Amnesty Prison Report Slams California Prisons' Solitary Confinement Policy

It's not just in California - It's happening everywhere.  

New York Prisoner Gets Five Years in Solitary for Cell Phone Smuggled in by Guard 

Long stretches in solitary confinement is an everyday punishment in New York State prisons. Currently, about 4,500 inmates are serving time in some form of 23-hour-a-day lockdown, with sentences ranging from months to decades. As we wrote in an earlier article, New York leads the nation in the use of "disciplinary segregation," and isolation "is very much a punishment of first resort, doled out for minor rule violations as well as major offenses. In New York, the most common reason for a stint in solitary is creating a 'disturbance' or 'demonstration.'...Second is 'dirty urine'—testing positive for drugs of any kind...Other infractions include refusing to obey orders, 'interfering with employees,' being 'out of place' and possession of contraband—not only a shiv but a joint, a cellphone or too many postage stamps.

This is what happens when liberals don't run government.  

Uninformed citizens may feel safer, may believe that if someone is in prison they deserve to be tortured, but the truth is that most inmates are in prison for non-violent offenses (most drug or drug-related), and will come out of prison eventually.  And when they come out, are they ever educated in the ways of violence, hate and abuse (more men are raped, in and out of prison, than women everywhere).  
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Private Prisons: Immigration Convictions In Record Numbers Fueling Corporate Profits

I think we're both coming from the same place, but where we part company is who's to blame -- And it is necessary to determine that (look back) in order to fix it (move forward).  

What Romney and other capitalists did and do isn't against the law.  As a matter of fact, what's against the law is when corporations' officers fail to work in the best interests of profits for their shareholders.  To try to fix the problem by appealing to a sense of honor (or shame) is futile.  It's got to be regulated and the regulations must be stringently enforced.  And for that, we have to look at the White House and Congress.  

Before Congress/White House were handing out incentives to corporations for offshoring Americans' jobs, they were making it possible for inmates at penitentiaries to take Americans' jobs for, literally, slave wages.  

We have several decades of politicians working on behalf of corporations and not the American people.  And whenever a Democrat gets into the White House, he hasn't worked to repeal what had been done before him, but has instead build upon his predecessors' assaults on the middle class.  

Where Republicans are straightforward about what they want and who they are (they have no shame), Democrats run on knowing better, but then do what Republicans do but spin it with prettier language.  And a poorly informed electorate, low information voters, believe it.
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Obama Campaign's New Ad Attacks Romney's 47 Percent Idea 'In His Own Words'

More documents were classified and fewer were declassifi­ed in FY 2009 than in FY 2008.



Obama's administra­tion is less transparen­t than Bush's.



http://www­.firstamen­dmentcente­r.org/news­.aspx?id=2­2720



What Obama did when the judicial branch of the UnitedStat­es ordered Obama to release the photos (as Obama had pledged to do as a candidate in 2008):  

Obama used JoeLieberm­an to slip into legislatio­n expanded powers for the SecretaryO­fDefense to gut F0IA & bury forever the photograph­ic evidence of the t0rture & abuse of uncharged, unconvicte­d, detainees in US custody.
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Obama Campaign's New Ad Attacks Romney's 47 Percent Idea 'In His Own Words'

Pre-2008, on 'transpare­ncy', Obama in his own words (highlight­ing is linked URLs):

"We need a president who sees the government not as a tool to enrich well connected friends and high-price­d lobbyists, but as a defender of fairness and opportunit­y for every single American. That's what this country's been about and that's the kind of president I intend to be"


"Transpare­ncy Will Be Touchstone­"


"On transparen­cy", "About inviting the people back into their government again", & "Part of the job of the next American president is making Americans believe that our government is working for them, because right now they don't feel like it's working for them. They feel like it's working for special interests and it's working for corporatio­ns"


"Meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public, no more secrecy...­..No more secrecy...­.."


