there is no business like the prison business
edweg

Manufactured poverty in US cities by outsourcing the industrial base, coupled with the War on Drugs to circumvent civil liberties and constitutional law to fill the privately owned prisons with millions of people, and employing millions more to arrest, process, and guard them... While the prisoners earn 30 cents an hour working call centers or making products for Corporate America....
To paraphrase Smedley Butler... The Drug War is a Racket...
and it imprisons millions of people world wide....

Uh, let me refresh myself. . .
What's the refrain we're constantly fed?

Oh yes: AMERICA - THE GREATEST NATION ON EARTH!

When will America tire of the bullshit?

SYSTEM OF A DOWN-PRISON SONG
They're trying to build a prison,
They're trying to build a prison,

Following the rights movements
You clamped down with your iron fists,
Drugs became conveniently
Available for all the kids,
Following the rights movements
You clamped down with your iron fists,
Drugs became conveniently
Available for all the kids,

I buy my crack, my smack, my b*tch
right here in Hollywood.

Nearly 2 million Americans are incarcerated
In the prison system, prison system of the U.S.

They're trying to build a prison,
They're trying to build a prison,
They're trying to build a prison, (for you and me to live in)
Another prison system,
Another prison system,
Another prison system. (for you and me)

Minor drug offenders fill your prisons
You don't even flinch
All our taxes paying for your wars
Against the new non-rich,
Minor drug offenders fill your prisons
You don't even flinch
All our taxes paying for your wars
Against the new non-rich,

I buy my crack, my smack, my b*tch
right here in Hollywood.

The percentage of Americans in the prison system
prison system, has doubled since 1985,

They're trying to build a prison,
They're trying to build a prison,
They're trying to build a prison, (for you and me to live in)
Another prison system,
Another prison system,
Another prison system. (for you and me)

FOR YOU AND I! YOU AND I! YOU AND I!
You and I.

They're trying to build a prison,
They're trying to build a prison,
They're trying to build a prison,
For you and me,
Oh baby, you and me.

All research and successful drug policy show
That treatment should be increased,
And law enforcement decreased,
While abolishing mandatory minimum sentences,
All research and successful drug policy show
That treatment should be increased,
And law enforcement decreased,
While abolishing mandatory minimum sentences.

Utilizing drugs to pay for secret wars around the world,
Drugs are now your global policy,
Now you police the globe,

I buy my crack, my smack, my b*tch
right here in Hollywood.

Drug money is used to rig elections,
And train brutal corporate sponsored
Dictators around the world.

They're trying to build a prison

They're trying to build a prison,
They're trying to build a prison,
They're trying to build a prison, (for you and me to live in)
Another prison system,
Another prison system,
Another prison system. (for you and me)
FOR YOU AND I! YOU AND I! YOU AND I!
You and I.
They're trying to build a prison,
They're trying to build a prison,
They're trying to build a prison,
For you and me,
Oh baby, you and me.

Paul Siemering

this story came from the new york times. Which it is why there is no mention of the engine driving ever higher incarceration rates. It's called PRIVATIZATION also know as the PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. once prisons are privatized they enter the deadly real of capital profits. Like any other business, the private prisons must grow to sustain profitability. To do that they need an ever increasing supply of prisoners.
I would never suggest that our congresspeople or state legislators might have any particular connection with business of any kind, but nevertheless this is indeed the case. Mandatory sentencing is only one of many legislative initiatives designed to help the prison businessmen expand their lucrative enterprise.

"Privatizing prisons" is a concept which, like "mountain top removal" should cause any sane person to recognize the folly of such an idea without even thinking about it.

End privatizing!
stop the prison industrial complex!

The American Gulag, by, for and of American conservatives.

I guess this validates that Americans are baaaaaaaddddd people.

What else can you expect when theocracy meets corporatocracy meets conservatism?

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in their moccasins - Native American proverb.

Re-read Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut.
.
.
Who writes the laws that fill America's prisons anyway? CCA and Wackenhut? Exactly!
.
.
It's time to repeal corporate citizenship and the lies, lobbies and bribes that always go with it.

