How lawmakers and lobbyists keep a lock on the private prison business

The three largest private prison companies in the US
spent $45m on lobbying over the last decade.
Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

Private prison corporations say they don't lobby on custodial policy. They seem to find legislators with views aligne

• 
• • Sadhbh Walshe
  • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 27 September 2012 09.55 EDT 

America's three largest private prison companies ... spent in the region of $45m over the past 10 years in lobbying state and federal governments. During the same period, these companies saw their profits soar as they scored more government contracts. [Also] during the same period, various pieces of legislation got passed ensuring that immigrant detention, in particular, would remain a lucrative growth market.

Thanks to mandatory sentencing laws and the "war on drugs", the prison population has exploded over the past 30 years – to the point where it has become an untenable burden on state budgets. The private prison business [is] reliant on state and federal governments to provide them with their customer base: that is, bodies to fill their cells.

The companies maintain that their lobbying efforts have nothing to do with this expansion and insist that it is their policy to "expressly prohibit their lobbyists from working to pass or oppose immigration legislation", such as the Arizona immigration bill SB1070, which provides for the mandatory detention of immigrants who cannot produce papers on request. [Then] where are the private prison firms spending those millions of lobbying dollars?

A report compiled by the Justice Policy Institute issued in 2011 and using data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics found that between 2003 and 2010, the [Corrections Corporation of America] contributed a total of $1,552,350 to state election campaigns.

Approximately half was to candidates, more than a third was to party committees and around one tenth was spent on ballot measures. Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corruption in the prison/industrial complex, click here.

Intelligence Effort Named Citizens, Not Terrorists

This Aug. 25, 2004 file photo shows unidentified analysts
at the Combined Intelligence and Fusion Center for
NORAD/Northcom in Colorado Springs, Colo. A
multibillion-dollar information-sharing program that was
created in the aftermath of 9/11 has improperly collected
information about innocent Americans and produced no
valuable intelligence on terrorism, according to a Senate
report that describes an effort that ballooned far beyond
anyone’s ability to control. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski/File)

A multibillion-dollar information-sharing program created in the aftermath of 9/11 has improperly collected information about innocent Americans and produced little valuable intelligence on terrorism, a Senate report concludes. 

It portrays an effort that ballooned far beyond anyone's ability to control. What began as an attempt to put local, state and federal officials in the same room analyzing the same intelligence has instead cost huge amounts of money for data-mining software, flat screen televisions and, in Arizona, two fully equipped Chevrolet Tahoes that are used for commuting, investigators found. 

 The report underscores a reality of post-9/11 Washington: National security programs tend to grow, never shrink, even when their money and manpower far surpass the actual subject of terrorism. 

When fusion centers did address terrorism, they sometimes did so in ways that infringed on civil liberties. The centers have made headlines for circulating information about Ron Paul supporters, the ACLU, activists on both sides of the abortion debate, war protesters and advocates of gun rights. 

One fusion center cited in the Senate investigation wrote a report about a Muslim community group's list of book recommendations. Others discussed American citizens speaking at mosques or talking to Muslim groups about parenting. No evidence of criminal activity was contained in those reports. The government did not circulate them, but it kept them on government computers. The federal government is prohibited from storing information about First Amendment activities not related to crimes.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on civil liberties, click here.

Energy firm uses 'land grabs' to secure fracking rights from reluctant landowners

Ranjana Bhandari and her husband, Kaushik De,
stand near a Chesapeake Energy gas well in Arlington,
Texas, on Sept. 16, 2012.

October 2, 2012, NBC News

Ranjana Bhandari and her husband knew the natural gas beneath their ranch-style home in Arlington, Texas, could be worth a lot - especially when they got offer after offer from Chesapeake Energy Corp. 

Their repeated refusals didn't stop Chesapeake, the second-largest natural gas producer in the United States. 

This June, after petitioning a Texas state agency for an exception to a 93-year-old statute, the company effectively secured the ability to drain the gas from beneath the Bhandari property anyway -- without having to pay the couple a penny. 

In fact, since January 2005, the Texas agency has rejected just five of Chesapeake's 1,628 requests for such exceptions. Chesapeake's use of the Texas law is among the latest examples of how the company executes what it calls a "land grab" -- an aggressive leasing strategy intended to lock up prospective drilling sites and lock out competitors.  

Chesapeake has become the principal player in the largest land boom in America since the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s and ‘50s, amassing drilling rights on more land than almost any U.S. energy company. After years of leasing tracts from New York to Wyoming, the company now controls the right to drill for oil and gas on about 15 million acres -- roughly the size of West Virginia.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on corporate corruption, click here.

Pesticide use ramping up as GMO crop technology backfires: study

U.S. farmers are using more hazardous pesticides to fight weeds and insects due largely to heavy adoption of genetically modified crop technologies that are sparking a rise of "superweeds" and hard-to-kill insects, according to a newly released study. 

Genetically engineered crops have led to an increase in overall pesticide use, by 404 million pounds from the time they were introduced in 1996 through 2011, according to the report by Charles Benbrook, a research professor at the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University.
 

