures for prison reform. The driver is cost. However, that runs up against lobbyists from prison corporations.

New York has no private prisons. Due to decreased crime the state is closing them. One of them is being turned over to the Osborne Association to be turned into a reentry center to help inmates rejoin society. That center intends to be the lamp, lifeboat, and ladder.

When people got to prison, they learn to be prisoners. When they leave prison, as most of them will, they need to relearn who to be members of our communities.

In a related article in the same issue of WS attorney and author Chase Madar reviews the book Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment by Robert A. Ferguson. In describing the book, Madar wrote:

Disease, rape, abusive and undertrained guards, overcrowding, profit motive, hair-trigger isolation confinement, mostly beyond the purview of legal redress: many of our prisons are everyday legal black holes. The goal of rehabilitation has been trampled to death and only raw punishment remains. As a young Home Minister, Winston Churchill correlated a nation's degree of civilization to the way it treats its criminals.

Why?

Ferguson searches for that answer rather than try to sell a ten-point prison reform plan. His book is a survey of the major philosophers of punishment, including Machiavelli, John Calvin, Kant, Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Melville, Dante, and Nietzsche ("Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.").

The Washington Spectator site is still being redesigned, so no links are available.

Debtors prison

All this week NPR ran a series titled Guilty and Charged. Debtors prison was outlawed a long time ago and the Supremes have ruled that a person can't be sent to jail if he is too poor to pay a court fine. But that hasn't stopped judges in nearly all states of imposing fines, and, more importantly, court costs, and then putting a person in jail if the fines can't be paid. Part of the question is what does it mean to be well-off enough to pay? The presence of a cell phone? The presence of (expensive?) tattoos?

The practice can get weird. A man can't pay a fine. He is jailed for several days. He is charged room and board for his time in jail (some counties pay for their jail system this way). He can't pay that either. Jailed again. No way out.

Another man can't pay, but tells the judge he just got a job and will be able to pay by the end of the week. Don't pay today, you go to jail today. I'll lose my job! Too bad. And when you get out one of your conditions of parole is to keep a job -- don't keep it and you're back in jail. But, judge, I have a job now, which I'll lose if I go to jail.

One law-and-order type said punishment means giving up money or time. If you don't have one you must give up the other. Those are the only two choices available. But there are more choices: reparative justice programs, realistic payment plans, and community service.

The private sector is more efficient

The recent problems with the Affordable Care Act website has brought the issue of privatization of government functions back to the spotlight. Dale Hanson of the Detroit News in an article reprinted in Huffington Post admits the government got this one wrong -- big time -- but that doesn't mean the private sector does it better. Hanson doesn't explore the private companies that built and botched the ACA website. But he does explore other privatized ventures that have gone bad and provides links to a few more.

One of Hanson's links is to an article in the blog Justice Before Charity with a copyright notice of 2010. The writer is anonymous though the page contains links to "Resources for LGBTQ Catholics." JBC starts us off with the essence of the privatization claim.

It is common knowledge that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector because private businesses have to worry about going out of business, while government agencies do not. The private sector will work harder and smarter, since the need to compete creates incentives for innovation and hard work. Having private companies perform the jobs of government will make everything more efficient.

This common sense is actually entirely wrong.

JBC documents many cases where the gov't paid more to a private company to get worse service than the gov't agency did on its own. I'll skip the individual cases and accompanying statistics and mention broad categories.

Prisons: The gov't may indeed save money. But it is because prison employees are paid less, are trained less, and cut corners on safety. Private prisons have a disastrous safety record and are quite violent places. Prison guard turnover is also quite high. Inmates are not trained for life outside the prison because the prison corporation does not want them to do well in the outside world. Let them commit another crime. They'll be back and we can make more money off them.

Private prisons in Calif. are less expensive to run than publicly funded prisons, but it is because (1) they only take inmates classified as needing minimum security, (2) they do not take inmates with serious mental or physical illness, (3) they don't take juveniles or females, (4) they shift some costs back to the state. If a prison only takes the least costly inmates it will cost less to house them.

