Candide’s Notebooks: The Daily Journal

Do you, like me, wonder how it can be that a nation as prosperous as ours cannot ever seem to find the money to spend directly in our children’s public school classrooms? That instead of our children being supplied with everything they and their teachers need within those classrooms to provide them with the world-class public education we are clearly capable of delivering, we are all instead having bake sales and car washes, and selling tickets to parent-provided spaghetti dinners to come up with the meager funds just so that our children’s teachers can get by without having to spend their own incomes on their students? Does this rankle you at all?

If it does, prepare yourself for additional rankling, and allow me to introduce you to the kid who has moved to one of the front row seats in the class, the immigrant detention industry. This industry is being supplied with all the U.S. taxpayer-money it needs to support 32,000 detainee beds, up from 27,500 in the previous year, plus a healthy profit for those astute enough to get in on this government gravy train.

“Each year, 300,000 immigrants are arrested in raids and along the border. What comes next is detention.”

According to Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), our nation’s largest prison provider, whose motto is “Prison Privatization at its Best”:

We are here to take care of the product that they deliver to us.

You simply cannot make this stuff up.

The business of immigrant detentions is enjoying record profits. Some notable quotes by CCA’s President and CEO John Ferguson:

… [the national immigration/customs budget is] quite above where the President’s original budget was, so we’re pleased to see that the government is funding the adequate needs for immigration/customs enforcement.

We’ve never seen the wind at our back like it is today. (spoken at a May 2006 investor conference after discussing $1.3 billion in revenue)

What I am most encouraged about is everything we are hearing says 33,000 [detention beds] is still not enough.

I’m sure CCA’s investors are happy with how our federal tax dollars are benefiting them. The value of $100 worth of shareholders’ investment in CCA in 2002 has grown to almost $600 today.

You might be interested to learn that the private equity and celebrated buyout firm, The Blackstone Group, is behind CCA’s financial success, having secured additional funding for growth through loans from Lehman Brothers and Bank of America. Blackstone is referred to as the 21st century’s Enron; its co-founder and chairman of the board, Stephen Schwarzman, received $350.7 million of compensation in 2007, making him one of the highest paid executives on Wall Street.

So what’s driving demand for this industry? Simply put, changes to immigration policy. You can safely bet all the gasoline you have to pump into your family car this year that the folks who run the companies that are profiting off of immigrant detention are spending whatever part of their record profits they have to on lobbying firms that write the immigration legislation that the lobbying firms then hand over to our legislators to co-sponsor who then tell us, their constituents and the schmucks who voted for them, that there’s no money to support our public schools, while there’s plenty of money to “keep us safe.” Yeah, right. And the higher the demand for immigrant detention beds, the more these private contractors can charge the U.S. taxpayer, even as they provide fewer detainee services.

Each new government program to increase immigration enforcement has been a business opportunity for CCA and companies like it.

Keep in mind that the immigrant detention industry lobbyists do not just have the backing of companies like CCA; lobbyists working for Blackstone and other hugely powerful financial firms undoubtedly provide the bulk of the “campaign contributions” devoted to rewriting “our” immigration legislation, as well as grease the tax loopholes that prevent these investment firms from having to contribute to the very tax base that pays for the programs based on this legislation.

One example of how these immigrant detention industry lobbyists rewrote immigration policy to benefit their industry was by convincing Congress to end the “catch and release” program. Many immigration experts feel that this was a big mistake. It created an urgent and immediate need for thousands more beds, the number of contracted beds being how the industry increases its income stream.

An example of an upcoming immigration policy that CCA anticipates will provide even more record profits is Operation Streamline, a zero tolerance program for immigrants crossing the border. Under Operation Steamline, every single human body that’s apprehended at the border will be charged with “entry without inspection,” a misdemeanor that will provide CCA with 15 to 30 days of detention income per body. CCA’s business plan relies on getting as many of these “entry without inspection” bodies charged with a felony that would result in six months to two years of additional detention income per body. As any enterprising person can easily see, it will be more profitable for CCA to detain these “entry without inspection” bodies for the maximum number of days allowable before releasing them or charging them with a felony. I’m sure this is just one of a myriad number of ways for CCA to further increase its revenue stream, its profits, and its investor income. This, folks, is a very sick system.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a budget that has grown from $0.5 billion in 2005 to $1.6 billion today, only two years later. It has grown nationally by receiving government contracts, contracts that paid for less than 20,000 detention beds in 2003, but that currently pay for 33,000 beds.

What exactly do these government contracts provide?

