Increase of Private Prisons Afer the Cold War

During the first term of the Clinton administration the number of people in prison first reached one million. In 1990 comparatively the number incarcerated in state and federal prisons was about 750,000. A report by the Bureau of Justice and a statistician said surprisingly that the rise wasn't because of longer prison sentences, it was for increased violence by white and drug use increase by blacks. One could consider the new technologies of cell phones and proliferation of automobiles as common infrastructure for new organized crime as well as the surge of Latino criminal gangs tied in to the over-the-border underworld. People learned to make their own meth in field cookeries all over the country also helping support non-rational criminal outbreaks.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/08/us/in-90-s-prison-building-by-states-and-us-government-surged.html

The report goes on to say that most prisons were under court orders to limit over-crowding in prisons. After the cold war the United States tried to cut back on federal spending that had increased during the Reagan administration. Few in Congress were willing to spend to build more Federal prisons when the public debt was already trillions and trillions (it is now about 20 trillion dollars)

After the end of the cold war increasing the number of government workers in publicly financed prison wasn't popular as it would require increased taxation. This essay isn't the place to examine the public economics issues, yet privatization was more popular than increasing government bureaucracy during the 1990s right until the present day. It goes without saying that government, legislative and Executive management of the federal budget is never good. Philosophically speaking, politicians are quite unenlightened regarding economic philosophy and rely upon truisms and stereotype postures inspired by Ayn Rand or Karl Marx as the case may be.
The Clinton administration brought about the beginning of a covert-overt moral decay following atheism, evolution theory and moral relativism that brought youth toward maturity in an 'anything goes' social environment. The lessons of Dewey and Nietzsche were taken up by the broadcast media. In Sacramento not only did Rush Limbaugh start in broadcasting, at least one radio station played with calling itself radio Satan. There were numerous mass school shootings in the U.S.; previously mostly unheard of. Drug use around the nation was rampant. The baby boomers raised their kids to be a me generation. Tens of millions of illegal aliens were still surging into the U.S.A. during the late 80s and 90s. Globalism and a failure of patriotism, unconcern for the advantages and responsibilities of being an U.S. citizen were more tributaries to a river of anomie called by one scholar 'the age of fracture'. Minorities and rap culture occasionally regarded prison as a home away from home eschewing shoelaces outside the walls because they are forbidden inside the walls. Drug use and sales were regarded as ways for upward economic mobility, especially as good jobs were sent out of the nation and the Wall Street rich concentrated national wealth and served as examples of the philosophy of personal egoism ethically. Christian moral influence declined nationally for a number of reasons.
Private prisons or prisons for profit seem to fit in more with the political outlook of the nation today. They need not necessarily be bad or set up to just make a profit by increasing in-flow and cutting costs. If the judiciary and legislature require certain good contractual or empirical parameters for prisons to earn government contracts then they shall find a way to accomplish and cohere to those parameters. Private prisons can be in effect experimental corrections facilities more readily than a government establishment anyway. A new prison costs tens of millions just to build much less staff and in has a hard time changing its physical infrastructure once built. Private prisons alternatively can close with no cost to the public. The private sector can produce buildings at lower cost and satisfy well-written government contracts, with those able to win perhaps already possessing the right assets for the contracts before bidding. Private prisons may today have grave faults, yet that is more the fault of the government for not designing good theoretical corrections facilities that the private prison corporation must follow if it wants to have a contract.
One obvious parameter concerns correction and recidivism rates. Government can require low recidivism rates for private corrections contractors for renewal of contract.

The growth of iprisoners in private prisons both state and federal has begun a slow decline from its high around 2013 when approximately 135,000 people were held. The crime rate too has decline a bit since then.http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/11/u-s-private-prison-population-has-declined-in-recent...

Retributive Punishment in the Evolution of History

Retributive justice is condign punishment for crimes. Every era has some sort of governing theory of punishment-or several, that are applied. If people use their honest best theory in the era, it may be difficult to find fault with it. If obvious injustice in punishment or correction occurs such that people know it is wrong, then it is wrong. Plainly a continuing quest for improvement in corrections and response to criminal activity is in the best interest of society ( more of a utilitarian concern though).

Secular laws according to various theories of retributive or utilitarian punishment were formed to control non-conformists to legal parameters of social behavior. Some regard them as heartless and so retributive forms are morphed by reformers increasingly into empirical social contracts for progenitors of acceptable sin training for convicts to train them to support secular political powers. That is, they haven’t been designed by those with the laws of God written upon their hearts and minds. They have hearts of stone instead of flesh and minds that are not born of the spirit. I support a more modern synthetic approach to corrections for crimes than retribution. Simple retributive justice may be ineffective except in time of war or civil disorder when summary execution may be required for survival. There are too many people shot out of the canon of life that are incapable of understanding why they are in jail instead of at Harvard. Correction can inform them why, whereas retribution probably won't.

