#florida state prison

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Greedflation, but for prisoners

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Apr 21) in TORINO, then Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Today in "Capitalists Hate Capitalism" news: The Appeal has published the first-ever survey of national prison commissary prices, revealing just how badly the prison profiteer system gouges American's all-time, world-record-beating prison population:

https://theappeal.org/locked-in-priced-out-how-much-prison-commissary-prices/

Like every aspect of the prison contracting system, prison commissaries – the stores where prisoners are able to buy food, sundries, toiletries and other items – are dominated by private equity funds that have bought out all the smaller players. Private equity deals always involve gigantic amounts of debt (typically, the first thing PE companies do after acquiring a company is to borrow heavily against it and then pay themselves a hefty dividend).

The need to service this debt drives PE companies to cut quality, squeeze suppliers, and raise prices. That's why PE loves to buy up the kinds of businesses you must spend your money at: dialysis clinics, long-term care facilities, funeral homes, and prison services.

Prisoners, after all, are a literal captive market. Unlike capitalist ventures, which involve the risk that a customer will take their business elsewhere, prison commissary providers have the most airtight of monopolies over prisoners' shopping.

Not that prisoners have a lot of money to spend. The 13th Amendment specifically allows for the enslavement of convicted criminals, and so even though many prisoners are subject to forced labor, they aren't necessarily paid for it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

Six states ban paying prisoners anything. North Carolina caps prisoners' pay at one dollar per day. Nationally, prisoners earn $0.52/hour, while producing $11b/year in goods and services:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

So there's a double cruelty to prison commissary price-gouging. Prisoners earn far less than any other kind of worker, and they pay vastly inflated prices for the necessities of life. There's also a triple cruelty: prisoners' families – deprived of an incarcerated breadwinner's earnings – are called upon to make up the difference for jacked up commissary prices out of their own strained finances.

So what does prison profiteering look like, in dollars and sense? Here's the first-of-its-kind database tracking the costs of food, hygiene items and religious items in 46 states:

https://theappeal.org/commissary-database/

Prisoners rely heavily on commissaries for food. Prisons serve spoiled, inedible food, and often there isn't enough to go around – prisoners who rely on the food provided by their institutions literally starve. This is worst in prisons where private equity funds have taken over the cafeteria, which is inevitable accompanied by swingeing cuts to food quality and portions:

https://theappeal.org/prison-food-virginia-fluvanna-correctional-center/

So you have one private equity fund starving prisoners, and another that's gouging them on food. Or sometimes it's the same company. Keefe Group, owned by HIG Capital, provides commissaries to prisons whose cafeterias are managed by other HIG Capital portfolio companies like Trinity Services Group. HIG also owns the prison health-care company Wellpath – so if they give you food poisoning, they get paid twice.

Wellpath delivers "grossly inadequate healthcare":

https://theappeal.org/massachusetts-prisons-wellpath-dentures-teeth/

And Trinity serves "meager portions of inedible food":

https://theappeal.org/clayton-county-jail-sheriff-election/

When prison commissaries gouge on food, no part of the inventory is spared, even the cheapest items. In Florida, a packet of ramen costs $1.06, 300% more inside the prison than it does at the Target down the street:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24444312-fl_doc_combined_commissary_lists#document/p6/a2444049

America's prisoners aren't just hungry, they're also hot. The climate emergency is sending temperatures in America's largely un-air-conditioned prisons soaring to dangerous levels. Commissaries capitalize on this, too: an 8" fan costs $40 in Delaware's Sussex Correctional Institution. In Georgia, that fan goes for $32 (but prisoners are not paid for their labor in Georgia pens). And in scorching Texas, the commissary raised the price of water by 50% last summer:

https://www.tpr.org/criminal-justice/2023-07-20/texas-charges-prisoners-50-more-for-water-for-as-heat-wave-continues

Toiletries are also sold at prices that would make an airport gift-shop blush. Need denture adhesive? That's $12.28 in an Idaho pen, triple the retail price. 15% of America's prisoners are over 55. The Keefe Group – sister company to the "grossly inadequate" healthcare company Wellpath – operates that commissary. In Oregon, the commissary charges a 200% markup on hearing-aid batteries. Vermont charges a 500% markup on reading glasses. Imagine spending decades in prison: toothless, blind, and deaf.

Then there's the religious items. Bibles and Christmas cards are surprisingly reasonable, but a Qaran will run you $26 in Vermont, where a Bible is a mere $4.55. Kufi caps – which cost $3 or less in the free world – go for $12 in Indiana prisons. A Virginia prisoner needs to work for 8 hours to earn enough to buy a commissary Ramadan card (you can buy a Christmas card after three hours' labor).

Prison price-gougers are finally facing a comeuppance. California's new BASIC Act caps prison commissary markups at 35% (California commissaries used to charge 63-200% markups):

https://theappeal.org/price-gouging-in-california-prisons-newsom-signature/

Last year, Nevada banned any markup on hygiene items:

https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/82nd2023/Bill/10425/Overview

And prison tech monopolist Securus has been driven to the brink of bankruptcy, thanks to the activism of Worth Rises and its coalition partners:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/08/money-talks/

When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time. Prisons show us how businesses would treat us if they could get away with it.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/20/captive-market/#locked-in

[nando161mando]

Florida leaving prisoners to die in the Hurricane

[godloveyell]

Jesus Fucking Chris! Are homeless people supposed to just hover a few inches off the ground when they need to sleep?!

