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In addition to torture and democracy, there is yet another place where the US can claim to be the world’s leader, and that is throwing people into prisons. America has only 4% of the world’s population, but has 25% of the world’s prisoners in jails, with more than one person in every 30 either in prison, on parole, probation, or in correctional supervision.[1]ICPR Launches 12th Edition Of The World Prison Population List
https://www.prisonstudies.org/news/icpr-launches-12t...n-list[2]World Prison Population List
https://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/re...12.pdf This means that about one person in three in the US has a criminal record. The US has more prison inmates than the leading 35 European countries combined and, with a little over 300 million people, has a larger absolute number of prisoners in jails than does China – which has 1,400 million people. The incarceration rate in China and the European nations is around 100, while the US is at almost 8 times this number. In fact, the US rate is higher than those countries listed by Amnesty International as having urgent human rights issues.
Even Hillary Clinton agrees:[3]Does the United States really have 5 percent of the world’s population and one quarter of the world’s prisoners?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/...oners/
”It’s a stark fact that the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population. The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40 years ago despite the fact that crime is at historic lows.” Hillary Clinton, speech on criminal justice at Columbia University, April 29, 2015
Privatisation of Prisons
From the late 1930s and 1940s when the convict leasing programs finally died, the US incarceration rate and numbers of prisoners remained low and fairly constant. Then during Reagan’s presidency from 1981 to 1989, “The Great Transformation”, the privatisation of public assets and infrastructure began in earnest, and the American prison system expanded rapidly, the incarceration rate multiplying by about 10 times and public budgets by about 20 times. This explosion in the prison population was not a response to increasing crime, but due entirely to changes in sentencing law and judicial policy that resulted from the surreptitiously-planned creation of a commercial system of legally-sanctioned slavery.
Some social analysts complain that this policy has continued despite evidence that it does not achieve public safety, but public safety was never the issue, and examining these statistics is a wild goose chase. Analysts examining the brief recent history of the US criminal justice system often focus on all the wrong things, looking for logical explanations and justification for the vastly increased incarceration rates. But those examinations are misguided because the analysts are missing the essential point which is that there was never any demonstrated need for the changes made to the public justice system. The changes were initiated entirely as a commercial proposition, all done as part of a huge conspiracy to milk the profits inherent in a privatised prison system.
The plain truth is that Reagan was approached, as were many Senators and Congressmen, with a plan to loot the public treasury for the benefit of a few invisible people. This was a conspiracy driven entirely by greed and racism, deliberately designed to criminalise color and profit from poverty, in no small part by reinstating the inhuman convict leasing system. It was a conspiracy to collect millions of the black, Latino and poor white, those possessing little education, no assets or employment prospects, seen as making no contribution to society, and to convert them into corporate “assets” worth $50,000 to $75,000 per year each to be drained from the public purse. The first step was the legislated creation of private prisons.
Judges, Politicians, and Other Criminals
In the majority of US states, judges are elected, as are many sheriffs, with their campaigns heavily supported and funded by the incarceration firms who have spent more than $50 million to lobby and bribe federal and state legislators who would support their agenda to permit privatised incarceration. These invisible owners of the prison companies then lobbied heavily for drastic changes in the criminal justice system for no reason other than to fill their soon-to-be obscenely profitable private prisons. These changes included the institution of mandatory minimum sentences for even misdemeanor offenses, and for an altered immigration policy permitting the arrest of anyone unable to prove legal US entry. They lobbied hard to ensure harsh criminal punishments for even trivial offenses and for the criminalisation of minor transgressions, especially minor soft drug offenses, which is why these same people have been so adamant about escalating the totally fictitious “war on drugs”.
Thanks to their efforts beginning in the 1980s, life sentences without parole have grown exponentially even for trivial crimes, in part because prosecutors will now file multiple charges for a single offense, considering for example each email sent by a criminal as a separate crime with its own mandatory sentence. Life sentences have been freely handed out for stealing a bicycle or a jacket. “This conspiracy was the force behind some States’ “three strikes and you’re out” laws, often leading to life sentences for victimless crimes involving only a few dollars.”[4]A LIVING DEATH: LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE FOR NONVIOLENT OFFENSES
https://www.aclu.org/report/living-death-life-withou...fenses[5]The ACLU’s report, A Living Death, chronicles the thousands of lives ruined and families destroyed by the modern phenomenon of sentencing people to die behind bars for non-violent offences.
In one case reported by the Guardian,[6]Over 3,000 US prisoners serving life without parole for non-violent crimes
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/13/us-pri...crimes a man took a jacket from a department store in New Orleans, and walked out without paying for it. He was convicted of shoplifting and sent to Angola prison in Louisiana. That was 16 years ago. Today he is still incarcerated in Angola, and will stay there for the rest of his natural life having been condemned to die in jail. All for the theft of a jacket, worth $159. “Until the early 1970s, life without parole sentences were virtually unknown. But they exploded as part of what the ACLU calls America’s “late-twentieth-century obsession with mass incarceration and extreme, inhumane penalties.” The report’s author Jennifer Turner states that today, the US is “virtually alone in its willingness to sentence non-violent offenders to die behind bars.”
Private Enterprise Prisons
These irrationally-enhanced penalties were all part of the vast plan by those few invisible people to create an enormous criminal class consisting of the black and the poor, and to profit hugely from the public treasury by controlling the incarceration and leasing of this new class of what are effectively indentured slaves. The new system is deeply racist, and is most of the cause behind the now common racial profiling of blacks and Latinos. The police are part of the process, the front line of soldiers who feed these new corporate assets into the private prison system. It is not accidental that about 80% of the US prison population consists of poor blacks and Latinos; these people have been selected as the inconsequential and disposable victims of this conspiracy for private profit. These are the same people, the same “surplus poor” who, a few centuries prior, were forcibly shipped as slaves from England to America, and the practice that virtually depopulated Ireland, and for the same reasons.
In some cases, these firms are hired to manage the state and federal prisons, receiving a ‘management fee’ of US$50,000 per prisoner whom they then “rent out” for another US$20,000 each. Many firms have contracts which guarantee payment for full occupancy, which means they are paid even if their jail cells are empty. Even more, the contracts demand that each day at least 35,000 immigrants without proper documentation (Mexicans and others) must be lodged in these private prisons.[7]For Private Prisons, Detaining Immigrants Is Big Business
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/us/prisons-immigr...n.html[8]How US Private Prisons Profit from Immigrant Detention
https://www.coha.org/how-us-private-prisons-profit-f...ntion/[9]The Role of Immigration in the Rise of U.S. Private Prisons
https://www.panoramas.pitt.edu/news-and-politics/rol...risons They reap even higher profits by under-feeding inmates and providing low-quality food, by hiring untrained staff, and by severe overcrowding to the extent that many jails do double and even triple bunking which means inmates sleep in shifts, sharing the same beds and rooms. These and many other provisions severely inflate the profits of the private prison system.
This is what is called a “public-private partnership” between the government and capitalists controlling the secret government. Democracy at its finest.[10]Private Prisons in the United States
https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/priva...tates/ Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is the largest in the private prison management industry with more than 50 percent of the market, and operates around 70 prisons.[11]Corrections Corporation of America
https://www.company-histories.com/Corrections-Corpor...y.html Their CEO received more than $22 million in compensation in only a few years, far more than any government civil service employee might have been paid.
As one author so clearly noted, “Even ignoring the terrible human and social costs of such a policy, US incarceration carries a huge financial cost, at more than US$80 billion per year. In America, spending on prisons has grown 1,500% since 1980, while spending on higher education has plummeted. California, with one of the highest incarceration rates and a private prison system, spends about $50,000 per inmate per year, but only $8,000 per student on higher education, spending in total about twice as much on incarcerating people as on educating them. Over the past 30 years, California has built one university and 20 prisons.” According to the Atlantic magazine, California now has the biggest prison system in the Western industrialized world, a system 40 percent bigger than the Federal Bureau of Prisons.[12]The Prison-Industrial Complex
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12...04669/ Politifact manage to muddle this very badly, by including extra campus buildings as separate “universities” while omitting many of the prisons.[13]Since 1965, California has built “six (college) campuses but 23 prisons.”
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/nov/09/de...times/ Others disagree.[14]Prison-Industrial Complex? Maybe It’s Time For A Schools-Industrial Complex
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/california-prisons-sc...839190
Bonnie Kerness, from a study of US prisons,[15]Bonnie Kerness, US prisons a human rights issue
http://realcostofprisons.org/writing/kerness_human_...ue.pdf wrote:
”People have said to me that the criminal justice system doesn’t work. I’ve come to believe that it works perfectly, just as slavery did, as a matter of economic and political policy. How is it that a 15-year-old in Newark who the country labels worthless to the economy, who has no hope of getting a job or affording college, can suddenly generate 20,000 to 30,000 dollars a year once trapped in the criminal justice system? The expansion of prisons, parole, probation, the court and police systems has resulted in an enormous bureaucracy … with one thing in common, a paycheck earned by keeping human beings in cages. The criminalization of poverty is a lucrative business, and we have replaced the social safety net with a dragnet. This whole new set of practices accepted by law enforcement was designed to continue to feed the money-generating prison system, which has neo-slavery at its core, sweeping up the poor and colored people.”
