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FOCUS: It's Time to Put an End to Private Prisons |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=15102"><span class="small">Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Sunday, 11 October 2015 10:33 |
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Sanders writes: "The United States is home to 4.4 percent of the world's population, and 22 percent of its prisoners. A big reason for this is because companies that profit from prisons have spent millions of dollars lobbying for laws that needlessly keep people behind bars for far too long."
Bernie Sanders. (photo: Arun Chaudhary)
It's Time to Put an End to Private Prisons
By Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News
11 October 15
 oday in America, shamefully, we have more people in jail than any other country on earth. The United States is home to 4.4 percent of the world’s population, and 22 percent of its prisoners.
A big reason for this is because companies that profit from prisons have spent millions of dollars lobbying for laws that needlessly keep people behind bars for far too long.
It is our job, in my view, to recreate our criminal justice system. And I believe that we cannot do that as long as corporations are allowed to profit from mass incarceration.
Today this situation has gotten so out of hand that our prisoners are no longer people — they have simply become ?sources of profit as laborers who work for pennies an hour on behalf of major corporations. Keeping human beings in jail for long periods of time must no longer be an acceptable business model. Our focus should be on treating people with dignity and ensuring they have the resources they need to get back on their feet when they get out. I am glad that President Obama this week ordered the release of nearly 6,000 nonviolent offenders from federal prison, but there is much more to do.
I have recently introduced legislation that will put an end to for-profit prisons. My bill will bar federal, state, and local governments from contracting with private companies who manage prisons, jails, or detention facilities. And it will require Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to improve their monitoring of detention facilities and eliminate private detention centers within 2 years.
The private-for-profit prison racket is a $70 billion industry, and with so much money at stake, it’s not surprising they’ve corrupted our political process.
The industry has contributed millions of dollars to candidates in pursuit of laws that increase incarceration of nonviolent offenders — a practice that disproportionately impacts people of color in the United States. We must stop the practice of governments guaranteeing prison occupancy as part of deals with private corporations that incentivize states to keep prison cells filled. And we must stop the practice of private companies charging exorbitant rates for prisoners to contact their families by phone — sometimes up to several dollars per minute to talk with loved ones, and charging outrageous service fees to prisoners trying to access their money upon release. That kind of exploitation takes an already difficult family dynamic between husbands, wives, parents and children and strains it even further.
It is wrong to profit from the imprisonment of human beings and the suffering of their families and friends. It’s time to end this morally repugnant process, and along with it, the era of mass incarceration.
But my legislation goes even further. It also takes steps to reduce our bloated inmate population by reinstating the federal parole system so that officials can individually assess each prisoner’s risk and chance for rehabilitation. It ends the immigrant detention quota, which requires officials to hold a minimum of 34,000 people captive at any given time. And it would end the detention of immigrant families, many of whom are currently held in privately-owned facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania.
If we act, not only can we prevent thousands of lives from being destroyed, but we can save billions of taxpayer dollars.
This legislation enjoys a broad coalition of support on both sides of the aisle. And if we stand together and continue to bring attention to this issue, we can put a stop to the abomination of private prisons profiting from human suffering.
Thank you for standing with me.
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Now I want to know if you’re willing to fight with me on this issue.
Sign my petition in support of my Justice is Not for Sale Act and say you’ve had enough of millionaires and billionaires profiting by keeping more and more Americans behind bars.
Visit Bernie 2016 - https://berniesanders.com/
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Battle Lines Are Being Drawn for First Democratic Debate |
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Sunday, 11 October 2015 08:16 |
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Galindez writes: "Listen carefully to all the candidates for the Democratic Party nomination for president. Well, listen to Hillary and Joe - Bernie is staying on message, and unless you attend their events you won't hear what the other Democrats are saying. Hillary and Joe are testing lines they hope can score points for them in the debate."
Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. (photo: AP/Reuters/Salon)
Battle Lines Are Being Drawn for First Democratic Debate
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
11 October 15
 isten carefully to all the candidates for the Democratic Party nomination for president. Well, listen to Hillary and Joe – Bernie is staying on message, and unless you attend their events you won’t hear what the other Democrats are saying. Hillary and Joe are testing lines they hope can score points for them in the debate.
Joe Biden
I know, he hasn’t announced yet, but ...
