looking into the workings of profit mad America

[undergroundpanther]

What I am doing here with all these links is showing where I think things are leading to..The "trends" in economics ,in"law" ,the "treatment" for mental illness,the profitable prisons and the dangers of debt.. Read on... Don't say it isn't happening here..Because it is..and where will you be when the trap is sprung and you wake up..owned.

First look at the STAGGERING numbers of people that could be effected by these slave state policies..

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/numbers.cfm
http://www.bankruptcyaction.com/USbankstats.htm
http://www.cjcj.org/pubs/one_million/onemillion.html

A paper to begin it.. Some ideas about why americans don't care about inequality..

http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/inequality/Seminar/Papers/Glazer.pdf

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Private enterprise and its profit motives are not the answer. No one will compete to treat the poor, severely mentally ill patients. They are our responsibility and many of those suffering can be helped with medication, intensive treatment, well-staffed community homes and modern hospitals
Every year business groups fight efforts to require insurance policies to treat mental illness like every other illness. The so-called mental health parity legislation provokes cries of wolf from business lobbyists including the bizarre claim made last year that they will be forced to spend thousands of dollars treating employees who are just feeling a little dizzy.

http://www.common-sense.org/journal/courage.html
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Health care is in profound crisis in the United States. In the richest country in the world, over 40 million people lack basic health insurance. Even for many that have insurance, coverage for mental health services is insufficient. Public health services for the poor and indigent are chronically underfunded and the private health care industry, in cooperation with powerful insurance interests, continues to block all efforts at progressive health care reform. Nonetheless, in the US, as in many other countries, the struggle for comprehensive health care as a fundamental right continues to be waged on many fronts.

To fight this system we first have to understand it. Michel Foucault showed us how modern societies, and the people who live in them, are constituted by and through institutions, practices and ideologies of power. Foucault insisted that the behavior of individuals is not merely the expression of their own internal psychic makeups, but rather the consequence of the action on them of modern forms of power, and the way that action is internalized through the processes of thought and consciousness.

http://www.zmag.org/martinezhealth.htm

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Nonetheless, psychiatrists in the East and West remain confident that they exist only to tend the ill. They believe their activities do not have social or political implications. They are simply caring for people in deep emotional distress. And they operate,they assert, via objective assessment and value-free scientific principles.

But classical psychiatry is not value free at all. On the contrary, it is based upon whole systems of prejudice about the nature of human behaviour and how it can be explained. Virtually every psychiatrist born and trained in the Soviet Union, for instance, honestly believes that mental illness, under certain circumstances, can cause political deviance. And virtually every Western psychiatrist would be prepared to say that mental disorder can result in social deviance, but not in political deviance. Mental illness is itself such an ephemeral and variable subject that it is much more liable to be interpreted according to the prevailing ideology.

http://www.newint.org/issue132/taking.htm

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Millions of mentally ill people are being affected by the policies of law-and-order advocates in states across the US. A National Institute of Justice 1995 discussion on the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) noted that 10 million individuals are detained in prisons and jails in the US each year. At least 6.4 percent and possibly as high as 8 percent had a severe mental disability, usually resulting from severe mental illness or mental retardation.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/mar2000/pris-m06.shtml
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Navarrete was surprised to learn that California has been
exporting prison-made clothing to Asia. He and the other prisoners
had no idea that California, along with Oregon, was doing exactly
what the U.S. has been lambasting China for - exporting prison-made
goods. "You might just as well call this slave labor, then", says
Navarrete. "If they're selling it overseas, you know they're making
money. Where's the money going to? It ain't going to us." For the
first time in the interview, Navarrete's usual scowl turned briefly
into a smile.

Federal law prohibits domestic commerce in prison-made goods
unless inmates are paid "prevailing wage". But because the law
doesn't apply to exports, no California prison officials will end
up in cells alongside their "employees".
Interestingly enough, prison authorities on both sides of the
Pacific make similar arguments to justify prison labor. "We want
prisoners to learn a working skill", says Mai Lin Hua, warden at
China's maximum security Shanghai Jail. He admits that his
prisoners are forced to work, facing solitary confinement if they
refuse. He also says China no longer exports prison-made goods to
the U.S. (2)

http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~kastor/private/prison-labor.html

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Many corporations whose products we consume on a daily basis have learned that prison labor power can be as profitable as third world labor power exploited by U.S.-based global corporations. Both relegate formerly unionized workers to joblessness and many even wind up in prison. Some of the companies that use prison labor are IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Microsoft, and Boeing. But it is not only the hi-tech industries that reap the profits of prison labor. Nordstrom department stores sell jeans that are marketed as "Prison Blues," as well as t-shirts and jackets made in Oregon prisons. The advertising slogan for these clothes is "made on the inside to be worn on the outside." Maryland prisoners inspect glass bottles and jars used by Revlon and Pierre Cardin, and schools throughout the world buy graduation caps and gowns made by South Carolina prisoners.

http://home.ican.net/~edtoth/lawprisonrace.html

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Grrrr
Sneaky Fucking Bastards.. I wonder if Wal Mart is reselling Prison goods.."laundered" through China marked as "imports" once chinese slaves sew new labels in? I wonder if this is why we trade with China and ignore thier human rights abuses like we ignore our own in Iraq and at home here in our own neighborhoods? The richboys they got a good scam set up..no?
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With the rise of the current right-wing (anti-crime)
political agenda by both of the major political parties in
this country, more and more prisoners have been preyed upon
by a vindictive public, egged on by the greedy politicians.
For years, the masses of people have been told that prisoners
are being "coddled" and treated better than the average
worker outside, and in return they want to inflict pain on
them more. "Take away their tv sets and radios, seize their
weight lifting equipment, stop their visitation with their
families, lock 'em in their cells 24 hours-a day, and while
you're at it make 'em pay rent just like we do!" These are
poor people, many of whom committed crimes in the first
place because they couldn't pay their own rent, less known
paying the state's rent while in prison. It's a foolish
idea, and is even more punitive than the politicians called
for, but they were quick to latch on to it. "What a great
idea, we *can* get blood from a turnip!"

http://circlealpha.com/library/prisonindustrial4.html

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The U.S. Senate has passed a dream bill for credit card and financial service companies that, if passed by the House, will land millions of American families in debt slavery. Rather than being able to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and make a difficult new start, families and individuals will be placed on long-term payment plans to credit card companies, companies that will take their houses, their cars, their child-support payments, and their paychecks.

If you think you're unlikely to land yourself a share-cropping position in this new feudal system, ask yourself if you can be sure that no one in your family will get sick, be injured, die, lose a job, or get divorced. More than one in every 100 adults in America files for bankruptcy each year.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/132/132_guest_bankruptcy_bill_pf.html

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And lastly some irecconcilable differences in sociological blindspots..

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bookchin/soclife.html

[Astarho]

1. kick

important stuff

[Karenina]

2. Great work!

BACK TO ONE!