Her assessment is 100% correct, and it isn’t only the adult prisons but juvenile facilities as well that have succumbed to massive corruption, there having been recent court cases where judges had accepted huge sums of money from the incarceration firms to arbitrarily imprison thousands of minors in their institutions. The net result of this immense greed is that – according to the FBI’s own statistics – about 80 million people, or about one-third of all American adults now have a criminal record, for either arrest or conviction, or both. In the entire recorded history of the world, there is not today and there has never been any other authoritarian police state where a third of the entire population had been in prison. This is what Chris Hedges called “a grotesque manifestation of corporate capitalism”. Only in America, the birthplace of “freedom”.
Bad and Gone, but not Quite
“We have seen private prisons hit by scandal after scandal. For example, in 2016 the Walnut Grove correctional facility (run by the aforementioned MTC) was shut down after a federal judge disclosed that it “paints a picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world,” including rape of younger inmates by older prisoners and guards denying medical care to, and having sexual relationships with, prisoners.[16]The cold hard facts about America’s private prison system
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/the-cold-hard-facts-...system
A 2016 report by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said that privately operated federal facilities are less secure, less safe, and drastically more punitive than publicly operated federal prisons. Inmate on inmate assaults were almost 30 percent higher in private prisons.” Following this report, the Justice Department announced that it intended to end its contracts with private prison operators as it deemed the facilities to be both less safe and less effective. Later in 2016, when President Trump was elected, the stock prices of private prison companies CoreCivic and GEO soared. A year later, in 2017, the DOJ under Attorney General Jeff Sessions overturned the decision not to use private prisons. And in 2018, private prison companies donated $1.6 million in contributions to the midterm elections. “CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America), the largest operator of private prisons in the U.S. In fewer than 20 years, it’s seen its revenue increase by more than 500 percent, from roughly $280 million in 2000, to $1.77 billion in 2017.”[17]The cold hard facts about America’s private prison system
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/the-cold-hard-facts-...system
Police “gardening” – Planting Drugs
In a case that contains all the elements of official state corruption and under-the-table payments for the purpose of feeding the private prison system, a state chemist in Massachusetts was discovered to have falsified thousands of drug and other tests, almost certainly with the knowledge and participation of the prosecutors and the judges. The results have been catastrophic with judges claiming her falsified testimony may have unjustly imprisoned as many as 40,000 cases over the years.[18]Accused chemist in Massachusetts handled over 40,000 drug cases: investigator
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-massachusetts...130820 They have posed the concern that this fraudulent behavior may not at all have been limited to this one woman in one location, but may be endemic throughout the US criminal justice system. Thousands of falsely-convicted persons have already been set free, but it will likely be many years before this one case ends. One US journalist writing about this case stated that Americans would be fools to place any trust in the integrity of the American criminal justice system, and for this tragic condition we can blame the greed erupting from the tens of billions of dollars involved in the privatisation of the US prison system.
Another eerily similar case involves New York State Police and Texas police, among others in many locations who concocted their own private methods of earning bonuses by feeding the private prison system. In these cases, the police ground up pieces of gypsum wallboard (plaster), packed it in little bags, then stopped cars at random, conducted illegal searches, dropped their little bags of ground up plaster in the cars, and arrested the driver for illegal drug possession.[19]US officer ‘pulled random people over and planted meth inside their cars, causing them to lose their freedom, their children, their marriages’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/po...1.html[20]Ex-Florida deputy gets 12 years for planting drugs
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/florida-deputy-1...863551[21]Body cam video shows police officer planting drugs
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/body-cam-video-baltimor...drugs/[22]A Florida cop planted meth on random drivers, police say. One lost custody of his daughter.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/07/11/flo...andal/ According to reports, at least many hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent motorists were fraudulently convicted from this scheme until one “brave public defender” demanded the evidence be presented to the court and be tested for proof. The fraud was then exposed, and it was discovered that the courts and the public prosecutors had all participated in the conviction to receive their “bonuses” for high incarceration rates.
Kids for Cash
In 2008, there was a massive “kids for cash” scandal in Pennsylvania,[23]Kids for cash scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal[24]Pennsylvania Court Injustices: Kids for cash
https://pacourtinjustices.com/judicial-atrocities/th...-cash/ in which judges had accepted millions of dollars in return for an agreement to impose unduly harsh and unjustified sentences on juveniles brought before them, in order to inflate the number of profitable inmates in two privately-owned detention centers. Teenagers would be referred to this court for offenses as trivial as offending someone on Twitter, or “trespassing” in a vacant and abandoned building, and sentenced to long periods of incarceration. After an investigation ordered by the State Supreme Court, hundreds of convictions were overturned, but the damage had already been done.[25]The Kids for Cash Scandal in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania
https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-kids-for-cash-s...a.html[26]‘Kids For Cash’ Captures A Juvenile Justice Scandal From Two Sides
https://www.npr.org/2014/03/08/287286626/kids-for-ca...-sides[27]Pennsylvania rocked by ‘jailing kids for cash’ scandal
https://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/23/pennsylvani...udges/
This is not about the violation of the human rights of these individuals, though it is more than obvious that they do suffer egregious violations. This travesty is being done on such a massive scale involving millions of people, that it constitutes a crime against humanity itself. Under the political and financial influence of Bernays’ invisible people, the US has descended far deeper into its morass of moral deformity where it now sends more people to prison, for more different offenses, for longer periods of time, than any other nation.
Convict Labor
Here, as in few other places, can we so clearly see the effects of privatising profits and socialising the costs. This vast new criminal class, left to itself, might contribute little to the economy but equally would cause little financial drain. With the legislative creation of the private prison system and the justice system creating the criminal class to fuel it, each of these individuals now produce $50,000 to $75,000 per year in revenue for these private corporations, most of which is drained from government tax revenue – from the public purse. The US government has conspired with these few individuals to create a hidden system by which they can loot the public treasury of many tens of billions of dollars every year on the pretense of being “tough on crime”.
A large percentage of these inmates become convict laborers who work in factories making military and police hardware including 100% of all items like helmets and bullet-proof vests, about 50% of all body armor,[28]Military Turns To Prison Labor For $100 Million In Uniforms — At $2-Per-Hour Wages
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/military-prison-unifo...498867 almost 100% of all paints and paint brushes, nearly 40% of all home appliances and about 25% of all US office furniture. They also make McDonald’s uniforms, Microsoft software packaging, Honda car parts, Victoria’s Secret lingerie, and they staff many call centers.[29]13 Everyday Items You Never Knew Were Made By Prisoners
https://www.thrillist.com/gear/products-made-by-pris...ronics[30]70 Products Sold By Companies Using Prison Labor
https://themodernjedi.com/70-products-sold-by-compan...labor/[31]11 products you might not realize were made by prisoners
https://theweek.com/articles/463364/11-products-migh...soners In many states, when you call the Tourism Bureau for travel information you are speaking to an unpaid convict in forced labor. In addition to their payments from the governments, these firms receive another $20,000 in convict leasing fees, renting their involuntary slaves to corporations at $55 per day, while the inmates receive as little as 32 cents per hour and never more than about one dollar. Although little-publicised, the private convict lease system has also reinstituted the brutal practice of chain gangs, where dozens of convicts, in many cases women, are chained together with shackles and put to work building roads or other such projects, again for little or no pay but with huge profitability to the firms.
“[But] prisons do rely on the labor of incarcerated people for food service, laundry, and other operations, and they pay incarcerated workers unconscionably low wages: our 2017 study found that on average, incarcerated people earn between 86 cents and $3.45 per day for the most common prison jobs. In at least five states, those jobs pay nothing at all. Moreover, work in prison is compulsory, with little regulation or oversight, and incarcerated workers have few rights and protections. If they refuse to work, incarcerated people face disciplinary action. For those who do work, the paltry wages they receive often go right back to the prison, which charges them for basic necessities like medical visits and hygiene items. Forcing people to work for low or no pay and no benefits, while charging them for necessities, allows prisons to shift the costs of incarceration to incarcerated people.”[32]Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html
This has ramifications throughout industry and the labor market, seriously distorting the market competition for labor. One reason wages are so low in many parts of the US – a cause on a par with Wal-Mart – is that it’s cheaper to hire convicts[33]Cheaper to hire convicts
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/another-reason-you...-07-12 who, even more conveniently, require neither benefits nor humane consideration. This is so true that demand for convict laborers in the US far outstrips supply.[34]Official: Convict laborers needed
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2007/jun/23/offi...70623/ More than a million inmates in the US are working literally for pennies. Prisoners are producing furniture for the University of Colorado for $2.45 per day. It is almost comical to read articles in the US press about China using convict laborers when the US is the world leader in this regard.
In the late 1800s in the US, much furniture, shoes and clothing were produced in prisons, often in greater quantity than that produced by free workers. It was so bad even then that the wages of women making apparel were driven to almost nothing. The practice was banned in the early 1930s but then resurrected again around 1980, as part of the Great Transformation of America. Convicts today make up between 4% and 5% of total US manufacturing employment, America’s prisons representing a large and growing pool of available labor.
