Stone Soup Station

Criminal Justice "Reform": Bullshit Meter Pegged In The Red

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 12:20:00 +0000

I have been lamenting for some time that the new era of prison/sentencing"reform" doesn't seem "new' at all. From my perspective, the focus continues upon the current system in place, adding "modules" like drug, homeless, veteran, and mental health courts without addressing the socioeconomic realities that often are the primary reason one turns to "criminal" activities (and even this is subjective and based on the whims of politicians defining what constitutes 'criminal' acts; ie marijuana possession) in the first place.

Prison Culture has an excellent piece, referenced in the article below, that pretty much sums up my own skepticism:

With every successive call for ‘reform,’ the prison has remained stubbornly brutal, violent and inhumane. A report titled “Struggle for Justice” published in 1971 put it this way:

“More judges and more ‘experts’ for the courts, improved educational and therapeutic programs in penal institutions, more and better trained personnel at higher salaries, preventive surveillance of predelinquent children, greater use of probation, careful classification of inmates, preventive detention through indeterminate sentences, small ‘cottage’ institutions, halfway houses, removal of broad classes of criminals (such as juveniles) from criminal and ‘nonpunitive’ processes, the use of lay personnel in treatment – all this paraphernalia of the ‘new’ criminology appears over and over in nineteenth-century reformist literature.”

There isn’t a prescription suggested in the quote above that is not currently being proposed by someone somewhere in America as a necessary ingredient of prison reform. It is as it ever was.

As the article below points out:

The major problem with defining the issue as reducing ‘mass incarceration’ is that almost anything you do that reduces the number of people behind bars can be called ‘reform’ regardless of the impact it may have on individuals and irrespective of whether it has any substantial impact on racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
It could be the criminal justice equivalent of the pyrrhic victory blacks experienced in winning the legal battle against school segregation only to find themselves a decade later with few white children in the public schools with whom to integrate.
Reframing the campaign as one to reduce criminalization would have us address all of the various ways in which people are being targeted, not just for illicit drug use. The new front for criminalization is the criminalization of poverty. There has been a proliferation of new laws and practices at the state and local levels designed to punish people for being poor by requiring them to submit to drug tests, background checks and other intrusive practices as a requirement for access to public benefits.
Reframing the campaign as one to reduce criminalization would also weed out those who see prison reform as a vehicle to promote privatization and limited government and have no interest in the ‘justice reinvestment’ approach that seeks to use savings derived from reduced incarceration to invest in the communities where the majority of criminal justice consumers live. Libertarian politicians like Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Rick Perry oppose things most people want and need: increasing the minimum wage; expanding Medicaid eligibility; increasing food stamps and other income support; investing in early childhood education; protecting consumers from predatory financial institutions and expanding the vote.

Yep.

Why We Should Be Suspicious of the Libertarian Right's Newfound Concern for Prison Reform

The problem with the growing popularity of fixing our prison system.

6 COMMENTS6 COMMENTS

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Photo Credit: Miller Center (M. Alexander); Gage Skidmore (R. Paul) / Wikimedia Commons

March 19, 2014 |

Like many criminal justice and drug policy reformers I have watched with great interest the growing bi-partisan support among elected officials for addressing ‘mass incarceration.’ Much of this new-found interest is due in part to Michelle Alexander’s well-received book, "The New Jim Crow," which elevated concerns about mass incarceration and its relationship to the ‘war on drugs’ in African American and liberal communities. Response to "The New Jim Crow" is part of a broad cultural shift in discussion of drugs and criminal justice policies, reflected in the popularity of shows like "Breaking Bad" and "Weeds," documentary films like "The House I Live In" and growing national acceptance of marijuana legalization. As someone who has spent the past 15 years advocating for reform of our criminal justice system and the end of punitive drug prohibition these developments should fill me with hope and optimism, instead I am filled with skepticism and great trepidation for the future.

It seems I’m not the only one who views these developments with a sense of unease. In Prison Culture’s recent website article, “Prison Reform’s In Vogue & Other Strange Things,” the author starts by noting the widespread optimism among journalists and others over the prospects for criminal justice reform and then goes on to express skepticism about the legitimacy of the development by citing history. The modern penal institution is a product of an earlier reform movement, which sought to replace physical torture and punishment with a system that would encourage quiet reflection, penance and rehabilitation. The author references a seminal report titled, “Struggle for Justice,” published decades ago, which put it this way:

More judges and more ‘experts’ for the courts, improved educational and therapeutic programs in penal institutions, more and better trained personnel at higher salaries, preventive surveillance of predelinquent children, greater use of probation, careful classification of inmates, preventive detention through indeterminate sentences, small ‘cottage’ institutions, halfway houses, removal of broad classes of criminals (such as juveniles) from criminal and ‘nonpunitive’ processes, the use of lay personnel in treatment — all this paraphernalia of the ‘new’ criminology appears over and over in nineteenth-century reformist literature.

Sound familiar? “Struggle for Justice” was published in 1971 and was referencing reforms from the previous century. As the authors astutely observed, many ‘reforms’ were merely changes in semantics: “Call them ‘community treatment centers’ or what you will, if human beings are involuntarily confined in them, they are prisons.” Everything being proposed to reform the criminal justice system by state and federal legislators today are reconfigurations of things we’ve done before with varying degrees of success.

During a recent conference call with activists on prospects for systemic reform Michelle Alexander is quoted as saying:

"We see politicians across the spectrum raising concerns for the first time in 40 years about the size of our prison state,” said Alexander, “and yet I worry that so much of the dialogue is driven by financial concerns rather than genuine concern for the communities that have been most impacted and the families that have been destroyed” by aggressive anti-drug policies.

Unless “we have a real conversation” about the magnitude of the damage caused by the drug war, “we’re going to find ourselves, years from now, either having a slightly downsized system of mass incarceration that continues to hum along pretty well,” she said, “or some new system of racial and social control will have emerged again, because we have not learned the core lesson that our history is trying to teach us."

I share Michelle Alexander’s concerns. I agree we have to directly confront the gross hypocrisy and misuse of resources associated with drug prohibition, but that’s only one aspect of the broader problem confronting us. I completely endorse the essential premise of “The New Jim Crow” — mass incarceration is the newest iteration of the racial caste system that was created during the earliest days of the republic and has persisted in various forms to the present.

For me, the problem is in framing the issue as dismantling ‘mass incarceration.’ There’s no disputing that the U.S. incarceration rate is a human rights disaster. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, except for the island nation of Seychelles. It has become an international embarrassment for the U.S., in much the same way that legal racial segregation was in the 1950s and ‘60s. African Americans learned the hard way that dismantling legal segregation and discrimination was not the same as dismantling racism and the institutions that support it — politically, socially and economically. Similarly, ending the ‘war on drugs’ will not significantly change the circumstances of communities that have been historically victimized by racially biased drug law enforcement. The frame of ending mass incarceration is great for educating people about the consequences of the war on drugs, but the frame we should use to guide policy reform is ending mass criminalization.

Mass incarceration is one outcome of the culture of criminalization. Criminalization includes the expansion of law enforcement and the surveillance state to a broad range of activities and settings: zero tolerance policies in schools that steer children into the criminal justice system; welfare policies that punish poor mothers and force them to work outside of the home; employment practices that require workers to compromise their basic civil liberties as a prerequisite for a job; immigration policies that stigmatize and humiliate people while making it difficult for them to access essential services like health care and housing. These and similar practices too numerous to list fall under the rubric of criminalization.

When people talk about mass incarceration they’re usually referring to the more than 2 million Americans behind bars in local jails or state and federal prisons. That number, as high as it is, obscures the fact that on any given day an additional 4 million people are under some form of correctional supervision — generally, probation or parole. According to the Wall Street Journal, studies reveal American men have a 52 percent likelihood of arrest over their lifetime — that’s basically a 50/50 chance. Either American men have an extraordinarily high rate of criminality or we’ve cast the police net way too wide and caught way too many in it.

I’m also suspicious of the libertarian right’s reasons for the sudden embrace of prison reform. Call me cynical, but I have a hard time believing they’ve seen the light and now support the agenda for racial justice despite the efforts of Rand Paul, Grover Norquist, Mike Lee and others to persuade us differently. From my perspective, the right’s embrace of prison reform is consistent with their broader vision of limited government. Over the past decade we’ve seen an aggressive campaign by conservatives to promote privatization of many traditional government services.

Education and corrections are two ‘big-ticket’ areas of government expenditure. They have the additional benefit (from the right’s POV) of being areas that primarily serve low-income and minority populations — groups with limited clout and even less resources. Reducing government expenditures in these areas through displacement and/or privatization accomplishes the economic and political objectives of right-leaning conservatives, especially if any savings derived from such “reforms” are returned to the ‘public’ in the form of tax cuts. Grover Norquist said as much during a remarkably honest exchange on the “PBS NewsHour,” where he appeared with then-NAACP E.D. Ben Jealous, ostensibly in support of the organization’s Smart on Crime Initiative.

I believe, for a variety of reasons, that the criminal justice system was already moving towards reducing incarceration — perhaps not at the same speed but the movement was headed in that direction. My reasoning is fairly simple. We have reached a stage technologically where we no longer need to incarcerate people in order to accomplish the goals of the criminal justice system

.I also believe that racism — and the U.S. criminal justice system is just one of the many tentacles of modern racism — is primarily designed to serve the interests of capitalism. When those interests involved the domination of blacks in order to exploit their labor (a.k.a. enslavement), racism helped facilitate that purpose — justifying black subordination, white supremacy and the violence on which the system relied. In today’s post-industrial economy, as black labor has become increasingly irrelevant, the education and criminal justice systems have become the principal tools for black subordination and economic exploitation. The prison industrial complex (PIC) is the new arena for the commodification of black bodies for the profit of a few. But the PIC doesn’t require people be housed in actual prisons. Home monitoring and surveillance equipment; community-based transitional housing; residential drug treatment facilities — provide methods of non-incarcerative control. We can turn people’s homes into their prisons and make them pay for the privilege of staying there, all in the name of reform.

The major problem with defining the issue as reducing ‘mass incarceration’ is that almost anything you do that reduces the number of people behind bars can be called ‘reform’ regardless of the impact it may have on individuals and irrespective of whether it has any substantial impact on racial disparities in the criminal justice system. It could be the criminal justice equivalent of the pyrrhic victory blacks experienced in winning the legal battle against school segregation only to find themselves a decade later with few white children in the public schools with whom to integrate.

Reframing the campaign as one to reduce criminalization would have us address all of the various ways in which people are being targeted, not just for illicit drug use. The new front for criminalization is the criminalization of poverty. There has been a proliferation of new laws and practices at the state and local levels designed to punish people for being poor by requiring them to submit to drug tests, background checks and other intrusive practices as a requirement for access to public benefits.

Reframing the campaign as one to reduce criminalization would also weed out those who see prison reform as a vehicle to promote privatization and limited government and have no interest in the ‘justice reinvestment’ approach that seeks to use savings derived from reduced incarceration to invest in the communities where the majority of criminal justice consumers live. Libertarian politicians like Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Rick Perry oppose things most people want and need: increasing the minimum wage; expanding Medicaid eligibility; increasing food stamps and other income support; investing in early childhood education; protecting consumers from predatory financial institutions and expanding the vote.

If the same folks who say they support prison reform as a ‘racial justice’ issue get behind these issues I’m down with them all the way. If not, they should get stepping.

1.3 million jobless Americans entering their fourth week without federal benefits are facing tough choices

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 12:44:00 +0000

"I'm not looking for a handout, I want to work." ~ Wesley

You and a few million others...

Life without benefits gets tougher for jobless

By Jennifer Liberto @CNNMoney January 20, 2014: 3:50 AM ET

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney)

Some of the 1.3 million jobless Americans entering their fourth week without federal benefits are facing tough choices.

Jean Winsor borrowed money from a friend to pay car insurance this month, so she can drive to interviews. She can't pay her Shinglehouse, Pa., mortgage.

Marcus Wesley is a few months from finishing a course in his Houston suburb to transition into medical information technology, a field that's hiring. "If I had to, I would have to live in my car," said Wesley, who has rent coming due.

Kerstin Foster got a job that starts in February, but she can't pay the grocery bills now. She spent most of two days last week in a long line -- with dozens of other jobless workers who lost benefits -- waiting to sign up for food stamps in Waterbury, Conn.

"All of us in line, we were all cut off from unemployment," said Foster, who will go back to work as an administrative assistant in a few weeks. "I'm one of the lucky people who has a job coming. What's going to happen to all the rest?"

The week of Dec. 28, extended federal jobless benefits expired with the end of a recession-era program intended to help those who have exhausted six months worth of state payments.

In the meantime, Congress left Washington last week with little progress made to extend the federal program.

The federal benefits first went into effect during the recession in June 2008. They were put in place to help unemployed workers who couldn't find jobs and whose state unemployment insurance had run out.

Back then, the jobless rate was 5.6%. It later climbed to more than 10% in 2009, and the government extended or expanded the federal benefits 11 times into the weak recovery,most recently in January 2013.

Many jobless Americans say it's still tough to find a job. Wesley, 40, of Missouri City, Texas, said he needs a few months to finish job training.

He spent years working in information technology, most recently for Bank of New York Mellon, which ended his contract last spring. When he couldn't find work for financial companies, he decided to transition to health care, an area in need of IT help.

Jobs end year on a downer

"I'm not looking for a handout, I want to work," Wesley said.

Brad Bowman, 35, lost his job in July working for a non-profit that mentors youth at Detroit-area schools, a victim of budget shortfalls. His parents and grandparents have paid his health insurance premiums the past two months.

Lately, he's been able to pick up $20 to $25 a day through a service that allows him to rent out his Dodge Stratus a few days a week to those who need a car.

"I can't rent it out every day because I need a way to get to an interview, should I get an interview," Bowman said.

Winsor, 49, has been paying her car insurance, Internet and phone bill so she can keep applying for jobs. But she has no idea how she'll make her $461 mortgage payment due in two weeks.

The home health care aide has been applying for dozens of jobs every day, she said. She's already turned off the heat in her part of her house, to keep the heating bill down.

"All I do is try and cry, and say 'Lord help me,'" Winsor said. "This government is going to make everyone break down."

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 11:44:00 +0000

Prison Industrial Complex in 2013: Running Amok, Gathering More Power, And Putting YOUR Freedom In Jeopardy

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 12:51:00 +0000

"The merger of correctional officer unions with the private prison industry unites two powerful – and once oppositional – forces both of whom have intense economic interests in maintaining/expanding the current situation of mass incarceration. "

Of all the things that have happened to us in the last 50 years, the rise of the "prison industrial complex" may turn out to be the very worst, and most difficult to change...

UPDATED:

For-Profit Prisons: Eight Statistics That Show the Problems

Friday, 27 December 2013 09:55By Kevin Mathews, Care2 | News Analysis

As private prisons become the norm in the United States, it's time society takes a look at the institution and asks, "Are prisons really being used as rehabilitation/deterrence for crime, or have private interests started attaching price tags to lawbreakers’ heads and exploited their incarceration for profit?"

Here are several key statistics that paint an ugly, troubling picture of the for-profit prison system in America:

500% Increase

The biggest private prison owner in America, The Corrections Corporation of America, has seen its profits increase by more than 500% in the past 20 years. Moreover, the business’ growth shows no sign of stopping, having already approached 48 states to take over government-run prisons.

10-60 Pounds Lighter

One way for-profit prisons to minimize costs is by skimping on provisions, including food. A psychiatrist who investigated a privately run prison in Mississippi found that the inmates were severely underfed and looked “almost emaciated.” During their incarceration, prisoners dropped anywhere from 10 to 60 pounds.

100%

100% of all military helmets, ID tags, bullet-proof vests and canteens are created in federal prison systems through prison labor. Though prisoners are “generously” compensated cents per hour, it’s clear having this inexpensive, exploited labor force is critical to the military industrial complex. I bet that the irony that mostly non-violent offenders are making war gear for others to perpetuate violence abroad without consequence is not lost on many of the inmates.

90% Occupancy

States sign agreements with private prisons to guarantee that they will fill a certain number of beds in jail at any given point. The most common rate is 90%, though some prisons are able to snag a 100% promise from their local governments. Because of these contracts, the state is obligated to keep prisons almost full at all times or pay for the beds anyway, so the incentive is to incarcerate more people and for longer in order to fill the quota.

25%

One in every four people that is incarcerated worldwide is held captive in a United States jail. How is it that a country with only 5% of the world’s population has 25% of all the inmates? Simple: prisoners are source of revenue for private companies, so the demand for incarcerating them is especially high.

11 Times

Violent crimes are down overall, so how does the United States keep prisons stocked instead? Amplifying the war on drugs: there are now 11 times as many people in jail for drug convictions than there were in 1980, constituting 50% of the prison population. Longer mandatory minimum sentences also keeps the inmates in longer. Most people incarcerated for drug charges are non-violent, have no prior record, and are addicts rather than major drug-traffickers.

50%

Nearly half of all detained immigrants are held in privately owned facilities. The fact that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has stepped up its game to detain more undocumented immigrants – about 400,000 each year – has actually increased the need for private systems as most detainees will linger in the system waiting for court dates for months if not years.

Civil rights groups have deemed the quality of care provided in immigrant detention centers unacceptable, particularly because of the large numbers of preventable fatalities and sexual assaults.

$45 million

The three largest for-profit prison corporations have spent more than $45 million on campaign donations and lobbyists to keep politicians on the side of privatized incarceration. In light of all of their ethical violations, it’s obvious that they have to offer some incentive for keeping their business legal.

Original post article:

Fifteen Things That We Relearned About the Prison Industrial Complex in 2013

Friday, 20 December 2013 11:29By Mariame Kaba, Prison Culture | News Analysis

The engine of the prison industrial complex unfortunately kept on chugging in 2013.

I wanted to highlight some of the key developments as I saw them during this year. There are so many things that I could have included and it was difficult for me to only choose fifteen to list. Truth be told, I initially only planned to feature 10 issues. That didn’t work out. Some things that aren’t on the list include the plea deals that Federal prosecutors coerce from drug defendants under threat of long prison sentences, the treatment of LGBTQ immigrants in detention centers, the political imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, Marissa Alexander leaving jail pending her March 2014 trial and more. Feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section.

1. The Federal prison population has grown to 219,000 people, an increase of 27% over the last decade.

Since 1980, the Federal prison population has exploded by 790 percent. Almost 50% of these prisoners are there for drug offenses. According to a new report (PDF) by the Urban Institute, Federal prison overcrowding will worsen if policy changes aren’t implemented. Federal prisons that are now 35 to 40 percent over capacity could reach 55 percent over capacity by 2023. The Justice Department’s budget for the federal prison system has increased from $5 billion in 2008 to $6.9 billion today.

The Government Accountability Office released a report this month about the Bureau of Prisons. In the report, the GAO attributes the increase of the Federal prison population to several factors including mandatory minimum sentences. In an attempt to address overcrowding, this summer, Attorney General Eric Holder gave “new instructions to federal prosecutors on how they should write their criminal complaints when charging low-level drug offenders, to avoid triggering the mandatory minimum sentences.”

[The Sentencing Project published an excellent fact sheet (PDF) outlining trends in U.S. corrections for those who want to learn more the scope of incarceration. Rosa Brooks's essay in Foreign Policy provides a good overview about the incarceration nation.]

2. We were still sterilizing women in U.S. prisons as late as 2010.

This summer, the Center on Investigative Reporting broke the story that:

Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

At least 148 women received tubal ligations in violation of prison rules during those five years – and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews.

From 1997 to 2010, the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform the procedure, according to a database of contracted medical services for state prisoners.

The women were signed up for the surgery while they were pregnant and housed at either the California Institution for Women in Corona or Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, which is now a men’s prison.

Former inmates and prisoner advocates maintain that prison medical staff coerced the women, targeting those deemed likely to return to prison in the future

The state of California held hearings this fall to collect more information.

Below is a documentary titled “Sterilization Behind Bars” produced by the Center on Investigative Reporting released just last month.

