America's Alarming New Heroin Epidemic

NOT!!!

It's Reefer Madness all over again.  The recent hysteria over a growing heroin epidemic (mostly among teenagers) is being whipped up by politicians and the Prison Industrial Complex.  Some people just can't accept the fact that it's 2014 and the War on Some Drugs is finally starting to wind down.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), heroin use among teenagers has actually declined in the past two years.  There has been a recent increase in overdose deaths, but most of these ODs were from prescription painkillers, not heroin.

The communications director for the Office of National Drug Control Policy said that any public notion of a heroin epidemic is “a function of media reporting.”

The REAL Voter Suppression: Denying Felons the Right to Vote

Red states have gotten lots of well-deserved publicity from their slippery attempts to crack down on voter registration drives, early voting, extended voting hours, etc.  But far more votes are suppressed by not allowing felons to vote.

The same goal is achieved by both types of voter suppression:  keeping minorities and low-income people out of the voting booth.  But preventing ex-cons from voting has been much much more effective in achieving this agenda.

I’m guessing the main reason America’s prisons are such hellholes — by Western standards anyway — is that felons have absolutely no voice in our government.  No matter how many millions of them there are, no politician gives a flying fuck about them if they can’t vote.

Thanks to the War on Drugs (and other victimless “crimes”), felons are a sizable percentage of the U.S. population.  Perhaps they deserve a voice in the laws that put them behind bars in the first place.  I’m not referring to violent criminals, obviously — just the millions of felons whose only “crime” was to offend somebody’s “morals.”

The private prison industry is extremely lucrative, thanks again to our countless laws against victimless “crimes.”  The Prison Industrial Complex and the Talibangelical wing of the GOP would both have a lot less political influence if the people most affected by them could vote.

An ex-convict has the right to move next door to you, but he/she can’t vote?!?!?!?  Why???

This isn’t the case in most Western countries.  ProCon.org conducted a survey of the world’s forty-five democracies.  Twenty-one of these countries have absolutely NO restrictions on felons’ voting rights.  Out of the remaining twenty-four countries, only FIVE of them are denying the voting rights of felons who have completed their sentence:  Armenia, Belgium, Chile, Finland and the United States.

I’m surprised to see Belgium and Finland in that category.  Chile, Armenia and the United States — it figures.

In my ongoing effort to be optimistic and see the glass as half full:  If we start putting corporate/financial criminals behind bars, maybe our “elected” “representatives” would suddenly get concerned about felons’ voting rights.

But alas, the glass if half empty.  I just remembered:  during the height of the Watergate scandal, somebody quipped that “prison reform” would be a side effect of having Nixon’s henchmen marching off to prison in droves.

How’d that work out for us?  Suddenly we had a new category of “non-violent” minimum security country clubs prisons for white collar criminals.  For everyone else, the Prison Industrial Complex just got stronger and stronger.

Fantastic Business Opportunities in the Prison Industrial Complex. Invest Your Sons and Daughters Now

America’s two largest private prison companies — GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America — “earned” over $2.9 billion dollars last year. There’s gold in them thar prison inmates. And if you hurry, YOU can get in on the ground floor NOW.

According to the Justice Policy Institute, the total prison population has increased by 16%. During the same period, the prison population of private federal prisons has increased by 120%.

And it gets worse. Private prisons are not just taking advantage of our harsh victimless-crime laws and unbalanced sentencing procedures. They’re actively working to create new laws and longer sentences.

The largest prison companies have bribed, er, I mean “contributed” nearly a million dollars to federal politicians, and over $6 million to state candidates. In Arizona, most of the state legislators who voted for the state’s immigration law — which will be a gold mine for private prisons — received campaign contributions from the private prison industry. Coincidence?

And in Florida, legislation has been introduced that would privatize ALL Florida prisons. Needless to say, there’s a lot of bribery involved here.

And in the “Small World” department, one of the founders of Corrections Corporation of America is the former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party.

Figures.

International Panel: “End the War on Drugs”

This probably won’t change anything. For decades, prominent American politicians — including conservatives — have called for an end to the war on drugs. It falls on deaf ears every time. The multi-trillion-dollar Prison Industrial Complex is perfectly happy with our drug laws just the way they are. Case closed.

Now an international panel, commissioned by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, is calling for an end to the war on drugs. This commission includes the Prime Minister of Greece; the former presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia; former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan; and George Schultz and Paul Volcker.

The panel issued a statement saying:

“Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won.”

