Author: Aino Terran

Building a Strong Foundation

I was looking to verify something else, when I stumbled upon this link:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/secede.asp

It is important to remember, in political discourse, that we all have a right to voice our opinion even if that opinion is unpopular, or even a little fringe.

As with the petitions that this link talks about however, it is also important to remember that while 100,000 people may seem like a lot of people (the largest number of signatures any of the petitions got was a little over 100,000), they still represent less than 1% of the population of any of the states involved.

The secessionists have a right to speak, but the rest of us need to remember that we as a nation are still relatively unified and should continue to be as we move forward as a nation.

We need to put aside all the petty bickering, and look at the real issues. We need to ignore the media for a few days and look at what is going on in our cities and towns and neighborhoods.

We need to get together as neighbors and move forward to repair our nation’s economy and to create strong communities, regardless of political affiliations.

The community, especially the neighborhood, and even more closely our households and families, are the most basic unit of society. If you look around, you will see that most likely your neighbor has the same wants, needs, and worries as you do. This is true even if you are a Democrat and he or she is a Republican (or some other combination of politician ideologies). At the community level we can work together to make our neighborhoods healthier and stronger.

By building up our communities and making them cleaner, safer, and more self-sufficient, we are creating a solid foundation. After all, communities are the building blocks of larger communities. They are the building blocks of a nation. If the foundation is more firm, then the nation will be stronger.

The first step is to address how you look at your neighbor. Do not look at them and think they are White, or Black, or Asian, or Arab. Do not look at them and think they are Catholic, or Muslim, or Baptist, or Atheist, or Jew. Do not look at them and think they are wealthy or poor. Look at them and think “They are my neighbor, my brother, my sister, a part of my community.”

Really, truly, everything else flows from this one little change. This one little detail in the way that you look at the world is the basis for everything else that needs to be done to repair the world that we live in.
From there, start a dialogue. It may not be easy at first, but be patient. The first step is just to communicate. Talk. Discuss whatever you want. This may sound pointless, but it is not. It helps to establish a consistent language between you and them.

We live in a world that has been divided consistently by the media and by the people who run the political parties. This division has lasted long enough that two people who follow two different political ideologies quite likely speak two different languages that sound so similar that when they collide it is explosive. Two people can use the exact same words and mean two totally different things. This is part of the healing process. This is part of the damage that must be undone.

As you continue to communicate, look to the community and see what is needed. Are the streets dirty? Are the street lights damaged? Is anyone in your neighborhood going to bed hungry at night? Is there anyone that does not have a bed? Even if they have no house, they are still a part of the community and should be lifted up and cared for.

As a member of the community, you will know better than any bureaucrat what the needs of your community are. And what you don’t know, others will. Dialogue will still be important at this point. It will still be important all along, and for the rest of eternity. Never let the dialogue end. It is what strengthens the bond of the community and makes it an extended family.

If there are people who are hungry, then decide how to help them. Are there the resources to feed them? Are there any empty lots that could be made into gardens? Depending on the time of year, and the annual weather patterns, a community garden can go a long way towards eliminating hunger. If you eliminate hunger, and homelessness, then you effectively eliminate poverty. Those are the two things that will hold an individual back the most. If you must fight to survive, then you have little energy for other things. If you have food and comfort, then you can survive most other things.

If the street lights are broken, then they can be repaired. If the city refuses to repair them, then the people must. There is a group in Detroit that is doing just that. They are not only repairing the streetlights, they are upgrading them to run on solar power.

If the streets are dirty, then the people can work together to clean them.

Every little bit helps. Every hour that you spend improving your neighborhood and improving your community is an investment in the future. Every bond of friendship that you make, regardless of differences in ideology, is an investment in the future of Humanity as a whole. Every garden you plant is an investment in food security. Every house you build or repair is an improvement in someone’s life.

Our world has some problems. Our nation has some problems. We all know this. We can work together though to help each other and to make our own little individual parts of the world better.

No contribution is too small. If you are afraid that you lack what it takes to start, then you must put those ideas aside. Every last one of us should do what we can, even if we do not see immediate results. If we stand together, and move together, then others will slowly start to follow.

Now is the time for people to stand up, and stand together, and take control of the future of their communities. Don’t ask your neighbor “Are you a Republican,” or “Are you a Democrat,” or “Are you a Christian,” or “Are you a Buddhist.” Ask only “Do you want to make this community better?”