Nothing like homeless people to turn even the most compassionate people into devout eugenicists. I’m waiting for some politician to pass a law forcing homeless people to compete in Hunger Games or Squid Games-style shows for the entertainment of the public. Lord knows there will be pundits and others willing to defend this sort of thing, because see previous remarks about eugenics.

Ideally, we’d just give homeless people a goddamn house. It’s literally been proven to be cheaper and more effective than any of our labyrinthine bureaucracies or letting them die in the streets.

But if we’re not going to do anything to address the problem of homelessness, is it so much to ask that we not at least make matters worse for them? They’re just trying to live.

Apparently it is too much to ask.

And who enforces this? Is it just a few bad apples, or is it all cops?

How hard is it for them to find cops willing to enforce this? Do they have to sift through hundreds of heroic cops who refuse until they find the one cop who's monstrous enough to enforce this, or do they easily find cops willing to enforce this because monstrous cops are everywhere and being a monster is part of the job?

"All cops are bad" is not a stereotype. It's literally a requirement for the job that every single one knew about.

[wynnd1]

Stuff like this is why I’m so worried about the Skrmetti case (the Tennessee trans minor gender affirming care ban) currently before the Supreme Court.

Thoughts, concerns, and rambling below the cut

CW: transphobia, discrimination

I think what’s happening under the authority of SB 245 probably violates BOTH the Equal Protection clause AND the blanket prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. But I doubt courts are going to agree on the latter (especially if the ban in Skrmetti is upheld).

If Tennessee wins in Skrmetti, I think there’s a good chance the trans people in this article in Florida will lose, and if they get all the way to the Supreme Court I expect the same. I hope that’s not the case, but I suspect it may be.

If those both occur with the weight of authority of the Supreme Court behind them, depending on the exact way the opinions are worded, I think that could give any state the authority to eventually impose a blanket gender affirming care ban (and definitely the legal basis to try). I think it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that could be enough for a Federal gender affirming care ban, but there are a little more counterarguments about who has the proper authority for that. But if a state can enact a total gender affirming care ban under that case law, I think the Feds probably could too.

A little bit of a pick me up: this is a worst case scenario. It is going to depend exactly on the scope of the courts rulings in those cases. And the exact language of the opinion. I always try to stay away from doomerism, and I would be making a doomer statement to say that this is the only possibility. But I would be a fool if I said it wasn’t a reasonable possibility.

To any other trans people who are scared out there in the wake of the election: it is scary. These cases are scary especially right now. I won’t lie to you and say they aren’t.

If anyone is like me, they want to keep an eye out on exactly when there is a new development that can make life worse for trans people in America worse across the board. With the recent increase in attacks on trans people, I want to focus on the big picture things. Every attack is bad, but some are indicators of exactly how far down the road we are.

Skrmetti is going to be a huge indicator. Whatever Trump does in the months leading up to that announcement we can still fight and disregard Skrmetti. But once it comes down, that will limit (or in an extremely hopeful situation, expand) exactly how we can fight.

The battle over SB245 is going to be another huge indicator. It has the ability to greatly impact the scope of the fight to even maintain trans rights. If it hits the Circuit courts to decide, that’s when we really need to be worried; think a red flag. If it hits SCotUS, that’s a panic situation. Think a black flag (I assume that’s worse than a red flag, and circuit court decisions definitely are more than a yellow).

When reading news about attacks on trans people, really pay attention to attacks that would appeal to people that might think it’s ok to discriminate against trans people, but only sometimes (list of examples at the end of the post bc it’s long. A short summary: If the idea can be summarized as “I support trans people, but” then that’s what I’m talking about). Those attacks are going to be the ones that make courts most likely to side against trans people. If the attack is just on all trans people: it’s still bad. But it can be easier to fight in court (just look at bostock; it was a 6-3 opinion during a liberal minority court that protected trans people expressly. The ONLY discrimination the employer could use to appeal to the court was transgender identity itself. There wasn’t anything to pair it up with.)

If you’re looking for hope in the dark, this is something you can look to, but know that this is a little bleak. The attacks that (right now at least) attack trans people that can’t be paired with any other “appeal to sensibilities” (read: appeal to “I support trans people, but” situations) are the ones that can protect us the most. Those are ones that can be fought all the way to the Supreme Court and I think could even be won. At the Supreme Court, there is a majority of justices who have, in the past, at least voted specifically to suggest that trans people don’t deserve every bad thing that happens just because they are trans. Justice Gorsuch (who I usually disagree with, but there are particular issues where he comes out not as bad as he usually does, like some indigenous tribe cases) WROTE Bostock, and Justice Roberts signed on (plus the 3 liberal justices makes 5). It doesn’t mean they’ll ever support trans rights again, but it does mean that there was a heart in there, at least a few years ago, that could be appealed to on trans issues, and hopefully it still can.