3. Prisons are still sites of violence and abuse.

In April 2013, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it had launched an investigation of Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women. I had written about the allegations of abuse and violence last year. The DOJ announcement came several months after a scathing report about conditions and abuses at the prison was released by the National Institute of Corrections (NIC).

Tutwiler Prison was named by Mother Jones Magazine as one of America’s 10 Worst Prisons earlier this year.

4. Children are still not exempt from the torture of solitary confinement.

The ACLU launched an online campaign to end the solitary confinement of children. From its petition:

Every day across the country, kids as young as 13 are held in solitary confinement with almost no human contact for days or months at a time. Solitary can amount to torture, and the consequences can be devastating for children because they are still developing—that’s why we must stop this cruelty now.

Earlier this year, we joined with 40 advocacy groups and launched a campaign to pressure Attorney General Eric Holder to ban solitary confinement for youth in federal custody—which would set an important precedent for states to follow suit. We received an initial response from decision-makers at the Department of Justice that signaled interest, but they still have not committed to a ban.

So we’re helping to shine a spotlight on this cruelty with this video—and then next week, we’ll deliver the signatures of the tens of thousands of people calling for an end to this practice. Sign the petition to add your voice to the call for justice now and help us get to 50,000 signatures—to make sure that Holder can’t ignore this issue any longer.

Below is a video describing the campaign:

5. People still love TV shows and films about prison.

2013 was the year of Orange is the New Black, a fictionalized Netflix series that is based on a memoir of the same title by Piper Kerman.

The show was a instant sensation and generated countless discussions and articles. In fact, In These Times Magazine ran an interesting three-part discussion. You can find it here.

[Full disclosure: While I read the book and enjoyed it very much, I have not watched the series.]

6. Corporations are still profiting off prisons.

In October, Liliana Segura wrote a detailed and enraging article about prison profiteering in the Nation Magazine. The Nation teamed up with the ACLU andBeyond Bars to raise awareness and take action against the exploitation of prisoners and their families.

Below is a video that highlights just one exploitative practice: prison phone call price gouging.

Learn more about the prison profiteering campaign here.

Importantly, the campaign for phone justice won a victory on August 9 when the FCC “passed a set of rules that will drastically reduce the cost of interstate phone calls between prisoners and their family and contacts on the outside. But these new rules won’t reduce costs for in-state calls, and don’t address the needs of hard-of-hearing and deaf inmates.” Learn more about the campaign for phone justice here.

7. Immigrant detention is still inhumane and expensive.

The National Immigrant Justice Center released a report (PDF) in April detailing the fate of children who are detained in adult facilities. It found that:

“…from 2008 to 2012, children under the age of 18 spent a combined total of 36,598 days in 30 adult detention facilities around the country. DHS detained more than 1,300 children in adult facilities in violation of the Flores v. Reno settlement agreement. DHS detained these children for periods ranging from three days to more than one year, and more than 800 children spent at least one week in adult custody.”

In August, the National Immigration Forum released a report titled the “Math of Immigrant Detention” which details the cost of detaining immigrants. Some of the findings that it underscores include:

For the Fiscal Year that begins October 1, 2013 (Fiscal year 2014), Department of Homeland Security and the White House requested $1.84 billion for DHS Custody Operations = over $5 million per day spent on immigration detention.

From 2001 to 2011 the total number of immigrants who pass through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention per year rose from 204,459 individuals in 2001, to a record breaking 429,247 individuals in FY 2011.

Between 2009 and 2011, over half of all immigrant detainees had no criminal records. Of those with any criminal history, nearly 20 percent were merely for traffic offenses.

Private prison companies in 2011 housed nearly half of all immigration detainees, and in FY 2012 CCA and GEO reported annual revenues of $1.8 billion and $1.5 billion respectively.

According to the Associated Press, the three corporations holding the largest percentage of ICE detention contracts, including CCA and GEO, collectively spent at least $45 million in the past decade on campaign donations and lobbyists at the state and federal levels.

Watch the documentary “Immigrants For Sale” if interested in learning more about the connections between private prisons and immigration.

8. The School to Prison Pipeline is still funneling mostly black and brown children into the juvenile and adult criminal legal systems.

As the Open Society Foundation suggests:

“Instead of investing in children and fostering supportive environments where they can succeed, many school districts turn to suspensions, expulsions, and even arrests to deal with typical pre-adolescent and adolescent behavior. Such “zero tolerance” policies harm all students, but children of color, students with disabilities and students identifying as LGBT are especially affected. One suspension increases the risk a child will drop out of school, and one school-based arrest can wreak emotional havoc, not to mention derail a student’s job prospects or acceptance to college or the military.”

Just last week, the Vera Institute for Justice published a report that looks at “existing research about whether zero tolerance discipline policies make schools more orderly or safe, if out-of-school suspension or expulsion leads to greater involvement in the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems, and what effect these policies can have on a young person’s future.” The report “concludes that, a generation after the rise of these policies and practices, neither schools nor young people have benefited.”

The Advancement Project released an entertaining video about a serious topic to illustrate the ways that school discipline used to be handled on tv shows vs. the ways that we now address student misbehavior.

Finally, many people are resisting the STPP and Broward County is one of the places where organizers are realizing some successes.

9. We still lock people up for extraordinarily long periods for nonviolent crimes.

The ACLU released a report last month titled “A Living Death” about people who were sentenced to life without parole for nonviolent offenses. They noted that as of 2012, there were about 3,278 prisoners serving such sentences. The New York Times writes in an editorial:

“And that number is conservative. It doesn’t include inmates serving sentences of, say, 350 years for a series of nonviolent drug sales. Nor does it include those in prison for crimes legally classified as “violent” even though they did not involve actual violence, like failing to report to a halfway house or trying to steal an unoccupied car.

The report relies on data from the federal prison system and nine states. Four out of five prisoners were sentenced for drug crimes like possessing a crack pipe or acting as a go-between in a street drug sale. Most of the rest were sentenced for property crimes like trying to cash a stolen check or shoplifting. In more than 83 percent of the cases, the judge had no choice: federal or state law mandated a sentence of life without parole, usually under a mandatory-minimum or habitual offender statute.”

10. Private prisons are still the worst.

In September, a group called “In the Public Interest” published a report titled “Criminal: How Lockup Quotas and “Low-Crime Taxes” Guarantee Profits for Private Prison Corporations.” The report shows “private prison companies mandate high inmate occupancy rates through their contracts with states – in some cases, up to 100 percent.”

Mother Jones explains that the report: “reviewed 62 contracts for private prisons operating around the country at the local and state level. In the Public Interest found that 41 of those contracts included occupancy requirements mandating that local or state government keep those facilities between 80 and 100 percent full. In other words, whether crime is rising or falling, the state must keep those beds full.

11. The so-called drug war is still racist and failed…

In June, the ACLU released an important report showing the racial disparities in marijuana arrests in the U.S. It got a lot of press coverage because of the staggering statistics. The report found that:

“Black people are 3.7 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people despite comparable usage rates…The report also found that marijuana arrests now make up nearly half of all drug arrests, with police making over 7 million marijuana possession arrests between 2001 and 2010.”

12. It’s still open season on black & brown bodies by the police.

In March, the NYPD gunned down Kimani Gray sparking days of protest by young people in Brooklyn. In August, Miami Police tased 18 year old Israel Hernandez to death. In September, Jonathan Farrell was shot to death by police in Charlotte. A few days ago, Durham police said that 17 year old Jesus Huerta shot himself in the head while his hands were cuffed behind his back. You get the picture…

13. Guantanamo is still open and still torturing prisoners.

After 12 years, Guantanamo Bay Prison is still open. This summer Yasiin Bey controversially tried to demonstrate how prisoners who are on a hunger strike at the prison are being forced-fed. There was a lot of controversy about his choice to dramatize the plight of the prisoners.

When the hunger strike was at its peak over 100 of the 166 Guantanamo prisoners participated. As the months have passed, that number has dropped and the U.S. military has announced that it will no longer provide information on the number of hunger strikers. Guantanamo is one of our greatest national shames.

The Guardian has produced a poignant and enraging video animation about the plight of the prisoners at Guantanamo. I encourage everyone to watch it to understand what is being done in our names.

14. Prisoners are still resisting all across the country.

Prisoners at Pelican Bay prison in California launched another hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions:

On July 8th 2013, more than 30,000 California prisoners initiated an indefinite hunger strike in response to the CDCR’s failure to meet their 5 Core Demands. 60 days and 1 death later, strikers suspended the strike, and California legislators committed to hold public hearings.

Mother Jones published a good article explaining the issues that were at stake in thehunger strike.

Below is a music video about the prison strike:

15. People outside of prisons are still resisting.

After over a decade of struggle, TAMMS Supermax Prison in Illinois closed its doors.

My friend Dr. Nancy Heitzeg (who co-edits the great Criminal Injustice series) wrote to add one critical issue to the list. So I’m making this #15 (a) since it’s my blog

15 (a). Some unions are joining forces with state governments to expand the use of private prisons.

California’s co-optation of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) into support of expanded use of private prisons is one of the most ominous moves of our time..

"Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this new privatization scheme is the collusion with old opponents. Previously, in California and elsewhere, private prison expansion has been stymied by correctional officers' union who resisted because of CCA and GEO's reliance on non-union labor. Not any more, and opponents of mass incarceration fear this is a harbinger of additional expansion and continued mass incarceration.

Such concerns stem in part from the fact that the arrangements could deprive prison reformers of an unlikely but potent ally: the prison guard union.

For years, California’s prison guard union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, served as a powerful check on the growth of the private prison industry. The union spent millions to support the campaigns of political allies, and launched media attacks that were widely seen as lethal to the political aspirations of opponents.

Now the union and the private companies are partners. Brown’s deal with CCA stipulates that the state will staff the private facility with union guards, effectively creating a detente between the former foes. When Brown first announced the deal in August, the union’s leader, Mike Jimenez, joined him on stage in a show of solidarity.

Pay close attention to this development. The merger of correctional officer unions with the private prison industry unites two powerful – and once oppositional – forces both of whom have intense economic interests in maintaining/expanding the current situation of mass incarceration. Watch too for the Supreme Courts’ take on Brown’s request to use out-of-state private prisons to resolve California’s in-state constitutional crisis re over-crowding. If they allow him to do this, it creates a precedent that further erodes the already miniscule rights of inmates to seek meaningful redress for “” conditions of confinement.”

"(T)oday, the purely racist tendency of the aristocracy is so great that it often is strong enough to outweigh their greed—discrimination is practiced even when it's unprofitable."

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 14:10:00 +0000

"(V)irtually all of this nation’s class-rigidity still remains in the U.S. South, even after the Civil War. New Dixie has replaced the aristocracy’s black slaves of Old Dixie, by the local (white) aristocracy’s institutionalized bigotry against poor people, now of all ethnic groups. What used to be their purely racist bigotry has, it seems, devolved into a crushing, pervasive, classist, bigotry in the South."

By Eric Zuesse

Economic Opportunity Is Lowest In the Republican Bible Belt, Major Study Finds

Class-rigidity is most extreme in the South, according to leading Harvard and Berkeley economists.

December 19, 2013 |

The website Equality-Of-Opportunity.org was established this year by four leading economists from Harvard and Berkeley, and it now headlines their major findings, “Mobility in the 100 Largest Commuting Zones.” It ranks all 100 largest U.S. cities for the chances of a person born poor to rise from the bottom 20% to the top 20%.

Whereas all of the top 21 cities (NYC being ranked #21) are shown clustered there closely around 10% for the given place’s odds that a resident born in the bottom 20% will rise into the top 20%, all except just three of the bottom 21 cities are in Old Dixie. Here, the probabilities of rising from the bottom 20% to the top 20% range widely, between just 6.7% (one-third less than in the best locales) down to merely 2.6% (around one-quarter of the probability in the best locales), among these 21 bottom-ranked cities.

In other words: virtually all of this nation’s class-rigidity still remains in the U.S. South, even after the Civil War. New Dixie has replaced the aristocracy’s black slaves of Old Dixie, by the local (white) aristocracy’s institutionalized bigotry against poor people, now of all ethnic groups. What used to be their purely racist bigotry has, it seems, devolved into a crushing, pervasive, classist, bigotry in the South.

Explaining this would produce controversy, and unfortunately the researchers don’t even try. However, it is a striking finding, which demands an explanation.

For a century after Abraham Lincoln was shot in 1865, the North’s Protestant aristocracy increasingly supported the Republican Party, which gradually became, in a sense, the new version of the old aristocratic Southern Democratic Party, but now spread nationwide: oriented more toward concerns about the “free market” than about democracy. Government became subordinated to economics—not just any economics, but “free market” economics, whereas economics had virtually nothing to do with the U.S. Constitution, which was instead concerned with political matters: government.

With the advent of Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his “New Deal” reforms and regulations during the Great Depression, and his starting of the Social Security system, this aristocratic hostility toward the Democratic Party intensified even more.

In FDR’s re-nomination acceptance speech in 1936, he said, “Economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution.” This was a speech that could be given today.

Then, as if to add insult to Protestant aristocratic outrage, the Catholic Democratic President John F. Kennedy finally committed the Democratic Party against the unquestionably bigoted South; and next, the remarkably progressive Democratic Texan President Lyndon Baines Johnson fatefully sealed this FDR-type Democratic Party, with the Civil Rights Acts, and also Medicare and Medicaid —all done to serve mainly the very same people, the middle-class and the poor, whom aristocrats traditionally have wanted instead to be suppressed, if not again enslaved (such as was the case in the Old South). For example, labor unions are routinely suppressed by aristocrats, because such unions challenge the "free market”— they challenge aristocrats’ hired managers, who no longer possess unrestrained control when a labor union is present.

Aristocrats call this "free market" of theirs simply “freedom,” meaning their own freedom, but also meaning (though never mentioning) the “freedom” of millions of have-nots to suffer unto their graves (via such class-rigidity as prevails especially in the South, and in underdeveloped countries around the world). These financial elite also sometimes call this free-market economics “tough love.” But no matter what the rationalization, the result for its victims is basically like a kiss of death; this is more that type of “love,” even when the proponents themselves actually sincerely believe it to be some sort of “love,” for the people who are actually suffering from this one-sided “freedom” of the aristocracy.

Republicans are proud of this “freedom,” or “discipline,” or “tough love”: they even sometimes call it the "opportunity society." That’s what pervades the South, the very same region of this country where economic opportunity is actually the lowest.

However, apparently enough Americans support this Orwellian operation, so that Republicans constitute a major party, which includes some of the very same people who suffer from it. This is the only way to explain the continued existence of the Republican Party as being a major political party in the U.S.

Nonetheless, this does not mean that today's Democratic Party is actually in favor of the poor—the Democratic Party of today just doesn't hate them as Republicans do. The clearest evidence of this came in a different study.

Princeton’s Larry M. Bartels posted to the Internet in 2002, updated in August 2005, his article, “Economic Inequality and Political Representation,” which examined the votes of U.S. senators on eight bills. He found that, “Republicans were about twice as responsive as Democrats to the views of high-income constituents,” but that, “There is no evidence of any responsiveness [of Senators] to the views of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution, even from Democrats.”

Furthermore, “For Republican senators there is no evidence of responsiveness to middle-income constituents,” but only to the views of high-income constituents, and, “Democrats seem to have responded at least as strongly to the views of middle-income constituents as to the views of high-income constituents—though, once again, there is no evidence of any responsiveness to the views of low-income constituents.”

The popular myth has always been promulgated by Republicans that Democratic politicians engage in class-warfare against the middle-class, on behalf of the poor; but that’s just a blatant lie, whose purpose is to hide the very real class-war, by Republicans, against the middle-class, which is being waged successfully on behalf of the rich—the exact opposite of Republican claims.

Furthermore, “Senators seem to have been a good deal more responsive to upper-income constituents when a Republican was in the White House ... than they were with a Democrat in the White House.”

Perhaps this is the reason why even with a conservative Democratic president such as Obama, today’s far-rightwing Republican Party cannot get much of its wish-list filled. Bartels found “surprisingly strong and consistent evidence that the biases I have identified in senators’ responsiveness to rich and poor constituents are not due to differences between rich and poor constituents in [electoral] turnout, political knowledge, or contacting.”

In common parlance: Bartels found that ideology alone accounts for this difference.

He also considered the possibility posed by a 1995 study, which had shown that, “citizens in the top quarter of the income distribution ... provided almost three quarters of the total campaign contributions.” Could that be the answer —senators were simply voting for their contributors? Bartels found that only “two of the eight salient roll call votes [concerning the minimum wage, and abortion]” in his study could reasonably be explained on the basis mainly of campaign contributions; the other six could not.

A pronounced ideological component seems to have been involved in most senate votes. Republican senators voted overwhelmingly in favor of the rich, and Democratic senators voted equally often in favor of the rich and of the middle-class. Only in about one-quarter of the instances could political donations reasonably account for that.

It might also be worth noting that, even today, the purely racist tendency of the aristocracy is so great that it often is strong enough to outweigh their greed—discrimination is practiced even when it's unprofitable. So: the traditional leftist "explanation" for conservatism (that it's purely based on greed) is false. The understanding that leftists have of rightists is basically the mirror-image of the way Fox News characterizes leftists.

The scientific studies that are being reported here constitute solid scientific findings, not opinions, and reporting them might come as interesting news to many readers, because our news-media unfortunately tend to be reluctant to report as news even the best scientific findings about ideology. But there is a difference between reporting on ideology, versus applying ideology (which an op-ed is supposed to do). This is therefore a news story, which brings together many studies that concern people’s ideology. If it happens to surprise anyone, then that would be simply because the major mainstream news media’s “neutrality” and “nonpartisanship” have required that they avoid reporting such facts as have been reported here. A lot of important facts are unreported for that reason. However, their being unreported has nothing to do with there being anything dubious about them.

Happy Holidays My Out of Work Friends - Congress Ends Your Unemployment Extension Just In Time For Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:16:00 +0000

"At the end of the day, the bill abandons 1.3 million Americans who desperately need unemployment insurance, and does nothing to promote economic growth or job creation. Furthermore, the legislation is paid for on the backs of the middle class and military families, while not touching the wealthiest amongst us and allowing corporations to continue to benefit from tax loopholes."(Mark Pocan, D WI)

Merry Christmas, you poor sunsabitches, hope you are still able to get on the list for a Toys For Tots donation.

To the rest of my hardworking, lower and middle class friends, be sure to deliver your holiday message to our dear friends in Washington who work tirelessly to ensure they are representing our best interests.

Bah Humbug.

"Makes Absolutely No Sense": David Cay Johnston on Budget Deal That Helps Billionaires, Not the Poor

Topics

U.S. Economy

Guests

David Cay Johnston, an investigative reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize while at The New York Times. He is currently a columnist for Tax Analysts and Al Jazeera, as well as a contributing editor at Newsweek. He is author of several books, including The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind.

Links

David Cay Johnston’s Website

A bipartisan budget deal to avert another government shutdown comes before the Senate this week. The vast majority of House members from both parties approved the two-year budget agreement last week in a 332-to-94 vote. It is being hailed as a breakthrough compromise for Democrats and Republicans. The bill eases across-the-board spending cuts, replacing them with new airline fees and cuts to federal pensions. In a concession by Democrats, it does not extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million people, which are set to expire this month. To discuss the deal, we are joined by David Cay Johnston, an investigative reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize while at The New York Times. He is currently a columnist for Tax Analysts and Al Jazeera, as well as a contributing editor at Newsweek.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: A bipartisan budget deal to avert another government shutdown comes before the Senate this week. The House approved the two-year budget agreement last week in a 332-to-94 vote. The bill eases across-the-board spending cuts, replacing them with new airline fees and cuts to federal pensions. In a concession by Democrats, it does not extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million people, which is set to expire this month. Republican Congressmember Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray called the deal a win for both sides.

