Part 12. The U.S."Meritocracy" v. Jews, Muslims, Gypsies, Germanic tribes, 2000 years of Italians, and gang bangers.

Regular people are found in prison guard jobs. Regular people are also found in gangs. It's the idea of gangs which has spread around America, not some criminal genetic mutation. But where it's the worst, as in inner-city California, it's more than an idea. Machismo-dominated culture and it's accompanying ignorance are all that's left when you take away a humans education -- like the Germanic tribes which conquered Rome. Far from the Greeks hundreds of years before, Romes conquerors ruled and lived in academic ignorance. It was the result of these people that,  by avenging themselves against brutal Rome, plunged Europe into the dark ages. These were largely German tribes-- it's not genetic, it's situational and cultural.  People are products of their environment. And governmental neglect leaves people without the tools to feel they can confirm and succeed to an ever-changing world. How can they succeed in a technologically advancing world when their parents couldn’t even make it in the analog days long past?  How do they believe in the face of their parents and their community's failure?

Yet, as it is today, the privileged powers that be have allowed a narrative to spread in our culture that our society is just.  That is, in fact, is filled with examples of equality, freedom, and fairness. Failures of family and race thus get laid--by both victim and victor-- at the poor's own doorstep.

If to understand all is to forgive all, then for the inner-city and working-class children, to understand America's social structure is to forgive themselves, their elders, and their race. But those historically in positions of influence have tended to make the teaching of America's class structure something that seems alien, untrue even pro-communist and/or un-American. So the divide between rich and poor grows largely unnoticed. Examples of it or its influence do are ignored by America's media.  Thus the outrage its existence might cause does not exist in the Americans mind. Even if it does, since we live in a “meritocracy”, it is unjust to get mad about. America is our hero.  Heroes are blameless.

As horrible as a property crime is when something is stolen from you it rarely makes your family members cry. But like death itself, one long prison sentence can make many citizens shed tears, especially on holidays, a time when Americans are expected to be celebrating and bonding. Tears flow year after year from Daughters, sons, mother's, fathers, sisters, brothers, wives, husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, best friends and anyone else the imprisoned affected positively. In cities like Los Angeles gangs become a part of the culture in its inner cities neighborhoods. Injustice and oppression cannot make a culture ascend nor disappear. In fact, cultures often become even more resolute and stubborn in their traditions. A larger dominating group defining and targeting a smaller weaker group often makes the smaller group further define itself as well as become more fervent towards what it feels is right as opposed to what its oppressors do.

Though all we can have are theories regarding culture, the gypsies, Muslims and Jews of Europe can be used as an example of this. Though the Muslims are really the most obvious example of American punishment not solving our issues, that story is packed with misinformation and its reputation is beyond the scope of this post.

The Romany people, known better as a subgroup of the people known collectively as Gypsies (Gypsy is actually a misnomer likely caused by the mistaken belief that they had originated from Egypt)  have been an oppressed minority in Europe for nearly a thousand years. What has resulted from the suppression? An impenetrable people that kept an unwritten language and culture alive and thriving privately amongst themselves.

The story with the Jewish people can be viewed much the same. Purely for instructive purposes, and nothing else, the Jews and gypsies can be viewed as our original, or “proto-gangs”. European oppression of them by the continents majority helped retain the resolution the Jews and Gypsies both needed in order to maintain a separate and unassimilated identity thus helping to honor themselves in the face of their haters. A less obvious but closer to home example comes from the early Italian-Americans (before they were considered white Americans), none assimilated with their oppressors, and instead shared a brotherhood with each other.

Whoever was to blame, it was these minority groups which embraced tradition and self-sufficiency over the health of outsiders. Luckily for the Jews, they retained a common written language, religion, and since the 1950s, a country. Today both the gypsies as a people, and Israel as a country fight to survive, nearly by any means. It is a lesson that was taught to them the hard way. Do we have outsiders amongst us that we want to remove or punish as did the Catholic church, Spain, Russia and the Nazi’s? Maybe a more important question is: would a ruling class want us to retain these scapegoats in order to distract us?

As for the people now hoping that prisons will reduce the frequency with which future criminal types have babies, would it not be ironic if us locking them up actually do the opposite?  Many inmates have been in the criminal justice system since they were children. They have been kept from the opposite sex and may want to rebound.  Their culture may also adapt to such needs by looking at certain activities like sexual promiscuity, as admirable.  This may lead to this influence then bleeding into the larger culture as a whole. There are several reasons why this may have actually already happened.  In prison, fathers are kept from paying child support and changing diapers.    Also, the human proclivity of viewing one's past trials and accomplishments--or lack thereof --favorably can increase the likelihood that the imprisoned will see the fact of having “survived” the punishment as an accomplishment. And actually, for many people,  prison is a place where one can tame his/her cumbersome drug habit (“get healthy”) and again, be released from the burden of bills like child support a (We front their bills). This protective mechanism may help to cement a criminal mentality as the final relevant developmental stage from what has avalanched from the smallest of

snowballs that began at the beginning of a lost childhood.

