Book Review: 'Double Down -- Game Change 2012' (Part 1 of 2)

by Sunnyjane

If you liked Game Change, the book on the 2008 election by Halperin and Heilemann, you'll also like the 2012 edition on the campaign between President Barack Obama and former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney.  And if you're a political junky who wants to see the jaw-dropping backstage machinations of a presidential campaign, you're going to love this book.  I certainly did.

As Ezra Klein of the Washington Post wrote:  [It is] a joyous romp through the seedy underbelly of presidential campaigning.  ... It’s also a marvel of reporting. Any time three staff members met in a room to badmouth a colleague or a candidate, admitted to a moment of stress or self-doubt, ... John Heilemann and Mark Halperin appear to have been sitting in the corner, scribbling notes.

While Charles Pierce and Michael Kinsley didn't care much for the book -- or Mark Halperin, it seems -- the reports of Double Down's having been called supermarket tabloid trash is based on the insistence from Jon Huntsman, Sr. that he was not Harry Reid's source on the Romney didn't pay any taxes for ten years issue.

West Wing Woes

I wonder why nobody told me anything about having to fight pirates.

The President and his staff were not exactly doing the Happy Dance at the beginning of the 2012 general election cycle -- which started in 2011, of course.  And, despite her personal high approval ratings, the First Lady wasn't happy, either.  

Chicago, which is what the campaign headquarters was called because it couldn't be run from the White House, wanted Michelle Obama to be active in the 2010 midterms and in the 2012 general elections.  She agreed in 2010, reluctantly, because she didn't want to burn through her likability capital on congressional races and she hated being away from her girls over night.  The campaign accommodated her restrictions.  But she was more than willing in 2012 to help MY GUY, as she called the President, and raised ten million dollars in one quarter of the campaign.  She proved to be a real buck-raker, and Chicago was thrilled.  The First Lady was irritated with the President's staff, and didn't mind telling them about it.

The President wasn't pleased with his West Wing staff, either, and he did something about it.  Rahm Emanuel -- who easily succeeded in pissing off everybody -- had already left to run for mayor of Chicago.  David Axelrod (disheveled and disorganized) and Robert Gibbs (who seemed to be quite skilled at using the word fuck as a noun, verb, adverb, adjective, etc.)  were sent to campaign HQ.  Bill Daley became White House Chief of Staff, which didn't turn out very well, and he was replaced by Jack Lew.  Lots of screaming, finger-pointing, and shakeups going on.

But President Obama was also unhappy with himself and his inability to deal with an obnoxious House of Representatives.  He had had to spend his time on issues ranging from birtherism to Osama bin Laden to rescuing two people from Somali pirates.  He thought his messaging was ineffective and sloppy.  In addition, he had a leaker on his staff, which really upset him.  

By May of 2012, he had his Bulworth Moment -- deciding that he was going to stop paying attention to campaign focus groups and tell the American people what he proposed and why.

That decision probably gave him a second term.

And Who Shall Lead Them?

Long before the Republican primary debates actually began in January 2012, the field was wide open  -- I counted as many as fifteen.  As had been said by many, Mitt Romney started campaigning for 2012 right after he lost the 2008 candidacy to John McCain.  But the establishment GOP did not want Romney -- they detested him -- and a bunch of others tried, in vain, to get each other to run.  Perhaps Haley Barbour, governor of Mississippi, was the most prescient when he predicted that if Romney ran, his weaknesses would attract a large, unruly field that would be bad for the party. 

Frankly, I think this group even exceeded Barbour's most dire predictions.

Is Rick Perry late again?  Oops!

Halperin and Heilemann share a lot of interesting insights into the personalities and foibles of the final 2012 Hopefuls, except for Ron Paul; there was little said about him.   So here are just a few examples of the less-than-stellar lineup of the Hopeless to become the 2012 Republican candidate for president.

I have never had sex with that woman!  Those women!  I have never had sex with...anybody!

Herman Cain:  Best known for his 8.7 tax program.  Well, Herman didn't think it would suit for him to go around yelling 8.7-8.7-8.7, so he told his staff, Goddammit, we're rounding it up to 9-9-9!   He was, to say the least, one of the most unqualified of the Eight-Left-Standing bunch, and after persistent allegations (which he denied) about sexual misconduct, he quit the race.

And getting there is half the fun!

Michele Bachmann:  Shedding staff like yesterday's underwear, Bachmann gaffed her way through the primaries.  The stories about her migraine headaches must have brought on more: her staff once found her in a fetal position in her hotel room and had to take fast and dramatic medical steps to ease her pain.  She quit in January 2012, after coming in a dismal fourth in the Iowa caucuses.  Thus, the I'm such a loser! quote that has been reported recently.

Hmmm...I'll hit Mitt with my new word: Obamneycare.   It'll be a winner!

Tim Pawlenty:  According to the book, the former governor of Minnesota and the current Congresswoman (Bachmann) from that state ...shared a reverent evangelical faith and a biting distaste for each other.  (Bachmann considered Pawlenty a weak-kneed fraud; he disparaged her as "dangerous" and "insane.")  Pawlenty may well be a weak-kneed fraud, but he's certainly correct on his assessment of Bachmann.  In an effort to tie Obamacare and Romney's Massachusetts health care law, he had coined the word Obamneycare in a television interview.  However, when asked by the moderator during the June 13, 2011 debate why he had used the term, he backed off and refused to take the opportunity to slam his rival.  He resigned from the race the next day.  OK, I guess Michele is right: Pawlenty is weak-kneed.