REP. PAUL RYAN: I think this agreement is a clear improvement on the status quo. This agreement makes sure that we don’t have a government shutdown scenario in January. It makes sure that we don’t have another government shutdown scenario in October. It makes sure that we don’t lurch from crisis to crisis.

SEN. PATTY MURRAY: Our deal puts jobs and economic growth first by rolling back sequestration’s harmful cuts to education and medical research and infrastructure investments and defense jobs for the next two years.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Republican Congressmember Paul Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray.
The budget deal is being hailed as a breakthrough compromise for Democrats and Republicans, but not everyone supports it. Democratic Congressmember Mark Pocan of Wisconsin said in a statement, quote, "At the end of the day, the bill abandons 1.3 million Americans who desperately need unemployment insurance, and does nothing to promote economic growth or job creation. Furthermore, the legislation is paid for on the backs of the middle class and military families, while not touching the wealthiest amongst us and allowing corporations to continue to benefit from tax loopholes," he said.

Well, for more, we go to Rochester, New York, where we’re joined by David Cay Johnston, an investigative reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize when he was at The New York Times. He’s currently a columnist for Tax Analysts and Al Jazeera, as well as a contributing editor at Newsweek.

David Cay Johnston, thanks so much for joining us. He’s joining us from PBS station WXXI in Rochester. Talk about the deal.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, this deal is a—actually, I think, a big win for the Paul Ryan Republicans. They will avoid the embarrassment, shame and political damage of shutting down the government, and they will obtain this from the—they obtained this from the Democrats without, as Congressman Pocan pointed out in his statement, touching at all the major issues. The corporate loopholes aren’t being closed. The tax-avoidance techniques of billionaires, who can legally live tax-free if they choose to, are not being shut down. The hedge fund and private equity managers will continue to be advantaged. And we’re going to kick 57,000 poor children out of Head Start, which means we’re going to narrow their economic futures and make all of us worse off in the future. We’re cutting a billion-and-a-half dollars from medical research to save lives. Why? Because the very richest people in America, those who have benefited most from being in this market, don’t want to pay for that kind of services. And by the way, being The War and Peace Report, the Pentagon is getting an extra $20 billion out of this deal. We already spend 42 percent of all the money in the world on our military. More money for the Pentagon? Seriously? While we are cutting off unemployment benefits and cutting medical research, reducing pensions for federal workers? This makes absolutely no sense. It will make us worse off.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the poorest Americans, David Cay Johnston? How are they affected?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, there is a war going on in this country, and it’s on the poor. And we have all sorts of ways that we are doing this. We are restricting their access to Medicaid. We are cutting food stamps dramatically in this country, or will be very soon. There is a 90-day fix for doctors who treat people who are on Medicaid. That, I suspect, will not be continued. And why would we be cutting fees to doctors who provide healthcare to people, unless, of course, you just, as Congressman Grayson once said, want them to die?

AMY GOODMAN: The budget now heads to the Senate, where it has the backing of the Democratic leadership. This is Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois urging members to vote for it when it comes up to the floor this week.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: Vote for this. Let’s move. Let’s govern. Let’s not shut down this government again. This is an opportunity. And with this opportunity, we can have a stronger national defense, a stronger country, and we can save the taxpayers money.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Democratic leader, Senator Dick Durbin.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, stronger national defense—I’m sorry, what? I mean, do we not have enough nuclear submarines to kill us all many times over with weapons against which no one is threatening us? It is just bizarre that we continue to stick to these memes that we’re not spending enough on national defense. We’re spending over $900 billion a year on national defense. Now, add to that that we—most of the world consists of our allies, who have a big military, and this just makes no sense whatsoever.

AMY GOODMAN: You also talk about the U.S. government paying through the nose for contractors.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes, well, you know, we started this movement back around the time that the New Deal ended and the era of Reagan, which we’re still living in, began, that it would be more efficient if we just got rid of those lazy, no-good, overpaid federal bureaucrats, and hired private contractors. Well, last year, contractors cost the government as much as $763,000 each. Overall, they cost twice as much as civil servants; and for Pentagon contractors, three times as much. And much of the work that is done by contractors turns out to be of little or no value. If, for example, you go to USASpending.gov, one of President Obama’s major initiatives on transparency, and put in "IRS contracts," the total amount of money it will show is equal to 500 years of the entire IRS budget. These contractors are ripping the taxpayers off left and right. Why do they stay there? Well, the owners of those companies hire politically connected people, like former congressmen, former heads of agencies, and they make campaign contributions that make sure they keep getting paid, while the poor have their situation worsened.

AMY GOODMAN: David Cay Johnston, you write about how, actually—how the country could generate millions of jobs.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Yes. There are a number of things we could do. I’ve been doing a series of columns on Al Jazeera about this very point. One of the things we can do is stop these, quote-unquote, "free trade" deals. There’s no such thing as "free trade." Trade has rules. And let me give you an idea how big they are. The super-secret Trans-Pacific Partnership plan, in which members of Congress who want to read any part of it have to show they have no pen or pencil or paper or recording device on them and are then led into a room. In chapter QQ, it’s 30,000 words. Think about how far in you’ve got to be to get to chapter QQ. And these deals have resulted, in every case, in the destruction of American jobs. You know, one way to look at this, however, I suppose, is that the generosity of blue-collar factory workers in America, who have been willing to give up their hold on the middle class so that the rural poor of Asia can have a better life, is something to be admired.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get a comment from you to respond to this quote. You talk about the TPP, the largest-ever economic treaty, representing more than 40 percent of the world’s GDP. This is Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker explaining why she supports the TPP.

SECRETARY OF COMMERCE PENNY PRITZKER: The TPP is a—meant to be a high-quality 21st-century trade agreement. And what we know from those trade agreements—take, for example, our trade agreement with Singapore—when we do a trade agreement of this quality, everyone’s economy grows. Trade has grown 60 percent with Singapore since we completed our free trade agreement. So this is a great opportunity.

AMY GOODMAN: David Cay Johnston?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, trade, in theory, can make us all better off. I’m not arguing against trade. The deals we have made have been awful. Our trade deal with China has cost us 2.8 million jobs. That’s the equivalent of every job in greater metropolitan Philadelphia. We’ve had over 50,000 factories close simply because of that deal. Our trade deal with South Korea, we were told it will result in more trade. Well, it has: one dollar of exports of goods by us to South Korea for every $25 of increased imports from South Korea. The global capitalist class see to it that these secretive deals are written in a way that they benefit, that workers in America have their wages driven down.

And the Trans-Pacific Partnership is widely believed—and remember, it’s a secret agreement that they want to ram through Congress with no debate—it is widely believed it will cement current U.S. law, while allowing trading partners flexibility to alter their laws. That’s a prescription for absolute disaster. And, by the way, Penny Pritzker is a queen of corporate welfare. That she is out promoting this, that she is treasury—commerce secretary, is itself astonishing, given how much the operations that she owns have benefited and supped with a big spoon at the public trough.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, who pushed this agenda forward, talking about this budget deal that has such bipartisan consensus? And who resisted it, David Cay Johnston?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, that, I’m not really big on. I mean, I make it a point of not living in Washington, D.C., so I can cover what politicians do more than they say. And so, I’m not really the expert to talk about that subject, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, David Cay Johnston, Detroit. I can’t let you leave without talking about that, because you write a lot about it, and it’s so critical, Detroit of course becoming the largest-ever U.S. municipality to qualify for bankruptcy. Earlier this month, Federal Judge Steven Rhodes ruled the city meets every criteria for insolvency, including failure to honor its debt obligations and inability to provide the bare minimum of services to its 680,000 residents. The bankruptcy ruling puts tens of thousands of retired city workers’ pension at risk, overriding protections in the Michigan state constitution. What happens to those pensions, David Cay Johnston?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, we don’t know exactly, but in all likelihood, people who are already retired, who are too old to work, are going to have their incomes cut. The average pension in Detroit is $19,000 a year. You just go out to suburban Ann Arbor, and it’s twice that much money. Detroit, though, is an example and a canary in the mine of what’s going on in this country. Deindustrialization is making us poorer. It is benefiting the global capitalist class. And we’re going to see more of this. Detroit went from having a large tax base, with factories producing things that helped grow the economy, to being full of vacant land all over the place and abandoned buildings because of the federal government’s trade policies and anti-union policies. We need to wake up and understand and vote for people who will change these policies, or the future is very clear. And you can see it in the cuts to the Head Start program, as a good example, and medical care. It’s the policy of Congress to spend money now in ways that will make us poorer in the future.

AMY GOODMAN: David Cay Johnston, thanks so much for joining us, joining us from WXXI, the PBS station in Rochester, New York. David Cay Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, formerly with The New York Times, now writing for Tax Analysts and Al Jazeera, as well as a contributing editor at Newsweek. We’ll link to your articles at democracynow.org.

This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a moment with the legendary poet, the distinguished professor, Nikki Giovanni. Stay with us.

"The industrial food system exists mainly to maximise profit for a few, not to maximise the nutritional benefits of food to all."

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 11:22:00 +0000

"To bring about food production and supply as a global public good would require... a three-part hybrid institutional arrangement formed by state institutions, private companies, and self-organized groups."

Staying alive shouldn't depend on your purchasing power
Jose Luis Vivero Pol, Doctoral Researcher on food governance. Centre of Philosophy of Law at Université Catholique de Louvain

How much would you pay for staying alive? How much would you pay for breathing pure air? That may seem a silly question since air is everywhere, accessible to all. Air is a global public good, part of the commons – and yet in China a smart entrepreneur is already selling canned air at around 50p a can.

People also have to pay for water, after all. And there’s a huge range in food expenditures between countries, from the £2,724 a Norwegian spends every year to the £132 typically spent by an Uzbek. So the essentials of life – air, food and water – must all be paid for. And while some nations have social welfare to provide the essentials, for everyone else no money means starving to death.

Today, purchasing power determines how much and which type of food can be accessed or produced by one’s own hand. Food is regarded as a private good. And yet some aspects of food production are considered part of the commons – agricultural knowledge accumulated over thousands of years, or from publicly funded research institutions, cooking recipes and national gastronomy, ocean fisheries, wild fruits and animals, and seedbanks and genetic material of plant and animals. Others are seen as a common, shared goal – food safety considerations, or maintaining food price stability and security.
And going even further, as my recent paper proposes, why not consider food itself as a commons, an earthy resource essential for each human being, to be produced, consumed and governed in common? Such a thought would embrace, perhaps even surpass the individualist approach to human rights. For example the right to clean water, the desirable right to clean air and the well-established right to food?

Food has been completely commodified, from a common local resource to a private, transnational, industrial commodity, to be speculated without moral consideration to achieve the best price. A race for land and water to support commercial food production has torn up vast areas of Africa and Latin America, while corporations drive obesity epidemics from increased consumption of ultra-processed food and drink.

The value of food is no longer based on the fact it is a basic human need that should be available to all, a fundamental human right that should be guaranteed to every citizen, a pillar of every national culture, certainly a marketable product that should be subject to fair trade and sustainable production, and a global good that should be enjoyed by all. Instead these multiple dimensions are superseded by food’s tradeable features; value is confused with price.

The common market and the commons

Some of the means to produce food are private goods – land, agro-chemicals – while others such seeds, rainfall, agricultural knowledge are not. Land enclosure, privatisation, legislation, excessive pricing and patents have all played a role in limiting the access to food as a public good. The industrial food system exists mainly to maximise profit for a few, not to maximise the nutritional benefits of food to all.

And the failure of this food system to feed the world, adequately and sustainably, cannot be ignored. The paradox is that half of those who grow 70% of the world’s food are hungry, hunger kills 3.1 million children per year, and increasingly food is used as livestock feed or biofuels. Up to a third of all the world’s food is wasted – enough to feed 600 million hungry people each year. Hunger still prevails in a world of abundance even as obesity grows steadily.

A food system anchored in market principles of supply and demand will never feed the world, because the private sector is not interested in feeding people who cannot pay. No analysis or research of recent decades has ever questioned this nature of food as a private good, and so the perception is that access to food is the problem.

The standard economic definition of public goods is anchored in the idea of non-rivalry and non-excludability. Many societies have and still consider food as a common good, as well as forests, fisheries, land and water. As long as the replenishment rate outpaces the consumption rate, any resource – forests, fish, fresh air, food – can be considered an always available, renewable resource.

Towards three-part governance of food

Bringing food back into the commons is essential for making the system more sustainable and fairer for food producers and consumers. The political economist Elinor Ostrom, a commons expert, suggested polycentric governance as a novel means to solve global problems, such as climate change. To bring about food production and supply as a global public good would require something similar; a three-part hybrid institutional arrangement formed by state institutions, private companies, and self-organised groups.

Such a major transition will require experimentation, at personal, local, national, and international levels. It will require diverse approaches to governance, whether by the market, state or by collective actions for food. It will take several generations, and will require all three working together, as no single element can carry out the transition by itself.

Governments have a vital role in countering the tendency toward wealth concentration, redistributing economic power towards the poor through genuine tax, credit, and land reforms. Two recent examples that might help are a meat tax to reduce meat consumption, or highly taxing junk food that contains high levels of sugar, fat and salt. Nevertheless, governments' leading role should shift towards self-negotiated collective action from groups of producers and consumers. The benefit consumers receive by protecting, producing and using their own resources through their self-organised actions is key to understanding the value, not just the cost, of the food they eat. It requires civic engagement, community and equal stewardship of resources.

There are already many initiatives worldwide that demonstrate how a right combination of collective action, government regulations and incentives, and private sector entrepreneurship yield good results for food producers, consumers, the environment, and society. The challenge is how to scale up those local initiatives to national level.

People’s capacity for collective action can complement the regulatory mandate of the state, and the demand-driven private sector. After all, millions of people innovating have far more capacity to find solutions than a few thousand scientists in laboratories. What’s more, collective action for food also helps rebuild the infrastructure of civic life eroded by individualistic behaviour, as philosopher Michael Sandel explains in What’s The Right Thing?

Far-reaching practical implications

Some practical recommendations: keep food out of trade agreements that deal with purely private goods. Instead, new production and distribution models for food are required. It would entail, among others, binding legal frameworks to fight hunger, obesity, and guarantee the right to food. It would include fraternal ethical and legal frameworks, universal Basic Food Entitlements or Food Security Floors guaranteed by the state. A minimum salary could be levelled with the costs of a typical food basket, financial speculation of food would be banned, and the non-consumption uses of food such as biofuels limited.

These are all geared towards establishing Universal Food Coverage, as called for by Amartya Sen, a social scheme that parallels the universal health and education that is the basis of the welfare state.
Navigating the path between these arrangements will be one of the major challenges of the 21st century, as long as the population continues to grows. A fairer and more sustainable food system is possible; I do not expect to see it during my lifetime, but I hope my descendants may.

Jose Luis Vivero Pol does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

2013 Nashville Homeless Memorial Photos and Videos (So Far)

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Sun, 15 Dec 2013 11:19:00 +0000

Attended the 2013 Nashville Homeless Memorial Yesterday and while I normally take lots of pictures share them, this event was a particularly painful one and I was both saddened and committed to honoring their deaths, so pictures were the last thing on my mind.

Three of my friends, not just "clients, consumers, peers" or "persons experiencing homelessness," died last year either as a direct or collateral result of their homelessness. And they were just three of the the thousands of people - fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters... - who died alone on our streets last year.

Please take a moment and be thankful if you're in a warm home, and remember that homelessness is far more complex than what you probably imagine, and far harder to escape than you can possibly imagine...

Do something.

Tennessean Photo Gallery

The Republic

Russ Anthony's Video of the 2013 Memorial:
Nashville Homeless Memorial 2013 from Russ Anthony 411 on Vimeo.

Charlie Strobel's Tennessean post

What a 21st-Century Approach to Drug Policy Looks Like

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Sun, 15 Dec 2013 10:31:00 +0000

“Drug policy reform should be rooted in neuroscience, not political science.” And “it should be a public health issue, not just a criminal justice issue. That’s what a 21st-century approach to drug policy looks like.” John Kelly

Amen.

For my friends and colleagues working in behavioral health on the Addictions side, I strongly encourage you to read "Why Does It Matter What We Call It" carefully. The critical importance of a "person first" approach cannot be underestimated.

(Special thanks to Jeff for sending this along)

Nuff said.

December 13, 2013 | 11:28 AM | Carey Goldberg

At The White House, Learning How Not To Talk About Addiction

Gil Kerlikowske, director of the U.S office of National Drug Control Policy. (The Canadian Press/Pawel Dwulit Via AP)

We don’t refer to someone who has anorexia or bulimia as having a “food abuse” problem. We say they have an eating disorder. So why do we refer to someone who is addicted to alcohol or pain pills as having a “substance abuse” problem?
Harvard’s John Kelly, director of the new Recovery Research Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, made that point this week at what was billed as the first-ever White House summit on drug policy reform. The Obama administration has moved far from the old “war on drugs” model. The current federal drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, wrote in his email invitation to the summit: “Drug policy reform should be rooted in neuroscience, not political science.” And “it should be a public health issue, not just a criminal justice issue. That’s what a 21st-century approach to drug policy looks like.”
Dr. Kelly, an associate professor of psychiatry, spoke to the summit-goers about the stigma around addiction — so pervasive it can even be seen in language. I asked him to elaborate; our conversation, edited:
It seems clear that addiction is not a good thing. It can cause people many problems, even kill them. But you’re saying that the trouble with addiction stigma is that it goes beyond seeing addiction as bad, to actually blaming the addict?
Yes. The degree of stigma is influenced by two main factors: cause — ‘Did they cause it?’ — and controllability — ‘Can they control it?’ We now know that about half the risk of addiction is conferred by genetics – what you’re born with. On controllability, neuroscience has also taught us that alcohol and other drugs cause profound changes in the structure and function of the brain that radically impair individuals’ ability to stop, despite often severe consequences.
Okay, but what about the other half? There is some element of choice in addiction, at least initially, isn’t there?
Addiction is like many other medical illnesses, in that there’s an interaction between the genetics and the environment. This makes some people more susceptible. For example, a lot of people are exposed to alcohol in our culture, but not everybody becomes addicted to alcohol. The genes may mediate the liking and wanting of that particular substance. For some people, alcohol is aversive for others, it’s kind of okay; for other people, it becomes everything.
So genetics is related to the cause. Brain damage — the toxicity and profound alteration in neurochemical function and structure produced by these abnormally potent reinforcers — alcohol, heroin, cocaine — which causes brain damage — that’s the controllability part. And the language we use directly maps on to that issue of cause and controllability. The rhetoric and language of ‘the war on drugs’ talks about ‘abuse’ and ‘abusers’ and the new movement, toward smarter criminal justice and a more public health approach, needs to look at it as a medical condition and talk about it as ‘substance use disorder,’ which is more accurate medical terminology.
Why does it matter what we call it?
The language we use to describe these problems may perpetuate stigma, and that can potentially harm patients and continue the suffering among families.
New evidence indicates that the commonly used “abuse” and “drug abuser” terms, for example, are conceptually linked to the notion that individuals are at fault for their addiction and therefore should be blamed and punished. These terms fitted well with the “war on drugs” policy approach. In contrast, use of the more medical and scientifically accurate “substance use disorder” terminology is linked more to a public health approach that conveys the notion of a medical malfunction.
We tested the effect of using these terms experimentally. We randomly assigned a paragraph vignette describing an individual in legal trouble due to alcohol and drugs; in half the vignettes the individual was described as “a substance abuser” in the other half he was described as “having a substance use disorder”; otherwise, the scenarios were identical.

(Courtesy J. Kelly)

These were randomly distributed to more then 500 doctoral level mental health clinicians, many of whom were addiction specialists. They were asked to read the brief description and then answer some questions about their judgments on whether the individual described was more to blame for his violation and should be punished.
Those clinicians exposed to the “substance abuser” term were significantly more likely to judge the person as more to blame and more deserving of punishment than the exact same individual described as having a substance use disorder. We tested these terms in a general population sample and found even larger differences with more negative and punitive judgments strongly associated with the “abuser” term.
These findings indicate that, even among well-trained doctoral level mental health clinicians and addiction specialists, exposure to certain language may create an implicit bias that may result in harsher punitive judgments that perpetuate stigmatizing attitudes toward individuals and families suffering from addiction. These may create barriers to honest self-disclosure and seeking treatment for alcohol or drug problems. This is important as only about 10 percent of affected individuals seek addiction treatment each year and they site stigma as a major barrier.

