Let me tell you a story...

[stillcool]

It all started with this article....

To some in Paris, sinister past is back
In Texas, a white teenager burns down her family's home and receives probation. A black one shoves
a hall monitor and gets 7 years in prison. The state NAACP calls it 'a signal to black folks.'
By Howard Witt
Tribune senior correspondent
Published March 12, 2007
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There was the 19-year-old white man, convicted last July of criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck, who was sentenced in Paris to probation and required to send an annual Christmas card to the victims' family.

There are the Paris public schools, which are under investigation by the U.S. Education Department after repeated complaints that administrators discipline black students more frequently, and more harshly, than white students.

And then there is the case that most troubles Cherry and leaders of the Texas NAACP, involving a 14-year-old black freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, who shoved a hall monitor at Paris High School in a dispute over entering the building before the school day had officially begun.The youth had no prior arrest record, and the hall monitor--a 58-year-old teacher's aide--was not seriously injured. But Shaquanda was tried in March 2006 in the town's juvenile court, convicted of "assault on a public servant" and sentenced by Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville to prison for up to 7 years, until she turns 21.
Just three months earlier, Superville sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, to probation.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703120170mar12,1,1921178.story?coll=chi-
newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

then I saw this...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/us/28youth.html?ex=1179720000&en=e9d1750f3b906e9b&ei=5070
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: February 28, 2007
Texan Calls for Takeover of State’s Juvenile Schools
AUSTIN, Tex., Feb. 27 — A long-simmering scandal over sexual abuse of juveniles at schools for youthful offenders broke into the open on Tuesday with an outraged state senator calling for a takeover of the troubled Texas Youth Commission.
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Senators questioned Mr. Nichols about the transfer in 2003 of one supervisor, Ray Brookins, to the West Texas State School from another school for juvenile offenders at San Saba, after pornography had been found on his computer. Mr. Brookins later became assistant superintendent at Pyote and was cited by the Texas Rangers for sexual contact with juveniles there, senators said.Another supervisor at Pyote, John Paul Hernandez, was also reported by the Texas Rangers to have engaged in sexual contact with students, senators said.

Both supervisors left the youth agency and are under investigation, said the Ward County district attorney, Randall Reynolds.
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Mr. Hernandez became principal at a charter school in Midland, the Richard Milburn
Academy, said Norman Hall, the school’s superintendent. The school did not know of Mr. Hernandez’s history when it hired him, Mr. Hall said, and put him on leave several weeks ago.
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The superintendent at Pyote, Chip Harrison, who knew of the accusations against Mr. Brookins and Mr. Hernandez and kept them on the staff, senators said, is now director of juvenile corrections for the commission, in charge of several schools.
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Mr. Nichols called him “one of our most experienced superintendents,” setting off a gasp from parents.
Stacie Semrad contributed reporting.

first thought: Thank God I didn't grow up in Texas. second thought: WTF? Doesn't incarcerating people cost money? And...wouldn't that kind of be a, as bush would say.. 'a last resort'? Curiously I continued on.....

In 1985 one out of every 320 Americans were in jail.
In 1995 one out of every 167 Americans were in jail.
Between1980 and 1994, the number of people in federal and state prisons increased 221%.
Today, 2 million Americans are in prison.
1.2 million are African-American men.
While there is debate over their underlying causes, these staggering statistics are generally thought to result from rigid drug laws, mandatory minimum sentences and increasingly tough
legislation— such as California’s "three strikes" law. One fact remains undisputed: prisons have become big business.
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Big name corporations compete with each other to underwrite prison construction with private, tax-exempt bonds and without voter approval. More and more states across the country are implementing mandatory labor for inmates, necessitating partnerships with outside industry.
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Prison Partners
In the tiny town of Lockhart, Texas a private prison run by Wakenhut (a for-profit private corporation) does business with a company called LTI. In this partnership the prisoners assemble circuit boards bound for hi-tech corporations. For LTI, moving manufacturing to the Lockhart prison was a no-brainer. There they found a captive workforce that did not require benefits or vacation pay, major tax incentives and a brand new assembly plant rented for only a symbolic fee. As a result, LTI’s plant in Austin, Texas was shut down and 150 people lost their jobs. In Michigan, through a similar arrangement, the majority of Brill Manufacturing Company’s workforce lost their jobs to state prison inmates.
http://www.itvs.org/shift/prison.html