I think Joe Biden’s implication that he was a realist, not a populist like Bernie Sanders, was a sign that he is planning to jump into the race and challenge the feasibility of Bernie’s proposals. It won’t work with Bernie’s base, but it could impact those on the fence who like what Bernie has to say but wonder if he can make his plans a reality. Aside from that, I haven’t really heard much from Biden that indicates which direction he wants the debate to go.
I do know that back in February the vice president spoke in Des Moines and said the candidates should run on the Obama administration’s record. In a lengthy speech at Drake University, he touted the administration’s accomplishments. If Biden jumps into the race I would expect that to be the theme of his campaign, and what he will focus on in the debate.
Martin O’Malley
The former governor of Maryland will take aim at Bernie Sanders early and often. He has called Sanders a protest candidate, and he ran a web ad attacking Sanders’ positions on gun control. For O’Malley to gain traction he has to open up some space to the left of Clinton, space that is now occupied by Bernie Sanders. O’Malley’s theme is “Action, not Words.” He is implying that as governor he got progressive things done, unlike the other candidates, who have proposed things but not had success in implementing their proposals.
Bernie should fire back and say “if I had been the governor of Vermont, I could have signed a lot of progressive legislation too, but as a US senator in Washington’s gridlock it’s not that easy.” Bernie should go on to say that he is running for president to bring fundamental changes to Washington.
O’Malley will likely call for more debates, and might take some shots at Clinton too. But if O’Malley has his eyes on being Hillary Clinton’s running mate, that will keep him from going after her. At this point I see the #2 spot as the only path O’Malley has to a future road to the presidency, so don’t be surprised if he becomes Hillary’s attack dog.
Jim Webb
Why is he still in the race? I don’t see him adding anything to the debate. He will tout his foreign policy resumé. As the former secretary of the Navy, he probably has the best resume for commander in chief. On the domestic front, prison reform is his pet project and could be an issue he would like to bring to the forefront.
Lincoln Chafee
He is a nice guy ... he won’t attack anyone. He will smile and say we have to end the war and bring the money home. If you play a drinking game, you could get drunk if you drink every time Chafee says “peace.” I am a peace activist so I’m not trying to make fun of Chafee, but you have to develop a broader platform than he has.
THE MAIN EVENT
Hillary v. Bernie
Unless Vice President Biden jumps in during the next few days, all eyes will be on Hillary and Bernie. They may not directly attack each other but there will be subtle attacks, especially from Clinton, and Bernie will attempt to lay out the policy differences between the two. The Sanders camp insists that Bernie will focus on introducing himself to the nation and won’t be looking for a fight. Hillary on the other hand needs to land some blows and slow Bernie down.
HILLARY CLINTON
Free College Education
Let’s start with Hillary. I guarantee she will go after Bernie on his plan for free college education at public universities. Last week she tested the line “I am not interested in having the taxpayers pay for Donald Trump’s kids to go to college.” I expect Bernie to immediately point out that all of Trump’s kids went to private colleges and universities, and under his plan it would be Wall Street paying for young people to get a higher education. We already have free public education – Bernie just wants to extend it four more years.
Foreign Policy
Hillary would love to spend a lot of the debate on foreign policy. CNN might bring up Benghazi, but I don’t think the other candidates will. As the former secretary of state, she will want to impress people with her knowledge of foreign policy. There is big risk here. Both Bernie and Lincoln Chafee will not let her forget her support for the Iraq war. She will have to defend her call for a no-fly zone in Syria. We know Hillary will take credit for imposing tough sanctions on Iran and bringing them to the table for talks on their nuclear weapons program. She will talk about her meetings with world leaders and maybe take a shot at Carly Fiorina, who calls Clinton’s meetings photo-ops.
Trump and the GOP
Hillary would love to spend most of her time attacking the Republicans. Her only risk here is voters thinking she is looking ahead and acting like the nominee before the primaries even start. Overall though, this is where she needs to be. All the candidates need to demonstrate that they can make the case against the Republicans and beat them.
BERNIE SANDERS
One of the biggest openings Bernie has is that he is polling well, even with a significant percentage of voters still not knowing much about him. He has to seize the moment on the national stage and introduce himself to the American people. His message is resonating; he needs to stay on message until all Americans have heard it. He does need to lay out the differences he has with Secretary Clinton, but his main focus should be his core message of fighting inequality. Americans know the system is rigged, and they are looking for someone to fight for them. That is Bernie’s lane to the nomination and the White House. Now the differences.