Schools: Let parents and students choose the best schools and the bad schools will go out of business. That's the mantra. It doesn't work. In Milwaukee public school education was the same as private schools. Can't claim private is better. Private schools (1) pay teachers less and train them less, (2) refuse most students with learning disabilities, and (3) expel students with behavior problems, sending them back to public schools. Yeah, some of these are similar to the list for prisons. The process of getting students into a private school does get the parent invested in the kid's education. But even with this advantage the private schools are not better.

Healthcare: The nef blog in Britain and its Mythbusters shows a chart of OECD countries (mostly North America, Europe, Japan, Australia) and the relation between healthcare expenditures per capita and longevity. USA is definitely an outlier, spending well over $7000 a person per year. The next closest (not named) spends under $5000 for better results. Britain's National Health Service does a bit better than the USA for half the cost. The difference is that the USA system is mostly private.

General gov't functions: JBC reports most companies that take over for gov't agencies pay their workers sub-poverty wages. That's pay so low the employee still qualifies for Medicaid and food stamps. So the gov't is paying the higher wages anyway.

Many gov't agencies, such as the ones that monitor oil drilling, are given a budget that is too small. The agency is understaffed. Congress declares it to be incompetent and cuts its budget even more. Disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill happen. What is cheaper, dealing with the blowout or properly funding the agency? Other underfunded agencies include the Securities and Exchange Commission (the Great Recession), weapons acquisition (staggering cost overruns), and the Coast Guard's acquisition (new ships that leak).

Veterans Health Administration: The VHA did not get outsourced. By 11 measures of quality it is the best health system in the world with a lower cost per patient. And it was public leadership that got it from worst to best in 25 years. Now if they could only be funded enough to treat all returning veterans.

There are instances where private business works just fine. In Guatemala the bus system is not run by the gov't. An enterprising person can buy a bus, design and market a route he thinks is underserved, and start driving. But when the free market doesn't work, the gov't must act.

Back to the claim that private companies have to work better and smarter or go out of business. But once they get the fat gov't contract they are no longer in danger of going out of business. The money keeps coming even if they are incompetent. But a poor family still needs to enroll in food stamps and has no alternatives. A public program doesn't work like a business.

Bryan Glick of Computer Weekly in Britain documents a few more privatizing projects that went bad, most of them (of course) related to computer programming. He makes a couple good points. When a public agency fails it isn't because there is a lack of competition or a lack of a market. It is a simple lack of leadership. And:

A private sector outsourcer will look for every opportunity to get new sources of revenue from a contract. A public sector employee - one with good leadership at least - is more likely to be focused on the services they provide.

That is a huge and fundamental difference.

Newsweek reports that there is a huge difference in how the national gov't treats corporate contractors and how it treats non-profit contractors. The corporate contracts are really cushy and if the contractor is incompetent or does something wrong, no big deal. The non-profit contracts are really skimpy (usually not enough to quite pay for the service they provide) and if the contractor does something wrong, they are barred from another contract for at least 10 years. Easy to guess who can afford the lobbyists to get Congress to slant the rules.

To summarize, when a government task is privatized, these are the things that happen:

* Worker pay is cut to the point they are underpaid or are in poverty. Workers are insufficiently trained to properly handle the job.

* Corners are cut so that quality of product or service is compromised or safety to worker, client, society, environment, or economy suffers.

* The contractor accepts only the least cost clients.

* The contractor concentrates on extracting money out of the contract to maximize profits, not to provide better service.

* The contractor no longer worries about competition, competence, or going out of business and acts accordingly.

Rescue but for a profit motive

I've been saying for some time that health care and education should not be subjected to the profit motive. My first post about it was back in 2008. Both are distorted by the bottom line, meaning decisions are made for other than robust health and comprehensive education.

Paul Buchheit of Common Dreams lists eight areas, including health care and education, where the profit motive, also known as privatization, are creating disasters in public life. I'll list them here with a bit of explanation. I'll let you read the original article for details and stats.