Giggle, chuckle, tee hee: Whee doggies!  Pain medications are FUN!

Rick Perry:  The Texas governor's debate missteps, his questionable racial history, claims that he is gay, his evangelical background, and his unrepentant assertion that Social Security is a Ponzi  scheme are all well-known fodder on which the media chewed with delight.  However, what was not well known -- even to his staff -- was the seriousness of his back  surgery in July 2011.  The persistent pain and his regular bouts of insomnia, coupled with less than sterling debate performances, led him to resign from the race in January 2012. 

Noooo, I don't want to hear about your wife!  MY wife is the only one who can have an abortion!

Rick Santorum:  Not much new on Saint Santorum.  Try as he might, Rick could not stay away from harping on far-right, evangelical Christiansta social issues.  Former Nebraska governor Rob Kerrey was heard to say, Santorum: that's Latin for asshole.

I don't know...I guess...let me see...maybe.

Jon Huntsman:  The one issue I found most fascinating was -- to me, anyhow -- brand new.  It involves the ten-year  animosity between Mitt Romney and fellow-Mormon Jon Huntsman, Jr.  -- who incredibly, had never met before 2002.  Both wanted to be The Rescuer of the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City; Mitt got the job, and both Huntsman, Jr. and Huntsman, Sr. were not at all happy.

Then, in 2008 when Romney was running to become the GOP nominee, Huntsman assured him he would endorse him, then turned around and endorsed McCain.  Romney was furious.  But Huntsman wanted badly to be Secretary of State and doubted that Romney would appoint a fellow Mormon to that position; thus, he pinned his hopes on John McCain.

Huntsman is a complicated fellow, prone to dark spells and with a dicey relationship with his father.  At times, it seemed to his staff that he didn't really want to run for president -- he just sort of wanted to be president.  I have the distinct feeling that Double Down reveals just a glimmer into the murky world of who Jon Huntsman really is.

And the Candidate is...

Heh...

End Note


Part 2 of this post will cover the presidential campaign and debates between the two candidates, as well as Romney's careful search for a vice presidential nominee.  That process  turned out to be a WHOA! type of thing.

The Republican Tea Party: Equal Opportunity Haters

by Sunnyjane

Déjà Vu All Over Again

Hardly had President Barack Obama gotten through his repeat swearing-in ceremony in 2009 when newly elected RNC Chairman Michael Steele (the Republican's we'll-show-you! retort to a black Democrat in the White House) issued a stern warning that he would torpedo the public perception that the Republicans are "a party unconcerned about minorities, a party that's unconcerned about the lives and dreams of average Americans."  Well, that may have been Mr. Steele's intention, but it obviously was not on the GOP leadership's agenda, and his torpedo turned out to be a dud.  And speaking of duds, the RNC ousted Steele and installed Reince Priebus.

Hey, forget what we stand for; we gotta sound "reasonable."

Fast Forward to early 2013.  Election over.  President Obama inaugurated to serve a second term.  Republican/Tea Party/Libertarian heads explode.  Recriminations and finger-pointing ensue: the GOP candidate was too conservative... or the GOP candidate was not conservative enough.  Karl Rove's fantastical fractured figure finagling blamed. 

Studies follow:  Ground game ineffective.  College Republicans conclude that the GOP is closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned.  And even though no one asks him for his opinion, in January Bobby Jindal tells an audience of Republicans, We must stop being the stupid party  ...  We must stop looking backward ... We must stop insulting the intelligence of voters.  It's rather good advice, actually, but...

...less than two months later, Priebus confirms for the country that there's little chance of a change in the GOP by saying that Mike Huckabee should be a model for a lot of people in our party.  Yes, indeedy, the same man who supported Todd Akin, says homosexuality is a sin and leads to polygamy, is against abortion for any reason, and believes that a breeder should be at home with one baby on her hip, one at her breast, and one in her belly.  That Mike Huckabee.   

Conclusion:  GOP business as usual.

What War on Women???
  

The little GOP bitch in pink thinks rape kits have magical abortion powers.

The far-right in this country badly need a war -- any war will do -- to alleviate their own insecurities, and one of the easiest ones to win seems to be their hostility towards women.   They've become very successful at destroying a woman's constitutional right to choose what's best for her, her family, and her own body.  If all goes according to the GOP's plan, Texas will enact* the most far-reaching and restrictive anti-choice laws in the country this week.  It will bring to nearly seven hundred the number of similar laws passed in just the past three months.

*Update: During a nail-biting special session of the Texas legislature on Tuesday, the bill failed.  However, Rick Perry has called for a second special session of the legislature to push the same restrictive anti-choice bill because Texans value women's lives so much that, according to Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst...

In Texas, we believe in regulating vaginas instead of fertilizer plants.

Oh, and since Gov. Oops will probably run for president in 2016,  he's gotta shore up those family-values creds, dontcha know.  [Do you think the far-right Christianistas realize that they actually worship a Jewish liberal?] 

While Texas is hell-bent on ruining life for many women in the second most populated state in the country, Iowa legislators have given Gov. Branstad (a far-right pro-lifer) the final decision on whether Medicaid will pay for a woman's abortion.  [Legally, Medicaid can only be used to pay for abortions resulting from rape, incest, danger to the life of the mother, or a fetus so malformed that it would not survive outside the womb.]  So, after the abortion for one of these situations is performed, the governor will be presented with the details and make the decision on whether Medicaid will pay the bill.  Oh, Branstad has assured the citizens of Iowa that he plans to be very thoughtful in making his decisions, even though there appear to be no guidelines whatsoever for him to follow.  Bottom line:  Iowa has completely lost its fucking mind and they're obviously not aware that politicans are lousy doctors.