The roles of punishment are to prevent, deter, correct and/or cause suffering to perpetrators of crimes. Durkheim, besides writing the first study of suicide, regarded crime as having some positive value; largely that it supported social change. Yet not all social change is good, some is bad. If for example there were cannibals in Wisconsin that wanted to eat their neighbors , that would not be a positive social change for the good though it would be criminal. Criminal activity rather than reason and social advise and consent to change laws serves revolutionary ends regarding the established governing powers. It is consistent with fascist methods to get what is wanted.

When some laws are unjust or appear so to large numbers of people, that enfilades the nature of social power and control by the ruling sovereign power. Not all people were in agreement with those within ruling power in virtually every nation in the history of man.

In democracy people theoretically try to improve justice and the efficiency of government so that it may function well yet not impinge the personal rights of individuals. Different forms of government may have different theories of punishment, such as execution for anti-state activity.

Retributive theories of punishment originate with payment in kind for criminal offenses; Lex talionis. Because it is impossible to have perfect justice with perfect witness, flawless evaluation of the motive for the offense with mind-reading of perps and victims, there are implicit dangers in the principle of eye for an eye retribution.

The video on Lex Talionis related that it actually provided a measure response to crime that was fair and balanced more or less, rather than excessive.

One can imagine sentencing someone to a lifetime of torture for some minor offense in youth as an example of disproportionate retributive punishment. Yet there were moderate position in disproportionate punishment to that were cognizant of kinship relationship and the need to quell violence.

One made read Tacitus’ Germania for examples of Euro-justice in the1st century a.d.

quote from Germania-“Punishments. Administration of Justice. In their councils an accusation may be preferred or a capital crime prosecuted. Penalties are distinguished according to the offense. Traitors and deserters are hanged on trees; the coward, the unwarlike, the man stained with abominable vices, is plunged into the mire of the morass with a hurdle put over him. This distinction in punishment means that crime, they think, ought, in being punished, to be exposed, while infamy ought to be buried out of sight- Lighter offenses, too, have penalties proportioned to them; he who is convicted, is fined in a certain number of horses or of cattle. Half of the fine is paid to the king or to the state, half to the person whose wrongs are avenged and to his relatives. In these same councils they also elect the chief magistrates, who administer law in the cantons and the towns. Each of these has a hundred associates chosen from the people, who support him with their advice and influence.”

At any rate it is worth noting that much of western common law came not from the ancient Middle East or Greece but from Germania and Britain and their traditions of common law such as the Salic Law of King Clovis in the 6^th century. Primogeniture shaped many levels of European society unto the late middle ages and beyond.

Quote concerning wounds from the Salic law… “Title XVII. Concerning Wounds.

1. If any one have wished to kill another person, and the blow have missed, he on whom it was proved shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

2. If any person have wished to strike another with a poisoned arrow, and the arrow have glanced aside, and it shall be proved on him; he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

3. If any person strike another on the head so that the brain appears, and the three bones which lie above the brain shall project, he shall be sentenced to 1200 denars, which make 30 shillings.

4. But if it shall have been between the ribs or in the stomach, so that the wound appears and reaches to the entrails, he shall be sentenced to 1200 denars-which make 30 shillings-besides five shillings for the physician's pay.

5. If any one shall have struck a man so that blood falls to the floor, and it be proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 600 denars, which make 15 shillings.

6. But if a freeman strike a freeman with his fist so that blood does not flow, he shall be sentenced for each blow-up to 3 blows-to 120 denars, which make 3 shillings.

Title XVIII. Concerning him who, before the King, accuses an innocent Man.

If any one, before the king, accuse an innocent man who is absent, he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.”

Plainly Clovis and people of his day regarded monetary punishment significantly. In light of later material in the course concerning for-profit prisons, that money element is important since there were probably many that could not pay. One would need to do historical research to determine what happened to those without money that were convicted. Plainly the advantage for satisfying legal penalties for those convicted was with the aristocracy and nobles of means, rather than those without.

I wanted to write something about Dr. Knight’s video and comments about Genesis and Adam and Eve. There are numerous ways of shaping retributive justive and for thinking about the people deserving punishment or not, and if the punishment was or should be proportionate. Obviously when one does not comprehend what occurred it is difficult to form a kind of post hoc determination of a punishment being just, fair or whatever with any accuracy.

Dr, Knight’’s account of the fall from the Garden as “a tiny peccadillo” and just eating a fruit plainly was an interpretation of a man without faith in God. He regarded it as a small crime and the killing of Cain by Abel as a large one.

Adam and Eve in the Garden is one of the most interesting stories of the Bible. They incurred correction for the original sin of eating of the tree of knowledge. For those of actual faith in God that was a real fall from grace. The correction was addition of all the characteristics of becoming a biological being in a thermodynamic system with all of the drives inherent across the animal kingdom.