John Kelly (Courtesy)

Does this language effect, which you found makes mental health professionals more judgmental of people with substance use disorders, actually translate into problematic behavior? Like withholding care or benefits?

We don’t know that for sure. That would be very hard to figure out. But what this research is suggesting is that it does produce a kind of implicit cognitive bias toward more punitive attitudes. We do know that attitudes predict behavioral response, however, and we’ve shown that language influences attitudes. So while we can’t prove it, there is a strong basis to believe that it could influence decisions such as withholding benefits or other things from individuals trying to recover from these problems.
You pointed out at the drug reform summit that other mental health fields don’t use the term ‘abuse.’

Right. Individuals with ‘eating-related problems’, are uniformly described as ‘having an eating disorder,’ not as ‘food abusers.’ We need to do the same in the addiction field.
Because the term ‘abuse’ gives rise to the ‘abuser’ term, it is better to use the term ‘misuse.’ Furthermore, given the lack of scientific specificity associated with the ‘abuse’ and ‘abuser’ terms, its nonuse would not result in any loss of scientific accuracy.
When you spoke at the White House, did you explicitly propose that the nation’s drug czar and his staffs and law enforcement more broadly change their language?
Yes, because while rhetoric around language has persisted for years, we now have good evidence that such terms may perpetuate stigma, and stigma is a huge barrier to seeking help.
We need to adopt new language which is more consistent with a public health approach, more accurate and more consistent as opposed to the rhetoric and language of the past — the abuse terminology, which is more strongly associated with a war on drugs approach. One very inexpensive way we can start to alleviate this terrible burden of stigma, which prevents people from seeking treatment, is to drop the old language.
Well, you’ll be up against some very ingrained linguistic habits — I mean, isn’t the federal addiction research agency called the National Institute On Drug Abuse? And you find it at drugabuse.gov. It could be quite an uphill battle to change this language.

If I’d thought of it at the time, I would have said that we do need to change the names of these federal institutions, so they don’t perpetuate this old language. I think it can be an uphill battle, but a battle that is not that difficult to win if we’re really serious about making changes that have an effect on the prevalence of substance use disorders and their impact in the United States. It would reflect a shift toward smarter evidence-based policies. It’ll just be a matter of if we decide finally to let go of that language and adopt new language more fitting, more accurate, and more conducive to the new game in town as opposed to the older war on drugs.
Please spell it out for me: You’re saying that whenever I would have said ‘substance abuse’ I now say ‘substance use disorder’ and for the person, I call them someone ‘with a substance use disorder’?

For example, when we’re talking about it generically, instead of using the term ‘substance abuse,’ many have adopted the term ‘substance misuse.’ And instead of describing someone as a substance abuser or alcohol abuser or drug abuser, you talk about a person who has a substance use disorder or is suffering from a substance use disorder. More broadly, it’s the ‘substance use disorder’ field.
It seems a bit odd when we’re not used to saying these things now; new terms can feel somewhat awkward and strange and foreign at first. But people adapt remarkably quickly; start using the new terms and they become second nature. Human beings are kind of resistant to change and our language is somewhat habitual, so it’s hard to shift our language, but we want to create a stigma against using stigmatizing language.
Is there a new term for the drug policy that has succeeded ‘the war on drugs’? The medical model? The public health approach?
Not formally yet. We could think of one — one that captures a public health and recovery orientation would be good.
Readers, suggestions? And will you consider shifting to Dr. Kelly’s terminology? Why or why not?

The "TurboTax Tips For The End Of The Year" Revised For The 99 Percent

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Sat, 14 Dec 2013 12:03:00 +0000

I was browsing the web and I came across the following infographic from TurboTax. Clearly, these people are running with a far different crowd than I and just about every single other person I know get to associate with.

Defer Your Bonus: What is this "bonus" you speak of? We're lucky just have a damned job today, and most of the people I know are either grateful (and then exploited) or are wishing they could find a job.

Know Your Deadlines: Oh, we got this covered because most of us who get refunds know exactly when we can file - as soon as we get our W2 from our employer, and we are all praying it comes as early as possible in January. We then run to the first HR Block or Jackson Hewitt office we can find, and let them soak us for a "rapid refund" so we can pay the rent and catch up on the bills we avoided paying in December in order to give our kids and families a Christmas.

Donate to Charity: "Donate?" That's where we shop.

Max out Retirement Savings: We try, but no matter how many lottery tickets we buy, we haven't gotten that "big winner" yet.

Brought to you by TurboTax.com

People like Grace King and her son are not only counting on us, their lives may just depend on us to get our acts together sooner rather than later.

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 11:50:00 +0000

I really don't enjoy saying "we told ya you are wrong" to those who claimed the last couple of years that "homelessness" was decreasing. Those of us who either provide direct service to people experiencing homelessness or support through training and skill building those who do KNEW that the data agencies and organizations were using to give us the numbers were not just skewed and wrong, but dramatically off target.

The recent Hunger and Homelessness report by the United States Conference of Mayors indicates that homelessness has increased by 25 percent in the last year alone, and women and families are the fastest growing segment of that population.

I've been a voice in the chorus for years now that has been desperately trying to raise awareness that there is a new face to homelessness. The old stereotype of the gutter drunk passed out in an alley - known in the jargon of homeless providers as "chronic inebriates/chronically homeless" - while still around, make up a far smaller percentage of the entire cohort of people who are homeless. The reason their numbers are dwindling while homeless families and women are rising is simple; due to ridiculously scarce resources, we as a society have had to carefully target those considered "high end" service users who are also the most vulnerable and likely to die if left on our city streets any longer.

This approach relies on a Vulnerability Index (VI) or a Vulnerability Assessment Tool (VAT) that helps outreach workers and homeless service providers prioritize and target those individuals, and then utilize ever-dwindling resources into getting them housed and ideally, wrapped with support services to help in the transition from street to home.

Sounds great in theory, and let me be clear here that I'm fully supportive of the use of the VI and the VAT as one tool in a well-stocked toolbox we need at our disposal to end homelessness.

But part of the problem is that when cities implement the VI or VAT and target the most "vulnerable" people, they often don't have anything left for everyone else who may still be homeless, but don't rise to the "priority" level of vulnerability as defined by the VI or VAT.

So, while you may see a woman with her child in line at the soup kitchens, trying to survive and keep her kid in school, her situation is dire in most places. She's got "nuthin comin" from the "safety net" of welfare and/or family support agencies because she and her family don't rise to the level of "vulnerability" needed to get them to the top of the priority list.

As a result, today you're more likely to see folks like Grace King in the video below, living day to day or week to week in hotels or sleeping in her car in a Walmart parking lot than you are to see one of the long-term chronically homeless individuals pushing a buggy or panhandling on some city street.

There's something very wrong with this picture.

While there continue to be efforts and agencies that work with families experiencing homelessness, what is lacking is affordable housing, cash to help those cover the costs of move in, and a better way to determine and prioritize what constitutes "vulnerability."

Importantly, the homeless service provider world continues to approach the global situation of service delivery in a penny-wise and pound foolish manner. We have strict eligibility requirements for those who try to access services and although the rationale behind the criteria is sound, the reality, especially in times of very tight budgets, makes a folly of our best laid plans. We will deny a person who needs $400 to help pay their rent any support because they're not "homeless." Then we will spend $10,000 on that person once they lose their housing to get them re-housed and back on their feet. This happens over and over and over again.

Granted, it should not have to be the taxpayer's burden to continually bail out those individuals who mismanage or waste their money and find themselves "imminently homeless." But why we cannot implement a temporary "payee" setup similar to the Social Security Administration's Payee Service for those who are either incapable of managing their money or never learned how to budget for a month is beyond me. Keeping people housed is cost effective and benefits the "greater good." It's a simple solution that could be instituted immediately for anyone who is housed but on the verge of homelessness and could be set up on a temporary basis while inexpensive peer support could be wrapped around the individual and/or family to help them learn budgeting and financial management skills.

We can do better, much better than we're doing now. People like Grace King and her son are not only counting on us, their lives may just depend on us to get our acts together sooner rather than later.

NewsChannel5.com | Nashville News, Weather

Measuring Poverty with Data Sets: Garbage In, Garbage Out

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 13:14:00 +0000

"(R)esearchers used available information and estimates about people’s historical incomes, along with their access to various social services and their eligibility for tax credits, to come up with a measure of poverty since the sixties that resembles the supplemental poverty measure." (Emphasis mine)

I was immediately conflicted when I cursorily reviewed the data provided in the article below, and I have to say I find it incredibly hard to believe the conclusions they're drawing. There are several reasons for this, including the "estimates" used to support them. I'm reminded as well of two things I've been taught about using statistics to arrive at conclusions:

Statistics can be used to manipulate the data to support just about any conclusion one wants to arrive at;
Garbage (information) in; garbage (results) out.

While I understand the importance of data to support a particular position, if I'm not immediately connected to the physical elements the data sets represent, my ADHD kicks in and I've got about a 10 second attention span until I notice something shiny somewhere else.

This makes it challenging for me to pay attention or give a crap about what they're saying because I either don't understand it or I cannot connect it quickly to something meaningful in my life and/or my work. As such, I haven't dug as deeply into this as I should, and I'll be the first to admit this.

But what is of particular interest to me was the data used to get to the conclusions, and my Grad courses on statistics repeatedly warned us of the critical importance of well framed research questions, sample sizes, and the data set itself, so I did a little additional digging.

I discovered that back in 2010, "an Interagency Technical Working Group (which included representatives from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Census Bureau, the Economics and Statistics Administration, the Council of Economic Advisers, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and OMB) issued a series of suggestions to the Census Bureau and BLS on how to develop a Supplemental Poverty Measure. Their suggestions drew on the recommendations of a 1995 National Academy of Science report and the extensive research on poverty measurement conducted over the past 15 years."

So, let me get this straight. The supplemental poverty measure they're using is constructed from the data obtained 1980 to 1995. This means the data itself is almost 20 years old, and of course is prior to the "pre-Bush" economic collapse. Its relevance seems pretty insignificant - at least to me - at this point in our current economic climate. I don't know about you, but my bullshit radar is sending off alarm bells that are waking up half my block as I write this.

I still don't know what to believe about this, but from an anecdotal perspective, I have a very hard time swallowing the results. Not arguing with what the data is showing, just arguing that the criteria used to define the relevant data may be horribly missing the mark.

December 10, 2013

Has America Become Less Poor?

Posted by Vauhini Vara

In 2006, John Cassidy wrote in the magazine about the difficulties of measuring poverty. For years, the U.S. government didn’t try to calculate how many people were poor, Cassidy wrote. Then, in the nineteen-sixties, a government statistician named Mollie Orshansky came up with a way to determine what a family would need to not be impoverished. She based her calculations on the cost of food, which, at the time, made up a big proportion of household budgets.

To this day, the government uses a version of that approach to measure poverty, even as families’ budgets have transformed: food expenses make up a much smaller percentage, and low-income families benefit from new social services and tax benefits that the poverty measure also doesn’t account for. Starting in 2010, the government created a second way to calculate poverty that accounts for these factors—the supplemental poverty measure.

But that figure has been published only for the past couple of years, which means we haven’t been able to see how poverty has changed over time under the supplemental measure. According to the official measure, meanwhile, the proportion of poor people in the U.S. appears about the same as in the nineteen-sixties. It was fourteen per cent in 1967 and fifteen per cent in 2012. That has led to a lot of puzzlement over whether the War on Poverty of the sixties—which set in motion many of the anti-poverty programs that we rely on today—had any effect at all.

Now, a new study by a group of Columbia University researchers suggests what some policymakers have suspected for years: if you account for a fuller range of costs like clothing and shelter, and for government aid like food stamps, poverty has declined over the years—and by a lot. That is, even as people have limited wages and contend with high prices in the supermarket and elsewhere, the help from services like food stamps, and from tax benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit, appears to have kept more people out of poverty.

The researchers used available information and estimates about people’s historical incomes, along with their access to various social services and their eligibility for tax credits, to come up with a measure of poverty since the sixties that resembles the supplemental poverty measure. Their finding: the proportion of poor people in the U.S. fell from twenty-six per cent in 1967 to sixteen per cent last year. (In this chart, “OPM” indicates the official poverty measurement, while “Anchored SPM” represents the researchers’ version of a supplemental measure, which is adjusted for inflation.)

Some politicians on the left might resist a measure that shows that poverty is much lower than it used to be: couldn’t this minimize the problem and make it harder to gain support for new anti-poverty programs? But it also may show that some anti-poverty programs of the past several decades appear to have achieved what they were meant for—which, one expects, should come as good news to everyone. Orshansky, the government statistician who came up with the first poverty measure, herself was open to other measurements. “If someone has a better approach, fine,” she said in 1999, according to Cassidy’s article. “I was working with what I had and with what I knew.”
Chart by Christopher Wimer, Liana Fox, Irv Garfinkel, Neeraj Kaushal, and Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University.
Photograph by Michael Dwyer/AP.

"You can't make a revolution, you can't decide that next Monday is the revolution. Revolutions are organic."

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 12:40:00 +0000

"What you have in a pre-revolutionary society, which I think we're in, is a kind of invisible revolution, whereby the state, the ideology of the state, in this case capitalism, the fiction of American democracy, larger and larger numbers of people--and I think we are also seeing this across the political spectrum--wake up and understand the hollowness of the language that's used to describe their own economic, political, and social reality."

I remember the period in which I lost faith in my government, and I was a very young man at the time. My brother Bennie Lee had returned from Vietnam badly damaged and forever changed from the horror and trauma of war. Watergate had happened, and Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency.

I knew then that something was badly off-kilter as I tried to reconcile what I had been taught with what I was seeing. But I was too young, too ignorant to understand that the American Dream as I understood it then was a myth for most, perpetuated by those who have to enslave those who do not in an endless hamster wheel of "producing" to achieve it.

It took an extended education - both textbook and street - and decades of frustration to understand why so many things I was taught; good guys get ahead, ethics and morality are important, hard work pays off, voting matters, fairness and equality are our cornerstones, blah blah blah, rarely materialized in the reality of the world I found myself in.

And things I never thought could happen in the "Land of the Free" have occurred with such frightening regularity and repetitiveness over the last two decades that today these civil and human right violations are normalized within our culture and our communities, barely raising an eyebrow among those who are standing on the sidelines watching.

Two messages that I've heard over my lifetime, from wildly disparate sources, resonate excruciatingly loudly with me today, one from Martin Niemoller and one from the band Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Here's the first:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I did not speak out;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
~M. Neimoller

And here's the second:

It ain't me, it ain't me,
I ain't no senator's son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me;
I ain't no fortunate one, no, - CCR

Chris Hedges: Credibility of the Ruling Elite Is Being Shredded

TRANSCRIPT:
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to Reality Asserts Itself, continuing our discussion with Chris Hedges about the people's movement, the left, its weaknesses--and I guess at some point we'd better get around to its strengths, too.

Now joining us in the studio is Chris Hedges. He's a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He's the author with Joe Sacco of the New York Times bestseller Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. He also writes a weekly column for Truthdig.
Thanks for joining us again.