Of that total, herbicide use increased over the 16-year period by 527 million pounds while insecticide use decreased by 123 million pounds. 

Herbicide-tolerant crops were the first genetically modified crops introduced to world, rolled out by Monsanto Co. in 1996, first in "Roundup Ready" soybeans and then in corn, cotton and other crops. Roundup Ready crops are engineered through transgenic modification to tolerate dousings of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide. 

In recent years, more than two dozen weed species have become resistant to Roundup's chief ingredient glyphosate, causing farmers to use increasing amounts both of glyphosate and other weedkilling chemicals to try to control the so-called "superweeds. Resistant weeds have become a major problem for many farmers reliant on GE crops, and are now driving up the volume of herbicide needed each year by about 25 percent," Benbrook said.

Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on the environmental and health risks posed by GMO foods, click here.

Letters by Sandusky, wife blame everyone else

Jerry Sandusky

By Ann O'Neill, CNN
updated 12:52 AM EDT,
Thu October 11, 2012

Bellefonte, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- When all was said and done, Jerry and Dottie Sandusky did not ask the judge for mercy. They did not try to extol Jerry's virtues, list good deeds or express regret. Instead, they depicted the boys he sexually assaulted as ungrateful and called them liars.

They blamed the young men -- including their own adopted son, Matt, who now claims he, too, was molested -- for their downfall.

In letters to the judge who would sentence the former coach, the Sanduskys portrayed themselves as virtuous victims of a vast conspiracy. They blamed powerful, image-conscious forces at Penn State University, lying cops, ambitious prosecutors and a scandal-hungry news media.

Victims angrily confront Sandusky at sentencing 

The couple's letters were mentioned in court on Tuesday but not read aloud. Judge John Cleland and the Centre County courts made them public, and CNN obtained copies.  In them, Jerry Sandusky expressed little sympathy for the 10 boys he was convicted of molesting. As he wrote about their families, he tried to shift the blame, pointing out that the boys came from unstable homes.

"Nobody mentioned the impact of abandonment, neglect, abuse, insecurity and conflicting messages that the biological parents might have had in this," he wrote. He said nothing about the damaged lives and institutions his molestation case left in its wake.  READ MORE

Boy Scouts helped alleged molesters cover tracks, files show

September 16, 2012, Los Angeles Times

Over two decades, the Boy Scouts of America failed to report hundreds of alleged child molesters to police and often hid the allegations from parents and the public. A Los Angeles Times review of 1,600 confidential files dating from 1970 to 1991 has found that Scouting officials frequently urged admitted offenders to quietly resign — and helped many cover their tracks. Volunteers and employees suspected of abuse were allowed to leave citing bogus reasons such as business demands, "chronic brain dysfunction" and duties at a Shakespeare festival. The details are contained in the organization's confidential "perversion files," a blacklist of alleged molesters, that the Scouts have used internally since 1919. Scouts' lawyers around the country have been fighting in court to keep the files from public view. As The Times reported in August, the blacklist often didn't work: Men expelled for alleged abuses slipped back into the program, only to be accused of molesting again. Now, a more extensive review has shown that Scouts sometimes abetted molesters by keeping allegations under wraps. In the majority of cases, the Scouts learned of alleged abuse after it had been reported to authorities. But in more than 500 instances, the Scouts learned about it from boys, parents, staff members or anonymous tips. In about 400 of those cases — 80% — there is no record of Scouting officials reporting the allegations to police. In more than 100 of the cases, officials actively sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it.

Note: For a list giving details of Boy Scout leaders who sexually abused scouts with impunity, click here. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on institutional sexual abuse, click here.

G.M.O.’s: Let’s Label ’Em

It's not an exaggeration to say that almost everyone wants to see the labeling of genetically engineered materials contained in their food products. And on Nov. 6, in what's unquestionably among the most important non-national votes this year, Californians will have the opportunity to make that happen [by voting] on Proposition 37. It would require "labeling on raw or processed food offered for sale to consumers if made from plants or animals with genetic material changed in specified ways." And it would prohibit marketing "such food, or other processed food, as ‘natural.' " Polls show Prop 37 to be overwhelmingly popular: roughly 65 percent for to 20 percent against, with 15 percent undecided. Nationally, on the broader issue of labeling, in answer to the question of whether the Food and Drug Administration should require that "foods which have been genetically engineered or containing genetically engineered ingredients be labeled to indicate that,"  

a whopping 91 percent of voters say yes and 5 percent say no. This is as nonpartisan as an issue gets, and the polls haven't changed much in the last couple of years.  

Unsurprisingly, Big Food in general - and particularly companies like Monsanto that produce genetically engineered seeds ... have already thrown tens of millions of dollars into defeating Prop 37. In general, as California goes, so goes the nation.

Note: With such a strong mandate, why do no U.S. states have GMO labeling laws? Will the many millions of dollars pumped into the Prop 37 campaign by Monsanto and others sway the voters? We will find out soon. For a powerful summary of the health risks from GMO foods, click here.