This is shameful. Other countries must be laughing at us.

Irony is on high alert. Jobless rates climb except in law enforcement and military recruitment.

Here's the Utah Correctional Industries website, proudly displaying prison (slave) labor.
http://www.cr.ex.state.ut.us/contentindustries/uci.asp

I have to say this..
When Common Dreams did a survey asking what the priorities of the new administration should be...I was very disappointed that over 80% answered universal healthcare.
I feel that we have to clean up our house before we should be thinking of ourselves.
There are too many people in this country that have committed non violent crimes (mostly soft drugs) that are in a very inhumane and repressive prison system.
George Bush Senior is on the board of directors of the largest private prison system in the U.S.
In my mind...this is what the war on drugs is all about.
Think about it.

Also
I want the monsters that were responsible for giving the orders to torture people in the American people's name to be tried before a World Court and at home.
Then I'll think about my own comforts and well being.

Indeterminate sentences like "7 years to life" also feeds the system. I'm corresponding with an inmate with that sentence who would have gotten out in 12 years had he accepted the plea bargain but he's now into his 18th year behind bars with no hope in sight for ever getting out.

4 suggestions....

- decriminalize victimless crimes.

maybe our prisons are burgeoning w/ people who shouldn't be there.

- provide decent legal services for the poor.

public offenders often work hand in hand w/ the prosecutors accepting pleas, how many people in the system cold have beat the system w/ a good attorney ? rich people rarely serve long sentences relative to their poor counterparts.

- provide more sentencing discretion to judges - nix the 3 strikes laws that mandate life imprisonment after the 3rd felony.

- restore voting rights to prisoners in jail and felons in the greater community.

after many serve their time they are marginalized from the political process by having their right to participate in the political process withheld. the folks w/ the greatest insight into the barbarous nature of our penitentiaries are prevented from changing that system through the electoral process. isn't this a little counter-intuitive?

on a positive note....

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/574/california_tax_regulate_marijuana_bill

Feature: California Assemblyman Introduces Landmark Bill to Legalize, Tax, and Regulate Marijuana

{California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) told a press conference in his home town Monday he had introduced a bill that would create a system of taxed and regulated legal marijuana sales and production. If the bill were to pass, California would become the first state in the nation to break so decisively with decades of pot prohibition.}

{It also comes at a time when support for marijuana legalization on the West Coast has gained majority status. In a Zogby International poll released last week, 58% of West Coast respondents said they favored taxing and regulating marijuana.}

- - -

please read the entire article, it's a positive start in the right direction. last week a person here in iowa was sentenced to 80 years in prison for growing about 100 marijuana plants (apparently he was 995 feet away from a daycare center). he'll spend the rest of his life in prison so a few morally righteous people can celebrate their bigotry - what a country... it's time for these draconian laws to end.

...peace...

Here is something interesting to think about: nowhere in the Sacred Scriptures does God command such an inhumane thing as locking people up in prison as a payment for their crimes. There are a select few crimes which call for the death penalty. A very few. Like 3 or 4 as I remember. The rest of any crimes are to be dealt with by means of restitution.

So if someone smokes a joint and hurts no one, who has been hurt so that they need restitution? If someone steals from me, then if they are caught, they have to pay me back with 20% interest. That's fair. Prison is not. Outside of prison, the thief has a chance for rehabilitation. His family can interact with him, he can get counseling, he can even have to work for me if I am a business owner and he can perhaps be brought to repentance by seeing that he stole from a basically good guy. Those opportunities do not exist in prison.

What exists in a prison term is no different than how the corporations are making money off the illegal war in Iraq -- a chance for a select group of corporate bigwigs to make a ton of money off our misery. Most people don't know that private corporations are involved in the prison scheme in this country.

Maybe it's time we tried doing this God's way instead of man's way. Much,much more humane!!

Time-Warner uses prisoners to take orders off their TV ads. Beware - I got threatened with death from one of their "salespeople" who had my phone number and address.