GOP governors are irrationally fixated on women's bodies and what they do with them.  Over in Wisconsin, Scott Walker thinks it's a dandy idea to perform transvaginal sonograms on first-term pregnancies.

There is no truth to the rumor that I want to prevent the next virgin birth from being aborted.

The governor has no problem with these invasive, medically unnecessary procedures and says,  I think most people think ultrasounds are just fine.  And which most people would that be, Governor?   It wouldn't be most men, now would it?  Just asking.  Oh wait, I get it!  Since Rush Limbaugh never got to see videos of Sandra Fluke having wild sex, I guess Scotty-boy is going to send his good buddy Rush videos of women having transvaginal sonograms.  Perhaps it's the only way Limpballs can get a stiffie going, huh?

But perhaps the most jaw-dropping bill being proposed against women at the moment is the one in Ohio that will require women who want birth control pills to undergo ultrasound procedures and wait twenty-four hours.  You cannot make this shit up.     

How about these states pass a law requiring a transpenile procedure for any man wanting a vasectomy or a prescription for Viagra or Cialis?

 

The Supreme Court Has Just Trod on My DOMA!

Q: How will DOMA repeal affect traditional marriage?   A: Ummm...

With a shrug and a Who cares?, Nancy Pelosi dismissed a reporter's question regarding Michele Bachmann's rant after the high court announced its decision on DOMA and Prop 8 in California: This decision is one that is profound because the Supreme Court not only attacked our Constitution today… Well, that's all you really need to know, because Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) had to school Ms. Bachmann and reporters on that little thingy called Separation of Church and State.  And he did it beautifully.

And in other far-right reactions on the DOMA repeal, Justice Scalia swallowed his legalized argle-bargle gargle by re-ranting his homosexual sodomy argument while Rand Paul believes that the DOMA decision could lead to bestiality.  No, seriously.  As Americablog points out, Rand just compared Mary Cheney’s relationship to sodomizing your pet.  Sweet.

And not to disappoint his faithful followers, the model for the GOP (see above) Mike Huckabee tweeted My thoughts on the SCOTUS ruling that determined that same sex marriage is okay: "Jesus wept."   Of course, the phrase Jesus wept has absolutely nothing to do with gay marriage, but hey, so what so long as it gets the far-right in a lather?

The Supreme Gutting of the Voting Rights Act

While the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (known as the formula section), it made Section 5 (the pre-clearance section) virtually null and void.  As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote in her scathing dissenting argument,  Section 5 is now "immobilized" without a working coverage formula.  Chief Justice Roberts said that it was the duty of the Congress to address the coverage formula; well, good luck with that, CJ.

I don't know where the Chief Justice was during the 2012 general election, but his ruling that racial minorities no longer face barriers to voting in states with a history of discrimination is naive at best, and deceitful at worst. Our country has changed, he wrote. While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.  Current conditions, Mr. Chief Justice?  It only took Gov. Perry two hours after the decision had been announce to declare that Texas may now implement the will of the people without being subject to outdated and unnecessary oversight and the overreach of federal power.  You can bet your sweet bippy that there will definitely be racial barriers put up for the folks in the Lone Star state.  As John Oliver pointed out, It takes Texas less time to disenfranchise voters than to barbecue a pig.

End Note 

 

We Americans have our work cut out for us.  Stopping the regressive and repressive actions of the Republican Party and its far-right cohorts will take all of us working hard together.  We must believe that we can do it.

As Nelson Mandela once said:

 It always seems impossible until it's done.

 

Cenk Uygur from "The Young Turks" reports about publication of Stratfor-emails by "Politicalgates" - More bombshell revelations from the Stratfor-pile: Rick Perry told Stratfor-Vice President Fred Burton that he "feels that Mitt Romney cannot get elected" - PLUS "Much of the US media resigned from investigative journalism", according to Stratfor-analyst

By Patrick

Read also our previous reports about the Stratfor emails:

+++ PART 1: Disparaging comments about Sarah Palin, - "President Hockey Mom" - Contempt for the American electorate as a whole - The real reason why Republicans attack Obamacare +++

+++ PART 2: Bad news for Mitt Romney: "Romney has been disastrous", "Romney thinks he can win. Mormon, no way" - PLUS: More GOP inside info and brutal remarks about Michelle Bachmann and again, about Sarah Palin: "Can carry the white trash and redneck vote" +++

The reporting by Politicalgates about the leaked Stratfor emails finally got more attention. As I explained and proved in the previous posts, Wikileaks granted us exclusive unrestricted access to the complete pile of millions of Stratfor-emails.

After our first post was tweeted by Wikileaks themselves and Andrew Sullivan also reported a memorable quote from the emails, I was incredibly happy to see that one of our favourite independent journalists, Cenk Uygur from "The Young Turks", yesterday published an extensive segment about the emails on their show, and credited Politicalgates with the new revelations (as well as Wikileaks and Anonymous, who obtained the emails in the first place). Cenk quotes email after email and clearly had a lot fun explaining to his audience how cynical the experts behind the scenes view the whole process, and how badly they view Mitt Romney.

Watch this segment from August 8, 2012 (uploaded with express permission by "The Young Turks"):   

Screenshot from the "Current TV" website:

Click here to go to the main website of "The Young Turks."