Trade
So you think Hillary took the TPP off the table when she sort of came out against the TPP. If you listened closely to Bernie’s response, he said it would have been nice to have her on board a few months ago when they needed 60 votes. Bernie is right: Hillary stayed on the sidelines during an extremely important vote. Fast track made it to the Senate floor by one vote; I guess two, if you consider that the vice president would have broken a tie. Twelve Democrats voted to end debate. What if Hillary Clinton had taken a strong position then? Maybe two senators would have helped kill fast track. As it is now, because the president was given fast track authority, the TPP only needs 50 votes in the Senate. Hillary Clinton’s position on fast track, according to her communications director Jennifer Palmeri, was that it was a procedural vote and that it was up to members of Congress to decide how they wanted to consider trade deals. To be fair, a few days before the vote, Clinton said she would have “probably” voted against fast track if she had still been in the Senate, but that is a pretty weak statement. Now all she really says is that from what she has heard about the deal, she doesn’t think it will meet her standards. I for one didn’t hear her say she was opposed.
Keystone XL Pipeline
Once again, Hillary has finally come to the right conclusion, but again she is too late. If she had come to that decision when she was secretary of state and had recommended to the president that he turn down the permit, the pipeline would no longer be an issue. We are now waiting for John Kerry stop delaying and make decision, but instead they keep kicking the can down the road, a process started while Secretary Clinton was in office.
Minimum Wage
So you say that Hillary supports raising wages. She does, but she won’t commit to $15 dollars an hour. I have been trying to ask her where she thinks $15 dollars an hour is too much money. Bernie or Martin can ask her that for me.
There are other issues that separate Bernie and Hillary, but those to me are the game changers. Of course Bernie will raise campaign finance and point to Clinton and O’Malley’s super-PACS. Taft Hartley will be raised, Iraq, the Patriot Act.
CNN has a lot of control here. Let’s hope Anderson Cooper allows it be a debate on the issues and not a gotcha circus like the Republicans had.
Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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The Case for Unions |
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Sunday, 11 October 2015 08:11 |
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Rozsa writes: "When unions are stronger, the rise in wages increases broader purchasing power among consumers, feeding economic growth and enabling employers to hire even more workers."
A pro-union protest. (photo: Politico)
The Case for Unions
By Matt Rozsa, The Daily Dot
11 October 15
 n Wednesday morning, Huffington Post employees sent out a letter to their colleagues calling for them to unionize. “We believe organizing is the best way both to preserve what’s already working and to bring about positive change,” they argued. “Simply, a union will give us a voice in our newsroom’s future.”
The Huffington Post writers may be making headlines right now with their movement to unionize, but they are hardly the first online publication to work toward that goal. Gawker’s media staff made the decision tto unionize back in June, followed swiftly by Salon, Vice, the Guardian, Al-Jazeera America, and ThinkProgress. Considering that increasing numbers of Americans are receiving their news and political opinions from the Internet, the digital media unionization trend is noteworthy.
This raises an important question: Do unions work? In short, yes they do. When unions are stronger, the rise in wages increases broader purchasing power among consumers, feeding economic growth and enabling employers to hire even more workers.
What’s more, unions actually improve the economic status of non-union workers as well as unionized ones. Since the benefits that accrue to organized workers frequently become the norm within their respective industries, employers that don’t have a unionized workforce face pressure to provide similar wages and other perks—lest they face a labor problem of their own.
Perhaps most importantly, widespread unionizing would significantly alleviate income inequality in this country. “One big reason America was far more equal in the 1950s and 1960s than now is unions were stronger then,” explained former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. “That gave workers bargaining power to get a fair share of the economy’s gains—and unions helped improve wages and working conditions for everyone.”
He also pointed out that America’s peak years of inequality, 1928 and 2007, were immediately followed by the worst economic crashes in our recent history. On both of those occasions, unions were significantly weaker than they had ever been before.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t disadvantages to unions. In a piece for Business Insider defending unions, Henry Blodget noted that unions can create a divisive culture within companies, drive businesses to move jobs overseas, become career employment for their (often overpaid) leaders, and force employers to treat all workers equally regardless of their relative skill and effort.