When it comes to ideologies and beliefs, that is the only question worth asking, and the only one that makes a difference. We are all human. We all know what it means to make our community better. When we stop looking at the horse and pony show that is national politics, and start looking at our home, we all see the same thing.

Protect the Investors? Really?

I keep hearing about how the banks have not been held accountable and they are still profiting madly (and maddeningly) from the bailouts and the fact that they are still being propped up by tax payer money now.

Add to this the fact that the same guys who were in charge then are still in charge now. Not only that, but many of them got record bonuses that year because on paper they made record profits… Because of the bailouts.

Now, I tend to agree with most people this far. It sucks that this happened. The bankers involved should be jailed, not given bonuses. This is where it gets a bit messed up, and where many in the mainstream media seem to get confused. I am going to use words that may sound very capitalistic for a few moments, but it is unavoidable since we are talking about banks.

The people in the media, who quite often are relatively intelligent people so I won’t call them idiots, actually feel sorry for and want to protect the investors while finding a way to punish the bankers. They WANT the banks to be held financially liable for what they did, but they DON’T want to hold the investors accountable.

What the fuck do they think investing means? The investors, the shareholders specifically, OWN the banks. It is THEIR investment. The guys that the bleeding heart types want to hold entirely accountable (and they should be held to account. I am not saying they should not), are employees of the bank, and not owners.

Yes, those with fiduciary/fiscal responsibilities and authority should be held accountable when they fuck up. That does not mean however that their bosses should be given expensive parachutes and a padded drop zone to escape the results of allowing the whole thing to crash.

Do we want to protect the economy? Yes.

Do we want to protect the depositors? Yes.

Do we want to protect the people directly responsible, and the ones who hired them to do it? Hell no.

Thousands of small business ventures get started and die every year because someone messed up somewhere along the way.

Thousands of long standing businesses collapse and close up shop every year, because of market pressures or because someone just screwed up.

Millions of people lose their jobs when this happens.

What do they get in the way of protection? Well, if they had their paperwork in order they can file it as a loss on their income taxes. That is it. Nothing else. They can file bankruptcy if they figure out what is going on in time. Beyond that, they and their investors are pretty much screwed.

When the crash came, we (the tax payers) bailed the banks out. THAT was our token gesture to the investors. How do they repay us? They gave record bonuses to the idiots that did it. This is called complicity. This is called approval of behavior. That action effectively absolved me of any pity I might have for them when it came to the issue of who to hold accountable.

If the banks are too big to fail, then one of two things needs to happen. Either they need to divide them up majorly, or they need to take them over. Nationalize the suckers and keep them nationalized until such a time as they can once again be able to operate without being “too big to fail.”

Yes, that means using tax payer dollars to insure the deposits… But we already do that, and the depositors are not at fault.

I will make one caveat to my above comments, and that is this: The first banks to nationalize should be the reserve banks… With no provision to ever privatize them again. Their role in our economy is too important to allow them to follow the same sort of stupid behaviors that banks are expected to make. On top of that, it would bring our current currency more in line with the guidelines provided by the constitution. Our government is supposed to generate money, not privatized banks.

When You Say “Support Our Troops,” Think About What That Actually Means

General rule of thumbs:

If you are not prepared for people to voice their opinion, avoid making controversial posts.

If you have comments to make about the troops, and you have troops on your friends list, assume that they are likely to see those comments. Assume that there are going to be times that they cannot hold their tongue.

And when you make comments about the troops, remember that they do not all think the same. Even if what you are saying is something that is agreed upon by about half the troops (that is a higher percentage than you can actually expect for us to agree on anything), the flip side of that is that about half don’t agree.

Supporting the Troops does not automatically mean supporting the regime that is sending them to die.

Supporting the troops does not mean buying into every bit of ra ra Jingoistic propaganda that you see.

It sure as hell doesn’t mean blowing the troops off when their opinions don’t match the image that you have in mind of how they should think and act and feel.

I hold my tongue on a lot. I hold my tongue on most things. There are limits however beyond which I have a moral obligation as a member of the United States Armed Services, as a Citizen of the United States of America, and as a plain old Human being to speak up and say something.

If I see posts that are purely religious in nature, I am generally going to ignore them. It is your right to hold whatever religious beliefs you want. I am not going to judge that.

I ignore a lot of posts that are just plain dumb, or misinformed unless it is something I can actually be of help on in some way.

I generally try to avoid offending people whenever I can.