“Five of [CCA’s] lucrative contracts to detain immigrants have no end date. Several of its other contracts contain “take or pay” clauses that guarantee a certain amount of revenue regardless of occupancy rates, as well as periodic rate increases. All of the contracts are renewed at a rate of almost 95 percent, any cost savings CCA reaps are kept for the company, not passed on to the taxpayer.”

Hoo-boy! That is one swell gravy train ride. This industry is operating virtually risk-free, hardly in a manner consistent with a free-market. The only risk to their continued profit growth is election reform at the level where lobbyists are no longer allowed to bribe our legislative representatives.
Imagine if all parents of public school children could say to each other: “We’re pleased to see that the government is funding the adequate needs for our world-class public school system.”

Or if Iraq war vets could say to each other: “We’re pleased to see that the government is funding the adequate needs for our returning war vets.”

But we can’t say these things. Because our government is serving the needs of an ideologically-driven minority demographic that plays up and preys on a collective fear that the bogeyman is right outside our borders and will kill us all in the middle of the night if we don’t make a strong financial commitment to the huge war profiteering industry, which now includes the private paramilitary industry, the international and domestic surveillance industry, and the immigrant detention industry. We can’t provide our own children with the kind of public school system that would result in a citizenry being able to see through this propaganda, and we can’t take care of our citizen soldiers, through adequate VA funding and a GI bill, because we must commit all of our tax money to for-profit businesses rooted in “national security.”

“… CCA’s confidence in future demand is so great, it’s not worried about an abundance of unused beds and lost profits. The company is already slated to develop 10,700 beds by 2009 in order to meet anticipated demand from federal and state customers. That’s good news for [CCA’s CEO] Ferguson, who in 2007 took home close to $3 million in executive compensation.”

When we consider these taxpayer expenditures in context with our lack of expenditures in areas such as education, health care, actual port and border security, and environmentally sustainable energy, it doesn’t take too much imagination to see that, not only are we making enemies out of friends with our support for the immigration detention industry, we are running our economic ship-of-state straight into a tidal wave, while neglecting those issues of truly critical importance to any great society’s success.

Thanks to DREAMActivist for the inspiration! — Linda

On Tuesday, April 22, in Pennsylvania, we listened to Sen. Clinton’s reckless remarks about the use of our nuclear capability “to totally obliterate [the people of Iran].” That comment was more than just a dramatic display of her willingness to say or do anything, no matter how dangerous or unproductive to international stability and peace, in order to win the democratic nomination, even putting at risk her future effectiveness to work with the various players in the Middle East. That “obliteration” comment carried with it darker implications that go beyond her political ambitions. When coupled with her other recent public comments showing her intent to reorient U.S. foreign policy even further in the extreme direction the Bush/Cheney neoconservatives have already disastrously taken us, her comments cannot be taken as mere campaign rhetoric.

In case you gave up in disgust on the April 17 Democratic presidential ABC debate during its first hour or so of uber-pathetic questioning by George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson about varying degrees of individual patriotism and about decisions regarding flag pin-wearing, Clinton offered up that she would use the nuclear annihilation of Iran as a deterrence.

This goes beyond mere saber-rattling. This is an overt expression of her willingness to pass right over the more reasoned option of diplomacy followed by the last resort option of military intervention. It indicates that she would use U.S. nuclear capability to commit genocide on a level surpassing even that which resulted in the deaths and suffering of hundreds of thousands of innocent “collaterals” in Japan during WW2, a genocide that we have yet to reconcile with U.S. claims that we are committed to world peace. How on earth would our furthering of a nuclear holocaust, even in the aftermath of a hypothetical nuclear attack by Iran on Israel, head humanity in a moral and more peaceful direction? That, my friends, is what Armageddon will look like.

In the wake of those most recent clearly hawkish comments by her about Iran, it’s not just appropriate, but necessary, that we revisit Sen. Clinton’s 2002 decision to give President Bush the authority to use our military to invade and occupy Iraq without specific authorization from Congress. It’s also important to reconsider her subsequent 2007 explanation that that decision was not a mistake.

Let’s connect all these dots before we decide that this is the person democrats will elect to answer that middle-of-the-night phone call. Following is a sequencing of quotes by Sen. Clinton that shed light into her policy positions as they pertain to the Middle East.

October 2002:

June 2007:

April 17, 2008:

April 22, 2008:

On the day before Clinton made her obliteration-of-Iran stance known, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said this before an audience of West Point cadets and faculty members about the consequences of getting into an armed conflict with Iran:

Let’s listen to that more reasonable position. Let’s not make a mistake about Sen. Clinton that’s potentially more disastrous than the one she made about President Bush. It would be a mistake for voters to think that Clinton would not do what she is telling all of us she will do.

