Nydia Ywalmoriel
05-26-2009, 05:44 PM
Hey all :)
There's been a lot of hysteria going on in the last week about housing the Guantanamo Bay detainees while their court cases are being resolved (I expect, or at least hope for the sake of our Constitution, that that whole 'indefinite detention' thing isn't going to work out so well for Obama). While our brave brave Congressmen are standing up and pissing their pants in terror at the thought of bringing suspected terrorists into the country to reside with brain-eating mass murderers:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=228017&title=Guantanamo-Baywatch (long, but watch through to the bit showing the prisoner after you read the rest of this)
and with everything having been proposed from SuperMax prisons surrounded with moats armed with shark-catapulting launchers and lasers:
http://hunter.dailykos.com/
to having Jack Bauer and Wolverine deal with our terrorist threats (thanks Malse for this one):
http://vagabondscholar.blogspot.com/2009/05/anti-terrorist-fantasy-dream-team-on.html
there's a Recession-related angle to this story that's been overlooked, namely: The collapse of the prison bubble.
For the last two decades, incarceration has been one of the few guaranteed growth industries in this country, and counties and small towns like the one down the road from me here in Dilley have been pinning their hopes on cashing in on those detention contracts and dollars, Alas, like the automotive, textiles, housing, and credit and banking industries before them, the prison industry has fallen on hard times as their bubble has burst, and towns like this one in southeastern Montana have found that just because you build your Bunker of Dreams, it doesn't necessarily mean they will come:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/26/montana.gitmo.west/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
For the click-averse, this town of 3,400 in southeastern MT put themselves in hock to the tune of 27 million in bonds to build a prison which has, to date, had no customers - the forlorn jumpsuits and magnetic locks sit unused. The city council *wants* to volunteer the prison to house the Guantanamo inmates, but both of the proud, manly, western state of Montana's senators are undergoing seizures and pissing their pants at the idea.
Given the state of our economy, and that we basically have *no* industry left, and one of the few things we do (ahem) well is incarcerate people, you think this would be a no brainer. Heck, we should contract out to incarcerate other countries' prisoners... if only we weren't spending 30,000 taxpayer dollars per prisoner per year for those jobs ;)...
I apologize for the length and meandering nature of this post, but upon reading this article, I don't know which struck me as more pathetic about the state of the country we live in - that a town would pin all its hopes on a prison, putting themselves hopelessly in hock to do so *and that this was a reasonable decision given economic realities*, or the mind-blowing hypocracy at our Congress acting like the Guantenamo prisoners, most of whom are there for no more at this point than the fact that we can't safely release them someplace, have plans for nuclear weapons stashed up their asses (and have for seven years ;) ) and bringing them into the country would unleash the Apocalypse.
Can't the Senators, you know, think of the children? The 'economic stimulus' this would provide? And think how many little prison-cottage-industry towns we could save if only we could scrape up some more terrorists...
Regards,
Nydia
There's been a lot of hysteria going on in the last week about housing the Guantanamo Bay detainees while their court cases are being resolved (I expect, or at least hope for the sake of our Constitution, that that whole 'indefinite detention' thing isn't going to work out so well for Obama). While our brave brave Congressmen are standing up and pissing their pants in terror at the thought of bringing suspected terrorists into the country to reside with brain-eating mass murderers:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=228017&title=Guantanamo-Baywatch (long, but watch through to the bit showing the prisoner after you read the rest of this)
and with everything having been proposed from SuperMax prisons surrounded with moats armed with shark-catapulting launchers and lasers:
http://hunter.dailykos.com/
to having Jack Bauer and Wolverine deal with our terrorist threats (thanks Malse for this one):
http://vagabondscholar.blogspot.com/2009/05/anti-terrorist-fantasy-dream-team-on.html
there's a Recession-related angle to this story that's been overlooked, namely: The collapse of the prison bubble.
For the last two decades, incarceration has been one of the few guaranteed growth industries in this country, and counties and small towns like the one down the road from me here in Dilley have been pinning their hopes on cashing in on those detention contracts and dollars, Alas, like the automotive, textiles, housing, and credit and banking industries before them, the prison industry has fallen on hard times as their bubble has burst, and towns like this one in southeastern Montana have found that just because you build your Bunker of Dreams, it doesn't necessarily mean they will come:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/26/montana.gitmo.west/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
For the click-averse, this town of 3,400 in southeastern MT put themselves in hock to the tune of 27 million in bonds to build a prison which has, to date, had no customers - the forlorn jumpsuits and magnetic locks sit unused. The city council *wants* to volunteer the prison to house the Guantanamo inmates, but both of the proud, manly, western state of Montana's senators are undergoing seizures and pissing their pants at the idea.
Given the state of our economy, and that we basically have *no* industry left, and one of the few things we do (ahem) well is incarcerate people, you think this would be a no brainer. Heck, we should contract out to incarcerate other countries' prisoners... if only we weren't spending 30,000 taxpayer dollars per prisoner per year for those jobs ;)...
I apologize for the length and meandering nature of this post, but upon reading this article, I don't know which struck me as more pathetic about the state of the country we live in - that a town would pin all its hopes on a prison, putting themselves hopelessly in hock to do so *and that this was a reasonable decision given economic realities*, or the mind-blowing hypocracy at our Congress acting like the Guantenamo prisoners, most of whom are there for no more at this point than the fact that we can't safely release them someplace, have plans for nuclear weapons stashed up their asses (and have for seven years ;) ) and bringing them into the country would unleash the Apocalypse.
Can't the Senators, you know, think of the children? The 'economic stimulus' this would provide? And think how many little prison-cottage-industry towns we could save if only we could scrape up some more terrorists...
Regards,
Nydia