Health Care. Ours is the most expensive in the world. Yet the most cost effective care in American is Medicare. One wonders why the salaries of CEOs of health systems are over ten times the salary of the Medicare administrator. Add in stock options and income can be over 300 times as much.

Water. Privatized systems charge 80 percent more for water and 100 percent more for sewage service. These companies make huge profits.

Internet. National systems, such as in South Korea have internet systems that are 200 times faster for half the cost.

Transportation. Privatized systems come with fare increases and elimination of unprofitable routes, leaving some riders without access. Bus drivers face longer hours at reduced wages.

Banking. Compare the deceit and depravity of Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America, with the solid performance of the publicly owned Bank of North Dakota. Yeah, a socialist bank in a red state.

Prisons. The goal should be to rehabilitate prisoners and gradually empty jails. But business is too good. Private prisons are worse in violence within, rehabilitation efforts, and prison conditions.

Education. Charter schools have not shown to be better, and have teachers with less experience and pay. The emphasis shifts to education as assembly line.

Consumer Protection. Privatized consumer protection means no consumer protection. A recent example is that Texas fertilizer plant explosion that hadn't been inspected for 25 years.

As summed up by US News, "Private industry is not going to step in and save people from drowning, or help them rebuild their homes without a solid profit." In order to stay afloat as a nation we need each other, not savvy businesspeople who presume to tell us all how to be rich. We can't all be rich. We just want to keep from drowning.

The first comment was that the author forgot the private funding of Elections.



Britain is considering a bill that would require Parliament to get public feedback (permission?) before privatizing a service. In spite of the ideology of "private sector efficiency," public services tend to be better quality, lower cost, and more accountable. I think the disconnect is those who want to privatize claim market efficiencies which don't materialize because the new business is a monopoly.

Profit and the purpose of prisons

I've written about three areas of society that are incompatible with the profit motive, meaning they should be run government, not privatized. Two of them are education and health care. Sorry, it would be difficult for me to come up with links.

Stephen Henderson, editor of the editorial page of the Free Press, documents why the third area, prisons, should not be privatized. The goal of a prison should not be warehousing inmates, but preparing them for life after prison. A component of that should be community based work to help the inmate adapt to society. And that costs money. Another aspect is justice-based sentencing and parole.

But privatizing prisons would mean such things as skimping on meals (the issue that got Henderson started) which means a released inmate is ill or malnourished, giving him a harder time to reenter society. That's if the prisoners don't riot over food. It also means the company running prisons will push for sentencing guidelines that increase the inmate population, their source of profit. That's counter to justice.

The way to measure prison success is through social and justice measurements. The bottom line won't tell you that. Privatizing prisons works against the worthwhile outcomes.

Back in chains

In a speech before a predominantly black audience, Joe Biden said the GOP policies would "unchain Wall Street" and "put you all back in chains." Yup, the GOP squawked about slavery. But there is an important point that Biden may not have intended, and the GOP missed.

Yes, the GOP policies are working to make sure blacks can't vote. Those policies have the greatest economic hit on black communities. Drug laws are causing more havoc on black communities.

And more blacks than whites are in prison. The privatization of prisons has meant those companies are looking for more sources of revenue -- such as selling prison labor. Yup. Blacks back in chains.



Terrence Heath reports on an analysis of Paul Ryan's plans for Medicaid. He notes these things:
* Medicaid is not the problem. Overall health care costs are the problem.
* Medicaid is not just for the poor. It is important to many middle- and working-class Americans.
* The cuts to Medicaid do not lower health care costs. They shift costs to those least able to afford them.
* Cuts to Medicaid are as unpopular as those for Medicare. Democrats compromising with the GOP do so at their peril.
The rest of Heath's post documents the pain the Ryan cuts would generate.