Most unsophisticated street criminals grew up in historically underprivileged areas where they witnessed an aggressive justice system bent on punishing them and their loved ones.  The community as a whole had all the reason to lose faith in the legitimacy of the system. No good people follow an illegitimate leader that is seen taking more than giving. Many crimes, including drunk driving, are committed by people who believe themselves to be good people--and by many measures they are. Sometimes reactions are unwise and have effects that the reactor would never have directly chosen. This goes for all classes of people who did something detrimental to another,  not just people labeled a detriment to society

Part 11 "television is one long lie"--David Rintels, former president of the writers Guild of America

MEDIA AND THE AMERICAN “EDUCATION"

From movies to product labels, much of what we view was made in an attempt to produce an acute emotional hunger. Which, like real hunger, makes it more difficult to think logically and more likely that you'll act to satisfy your hunger. This is usually accomplished by spending, and thereby buying, something.  Logic is often the media's enemy because it is the consumer's friend. As for truth, it's at best an incoherent side note. Simply by default, continuously streaming unbiased truth is forbidden because  lies, exaggerations, and biased perspectives are what have the most potential and incentive to generate profit and power. Truth is only the friend of actual gods, not our media gods who depend on public ignorance to thrive.

Around election days, regularly employing cynically deceptive commercials and community outreach (P.R.) campaigns, which seamlessly streamline into the public narrative,the CCPOA and similar groups have been able to flourish*.    Fear and apathy of the masses towards the private slave warehousing done in the name of stripping us of as much wealth as possible, until death do us part, are what ensure its continuation. The capitalist (money making) expertise honed by professionals and used by the CCPOA has allowed it to become the most powerful union, in the most populous state, in the most powerful country in the world. It is influential.

Factor all of the above in with that outrageous asshole in your younger years you still haven't forgave, (and whom you hope right now is in Buhba’s cell) , along with some random second-hand horror story you have heard and sprinkle on top the network news and some (bigger, brighter, better, Law-and-Order-copied) cop dramas, and we have a creation little short of a  revolution can stop from ever increasing its relative money and power by marketing fear and promoting ignorance.

Television is not reality and yet it actually influences our perception of reality. And this has many powerful implications. One of which is our conceptualization of the common criminal vs. victim dichotomy. Though not as morally bankrupt as the  firsthand cop-sponsored fear commercials, studies show that the most popular cop-dramas produce a startling inaccurate and distorted characterization of the people they pretend to portray. In these, the accused are presented as full of excessive greed or some sort of psychological pathology. Something that will make us feel like they were destined criminals who need to be in prison. Often contrasted with the bright futured or upstanding random citizen victim on the good guy team. As for the criminals themselves, they were never victims, especially of horrible circumstantial misfortunes. Never fearful, never unlucky. No, especially not illiterate, never influenced by  an abused childhood, never a foster kid, with dead or missing parents. Never, or near so, any of those things that humanize someone.

On the other side police, prosecutors, and prison guards are often portrayed as sinless forces of good. Both textbooks and television have acted as instructional programs that bolster the perception of government officials while impugning the character of the accused and imprisoned.

 Very rarely is a story that is a little more gray, more complex, presented. Rarely are we presented with a story involving something both more complicated and subtle as someone who was led to believe they had a (possibly racial) incurable learning impairment; led to believe any attempt to succeed on their own would lead to failure. Failure in front of everyone. Everyone then realizing they'd tried and still couldn't do it. So as a fearful unaccomplished kid they actually got in the habit of trying to fail, thereby succeeding in something without risking their fragile ego. In fact succeeding in the only thing they suspected they could. Giving these still less innocent examples though takes away from the tragic randomness of life itself in which, as Aristotle wrote, “it is probably that many things should happen contrary to probability." Prison systems have been holding truly wonderful and improbable prisoners since Jesus’ time.

This dynamic of the seemingly improbable being probable is no more poorly expressed than in cop dramas new brethren of prison dramas, and also their so-called television documentaries, missing are the anti-climatic, various groups of average individuals, some of those being innocent. While others having been hopeless, homeless, or jobless, or even having come to terms with growing up role model-less, now realizing those decisions made - based on the information they were most familiar with - were below them and mistakes. The truth being California’s prisons are filled with all too regular people responding to extraordinarily bad events, and not so much that Aryan brother on television.