However, when I see posts talking about the constitution, about people’s rights, about what a person thinks it means to support our troops, those are kind of things I have to speak up on if I disagree. They are things that are very personal to me, and quite often have a direct impact on me and my way of life.

When people say “Support our Troops,” I am one of those troops.

When people say “The troops fought and died for your right to do such and such,” we also generally fight and die for your right not to do it as well.

When people speak about freedom of religion, and how something is trampling their rights, Freedom of Religion is Freedom to practice ANY religion, not just yours.

When someone says that preventing them from trampling someone else’s rights is taking away their rights… There is a world for that, and it is plain old bullshit.

I am opinionated about certain things, but as a general rule they are things that I am very passionate about for one reason or another. When it comes to issues of what our troops fight and die for, that one is about as personal as you can get.

The Amazing Great Ape

The idea of evolution seems to scare some people.

For some, it is as if they believe that accepting evolution is to abandon their faith.

For others, it is as if they feel that if they accept that they are categorized as apes, that they will suddenly no longer be able to control their behavior, that they will somehow become more animalistic.

It is as if they believe that somehow, if Human kind is a mere animal, then that makes him less special. That makes his position in the world less prominent.

To me, the idea that a single species could manage at the same time to evolve the ability to stand upright, opposable thumbs and fingers, and the ability to reason at the level that we do all at once is… Well, it is miraculous. It is amazing. It is a thing which is rare and beautiful in the universe.

Our closest cousins in the animal kingdom have opposable thumbs, and the ability to stand upright for a time, but they do not reason at the same level that we do. I mean, sure they can puzzle through simple tasks and even use tools, but they are primitive and their communication skills and social boundaries do not allow them to come anywhere near close to what we have achieved.

Our closest peers, on an intellectual and emotional level, possess the ability to reason as we do. Their societies are much like ours were in the Stone Age. They can talk amongst themselves. They can plan things between families. They can even use tools. They can even communicate with us once a common medium has been decided upon. They however do not have opposable thumbs (or any fingers/claws at all for that matter), and they cannot walk upright.

All of the creatures I have mentioned so far are mammals. Perhaps the next most intelligent creature however, because they themselves are not mammals, even though they can communicate amongst themselves, reason somewhat well, and use and create tools, and even though they have ways to bypass the need for opposable thumbs… Well, we see them as a tasty snack. Sorry guys.

My point is, even if we are animals we are still Humans. Even if Humans are apes, we are still the most elevated among the Great Apes. We have still built civilization. We are still capable of communicating with each other at great distances. We are still capable of reaching out to our fellow creatures and elevating some of them as well. We are still very much the masters of our world and our destiny.

Even if we are animals…
Even if we did evolve from some primordial muck over the course of millions of years…
We are amazing.

What is more amazing? The idea that some creature got lonely and decided to create friends, or the idea that we amongst all the millions upon millions of possible species that ever existed, we among all of those things that fly in the air, and walk on the land, and swim in the sea, that we were the ones to stand up and walk forward proudly into the darkness of night and on into the glorious dawn of the new morning and eventually to the stars?

I think that is pretty fucking brilliant personally.

I think that if the single most amazing thing on the face of the planet is going to shake your faith, then maybe you need to rethink things a bit.

We are Freaking Out Over Nonsense

So… I see a trend, and it is not just on the right.

People are picking up on “scandals” and “outrages” that are being fed to them by their respective “wings” of the media.

People are getting all worked up on little things that are at most slights, and offenses.

People are freaking out over things that are flat out not true and have been debunked a thousand times over, because their favorite pundit is still pushing the issue.

You know what else is happening as a result?

It is a heck of a lot easier for the media to conveniently overlook some pretty heinous stuff. It is a heck of a lot easier for the media to run horse and pony shows while the real news is overlooked, ignored, or worst yet, flat out changed.

Stephen Colbert has a slogan for his show: “When news breaks, we fix it.” There is a reason for this. He is a satirist, and that is how he sees the real “news” media most of the time.

If we are taking the horse and pony show, and seeing it as real news; If we are accepting all the little nit picking details as controversy; then it is a hell of a lot easier for the media outlets to feed us the party line. It is a lot easier for them to make out normal people as criminals and heroes as villains.

We have wars going on that are not legal under international law. These wars are only called wars when it is convenient, such as when they want to invoke the espionage act.

We have secret laws: you know the thing that once sent famous politicians into a frenzy because they were introduced in other countries. These secret laws are being used to clamp down on first, fourth, and fifth amendments.

