Virginia to continue shackling pregnant inmates while giving birth

The Virginia House of Delegates just killed a bill that would have ceased requiring that female inmates be shackled during labor. From Dan Casey at the Roanoke Times:

Del. Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge and chairman of the subcommittee, replied: “Does it show concern for the child for the mother to engage in criminal activity when she knows she’s pregnant? Do you agree choices have consequences?”

Is there any other way to read that quote, other than that incarcerated moms in labor deserve to be treated as inhumanely as possible, because they had the temerity to get locked up after they were impregnated? He makes it sound as the state should meting out an extra measure of cruelty because of the woman’s mistake.

It verges on a “revenge” theme. How despicable. Is that what criminal justice in Virginia has come to?

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Viguerie blasts Romney for calling himself "severely conservative"

Richard A. Viguerie, the Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, issued the following statement regarding Mitt Romney's speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in which he described himself as "severely conservative":

"In my 50 years in conservative politics at the national level, I have never heard anyone other than Governor Romney describe himself as 'severely' conservative.

"Romney has shown, once again, that he can mouth the words conservatives use, but he has no gut-level emotional connection with the conservative movement and its ideas and policies.

"To paraphrase a story about Mark Twain, one day his wife decided to repeat some of his more colorful four-letter words to embarrass him into cleaning up his language. After absorbing the barrage, the author thought for a moment and said, 'Honey, you've got the words right, but you just don't have the tune.'

"After 50 years in the conservative movement, I can say with some authority: Mitt, you may have the words of conservatism right, but you just don't have the tune."

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$5 gas this year?

This will certainly be a blow to the recovering US economy. At the same time, this should highlight the absolutely ridiculous handling of Big Auto by Washington for years. The country is flooded with gas guzzlers and it's that way because Washington helped create that problem. CNBC:

Get ready to pay $5 a gallon for gasoline this year.

John Hofmeister, founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy and the former CEO of Shell Oil’s U.S. operations, warned that there is a “better than 50 percent chance” the price of gas will spike on continued heavy demand in emerging markets and weak public policy at home.

Note from John: Drove by a gas station in DC next to the Watergate that's known for its usury pump prices. $4.99. Read the rest of this post...

Eight Rupert Murdoch journalists arrested in UK

It's hard to imagine this never happened in the US as well with News Corp. Again, why are the Republicans and too many Democrats cooperating with an allegedly criminal organization? NY Times:

British authorities arrested eight people on Saturday, including five employees of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid The Sun, as part of an investigation into bribery of public officials by journalists, Scotland Yard and the parent company of the newspaper said. The arrests were made on “suspicion of corruption” in conjunction with a search operation at the homes of those arrested and at the office complex that houses the newspaper, detectives said in a statement. The five Sun employees are between the ages of 45 and 68. None were named, in accordance with police policy. But the BBC and other British news media reported the arrested Sun employees as a deputy editor, Geoff Webster; the chief reporter, John Kay; the chief foreign correspondent, Nick Parker; a picture editor, John Edwards; and a reporter, John Sturgis.

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"Slavery By Another Name"

From time to time I'm going to write in keeping with Black History Month. The first post in this series was on February 1, with a reprint of a letter from a former slave entitled "To My Old Master". (If you haven't already read this, do; it's quite a treat.)

This post showcases a PBS documentary, Slavery By Another Name, which tells how slavery persisted in the South despite the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War. I'm willing to bet that not one in 100 Americans knows about this system. I know I didn't.

Lindsay Beyerstein of the Hillman Foundation explains:

Slavery By Another Name debunks the cherished assumption that slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. In fact, as Blackmon and Pollack show, the enslavement of black Southerners persisted under the guise of convict labor from the end of Reconstruction to the beginning of World War II. ...

The polite term for the new slavery was "convict leasing." Southern states criminalized the slightest infractions by black people, real or imagined. It was a crime to be unemployed, or to be employed and look for a better job without permission. Unauthorized black job-seekers could be sent back to their employers to work off their "debt" as convict laborers. Walking along the railroad tracks or speaking loudly in the presence of white women could also condemn a black person to a term of hard labor.

So while indentured servitude was illegal, it wasn't illegal for states to perform "middle-man" services and lease out their prisoners. Since the "debt" was to the state, and the payer was the leasee, the law was satisfied.

Bet you can see where this is headed:

Employers paid the state to "lease" the prisoners. As under slavery, the hardiest-looking men fetched the highest prices. About 95% of the people in the convict labor system were black men between the ages of 14 and 30, because they were the most desirable laborers. Some women were also forced to work as laundresses and cooks. Blackmon's resesarch shows how arrest rates rose to meet the demand for labor.

Are you ready for the next connectable dot?

Blackmon, a longtime Wall Street Journal reporter. ... observed that a "potentially diabolical" conflict of interest arises when the people responsible for making arrests stand to profit by arresting more people.

Which leads us directly to:

■ Law enforcement agencies directly benefiting from "confiscated" property during drug arrests (which a drug-hating, tax-hating environment incentivizes); and

■ Private prison companies bribing (sorry, "incentivizing") state politicians to (a) pass harsh anti-immigrant laws, and (b) build more warehouses for their shared inventory (sorry, "malefactors of dark skintones") — all of which they profit from.

Slavery is America's original sin; always was, always will be. It's not like we're clear of it; those of us lighter-hued folks reap the benefits every day. (Doubt me? When was the the last time the cops searched your car — or bumped you around a bit — for "driving while white"?)

The PBS documentary airs starting February 13. Beyerstein's report on it is here.

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Federal Reserve chose winners of government bond auctions

Take a guess who came out on top? If you guessed the big Wall Street players who had to be saved from extinction on the taxpayer dime you would be correct. Sorry folks, but this is not free market capitalism. Washington really needs to quit deciding who is going to win on Wall Street or else we will always be at the mercy of a short list of companies. Why is welfare for the poor bad but welfare for the richest of the rich somehow acceptable?

The Federal Reserve secretly selected a handful of banks to bid for debt securities acquired by taxpayers in the U.S. bailout of American International Group Inc., and the rest of Wall Street is wondering what happened to the transparency the central bank said it was committed to upholding. “The exclusivity by which the process has shut out smaller dealers is a little un-American,” said David Castillo, head of sales and trading at broker Further Lane Securities LP in San Francisco, who said he would have liked to participate. “It seems odd that if you want to get the best possible price that it wouldn’t be open to anyone who wants to put in the most competitive bid.” After inviting more than 40 broker-dealers to take part in a series of auctions last year, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York asked only Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) and Barclays Plc (BARC) to bid on the full $13.2 billion of bonds offered in two sales over the past month. The central bank switched to a less open process after traders blamed the regular, more public disposals for damaging prices in 2011. This week, Goldman Sachs bought $6.2 billion of bonds in an auction.

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Myanmar monk taken away by police

The new peace with Western governments didn't last for very long. Yesterday there was a story out there about the price of real estate rising in Myanmar due to the new understanding. Suddenly, it looks like the same old, same old dictatorship. BBC News:

Some 15 officials came in three cars at about 01:15 local time (1845 GMT Thursday), a monk who was with Gambira told the BBC. These officials were from the government religious authority department and Rangoon division government, he added. After he was freed last month, Gambira has reportedly been reopening monasteries that were locked up by the authorities since the ''saffron revolution'' movement led by monks in 2007. "He was taken this morning from his monastery for questioning because he broke the locks of three monasteries since his release," the official who wished to remain anonymous told AFP.

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