Prison Industrial Complex in 2013: Running Amok, Gathering More Power, And Putting YOUR Freedom In Jeopardy

"The merger of correctional officer unions with the private prison industry unites two powerful – and once oppositional – forces both of whom have intense economic interests in maintaining/expanding the current situation of mass incarceration. "

Of all the things that have happened to us in the last 50 years, the rise of the "prison industrial complex" may turn out to be the very worst, and most difficult to change...



UPDATED:

For-Profit Prisons: Eight Statistics That Show the Problems

Friday, 27 December 2013 09:55By Kevin Mathews, Care2 | News Analysis

As private prisons become the norm in the United States, it's time society takes a look at the institution and asks, "Are prisons really being used as rehabilitation/deterrence for crime, or have private interests started attaching price tags to lawbreakers’ heads and exploited their incarceration for profit?"

Here are several key statistics that paint an ugly, troubling picture of the for-profit prison system in America:

500% Increase

The biggest private prison owner in America, The Corrections Corporation of America, has seen its profits increase by more than 500% in the past 20 years. Moreover, the business’ growth shows no sign of stopping, having already approached 48 states to take over government-run prisons.

10-60 Pounds Lighter

One way for-profit prisons to minimize costs is by skimping on provisions, including food. A psychiatrist who investigated a privately run prison in Mississippi found that the inmates were severely underfed and looked “almost emaciated.” During their incarceration, prisoners dropped anywhere from 10 to 60 pounds.

100%

100% of all military helmets, ID tags, bullet-proof vests and canteens are created in federal prison systems through prison labor. Though prisoners are “generously” compensated cents per hour, it’s clear having this inexpensive, exploited labor force is critical to the military industrial complex. I bet that the irony that mostly non-violent offenders are making war gear for others to perpetuate violence abroad without consequence is not lost on many of the inmates.

90% Occupancy

States sign agreements with private prisons to guarantee that they will fill a certain number of beds in jail at any given point. The most common rate is 90%, though some prisons are able to snag a 100% promise from their local governments. Because of these contracts, the state is obligated to keep prisons almost full at all times or pay for the beds anyway, so the incentive is to incarcerate more people and for longer in order to fill the quota.

25%

One in every four people that is incarcerated worldwide is held captive in a United States jail. How is it that a country with only 5% of the world’s population has 25% of all the inmates? Simple: prisoners are source of revenue for private companies, so the demand for incarcerating them is especially high.

11 Times

Violent crimes are down overall, so how does the United States keep prisons stocked instead? Amplifying the war on drugs: there are now 11 times as many people in jail for drug convictions than there were in 1980, constituting 50% of the prison population. Longer mandatory minimum sentences also keeps the inmates in longer. Most people incarcerated for drug charges are non-violent, have no prior record, and are addicts rather than major drug-traffickers.

50%

Nearly half of all detained immigrants are held in privately owned facilities. The fact that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has stepped up its game to detain more undocumented immigrants – about 400,000 each year – has actually increased the need for private systems as most detainees will linger in the system waiting for court dates for months if not years.

Civil rights groups have deemed the quality of care provided in immigrant detention centers unacceptable, particularly because of the large numbers of preventable fatalities and sexual assaults.

$45 million

The three largest for-profit prison corporations have spent more than $45 million on campaign donations and lobbyists to keep politicians on the side of privatized incarceration. In light of all of their ethical violations, it’s obvious that they have to offer some incentive for keeping their business legal.

Original post article:

Fifteen Things That We Relearned About the Prison Industrial Complex in 2013

Friday, 20 December 2013 11:29By Mariame Kaba, Prison Culture | News Analysis

The engine of the prison industrial complex unfortunately kept on chugging in 2013.

I wanted to highlight some of the key developments as I saw them during this year. There are so many things that I could have included and it was difficult for me to only choose fifteen to list. Truth be told, I initially only planned to feature 10 issues. That didn’t work out. Some things that aren’t on the list include the plea deals that Federal prosecutors coerce from drug defendants under threat of long prison sentences, the treatment of LGBTQ immigrants in detention centers, the political imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, Marissa Alexander leaving jail pending her March 2014 trial and more. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section.

1. The Federal prison population has grown to 219,000 people, an increase of 27% over the last decade.

Since 1980, the Federal prison population has exploded by 790 percent. Almost 50% of these prisoners are there for drug offenses. According to a new report (PDF) by the Urban Institute, Federal prison overcrowding will worsen if policy changes aren’t implemented. Federal prisons that are now 35 to 40 percent over capacity could reach 55 percent over capacity by 2023. The Justice Department’s budget for the federal prison system has increased from $5 billion in 2008 to $6.9 billion today.

The Government Accountability Office released a report this month about the Bureau of Prisons. In the report, the GAO attributes the increase of the Federal prison population to several factors including mandatory minimum sentences. In an attempt to address overcrowding, this summer, Attorney General Eric Holder gave “new instructions to federal prosecutors on how they should write their criminal complaints when charging low-level drug offenders, to avoid triggering the mandatory minimum sentences.”

[The Sentencing Project published an excellent fact sheet (PDF) outlining trends in U.S. corrections for those who want to learn more the scope of incarceration. Rosa Brooks's essay in Foreign Policy provides a good overview about the incarceration nation.]