Richard Armitage, formerly the deputy secretary of state during George W. Bush’s first term (under Colin Powell), said it best: “Lazy diplomacy,” as he called it, doesn’t work. “We don’t like Chavez, so we’re just not going to speak to him. We don’t like North Korea, we don’t speak to them. We don’t like Iran, we don’t speak to them. Pretty soon we won’t speak to Peru… Guess what? Pretty soon you’re not speaking to more people than you’re speaking to.” As I see it, Carter is doing quite a few people a very big face-saving favor, the deaf-mute Bush administration most of all. The full story at About…

• What Israelis Say About Talking to Hamas

Cliff Schecter is a consultant and pundit whose acquaintance I made last year when he moved to Ohio and was getting to know Ohio bloggers. He became somewhat of an Internet star when his videos smacking down GOP hacks on MSNBC went viral–his combative, take-no-prisoners style was a breath of fresh air. I got in touch with Cliff when I found out he was writing a book on John McCain. (I was angling for a review copy.)

Well, John McCain’s campaign trajectory last year, when he wasn’t raising money and the press was ignoring him and his poll numbers were in the single digits, seemed to sink the book, but the fact that the rest of the GOP field sucked more than McCain brought the project back from the grave.

Meanwhile, Cliff has left his previous employer, Brave New Films, and has a new site partnered with the Agonist. Along with his great blogging partners Paddy and GottaLaff, his site is lively, always current, and one of the liberal net’s most exciting landings.

The Real McCain is rocketing up the charts at Amazon, and even though I haven’t read the whole thing yet, Cliff was good enough to send me one of the book’s more explosive chapters, about McCain’s famous temper. Schecter collects several well documented examples of McCain’s sharp tongue and general pissiness. But he also includes a couple of episodes exclusive to this book, such as a fistfight McCain engaged in with his friend Rick Renzi (you know, the cochair of McCain’s Arizona campaign who recently was charged on 35 counts of corruption). But more shocking to my mind is the excerpt from The Real McCain, posted by GottaLaff at Cliff’s site which describes McCain calling his wife Cindy the c-word. When Cindy McCain playfully told her husband he was getting a little thin up top, he lashed out, “at least I don’t plaster on the make up like a trollop, you cunt.” The incident was related to Schecter by three Arizona reporters who demanded anonymity.

I think these kinds of incidents are important for a couple of reasons. One, it’s the right that has consistently used private moments as a basis for judging the “character” of a leader, and it’s the right that has consistently claimed that character is important. If Republican voters and leaders are willing to overlook the sordid details of McCain’s ugly temper while vilifying Obama for the comments of his pastor, it indicates a double standard that is to say the least ridiculous. The other reason I think it is important is that McCain has raised the issue of his warrior past as part of his qualification for office. If his warrior past has left him with some sort of post traumatic disorder, it’s fair game to consider it in terms of his fitness for office. But more broadly, we have to wonder if the psychological trauma McCain has endured is currently being inflicted on thousands of young men and women returning from Iraq.

I’m not doing Cliff’s work justice; it’s more than simply a series of titillating tidbits. He presents a view of McCain that shows a man deferential beyond belief to those in authority (like Bush, whose campaign smears of McCain’s family in 2000 seem oddly ignored in his later adulation of the President) while oddly, shockingly vicious to others whom he immediately begs for forgiveness after the offense. It’s an odd pattern of behavior that begs for psychoanalysis: is it PTSD of some kind? Or is McCain just an old fashioned bully? Given the consequences for the world of Bush’s sick need to compete with his own father, McCain’s psychoses certainly seem worthy of further study in the run up to the 2008 election.

Joe Lieberman, the warhead on John McCain’s warmongering, sits on the Armed Services Committee. So he had a chance to lap about Gen. David Petraeus’ boots a few times, which he dutifully did. But nothing he said was more base and pitiful than this, after complaining at length about charges that Iraqis aren’t getting their act together: “The Iraqi political leadership has achieved a lot more progress in reconciliation since September than the American political leadership has.” Really? Is Bush sending troops to battle Democratic Party militias? Are Hillary Clinton’s Mahdi Army black-shirts battling Barack Obama’s in the streets of Chicago and Brooklyn and the Southeast portions of D.C.? Wasn’t Lieberman making his little plea from a marbled and oak-paneled Senate hearing room where Republicans and Democrats pal around so conventionally and obsequiously that the “D” and “R” next to their names are, as in Lieberman’s literal case, interchangeable? But no one will hold him to his words. That’s the privilege of being a mercenary senator.

