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The Center for Media and Democracy's (CMD) series of profiles on "America's Highest Paid Government Workers" today puts the spotlight on George Zoley, Chief Executive Officer of GEO Group, one of America's largest for-profit prison firms providing services to states and the federal government.
The Center for Media and Democracy's (CMD) series of profiles on "America's Highest Paid Government Workers" today puts the spotlight on George Zoley, Chief Executive Officer of GEO Group, one of America's largest for-profit prison firms providing services to states and the federal government.
Geo Group's revenue in 2012 exceeded $1.4 billion and CMD estimates that 86% of this money came out of the pockets of taxpayers. CMD's investigation of Geo Group unearthed how the company's cost-cutting strategies lead to a vicious cycle where lower wages and benefits for workers, high employee turnover, insufficient training, and under-staffing results in poor oversight and mistreatment of detained persons, increased violence, and riots.
But according to SEC filings, top officials at the firm are doing just fine. From 2008-2012 George C. Zoley raked in $22 million in compensation. Thank you taxpayers!
Since its founding nearly 30 years ago, GEO Group has profited from federal and state policies that have led to a dramatic rise in incarceration and detention in the United States -- an increase of more than 500 percent over the past three decades. In recent years, with crime rates dropping and sentencing reform spreading, GEO Group has found a new way to keep its profits high: many of its contracts contain bed guarantees or "lock up quotas" that require that a state keep prisons full, and put taxpayers on the hook for empty beds.
For many years GEO Group participated in the task force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that pushed bills that lengthened time in prison, such as so-called "truth-in-sentencing" and "three strikes" legislation, as models for states to adopt across the nation. Today, locking up non-violent illegal immigrants is a new profit center for the firm.
"America's highest paid workers aren't your hardworking teachers, firefighters or corrections officers, they are CEOs who take over public services and divert millions of tax dollars out of our local communities and into their pockets," said Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy.
Over the next few weeks, CMD will continue to profile some of the other CEOs who are living large off the taxpayer dime. The effort is part of our ongoing project, OutsourcingAmericaExposed.org, which focuses on the 12 firms doing the most to privatize public services.
Learn more about violence and abuse at GEO Group prisons at our GEO Group profile.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is a non-profit investigative reporting group. Our reporting and analysis focus on exposing corporate spin and government propaganda. We publish PRWatch, SourceWatch, and BanksterUSA. Our newest major investigation is available at ALECexposed.org. We accept no funding from for-profit corporations or the government. If you would like to make a financial contribution to support our work, please click here.
One critic said the right-wing Democrat intends "to inhibit climate action and undermine agencies charged with protecting public health and safety—all in the interest of propping up his fossil fuel funders."
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and right-wing Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on Thursday introduced legislation that would prevent a federal agency from banning gas stoves.
Cruz and Manchin's bill to preempt the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) from banning gas stoves—titled the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act and described by progressive advocacy group Food & Water Watch as "absurd"—comes even though the agency says it has no plans to implement such a prohibition.
Climate and public health advocates celebrated last month after CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. told Bloomberg News that gas stoves are "a hidden hazard" and suggested that new ones should be banned.
However, as Reutersreported Thursday, Trumka "walked back those comments after conservatives and energy industry groups seized on them as a way to criticize the Biden administration for allegedly overreaching with its climate and environmental policy agenda."
Food & Water Watch observed that while "there is currently no plan" to ban gas stoves, "there is substantial research documenting the hazards associated with the air pollution" the methane-powered appliances create.
A widely shared recent study found that 12.7% of childhood asthma cases in the U.S. can be tied to indoor air pollution caused by gas stoves. The findings bolstered calls from environmental justice advocates and public health experts to prohibit the sale of new gas stoves and expedite the switch to cleaner and safer electric ones, but the CPSC has yet to propose regulatory action.
"Manchin is doing his part to fuel the ridiculous right-wing panic over a nonexistent war on gas stoves," Food & Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh said Thursday. "But his intent behind this legislation is serious: to inhibit climate action and undermine agencies charged with protecting public health and safety—all in the interest of propping up his fossil fuel funders."