If you find yourself in support of SB245 and you support trans people, consider the following: 1) these people mostly have convicted of crimes but in our modern legal system conviction doesn’t always mean commission, 2) Florida is trying to pass laws that make it easier to imprison trans people generally and have nothing to do with “common” crimes like theft, drugs, or assaultives, 3) trans people are more likely to be put in situations that give rise to all three of those categories of crime, and I think the trans panic defense hasn’t been as weakened in Florida as other states like Michigan, and 4) our modern incarceration system fucking sucks across the board but is shown to be worse in certain states: Florida has the 13th highest incarceration rate (prisoners/population) (https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/FL.html) and has the 3rd highest total number of prisoners nationally (https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/prison-population-by-state)

Examples of types of attacks I was talking about above that are the most important to pay attention to.

Summary: “I support trans rights, but maybe this time it’s ok.” Skrmetti: “I support trans rights, but maybe we should be careful and do more research before children are impacted”. SB245: “I support trans rights, but these are people who committed crimes”. Think about ANY potential marginalization (ESPECIALLY) if you there’s any group of people you think deserve to be in the situation they’re in. “I support trans people, but I don’t know if someone with autism can make ‘that decision’ for themselves” (insert any mental health issue or disability here and it still works, I’ve just personally heard that with autism, and I have autism. I’m going to be a damn lawyer, so if I can make decisions on behalf of clients, if I can lead someone in their criminal or civil defense, I can certainly know that I’m a woman). “I support trans people, but those are not trans people they’re just men pretending to be women to hurt women” (we see this one all the damn time and it gets so much easier when TERF rhetoric of “I hate all men and all men are inherently evil” propagates. Hate the patriarchy. Hate the things it causes and the way certain people act because of it. Don’t hate people because of who they are). “I support trans people, but those are immigrants and they aren’t my responsibility they’re the responsibility of the countries they come from” (remember Trump talking about them doing transgender surgery on “illegal aliens” in prison, which is blankety false? Yeah). “I support trans people, but this person did something I don’t agree with so I’m going to deny them the same respect I purport to think “real” trans people should have” (see how people treat any trans woman who does anything questionable ever). I could go on, but I think I’ve hit some of the major ones that I can think of off the top of my head. There are more. And there will always be more.

[politijohn]

You might not be excited to vote for President this election, but know there are over 150 ballot initiatives across the country you should consider.

Abortion is on the ballot in ten states:

Increasing the minimum wage is on the ballot in Alaska, California, Massachusetts, and Missouri.

Guaranteed paid sick leave is on the ballot in Alaska, Nebraska, and Missouri.

Banning forced prison labor is on the ballot in California and Nevada.

Banning gerrymandering is on the ballot in Ohio (despite confusing language approved by their Supreme Court).

Regulating SuperPACs is on the ballot in Maine.

Protecting public education is on the ballot in Nebraska.

Easing gig economy unionization efforts is on the ballot in Massachusetts.

Ranked-choice voting is on the ballot in Oregon, Missouri, and DC.

Legalizing marijuana is on the ballot in Nebraska, Florida, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

[odinsblog]

🗣️THIS IS WHAT INCLUSIVE, COMPASSIONATE DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE

Minnesota Dems enacted a raft of laws to make the state a trans refuge, and ensure people receiving trans care here can't be reached by far-right governments in places like Florida and Texas. (link)

Minnesota Dems ensured that everyone, including undocumented immigrants, can get drivers' licenses. (link)

They made public college free for the majority of Minnesota families. (link)

Minnesota Dems dropped a billion dollars into a bevy of affordable housing programs, including by creating a new state housing voucher program. (link)

Minnesota Dems massively increased funding for the state's perpetually-underfunded public defenders, which lets more public defenders be hired and existing public defenders get a salary increase. (link)

Dems raised Minnesota education spending by 10%, or about 2.3 billion. (link)

Minnesota Dems created an energy standard for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. (link)

Minnesota already has some of the strongest election infrastructure (and highest voter participation) in the country, but the legislature just made it stronger, with automatic registration, preregistration for minors, and easier access to absentee ballots. (link)

Minnesota Dems expanded the publicly subsidized health insurance program to undocumented immigrants. This one's interesting because it's the sort of things Dems often balk at. The governor opposed it! The legislature rolled over him and passed it anyway. (link)

Minnesota Dems expanded background checks and enacted red-flag laws, passing gun safety measures that the GOP has thwarted for years. (link)

Minnesota Dems gave the state AG the power to block the huge healthcare mergers that have slowly gobbled up the state's medical system. (link)

Minnesota Dems restored voting rights to convicted felons as soon as they leave prison. (link)

Minnesota Dems made prison phone calls free. (link)

Minnesota Dems passed new wage protection rules for the construction industry, against industry resistance. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a new sales tax to fund bus and train lines, an enormous victory for the sustainability and quality of public transit. Transit be more pleasant to ride, more frequent, and have better shelters, along more lines. (link)

They passed strict new regulations on PFAS ("forever chemicals"). (link)

Minnesota Dems passed the largest bonding bill in state history! Funding improvements to parks, colleges, water infrastructure, bridges, etc. etc. etc. (link)

They're going to build a passenger train from the Twin Cities to Duluth. (link)

I can't even find a news story about it but there's tens of millions in funding for new BRT lines, too. (link)

A wonky-but-important change: Minnesota Dems indexed the state gas tax to inflation, effectively increasing the gas tax. (link)

They actually indexed a bunch of stuff to inflation, including the state's education funding formula, which helps ensure that school spending doesn't decline over time. (link)

Minnesota Dems made hourly school workers (e.g., bus drivers and paraprofessionals) eligible for unemployment during summer break, when they're not working or getting paid. (link)