2. We were still sterilizing women in U.S. prisons as late as 2010.

This summer, the Center on Investigative Reporting broke the story that:

Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

At least 148 women received tubal ligations in violation of prison rules during those five years – and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews.

From 1997 to 2010, the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform the procedure, according to a database of contracted medical services for state prisoners.

The women were signed up for the surgery while they were pregnant and housed at either the California Institution for Women in Corona or Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, which is now a men’s prison.

Former inmates and prisoner advocates maintain that prison medical staff coerced the women, targeting those deemed likely to return to prison in the future

The state of California held hearings this fall to collect more information.

Below is a documentary titled “Sterilization Behind Bars” produced by the Center on Investigative Reporting released just last month.

3. Prisons are still sites of violence and abuse.

In April 2013, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it had launched an investigation of Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women. I had written about the allegations of abuse and violence last year. The DOJ announcement came several months after a scathing report about conditions and abuses at the prison was released by the National Institute of Corrections (NIC).

Tutwiler Prison was named by Mother Jones Magazine as one of America’s 10 Worst Prisons earlier this year.

4. Children are still not exempt from the torture of solitary confinement.

The ACLU launched an online campaign to end the solitary confinement of children. From its petition:

Every day across the country, kids as young as 13 are held in solitary confinement with almost no human contact for days or months at a time. Solitary can amount to torture, and the consequences can be devastating for children because they are still developing—that’s why we must stop this cruelty now.

Earlier this year, we joined with 40 advocacy groups and launched a campaign to pressure Attorney General Eric Holder to ban solitary confinement for youth in federal custody—which would set an important precedent for states to follow suit. We received an initial response from decision-makers at the Department of Justice that signaled interest, but they still have not committed to a ban.

So we’re helping to shine a spotlight on this cruelty with this video—and then next week, we’ll deliver the signatures of the tens of thousands of people calling for an end to this practice. Sign the petition to add your voice to the call for justice now and help us get to 50,000 signatures—to make sure that Holder can’t ignore this issue any longer.

Below is a video describing the campaign:

5. People still love TV shows and films about prison.

2013 was the year of Orange is the New Black, a fictionalized Netflix series that is based on a memoir of the same title by Piper Kerman.

The show was a instant sensation and generated countless discussions and articles. In fact, In These Times Magazine ran an interesting three-part discussion. You can find it here.

[Full disclosure: While I read the book and enjoyed it very much, I have not watched the series.]

6. Corporations are still profiting off prisons.

In October, Liliana Segura wrote a detailed and enraging article about prison profiteering in the Nation Magazine. The Nation teamed up with the ACLU andBeyond Bars to raise awareness and take action against the exploitation of prisoners and their families.

Below is a video that highlights just one exploitative practice: prison phone call price gouging.

Learn more about the prison profiteering campaign here.

Importantly, the campaign for phone justice won a victory on August 9 when the FCC “passed a set of rules that will drastically reduce the cost of interstate phone calls between prisoners and their family and contacts on the outside. But these new rules won’t reduce costs for in-state calls, and don’t address the needs of hard-of-hearing and deaf inmates.” Learn more about the campaign for phone justice here.

7. Immigrant detention is still inhumane and expensive.

The National Immigrant Justice Center released a report (PDF) in April detailing the fate of children who are detained in adult facilities. It found that:

“…from 2008 to 2012, children under the age of 18 spent a combined total of 36,598 days in 30 adult detention facilities around the country. DHS detained more than 1,300 children in adult facilities in violation of the Flores v. Reno settlement agreement. DHS detained these children for periods ranging from three days to more than one year, and more than 800 children spent at least one week in adult custody.”

In August, the National Immigration Forum released a report titled the “Math of Immigrant Detention” which details the cost of detaining immigrants. Some of the findings that it underscores include:

For the Fiscal Year that begins October 1, 2013 (Fiscal year 2014), Department of Homeland Security and the White House requested $1.84 billion for DHS Custody Operations = over $5 million per day spent on immigration detention.

From 2001 to 2011 the total number of immigrants who pass through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention per year rose from 204,459 individuals in 2001, to a record breaking 429,247 individuals in FY 2011.

Between 2009 and 2011, over half of all immigrant detainees had no criminal records. Of those with any criminal history, nearly 20 percent were merely for traffic offenses.

Private prison companies in 2011 housed nearly half of all immigration detainees, and in FY 2012 CCA and GEO reported annual revenues of $1.8 billion and $1.5 billion respectively.

According to the Associated Press, the three corporations holding the largest percentage of ICE detention contracts, including CCA and GEO, collectively spent at least $45 million in the past decade on campaign donations and lobbyists at the state and federal levels.

Watch the documentary “Immigrants For Sale” if interested in learning more about the connections between private prisons and immigration.

8. The School to Prison Pipeline is still funneling mostly black and brown children into the juvenile and adult criminal legal systems.

As the Open Society Foundation suggests:

“Instead of investing in children and fostering supportive environments where they can succeed, many school districts turn to suspensions, expulsions, and even arrests to deal with typical pre-adolescent and adolescent behavior. Such “zero tolerance” policies harm all students, but children of color, students with disabilities and students identifying as LGBT are especially affected. One suspension increases the risk a child will drop out of school, and one school-based arrest can wreak emotional havoc, not to mention derail a student’s job prospects or acceptance to college or the military.”