"Clintons did health care the wrong way, behind closed doors" [and then Obama secretly negotiated with Big Insurance & PhRma, telling Americans that that was Congress's job, he was staying out of it, but promising that he'd veto any legislation that didn't include "a robust public option"]: 

http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=CU0m6Rxm9­vU 

http://www­.youtube.c­om/watch?v­=YBtIKgGHY­PQ


"The American people are the answer"



Obama's Transparen­cy Problem


KEEP READING
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Obama Campaign's New Ad Attacks Romney's 47 Percent Idea 'In His Own Words'

The struggle over the Trans-Pacific Partnership reveals a disturbing trend in American politics. The much discussed Citizens United ruling granting corporations personhood has given way to a trade negotiation process in which corporations are granted more rights than American citizens, their elected representatives, or foreign governments impacted by the deal. That trade negotiations with such an immense potential impact on numerous sectors of the American economy have been conducted in secret is troubling enough. To consider that those negotiating the treaty have willfully ignored experts and elected representatives in favor of corporate interests calls into question the sustainability of American democracy.

Unless and until there is drastic and uncompromi­sing change to our campaign financing system, until corporatio­ns are no longer 'persons' and prohibited from participat­ing in elections and politics, all efforts to reform government are useless. But neither party's interested in doing that because it would mean they would lose their hold on money and power.

Any party that doesn't have that as their first order of business (particula­rly after the Citizens United decision and the overwhelmi­ng public support for reform) is d!rty, r0tten and corrupt to the bone.

I'm an old, lifelong Democrat saying that.  I've never voted Republican and never will­, and I may never vote for another Democrat again.  But I think it may be too late for that, for this "noble experiment­" (continuin­g the US as we've known it and as it was intended (a democratic republic) by the framers.
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Obama Campaign's New Ad Attacks Romney's 47 Percent Idea 'In His Own Words'

While Congress, the press, and the public have had to make do with leaked chapters of negotiations, Just Foreign Policy reports that 600 corporate lobbyists were granted access to the negotiated text. American democracy is in a sorry state when corporations are granted more access to even the text of sweeping government agreements than the public and its elected officials. Although corporate influence on U.S. trade policy is hardly a new phenomenon, the simultaneous waning of congressional oversight is all the more unsettling.

In May, Democratic Reps. Barney Frank and Sander Levin wrote to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to express their concern about the TPP's provisions entrenching capital mobility. Their letter requested "an official written statement of the U.S. policy" concerning the ability of parties to the agreement to deploy capital controls in the face of a financial crisis. If the leaked drafts accurately reflect the direction of the negotiations, countries that instituted capital controls could be taken to court by private corporations and could be held liable for damages. Hundreds of economists signed letters in January and February 2011 opposing these provisions, yet the investment chapter leaked in June suggests that neither their concerns nor Frank's and Levin's were taken into consideration.

Other troubling trends have emerged in the leaked chapters. According to Citizen.org, the negotiations thus far have given corporations the right to avoid government review when acquiring land, natural resources, or factories. They have also banned corporate performance requirements, guaranteed compensation for the loss of ""expected future profits' from health, labor, [or] environmental" regulations, and included stunning provisions concerning the right to "move capital without limits." If these are indeed terms of the TPP, then the agreement would make it nearly impossible for countries to hold corporations accountable for their conduct--and would in fact hold governments liable for any "damage" incurred by corporations due to the institution of regulations. 

Many progressives had hoped that President Barack Obama would shift U.S. trade policy away from staunch free-marketeering. But according to Lori Wallach, the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, the leaked chapters of the TPP "sent shock waves through Congress because it showed that U.S. negotiators had totally abandoned Obama's campaign pledges to replace the old NAFTA trade model and in fact were doubling down and expanding the very Bush-style deal that Obama campaigned against in 2008 to win key swing states."

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Obama Campaign's New Ad Attacks Romney's 47 Percent Idea 'In His Own Words'

According to 2008 data from the Cornell Survey Research Institute reported Monday in a Times opinion piece, that 96 percent of Americans have taken part in government benefit programs in one form or another.

Listed below are 21 programs referenced by the researchers. Numbers 1 through 13 are “direct,” meaning that the aid comes directly from the government; the remainder are considered “submerged,” in that they come indirectly, through government tax policies. (For instance, the money you put in your workplace 401(k) plan grows tax-deferred).

1) Head Start

2) Social Security Disability

3) Social Security Retirement and Survivors Benefits

4) Supplemental Security Income (SSI)

5) Medicaid

6) Medicare

7) Welfare (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or T.A.N.F.)

