South Korea, 1975 - 1988: Prototype for America’s Prison Industrial Complex

Think of it:  mass arrests where thousands of “vagrants” and “undesirables” are swept up and crammed into prisons (with no charges, no trial) for years; decades.

Debtors’ prisons, where people are arrested for petty crimes, and then locked up until they can pay their fines.  They can’t pay off their fines while they’re in jail, and they don’t get out of jail until they can pay their fines…

Private prisons (e.g. Corrections Corporation of America/CCA, The GEO Group) whose owners have every incentive to lock up as many victimless nonviolent “criminals” as possible, with ZERO accountability to anyone.

(“Elected” legislators and police departments working hand-in-glove to enforce a corporate agenda — this is one of the hallmarks of Fascism.)

It hasn’t happened here.  Yet.  But it already happened forty years ago in South Korea.

The linked article is pretty long, but it’s riveting in that horrifying sort of way.  The worst of the corporate/Fascist excesses had pretty much run their course by the late 1980s.  But none of the culprits has ever been arrested, tried, shamed or held accountable in any way.  Every attempt to investigate these crimes has been abruptly squelched by South Korea’s Powers That Be.

From the article:

“In 1975, dictator President Park Chung-hee, father of current President Park Geun-hye, issued a directive to police and local officials to ‘purify’ city streets of vagrants. Police officers, assisted by shop owners, rounded up panhandlers, small-time street merchants selling gum and trinkets, the disabled, lost or unattended children, and dissidents, including a college student who'd been holding anti-government leaflets.  They ended up as prisoners at 36 nationwide facilities.”

The most notorious of these facilities was Brothers Home, which had mutated from an orphanage (supposedly) into one of the most vile, brutal prisons in modern history.

Don’t think for one minute that this “can’t happen here.”  Jillions of dollars in undisclosed/anonymous donations are flowing from GEO Group and CCA lobbyists, and hundreds of taxpayer-financed prostitutes (formerly known as legislators) are willing to spread their legs as wide as they have to — suck those lobbyists‘ dicks as hard as they‘re told to — if they can just get some of that corporate money.

Yes, It Can Happen Here.

Who's the Worst of the GOP White House Contenders? Marco Rubio.

By a mile.  Nobody else in the GOP Clown Car even comes close; mostly because the rest of them don't have a snowball's chance in Hell of ever winning a national election.

Ted Cruz and Carly Fiorina are batshit crazy.  Donald Trump is too loud and obnoxious.    Ben Carson??? ROTFLMAO!  Ditto for “Jeb!”

Marco Rubio is every bit as Far Right, every bit as corporate-owned-and-operated, as the rest of the GOP Clown Car, but without the foaming-at-the-mouth bug-eyed craziness that would scare off Middle America.  Marco Rubio COULD get elected if he wins the nomination.  And that is just plain fuckin' scary.

Underneath that smiling personable Ricky Martin demeanor, Rubio is just another corporate prostitute who's being paid to pick up where George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan left off.  Here's Matt Taibbi's impression of Marco Rubio in a Rolling Stone article:

“He is short but prickishly good-looking, all hair and teeth and self-confidence. He's the kind of guy that no group of men wants to go to a bar with, both because he spoils the odds and because he seems like kind of an asshole generally...There are young women in the crowd looking up at him adoringly, like a Beattle... He's so slick, he could probably sell a handful of cars at every speech...He checks all the boxes of what the Beltway kingmakers look for in a political marketing phenomenon: young, ethnic, good-looking, capable of working a room like a pro and able to lean hard on an inspirational bio while eschewing policy specifics...Rubio sells a kind of strident, bright-eyed dickishness that in any other year would seem tailor-made for roping in conservatives.”

Scared yet?  Here are some of the “policy specifics” that Marco Rubio wants to eschew — at least until AFTER he wins the White House:

If you like Private Prisons — aka the Prison Industrial Complex, For-Profit Prisons, the various Kids-For-Cash scandals (Google it) — You'll love Marco Rubio.

And don't you just hate those FCC commies with their nanny state Net Neutrality?  Wouldn't you love to crack down down on those municipal governments who are providing low-cost high-speed Broadband access?  So would Marco Rubio.

And needless to say, Marco Rubio wants to return control of banking/financial regulations to the Wall Street thugs who have purchased him.

Be Very Afraid.

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.