CHRIS HEDGES, JOURNALIST, SENIOR FELLOW AT THE NATION INSTITUTE: Thank you.
JAY: So you wrote a column in Truthdig. The title of it is "Our Invisible Revolution", and you quote, to start with, Alexander Berkman: "Did you ever ask yourself how it happens that government and capitalism continue to exist in spite of all the evil and trouble they are causing in the world?"
And let me add to that. We've had these enormous revelations recently, WikiLeaks and Snowden, and Hammond's leaks of the Stratfor files. And it should, one would think--and enough of this has gotten into the mainstream media, you know, enough of the revelations, that you would have had, you'd think, a fundamental shaking of masses of people's belief in the American narrative. But not so much. Like, we've not really seen a change in the political landscape at the mass scale that one might have thought.
HEDGES: Well, this was what Berkman--this essay is called "The Idea Is the Thing"--is playing out, that as long as the ideas that sustain the power elite have currency or relevancy, the institutions that hold up that system of power are unassailable. Once those ideas are utterly discredited, those institutions collapse.
And Berkman draws the analogy of heating water on a kettle, that you can't make a revolution, you can't decide that next Monday is the revolution. Revolutions are organic. And they take place through this change within the culture whereby the ideas that sustain a particular ruling class are so thoroughly discredited that the ruling class is finally only able to sustain itself through the use of force and violence, that it's kind of--it resorts to the most naked forms of repression to hold on to power, which, as you can see with the rise of the security and surveillance state, we are moving towards.
And so what you have in a pre-revolutionary society, which I think we're in, is a kind of invisible revolution, whereby the state, the ideology of the state, in this case capitalism, the fiction of American democracy, larger and larger numbers of people--and I think we are also seeing this across the political spectrum--wake up and understand the hollowness of the language that's used to describe their own economic, political, and social reality.
What's important is that in this process you need to present an alternative vision, an alternative language, so that people can orient themselves toward something. Otherwise, any kind of eruption is nihilistic. Without that kind of vision, ultimately it doesn't represent any kind of a threat to the ruling elite, because it doesn't drive towards something. And I think that, you know, opinion polls point this out in terms of, like, the approval rating of Congress, which is below 10 percent, the utter disgust at the inability of the centers of power to respond to the most basic concerns and needs of the citizenry. All of that is there.
And I think that it's incorrect to say that nothing's happening, that there is no ferment. I think this is the ferment. And it's extremely dangerous for the ruling elite, because their credibility--and Obama, the current disaster with Obamacare is just adding to that--is being shredded.
JAY: One of your main points in the article "Our Invisible Revolution" is this point you're starting to get at. If there isn't a vision to fight for, one, I don't think you can really get people into motion, because unless things are in absolute desperation for more people than are--because many people are desperate, but it's not the majority that a desperate. Even if unemployment, the real unemployment is 20, 25 percent, there's still 75 percent of people who have jobs. But if there isn't a vision to fight for, then what are you left with? But what's happening now is there's this sort of right-wing vision, that's kind of carving off a part of this alienation, you know, this idea of the smaller government and that we can all be free and we'll all be able to do what we want, you know, individualism, is--hearken back to these days of America that actually never existed.
HEDGES: Right. Well, that's a danger. I mean, you know, in situations of collapse or turmoil, we could certainly swing to our version of a kind of Christian fascism, which I've spent a lot of time writing about in my book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.
And these are classically fascist movements, in that they celebrate the language of violence, the gun culture. They fuse the iconography and language of American patriotism with the Christian religion. They demonize and direct a legitimate sense of rage and betrayal at the vulnerable Muslims, homosexuals, undocumented workers, liberals, intellectuals, feminists. And they are funded by the most retrograde elements of American capitalism--the Koch brothers and others.
And I think given the fact that progressive, populist, radical movements have been eviscerated throughout the 20th century and destroyed means that those of us who care about an open, egalitarian society are extremely weakened and disadvantaged. So it may very well be that our backlash is a very disturbing kind of quasi-fascist backlash. That indeed may happen. Certainly in breakdown or the breakdown of any society, you are going to see the rise of those kind of vigilante, racist, right-wing elements, and they will employee violence. History has shown that.
The question is whether we can build a response with an alternative vision fast enough to counter that kind of implosion. You know, I covered the breakdown of the former Yugoslavia, and I see many scenarios between here and the former Yugoslavia. There you had a self-identified liberal elite that was not able to deal with economic collapse. Hyperinflation took over the former Yugoslavia, and it vomited up these figures like Radovan Karadić and Slobodan Miloević and others in the same way that Weimar vomited up the Nazi Party.
And what happens in moments of breakdown is that people not only turn against an ineffectual liberal elite that is not able--that in essence--that has presided over political and economic paralysis, or certainly political paralysis, but they also jettison the values that elite purports to defend. And that's what's dangerous. And we're certainly barreling towards that kind of a crisis. I worry that we are not only weakened but unprepared.
JAY: Well, one thing we're going to do at The Real News is we're going to spend a little less time with the critique. We're not going to stop the critique, but we're going to spend a little less emphasis on the critique and spent a lot more time in terms of investigative journalism and working with, you know, policy experts, front-line workers, the public. We're going to have town halls. And it's part of the reasons. And we'll tell you more about our new building and what we're doing here.
But this idea--and you raise it in this article and others--we have to create a viable vision of what the alternative is. But, like, what would you do if you ran a city like Baltimore, what would you do if you ran a state like Maryland, dealing with the real world, not some utopian vision? But what you do the next year? And what do you do for the next three, four years? 'Cause I don't think you can really get a big mass movement going in this country if they don't think what they're fighting for is at least going to be better than what exists.
HEDGES: Well, and history has shown that that is absolutely correct. And so I write in the article that I seek to articulate a viable kind of socialism, which is going to have to begin at the local level. And I know that, you know, you're in accordance with this that we're probably going to have to start by taking over city after city, town after town. That's where it's going to begin. We can't compete on a national level anyway. We're shut out. Ralph Nader has amply illustrated what happens when you try and compete in that arena. But on the local level, especially in depressed cities, we can.
Now, the problem with cities like Baltimore or other depressed cities is that you have such a large segment of the population incarcerated. And that's done consciously. That bottom sort of 15 percent of people who are considered superfluous in terms of labor, whose bodies are worth nothing on the street, are put into cages where their bodies are worth $40,000 or $50,000 a year to prison contractors and food contractors and private security guard companies and people who build prisons and everyone else.
So that has been an effective mechanism by which we have broken our most astute sort of political class, which is the African-Americans, who not only traditionally understand the nature of white supremacy and power, but understand the nature of empire. Figures like Frederick Douglass, King, Malcolm, their critique of empire came from having suffered internally from the mechanisms of empire and having the first chapter--or it was the second chapter of my book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt takes place in Camden, which per capita is the poorest city in the United States and, not surprisingly, in terms of homicides per capita the most dangerous. And we're talking two, three, four generations where people have been so traumatized by the violence that is taking place within these internal colonies and the violence of mass incarceration that I don't know how effective those communities initially are going to be, given how broken they are.
I think that the recipe for revolt will come from a fusion between what Bakunin called the déclassé intellectuals, these kids who, burdened with tens of thousands of dollars of college debt, coming largely out of the middle class, thrown out into the workforce, where they can't get jobs, they can't pay their debts, coupled with service workers who are in essence the working poor.
JAY: And I think one of the misconceptions some people have about Baltimore--and it's partly to do with the television--the percentage of African-Americans in Baltimore, if I understand it correctly, who live in these very dispossessed areas and with generation after generation of chronic, you know, addiction to drugs and crime is a real minority. The vast majority of African-Americans in Baltimore are part of a fairly stable working-class.
HEDGES: That's not true in Camden. So that provides hope, then.
And, you know, we find--I don't want this to be racial, because if you look at the meth labs that are popping up in all these old mill towns where my families are from in Maine, it's the same. And, actually, we're watching now the criminalization, through the war on drugs, of the white poor, the white underclass, who are now being railroaded into these prisons at increasing rates because they've also become superfluous in the neofeudalistic state that we've created.
But I think, yes, it's going to come off the ground. It's going to come by stepping out outside of the mainstream. It's going to come by articulating a very different vision about how we relate to each other, how we relate to our economic system, and ultimately how we relate to the ecosystem if we're going to make it. And none of those visions are coming out of traditional centers of academia, traditional political parties, traditional forms of the media. These things are all going to have to be created at the margins of society and then implemented at the margins of society. And then, hopefully, there'll be a kind of contagion where they will spread outwards. And frankly, if they don't--I mean, I just speak as somebody who reads climate change reports--we're finished and we are completely finished.
JAY: Well, you kind of just talked about the agenda of The Real News.
HEDGES: Good.
JAY: Thanks for joining us, Chris.
HEDGES: Thank You.
JAY: And thank you for joining us. We're in our year-end fundraising campaign. And in 2014, this is essentially what we just discussed is what we're planning to do. If you'd like to see that happen, we need your support. None of this happens without you. So you've got to click the Donate button, which is somewhere around here. If you're watching this video not on the Real News website, down here below the player you'll see a link that takes you back to our site, and you can click the Donate button. Or you can pick up the phone. There's all kinds of ways.
Thanks for joining us. And again, we can't do this without you.

"The average person unknowingly breaks at least three federal criminal laws every day."

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Tue, 10 Dec 2013 00:14:00 +0000

"The penal system is particularly daunting because its raw brutality seems to leave no room for reason."

The next time those of you are feeling holier than thou and inclined to kick a man or woman while they are down and spending some quality time at the local, state or federal greybar hotel - a spectator sport that seems to be a national pastime in our country - you might want to reconsider your "lock em up and throw away the key" mentality. Chances are, you're only on the outside because of the grace of God, your higher power, or blind, dumbass luck.

Credit: http://bit.ly/IMIf2q

I won't reiterate statistics here to show that the US incarcerates more people in the land of the "free" than just about any five other countries combined. I'll pass on linking you to the other posts I've done on the issue of out of control prosecutors and nonviolent crimes that have put people away for life, because you can find them all just a few posts down from this one here on this blog.

What I will do however, is to jump right to the conclusion Wendy McElroy so powerfully shares with us about the unlikely change to this system in our lifetime. So, if I were you, I'd be damned careful every day, stash some cash in an account strictly for "legal defense" (because if you are unfortunate enough not to be able to hire a high priced high falutin bigshot lawyer, you're in even more trouble), and think twice before throwing stones at others, because your glass house is made of really shitty material and there are lots of folks standing around just waiting for you to break a pane:

Why are such reforms unlikely to occur?

Legislators have a strong incentive to call constantly for more laws and stricter enforcement. Until a large enough voter or protest base has been victimized by the law and demands change, politicians are rewarded for continuing that call. Being "hard" on crime is not merely a vote winner but also gives the state apparatus, on which the hands of legislators rest, much greater social control.

Meanwhile, the asset forfeiture that often accompanies arrests can turn a tidy profit, not merely for the state but especially for the police departments that absorb the assets.

Moreover, hordes of unionized people now have well-paying, plush-benefited jobs in the legal and penal systems. If 90 percent of arrests and imprisonments were eliminated then 90 percent of those jobs might disappear.

And so you and your children are likely to continue living under the constant threat of arrest by an arbitrary power against whom you either have no defense or a defense that could be ruinous. You will continue to live in a police state.

Decriminalize the Average Man

Mises Daily: Wednesday, October 12, 2011 by Wendy McElroy

If you reside in America and it is dinnertime, you have almost certainly broken the law. In his book Three Felonies a Day, civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate estimates that the average person unknowingly breaks at least three federal criminal laws every day. This toll does not count an avalanche of other laws — for example misdemeanors or civil violations such as disobeying a civil contempt order — all of which confront average people at every turn.

An article in the Economist (July 22, 2010) entitled "Too many laws, too many prisoners" states,

Between 2.3m and 2.4m Americans are behind bars, roughly one in every 100 adults. If those on parole or probation are included, one adult in 31 is under "correctional" supervision. As a proportion of its total population, America incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan.

By contrast, in 1970, less than one in 400 Americans was incarcerated. Why has the prison population more than quadrupled over a few decades? Why are you, as an average person and daily felon, more vulnerable to arrest than at any other time?

There is a simple answer but no single explanation as to how the situation arose or why it continues to accelerate out of control. The answer: a constant flood of new and broadly interpreted laws are criminalizing entire categories of daily life while, at the same time, the standards required for arrest and conviction have been severely diluted. The result is that far too many people are arrested and imprisoned for acts that should not be viewed as criminal at all or should receive minimal punishment.

In some cases, the violated laws are so obscure, vague, or complicated in language that even the police are ignorant of them. In other cases, outright innocence is not sufficient to escape the brutality of detention.

Some Sample Cases

(Note: the following examples are selected to illustrate the wide range of criminalization that is occurring and so their circumstances differ significantly from each other. Nevertheless, they share certain factors: the criminalization of harmless, trivial acts; the enforcement of unreasonable rules; the severity with which any noncompliance is punished; the indifference to the human devastation wrought by law.)

In 2005, while a passenger in his family car, Anthony W. Florence was mistakenly arrested for a bench warrant on traffic tickets he had already satisfied; the proof of payment he carried was to no avail. During seven days in jail, Florence was strip-searched twice, even though the guards admitted they had no reasonable suspicion of contraband. He was otherwise deprived of rights; for example, guards watched him shower and forced him to undergo a routine delousing.[1]

Eventually released, the attempt to get justice has taken Florence years. On October 12, the United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear Florence v. Burlington, et al., in which the question is "whether the Fourth Amendment permits a jail to conduct a suspicionless strip search of every individual arrested for any minor offense no matter what the circumstances."[2]

According to his lawsuit, Florence is joined by people who were similarly treated after being arrested and jailed for such crimes as "driving with a noisy muffler, failing to use a turn signal, and riding a bicycle without an audible bell."

In 2003, "three pickup trucks" with "six armed police in flak jackets" pulled up to 66-year-old George Norris's house in Texas.

Norris was detained for four hours while they ransacked his home and confiscated 37 boxes of possessions without offering a warrant or an explanation. In March 2004, Norris was indicted under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species for "smuggling" the orchids he had ordered and paid for to run a side business. Norris was thrown into the same cell as a suspected murder and two suspected drug dealers.[3]

The Economist reports,

Prosecutors described Mr. Norris as the "kingpin" of an international smuggling ring. He was dumbfounded: his annual profits were never more than about $20,000. When prosecutors suggested that he should inform on other smugglers in return for a lighter sentence, he refused, insisting he knew nothing beyond hearsay. He pleaded innocent. But an undercover federal agent had ordered some orchids from him, a few of which arrived without the correct papers. For this, he was charged with making a false statement to a government official, a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Since he had communicated with his suppliers, he was charged with conspiracy, which also carries a potential five-year term.

Unable to pay legal bills, Norris pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 17 months. For bringing prescription pills into prison, he was thrown into solitary confinement for 71 days. But "[t]he prison was so crowded … that even in solitary he had two room-mates."

In 2000, a poor kid from foster care named T.J. Hill thought he had found a path to success when he received a wrestling scholarship to Cal State Fullerton. School did not work out, and he was arrested in 2006 for possession of psilocybin (mushrooms).

He was put on five years' probation with a suspended imposition of sentence. In other words, if he completed his probation successfully, he would not have a criminal record.[4]

In November 2008, he left the state and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Although the original charge was minor and no further illegal activity occurred, T.J. was jailed on $100,000 bail to prevent flight risk. His family has spent thousands on legal fees. Now well known for his volunteer work with children, even police officers are hoping T.J. escapes more jail time. As one of them said, "He's a good guy. He's changed lives." Whether he will be allowed to continue doing so or will become dehumanized through a senseless, brutal imprisonment waits to be seen.

Such stories abound. Most share characteristics with the foregoing three. For example, the criminal activity being punished is trivial and violates no one's rights. The crimes are mala prohibita rather than mala en se. The first refers to crimes that exist only because rules were passed to control people's nonviolent behavior, like the buying of orchids; the second refers to crimes that exist because the acts are intrinsically wrong, like rape. Another characteristic shared: the punishments are extreme and any attempt to correct them is often ruinously expensive in terms of time and money. But the ultimate punishment is usually the police record that follows these "criminals" for life, shutting off worlds of opportunities.

Ask yourself, How different am I from Florence, with his paid-up-but-still-punished traffic tickets? Or from Norris, who accidentally purchased a harmless but illegal flower? Or from T.J. who made a mistake by breaking a malum prohibitum law against drugs?

If something similar happens to you or your children, do you want the lives of those you love to be destroyed by clerical error, understandable ignorance, or a youthful mistake? With every passing law, that prospect becomes more probable.

What Path to Justice?

Even thinking about how to shift a government system toward freedom or justice can be exhausting. The penal system is particularly daunting because its raw brutality seems to leave no room for reason. Fortunately, the best approach may be to address the penal system's precursors: the legislatures that create laws, the law enforcement and judiciaries that impose them. Without fundamental change at the early stages, effective change at the final stage of imprisonment is unlikely.

"The penal system is particularly daunting because its raw brutality seems to leave no room for reason."

Libertarianism has evolved sophisticated theories of what constitutes a proper justice system and how to implement it. One of the most popular theories is based on restitution, rather than retribution or punishment. Restitution is the legal system in which a person "makes good" on a harm or wrong done to another individual and does so directly; if you steal $100, then you pay back $100 and reasonable damages directly to the victim of your theft. You do not pay a debt to society or to the state by going to prison. You do not undergo "punishment" other than the damages assessed. You make your victim "whole" — and, perhaps, a bit more for his trouble.

Restitution is inherently self-limiting in how much the perpetrator is processed by the system. Beyond what is necessary to guarantee that the harm or wrong is repaired, there is no need for a perpetrator to relinquish any of his rights. A thief need not be caged to pay back $100 plus damages; all he needs to do is pay it back. There is no need for the currently huge prison industry nor the degradation of society that accompanies it.

To accomplish this, legal scholar Randy Barnett advocates sweeping away the entire criminal justice system. In its place, he proposes to establish a broadened civil-court system that adjudicates civil liabilities and damages. Many critics object to the pure restitution model; for example, they claim restitution cannot adequately redress crimes like murder. Whatever the merits of such objections, it is clear that restitution can address the great majority of harms and wrongs. Moreover, if an action required the presence of an actual victim whose person or property had been injured, then most current laws would fall off the books. Prisons would be spacious.[5]

Small Steps toward Justice

Fortunately, smaller steps than outright revolution can offer relief to many people suffering from the injustice of our legal and penal systems. These steps include

A sunset provision attached to all new or amended laws. This is a clause that provides an expiration date for a law unless action is taken to renew it. Today most laws are in effect indefinitely.
The elimination of civil-contempt imprisonments, which most commonly occur in family courts; men who are unable to pay court ordered spousal or child support are imprisoned for "contempt" without a trial or appeal process, and for whatever term is set by a judge. This converts the penal system into a debtor's prison. The America legal system is distinguished from most other Western ones in permitting such imprisonment.
The elimination of a double standard under the law for those involved in law enforcement. For example, the elimination of personal immunity for the willful wrongdoing of police officers on duty and for district attorneys who pursue blatantly flimsy cases. Such immunity skews incentives toward brutality and overprosecution.
Reinstatement of the mens rea safeguard. Mens rea means there was no "guilty mind" when an act occurred and, so, there was no crime although civil liability may well exist. For example, if a man bumps into another car without noticing it, he should not be charged with leaving the scene of an accident. He is civilly liable but not criminal so. Currently, there is a concerted attack on mens rea so that people are deemed criminally "guilty" despite their intent.[6]
Establishment of an "ignorance-of-the-law" defense. This differs from mens rea. For example, if a man knows he hits a car and leaves the scene, an "ignorance" defense would be "I didn't know doing so was illegal." It would be an invalid defense because everyone in our society is reasonably deemed to know that the destruction of property is wrong. But it is currently impossible for anyone — including the police — to know the content of every law. The principle that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" comes from 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes who addressed willful ignorance of laws that were well-known or a matter of common sense. Thus the claim "I didn't know rape was wrong" is an invalid defense while "I didn't know buying an orchid was wrong" would probably be valid even to Hobbes.
The elimination of criminal charges for all nonviolent "wrongdoing" toward law-enforcement agents. Such charges include obstruction of justice, lying to the police, and peacefully resisting arrest.
The decriminalization of all drugs
A return to the traditional rules of statutory interpretation by which criminal statutes are narrowly construed. Today, not merely criminal laws but seemingly unrelated ones, such as the Commerce Act, are being stretched to include a wide range of so-called violators as criminals.

The list could be much longer. But the implementation of any one of the foregoing and simple protections of justice could save misery or ruination for many thousands of innocent people.

Conclusions

Why are such reforms unlikely to occur?

Legislators have a strong incentive to call constantly for more laws and stricter enforcement. Until a large enough voter or protest base has been victimized by the law and demands change, politicians are rewarded for continuing that call. Being "hard" on crime is not merely a vote winner but also gives the state apparatus, on which the hands of legislators rest, much greater social control.

Meanwhile, the asset forfeiture that often accompanies arrests can turn a tidy profit, not merely for the state but especially for the police departments that absorb the assets.

Moreover, hordes of unionized people now have well-paying, plush-benefited jobs in the legal and penal systems. If 90 percent of arrests and imprisonments were eliminated then 90 percent of those jobs might disappear.

And so you and your children are likely to continue living under the constant threat of arrest by an arbitrary power against whom you either have no defense or a defense that could be ruinous. You will continue to live in a police state.

The author of several books, Wendy McElroy maintains two active websites: wendymcelroy.com and ifeminists.com. Send her mail. See Wendy McElroy's article archives.
You can subscribe to future articles by Wendy McElroy via this RSS feed.

Notes

[1] Robert Barnes, "Supreme Court is asked about jails' blanket strip-search policies," Washington Post, September 12, 2011.
[2] "Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of the County of Burlington," SCOTUS blog.
[3] "Too many laws, too many prisoners," The Economist, July 22, 2010.
[4] Bill McClellan, "Wrestler is still grappling with an old arrest," StLtoday.com, September 18, 2011.
[5] Randy E. Barnett, "Restitution: A New Paradigm of Criminal Justice," Ethics volume 87, number 4 (1977)
[6] Gary Fields and John R. Emshwiller, "As Federal Crime List Grows, Threshold of Guilt Declines," WSJ.com, September 27, 2011.

Steve Duncan Brings "No Man's Land" to The Masses And In The Process, Humanizes Those Who Are Homeless

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Mon, 09 Dec 2013 11:14:00 +0000

Spending some time wandering streets around the country while living either homeless or addicted, and sometimes both, I know first-hand that cities have "hidden" sides to them. Many of them are extraordinarily dangerous for the uninitiated and/or uninvited, but for those who know how to engage - or avoid with courtesy - those who inhabit them, the rewards of exploration are mind-boggling glimpses into the lives and activities of people you probably don't even know exist in your own community.

I've always been fascinated and impressed with those who can live where most of us wouldn't or couldn't imagine; from homeless camps to sewer tunnels to innercity "caves" created by construction processes. The ability to adapt and overcome is a human being's strongest skill and peeking into the lives of those who have taken "alternate" approaches to surviving in our cities is an eye opening reminder of just how clever and adaptable we are.

A couple of years ago, while waiting for a flight in an airport in anywhere, USA, I came across a book by Moses Gates called "Hidden Cities." I was immediately intrigued and it re-piqued my interest in life lived off the beaten path, especially given that I'd grown fat, lazy and comfortable in my now boringly predictable and solidly middle class lifestyle.

I'm a wanderer by genetics; my father's lineage is nomadic and the steps of my ancient ancestors across deserts and plains continually smolders and occasionally flares within me. I'm compelled at my core to travel, explore, move to the next place. It's hard as hell for me to remain in one area and I am pulled always to see what's around the next corner, over the next hill, down the road a little further, so it's a no-brainer why explorations like Hidden Cities or Carl Hoffman's fantastic journeys around the world via "The Lunatic Express" hold such high interest for me.

So it's no wonder that Andrew Wonder's video below of Steve Duncan's undercity explorations immediately grabbed and held me from the moment he hopped off a subway platform and began running through the tunnels. His encounter with folks living under the city begins around 15.00 and runs to 20.00, so you can skip right to that if that's all you're interested in here, but the video itself is well worth the time to watch from start to finish if you're inclined, as I am, to wonder what's behind the barricade, at the top of a bridge tower, or behind closed doors that never see "the public's" footprints. The bridge climb is particularly sweet, and you can catch that around 25.00 in...