8) G.I. Bill

9) Veterans’ benefits

10) Pell Grants

11) Unemployment Insurance

12) Food Stamps

13) Government Subsidized Housing

14) Home Mortgage Interest Deduction

15) Hope and Lifetime Learning Tax Credits

16) Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit

17) 529 accounts (qualified tuition programs) or Coverdell education savings account (Education I.R.A.’s)

18) Earned-income tax credit

19) Employer subsidized health insurance

20) Employer subsidized retirement benefits
[Numbers 19 and 20 are even more submerged than the other policies in that group, because unlike with the others, people take no actual steps to claim the government benefit. As long as one is acquiring those employer-provided benefits, one simply gets the tax benefit — if the employer put the same money in people’s paychecks, they would have to owe taxes on it.]

21) Federal student loans

How many of these have you received or relied on? Are you poor, working class, middle class, upper middle class, or part of the 1 percent?
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Obama Campaign's New Ad Attacks Romney's 47 Percent Idea 'In His Own Words'

Obama and the Investor Class:

It would be a relief to report with any certainty that the negotiations over the TransPacific Partnership (TPP)--a massive proposed free-trade zone spanning the Pacific Ocean and all four hemispheres--are definitely empowering corporations to the detriment of workers, the environment, and sovereignty throughout the region. Unfortunately, the secretive and opaque character of the negotiations has made it difficult to report much of anything about them. 

What can be confidently reported about the TPP is that, in terms of trade flows, it would be the largest free-trade agreement yet entered into by the United States--and, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, that the ministers negotiating the agreement "have expressed an intent to comprehensively reduce barriers in goods, services, and agricultural trade as well as rules and disciplines on a wide range of topics" to unprecedented levels. Yet despite these grandiose ambitions, details of the negotiations and drafts of the text have been purposefully withheld from Congress and American citizens.

The secrecy surrounding the negotiations is breathtaking. In July, 134 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk requesting that the appropriate congressional committees be consulted and that a draft of the text be released. The members reminded Kirk that draft texts were circulated and congressional committees consulted throughout the NAFTA negotiations in the early 1990s. Their letter received no response. A month later, House members petitioned Kirk to allow a congressional delegation to observe the negotiations--as in the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the launch of the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization, and numerous NAFTA rounds. Despite its persistence, Congress has not been granted any significant oversight or insight regarding the negotiations.   

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Private Prisons: Immigration Convictions In Record Numbers Fueling Corporate Profits

While it may seem that way, the truth is that both Democrats and Republicans do it equally well.  

Republicans are just more direct and upfront about it.  Republicans make no bones about it, that they believe in it and want to do more of it.  

Democrats run on knowing better, make promises "to reform it", but we come to learn that "reform" doesn't mean the same thing to us as it does to professional Democrat politicians.  "Reform" (to politicians), in general, means make it work 'better' (whatever that means; usually it's to keep doing whatever it is, but add another component, another layer, where more people (Democratic contributors and supporters) can also profit.
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Private Prisons: Immigration Convictions In Record Numbers Fueling Corporate Profits

Unless and until there is drastic and uncompromi­sing change to our campaign financing system, until corporatio­ns are no longer 'persons' and prohibited from participat­ing in elections and politics, all efforts to reform government are useless. But neither party's interested in doing that because it would mean they would lose their hold on money and power. 

Any party that doesn't have that as their first order of business (particula­rly after the Citizens United decision and the overwhelmi­ng public support for reform) is d!rty, r0tten and corrupt to the bone.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

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Private Prisons: Immigration Convictions In Record Numbers Fueling Corporate Profits

Privatization.  Transferring government services to the private sector.  Taxpayers still pay, but pay more.  And for worse performance.  

Both parties are in on it.
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Private Prisons: Immigration Convictions In Record Numbers Fueling Corporate Profits

For three years in a row, more people have been convicted of immigration offenses than of any other type of federal crime, according to the United States Sentencing Commission. Illegal re-entry into the United States was the most commonly filed federal charge last year, marking a dramatic shift in the makeup of the U.S. criminal justice system, which has been dominated by drug crimes in recent decades.

How does Romney figure into this?

It began under Bush and it has expanded exponentially under Obama.
About Prisons
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Election May Decide When Interrogation Amounts To Torture

Romney's advisors have determined that Romney needs to attract the 'sadist'-voters.

Priceless.
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