When the Memphis Tigers were dipped in the river of basketball immortality, the basketball gods held them by their heel, and that heel goes by the name of free throw shooting.  With the mighty Kansas Jayhawks all but slain Monday night, Kansas, in the last throes of battle, aimed directly for that heel, and pierced it, and became NCAA’s champions in men’s basketball themselves just as the moment seemed out of reach. 

With two minutes left to play, Memphis held a nine point lead, and Kansas began to do what desperate teams always do, and usually unsuccessfully.  They began fouling the opposition, sending them to the free throw line, and hoping for misses.  This time the strategy worked.  Two agonizing minutes later Kansas had pushed the game into overtime, aided by a series of clanging, clunking, tense Memphis misses, and a miraculous game tying, flailing three point shot by Kansas’ Mario Chalmers.  It wasn’t beautiful basketball by any means.  The game was marked by turnovers and defense, not the graceful flowing energy of a stylish basketball, no Jordanesque moments of individual excellence or carefully choreographed executions of half court mastery.  But in the end it was Kansas’ frenetic defense in regulation and swaggering confidence in the overtime period, as well as Memphis’ lousy shooting from the line, that gave them the crown.

As the tournament began, many fans and commentators discounted Memphis for precisely this reason–their free throw shooting was among the worst in the country.  But as the tournament unfolded Memphis silenced their critics, blowing out great teams like UCLA and yes, making their free throws in the process.  And of course, Memphis and their blue collar city were crashers to the party hosted by the elite of college basketball, the dignitaries like North Carolina, UCLA, and of course Kansas, home of basketball’s inventor. 

It led Memphis coach John Calipari to create an ”us vs. them” narrative and to wonder why his team wasn’t favored by the basketball press in spite of their record-breaking victory total.  “How many of you are picking us to win?”, he asked rhetorically in an interview on ESPN.  “‘None.  But that doesn’t mean we’re against you,’” he answered, speaking as the sportswriters.  “Well, you’re certainly not for us!”  As ESPN’s Jay Bilas wrily noted, Calipari was masterfully placing a chip on his players’ shoulders,  creating a cloud of “disrespect” that the 21st century player seems to thrive on.  There’s nothing worse than being “disrespected” and nothing better for a coach to motivate his team with.  And for this tournament, the contrived psychology worked, with Calipari’s team playing as though they were on a mission and dominating the field.  Their five point deficit in the first half last night was their largest of the season,  and they returned in the second half a different team, confident and aggressive and firmly in control as the game wound towards its conclusion.

Sure there were other factors contributing to Memphis’ demise.  They were too reliant on Chris Douglas-Roberts and Derrick Rose to make individual plays, and when Kansas was able to contain the Memphis guards they kept their lead.  They were outrebounded heavily, especially in the first half.  And when Joey Dorsey fouled out, Memphis lost their inside presence which made a big difference in the overtime period.  But what will always be remembered are the free throws Douglas-Roberts and Rose should have made.

 After a dominant tournament in which they proved their worth, they were undone by the simplest and most mundane scoring play in basketball.  In the end, it wasn’t the basketball royalty that doomed Memphis.  It was their own glaring weakness, the one flaw in their mighty game that ended their season.  For Achilles in a Memphis uniform, it was an unglorious end. 

A couple of you may have noticed that the email updates have fallen off lately. That’s only because I haven’t taken the time to prepare them. My apologies to those who were expecting them, my apologiers, now that they’re resuming, to those who were glad to do without them, and my thanks for the continuing addition of many new subscribers since I did update last.

I know that I promise daily updates on the front page of the Web site. I’ll try not to honor that promise: Daily updates are a bit much, and let’s be honest, they clutter the mailbox and annoy the reader. I’ll update every few days, and more often only when absolutely necessary–in case the world ends or I write something I particularly want to show off. And as I started doing a few months ago, I’ll include relevant links and updates from my Middle East Notebooks.

All right everyone, time to make your voice count and help me out with my first poll. Come on out at About and vote on the question of the week. The next president, whoever it is, will have to deal with the Middle East, as has every president since Harry Truman. The question: where should those Middle East priorities be? It’s a lost cause for the current nullity in the White House. But you can help the next president decide. Get out the vote…

Question: Is it possible to be having “a pretty good economic run” while food stamp recipients are rising to their highest levels in four decades?

Answer: Depends on who you’re talking about.

