Incarceration and Debt

Hello friends;
  I can't imbed the video.  Please click on the link and watch it on CNN.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/30/zakaria-incarceration-nation-2/?hpt=hp_c2

March 30th, 2012

By Fareed Zakaria, CNN



Something caught my eye the other day: Pat Robertson, the high priest of the religious right, had some startling things to say about drugs.
"I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol," Mr. Robertson said in a recent interview. "I've never used marijuana and I don't intend to, but it's just one of those things that I think. This war on drugs just hasn't succeeded."
The reason Robertson is for legalizing marijuana is that it has created a prison problem in America that is well beyond what most Americans imagine.
"It's completely out of control," Mr. Robertson said. "Prisons are being overcrowded with juvenile offenders having to do with drugs. And the penalties - the maximums - some of them could get 10 years for possession of a joint of marijuana. It makes no sense at all."
He’s right. Here are the numbers: The total number of Americans under correctional supervision (prison, parole, etc.) is 7.1 million, more than the entire state of Massachusetts. Adam Gopnik writes in the New Yorker, "Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America...than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."
No other country comes even close to our rates of incarceration. We have 760 prisoners per 100,000 people. Most European countries have one seventh that number (per capita, so it's adjusted for population). Even those on the high end of the global spectrum - Brazil and Poland - have only a quarter the number we do.
If you say this is some kind of enduring aspect of America's "Wild West" culture, you would be wrong. In 1980, our rates of incarceration were a quarter what they are now. What changed was the war on drugs and the mindless proliferation of laws that created criminal penalties for anything and everything. If you don’t believe me, listen to Pat Roberston again. Here's a quote:
"We here in America make up 5% of the world's population, but we make up 25% of jailed prisoners....We have now over 3,000 - the number must be might higher than that - but over 3,000 federal crimes, and every time the liberals pass a bill - I don't care what it involves - they stick criminal sanctions on it. They don't feel there is any way people are going to keep a law unless they can put them in jail.... So we have the jails filled with people who are white collar criminals.
In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. In 2011, California spent $9.6 billion on prisons, versus $5.7 billion on higher education. Since 1980, California has built one college campus; it's built 21 prisons. The state spends $8,667 per student per year. It spends about $50,000 per inmate per year.
Why is this happening? Prisons are a big business. Most are privately run. They have powerful lobbyists and they have bought most state politicians. Meanwhile, we are bankrupting out states and creating a vast underclass of prisoners who will never be equipped for productive lives.

I never thought I'd say this, but God bless you, Pat Robertson

Hi Friends;

Gees!   I find myself in the same boat here.... I never would have thought I'd see Pat Robertson as a voice of reason and logic.  Go figure.
  One of the odd things I realized as I was reading this and thinking on what I wanted to say about it.... we in America, where "liberty" seems such a catch word, have made a practice and knee-jerk jovial reaction that includes the very elimination of said liberty.  Is crime acceptable?  Of course not.  I don't advocate it, but I also don't advocate the ruination of a life for it.  You've all heard my take on the so called "juvenile justice system".   Drug offenses, the big evil of the 80's and 90's, filled a lot of cells for a very long sentence.  And, if you are convicted of a sex offense, once you have done your time the state continues to punish you - in some cases for life.  What have we become?

hugs.
randy.

Ah, yes. The "sanctity" of marriage...

Hi friends;

  I had the tv on while checking my email, visiting friend's sites, etc.  This came across the so called "news" as I just read a comment about the previous post.  I will ask you to simply click on the link and then ask yourself.....Sanctity?   http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/46903172/ns/today-relationships/t/first-divorce-expo-us-aims-empower-attendees/

hugs.

I would like to see his "evidence".

Former '80’s heartthrob and “Growing Pains” star Kirk Cameron is feeling the heat after he voiced his views on gay marriage during an interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan.

"Marriage is almost as old as dirt, and it was defined in the garden between Adam and Eve. One man, one woman for life till death do you part," says Cameron. "So do I support the idea of gay marriage? No, I don't."
Morgan then asked the born-again Christian if he thought homosexuality was a sin. To that, Cameron replied, "I think that it's unnatural. I think that it's -- it's detrimental, and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization."
http://mxp.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/07/kirk-cameron-responds-to-backlash-over-anti-gay-comments/?iref=obnetwork


Hi Friends;
  I really liked Kirk in the show he did as a teenager.  Over the years, he has found himself a lifestyle and outlook that seems to work well for him.  For him.  I do support his right to it, even his right to his opinion and freedom of speech.  My question regarding his claims that homosexuality is "unnatural, detrimental and ultimately destructive...." is to ask - says who?
  I will agree to a point.  For someone oriented heterosexual, homosexual activites may be unnatural.  But, to someone who is homosexual, it's the very definition of natural. 
  How is homosexuality detrimental to the foundation of civilization?  The atomic bomb is destructive to the foundation of civilization.  The loving and nurturing relationship shared between two men cannot be seen as anything but positive.  Further, it is a positive and productive union, resulting in all the same general positives as a good heterosexual marriage.  The only difference, the homosexual relationship in of itself does not produce children. 
  So, tell me Kirk, and anyone else...  how again is that destructive?

