Mass Incarceration As An Investment Vehicle

[ click pic to enlarge ]

Jeebus fuck . . .

WASHINGTON -- One of the country’s largest operators of private immigration detention facilities has made significant contributions to several Texas members of Congress.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2018/06/20/company-runs-immigration-detention-centers-top-donor-two-texas-congressmen

Incarceration for profit!  What could possibly go wrong?

Corporation shareholders unhappy because profits are lagging?  What would fix such a slump?  Simple, and quite frankly, the only thing that can fix it - more bodies, in more beds, in more cells (or cages as it may be).

Did you hear that these companies are charging U.S. taxpayers $775.00 per day - not per week, not per month - per day, to house the migrant children that CBP has detained?  [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/20/migrant-kids-tent-cities-cost-more-than-detaining-families-report.html]

They currently have (conservative estimate) somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 kids that are being held in these for-profit facilities - and they are holding them for much longer periods of time than has been done in the past.

Do the math kids.  Not good at math?  Ok - The Gadfly will do it for you.  Assuming 30.4 days per month mkay (365 divided by 12)?  That's $23,573 a month.  That's $282,875 per year.  Remember - we're still talking about cost per kid here.  Multiply that amount by - oh let's go with 17,000 - that works out to be a grand total of a little more than $4.8 billion.  And while these corporate vampires are making that kind of cash hand over fist, they can't even afford to provide these children with the bare-bones basics like soap and toothbrushes.

It's quite astonishing that this dystopian concept doesn't bother many conservatives.  As with their obeisant veneration of Drumpf though, it appears that a great many of them have deluded themselves in to believing that an incestuous mixture of Wall Street greed & ethics, and the government penal system, is actually a good thing for the country, and that such a system would never tread upon the lives of their own patriotic, freedom-loving asses.

The state of Illinois just passed a ban on these for-profit dungeon-masters from operating in their state - good for them.  A couple of other states are making moves to do the same.  But the genie is out of the bottle already, and once big money and the corporate sharks are aroused by the smell of this kind of blood-money in the water, the future of democracy will be saddled with yet another obstacle to have to overcome for it's survival.

Folks had better wise up to what's going on here.




----TFG

When You Have No Truths To Tell - Quite The Quandary

Interesting.

President Trump: "There were numerous cases where women were paid money to say bad things about me. You can't do that. You can't do that. And those women did wrong things." https://t.co/o5rsXVqVgt pic.twitter.com/CgqBN63sKd

— The Hill (@thehill) June 23, 2019

If Drumpf has proof of this bombastic claim, then he needs to haul these (as yet unidentified) women whom he is accusing of serious crimes, in to a court of law, get everyone sworn in under oath, and let's get to the bottom of the truth - right?  Sound like a sensible idea?

Here's the thing though.

Remember back in 2016, in the months leading up to election day, when those other 15 or 16  women came out with their own claims of Donald Trump sexually assaulting, and even, like E. Jean Carroll is now claiming, raping them?  Just as he is here with Carroll, a snarling Drumpf dismissed all of those women as liars and frauds too, using the same defense that he didn't "even know" most of them, or "never met" them. And yet, like with Carroll, evidence in the public domain inevitably comes to light that shows otherwise.

But Drumpf, being the oh-so-extra-special turgid bully that he is, decided he would take his then public denial of guilt a step further when he claimed that when the election was over, he The Great and Powerful Drumpf, was going to sue all of these women. For what? Presumably for slandering his pristine family name or his manhood, or both, but he didn't say.

There was a news interview at the time where the attorney for one of Drumpf's accusers laughed at his threats to sue and said . . .

"𝙄𝙛 𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙢𝙥 𝙨𝙪𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙘𝙘𝙪𝙨𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙬𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙣 𝙝𝙖𝙫𝙚 𝙨𝙪𝙗𝙥𝙤𝙚𝙣𝙖 𝙥𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙤𝙣𝙡𝙮 𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙢𝙥 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙚𝙣𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙖𝙥𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙧 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙙𝙚𝙥𝙤𝙨𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨. 𝘼 𝙛𝙞𝙚𝙡𝙙 𝙙𝙖𝙮."

https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/22/politics/trump-says-hell-sue-sexual-misconduct-accusers/index.html

And if you believe that Drumpf wasn't aware of the truth in that statement, explain why it is then that since the day he blustered that threat to sue, why hasn't he uttered a single peep, or made a single legal move to sue a single one of these women accusers?

Fear of perjury and obstruction.

It's the same reason Drumpf is now using executive privilege claims to prevent people who formerly served in his administration from responding to subpoenas and talking to Congress under oath.  It's the same reason that Drumpf himself has copped to for not wanting to be interviewed in person by Robert Mueller, for he knows full well, and he knows himself better than anyone, that he would very quickly find himself in criminal peril for lying to investigators and obstructing a federal investigation.

And that right there dear readers, is the sum total of the personal character of the individual who presently calls himself POTUS.

----TFG

The Madness Of The Boy Who Would Be King

[ click pic to enlarge ]

Drumpf has just brought this country significantly closer to not just a constitutional crisis in the form of his own impeachment, but also with an escalation in the battle for this nation's soul and our democracy's future.

