If you’re looking for one of the reasons why the United States imprisons more people — by miles — than any other nation, you can look to the development of private prisons as a means of making some people rich. Those people spend millions of dollars to lobby elected officials to do two things: Convert government-run prisons to private prisons, and lock up more people for longer periods of time. Because that makes them even richer.
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May 16, 2012
Private Prisons Lobby for Harsher Sentences
May 3, 2012
The “capitalism” we protest – response to Seattle Times author Jon Talton
Author Jon Talton wrote two interesting pieces for the Seattle Times yesterday, one in anticipation of the May Day anti-capitalist march, and the other reflecting on it afterwards.
The latter was precisely what you would expect from the Times. Lazy, poorly researched non-sense which, had it been written on any other subject, would have been considered unpublishable.
The previous article - although equally uninformed - was more interesting, however, because it came closer to the heart of the disagreement between the liberal establishment and anarchists, and, in fact, demonstrates precisely the opposite view the author intends it to.
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April 25, 2012
Why Isn’t Closing 40 Philadelphia Public Schools National News? Where Is the Black Political Class?
By Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce A. Dixon:
In what should be the biggest story of the week, the city of Philadelphia’s school system announced Tuesday that it expects to close 40 public schools next year and 64 by 2017. The school district expects to lose 40% of current enrollment to charter schools, the streets or wherever, and put thousands of experienced, well qualified teachers, often grounded in the communities where they teach, on the street.
Ominously, the shredding of Philadelphia’s public schools isn’t even news outside Philly. This correspondent would never have known about it save for a friend’s Facebook posting early this week. Corporate media in other cities don’t mention massive school closings, whether in Chicago, Atlanta, NYC, or in this case Philadelphia, perhaps so people won’t have given the issue much deep thought before the same crisis is manufactured in their town. Even inside Philadelphia the voices of actual parents, communities, students and teachers are shut out of most newspaper and broadcast accounts.
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April 23, 2012
Jailed for $280: The return of debtors’ prisons
By Alain Sherter, April 20, 2012
How did breast cancer survivor Lisa Lindsay end up behind bars? She didn’t pay a medical bill — one the Herrin, Ill., teaching assistant was told she didn’t owe. “She got a $280 medical bill in error and was told she didn’t have to pay it,” The Associated Press reports. “But the bill was turned over to a collection agency, and eventually state troopers showed up at her home and took her to jail in handcuffs.”
Although the U.S. abolished debtors’ prisons in the 1830s, more than a third of U.S. states allow the police to haul people in who don’t pay all manner of debts, from bills for health care services to credit card and auto loans. In parts of Illinois, debt collectors commonly use publicly funded courts, sheriff’s deputies, and country jails to pressure people who owe even small amounts to pay up, according to the AP.
Under the law, debtors aren’t arrested for nonpayment, but rather for failing to respond to court hearings, pay legal fines, or otherwise showing “contempt of court” in connection with a creditor lawsuit. That loophole has lawmakers in the Illinois House of Representatives concerned enough to pass a bill in March that would make it illegal to send residents of the state to jail if they can’t pay a debt. The measure awaits action in the senate.
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April 18, 2012
The U.S. Poured So Many Toxic Weapons on Falluja in 2004 That Residents Still Pay the Price
Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1000 births, compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait
Michael Kelley Apr. 18, 2012. Business Insider
The increases in cancer, infant mortality and perturbations in birth sex ratio in Fallujah are significantly greater than those recorded for survivors of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasakiin 1945, according to a study and reported by Karlos Zurutuza of Inter Press Service (IPS).
The study, released by the Switzerland-based International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, shows that in the years following Operation Phantom Fury there has been a 4-fold increase in all cancer, including a 12-fold increases in childhood cancer in those aged 0-14.
According to hospital spokesman Nadim al-Hadidi, Fallujah hospital cannot offer any statistics on children born with birth defects because there are just too many.
