Posted on 08/22/2007 4:37:51 PM PDT by nypokerface
LOL much better than the one I drug up!
All right. Let's start the 'Organ' Harvest next...
It effectively puts slave labor into competition with free labor, distorting market forces. It creates a pool of sub-minimum-wage workers that politicians can use to reward cronies. It distracts prisons from their core functions of protecting the public and rehabilitating offenders. It creates an incentive for prisons to hold on to the most profitable inmates, not the most dangerous.
The history of prison labor for hire is not a pretty one. From Dickensian debtors' workhouses to leased black work crews in the post-bellm South, it is a system that invites abuse. It is not a camel's nose that I want to let into the tent.
I have no problem with work as a condition of incarceration -- the state has plenty of jobs that need doing. Georgia is second, I'm told, after Texas in its use of prison labor -- they perform landscaping and maintenance at state parks, make and bottle cleaning products for use in state offices, build and repair furniture for state offices, and of course perform the classic duties like picking up litter on the highway and stamping out license tags. Running printing presses for state printing jobs. Tasks that both benefit the state and give them skills for when they get out.
When my dad worked at the prison in Buford, GA, there was one good ol' boy who took the work crews out each morning. They weren't chain gangs in the sense that they weren't chained to each other, but otherwise it's pretty much the same vibe. This' good ol' boy had the same routine day after day, with little variation.
"Men," he would say to the prisoners lined up alongside the reinforced school bus, "The state tells me if one of y'all tries to run, I am expected to fire a warning shot."
Shoosh-BLAM! as he racked his 12-gauge and fired it in the air.
"That was your warning shot. Get on the bus."
Personally, I would like to see the city of Detroit utilize chain gangs to clean up the neglected areas of the city. I think the reason they don't is due to a union thing.........
“She has no idea what she’s doing”
“She knows exactly what she’s doing.”
A wise friend of mine dubbed Cool Hand Luke the sweatiest movie ever made. Can’t argue. A distant second is A Time to Kill, which gets points for sweaty Ashley Judd. After that, Apocalypse Now, I guess. Brando certainly sweats enough for ten men.
"What we need is a better class of inmate."
-- Huey Long
Call your Congressional traitor and ask.
And Illegal Immigrant labor doesn’t undermine unionized labor? Does the UFW represent illegals?
Good idea. I’ll use that toll free # that was setup for all the illegals during shamnesty.
This story is a complete lie. ;)
Wait! I wonder if the prisoners are illegals...
Now if they would just pay farmers to harvest ILLEGALS we might have something.
ok by me. Welfare recipiens work program... at least they’d be earning their keep a bit.
Wonder how many inmates that are working the farms are also illegal aliens serving a sentence for crimes committed while here in the US as an illegal alien. Even one would be some kind of poetic justice, wouldn’t it?
Say no more. Better to use American criminals than foreign criminals. So what's the damn beef?
Yes. UFW is the union founded by Caesar Chavez, the group that had liberals boycotting grapes through the '70s and '80s.
The Arizona State Prison at one time was almost entirely self-sustaining. They grew their own beef, vegetables, wheat and cotton. They made their own furniture and anything else that was needed on a regular basis. It was local businesses which insisted that the practice stop. They were missing out on the lucrative contracts for supplying the inmates.
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