The former president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, said:

“The fact is that the war on drugs is a failure. Being a failure is not saying that you have nothing to do with drugs. You have to act. The drug are infiltrating the local power in several parts of the world. Corruption is increasing and the consumption of drugs is also increasing.”

The former president of Colombia said:

“We hope the U.S. at least starts to think there are alternatives. We don't see the U.S. evolving in a way that is compatible with our countries’ long-term interests.”

In a related story: Mexico’s violent crime rate is through the roof; and not just in Juarez and other border cities. Monterray, an industrial powerhouse and one of Mexico’s wealthiest cities, is being swallowed up by drug-related gang killings and kidnappings. Monterray has already had as many drug-related murders so far this year as it had in all of 2010.

Imagine the outrage in the U.S. if a law in Mexico was causing tens of thousands of Americans to be kidnapped and murdered every year. Mexico has some of the highest anti-American sentiment in the world. We can thank the war on drugs for that.

“A Tale of Two Moralities”

That’s the title of a recent Paul Krugman column. I have to take issue with this column. There isn’t anything I disagree with. But it’s way oversimplified; it leaves out too much.

He’s talking about the great political divide that’s tearing the country in two. The Left believes it’s “morally superior” for “the affluent to help the less fortunate.”

And the Right “believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft.”

And this is why his column is too simplified. The people on the “Right” he’s talking about are Libertarians. They make up a tiny portion of the Right Wing. He doesn’t mention anything about “Christian” snakehandlers and Salem witch-hunters who want to take America back to the 1700s. Or the warmongering rednecks who want the U.S. to invade and occupy dozens of “backward” countries because we know what’s best for them. (And because We WANT the natural resources that God mistakenly put under their soil instead of ours.)

Of course, Republicans and conservatives all pretend they’re Libertarian. Judging by their political slogans, you’d think they really do want “the government off our backs,” and believe in “self-reliance,” “personal responsibility” and “the right to be left alone.” Those soundbites are a lot more appealing than “I hate queers, minorities and everybody who doesn’t go to my church” or “we oughtta just bomb all them third world countries back to Kingdom Come.”

But unfortunately those last two categories make up the vast majority of today’s Republican Party. They all screamed “Freedom died today!” when Obama signed the health care reform bill last Spring. But these same freedom-loving individualists were stone silent when we invaded Iraq under false pretenses, and when Dumbya established massive domestic spying programs and eliminated Habeas Corpus. When our government spends trillions of dollars on wars and the Prison Industrial Complex, the Right mysteriously forgets about their “right to keep what they earn.”

And I disagree with his description of liberals. I can’t speak for anybody else, but the reason I’m in favor of a public safety net (or “the nanny state” as wingtards like to call it) has nothing to do with whether it’s a “moral” issue or “the right thing to do.” I believe in having a safety net because it works. It’s better for the whole country. As the saying goes, “When everybody wins, we all win.” (Or whatever the exact wording is.)

When millions of Americans are unemployed, destitute, homeless, sick and not having access to health care — the entire country gets pulled down. I would assume that the rest of the industrialized world has become “socialistic” for practical, pragmatic reasons; not because of “morality” or “right and wrong.”

When a huge percentage of a country’s population is poor, scared shitless and pissed off — it means the system is NOT Working. Tunisia, anyone?

So that’s my quarrel with Paul Krugman’s column. The Left favors a safety net (“robbing Peter to pay Paul,” whatever you want to call it) because it makes the entire country a better place; not because it’s “moral” or “the right thing to do.”

And the Right is sure as hell NOT made up of freedom-loving individualists who just want the government to leave us alone.

Arizona Immigration Law: A Gold Mine for Private Prisons

Whatever Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says, she likes the new immigration law for other reasons besides safety and border security. She’s closely allied with the Prison Industrial Complex.

Two of her top advisers have close ties to Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). And CCA holds the federal contract for housing detainees in Arizona. When they start rounding up all them swarthy Meskins — the new law takes effect this Thursday — Corrections Corporation of America will get even wealthier.

Hey, as long as America locks up more people than any other country in the world, we might as well make a profit from it, right? Or to paraphrase a popular poster from the late ‘60s: Prison is good business; invest your son.

Now who says Republicans don’t have any original ideas, any solutions? Al Franken comes to their defense. They do too have an agenda: They’re trying to bring the economy to a standstill because they don’t want people to get jobs before the election.

See??? The Republicans really DO stand for something.