Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: October 2, 2007 11:10:51 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Bush's Model for the "Free World" Is a Maximum-Security
PRISON
"Orwell -- the OTHER George"
GOP Occupied America:
Does the GOP "Vision Thing" Include
Blackwater Patrolling America's Cities,
Innocent People Awaiting Death?
http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2007/10/gop-occupied-
america-does-gop-vision.html
The sorry state of "criminal justice" in Texas is a predictor of
nightmare years ahead unless the US wakes up! Just as GOP policies
have consistently made terrorism worse, crime in Texas has gotten
worse over the back to back regimes of George W. Bush and his
successor, Rick Perry, called Governor Goodhair by the late
columnist, Molly Ivins.
The horrible state of criminal justice in Texas is a predictor of
criminal justice in a fascist America, where outsourcing replaces
responsible, accountable government. The GOP likes outsourcing.
It's an easy way to shirk civic responsibilities and reward cronies.
Much of the Texas prison system is outsourced to private firms. It
is but a small step to contracting Blackwater to patrol US urban
centers. Forces from Blackwater, DynCorp, and Wackenhut were
deployed in New Orleans. Capping several years of rumor, the
Department of Homeland Security moved forward toward the planned
construction of "emergency detention facilities" --concentration
camps in locations throughout the US. A no-bid contract of some 385
million dollars was awarded to Halliburton. Other contracts went to
KBR. As to be expected, the camps will be "activated" in the event
of a terrorist attack or a declared "national emergency".
In the duplicitous “War on Terror,” mercenary armies like DynCorp,
Blackwater USA, KBR, Custer Battles, and Aegis plunder Iraq and
other victims of Pax Americana, operating with no rules of
engagement and near-total legal immunity, usually earning at least
four times the salaries of enlisted U.S. soldiers.
A Sept. 21 London Independent investigation labeled the $120
billion sector “arguably the fastest-growing industry in the global
economy,” with operations in 50 countries, adding, “None of the
estimated 48,000 private military operatives in Iraq have been
convicted of a crime and no one knows how many Iraqis have been
killed by private military forces, because the U.S. does not keep
records.”
--Private contractors threaten U.S. democracy, Rice Thresher
A day after the United States Supreme Court halted an execution in
Texas, that medieval state made public plans to murder more people
in the name of state and justice including one this week.
Though several other states are halting lethal injections until it
is clear whether they are constitutional, Texas is taking a
different course, risking a confrontation with the court.
“The Supreme Court’s decision to stay convicted murderer Carlton
Turner’s execution will not necessarily result in an abrupt halt to
Texas executions,” said Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for Attorney
General Greg Abbott of Texas. “State and federal courts will
continue to address each scheduled execution on a case-by-case basis.”
--Texas Planning New Execution Despite Ruling, New York Times
This latest outrage points up an interesting and apparent
correlation between Bush's failed "war on terrorism" and the
equally failed "war on crime" in Texas.
I recently provoked the ire of the Heritage Foundation by stating
and proving --to the foundation's chagrin --the simple truth:
Terrorism is Worse Under GOP Regimes. More than enough stats make
an equally compelling case about crime: crime is always worse under
GOP regimes. That this should turn out to be the case may have
something to do with the fact that since 1980, unemployment is
always worse under GOP regimes.
Job Growth Per Year Under Most Recent Presidents
Johnson 3.8%
Carter 3.1
Clinton 2.4
Kennedy 2.3
Nixon 2.3
Reagan 2.1
Bush 0.6
Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current
Employment Statistics Survey.
I don't believe in GOP coincidence theories. There are reasons for
the sorry state of nation and state. Among those reasons are,
generally, GOP incompetence, criminality, and endemic dishonesty.
Let's put it in perspective.
The United States holds the dubious distinction of having the
largest incarcerated population in the world, with 2 million people
behind bars as of year-end 1999.2 With only 5% of the world's
population, the US holds a quarter of the world's prisoners In the
1990s alone, more persons were added to prisons and jails than in
any other decade on record.
...
In a continued examination of those states that lead the national
trend in increasing levels of incarceration, the Justice Policy
Institute turns a focus on the state of Texas. The Lone Star
State's criminal justice system is particularly worthy of scrutiny
at this time, as the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported in
August, 2000 that Texas, for the first time, leads the nation in
imprisoning its citizens: Texas now has the nation's largest
incarcerated population under the jurisdiction of its prison
system. Since 1990, Texas has lead the nation's 50 states with an
annual average growth rate of 11.8%, about twice the annual average
growth rate of other state prison systems (6.1%). Even more
important to the national context, since 1990, nearly one in five
new prisoners added to the nation's prisons (18%) was in Texas.
--An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State
The back to back GOP regimes of Bush/Perry have been disastrous.