Minnesota Dems passed a bunch of labor protections for teachers, including requiring school districts to negotiate class sizes as part of union contracts. (Yet another @SydneyJordanMN special here. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a state board to govern labor standards at nursing homes. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a Prescription Drug Affordability Board, which would set price caps for high-cost pharmaceuticals. (link)

Minnesota Dems created new worker protections for Amazon warehouse workers and refinery workers. (link)

Minnesota Dems passed a digital fair repair law, which requires electronics manufacturers to make tools and parts available so that consumers can repair their electronics rather than purchase new items. (link)

Minnesota Dems made Juneteenth a state holiday. (link)

Minnesota Dems banned conversion therapy. (link)

They spent nearly a billion dollars on a variety of environmental programs, from heat pumps to reforestation. (link)

Minnesota Dems expanded protections for pregnant and nursing workers - already in place for larger employers - to almost everyone in the state. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a new child tax credit that will cut child poverty by about a quarter. (link)

Minnesota Democrats dropped a quick $50 million into homelessness prevention programs. (link)

And because the small stuff didn't get lost in the big stuff, they passed a law to prevent catalytic converter thefts. (link)

Minnesota Dems increased child care assistance. (link)

Minnesota Dems banned "captive audience meetings," where employers force employees to watch anti-union presentations. (link)

No news story yet, but Minnesota Dems forced signal priority changes to Twin Cities transit. Right now the trains have to wait at intersections for cars, which, I can say from experience, is terrible. Soon that will change.

Minnesota Dems provided the largest increase to nursing home funding in state history. (link)

They also bumped up salaries for home health workers, to help address the shortage of in-home nurses. (link)

Minnesota Dems legalized drug paraphernalia, which allows social service providers to conduct needle exchanges and address substance abuse with reduced fear of incurring legal action. (link)

Minnesota Dems banned white supremacists and extremists from police forces, capped probation at 5 years for most crimes, improved clemency, and mostly banned no-knock warrants. (link)

Minnesota Dems also laid the groundwork for a public health insurance option. (link)

I’m happy for the people of Minnesota, but as a Floridian living under Ron DeSantis & hateful Republicans, I’m also very envious tbh. We know that democracy can work, and this is a shining example of what government could be like in the hands of legislators who actually care about helping people in need, and not pursuing the GOP’s “culture wars” and suppressing the votes of BIPOC, and inflicting maximum harm on those who aren’t cis/het, white, wealthy, Christian males. BRAVO MINNESOTA. This is how you do it! And the Minnesota Dems did it with a one seat majority, so no excuses. Forget about the next election and focus on doing as much good as you can, while you still can. 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿

👉🏿 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1660846689450688514.html

[mrs-bluemarine]

LOL

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #32

August 30-September 6 2024.

President Biden announced $7.3 billion in clean energy investment for rural communities. This marks the largest investment in rural electrification since the New Deal. The money will go to 16 rural electric cooperatives across 23 states Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Together they will be able to generate 10 gigawatts of clean energy, enough to power 5 million households about 20% of America's rural population. This clean energy will reduce greenhouse emissions by 43.7 million tons a year, equivalent to removing more than 10 million cars off the road every year.

The Biden-Harris Administration announced a historic 10th offshore wind project. The latest project approved for the Atlantic coast of Maryland will generate 2,200 megawatts of clean, reliable renewable energy to power 770,000 homes. All together the 10 offshore wind projects approved by the Biden-Harris Administration will generation 15 gigawatts, enough to power 5.25 million homes. This is half way to the Administration's goal of 30 gigawatts of clean offshore wind power by 2030.

President Biden signed an Executive Order aimed at supporting and expanding unions. Called the "Good Jobs EO" the order will direct all federal agencies to take steps to recognize unions, to not interfere with the formation of unions and reach labor agreements on federally supported projects. It also directs agencies to prioritize equal pay and pay transparency, support projects that offer workers benefits like child care, health insurance, paid leave, and retirement benefits. It will also push workforce development and workplace safety.

The Department of Transportation announced $1 billion to make local roads safer. The money will go to 354 local communities across America to improve roadway safety and prevent deaths and serious injuries. This is part of the National Roadway Safety Strategy launched in 2022, since then traffic fatalities have decreased for 9 straight quarters. Since 2022 the program has supported projects in 1,400 communities effecting 75% of all Americans.

The Department of Energy announced $430 million to support America's aging hydropower. Hydropower currently accounts for nearly 27% of renewable electricity generation in the United States. However many of our dams were built during the New Deal for a national average of 79 years old. The money will go to 293 projects across 33 states. These updates will improve energy generation, workplace safety, and have a positive environmental impact on local fish and wildlife.

The EPA announced $300 million to help support tribal nations, and US territories cut climate pollution and boost green energy. The money will support projects by 33 tribes, and the Island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. EPA Administer Michael S. Regan announced the funds along side Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland in Arizona to highlight one of the projects. A project that will bring electricity for the first time to 900 homes on the Hopi Reservation.

The Biden-Harris Administration is investing $179 million in literacy. This investment in the Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant is the largest in history. Studies have shown that the 3rd grade is a key moment in a students literacy development, the CLSD is designed to help support states research, develop, and implement evidence-based literacy interventions to help students achieve key literacy milestones.

