If there is one thing at which the Euro Anglo culture excels it is the art of double-speak. Native Americans referred to it as “speaking with a forked tongue.”
In the case of the prison-industrial complex white supremacist types use this art of double-speak to sell and institutionalize their antebellum South racist tendencies in the guise of a new and improved form of immigration law enforcement. This evolution has taken several form. Over the past 30 years in the South it is evidenced in the evolution of lynching to imprisoning (guilt not a necessity). Both the Arizona and Southern practices are holdovers from the days of slavery which in the South were still in practice after WWII.
This social psychology has been noted to derive from the Southern "cultural tradition of exclusion," and that exclusion is “a basic element of the legacy of slavery.” In a sense it is a prejudice by the majority population toward those unlike the majority.
Supporters praise it as a tough law that lets state authorities enforce laws the federal government will not. Critics say it will lead to racial profiling. The Justice Department believes it's unconstitutional, and most of the law has been suspended while that case proceeds in federal court.”
Recently NPR’s Neil Conan interviewed Laura Sullivan, NPR’s police and prisons correspondent and also “Beau Hodai. He's a freelance journalist who's been covering private prisons in Arizona.”
About a year ago Sullivan did a series on bail bonds in the United States. In doing so she “stumbled upon an organization called the American Legislative Exchange Council, which was very instrumental in passing a number of pro-bail-bondsman laws throughout the country.” While researching ALEC Sullivan “came across a fascinating article written by Beau [Hodai] that made the connection between the private industry - private prison industry and ALEC.” That lead to NPR’s investigation.
NPR’s investigation uncovered a link or connection between “immigration and ALEC.” The connection involves state Senator Russell Pearce who “is on the ALEC Public Safety Task Force. He's an executive public-sector member. And the way the task forces are comprised is you have the public-sector represented, and then you also have the private sector. Also sitting on that task force is the Corrections Corporation of America, which is the nation's largest detainer of undocumented immigrants.”
Mr. HODAI: That is correct. Their primary customers are the U.S. Marshal Service, the Bureau of Prisons - which also holds immigrant detainees -and ICE.
CONAN: These are while hearings are conducted to see if they are going to be deported, that sort of thing.
Mr. HODAI: Right.
CONAN: Okay. So this conference, ALEC, Laura, this is a private-public partnership. We hear about these kinds of things all the time. There's nothing suspicious about that.”
“SULLIVAN: So here's how this whole thing breaks down. So by all accounts, this idea comes from Senator Russell Pearce. He's passed similar legislation or tried to have similar legislation passed in Arizona. He's very adamant about illegal immigration, and he had this idea, and that's what he said.
And all the evidence suggests that he in fact did have this idea. But instead of taking this idea to the state House floor, to other legislators, to committees in public domains, where the public can see what's happening and what ideas legislators are making, he took it to a private conference room at the Washington Hyatt last December.
And it was in this conference room that the final draft of this legislation was written, and it was introduced two months later, word for word, in the Arizona State House.”
And in as Beau was saying earlier, in this room is the private prison industry and some other powerful corporations, and they are they all have a hand in this.
And it's interesting also that it's not even just what happens in this conference room. It's also the phone calls and the emails that take place before the legislation's even brought to this hotel conference room.
CONAN: Well, let me quote from Senator Pearce, and he has replied about - that the how much influence prison firms had over his legislation. He says: Zero. Can I make it any more clear? Zero. I've never spoken to them on it. They've never had influence. They never came to me over it. I don't know where they come up with that stuff. They've never asked to talk to me about it.
But they, I assume he means you, Laura.
SULLIVAN: Well, Senator Pearce and I had a very long conversation about this in his office, and specifically about whether or not - the role that the private prison industry played in the drafting of this legislation.
He at first said that he had never spoken to the private prison industry before. This is not what the evidence suggests. He is a board member of this committee that met in this conference room. He and the private prison corporations have been board members for 10 years almost together, for years and years together.
The private prison corporation has chaired this board twice in the past 10 years. They are a very active member in this group. And they, you know, in addition to meeting three times a year at very, you know, conferences in very sunny locations, they also have conference calls. They also send draft legislation around to each other email. They discuss what they're going to bring up to the entire committee when they meet in the boardroom, in the conference room.
So it was Senator Pearce suggested to me, as well, that he had not spoken to them before. But that doesn't appear to be the fact."
This is where the art of double-speak and the forked tongue becomes important.
Why does any of this matter? Quite simply because what these huge corporations are doing ---away from the light of day---is buying influence with elected representatives unbeknown to the constituents of those elected representatives.
In other words there is no transparency. To the casual observer what happens looks like what ALEC and huge corporations would really like for constituents to believe happened. Little could be further from the truth.
“When you when a corporation wants a piece of legislation passed - and many of them are very active about this.”
CONAN: Sure.
SULLIVAN: They go out and they push for it and they hire a lobbyist, or they register themselves as a lobbyist.