Private Probation Companies
Another arrow in their quiver was the institution of private probation companies, who are hugely profitable in their own right while serving as yet another feeder source to the private prison system.[35]US: Private Probation Harming the Poor
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/20/us-private-proba...g-poor[36]The Private Probation Problem Is Worse Than Anyone Thought
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02...83589/[37]Profiting from Probation: America’s “Offender-Funded” Probation Industry
https://nicic.gov/profiting-probation-america%E2%80%...dustry These probation firms offer to take responsibility for all those individuals, virtually all black, Latino and poor, who cannot immediately pay a small court fine or are otherwise under the custodial care of a court. The firms add entry fees, monthly fees and a multitude of other charges to the original fine, to the extent that a $100 speeding ticket can grow to many thousands of dollars – and well outside the ability of these individuals to pay. If the firm is able to eventually collect all its exorbitant fees, then well and good. If not, it charges the victim with a parole violation which means automatic jail time.
With this, these unfortunate poor are being deliberately driven farther into poverty and eventually sold into what is a modern debtor’s prison system where they will produce huge profits for the owners. They are being slowly bled to death. One 31-year-old woman received a $179 fine for speeding. When she couldn’t pay immediately, she was turned over to a probation firm where her debt immediately totaled more than $1,500. Unable to pay, she was jailed and charged additional fees for each day she spent behind bars. After 40 days in jail, she then owed the probation company $3,170. These companies function in a sense as bill collectors for the local courts, but are given the authority to determine that any individual will be sold to the private prison system if they fail to pay their debt immediately. These firms, the courts, the prosecutors, the police and the private prisons are all engaged in a conspiracy to shift much of the cost of the judicial system to the (often innocent) offenders.
The Past is Prelude
Let’s go back in history for a moment to a period prior to the 1920s and 1930s when these same attitudes flourished. Americans will tell you that the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution set the nation on a new morally-righteous course by outlawing slavery, but that claim is false. Slavery was never abolished in America. The 13th Amendment states clearly that slavery and involuntary servitude are permissible “as punishment for crimes”, and that says it all.[38]The Convict Leasing System – History and Analysis
https://study.com/academy/lesson/convict-leasing-sys...z.html After this amendment, slavery continued in the US as before but with an altered structure. Prior to this, blacks, whites and native Indians were owned by their masters; after the amendment, they were free criminals being punished for crimes – the only useful difference being the change in name. Immediately upon the granting of their “freedom”, those same people were rounded up as criminals and placed into the nation’s new convict leasing system where they were treated as badly as before. “The Southern states passed “Black Codes”, or laws that only applied to Black people and made them open to prosecution for “offenses” such as loitering, breaking curfew, vagrancy, having weapons, and not carrying proof of employment. Additionally, children of “ineffective parents” would be placed in “apprenticeships” in which they were forced to work on plantations.”
New laws were immediately passed that would effectively criminalise blacks and other former slaves and permit their re-insertion into slavery. These so-called crimes were often so vaguely-defined as to be universal, as was their capricious and arbitrary enforcement. A theft of an item worth less than a dollar would result in a prison sentence of five years. For blacks and former slaves, vagrancy was a crime, as was ‘wandering’. Looking at a white woman was a crime, possessing insufficient identification or proof of employment would result in a prison sentence, as would owing a debt or ‘walking while being black’. Additional crimes were fabricated almost daily to justify the rounding up of the blacks – and many of the poor white – into what could become a lifetime of indentured slavery. Laws allowed for police to “round up idle blacks in times of labor scarcity” and gave employers a legal tool to prevent these slave workers from ever leaving.
In many cases, the prisons didn’t even exist. Newly-sentenced ‘criminals’ would be sent directly to the work sites of their new owners. These forced labor programs existed throughout the US though they were more common in the South, and represented an almost unlimited source of cheap and disposable labor. All costs of housing, clothing and medical care could be charged to these convicts who, having no money, were unable to pay and thus accumulated an increasing debt load that might never be worked off. The treatment of blacks and the poor actually degraded after the so-called abolition of slavery. Since these convicts were not owned assets their deaths constituted no loss, and thus cruel mistreatment, torture and killing were common and unpunished. This program ideally suited the American culture and social system since it so perfectly gave expression to their natural Christian racism and to the secret elites’ long historical record of the commercially-profitable exploitation of human misery. Most American history books will tell us the system died out in the early 1900s, but that is not true. The state of Tennessee owned coal mines that were built and worked by convict slave labor which did not close until about 1970, and there are other examples.
“Within a few years states realized they could lease out their convicts to local planters or industrialists who would pay minimal rates for the workers and be responsible for their housing and feeding — thereby eliminating costs and increasing revenue. Soon, markets for convict laborers developed, with entrepreneurs buying and selling convict labor leases. Unlike slavery, employers had only a small capital investment in convict laborers, and little incentive to treat them well. Convict laborers were often dismally treated, but the convict lease system was highly profitable for the states and the employers.”[39]Convict Leasing
https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/them...asing/
This was one of the harshest and most exploitative labor systems in the world’s modern history. All the Christian nations were shockingly cruel, but the US was arguably the worst of all. The writer Douglas A. Blackmon[40]Douglas A. Blackmon on “Neoslavery” and the “Convict Labor System”
https://themoderatevoice.com/douglas-a-blackmon-on-n...ystem/[41]Video: Douglas Blackmon: How Did Convict Labor Work
https://www.nbcchicago.com/top-videos-home/douglas-b...29199/ described the system this way: “It was a form of bondage distinctly different from that of the antebellum South in that for most men this slavery did not last a lifetime and did not automatically extend from one generation to the next. But it was nonetheless slavery – a system in which armies of free men, guilty of no crimes and entitled by law to freedom, were compelled to labor without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced to do the bidding of white masters through the regular application of extraordinary physical coercion.” The second link[41]Video: Douglas Blackmon: How Did Convict Labor Work
https://www.nbcchicago.com/top-videos-home/douglas-b...29199/ is an interesting very short video.
Returning to the present day, we can see that nothing has changed. Slavery and all its derivatives, including today’s US prison and criminal justice systems, have always been entirely commercial in character, representing American capitalism at its finest. The old convict lease system and unpaid forced labor as a financially profitable way to prey on the blacks and the poor, has been resurrected virtually intact, as have the debtors’ prisons of the private probation companies. The structural framework has changed somewhat, but the essentials and the results – in terms of both human misery and commercial profit – are identical to the varied systems of commercially-driven predatory racism that have existed in the US and been perpetrated by the bankers and elites for hundreds of years. The American Dream is not for everyone.
Mr. Romanoff’s writing has been translated into 32 languages and his articles posted on more than 150 foreign-language news and politics websites in more than 30 countries, as well as more than 100 English language platforms. Larry Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He is one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney’s new anthology ‘When China Sneezes’. (Chapt. 2 — Dealing with Demons).
His full archive can be seen at
https://www.bluemoonofshanghai.com/ + https://www.moonofshanghai.com/
He can be contacted at:
Notes
[1] ICPR Launches 12th Edition Of The World Prison Population List
https://www.prisonstudies.org/news/icpr-launches-12th-edition-world-prison-population-list
[2] World Prison Population List
https://www.prisonstudies.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/wppl_12.pdf
[3] Does the United States really have 5 percent of the world’s population and one quarter of the world’s prisoners?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/04/30/does-the-united-states-really-have-five-percent-of-worlds-population-and-one-quarter-of-the-worlds-prisoners/
[4] A LIVING DEATH: LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE FOR NONVIOLENT OFFENSES
https://www.aclu.org/report/living-death-life-without-parole-nonviolent-offenses
[5] The ACLU’s report, A Living Death, chronicles the thousands of lives ruined and families destroyed by the modern phenomenon of sentencing people to die behind bars for non-violent offences.
[6] Over 3,000 US prisoners serving life without parole for non-violent crimes
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/13/us-prisoners-sentences-life-non-violent-crimes
[7] For Private Prisons, Detaining Immigrants Is Big Business
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/01/us/prisons-immigration-detention.html
[8] How US Private Prisons Profit from Immigrant Detention
https://www.coha.org/how-us-private-prisons-profit-from-immigrant-detention/
[9] The Role of Immigration in the Rise of U.S. Private Prisons
https://www.panoramas.pitt.edu/news-and-politics/role-immigration-rise-us-private-prisons
[10] Private Prisons in the United States
https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/private-prisons-united-states/
[11] Corrections Corporation of America
https://www.company-histories.com/Corrections-Corporation-of-America-Company-History.html
[12] The Prison-Industrial Complex
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/12/the-prison-industrial-complex/304669/
[13] Since 1965, California has built “six (college) campuses but 23 prisons.”