The US government secured the release of 135 political prisoners from Nicaragua. Nicaragua's dictator President Daniel Ortega has jailed large numbers of citizens since protests against his rule broke out in 2018. In February 2023 the US secured the release of over 200 political prisoners. Human rights orgs have documented torture and sexual abuse in Ortega's prisons.

The Justice Department announced the disruption of a major effort by Russia to interfere with the 2024 US Elections. Russian propaganda network, RT, deployed $10 million to Tenet Media to help spread Russian propaganda and help sway the election in favor of Trump and the Republicans as well as disrupting American society. Tenet Media employs many well known conservative on-line personalities such as Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, Dave Rubin, Tayler Hansen and Matt Christiansen.

Vice-President Harris outlined her plan for Small Businesses at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. Harris wants to expand from $5,000 to $50,000 tax incentives for startup expenses. This would help start 25 million new small business over four years.

[theonion]

Expressing concern after he stepped inside the cold, concrete room and suddenly heard the click of a lock behind him, a panicked Secretary of State Marco Rubio was reportedly trapped Monday in a cell while on a tour of one of the world’s largest prisons in El Salvador. “Uh, guys, I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding—I’m here on a diplomatic visit, not because I’m a criminal,” said the 53-year-old former Florida senator and current Trump official, who then laughed, called over a prison guard, and nervously attempted to explain that he was looking for a prison to lock people up in, not to be locked up in himself. 

Full Story

[bisexualbaker]

This this this, thank you. I was unaware of the mysterious behind-the-scenes sabotage, and I wish I could be surprised by it, but I know about several of the other attempts by Republicans to suppress voters.

For a lot of us, it can be as easy as taking a quick trip over to one's polling place when you have a moment, even on a break from work; some states even offer paid time off for voting, and I'm lucky enough to live in one of them.

But other places, people are living paycheck-to-paycheck and can't afford to take time off to vote and don't know how to get a mail-in ballot. Or the lines are so ridiculously long that, even if they can get time off to vote, it's not enough time, and also it's against the law to give people standing in line bottles of water. Or their names have been "mysteriously" purged from the voter registration rolls since the last time they voted, without informing them, and there's no same-day registration. Etc etc.

A lot of places in the US make it obscenely difficult to vote. It's deliberately unfair.

So if you're in one of the places in the US where it's easy to vote, for the love of all you hold dear, do so. With enough of us voting, we might make it possible for more people to vote in the future, and that will count for something.

‘why should I expend so much of my precious time and energy casting my vote? why should I labour so long and so hard to participate in this election when the candidate opposing the literal fascist isn’t entirely perfect?’

as a non-american I am fascinated by this us voting system whereby apparently you must scale ice-capped mountains, descend through dark and secret tunnels pursued by monsters of the deep, sail raging river rapids, navigate haunted marshes and walls guarded by the undead, until at last you must scale the perilous steppes of Mount Doom to cast your ballot into the firey depths. I was under the impression you just take twenty minutes out of your fucking day to put an ‘x’ on a piece of card.

[whencyclopedia]

Geronimo

Geronimo (Goyahkla, l. c. 1829-1909) was a medicine man and war chief of the Bedonkohe tribe of the Chiricahua Apache nation, best known for his resistance against the encroachment of Mexican and Euro-American settlers and armed forces into Apache territory and as one of the last Native American leaders to surrender to the United States government.

During the Apache Wars (1849-1886), he allied with other leaders such as Cochise (l. c. 1805-1874) and Victorio (l. c. 1825-1880) in attacks on US forces after Apache lands became part of US territories following the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). Between c. 1850 and 1886, Geronimo led raids against villages, outposts, and cattle trains in northern Mexico and southwest US territories, often striking with relatively small bands of warriors against superior numbers and slipping away into the mountains and then back to his homelands in the region of modern-day Arizona and New Mexico.

He surrendered to US authorities three times, but when the terms of his surrender were not honored, he escaped the reservation and returned to launching raids on settlements. He was finally talked into surrendering for good by First Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood (l. 1853-1896), under the command of General Nelson A. Miles (l. 1839-1925), in 1886. None of the terms stipulated by Miles were honored, but by that time, Geronimo felt he was too old and too tired to continue running. Geronimo's surrender to Gatewood is told accurately, though with some poetic license, in the Hollywood movie Geronimo: An American Legend (1993).

Geronimo was imprisoned at Fort Pickens, Pensacola, Florida, before being moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Toward the end of his life, he became a sensation at the St. Louis World's Fair (1904) and President Theodore Roosevelt's Inaugural Parade (1905) as well as other events. Although one of the stipulations of his surrender was his return to his homelands in Arizona, he was held as a prisoner elsewhere for 23 years before dying in 1909 of pneumonia at Fort Sill.

Name & Youth

His Apache name was Goyahkla ("One Who Yawns"), and, according to some scholars, he acquired the name Geronimo during his campaigns against Mexican troops, who would appeal to Saint Jerome (San Jeronimo in Spanish) for assistance. This was possibly Saint Jerome Emiliani (l. 1486-1537), patron of orphans and abandoned children, not the better-known Saint Jerome of Stridon (l. c. 342-420), translator of the Bible into the Vulgate and patron of translators, scholars, and librarians.

