Monday, June 24, 2019

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




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