Just last week, the Vera Institute for Justice published a report that looks at “existing research about whether zero tolerance discipline policies make schools more orderly or safe, if out-of-school suspension or expulsion leads to greater involvement in the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems, and what effect these policies can have on a young person’s future.” The report “concludes that, a generation after the rise of these policies and practices, neither schools nor young people have benefited.”

The Advancement Project released an entertaining video about a serious topic to illustrate the ways that school discipline used to be handled on tv shows vs. the ways that we now address student misbehavior.

Finally, many people are resisting the STPP and Broward County is one of the places where organizers are realizing some successes.

9. We still lock people up for extraordinarily long periods for nonviolent crimes.

The ACLU released a report last month titled “A Living Death” about people who were sentenced to life without parole for nonviolent offenses. They noted that as of 2012, there were about 3,278 prisoners serving such sentences. The New York Times writes in an editorial:

“And that number is conservative. It doesn’t include inmates serving sentences of, say, 350 years for a series of nonviolent drug sales. Nor does it include those in prison for crimes legally classified as “violent” even though they did not involve actual violence, like failing to report to a halfway house or trying to steal an unoccupied car.

The report relies on data from the federal prison system and nine states. Four out of five prisoners were sentenced for drug crimes like possessing a crack pipe or acting as a go-between in a street drug sale. Most of the rest were sentenced for property crimes like trying to cash a stolen check or shoplifting. In more than 83 percent of the cases, the judge had no choice: federal or state law mandated a sentence of life without parole, usually under a mandatory-minimum or habitual offender statute.”

10. Private prisons are still the worst.

In September, a group called “In the Public Interest” published a report titled “Criminal: How Lockup Quotas and “Low-Crime Taxes” Guarantee Profits for Private Prison Corporations.” The report shows “private prison companies mandate high inmate occupancy rates through their contracts with states – in some cases, up to 100 percent.”

Mother Jones explains that the report: “reviewed 62 contracts for private prisons operating around the country at the local and state level. In the Public Interest found that 41 of those contracts included occupancy requirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilities between 80 and 100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising or falling, the state must keep those beds full.

11. The so-called drug war is still racist and failed…

In June, the ACLU released an important report showing the racial disparities in marijuana arrests in the U.S. It got a lot of press coverage because of the staggering statistics. The report found that:

“Black people are 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people despite comparable usage rates…The report also found that marijuana arrests now make up nearly half of all drug arrests, with police making over 7 million marijuana possession arrests between 2001 and 2010.”

12. It’s still open season on black & brown bodies by the police.

In March, the NYPD gunned down Kimani Gray sparking days of protest by young people in Brooklyn. In August, Miami Police tased 18 year old Israel Hernandez to death. In September, Jonathan Farrell was shot to death by police in Charlotte. A few days ago, Durham police said that 17 year old Jesus Huerta shot himself in the head while his hands were cuffed behind his back. You get the picture…

13. Guantanamo is still open and still torturing prisoners.

After 12 years, Guantanamo Bay Prison is still open. This summer Yasiin Bey controversially tried to demonstrate how prisoners who are on a hunger strike at the prison are being forced-fed. There was a lot of controversy about his choice to dramatize the plight of the prisoners.

When the hunger strike was at its peak over 100 of the 166 Guantanamo prisoners participated. As the months have passed, that number has dropped and the U.S. military has announced that it will no longer provide information on the number of hunger strikers. Guantanamo is one of our greatest national shames.

The Guardian has produced a poignant and enraging video animation about the plight of the prisoners at Guantanamo. I encourage everyone to watch it to understand what is being done in our names.

14. Prisoners are still resisting all across the country.

Prisoners at Pelican Bay prison in California launched another hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions:

On July 8th 2013, more than 30,000 California prisoners initiated an indefinite hunger strike in response to the CDCR’s failure to meet their 5 Core Demands. 60 days and 1 death later, strikers suspended the strike, and California legislators committed to hold public hearings.

Mother Jones published a good article explaining the issues that were at stake in thehunger strike.

Below is a music video about the prison strike:

15. People outside of prisons are still resisting.

After over a decade of struggle, TAMMS Supermax Prison in Illinois closed its doors.

My friend Dr. Nancy Heitzeg (who co-edits the great Criminal Injustice series) wrote to add one critical issue to the list. So I’m making this #15 (a) since it’s my blog 

15 (a). Some unions are joining forces with state governments to expand the use of private prisons.

California’s co-optation of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) into support of expanded use of private prisons is one of the most ominous moves of our time..

"Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this new privatization scheme is the collusion with old opponents. Previously, in California and elsewhere, private prison expansion has been stymied by correctional officers' union who resisted because of CCA and GEO's reliance on non-union labor. Not any more, and opponents of mass incarceration fear this is a harbinger of additional expansion and continued mass incarceration.

Such concerns stem in part from the fact that the arrangements could deprive prison reformers of an unlikely but potent ally: the prison guard union.

