I really need to stay away from reading the latest about the California Governator and his prison budgets… cuz, it really pisses me off! In a way, I really wanna know what is going on with our money, but then when I find out, I just get upset because its jacked and there seems to be little anyone can do to relieve popular hysteria that is allowing the large prison unions to suck us all dry.

The California Parole system is broken, but it is broken for a good reason, to line the pockets of the correction system unions with 6 figure salaries, people who would only be qualified to work at Jack-in-the-crack without them. I mean, you need tons of people to get tons in overtime and they make sure getting tons of people is no problem. Civil rights? hell, they got trumped by 100k+ salaries to idiots who flunked out of pre-school.

Seriously, the California prison system is one of the largest on the planet with the highest rate of paperwork and parole violators on the planet to match. The Governator just asked for billions more to build more California prisons so California can hire more cousins as guards and give people prison time on their parking tickets so more guards can buy those gas guzzling Hummers they seem to love. Hell, almost makes you wish you were related to a California prison guard, no need for education or even 1/2 a braincell, they take care of their own, ya know.

There is a family I know, if it wasn’t for the correction officer union they would all be on welfare and there is over a dozen of em. They make me sick, always saying how great it is to be able to vote for your own raises and be able to hire all your friends and family. Yep, they claim they vote on whether to get a raise or not… ahh, let me think about that one… “I vote not. California is in a budget crisis ya know… my new Maseratti can wait! DUHHH!”

The sad fact is that the California parole board makes it very hard for parolees to NOT get violated. Getting pulled over for a traffic ticket may get you a year and 3 years of parole no matter what the original sentence, is mandatory. Many people do more time on violations than the original offense, keeping the union fat and happy.

Many parolees are forced into crazy restrictions, even though they are now “free”. I just saw a story about a block of houses in the ghetto. It seems that the parole officers are FORCING the parolees to live there. Once there, they are not allowed to get back to work and are made to file for welfare, whether they want to or not. The welfare is to pay for the housing and the fleet of BMW’s (and all the gold teeth) the cousin, sorry, I mean the home owner wants.

They stack bunk beds 10 deep in the bedrooms and force the “free” men to stay there and pay rent with the welfare money that gets sent directly to the cousin, sorry, the homeowner. If the men have a home and a job to go to and actually leave… well, it’s a violation and another year in prison.

I talked to this kid, he was about 21, he told me he refused to go on welfare, he said he had a wife and child to take care of and if he did the welfare, they would take it out of HER paychecks from work (his wife), he was actually allowed to work (after many complaint letters) and tried to work but the job was 50 miles away from house and it took 2 hours on a bus to get to work. He said they refused to allow him to live closer to his job, seems it was just too much paperwork. Anyway, he is now back in prison because he was late coming back twice… 2 to 3 hours late… Once because of the bus and once because his boss needed some overtime. His wife and child? well, seems their home is now in foreclosure because she just can not pay all the bills alone. Child support? she gets none because “cousin” takes the welfare check. He needs a few more 140″ flat panel plasma tv’s, to give as gifts to the union members that set him up, fat, collecting welfare checks for 30 fools living in his 3 bedroom house. All thanks to the Governator and the State of California!

Here is a quote regarding this issue..

Whoa! Take a deep breath for a minute. I happen to be a Correctional Officer in a state institution that holds about 7200 inmates. I must say (and I am a progressive) that you don’t want these men back on the streets. Many can barely read, don’t have a work ethich other than selling dope, and are prone to violence. God knows what people are capable of doing while under the influence. Be careful what you pray for, you just may get it…

Funny how “ethic” is mis-spelled above from the original quote. That attitude sums us the California budget crisis in regards to the bloated prison population. “God forbid that someone who can not read, be taught how to read, hey, they would then be able to read the paperwork, point out the mis-spellings and maybe some other bullshit being spread on taxpayers.

Just throw them into the bottomless hole where they belong and do everything possible to keep them there for years after the original sentence was completed, drain dry the struggling taxpaying families, schools and social programs to lock up as many people as possible for as long as possible “. Speaking about being prone to violence… I saw some news piece some time back about the Coecoran prison guards who were setting up prison fights to the death for the sake of their own entertainment and gambling… Does that qualify as violent? Criminal sentencing needs to stay where it belongs, with the justice system, NOT the labor unions and their kin.
Unrealistic parole rules set as a blanket, regardless of the individual situation is insane. What is sick ass shit is that the only reason they make it impossible for the parolee’s to get back into society, work and family is to make sure the prisons stay FULL. Without full prisons, there would be no need for tons of overtime! It sickens me that every other state wants parolees to get to work and become self-sufficient while California forces them into insane conditions, all set up to bring them back into prison for the 3 years! WTF Taxpayers? We need school books NOT welfare for parolees that are not allowed to work.

