An American Gulag

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

A famous Texas scandal spawned a legend and a movie: "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas", starring Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton. Many, not familiar with Texas scandals, probably thought it referred to the state legislature where various "favors" and "special considerations" are sold to special interests and various lobbys. But --it's not a whorehouse; it's just a circle jerk.

Of late, Texas has taken political prostitution to levels not seen since A. Hitler pimped his "Third Reich" to corporate 'johns' --I.G. Farben, Thyssen, Krupp! All would get big, juicy, sexy government contracts if they but joined his crazy, evil scheme to enslave the world and exterminate jews, gypsies and anyone else not liked by Hitler, his cult of Nazis, his hand-picked perverts, whack-jobs, and a panoply of marginal and otherwise ineffective types, in fact, those who would be failures in a normal world. And those are the Nazis!! The GOP may be worse.

The scam is often repeated in various ways by the American GOP but the Texas model, cooked up by Herrs Bush and Perry, may have outdone Hitler's blunt approach but, in the end, it's all Nazism. Hitler met 'industrialists' Thyssen, Krupp and several representatives of I.G. Farben --the makers of Zyklon 'B'. The meeting is described in some detail by William Shirer in 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'.

Goebbels was jubilant. "Now it will be easy," he wrote in his diary on February 3, "to carry on the fight, for we can call on all the resources of the State. Radio and press are at our disposal. We shall stage a masterpiece of propaganda. And this time, naturally, there is no lack of money."(2)

The big businessmen, pleased with the new government that was going to put the organized workers in their place and leave management to run its business as it wished, were asked to cough up. This they agreed to do at a meeting on February 20 at Goering's Reichstag President's Palace, at which Dr. Schacht acted as host and Goering and Hitler laid down the line to a couple of dozen of Germany's leading magnates, including Krupp von Bohlen, who had become an enthusiastic Nazi overnight, Bosch and Schnitzler of I. G. Farben, and Voegler, head of the United Steel Works. The record of this secret meeting has been preserved.

Hitler began a long speech with a sop to the industrialists. "Private enterprise," he said, "cannot be maintained in the age of democracy; it is conceivable only if the people have a sound idea of authority and personality . . . All the worldly goods we possess we owe to the struggle of the chosen ...We must not forget that all the benefits of culture must be introduced more or less with an iron fist." He promised the businessmen that he would "eliminate" the Marxists and restore the Wehrmacht (the latter was of special interest to such industries as Krupp, United Steel and I. G. Farben, which stood to gain the most from rearmament). "Now we stand before the last election," Hitler concluded, and he promised his listeners that "regardless of the outcome, there will be no retreat." If he did not win, he would stay in power "by other means . . . with other weapons." Goering, talking more to the immediate point, stressed the necessity of "financial sacrifices" which "surely would be much easier for industry to bear if it realized that the election of March fifth will surely be the last one for the next ten years, probably even for the next hundred years."

All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament. Krupp, the munitions king, who, according to Thyssen, had urged Hindenburg on January 29 not to appoint Hitler, jumped up and expressed to the Chancellor the "gratitude" of the businessmen "for having given us such a clear picture." Dr. Schacht then passed the hat. "I collected three million marks," he recalled at Nuremberg.(3)

----William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The Nazification of Germany: 1933–34

There are other, corroborating sources for this meeting.

Hitler did not intend to share his power with coalition partners. After the dissolution of the Reichstag, he hoped to win an absolute majority for the NSDAP with a massive election campaign. To finance the electoral battle, he sought support from Germany’s leading industrialists. In a meeting held on February 20, 1933, Hitler and Hermann Göring (1893-1946) explained the benefits that industry leaders would derive from an NSDAP victory: political stability, the complete elimination of the Communist threat and, not least, a lucrative rearmament policy.

Among those present at the meeting was George von Schnitzler, a board member of I.G. Farben, then the world’s largest chemical conglomerate. (I.G. Farben would eventually go on to produce the Zyklon B gas used in Nazi death camps). In the following affidavit, given in English on November 10, 1945, Schnitzler describes the purpose of the meeting and provides the names of others in attendance that day.