For years, California’s prison guard union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, served as a powerful check on the growth of the private prison industry. The union spent millions to support the campaigns of political allies, and launched media attacks that were widely seen as lethal to the political aspirations of opponents.

Now the union and the private companies are partners. Brown’s deal with CCA stipulates that the state will staff the private facility with union guards, effectively creating a detente between the former foes. When Brown first announced the deal in August, the union’s leader, Mike Jimenez, joined him on stage in a show of solidarity.

Pay close attention to this development. The merger of correctional officer unions with the private prison industry unites two powerful – and once oppositional – forces both of whom have intense economic interests in maintaining/expanding the current situation of mass incarceration. Watch too for the Supreme Courts’ take on Brown’s request to use out-of-state private prisons to resolve California’s in-state constitutional crisis re over-crowding. If they allow him to do this, it creates a precedent that further erodes the already miniscule rights of inmates to seek  meaningful redress for “” conditions of confinement.”

"(T)oday, the purely racist tendency of the aristocracy is so great that it often is strong enough to outweigh their greed—discrimination is practiced even when it's unprofitable."

"(V)irtually all of this nation’s class-rigidity still remains in the U.S. South, even after the Civil War. New Dixie has replaced the aristocracy’s black slaves of Old Dixie, by the local (white) aristocracy’s institutionalized bigotry against poor people, now of all ethnic groups. What used to be their purely racist bigotry has, it seems, devolved into a crushing, pervasive, classist, bigotry in the South." 

By Eric Zuesse

Economic Opportunity Is Lowest In the Republican Bible Belt, Major Study Finds

Class-rigidity is most extreme in the South, according to leading Harvard and Berkeley economists.

December 19, 2013  |  

The website Equality-Of-Opportunity.org was established this year by four leading economists from Harvard and Berkeley, and it now headlines their major findings, “Mobility in the 100 Largest Commuting Zones.” It ranks all 100 largest U.S. cities for the chances of a person born poor to rise from the bottom 20% to the top 20%.

Whereas all of the top 21 cities (NYC being ranked #21) are shown clustered there closely around 10% for the given place’s odds that a resident born in the bottom 20% will rise into the top 20%, all except just three of the bottom 21 cities are in Old Dixie. Here, the probabilities of rising from the bottom 20% to the top 20% range widely, between just 6.7% (one-third less than in the best locales) down to merely 2.6% (around one-quarter of the probability in the best locales), among these 21 bottom-ranked cities. 

In other words: virtually all of this nation’s class-rigidity still remains in the U.S. South, even after the Civil War. New Dixie has replaced the aristocracy’s black slaves of Old Dixie, by the local (white) aristocracy’s institutionalized bigotry against poor people, now of all ethnic groups. What used to be their purely racist bigotry has, it seems, devolved into a crushing, pervasive, classist, bigotry in the South. 

Explaining this would produce controversy, and unfortunately the researchers don’t even try. However, it is a striking finding, which demands an explanation.

For a century after Abraham Lincoln was shot in 1865, the North’s Protestant aristocracy increasingly supported the Republican Party, which gradually became, in a sense, the new version of the old aristocratic Southern Democratic Party, but now spread nationwide: oriented more toward concerns about the “free market” than about democracy. Government became subordinated to economics—not just any economics, but “free market” economics, whereas economics had virtually nothing to do with the U.S. Constitution, which was instead concerned with political matters: government.

With the advent of Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his “New Deal” reforms and regulations during the Great Depression, and his starting of the Social Security system, this aristocratic hostility toward the Democratic Party intensified even more.

In FDR’s re-nomination acceptance speech in 1936, he said, “Economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution.” This was a speech that could be given today.

Then, as if to add insult to Protestant aristocratic outrage, the Catholic Democratic President John F. Kennedy finally committed the Democratic Party against the unquestionably bigoted South; and next, the remarkably progressive Democratic Texan President Lyndon Baines Johnson fatefully sealed this FDR-type Democratic Party, with the Civil Rights Acts, and also Medicare and Medicaid —all done to serve mainly the very same people, the middle-class and the poor, whom aristocrats traditionally have wanted instead to be suppressed, if not again enslaved (such as was the case in the Old South). For example, labor unions are routinely suppressed by aristocrats, because such unions challenge the "free market”— they challenge aristocrats’ hired managers, who no longer possess unrestrained control when a labor union is present. 

Aristocrats call this "free market" of theirs simply “freedom,” meaning their own freedom, but also meaning (though never mentioning) the “freedom” of millions of have-nots to suffer unto their graves (via such class-rigidity as prevails especially in the South, and in underdeveloped countries around the world). These financial elite also sometimes call this free-market economics “tough love.” But no matter what the rationalization, the result for its victims is basically like a kiss of death; this is more that type of “love,” even when the proponents themselves actually sincerely believe it to be some sort of “love,” for the people who are actually suffering from this one-sided “freedom” of the aristocracy.

Republicans are proud of this “freedom,” or “discipline,” or “tough love”: they even sometimes call it the "opportunity society." That’s what pervades the South, the very same region of this country where economic opportunity is actually the lowest.

However, apparently enough Americans support this Orwellian operation, so that Republicans constitute a major party, which includes some of the very same people who suffer from it. This is the only way to explain the continued existence of the Republican Party as being a major political party in the U.S.

