{"id":225453,"date":"2016-02-17T02:46:18","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T02:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=225453"},"modified":"2016-02-17T02:46:18","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T02:46:18","slug":"how-a-candidates-mega-donors-get-served-after-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/how-a-candidates-mega-donors-get-served-after-the-election\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Candidate’s Mega-Donors Get Served After the Election"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

An example will be described here of a way in which corrupt Presidential candidates load up their campaigns\u2019 advertising budgets by pushing for policies to increase the percentage of America\u2019s prisoners who are locked away in for-profit prisons, corporate-owned prisons \u2014 basically, for those politicians pushing to privatize<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>the imprisonment function of government. To provide depth in this account, we\u2019ll focus specifically on privatization of the imprisonment of \u201cillegal aliens\u201d or \u201cundocumented aliens.\u201d (The official definition of that concept: \u201cAn \u2018Undocumented Alien\u2019<\/span><\/a> is an alien who has entered the United States illegally and is deportable if apprehended, or an alien who entered the United States legally but who has fallen \u2018out of status\u2019 and is deportable.\u201d) We\u2019ll also explain here why our government requires that at least 34,000 suspected \u2018illegal aliens\u2019 must be imprisoned at any given time<\/span><\/a>. (Basically, it\u2019s mandated in order to pad the profits of imprisonment-corporations. That\u2019s how corrupt our country is, as will here be documented.) And we\u2019ll discuss how the Obama Administration insists upon this 34,000-prisoner-minimum policy, in practice (though opposing it in rhetoric<\/span><\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

The Nation<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>magazine recently headlined \u201cThis Man Will Almost Certainly Die,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and documented that, \u201cContractors operating immigrant-only prisons are rarely forced to follow the rules that govern regular BOP [Bureau of Prisons] facilities.\u201d In other words, they documented (and the ACLU has documented far more<\/span><\/a>) that one way the imprisonment corporations increase their executive compensation, corporate dividends, stock-performance, and attractiveness to investors, is by their not being required, in practice, to treat prisoners as well as the government-owned prisons are Constitutionally required to treat prisoners. Not all of a person\u2019s Constitutionally protected rights are lost when the given individual becomes charged, nor even if the person becomes convicted, of a violation of law. Government-owned prisons are required by the courts to maintain certain minimal standards. Privately owned prisons simply aren\u2019t (as The Nation<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>explained, and the ACLU further documented).<\/span><\/p>\n

Because The Nation<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>is a Democratic Party mouthpiece, the magazine also recently headlined, \u201cThe Democratic Presidential Candidates Would End Private Prison Contracts,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and their headline\u2019s falsehood regarding Hillary Clinton might have been published just in case Clinton becomes the nominee (the headline was virtually certain to be true about Sanders, but almost certainly false<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>about Clinton). They did this despite the fact that Clinton is tied with the Republican Marco Rubio as being the biggest of all of the many recipients of campaign-funds from imprisonment-corporations (and this indicting fact about her will be documented here). Hillary Clinton has a lengthy record of similarly promising one thing during political campaigns and then subsequently as a government official fighting actually for the exact opposite behind the scenes (she\u2019s quite similar to Barack Obama on that \u2014 her sheer mendacity). So: it\u2019s irresponsible if not dishonest for a so-called \u2018journalistic\u2019 enterprise to run a blatantly false headline like this. That\u2019s a propaganda-enterprise, not actually a journalistic one. (But their article about the barbarism of imprisonment-corporations was thoroughly honest.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The prison industry also provides a good example of the general untrustworthiness of the American press, both liberal and conservative: 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<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>\u2018consensus\u2019 among the office-holders who control the government\u2019s money and policies, the actual votes<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>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 ignorant voters who believe the candidate\u2019s words and promises and ignore his record of votes \u2014 and they get just more of the same. (In fact, our government provides almost unusable websites by which a voter may search and inspect a given candidate\u2019s voting-record and inspect the bills that he or she was voting on. Obscurantism reigns, so as to reduce government officials\u2019 accountability to the voters.) If this is \u2018democracy,\u2019\u00a0 <\/span>it\u2019s \u2018democracy-by-deception\u2019: the candidate says one thing, but, when a crucial vote in Congress comes, votes the opposite \u2014 and most of the people who had voted for that candidate never even get to know that he or she had conned them. <\/span><\/p>\n

Another article at Vice News<\/a><\/span> (this being an honest one) showed that the U.S. Presidential candidates who in the 2016 race had received the most donations from private prison corporations<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>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. CCA is a heavily Republican<\/span><\/a> corporation. And so is GEO<\/span><\/a>. (So is the 3rd-largest<\/span><\/a>.) (Republicans openly<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>support the privatization of virtually any government-function. Corruption itself has even been openly supported by some Republicans, as being the \u2018efficient\u2019 way to do things. The Republican Party\u2019s ideology isn\u2019t opposed to corruption. But the Democratic Party\u2019s ideology is. And that\u2019s the reason why Democratic politicians tend to speak one way and vote another, whereas Republican politicians are almost invariably the same in their actual policies as they have promised in their rhetoric. They lie like the dickens<\/span><\/a> against Democrats, but are truthful about the policies they\u2019ll pursue \u2014 they actually do vote for the policies that they had campaigned on.)<\/span><\/p>\n