UNDERCITY from Andrew Wonder on Vimeo.

"You're probably making 10 percent less than you were ten years ago. The top 0.01 percent is making 76.2 percent more"

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 13:25:00 +0000

Just a little food for thought to kick your weekend off with.

May be one of the big reasons we hear that the "United States Spring may be coming" to a community near you....soon.

You’re probably making 10 percent less than you were ten years ago. The top 0.01 percent is making 76.2 percent more.

More Idiocy Related To The War On Drugs and Its Impact On The Individual And The Community

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 11:14:00 +0000

“Prosecutors can say, ‘Take these 10 years or, if you get a trial and are convicted, you’re going to look at life...That’s a pretty amazing power that unfortunately they are more than willing to wield.'"

The last couple of weeks have been...hectic, to say the least, with travel and a couple of major conferences I'm involved with. It's left little time for writing or posting anything personal but when I came across the article in the Huffington Post below, and remembered the resource I recently found on the Faces and Voices For Recovery website done by The Sentencing Project, I had to take a moment to get it out to others.


Credit:http://www.flickr.com/photos/45383850@N03/5358684025

The article details how easy it is to find yourself with a drug conviction. What the DA and your typical appointed Public Defender (and for that matter, your high-priced Attorney) always seem to fail to tell you when they're bending you over and leaving the lube at home is what pleading guilty actually entails beyond the immediate criminal justice implications.

The report by the Sentencing Project, A Lifetime of Punishment: The Impact Of The Felony Drug Ban On Welfare Benefits details the hardships created upon those individuals who were ensnared in the failed war on drugs in this country and now suffer collateral sentencing impacts that affect them, their children, and their families..forever.

I don't care how you feel about those who use drugs or whether you believe or not that addiction is a disease. What you should care about however, is the cost to our community and to your wallet that comes with shoving people onto the street in destitution and hopelessness. In 2012, HUD Secy Shaun Donovan stated that average cost of one person who experiences chronic homelessness in a given community costs that community about $40,000 a year of taxpayer money. It's bad enough when our society must cover the costs of those who have no resources and exist "outside the margins" of our communities, but when you strip away all hope of ever being able to rebuild your life, you create a very unpredictable mindset within the individual who has been beaten down; I've said it before, strip away hope and all bets are off on what that person is capable of in order to survive.

Leave a man or woman with no legal options to care for themselves or their families and most of us will do whatever it takes. Nothing is "off the table" when it comes to survival, folks, and WE created that situation for them. You can argue that "they broke the law" but once they've repaid that debt, they deserve a chance to make it right. If we don't give them that chance, then there's absolutely NO reason to follow any other laws...ever.

From a moral and ethical standpoint, rapists, child molesters and convicted murderers aren't treated as unjustly as those who have felony convictions for drugs. It's an absurd waste of our continually shrinking tax dollars and morally reprehensible behavior from those who legislated this into existence.

This madness needs to end. Now.

Read the full report from The Sentencing Project here.

Drug Defendants Are Being 'Forced' To Plead Guilty, Report Claims

Posted: 12/05/2013 12:00 am EST | Updated: 12/05/2013 12:48 am EST

Only 3 percent of U.S. drug defendants in federal cases chose to go to trial instead of pleading guilty in 2012, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch.

The small number begins to make sense if you consider the consequences faced by drug defendants convicted in court, argues the report's author, Jamie Fellner.

“Prosecutors can say, ‘Take these 10 years or, if you get a trial and are convicted, you’re going to look at life,’” said Fellner, an attorney who specializes in criminal justice issues at Human Rights Watch. “That’s a pretty amazing power that unfortunately they are more than willing to wield."

The effect, she argues, is that prosecutors essentially “force” defendants to plead guilty.

Last year, drug defendants in federal cases who went to trial and lost were sentenced to more than three times as many years in prison as those who took a plea, according to the report’s analysis of data from the United States Sentencing Commission, a government agency.
And the majority of those who did go to trial -- 89 percent of them -- lost.
The percentage of defendants in 2012 who fought their charges is likely an all-time low. In 1980, the first year for which the report reviewed the relevant data, the percentage of federal drug defendants who pleaded guilty was slightly more than 60 percent, and it has risen steadily since then.
The advent of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws in the mid-80s is largely responsible for the steady increase in guilty pleas, according to Fellner. Such laws required judges to impose harsh, predetermined sentences on people convicted of the distribution and, in some circumstances, possession of illicit drugs, while giving prosecutors the ability to offer defendants smaller sentences as part of a deal.
“If you can get someone to acknowledge guilt without the burden and expense of a trial, without having to marshal witnesses and line up witnesses, and without risking an acquittal, why not?” said Fellner. “You don’t have the cost of a trial, it doesn’t take the time and resources, and it increases the notches on your belt of how many convictions you’ve gotten.”
But in reality, the government lacks the resources needed to try everyone who is charged with a drug offense, said Steven Jansen, the vice president and chief operating officer of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, a professional group based in Washington.
“Justice would almost stand still if we took the majority of our cases to trial,” he said.
Jansen noted that efforts are underway to reform the nation’s mandatory-minimum sentencing laws. Lawmakers from both parties have introduced bills that would scale back the reach of those laws, and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has directed federal prosecutors to shift their attention away from drug cases.
“Our system is looking at mandatory minimums and what we’re going to either do or not do about them,” Jansen said. “But a defendant is really not forced to accept a guilty plea. Obviously they have a right to go to trial no matter what the sentence is.”

Food Stamps Don't Make People "Fat" - Lack Of Ability To Purchase Healthy Food Does

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 12:20:00 +0000

What the "studies" and "correlations" below don't tell you is the living conditions and what's available to those who must use food stamps to obtain their food; that is why some people become overweight on the program.

I'm no dietician, but I can tell you a few important things that happen to large numbers of folks who must use food stamps:

(Credit: http://www.erench.com/RESTAUR/CALIF/MOJV/GAS/index.htm)

Often folks are limited by lack of feasible transportation to the "shopping options" available in their immediate area. This includes "convenience" marts, gas stations, and little mom and pop neighborhood grocery stores. Anyone who has purchased food in any of these places knows choice is limited and the cost is higher than your average Kroger, Safeway or...shudder...Walmart.
Starches and sugars are cheaper than meats and veggies.
Poverty sucks and food is comforting.

So our researchers can study all they want, and they can find correlations where they look, but a very simple rule about data is: garbage in, garbage out. About the same can be said for the diets of so many who must use foodstamps because they lack choice and opportunity most of us take for granted.

If you're looking for the real reason, it helps to understand the lives of the people you're studying.

Do Food Stamps Make Poor People Fat?

Posted: 11/13/2013 9:24 am EST | Updated: 11/13/2013 4:21 pm EST

Arthur Delaney

WASHINGTON -- Food stamps contribute significantly to an obesity problem in south Texas, according to a recent story in the Washington Post.

The piece, by reporter Eli Saslow, examines a Texas county in which 40 percent of residents receive nutrition assistance, meaning they eat cheap food, resulting in "rates of diabetes and obesity that double the national average," Saslow writes. His big question: "Has the massive growth of a government feeding program solved a problem, or created one?"

Researchers have also wondered whether the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program fattens its 47 million enrollees, but they have not found overwhelming evidence that it does.

"In fact, a growing body of research suggests a protective effect of SNAP participation on obesity risk," the Food Research and Action Center, a liberal advocacy group opposed to cutting food stamps, found in a report, most recently updated in January, that cited more than a dozen separate research efforts.

One study, for example, found that poor people in Massachusetts receiving benefits for six months had lower body mass indexes than people receiving benefits for shorter periods of time. A study in New York City found food insecurity increased body mass only in women not receiving food assistance. (People can still be "food insecure," meaning they lack access to food at all times because of limited resources, even if they receive food stamps.) And a national study found that food-insecure adults over age 54 receiving benefits were less likely to be overweight than non-beneficiaries.

Several studies have found a correlation between SNAP participation and increased body mass among adult women, however. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2008 review of available research found that while use of food stamps didn't increase obesity among children, adult men, or the elderly, studies showed adult women were 2 to 5 percent more likely to become obese if they received food stamps for more than a year.

The Food Research and Action Center has said those studies are flawed, pointing out, among other things, that food insecurity among women in general is particularly associated with obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, low-income women are more likely to be overweight than their higher-income counterparts, while the opposite is true for men. Obesity is less common among both men and women who have college degrees.

Saslow's story focused on a diabetic mother of five in McAllen, Texas, named Blanca Salas, who has been receiving food stamps for nearly a decade. She says it's exhausting to try to find and cook healthy food in a landscape dotted with dollar stores and dollar menus and not much else.

"As her health worsened, she had started shopping mostly for foods she knew [her children] would eat and prepare themselves," Saslow wrote. "She was a single mother with little money and less energy, she reasoned; it was more important to provide enough than it was to worry about what, exactly, she was providing."

Congress is in the midst of a debate over whether to cut food stamps, with Republicans in the House of Representatives seeking to reduce enrollment by 3.8 million. Few have argued that the program's link to the nation's obesity problem, however murky, is a reason to reduce benefits. Rather, the focus has been on the cost of the program and concerns that it coddles lazy Americans who should be spending more hours on the job.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture does run a program to fight obesity among SNAP recipients by promoting healthy food choices. Congress recently cut the program's budget by more than 25 percent and used the money to subsidize the dairy industry.

Hawaii Democrat Rep. Tom Bower Apologizes For Sledgehammering Homeless Carts But Misses The Real Issue

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 12:16:00 +0000

"Bowering" to scathing public response from a variety of sources and stories (not to mention emails and calls from all around the country), Representative Bower (D-HI) is looking to change the discussion.

It bears pointing out however, that Mr. Bower is wrong on so many levels here I don't really know where to begin.

“If I see shopping carts that I can’t identify, I will destroy them so they can’t be pushed on the streets.”

I believe that is considered vandalism, sir and I think you are breaking the law. Worse, you have done so on television.

“I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets.”

Then learn about why people experience homelessness, support your local service providers and outreach workers, invite the 100,000 Homes Campaign to help your city, and do something that's actually practical instead of destructive, stigmatizing, and bordering on hate crimes against the homeless.

“If someone is sleeping at night on the bus stop, I don’t do anything, but if they are sleeping during the day, I’ll walk up and say, ‘Get your ass moving.’”

Your actions sir, apprear to me to be morally reprehensible. Have you ever attempted to sleep on any city street? If not, you should consider yourself very fortunate and thankful, Mr. Bower, because the violence perpetrated against the homeless while sleeping shocks the conscience.

Perhaps if you knew about individuals like Tara Cole, a Nashville, TN woman who was pushed into a river while wrapped in her sleeping bag one night by two young men who were drunk and "looking for some fun;" or the man who sound asleep was shot in the face and neck repeatedly with a paintball gun by a gang of teens; or the "suspicious" bus shelter fire that killed 62 year old Harley Lawrence as he slept; or the three homeless men who were all stabbed multiple times and died as they slept alone, you'd understand why some people who are homeless doze off during the daytime.

It's my understanding, Rep. Bower, that Hawaii has one of the highest populations of people experiencing homelessness in the country. There are plenty of evidence-based and promising practices that have been developed to help ameliorate homelessness; you can find some great information on how to accomplish this at the SAMHSA Homelessness Resource Center and you can even get free technical support and assistance to implement, execute and maintain fidelity to the models here.

I would think that as a Representative of "the people" of the great state of Hawaii, you'd be running, not walking, to supports like this, given the amount of homelessness in your community. That you don't reflects poorly on your ability to legislate and govern in your state. A little time spent researching the causes and conditions of homelessness would also clearly benefit you, and you can begin with some very good, honest, and frankly eye-opening information about homelessness here, here, and here.

There's a great new guidebook for Public Housing Authorities to end homelessness as well, and I highly recommend you peruse it. I also recommend a Google search on the challenges related to homelessness; something I recommend you do sooner, rather than later, because you sir, are not helping the problem with your actions.

In fact, your behavior is contributing both to the stereotypes about homelessness and perpetuating violence against those experiencing homelessness, and it hasn't stopped simply because you've "retired" your sledgehammer. In fact, it appears your priorities are skewed, given your recent statement that ”Now that the issue of shopping carts is on our minds...the question is are we going to move forward and try to solve it or just let it become status quo.”

I would think that you'd be more concerned about the human suffering and misery of those who must endure living homeless in your community, sir. My hope would be that these individuals would take precedence over the shopping carts outside of their store zones in your city. In fact, I'll wager that if you actually addressed the real and very large problem of homelessness in Hawaii, instead of trying to send those individuals out of your state with a one way plane ticket and burdening other communities with a situation you're apparently unwilling to resolve yourself, the issue of abandoned shopping carts would disappear pretty quickly.

You now have the resources and the knowledge; you are freed from your previous ignorance regarding the causes and challenges of - and solutions to - homelessness.

The real question now is whether you will act upon your new knowledge and actually do something that ends homelessness in your community.

Hawaii State Rep. Tom Bower (D! wtf?) Sledgehammers Homeless People’s Possessions

Five-term Hawaiian Representative Tom Brower (D-WTF?) has waged his own war on the homeless in his state. He has taken the streets with a sledgehammer in search for homeless people in hopes to destroy any possession they may have. Brower says he’s “disgusted” with homeless people in his state and informed the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about his own ideology in enforcing “justice.”

“If I see shopping carts that I can’t identify, I will destroy them so they can’t be pushed on the streets.”

Brower claims that since he began this new campaign, he has destroyed an estimated 30 shopping carts with a sledgehammer in the last two weeks.

“I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets,” he explained to Hawaii News Now.

As if destroying homeless’ possessions wasn’t enough to ‘clean up the streets’, Brower has made it a priority to interrupt these people that he finds sleeping and tell them to get up and sleep somewhere else.

“If someone is sleeping at night on the bus stop, I don’t do anything, but if they are sleeping during the day, I’ll walk up and say, ‘Get your ass moving,’” he said.

Apparently Brower finds homeless people insignificant and unworthy of any self-respect to owning and protecting their possessions. Clearly if Brower were to raid middle-class homes and smashed their possessions, someone would indeed wake him up and say ‘Get your ass moving’…out of office that is.

Homelessness is a complex, overwhelming problem, and cities all over America appear determined to solve it by abusing homeless people until they go away. Brower has frightened the homeless, but has not done much to actually help them. Hawaii currently maintains the highest homeless rate in the country, but instead of providing shelters or more services to help these people, lawmakers approved $100,000 to offer one-way flights out of Hawaii to any of the state’s estimated 17,000 homeless persons.

It is very sad that in this country, the default solution is to devise endlessly creative ways to punish the homeless for being homeless.

"By cutting back on food stamps, we are ensuring the perpetuation of inequality, and at that, one of its worst manifestations: the inequality of opportunity."

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Thu, 21 Nov 2013 22:04:00 +0000

I struggled to provide some personal perspective to this and about all I can come up with is one big sigh of frustration. I'm outraged and pained every time I hear someone tell me how badly the cuts in foodstamps have impacted them. I can not believe that there are actually people - my neighbors, community members, friends, relatives - who actually support actions like this.

And I experience a hopelessness that we have any power to fight back against what seems like a relentless, continuous, whack a mole battle with Goliaths, who, every time we defeat or stop them in one place, arise in another with a more insidious, frightful and damaging attack in another.

It's like screaming into a windstorm and I can see how people just get worn down, discouraged, despondent, and lose all hope...

The quote below sums up perhaps best both the ridiculousness and the impact of this monstrosity hidden under the most benign proposal name, the Farm Bill, in one tight, ugly paragraph:

The nonsensical arrangement being proposed in the House Republicans’ farm bill is an especially egregious version of this process. It takes real money, money that is necessary for bare survival, from the poorest Americans, and gives it to a small group of the undeserving rich, in return for their campaign contributions and political support. There is no economic justification: The bill actually distorts our economy by promoting the kind of production we don’t need and shrinking the consumption of those with the smallest incomes. There is no moral justification either: It actually increases misery and precariousness of daily life for millions of Americans.

The arrogance, hubris and sheer meanness of some is just goddam breathtaking...

NYT: The Great Divide November 16, 2013, 2:30 pm

The Insanity of Our Food Policy

By JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

American food policy has long been rife with head-scratching illogic. We spend billions every year on farm subsidies, many of which help wealthy commercial operations to plant more crops than we need. The glut depresses world crop prices, harming farmers in developing countries. Meanwhile, millions of Americans live tenuously close to hunger, which is barely kept at bay by a food stamp program that gives most beneficiaries just a little more than $4 a day.

So it’s almost too absurd to believe that House Republicans are asking for a farm bill that would make all of these problems worse. For the putative purpose of balancing the country’s books, the measures that the House Republican caucus is pushing for in negotiations with the Senate, as Congress attempts to pass a long-stalled extension of the farm bill, would cut back the meager aid to our country’s most vulnerable and use the proceeds to continue fattening up a small number of wealthy American farmers.

The House has proposed cutting food stamp benefits by $40 billion over 10 years — that’s on top of $5 billion in cuts that already came into effect this month with the expiration of increases to the food stamp program that were included in the 2009 stimulus law. Meanwhile, House Republicans appear satisfied to allow farm subsidies, which totaled some $14.9 billion last year, to continue apace. Republican proposals would shift government assistance from direct payments — paid at a set rate to farmers every year to encourage them to keep growing particular crops, regardless of market fluctuations — to crop insurance premium subsidies. But this is unlikely to be any cheaper. Worse, unlike direct payments, the insurance premium subsidies carry no income limit for the farmers who would receive this form of largess.

The proposal is a perfect example of how growing inequality has been fed by what economists call rent-seeking. As small numbers of Americans have grown extremely wealthy, their political power has also ballooned to a disproportionate size. Small, powerful interests — in this case, wealthy commercial farmers — help create market-skewing public policies that benefit only themselves, appropriating a larger slice of the nation’s economic pie. Their larger slice means everyone else gets a smaller one — the pie doesn’t get any bigger — though the rent-seekers are usually adept at taking little enough from individual Americans that they are hardly aware of the loss. While the money that they’ve picked from each individual American’s pocket is small, the aggregate is huge for the rent-seeker. And this in turn deepens inequality.

(Credit: Javier Jaén)

The nonsensical arrangement being proposed in the House Republicans’ farm bill is an especially egregious version of this process. It takes real money, money that is necessary for bare survival, from the poorest Americans, and gives it to a small group of the undeserving rich, in return for their campaign contributions and political support. There is no economic justification: The bill actually distorts our economy by promoting the kind of production we don’t need and shrinking the consumption of those with the smallest incomes. There is no moral justification either: It actually increases misery and precariousness of daily life for millions of Americans.

FARM subsidies were much more sensible when they began eight decades ago, in 1933, at a time when more than 40 percent of Americans lived in rural areas. Farm incomes had fallen by about a half in the first three years of the Great Depression. In that context, the subsidies were an anti-poverty program.

Now, though, the farm subsidies serve a quite different purpose. From 1995 to 2012, 1 percent of farms received about $1.5 million each, which is more than a quarter of all subsidies, according to the Environmental Working Group. Some three-quarters of the subsidies went to just 10 percent of farms. These farms received an average of more than $30,000 a year — about 20 times the amount received by the average individual beneficiary last year from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program, or SNAP, commonly called food stamps.

Today, food stamps are one of the main support beams in our anti-poverty efforts. More than 80 percent of the 45 million or so Americans who participated in SNAP in 2011, the last year for which there is comprehensive data from the United States Department of Agriculture, had gross household incomes below the poverty level. (Since then, the total number of participants has expanded to nearly 48 million.) Even with that support, many of them experience food insecurity, that is, they had trouble putting food on the table at some point during the year.