Nonetheless, this does not mean that today's Democratic Party is actually in favor of the poor—the Democratic Party of today just doesn't hate them as Republicans do. The clearest evidence of this came in a different study.

Princeton’s Larry M. Bartels posted to the Internet in 2002, updated in August 2005, his article, “Economic Inequality and Political Representation,” which examined the votes of U.S. senators on eight bills. He found that, “Republicans were about twice as responsive as Democrats to the views of high-income constituents,” but that, “There is no evidence of any responsiveness [of Senators] to the views of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution, even from Democrats.”

Furthermore, “For Republican senators there is no evidence of responsiveness to middle-income constituents,” but only to the views of high-income constituents, and, “Democrats seem to have responded at least as strongly to the views of middle-income constituents as to the views of high-income constituents—though, once again, there is no evidence of any responsiveness to the views of low-income constituents.”

The popular myth has always been promulgated by Republicans that Democratic politicians engage in class-warfare against the middle-class, on behalf of the poor; but that’s just a blatant lie, whose purpose is to hide the very real class-war, by Republicans, against the middle-class, which is being waged successfully on behalf of the rich—the exact opposite of Republican claims. 

Furthermore, “Senators seem to have been a good deal more responsive to upper-income constituents when a Republican was in the White House ... than they were with a Democrat in the White House.” 

Perhaps this is the reason why even with a conservative Democratic president such as Obama, today’s far-rightwing Republican Party cannot get much of its wish-list filled. Bartels found “surprisingly strong and consistent evidence that the biases I have identified in senators’ responsiveness to rich and poor constituents are not due to differences between rich and poor constituents in [electoral] turnout, political knowledge, or contacting.”

In common parlance: Bartels found that ideology alone accounts for this difference. 

He also considered the possibility posed by a 1995 study, which had shown that, “citizens in the top quarter of the income distribution ... provided almost three quarters of the total campaign contributions.” Could that be the answer —senators were simply voting for their contributors? Bartels found that only “two of the eight salient roll call votes [concerning the minimum wage, and abortion]” in his study could reasonably be explained on the basis mainly of campaign contributions; the other six could not. 

A pronounced ideological component seems to have been involved in most senate votes. Republican senators voted overwhelmingly in favor of the rich, and Democratic senators voted equally often in favor of the rich and of the middle-class. Only in about one-quarter of the instances could political donations reasonably account for that.

It might also be worth noting that, even today, the purely racist tendency of the aristocracy is so great that it often is strong enough to outweigh their greed—discrimination is practiced even when it's unprofitable. So: the traditional leftist "explanation" for conservatism (that it's purely based on greed) is false. The understanding that leftists have of rightists is basically the mirror-image of the way Fox News characterizes leftists.

The scientific studies that are being reported here constitute solid scientific findings, not opinions, and reporting them might come as interesting news to many readers, because our news-media unfortunately tend to be reluctant to report as news even the best scientific findings about ideology. But there is a difference between reporting on ideology, versus applying ideology (which an op-ed is supposed to do). This is therefore a news story, which brings together many studies that concern people’s ideology. If it happens to surprise anyone, then that would be simply because the major mainstream news media’s “neutrality” and “nonpartisanship” have required that they avoid reporting such facts as have been reported here. A lot of important facts are unreported for that reason. However, their being unreported has nothing to do with there being anything dubious about them.

Happy Holidays My Out of Work Friends - Congress Ends Your Unemployment Extension Just In Time For Christmas

"At the end of the day, the bill abandons 1.3 million Americans who desperately need unemployment insurance, and does nothing to promote economic growth or job creation. Furthermore, the legislation is paid for on the backs of the middle class and military families, while not touching the wealthiest amongst us and allowing corporations to continue to benefit from tax loopholes."(Mark Pocan, D WI)

Merry Christmas, you poor sunsabitches, hope you are still able to get on the list for a Toys For Tots donation.

To the rest of my hardworking, lower and middle class friends, be sure to deliver your holiday message to our dear friends in Washington who work tirelessly to ensure they are representing our best interests. 

Bah Humbug.

"Makes Absolutely No Sense": David Cay Johnston on Budget Deal That Helps Billionaires, Not the Poor

Topics

U.S. Economy

Guests

David Cay Johnston, an investigative reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize while at The New York Times. He is currently a columnist for Tax Analysts and Al Jazeera, as well as a contributing editor at Newsweek. He is author of several books, including The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind.

Related

"Poverty Wages in the Land of Plenty"

Dec 05, 2013 | Columns & Articles

Thom Hartmann on "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It"

Nov 12, 2013 | Story

READ: Thom Hartmann, "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It"

Nov 11, 2013 | Web Exclusive

Links

David Cay Johnston’s Website

A bipartisan budget deal to avert another government shutdown comes before the Senate this week. The vast majority of House members from both parties approved the two-year budget agreement last week in a 332-to-94 vote. It is being hailed as a breakthrough compromise for Democrats and Republicans. The bill eases across-the-board spending cuts, replacing them with new airline fees and cuts to federal pensions. In a concession by Democrats, it does not extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million people, which are set to expire this month. To discuss the deal, we are joined by David Cay Johnston, an investigative reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize while at The New York Times. He is currently a columnist for Tax Analysts and Al Jazeera, as well as a contributing editor at Newsweek.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: A bipartisan budget deal to avert another government shutdown comes before the Senate this week. The House approved the two-year budget agreement last week in a 332-to-94 vote. The bill eases across-the-board spending cuts, replacing them with new airline fees and cuts to federal pensions. In a concession by Democrats, it does not extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million people, which is set to expire this month. Republican Congressmember Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray called the deal a win for both sides.