*http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/biggest-obstacle-prison-reform-labor-unions

Part 10--The Value of Fear, laundering your tax money (extended)

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Criminals watching Criminals

In our country, where less than one percent of people are affected by random violent crime each year, 100% of us are being punished, with the loss of huge percentages of our income, via tax money to finance  the use of outdated methods of crime prevention. prisons don’t stop crime, they create it by waisting money that could otherwise be used to help people get work, food, and shelter.  Imprisoning a needlessly high amount of people at a disgraceful cost per inmate, as exemplified in California, is dumb.  As seen with past legislation in CA, funding prison through the cutting of things like education in fact produces  “returns” to their communities that are probably helping to produce more crime.  One way prison over productivity is promoted is by the unions’ (also by regular companies which own and manage prisons) broad manipulation of governmental support through "lobbying" (which often plays out as being a euphemism for the bribery of public officials). Also through the tax money they have taken and launched  commercials with to influence public opinion, or influence who is elected.

The sole goal of those players in the business of prison is to increase their power and subsequent wealth by helping to secure the systems continuing growth and/or maintenance. They have had no incentive to promote, public safety, the rehabilitation of offenders or communities, not to mention our children's education or our own spending of money--or rather the lack thereof. Education funding to them is a deadly rival.

There are better methods for control than prisons. Because of California’s correctional institutions they have had nearly $10,000,000,000.00 less, each year, than what they could have had while prisons used only 4% of that 10 billion on poorly managed rehabilitation and education programs--combined.

Many aspects of the California prison guards manipulation of the system are lacking in subtlety,  their overtimes have been tracked surpassing $100,000a year (just in the 6 months from January to June of 2009, their over-time pay outs cost us $154,618,998.30)⑤ with this trend showing an increase in frequency in those soon to retire, thereby inflating their pensions drastically which thus far has allowed their manipulations to benefit them far into retirement, taking extra money from your wallet every single month, year after year, until they die as the well fed public service heroes they were.

Continuing into the recession by July 2007 in the past three years they were tracked getting 6 raises, one every 5 months of an average 4 percent. Maximum salary went up $15,100 to $73,700. Not including overtime. Overtime went up $11.00 (from $41.00to $52.00 per hour). All around they pushed their salary up 26% and more than doubled the cost to us of their overtime from fiscal 2003-04 to 2007-08.

If this cash cow being milked by the CCPOA isn't Lady Justice’s biggest nightmare then companies, you yourself could own, building prisons is. There is nothing wrong with making money where there is honest opportunity.  But, throughout the country, these companies have been witnessed attempting to influence law and men, presumably to make sure that their company grows. We may not agree as to exactly when that promoting the growth of a prison company, to increase profit, will be at the detriment of justice and public benefit. , But all should agree that, at some point such an undertaking will become malevolent and harmful. Even once honest money can become entrenched, like a parasite, if allowed to not evolve.  Doing things like lobbying for longer sentences, as well as producing public relations campaigns and commercials solely designed for you to believe prisons are progress, and that more are better, are done to take your money by selling you fear.  A much better solution for these entities is to find new ways to handle those labeled liabilities to society. The solutions are here, will these prison entities continue fighting them or start working promote answers?

Striving to avoid vacancies while promoting business growth, they generally --like the CCPOA-- treat humans as a commodity for depositing in banks--known as penitentiaries--in order to milk the capital interest that is provided for by a busy and misdirected public. While taking our money with one hand, the other hand directs us to focus  apathetically on real criminals and petty bed-fillers alike. The money for nothing, laundered through taxes, rewards a failure to rehabilitate and innovate. This is again breaking what is the first law of economics: Incentive. In fact, without innovation, their only incentives are to not stop crime or help society, in any way. Thank God we have progressed.

Such backward business is dependent upon ignorance. Its growth is dependent upon us believing that what prisons are doing, having done, and fighting for, are all for us. But this fact was kept very quiet as fear campaigns spread and prison populations grew, even as violent crime dropped--even amongst our children.

Among other things, we must ignore what isn’t or is taking place in schools and to schools, as they’re  sucked dry of capital. We must ignore what is taking place amongst family members and acquaintances regarding violent crime so that we can feel Okay with what is taking place. And we must continue ignoring reality as whole neighborhoods are sucked dry of social-capital by having their residents inordinately subjected to a predatory police force, etc. It is a travesty to argue, as some do, that we owe our safe lives to them, the prison profiteers. It is not because they were honorable, but because they have been effective scam artists, in an easy con, that the CCPOA grew and gave themselves pay raises, with budget increases, while cities and counties had to brown out fire stations, slash fire and police forces, cut education.