Captive Labor
America's Prisoner's As Corporate Workforce
By Gordon Lafer The American Prospect, 1 September 1999
http://www.postcarbon.org/node/2244
When most of us think of convicts at work, we picture them banging out license plates or digging ditches. Those images, however, are now far too limited to encompass the great range of jobs that America's prison workforce is performing. If you book a flight on TWA, you'll likely be talking to a prisoner at a California correctional facility that the airline uses for its reservations service. Microsoft has used Washington State prisoners to pack and ship Windows software. AT&T has used prisoners for telemarketing; Honda, for manufacturing parts; and even Toys "R" Us, for cleaning and stocking shelves for the next day's customers.
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But the attractions of prison labor extend well beyond low wages. The prison labor system does away with statutory protections that progressives and unions have fought so hard to achieve over the last 100 years. Companies that use prison labor create islands of time in which, in terms of labor relations at least, it's still the late nineteenth century. Prison employers pay no health insurance, no unemployment insurance, no payroll or Social Security taxes, no workers' compensation, no vacation time, sick leave, or overtime. In fact, to the extent that prisoners have "benefits" like health insurance, the state picks up the tab. Prison workers can be hired, fired, or reassigned at will. Not only do they have no right to organize or strike; they also have no means of filing a grievance or voicing any kind of complaint whatsoever. They have no right to circulate an employee petition or newsletter, no right to call a meeting, and no access to the press. Prison labor is the ultimate flexible and disciplined workforce.
All of these conditions apply when the state administers the prison. But the prospect of such windfall profits from prison labor has also fueled a boom in the private prison industry. Such respected money managers as Allstate, Merrill Lynch, and Shearson Lehman have all invested in private prisons. As with other privatized public services, companies that operate private prisons aim to make money by operating corrections facilities for less than what the state pays them. If they can also contract prisoners out to private enterprises—forcing inmates to work either for nothing or for a very small fraction of their "wages" and pocketing the remainder of those "wages" as corporate profit—they can open up a second revenue stream. That would make private prisons into both public service contractors and the highest-margin temp agencies in the nation.
http://www.postcarbon.org/node/2244

The Prison Industrial Complex in America: Investment in Slavery
by Venerable Kobutsu Malone, Osho
The United States Constitution Permits Prison Slavery and Involuntary Servitude
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The secure housing, minimal support, minimal medical care and feeding of 2.2 million people is a costly endeavor consuming billions and billions of dollars of taxpayer's money every year in America. Corporations are lined up to receive a portion of the public funds used to support the self-perpetuating incarceration industry. States such as California spend more public funds, tax dollars, your money, my money, on prisons than for education and schools
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The largest network of prison labor is run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons' manufacturing consortium, UNICOR. While paying inmate laborers entry-level wages of 23 cents an hour, UNICOR boasts of gross annual sales (primarily to the Department of Defense) of $250 million.
The correctional-industrial complex therefore relies on a sobering "joint venture" directly relating profits to increased incarceration rates for four kinds of "partners," only the first of whom are those seeking opportunities in prison construction. A second kind of partner stocks these prisons with stun guns, pepper spray, surveillance equipment, and other "disciplinary technology," corporations such as Adtech, American Detention Services, the Correctional Corporation of America and Space Master Enterprises. A third partner finds a state-guaranteed mass of consumers for food and other services in the prisoners themselves, such as Campbell's Soup and Szabo Correctional Services. The fourth partner can be any private industry or state-sponsored program that stands to gain from paying wages that only nominally distinguish captive forced labor from slavery. In this last category, an example of the former is Prison Blues and of the latter is UNICOR which uses prisoners to produce advanced military weaponary
http://www.engaged-zen.org/articles/Kobutsu-Investing_in_Slavery.html

Key financials for Federal Prison Industries, Inc.
Company Type Government Agency
Fiscal Year-End September
2005 Sales (mil.) $833.6
1-Year Sales Growth (5.2%)
2005 Net Income (mil.) $64.5
1-Year Net Income Growth 1.4%
2005 Employees 19,720
1-Year Employee Growth 2.0%

CEO Harley G. Lappin
COO Steve Schwalb
Controller Bruce Long
HARLEY G. LAPPIN
DIRECTOR
FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS
Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons on April 4, 2003. He is a career public administrator in the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the seventh Director of the Bureau since its establishment in 1930. He is responsible for the oversight and management of the Bureau’s 114 institutions and for the safety and security of the more than 193,500 inmates under the agency’s jurisdiction.
http://www.unicor.gov/

