{"id":218457,"date":"2016-01-23T18:45:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-23T18:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=218457"},"modified":"2016-01-23T18:45:23","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T18:45:23","slug":"how-candidates-mega-donors-get-served-after-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/how-candidates-mega-donors-get-served-after-the-election\/","title":{"rendered":"How Candidates’ Mega-Donors Get Served After the Election"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, updated from strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The prison industry provides a good example: One recent article at Vice News<\/span><\/a> criticized the legislation proposed by Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders to eliminate America\u2019s private prisons, or corporate-owned prisons, and it quoted a liberal \u2018expert\u2019 on the subject, who said: \u201cEven though there’s a left-right consensus on criminal justice reform, a lot of folks on the right still very much embrace private prisons, which have a lot of lobbying power, so politically, it’s not a viable reform.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s how corrupt the U.S. is: even when there\u2019s verbal \u2018consensus\u2019 among the office-holders who control the government\u2019s money and policies, the actual votes by the office-holders go in the opposite direction, whenever that\u2019s necessary in order for the office-holder to have enough campaign-money to become re-elected by the ignorant voters who believed his words and promises instead of his votes and the actual results. If this is \u2018democracy,\u2019 <\/span>it\u2019s \u2018democracy-by-deception\u2019: the candidate says one thing, but, when the crucial vote in Congress comes, votes the other way \u2013 and most of the people who had voted for that candidate will never even know he had conned them. <\/span><\/p>\n

Another article at Vice News<\/a><\/span> showed that the U.S. Presidential candidates who in the 2016 race had received the most donations from private prison corporations were Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio, each of whom had received $133,000 from them this cycle. Clinton\u2019s money came almost entirely from the largest imprisonment-company, GEO (former Wackenhut)<\/span><\/a>, which is mainly allied with ALEC and the rest of the Republican Koch brothers\u2019 political operation; but Rubio\u2019s money came mostly from the second-largest, CCA (Corrections Corporation of America)<\/span><\/a>, which was founded by the Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Thomas W. Beasley and two of his friends. <\/span><\/p>\n

That last-mentioned Vice article said nothing about Sanders (he hadn\u2019t received any donations from them), but it did discuss the imprisonment industry\u2019s favorite candidates:<\/span><\/p>\n

Officially, private prison companies don’t try to influence how the US government treats immigrants. The GEO Group noted that the company’s lobbyists “focus entirely on promoting the use of public-private partnerships.” <\/i>[Note: Hillary Clinton has always praised \u2018public-private partnerships.\u2019] MTC and CCA did not respond to requests for comment.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The candidates aren’t talking about it either: The campaigns for Clinton, Bush, Rubio, and Trump ignored repeated VICE inquiries about private prisons. But activists say industry lobbying may have shaped the “detention-bed mandate,” a policy that requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to keep at least 34,000 people locked up \u2013 mainly in private prisons \u2013 while they wait to appear in immigration court. It costs taxpayers $2 billion a year for ICE to meet the quota.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Extreme corruption is the reason why the United States has not only the world\u2019s highest prisoner-count, but the world\u2019s highest imprisonment-rate. Even if it might be the case that incarceration rates don\u2019t necessarily correlate with corruption, they do necessarily reflect the extent to which a given nation\u2019s government is (by means of its laws and its enforcement of those laws) at war against its own population; and, so, technically speaking, incarceration rates (the percentage of the population who are in prison) are <\/span>supposed to reflect the prevalence of law-breaking within a given nation. After all: by definition, people are presumed to be in prison for law-breaking, irrespective of whether the given nation\u2019s laws are just \u2013 and, if they\u2019re not<\/i> <\/span>just, then this fact reflects even more strongly that the nation itself is<\/i> <\/span>corrupt. So: a high incarceration-rate does strongly tend to go along with a nation\u2019s being highly corrupt, in more than merely<\/i> <\/span>a technical sense \u2013 it\u2019s almost more like being the definitive measure of \u201ccorruption.\u201d So, the correlation between incarceration rates and corruption must be assumed to be high, and any measure of corruption which fails to at least include countries\u2019 incarceration rates should be rejected. <\/span><\/p>\n