God was concerned that eating of the tree of knowledge had made the disobedient pair ‘as little gods’. He constrained their existence to the temporal Universe therefor before they could also eat of the tree of eternal life and become real problems. That criterion is quite different than the secular and even atheist paradigm that Dr. Knight put forward.

Dr. Knight also did not believe in the divine origin of the Decalogue. He did not regard it as being delivered unto Moses who prophesied essentially that a man of whom King David fit the role would dwell upon the writings day and night. Moses probably invented Hebrew writing and commissioned the writing of works that became the Pentateuch when assembled in the Court of Solomon or Rehoboam formally (and redacted latter).

Wouldn't Beijing Be Nuked Same TIme As Pyongyang if Things Escalate?

One wonders if the Chinese leaders are disciplined enough to not expand the war beyond the three capitals should a nuclear exchange transpire in the future. Beijing has not placed good enough sanctions on North Korea and probably hopes they vaporize D.C. so Beijing can be number one in world trade. Beijing and its nuclear threat of retaliation on the United States should D.C. choose to vaporize Pyongpang before it vaporizes Washington, makes it North Korea's real sponsor for nuclear terrorism on the United States from Paramount Dictator Kim Jong Un and his communist dong missiles.

China without Beijing might be a more peaceful, gentler place with better democracy. Evn in the most dark cloud, silver lining may emerge like shiny fortune cookie.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-hits-back-at-trump-criticism-over-n-korea/ar-AApasTU?li=BBnba9K

Should Joe Lieberman Be WH Commo Director?

With the removal of White House communications director Scarmucci from his job after ten days the White House needs to find a secure, reliable and capable individual to olay that role. Maybe Jeff Goldblum or Joe Lieberman could fit the bill.

Personally I believe that someone like former Alaska Republican senate candidate Joe Miller (lost to Lisa Murkowski in 2010) who is a former federal judge, Yale law graduate and University of Alaska-Fairbanks M.A. in economics with a silver star from Desert Storm when he was an Army officer, could serve reasonably well.

There is always reliable billionaire Ophrah WInfree,Charley Gibson or Juan WIlliams to ask if the White House feels it is in trouble.

Longest Lasting Plays in NFL History (15 seconds)

Murkowskicare; Next Dysfunctional Health Plan Up?

Senators Murkowski, Collins and McCain seemed to have fated the U.S.A. to have some sort of Obamacare light ahead. Senator Murkowski at least has some few thousands of people that use the Obamacare exchanges (maybe 23,000) and the expanded Medicare coverage. Yet Obamacare should be entirely scrapped (repealed) and replaced with a tripled V.A. hospital system that covers all vets and poor civilians too (maybe 40 million people) with direct, free medical services without using insurance at all.

Shouldn't all government medical care be abolished to avoid communism? Government workers should then be free to buy their own from private insurers. If government is to provide medical support to the public shouldn't it be the poor that are first covered? What if F.D.R. had designed social security to benefit people from the top-down but realistically excluded the poorest of the poor?

That can never happen id Murkowski care forces a cheap Obamacare into law leaving no one satisfied. Murkowskicare would bloat the nation’s budget and still not cover the millions of the very poor that fall through the cracks because they aren’t sedentary enough to remain on just one state bureaucratic surveillance-ministry of control screens.

Obamacare was designed to enrich corporations and provide cheap stuff for working women and homosexuals in addition to the middle class that have exhausted insurance benefits.

Deciding what those people should pay for and how they should collectively negotiate with insurance corporations should be an issue entirely separate from hat of covering the most poor and veterans with free walk-in service without documentation besides a valid state ID card and federal tax record of poverty the year or three before.

Lisa Murkowski votes Democrat on most of the controversial issues, yet support oil development too. Her interest is in satisfying cross over voters and cross dressers too, rather than any sort of concern about the fate of the national budget or the very poor of the U.S.A.

Germans Against New Russian Sanctions; Fallout from U.S. Decision

Polls show that the majority of Germans; the EU leadership in effect, are against the new U.S. sanctions forced by congress upon Russia. They were an unnecessary and belligerent step toward resurrecting the cold war.

https://www.rt.com/news/397955-majority-germans-against-russia-sanctions/

Most people want good Russia-Trump relations rather than bad. The Democrat party requires a foreign villain however, and Russia is the choice. That probably works well for Democrat party leadership in the Harvard Business School Alumni network too. They wanted to pick over the carcass of the old Soviet Union like it was a thanksgiving turkey, and there are still plenty of sandwiches remaining.

For the United States the sanctions will have the consequence of drawing Europe and Russia closer together. The tectonic plates of the two regions will slide over one another and raise a new Alps (only joking here). Russian and European economies can work together along with China to leave the US. as a rather daft 3^rd party and outsider unable to actually have an independent, non-fossil fuel based energy infrastructure and economics, gasping for breath, desirous of new Russian rockets to take them to the moon.

Seriously though, the sanctions should be ended rather than increased. The U.S.A. will be the loser as it builds new problems over-there.