What operation? Coronary bypass? That was after he left office. But what's your point?
About Joe Biden
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Of course.
That's what being one of the privileged Haves gets you: 'Government insurance' that covers care and rehabilitation and holds your job (and pays you as if you've been there, on the job) until you're ready to return or have decided not to. And continues to accommodate you at your diminished pace and capacity.
Nice work if you can get it.
About Joe Biden
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
How is it we claim to be the freest nation in the world, yet our government censors what we can hear/read/see and where we can and can't travel (Cuba)?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
To your Republican friends,
Did you not catch Waco, and Ruby Ridge? Or the war in Iraq? Did their guns protect them from SCUDs?
Guns are no protection against the tyranny of the government once it's turned against you.
About Video
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
And what do you think happens to Constitutional rights and protections from cruel and unusual treatment when private corporations own what is the government's responsibility? If you believe that your rights to quality nutrition or medical care or protection from other inmates are protected no matter who owns the prison, you're deluding yourself.
In exchange for keeping at least a 90 percent occupancy rate, the private prison company Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has sent a letter to 48 states offering to manage their prisons for the low price of $250 million per year, according to a letter obtained by the Huffington Post
The company says it’s a way for states to help manage their current budget crisis. “We believe this comes at a timely and helpful juncture and hope you will share our belief in the benefits of the purchase-and-manage model,” CCA chief corrections officer Harley Lappin said in the letter.
But reports indicate that private prisons do not actually save states money, since the average inmate costing more than in public prisons. Worse yet, for-profit prisons have been accused of heightened levels of violence toward prisoners and have limited incentives to reduce future crimes by current inmates, through education and training programs, counseling or drug and alcohol rehabilitation, according to a report from the American Civil Liberties Union.
Last year, the CCA became the first for-profit prison company to buy outright a state-owned prison, under the auspices of the Administration of Ohio Governor John Kasich (R).
Private Prisons Spend $45 Million On Lobbying, Rake In $5.1 Billion For Immigrant Detention Alone.
Private prison industry helped draft Arizona immigration law. A private corrections company helped write and lobbied hard for a draconian bill that'll help fill their cells
Correction Corp of America's Contributions to Federal Candidates in 2010, in 2012.
In actuality, the prison industrial complex goes beyond merely housing - Lobbyists work both sides of the street, seeking expansion of criminal laws to increase the prison population. Here's just one way they go about it - Private Prisons: Immigration Convictions In Record Numbers Fueling Corporate Profits. Then there are the drug wars. And debtors' prisons are making a comeback (what do you think happens when you make personal bankruptcy impossible while leaving banks to make bad loans which they then go to the government for bailing out?).
Private Prison Corporations on a Shopping Spree - Private Prison Corporations Are Modern Day Slave Traders - The nation’s largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America, is on a buying spree.
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
"It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy," Shakyra Diaz, policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, tells HuffPo. "In order to have it at 90 percent, you need to be able to make criminals to fill it at 90 percent." Diaz can relate better than most — Ohio sold off a prison to the CCA last year after learning that they stood to save $3 million each year through the transaction. Other Buckeye State institutions have since followed suit, and one prison put itself on the market last year only for the CCA to swoop it up for $72.7 million.KEEP READING
Of course, that doesn’t mean that the 48 states the CCA is appealing to right now have immigration laws that will ensure that the prisons will stay packed. That’s where the Corrections Corp. notes an eligibility factor for facilities that might be interested in selling. In order to be considered for purchase, the prisons approached by the CCA must be able to house no fewer than 1,000 inmates, while also guaranteeing that the facility will stay at a minimum of 90 percent of capacity during the length of their contract.
It’s the privatization of America’s prison system and with it comes an almost guaranteed promise of putting more citizens behind bars. As states fall on hard times, an offer of millions might seem like an easy sell to many, as evident by the list of facilities that have already followed through with the decision. In the end though, the payoff that goes to a billion-dollar private business comes at a cost to civil liberties of the rest of America, as citizens become less of a voice of the state and more a profitable hot commodity.
I'm not implying it - I'm stating it flat out. Jailing Americans becomes a profitable business:
The privatization of America’s prison system is well on its way to complete.
Corrections Corporation of America, the largest operator of for-profit prisons in the US, is appealing to 48 states across the country with an offer to buy out their detention facilities.
The Huffington Post has obtained a letter sent out by Corrections Corporation of America Chief Corrections Officer Harley G. Lappin, in which he explains to state officials across the country the benefits of being bought out. According to Lappin, the CCA has earmarked $250 million for purchasing and managing government-owned corrections facilities, and describes the effort as an “opportunity for federal, state or local government that are considering the benefits of partnership corrections.”
Founded in the early 1980s, the CCA currently manages over 60 correctional facilities across the US. With profits skyrocketing for the private company in recent years — while states are continuously stuck the red — they are insisting to these governments that selling off their cells would be beneficial to both.