"As state and local governments are increasingly looking to turn away from gas in new construction—moves that will improve air quality and public health, and reduce climate pollution—Sen. Manchin continues looking backward," said Walsh.
\u201ctwo of Congress's biggest beneficiaries of fossil fuel $ are here to defend gas stoves from a non-existent ban\n\nfabulous stuff\n\noil/gas contributions over career: \nCruz: $4,242,269\nManchin: $1,261,766 (incl. $757,059 in 2022 cycle)\u201d— Chris D'Angelo (@Chris D'Angelo) 1675358153
Manchin is the top congressional recipient of cash from the fossil fuel industry, which has fought aggressively against increasingly popular campaigns to outlaw gas stoves at the state and local levels.
However, the coal baron who leads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is far from alone in his defense of planet-heating and illness-inducing gas stoves.
As The Washington Postreported Thursday, Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future—a nonprofit group founded by a half-dozen gas companies—"has enlisted prominent Democratic politicians and pollsters to help enhance gas' reputation among liberal voters."
Former Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) are among those going to bat for the fracking and gas utility industries.
"Natural Allies is backed by TC Energy, the Canadianpipeline giant behind the controversial Keystone XL project, and Southern Company, one of the biggest U.S. utilities," the Post reported. "Launched shortly before the 2020 election, the group is led by Susan Waller, a former executive at the pipeline firm Enbridge."
"In order to be equipped for a warmer world, we have to anticipate changes, get the affected parties on board, and take advantage of local knowledge," said one researcher.
Scientists at the University of Hamburg in Germany argued Wednesday that meeting the 2015 Paris climate agreement's goal of limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C is "currently not plausible"—but warned that despairing over climate "tipping points" risks taking attention away from "the best hope for shaping a positive climate future... the ability of society to make fundamental changes."
The Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook assessed the planetary impacts of several "physical processes that are frequently discussed as tipping points." These include the melting of sea ice in the Arctic and glaciers at the North and South Poles; the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the system of ocean currents that carries warm water upward into the North Atlantic; and "dieback" in the Amazon rainforest, in which rising temperatures would dry out trees and eventually change the forest landscape into a savanna, releasing billions of tons of stored carbon.
Those scenarios "are serious developments," said researchers at the university, but the melting of ice "will have very little influence on the global temperature until 2050." The weakening of AMOC and Amazon dieback will have a "moderately" greater influence on global temperatures.
"Human agency has a large potential to shape the way climate futures will evolve."
"By extrapolating current trends," reads the study, "permafrost thaw and Amazon Forest dieback are expected to release somewhat more than one year's worth of today's anthropogenic CO2 emissions between now and 2050. Thus, the contributions of these two processes to the remaining carbon budget are small. Since both will only moderately affect the global surface temperature, we deduce that they also only moderately inhibit the plausibility of attaining the Paris agreement temperature goals."
Such tipping points "could drastically change the conditions for life on Earth," but for experts, progressive politicians, and campaigners who share the goal of limiting planetary warming to 1.5°C—or as close to that as possible—"they're largely irrelevant," said Jochem Marotzke, a study co-author and professor at the university's Cluster of Excellence "Climate, Climatic Change, and Society" (CLICCS).
In other words, The Hillexplained, "Keeping global warming below 1.5°C—the goal set in the Paris agreement—is implausible for social reasons, not technical ones."
The researchers also examined 10 "drivers of social change" including media, United Nations climate policies, transnational initiatives, climate regulations, climate litigation, knowledge production, consumption patterns, corporate responses, fossil fuel divestment, and climate and social movements like the global Fridays for Future movement and Extinction Rebellion.
\u201cTo analyze the scenario, we assess 10 social drivers and 6 physical processes using our integrated CLICCS Plausibility Assessment Framework.\u201d— CEN Uni Hamburg (@CEN Uni Hamburg) 1675248518
With fossil fuel companies continuing to make long-term investments in oil and gas extraction even as they announce pledges to reach net-zero carbon emissions, and rampant consumption of carbon-intensive goods showing no sign of slowing down, the study says, corporate responses and consumption patterns "continue to undermine the pathways to decarbonization, let alone deep decarbonization."
