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THEIR GREED KNOWS NO BOUNDS!

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  • THEIR GREED KNOWS NO BOUNDS!

    Even though crime rates in American have either stabilized or gone down, the incarceration rate (especially for people who are in this country illegally) has gone up - way up. (As this video points out, more people are being incarcerated on civil charges, not criminal.)

    Naturally, as with most changes in this country, this has more to do with profit than anything else - and now we find that Wells Fargo is a major shareholder in for-profit prisons. Hmm. So this is what's taken the place of mortgages as the banking cash cow? From Salon:

    As Wells Fargo has grown over the years, using its bailout funds to gobble up rival Wachovia and expand to the East Coast, so has the U.S. prison population. By 2008, one in 100 American adults were either in jail or in prison – and one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34, many simply for non-violent offenses, justice not so much blind as bigoted. Overall, more than 2.3 million people are currently behind bars, up 50 percent in the last 15 years, the land of the free now accounting for a full quarter of the world’s prisoners.

    These developments are not unrelated.

    A driving force behind the push for ever-tougher sentences is the for-profit prison industry, in which Wells Fargo is a major investor. Flush with billions in bailout money and an economic system designed to siphon wealth from the working class to the idle rich, Wells Fargo has been busy expanding its stake in the GEO Group, the second largest private jailer in America.

  • #2
    Re: THEIR GREED KNOWS NO BOUNDS!

    Hi Lizzie,

    I cannot find the video you refer to above ??? It sounds interesting.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: THEIR GREED KNOWS NO BOUNDS!

      Prisons for profit seem to be the current money market places to be...............SERCO [Australia] are in the "Prison Game", but they also now appear to run the immigration [illegal entry] detention centres.

      ****************************************

      SERCO: RUNNING NUKES AND PRISONS FOR PROFIT

      Serco do a bunch more that didn’t even make our story:

      As well as thanking God for his success, CEO Chris Hyman is a Pentecostal Christian who has released a gospel album in America and fasts every Tuesday. Amazingly, he was also in the World Trade Centre on 9/11, on the 47th floor addressing shareholders.

      Serco run navy patrol boats for the ADF, as well as search and salvage operations through their partnership with P&O which form Defence Maritime Services.

      Serco run two Australian jails already, Acacia in WA and Borallon in Queensland.

      They’re one of the biggest companies In the UK for running electronic tagging of offenders under house arrest or parole.

      Serco are in one of the two favoured bid consortiums for the new Sydney metro rail line.



      Watch news video at http://hungrybeast.abc.net.au/node/1036

      ****************************


      Wednesday, 1 July 2009


      Private contractor Serco to run detention centres
      by Sophie Black
      As part of the refugee and asylum seeker policy embedded in the Labor party’s 2007 national platform and constitution, the party pledged:

      * The length and conditions of detention must be subject to review and detention centres managed by the public sector.

      Despite this, today UK services company Serco’s Australian subsidiary, Serco Australia, begins to phase in its control over seven detention centres. The Villawood, Maribyrnong, Darwin and Perth centres, and three centres on Christmas Island, will be run by Serco. Transition from existing service provider Global Solutions Ltd (now G4S) will commence in July, and is expected to be completed by November.

      In 2006 the former government announced it would not extend G4S’s $300 million contract when it expired at the end of 2007, and all detention services would be retendered.

      The Age reported in January that at the time, “Labor criticised the decision and said the contract with G4S should be terminated and the centres returned to government control so there was a clear line of responsibility back to the minister.”

      “This is the private company that has people coming in the doors with no mental health problems and going out as broken human beings,” then Labor immigration spokesman Tony Burke said. “There is one answer and one answer alone, and that is there have been enough breaches of this contract for the government to take action to terminate the privatisation of our detention centres. It was a bad idea from the start. It should not have taken place. It should not be continued.”

      http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/07/01/...ntion-centres/

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      • #4
        Re: THEIR GREED KNOWS NO BOUNDS!

        I believe there are a few privately run prisons in Australia too. I think that is disgusting. But on the subject of greed, I just read today in the Sunday newspaper that the US Presidents secretary who earns around $90,000 pays a higher rate of tax than the President. Apparently President Obama thinks this is wrong and wants to ensure that the high earners pay a fairer rate of tax. I agree with him. Over the years I've heard a number of people say that everyone should pay the same rate of tax,but that is actually unfair as 20% of a $20,000 salary means a lot more to that person than 20% of $500,000. This present Labor Government we have here has done the best thing possible for the lowest paid workers. They have raised the tax free threshold by a considerable amount. I remember my Dad telling me many years ago that this was the only way to ease the burden on low paid workers.

        Elda

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        • #5
          Re: THEIR GREED KNOWS NO BOUNDS!

          if there was a singe rate of tax (and I do not know the %age) then the tax system would be much easier to manage. This would mean a lot less bureaucracy and less on evasion. But that would not swing with the civil servants (who really run the country) because it would mean les jobs for them...
          Cameron in the UK is going some of the way to try to simplify the welfare system which costs billions and is being really abused.
          Every little helps.

          Sandy

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