Why I can't celebrate on this Fourth of July

Wow has it been four months since I last wrote a post? It's been too long, anyway I hope that everyone has a very happy 4th of July. However I personally don't have many reasons to celebrate our country today. I know that maybe Blasphemy to the right wing in this country that celebrate the fourth of July no matter what's going on in America. Today the United States has turned into the United Corporate States of America, our government is totally owned by muliti-national corporations and we the people of this country are sitting around wondering what's going to happen next on "American Idol". Some of the serious issues facing this country is that the Supreme Court is giving away all of the people's rights in order to give them to corporations. This Supreme Court has according to AF:L-CIO the Roberts Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Chamber of Commerce 72% of the time, as you can see on the chart on the right. Why would I celebrate a holiday that honors America, when one of her institutions is actively screwing over the American people?

The American government has since the Bush years been killing millions of people overseas with their drone strikes and not telling us why they are doing this and who have they killed. Keeping secrets from the American people who employ the people in the government by the way is unacceptable and Anti American and possibly treasonous. For the record I do understand that the American government has to keep certain things secret from it's people but secrets that are embarrassing to the government can't be hidden under the guise of "national security" According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism since January of 2014 President Obama has killed more than 2,400 people under his drone program in the middle east. As you can see on this chart on your top left. Look I'm not saying that all of the people that are killed under this drone program are innocent, however America is not supposed to kill people without giving a suspected terrorist a trial and convict him, to me most Americans have forgotten this important ideal.

There are many other reasons why I can't celebrate the fourth of July today, if I go on and on I'll be writing all night long, however I will list one more reason the anti-immigrant protests in Murrieta. They are protesting those poor kids that are coming across the border like these kids are the problem in this country. Those kids deserve a chance to stay in America. That's the whole point of this once great country. These "Americans" never read what it says on the Statue of Liberty. We are supposed to be a great country that accepts anyone and everyone to give them a second chance. Instead we got a group of people that only care about themselves and their perceived interests. So these are my thoughts on this fourth of July I do not want to be a party pooper but I just needed to get this off my chest.

Links to my sources:
http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Economy/The-Market-Isn-t-Free-if-the-Refs-Consistently-Rule-for-One-Side
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2014/01/23/more-than-2400-dead-as-obamas-drone-campaign-marks-five-years/

How Can we End GOP Manufactured Crisis

Today is the eighth day of the government shutdown caused by the tea party republicans and now even the quote moderate republicans now are siding with the tea party and they want to defund the Affordable Care Act in order to fund the government and to raise the debt ceiling. So why are the republicans doing this? The reason why is because the first time the republicans threatened to not raise the debt ceiling in 2011 President Obama gave in a negotiated with them. That was a big mistake by the president, if he did not negotiate with the republicans back in 2011 then they would not be doing this now in 2013. All of the republicans are expecting President Obama and the Democrats are going to give in and give them something in exchange for opening the government and raising the debt ceiling. If the Democrats give in now, then every time the debt ceiling needs to be raised, the republicans will want something for doing their jobs and the Democrats and the President can't allow that for the sake of the country.

Now the question must be what can President Obama do to end the republican manufactured crisis? The debt ceiling is easy, all the President has to do is invoke the 14th amendment and order to treasury department to continue to pay our debts the way that they've always have. Section four of the 14th amendment states as follows,"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void." With the republican party's threat of not raising the debt ceiling they are questioning the debt of the United States and the President should be able order the treasury to continue to pay the debts of the United States no matter what the republican party says. The President can't allow the republican party to insert fear into not only the American people but to the rest of the world he has to have a backbone and say no to the republican party America will always pay her bills no matter what.

Now to the issue of opening the government back up, that's much tougher because according to the Constitution, Congress has the power of the purse strings which means that only congress has the power to fund the government, which is why that President Obama can't be responsible for the government shutdown because the executive branch of the government can't fund the government that's up to Congress and they've failed to do that so it's the republicans fault not President Obama. The question is what can President Obama do about the budget? Unfortunately not much the Republican party has the power of the purse, because ignorant Americans voted for the tea party republicans who had no interest in governing their interest is shutting down the government and to destroy the American government. The issue is that the founders never imagined that one day in the far future that there would be a political party that would be willing to hold the American people hostage in order to get what they want from the political party in power. To me what the republican party is doing is the most Anti-American thing that any political party has ever done in America's history.