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2017/nov/09/delaine-eastin/false-claim-california-has-built-nearly-four-times/
[14] Prison-Industrial Complex? Maybe It’s Time For A Schools-Industrial Complex
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/california-prisons-schools_n_3839190
[15] Bonnie Kerness, US prisons a human rights issue
http://realcostofprisons.org/writing/kerness_human_rights_issue.pdf
[16] The cold hard facts about America’s private prison system
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/the-cold-hard-facts-about-americas-private-prison-system
[17] The cold hard facts about America’s private prison system
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/the-cold-hard-facts-about-americas-private-prison-system
[18] Accused chemist in Massachusetts handled over 40,000 drug cases: investigator
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-massachusetts-crimelab-idUSBRE97J0YW20130820
[19] US officer ‘pulled random people over and planted meth inside their cars, causing them to lose their freedom, their children, their marriages’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/police-us-planted-evidence-meth-marijuana-cars-florida-zachary-a9001961.html
[20] Ex-Florida deputy gets 12 years for planting drugs
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/florida-deputy-12-years-planting-drugs-78863551
[21] Body cam video shows police officer planting drugs
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/body-cam-video-baltimore-police-department-officer-planted-drugs/
[22] A Florida cop planted meth on random drivers, police say. One lost custody of his daughter.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/07/11/florida-cop-meth-drugs-arrests-scandal/
[23] Kids for cash scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal
[24] Pennsylvania Court Injustices: Kids for cash
https://pacourtinjustices.com/judicial-atrocities/the-crimes/kids-for-cash/
[25] The Kids for Cash Scandal in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania
https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-kids-for-cash-scandal-in-luzerne-county-pennsylvania.html
[26] ‘Kids For Cash’ Captures A Juvenile Justice Scandal From Two Sides
https://www.npr.org/2014/03/08/287286626/kids-for-cash-captures-a-juvenile-justice-scandal-from-two-sides
[27] Pennsylvania rocked by ‘jailing kids for cash’ scandal
https://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/23/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges/
[28] Military Turns To Prison Labor For $100 Million In Uniforms — At $2-Per-Hour Wages
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/military-prison-uniforms_n_4498867
[29] 13 Everyday Items You Never Knew Were Made By Prisoners
https://www.thrillist.com/gear/products-made-by-prisoners-clothing-furniture-electronics
[30] 70 Products Sold By Companies Using Prison Labor
https://themodernjedi.com/70-products-sold-by-companies-using-prison-labor/
[31] 11 products you might not realize were made by prisoners
https://theweek.com/articles/463364/11-products-might-not-realize-made-by-prisoners
[32] Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2022.html
[33] Cheaper to hire convicts
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/another-reason-your-wages-are-low-its-cheaper-to-hire-convicts-2019-07-12
[34] Official: Convict laborers needed
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2007/jun/23/official-convict-laborers-needed-20070623/
[35] US: Private Probation Harming the Poor
https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/20/us-private-probation-harming-poor
[36] The Private Probation Problem Is Worse Than Anyone Thought
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/02/the-private-probation-problem-is-worse-than-anyone-thought/283589/
[37] Profiting from Probation: America’s “Offender-Funded” Probation Industry
https://nicic.gov/profiting-probation-america%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Coffender-funded%E2%80%9D-probation-industry
[38] The Convict Leasing System – History and Analysis
https://study.com/academy/lesson/convict-leasing-system-history-lesson-quiz.html
[39] Convict Leasing
https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/convict-leasing/
[40] Douglas A. Blackmon on “Neoslavery” and the “Convict Labor System”
https://themoderatevoice.com/douglas-a-blackmon-on-neoslavery-and-the-convict-labor-system/
[41] Video: Douglas Blackmon: How Did Convict Labor Work
https://www.nbcchicago.com/top-videos-home/douglas-blackmon-how-did-convict-labor-work/2329199/
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Very interesting article. It certainly made me think differently about our criminal justice system.
An excellent overview of what it looks like in the home of the world‘s self appointed police. When will Americans wake up and realize the self-deception? And when will the rest of the world realize that the self-appointed law enforcers of planet Earth are the biggest law breaker themselves?
The story is also a shining example of how the growth compulsion of credit money must literally turn everything into a business. We will not have peace on earth until debts are cancelled, wealth is reformed, and a just, interest-free monetary system is established.
Back on the days of peace-love and happiness 60’s, hippies had a name for law enforcement, they called them PIGs. Today, these same People In Government (PIGs) have created a Police State that rivals any nation on earth, where PIGs are used to punish adversaries and those not in lockstep with their agenda. People In Government (PIGs) are the reason we are in the mess all around us.
They have failed in their oaths to uphold basic rights and should all be sent to the same vast prison systems they help build using tax payers money. Show them the same disrespect, humiliation, and cruel and unusual punishment they impose on the rest of us x100.
….get to the point CQ, ok, nice and clean Pig farm camps for PIGs, where they eat their own.
I`m afraid that I disagree that the US system is racist. That Blacks are incarcerated at higher rates raises some questions, but Whites living in poverty have a lower incarceration rate, and, generally speaking are involved in crime at a lower rate.
The real question is why is there poverty, at all, in a country with the massive natural resources that the US has. The potential is enormous. As I have stated many times, there is no perfect political or economic system. However, where there is lower unemployment, there is lower crime. Where there is a less disparity in income distribution through fair wages, there is lower crime. Where societies are more homogeneous, there is lower crime. The US, and now all other (((Western liberal democracies))) have bought into the low wage multiculturalism model. First, jobs were offshored to reduce wages and create unemployment, then the “service” jobs basically froze those lower wages. When people refused to do the jobs for the lousy wages and working conditions offered, the solution was mass immigration to meet the alleged “labour shortage”. In a system that is based entirely on greed and self interest, poverty is an absolute necessity. That is not to say that there aren`t good employers who treat their employees well, but their numbers have been shrinking, due to the “shareholder value” mindset of screwing the employees for the sole benefit of the shareholders. While the Germans used to call it the “English disease”, I have always seen it as the (((English))) disease. Until the parasitic banking system, run by the internationalists who have turned currency into a commodity to be manipulated, is overturned, and governments stop being the puppets of that system, nothing is going to change. The US may be leading the way, but several other (((Western liberal democracies))) are catching up.
An alternative theory might be: Americans are simply more criminal by nature, so of course we’d get locked up more.
Many of our ancestors were criminals. I know several of mine were, and I’ve got more than a couple of relatives who seem to have inherited the tendency. Seems reasonable that a gene pool consisting of some combination of law-averse pioneers, pirates, political and religious exiles, slaves and indentured servants, and various other kinds of “wretched refuse” would have a much higher rate of incarceration.
It’s a moot point whether it’s the result of a genuine yearning to be free of constraints, or simply a lowered (and lowering) ability to delay gratification and exercise good judgement.
The folks who thrived in settled, homogenous and bureaucratized countries simply didn’t need to come here… at least until the revolutionaries, fronteirsmen and other assorted roughnecks had cleared the path for more genteel profiteers (which undoubtedly consisted largely of white collar criminals as well). The West was wild, and wasn’t won by risk-averse by-the-rules players. To put it another way, nobody who could hold down a decent job wanted work under those conditions.
How do we compare to, say, Australia? Do the descendants of criminals experience less incarceration in a country that provides more opportunities to redirect or exploit specific genetic tendencies that would be a liability in a bureaucratic system with a puritanical streak, not to mention an extreme gap between rich and poor?
The answers to these questions are probably not going to come from sources like the ACLU and Hillary Clinton…
Of course much of the problem is that the American prison system is too lenient, rather than being too harsh. Criminals regularly rack up multiple pages of arrests, and in the end California releases a bunch of prisoners for “space” reasons, with the result being the predictable crime wave.
This article is a classic misdirect. It’s hyper-Americanism claiming it is anti-American. The American is not concerned about reducing crime – quite the contrary. They’re concerned about being too mean to criminals. Compassion for the criminals’ victims is always conspicuously missing…
Recently America decided the black-on-black homicide rate was too low, so they went all BLM, and got it way up. Some 10,000 extra black corpses a year. Naturally, largely young men. Or rather, “children,” as folk of this age are called in America. Who doesn’t want more dead kids? Not Americans, that’s for sure.
Prison is very much a trailing indicator. Pro-crime policy is established, crime goes up, and then prison populations go up. America has the highest prison population in the world because it has the most crime-friendly policies in the world.
If you genuinely intend to lower crime, you don’t even do prison. You do flogging and execution.
Criminals can’t “pay their debt” to society, and certainly not by Catholic-style penance displays. Prison just makes the criminals even more expensive. If they can’t leave their neighbours alone, kill ’em and have done with it.
Asshole. You didn’t read the article as all typical pontificating assholes don’t.
Its all because of the negro situation. Without blacks, America would be like any other European country.
Quote from article:
Quote from WaPo:
One-in-three from 319 million would be more than 100 million people with criminal records.
One-in-thirty from 319 million would be about 10.6 million people with criminal records.
This is a rather important typo. I could believe one in 30 has a criminal record, but that is very different from one in three.
The law is written as defacto operandi to incarcerate as many as possible at anytime.
I’m not sure you read or understood this article.
After a fact filled article to the effect that incarceration since the 80’s was an Elite conspiracy to make exorbinate profits from injustice & human misery you effectively speculate about the existence of a “crime gene/s” ?
And, incidentally, Australia has no where near such a corrupt incarceration regime as the US’s.
“If they can’t leave their neighbours alone, kill ’em and have done with it.”
Hope the police drop a baggy on you.
See you on the other side.
England’s crime rate has gone up over 50 times since 1898, and now victimization is within 15% of America’s. The negro population is 3%.