If you are not familiar with Stratfor, read their Wikipedia-page.

However, there is of course much more. As far as the US-presidential race is concerned, there is one particular "gold nugget" which I found only after my first two posts were published, and which should raise eyebrows as well. In fact, it should make headlines.

The Vice-President of Stratfor, Fred Burton reports in June 2011 about discussion he had with Texas Governor Rick Perry - the content of which won't make Mitt Romney very happy!

Fred Burton wrote:

85 % Gov Perry will run for POTUS per a discussion with the Gov.

He feels Romney can't get elected.

Screenshot:

OH SNAP! Rick Perry feels Mitt Romney cannot get elected!

Is there actually anyone in the Republican party who thinks that Mitt Romney CAN get elected?

We already knew from the previous revelations that Fred Burton also strongly believes that Romney is unelectable, mostly due to the fact he is Mormon.

But I found another "nugget" by Fred Burton (who is not shy to make harsh and "politically incorrect" comments in the emails about a whole range of different topics). Fred Burton found another reason why Mitt Romney has a problem to find sufficient appreciation within the electorate:

It's a black issue in Michigan. How many blacks think Romney (Mormon
whitey with shiny hair) will help them? Zero. He looks like a Loo-siana State Trooper.

OH SNAP again! Fred Burton truly calls it like he sees it. One could virtually fill a book with memorable quotes by Burton.

Yes - how many blacks will actually vote for Romney? Do they really want a "Mormon whitey with shiny hair", as Fred Burton puts it?

Screenshot (as in the previous posts, I blacked out the name of the Stratfor-analysts):

"Loo-siana!" That really made me laugh. It is very mean, this remark, of course, and apologies to readers who are proud of their state, but this remark clearly has a hint of brilliance as well.

The Stratfor emails also deal with a subject which the mainstream is certainly not to keen to report about - the sorry state of the mainstream media and of investigative journalism itself. Here at Politicalgates we wrote many times about the fact that true fearless and hard-hitting investigative journalism in the USA is pretty much dead.

There are of course a few independent journalists left who are not afraid to report about the truth. Journalists like Brad Friedman and of course Cenk Uygur come to mind, and then there are websites like Think Progress, Alternet, and some others - but frankly, these journalists are few in number, and their readership is relatively small. And even these independents journalists cannot touch certain taboo subjects, as the reporting about Sarah Palin's faked pregnancy proved - a scandal which was incredibly easy to discover and was also an open secret in Alaska in 2008 (see for example our rebuttal to Justin Elliott's article which he published at Salon).

We have news: The analysts at Stratfor share our negative view about the USA media!

Quote:

If newspapers were doing their job properly, if they were following the edict of the great London Times editor Thomas Delane that 'the duty of the press is disclosure', there would be little space for Wikileaks. Much of the media, particularly in metropolitan America, has resigned from investigative journalism, preferring instead to feed off the corporate and government spin doctors for serious news, and publish tedious 'lifestyle' sections.

Can you believe it? If you would like to read some true thoughts about the US media these days, you need to resort to leaked emails!

Also, note the positive comments about Wikileaks in this exchange. But, but...I thought they were terrorists, who need to be assassinated, according to a large section of right-wingers?

It turns out that the Wikileaks-people are in fact "sick of spin doctors and politicians telling lies."

Screenshot:

What a great quote by this Stratfor-analyst. For this quote alone, it was worth to publish these emails.

However, I was pleased to read that these negative views apparently do not apply to all the media outlets.

The analysts at Stratfor hold for example the German "Spiegel" and the UK "Guardian" in high regard:

To answer xxxx's question, this is certainly something that could be assumed. Mossad and German intelligence have grown close over the years, especially following the fiasco in Munich. On the other hand, Der Spiegel usually does very good in depth analyses and investigative work. Best at that in Germany. In that way, it has a very good tradition of
investigative journalism similar to the Guardian (although it is a weekly, not a daily like the Guardian).

Screenshot:

It is just a shame that "Der Spiegel" is published in German, although it also features a small English section. It really still is the beacon of investigative journalism, with nearly 100 people working in their fact-checking department, even if this is not often visible to the English-speaking world. The UK Guardian provides outstanding investigative journalism as well. In the USA, it is mainly the group of small independent journalists who deliver, although I would like to point out that it gives me some hope when even a rather "inconspicuous" outlet like AP presents some solid investigative research on Mitt Romney. There might be hope, but only if the media is not afraid of the truth, which in many cases will be shocking and highly inconvenient. Just remember: "The duty of the press is disclosure", not getting involved in partisan politics.

+++

UPDATE:

Wikileaks just tweeted this post! The second tweet by Wikileaks in a week to one of our posts! Many thanks, we really appreciate it!

I now have the complete video to the clip by "The Young Turks", which they have posted on their website. Look at the youtube clip with just the audio for listening which I included above!

I do not want to post the complete video clip by "The Young Turks" right now, as it seems to be behind a paywall. Maybe they will publish it on youtube later. Here are some screenshots with the brilliant Cenk Uygur:

Scandal in Lock Down Mode: Rick Perry and the Texas Youth Commission 3/3

by Nomad

Scandal in Lock Down Mode Part One Part Two

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Thomas Jefferson

Severe Consequences 

George Bush

The origins of the Texas Youth Commission problems actually began as a result of fear-mongering campaign tactics about the rise of violent juvenile crime during George Bush’s 1994 run for governor. In one of his campaign ads, Bush told voters,

"The bottom line is young people need to understand there will be severe consequences for bad behavior."