Desperate times calls for desperate measures, and maybe it's time to arrest certain republican members of the house and charge them with treason. I know that this will lead to a shit storm but this is the only way that I can see that we can't get the government functioning again and as a nation we can't wait until 2014 in order to vote out the republican party. However this suggestion would be a last resort to me because if anybody does this then it would set a dangerous precedent and if a president does not agree with any congress they can arrest them for treason so in my opinion this would be the nuclear option, but it maybe time for the president to use it because the republicans in the house will not budge from there current position. The Republicans need to be scared straight and the only way that I can see that happening is that the President arrests some of the republican leaders of the house and maybe just maybe that scares them straight.  

Private Prisons Profit Even When Crime Rates Drop

Today is Friday and I came across a piece by Mother Jones about how private prisons make money even though crime rates are dropping. Mother Jones quoted a group called In the Public Interest, they are a anti-privatization group and I read their entire seventeen page report and I thought the report was very well done and I learned a lot about the way that the contracts that private prison companies sign with states. There's a clause that private prisons love to put into a contracts which are called occupancy guarantees or quota no matter how high the crime rate is. Before I even read the report I have to say that this clause is going to destroy state budgets because no matter what these corporations will get paid if these prisons are full or not, and these corporations even admit that is there business model and they make hundreds of millions of dollars, and as long as states allow these corporations to get away with this, then they will continue to do it, because a corporations primary responsibility is to make as much money as possible, I know that because I go to college and I major in business administration. Now here the main findings of the report in this picture:

These are the main findings of the report and you can read the entire report at the link that I'm going to provide at the end of this post I recommend that you read the entire report if you have the time. Now I'm going to talk about my opinion, simply put the private prison corporations should not even exist because states and federal government should be running these prisons. In my opinion prisons should not have a profit motive because if prisons are profit driven then they will be problem as the report showed. The report talked about what happened in the state of Colorado "In 2012 the state began a utilization study to analyze which facilities made the most sense to close, but did not want to shut down any facilities until the formal analysis was complete. In response to these preliminary discussions, CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) threatened to close one of its private facilities. Behind closed doors and without any public hearings, CCA and the governor's office and the Joint Budget Committee negotiated a deal. In exchange for keeping the facility open, the state agreed to a bed guarantee, which required Colorado to keep at least 3,300 prisoners in the three CCA facilities, at an annual rate of $20,000 per inmate for the 2013 fiscal year." (pg.7) My question is why would the state want to negotiate with CCA? Let them close their prison the crime rate in Colorado is dropping so why would they care if CCA closed one of their facilities. This is another example of the government working for private corporations and protecting their profits over the interests of the taxpayers of the state of Colorado. There are many more examples in the report which you can read for yourselves.

The report also quotes a CCA annual report from 2010 and it says that "Historically, we have been successful in substantially filling our inventory of available beds and the beds that we have constructed. Filling these available beds would provide substantial growth in revenues, cash flow, and earnings per share." (pg. 4) First of all I don't like how CCA dehumanizes the inmates calling them "inventory" and CCA admits that in order to make more money they will strong arm states to agreeing to these occupancy guarantees between 80% and 100%  occupancy rates and the states will pay a penalty for the beds that are not filled. This is more proof that privatizing the prisons will not save the states money but will cost the states or taxpayers more money in the long term.

There is more and more people going to prison every single year in this country and there is a number of reasons why in my opinion one the private prisons have been lobbying state and federal governments in order to put more and more people in prisons. Fox example CCA themselves spent $1,070,000 in 2011 and $980,000 in 2012 to lobby congress in order to get tougher immigration laws in order to make more money for themselves obviously.(http://grassrootsleadership.org/blog/2013/02/meet-private-prison-industry-s-lobbyists-who-could-shape-immigration-reform) 

The prison-industrial complex it's been called and it started with Richard Nixon's "War on Drugs" and it's been getting worse and worse in the United States, there are around 2.5 million people currently locked up in the United States and our policies are not getting better they are getting worse. 

So what do we progressives do about this problem? My opinion we need to end the "War on Drugs" we need to legalize marijuana, we need to eliminate minimum sentencing and let judges decide sentencing on a case by case basis. I think that we need to eliminate or heavily reduce the private prisons in the United States, the government should the ones who are running the prisons not private corporations who are trying to make a profit. After we put in these reforms things should get better...I hope 

Link to report: http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/sites/default/files/Criminal-Lockup%20Quota-Report.pdf

Link to Mother Jones Piece: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/09/private-prisons-occupancy-quota-cca-crime#13796889600211&action=collapse_widget&id=4393633