Yuram Abdullah Weiler: Profit From Prisons: How UNICOR Capitalizes On Inmate Labor

Source:The FreeState

The United States has a high convict recidivism rate, i.e., a large percentage of our prison inmates come back to prison after they finish their sentences.   70 % of ex-convicts return to prison. We also have a relatively large prison population.  About 1 of every 100 Americans is either in prison, on parole, or under some other type of supervised probation.

Because of these factors, we have high prison costs.  Prisons, as they are currently structured do not pay for themselves. There are a few exceptions to that among state prisons that are like family farms.  There are a few prisons in Louisiana where inmates work full-time producing food and other products for the institution but also to sell on the market and to other government agencies.

This post is about how to reduce the recidivism rate, the prison population and the associated  high costs.  The first step is educating the inmates who've decided that they want to improve themselves and end their criminal careers.  Once they have marketable skills, they can  work in prison factories and other prison business's and make a living for themselves and their families.

We should make prison industries real enterprises producing products for the prisons but also for other government agencies and the open market as well.  Local business could manage these industries  using the inmate population as their staff.  Instead of paying the inmates 20 cents or a dollar an hour, as is done now, they could pay them the local going rate for the work that they do. 

American Enterprise Institute: Nicholas Eberstadt- The Government vs. The American Character:

Source:The New Democrat

I agree with Nicholas Eberstadt on the growth of the entitlement state in America. We use to be a society in which you took care of yourself as much as you could and when you couldn't, your friends, family and private charity helped you get by.  The Great Depression really changed that.  When it once was commonplace for millions of Americans to retire without a pension and be taken care of by their savings and their kids and for nobody to have health insurance, that doesn't work anymore. This so-called Libertarian Utopia pre-Great Depression, (actually never existed for non-Anglo-Saxon-Americans) no longer exists. Private charity is still in business, but for people who fall on hard times and don't have enough savings and friends and family with enough resources to help them get by in the short-term, they have other options. Which is called the public safety net. A public social insurance system that we all pay into and take out from when we need it. 

Our economy has matured.  Healthcare technology is vastly improved, increasing life expectancy, and is much more expensive.  In our capitalist economic system, we have a social insurance for people who hit  rough times. We'll never be a Scandinavian social democracy or any other social democracy, where it's the job of the central government to meet the economic and insurance needs for the people. Instead of those people being able to get those services from the private sector. Things like education, health care, health insurance, day care, pension, etc. And we'll probably never be a Libertarian Society for anyone. Where there is no public safety net and again people are completely dependent on private charity when they fall on hard times. We're in the fact when it comes to the developed world, the third way. A country that has a public safety net for people who need it. But where everyone else is responsible for talking care of themselves. 

In comparison with Canada and Europe, our public social insurance system is very modest. We shouldn't have an insurance system that takes care of everyone because that would incentivize welfare over work and encourage people to not do as much for themselves as they can. All we have is a safety net for people who can't pay their bills and survive any other way. And the way I would reform is, is not by trying to eliminate it or expand it and try to become like Scandinavia or Britain, but instead use it as an empowerment self-inporvment system. Where yes people can get cash assistance and insurance, to meet their short-term needs. But also a system that empowers people to get on their own feet. With things like job training, education, small business loans, and help finding a new job that allows for people to make it on their own. 
Source:J Lowe

The Washington Times: David Keene: A Better Way to Help the Dangerously Mentally Ill

Source:The New Democrat

This may be the first post on The New Democrat about an article in the Washington Times.  I'm not sure.  The Times is one of two small right-wing newspapers in Washington, D.C.  They are small compared with the progressive Washington Post, one of the most important big city news papers in the country, if not the most important.  The Washington Times, even with their supposed reporting, sounds, a lot of times, like the FOX News of print, a partisan political operation trying to pass themselves off as a news organization but really just repeating stuff from Republican or Tea Party sources and reporting things that really aren't news.

But today, David Keene writes what could be called a "compassionate conservative" piece about mental health care in America and what is wrong with it.  We lock up people who otherwise would be classified as mental patients who should be institutionalized but, since they were convicted of committing felonies, we put them in prison.  The prison staff isolates them in indefinite solitary confinement so they can't hurt anyone.  This is understandable, from the staff's viewpoint but it  treats the symptoms instead of addressing the underlying problems that cause these people to act out in the first place.