Back in mid-December, just 3 1/2 months ago, President Bush delivered another one of his absurd speeches about the U.S. economy. He told us that “we’ve had a pretty good economic run” and that “the underpinning [of the economy] is good.”

On March 31, 2008, we read this:

Driven by a painful mix of layoffs and rising food and fuel prices, the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s.

What is going on here? Is Bush lying about the economy, too? Or could it be that he simply does not know that all is not well for those Americans in our working middle-class? Or something else altogether?

When he tells us that “we’ve had a pretty good economic run,” he’s not referring to America’s working middle-class. Nope. He couldn’t be, because that would make his statement patently false. He must be referring to the energy, credit card, private equity buyout, and war profiteering industries. Those industries are definitely having more than just a pretty good economic run. They are having the run of their lives. Their skis are slickly waxed, and the snow’s packed tight right now on those economic slopes.

And when he assures us that the economy’s underpinnings are good, he’s letting us know, in a roundabout way, that America’s working middle-class no longer comprises a relevant part of our economy. Unless you are an executive and/or a significant shareholder in the energy, credit card, private equity buyout, or war profiteering industries, you’re not invited to this party.

While I am not going to get into the obviously disturbing ramifications of a national economic scenario in which America’s citizens work primarily/almost exclusively for businesses like ExxonMobil, VISA, JPMorgan Chase, and Blackwater Worldwide, I will say that I think this is a very narrow, limiting, and altogether un-American direction for our ship-of-state to be heading.

So once again, while not technically lying, Bush is not divulging all the pertinent facts, in this case the facts that relate to America’s working middle-class incomes not keeping pace with the cost of living. The whole truth is available; we’re just not going to hear about it in the president’s economic stump speeches.

The Economic Policy Institute released a report on Labor Day, 2007, that provided more of what we actually should know about the state of our economy:

Most workers have relatively little to show in terms of real wage and income gains over this recovery … As of 2006, the median income of working-age families (those headed by someone less than 65) was down -4.2% in real terms over the cycle, a loss of -$2,375 (2006 dollars). Poverty, at 12.3%, remains 1.0 percentage point above its 2000 trough … Employment rates remain well below their peak levels, and job growth has been uniquely weak in this recovery … When examined closely, the wage findings tell an important story about who has and who lacks the bargaining power to benefit from today’s economy. Economic elites talk up the economy, with bullish references to GDP, productivity, and job growth.

Got that? Here’s the quick-and-dirty recap:

1. Wage and income gains — stagnant.
2. Median income of working-age families — down.
3. Poverty — steady to slightly above its 2000 mark.
4. Employment rates — still significantly down.
5. Job growth — uniquely weak.

I see nothing to strut-and-crow about in those indicators.

The report concludes:

But just whose economy are they talking about? A central goal of economic policy must be to reconnect the living standards of the workers … to the growth in the overall economy … That will not occur simply because we wish it to, nor will it arise automatically from faster overall growth. It will be the result of deliberate policies to build institutions and mechanisms that enable working persons to claim their fair share of the growth they themselves are helping to create.

Imagine that! A national economic policy with the goal of developing and investing in institutions and mechanisms that will reconnect the living standards of the workers to the growth in the overall economy. Oh, if only!

So, the “we” that Bush tells us is doing just fine does not include working families. In Bush-speak, there is the “we” that is benefiting from our current economic policies, and then there is another “we,” made up of America’s working middle-class, that is not benefiting.

Bush says of himself: “I’m a glass half-full person.” That’s great, George. However, “we,” the rest of us, could all do with a little more whole-glass honesty mixed in with your arguably misleading optimism. Don’t cherry-pick your economic facts, sir. “We,” the rest of us, need to know the truth, and not just your “half-full” impression, about our economy. There are an awful lot of us on the “half-empty” side. After all, when you’ve retired away to Crawford, or Paraguay, or wherever it is you’re planning to hide out for the rest of your days, “we,” the rest of us, are going to have to deal with the whole economic mess you’re leaving behind.

Meanwhile, I’m getting damn-tired of being pinned under by the record profits and resultant lavish lifestyles of the “we” that Bush’s economic policies are benefiting.

On a more local note, the number of food stamp recipients in Sonoma County, CA (where I live) has jumped 76% since 2000 to a record 14,486 people:

AT A GLANCE Enrollment in Sonoma County for:
Food Stamps
2008 — 14,486
2007 — 13,735
2006 — 13,244
2000 — 8,231

WIC (Women, Infants and Children)
2008 — 9,600
2007 — 8,990
2003 — 7,100