REP. PAUL RYAN: I think this agreement is a clear improvement on the status quo. This agreement makes sure that we don’t have a government shutdown scenario in January. It makes sure that we don’t have another government shutdown scenario in October. It makes sure that we don’t lurch from crisis to crisis.

SEN. PATTY MURRAY: Our deal puts jobs and economic growth first by rolling back sequestration’s harmful cuts to education and medical research and infrastructure investments and defense jobs for the next two years.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Republican Congressmember Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray.
The budget deal is being hailed as a breakthrough compromise for Democrats and Republicans, but not everyone supports it. Democratic Congressmember Mark Pocan of Wisconsin said in a statement, quote, "At the end of the day, the bill abandons 1.3 million Americans who desperately need unemployment insurance, and does nothing to promote economic growth or job creation. Furthermore, the legislation is paid for on the backs of the middle class and military families, while not touching the wealthiest amongst us and allowing corporations to continue to benefit from tax loopholes," he said.

Well, for more, we go to Rochester, New York, where we’re joined by David Cay Johnston, an investigative reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize when he was at The New York Times. He’s currently a columnist for Tax Analysts and Al Jazeera, as well as a contributing editor at Newsweek.

David Cay Johnston, thanks so much for joining us. He’s joining us from PBS station WXXI in Rochester. Talk about the deal.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, this deal is a—actually, I think, a big win for the Paul Ryan Republicans. They will avoid the embarrassment, shame and political damage of shutting down the government, and they will obtain this from the—they obtained this from the Democrats without, as Congressman Pocan pointed out in his statement, touching at all the major issues. The corporate loopholes aren’t being closed. The tax-avoidance techniques of billionaires, who can legally live tax-free if they choose to, are not being shut down. The hedge fund and private equity managers will continue to be advantaged. And we’re going to kick 57,000 poor children out of Head Start, which means we’re going to narrow their economic futures and make all of us worse off in the future. We’re cutting a billion-and-a-half dollars from medical research to save lives. Why? Because the very richest people in America, those who have benefited most from being in this market, don’t want to pay for that kind of services. And by the way, being The War and Peace Report, the Pentagon is getting an extra $20 billion out of this deal. We already spend 42 percent of all the money in the world on our military. More money for the Pentagon? Seriously? While we are cutting off unemployment benefits and cutting medical research, reducing pensions for federal workers? This makes absolutely no sense. It will make us worse off.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the poorest Americans, David Cay Johnston? How are they affected?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, there is a war going on in this country, and it’s on the poor. And we have all sorts of ways that we are doing this. We are restricting their access to Medicaid. We are cutting food stamps dramatically in this country, or will be very soon. There is a 90-day fix for doctors who treat people who are on Medicaid. That, I suspect, will not be continued. And why would we be cutting fees to doctors who provide healthcare to people, unless, of course, you just, as Congressman Grayson once said, want them to die?

AMY GOODMAN: The budget now heads to the Senate, where it has the backing of the Democratic leadership. This is Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois urging members to vote for it when it comes up to the floor this week.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Vote for this. Let’s move. Let’s govern. Let’s not shut down this government again. This is an opportunity. And with this opportunity, we can have a stronger national defense, a stronger country, and we can save the taxpayers money.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Democratic leader, Senator Dick Durbin.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, stronger national defense—I’m sorry, what? I mean, do we not have enough nuclear submarines to kill us all many times over with weapons against which no one is threatening us? It is just bizarre that we continue to stick to these memes that we’re not spending enough on national defense. We’re spending over $900 billion a year on national defense. Now, add to that that we—most of the world consists of our allies, who have a big military, and this just makes no sense whatsoever.

AMY GOODMAN: You also talk about the U.S. government paying through the nose for contractors.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes, well, you know, we started this movement back around the time that the New Deal ended and the era of Reagan, which we’re still living in, began, that it would be more efficient if we just got rid of those lazy, no-good, overpaid federal bureaucrats, and hired private contractors. Well, last year, contractors cost the government as much as $763,000 each. Overall, they cost twice as much as civil servants; and for Pentagon contractors, three times as much. And much of the work that is done by contractors turns out to be of little or no value. If, for example, you go to USASpending.gov, one of President Obama’s major initiatives on transparency, and put in "IRS contracts," the total amount of money it will show is equal to 500 years of the entire IRS budget. These contractors are ripping the taxpayers off left and right. Why do they stay there? Well, the owners of those companies hire politically connected people, like former congressmen, former heads of agencies, and they make campaign contributions that make sure they keep getting paid, while the poor have their situation worsened.