Geronimo was born near Turkey Creek near the Gila River in the region now known as Arizona and New Mexico c. 1825. He was the fourth of eight children and had three brothers and four sisters. In his autobiography, Geronimo: The True Story of America's Most Ferocious Warrior (1906), dictated to S. M. Barrett, Geronimo described his youth:

When a child, my mother taught me the legends of our people; taught me of the sun and sky, the moon and stars, the clouds, and storms. She also taught me to kneel and pray to Usen for strength, health, wisdom, and protection. We never prayed against any person, but if we had aught against any individual, we ourselves took vengeance. We were taught that Usen does not care for the petty quarrels of men. My father had often told me of the brave deeds of our warriors, of the pleasures of the chase, and the glories of the warpath. With my brothers and sisters, I played about my father's home. Sometimes we played at hide-and-seek among the rocks and pines; sometimes we loitered in the shade of the cottonwood trees…When we were old enough to be of real service, we went to the field with our parents; not to play, but to toil.

(12)

After his father died of illness, his mother did not remarry, and Geronimo took her under his care. In 1846, when he was around 17 years old, he was admitted to the Council of Warriors, which meant he could now join in war parties and also marry. He married Alope of the Nedni-Chiricahua tribe, and they would later have three children. Geronimo set up a home for his family near his mother's teepee, and as he says, "we followed the traditions of our fathers and were happy. Three children came to us – children that played, loitered, and worked as I had done" (Barrett, 25). This happy time in Geronimo's life would not last long, however.

Continue reading...

[fatehbaz]

Today, as you read this [...], there are almost 2 million people locked away in one of the more than 5,000 prisons or jails that dot the American landscape. While they are behind bars, these incarcerated people can be found standing in line at their prison’s commissary waiting to buy some extra food or cleaning supplies that are often marked up to prices higher than what one would pay outside of those prison walls. [...] If they want to call a friend or family member, they need to pay for that as well. And almost everyone who works at a job while incarcerated, often for less than a dollar an hour, will find that the prison has taken a portion of their salary to pay for their cost of incarceration. [...] These policymakers and government officials also know that this captive population has no choice but to foot the bill [...] and that if they can’t be made to pay, their families can. In fact, a 2015 report led by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Forward Together, and Research Action Design found that in 63 percent of cases, family members on the outside were primarily responsible for court-related costs [...].

Rutgers sociology professor Brittany Friedman has written extensively on what is called “pay-to-stay” fees in American correctional institutions. In her 2020 article titled, “Unveiling the Necrocapitalist Dimensions of the Shadow Carceral State: On Pay-to-Stay to Recoup the Cost of Incarceration,” Friedman divides these fees into two categories: (1) room and board and (2) service-specific costs. Fees for room and board -- yes, literally for a thin mattress or even a plastic “boat” bed in a hallway, a toilet that may not flush, and scant, awful tasting food -- are typically charged at a “per diem rate for the length of incarceration.” It is not uncommon for these fees to reach $20 to $80 a day for the entire period of incarceration. The second category, what Friedman refers to as “service-specific costs,” includes fees for basic charges such as copays or other costs for seeing a doctor or nurse, programming fees, email and telephone calls, and commissary items. 

In 2014, the Brennan Center for Justice documented that at least 43 states authorize charging incarcerated people for the cost of their own imprisonment, and at least 35 states authorize charging them for some medical expenses. More recent research from the Prison Policy Institute found that 40 states and the federal prison system charge incarcerated people medical copays. 

It’s also critical to understand how little incarcerated people are paid for their labor in addition to the significant cut of their paltry hourly wages that corrections agencies take from their earnings. Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of incarcerated people work behind bars. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, those who work regular jobs in prisons such as maintaining the grounds, working in the kitchen, and painting the walls of the facilities earn on average between $0.14 and $0.63 an hour. [...] Arkansas and Texas don’t pay incarcerated workers at all, while Alabama only pays incarcerated workers employed by the state’s correctional industry. [...]

For example, if someone sends an incarcerated person in Florida $20 online, they will end up paying $24.95. [...]

Dallas County charges incarcerated people a $10 medical care fee for each medical request they submit. In Texas prisons, those behind bars pay $13.55 per medical visit, despite the fact that Texas doesn’t pay incarcerated workers anything. Texas is one of a handful of states that doesn’t pay incarcerated people for their labor. 

In Kentucky’s McCracken County Jail in Paducah, it costs $0.40 a minute for a video call; this translates into $8.00 for each 20-minute video call. [...] For those who need to use email, JPay charges $2.35 for five emails for people in the Texas prison system ($0.47 an email). [...]

People in Florida prisons pay $1.70 for a packet of four extra-strength Tylenol and $4.02 for four tampons. And with inflation, commissary items are priced higher than ever. For example, according to the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, incarcerated people in Kentucky experienced a 7.2 percent rise in already-high commissary prices in July 2022. Researchers noted that a 4.6-ounce tube of Crest toothpaste, which costs $1.38 at the local Walmart, is $3.77 at the prison commissary. [...]

In Gaston County, North Carolina, incarcerated individuals who participate in state work release may make more than the state’s $0.38 an hour maximum pay, but they pay the jail a daily rate based on their yearly income of at least $18 per day and up to $36 per day. In fact, Brennan Center research indicates that almost every state takes a portion of the salary that incarcerated workers earn to compensate the corrections agency [...].