Observe:

EXCLUSIVE: President Trump tells @GStephanopoulos that he "wasn't gonna fire" special counsel Robert Mueller because "I watched Richard Nixon go around firing everybody, and that didn't work out too well." https://t.co/J72Biz1YSs pic.twitter.com/glA1e6L57y

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) June 16, 2019

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/06/trump-moves-to-take-unchecked-power-article-ii-of-the-constitution-allows-me-to-do-whatever-i-want/

Trump:  "𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙡𝙚 𝙄𝙄 [𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙩𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣] 𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙤𝙬𝙨 𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙙𝙤 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙄 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩."

He was not joking folks.  Watch the videotape.  That was a very serious statement just cavalierly uttered by President Orange Caligula.

Now, imagine if, at any time during his presidency, speaking in his official capacity as President of The United States of America, Barack Obama had ever -- EVER!!!! -- even in joking EVER!!!! -- proclaimed that "𝘼𝙧𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙡𝙚 𝙄𝙄 [𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙩𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣] 𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙤𝙬𝙨 𝙢𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙙𝙤 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 𝙄 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩."

Holy shit! - the conservatives in this country would have been foaming at the mouth with apoplectic rage.  There would have been a run on pitchforks and rope at Home Depot.  And The Gadfly has absolutely no doubt that they would have pushed for the immediate impeachment of Obama - not one iota of doubt.  Tell The Gadfly he is wrong about that and The Gadfly will tell you that you are irrefutably full of shit.

With his arrogant decree that he can do "whatever" he wants because his interpretation of the U.S. Constitution is the only interpretation that matters, Drumpf has now arrived at one of the key junctures in the process of how autocrats advance the ambitions of their eventually despotic regimes - by issuing public proclamations staking out unilateral ownership of absolute, unaccountable executive power - unaccountable to no one, not even the law.

It's like his tweet from the other day, where he basically threatened Americans that if anyone but him  "takes over" the presidency in 2020 (spoken like a true mobster), America's economy would be destroyed.  First of all - that is about as un-American and unimaginable a thing to hear coming from the mouth of a sitting U.S. president.  Secondly, it dovetails nicely with his newest proclamation that he can do "whatever" he wants with the American people's government, which he now apparently believes, belongs solely to himself, as if it were just one of his gaudy, shady business deal, real-estate properties.

At some point we are going to arrive at the nexus where the constitutionally mandated process of Congressional oversight and Judicial checks and balances, reality, and Donald Trump's psychotic, authoritarian ego are going to meet, and shit is going to get ugly pretty damn fast.

“Because a man plays a king superbly well does not mean that he would make a good king.”

― Louis L'Amour, 'Comstock Lode'

----TFG

The Bloody Red Badge of American Cowardice . . .

Umm - ok . . .

"The FDLE investigation shows former Deputy Peterson did absolutely nothing to mitigate the MSD shooting," Commissioner Rick Swearingen said in a statement. "There can be no excuse for his complete inaction and no question that his inaction cost lives."

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/04/729728957/his-inaction-cost-lives-deputy-in-parkland-shooting-arrested-faces-11-charges

"Did absolutely nothing to mitigate" . . . needless slaughter.

"Inaction cost lives" . . . innocent lives.


It's just a tad ironic in The Gadfly's view that they are prosecuting this hapless school cop for the act of cowardice in the face of danger resulting in the deaths of innocents.

Ironic, for at this very moment, there are hundreds, no, make that thousands, of U.S. politicians at the federal and state levels of this country, Republicans and Democrats, who have committed, and presently are committing, the exact same offense in the form of their own cowardice for allowing the dark money slush fund that calls itself the NRA, and the gun manufacturing lobbyists, to control the legislative agenda of Congress on the issue of gun violence, in exchange for political support and campaign donations.

The cowardly behavior of these gutless, selfish politicians on this issue has fostered a societal environment of ever increasing and deadlier gun violence which is proliferating uncurbed in our country.

America's political "leaders" have done "absolutely nothing to mitigate" the ever escalating numbers of innocent dead Americans from random and rampant gun violence.

Their negligent "inaction" on this matter has clearly "cost lives."

The Gadfly doesn't think it's a stretch at all to believe that these NRA-owned politicians are trying to wash away their own sins along with the blood of innocents that indelibly stains their own hands with the arrest and prosecution of this sacrificial lamb, school cop, all of which does absolutely nothing but compound the vile nature of their own cowardice.

It's a sad commentary on where we are at as a self-described, "civilized" nation.





----TFG

From D-Day to Donald Day - The Chronicle Of An Empire's Fall From Grace

[ click pic to enlarge ]

Wow.  Imagine - 75 years ago this happened in human history.

Think about it.

If you know anyone who is older than 75 years of age, they were alive on this planet when D-Day went down in 1944.  And if you do actually know one of those people, there is a very good likelihood that they are alive, and living in a free America today, because 75+ years ago, America's then POTUS made a determination that if America was truly the "land of the free and home of the brave," then Americans needed to stand up, as a nation, and defend the freedom-loving peoples of the world from the depraved, murderous aspirations of authoritarian monsters like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin.

Think about that for a little while.  A good, long, contemplative while.

Then ask yourself - and be fucking honest - ask yourself if you have full faith and trust in the individual currently leading this country to stand up to the modern-day authoritarians from Russia, China and North Korea, and the budding authoritarians in Saudi Arabia, Hungary, and Turkey.

That's all.



----TFG