We have an underfunded mental health care system in America that results in a lot of damage to society, including the loss of innocent lives.  We have mental patients who are on the street when they should be institutionalized for their own good and for the good of society, not in prison but in real mental hospitals or, at the very least, in outpatient care with medication and regular appointments with  caregivers.  This is self-inflicted wound.  We've shot ourselves in the feet.

We have the resources in this country to fully-fund mental health care.   We should've done that as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.  Even some Congressional Republicans who, at the time, were in the minority in the House and Senate believed that we should have addressed this problem.  Even with all of the  shootings, post Gabby Gifford in Tucson, we have failed to act and, as a result, our country is still in danger of more shootings by mentally disturbed people who have no business being in possession of firearms.

I'm in favor of background checks to make sure that anyone attempting to buy a firearm does not have a mental health or criminal record but that, alone, won't solve the problem because as long as there are mental patients on the streets with access to firearms, either through the legal or black markets, we will remain at risk of further gun violence in this country.

Along with background checks on gun purchases we need to make mental health care part of health insurance for both private and public insurers.  People in mental hospitals should be eligible for public assistance while they are institutionalized to cover costs that their health insurer doesn't cover.  We need to make sure that, in the future, mental patients are not released because their hospital can no longer afford to treat them. 

Hoover Institution: Edward Paul Lazear: How to Energize a Lackluster Recovery

Source:The New Democrat

The U.S. income tax is now the biggest book ever written in the history of the world, at least as far as I know, standing at over one-million pages.  How would you like that for a book review homework assignment?  This system is in drastic need of reform.  I propose a National Progressive Consumption Tax or NPCT.

This eliminates, perhaps,  the biggest book  in world history and tells Americans that what they make and earn is legally and officially theirs but Uncle Sam will take a percentage of what they spend to provide the needed services that only the Federal Government can.  This system eliminates a lot of taxpayer funded subsidies to businesses and wealthy individuals.  No one would be able to avoid the NPCT except the working poor who would receive a scale of exemptions to replace the Earned Income Tax Credit.  They would be eligible for other subsidies to help them move up the economic ladder simply by reporting their annual income to the IRS.  The NPCT would be progressive because low-income people spend almost all of their money on the basic necessities of life which would be taxed at a lower rate than luxury goods.

The NPCT would be good for economic growth.  Taxes on capital gains and business incomes could be reduced.  Basic necessities would be taxed at low rates.  Food, housing, and non-luxury transportation will be consumed because people have to have those things.  The wealthy would continue to spend money on their play toys even if those things are taxed more highly.

Savings will be encouraged, resulting in less consumer debt.  In the next recession, people would have the means to continue supporting themselves and we would have less need for public assistance. 

New York Times: 'Will Hillary Clinton Run for President in 2016?'

Source:The New York Times- Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton (Democrat, New York)

Source:The New Democrat 

"A selection of clips showing how Hillary Rodham Clinton responded to variations of the question: Will she run for president in 2016?" 

From the New York Times

As far back as early 2006, it was not only clear that Democrats would win back Congress that year, at least the House of Representatives with, perhaps, a 50-50 split in the Senate, but that then Senator Hillary Clinton would not only win the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 but probably win the general election as well unless the Republican Party was smart enough to nominate Rudy Guliani,  Senator John McCain, or someone else on the Right, but who could win Independents and also beat Senator Clinton in the swing states.

Well, Democrats did win back Congress in 2006 (both the House and Senate) and Senator Clinton served in the majority party in the 110th Congress of 2007-08. But last time I checked, she's not the President of the United States, wasn't on the ballot at all in 2012 and served as Secretary of State in the first Obama Administration. Why is that?  Well,  she lost to then freshmen Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president.  Before his great keynote address for Senator John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, most Americans had never heard of him.

As late as late 2007, then Senator Obama didn't seem to have much of a shot at winning the Democratic nomination for president. It was his great speech at the Thomas Jefferson dinner in Iowa in December of 07 that made him a major player and perhaps carried the Iowa Caucus for him that year.  He was  able to inspire people to get behind a cause for the society as a whole.  This was his theme for president in 2007-08.

I'm not sure if the Clinton presidential campaign was expecting a cakewalk to the Democratic nomination for president but they weren't expecting a major challenger either.  Quite frankly, most of the Democratic Party, including me, as well as most of the national media weren't expecting a strong challenge to Hillary for the Democratic nomination.  At the time, the possibility of being the first female President of the United States, the Democrat who was the most electable, and what people saw as a strong resume seemed to be enough for Hillary Clinton to be President.

