Overincarceration in America » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union
So someone posts the attached link on facebook today.
I chime in,
“We have more people in jail per capitia than South Africa had under apartheid. Something like one out of every 25 children has a parent in prison or with a prison record, up from one out of 125 a few decades ago.
Our recidivism rates have skyrocketed over the last 30-40 years. when Johnny Cash played Fulsom Prison’s most of the men listening to him would not be returning. Now-a-days a huge majority of the men released from Fulsom will be back in prison within 2-3 years.
Land of the Free my ass.”
some useless moronic twit responds, “Well, that’s Fulsom prison.”
No shit, Dick Tracy. It’s fulsom and every other prison in this fucking country…
Actually what I said was this,
“I use Fulsom as an example because it was the shining jewel of California’s prison system back in the day and 40-50 years later it is fairly representative of our prison system as a whole. It was built to house 1800 and now houses over 4500, something that has been repeated in prison systems across the country.
Part of the problem in over-crowding is of course due to California much vaunted and completely ineffective at deterrence 3 strikes law but 3 strikes do not completely account for the numbers. Fulsom’s educational and rehabilitative programs, which cost mere pennies compared the sum total of the prison’s budget, have been gutted and each time a program is cut there is a correlating spike in the rate of recidivism.
Fulsom, besides being fairly well known, is also fairly representative of all US prison’s in population and success rates. The same point can be made by comparing recidivism rates from any prison system across the country over the last 40 years. It is a country-wide epidemic.
One in three African American males will serve time in prison or jail in their lifetime. And just to rule out any extraneous theories about why that happens I will also say that African Americans males are twice as likely to be convicted as their white counterparts. i.e. They may not be committing crimes at a higher rate but they sure as hell are getting prison time at a higher rate for the very same crimes. If we do not make a drastic change in course we will soon have a caste system in this country.”
My rage bubbled up inside me as I typed.
I hate liberals, I hate people who miss the point when it is spelled out right in front of them and I really loathe people who think their own personal opinion trumps facts. Did I not fucking mention nationwide statistics and the fucking idiot says, well that’s Fulsom. Implying it is an isolated case.
I’m losing my ability to tolerate another self-absorbed progressive who is completely fucking incapable of actually responding to what is actually said to them and only ever able to comment on their own opinion. I’m losing my patience with sanctimonious morons who are only able to answer the question ‘what is the solution to’ with ‘well, this problem makes me feel this way,’
It seems sometimes like an entire generation (Baby Boomers of course! i.e, the it’s all about “ME” people) is literally and completely incapable of actually responding to what is said to them. They can’t come up with solutions for anything, they are only able to talk about how it makes them feel. I can not say with enough emphasis to really portray my opinion how little I fucking care about the feelings of people who are too stupid to answer simple questions and too self-absorbed to realize their expression of their feelings doesn’t help anything but the feeding of their out of control feelings of self importance. No ideas on how to make it better? None? Good, then everything coming our of your mouth is useless feces. Go fertilize a garden and ge the fuck out of the way.
Progressive, Liberals and Democrats are good at two things, losing important elections and missing the point. Why the hell should I help them do either anymore? It’s not like any of the work I ever put it ever advanced my own ideals. Why the hell should I bother? High ranking Democrats and Party kleadership don’t give a shit about the three issues that are most important to me, why should I continue to put myself out there to help a bunch of self-absorbed hypocritical assholes pass laws that at best do not address the issues I care most about and at worst are completely counter productive to any advancing causes I value.
For me any cesstion of women’s control over their own body is tantamount to endorsing slavery. Apparently our African-American President is OK with compromising on the liberties of poor women. Why do they matter right? Why should the fact that he signed away women in poverty’s right to own their own bodies bother him? It clearly doesn’t because he has compromised more than once on this issue. To which I say, fuck you and your steaming puile of feces of a health care bill.
The Democrat party only makes a pretense at caring about civil rights. They hold up GBLT marriage, rights liberties as this badge of progressive honor to prove their dedication to the cause of civil right but the reality is that it is only smoke and mirros. They only tepidly support rights for GBLT the first place and it is far from apporpiate starting and ending point for civil liberties…. I’m all for gay marraige but let’s be honest with ourselves, it only affect a slim portion of the population, a slim, well organized and well funded sliver of the population. IT’s great and all but legalizing gay marriage doesn’t do anything for the large majority of the population that do not self-identify as GBLT, or even Q.
Let’s see, how many non-violent offenders are in jail and how many GBLT’s want to get married? Tell me which is a more important issue, is it the issue that affects more of the population and has the power to lift up or hopelessly put down generations of large segments of the American population and which one has better funded PACs?
Honestly, sometimes I think the D’s use gay issues to get out of doing anything for minorities and the poverty stricken and I very much include BHO in that statement.
What has Obama done for the struggling African American middle class? What has Obama done for education parity? What has Obama done for the African American children whose fathers are incarerated? When has even acknowlged these problems? Um, fucking never?
Sure he signed DADT but explain to me how that help heterosexual African American males change their situation, or how it helps women in poverty exercise their ownership of their own bodies. Explain to me how that improves civil rights for anyone except the LBGT community. Oh my gosh it doesn’t! And what percentage of the total society do LBGT people make up? And how big is the non-violent offener population in US prison systems? How many African American men have been in jail and how many times more do they get convicted than their white counterparts (hint, twice as many times!) ? How exactly does gay marriage help them? Oh wait it doesn’t….
I am very pro gay marriage and very anti-DADT but those two issues don’t mean the D’s are particularly progresive and they certainly don’t mean they are looking for the diadvantaged or struggling to improve the parity of civil liberties Americans enjoy. It mean they need one example to blow smoke with while they piss on civil rights as much the R’s do. Nothing more.
Fuck ’em, fuck ’em all.
