Goldman Sachs' Outrageous Scheme to Profit Off Jailed Young Offenders


In 2012, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced [3] that New York City would be the site of a new experiment very dear to his billionaire’s heart. He declared that Wall Street megabank Goldman Sachs would provide a loan of nearly $10 million to pay for a program intended to reduce the rate at which adolescent men incarcerated at Rikers Island reoffend after their release (currently almost half reoffended within a year). The city government was short of money, so Goldman Sachs would step in to do what anemic public investment could not accomplish on its own: keep young men out of jail.

If the program succeeded, the giant bank would profit. The more recidivism dropped, the more taxpayers would have to pay Goldman Sachs. On the other hand, if recidivism didn’t drop significantly, Goldman would lose its investment.

So far, it’s too early to tell whether or not the program, which focuses on cognitive behavioral therapy, will meet its goals, but according to reports [4] from the Department of Corrections, fighting has already been reduced at Rikers, so Goldman may just cash in.

The Rikers experiment is an example of a new trend in what are called “social impact bonds.” Burning questions about who profits and who loses in these schemes have become the subject of debate asl the trend catches hold. Let’s explore.

Wisconsin Club for Growth's allegations that prosecutors in the John Doe campaign finance probe have engaged in politically-motivated "selective prosecution" don't stand up to even limited scrutiny. On February 10, Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCFG) and its director Eric O'Keefe filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the John Doe probe as a violation of the First and Fourteenth amendments, and alleging that John Doe prosecutors have "singled out Plaintiffs as targets for investigation, ... while others similarly situated were not targeted."

John Doe prosecutors are reportedly pursuing a theory of illegal electoral coordination during Wisconsin's 2011 and 2012 recall elections between candidates such as the Walker campaign and "independent" groups like WCFG, which spent $9.1 million on election ads during the recalls and funneled millions more to other politically-involved groups.

WCFG devotes seven pages of its federal complaint to what it calls "materially identical" conduct by Democrats or liberal groups, which it claims shows that WCFG and other "targets of the investigation were selected based on political views and associations." Yet a review of the alleged acts of impropriety demonstrates that WCFG is grasping at straws. Many of the alleged acts of impropriety did not violate Wisconsin law. Others were investigated and dismissed. Others lacked any documentation.

...

The "selective prosecution" allegations -- along with WCFG's lengthy rewrite of Wisconsin history -- are part of an effort to show that the investigation is being conducted in bad faith, as partisan retaliation for WCFG exercising its "free speech" rights. Such a showing is necessary to convince a federal court to take the extraordinary step of interfering with a state investigation.

President Obama just went to Flanders Field in Belgium to pay homage to those who lost their lives in World War I. But rather than use the occasion to point out the idiotic hideousness of that war, he whitewashed it, praising “the profound sacrifice they made so that we might stand here today.” He saluted their “willingness to fight, and die, for the freedom that we enjoy as their heirs.”

But this was not a war for freedom. It was a triumph of nationalism, pitting one nation’s vanity against another. It was a war between empires for the spoils. Historian Allen Ruff, who is studying the causes and effects of World War I, was not impressed with Obama’s speech. “With Both NATO and the European Union headquartered in Brussels,” Ruff says, “it would have been a true homage to the dead buried in Belgium a hundred years ago if Obama spoke out against all major power imperial ambition, the true cause of so much slaughter then and since, rather than mouthing some trite euphemisms about the honor of dying for ‘freedom.’ ”

But Obama insisted on repeating the very propaganda that fed that war. Without irony, he quoted the poem from John McRae that was used to encourage soldiers to sign up and civilians to pay for war bonds. Here’s the verse that Obama cited:

“To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”

Yet there was delivering that “old lie” with “high zest,” and the obscenity of it should not escape us, even 100 years on. For the soldiers Obama praised did not die for “freedom,” but for something much more base. They died for the same reason U.S. soldiers died in the Iraq War. As Howard Zinn noted, ten years ago, “They died for the greed of the oil cartels, for the expansion of the American empire, for the political ambitions of the President. They died to cover up the theft of the nation’s wealth to pay for the machines of death.”

Georgia Men's Basketball Has Policies Against Orgies And Gangbangs

The Student Press Law Center published the students' findings from various colleges around the country. The majority of the available guidelines are mundane, like sternly reminding athletes not to screw around on social media—we already know people are hired to monitor that stuff—but the most interesting set of rules belonged to the Georgia Bulldogs men's basketball team, led by head coach Mark Fox. The section delves into what not to do in terms of sex.

To be clear, the section titled "Treat women with respect" mostly contains responsible, obvious advice, but some of it is weirdly detailed:

-No means no, date rape is a serious issue.

-You don't own your girlfriend.

-Stay out of gray areas, Orgies and gang bangs are inappropriate.

-Never assault or intimidate a woman.

-Birth control is your responsibility too

-Don't spend all your energy in the bed all night

-Hicky's/passion marks should not be ever noticed by coaches

-One. Not two or three girlfriends...

Ugh, Dad. It's called a hickey. (Also, college students still get hickeys?)

WASHINGTON — The White House and congressional Democrats are preparing to step up attacks on Republicans over pocketbook issues like the minimum wage in the most aggressive and coordinated move yet to try to reverse the Republican momentum that threatens their control of the Senate in the final two years of the Obama presidency.

The effort is set to begin within the next two weeks in the Senate when Democrats will call a vote on their proposal to increase the minimum wage to $10.10, and it will continue through spring and summer with additional legislation to eliminate the pay gap between men and women, lower interest rates on college loans and close tax loopholes that benefit corporations with business overseas.

The votes will be timed to coincide with campaign-style trips by President Obama, with the first planned around the time of the minimum-wage vote. The proposals have little chance of passing. But Democrats concede that making new laws is not really the point. Rather, they are trying to force Republicans to vote against them.

...

“These are poll-tested political messages that they want to put on the floor to get Republicans on the record voting against seniors and children and every other group you can think of,” said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the head of the Republicans’ policy arm. “It’s noise.” Where Democrats hope voters will see a Republican Party that favors the privileged at the expense of the middle class, Republicans want voters instead to see a Democratic Party that has put the country’s prosperity at risk through government overreach and bad policy.