The CCA says that by selling off prisons, state governments can remediate the “challenging corrections budgets.”While it could come as a saving grace for taxpayers, it also conjured up questions over the motives of a for-profit corporation that makes bank off of putting men and women behind bars.
While seeing their revenues increase quintuple over the last 20 years, the CCA has used those profits for more than just maintaining prisons. For one thing, they’ve forked over a fair share on lobbying Congress. While netting $133 million in income between 2006 and 2008, the CCA spent nearly $3 million lobbying; during that decade, the number of dollars spent in Washington amounted to around $17.6 million.
And what were they asking for? Stricter laws that will see to it that their prison cells are more easily stocked.
Corrections Corporation of America officers have been linked to the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which has in turn lobbied for increased sentencing for inmates convicted of non-violent crimes across the country and helped pass the controversial immigration law in Arizona. Corrections Corp. themselves have lobbied for Arizona's Senate Bill 1070, and the reasoning is simple: an more stringent immigrant laws means more arrests and, thus, more jam-packed for-profit prisons.
In 2009 reports obtained by National Public Radio, the CCA wrote that they expected “a significant portion of our revenues" from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. According to BloombergBusinessWeek, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement pays around $90 every day for each detainee that their work helps land behind bars.
I often try to figure out ways to convince people that private prisons are not in the best interest of anyone but executives of private prison companies. There are plenty of others out there like myself, trying to work with elected officials and concerned citizens to convince our legislators that continually giving billions of dollars to an industry whose very survival depends on locking up an ever-increasing segment of our population is morally reprehensible, and bad business to boot. But unfortunately, much of that activism seems for naught, as the anti-privatization movement's resources and political relationships pale in comparison to the influence built up by the privateers.
Take for example BroderickJohnson, lobbyist extraordinaire who was paid more than $1 million to lobby to get TARP passed on behalf of the major financial institutions that destroyed our economy. He's also worked for such socially conscious organizations as TalxCorp (which helps employers challenge unemployment claims), Comcast, and the GEO Group. Johnson also happens to be a senior adviser to Obama, whose immigration policies have been, if not an expansion, at least the continuation of the compassionate and sensible policies of his esteemed predecessor.
So Obama's got a former GEO Group lobbyist working as a senior adviser. He also appointed a former employee of the GEO Group and CCA, Stacia Hylton, as director of the US Marshal's Service, a federal agency in control of millions of dollars worth of private prison contracts. So it should come as no surprise that the GEO Group was awarded a contract in excess of $235 million to house immigration detainees, despite decades of evidence proving the company can't operate a prison efficiently and that it seems incapable of treating its wards with basic human decency.
They have, we all have. They're called "entitlements" because we've paid for them.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
This was a sell-out by Obama way before the election. This was planned and plotted, (lame) ducks lined up in a row for passage before any new Congress got into office.
Obama's 'most ardent supporters', along with Democratic politicians' supporters and Republican politicians' supporters, need to realize that none of these are good guys, working in the interest of the 99%. They're all out to feather their own personal nests (John Breaux and Trent Lott, fercrissakes), the people be d@mmed. They're corrupt to the bone, and that includes the occupant of the Oval Office.
I know that's hard for Obama's supporters to accept, as his general persona is charming and likable. But are his followers really that naive to believe that charm and corruption are mutually exclusive?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
One lobbyist said he didn't worry too much about the Baucus bill because "we knew the House wasn't going to pass it." But another lobbyist, who had worked on the PuertoRico issues, said he saw Baucus' bill as an important starting point that "set the parameters" of a future fight with HouseRepublicans.
But there never was a fight. Baucus' bill sat ignored until last week, when the WhiteHouse sat down with Senate Republicans to craft a deal averting the fiscal cliff.
A RepublicanSenate aide familiar with the cliff negotiations tells me the WhiteHouse wanted permanent extensions of a whole slew of corporate tax credits. When SenateRepublicans said no, "the WhiteHouse insisted that the exact language" of the Baucus bill be included in the fiscal cliff deal. "They were absolutely insistent," another aide tells me.
Sure enough, Title II of the fiscal cliff legislation is nearly a word-for-word replication of the Family and Business TaxCutCertaintyAct of 2012.
So, this wasn't a case of lobbyists sneaking provisions into a huge package at the last minute. That probably wouldn't have been possible, many lobbyists told me Wednesday, because the workload in the past two weeks was too large and the political stakes were too high.
One lobbyist who worked on the bill over the summer said he would never ask a member " 'Hey, can you do this for a client,' when their political lives are on the line."
"The legislators and the staff go underground when things get so intense," another Hill staffer-turned-lobbyist told me. "Nobody has time for a meeting. Nobody wants to talk about what's going on. ... The key is to plant the seed months in advance."
GE, GoldmanSachs, Diageo -- they planted their seeds over the summer. They'll enjoy the fruit in the new year.
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