These room and board fees are found throughout the nation’s jails and prisons. Michigan laws allow any county to seek reimbursement for expenses incurred in relation to a charge for which a person was sentenced to county jail time -- up to $60 a day. Winnebago County, Wisconsin, charges $26 a day to those staying in its county jail.

---

Text by: Lauren-Brooke Eisen. “America’s Dystopian Incarceration System of Pay to Stay Behind Bars.” Brennan Center for Justice. 19 April 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[odinsblog]

A Florida woman, unable to get an abortion in her state, carried to term a baby who had no kidneys.

Deborah Dorbert's son Milo died in her arms on March 3, shortly after he was born, just as her doctors had predicted he would.

"He gasped for air a couple of times when I held him," said Dorbert, 33. "I watched my child take his first breath, and I held him as he took his last one."

She said her pregnancy was proceeding normally until November, when, at 24 weeks, an ultrasound showed that the fetus did not have kidneys and that she had hardly any amniotic fluid. Not only was the baby sure to die, her doctors told her, but the pregnancy put her at especially high risk of preeclampsia, a potentially deadly complication.

Her doctors told her it was too late to terminate the pregnancy in Florida, which bans nearly all abortions after 15 weeks. The only options were to go out of state to get an abortion or to carry the baby to full term, and Dorbert and her husband didn't have the money to travel.

What followed was an agonizing 13 weeks of carrying a baby she knew would die and worrying about her own health. It left Dorbert with severe anxiety and depression for the first time in her life.

Florida law allows abortions after 15 weeks if two doctors confirm the diagnosis of a fatal fetal abnormality in writing, but doctors in Florida and states with similar laws have been hesitant to terminate such pregnancies for fear someone will question whether the abnormality was truly fatal. The penalties for violating the law are severe: Doctors can go to prison and face heavy fines and legal fees.

(continue reading)

[bucktommypositivityproject]

335 Donation Drive- February Fundraiser

Disclaimer: I do my best to properly research each organization, but I'm human. If an organization is ever listed that has a negative history, please do not hesitate to let me know.

The listed nonprofits, at a glance:

Black LGBTQ+ Liberation Inc. (BLINC)- BLINC is a South Florida-based nonprofit. They focus on helping BIPOC LGBTQ+ people lead happier lives through arts, health and wellness programs, and strategic community partnerships.

The Okra Project- The Okra Project focuses on supporting Black trans people across the United States. They provide food, security, safe transportation, and mental health services. Funding has supported 10 annual programs and 279 Black trans individuals.

The Audre Lorde Project- Based in Brooklyn, The Audre Lorde Project is and LGBTQ+ organization for people of color. They focus on community organizing and nonviolent activism, including: AIDS and HIV activism, pro-immigrant activism, and prison reform.

Brave Space Alliance (BSA)- BSA is the first Black trans-led LGBTQ+ center in Chicago. Their Four Pillars of Dignity are: Health, Housing, Food, Identity. They provide essential services, develop programs for individuals and families, and advocate on issues that directly impact Trans, LGBQ+, and Black communities.

Black AIDS Institute (BAI)- BAI is dedicated to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Black community. Their vision is to see a world where Black people are free of HIV and AIDS, free of stigma and shame, and where health and well-being are paramount. They have multiple national programs which focus on educating African American communities about the science of HIV, medical advancements, and prevention methods.

[mariacallous]

WASHINGTON — It took decades for defenders of the Confederacy to rewrite the history of the Civil War to recast Southern rebels’ treasonous attack against the United States as an act of honor and courage.

It took Donald Trump a mere fraction of that time to accomplish the same feat for his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt.

In a mere four years, that day’s effort to end or, at the very least, suspend American democracy with a deadly assault on the Capitol, incited by Trump himself, has for a large swath of the country instead become a peaceful protest whose participants have been persecuted by Trump’s political opponents.

“What they have in common is that in both cases a story is propagated that a portion of the population wants to hear because it absolves them, or those in their in-group, of a transgression of not just the law, but of commonly held moral principles,” said Gabriel Reich, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor who has studied how the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction is taught in schools.

“Liberal democracies really struggle with bad-faith actors who manipulate existing rules and norms to their own benefit,” he added.

Tom Joscelyn, a counterterrorism expert who served on the staff of the House Jan. 6 committee and was a co-author of its report, said he still finds it hard to believe that people could watch what happened that day unfold on television and then still accept Trump’s version of it. Unlike children growing up in the South in the 1940s and 1950s, for whom the Civil War was generations in the past, Trump’s followers and allies are rejecting readily available evidence of contemporary violence.

“All you need is the images and the videos from that day, his own words, and what you saw with your own eyes, and it was clear that he had crossed some bright lines,” he said. “All of that should have been disqualifying, and it wasn’t.”

Trump’s transition team did not respond to HuffPost queries. Even since his win in November, Trump has continued to lie about the 2020 election having been stolen from him and has described those who have been prosecuted for their actions on Jan. 6 as political prisoners.

“These people have been treated really, really badly,” he told Time magazine last month. “They’ve suffered greatly, and in many cases they should not have suffered.”

Mac Stipanovich, a longtime Republican political consultant in Florida, said he remembers as a child reading a plaque honoring dead Confederate soldiers in his town square. “That’s the way we grew up. That’s what we knew,” he said.

That Trump was able to revise his own history so quickly is a noteworthy achievement, he added.