That last-mentioned Vice article said nothing about Sanders (he hadn\u2019t received any donations from these companies; he refuses to), 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 <\/i>[the 3rd-largest] 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 \u2014 mainly in private prisons \u2014 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

Progressive journalists had earlier pointed out both Clinton\u2019s<\/span><\/a> and Rubio\u2019s<\/span><\/a> aggressive fundraising from the private-prisons industry. (However, whereas Rubio didn\u2019t need to lie about his supporting private prisons, since he\u2019s a Republican and virtually the entire Party supports them, Clinton did lie and say she won\u2019t support them. The Democratic electorate opposes privatization of prisons; and most Democratic voters don\u2019t really care much whether they were suckered by candidates they had voted for; so, lying as to what policies they will pursue works well for lots of Democratic candidates \u2014 just look at Barack Obama as an example, such as the public option he had promised in his health plan: he abandoned it as soon as he was elected.)<\/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 incarceration rates didn\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 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 \u2014 and, if they\u2019re not<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>just, then this fact reflects even more strongly that the nation itself is<\/i>\u00a0 <\/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>\u00a0 <\/span>a technical sense \u2014 it\u2019s almost more like being the definitive measure<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>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 citizens (but only 90,024<\/span><\/a> \u2014 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> citizens (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 which 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 \u2014 Barack Obama\u2019s Administration, the Administratin of that man who constantly criticizes America\u2019s high imprisonment-rate \u2014 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 \u2014 unlike<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>in the hotel trade \u2014 this coercive<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>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>\u00a0 <\/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 overwhelmingly reduces the trustworthiness of a suspect\u2019s statements, but torture always serves as a vent for revenge, even when the suspect actually had 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 the Constitution\u2019s \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 \u2014 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. <\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u2014 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 \u2014 and that the corporation\u2019s only obligations (other than to stockholders) are to the government, not<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>to the public; thus, no such FOIA requests will be honored.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what\u2019s not<\/i>\u00a0 <\/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\u2014 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 \u2014 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 \u2014 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 multifold false) argument is the reason why injustices to defendants in the U.S. immigration system must continue, according to Venturella, the salesman for GEO (his title is \u201cSenior Vice President\u201d).\u00a0And, the U.S. government from Obama doesn\u2019t challenge it, but instead unquestioningly accepts<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>his propaganda, and his profits-above-prisoners values. Obama favors investors\u2019 \u2018right to profit\u2019 above prisoners\u2019 right to health care, education, etc. \u2014 and then blames prisoners for their recidivism. <\/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 \u2014 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 (FOIA) request in this case must be denied.<\/span><\/p>\n

The basic<\/i>\u00a0 <\/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>\u00a0 <\/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. Privatizing prisons doesn\u2019t increase efficiency, but lowers efficiency.)<\/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 \u2014 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 (America), one finds a dysfunctional motor (corruption even in the \u2018justice\u2019 system).<\/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\u00fal Grijalva (D-AZ), Keith Ellison (D-MN), and Bobby Rush (D-IL). That\u2019s the piece of proposed 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 bill-sonsors 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 (including \u2018liberals,\u2019 meaning snake-tongued conservatives, otherwise called conservative Democrats) would first have to become replaced by progressives, 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 commentariat that he disagrees with them about the difficulty of cleaning up Washington, just that \u201ca political revolution\u201d is needed, and that he seeks the votes of everyone who favors cleaning it up. His opponent, Hillary Clinton, is against that. She\u2019s willing only to tinker with the corruption. All Republican candidates are also against cleaning it up. (It\u2019s actually part of conservative ideology.) That\u2019s the reality, and America\u2019s voters will decide in the 2016 elections whether to continue America\u2019s intense corruption.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 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 An example will be described here of a way in which corrupt Presidential candidates load up their campaigns\u2019 advertising budgets by pushing for policies to increase the percentage of America\u2019s prisoners who are locked away in for-profit prisons, corporate-owned prisons \u2014 basically, for those politicians pushing to privatize\u00a0 the imprisonment […]<\/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":[115,951,551,96,29,535,698,753,1069,540,969,949,49,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-225453","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-clinton","10":"tag-corruption","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-democrats","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-hillary-clinton","15":"tag-police-state","16":"tag-prisons","17":"tag-republicans","18":"tag-rubio","19":"tag-sanders","20":"tag-usa-news","21":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225453","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=225453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225453\/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=225453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}