The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has reversed hundreds of convictions of children made by judges who took kickbacks from privately owned detention centers.
Obviously, it’s nice to see their records expunged, but some of the damage will be permanent.
As I said 6 weeks ago, old post This is a Natural Result of Private Prisons.
It looks like the financial meltdown, and the reduction in tax revenues for local and state authorities have lead to a reevaluation of incarceration policies, which have led the US to have the largest prison population of any society in history: (Gulag nation)
For nearly three decades, most U.S. states have dealt with lawbreakers in two ways: Lock more of them up for longer periods, and build more prisons to hold them. Now many governments, out of money and buried under mounting prison costs, are reversing many of those policies and practices.
Some states, like Colorado and Nevada, are closing prisons. Others, like Kansas and New Jersey, have replaced jail time with community programs or other sanctions for people who violate parole. Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill this month that enhances the credits some inmates can earn toward release.
Obviously, it’s depressing that it’s taken a fiscal crisis to interject some sanity on the entire issue of over imprisoning our population, but I’ll take what I can get.
Hopefully this can make a dent in the “prison-industrial complex.”
We now know that hundreds, perhaps thousands of children were sent to private juvenile detention facilities because the judges got kickbacks, more than 2.6 million dollars, from the operator of two private facilities.
The judges in question, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan have pled guilty, with a recommendation from the prosecutors for a term of 87 months.
It should be 87 years.
The particulars are an indictment of our culture of privatization of government services:
With Judge Conahan serving as president judge in control of the budget and Judge Ciavarella overseeing the juvenile courts, they set the kickback scheme in motion in December 2002, the authorities said.
They shut down the county-run juvenile detention center, arguing that it was in poor condition, the authorities said, and maintained that the county had no choice but to send detained juveniles to the newly built private detention centers.
So, private players get into the system, pay off the right people, and these people shut down the government run facilities, and take kick-backs.
It’s worth noting that these kick-backs are called “consultancy fees” when the IMF and the World Bank do this in 3rd world nations, and have frequently involved basic human needs like a municipal water supply.
It should be noted that Robert J. Powell, the owner of the two facilities involved, PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care, is claiming that he did not bribe anyone, but rather that he was shaken down by the judges:
Robert J. Powell co-owned PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care until June. His attorney, Mark Sheppard, said his client was the victim of an extortion scheme.
“Bob Powell never solicited a nickel from these judges and really was a victim of their demands,” he said. “These judges made it very plain to Mr. Powell that he was going to be required to pay certain monies.”
Let’s see, you build jails for kids, and then suddenly they shut down the existing facility, because they think that you might bribe them?
I don’t think so.
BTW, these folks might never have been caught, but for the fact that they were doling out favors to friends in arbitration awards, and the insurance companies cried “foul,” and got an investigation.
In any case, they are now reviewing thousands of cases, and the federal prosecutors have petitioned the court to expedite notification to the victims.
Interestingly enough, the thing that seems to be bothering me the most involves a person who is not going to jail:
At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.
Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.
Why is anyone who would criminalize a satirical MySpace page allowed anywhere near children?
Why is this person still employed? Why are the police officers and prosecutors who did not laugh him off, or better still throw him in jail for harassment?
There is so much wrong here, that I’m beyond ranting.
It appears the the contracts were all written to expire at the end of November, and this may simply be an administrative screw up of, well, Democratic Party proportions.
If contracts are written this way at the DNC, so as not to encumber a successor chair, this is completely whack. There should be a 4-8 week overlap, so that you do not have a vacuum while the new guy is finding his feet.
Original post here.
Well, I just overheard on the radio that the Baltic Dry Index, a measure of the cost of shipping, just fell to a more than 5 year low.
Ships are sitting idle as manufacturers try to reduce inventory.
We are also seeing this at the other end of the manufacturer to market equation, with retail sales falling 1.2% in September…And remember, this was before Lehman imploded.
The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book, a report of the state of the economy, is pointing down too, as is the New York Fed’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey.
In energy, crude oil ended at less than $75/bbl today…..One note, when I predicted some time back that we would never see the south side of $100/bbl, I was wrong.
Interestingly enough we are also seeing reports that Paulson can give money to banks, but he can’t make them lend it out, which would seem to imply that we need someone more interventionist at the helm.
The court appointed overseer of prison healthcare in California has moved to seize $8 billion from the California treasury for healthcare for inmates.
California’s spending on prisons exceeded its spending on education the state university system some time in the early 1980s, and has aggressively pursued incarceration with the most aggressive “three strikes” law enforcement in the nation.
It looks like the people of California will have to start paying for their imprisonment fetish.
Hopefully, this will make the people of California think about the value of the war on drugs and our prison society.
There is a greater proportion of the US population imprisoned than any other society in history…ever.
Once again, I got sucked in by a story that was too good to be true, a 13 year old stealing his dad’s credit card and blowing it on escorts, that turned out not to be true.
Hoax, at least according to World Wingnut Daily.