“It is a tribute to Trump and his posse’s ability to convince half the country,” Stipanovich said. “And it is a telling indictment of the intelligence of that half of the country.”

From Protecting Slavery To The Honorable ‘Lost Cause’

When America elected the leader of a party dedicated to abolishing slavery as president, 11 Southern states decided to secede and started a war against those that remained. That these rebel states would lose was likely inevitable, given the Union’s industrial might and population advantage, and 700,000 deaths later, they did.

Yet within a few short years, an effort to reinvent that loss and the motivations behind it began. Confederate sympathizers and segregationists in academia, the media and politics cast men like Robert E. Lee — officers in the U.S. Army who had taken up arms against the United States — as tragic American heroes. And the reason behind the war, the preservation of human slavery, was replaced with a principled defense of “states’ rights” — even though slavery was plainly cited in the states’ own articles of secession.

“They made sure that teachers, including university-level historians, taught that story as historical truth, while simultaneously suppressing other points of view from the media,” VCU’s Reich said.

It took decades of repetition, replete with the construction of statues and memorials to the leaders of the failed insurrection, but this “Lost Cause” myth eventually became an accepted narrative, primarily in the South but to a lesser extent all over the country. So much so that some U.S. military bases in the first half of the 20th century were named for Confederate officers.

Trump’s propaganda campaign to redefine Jan. 6, in contrast, has taken place at lightning speed.

On Jan. 6 itself and in the days immediately afterward, the early consensus was that Trump had incited the attack on the Capitol and that he was wrong to do so. Republican congressional leaders blamed him in floor speeches. Trump himself on Jan. 7 read prepared remarks warning members of his mob: “To those who broke the law, you will pay.”

Trump’s former United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley, expressed the conventional wisdom at the time that Trump was finished. “I think he’s lost any sort of political viability he was going to have,” she told Politico on Jan. 12.

Four years later, Trump is about to return to the same White House he left in disgrace. His new administration will be stocked with those willing to repeat and spread his continuing lies about the 2020 election. And he has promised not only to pardon those prosecuted for taking part in the Jan. 6 attack but to prosecute those who tried to hold him and his followers to account.

The Triumph Of The Repeated Lie

That Trump was able to return to power, despite everything, was perhaps foreseeable because he never lost the loyalty of the Republican primary voting base.

Indeed, the day after his coup attempt had failed, the overwhelming majority of the 163 members of the Republican National Committee gave him a sustained ovation when he called into their winter meeting in Amelia Island, Florida.

Three weeks later, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, at the time the country’s highest-ranking elected Republican, visited Trump at his South Florida country club, effectively signaling that Trump remained the party’s leader. Two weeks after that, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, while lambasting Trump for his behavior leading up to and on Jan. 6, nonetheless voted not to convict Trump for inciting the insurrection following his House impeachment for that offense. A conviction would have been followed by a vote to ban him from federal office for life.

By April, the RNC was again holding fundraising events at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, putting donors’ money into his personal bank account. Officials acknowledged privately that Trump remained their biggest fundraising draw and that they had to go along with the fiction that the 2020 election had been stolen because their voters believed it to be true — even though the only reason for that belief was Trump’s lies.

And by the end of 2021, following the release of conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson’s “documentary” claiming that the Jan. 6 insurrection was actually a “false flag” operation by the FBI, Trump began calling those under prosecution for taking part in his coup attempt — even the hundreds convicted for having assaulted police officers — “hostages” and “political prisoners.”

Republican candidates for offices large and small in increasing numbers made pilgrimages to Palm Beach to win his endorsement. Journalists similarly made the trek — not to ask about his unprecedented attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power, but about his candidacy to regain the presidency in 2024.

The new “Lost Cause” myth for Jan. 6 was complete.

“It’s disheartening,” Joscelyn said.

Stipanovich, who broke from the Republican Party when it embraced Trump in 2016, said that a more apt — and troubling — comparison to Trump’s rewriting of Jan. 6 may be the way Adolf Hitler and the Nazis remade their 1923 Beer Hall Putsch into a valiant act of patriotism, rather than an attempted coup that sent Hitler and others to prison.

“When it failed, the heroes of the failure became the hope of the future,” he said.

Whatever the appropriate historical analogy, the fact that Trump was able to assault democracy as he did and still come back to power is worrisome, said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist. Sabato also grew up in that state, where the Civil War was taught as the “War of Northern Aggression.”

“The Lost Cause was a ‘big lie,’ but I’m not so sure Trump’s ‘big lie’ will ever be a lost cause,” he warned. “This is not cynicism. It’s the reality we face.”

[vague-humanoid]

A Georgia sheriff's deputy shot and killed a Black man who spent more than 16 years in prison on a wrongful conviction, according to a report Tuesday.

The Camden County deputy stopped Leonard Allen Cure as he drove Monday on Interstate 95 near the Georgia-Florida state line. Though he got out of his vehicle and cooperated at first, investigators said he became violent after he was told he was being arrested, reported WSB-TV.

“I can only imagine what it’s like to know your son is innocent and watch him be sentenced to life in prison, to be exonerated and ... then be told that once he’s been freed, he’s been shot dead,” said Seth Miller, executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida.

@chrisdornerfanclub

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a claims bill in June granting Cure $817,000 in compensation for his conviction and imprisonment, along with educational benefits, and he received those funds in August.