These are serious problems that, in the past, have convinced many Americans to think twice about supporting unionization.
Yet as Blodget himself points out, “great companies in a healthy and balanced economy don't view employees as ‘inputs.’ They don't view them as ‘costs.’ They don't try to pay them ‘as little as they have to to keep them from quitting.’ They view their employees as the extremely valuable assets they are (or should be). Most importantly, they share their wealth with them.”
So why did unions become so weak? Much of the problem can be traced back to a single origin—the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Back in 1981 (less than seven months into his first term), Reagan famously threatened to fire nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers unless they called off an illegal strike. After following through on his threat for all employees who didn’t return to their posts, Reagan established a precedent wherein the power of strikes to assert employees’ interests was lost.
Before Ronald Reagan’s termination of the airline workers, strikes were commonly used to force both public and private sector employers to be responsive to employees’ demands. When Reagan terminated the airline workers, however, he emboldened businesses to view it as culturally acceptable to simply replace unhappy employees, rather than listen to and accommodate them. Today, employees who try to unionize their work force have a one-in-five chance of being fired for doing so, regardless of whether their efforts are legal or have legitimate grounds.
Reagan’s game-changing decision occurred more than three decades ago. Today, one of the leading candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—recently unveiled a plan to make it easier for workers’ to join unions.
“Millions of Americans who want to join unions are unable to do so because of the coercive and often illegal behavior of their employers,” Sanders argued. “The benefits of joining a union are clear: higher wages, better benefits and a more secure retirement. If we are serious about reducing income and wealth inequality and rebuilding the middle class, we have got to substantially increase the number of union jobs in this country.”
While legislation like Sanders’ proposed Workplace Democracy Act is a good start, it won’t be enough. Another important step is spreading information about why unions are so important. Although 58 percent of Americans approved of labor unions as of August, that number was consistently north of 60 percent before 1972.
Right now, many Americans don’t fully understand the benefits of being in a union, and as a result, they don’t prioritize it as highly as they should. The fact that the Sanders campaign is gaining traction by focusing on labor issues is certainly a promising step in the right direction, but it is a trend that needs to continue outside of the realm of presidential politics as well as within it.
Perhaps the best observation about the importance of labor unions came from, ironically, the Republican president who happened to govern this country at the time when they were strongest—Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“Unions have a secure place in our industrial life,” he observed. “Only a handful of reactionaries harbor the ugly thought of breaking unions and depriving working men and women of the right to join the union of their choice.”
This is precisely the point: At the end of the day, a worker’s ability to join a union is nothing more or less than an individual’s desire to have some measure of control over their compensation and workplace environment. More than an economic issue, unionization is a matter of civil liberties. When the workers at the Huffington Post decided to unionize, they weren’t simply fighting for more money, but for the ability to have their contributions to that publication given the respect it deserves.
Let’s hope the rest of America will someday follow their lead.
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Afghanistan and Iraq: Lessons for the Imperial |
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Saturday, 10 October 2015 14:02 |
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Nader writes: "The American people are entitled to know how so much American military might and the trillions of dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, since 2003 and 2001 respectively, is unable to defeat either the Taliban or ISIS."
Ralph Nader. (photo: Sage Ross/WikiMedia Commons)
Afghanistan and Iraq: Lessons for the Imperial
By Ralph Nader, Reader Supported News
10 October 15
he photographs in the New York Times told contrasting stories last week. One showed two Taliban soldiers in civilian clothes and sandals, with their rifles, standing in front of a captured U.N. vehicle. The Taliban forces had taken the northern provincial capital of Kunduz. The other photograph showed Afghan army soldiers fully equipped with modern gear, weapons, and vehicles.
Guess who is winning? An estimated 30,000 Taliban soldiers with no air force, navy, or heavy weapons have been holding down 10 times more Afghan army and police and over 100,000 U.S. soldiers with the world's most modern weaponry -- for eight years.
ISIS forces from Syria have taken over large areas of northern and western Iraq, including its second largest city, Mosul, and the battered city of Fallujah. ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria are estimated to number no more than 35,000. Like the Taliban, ISIS fighters, who vary in their military training, primarily have light weaponry. That is when they are not taking control of the fleeing, much larger, Iraqi army's armored vehicles and ammunition from the United States.
