"ARE THERE NO PRISONS...' ...Are there no workhouses?"

[CatWoman]

I watched this very interesting show on the History Channel yesterday -- dirty jobs during the Victorian era.

Seems workhouses were established to punish the poor for being poor.

Looks like Bush has been studying up on history.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. There were "poor farms" in the US

up until the Depression at least. No, they weren't pretty. I had a great grandfather who was duped out of his life savings. He wasn't healthy enough to go back to work, and so he committed suicide in a very messy way because he didn't want to go to the "poor farm". This was about 100 years ago. If Bush has his way, this kind of tragedy will be recreated here.

[CottonBear]

2. Next stop for the USA: poor farm and debtors prisons. n/t

[yurbud]

3. that was why Bush wanted Social Security reform...

the GOP misses being able to do what was done to your great grandfather.

[sui generis]

5. Bush won't get his way

the prison lobby is too invested in warehousing criminals, and if everyone has a job, prison attendance drops off. (kinda sorta sarcasm)

Anyway, the ACLU needs to spring into action yet again on this, as well as the NAACP and LULAC.

It is insane to think that turning someone into a government slave-for-food will do anything for their future or to "raise them up". A fundamental misunderstanding of the social mechanics and factors that perpetuate poverty, but what else would you expect from a D student and sociopath.

[MountainLaurel]

9. And into the 1950s in some areas

It was standard protocol for lower-class youths who got in trouble, or whose parents couldn't afford to raise them, to end up at the boys' farm (the rural version of juvie). Ironically, two of my criminal justice professors in undergrad had been involved in this system as children.

[CatWoman]

10. I think Steve McQueen was in one of them.

[MountainLaurel]

12. From his imdb bio

Although he was the highest paid star of the 1960s Steve McQueen had a reputation for being tightfisted. On some films he would demand 10 electric razors, and dozens of pairs of jeans. It was later found out he gave this stuff to Boys Republic, a private school and treatment community for troubled youngsters, where he spent a few years himself.

[CatWoman]

13. thanks, ML

[MountainLaurel]

14. De nada!

[wryter2000]

4. "And the treadmill and the poor law?"

We should start calling * Scrooge.

[newscott]

6. The current incarnation is called consumer debt

All hail the Credit Card company.

After all so many of us ar truly working for them.

[Extend a Hand]

7. looks like debtor's prisons are sneaking back already

http://www.lewrockwell.com/mcelroy/mcelroy31.html

http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/p/jph13/DebtorsPr...

[Hidden Stillness]

8. Let Us Wake Before We Die

I believe, as horrible as this current era is, that this is slowly shaping up to be the return of the true Democratic Party, on track and reminded of what it once knew. Dropping off the corporate connections (I hope) and the phony non-issues, invented by Republicans, we will demand--as the people, after all, not the official Party leadership, demanded Republicans get their filthy hands off Social Security--that the corporate lobbyists get out of Government, and return it to public service for our citizens. We are learning, after all, that Republicans are the same they were a hundred years ago, they would pay you nothing, slit your throat and leave you to die, if they could. With all their "framing" and "media relations," they never did change, and they are the same Gilded Age slum landlord who will kick you out and let you freeze to death, that they were during Dickens's time.

[CatWoman]

11. I sure hope so, Stillness

I sure hope so.

good post.