We have journalists under investigation by the FBI and CIA for… Yeah, journalism. Peaceful activists are on FBI watch lists, and potential whistle blowers dare not speak up without fleeing the country first (or at least preparing to do so).

Let me ask you this: What is a bigger issue, protecting your already existing right to say “Merry Christmas” that no one is trying to take away, or the fact that pretty much all of our online communications and the meta-data on all of our phone calls is being stored away in a massive database out in the desert? Now, which one have you heard more about on the news?

A Gnawing Thought

There is something that has been gnawing at me for at least a week now. I realize that it is a matter of paradigm, but it has still gotten me thinking.

I read and watch a lot of anime/manga that would be considered drama I suppose. Even the television shows I choose to watch on a regular basis have drama elements. A common theme in these sorts of stories is relationships and interactions between people.

Something that is not uncommon in these stories and even in discussions with people in the real world is to hear them discuss previous relationships by saying “I felt so strongly about them before, but now I can barely remember their face,” or words with similar meaning.

It has gotten me thinking. This seems to be a common thing in society. It even shows strongly in the phrase “There are many fish in the sea,” a common statement of advise to people who have gone through a recent breakup.

To be blunt, I don’t understand this. It is unfathomable to me. It is an aspect of the human mind that bewilders me. I don’t understand it, it confuses me, and I find it a little sad. The reason I said above that it is a matter of paradigm is because I literally don’t have the experiences to relate.

I remember every person I ever fell in love with, even when it was unrequited. I remember their names. I remember their faces. I remember the day we met, and the day we said goodbye for the last time. It is as if these things were etched onto my soul as a record for all eternity.

I remember the people who touched me in that way, so the idea of someone simply forgetting a person that they were in a relationship with or that they once felt that they loved is alien to me.

The idea that a human being could forget these things brings tears to my eyes. People who were in my life for the briefest of moments are etched eternally on my soul, yet there are people who forget the face of those that they actively had relationships with.

I would like to think that this is a lie that people tell themselves: a coping mechanism. However, it seems so prevalent in our culture that I am not so sure.

Perhaps there is some difference in the way that I approach human interaction. Perhaps my mind assigns higher value to these things than some others. I don’t know.

I know that there really isn’t a lot of point to this post, but it is something that I have been thinking about quite a bit. If anyone has any comments or input, feel free to comment.

Persecution?

Ok…
News flash…

Just because some talking head tells you that the guys in charge are being persecuted, just because they believe that some prophesy said that would be the proof that you were doing things right, doesn’t make it so.

If you belong to the group that makes up 76% of the country’s population, and 88% of the US Congress, and likely an even larger percentage of the law making bodies over all in the states… Odds are you are not being persecuted.

In the day and age of persecution that was discussed in the bible, Christians were a smaller percentage of the world population than the Jews are now. They were new, they were strange, they were more vocal than any monotheistic group that the government had dealt with up to that time.

You want to know how you can tell if you are being persecuted:

  • Have you been denied or lost a job because you were Christian?
  • Have you ever felt that local law enforcement might gun you down because you are Christian?
  • Have you ever had to practice your faith in secret to avoid being jailed, executed, or tortured because you are a Christian?
  • Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with a brick through your window, or a random holy symbol burning on your front lawn because you are a Christian?
  • Have you ever been refused service in any establishment because you are a Christian?

These things do happen in modern America, but not to Christians.

I have seen these things happen to Pagans in the US, and I have heard of them happening lately to Muslims as well. These things do happen. These things are persecution.

Being asked not to teach your religion to other people’s children is not persecution. Would you like me to teach your children Buddhism, and tell them it is the only way to enlightenment? Telling you that it is wrong to bully our children is not persecution. Would you like me to tell your children that they are worthless and will burn in hell because they are different from me? It is not persecution to tell you not to pass laws based on your religion. The part of the Constitution that says not to do that is entirely about preventing the persecution of one group or the raising up of another.

I know these examples may seem like common sense to most people that will read my posts, but they are obviously news to others. After all, that is one of the biggest things I hear from the talking heads lately “Bullying is not wrong if it is based on firmly held beliefs, so anti-bullying laws are persecution!”

Screw that. You are free to practice your religion as long as it does not harm anyone else. It makes Christianity as a whole look bad when you get those few idiots who want to bully others in Christ’s name. No offense, but if the bible is the word of God, and Christ was the son of God/ultimate prophet, then there is a special place in Hell for people like that.