The TX gulag system differs very little from concentration camps. To be expected, they look modern from the outside. But, like Hitler's string of concentration and death camps, they are the work of 'private enterprise' contracted by 'government'; it is private enterprise which benefits from the Faustian deals that created them. Reduced to its essence, Hitler's 'Nazi' scheme systematically murdered millions and just as systematically reduced as many to slavery amid unimaginably horrible conditions.

--German History in Documents and Images, Volume 7. Nazi Germany, 1933-1945, Georg von Schnitzler on Hitler’s Appeal to Leading German Industrialists on February 20, 1933 (Affidavit, November 10, 1945)

A 'party' is what it does! If the basics of this 'privatization scheme' are repeated by Texas Republicans with similar/same results, then in what way does it differ from 'fascism' or 'corporatism' or "Nazism'? In Texas, politicians have been known to say: "if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, it's a duck!" Indeed! One is what what does! A political party is what it does! The GOP has repeated the Hitler model in Texas with respect to its gulag of prisons! Am I to call the Texas GOP 'boy scouts' because they are not in Germany? Of course not! I will call them what they are and what they are, in fact and deed, are fascists!

The Texas GOP Learned From Hitler's Mistakes

The Bush family has worked to establish the same or similar model in Texas. The fruition is seen in the Texas gulag of corporate-owned prisons. The roots of this horrific outcome may be traced to Nixon-Bush overtures to China. Bush Sr's efforts to set it all up are too often forgotten by writers focused upon Nixon's largely ceremonial trip to the Forbidden City. Recall that Bush SR was ambassador to China under Nixon, that it was Nixon that took the U.S. off the gold standard; but it was most certainly Bush Sr who cut the deals in advance of Nixon's largely ceremonial trip.

It was, therefore, Bush Sr who sold us out to China. Like a bad penny, a Bush always seems to turn up when one researches China, oil, the U.S. imbalance of trade with China, oil wars, and other 'rotten' things.

“There is something rotten in Houston”

That Texas would eventually play a role in the grand scheme of things was inevitable. It was an oil producing state; later, an oil refining state. And Texas has a history of often rampant lawlessness. Now –my great uncle, Lawson 'Loss' Hart, was on the right side of the law. As a federal marshal, he tracked down, outdrew, shot and killed the infamous outlaw --Bill Dalton of the notorious Dalton gang. We could use a few more 'Harts' who might, likewise, track down the lawless Bushes, the crooked gang called GOP!

Bush SR's choice of Houston as his permanent residence was unfortunate for Houston. I recall speaking with Houston Mayor Fred Hofheinz (middle 70s)! The occasion of that specific conversation was a 'smear job' that was making the rounds, a 'smear job' that might as well have had 'G O P' stamped on it with a copyright date. Hofheinz said to me: "There is something rotten in Houston!" It was as much his tone and demeanor as the sentence itself that sent chills down one's spine.

The mayor's comments came during an organized but shadowy campaign of rumor and villification against him. The rumor surfaced immediately following an infamous 'reception' for the Sr Bush at the venerable old Rice Hotel in downtown Houston. I believe that it was already envisioned, decided, that the Senior Bush would --one day --become President, and that Jr (Shrub) would, likewise, occupy the White House one day. Thus --in two generations the GOP would effect what Sr himself referred to as a 'new world order'.

The resulting fascist prison model that is now in place and operating in Texas is proof that they have not yet failed in their mission. As Hitler made promises to Thyssen, Krupp, Farben et al, one wonders: did Bush and Perry promise to subvert Texas education, in fact, reducing the state to dead last in high school graduations? Is this the crux of the deal? Essentially --we trash education and thus ensure the prisons a full house!

Texas became a different state after the election of Ronald Reagan

I thought it ironic that the man most responsible for the GOP infestations in Texas --Tom DeLay --was, himself, a roach exterminator by trade. GOP strong-holds with which I am most familiar were/are GOP infestations in Brazoria county and Fort Bend County. It was in Fort Bend County that Tom DeLay built up a base that would eventually allow him to gerrymander the state, making Texas safe for fascism.

Brazoria County got a new Republican High Sheriff who set out on a course of absolutely zero tolerance. So many were arrested he had to build his own little mini prison in the county. I am surprised that he was not awarded a title: 'Duke'.