Historically, food stamp programs and agricultural subsidies have been tied together. The two may seem strange bedfellows, but there is a rationale: There is a need to address both sides of the economics of food — production and consumption. Having a bounteous supply within a country does not ensure that the citizens of that country are well fed. The radical imbalance between farm subsidies to the wealthy and nutritional assistance to the neediest — an imbalance that the farm bill proposals would directly promote — is a painful testament to this established economic fact.

The Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen has reminded us that even famines are not necessarily caused by a lack of supply, but by a failure to get the food that exists to the people who need it. This was true in the Bengal famine of 1943 and in the Irish potato famine a century earlier: Ireland, controlled by its British masters, was exporting food even as its citizens died of starvation.
A similar dynamic is playing out in the United States. American farmers are heralded as among the most efficient in the world. Our country is the largest producer and exporter of corn and soybeans, to name just two of its biggest crops. And yet millions of Americans still suffer from hunger, and millions more would, were it not for the vital programs that government provides to prevent hunger and malnutrition — the programs that the Republicans are now seeking to cut back.

Taking from the poor to subsidize the rich.

And there is an extra layer of irony to America’s food policies: While they encourage overproduction, they pay little attention to the quality and diversity of foods our farms produce. The heavy subsidization of corn, for instance, means that many unhealthful foods are relatively cheap. So grocery shopping on a tight budget often means choosing foods that are not nutritious. This is part of the reason that Americans face the paradox of hunger out of proportion to their wealth, along with some of the world’s highest obesity rates, and a high incidence of Type 2 diabetes. Poor Americans are especially at risk for obesity.

A few years ago, I was in India, a country of 1.2 billion, in which tens of millions face hunger on a daily basis, when a front-page headline blared that one in seven Americans faced food insecurity because they couldn’t afford the basic necessities of life. Indian friends I met that day and in the following week were puzzled by this news: How could it be that in the richest country of the world there was still hunger?

Their puzzlement was understandable: Hunger in this rich land is unnecessary. What my Indian friends didn’t understand is that 15 percent of Americans — and 22 percent of America’s children — live in poverty. Someone working full time (2,080 hours a year) at the minimum wage of $7.25 would earn about $15,000 a year, far less than the poverty threshold for a family of four ($23,492 in 2012), and even less than the poverty level of a family of three.

This grim picture is a result of political decisions made in Washington that have helped create an economic system in which the undereducated must work exceptionally hard simply to remain in poverty.

This is not how America is supposed to work. In his famous 1941 “four freedoms” speech, Franklin D. Roosevelt enunciated the principle that all Americans should have certain basic economic rights, including “freedom from want.” These ideas were later embraced by the international community in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which also enshrined the right to adequate food. But while the United States was instrumental in advocating for these basic economic human rights on the international scene — and getting them adopted — America’s performance back home has been disappointing.

It is, of course, no surprise that with the high level of poverty millions of Americans have had to turn to the government to meet the basic necessities of life. And those numbers increased drastically with the onset of the Great Recession. The number of Americans on food stamps went up by more than 80 percent between 2007 and 2013.

To say that most of these Americans are technically poor only begins to get at the depth of their need. In 2012, for example, two in five SNAP recipients had gross incomes that were less than half of the poverty line. The amount they get from the program is very small — $4.39 a day per recipient. This is hardly enough to survive on, but it makes an enormous difference in the lives of those who get it: The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that SNAP lifted four million Americans out of poverty in 2010.

Given the inadequacies of the existing programs to combat hunger and poor nutrition, and given the magnitude of poverty in the aftermath of the Great Recession, one might have thought that the natural response of our political leaders would be to expand programs enhancing food security. But the members of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives see things differently. They seem to want to blame the victims — the poor who have been provided an inadequate public education and so lack marketable skills, and those who earnestly seek work, but can’t find any, because of an economic system that has stalled, with almost one out of seven Americans who would like to find full-time employment still unable to obtain it. Far from alleviating the impacts of these problems, the Republicans’ proposal would reinforce privation and inequalities.

And the calamitous effects of the Republicans’ proposal will reach even beyond our borders.
Viewed from a larger perspective, the farming subsidies, combined with the cutbacks in food stamps, increase global poverty and hunger. This is because, with American consumption diminished from what it otherwise would be and production increased, food exports will inevitably increase. Greater exports drive down global prices, hurting poor farmers around the world. Agriculture is the main source of livelihood for the 70 percent of the world’s poor living in rural areas, who overwhelmingly reside in developing countries.

The adoption of the House Republicans’ plan will reverberate in our economy through several channels. One is simply that poor families with diminished resources will tamp down growth. More pernicious is that the Republicans’ farm bill would deepen inequality — and not just through the immediate giveaways to wealthy farmers and corresponding cuts to the poor. Children with poor nutrition — whether they are hungry or ill because of bad diets — do not learn as well as those who are better fed.

By cutting back on food stamps, we are ensuring the perpetuation of inequality, and at that, one of its worst manifestations: the inequality of opportunity. When it comes to opportunity, America is doing an alarmingly bad job, as I’ve written before in this series. We are endangering our future because there will be a large coterie of people at the bottom who will not live up to their potential, who will not be able to make the contribution that they could have made, to the prosperity of the country as a whole.

All of this exposes the Republicans’ argument in favor of these food policies — a concern for our future, particularly the impact of the national debt on our children — as a dishonest and deeply cynical pretense. Not only has the intellectual undergirding of debt fetishism been knocked out (with the debunking of work by the Harvard economists Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff that tied slowed growth to debt-to-G.D.P. ratios above 90 percent). The Republicans’ farm bill also clearly harms both America’s children and the world’s in a variety of ways.

For these proposals to become law would be a moral and economic failure for the country.

A Message of Recovery To Jeffrey Stevens in Torrington, Connecticut

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 11:52:00 +0000

In a 2012 survey on drug use in the U.S. by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 669,000 respondents said they use heroin, up from 620,000 in 2011 and 373,000 in 2007. The report, issued in September of this year, also showed that 156,000 people 12 or older reported using heroin for the first time in 2012, a number on par with recent years, but up from 2003 (92,000 first-time users) and 2006 (90,000).

***********

“It’s unrealistic to think the police are going to solve the drug problem in America.” Torrington Police Chief Michael Maniago

**********

“I hate it; I hate that because somebody has a problem that they’re looked down upon and I hate that it’s something people think that they enjoy when they have no idea the amount of suffering that these people are going through.” Jeffrey Stevens

Jeffrey, let me be one of many to say "I feel ya." I started using drugs on my 13th birthday. At 27, I was shooting cocaine and heroin daily while trying to cope with poverty, personal failures, family trauma, and a shitty hand I kept dealing to myself while trying to escape, succeed, and live. I partied hard because we're always chasing that first "rush" and we never really catch it. In the process, I've "fallen out" three times I can remember clearly; and each time I miraculously came to, I was shocked to see the looks on the faces of the people around me.

The first time my first wife found me; I had injected some black tar at my kitchen bar counter, slumped over in a nod in the barstool, and apparently my dogs whined and whimpered at my feet in a way that alerted her to my situation. When I came to, she, the neighbor and two paramedics were standing over me trying to get me to go to the hospital. I refused of course, as I knew what had happened, but do you know that when they left, I fixed again. That is the depravity that accompanies the disease of addiction, my friend.

The second time, I only remember being viciously and repeatedly slapped by my lady, and as my consciousness rose from the black, I realized she was crying hysterically and begging me not to leave her. I've never seen anyone so sad, fearful, angry, and overjoyed at the same time.

Although the emotional trauma I inflicted on my partner when I overdosed the second time haunts me now, the third time was truly the worst. I was so gowed I don't even recall where I ODed at; but I woke up in an ambulance when the medic pushed some IV Narcan too fast and yanked me from a deep gow right into severe withdrawal.

Two things about that incident I remember like they were this morning; I saw my reflection in the glass cabinets lining the ambulance and I was bluer than a damned blueberry Jeff, a blue no one should ever see on themselves, my friend - the blue of imminent death. The second thing I remember is telling the medics how pissed off I was for "bringing me back." I clearly remember - and can still feel the utter despair I was experiencing at the time - telling them "you should have let me go." I owe my life to those paramedics today and thank the Gods they were able to resuscitate me, but it took another decade before I realized they'd done me a favor.

Through it all, I have done things so scandalous and treacherous that I'm frankly thankful my memories of most of that time - more than half my life - are blurry or just....gone.

I couldn't look at myself in the mirror for 20 years, and my battle with addiction continues to this day, some 27 years later. Today, I celebrate 14 years in Recovery, but even that has been challenging because of my initial love id, and then total dependence on, opiates.

I tell you this not to instill a sense of hopelessness, far from it. I share my story just like you're doing, as ours are stories of a recovery against all odds. For you, Jeffrey, and for all our brothers and sisters who are struggling with similar stories, you may hold onto my strength and fellowship when you are down and lonely. You can lean on my and countless others' shoulders when people who know nothing about the disease of addiction say hurtful, painful, degrading, disgusting things about you. You can believe and keep the hope that it can get better and you can overcome, because I, and many others, have been able to escape the ravages of the disease, against often seemingly insurmountable odds.

This is a lifelong fight Jeffrey, but you dont have to battle it by yourself. You've got the support, the Agape love, the understanding and the strength of millions of us who've traveled a very similar road and arrived in recovery. We're battered and bruised, to be sure, but we're alive, and we're grateful for the chance to set things right in our lives and the vast majority of us would do anything to support those trying to recover.

So the next time you're down, feeling alone and dealing with the trauma, pain, and lure of addiction, know that all around the country and the world, we are extending our collective hand to you to join us.

You are never alone in your struggle.

In heroin’s grip: Overdose deaths expose Torrington’s struggle with addiction

File image of heroin.courtesy of Torrington Police Department

By Esteban L. Hernandez and Isaac Avilucea, ehernandez@registercitizen.com and iavilucea@registercitizen.com, @EstebanHRZ and @IsaacAvilucea on Twitter

Jeffrey Stevens plunged the needle into his arm, nodding off as the heroin filtered through his blood. His breathing became so faint, a friend feared the worst when she discovered him later, slumped over in a car in Waterbury.

He should have died that night a few months ago. Stevens knows this, but said luck was on his side, like so many nights before. His friend, a nurse, administered CPR, saving him. After waking up inside a car, he was startled to see his friend crying.

“I was almost there. I almost finished the job. I was almost finally dead,” said Stevens. “That’s really what I wanted at that point.”

Stevens, 27, is from Thomaston, a town small enough that most people know of the drug addiction he’s dealt with, which means most people think of him as a junkie. He’s been kicked out of some restaurants in his hometown because managers said they “don’t serve junkies.” He recently moved back to Thomaston after spending some time in Phoenix, and he has family in nearby Torrington.
According to police, there were three suspected heroin-related deaths in Torrington over the weekend of Nov. 2-3. On Nov. 6, a possible fatal heroin overdose was reported in Winsted. In early September, three Litchfield County residents died of suspected heroin overdoses in a five-day period from Sept. 3 to 7. The victims ranged in age from 19 to 62, with varied backgrounds and from different socioeconomic classes.

Since the start of 2013, there have been nine suspected heroin-related deaths in Torrington. In 2012, five heroin-related deaths were reported. From 2008 to 2011, there were 11 heroin-related deaths reported in the city.

The number of deaths tied to heroin use also are up in Litchfield County, with 19 deaths reported this year. In 2012, 11 deaths were reported, up from four the previous year.

There have been four heroin-related deaths in New Milford this year; two each in Harwinton, Terryville and Woodbury; and one in Winsted.

Campion Ambulance serves about 160,000 people in Litchfield and New Haven counties, including Torrington. The city-contracted ambulance company responded to 20 heroin-related deaths since October 2012. All told, they’ve responded to 271 calls for suspected drug overdoses, said Fred Rosa, Campion Ambulance regional manager.

“There’s definitely been a rise in heroin use,” Rosa said. “It was never as prevalent as it was now.”
The apparent rise in heroin use also is impacted by a suspected “bad batch” of the drug. State officials in October warned that a mix of heroin and clenbuterol, a veterinary drug not approved for human use, could be in the local heroin supply. The mixture could be life-threatening.

Deaths, use on the rise
In a 2012 survey on drug use in the U.S. by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 669,000 respondents said they use heroin, up from 620,000 in 2011 and 373,000 in 2007. The report, issued in September of this year, also showed that 156,000 people 12 or older reported using heroin for the first time in 2012, a number on par with recent years, but up from 2003 (92,000 first-time users) and 2006 (90,000).

Experts have put forward several reasons for the increase in heroin use, including availability and cost. Officials also are seeing heroin being used as a substitute for the abuse of now-harder-to-obtain prescription drugs.

Dr. Robert Heimer, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, has studied fatal overdoses from heroin or pharmaceutical narcotic painkillers and drug addiction in Connecticut. He said the state is seeing a transition of opioid abuse being an urban problem to a suburban and rural problem.

“If you have access to it, it is very cheap and very pure,” Heimer said.

He said nine deaths in Torrington this year is a large enough issue that some kind of opioid prevention program is appropriate in the city. He has worked with programs in Fairfield and New Haven counties, as well as Hartford.

Education programs about overdoses are “the first and most immediate response” the city can take. Providing better access to drug treatment also is essential.

“Neither one by itself will alleviate the problem,” Heimer said, adding that the coming expansion of a Hartford Dispensary methadone clinic to a site on Kennedy Drive in Torrington is a “very good step, but they also need to roll out an overdose prevention program.”

Escalating dependency
Daniel Gardner IV died Sept. 6 of a suspected drug overdose after police say he mixed a lethal dose of heroin and cocaine. A gifted car dealer, he worked at Torrington Honda, where he met his wife, Lauren, whose family owned the dealership. The couple had a 3-year-old son, and Gardner was serious about turning around his life.

“He just had the gift of gab,” Caitlin Gardner said of her brother.

But Daniel also was cursed by “demons.” He inherited his father’s taste for whiskey. At 14, he began experimenting with marijuana as a way to cope with an absentee father.

Bouncing in and out of rehab, Daniel Gardner seemingly had finally escaped the clutches of alcohol addiction, and was sober for eight years before relapsing in 2011. The family was devastated, and Caitlin Gardner pried her brother for answers.

“I was just trying to get into his head and ask him, ‘Why? Can you please try to explain to me what you’re going through?’” she said.

Soon after, feeling isolated and burdened by shame, Daniel Gardner began mixing alcohol with prescription pills. That progressed to heroin, a common route for users searching for cheaper, more readily available alternatives to prescription painkillers.

Combating the problem
“Torrington’s drug problem is typical for any city the size of Torrington, but there are other things that lend itself to Torrington’s issue,” said Torrington Police Chief Michael Maniago, a 34-year member of the force who worked for seven years on the department’s narcotics unit.

While the overall level of drug activity police are seeing is not unusual for Torrington, the number of overdose deaths is.

“As far as that goes, yes, we have not had this many that I can remember,” Maniago said, calling it “unacceptable.”

Maniago said the worst drug-related issue the city had experienced occurred during his time at the narcotics unit in the late 1980s and early ’90s during the crack cocaine epidemic.

He said rehabilitation programs, community support for people with addiction and public policy must supplement law enforcement tactics.

“It’s not just a police problem,” said Maniago. “It’s unrealistic to think the police are going to solve the drug problem in America.”

Efforts to curb heroin use and arrests most likely will require combined work from state and federal authorities, Maniago said, and cooperation with other local agencies, as well. He said he’s spoken with area police chiefs and they agree heroin use is an issue.

“When resources are diminished to fight crime, it makes it very difficult. I’m not saying that’s an excuse, what I’m saying is that narcotics work especially is a resource-driven aspect of law enforcement,” said Maniago. “You need people, you need equipment, time, money, to do all the work that is necessary.”

Mary Kate Mason of the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services said her agency has seen a steady uptick in the number of heroin patients admitted into its drug rehabilitation program. Nearly a quarter of the 63,000 patients her agency served for substance abuse last year identified heroin as their primary problem.

The number of heroin patients admitted to the program in 2010 jumped from about 12,000 to nearly 16,000 in 2012. That figure, Mason said, doesn’t take into account others who get treatment for heroin addiction under private insurance plans since the department works only with uninsured or under-insured clients.

From $20 to $7
Today, Jeffrey Stevens is in recovery, attempting to live a life of sobriety for what he said is the “100th time.” He’s been using the drug on and off since he was 18 and has been arrested several times as a result of his addiction.

“Even when I get high now, it’s not even getting high, it’s just suppressing emotions,” said Stevens. He’s made it as long as four months before relapsing. This latest attempt at sobriety is motivated by his last overdose, which he said made him realize he had to make a decision about either ending his life or doing whatever it takes to stop using.

After completing a 30-day rehabilitation program, Stevens joined a 12-step program to help with substance abuse. He said it’s busy, almost like a full-time job, to make sure he stays on a path toward sobriety.

The first time he ingested heroin, Stevens said he was already suffering from alcoholism and using prescription pills to help him sleep as he tried to stop drinking. As the cost of prescriptions rose, he found an alternative.

“The prescriptions became so expensive,” Stevens said. “A bag of heroin, frankly, I mean it’s $7 in Waterbury. It’s enough to kill you, obviously.”

When he first started using the drug in 2004, a bag of heroin less than an inch wide cost $20. The drug is now a lot cheaper, he said, and a lot stronger. He said he started using the drug by snorting it. After that no longer had the same effect, he began using a needle.

“When I was snorting it, the first six months, I actually got a lot of praise, because I had stopped drinking and people didn’t know that I was doing that,” Stevens said. “They had no idea I was doing heroin.”

As his addiction grew and his use increased, he began losing weight, going from about 145 to 115 pounds. At one point, he said he was consuming 20 bags a day.

“Heroin totally took my life, it took everything from me,” Stevens said. “I’m lucky to be alive, but it has taken everything from me and destroyed my family, destroyed me, destroyed everything.”

Access to treatment
The issue of heroin use in Torrington was brought to the public’s attention in September of last year, when the Hartford Dispensary attempted to open a methadone clinic called the Torrington Health and Recovery Center.

The center’s zoning application was denied by the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission in November 2012, which cited a lack of adequate parking and close proximity to a child care facility. Public disapproval of the idea included a petition against the clinic, signed by then-Mayor Ryan Bingham. Opponents feared the clinic would bring out-of-town addicts to Torrington.

The city settled with the dispensary for $110,000 in July, after the company filed a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination. Part of the settlement included the commission approving a new location at 140 Commercial Blvd. on May 22.

Speaking out
Stevens decided to speak out about his battle with addiction because he doesn’t like how people addicted to drugs such as heroin are seen in such negative light. What most people don’t understand, Stevens said, is that, after a certain point, using no longer is a choice.

“People look down at these people and there is such a stigma on heroin and crack cocaine that as soon as you’re labeled one of those things, people don’t look at you, they don’t talk to you,” said Stevens. “If there’s one thing that I want everybody to know is that these people are not bad people.”
He said he knows plenty of people who have recovered and help their community in a positive manner. He said some of the most charismatic, loving people he’s ever met were people who were addicted to narcotics.

“I hate it; I hate that because somebody has a problem that they’re looked down upon and I hate that it’s something people think that they enjoy when they have no idea the amount of suffering that these people are going through,” said Stevens.

In rehab centers especially, it’s easy to get clean for 30 days, he said, but once users are back out in the real world, it can be difficult to deal with the reality a person tried to escape in the first place. So many simply go back to using their drug of choice. He said Connecticut is better than other states he’s visited as far as helping heroin addicts.

Currently, Stevens enjoys hiking, skiing, snowboarding and traveling as hobbies. He nearly completed a bachelor’s degree while studying accounting. He might study medicine, he said, but doesn’t have plans to return to school at this time. He wants to focus on simply being alive.

A lifelong fight
It’s not always easy for family members to identify symptoms of potential drug use because users mask or often show few or no signs, depending on how often they’re abusing, according to Susan Wolfe, a drug treatment expert with the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
“It may not be obvious to other people,” she said.

Wolfe has a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Alabama Birmingham and has worked with thousands of patients over 28 years. She cautioned against making blanket statements about heroin addiction, saying rehabilitation and recovery largely is “individualized” and requires users to make a lifelong commitment toward getting clean.