You can teach whatever you want in the church house. You can teach whatever you want at home. If you are running a parochial school (i.e. a Church run religious facility), then whatever you want to teach is fair game. After all, the parents made a conscious choice to send their children to you, and that choice was quite likely based on your teachings.

And guess what! If your group was being persecuted, that would not be possible. Yes, there are people who petition to have the accreditation of some religious schools revoked. However, the accrediting agencies generally already know what is being taught so that is not likely to happen. Furthermore those attempts are not based on your faith. They are based on the fact that there are schools teaching non-sense as science. That non-sense is harmful in the long term because it can affect your child’s future education possibilities. Still, those schools exist and are allowed to exist. In a lot of ways that in and of itself is the exact opposite of persecution. It is acceptance to the extent that society is effectively standing back while people teach their students things about physics and geology that just aren’t founded in any form of science. I suppose that at this point it is too late to voice an obvious bias towards Young Earth “theory”.

Does persecution exist in our country? Yes. You can bet it does.
Are some of the groups persecuted against Christian? Yes.

However, if you are a Christian, odds are you have never experienced true persecution unless you are a Mormon. There are parts of the country where Catholics are actively persecuted as well, but only by other Christians.

Support Our Troops, But Don’t Bash Dissenters

A lot of people post things in support of the troops. I am cool with that. I am all for supporting the troops.

Whenever this happens though, you will often get people who are pissed off about the wars, and about the government, and about the direction that things have gone. Believe it or not, I am cool with that too. I understand what they are getting at and where they are coming from.

What I am not cool with is that the response to these people is almost always a personal attack, with a liberal application of jingoistic slogans and references to 911.

People who get the most pissed off about our government’s military actions are generally not anti-troops. You don’t have to protect us from them. They are on our side too.

What may be a good idea though is to take a step back, and read what they posted and think about it. Google a bit. Ask questions. Don’t just jingoistically wave the flag and sing the praises of the troops while invoking the image of 911 as the answer to all the concerns you might have.

Yes, 911 happened. A lot of people died that day. That number though is dwarfed by the number of people killed in the decade since. That number is dwarfed by the number of men women and children who will never see another birthday, who will never see their families again. Most of them were only guilty of being in the country that our leaders decided to attack under the guise of tracking down a non-state entity.

By non-state entity I mean that we officially went to war against a group equivalent to the Mafia, only smaller and less well armed. We did not declare war on a specific country.

There are politicians that will still use the argument “They hate us because we are free!”

Guess what, they hate us because we bombed their neighbors. They hate us because we used words like “Crusade” and “Jihad” to describe a war not only on a group of people, but on the religion that group claims to follow. They hate us because having a Muslim sounding name is all that it takes in some places to get picked up off the streets and not see your family for four years… That is totally ignoring the fact that at the end of those four years you were dropped off in a random Middle Eastern country where you have no connections, have never been, and don’t even speak the language (That guy was Canadian, picked up in Canada at the request of our Government).

This is the sort of thing our government is doing in our name. They send our troops to faraway lands to cause massive damage and leave behind massive numbers of casualties, and they claim it is in the name of the “War on Terror.” The troops suffer. The local populations suffer. Their families suffer (both the troops and the locals). The military contractors make millions. And when all is said and done, they like us even less than they did before. Not only do they hate us more than they did before, but most of them don’t even know why we are there. When polls have been done, questioning people in Iraq and Afghanistan, over ninety percent had no clue what happened on 911. First word they got that anything was wrong involved an explosion in their back yard.

And of course, once the dust settles, and the end of hostilities officially arrives, it is only a matter of hours before the oil companies, and the mineral companies have boots on ground securing contracts.

Some thoughts on identity theft and social media

There are three pieces of personal identifiable information (PII) that most organizations, especially financial ones, use to prove who you are in over the phone and electronic transactions.

These are:
1) Your Name
2) Your Birth Date
3) Your Social Security Number

The three of these are considered so interconnected that if you have any two of them, you can find the third. Quite often this can be done through web based resources that you can find using Google.

Now, one of the most common things popping up on Facebook these days are “games” that even if they mean well, are ripe for abuse by criminals.

“What is your rock band name?”
“Who is on your Harry Potter Zombie Apocalypse Team”
“Who is your ”

I am sure you have seen them around. They all use a simple formula where the first person/thing/name is based on the month you were born, and the second is based on the day. From there, if you have EVER said ANYTHING online in any public place about your age, they know your date of birth. If you are on FaceBook, then there is a pretty good chance that you are using your real name.