The GOP/right wing inclined would rather build a prison than prevent the crimes that fill it. Why? That's easy! There is less easy money to be made locking folk up when crime rates are in decline! For the same reason, the right wing would rather not "waste tax payer money" to educate a child. Better to let him take to the streets, rob a convenience store, perhaps shoot someone, get arrested, sentenced and locked up in a corporate prison where the GOP's corporate/wealthy base and support could make an easy buck by warehousing him.

"Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons? If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus." population."

--Scrooge

But the Texas GOP has done Scrooge one better: they are making a profit off both their deaths and incarceration.

WHERE is the will to win? When the right wing has succeeded in destroying civilized society if not the world, the left will have failed to save it!

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The Rise of Fascism in Bush-Perry Texas

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Recently --Texas Gov Rick Perry's boisterous audience of schizoid GOP idiots were caught waving US flags: SECEDE! Perhaps, because of what the GOP has made of it, Texas should secede. By presiding over the deterioration of public education in Texas, the Bush/Perry GOP has created a fascist model in which the profits of huge, right-wing inclined corporations rise as TX educational standards decline; a model in which illiteracy rises concurrently with corporate profits; a model in which the living conditions of millions deteriorate as the lifestyles of a dwindling few grow opulent beyond the ability of even oil barons to imagine.

Texas is about 50 years behind the US. As Bush-Perry neglected education, crime rates rose, most noticeably --murder! Drop-outs account for most, if not all, increases in violent crimes. Minorities --primarily black and Hispanic --are meanwhile disproportionately represented in the Texas gulag system but under represented in the State legislature, the various city councils, and the state judicial system.

Texas is about 50 years behind the US, much more so if compared to Europe. Minorities --primarily black and Hispanic --are disproportionately represented in the Texas gulag system but under represented in the State legislature, the various city councils, and the state judicial system.

Texas was once a Great State and, as a native Texan, I mourn its passing!

Declines in education and jobs are of no concern to the current Governor --Rick Perry, called Governor Good Hair by Molly Ivins, a real Texan, a patriot and brilliant writer. During the Bushy - Hair era, Texas became a gulag state by beating out Mississippi for dead last in high school graduations. A matter of considerable concern among intelligent, thoughtful people but for the axis of Bush-Perry it means more fodder for the corporate owned and run state prison system. The word for this is fascism! There is, in Texas, a corporate gulag of GOP making. One fears that the Texas model will be replicated across America:

1. subvert public education
2. exploit the resulting rise in crime to elect more GOP candidates
3. lock up the victims in corporate-owned prison hell-holes.

That is how Texas became the lab study, the 'fascist model' upon which a fascist state is built. This model is not new. Hitler tried it with concentration camps. The primary corporate beneficiaries were I.G. Farben and Thyssen/Krupp.

These basic fascist principles have inspired movies --good, bad, and ugly. The 'bad' summons up memories of a horrible movie: Judge Dredd, a fascist 'wet dream' in which so-called 'judges', having murdered 'due process of law' could pass sentences on the spot! Fascists, red necks, Bush, Perry were most surely inspired by a single line summing up so many GOP aspirations: “The justice system works swiftly in the future now that they've abolished all lawyers.”

The rise of Fascist-Goppism in Texas was signaled by the constant anti-trial lawyer drumbeat. Soon --trial lawyers will be out of a job and no one will be allowed to present a defense. No problem --Judge Dredd and Gov Perry will just fill up those corporate hell-holes with fresh meat!

Slavery is back! Perhaps it never left! Every fascist dictatorship is preceded with cries of : kill all the lawyers! Depriving them of a profession, a livlihood may be slower but just as effective.
Crimes rates --rising, falling, stagnate --never justify the death penalty. In fact, crime rates invariably increase in death penalty states. States without the death penalty have consistently lower murder rates.

The GOP in Texas might prefer you think they are stupid. Otherwise, you might conclude that because these facts may be easily obtained and verified that their heinous policies were chosen --not out of GOP incompetence --but deliberately for the purpose of filling up the prisons, thus enriching the corporations which own and run the prisons.
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The death penalty is medieval, barbaric and ineffective. Throughout history, the death penalty has failed to deter crimes of any sort. There is, therefore, no rationale for the state murder of anyone accused of any crime. Increasingly fewer cases are 'proven' beyond a 'shadow of a doubt'. A disproportionate number are arrested for the crimes of being black and/or poor.