Pursuant to Federal statute, FPI's Board of Directors is composed of six members representing industry, labor, agriculture, retailers and consumers, the Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General. The board consists of a wide variety of accomplished individuals each of whom have been appointed by this President and serve without compensation.
http://www.unicor.gov/about/members_meetings/board_members/
David D. Spears, Chairman(Represents Agriculture) Director of Kansas Farm Bureau-Agriculture Solutions. Former Commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Donald R. Elliott, Vice Chairman(Represents Industry)
Eaton Corporation's Fluid Power Group.
http://www.co.lancaster.pa.us/cao/cwp/view.asp?a=3&q=561998&caoNav=|
Audrey J. Roberts, (Represents Manufacturing)/b]Former President (retired) Martin Mfg. Co., Inc. Consultant for Gov't. Contractors and sales for Roberge Sales,Omega & Harodite Finishing.
just for fun...check out this link:http://www.sprucemtsurplus.com/canvasgoods4.html
Premium Genuine Issue U. S. Military Surplus. Including, United States ...Mfg by General Clothing Co, Inc in 1990. ... Mfg by Martin Mfg Co.
Phillip J. Bell(Represents the Secretary of Defense)The Honorable Phillip J. Bell was appointed Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Logistics and Material Readiness on August 2, 2005. Previously, Bell served as Deputy Under Secretary of the Army at the Department of Defense. He previously served as Chief of Staff for the Afghanistan Reconstruction Group at the Department of State.
Diane K. Morales, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Logistics and Materiel Readiness.
Diane K. Morales of Texas to be the Defense Representative
Morales has more than 20 years of experience in business and defense matters. Most recently, she was president of DMS, a management services firm that focuses on defense and commercial logistics. Her previous government positions included serving as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Logistics, 1990-93; board member, Civil Aeronautics Board, 1983; and deputy assistant secretary for Policy at the Department of Interior, 1981-83
In the private sector, Morales was president of Morales Consulting Services; vice president for government affairs at the Earth Technology Corp.; marketing services manager of 3D/International Inc.; and account executive at the advertising and public relations firm of Goodwin, Dannenbaum, Littman & Wingfield Inc.
http://www.defenselink.mil/Releases/Release.aspx?ReleaseID=2982
Frank Gale(Represents Labor)
National Sergeant-At-Arms, Fraternal Order of Police
http://www.fop.net/about/board/eboard/index.shtml
Kenneth Rocks of Pennsylvania to be the Labor Representative
Kenneth R. Rocks, Sergeant-at-Arms for the Grand Lodge Executive Board, Fraternal Order of Police.
Lee Lofthus(Represents the Attorney General)
Assistant Attorney General for Administration

http://www.energy.gov/
Senior Energy Officials
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/femp/about/seo.html

The Services Business Group has a full range of services to meet your labor needs. Our goal is to be the #1 source for services to Federal Government, federal contractors, and commercial firms.http://www.unicor.gov/services/
Fleet Management & Vehicular Components

Federal Prison Industries provides a full array of customized fleet modernization programs ranging from tactical vehicle & vehicular components remanufacturing (RESET), commercial vehicle upfitting and de-retrofitting to web-based fleet asset services for fleets ranging from fifty to thousands of vehicles.FPI has been a premium provider of fleet management and vehicular components remanufacturing services to the federal government since 1997. It has a unique understanding of the federal environment working closely with Armed Services, Defense Department and Homeland Defense agencies and broad experience across DoD and civilian agency fleets.
http://www.unicor.gov/fleet/
The Industrial Products Business Group provides a diverse product offering.
http://www.unicor.gov/industrial_products/
The Office Furniture Business Group offers a full range of office furniture options,from reception areas to executive suites.http://www.unicor.gov/office_furniture/
UNICOR's unique, full service recycling program is an integrated part of a national e-scrap solution. UNICOR's commitment to the environment extends to its vendors, who are required to sign no-landfill certifications, follow a restrictive export policy, and agree to site inspections.
http://www.unicor.gov/recycling/
The Clothing and Textiles Business Group provides a wide assortment of products from a variety of materials. These include products for medical, military apparel, law enforcement, and lodging needs.http://www.unicor.gov/clothing_textiles/
UNICOR/FPI Electronics Group
UNICOR/FPI's nationwide network of factories are fully equipped and staffed to manufacture electronics and electrical products for the most demanding military, federal agency and commercial uses
http://www.unicor.gov/electronics/