Out of the world\u2019s 223 countries, the U.S. has the world\u2019s second-highest incarceration rate: 698 per 100,000<\/span><\/a>, just behind #1 Seychelles, with 799 per 100,000. Seychelles doesn\u2019t even have as many as 100,000 people (but only 90,024<\/span><\/a> \u2013 as many people as are in the city of Temple, Texas). By contrast, the U.S. has 322,369,319<\/span><\/a>; so, the U.S. is surely the global leader in imprisonment. And, furthermore, #3, St. Kitts and Nevis, with an incarceration-rate of 607 per 100,000, has only 54,961<\/span><\/a> people (as many people as are in the city of Columbus, Indiana). The only other country that might actually be close to the U.S. in imprisoning its own people is North Korea, which could even beat out the U.S. there, but wouldn\u2019t likely beat tiny Seychelles: North Korea is estimated to have \u201c600-800 people incarcerated per 100,000,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and a total population of \u201c24,895,000.\u201d<\/span><\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, for imprisonments, the U.S. really does have no close second: it\u2019s the unquestionable global market-leader, for prisons and prisoners.<\/span><\/p>\n

And this brings us to the market-leader for prisons within America itself, and to the stunning corruption that stands behind it. So, here\u2019s that extraordinary example, and the story behind its corruption, which will provide a close-up view of America\u2019s general corruption, from the top (including the government itself) on down: <\/span><\/p>\n

In order to protect the profits of privately run prisons in the U.S.<\/span><\/a> (where \u201cSixty-two percent<\/span><\/a> of detention beds are administered by private prison corporations,\u201d meaning that most U.S. prisoners are being \u2018served\u2019 by for-profit corporations in for-profit-run prisons), the U.S. Federal Government \u2013 Barack Obama\u2019s Administration, the Administratin of that man who constantly criticizes America\u2019s high imprisonment-rate \u2013 is refusing to honor Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which is trying to find out why people are being imprisoned as illegal immigrants who ought not to be<\/span><\/a>. Wrongly-imprisoned people are a device by which private prison-operating companies keep their prison-beds occupied and thus drawing income from the U.S. government, just like a high occupancy-rate is essential for a hotelier\u2019s profitability. But \u2013 unlike<\/i> in the hotel trade \u2013 this coercive<\/i> bed-occupancy produces more than mere profits; it produces also distressed families, of those individuals who are yanked and unjustifiably imprisoned, families suffering needlessly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It turns out that U.S. federal laws, passed mainly by the Republicans, but also with votes from corrupt Democrats, require (in\u00a0H.R.3547<\/span><\/a>)\u00a0the U.S. government to pay for \u201ca level of not less than 34,000 detention beds\u201d for \u2018illegal immigrants.\u2019 (You can see that requirement being cited by the Republican interrogator of an Obama Administration official, Department of Homeland Security, at 1:03:00- in\u00a0this video<\/span><\/a>, where the Obama official is being criticized for not locking up enough<\/i> <\/span>people to meet the law\u2019s requirements.)\u00a0(Republicans and other conservatives love to punish people, irrespective of justice; so, they want at least those 34,000 prisoners. To be concerned about justice, as the CCR is, is to be \u2018soft on crime,\u2019 as Republicans view it. Instead of justice, Republicans seek revenge; thus, for example, Republicans overwhelmingly support torture against \u2018terrorist\u2019 suspects; Democrats overwhelmingly oppose it<\/span><\/a>. Torture greatly reduces the trustworthiness of a suspect\u2019s statements, but it always serves as a vent for revenge, even when the suspect actually had nothing to do with terrorism; so, Republicans strongly approve of torture. Similarly, the most-conservative Muslims approve of beheading \u2018infidels.\u2019 Conservatives everywhere<\/i>, and in every faith, support harsh punishments; and the U.S. is a conservative country; so, sentences are long, and the conditions are harsh.)<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the Obama Administration itself, even as it locks up, on some days, just shy of the legally mandated minimum of 34,000 accused \u2018illegal immigrants\u2019 (which shortfall is here drawing the ire of that congressional Republican in the video), is also actively blocking CCR from access to the information<\/span><\/a> about how the government and private corporations set rates for immigration detention beds and facilities. CCR argues that private profits are being given higher priority by the Administration than is the welfare of the public; and, thus, that the General Welfare Clause of the U.S. Constitution is being violated here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Obama Administration says that it won\u2019t release the information, because to do so would \u201charm corporations competitively.\u201d\u00a0That\u2019s more important to Obama than is \u201cthe genetral welfare.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

CCR claims<\/a><\/span>, and the Obama Administration is opposing their claim, that “there is essentially no competitive market in\u00a0government contracts that could be harmed by the\u00a0release of information, that there should be nothing\u00a0proprietary about the terms of a government contract,\u00a0and that the public has a right to understand how\u00a0Congress funds immigration detention and how that\u00a0funding is influenced.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Obama Administration is arguing that if this same cost-information were being requested concerning any of the 38% of government-run prisons, then the FOIA request would be complied with, but that contracting-out or privatizing that function has freed the government from any such obligation.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