States Without the Death Penalty Have Better Records on Homicide Rates

A new survey by the New York Times found that states without the death penalty have lower homicide rates than states with the death penalty. The Times reports that ten of the twelve states without the death penalty have homicide rates below the national average, whereas half of the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above. During the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48% - 101% higher than in states without the death penalty. "I think Michigan made a wise decision 150 years ago," said the state's governor, John Engler, a Republican, referring to the state's abolition of the death penalty in 1846. "We're pretty proud of the fact that we don't have the death penalty."

--New York Times, 9/22/00, Death Penalty Information Center

Texas, notably, has not occupied a position of prominence with regard to petroleum production since it was discovered that bombing Iraq and killing civilians there was much, much cheaper than is the secondary recovery of oil. Why spend millions exploring for oil when you can just steal fields that are already productive?  The cost of bombing the crap out of the oil's rightful owners?? Hell --the taxpayer is stuck with that tab!

Because of rapacious oil development, the neglect of education and the hubristic disregard for human rights and environment, so-called 'free enterprise' has robbed millions of children of a decent education and as many poor of justice in a state ruled by goddamned liars, elites and their ass kissers: the GOP!

• Texas --Bush style --provides the residents of Texas with some of the nation's very worst crime and incarceration rates;
• Texas subjects the residents of Texas to deteriorating air quality and wanton ecosystem destruction;
• Texas can boast of the nation's very worst murder, crime and incarceration rates!
• Texas --a state that now leads the nation in pollution, crime, and illiteracy --should be studied by any other state wishing to avoid a similar disastrous fate.

Fascism --now dominating the political and cultural life of Texas --spawns crime and creates the conditions in which it is nurtured and thrives and, worse, benefits the GOP and its corporate sponsors.

Still, most people are now ashamed to admit that punishment is based on vengeance and, for that reason, various excuses and apologies have been offered for the cruelty that goes with it. Some of the more humane, or “squeamish,” who still believe in punishment, contend that the object of this infliction is the reformation of the victim. This, of course, cannot be urged of the death penalty or even punishment for life, or for very long-term sentences. In these cases there is neither inducement to reform nor any object in the reformation. No matter how thorough the reform, the prisoner never goes back to society, or he returns after there is no longer a chance for him to be of use to the world or to enjoy life.

--Clarence Darrow, Crime: It's Cause and Treatment

Tea Baggers are Scumbaggers!

If there is a real and widespread desire among Texans to secede, then, by all means, secede. But in fact, I believe secession talk is just another right wing smokescreen with which it exploits its base and deceives otherwise good citizens of Texas!

Power may corrupt, and absolute power may corrupt absolutely, but in the comics Judge Dredd is basically Dirty Harry on Overdrive, an incorruptible lawman obsessed with The Law and Justice. The official plot synopsis of the 1995 movie swallows the official line too: “In the Third Millennium a powerful and efficient hybrid of the police and judicial system has given birth to group of new guardians of the law with the power to dispense instant justice and punishment. These judges are law enforcer, jury and executioner. One of these judges, Judge Joseph Dredd is a living legend - six feet of armored justice with no outside interests besides his devotion to enforcing the law.” Why anyone would however want to make a sequel or (bullshit Hollywood jargon coming up) “re-imagining” of Judge Dredd is a bit of a mystery. The original film disappointed at the box office and made a mere $113 million world-wide. Audiences who didn’t know the character beforehand were baffled. “Considering that the movie was adapted from comic books, the least we should expect is a juicy battle between good and evil,” Anthony Lane wrote in The New Yorker, “but the conflict is, in fact, a matter of fine distinctions between shades of Fascism.”

--FROM PAGE TO SCREEN: JUDGE DREDD (2012)

Fascist Bullshit: "I AM the law!"