AMY GOODMAN: David Cay Johnston, you write about how, actually—how the country could generate millions of jobs.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes. There are a number of things we could do. I’ve been doing a series of columns on Al Jazeera about this very point. One of the things we can do is stop these, quote-unquote, "free trade" deals. There’s no such thing as "free trade." Trade has rules. And let me give you an idea how big they are. The super-secret Trans-Pacific Partnership plan, in which members of Congress who want to read any part of it have to show they have no pen or pencil or paper or recording device on them and are then led into a room. In chapter QQ, it’s 30,000 words. Think about how far in you’ve got to be to get to chapter QQ. And these deals have resulted, in every case, in the destruction of American jobs. You know, one way to look at this, however, I suppose, is that the generosity of blue-collar factory workers in America, who have been willing to give up their hold on the middle class so that the rural poor of Asia can have a better life, is something to be admired.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get a comment from you to respond to this quote. You talk about the TPP, the largest-ever economic treaty, representing more than 40 percent of the world’s GDP. This is Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker explaining why she supports the TPP.

SECRETARY OF COMMERCE PENNY PRITZKER: The TPP is a—meant to be a high-quality 21st-century trade agreement. And what we know from those trade agreements—take, for example, our trade agreement with Singapore—when we do a trade agreement of this quality, everyone’s economy grows. Trade has grown 60 percent with Singapore since we completed our free trade agreement. So this is a great opportunity.

AMY GOODMAN: David Cay Johnston?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, trade, in theory, can make us all better off. I’m not arguing against trade. The deals we have made have been awful. Our trade deal with China has cost us 2.8 million jobs. That’s the equivalent of every job in greater metropolitan Philadelphia. We’ve had over 50,000 factories close simply because of that deal. Our trade deal with South Korea, we were told it will result in more trade. Well, it has: one dollar of exports of goods by us to South Korea for every $25 of increased imports from South Korea. The global capitalist class see to it that these secretive deals are written in a way that they benefit, that workers in America have their wages driven down.

And the Trans-Pacific Partnership is widely believed—and remember, it’s a secret agreement that they want to ram through Congress with no debate—it is widely believed it will cement current U.S. law, while allowing trading partners flexibility to alter their laws. That’s a prescription for absolute disaster. And, by the way, Penny Pritzker is a queen of corporate welfare. That she is out promoting this, that she is treasury—commerce secretary, is itself astonishing, given how much the operations that she owns have benefited and supped with a big spoon at the public trough.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, who pushed this agenda forward, talking about this budget deal that has such bipartisan consensus? And who resisted it, David Cay Johnston?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, that, I’m not really big on. I mean, I make it a point of not living in Washington, D.C., so I can cover what politicians do more than they say. And so, I’m not really the expert to talk about that subject, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, David Cay Johnston, Detroit. I can’t let you leave without talking about that, because you write a lot about it, and it’s so critical, Detroit of course becoming the largest-ever U.S. municipality to qualify for bankruptcy. Earlier this month, Federal Judge Steven Rhodes ruled the city meets every criteria for insolvency, including failure to honor its debt obligations and inability to provide the bare minimum of services to its 680,000 residents. The bankruptcy ruling puts tens of thousands of retired city workers’ pension at risk, overriding protections in the Michigan state constitution. What happens to those pensions, David Cay Johnston?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, we don’t know exactly, but in all likelihood, people who are already retired, who are too old to work, are going to have their incomes cut. The average pension in Detroit is $19,000 a year. You just go out to suburban Ann Arbor, and it’s twice that much money. Detroit, though, is an example and a canary in the mine of what’s going on in this country. Deindustrialization is making us poorer. It is benefiting the global capitalist class. And we’re going to see more of this. Detroit went from having a large tax base, with factories producing things that helped grow the economy, to being full of vacant land all over the place and abandoned buildings because of the federal government’s trade policies and anti-union policies. We need to wake up and understand and vote for people who will change these policies, or the future is very clear. And you can see it in the cuts to the Head Start program, as a good example, and medical care. It’s the policy of Congress to spend money now in ways that will make us poorer in the future.

AMY GOODMAN: David Cay Johnston, thanks so much for joining us, joining us from WXXI, the PBS station in Rochester, New York. David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, formerly with The New York Times, now writing for Tax Analysts and Al Jazeera, as well as a contributing editor at Newsweek. We’ll link to your articles at democracynow.org.

This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a moment with the legendary poet, the distinguished professor, Nikki Giovanni. Stay with us.

"The industrial food system exists mainly to maximise profit for a few, not to maximise the nutritional benefits of food to all."

"To bring about food production and supply as a global public good would require... a three-part hybrid institutional arrangement formed by state institutions, private companies, and self-organized groups."

Staying alive shouldn't depend on your purchasing power
Jose Luis Vivero Pol, Doctoral Researcher on food governance. Centre of Philosophy of Law at Université Catholique de Louvain

How much would you pay for staying alive? How much would you pay for breathing pure air? That may seem a silly question since air is everywhere, accessible to all. Air is a global public good, part of the commons – and yet in China a smart entrepreneur is already selling canned air at around 50p a can.

People also have to pay for water, after all. And there’s a huge range in food expenditures between countries, from the £2,724 a Norwegian spends every year to the £132 typically spent by an Uzbek. So the essentials of life – air, food and water – must all be paid for. And while some nations have social welfare to provide the essentials, for everyone else no money means starving to death.