Note that 50 times means that a known previous system prevented 98% of all current crimes. I round that to 100%, because effectively crime in England could be effectively 0. P.S. That previous system had things like capital punishments for shoplifting…turns out execution works great.
One way to characterize the religion of theocratic America, Egalitarianism, is worship of the envious.
Criminals envy the law-abiding. Most of them don’t “choose” crime exactly, they just can’t help themselves. This is the basic reason America is crime-positive. To an Egalitarian, the problem isn’t crime, the problem is that cooperator and the defector are unequal, and, by religious diktat, the cooperator is at fault for this. Everyone is supposed to be a criminal.
I’m not 100% sure why they like killing blacks of age 13-18 so much, though. They really can help themselves…without BLM telling them they have a moral right (duty, even!) to shoot the heck out of each other, that is. Is this what racism looks like IRL? Certainly, the effects are horrifically racist, and they’re not backing down, so…
Regardless, America is quite skilled at encouraging everyone to be a criminal. Hence the prison population statistics. More skilled at encouraging Bantu in particular, but nevertheless.
Another manifestation of the worship of the envious is that you’re not supposed to be intelligent in America. It makes the slower students jealous, see? They can’t rebut you – that’s too scholarly, verboten – but they can use the point-and-sputter technique to let you know you’re flagrantly violating local norms.
Sadly the lack of education in America makes them unaware that a person can be non-American, and thus not share their norms. Indeed they might even take [violating American social norms] as a profound compliment.
Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is a change. Likewise not every deviation is excellent, but every form of excellence is anti-Egalitarian…
P.S.
I was once sent to the principal’s office. It was very educational. He said, “I like it when kids are sent to me for good reasons, but I don’t like it when they’re sent here for doing something bad.” Even at six years old, my immediate response was, “Nobody is sent here except for punishment, you prat.” (I was not stupid enough to actually say this. Do try not to tell lies so transparent that even kids barely old enough to cross the street on their own can immediately tell you’re just lying.)
The citizen is falsely told the police represent “the law” and then the police are kept separate from their neighbourhood, promoting an antagonistic us vs. them dynamic. You only see them when they’re there to attack you. Us citizens vs. the law.
This very naturally and predictably constitutes anti-law propaganda. The voter is induced to view the law with hatred and disdain…even for the laws that are valid and legitimate, since voters aren’t sophisticated enough to tell the difference. Monkey feel, monkey do.
The easiest way to make crime rates collapse is a mandatory arming law. Turns out even in America (specifically Kennesaw, Georgia) 9/10th of crime is optional. Everyone can have a gun instead.
The second easiest way is to make cops start giving out positive tickets. If most of the time you see the cops they’re giving you a pat on the back, instead of being a killjoy, recidivism rates drop by more than half.
Can’t have that, now can we? At this point it’s clearly working as intended, and so they carry on.
Criminal “Justice” is an OXYMORON….
So is “JUDEO-CHRISTIAN”…!
what are the odds…?
See: Zephaniah 3:9….a PURE Language…
Have you ever noticed that Americans have all these movies glorifying criminals? Almost as if the culture lionizes crime or something like that.
Here we have someone imagining themselves being the one offed for being unable to keep their sticky fingers to themselves, and, quite naturally, feeling ressentiment. The idea of, you know, not perpetrating: ruled out a priori.
Q: Why does America have a criminal government?
A: Its criminal population demands a criminal government.
Americans really do consent to their government, which really is popular. I was surprised.
See also: Republic, Book VII. In summary, “if his son, the tyrannical man, falls into bad company — and he will — then he will be governed entirely by the bad and the desire for the bad.”
P.S. Is rebellion a crime, which would, since personnel is policy, be carried out by criminals? 🤔
There are three things that should be done in order to “clean up” America’s “justice” system.
1. Abolish “plea bargains”. Prosecutors routinely “overcharge” or “multiple charge” defendants, hoping that at least one charge will “stick”, overwhelming the defendant with charges where they can get a plea bargain and count it as a “win”. If there are multiple charges, each charge must be tried separately on its own merits. It is fact that innocent defendants caught up in the “justice system” routinely plead guilty to one charge to eliminate the possibility of a long prison sentence. Presently this is the “carrot and stick” approach that prosecutors routinely use to gain convictions.
2. Once a convict is released and ALL reparations are paid, the “slate” is “wiped clean”. “Restorative justice” would be a requirement in ALL cases. Once all “restorative justice” claims were paid and all “incarceration sentences” were fulfilled, a person’s prior record could not be used to deny employment. Second Amendment rights as well as all other rights would be fully restored.
3. Prison convict labor must be paid at current market rates with the proceeds going towards “restorative justice” mandates. This, in itself would make the concept of “restorative justice” work.
America has too few black people in prison all while locking up whites who protest, trespass or defend themselves against criminals.
https://www.unz.com/isteve/fbi-blacks-made-up-60-4-of-known-murder-offenders-in-2021/
Excellent points all! Thanks for posting.
I would add three more suggestions.
1. Abolish “qualified immunity” for all public officials starting at the top. Federal, state, and local officials should have no official immunity not available to ordinary citizens. Require all public officials to purchase a “bond”. The basic cost of the bond would be borne by the municipality. Surcharges for misconduct would be borne by the public official himself. failure to secure a “bond” would result in loss of employment or political position.
2. Abolish all “carve outs”–laws that specifically exempt certain individuals from laws that apply to “the rest of us”. Examples include types of weapons permissible for police and public officials to posses, but denied to us ordinary citizens. This includes firearms “magazine capacity restrictions” among others. Another example is members of Congress not being subject to “insider trading” laws that the rest of us are subject to.
3. Abolish all mala in se (mala prohibitum) laws and statutes. These laws are prohibitions on the possession of certain substances and proscribe certain behaviors that are not in themselves criminal in nature.
I propose the following Constitutional Amendment that would accomplish almost all of the above:
To wit:
Congress shall pass NO LAW that does not apply equally to itself, all persons in the federal executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, and all state and local divisions and subdivisions of government.
This would be a reinforcement of “equal justice under law” which is (supposed to be) applicable to all.
Best regards,
Usury and the manipulation of money is intrinsic to capitalism. The system operates for the benefit of a small number of owners of capital, which results in a mismatch of production and consumption, since the workers cannot afford to buy what they produce. Usurious loans temporarily redress the balance but always produce economic crashes once the loans at interest cannot be repaid. The rise of labor unions, which had the power to demand higher wages, temporarily mitigated the situation but the collapse of trade protection allowed the outsourcing that has crushed the private industry labor movement. Government employee labor unions benefit from the pauperization of the country, which provides the agencies they work for a larger clientele. There is no easy way out of this mess, as the economic oligarchs who benefit from this system control both the political process and the flow of information to the general public.
Government cutbacks are everywhere, particularly in the areas of helping the unemployed. I don’t see how doing more work with less staff benefits anyone, unionized or not.
Why doesn’t Larry Romanoff write about Chinese government’s organ-harvesting from prisoners in the People’s Republic of China?
Why doesn’t Larry Romanoff write about Saudi government’s routine public beheadings and routine punitive amputations of prisoners’ limbs?
“In one case reported by the Guardian,[6] a man took a jacket from a department store in New Orleans, and walked out without paying for it. He was convicted of shoplifting and sent to Angola prison in Louisiana. That was 16 years ago. Today he is still incarcerated in Angola, and will stay there for the rest of his natural life having been condemned to die in jail. All for the theft of a jacket, worth $159. ”
So I might agree that sentencing guidelines need reformed, especially with regards to low level drug offences. But this description is…disingenuous at best. Mr. Jackson’s life sentence was a result of having three prior felony convictions, one of them violent. Gahd only knows how many actual crimes he committed.
So no, he was not sent to prison for life for the theft of a jacket.
We talking violent crime here which is what blacks specialize in. Currently America’s murder rate is 5 times that of England. Rape, armed robbery, and assault had comparable ratios last time I looked.
Why doesn’t Larry write about Canadian prisoners being fed prime rib of beef Sundays—Saturday night porn Tv–Monday to Friday talking to counsellors and Investment Night Wednesday for Tonto and Harry getting his true dough Tuesday and Thursday. It is sure as hell is not a country club in any sense of the word.
Romanoff goes into bizarre statistics. I suppose it’s possible that one in three Americans carries a penal sentence short of late library books.
Fact-filled? Again, I’ll refer to the fact that nowhere else on Unz would you see people agreeing with an article that uses, as primary sources, the ACLU and Hilary Clinton.
Incarceration is not the hill to die on. If anything, not enough criminals are being taken off the streets.
Qui bono? For once, who cares? The only problem with high rates of incarceration is that too many minor offenses are being punished, and fewer billionaires and war criminals are being held to account. Throw half of mendacious Wall Street into the pound with more granny rapists and I guarantee that society will benefit.
We have a lot of people in the justice system because we have a pretty sophisticated system of solving crimes such as CCTV, crime labs, extensive fingerprint databases, face recognition technology, etc. We also have a very diverse and sometimes unruly underclass. You really expect me to believe that South Africa, Rhodesia, or Honduras would not have just as high a percentage incarcerated if they caught as many criminals as we do? We caught the Golden State killer with DNA samples from family members in open databases. They doing that in the Congo?