I have a prediction for 2015-16: If the Hillary campaign believes the same strategy for winning the nomination and the presidency will work in 2016 even though it failed in 2008, they'll lose and, perhaps, lose big. Not the presidency itself, because, as Newt Gingrich has acknowledged, there isn't a Republican standing who can beat her right now, almost regardless of the campaign she runs, if she avoids major mistakes and nothing emerges from her record that could seriously damage her.  Her lack of a presidential vision and theme provides the opening that Brian Schweitzer, Martin O'Malley or Andrew Cuomo could exploit to defeat her for the Democratic nomination.  Any of those three would have that vision and theme to use against her.

I understand all the yearnings to have the first female President of the United States.  If the best candidate for president is a woman or Hillary wins the Democratic nomination, I'll vote for her. But running for the presidency of the United States is applying for the most important job in the world.  To win that job you not only have to beat out all of the other applicants but you also have to show the country why you are the best applicant and what you intend to do after you are hired.  Hillary hasn't done that yet.  She's still playing it safe as if it were 2007-08 all over again. 

The American Spectator: Jeffrey Lord: 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative

Source: The American Spectator.

Source: The New Democrat 

1964 is a big year  in 2014, for several reasons.  There are a few huge fifty-year anniversaries coming up, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Barry Goldwater winning the Republican nomination for president and Ronald Reagan coming on the national political scene. The third one is the main point of this post because Ron Reagan is far and away the most popular Republican President in modern American history.

This is why Republicans are always quoting Reagan or calling themselves "Reagan Conservatives" whether they are or not. There are Republicans who call themselves "Reagan Conservatives" and then there are actual Reagan Conservatives or Goldwater Republicans who actually practice what they claim to be their political philosophy.  They are for limited government and individual freedom, not big government intrusion into our personal lives.

John McCain, Jeff Flake, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee are all current U.S. Senators who are Reagan Conservatives because they stand by the key Reagan principles of limited government, individual freedom, peace through strength, and individual rights.  Then, there are Republicans who falsely claim to be Reagan Conservatives in order to get elected such as Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Governor Rick Scott of Florida.  They claim to be against big government except when they want Big Brother in our homes and bedrooms.  They associate themselves with Reagan to gain political power.  It is up to voters to validate their claims.
Source:Reagan Foundation

Townhall: Jacob Sullum: Pot, Poker, Prohibition: Do Republicans Really Want to be the Party of Unprincipled Killjoys?

Source:The New Democrat

Yesterday, Matt Welch had a column in the libertarian magazine, Reason, talking about big government paternalists on the Left.  He said that Progressives not only want to manage American's economic lives but their personal lives, as well.  Links to that article and to a post byThe New Democrat will be on this blog.  Welch was basically talking about what he sees as paternalistic and prohibitionist Progressives, people who want to outlaw fun things for Americans' own good.

Today, Jacob Sullum, an editor at Reason, had a column in Townhall talking about prohibitionist, big government, statist Republicans.  They want Uncle Sam to outlaw things that think are dangerous and deny Americans and the states the right to make these decisions for themselves.  Today's Tea Party Republicans like to talk about principles and standing by them.

Before you can stand by your principles you have to have some and you can't abandon them every time  somebody in the private sector or at the state level gets involved in activities that you personally do not like.  If you invoke a Federal solution in such cases, you are putting yourself in the position of some kind of god or something that has the moral judgement and authority to make such decisions for the entire country.  Except for Rand Paul and Rick Perry, you don't see a lot of Federalists in the Republican Party, right now.  

The paternalistic statists on the Left  want to outlaw, at the Federal level, hate speech, gambling, soft drinks, firearms, tobacco, and, perhaps, alcohol.  Some of them want to continue marijuana prohibition and, even, outlaw right-wing media. This statist wing of the Left definitely exists and is the farthest left that the left wing gets, while still believing in some form of democracy.

There are paternalistic statists on the Right as well.  If the crews of Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann ever had their way, pornography, gambling, same-sex-marriage and, perhaps, homosexuality would all be illegal at the Federal level with no provisions for options at the state level.  And, of course, marijuana would remain illegal.

Labels and principles have real meanings.  If you are going to call yourself a Federalist and a believer in individual freedom, you should know what those words mean and realize that you live in a liberal democracy where other people have the freedom to do things of which you personally do not approve. You should know, as well, that we are a Federal Republic with the police powers reserved to the fifty states by the U.S.Constitution.  If you don't, then when you put labels on yourself, you are just calling yourself names.