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Psychopaths in Power: Why Texas is the 'Gulag State'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

An innocent man has been executed in the Gulag State of Texas. This man, whose innocence is now proven, is the ultimate price paid for endemic, state-sponsored idiocy and even less excusable psychopathy. Educational standards have declined under fascist GOP regimes --prominently Bush Jr and his successor Rick Perry. Incarceration rates have risen; justice is applied inequitably. The deaths of innocents at the hands of a psychopathic, GOP dominated state is the price that is paid for allowing the GOP any influence, any power.

A report published today in the New Yorker finds that Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 in Texas for setting a fire that killed his three daughters, was innocent. He is pictured at left with his two-year-old daughter Amber, who died in the fire.

This is incredibly sad news, but it also marks the most conclusive evidence yet that an innocent person has been put to death in the United States. We’ve known for years that the arson science used to convict Willingham was flat-out wrong. Today’s New Yorker report goes further: it dismantles the case that sent Willingham to his death, point-by-point, proving that every shred of evidence used against him was false.

Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck wrote in the Huffington Post: "There can no longer be any doubt that an innocent person has been executed. The question now turns to how we can stop it from happening again."

And the New York Times adds, in an editorial today: "The Willingham investigation, which is continuing, is further evidence that the criminal justice system is far too flawed to justify imposing a death penalty."

I strongly, strongly urge you to read David Grann’s incredible New Yorker piece in its entirety. I can’t imagine that you can leave the story with trust in our system of capital punishment.

--New Yorker: Texas Executed an Innocent Man

Texas is about 50 years behind the the US, much more so compared to Europe. Minorities --primarily black and Hispanic --are disproportionately represented in the Texas gulag system but under represented in the State legislature, the various city councils, and the state judicial system.

Many studies have shown that all crimes increase in death penalty states. I doubt that anyone knows why that is the case but the verifiable numbers prove conclusively that that is the case in fact. I would venture an hypothesis: the death penalty creates and/or encourages a society in which life itself is not valued to the same degree as it is in non-death penalty states. Of the variables, it is difficult to say which is the cause, which is the effect.

In any case, states without the death penalty have consistently lower murder rates. The death penalty is medieval, barbaric, ineffective. Its effect is measurable if it cannot be explained. Simply --the death penalty does not and will never deter crimes of any sort. There is, therefore, no RATIONAL reason for the state to continue murdering folk. It is not merely crazy and psychopathic to keep on doing it, it is counter-productive and immoral.

States Without the Death Penalty Have Better Records on Homicide

A new survey by the New York Times found that states without the death penalty have lower homicide rates than states with the death penalty. The Times reports that ten of the twelve states without the death penalty have homicide rates below the national average, whereas half of the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above. During the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48% - 101% higher than in states without the death penalty. "I think Michigan made a wise decision 150 years ago," said the state's governor, John Engler, a Republican, referring to the state's abolition of the death penalty in 1846. "We're pretty proud of the fact that we don't have the death penalty."

--New York Times, 9/22/00, Death Penalty Information Center

Texas, though it boasts of its 'oil' economy', has apparently forgotten that Texas has not occupied a position of prominence with regard to petroleum production since it was discovered that bombing Iraq and killing civilians there was much, much cheaper than are the expensive secondary recovery methods by which big lying oil companies squeeze a few more gallons out of all but abandoned oil fields in West Texas. It's called 'secondary recovery'. It is very expensive, often not profitable. It is cheaper and easier to con the American public into supporting wars of aggression in which it is known that a primary military objective is the siezure of oil fields!

Why spend millions exploring for oil when you can just steal fields that are already productive? The cost of bombing the crap out of the oil's rightful owners?? That is of no interest to the 'oil barons' of Texas who, in fact, produce very little oil. Is is easier to con the American public. It is easier to let the U.S. military seize the oil fields that are still productive. The US taxpaper is stuck with the tab; the oil barons are off the hook.

So-called 'free enterprise' --irrationally revered by Texans, scumbaggers (tea baggers) and rednecks --has robbed millions of children of a decent education and as many poor of justice in a state ruled by the oil elites.

• Texas --Bush style --provides the residents of Texas with some of the nation's very worst crime and incarceration rates;
• Texas subjects the residents of Texas to deteriorating air quality and wanton ecosystem destruction;
• Texas can boast of the the nation's very worst murder, crime and incarceration rates!
• Texas --a state that now leads the nation in pollution, crime, and illiteracy --should be studied by any other state wishing to avoid a similar disastrous fate.