Also, in some of these countries, if caught red handed there is no trial, things are dealt with right on the spot. I am familiar with a gentleman living in Honduras who had a family member assaulted. The police told him best to deal with it himself – meaning kill the guy.
I’d like to see the entire rap sheet for the guy who got a lifetime sentence for stealing a coat.
“It’s okay if crime goes up 50 times, as long as the crime in question isn’t murder.”
“Reversing pro-crime policies (e.g. abolishing police) would have no effect on one part of the population.”
“I deserve to be rich and any system that doesn’t make me rich must be an immoral system.”
The communist isn’t concerned with the proletariat – they just want to replace the allegorical fat cat, the peak beneficiary of the system, with themselves.
This is a lie.
Probably it’s a straight lie, but possibly it’s innumeracy pretending it isn’t innumerate.
Fun fact: in places where it’s not legal for unions to commit terrorism, they are not competitive and workers don’t want to join them. In places folk want to join unions, their industries need regularly repeated bailouts due to business failure.
Imagine someone assuming every person sent to an American jail is an innocent lamb who merely got a dime bag planted on them. You probably get something like 1 in 3.
What actually happens is one guy is sent to prison 10-20 times due to re-perpetrating within days of being released. George Floyd, for example, served five different jail sentences. His rap sheet alone records nine felonies, never mind the stuff he wasn’t caught doing.
Personally, after the first sentence, I consider the police to be 100% responsible for all of Floyd’s victims. They knew he was a problem and didn’t do anything that could have stopped him. On the contrary, as Chauvin found out, they will zealously prosecute anyone who effectively lowers the American crime rate.
As one should have learned in school when the teachers provided air cover for the bullies. Do anything that might discourage them, and you’re the one facing disciplinary action.
Naturally, you can’t sue the black government for negligence. The black government decides who you’re allowed to sue.
Superb. You’ve got my vote — or can I even vote for an anarchist? 😉
I should not have written penal. I meant a Court conviction which in most cases in America are misdemeanours. Jay walking for example. One in three Americans may well carry them. Maybe even more. Good points you raised. Once a school is lenient about bullying, the weaker students are easy prey. Feminist dogma eliminates corporal punishment as only justifying violence. Not true at all as paltry research has shown. So boys become slouches and bullies. Girls who are swots surge ahead. They most resemble the women teachers who leave dealing with the boys to the male teachers.
Invasive Species: The California Cockroach.
Video Link
Larry Romanoff has never lived in a “diverse” American neighborhood. His article parrots the Red China (and woke-American) line on “systemic racism” and criminal justice in America.
He is here because Unz loves his rabid antisemitism and rabid antiamericanism (Romanoff is one of the few columnists that Unz can find who supports his view that Covid-19 was deliberate American biowarfare).
Look at Romanoff’s website. He follows the Red China propaganda line on all major issues. By the way he is also explicitly anticapitalist and explicitly antidemocratic. He follows the Red China line on Tianmen, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan. I’m just describing – using those labels is not an attempted refutation of those positions.
I’ve been critical of the American Empire all my life. But that does not tempt me to to adopt uncritically the propaganda and policies of the Chinese or Russian empires.
The best system would be one where small businesses owned and run by individuals and/or families would be the main producers and any needed large businesses would be owned by the workers and managed by those chosen by the worker/owners. There would be no corporate capitalism run for the benefit of absentee investors. Such a system would be vigorously opposed by both capitalists and socialists, neither of whom has the slightest interest in actually empowering workers. Labor unions are definitely an inferior mechanism for worker empowerment but are better than what we have now. When 40% of the private work force was unionized, the non-unionized corporations had an incentive to keep wages high and working conditions tolerable lest their employees unionize. That incentive is long gone. Want better wages or working conditions? Drop dead – we’re moving to Mexico or China! Corporations that employ union members will always be at a price disadvantage compared to non-unionized corporations because of higher labor costs. That is why the private union movement collapsed when the government allowed mass importation of foreign-manufactured goods and then the outright exportation of manufacturing to low-wage countries (and hostile despotisms like China).
The communist accuses the capitalist of stealing the labourer’s fruit because the communist wants to steal the labourer’s fruit. “From each according to their ability.” Empirically, this means everything. You’re supposed to donate your entire output and just kinda hope someone donates some of it back.
They don’t. Implemented faithfully, communism is omnicide – everyone starves to death.
“The best system is where a brutal angel imposes [rules] from on high.” We don’t need to discuss the details of [rules] since you have a more fundamental problem: who owns the rules? Recall that [Quis custodiet?] is from 100 AD.
Texbook Fascism.
Step 1: faith in Communism.
Step 2: realize Communism is omnicide.
Step 3: prefer not dying over Communism; lose faith.
Step 4: compromise.
Try to rescue as much of Communism as possible. “Surely, I have failed Communism, Communism didn’t fail me.” Result: stone-age thought, BC-era, dressed up as modern and new.
Not compatible with industrial economics.
“Fascism won’t devolve into public-private “partnership” this time around.” Here, deep in the BC era, nobody has tried Fascism before, so this error is almost forgivable.
Slave mentality. Workers are hapless objects with no ability to defend themselves. “Workers will have power if our brutal angel benevolently grants them power.”
Just gotta get that angel first…
Advocating for legalization of terrorism.
Unions were a high + low vs. middle strategy. Now the middle has been seized directly and the low have been thrown under the bus. The left always eats its own; evil cannot cooperate.
A third time the mechanism relies on our immortal angel.
What happened in 1971 had everything to do with central banking and nothing to do with union rules.
Indeed let’s just check the pulse on what was actually happening with unions in 1971, especially regarding workers….
“High prices are better than lower prices because it means buyers can’t afford as much stuff.”
Faith in Communism + don’t want to die => partial omnicide, isn’t quite fatal => immiseration.
Unions are cancerous and kill the industries they invade. Since everything is more expensive, obviously we need to raise wages, unions are happy to raise their dues on the back of the higher wages, which makes things doubly more expensive, and then…
Unions killing local industry was the point. Black governments like America’s prefer a poor population to a rich one. Pauperization is disempowering; the population becomes feeble and, as far as possible, dependent on the government.
See also Egalitarianism. All about indulging in envy. It’s okay if the government gets a bit poorer as long as the populace gets a lot poorer. Technically the Gini coefficient becomes “better” since so many folk end up pushed to the flat edge of deadly poverty, and only a tiny spike remains above subsistence.
Until the Empire collapses and the black government can no longer extract tribute to pay for the dependencies, of course.
America was lucky there was an off-shore for industry to flee to. It would have been razed regardless.
A good beginning point is that nations with low crime rates have zero tolerance for drugs,violence and vagrancy,all of which are endemic in the U.S.They also do not tolerate illegal immigration, have low rates of legal immigration and have maintained their linguistic,cultural and racial homogeneity.
The low crime counties are mostly Caucasian,Asian or a combination of the two such as Singapore.
Since the U.S. has violated every common sense norm for building a a safe and smoothly functioning society, we should not be surprised that we lead the world in crime,hordes of worthless lawyers,
prisons
Let’s discuss [rules] anyway, though.
If you don’t like how businesses are owned, then buy them. Everyone has their price: in a capitalist country, you can just do that. Then you can sell them to whoever you want to own them. (Spoiler: they won’t be sold.)
This adheres to the principle of responsibility and minding your own business. If you don’t like how something is run, then use the available voluntary methods to responsibly make it your business.
It’s only in communist countries that you can’t just buy a business.
No, the problem is that the communist wants to pay less than the owner is selling for. This is known to normal people as a [ripoff].
Background: prices measure demand. If the communist’s bid for the business is less than the current owner’s bid, then they want it less, meaning it is owned by the correct person. Which is yet another reason why letting communists arrogate property to themselves results in immiseration. They have to disempower the workers and peasants before they can do anything.
BTW solution to “car factory worker can’t buy a car.”
Reality: worker installs window. They didn’t even make the window, let alone the whole car. Their work is paid more than it’s worth, or else they would quit. Even peasants aren’t stupid enough to stay at jobs that don’t pay.
Trade works because both sides get paid more than what they’re selling is worth.
The communists wants to interrupt trade because they’re mad someone else is better at trading than they are. Even the communist isn’t surprised when exchanging value-adding trades with value-subtracting violence results in poverty – they just think death is preferable to being shown up. As long as nobody is richer than they are, they are happy.
The only problem with high rates of incarceration is that too many minor offenses are being punished, and fewer billionaires and war criminals are being held to account. Throw half of mendacious Wall Street into the pound with more granny rapists and I guarantee that society will benefit.”
Won’t argue with that.
But — still think non violent crime could be better dealt with.
Incarceration is expensive & has dubious if not negative outcomes.
Get rid of for-profit prisons & I’ll rethink my positions.
A situation also, putting opposite gender posers in jail with females, or otherwise ‘special treatment of no jail. http://www.womenarehuman.com/too-good-for-prison-9-times-judges-decided-being-transgender-is-punishment-enough .Why are supposed judges so interested protecting posers but not us. Said before, should use other labels than false single word ‘trans jender’, we cannot change chromosomes. The thing ignored is men using hormones to appear female, but are stil male dominant, and females using testosterone to appear opposite are amped on male hormones -so also male dominant. Some blend in more than others.