The state itself has become become an environmental disaster where
the deteriorating air quality is linked to increased incidences of
respiratory diseases. The GOP played politics with the education of
children, perpetrating a deliberate fraud called the "Houston
Miracle". It would become the blueprint for "No Child Left Behind",
a scam involving phony test scores and book cooking. It was an
educational "Enron".
When nominated to serve in Bush’s cabinet, many marveled at Paige’s
triumphs as Houston’s superintendent of public schools in Houston
from 1994 to 2000. Usually near the top of Paige’s list of
accomplishments was his success in dramatically bringing down
dropout rates in one of the nation’s largest school districts.
There was one funny thing about those dramatically curtailed
dropout rates, though. They weren’t true.
In Paige’s last year as Houston’s superintendent, the school
district reported an incredibly low dropout rate of 1.5%. That was
better than any comparably-sized school district in America. The
problem, however, is that the district, which was under Paige’s
supervision, cooked the books and failed to count thousands of
students who dropped out and didn’t return.
As Cohen explained today, “As with Enron, [Houston’s] school system
has kept a set of books that has absolutely nothing to do with
reality. Some high schools reported absolutely no — that’s zero —
dropouts. That these schools were in impoverished areas made the
figures either preposterous or a miracle. The school system — not
to mention George Bush — preferred to see a miracle.
--Rod Paige’s Houston ‘Miracle’, Carpetbagger Report
As the GOP "Enronized" the great state of Texas, an assembly line
criminal justice system, in cahoots with a medieval, privatized
prison system, proved to be an oxymoron. It was "criminal" but
hardly "justice". Despite the GOPs "worst" efforts, crime in Texas,
always a topic of much discussion and study, has gotten worse.
Texas is big on capital punishment, but even its industrialized
application of the death penalty just cannot kill off the criminals
as fast as they procreate and multiply. The GOP may be seeking a
"final solution".
...by year's end 1999, there were 706,600 Texans in prison, jail,
parole or probation on any given day. In a state with 14 million
adults, this meant that 5% of adult Texans, or 1 out of every 20,
are under some form of criminal justice supervision. The scale of
what is happening in Texas is so huge, it is difficult to contrast
the size of its criminal justice systems to the other states'
systems it dwarfs:
There are more Texans under criminal justice control than the
entire populations of some states, including Vermont, Wyoming and
Alaska.
According to Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates, one quarter of
the nation's parole and probationers are in Texas. California and
Texas, together, comprise half the nation's parolees and probationers.
The number of people incarcerated in Texas (in prison or jail)
reached 207,526 in mid-year 1999. Only California, with 10 million
more citizens, has more people in both prison and jail.
Texas has a rate of 1,035 people behind bars for every 100,000 in
the population, the second highest incarceration rate in the nation
(second only to Louisiana). If Texas was a nation separate from the
United States, it would have the world's highest incarceration
rate--significantly higher than the United States (682), and Russia
(685) which has 1 million prisoners, the world's third biggest
prison system. Texas' incarceration rate is also higher than China
(115), which has the world's second largest prison population (1.4
million prisoners).
If the US shared the incarceration rate of Texas, there would be
nearly three million Americans behind bars (2,822,300)--instead of
our current 2 million prisoners.
The Texas prison population tripled since 1990, and rose 61.5% in
the last five years of this decade alone. In 1994, there were 92,
669 prisoners in Texas. This number had increased to 149,684 by mid-
year 1999.
The Texas correctional system has grown so large that in July 2000,
corrections officials ran out of six digit numbers to assign
inmates, and officially created prisoner number 1,000,000.
--An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State
Texas is called the gulag state for good reasons. Certainly,
justice in Texas is applied inequitably. Minorities --primarily
black and hispanic --are disproportionately represented in the
Texas gulag system but under represented in the State legislature,
the various city councils, and the state judicial system. For
example, blacks represent only 12% of the Texas population but
comprise 44% of the total incarcerated population. Whites make up
about 58% of Texas' total population, but only 30% of the prison
and jail population.
While one out of every 20 Texas adults is under some form of
criminal justice control, one out of 3 young black men (29% of the
black male population between 21 and 29) are in prison, jail,
parole or probation on any given day.
One out of every four adult black men in Texas is under some form
of criminal justice supervision.
Blacks in Texas are incarcerated at a rate seven times greater than
whites. While there are 555 whites behind bars for every 100,000 in
the Texas population, there are an astonishing 3862 African
Americans behind bars for every 100,000 in the state. This is
nearly 63% higher than the national incarceration rate for blacks
of 2366 per 100,000.
If Texas' black incarceration rate was applied to the United
States, the number of blacks behind bars on a national level would
increase by half a million. There are currently an estimated
824,900 African Americans in prison and jail in the US The new
figure, 1,346,370, would increase the number of African Americans
incarcerated in the US by 63%.
The GOP are consistent to the point of boring. Therefore, what the
GOP has done to Texas is a clue to the effect Bush/GOP rule may
have nationally, globally. The GOP modus operandi is premised as it
is upon delusion, lies, spin, claptrap ideology and bullshit!
