Yesterday, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released
a report
chronicling the political strategies of private prison companies
“working to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.”
The report’s authors note that while the total number of people in
prison increased less than 16 percent, the number of people held in
private federal and state facilities increased by 120 and 33 percent,
correspondingly. Government spending on corrections has soared since
1997 by 72 percent, up to $74 billion in 2007. And the private prison
industry has raked in tremendous profits. Last year the two largest
private prison companies — Corrections Corporation of America (CCA)
and GEO Group — made over $2.9 billion in revenue.
JPI claims the private industry hasn’t merely responded to the
nation’s incarceration woes, it has actively sought to create the
market conditions (ie. more prisoners) necessary to expand its business.
The capital city Pennsylvania is broke and will be skipping this month’s
multi-million dollar bond payment.
On Sept. 15, Harrisburg, Pa., was scheduled to make a $3.29 million
payment on the bonds it issued to build a trash plant. But, the
cash-strapped city doesn’t have the dough.
“The city’s budget is in deficit,” said Chuck Ardo, spokesman for
Harrisburg Mayor Linda Thompson. “We’re looking for ways to trim the
budget just to keep services going.”
“Now the chickens have come home to roost,” the mayor said in a statement
released Wednesday.
Patrick Davis points out from Macon that HB 87 is producing
Lowndes County farm employment problems, and maybe local farmers
should take that into account when they vote.
With the law passed and ready for implementation, many rural
farmers—especially in Central and South Georgia—are taking notice to
the exodus of migrant workers and immigrants which has left some farmers
without workers to pick crops.
Many of these same farmers that are hurting economically and losing
crops in these rural counties had voted Republican for years.
Valdosta’s Ellis Black who represents parts of Lowndes County as a
state representative helped to pass Gov. Nathan Deal’s conservative
and punitive agenda and consequently it has contributed to drive an
increasing number of migrant workers out of the Peach State.
Private prisons have no business plan, because the majority of their
“customers” are in danger of not getting locked up.
We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.
Spend that tax money on rehabilitation and education instead.
Last week the Industrial Authority held a meeting on 14 June 2011
that it called its regularly scheduled meeting.
Except the date for that meeting on VLCIA’s own web page said “June 21, 2011”.
I checked just before going to last week’s meeting.
Well, some of us did note the date of the 14 June meeting
because the VDT published that date.
However, nobody said at that meeting whether there would be another
meeting this week.
Leigh Touchton, president of the Valdosta-Lowndes NAACP,
says the local and state NAACP are opposed to the biomass plant
because the community that is most affected is the minority community.
She referred to her previous presentation of a letter from
Dr. Robert D. Bullard.
She also brought up an incident with Brad Lofton and recommended
that VLCIA hire an executive director who wouldn’t act like that.
And she said she deals with VSEB all the time:
I’ve taken men through there, I’ve signed them up.
She referred to me when she said that, so what I said before
is appended after the video.
The health of the community is way more important than the job —Leigh Touchton
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Roy Copeland, Tom Call, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett chairman,
J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Acting Executive Director,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 17 May 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
What I actually recommended regarding VSEB, in response to
a specific request from Leigh Touchton for recommendations,
was maybe schedule a meeting with Roy Copeland to talk about
VSEB and solar job opportunities:Continue reading →
On Friday June 17th, exactly 40 years after President Richard Nixon
declared a “War on Drugs,” Internet activists organizing from the social
news and activism website, Reddit.com, called the White House en masse
to demand an end to the War on Drugs, calling it a “trillion dollar
incarceration machine” with a measurable failure to reduce drug use,
or harm from drug use.
This is also the last vestige of Nixon’s fight against the civil rights and anti-war movements: And if you look at US incarceration rates, it’s been incredibly effective. . .
4,919 Black males per 100,000 population
1,717 Latino males per 100,000 of population
717 White males per 100,000 of population.
South Africa under Apartheid (1993) – 851 Black males per 100,000
That’s right, almost six times as many black males per capita
get locked up in the U.S. than in South Africa under apartheid.
The numbers are even worse for young people and especially young black males,
leading to this summary:
This isn’t a War on Drugs: It’s a Race War; It’s a War on the youth,
likely to protest controversial policies (a war that conveniently takes
away those groups voting rights). It’s a war on the American People,
paid for by the American people, for the American people’s own good.
Yep.
Except a majority of the American people don’t want the “war on drugs”
any more.
It’s time for the laws to change.
… has made some courageous and profoundly
important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective
control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former
presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary
general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and
government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul
A. Volcker.
The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug
effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was
declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of
opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5
percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute
treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm
to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort
on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent,
low-level offenders.
These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from
three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country
should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana,
with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against
filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and
summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should
not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”
Imagine that!
A drug policy meant to address the problem.
T-SPLOST regional executive committee chairman
Ashley Paulk
gave his opinion on T-SPLOST at a Lowndes County Democratic Party
(LCDP) meeting a few months ago:
He’s against it
because he doesn’t like
a law with a stick in it.
At the same LCDP meeting, Corey Hull of VLMPO explained T-SPLOST,
which LAKE videoed in six parts,
Karen Noll asked the VLCIA board to put a no-biomass clause
in any purchase agreement regarding the proposed biomass site.
She began with these words:
I’m Karen Noll.
I hope some of you already have seen my writing and
have read my letters to you in the past.
I’m obviously here on one issue.
I hope that in the future I can be talking to you about other issues.
But right now I’m talking to you about biomass.
And we celebrated that it was dead and it was gone and now it’s not.
Because we really don’t know … what the plan is.
Karen Noll made a pitch based partly on saving taxpayer money.
In addressing health concerns, she handed the board a letter from local doctor
Craig Bishop.
She handed the board a petition with “at least 700 signatures”
and she said for each signature there was probably at least one more
that didn’t sign.
Some of what she said appeared to be drawn from a letter
that is appended in this post after the video.
Yesterday, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released a report chronicling the political strategies of private prison companies “working to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences.” The report’s authors note that while the total number of people in prison increased less than 16 percent, the number of people held in private federal and state facilities increased by 120 and 33 percent, correspondingly. Government spending on corrections has soared since 1997 by 72 percent, up to $74 billion in 2007. And the private prison industry has raked in tremendous profits. Last year the two largest private prison companies — Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group — made over $2.9 billion in revenue.