From there they can use that information to track down all kinds of things about you.

This brings me to another point. NEVER EVER EVER set the contact/biographical data on your Social Media profiles to public. If you want your friends to be able to see it, and you are selective about who is on your friends list, then letting them see it is generally ok. This is especially true if everyone on your list is friends and family that you think have (or should have) the information anyway. Don’t put it out where everyone can see it though.

If you are using a social network that doesn’t give you the option of hiding data, then there are three safe options (depending on how it is set up).
1) Leave the information blank.
2) Lie
3) Use another website, and leave that one alone.

To be honest, if they don’t have a way to lock down data, and they make you provide something, you are probably better off going elsewhere anyway.

Remember: This is the information age. This is the age in which your online presence means almost as much as your physical presence. This is the age in which financial institutions depend on data points to act as “finger prints” to prove who you are. What you know is who you are. What someone else knows, can allow them to be you.

How many of us have called up our bank and said: “Hey, I am trying to set up a direct deposit, and I forgot my account number?” and then two minutes later, after a few security questions (name, ssn, date of birth) had that information?

You can generally get the banks routing number from their website, usually with only a few clicks.

With those bits of information you can set up a deposit. You can also set up a withdrawal.

How many of us have online checking? How many of us use our check/debit card for pretty much everything? I know I barely carry cash any more. The result is hundreds of transactions on my account every month ranging from five dollars; up to almost two grand (my rent is on an auto-withdrawal).

Would you notice if a random transaction showed up in the middle of that madness for say, twenty dollars? Especially if it was processed through some random payment platform that looked a lot like the name of a bank ATM.

Then, after a few of these without gaining attention, suddenly the same organization does a withdrawal of five hundred dollars, or even more. That one gets your attention, but at that point it can be really hard to fight. After all, it was authenticated with your PII. As far as the bank knew, it was you.

Modern American Slavery: The Prison Industrial Complex

The Private Prison Industry is one of America’s greatest shames. Corporations contract to the states to run prisons. They profit off of every person in their “care” and they generally have minimum occupancy agreements with the states that run as high as 90%.

This means that our governments are not only paying another entity to run our prisons at a profit, but they are promising to keep bodies in the beds. There is no way to make such a promise unless you are also promising (spoken or unspoken) to violate every constitutional principle a person can think of.

These corporations crow proudly that they are “Successfully” keeping their facilities full and that they are “successfully” increasing occupancy every year. Sorry, but by the very nature of a prison system, growth is a failure not a success. It only counts as a success if you are a share holder or a board member who is counting the inmates as units of money and not people.

The rise of the prison industry as a for-profit industry has caused massive damage to us as a society.

“We believe we have been successful in increasing the number of residents in our care and continue to pursue a number of initiatives intended to further increase our occupancy and revenue.” – CCA 2010 Annual Report

This quote basically says it all.

* Their lobbyists push to keep the war on drugs going.
* Their lobbyists push for policies like “Stop and Frisk.”
* Their lobbyists are entirely responsible for the various “Three Strikes” laws.
* Their lobbyists push the agenda to have more police in schools (as opposed to private security firms) resulting in police being involved in the disciplinary process of the schools. More children are in prison as a result.
* They actively push the agenda to increase the number of undocumented immigrants that are locked up while awaiting trial, even though it has been proven that most are otherwise law abiding and will show up for court dates on their own.
* The level of corruption in the courts has sky rocketed, as they work out back room deals with judges to pay them off for tweaking verdicts and sentencing in favor of the prison system.

This is just the beginning of the list. This doesn’t even begin to deal with the fact that in order to guarantee occupancy, someone’s rights have to be ignored.

People talk about potential dystopian futures. Screw that, we are already there. Human beings, American Citizens, are being treated as cattle, and bought and sold for the profit of corporations. I am not going to point fingers at one political party or the other. After all, the country changes hands between them every four to eight years. Even if that were not true, this took cooperation on the part of both political parties to make happen, and to get to the degraded, depraved state that it is in.

And then of course, there is the most recent addition to the whole fucked up mess. Leasing out prisoners to perform labor for corporations at nickels and dimes per hour. Yes, our nation is slowly but surely reinstating full out slavery. This is going on at the state level now, but the federal government has not stepped in to stop it.

And people wonder where the jobs are going.

Here is a link to a HuffPost article on the subject:
30 Ways the Prison Industry Gets Rich