You can read it here:
I am committed to make investments to find the causes of autism, including possible environmental causes like vaccines. I have long been a supporter of increased research to determine the links between environmental factors and diseases, and I believe we should increase the NIH’s ability to engage in this type of research. My administration will be committed to improving research to support fact-based solutions, and I will ensure that the NIH has the staff and funding to fully explore all possible causes of autism.
Just to be clear: the vaccine-autism link is a hoax.
The doctor who came up with it was in cahoots with the lawyers, and he had a patent on a junk science alternative.
He is now in the process of having his license to practice medicine stripped.
First, the opposition won an absolute majority, as I said yesterday. It appears that the MDC Tsvangirai has 99 seats, MDC Mutambara (a sort of a splinter faction, but not fully a separate party) has 10, and Zanu-PF has 97, with one independent, out of 210 seats (3 seats had the winners die before the election and are empty).
The entire MDC Tsvangirai/MDC Mutambara has me confuse, but it appears that they are the same party, they just don’t get along, so they have an outright majority.
There is also an upper house, and results have been delayed, but this is rather a more complex system than the Parliament.
Still no results in the presidential election, a runnoff is expected, along with a lot of unrest.
The original calculation of 50.3% for Tsvangirai appears to have been a miscalculation.
Remember my post about an April Fools prank driving the stock market rally?
There was an April fools gag, but the there were no news reports, nor any stock market rally as a result. Barry Ritholtz completely punk’d me by using someone else’s April Fools’ gag as a jumping off point.
Damn….I gotta get him back next year, but it was a very good prank.
In discussing a possible revote, I noted that I thought that objections being raised by the Obama campaign were a specious attempt to stone wall.
I’ve finally come across some of the specific issues that they have with a revote, and they are in fact quite valid.
One question is who do you allow to vote. Unlike a lot of other states, Michigan has an open primary, which means that you can choose which ballot you want when you walk into the polling area, regardless of party affiliation.
To quote Chairman Kaga, “As Memory Serves”, there were a lot of Democrats who chose to vote for Mittmentum, because they thought that he would be particularly weak in the general.
So, there is now an issue regarding what to do with the people who voted on the Republican ticket.
This is a completely legitimate issue.
My preferred solution would be to simply allow only people who were registered Democrats as of the date of the first election to participate in any revote, regardless of which ballot they took in January. I think that open primaries create too much mischief, particularly in this instance.
In any case, this issue has a number of possible solutions, and it cuts to the very core of any possible revote, so it is a very valid concern, and needs to be addressed to the satisfaction of both campaigns.
Me bad on calling it stonewalling
I just had an email exchange with him, and he referred me to his (along with Robert Polli and Marc Schaberg) paper, Securities Transaction Taxes for U.S. Financial Markets, and he does in fact call for a sales tax on most securities.
ABSTRACT: This paper examines the viability of security transaction excise taxes (STETs) as one policy tool for promoting a more stable financial environment, specifically with respect to the U.S. economy. Contrary to a large recent critical literature, we show that a STET can be designed without creating large distortions between segments of the financial market. We also show that a modest STET for the U.S.—beginning with a 0.5 percent tax on equity trades and scaled appropriately for other financial instruments—would generate substantial new government revenues, on the order of $100 billion per year.
The link is to the abstract, and the whole paper is a 55 page double spaced PDF, which you need to read on paper, with a highlighting and a regular pen so you can take notes.
It’s not a light read, but it’s a good read.
On a more general level, I think that, given the current downturn, we will see a large expansion in taxes at all level, with things like internet download sales being taxed, and that we will see an aggressive pursuit of online and mail order sales taxe evasion too.
The state and local governments will have no choice.
Then again, considering my record on predictions, and the fact that the only formal training I ever had on economics was high school, where I did a presentation on microeconomics*, what the heck do I know.
*Microeconomics is a study of the economics of individual businesses, as opposed to entire economies. I prefer it, because the systems are not so huge and complex that cause and effect breaks down. Macro economics sometimes makes my head hurt.
Well, it looks like the nail in the coffin of my prediction regarding the format wars (see also here, here, here, here, here, and here), has been driven, we have reports that Toshiba will be ending production of HD-DVD players.
For my next prediction, George W. Bush will not be impeached.
If only my predilection towards erroneous prognostication worked that way.
In my post, The World’s Lamest Flash Games I checked out the games on my computer with the sound off, as is my normal want, as I don’t like being surprised by sounds.
I had no idea that the flash games that I posted as windows had that unbelievably tacky music playing.
It has been replaced by links.
I’m sorry.
I was certain that, if there were a winner in the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars, it would be HD-DVD. ( here, here, here, here, here, and here)
It’s a cheaper tech, and it’s not controlled by Sony.
Well, the New York Times is now reporting that
NBC Universal and Paramount are seriously considering a switch to Blu-Ray.
I’m not wrong yet, but it seems likely that I will be in the next 12-18 months.
Then again, the end of the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray wars has always seemed to be 12-18 months away.
Turns out that the reports of Supermodel Gisele Bündchen demanding payment in Euros was a fraud originating in Brazil.
So, my earlier post was full of it. Sorry
I should have gone to more sources.
The story originated with the notoriously inaccurate site Debka File. There appears to be a buildup, but no invasion, or even a temporary incursion, yet.