At first I was going to leave this one be.... nah!

The Hoodie!

As our good friend Geraldo Rivera spelled out so earnestly in his recent cant oddly clearly heard despite having his head so far up his ass, it is the hoodie, that terrible and terrifying garment from hell, that has once again taken a fine young man to his grave and cast the innocent and pure George Zimmerman into legal limbo.  God Damn those Hoodies!!!!!!!

  I, for instance, always quake in the presence of a hoodie sweatshirt.  They frighten me.  How can it not?  Obviously a creation of satan, designed purely for the criminal element.  An artifice of evil.  Men stand in awe, in outright fear from the very concept.  Yet, the garment persists.

  There can be no Peace with hoodies.  There can be no love with hoodies.  They are the devil's spawn, my people.  Don't you see!

Ok, mayhap I've over sold my point.  It's happened before. 

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/national_world&id=8594415

For those of you who don't know, a young man by the name of Treyvon Martin was stalked, eventually killed, by a man who was supposedly the local neighborhood watch captain.  An armed watch captain, which is against the rules, and one who was told by the police dispatcher to stay away from the kid.   This man, George Zimmerman, failed to pass the tests required to be a police officer, most likely those dealing with aggression, delusions of grandeur and self importance, autocracy, etc.  He stalked this young man for "looking like he was into something:" - yeah, he was into a jug of sweet tea and a bag of Skittles. 

Geraldo Rivera, that bastion of broadcasting, that poet laureate of journalism, that epic man of morality and authenticity, declared that George Zimmerman may be at fault.  It could be true.  He's sort of holding his opinion there.  But, the hoodie sweatshirt that the lad was wearing was "just as much at fault".  Huh?  SEE LINK

  George Zimmerman has not been charged with a crime.  Yet.

  Why?  Well, it was the hoodie, of course.  Of course!  Of course.  It couldn't be that the lad was of dark complexion.  So-called Black.  Nope.  It was that damn hoodie sweatshirt.

The Apology

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.


- Paul Boese



One of the oddest conversations I had with my father was over the "apology" to the Afghan people.  Dad said it is repugnant to apologize to the enemy.
 
Oops....
 
Who is my enemy?  To some, anyone of the Muslim faith is an enemy.  Any Arab, Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi or Iranian, any Afghan...  is that what we as a people want to understand as 'My Enemy'?   
 
  I've always thought that we as a people, in many ways all western society, seem to excel in those environments where we are sure who our enemy is and can hate them without hesitation.  It's usually best to have someone far away, of course, so that we never really get to know them.  And, it's usually best if they think different than we do, wear different clothes, have different beliefs, and especially if they look different.
  In war it is easy to understand the enemy.  He's the one pointing a rifle at you, right?  Well, for the soldier, that is true.  But, if you widen your scope you begin to see not the soldier, but the troop movement.  Widen further, and you see not just the troop movement, but how that movement can effect your own goals and security.  Widen further and we begin to see perhaps the man behind the movement.  We see the Field Marshal, the King, the President.

  If I am a soldier and I defeat another soldier, well, he is doing his job and I am doing mine.  If I am a General and I defeat the enemy's expansion, well, I've done my job while that other general did his best to do his.  If I am a king or a president, and I defeat the leader of the other country, well, I've done my job and he failed to do his.   All is relatively well in this scenario, outside the nightmares of the soldier or the general, or even the president for the cost of actions taken.

  What happens, though, when a soldier kills not another soldier but a civilian?  What happens when a general takes over a land and subjugates a people, changing their very way of life?  What happens when a president  gives an order that decimates a country?  It is out of ones job.... the actions go beyond the rules of civility.

 It's easy to say 'kill them all' when the trigger is in someone else's hands.  It's easy to play 'couch-potato quarterback'.  After all, I can spout out my little hatreds far from the killing fields, far from the action, far from the consequences.  I can declare my leaders incompetent and weak without recrimination because I live a cushy life.  But, if we are to place a man/woman in leadership, we expect them to lead, to seek out the future, to create a world we would want to live in.
  I don't know if admitting when one is wrong is able to be considered "aiding and comforting the enemy".  I don't know if making war upon a people or a religion is what some think we are doing.  I do know that if we are so wild as to be incapable of defining our objectives, declaring our enemies, and deciding our course of achieving our goals, we best stay home and bitch from the couch.