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April 12, 2012
Why Campaigning for Democrats Cripples Labor Unions
By Shamus Cooke of Common Dreams:As labor leaders across the U.S. shift resources away from defending workers and into Obama’s re-election campaign, millions of organized and non-organized workers remain unemployed and hopeless. Contrary to the “optimistic” government jobs numbers, the jobs crisis grinds onward. Some labor leaders will argue that getting Obama elected is the first step towards addressing the jobs crisis, but they know better.
The recent so-called JOBS Act that passed with strong Democrat and Republican support will create zero jobs — the law’s intent is to lower regulations for banks and corporations, in an attempt to boost their profits. The JOBS wording was used for popularity’s sake, requiring heavy doses of deceit.
A similar-minded jobs project was put forth by Obama earlier in the year, when he appointed “experts” to his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. But the Council was front loaded with CEO’s and bankers, with only two labor reps, who allowed themselves to be used to obscure the real intent of the project. Richard Trumka, President of the labor federation AFL-CIO, was one of the token labor leaders on the council, who only later partially redeemed himself by denouncing the Council’s job-creating recommendations (predictably, one of the key “job creating” ideas was to lower corporate tax rates).
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April 10, 2012
Why Obama’s JOBS Act Couldn’t Suck Worse
President Barack Obama signs the Bill for the HR 3606, the 'Jump start Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act.
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone Magazine:
Boy, do I feel like an idiot. I’ve been out there on radio and TV in the last few months saying that I thought there was a chance Barack Obama was listening to the popular anger against Wall Street that drove the Occupy movement, that decisions like putting a for-real law enforcement guy like New York AG Eric Schneiderman in charge of a mortgage fraud task force meant he was at least willing to pay lip service to public outrage against the banks.
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April 7, 2012
5 Ex-Cops Sentenced in Katrina Killings Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, from the New York Times.
Fuki Madison, centre, mother of Ronald Madison, who was killed by New Orleans police, reacts as she leaves federal court after sentences were handed out in her case in New Orleans on Wednesday.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge sentenced five former police officers to years in prison for the deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge in the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina but not before lashing out at prosecutors for allowing others involved to serve lighter penalties for their crimes. The case that wrapped up Wednesday was the centerpiece of a Justice Department push to clean up New Orleans’ police department that has long been tainted with corruption.
U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt expressed frustration that he was bound by mandatory minimum sentencing laws to imprison former Sgts. Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius and former officers Anthony Villavaso and Robert Faulcon for decades when other officers who engaged in similar conduct on the Danziger Bridge — but cut deals with prosecutors — are serving no more than eight years behind bars.
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April 4, 2012
ICE Arrest 3k Immigrants in 6 Days, Largest Roundup Ever
By Jorge Rivas, of Colorlines. Tuesday, April 3 2012
On Monday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced 3,168 undocumented immigrants were detained over the course of six-days in a national operation the agency dubbed “Cross Check.” According to ICE, the six-day operation was the largest such effort in the agency’s history.
Operation Cross Check involved more than 1,900 ICE officers who worked with federal, state and local law enforcement throughout the U.S. to carry out the arrests in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, three U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.
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April 4, 2012
Rare Rolling Sympathy Strike Beats Garbage Company That Tries to Trash Its Promise
Photo Credit: International Brotherhood of Teamsters
AlterNet / By Josh Eidelson
Thursday, 250 Teamsters in Seattle went on strike against Republic Services, the second-largest waste disposal company in the United States. Workers in Buffalo, New York, and Columbus, Ohio struck Republic for three days earlier this week. These workers weren’t responding to moves by local management. Instead, they went on strike in solidarity with 24 striking co-workers in Alabama. The kind of strike they pulled off has become all too rare in the modern labor movement – and it’s usually illegal. On Friday, it won them a settlement the union hails as a triumph.
“We’ve made this company what it is,” said Mobile, Alabama striker Michael McLean Wednesday. “And then you have these people who come in and basically just poop on us. No respect for us.” But after taking workers for granted, said McLean, “they’re seeing it now: There’s garbage still all on the ground.” Striking Alabama workers – all male, majority African-American — wore signs that read “I Am a Man,” echoing the sanitation workers strike that Martin Luther King was assassinated while supporting. So do their children.
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