November 01, 2009 03:56 PM UTC

note to self July 2008--flash forward Sen Bennet and Rep. Polis and Gov. Ritter give me hope

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• by: Ray Springfield

note to self July 2008–flash forward Sen Bennet and Rep. Polis and Gov. Ritter give me hope

I have an old acquaintance that sued DPD a few years ago. I told him that if he could afford to pay the medical bills that he should skip it. He didn’t listen. He wound up in prison. He was a previous felon.

It may not be related but the idea that I’m thinking of here is that this society has a huge number of felons. The system is dependent on maintaining a huge number of them. The economy may be going south, but prison construction roars like a bull.

The current immigration issue sadly brings to light that both parties will promise all kinds of action and will deliver absolutely nothing. Fencing and policing the border, if it were possible, would obstruct “legitimate” trade to the point of causing massive economic harm. The other proposal to make poor people pay thousands of dollars in fines to stay here indentures them and reminds one of sharecropping Jim Crow shackles on their already low resource existence.

I joked 10 years ago that the GOP platform was:

1. pro life (we don’t want poor babies to die before we can put them in private jails)

2. Pro guns ( not all the poor will gladly go to the corporate prisons)

3. Pro death (when those felons are no longer useful to the private prisons then the society needs to execute them.)

This “joke” is becoming reality: private prisons, private mercenaries ( called American contractors), easier and easier ways to go prison.

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I wrote this in my journal over a year ago.I’m definitely against private prisons.

Today I have more hope that progress will prevail.