Against vastly greater numbers of Iraqi soldiers, backed by U.S. weapons, U.S. planes bombing daily, 24/7 aerial surveillance, and U.S. military advisors at the ground level, so far ISIS is still holding most of its territory and is still dominant in large parts of Syria.
The American people are entitled to know how all this military might and the trillions of dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, since 2003 and 2001 respectively, can produce such negative fallouts.
Certainly these failures have little to do with observing the restraints of international law. Presidents Bush and Obama have sent military power anywhere and everywhere, regardless of national boundaries and the resulting immense civilian casualties, in those tragic, blown-apart countries.
The current perception of the U.S. in these countries is that of invaders on a rampage. Recruiting motivated fighters, including a seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers, is easier when the invaders come from western countries that for over a century have been known for attacking, carving up boundaries for artificial states, intervening, overthrowing, propping up domestic dictators, and generally siding with oligarchic or colonizing interests that brutalize the mass of the people.
It hasn't helped for these invasions to be supported by an alien culture rooted in the Christian crusades against Islam centuries ago, whose jingoism in the U.S. continues among some evangelical groups today.
But of course more contemporary situations are, first and foremost, the wanton destruction and violent chaos that comes with such invasions. With the absence of any functioning central governments and the dominance of tribal societies, the sheer complexity of the invaders trying to figure out the intricate "politics" between and within tribes and clans turns into an immense, ongoing trap for the western military forces.
When the U.S. started taking sides with the Shiites against the Sunnis in Iraq, or between different clans and tribes in Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers, not knowing the language or customs, were left with handing out $100 bills to build alliances. Our government air-shipped and distributed crates of this money. With the local economies at a standstill, public facilities collapsed, fear gripped families from violent streets and roads, and all havoc broke lose in the struggle for safety and survival.
Afghan soldiers, who are paid only $120 a month, will do almost anything to supplement their income, including selling weapons. At higher levels, bribes, payoffs, extortions create an underground economic system. The combination of lack of understanding, the systemic bribes, and the ensuing corruption has produced a climate of chaos.
Then there is the reckless slaughter of civilians -- wedding parties, schools, clinics, peasant boys collecting fire-wood on a hillside -- from supposedly pinpoint, accurate airplanes, helicopter gunships, drones or missiles. Hatred of the Americans spreads as people lose their loved ones.
Our "blowback" policies are fueling the expansion of al-Qaeda offshoots and new violent groups in over 20 countries. On 9/11, the "threat" was coming from a corner of one country -- northeastern Afghanistan. The Bush/Cheney prevaricator frenzy led to local bounty hunters taking innocent captives, falsely labeled as "terrorists," who were sent to the prisons in Guantanamo, Cuba. These actions have damaged our country's reputation all over the world.
All this could have been avoided had we heeded the advice of retired, high-ranking military, national security, and diplomatic officials not to invade Iraq and their advice not to overreact in Afghanistan. But the supine mass media, and an overall cowardly Congress let the lies, deceptions, and cover-ups by the Bush regime go unchallenged and, as Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) put it, Bush/Cheney "lied us into the Iraq War."
It isn't as if the Taliban and ISIS are winning the "hearts and minds" of the local people. On the contrary, while promising law and order, they treat local populations quite brutally, with few exceptions. But the locals have long been treated brutally by the police, army, and militias jockeying for the spoils of conflict. Unfortunately, there is still no semblance of ground-level security.
All empires fail and eventually devour themselves. The U.S. empire is no different. Look at the harm to and drain on our soldiers, our domestic economy, the costly, boomeranging, endless wars overseas and what empire building has done to spread anxieties and lower the expectation level of the American people for their public budgets and public services.
Not repeatedly doing what has failed is the first step toward correction. How much better and cheaper it would be if years ago we became a humanitarian power -- well-received by the deprived billions in these anguished lands.
What changes are needed to get out of these quagmires and leave a semblance of recovery behind? Press those gaggles of presidential candidates, who war-monger with impunity or who are dodging this grave matter, for answers. Make them listen to you.
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pparently desperate Republicans are pleading with Paul Ryan to become Speaker of the House, because he’s “