Crazy thing is, that 21 year old kid also said that he tried smoking crack at the house for the first time ever(he was not into drugs, he went to prison over a stupid drunken brawl). He said everyone is so bored that all there is left to do is dope. Thats great, my 28% of income tax is going into starting some kids drug problem and keeping up the neighborhood’s crack house. GO GO Governator!

wanna know more about the governator Arnie and the california budget due to intentional prison overcrowding to make a few rich? read this article about how much money California may waste as our school children lack the funds needed for things like…. books

This sums it all up, comment from another article about needing billions more yearly to build more prisons..

I find California’s prison system to be a “MONEY PIT”. And until they revise the Sentensing process and Parole System and get these parts out of the hands of the Prison Unions their will never be an answer. California has turned the Fox Loose in the Hen house.

Bro, the Union’s foxes seem to have penned up not just the hens, but every rooster, turkey and pigeon for their pluckings.

Making money hand over fist and still taking..

People need to be more educated in the real reason why more prison are being build. I college student and my research has been on the Prison Industrial Compex. PRISONS ARE THE NEW SLAVE TRADE. Fortune 500 and multi-billion dollar corporations such as McDonalds, Microsoft, Boeing, Sprint, Compaq, Toys R Us, and Revlon and Victoria ’s Secret use prison labor for packing, telemarketing, and manufacturing. Hattery, Angela and Smith, Earl. (2006) The prison industrial complex. Sociation Today, 4 (2).

You don’t have to dig deep or far to find corruption in non profit organizations. Most people would agree that there is plenty of profit to be made in non-profits for the wealthy supporters, trustees and board members.

Seems the IRS is taking a closer look into conservation land deals. It kinda goes as so… a company buys land for conservation purposes, the land is not historic nor serves much environmental value, they then sell the land at a discount, after adding a few “conservation” restrictions towards its development. The land is sold to trustees at a discount and the trustee then makes a tax deductible “cash gift” to the company in the amount of the difference. The trustee gains the land at a considerable savings due to the “so called” money gift tax deduction they made to the company they purchased it from.

The IRS is having an issue with that procedure because the tax gifts are worth more that the restriction placed on the land.

I gotta wonder what some of the restrictions are…. maybe they only chop down 90%  of the trees instead of all of them. Thumbs up for not for profit conservation groups.

RS Toughens Scrutiny of Land Gifts
By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 1, 2004; Page A01

TThe Internal Revenue Service announced yesterday that it is cracking
down on improper tax deductions taken by people who give real estate and
cash to environmental groups, warning that taxpayers could face
penalties and charities could lose their tax-exempt status.

The IRS is specifically targeting gifts of “conservation easements” -
deed restrictions that limit some types of real estate development. The
easements have become the environmental movement’s key tool for
preserving fragile ecosystems and millions of acres of open space.

The IRS is focusing on easements that have questionable public benefit
or have been manipulated to generate inflated deductions.

“We’ve uncovered numerous instances where the tax benefits of preserving
open spaces and historic buildings have been twisted for inappropriate
individual benefit,” IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson said in a
statement. “Taxpayers who want to game the system and the charities that
assist them will be called to account.”

The IRS warned that it intends to levy penalties on charity executives
and board members who collect or knowingly help secure improper
deductions claimed in connection with such transactions.

The announcement did not name individual taxpayers or charities. It
comes as the IRS is conducting a major audit of the Arlington-based
Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest environmental organization.

The Washington Post reported last year that the Conservancy had
repeatedly bought land, added some development restrictions, and then
resold the properties at reduced prices to its trustees and other
supporters. The buyers made cash gifts to the Conservancy roughly equal
to the difference in price, thereby qualifying for substantial tax
deductions - just as if they had given money to their local charity.

The Conservancy said the sales prices were proper because the
development restrictions reduced the market value of the tracts. In the
wake of the news articles, however, the Conservancy announced that it
would no longer conduct such deals with its board members and trustees.

Sheldon Cohen, a former IRS commissioner now working as a private lawyer
in Washington, called yesterday’s announcement an unusually strong
action. He said, “It is pretty obvious who it is aimed at.”

Conservancy spokesman James Petterson said yesterday that executives
there were studying the IRS action.