However, CCR is concerned specifically about that profit-motive here \u2013 that the revolving door between government service and the private sector might itself be a key part of the explanation for the government\u2019s requiring that at least 34,000 people will be in prison for, or awaiting trial on charges of, \u2018illegal immigration.\u2019 CCR contends that the only reason why people should be imprisoned in America is that they\u2019ve actually broken laws for which the correct punishment is a prison term. But the position of the U.S. government is contrary: if the beneficiary of someone\u2019s imprisonment is a private corporation, the public shouldn\u2019t necessarily be allowed to know what\u2019s going on, nor why. And, so, that\u2019s the issue here. Does a private corporation\u2019s privacy-right exceed the public\u2019s right-to-know?<\/i> The government says yes; CCR says no. CCR argues that to privatize is not to immunize: the government has the same obligations to the public, regardless of how it has chosen to carry out its obligations \u2013 either directly, or else by contracting them out (such as here). The Obama Administration argues that a private corporation is private, protected from the public\u2019s scrutiny \u2013 and that the corporation\u2019s only obligations are to the government, not<\/i> <\/span>to the public; thus, no such FOIA requests will be honored.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what\u2019s not<\/i> <\/span>in dispute about the case: the man who, in the first Obama Administration, was the head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations,\u00a0David Venturella<\/span><\/a>, is now the top sales official at GEO Group, which is\u00a0“the world’s leading provider of correctional\u00a0detention, and residential treatment services\u00a0around the globe\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 and that\u2019s also the first thing GEO says about itself, on its own\u00a0\u201cWho We Are\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0page. And Mr. Venturella is now being cited by the Obama Administration as an \u2018expert,\u2019 in order to deny CCA\u2019s FOIA request.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a GEO official, Venturella\u00a0claims in his 22 December 2015 declaration in the court-case,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that, \u201cthe winning proposal in almost every Federal procurement competition is awarded to the lowest priced bidder,\u201d and that, \u201cThe disclosure of GEO\u2019s proprietary bed-day rates and staffing plans would result in substantial competitive financial harm to GEO.\u201d He claims that, \u201cEven with access to their larger competitors\u2019 staffing plans, the smaller private companies do not have access to the capital needed to compete to win a large facility.\u201d In other words: he pretends that GEO is one of \u201cthe smaller private companies.\u201d But then he goes on to say (just in case a reader might happen to consider GEO not to be one of \u201cthe smaller private companies”): “The second stage would be acrimonious competition between\u00a0the larger organizations,\u00a0public and private, that will very likely\u00a0lead to their withdrawal from the detention\u00a0market as well,\u00a0thereby leaving ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] with no viable detention service providers.\u201d Venturella assumes here that ICE cannot itself own and operate its prisons. (He doesn\u2019t say why; he merely assumes that it\u2019s the case \u2013 perhaps that everything<\/i> should be privatized, and must<\/i> be privatized, so ICE shouldn\u2019t run its own prisons.) And, he also is vaguely threatening there to abandon this market. He\u2019s actually suggesting that, if the government were to require this information about cost and profitability to be released to CCA, then GEO might no longer even bid on this business \u2013 regardless of how profitable it is to them. And, he says, this would leave ICE \u201cwith no viable detention service providers.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So: that (ridiculously and multiply false) argument is the reason why injustices to defendants in the U.S. immigration system must continue, Venturella, the salesman for GEO (his title is \u201cSenior Vice President\u201d), is here arguing.\u00a0And, the U.S. government doesn\u2019t challenge it, but instead unquestioningly accepts it. <\/span><\/p>\n

Essentially, the Obama Administration is joining with GEO arguing that the profitability of private prison companies is more important than any injustices that might happen to be caused by Congress\u2019s establishment of an arbitrary fixed and stable minimum number of prisoners every day \u2013 and, since the head of the top prison-company is saying that profits would be threatened by adhering to FOIA in this particular matter, the Freedom Of Information Act request in this case must be denied.<\/span><\/p>\n

The basic<\/i> <\/span>argument, in other words, is that privatization is more important than the U.S. Constitution and its General Welfare Clause.<\/span><\/p>\n

How close are these contractors to<\/i> <\/span>the government?<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are five of the seven members of the\u00a0Board of Directors<\/span><\/a>\u00a0of GEO:<\/span><\/p>\n