(This tough talk about crime and punishment is somewhat ironic given the later events.) Some may argue that playing upon the fears of the public was to be merely a dress rehearsal for the anti-terrorism campaign following the hysteria caused by the 9-11 attacks. 

But then you don't mess with success. After all,  the “tough on crime” position had also worked for his father in his own the presidential campaign. The “revolving door” advertisement, produced by political consultant Roger Ailes, had been considered a major factor in Bush’s defeat of Michael Dukakis in 1988. Following those ads, the percentage of poll respondents who felt George Bush, Sr. was "tough enough" on crime rose from 23 percent in July 1988 to 61 percent in late October 1988. Being tough on anything always plays well with Texas voters.

In order to fulfill that campaign promise, Bush would go on to nearly triple the size of the Texas youth corrections system, increasing the number of youthful offenders in state-run facilities from 1,800 to over 4.550 by the time of his presidential swearing-in in 2001. The Houston Chronicle weighs in with this:

Legislators and youth advocates say that system expansion overtaxed an agency bureaucracy, aggravated problems with staffing TYC facilities and set up a breakdown that occurred after major cuts were made to the agency's budget in 2003.

"The agency probably grew too fast based on Governor Bush's commitments of being more proactive in the enforcement of youth," said Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.

There were supposedly many contributing factors to the problem. Perhaps they were, but was it merely a case of incompetence by one governor followed by neglect and careless budget-cutting by another?

The TYC administration and board were inadequate to handle problems with the expansion. Remote locations of many TYC facilities made it difficult to hire and retain staff. The buildup brought in more children with mental problems. Open dormitory settings allowed older youths to become predators of the younger inmates and to organize their dorms against the guards.

And the state's political leadership — both Gov. Rick Perry and the Legislature — was slow to recognize the growing crisis because the focus was on adult prisons while the juvenile system ran on autopilot.

A harsh assessment, to be sure, but even this glosses over another important factor. Something that, for good reason, nobody really wanted to discuss. It requires peeling one more layer back from the onion to reveal that "lone why." 

The Geo Group

To get to the reasons why problems with the TYC could have gone on for so long and to have been so successfully ignored, one has to zoom out and take an even larger view. 

It had to do with exposure-which if you have something to hide, is not a good thing.
The Geo Group a private company, one of about a half dozen, that operates prisons, juvenile justice centers, psychiatric hospitals and immigration detention centers all over the world,  and has big business in Texas.  The corporation runs 19 correctional facilities in Texas, including nine under contract for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Here is a map of the other privately-run facilities in the USA.

Geo Group Facilities in the USA

As a multi-national service provider for government, The Geo Group has found the management of correctional, immigration detention, and mental health facilities to be a highly lucrative enterprise. With 20,000 employees, and a revenue in 2010 estimated at $ 1.27 billion, the corporation operates in North American South Africa, the United Kingdom and Australia. It operates more than 50 facilities in the United States including five mental health facilities in Florida.

And make no mistake, there’s money to be made keeping people locked away. With 2.3 million people behind bars and an estimated 10 million Americans cycling in and out of correctional facilities each year, the United States is in the midst of an "epidemic of mass incarceration," say researchers from the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, a collaboration of The Miriam Hospital and Brown University.

As NPR reports:

On any given day, there are 1.6 million people serving sentences in state and federal prisons. Eight percent of them are in facilities operated by private companies. In the federal detention system, more than 16 percent of detainees are held in private lockups.

This proportion is projected to grow. According to industry leader Corrections Corporation of America [CCA], no state has allocated money to build new state-run prisons in the last year because of budget crises. So some state governments are turning to the private sector to house their prisoners. The private corrections industry maintains that it can build and start up prisons faster, and incarcerate inmates more cheaply than state-run facilities.

Based in Boca Raton, Fla., Geo Groups Inc. — formerly Wackenhut Corrections -— is competing with CCA for new contracts. Since 2009, GEO has acquired 7,600 new prison beds, a growth of 10 percent, according to a GEO annual report.

GEO spent $2,065,000 on lobbying between 1999 and 2009. The three major lobbying firms under Geo are Lionel "Leo" Aguirre, Winston & Strawn, and Dykema Gossett. 

Geo Group had had a notorious record when it won the contract with TYC. The record in Texas at the time of the West Texas School case was evolving is hardly confidence-inspiring, as this source reveals. As the writer notes:

The list is long enough and filled with enough serious incidents that it makes me wonder why GEO continues to earn lucrative contracts like the three new Texas contracts .... One reason might be the high-priced lobbyists and former state officials that GEO keeps employed. 

As far as a private-sector solution to the economic shortfalls, Geo Group's relationship with the Texas Youth Commission left a lot to be desired. Regardless of that detail, it was making somebody a lot of money.

If Texas Were A Country
In a study released in 2007 by the Washington, DC-based Justice Policy Institute found that one out of every 20 adults in Texas were either in prison, jail, on probation or on parole. There are more people in prison in Texas than in any other state, and Texas' incarceration rate is second only to Louisiana. The report found that:

If Texas were a country, it would have the highest incarceration rate in the world, easily surpassing the United States and Russia, the next two finishers, and seven times that of the next biggest prison system in China.

The prison population in Texas has gone from 29,892 in December 1980 to an astounding 172,116 by December 2006. Stated Vincent Schiraldi, the Institute's Director and report co-author:

"The sheer numbers of people in prison and jail in Texas are signs of system fixated on punishment, and devoid of compassion."