A number of social drivers including social movements, climate regulations, and fossil fuel divestment were found to currently "support decarbonization, but not deep decarbonization by 2050," which is needed to attain the 1.5°C goal.
"There are promising reforms underway, especially at the E.U. level," reads the report, adding that "general and ongoing public interest in and focus on climate policies" is an "enabling condition" that could help strengthen global movements and ramp up pressure on policymakers.
The researchers' assessment of the 10 social drivers demonstrates "that human agency has a large potential to shape the way climate futures will evolve," tweeted CLICCS. "However, human agency is strongly shaped by injustices and social inequalities, which inhibit social dynamics toward deep decarbonization by 2050."
The study identified how human actions can help shift the current trajectory "toward deep decarbonization," including:
"In order to be equipped for a warmer world, we have to anticipate changes, get the affected parties on board, and take advantage of local knowledge," said Anita Engels of the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability at University of Hamburg. "Instead of just reacting, we need to begin an active transformation here and now."
Intentionally sinking the vessel "would equate to a state-sponsored environmental crime," said one shipbreaking expert.
The former flagship of Brazil's navy—an ex-French aircraft carrier built in the late 1950s that environmentalists estimate contains hundreds of tons of highly carcinogenic chemicals—will be scuttled at sea after being denied permission to be scrapped in Turkey, Brazilian naval officials said on Wednesday.
The NAe São Paulo (A-12), an 870-foot Clemenceau-class carrier first commissioned by the French navy in 1963 as the Foch, will be sunk using explosives about 217 miles off Brazil's coast in the country's exclusive economic zone at a depth of around 16,000 feet, Brazilian Environmental Minister Marina Silva said after a federal judge denied a government request to stop the sinking on environmental grounds.
"Given its deteriorating floating condition and the inevitability of uncontrolled sinking, there is no other option but to jettison the hull and sink it in a planned way," Brazil's navy said of the ship in a statement, according to Reuters.
Silva, and many environmentalists, did not want to sink the vessel, which contains an unknown quantity of toxic substances. French authorities said they believed there were 45 tons of asbestos—a common fire retardant at the time of the carrier's construction—onboard, although experts said the figure is likely higher.
"We're talking about a ship containing both hazardous materials and valuable materials—it's supposed to be brought into the territory of Brazil and managed in an environmentally sound way."
Basel Action Network (BAN), a Seattle-based NGO that works to stop the export of toxic waste to developing nations, estimates the São Paulo contains around 300 tons of highly carcinogenic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
Under pressure from environmental groups including BAN, Turkish authorities last September rescinded permission for the São Paulo to be towed to Turkey for scrapping after Brazilian officials could not provide a satisfactory list of toxic substances aboard the carrier.
BAN executive director Jim Puckett said that abandoning the São Paulo at sea would be an act of "gross negligence," as well as a violation of three international environmental conventions.
"We're talking about a ship containing both hazardous materials and valuable materials—it's supposed to be brought into the territory of Brazil and managed in an environmentally sound way," Puckett toldTime. "You can't just sink it."
Nancy Wallace, director of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's marine debris program, concurred.
"Anytime there's a vessel that's left at sea, the first thing to think about is toxic chemicals, which can be very impactful to wildlife," Wallace said.
In a statement last month, Ingvild Jenssen, founder and executive director of NGO Shipbreaking Platform, asserted that "intentionally sinking this toxic aircraft carrier would equate to a state-sponsored environmental crime."
Brazil purchased the vessel from France for $12 million in 2000, and the São Paulo served as the Brazilian navy's flagship until it was decommissioned in 2018.
In a late twist, earlier this week a Saudi business group offered the equivalent of $6 million for the São Paulo's hull—three times the offer made by the Turkish shipyard that had tried to acquire the ship.
Puckett argued the vessel is simply too valuable to be scuttled.
"It's got millions of dollars worth of steel to be recycled, which far outweighs the cost of managing those hazardous materials," he contended. "I've never seen such a valuable ship being deliberately sunk."