Category Archives: History

Georgia following Florida down the private prison path

Florida is already forging down the path Georgia wants to follow on private prisons. Steve Bousquet writes in the Miami Herald:
The Florida Legislature’s push to privatize many more prisons, its most far-reaching cost-cutting plan in years, could open a lucrative door to politically connected vendors who stand to profit.

Senate and House budgets require the state to privatize prisons in South Florida, home to one-fifth of the statewide inmate population of 101,000. The region is the home of the GEO Group, the nation’s second-largest private prison operator, which currently runs two private prisons, including the largest private lockup, the Blackwater River Correctional Facility in Milton.

Why is this path so popular with the Florida legislature? Continue reading →

Former Mexican president Vicente Fox urges drug legalization

Sandra Dibble writes in signonsandiego 6 April 2011 that Former Mexican president urges drug legalization

Photo by Omar Martinez — Frontera
Legalization of drugs in Mexico would not only lead to lowered violence and drug consumption but also boost its economy, former Mexican President Vicente Fox said Wednesday during a speech to a convention of newspaper editors from the United States and Latin America.

“Things are going very badly for Mexico with the issues of organized crime and violence,” Fox said in Spanish. “We’re losing large volumes of tourists, if not in the interior, then at the border. We’re losing a great number of investments.”

And if there were more jobs in Mexico, from tourism and investments, there would be fewer Mexicans trying to sneak into the U.S. for jobs.

Will legalization cause more drug use? No:

On Wednesday, Fox cited the example of Portugal, where he said drugs use has fallen by 25 percent a decade after they were legalized there.

That would be better than locking up more people for private profit while not decreasing drug use, and that’s what we’re doing now.

-jsq

Jails Reap Millions Off U.S. Illegal Alien Crackdown

Betty Liu reports for Bloomberg that Jails Reap Millions Off U.S. Illegal Alien Crackdown:
The big winner in the crackdown on the illegal immiggration has been the private prison industry. As Bloomberg Business Week reports in its latest issue, companies such as Corrections Corporation of America are making millions. In fact, CCA makes more money from detaining immigrants than it does from any single U.S. state.
She goes on to mention CCA’s stock price has gone up by a factor of ten since 9/11.


Bloomberg’s Betty Liu reports, 18 March 2011. (Source: Bloomberg)

The source of the money CCA and its investors and executives are making? Our tax dollars!

With all the additional jail time, misdemeanors, and felonies in new state laws such as Arizona’s, states could catch up with the feds in paying CCA through the nose!

-jsq

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy.” –Thomas Alva Edison

Sometimes he was a prophet:
“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

— Thomas Alva Edison talking to Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone in 1931

Source: as quoted in Uncommon Friends : Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James Newton, p. 31

-jsq

“consider ending drug prohibition” “stop the hypocrisy.” –Frank Serpico

One of our readers doesn’t believe Frank Serpico is for legalization of drugs, despite what filmmaker Connie Littlefield and LEAP say. Fair enough: that’s circumstantial evidence. Let’s see what Serpico himself says.

Frank Serpico in his blog, 27 March 2007:

DAMAGE DONE
THE DRUG WAR ODYSSEY
THE FILM
THE COPS
THE FILM MAKERS

After 30 years of drug war, illegal narcotics are decreasing in price, increasing in purity and demand continues to surge. The heroes of this film are veterans of the drug war and they urge us to consider ending drug prohibition. They have had a complete revolution in their thinking. Now they are working to end the War on Drugs. Find out what happened to change their minds.

http://www.drugwarodyssey.com/

Serpico quoted in the website for the film he recommends:

“I think Prohibition is causing the public to lose their respect because they’re enforcing laws that basically aren’t hurting anybody. I think we have to stop the hypocrisy.”
That website’s summary of the film: Continue reading →

“More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began” –Michelle Alexander

Dick Price writes that More Black Men Now in Prison System than Were Enslaved,
“More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” Michelle Alexander told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday, the first of many jarring points she made in a riveting presentation.
She’s written a best-selling book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, and she discusses the problem: Continue reading →

Why school consolidation is useless: bright flight

What local county grew twice as fast as any of the others? If you guessed Lowndes, nope, no prize for you. The answer, according to the 2000 census, is Lanier County:

What school consolidation would get us is more of that. Not white flight, rather bright flight, to Lanier and other counties. Many of the leaders of the local African-American community already don’t live in Valdosta; they live in Lowndes County or even Berrien County. More of both black and white people will move out of a county with a consolidated school district, resulting in lower educational results not just for Valdosta but also for Lowndes schools. Is that what we want?

How about all the people who claim they know how to take our schools to “the next level” get on with doing that right now with the two existing school systems?

-jsq

South Georgia already in drought: parameters for industry?

Droughts and floods: maybe we need to manage water better, including managing industrial use of water.

According to the AP, Ga. foresters brace for busy wildfire season:

A cold, wet winter has left northern parts of the state in decent shape, but in southern Georgia river flows and soil moisture are both at some of the lowest points that would be expected in a century, said David Stooksbury, Georgia’s state climatologist at the University of Georgia.
The nearterm effects:
“We have a good fuel load with plenty of dry vegetation, the soil is dry and there’s a low relative humidity and there’s wind,” Stooksbury said. “That is the simple recipe for a trash fire to get out of control very quickly and become a wildfire.”
Yes, Sunday Georgia Forestry cut off burn permits in Lowndes County because some fires had gotten out of control.

The long term problem? Continue reading →

Adage and Gretna’s mayor

That previous plant in Florida was the one in Gretna, Gadsden County, Florida, cancelled last year, according to John Downey in the Charlotte Business Journal, 16 October 2010. In the Gretna case, the mayor of Gretna posted a press release 16 March 2010 saying:
Mayor Anthony Baker of the City of Gretna announced today that in light of Adage, LLC’s decision to suspend activity on its proposed Bioenergy facility slated for construction in Gretna (as well as suspension of its application for an air permit through the Florida Department of Environmental Protection) that the City now considers this matter closed and will take no further action on Adage’s request to locate this facility in Gretna. Inasmuch as the Bioenergy Plant could neither legally operate nor be sited in Gretna without an air permit, the City concluded that this was no longer a viable project and Adage’s decision to suspend activity on its air permit indicated that further consideration of the project by the City was unwarranted. Since there were no issues pending before the City of Gretna requiring action by its Commission relative to the Plant, the Mayor deemed termination of the project as final disposition of this matter as far as the City is concerned.
This is despite promises of jobs, jobs, jobs: Continue reading →

“Parameters on the types of industry” –VDT Editorial

And what about all that land?

In addition to a news story about Brad Lofton moving on up to Myrtle Beach, the Valdosta Daily Times also had an editorial yesterday (14 March), Lofton’s leaving a void in which they make some good points, including:

While the search is on for a new director, now is the time for the city, county and industrial authority board to come together to make some decisions about the organization and what the community leadership needs and wants it to be.
Here are a few modest suggestions along those lines, including considerations such as water.

More from the VDT: Continue reading →