It's easy to say that this is the means to deal with crime, but is that actually true? Let's compare New York's prisons and Texas' prisons in the same period.

While Texas had the fastest growing prison system in the country during the 1990s, New York had the third slowest growing prison population in the US. Over all, during the 1990s, Texas added five times as many prisoners as New York did (18,001).Yet since 1995, the study found that New York's decline in crime was four times greater than Texas' decline in crime. Texas' current incarceration rate (1,035 per 100,000) is 80% higher than New York's (574 per 100,000), yet Texas' crime rate (5,111 per 100,000) is 30% higher than New York's (3,588 per 100,000). In 1998, Texas' murder rate was 25% higher than New York State's rate.

Not only are there more people in prison but the ones in prison are more often than not non-violent offenders.Given those facts, it's clear that incarceration is a big business in the Lone Star State.

The Hungry Beast

In 2010, the two largest private prison companies alone received nearly $3 billion dollars in revenue, and their top executives, according to one source, each received annual compensation packages worth well over $3 million. The privatization of the prison system, by its nature, is a hungry beast. 

As an ACLU report explains that while the incarceration rates climb ever upwards, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates, holding more and more people in its prisons and jails, and generating massive profits. Private prisons for adults were virtually non-existent until the early 1980s, but the number of prisoners in private prisons increased by approximately 1600% between 1990 and 2009.

One problem, however, despite what two out of five Americans think, violent crime is not on the rise; it's actually on a steep decline. According to the FBI, property crimes are down too. Yet the prison population is still on the increase. 

So, is this merely a sign that the prison system is effective at stopping crime? Not quite. There's something more to it.

According to ACLU, the two leading industry companies, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, received a combined $3 billion in annual revenue in 2010. According to the report, the CCA acknowledged in records submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission that current sentencing laws increase the company’s profits.

Thus, the toughest possible approach to crime means maximum profits for the private incarceration corporations. The ACLU report goes on to say:

Leading private prison companies essentially admit that their business model depends on high rates of incarceration. For example, in a 2010 Annual Report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company, stated: "The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by . . . leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices . . . ."

The Southern border states are especially appetizing for corporations like Geo Group. Why, you might ask?

In August (2011), when GEO, the Florida prison company, posted a 40 percent rise in second-quarter profits, its executives in Boca Raton spoke of new immigration business on both sides of the Atlantic.

John M. Hurley, a GEO executive for North American operations, cited "the continued growth in the criminal alien population," larger facilities, and longer federal contracts, some up to 20 years.

A source  supplies the details: 

Since the late 1990’s, the number of people held in immigration detention has exploded. On any given day, ICE detains over 33,000 immigrants; this is more than triple the number of people detained in 1996. In the last 5 years alone, the annual number of immigrants detained and the costs of detaining them has doubled: in 2009, 383,524 immigrants were detained, costing taxpayers $1.7 billion at an average of $122 a day per bed. Nearly 2.5 million individuals have passed through immigration detention facilities since 2003.

And, and for the private prison operators,  immigrants, like children, have few if any civil rights to fret over. Practically everybody benefits. Politicians can win votes by taking a tough stand on the immigration problem. Profits can be made by corporations. Nearly everybody gets something out of the neat arrangement. 

The influence of private prison operators, like Geo Group, affects state governments in a number of ways. Firstly, its lobbyist can influence any legislation which increases incarceration rates. Secondly, it can effectively discourage the necessary oversight by government agencies. Direct or indirect conflicts of interest can call into question politician’s motives. As Detention Watch Network warns:

These deep connections between corporate and government actors raise concerns about the extent to which private industry is dictating policy in an area where the lives, liberty and basic rights of hundreds of thousands of people are at stake.

As a Texas Watchdog Group found, Geo Group maintains close relationships with Texas lawmakers. Two state legislators, State Senator, Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo and state Rep. Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville had financial links to Geo Group. For example, Zaffirini’s husband, Carlos, had been a lawyer and advocate for the firm. Ms. Zaffirini denied knowing anything about Geo Group and its scandals, despite the fact her husband had worked for them.

“I quite frankly have not given private prisons a lot of thought," she says. "I spend most of the time focusing on the issues of the poor, the elderly and people who can’t represent themselves."

Quite a defense. Of course, despite her professed compassion, that altruism doesn't seem to extend to unrepresented prisoners, especially sexually abused juveniles. It is simply not a "tough stand" and isn't likely to win much approval with many Texas voters.

Oliveira, meanwhile, also has a cozy relationship with the prison company. His Brownsville law firm serves as its local defense counsel.

"The private prison industry is dependent on taxpayer dollars," says Alex Friedmann, the associate editor of Prison Legal News, a newsletter dedicated to protecting inmates' legal rights. "So, yes, I believe Zaffirini and Oliveira have a conflict of interest, or at least a perceived conflict of interest."

In fact, that appearance of conflicted interests is really nothing to be too concerned about. A red herring, in fact, Geo Group has a lot more influence on Texas politicians with its teams of professional lobbyists.

Need proof? Then, let's see what occurred when public outrage turned to political action.

Unscathed

After the West Texas School scandal, the public reaction demanded greater scrutiny of all TYC facilities. What the inspectors found in both the state-run and the privately-run facilities would shock them. The agency officials closed GEO's Coke County Juvenile Justice Center saying they'd found atrocious conditions there. 

Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire (D-Houston) told reporters "They've run a very poor facility that probably violates the youths’ civil rights. Kids were stepping in their own feces. The sheets were such that a cat or dog wouldn't sleep on them."

Then in April 2009, a high court upheld a massive judgment against the GEO Group after an inmate was fatally beaten at another one of its prisons. The Texas Tribune gives other examples:

...[A]n inmate at GEO's Dickens County prison facility slashed his throat, leaving letters complaining of blood-coated blankets and pillows, and floors and walls covered in mold. In 2006, a woman killed herself at a GEO jail in Val Verde County, after complaining that she had been raped by another inmate and sexually harassed by a guard.And in early 2009, inmates at GEO's Reeves County Detention Center started fires and took hostages to demand better health care. Later that year, a Texas appeals court upheld a $42.5 million verdict against the company for the 2001 death of an inmate four days from finishing his sentence at a Willacy County facility. The man was beaten to death by other inmates using padlocks stuffed into socks.

And keep in mind, this was in Texas alone. 
After an unrelenting series of Geo Group scandals, Democrat lawmakers in Texas came to the capital with a mission. They authored six separate bills, aimed at independent oversight and accountability private prison companies. It seemed like a good step forward. 
What happened next? Here’s what Matt Pulle, reporter for Texas Watchdog found:

But in a remarkable turnaround for the corrections outfit, if not the entire troubled industry, not a single anti-private prison bill passed. In fact, none of the measures even received a floor vote. Despite an ongoing bout of bad press and public mishaps, the GEO Group emerged unscathed this legislative session thanks to a team of high-dollar lobbyists with deep roots in state government.

It would seem all the factors has come together- a perfect storm- determined legislators, the public outcry about the horrendous abuse of children. Everything needed for sensible and conclusive reform. And yet... nothing.

"At the beginning of the session there were several people who were rightfully outraged by what happened over the last two years," says Bob Libal, the Texas campaigns coordinator for Grassroots Leadership, a social justice organization that opposes private prisons. "So for there to be nothing to come out of this session out of six or seven good thoughtful bills that would have just provided basic accountability, it's really sad. And it really speaks to the private prison industry and the amount of influence they have."

That is particularly true of the GEO Group and its mental health unit, GEO Care, which shelled out a maximum of $370,000 this year on lobbyists in Austin, neatly coinciding with the company's slate of troubles that made national news. Meanwhile, its rival, the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, spent a maximum $50,000, according to records on file with the Texas Ethics Commission. Both prison companies do comparable business with the state, with each firm operating all or part of at least nine state facilities.

Leaving nothing to chance, Geo Group reportedly donated $15,000 into Perry’s 2010 reelection effort through its political action committee. Luis Gonzalez, a GEO Group lobbyist, meanwhile, gave $50,000 to Perry’s reelection bid.

Not Alone

In fact, Rick Perry, as a governor in good standing with the private prison corporations, is certainly not alone. As ThinkProgress reports:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer

Two of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s (R) most senior aides are current or former lobbyists for private prisons, and this industry stands to earn a windfall off the anti-immigrant SB 1070 law that Brewer recently signed.

As NPR later reported, this controversial law was largely conceived and drafted by a conservative business lobbying group in Washington, D.C.known to most people as American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private-prison operator in the US, had crafted the precise language and provisions contained in this anti-immigration bill. As NPR’s Laura Sullivan revealed,

Once the language was introduced, the influence of private prison companies intensified. NPR reports that 30 of SB 1070’s 36 co-sponsors received campaign contributions from lobbyists of three major private prison companies including CCA, Geo Group and Management and Training Corporation.

The reason for pushing this questionable legislation is obvious. 

According to Corrections Corporation of America reports reviewed by NPR, executives believe immigrant detention is their next big market. Last year, they wrote that they expect to bring in “a significant portion of our revenues” from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that detains illegal immigrants.

Other governors are also sharing the same cozy bunk with the prison industry, according the ThinkProgress article.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) turned over $600 million in corrections funding to the private prison industry after one private prisons company doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to Scott and the Florida GOP.

According to one source, Geo Group operates four federal prisons in Florida. In that state alone, Geo Group gave $705,000 in campaign contributions, and Geo Care, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Geo Group, gave an additional $117,415. And this was only one of several corporations in the industry involved. As a whole, the private-prison industry tends to court the Florida Republicans more than the Democrats. giving $783,494 compared to $143,000 to the Florida Democratic Party.

And Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) plans to sell five of its prisons to a private company. Meanwhile, the private prisons industry has spent millions to lobby state lawmakers to make criminal laws harsher in order to drive up their profits.

Yet while private prisons are having no trouble getting the attention of GOP lawmakers, they aren’t actually very good at running correctional facilities. A study of Arizona’s prison system found that private prisons cost more than their government-run counterparts, despite the fact that they typically steer clear of the costliest inmates.

The private sector solution means the job will not be done any better, the people doing the job won’t be properly screened, crimes and serial abuse will be committed and it won’t be a cent cheaper. To top it all off, corporations have reportedly been using inmate labor to replace private sector workers.

There you have it now, finally, amid all those tales of preventable scandal, all the suffering of child-victims, here’s that lone why.

Courts of Justice and The Court of Conscience

To wrap the story up, justice- or a Texas facsimile of it- took one step forward in the West Texas School scandal. It took five years and a lot of useless posturing, a lot of fingering pointing and excuse-making but the two administrators accused in the Texas Ranger’s original report were finally indicted.

