US Politics Mega-thread - Page 884

On February 18 2014 02:56 Nyxisto wrote:

I know what the Kyoto protocol is and I wasn't being literal.

Fact is long term damage doesn't interest anyone and the cost of climate change and pollution would probably justify a way more drastic climate policy.

On February 15 2014 22:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

That's a trivial point though. The incentive to make society worse by having more prisoners is way to small to move the needle in any decision making process.

Public prisons involve people with a vested interest in keeping the number of prisoners high as well. Police officers have a vested interest in keeping crime high.

Just because an interest exists doesn't make it a relevant factor.

On February 18 2014 06:26 Liquid`Drone wrote:


Police being considered "better" because they have a higher clearance rate / more "solved cases" or whatever is just another terrible part of the whole "measurement-society". I don't have technical data regarding to what degree prison lobbyists have swayed public opinion or actual votings regarding 3 strikes and you're out or drug legalization or whatever (and I have a hard time imagining that such data exists), but there existing prison lobbyists whose prime interest is not how to keep more people out of jail is not something you should just scoff away as irrelevant or a non-issue. It's terrible.

On February 18 2014 08:32 oneofthem wrote:
i don't know a lot about the facts of this situation, but the discussion can be advanced without facts about the magnitude of the problem or how widespread it in fact is. the idea is basically that prisons should be rehabilitative and not simply slavery by another name.

On February 18 2014 07:57 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

A couple points:

About 5% of inmates in the US are housed in private facilities. That's pretty small to be a big influence on public policy.

You keep insisting that private prisons have interests that run counter to the public's best interest. While that may be true, you have not shown that it's more true than with public prisons. Law enforcement officials are typically advocates for things like three strikes laws and drug prohibition. If private prisons are advocates for those things, they're simply in line with their public counterparts.

On February 18 2014 09:16 Liquid`Drone wrote:


That first is very valid- thought the number was higher to be honest. Still, I guess 5% of american inmates does account for more than 100000 people.

I guess this is might be more of a battle of principles than one of practicality for me - there are many other aspects of the american penal system that irk me more than some of them being privatized - public opinion being one of them, which makes it tough.

I'm not budging on how bad I think privatized jails are, but I can concede that it's not that major of an actual issue in usa today.

On February 18 2014 12:51 Velocirapture wrote:


This is fair in my estimation. For me the big difference is that, for public jails, the person holding the purse strings is an elected official whose motivations are to reduce crime and incarceration while remaining tough on those who really need it. Interest groups like prison worker unions are an incredibly minor force compared to what would happen if prisons became a completely privatized for-profit market driven entity. I just imagine big tobacco levels of lobbyists in DC pushing for harsher laws and longer sentences on literally everything. But at the end of the day this is all speculation and I would be open to the idea if it addressed bigger problems, like the actual rehabilitation of criminals.

A retired investor plans to drop as much as $100 million on attack ads during the 2014 election to pressure lawmakers and governors to act on climate change, the New York Times reported Monday.

Tom Steyer, founder of the hedge fund Farallon Capital Management, is seeking to raise $50 million from donors to match $50 million of his own money for his political organization NextGen Climate Action, people familiar with the discussions told the Times.

The group's targets include climate change skeptics like Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). But when NextGen asked supporters this month to pick a congressional candidate for the group to run ads against, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), who is a Keystone pipeline supporter, was included on the list of choices, according to the Times.

As she is considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for reelection, Landrieu would be an interesting target for NextGen, which tends to aim its dollars at Republicans even if it is critical of Democrats who don't take strong stances on environmental issues. When asked whether Democratic control of the Senate would be necessary for him to move on his climate agenda, Steyer told the Times that “as long as we have this partisan divide on energy and climate, it’s got to be important.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was forced to spend the long weekend defending his debt limit vote and talking up the importance of compromise to being a good leader.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) did the exact opposite: he publicly torched his own party's leadership for walking the plank and portrayed Republican senators a bunch of liars and cowards who think Americans are "rubes."

Tensions between the leader of the party's establishment wing and the leader of its tea party wing are reaching an all-time high as the two camps move in opposite directions in preparation for the November congressional elections.

"My job is to protect the country when I can and to step up and lead on those occasions when it's required. That's what I did," McConnell said in Louisville at a campaign event over the weekend, as quoted by CNN. "I negotiated the Budget Control Act with Vice President Biden in August of 2011. It led to a deficit-reduction package that actually reduced government spending for two years in a row for the first time since right after the Korean War."

The GOP leader was responding to a backlash spurred by Cruz after McConnell and 11 other Republicans voted with Democrats to advance legislation to lift the debt ceiling without any policy add-ons. Ironically, it was Cruz who put them in that position by filibustering and forcing a 60-vote threshold to end debate. If not, Democrats would have carried it to victory alone and Republicans could have avoided the blame for averting disaster without taking the painful vote.

On February 19 2014 01:29 farvacola wrote:
Ted Cruz is the gift that keeps on giving.

On February 19 2014 00:05 DoubleReed wrote:
Private prisons have massive problems because the companies concern themselves so much with lobbying and skimp on security. Guards at private prisons report way more security risks and some even make deals with the prisoners to police each other because of lack of staffing (inmates running the asylum). Once a state starts to rely on private prisons its difficult to wean them off. However, some states have realized what a ridiculous scam it is and have dropped them. So financially it has screwed over states.

IMO, imprisonment is a fundamentally government function. The idea of corporate imprisonment seems incredibly fascist.

On February 19 2014 02:41 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

California's prisons are so over crowded that the courts have ordered them to fix it (found "cruel and unusual") and elected officials are dragging their feet. They recently fought for and won a 2 year delay to deal with it so those prisoners will just have to live with 2 more years+ of cruel and unusual. Maybe by then it will become usual and the next wave of elected officials can ignore it all over again.

Elected officials aren't angels when it comes to running prisons!