The Great Recession and California’s concomitant deficit hit all except the guards. Basically. we lost  $10,000,000,000.00 annually so they could store 168,000 (non-taxpaying) convicts in their bank accounts.

Due to a lack of funds we have lost police, patrol cars, and the ability to test and implement new technologies that can help to prevent and investigate crime. Inevitably, the deficit created by the prison bill equated to not catching all levels of criminals and it still does. This included those whom as of yet aren't in the system, but would have shaped up after a slap on the wrist. As for the rest, at least they would have had a long-lasting red flag affixed to their identities to alert law-enforcement thus allowing them to watch and inspect the convicted more closely.

Now instead, thousands may fly under the radar, many for decades continuing to commit crime. In this case the chance of rehabilitation diminishes to the utmost, as fewer get caught and our society goes bankrupt over punishing others in the most uncreative way since the dark ages. Producing, not reducing, injustice, as some get little or no punishment while others lose their lives. All this so we can keep the already tagged, targeted, and tracked behind bars serving their, one of a kind, historically long prison sentences. It is a product of the prison industry tenaciously holding onto their sure shot meal-ticket regardless of society. The system feeding off of us monetarily while it feeds off of the inmates psychologically. And since money is in fact time spent and therefore lost, stealing both of our lives at once. 

A cynic might say that it's the criminals whom should be punished and those involved should milk the naive tax payers in their name.  After all, with your tax money you buy psychological peace like a drug, only costing you $1000.00 every 3 years. Pretty cheap as far as addictions are concerned, but they don't sell us peace. They sell fear. And addictive substances are not always the problem, this Corporate-ruled society is the problem and mind altering substances are an escape from it. They can be an escape from the unnatural reality that has been built around us.

As for promoting unjustified fear, some inmates and all tax payers are the actual forgotten victims, This is seen when any (media and/or legislative) reform attempt which threatens the unions cash flow is met by a rushing flood of frightening commercials staring some frustrated and/or often very scared prisoners, engaged in a riot or in beating a troublemaker up who had likely been on the verge of starting a riot. Both instances are events that the prisoners cannot simply run from. These presentations either sound like they are narrated by the deep voice guy used to market horror films, or some notable figure who has either been corrupted, is a closet racist, or is a simple minded and self-righteous vacuum of ignorance. Someone ready not simply to vengefully destroy nearly all--good though wrong at one time--inmates and any loving family members they may have, but also the continuation of robbing from our beautiful state.

Us and our children are being robbed. We were directed toward some scary criminal as   parks and schools were closed and they continued reducing first responder hiring, new equipment purchases and manned stations. How much property needlessly burned? How many lives destroyed by what's been lost? Police and, more importantly,  first-responders were taken from the streets. How many ambulances were too far from one of the many (now fatal) DUI accidents, heart attack victims or home fires? How many misguided human beings about to commit a crime have been allowed to escape apprehension, prosecution, and there by identification due to the reduced funds caused by a 10 billion dollar bill?  Most of that $50,000 X 168,000 a year could have been spent more effectively.

I can imagine there are some misinformed--mildly frustrated--people right now thinking, “there's no corruption, you are corrupt! Not only are nearly all  people in prison guilty, but they also are very violent, and not just under certain threatening circumstances, but a scary sort of highly unpredictable violence and criminality. Something that escapes our normal people sort of rational thought. Something inhumanly different. Not humans like us, but animals. They're bad guys just like the ones on the shows I'm entertained by, so screw them!" As anyone will find out that reads on,they are wrong.

It is true that many people stick to the self-righteous cliché “don't do the crime if you can't do the time.” I only will qualify the cliché by saying: we as humans are horrible predictors of the future and how we'll feel about our reactions in the present once we go there. We cannot predict what of the random unpredictable future events we can or can't handle in a positive way. The desperation of the moment often dictates our actions. And if we can't control the present, nor predict the reality of the future, what makes us feel like the 20 year old (homo trium litterarum) convict not just predicted his future but was able to predict his reaction to it? As crazy as it sounds, many and most, at the nations peak incarceration levels, have been regular Americans who have just gone through some irregular life experiences. Though far from all, many simply have had some unlucky circumstances that led them to prison. A majority of them come from underprivileged back grounds, and do not have the skills to adapt to this changing environment.