Ray Edward Brookins

Ray Edward Brookins was indicted in 2007 on four counts of sexual abuse. Eventually on 25 April 2010 after a four-day trial, Brookins was convicted of two counts each of having an improper sexual activity with a person in custody and having an improper relationship between an educator and student.

Brookins was sentenced to 10 years in prison for sexually abusing a then-18-year-old back in 2004. In two full days of testimony, 11 witnesses testified against Brookins, including the victim himself. Prosecutors also presented DNA evidence that linked the victim’s sperm to Brookins’ office. Brookins did not testify, and the defense offered no witnesses of its own.

The other official named in the Bruzynski report, school principal John Paul Hernandez pled not guilty to 11 counts, including one sexual assault charge. The case against Hernandez was admittedly less documented as Brookins had been and therefore, there was more room for doubt despite the volumes of evidence, such as the interviews from victims and employees, collected by Sargeant Bruzynski. 

On February 23, 2011, after nearly six years of waiting, two weeks of trial, and finally six hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted the former state school administrator Hernandez of all of the sexual abuse charges. 

John Paul Hernandez

Mr Hernandez's lawyer, Albert G. Valadez, told jurors yesterday Brookins's conviction started an 'avalanche' of rumours against his client because it made it easier for inmates to make allegations. Hernandez’s attorney, Albert G. Valadez, said inmates made up the allegations so they would be released from the facility. This charge was made at the trial despite the fact that two of the student/inmates (who had claimed that Hernandez had performed oral sex with them had voluntarily undergone polygraph examinations and had passed. The tests had been conducted by the Special Crimes Polygraph Service in Midland, Texas, according to Burzynski's report.)

Valadez said the jury foreman told him after the trial that initial votes were two for not guilty and nine to convict. Those two jurors were somehow able to sway the rest, with one longtime holdout. Hernandez credited his acquittal to an absence of physical evidence. An interesting way of putting it, I think.

Hernandez told reporters after the trial. “I got too comfortable there. I forgot I was working in a prison.”
The mother of Hernandez, 76-year-old Asteria, told reporters after the trial that her son was the real victim. “They robbed him of his career, his dignity, everything, These people are wrong, He’s not a monster. He’s not a bad person.”

Indeed, in the eyes of the law, the verdict has cleared his name officially. With his name cleared, he is ready to go back into job market and get on with his life. He seemed uncertain about his future.

Hernandez, who has a master’s in political science and history as well as education (administration), said he’d like to teach again but fears public schools. “It just takes allegations,” Hernandez said, and said he could imagine the talk there would be if he were ever accused of anything again.

I know what you are probably saying. Yes, that’s what passes for justice nowadays. It’s something that we must tolerate. Still at least, reforms were made, you may be saying. Think again. According to an article in the Statesman:

Nearly four years after the Texas Youth Commission was overhauled after a sex abuse and cover-up scandal, four leading advocacy groups for incarcerated youths said Tuesday that little has changed. Widespread unsafe conditions and various forms of abuse and mistreatment continue to plague the agency, they say.

In a formal complaint asking the U.S. Justice Department to investigate, Texas Appleseed, Advocacy Inc., the Center for Public Representation and the National Center for Youth Law said the commission is unable to ensure the safety of the 1,700 youngsters it incarcerates because of operational flaws, including inadequate staffing, improper restraints and excessive force.

And the rapes- if not by administrators- still continue according to the advocacy groups.

High numbers of youth-on-youth assaults continue to plague the agency's lockups in Beaumont and Corsicana — which last year won the dubious distinction in a federal report of having the second-highest sexual assault rate in the country among youth prisons.

Governor Perry-turned presidential candidate Perry certainly didn’t want this subject to once again blow up, endangering his campaign. The Justice Department was not particularly welcome, according to Perry. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the governor felt that Texas was perfectly capable of handling this problem. It was more likely that he simply didn’t want the prying eyes of outside oversight. Too much was at stake.

Gov. Rick Perry's office said in a statement that Texas can fix any problems on its own.

"Since 2007, Gov. Perry has passed sweeping reforms to ensure the safety of incarcerated youth in the TYC system, and the state will continue to improve the system without the help of the federal government," the statement said.

Other legislators were less sure. They had seen this scenario play out before and in the end, they knew the usual outcome. Lots of talk and posturing and theater for public consumption.

"When we have allegations like this that can't ensure the safety of the youths in our facilities, we're back to where we were three or four years ago," said House Corrections Committee Chairman Jim McReynolds, D-Lufkin , a member of a special legislative panel that investigated previous Youth Commission abuses and pushed through the reforms.

"I want answers to each of the allegations. ... I don't want to hear that we're making strides. If what we're doing is not what needs to be done to stop this, then it's time for some changes. It cannot continue."

As far the Texas Ranger, Sergeant Brian Burzynski. he was honored by the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum with words of praise on September 1 2007 by Colonel Tommy Davis, Texas Department of Public Safety. Davis said,

Sergeant Burzynski's initiative, diligence and  commitment to pursuing prosecution against high-ranking members of a state agency responsible for offenses against juvenile inmate reflects the high moral standards the public has come to admire and respect from officers of the Texas Department of Public Saftey and the Texas Ranger Division.  

In the end, at least, somebody gave a damn about the unseen and forgotten children beyond the walls. That surely must count for something. Mohandas Gandhi once said:

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

It would be a better place to live in, to bring up our children in on the day when these two courts are reconciled.

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