One is \u201cFormer Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Another is \u201cFormer Under Secretary United States Air Force.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Another is \u201cExecutive Director, National League of Cities.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Another is \u201cChairman and CEO of ElectedFace Inc.,\u201d\u00a0which<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u201cwill connect people to their elected officials in every political district.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Another is George C. Zoley, the company\u2019s Founder and CEO, who is also\u00a0\u201cAmerica\u2019s Highest Paid \u2018Corrections Officer.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0In fact: “GEO Group’s revenue in 2012\u00a0exceeded $1.4\u00a0billion\u00a0and CMD [Center for Media and Democracy] estimates that 86% of this\u00a0money came out of the pockets of taxpayers.\u00a0CMD’s investigation of GEO Group unearthed\u00a0how the company’s cost-cutting strategies lead\u00a0to a vicious cycle where lower wages and\u00a0benefits for workers, high employee turnover,\u00a0insufficient training, and under-staffing results\u00a0in poor oversight and mistreatment of detained\u00a0persons, increased violence, and riots.\u201d (If so, then that would add to the misery that\u2019s produced by the improper imprisonments.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to Nasdaq<\/a><\/span>, major investors in GEO Group include: Vanguard,\u00a0BlackRock<\/span><\/a>, Scopia Capital (a hedge fund run by Jeremy Mindich and Matt Sirovich) Barclays Global Investors<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0Bank of New York Mellon<\/span><\/a>, and more.[132]<\/sup><\/span><\/a> George Zoley, CEO of GEO, is a major stockholder with over 500,000 shares.[133]<\/sup><\/span><\/a>\u00a0For more on investors, see Ray Downs,\u00a0\u2018Who’s Getting Rich Off the Prison-Industrial Complex?’<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Vice<\/i>, June 2013.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Privatization is very profitable. But not for everybody. Only for the well-connected. For everybody else, it\u2019s just more poor and abused workers, and unjustly imprisoned people. But virtually all Republicans, and also the Obama Administration and other corrupt Democrats (and Obama will get his enrichment after he leaves office), think that privatization is necessary \u2013 even more necessary than is adherence to the U.S. Constitution, or than a justly ruled nation, and a prosperous public.<\/span><\/p>\n

This type of government fits with America\u2019s extraordinarily high incarceration rate. Looking under the hood of one dysfunctional car, one finds a dysfunctional motor.<\/span><\/p>\n

But a few U.S. officials do whatever they can to reduce the country\u2019s corruption. For example, the \u201cImmigration Detention Bed Quota Timeline\u201d<\/span><\/a> shows that, in September 2015, when Senator Sanders (who probably is the U.S. federal government\u2019s leading campaigner against corruption) introduced \u201cthe Justice is Not for Sale Act of 2015<\/span><\/a>, which seeks to end the bed quota among other criminal justice and immigration detention reforms,\u201d his bill\u2019s co-sponsors in the House were Reps. Ra\u00c3\u00bal Grijalva (D-AZ), Keith Ellison (D-MN), and Bobby Rush (D-IL). That\u2019s the legislation which was condemned by the earlier-quoted liberal who said of it, \u201cEven though there’s a left-right consensus on criminal justice reform, a lot of folks on the right still very much embrace private prisons, which have a lot of lobbying power, so politically, it’s not a viable reform.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Those were the most progressive members of the U.S. Congress. Arrayed against them are the billions of dollars in political propaganda that cause the number of such progressives to be extremely few in the U.S. government. For that bill to pass in Congress, practically all conservatives would first have to become replaced by progressives, and by other supposed non-conservatives (called \u2018liberals,\u2019 meaning snake-tongued conservtives), in Congress. Sanders says that it would require \u201ca political revolution,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and he\u2019s correct on that. He\u2019s not telling the liberal commentarot that he disagrees, just that \u201ca political revolution\u201d is needed, and that he seeks the votes of everyone who favors it. His opponent, Hillary Clinton, is against it. All Republican candidates are against it. That\u2019s the reality, and America\u2019s voters will decide whether to continue it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, updated from strategic-culture.org The prison industry provides a good example: One recent article at Vice News criticized the legislation proposed by Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders to eliminate America\u2019s private prisons, or corporate-owned prisons, and it quoted a liberal \u2018expert\u2019 on the subject, who said: \u201cEven though there’s a left-right consensus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":218458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[115,30,534,551,698,930,1069,931,969,6257,49,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-218457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-conservatism","11":"tag-corruption","12":"tag-hillary-clinton","13":"tag-liberalism","14":"tag-prisons","15":"tag-progressivism","16":"tag-rubio","17":"tag-trump","18":"tag-usa-news","19":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}