From the sound of this article, Martial Law and Imprisionment of the American people will come into effect, thanks to the bill (H.R. 645) being in consideration by Congress. Google "HR 645"(A.K.A: National Emergency Centers Establishment Act) and read of what the bill is about. I guarentee Common Dream readers that this article is the tip of the iceberg of this bill.

Can we "grow the economy" any other way?

Yes, restitution used to be the way of making good the crime until during the reign of one of England's Kings the law was changed to make crime a crime against the Crown.

Mignt be time to change back to restitution.

George Bush I is the most underrated sleaze monger alive right now.

When he was in office there was a tiny town with three enormous churches and a fourth of July celebration which every year out did any other town regardless of size.

They had a lot to prove. In the thirties signs posted all over the town read "nigger don't let the sun set on you in *****". They still have no black residents, and everybody in surrounding counties knows why.

George I "honored" this shabby practice by having himself choppered into the festivities one July fourth. I was ashamed then. Now I'm glad it happened. People have a way of judging themselves more harshly than anybody else ever could.

Under George II the whole country became infected. One in thirty one? That's over 3%. Three per cent of us are so much worse than the other 97% that it is necessary to put them in cages or follow them around? Not bloody likely.

This country has always looked for scapegoats. Lynchings, slavery, extreme poverty, blood lust,the theft of the land we are sitting on---these right wing religious wing nuts had better hope God does not come back to judge this society.

And you know what the conservatives will rebutt with?

Crime is down because the prison are keeping the bad guys off the streets.

Of course even if you accept their argument it is still only keeping petty crims off the streets. The big players, the investment bankers who have impoverished the nation et al, are walking free.

They will never let go of the drug war. Because, poeple get together and talk, think and find flaws in their logic.The pulpit wants to control all minds with the tripe they survive by. Heads turned the other way and you got stuff like green thinking, healthy eating, war bad, social responsibility and all the other cool stuff that the main stream is now pushing around as normal. But still WEED is the enemy. You know who I am. I am a member of the badest generation. The generation that the U. S. federal government declared war against. My friends have suffered, people I never met who are my friends have suffered, others will suffer. It will get worse before it gets better. I don't have enough space or the eloquence to describe the outrage that people should feel for this social/culture war. It is why America suffers today. America has decided not to evolve it has decided to be facist.

Mobilize. Now is the Time.

My state legalized weed and most importantly GROWING IT, years ago. Medical marijuana? Yes, but it legitimately helps so many things, from pain to anxiety to insomnia, that that is a huge door.

The key to our law is that it is the Dr's discretion that decides if you can benefit from it. EZ.

Gather signatures, get it on a ballot. BO will not kill it.

State laws can be changed. I grow. And if someone tries to rip my plants off the sheriff will arrest them.

The 'heck' with facism, cages and jailers. Let's grow our way out of the Archipelago.

Mobilize to Change State Laws. Joe.

(last year a cop looked in a garbage bag, 1/2 full of weed in my house, because he could smell it FROM OUTSIDE, he insisted on coming in, but he scoped the bag and said no sweat, he could tell I was 'legal'. We can possess two pounds of medicine no sweat.

benorml

Is there no Hope?

P.S. Why so little on CD on Sub Saharan Conflicts DNC, Nigeria, etc.?

I dunno, looking at that picture, it looks to me like they've managed to sequester a whole lot of ugly. Do we really want that back on the streets?

One of the two biggest favors we can do ourselves in America is to

legalize drugs ---

and to enact Single Payer Health Care ---

just end the age restrictions on Medicare.

"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"

And while no one was paying much attention...they managed to privatize war and prisons...

Now that these functions are officially profitable, they are here to stay,

Since 1 out of every 100 Americans is a lawyer, we need 1 out of every 31 in the rest of the population to be their clients or they'll go broke and end up on welfare or become politicians.

Signed: Lawlessone [for more irreverence, see resistence-is-possible.blogspot.com]