The dichotomy being the rest of us are pushed to obey and feminize. Those pushing it falsely claim to be weaker because ‘minority’, but theyre tougher because male dominant. Seems projection scam to claim ‘weak’ so hand themselves special rights while being male dominant, and put down everyone else’s rights.
Then considering on jails imagine being female and innocent and they throw in transvestite men with you. Another reason why we should use other labels, separate those who appear opposite, who use power or are doing vile, label transvestites, and those who don’t have power or don’t do vile label apprevs, short for appears reversed or something. The anti speech types want to stop us using real words, which works for them not us.
Whatever else we should increase the male side in all of us, females also, for ability to direct the future. Appreciate the piece.
Would definitely agree on some of the perspectives, are many examples, know one who was railroaded, the person was wronged, in this case by an immigrant, and just voicing a problem about something they did, and police covered for the immigrant, and falsely framed the white person. I figured out some cabalists, who spy on us on the web or on phones, got hold of the immigrant and told them to file charges, then the person was arrested, and the false judge threw the person in jail, and ‘ordered’ them go to a psychiatrist -some of who are also cabalists, and dictated them to take drugs, and test to make sure they took drugs, and pay money to the immigrant, and continued keeping the person in jail.
Not only did the person do nothing wrong, the person had been wronged. Not using specifics because was about three years ago. person been through enough including media put downs, and cabalist trolls in comments online on yutube etc. People refuse to see because we don’t make gangs -we are ganged against, and becoming more and worse. They schemers are everywhere, in systems, in every neighborhood, which we outnumber them but people ignore, fail to sort, or make effort to connect.
Supposed attorney who was supposed to defend the person let everything go on, pretended to not know anything. I dug around and found he was an immigrnt pusher, and think maybe a jw. I called around for the person, other lawyers didn’t want to get involved, which seemed suspicious. How are lawyers not affected by stuff going on. I went to see the person in jail and people don’t realize how it is, iron doors everywhere, and half the people working there are psychos. Point being different people involved in things including supposed police, and would agree that many in jails don’t belong there.
“Alrenous” –
First of all, I do not hide behind an “alias,” as you and so many others who post on Unz do. My posts are based on FACTS, which I have discovered by reading, studying and working in the real world. If I do attempt to share an opinion, it is stated as such.
Your comments on unions and the labor situation in the United States and around the world really don’t merit comment, as your mind is already made up, probably from what you have watched on Fox News, CNN News and reading Forbes and Fortune magazines. But I will reply to your comments, in hopes that at least some of the readers might become more educated as to the truths concerning the subjects of labor and unions.
Some of the more recent “casualties” in the American job market are Hershey’s (candy) and Carrier air conditioning, heating and refrigeration. These concerns were very profitable, but the managements realized that they could obtain greater profits by relocating to Mexico. Contrary to your opinions, the fact is that tens of thousands of American factories have closed and millions of jobs have been offshored, not because of the unions’ “cancer-spreading” and “industry killing.” The jobs were offshored because management realized that they could obtain greater profits by doing away with jobs in the United States and to hell with American workers. Corporations hold NO allegiance to any country, including the United States. Their modus of operandi is to privatize the profits and to socialize the losses and “externalities.” That is their idea of “free market” / “free trade.”
You really need to do some SERIOUS research on the TRUE history of American business and that of the American labor movement. If it was not for the workers being exploited, there would have been no need for any unions. As railroading magnate Jay Gould was famous for saying, “I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
Since you seem to know very little about REAL United States history, I will try to educate you a little bit on the subject. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a tremendous number of Americans becoming injured and killed on the job, as a result of unsafe working conditions. It was the unions who were the impetus behind meaningful legislation, such as the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OSHA) in being passed. Companies had to be FORCED to do the right thing by its employees, because the only thing that mattered to them was profits.
There were a few exceptions to this, most notably George Westinghouse. Also, Henry Ford, after granting his workers the “$5 Day,” realized just how monotonous factory work had become and actually tried to at least make things a little better, in response to his very major problem of employee turnover. Also, at first, Henry Ford was vehemently against unions, but his wife convinced him of the futility of that outlook. After he did recognize the unions’ legitimate rights, he actually tried to cooperate with them.
Another bit of American history of which you seem to know nothing is that in the time period following World War II, when the labor unions were at their strongest and the EFFECTIVE corporate and rich persons’ income tax rates were at their highest, THAT was the time period in our country when we enjoyed the longest sustained increase in the standard of living for ALL Americans.
When Alfred P. Sloane was the Chief Executive Officer of General Motors (GM), he used to travel around the country and have sit-down meetings with car dealers’ owners. He would ask them of their concerns and suggestions for improving GM’s products. He would write them down and after getting back to Detroit, he would ACT on them. GM’s products were the best in the country, because GM spent a large amount of money on research and development. Nowadays, the corporate officers’ main priority is wringing as much profit out of their employees and suppliers as possible. And orchestrating stock buy-backs, for the benefit of the corporate officers and the major stockholders.
I know this for a fact, because I had worked for one of GM’s “Tier One” suppliers – A.O. Smith Automotive Products Division. The facility where I worked manufactured truck frames for GM. I had left that facility for 11 weeks and when I came back, it was no longer A.O. Smith Automotive Products. It had become part of “Tower International,” a start-up corporation established by a few “hot shot” investors who were going to make a “killing” in the automobile supplier business.
A.O. Smith had been making vehicle frames since Henry Ford’s Model T and if any company knew how to make money doing that, it was A.O. Smith. But A.O. Smith decided that since the “Big Three” were putting such a squeeze on its suppliers, it decided to get completely out of the automobile supplier business. By the way, Tower Automotive eventually realized what A.O. Smith had already figured out; Tower subsequently filed for bankruptcy.
As a retired member of the United Auto Workers union (UAW), it makes me very sad to say that many of the top UAW officers are now in jail or are awaiting trial or sentencing for their parts in union corruption. When Walter Reuther was president of the UAW, there was NO corruption in that union. NONE. A grass-roots effort at the UAW – Unite All Workers for Democracy” – is in the process of attempting to reform the union and to get it back to what it was under Reuther’s leadership.
Unlike what you propound, it is NOT the “unions” which are responsible for the demise of the United States; it is the parasites in the banking & financial “industries” and the corporate leadership who have sold the United States down the river, in their quest for ever higher profits. It is the GREED of these two groups and NOT the unions which are destroying our country.
All of the problems now facing the United States are a direct result of the actions of the financial “industry” and the major U.S. corporations, NOT the unions. Every war that the United States has participated in at least since World War I resulted from lies and deception, so that the banks and military-industrial complex could make money from the US’ participation. The wars had NOTHING to do with Americans’ safety or “freedom.”
The Savings & Loan scandal of the 1980s, the 2007-2008 financial melt-down and the “Covid” plandemic have all been engineered by the financial elite. The same holds true for every recession and depression in which the USA has found itself since its founding. These have been the means whereby the financial elite could manipulate the American (and world) economy to make money. now we have groups working towards a “Great Reset” and a “Green Revolution.” This is just the latest attempt by the financial elite to tax and control everyone and everything on the planet.
Everything in the United States is based on fraud – DEBT, resulting from fictitiously created fiat money by the Federal Reserve, a privately held financial cartel. Every “market” in the USA is rigged. The stock market and the futures markets; the commodities markets, including the prices of gold and silver and even the “markets” for collector coins and stamps are all rigged.
We have the so-called “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terror,” both of which are as phony as a $3 bill, their only purpose being to make the rich richer and to further the prison-industrial complex, the lawyers and the judges. There is enough technology and brainpower here in the United States to solve ANY problem. But we have the problems because there is so much money to be made in dealing with them.
Personally, I think that things here in the USA have degenerated to the point where we have crossed the point of no return. If a revolution ever did happen, the result would probably be worse than what we now have. I do NOT look for any of the “Democrats,” the “Republicans,” the “Libertarians” or the “Greens” to save us. I am NOT a “communist,” a “socialist,” a “Libertarian” or a “Green.” I am for capitalism with realistic and meaningful regulation.
Thank you.
Brad Anbro
United Auto Workers Journeyman Electrician (retired)
Dear me, that is big of you. Thinking for the first time? Did it give you an headache?
‘Capitalism with realistic and meaningful regulation’??!! Dream on-this NOW is the one and only REAL form of capitalism, and it is self-destructive. Not only does it destroy human lives, but it destroys Life on Earth wherever it goes. They only tolerated mostly Mafia-run unions when they were afraid of communism. With that gone, the gloves came off.
Only half? Apart from being unforgivably ‘antisemitic’, that would just make the other half twice as rich.
Thought on Brad post above, on one hand at base some merit to idea of unions, grouping is important, though when too big, is part of machine, or was made by them. The ‘police’ unions, and ‘teachers’ unions, have been a tool, division tool. Focused on selfish. People should group based on freedom and future and earth, rather than on whatever ‘job, which most serve a false system. Redirect energy. There should have been a thousand or ten thousand car companies, not six or ten here. There are cars that don’t need gas. Monopoly isnt good. Post has merit, and just think we need to redirect outside their system boxes. All the way outside. Back to neanderthals. And think what’s important, and on groups made ourselves. Re start from there.