I am of the confirmed opinion that the rise of crime in Texas is concurrent with the rise of the Texas GOP. I suggest that the fascist policies that now dominate the political and cultural life and environment of Texas spawns crime and creates the conditions in which it is nurtured and survives.

Still, most people are now ashamed to admit that punishment is based on vengeance and, for that reason, various excuses and apologies have been offered for the cruelty that goes with it. Some of the more humane, or “squeamish,” who still believe in punishment, contend that the object of this infliction is the reformation of the victim. This, of course, cannot be urged of the death penalty or even punishment for life, or for very long-term sentences. In these cases there is neither inducement to reform nor any object in the reformation. No matter how thorough the reform, the prisoner never goes back to society, or he returns after there is no longer a chance for him to be of use to the world or to enjoy life.

--Clarence Darrow, Crime: It's Cause and Treatment

Tea Baggers are Scumbaggers!

Recently --Texas Gov Rick Perry's boisterous audience of schizoid idiots were caught waving US flags even as they shouted: SECEDE! It might have been funny if these folk were not so tragically STUPID! Think about it --traitors to the US, favoring secession from the US waving US flags. IDIOTS! Is 'secession' from the US necessarily 'treason'? Well --the US just prior to the Civil War certainly thought so and fought and won a Civil War to prove the point. In any case, waving US flags while advocating secession is absurd if not downright moronic!

Secede?? Perhaps the US Should Throw Texas Out, Deny Them Federal Aid Until They Address the Human Rights Abuses in the Fascist Prison System!

Clearly, scumbaggers...uh...tea baggers result from the monumental failure of Texas to educate its young. It is a tragic lapse of values. It is as well an utter failure of policy and budget priorities resulting in Texas' humiliating failure to educate its younger generations. What is to be said of a society that cannot or worse --will not --educate its young? Answer: nothing good!

Nevertheless, Perry is said to have 'fired up an anti-tax tea party with an old Southern mantra: 'states' rights'. I say 'state's right' is just a code word for old-time, old South bigotry. The term should raise as many hackles as do terms like 'nigger' and 'Sambo'! 'State's rights' should be a wake up call to a black community that was since the end of the Civil War denied the the civil rights that were accorded 'white folk' without controversy. My sympathies are not misplaced; my own ancestors --Native Americans --were the object of genocide, rounded up, denied properties that had been recognized by the US government, expelled, marched hundreds of miles to 'concentration camps'.

I doubt that this or any other so-called 'tea party' was exceptionally stupid! It was, rather, typically stupid, based on generations in which old bigotries, prejudices and ignorance were passed down and encouraged. Until the scumbaggers change their tune, I will urge them, rather, to return from whence they came. This land is MY land!

Texas is the Number One Backwater in Education

The school board in this impoverished rural hamlet in North Texas has drawn national attention with its decision to let some teachers carry concealed weapons, a track no other school in the country has followed. The idea is to ward off a massacre along the lines of what happened at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.

“Our people just don’t want their children to be fish in a bowl,” said David Thweatt, the schools superintendent and driving force behind the policy. “Country people are take-care-of-yourself people. They are not under the illusion that the police are there to protect them.”

Even in Texas, with its tradition of lenient gun laws and frontier justice, the idea of teachers’ taking guns to class has rattled some people and sparked a fiery debate.

Gun-control advocates are wringing their hands, while pro-gun groups are gleeful. Leaders of the state’s major teachers unions have expressed stunned outrage, while the conservative Republican governor, Rick Perry, has endorsed the idea.

--In Texas School, Teachers Carry Books and Guns, New York Times

Texas Is No. One; Leads the Nation in Executions

When Justice Byron White wrote the Enmund decision in 1982, he observed that the Court was not aware of a single execution of someone who did not kill or intend to kill. What a difference another quarter-century makes. Months after Enmund was decided, Texas executed its first prisoner since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. In the tidal wave of capital cases that followed, numerous defendants would be sentenced to die under the law of parties.