Failing to wage an effective "war on terrorism" abroad, the GOP
presides over rising crime rates at home, throughout the nation.
Predictably, the GOP will blame the victims of GOP policies of
disenfranchisement, elitism, and discrimination. The GOP will wage
yet another "war on crime" though it is the GOP which is the
biggest outlaw, just as Bush waged war on terrorism, though he is
the world's biggest terrorist.
Five years of crime rates show that murders, robberies, rapes and
other violent offenses last year were returning to the peak, set in
2002. Crime dropped dramatically after that, the figures show.
In 2006, an estimated 1,417,000 violent crimes were committed, a
sharp increase from the 1,360,000 reported in 2004 and approaching
the estimated 1,425,000 in 2002.
--New York Times, Violent Crime Reported Up 2% in 2006
Those stats confirm a trend of at least two years. Yet, Justice
Department flack, Brian Roehrkasse, called the report "good news".
I wonder how Roehrkasse felt about the FBI summary of 2006
indicating that robberies had increased 9.7 percent nationwide,
arson 6.8 percent, murders 1.4 percent! It is the situation in
Texas, Bush's so-called "homestate", where the effects of the GOP's
medieval policies have fallen to Rick Perry.
Reflecting a surge in crime in Texas after the dislocations of
Hurricane Katrina, Houston recorded a sharp increase in homicides,
to 202 for the first half of 2006, up from 158 in the comparable
prestorm period last year. Three Texas cities ranked among the
nation’s top 10 in crimes per capita.
Homicides in Dallas were down to 101 from 106 but it still ranked
as the nation’s most crime-ridden big city, with 3,985 overall
crimes per 100,000 population, followed by Houston with 3,444.
After Phoenix with 3,436, San Antonio was 4th with 3,422.
--An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State
FBI statistics prove that since Bush seized the White House, crime
rates have jumped. Violent crime increased at 2.5 percent in 2005,
the highest rate in 15 years. Nevermind! Bush favored a 52 percent
cut in law enforcement funding. That's not the worst of it. Bush
and the GOP will never admit that GOP policies prove the utter
failure, the moral paucity, the complete intellectual inadequacy of
the GOP as a party, as an institution. Utterly predictable, the GOP
will cite every fact proving their endemic failures as reasons to
compound the problem. Having replaced ideas with propaganda, plans
with platitudes, the GOP will simply roll out more of the same old
GOP eyewash, claptrap, and bullshit!
We would call a doctor an idiot who tells you to just keep on doing
whatever it is that's making you sick. Yet the GOP does that
repeatedly, mistaking the illness for the cure and making it worse
with greed and incompetence. Confronted with rising crime and
swelling prisons, the GOP will propose even newer programs
guaranteed to raise crime rates even as they enrich cronies which
privatized prison systems, privatized Blackwater storm-troopers, a
robotized surveillance system.
It is but a small step then to privatizing the state police or even
the various metropolitan police departments. Blackwater, I am sure,
would love to get the juicy contract, the license to kill and get
paid for it. In that event, the march toward fascism will have been
completed. Life in America will have become a nightmare for
everyone but an elite of about one to five percent of the
population. The streets will be patrolled by armor-plated
Blackwater goon squads and other gung ho gun nuts for whom human
life means little to nothing.
In the meantime, the words of the late Molly Ivins seem prescient,
a plaintive warning about the breakdown of law and order that
follows from the complete and institutional breakdown of the rule
of law. We will have the right-wing to blame for having made of
America the ugliest police state in the history of the world.
The notorious inability of prosecutors to admit that they are ever
wrong is a fact of life. What is far more horrifying is the refusal
of judges and courts to look at evidence that proves innocence. Can
you imagine how that must feel - to be in prison for a crime you
didn't commit and to finally be able to prove it, only to have a
court refuse to consider the evidence? Most of this is a
consequence of a noxious law that Congress rushed through after the
Oklahoma City bombing. Called the Anti-Terrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act of 1996, the law was aimed at the ability of
federal judges to second-guess state courts and at the ability of
prisoners to file endless habeas corpus claims challenging the
constitutionality of their convictions.
--Molly Ivins
Blackwater is Trained for use in US Cities and Schools
A timely update:
Anti-Crime Unit To Carry Submachine Guns On Central Fla. Streets
ORLANDO, Fla. -- Members of the Orange County anti-crime unit will
carry automatic submachine guns to combat heavily armed criminals
roaming Central Florida streets.
Sheriff's deputies who patrol areas around South Orange Blossom
Trail have the same stories to tell, going up against criminals
with powerful guns almost every night, Local 6 reported.
"(It's) a simple concept: Where there's drugs, there's going to be
guns," Orange County sheriff's Cmdr. Al Rollins said. ...
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