They were not afraid of communism, except for fake in tabloid press. As a rule the MSM papers always pushed marxism or at least some aspects of it in an effort “to educate the yokels”. Marxism, together with blacks, sex education, evolution theory and multiculturalism was always something to teach no longer to be afraid of. Unions are always mafia-run no matter the culture, the country or the regime, even the necessary good they do is done through the agency of the common sense, lacking to justices and to university-promoted people, that mafia feudal relationships impose. Unions in Soviet Union were pro-government mafias. Unions in all Latin American in Southern European countries are typically mafia. Union mafias are not there for the proletariat at large but to control certain production and ressource control facilities by hiring employees as foot soldiers at higher salaries people who do the mere real job will never earn. Communism, together with anarchism came as a convenient ideological justification for mafia behaviour first before being applied for real.
Very opinion. Much assertion. Great avowal. Wow.
The propaganda is on point. This is indeed exactly what you’re supposed to say. Charitably, Anbro is afraid my master is going to whip me, and is kindly trying to prevent it. Considerate.
Seems to have overlooked that I don’t have a master, though…
So, this is a thing that liars say, and it is how a liar would say it. A wise person stops reading right there, because they value their time too much to spend it on falsehood.
Is there a point to spouting meaningless lies in dead text in the unread stub end of a comment section on a fringe website?
Perhaps a religious ritual? Trying to ritually purify the comment section after it has been affected by heretics or heresy.
Fascism point 3: Obsession with the Plot of the State Enemy. Perhaps I have being promoted to State-level threat.
Which is in a sense true. When you speak the truth you speak with truth’s authority, and the truth is indeed a State-level enemy.
Unfortunately for the Fascist State (and its unions) truth is more robust than even the strongest empire…
This is not how you behave if you have confidence in your beliefs. Don’t have to socially browbeat the interlocutor into submission.
The person who lies to themselves betrays themselves. The one person who you should be able to know is on your side 100% of the time is yourself. And yet… Hard to have confidence in a traitor.
No no Anbro, you’re supposed to bear false witness against yourself, not your neighbour.
I don’t suffer from Gell-Mann amnesia. When you get the familiar facts wrong, it tells me you yourself think you need to make things up to support your argument. When I disbelieve it, I’m merely respecting your own opinion on your opinions.
—
In short, we can’t have strangers in our comment section, now can we?
That’s why it’s open to the public. So no strangers get in.
P.S. The trick here is that I am also involved in a religious ritual. Left that opening there on purpose. It amuses me when there’s a true accusation that can be made, and yet they insist on using the false ones.
If you want unions to do actual good, don’t do unions.
If you don’t think the business is paying the proper wages, then buy the business and run it yourself, paying the wages you believe are correct. At worst, start your own competitor.
Unions are inherently irresponsible. “I have the right to set the allowance of your kids in your house.” It’s not some coincidence that unions behave irresponsibly.
It is very obviously in contravention of basic economics, to the point where it’s suspicious that I have to point this out. Wages are set by supply and demand, like all other prices. Neither union nor manufacturer have any control over either supply or demand. A union trying to price-set wages causes a shortage of work once, like all communists, they run out of other people’s money. The opposite of the intended result, as with all irresponsibility, as with all defection, as with all communism. Unions aren’t goods, they are inherently criminal.
Further it’s in contravention of voluntary trade. Pro-union arguments always assume a worker can’t turn down a job. They assume slavery – and then we’re supposed to be surprised that union workers get shoved around like livestock.
The worker agreed to the wage. The union says they’re not allowed to agree to a wage without union approval. They call this power grab “empowering” because of course they do. “Diversity is our strength (at the ballot box, because they vote for us, or we wouldn’t import them)!”
Union arguments assume workers are irresponsible, childish serfs who can’t safely negotiate a contract without mommy holding their hand.
There’s also the learned helplessness angle. “Capital is owned by capitalists by irrevocable word of God.”
Of course the reality of a Fascist country isn’t that far off. The government owns GM, they’re not selling, and they’re certainly not going to allow you to open a competitor. Blaming GM for being government-owned isn’t going to work out, now is it? And, historically, didn’t.
Unions were used when governments couldn’t openly set GM wages and needed a cat’s paw. A cutout. Now that’s no longer necessary, so the unions are done away with.
M-M,
Thank you for the reply. Apparently, you did not read my entire post. As I said in the post, during the time period after World War II, when unions were at their strongest and the effective income tax rates on corporations and the very rich were at their highest, that was when the real wage increases and living standards of most Americans rose the most. The last three decades here in the USA has brought wage stagnation and even decline for the less well-to-do Americans.
It is my belief that capitalism does not need to be self-destructive. If the USA can get back to where the effective income tax rates are such as they were after World War II and if we can again have meaningful and effective regulation, I think that our economy would improve greatly. That, and stopping all of the illegal and immoral WARS in which we find ourselves and closing most of our foreign military bases and bringing the troops HOME. Also, striking down the “Citizens United” supreme court ruling and doing away with ALL of the unconstitutional presidential “signing statements” that have been made into law since the presidency of Truman.
In short, we need to find a way of stopping all of the greed by the corporations and financial “industry” that is ruining our country and making us a laughingstock to the world. I don’t think that this will be easy, but I think that it can be done. Do I think that it will happen? No, because both the “Democratic” and the “Republican” national parties are completely boght off by the Big Money interests.
Allow me to give you an example of how ridiculous things have become here in the USA. The company from which I retired, had a very peculiar profit-sharing system. I will try to explain it and will use hypothetical round numbers in my explanation. Say that the company had $10m sales in a particular year and had $1m of profit. They decide to pay the employees 5% of their annual wages as a “bonus” for a very good year.
The next year comes and goes. Again, the company has $10m in sales, $1m of profit and then says to the employees, “We cannot pay any bonus this year, because there was NO INCREASE over last year’s numbers.” The employees hear this and decide that they are going to slack off for a year, so that the company has a “bad year.” The next year they will do better, so that there is once again an increase, and the company will pay the bonus.
That was EXACTLY what the employees would do. They were not stupid. They figured that if $1m of profits was good enough for the company to pay a bonus on in one particular year, it ought to be good enough for the company to pay a bonus on the next. And I did not blame them one bit in their line of thinking. I looked at it the same way.
The company was a very good company to work for, it had been operating in the city for over 100 years and it made an excellent product. By and large, the management treated the employees very well. But their “profit sharing system” left much to be desired. If they would have re-worked their profit-sharing system, the employees would have been behind them 100%.
Just my two cents worth.
Thank you.
Interesting question, but it’s actually a CIA story.
Well, Brad, capitalism, in my opinion, being a form of cancer, ie insatiable and REQUIRING unending growth or it stagnates and dies, must be destructive. And the evidence is all around us. Neo-liberal capitalism, in reality neo-feudalism, that directs all wealth to a tiny, parasitic, few, makes it more rapidly deadly.
Marx saw it quite well for two centuries ago-the declining rate of return on capital, oligopolisation and monopolisation, financialisation and the immiseration and impoverishment of workers. He even foresaw the ecological catastrophe, with his theory of the ‘metabolic rift’, which furthered the observations of earlier scholars. We is rooted, old boy, and capitalism is the last thing we need.
M-M,
Thank you for the reply. But I respectfully disagree with you in that you seem to be completely against capitalism. I am for capitalism, but the kind which we had here in the USA, in the decades after World War II, when there were reasonable regulations in place, when the unions were at their strongest, when the stock market was not such a big casino and when the “rich” were not so greedy.
It is my opinion that the United States is so far “gone” that the only thing which might possibly save it would be another revolution. But I am afraid that if there was another revolution, what we would end up with would be just as bad, if not worse, than what we now have. In short, I have absolutely NO HOPE for this country of ours. I do not believe that the “Democrats” or the “Republicans” or even the “Libertarians” are going to save it. And certainly not the “Greens.”
I was in a walk-in clinic awhile back and while awaiting my turn at being looked at, I picked up one of the major financial magazines, since I was not into golf or “People.” I began reading this article about the formation of the Hospital Corporation of America and how a few doctors, using DEBT, built up the corporation to our country’s largest for-profit hospital corporation. The article stated that the CEO of that corporation had made 30.4 MILLION dollars in 2020. When I got home, I did some simple arithmetic and figured that his rate of “pay” was $83,287.67 PER DAY or $3,470.31 PER HOUR – every day and every hour throughout the year.
That is not an isolated case. Many other CEOs make less, but also many others make more. Who needs that kind of money? They certainly are not helping our country by collecting such exorbitant compensation “packages.” The entire country, in my opinion, is out of whack and I do not think that any person or political party can save it.
I am somewhat familiar with Marx’ writings but I have absolutely NO confidence in socialism or in communism. There would be a few at the top, who would own everything, while everyone else would be their slaves, owning very little and having little, if any, freedom or rights. I think that this so-called “Great Reset” is nothing but socialism on steroids and I want nothing to do with it or with Klaus Schwab and his ilk, of which he is merely their “puppet.”
Thank you.