That allows the public to know two things: One, what they're lobbying for, and two, how much money they're spending on it, and the sort of things that they're paying for in order to convince legislators to go their way on a piece of legislation.
What happens at ALEC is completely private. It doesn't there is no public oversight. The public is not invited. The media's not allowed. What's happening in these taskforce meetings is completely secret to the rest of the world. And these corporations have the undivided ear of these state legislators, who have been, by all accounts, wined and dined at these conferences by these very corporations. In fact, these corporations, for the most part, paid for them to come to the conference.”
What makes these practices so egregious is that ALEC while existing almost exclusively for the purpose of lobbying for its causes does so without the regulations that apply to lobbyists. This subtle pattern of influence is made the worse because often it is with the complicity of elected representatives. At best this is an end run around democratic practices by both big business and those elected to represent the people.
From Texas Red: a cratered landscape of prisons, deplorable apartheid public education, lack of healthcare and politicians and majority population intent on keeping it that way…
Hasta Siempre,
Hasta Siempre,
More:
Public Policy: on the prison-industrial complex, ALEC, SB 1070 and the art of double-speak
Elections 2010 What will Tea Party, GOPer mid-term wins mean for immigration, prison-industrial complex?
The prison-industrial complex, apartheid public education system, racism and Elections 2010
How Corporate Interests Got SB 1070 Passed
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131191523&sc=tw&cc=share
Shaping State Laws With Little Scrutiny
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130891396
The prison-industrial complex, apartheid public education system, racism and Elections 2010
There are several topics on which I’ve railed for more than a year now. The central of these are best captured in my tagline, Texas Red: a cratered landscape of prisons, deplorable apartheid public education, lack of healthcare and politicians and majority population intent on keeping it that way.
Here & Now: SB 1070/Private Prisons
http://americasvoiceonline.org/blog/entry/npr_az_politicians_profit_off_of_sb_1070/
Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law
NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.
State Immigration Measures Show Business Influence
So, for example, last December Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce sat in a hotel conference room with representatives from the Corrections Corporation of America and several dozen others. The group voted on model legislation that was introduced into the Arizona legislature two months later, almost word for word.
Report says education charities stingy with needy kids
A watchdog charity group has chided the nation's biggest education foundations for only allocating 11 percent of their collective grant money to the country's neediest children.The National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy's report evaluated 672 foundations that gave at least $1 million in grants to education from 2006 to 2008. Only about 11 percent of those grants went to "marginalized communities," defined primarily as children in low-income families and minority children. And just 2 percent of those funds went to fostering long-term change through advocacy efforts and community building.
This leaves the "alarming inequities in educational opportunities" in America unaddressed, the report charges. Since about half of public school funding comes from the local level, students living in poor areas tend to go to schools that are under-funded, and kids in richer areas go to better-funded schools. This feeds the persistent achievement gap between low-income and high-income students and minority and white students.
Dragging death in Texas raises tensions
Recent death of black man in Paris echoes horrific crime a decade ago
Farmers Branch keeps up illegal-immigration fight
http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/04/25/2141306/farmers-branch-keeps-up-illegal.html
Speak English Only, Small NY Towns Decree
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/speak-english-only-small-ny-towns-decree/19477485?icid=main|htmlws-main-w|dl1|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fnation%2Farticle%2Fspeak-english-only-small-ny-towns-decree%2F19477485
Civil Rights Act (1968)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1968
Civil Rights Act 1964
Slavery by Another Name
Illusions of Justice
The Rope, the Chair, and the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, 1923-1990
“However, James W. Marquart, Sheldon Ekland-Olson, and Jonathan R. Sorensen offer a more complex thesis. In their book, The Rope, the Chair, and the Needle: Capital Punishment in Texas, 1923-1990,[5] they argue that Texas' execution rate reflects the Southern "cultural tradition of exclusion," and that "[s]uch exclusion was a basic element of the legacy of slavery."
The Conscience of a Liberal
Think the mid-term election was bad? Wait 'til Republicans get to redraw the electoral map…
The Republican Decade?
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/11/republican-decade-congressional-redistricting
Republicans map out their agenda of less
'Open Veins' and enduring ills in Latin America
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
Doublespeak
Doublespeak (sometimes called doubletalk) is language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., "downsizing" for layoffs), making the truth less unpleasant, without denying its nature. It may also be deployed as intentional ambiguity, or reversal of meaning (for example, naming a state of war "peace"). In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth, producing a communication bypass.
Forked tongue
The phrase "speaks with a forked tongue" means to say one thing and mean another or, to be hypocritical, or act in a duplicitous manner. In the longstanding tradition of many Native American tribes, "speaking with a forked tongue" has meant lying, and a person was no longer considered worthy of trust, once he had been shown to "speak with a forked tongue".
Immigrant Voter Fraud Fears Didn't Materialize
Racial inequality and slavery - Bill Moyers_pt1
ALEC
American Legislative Exchange Council
Corrections Corporation of America
Arizona SB 1070
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_SB_1070
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