Government has declared the economic crash was nobody's fault and aren't pursuing prosecution. But there is evidence of crimes. The perps may not face jail, but we could make them face continued public humiliation.
* Repeatedly parade their crimes in public.
* Repeatedly count up their billions in ill-gotten gains and compare to the human misery they caused.
* Publicize details of dirty deals and disdain for clients.
* Make them pay millions to defend themselves in the court of public opinion.



Here are five things the rich get out of the government they claim they want to shrink.
* Security: A lot of what the police do is focus on crimes against wealth. Business keep the police focus on homeless, unemployed, and drug users to make sure these groups don't take their anger out on the wealthy.
* Taxes and regulations: The gov't is doing all it can to make tax avoidance, customer fleecing, and reckless polluting legal.
* Research and infrastructure: Long term research takes too much time for corporations focused on quarterly profits, so the gov't does it. Corporations take advantage of roads, ports, power grids, communication networks (including satellites) built and maintained by the gov't. Education, paid for by the gov't, trains the chemists, chip designers, and programmers, engineers, and analysts that corporations need.
* Corporate welfare.
* Disaster recovery: Most of the expense of oil spills are paid by the gov't. There is also financial bailout for those too big to fail.



Tony Danza (yes, the TV star) spent a year teaching 10th graders in Philadelphia, apparently for a reality TV series. He lived to write a book about it, due out next month. He wrote an article in USA Weekend, which comes with the Sunday Free Press. One thought from the article: Every time the school's budget is cut the students get the message that education is not important.



Every August Beloit College releases a Mindset List which looks at culture through the eyes of those entering college. It began as a way to tell faculty about outdated references. It is now used as a way of keeping track of the changing worldview of the young. Now that I teach college students I probably should pay attention. Examples:

They have had to incessantly remind their parents not to refer to their CDs and DVDs as “tapes.”

For most of their lives, maintaining relations between the U.S. and the rest of the world has been a woman’s job in the State Department.

Women have always piloted war planes and space shuttles.

My readership in Russia has apparently collapsed. A couple weeks ago I was getting more than 200 hits a week from Russia. Then suddenly it dropped to 20-35 a week. No idea why. My readership this week includes USA, Britain, Russia, Germany, India, Canada, Ukraine, China, Australia, Venezuela, Netherlands, and Thailand.

Incarceration because of emotional gratification

A while back I wrote about high incarceration costs in some states. Here is a map looking at incarceration rates, followed by one showing percentage of non-white population by state. The author contrasts the two maps with this premise (my summary):

Most of American politics is influenced by race and most of that is the white majority's fears of non-whites. Places with large minority populations that seem to pose a threat to whites are more likely to support laws driven by emotional gratification ("lock up the bastards!"). That is shown by the higher incarceration rates for non-whites. But in places with miniscule non-white populations (North Dakota), most prisoners are white and it is more difficult to rouse the population with "lock up the bastards!" when the bastards look a lot like everyone else. States in which whites are not in the majority (Hawaii) also avoid the highest incarceration rates.

Just lock them up

A big item in Michigan news is how to reduce the cost of prisons. One option being considered is to allow the maximum security prison in Standish house the prisoners currently in Gitmo, which would bring in federal dollars.

Michigan isn't the only one with prison problem. Here is a map of expenses, as percent of state budget, being spent on prisons (no idea why there is no data for Mich.). Oregon spends more than 10% and Michigan is one of several that spends more on prisons than on education.

It gets worse. America, with a population of 300 million has a prison population of 2.2 million. The next 36 highest prison populations are in countries with a combined populations of 900 million and they have only 1.8 million in prison.

NPR did a story about the fading glory of California's Folsom Prison, made famous by Johnny Cash. Back in the last 60s, when Cash sang there, Folsom was the model for the rest of the country on how to rehabilitate inmates and keep them out of prison after release. No more. The Calif. system is so broke and has so many inmates that it can't afford efforts at rehabilitation.

The cause of the collapse? A series of get-tough-on-crime laws that boosted the prison population, mostly with drug offenders. And the power behind getting those laws passed? The prison warden union, whose membership increased by 17 times in the last 30 years and whose salaries have jumped.