OK, so you're eating dinner or watching game shows, but sooner or later you will come here and read all about Howard being first!

A Nation Incarcerated: The American Gaol Crisis

by Charles Lemos, Sun Feb 07, 2010 at 03:49:46 PM EST

The British game show Quite Interesting hosted by the comedic actor Stephen Fry tackles the subject of the American gaol (the Oxford Dictionary spelling of jail) population. As always, the erudite QI uncovers some statistical gems demonstrating how insane our criminal justice policy is.

• The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world with nearly one percent of the US population behind bars. One in ninety-nine adults are behind bars. No society in history has imprisoned more of its citizens than the United States.


• There are more black 17 year olds in prison than in college.


• As a percentage of the population, we imprison more than twice as much as South Africa. Our rate of incarceration is more than three times higher than Iran's and more than six times higher than China's.


• As Stephen Fry notes, prisons are a big business going as far as suggesting that we have re-invented the slave trade.  Perhaps, that's a bit much but it's also hard to ignore that prisons are a big business in the United States. While it is illegal to import manufactured goods made by forced prison labor, it's not illegal to produce them domestically. 

• FPI, who manufactures under the trade name UNICOR, manufactures products such as office furniture, clothing, beds and linens, electronics equipment, and eyewear. It also offers services including data entry, bulk mailing, laundry services, recycling, and refurbishing of vehicle components. Twenty-one percent of US manufactured office furniture is produced by prison labor.


• Minimum estimate of annual value of prison and jail industrial output exceeded $2 billion dollars in 2006 with FPI accounting for over a quarter of that amount. In 2009, FPI reported sales of $885 million. The minimum wage paid at a UNICOR plants is $0.23 an hour. By way of comparison, the minimum wage paid in Haiti is $0.30 an hour while the average hourly earnings of a non-prisoner U.S. worker making office furniture: $13.04.


• Nevada pays its prison work force $0.13 an hour. Georgia and Texas do not pay a wage at all.

Here are some other disturbing facts:

• The United States has just over four percent of the world's population, but over twenty-five percent of the world's prison population.


• The People's Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million inmates, while having four times the population, thus having only about 18% of the US incarceration rate.

Paul Ryan is an idiot, but I enthusiastically endorse his proposed tax policy reform plan, wherein he recommends two tax brackets with only a standard deduction, except for a dopey health care tax credit.  Here is a segment from A Roadmap for America's Future

In contrast to the six tax rates in the current code, the simplified tax has just two rates: 10 percent on adjusted gross income up to $100,000 for joint filers, and $50,000 for single filers; and 25 percent on taxable income above these amounts.  These tax brackets are adjusted each year by a cost-of-living adjustment as measure in increases in the consumer price index. Taxable income equals gross earnings minus a standard deduction and personal exemption.

Under this proposal, all citizens participate and have a vested interest in how taxes are spent, including on public welfare, infrastructure and health care spending plans.  No one skips out on taxes through dodges, shelters, and deduction schemes.  Revenue certainty is enhanced. 

can you spot them?

Geopolitics

Facing up to China

Making room for a new superpower should not be confused with giving way to it

Feb 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

FOR six decades now, Taiwan has been where the simmering distrust between China and America most risks boiling over. [...]

A swing [...] seesaw

Two dangers arise from this loss of Western self-confidence. One is of trying to placate China. The delay in Mr Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama in order to smooth his visit to China[...], as well as turning an issue of principle into a bargaining chip. America needs to stand firmer. Beefing up the deterrent capacity of Taiwan, which China continues to threaten with hundreds of missiles, is in the interests of peace. [...]

On the other hand the West should not be panicked into unnecessary confrontation. Rather than ganging up on China in an effort to “contain” it, the West would do better to get China to [...]

It is in the economic field that perhaps the biggest danger lies. Already the Obama administration has shown itself too ready to resort to trade sanctions [...] That is why the administration and China’s government need to work together to pre-empt trouble.

Some see confrontation as inevitable when a rising power elbows its way to the top table. But America and China are not just rivals for global influence, they are also mutually dependent economies with everything to gain from co-operation. Nobody will prosper if disagreements become conflicts.

Dfa's control of Puddleriver's Blogforamerica:

Johny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues

http://hypem.com/#/track/1011764/Johny+Cash+-+Folsom+Prison+Blues

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals -

White Rabbit

I must be past five by now.

Each of you can make a difference in helping to pass HR 4601 - The National Nurse Act of 2010. Please call or write to your elected Representative this week.

You can do this very easily by visiting the Take Action link http://nationalnurse.org/takeAction.shtml on the National Nurse website. Although this page is undergoing some necessary maintenance with bill information related to HR 4601 to be added in the coming weeks, there is still helpful information to help you to be successful with contacting your Representative. Please urge your elected member of Congress to sign on as a co-sponsor to HR 4601. The more calls, letters, and emails the elected officials receive from their own constituents, the more likely they are to join the list of co-sponsors to HR 4601.

Fvk no!