Maggots on Prison Food Is Crime on Crime

By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News

27 November 17

hree state prisoners in Oregon have filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court against four of the state’s prisons, saying that they were forced to eat fish and chicken intended to be animal feed or “bait food,” as well as spoiled milk and other moldy, rotten or inedible food. The suit accuses the Department of Corrections of civil rights violations and “deliberate indifference to health and safety.”

The three state prisoners, who were granted class-action status to represent all prisoners in the four accused prisons, told the court that immediately prior to state health inspections, prison administrators directed them to clean up kitchens and to remove “not for human consumption” food, green meat, and moldy, spoiled food to mobile refrigerator and freezer trucks elsewhere on the compound, only to return the food to the kitchen after the inspection was over. One of the prisoners said she witnessed the delivery of food marked “not for human consumption” being prepared and served to her and her fellow prisoners. In stark contrast, she said, she was ordered to prepare “prime beef roasts” for prison staff.

The complaint says that prisoners were often nauseated during and after meals and that they suffered stomach and intestinal pain and discomfort. The prisoners are seeking unspecified economic and non-economic damages, including punitive damages.

The unfortunate aspect of this story is that this is the norm, not the exception. Aramark, the well-known food service company that was named one of the most ethical companies in the world in 2015, nonetheless was sued and sanctioned repeatedly that year for, among other things, serving prisoners food that had been thrown in the trash; serving prisoners food that had been covered in maggots; and serving prisoners cake that had been partially eaten by rats. When confronted with the reports, an Aramark spokesman said, “I’m not going to comment on an allegation from eight months ago that is one of hundreds of allegations made by special-interest groups against our company and our hardworking employees.”

Similarly, in what it described as “an unfortunate accident,” John Soules Foods Incorporated, which calls itself “America’s Leading Fajita Brand” on its website, served dog food to prisoners in Texas that it says it had accidentally labeled as “ground beef.” After the Food and Drug Administration investigated the company over the course of six years, it admitted guilt, paid a fine to the U.S. Treasury of $392,000, and promised to be more careful next time. There were no criminal charges against anybody, and no restitution of any kind was made to the prisoners, one of whom mused that the scandal of the situation wasn’t even that they were fed dog food — it was that they didn’t even realize it was dog food because the food is so bad to begin with.

I wrote in my “Letters from Loretto” blog series from prison about my first Friday lunch in the prison cafeteria. My first full day in prison was a Friday. One of my cellmates said that Friday was fish day, to which I replied, “Great. I love fish.” He looked at me and said, “Not this fish. Nobody eats it. You shouldn’t either.” I went to the cafeteria and got in line. When I approached the serving line, I saw the boxes that had held the fish stacked up. They were clearly marked, “Not for Human Consumption. Feed Use Only.” Others were stamped “Alaskan Cod. Product of China. For Sale in Asia Only.” I never tried the fish in my two years in prison.

There’s no easy fix to this problem. Let’s face it: There’s no “prisoner lobby” on Capitol Hill. Most American voters don’t care if prisoners eat food that had first been nibbled by rats. Everybody wants to “get tough on crime,” right? The only solution is to do what the Oregon prisoners did. Sue the bastards. Organizations like the Human Rights Defense Center and the American Civil Liberties Union have been dogged in doing just that. And they’ve been moderately successful. The bottom line is that prison administrators will always try to cut costs, and those cuts almost always come in medical care and food. Similarly, private, for-profit prison executives do exactly the same thing so they can deliver savings to their shareholders and collect bonuses for themselves. The rest of us have to fight for the rights of those who can’t defend themselves. The courts are the only places to do that.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act - a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration's torture program.

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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GOP Tax Agenda Is a Grave Threat to People in Poverty

By John Bouman, The Hill

27 November 17

hat do taxes have to do with poverty and opportunity? A great deal, actually.

Taxes might seem painful and tedious — painful to pay and tedious to deal with — but they are important. Taxes pay for vital services that ensure equal opportunity, promote upward mobility, and ultimately benefit all of us. Tax policies are the less glamorous half of our public budgets? — ?those profoundly moral documents that reflect our country’s priorities and values.

Congressional Republicans have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform the tax code to make it more fair and just, and to improve the lives of working people and people living in poverty.

And what have they produced? An agenda that is a moral and fiscal disaster.

Just as the season of giving takes hold, congressional Republicans are advancing tax legislation at a breakneck pace that would deliver massive giveaways to the ultra-rich at the expense of everyone else. House Republicans voted earlier this month to pass their legislation, while the Senate could vote as early as this week to advance theirs.

Though there are some differences between the two plans, the broad contours are largely the same: both would give lavish tax cuts to our country’s largest corporations and wealthiest people, while raising taxes on millions of middle- and moderate-income households.

Furthermore, both plans pave the way for a large-scale assault on crucial basic assistance programs. After driving up the federal deficit by some $1.5 trillion dollars over the next decade to pay for those tax cuts to the super-wealthy, lawmakers will likely use these shortfalls as pretext to slash programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and food and housing assistance — just as congressional Republicans voted to do earlier this year.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has already warned lawmakers that their tax plan could trigger an automatic $25 billion cut to Medicare in 2018 alone, and President Trump has himself suggested that “welfare reform” — a euphemism for attacking safety net programs — is next up on the legislative agenda.

Worse still, the Senate plan would also repeal the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate. As the CBO reports, this would strip roughly 13 million people of health insurance and cause premiums to soar for millions more consumers.

And to boot, the House legislation would exacerbate the affordable housing crisis currently plaguing low-income Americans around the country, scrapping key credits and exemptions that help finance the production and maintenance of thousands of multifamily rental units.

Put short: the GOP tax agenda is nothing short of a reckless attempt at Robin Hood in reverse, devastating legislation that, in the end, would sharply increase poverty and hunger, decimate state budgets, and ultimately reduce opportunity for millions of low- and moderate-income people in this country.

Now, tax policies could be used to improve the lives and chances at upward mobility of people living in poverty, if Congress was so inclined.

For example, rather than cutting taxes on the rich, congressional Republicans could use tax reform to capitalize on the broad, bipartisan support for improving the Child Tax Credit (CTC). The CTC is a tax credit that provides crucial financial support for tens of millions of low- and moderate-income families — but, because it is not refundable against payroll taxes, millions of our country’s poorest families and children are locked out of its benefits.

Thankfully, senators from both sides of the aisle — including Republicans Marco Rubio and Mike Lee, and Democrats Sherrod Brown and Michael Bennet — have proposed expanding and increasing the credit to reach lower-income families. Doing so would make the CTC more like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) — one of our country’s most effective anti-poverty programs.

Nonetheless, Republican leaders have ignored these calls, electing to instead make adjustments to the CTC that largely benefit wealthy households, while offering only token help to some 20 million low-income kids and actively jeopardizing the credit for many in immigrant families.

Taxes are about values and priorities. Currently, the Republican tax plans prioritize the ultra-rich over everyone else, and lay out a harsh vision for our nation in which opportunity is more and more scarce for people experiencing poverty. Unless they wish to make this country much less fair and just, lawmakers should vote to kill this disastrous plan.