Copyright © 2018 - 2021, The Troy Press
Copyright © 2016 - 2021, The Troy Press
Copyright © 2018 - 2021, The Troy Press
Source
EDITOR'S NOTE: In the source article, author Shaun King, famous sheep-dogger
and promoter of all things Democratic Party, who regularly argues for the D
identity of politics - "Vote For The Democrat!", goes off his usual script and
for once shows how the Democratic Party is anything but progressive.
... And meanwhile, Photosymbiosis gives us yet again an awesome comment in the
comment section, which we provide here below.
EDITOR'S SECOND NOTE: This news summary entry is actually from a comment by Photosymbiosis. We like her work enough to have started collecting it instead of letting it go down the memory hole of a comment section. FROM HERE DOWN it's photo's work.
This trend began in the mid-1970s, when US prison population was down around 200,000 people. (Around 1 in every 600 adults). Since then, probably mostly due to draconian drug laws, there's been at least a 400% increase:
THE NUMBERS:With only 5% of the world's population, the U.S. has more than 20% of the world's prison population - that makes us the world's largest jailer.From 1978 to 2014, our prison population has risen 408%.One in 110 adults are incarcerated in a prison or local jail in the U.S.
Behind this are the drug laws (where racially biased enforcement is the most common) and the rise of the for-profit prison complex. So, where do Democrats stand on these issues? It doesn't look too good, really:
Campaign finance records show that the PACs, leadership PACs, and joint fundraising committees of at least 23 Democrats in Congress have received $52,750 in campaign contributions from the PACs of GEO Group and CoreCivic during the 2017-18 election cycle through May 2018. . . Last November, however, the DCCC received a $10,000 contribution from the GEO Group PAC and during the current election cycle has taken in over $350,000 bundled by four lobbyists closely connected to GEO Group or CoreCivic, records show.
Now, most prisons are contracted by the states, not by the federal government, and that's where most of the private prison money goes - to state legislatures: Open Secrets article
While the three largest private prison companies - Corrections Corp. of America (CCA), The GEO Group, and Management and Training Corp. (MTC) - all spend significantly more in state capitals than on Capitol Hill, they are not shy about throwing money around in DC to monitor what's going on in Congress and at the regulatory agencies and try to have input. With combined annual revenues in the billions, they have cash to spare. In 2014 alone they spent nearly $2 million lobbying in Washington. And in the 2014 election cycle, PACs and employees of those three companies donated about $350,000 to sitting members of Congress; their preference is overwhelmingly for Republicans - only about one-third of that money went to Democrats. . .
So, with the Republican Party taking 2/3 of the private prison money, and the Democratic Party taking 1/3 of the private prison money - well, on this issue, it seems Republicans are twice as corrupt as Democrats. This is not encouraging when it comes to prospects for systematic reform, is it? So as far as the DNC and the DCCC 'getting involved' it seems they already are involved - in perpetuating the status quo. Unfortunately, the poor black people who have been most victimized by the 'criminal justice system' cannot compete with GeoGroup and CCA and MTC when it comes to bribing politicians. That's how the investment capitalism -controlled 'free market system' works, though. . . We wouldn't want our 401k retirement pension plans to lose value because of criminal justice reforms, would we?