“The Nature Conservancy over the last decade has received several legal
opinions reflecting other interpretations of the law,” Petterson said.
“We are reviewing what the IRS issued, assessing its impact on our
programs and determining appropriate actions.”

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Reading a watchdog site called Citizens for Ethics, I found a story that should have shocked me, but, unfortunately it didn’t. You see over the course of the war in Iraq, the militry overspending issues, greedy contractor scandals, corruption and plain lies, It’s something I came to expect…. The government overpaying for shit to support contractors.

What should have shocked me here is that in this case, the crap they paid $74 million of our tax dollars for, does not even work correctly and is a military safety item.  Sadly, it’s something I guess I came to expect, government putting the interests of its contractors before human safety and the lives of soldiers.

Here is the story… To no one’s surprise anymore, when the government finds out a product is substandard… what do they do? well, they buy more quickly before anyone finds out.

From citizens for ethics

At a time when a new acronym, TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), has entered the American lexicon because of injuries sustained to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the New York Times reports that not only are many combat helmets being given to our troops substandard, and not only was there a lawsuit about it, but the government actually placed an order with the same company for more helmets just days before the suit was settled.

Reports the Times:

A North Dakota manufacturer has agreed to pay $2 million to settle a suit saying it had repeatedly shortchanged the armor in up to 2.2 million helmets for the military, including those for the first troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Twelve days before the settlement with the Justice Department was announced, the company, Sioux Manufacturing of Fort Totten, was given a new contract of up to $74 million to make more armor for helmets to replace the old ones, which were made from the late 1980s to last year.

The issue at the heart of the suit were two former employees of the company who maintained (and never were disproved) that Sioux was not weaving their Kevlar at the mandated 35 by 35 thread per square inch count, but 34 by 34, and making up the weight difference by just applying more hardened resin. I think in anyone’s book, that would be considered reason enough to never place a contract with the same company again. But, what’s worse, that extra resin makes the helmets more brittle, which doesn’t give the necessary head protection to the troops.

In the suit, it seems like everyone at the company knew what they were doing:

In the evidence in the suit were hundreds of daily inspection records showing repeated violations of the weaving standards, as well as tape recordings of six managers and employees’ admitting covering up violations.

In a conversation Mr. Kenner secretly taped, Rhea Crane, quality assurance officer, worried “if we ever had someone get killed, and they decided to investigate because they thought maybe the helmet wasn’t any good.”

“If we ever got audited,” she said, “you know what they would do to us. Shut us down and fine us big time. Probably never see another government contract.”

Oh, you think so, Mrs. “Quality Assurance Officer?” Well, lucky for you all at Sioux Manufacturing, the Bush administration is on the scene, where substandard products for the troops are awarded with MORE contracts! We’ve truly entered the Bizarro World.

Thankfully, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has taken up the case and written to Congress to investigate this matter. We at VoteVets.org fully support their call for an investigation, and we’ll be doing more in the coming days to support their efforts.

There have been many, many things wrong with how the wars have been waged. I don’t think I need to go through a litany of them. But, to me, there is no issue more tragic than how Donald “The Army You Have” Rumsfeld, and this administration have been absolutely and totally irresponsible - indeed wreckless - in how they go about protecting our troops at the most basic levels, from body armor, to Humvee armor, and now, to helmets.

I am sure everyone knows about this this video of government spending and corruption within military contracts, but just in case anyone missed it, here it is again.

This is a clip from “Iraq for Sale”. The video talks about the problem of government spending in the Iraq war. It seems that every time I open the paper I see another company “investigated” for ripping off the tawpayers. Recently, security contractors were in the news for billing for security gaurds they apparently never had.

War always brings out the “profiteers” it seems. And why not? The government is handing out billions. right?

Military over-spending and plain government overspending has always been an issue. I used to work for them. I remember a time when they wanted to have a barbaque for employees (about 100 people at that office or less). They went out and got a barbaque grill that they needed for 1 day only. The grill looked like any other you would get at the store except this one cost in excess of 50K.  Yes, the office spent 50,000.00 for a barbaque grill for a 1 hour lunch.

Seems sick? When I worked there the daily joke was what percentile everyone was in for the day… you see, the government office said that 20% of the people do 80% of the work on any given day.

Working there, I remember when voters, voted against salary increases for everyone… But no one was worried or cared because no increases just means bigger yearly bonuses. Yep, they voted against the 6% increase so the office authorized a 15% year-end bonus because bonuses were not in question and would not look like an increase on paper.