One was Norman Green. Green was charged for a murder during a botched robbery in an electronics store in 1985. He got death. His accomplice, the man who actually pulled the trigger, got life. The arbitrary result exemplifies what Green's appellate lawyer, Verna Langham -- who also handled Kenneth Foster's first appeal -- sees as the danger of the law of parties. "[It] is subject to such loose interpretation," she told the Austin Chronicle in 2005. "A kid in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people can end up being sentenced to death." Green was executed in 1999.

--Alternet, Innocent Man Sentenced to Death Under Cruel Texas Law

Black people represent only 12% of the Texas population but comprise 44% of the total incarcerated population. Whites make up about 58% of Texas' total population, but only 30% of the prison and jail population.

• While one out of every 20 Texas adults is under some form of criminal justice control, one out of 3 young black men (29% of the black male population between 21 and 29) are in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day.
• One out of every four adult black men in Texas is under some form of criminal justice supervision.
• Blacks in Texas are incarcerated at a rate seven times greater than whites. While there are 555 whites behind bars for every 100,000 in the Texas population, there are an astonishing 3862 African Americans behind bars for every 100,000 in the state. This is nearly 63% higher than the national incarceration rate for blacks of 2366 per 100,000.
• If Texas' black incarceration rate was applied to the United States, the number of blacks behind bars on a national level would increase by half a million. There are currently an estimated 824,900 African Americans in prison and jail in the US The new figure, 1,346,370, would increase the number of African Americans incarcerated in the US by 63%.

Do you see the pattern? I allege that Bush and the GOP deliberately sabotaged education in Texas with budget cuts and other GOP idiocy so that the GOP's corporate buddies could make a killing in the prison business! Who but the corporations who run the fascist prison system have benefited by the measurable increase in crime that defines GOP occupied Texas.

Everything's big in Texas — big pickup trucks, big SUVs and the state's big carbon footprint, too.

Texans' fondness for large, manly vehicles has helped make the Lone Star State the biggest carbon polluter in the nation.

The headquarters state of America's oil industry spewed 670 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2003, enough that Texas would rank seventh in the world if it were its own country, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The amount is more than that of California and Pennsylvania — the second- and third-ranking states — combined.

A multitude of factors contribute to the carbon output, among them: Texas' 19 coal-burning power plants; a heavy concentration of refineries and chemical plants; a lack of mass transit; and a penchant among ranchers and urban cowboys alike for brawny, gas-guzzling trucks — sometimes to haul things, but often just to look Texas tough.

Debbie Howden, an Austin real estate agent, said her family of six has two pickup trucks, three SUVs, and no apologies. "I would definitely put size and safety over the emissions thing," said Howden, 55. She calls their high fuel bills a "necessary evil."

--Texas Is Biggest Carbon Polluter

Ten large companies generate more than one third of the 2.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted each year by U.S. electric power generators, according to figures in a first-of-its-kind database unveiled Wednesday.

American Electric Power, based in Columbus, Ohio, and Southern Co. of Atlanta, which run the largest coal power plants in the country, top the list of U.S. companies responsible for greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, according to data compiled by the Center for Global Development, a global economic development think tank in Washington, D.C.

The database, called CARMA or Carbon Monitoring for Action, culls for the first time data both from government regulators around the world and commercial databases to provide an up-to-date look at the state of CO2 from power production—which accounts for one quarter of all carbon emissions. (The database doesn't look at other large sources, like transportation and manufacturing.) Here are the top sources of greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation in the United

--The 10 Biggest Carbon Dioxide Polluters

The fascist corporatization of state prisons makes a slick end run, a veer, perhaps a 'triple option', around the Bill of Rights, sets up crony [phony?] corporations with a guaranteed gravy train at tax payer expense, and --to sweeten the deal --it provides them with slave labor. Bill Yeoman nor Darrel Royal could have done better on the gridiron. What a hand-off! What an end run around the laws! What a blitz!

My assertions are backed up by a recent Pew study of trends that had been embraced by Bush's Texas, primarily the rapid outsourcing of prison construction and management throughout the US. As in Texas, crime rates over the period under study increased. Guilt or innocence is of no concern to corporate robber barons.