Wolfe said heroin, a rapid-acting drug, is highly addictive because it excites the brain’s reward pathways, resulting in a “rush of euphoria.”

“The way that your brain works is if you repeatedly use a substance, what happens with any type of learning is that there are basically pathways that are established,” she said. Once those pathways are established, Wolfe said, an individual must create new ones because “you can’t undo a pathway you already started.”

Wolfe pointed to some classic signs of potential heroin abuse: increased tolerance, needing higher doses of a substance to achieve the same high; withdrawal, cravings and preoccupation. Wolfe said heroin users are at “high risk” for overdoses after a period of abstinence because the body’s tolerance decreases.

“If they’re away for a week, and they go back to using, using the same amount they were using before the break is now too much for them,” she said.

Users who mix substances, such as alcohol and other opioids, or have preexisting medical conditions, also are at heightened risk for overdose, Wolfe said. Mason stressed those are only a handful of possible scenarios.

“There’s not a safety mechanism that’s going to say, ‘This is a safe amount, this is an unsafe amount,’” she said.

Reach Esteban L. Hernandez at 860-489-3121 ext. 328. Reach Isaac Avilucea at 860-489-3121 ext. 324.

"New York City Housing Authority will ease its ban on recently released prisoners and allow some of them to live in public housing as part of a pilot program"

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 11:41:00 +0000

“We’re hoping we’ll see fathers and mothers reunited with their children, or parents who are reunited with their children and grandchildren and need their support because they’re aging parents.” Nora Reissig

This is a hugely important step in the right direction for helping those with convictions begin the rebuilding process of their lives.

Make no mistake, there will be challenges and failures. The recidivism rate is high for those of us convicted of felonies and incarcerated, because there are so many restrictions and requirements placed upon those returning into society.

My own release is a good example here, and I'll point out on the front end that I'm probably not your "typical" inmate; I was a low level offender whose crime was cultivating the debbil's weed, I had a place to go "home" immediately upon my release, a decent start to my education and was working on completing my Bachelor's degree. I also had a job waiting for me when I returned, and I had people who stood by me the entire time I was down. I was committed to breaking the cycle of poverty and addiction, even though I was still in active use through the entire prison experience and long after my parole ended. In fact, the strongest heroin I've ever done in my life arrived via a package to one of my "cellies" about 10 days before I was to be released; it was so potent that it killed a man in the cell below me 4 days before I went home.

(Tim Pearce, Los Gatos/Flickr)

I exited the gate in Folsom, California with less than $60. I lived 170 miles away, and no bus or taxi service was available to get me back home. I had to report to my Parole officer within 48 hours of my release, and he was in Sacramento, CA, a 300 mile round trip from my home and no public transportation to get me there and back. It was only because I had family and friends who supported me with a loan and a ride that I didn't violate parole within the first 48 hours of my release.

Most folks exiting the penitentiary don't have it nearly as good or as easy as I did, and I came perilously close to violating my parole less than 2 days after I was released.

The odds are stacked against offenders who've done their time. In fact, one of the most prevalent decisions many of my downed brothers made was to "flatten" their time inside so upon release they didn't have the hassle of parole or probation to deal with. Many of these men were originally committed to a new start but had been tripped up by "failure to comply" with parole conditions because they'd been unable to secure a job within the required timeframe, ended up homeless, and/or couldn't get to their parole officer on time for a check in.

These seem like bullshit reasons to violate a man, but parole is no joke and they don't show a lot of leniency. In addition, once you're on parole, you have no "rights" and a violation comes quickly and easily at the hands of the officer and a small panel of corrections folks who are unwilling - for many reasons - to cut a guy a break, no matter what the circumstances. You really can't blame them.

There were some very bad people alongside me while I was down and many of them were almost hopelessly locked into the situation they found themselves in, because they were so stigmatized and blocked from the traditional routes out of poverty and ex-offender status.

This isn't a another plea for leniency for those of us who've done the time for doing the crime. It's about thinking how best to ensure a person can make a fresh start upon release if he or she has a mind to reform. It's about holding them strictly accountable but also putting the right knowledge, tools, and resources at their disposal so they have more of a choice - and a chance - at returning to their communities able to make the necessary changes in their life that will lift them out of their past.

Providing an individual access to affordable housing upon release from prison is an important step in the right direction.

Ban on Former Inmates in Public Housing Is Eased

By MIREYA NAVARRO

Published: November 14, 2013

The New York City Housing Authority will ease its ban on recently released prisoners and allow some of them to live in public housing as part of a pilot program set to start next month.

Public housing nationwide has been off-limits to many people with criminal records and, in New York, residents can be barred for up to six years depending on the nature of their offenses. But two years ago the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development began urging public housing agencies to relax admission policies in an effort to help people released from prison reunite with their families.

The New York City Housing Authority, landlord to more than 400,000 residents, will be one of the first public housing agencies in the nation to test lifting the restrictions. The program will, over the two-year pilot period, place 150 former inmates in public housing and provide social services to help them find jobs and meet other requirements.

“We’re hoping we’ll see fathers and mothers reunited with their children, or parents who are reunited with their children and grandchildren and need their support because they’re aging parents,” said Nora Reissig, the director of family services for the Housing Authority.

Research shows that housing and family support, especially during the critical first months after prisoners are released, increase their chances of success in re-entering society and not returning to crime. But they face hurdles when trying to rent apartments, advocacy groups say, and for many the preferred or only option is to return to their former homes or to live with family members.

Only those released within the previous 18 months, or those about to be released, will be eligible. Some of the participants are expected to be former public housing residents who are returning home. Others will be people who did not live in public housing but have a relative currently living in a Housing Authority building.

The change in policy is also meant to help the city tackle homelessness. Officials with the city’s Department of Homeless Services, which will defray the program’s cost of about $700,000, says its shelters house 484 adults who were released from prison in the last 18 months. The department’s deputy commissioner for adult services, Douglas C. James, said 100 of the program’s 150 participants are expected to come from the shelters.

Opening up options would also help residents who are already housing recent ex-convicts and who face eviction if the violations are uncovered. New York housing officials said they did not keep figures on how many unauthorized tenants came from prisons but said that the New York State Division of Parole lists about 1,500 parolees with a public-housing project in the city as their address.

John B. Rhea, chairman of the Housing Authority, said a change in policy would allow some of these residents to get “out of the shadows.”

“As the largest provider of housing in New York, we feel it’s important to be part of the solution,” Mr. Rhea said.

Only a few cities, like New Orleans, are changing admission rules to accommodate former prisoners in public housing or the Section 8 rental assistance program, said Margaret diZerega, director of the family justice program with the Vera Institute of Justice, a policy and research organization. The Vera Institute helped design the demonstration project in New York.

But Ms. diZerega said New York’s approach may hold the best potential for replication because of the social services included.

“The service component is one that will give housing authorities more confidence to maybe take a chance on people they previously excluded,” she said.

Housing officials in New York and elsewhere must still comply with HUD’s lifetime bans on some registered sex offenders and on people convicted of methamphetamine production on federally subsidized property. To be eligible in New York, candidates would have to be related to the apartment’s leaseholder, including by domestic partnership. They must agree to work with case managers to find employment, blend into the household and undergo drug treatment or attend addiction support groups if necessary before the placement becomes permanent.

The program, in the works since 2010, counts on the support of the New York Police Department and the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, as well as tenant leaders. About 19 percent of offenders released from New York State prisons last year listed shelters as their first known address, state corrections officials said.

Reginald H. Bowman, who is the president of a citywide council of public housing residents, said he expected mixed reactions to the program in housing projects. But he supported it, he said, because “in reality, whether these people return to public housing or not, they’re still going to return to their neighborhoods and it would be better for them to have monitoring and support systems than to have them released with no safety net.”

"The U.S. has been waging the War on Poverty for a generation now and still nearly 50 million Americans are below the line:" Here's How To End Poverty in the U.S.

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 22:49:00 +0000

"The government would mail every American over the age of 21 a check each month. That’s it. Everyone is free to do what they like with it."

The kneejerk reaction I suspect is/will be that giving everyone over 21 a check for $995/mo (poverty line is $11,945 divided by 12 mos = $995.41) would immediately make a nation full of slothy, television junkies who lacked incentive to do much more than load another rock onto the crack pipe, chug another 40, or bust out a bong and wake n bake.

I think that assumption is anything but accurate...

Giving All Americans a Basic Income Would End Poverty

Danny Vinik

President Barack Obama distributes food at a food pantry on November 24, 2010 in Washington, DC.

Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

This post originally appeared in Business Insider.

A simple idea for eliminating poverty is garnering greater attention in recent weeks: automatically have the government give every adult a basic income.

The Atlantic's Matt Bruenig and Elizabeth Stoker brought up the idea a few weeks ago when they contemplated cutting poverty in half, and Annie Lowrey revisited it in today's issue of the New York Times Magazine.

Real wages have been stagnant in America for decades now and income inequality has grown immensely. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, it’s only gotten worse. The Census Bureau reported in September that the 15 percent of Americans (46.5 million) live below the poverty line. Government benefits like food stamps and TANF help lift some of them above the line, but millions still live below it.

So here's what you need to know about it.

How would it work?

It’s exactly how it sounds. The government would mail every American over the age of 21 a check each month. That’s it. Everyone is free to do what they like with it.

How would it be funded?

In 2012, there were 179 million Americans between the ages of 21 and 65 (when Social Security would kick in). The poverty line was $11,945. Thus, giving each working-age American a basic income equal to the poverty line would cost $2.14 trillion. For some comparison, U.S. GDP was almost $16 trillion in 2012 and the defense budget was $700 billion.

But a minimum income would also allow us to eliminate every government benefit as well. Get rid of SNAP, TANF, housing vouchers, the Earned Income tax credit and many others. Get rid of them all. A 2012 Congressional Research Service report found that the federal government spends approximately $750 billion each year on benefits for low-income Americans and that rises to a clean trillion when you factor in state programs. Eliminate all of those and the net figure comes out to $1.2 trillion needed to pay for a universal basic income, still a hefty sum.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to pay for it. The CBO found that a carbon tax would bring in nearly $100 billion a year for instance. Revenue would also increase automatically since everyone would have a basic income on which to pay taxes. The government could also offer a basic income of $6,000 a year instead of up to the poverty line. Funding a basic income for all working-age adults would not be easy and would require a substantial increase in the size of government, but it's not impossible either.

What are the benefits of a basic income?

The clear one is that no American would live below the poverty line. The U.S. has been waging the War on Poverty for a generation now and still nearly 50 million Americans are below the line. This would end that war with a decisive victory.

There are knock on effects as well. Americans would have greater leverage to demand higher wages and better working conditions from their employer thanks to the increased income security. Families could allow one parent to take time off to raise their kids. Eliminating the numerous different government welfare programs would also lead to efficiency gains as adults would simply receive their check in the mail and not have to waste time filling out paperwork at numerous different offices.

What are the drawbacks of a basic income?

Economists have long shuddered at the thought of a basic income, because it strongly disincentives work. However, a basic income is just that: basic. Most adults would continue to work to earn extra money. The employment effects would not be non-existent and there may be an increase in part-time work. As Lowrey points out, different studies have found the disincentive effects on work are not as strong as economists feared.

Are there any real world examples?

Perhaps in the near future. Switzerland’s citizens will soon vote on a referendum to give each working-age adult in Switzerland a basic income of $2,800 (2,500 francs) per month. Supporters of the initiative unloaded a dump truck of eight million coins, one for every Swiss citizen, after they successfully gained 125,000 signatures and triggered the referendum. Other countries have experimented with basic income in small areas, but none has done so throughout an entire country as Switzerland is considering. If the referendum passes, economists will certainly watch intently to see its effects.

Does it have a chance in Congress?

No. Congress can't even keep the government open or pass a budget, much less revamp our entire benefits program into a basic income. However, there is some bipartisan agreement in academic circles on the idea of a basic income. The American Enterprise Institute's Charles Murray has written a book on the subject, and liberals have long dreamed of a guaranteed basic income. Nevertheless, it will not be coming to the U.S. anytime soon.

Saturday in the Park (and every other day, too)

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Sat, 16 Nov 2013 17:01:00 +0000

(Credit: http://cartoonsforcauses.blogspot.com/2012/01/berry-cartoon-homelessness.html)

Returning to a New Normal

noreply@blogger.com (Steven ) — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 11:06:00 +0000

Longtime readers here (amazing to me that I've been writing in this damned blog for over 5 years now), friends, and family know that I've been in methadone maintenance treatment(MMT) for the past 14 years. For the two decades prior to my entry into MMT, I was a hardcore poly drug abuser with an intense affinity for heroin and cocaine. I'll spare you all the misery and horror stories in this post, mainly because they leak out periodically elsewhere in this blog and whenever I have to go there, I have to then deal with the guilt, misery and pain I caused myself and so many others.

Suffice it to say, I spent so long as a treacherous, gowwed asshole that it became who I was, internally and externally.

The slippery slope of nefarious behavior is paved with people like me.

But there was a time...when I was someone else.

That someone else loved others and found joy in simple things; rainy days in front of a fireplace with a good book; rocking on a porch with a panoramic riot of fall colors holding my breathless attention for hours at a time. Walking with my dogs, riding dirt bikes, playing cards and games with my family members, enjoying and excelling in sports and collecting baseball cards, and fishing....I was a fishing maniac. Music -usually loud, headbanging rock n roll - started my day every day; got me up, awake and ready to squeeze the balls of this world in a visegrip hold and take the day by storm.

You know, "normal" stuff.

(Credit: http://candycoatedreality.com/2012/10/12/unexpected-miracle/)

All that went away when I found heroin. It began slipping away on the junk-highway; the first time I ingested a Percodan I made a left turn, stomped the pedal and roared off into oblivion. Every sip of Tussenex or dose of Vicodin, Percodan, Demoral, Morphine or Diluadid pushed that pedal harder towards the floor. By the time I graduated to Heroin I was on a slow motion rocket and the world whipped by so fast in my drug induced haze that 30 goddam years passed before the 54 year old man at the wheel realized he was on the real highway to hell.

So I slammed on the brakes about a year ago.

But the ride didn't stop "just like that." The brakes, conditioned for decades with the lubricant of addiction, weren't as responsive as one would like in this high-end sports car, and the vehicle itself had long ago begun rusting and coming apart at the seams, leaving a trail of broken parts scattered all over the road.

A year later however, the ride has slowed to a walker's pace, and I'm close to parking this fucking nightmare machine in the garage forever.

I know this because things that used to mean so much to me but had disappeared when Morpheus claimed me are returning.

It's a slow renewal of the old, but it is happening: the ability to read for more than a few minutes without nodding off; the need for powerhouse, wake the dead jams in the early morning; the mind that holds a thought for more than 15 seconds; an interest in fishing, sports, games and music again; a connection to my partner and my family that I've not felt for years....decades....

I'm rediscovering who I am, what normal is, and the things I used to enjoy. It's all so familiar, yet so new. And the man emerging from the 30 year ride with eyes that can see again... he's a much different man.

He's a man that I can look at in the mirror and be okay with. I kinda like this guy; he seems to be growing on me, and I think others, too; sorta like a fungus, perhaps, but a good fungus, nonetheless.

Credit: http://yakwallet.com/natural-beauty-flowers-hd.html

There's still a stretch of highway in front of me, for sure, but the world outside is clear and I'm able to roll down the window, smell the flowers and read the road signs.

It is glorious, new, exciting, exhilarating....

And almost normal, for the first time in 30 years.

Stone Soup Station

Criminal Justice "Reform": Bullshit Meter Pegged In The Red

Why We Should Be Suspicious of the Libertarian Right's Newfound Concern for Prison Reform

1.3 million jobless Americans entering their fourth week without federal benefits are facing tough choices

Life without benefits gets tougher for jobless

Some of the 1.3 million jobless Americans entering their fourth week without federal benefits are facing tough choices.

Prison Industrial Complex in 2013: Running Amok, Gathering More Power, And Putting YOUR Freedom In Jeopardy

For-Profit Prisons: Eight Statistics That Show the Problems

Fifteen Things That We Relearned About the Prison Industrial Complex in 2013

"(T)oday, the purely racist tendency of the aristocracy is so great that it often is strong enough to outweigh their greed—discrimination is practiced even when it's unprofitable."

Economic Opportunity Is Lowest In the Republican Bible Belt, Major Study Finds

Happy Holidays My Out of Work Friends - Congress Ends Your Unemployment Extension Just In Time For Christmas

"Makes Absolutely No Sense": David Cay Johnston on Budget Deal That Helps Billionaires, Not the Poor

Topics

Guests

Related

"Poverty Wages in the Land of Plenty"

Thom Hartmann on "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It"

READ: Thom Hartmann, "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It"

Links

David Cay Johnston’s Website

Transcript

"The industrial food system exists mainly to maximise profit for a few, not to maximise the nutritional benefits of food to all."

The common market and the commons

Towards three-part governance of food

Far-reaching practical implications

2013 Nashville Homeless Memorial Photos and Videos (So Far)

What a 21st-Century Approach to Drug Policy Looks Like

December 13, 2013 | 11:28 AM | Carey Goldberg

At The White House, Learning How Not To Talk About Addiction

The "TurboTax Tips For The End Of The Year" Revised For The 99 Percent

People like Grace King and her son are not only counting on us, their lives may just depend on us to get our acts together sooner rather than later.

Measuring Poverty with Data Sets: Garbage In, Garbage Out

Has America Become Less Poor?

"You can't make a revolution, you can't decide that next Monday is the revolution. Revolutions are organic."

Chris Hedges: Credibility of the Ruling Elite Is Being Shredded

"The average person unknowingly breaks at least three federal criminal laws every day."

Decriminalize the Average Man

Some Sample Cases

What Path to Justice?

Small Steps toward Justice

Conclusions

Notes

Steve Duncan Brings "No Man's Land" to The Masses And In The Process, Humanizes Those Who Are Homeless

"You're probably making 10 percent less than you were ten years ago. The top 0.01 percent is making 76.2 percent more"

You’re probably making 10 percent less than you were ten years ago. The top 0.01 percent is making 76.2 percent more.

More Idiocy Related To The War On Drugs and Its Impact On The Individual And The Community

Drug Defendants Are Being 'Forced' To Plead Guilty, Report Claims

Food Stamps Don't Make People "Fat" - Lack Of Ability To Purchase Healthy Food Does

Do Food Stamps Make Poor People Fat?

Hawaii Democrat Rep. Tom Bower Apologizes For Sledgehammering Homeless Carts But Misses The Real Issue

“If I see shopping carts that I can’t identify, I will destroy them so they can’t be pushed on the streets.”

“I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets.”

“If someone is sleeping at night on the bus stop, I don’t do anything, but if they are sleeping during the day, I’ll walk up and say, ‘Get your ass moving.’”

“If I see shopping carts that I can’t identify, I will destroy them so they can’t be pushed on the streets.”

“I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets,” he explained to Hawaii News Now.

“If someone is sleeping at night on the bus stop, I don’t do anything, but if they are sleeping during the day, I’ll walk up and say, ‘Get your ass moving,’” he said.

"By cutting back on food stamps, we are ensuring the perpetuation of inequality, and at that, one of its worst manifestations: the inequality of opportunity."

The Insanity of Our Food Policy

A Message of Recovery To Jeffrey Stevens in Torrington, Connecticut

In heroin’s grip: Overdose deaths expose Torrington’s struggle with addiction

"New York City Housing Authority will ease its ban on recently released prisoners and allow some of them to live in public housing as part of a pilot program"

Ban on Former Inmates in Public Housing Is Eased

By MIREYA NAVARRO

Published: November 14, 2013

"The U.S. has been waging the War on Poverty for a generation now and still nearly 50 million Americans are below the line:" Here's How To End Poverty in the U.S.

Giving All Americans a Basic Income Would End Poverty

Saturday in the Park (and every other day, too)

Returning to a New Normal