By Tom Gomez

Until 2004, Colorado State prisoners were paid $2 a day for our labor, roughly $40 a month. Since that time the Colorado State Legislature, in an attempt to reduce the cost of incarceration while it enacted more laws to lock up more people, for more time, reduced the amount paid to prisoners to $0.62 a day, roughly $13 a month. While the change has made prison conditions harsher, it has done nothing to reduce the spiraling cost of incarceration in Colorado. Despite the change the Department of Corrections budget has grown every year since. Colorado now spends more on prisons than it does on higher education, and there is no end in sight. Last year the DOC population grew by another 2% despite a falling crime rate. At a cost of $30,000 a year for each prisoner it houses DOC is not likely to be able to significantly reduce, or even offset, the high cost of incarceration by such methods as raising the cost of phone time or cutting back on food. Instead state university students and their parents will pay the bill, by absorbing another 9% increase in tuition next year. It will be paid by cuts in services to seniors, by public education, and by the improvised children of the men and women doing time here.

State legislatures across the country have built prisons while cutting funding for education and public health for 30 years now. In the name of cutting the cost of ‘big government’ and getting ‘tough on crime’ they have made prisons harsher, more crowded and dangerous, but not cheaper. Led by ‘tough prosecutors’ who view not only crime, but poverty itself as a moral failing they have given us a nation of tent cities that stretch from sea to shining sea bursting with the nation’s three-million homeless people, and interstates from coast to coast dotted with razor ribbon and guard towers. In many American cities more than half of all public school students will not graduate high school.

Springs to move on the homeless
The sky was blue and the grasses yellow ocher, the willows had started turning red. I had just finished remembering the pack of wolves,dogs and cats in my past at the Colorado Springs Humane Society pet graveyard. I was headed off at a tangent from the visible tents of the homeless camp along the banks of the flood control canal.

The fences were knocked down separating the highway from the waste ground.
Waste ground is what is left of the great commons that was the American West. Waste ground land too moist to develop too far from sewer and water hook ups. Too noisy from the near traffic unseen due to the engineering of large slabs of concrete.

The weather being cold meant there was minimal snake exposure and no insects in February. Also there were no birds. That might be because of the condos up the hill built on the the mining wastes of the gold mill Superfund site. This ground must be some of the most contaminated in the United States. Of course the homeless are there, where else would the politicians put homeless families? I proceed along the on ramp invisible to the traffic above. As I approach the intersection there is a whole bunch of fecal matter human or large dog or small bear.
I stopped near the camp to make notes when a young Black man starts screaming at me. There is ditch between us so I am able to withdraw not wanting to get the absolutely toxic water on myself or another human.

These people are homeless for a reason, anger issues must play a role in their young man's reaction to passers bye.

Cartoon for Cannabis Health News Magazine: http://cannabishealthnewsmagazine.com

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Funk the War 9: Bad Romance

Student power against Obama's recession empire

Obama's got us singing like Lady Gaga, “I want your love and all your lover's revenge.” Thousands of anti-war youth fell in love with Obama and dropped everything to build his campaign. He seduced us with promises of hope and change from Bush's abuses, all the while refusing to give up his lust for the War on Terror.

We've been together a while now and Obama keeps expanding the War on Terror in the Middle East and Central Asia. He's taking advantage of record youth unemployment and skyrocketing college costs to drag young people into a war we've got nothing to gain from. More soldiers trapped in the War on Terror are committing suicide than ever before. Obama, “Baby, you're sick.”

March 19th is the 7th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq and the occupation's going strong. It's time to Funk the War, light the bed on fire, and break free from this bad romance.

“Walk, walk, fashion baby, work it!” DC SDS is calling for a massive student power dance party against empire to disrupt the corporate-political war machine in streets of the capital city. We refuse to let another year of war in Iraq and war on our youth pass by without resistance. Join us in the streets and help build an unstoppable student & youth anti-war movement in 2010.

by Tom Gomez

The holiday season is an unhappy season for many prisoners who are far from home and family. For me, and no doubt many others here who have neither, it is a time for reflection, a time to take stock of ourselves and resolve to make changes in our lives. That is even more true for at least some of those here who have children of their own, children who are waiting on the outside for their parent to get out.

To be sure, that's not everyone here, some prisoners glorify lives of crime and violence, addiction and alcoholism, at least to me. I doubt they do the same on the phone with their 7-year old, or an aging parent they might not see again when they get out. No one dreams of being a convict when they grow up.

So if people don't like prison, why do so many convicts come back over and over again? In Colorado, 70% of paroled convicts return to prison, 27% with new criminal charges. Roughly 50% of those to be released from prison return on a new criminal case. Finishing parole, or 'killing your number' makes it no less likely that you'll be back. So why is it that while 1 in 136 people in our society is in prison, despite the US having the highest rate of incarceration per capita in the world, people here in prison just can't seem to get out and stay out?

Many legislators feel that the problem is that convicts are genetically inferior to the wider population. Backed up by an army of psychologists and social workers, they find the offender to be biologically different from themselves and talk about treating the offender's 'anti-social personality disorder', about the 'disease model of addiction'. They seldom, if ever, talk about poverty.

Ciudadanía paraguaya atónita ante nombramiento de ex terrorista como director de Itaipú.

La decisión del cura Fernando Lugo de nombrar director de Itaipú a un ex terrorista que intentó asaltar a su propia madre en la década de 1970, sigue conmocionando a la sociedad paraguaya y avivando la ya desatada tormenta política en el principal partido que lo sostiene, el Liberal.

A propósito, estos apuntes aparecidos en La Nación:

http://www.lanacion.com.py/notic...
 

TROY DAVIS & MUMIA ABU ~JAMAL ~ ARE HAVING PRAYERS FOR JUSTICE SAID FOR THEM WORLD~WIDE ..WE CAN ALL ONLY HOPE AND PRAY THAT EVERYONE IN OUR U.S.CONGRESS THAT KNOWS AND UNDERSTANDS HOW UNJUST OUR U.S JUDICIAL SYSTEM CAN BE WITH OUR POORER AMERICANS,BECOMES ACTIVE IN MAKING SURE THAT TROY DAVIS OF GEORGIA AND MUMIA ABU~JAMAL OF PENNSYLVANIA RECEIVE FAIR AND JUST TRIALS BEFORE ANY POSSIBLE FUTURE EXECUTIONS TAKE PLACE.

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THE NATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE COMMISSION ACT OF 2009

The National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009 that I introduced in the Senate on March 26, 2009 will create a blue-ribbon commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom. I believe that it is time to bring together the best minds in America to confer, report, and make concrete recommendations about how we can reform the process. This legislation has already garnered wide bipartisan support in Congress and from interest groups representing a range of backgrounds and political viewpoints.

Why We Urgently Need this Legislation:

With 5% of the world's population, our country now houses 25% of the world's reported prisoners.
Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1200% since 1980.
Four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals.
Approximately 1 million gang members reside in the U.S., many of them foreign-based; and Mexican cartels operate in 230+ communities across the country.
Post-incarceration re-entry programs are haphazard and often nonexistent, undermining public safety and making it extremely difficult for ex-offenders to become full, contributing members of society.