For the first time in history more than one in every 100 adults in America are in jail or prison—a fact that significantly impacts state budgets without delivering a clear return on public safety. According to a new report released today by the Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project, at the start of 2008, 2,319,258 adults were held in American prisons or jails, or one in every 99.1 men and women, according to the study. During 2007, the prison population rose by more than 25,000 inmates. In addition to detailing state and regional prison growth rates, Pew’s report, One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008, identifies how corrections spending compares to other state investments, why it has increased, and what some states are doing to limit growth in both prison populations and costs while maintaining public safety.

As prison populations expand, costs to states are on the rise. Last year alone, states spent more than $49 billion on corrections, up from $11 billion 20 years before. However, the national recidivism rate remains virtually unchanged, with about half of released inmates returning to jail or prison within three years. And while violent criminals and other serious offenders account for some of the growth, many inmates are low-level offenders or people who have violated the terms of their probation or parole.

--More than One in 100 Adults Are Behind Bars, Pew Study Finds

It is an Orwellian nightmare of waste, graft, and fascism in which no one is held to account. It is a corporate 'gravy train', relieving elected officials of almost every responsibility that government is traditionally and rightfully accorded. It's a scheme, a legalized payoff, a 'good living' for those profiting from incompetent and irresponsible government.

Nevertheless, the industrialized application of the death penalty cannot kill off criminals as fast as they procreate and multiply. The GOP may one day cite this fact in support of a "final solution".

...by year's end 1999, there were 706,600 Texans in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day. In a state with 14 million adults, this meant that 5% of adult Texans, or 1 out of every 20, are under some form of criminal justice supervision. The scale of what is happening in Texas is so huge, it is difficult to contrast the size of its criminal justice systems to the other states' systems it dwarfs:

• There are more Texans under criminal justice control than the entire populations of some states, including Vermont, Wyoming and Alaska.
• According to Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates, one quarter of the nation's parole and probationers are in Texas. California and Texas, together, comprise half the nation's parolees and probationers.
• The number of people incarcerated in Texas (in prison or jail) reached 207,526 in mid-year 1999. Only California, with 10 million more citizens, has more people in both prison and jail.
• Texas has a rate of 1,035 people behind bars for every 100,000 in the population, the second highest incarceration rate in the nation (second only to Louisiana). If Texas was a nation separate from the United States, it would have the world's highest incarceration rate--significantly higher than the United States (682), and Russia (685) which has 1 million prisoners, the world's third biggest prison system. Texas' incarceration rate is also higher than China (115), which has the world's second largest prison population (1.4 million prisoners).
• If the US shared the incarceration rate of Texas, there would be nearly three million Americans behind bars (2,822,300)--instead of our current 2 million prisoners.
• The Texas prison population tripled since 1990, and rose 61.5% in the last five years of this decade alone. In 1994, there were 92, 669 prisoners in Texas. This number had increased to 149,684 by mid-year 1999.
• The Texas correctional system has grown so large that in July 2000, corrections officials ran out of six digit numbers to assign inmates, and officially created prisoner number 1,000,000.

  --An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State

Lower and working classes pay more than their fair share of taxes. The government taxes labor and gives capital a free ride, a recipe for an impending economic collapse, a collapse that appears to be well underway and quite beyond anyone's power or ability to stop. But that has not stopped the government from playing it's well-rehearsed role as the shakedown arm of the nation's tiny and shrinking elite.

If because of GOP transfers of unearned wealth to the increasingly tiny elite of about one percent of the population, labor is unproductive or impoverished the productivity of the nation will decline and ultimately collapse. The poor are increasingly denied decent housing or food because elites have bid up prices on commodities. If you can no longer afford decent housing, health care or food, you have then, perhaps recently under Bush, fallen off the ladder and your children have been or will be left behind! Already just one percent of the US owns more than the rest of us combined. They RULE! It's the GOP way.

Social Darwinism --a tragic mis-read of Darwin --has harmed humankind; many a greedy, psychopathic robber baron has justified his own wealth and the atrocities committed to acquire it with Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism continues to impoverish large segments of our society. Social Darwinism is personified by a fictional character --Scrooge --who summed it up in Dickens' A Christmas Carol:

"Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons? Then let them die and decrease the surplus population." —Scrooge, A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

In those categories and thanks to the GOP, Texas is NUMBER ONE!

Is Justice Served?

Published Articles on Buzzflash.net

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Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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