Today, purchasing power determines how much and which type of food can be accessed or produced by one’s own hand. Food is regarded as a private good. And yet some aspects of food production are considered part of the commons – agricultural knowledge accumulated over thousands of years, or from publicly funded research institutions, cooking recipes and national gastronomy, ocean fisheries, wild fruits and animals, and seedbanks and genetic material of plant and animals. Others are seen as a common, shared goal – food safety considerations, or maintaining food price stability and security.
And going even further, as my recent paper proposes, why not consider food itself as a commons, an earthy resource essential for each human being, to be produced, consumed and governed in common? Such a thought would embrace, perhaps even surpass the individualist approach to human rights. For example the right to clean water, the desirable right to clean air and the well-established right to food?

Food has been completely commodified, from a common local resource to a private, transnational, industrial commodity, to be speculated without moral consideration to achieve the best price. A race for land and water to support commercial food production has torn up vast areas of Africa and Latin America, while corporations drive obesity epidemics from increased consumption of ultra-processed food and drink.

The value of food is no longer based on the fact it is a basic human need that should be available to all, a fundamental human right that should be guaranteed to every citizen, a pillar of every national culture, certainly a marketable product that should be subject to fair trade and sustainable production, and a global good that should be enjoyed by all. Instead these multiple dimensions are superseded by food’s tradeable features; value is confused with price.

The common market and the commons

Some of the means to produce food are private goods – land, agro-chemicals – while others such seeds, rainfall, agricultural knowledge are not. Land enclosure, privatisation, legislation, excessive pricing and patents have all played a role in limiting the access to food as a public good. The industrial food system exists mainly to maximise profit for a few, not to maximise the nutritional benefits of food to all.

And the failure of this food system to feed the world, adequately and sustainably, cannot be ignored. The paradox is that half of those who grow 70% of the world’s food are hungry, hunger kills 3.1 million children per year, and increasingly food is used as livestock feed or biofuels. Up to a third of all the world’s food is wasted – enough to feed 600 million hungry people each year. Hunger still prevails in a world of abundance even as obesity grows steadily.

A food system anchored in market principles of supply and demand will never feed the world, because the private sector is not interested in feeding people who cannot pay. No analysis or research of recent decades has ever questioned this nature of food as a private good, and so the perception is that access to food is the problem.

The standard economic definition of public goods is anchored in the idea of non-rivalry and non-excludability. Many societies have and still consider food as a common good, as well as forests, fisheries, land and water. As long as the replenishment rate outpaces the consumption rate, any resource – forests, fish, fresh air, food – can be considered an always available, renewable resource.

Towards three-part governance of food

Bringing food back into the commons is essential for making the system more sustainable and fairer for food producers and consumers. The political economist Elinor Ostrom, a commons expert, suggested polycentric governance as a novel means to solve global problems, such as climate change. To bring about food production and supply as a global public good would require something similar; a three-part hybrid institutional arrangement formed by state institutions, private companies, and self-organised groups.

Such a major transition will require experimentation, at personal, local, national, and international levels. It will require diverse approaches to governance, whether by the market, state or by collective actions for food. It will take several generations, and will require all three working together, as no single element can carry out the transition by itself.

Governments have a vital role in countering the tendency toward wealth concentration, redistributing economic power towards the poor through genuine tax, credit, and land reforms. Two recent examples that might help are a meat tax to reduce meat consumption, or highly taxing junk food that contains high levels of sugar, fat and salt. Nevertheless, governments' leading role should shift towards self-negotiated collective action from groups of producers and consumers. The benefit consumers receive by protecting, producing and using their own resources through their self-organised actions is key to understanding the value, not just the cost, of the food they eat. It requires civic engagement, community and equal stewardship of resources.

There are already many initiatives worldwide that demonstrate how a right combination of collective action, government regulations and incentives, and private sector entrepreneurship yield good results for food producers, consumers, the environment, and society. The challenge is how to scale up those local initiatives to national level.

People’s capacity for collective action can complement the regulatory mandate of the state, and the demand-driven private sector. After all, millions of people innovating have far more capacity to find solutions than a few thousand scientists in laboratories. What’s more, collective action for food also helps rebuild the infrastructure of civic life eroded by individualistic behaviour, as philosopher Michael Sandel explains in What’s The Right Thing?

Far-reaching practical implications

Some practical recommendations: keep food out of trade agreements that deal with purely private goods. Instead, new production and distribution models for food are required. It would entail, among others, binding legal frameworks to fight hunger, obesity, and guarantee the right to food. It would include fraternal ethical and legal frameworks, universal Basic Food Entitlements or Food Security Floors guaranteed by the state. A minimum salary could be levelled with the costs of a typical food basket, financial speculation of food would be banned, and the non-consumption uses of food such as biofuels limited.

These are all geared towards establishing Universal Food Coverage, as called for by Amartya Sen, a social scheme that parallels the universal health and education that is the basis of the welfare state.
Navigating the path between these arrangements will be one of the major challenges of the 21st century, as long as the population continues to grows. A fairer and more sustainable food system is possible; I do not expect to see it during my lifetime, but I hope my descendants may.

Jose Luis Vivero Pol does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.