Corrections Inc
3/25/11 From the Golden Vault of the Meria Show, Meria with John Biewen on “prisons for profit”. Recorded in 2003, this still holds up. Meria refers to prisons for profit often on her show, here’s why. the Corporate prison system in America – big business; lobbying for new laws to imprison the maginalised for free/cheap labor; crime down, prison population up? who benefits? Corrections Corporation of America – create laws for more inmates; stepping up the drug “war” for more inmates; Who benefits from prison labor? AT&T, BOA, Costco,Starbucks,Boeing,Microsoft,Sprint, Verizon and many more. Land of the free? hmmmm…free labor maybe.
The new Gov. here in Maine is a real whack job and started offending everyone when he got into office. One of his pet projects is to build a privatized prison somewhere in the boondocks of this state, with the promise of jobs for struggling rural townships etc. I’m sure that deal was brokered with campaign contributions. I was living in California when a 3rd strike applied to a man for stealing a SLICE of pizza. Get caught with a gram of powder cocaine – whites drug of choice get 1 year, get caught with a gram of crack cocaine – blacks drug of choice – get 10 years. That’s broad-brush, but that’s how it is in Cali. Americans of African descent are harder to program, so ‘they’ are rounding them up in this heinous way. After the state mental hospital here in Maine was closed in the mid 90’s, the downtown streets of Portland looked like ‘Lion Country Safari’ with the homeless mentally ill wandering the streets untreated – it continues to this day and is truly tragic. We need t-shirts that ask ‘Who Benefits?’ ‘Follow the Money’ and ‘Why Do They Hate Us?’ and have ‘Find Out @ Meria.Net’ on the back.
good idea on the tee shirts! Feel free to print them! One day if I have time perhaps I can do a line at cafepress or something.