I really do wonder why anyone even has to vote for such things, in the end they get what they want anyway and throw in some extra for that F.U.

I have a friend who was in the military. He tells me that there were times when they threw expensive equipment… like brand new 100k bulldozers and stuff off planes into the ocean. Why? well, so they could say they used them and did not come back with the brand new unused equipment. If it came back, they would get less money in their budget.

The spending is SICK, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill for the bulldozers swimming in the Pacific.

I have figured this out… every single day I give $65 to the US government (split between sales tax, gas tax, property tax, income tax, etc.) as do the rest of us to fuel excessive spending…. I mean those overseas contractors do need to make a living, why have 1 mansion when my 65 daily + millions of others will contribute to 2 or 3 mansions…  maybe even in the Bahamas. Why have 1 Jaguar, when you can get a fleet? hmmm?

Pharmaceutical companies using third world countries for unethical drug trials, who would have guessed?
[Link]Associated Press
Pfizer facing 4 court cases in Nigeria By HEIDI VOGT

A security guard in this dusty Nigerian city is living with tragedy - a 14-year-old son whose dazed eyes, slow speech and uneven gait signal brain damage. Mustapha Mohammed says he knows who to blame - Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug maker.

New York-based Pfizer is facing four court cases - two filed by the Nigerian government and two by officials in the northern Nigerian state where Mohammed lives - over a decade-old drug study that included Mohammed’s son.

The company, which denies any wrongdoing, is accused of using a 1996 meningitis epidemic to push through a sloppily managed drug study that contributed to death in some and infirmities in others.

The fallout provides a case study of the ethical dilemmas that arise when Western medical priorities run into Third World poverty and ignorance. The communication gap between those handing out medical alms and those receiving has bred mistrust and anger in Kano - with damaging, far-reaching effect.

The Pfizer case was cited as one reason residents of Kano and the state of the same name boycotted a polio vaccine in 2003, fearing it was a plot to make Africans infertile. Polio exploded in Nigeria and eventually spread to 25 previously polio-free countries.

Though the meningitis epidemic is long over and the polio vaccination program is back on track, misinformation and suspicion persist.

Mohammed is sure no one asked his permission to test a drug on his child. But he also wasn’t asking many questions when he rushed his son to the hospital in 1996.

“We were desperate for drugs. We just took it in good faith,” said Mohammed, who lives in a tiny house off a dirt road in one of Kano’s poorer neighborhoods. Mohammed - who can’t read or write - only later found out that the pink paper he kept with Pfizer’s name and treatment dates meant his son had been in the study.

Pfizer says it explained the study to families using practices in line with U.S. and international guidelines, even employing Nigerian nurses and doctors who spoke Hausa, a main Nigerian language. Written permission was obtained when possible, or oral consent if parents were illiterate.

Across town, Abu Abdullahi Madaki can’t be sure if her daughter Firdausi took part in the Pfizer study. Citing privacy concerns, Pfizer has declined to release the names of the 200 children it treated.

All Madaki knows is she took a feverish 8-month-old infant to the hospital in 1996, and now her daughter suffers severe brain damage that left her unable to sit up or talk.

Meningitis - a brain infection - leaves 10 percent to 20 percent of survivors with mental damage, hearing loss, or learning disabilities, according to the World Health Organization.

But Madaki said: “My younger sister had meningitis, but it was nothing like this. My younger sister is now a mother with children.”

Madaki, who is illiterate, said she’d always felt that the hospital did something wrong. She decided when she heard about the charges against Pfizer on the radio that her daughter must have been in the study.

“The central events at issue in this lawsuit occurred in 1996, not long after epidemics of bacterial meningitis, measles and cholera broke out in Kano, Nigeria. Pfizer established a treatment center at the Infectious Disease Hospital in Kano to treat victims of the meningitis epidemic.

Plaintiffs allege that Pfizer, instead of using safe and effective bacterial meningitis treatments, used the epidemic as an opportunity to conduct biomedical research experiments on Nigerian children involving Pfizer’s “new, untested and unproven” antibiotic, trovaflozacin mesylate, better known by its brand name, Trovan.”

Plaintiffs claim that Pfizer failed to obtain informed consent, and that some children were deliberately given inadequate doses of ceftriaxone so that Trovan would look more effective by comparison. Several children died. The case is ongoing .

What is the chance that justice will be served under the circumstances?

Four years later it seems that Pfizer is going to try to keep the whole thing quiet through some form of payment of money or perhaps a large bribe.
Source: AHRP