VANCE PACKARD: Consumerism the New Fascism

ANNOUNCING: Domestic Contradictions - A Radio Serial
performed by the Australian Performing Group in the 1970's and recorded by the ABC Australia
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While 20% of Americans are living in absolute poverty Billionaires are making sure they have those essential items to sustain life.

A billionaire and his view are not easily parted, and to prove it, Silicon Valley tycoon Larry Ellison has splashed out a whopping $US40 million on a neighbouring property to guarantee his uninterrupted view of San Francisco Bay.

JAPAN EARTHQUAKE & TSUNAMI (2011)

Pakistan floods (2010) - Asian Tsunami (2004)

"A billion could live off the earth; 6 billion living as we do is far too many, and you run out of planet in no time." (James Lovelock.)

Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal.

"The gentleman that's the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger," Nichols said. "He's a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman."

What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.

"They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community," Nichols said, "the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate."

But Nichols wasn't buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants?

"They talked like they didn't have any doubt they could fill it," Nichols said.

That's because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona's immigration law.

The law is being challenged in the courts. But if it's upheld, it requires police to lock up anyone they stop who cannot show proof they entered the country legally.

Among hundreds of bills drafted by an alliance of business, lawmakers: Arizona's immigration law.

When it was passed in April, it ignited a fire storm. Protesters chanted about racial profiling. Businesses threatened to boycott the state.

Supporters were equally passionate, calling it a bold positive step to curb illegal immigration.

But while the debate raged, few people were aware of how the law came about.

NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.

The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.

Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce says the bill was his idea. He says it's not about prisons. It's about what's best for the country.

"Enough is enough," Pearce said in his office, sitting under a banner reading "Let Freedom Reign." "People need to focus on the cost of not enforcing our laws and securing our border. It is the Trojan horse destroying our country and a republic cannot survive as a lawless nation."

But instead of taking his idea to the Arizona statehouse floor, Pearce first took it to a hotel conference room.

It was last December at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. Inside, there was a meeting of a secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Insiders call it ALEC.

It's a membership organization of state legislators and powerful corporations and associations, such as the tobacco company Reynolds American Inc., ExxonMobil and the National Rifle Association. Another member is the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America — the largest private prison company in the country.

"I did a presentation," Pearce said. "I went through the facts. I went through the impacts and they said, 'Yeah.'"

The 50 or so people in the room included officials of the Corrections Corporation of America, according to two sources who were there.

Pearce and the Corrections Corporation of America have been coming to these meetings for years. Both have seats on one of several of ALEC's boards.

And this bill was an important one for the company. 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.

In the conference room, the group decided they would turn the immigration idea into a model bill. They discussed and debated language. Then, they voted on it.

"There were no 'no' votes," Pearce said. "I never had one person speak up in objection to this model legislation."

Four months later, that model legislation became, almost word for word, Arizona's immigration law.

They even named it. They called it the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act."

"ALEC is the conservative, free-market orientated, limited-government group," said Michael Hough, who was staff director of the meeting.

Hough works for ALEC, but he's also running for state delegate in Maryland, and if elected says he plans to support a similar bill to Arizona's law.

Asked if the private companies usually get to write model bills for the legislators, Hough said, "Yeah, that's the way it's set up. It's a public-private partnership. We believe both sides, businesses and lawmakers should be at the same table, together."

Nothing about this is illegal. Pearce's immigration plan became a prospective bill and Pearce took it home to Arizona.

Pearce said he is not concerned that it could appear private prison companies have an opportunity to lobby for legislation at the ALEC meetings.

"I don't go there to meet with them," he said. "I go there to meet with other legislators."

Pearce may go there to meet with other legislators, but 200 private companies pay tens of thousands of dollars to meet with legislators like him.

As soon as Pearce's bill hit the Arizona statehouse floor in January, there were signs of ALEC's influence. Thirty-six co-sponsors jumped on, a number almost unheard of in the capitol. According to records obtained by NPR, two-thirds of them either went to that December meeting or are ALEC members.

That same week, the Corrections Corporation of America hired a powerful new lobbyist to work the capitol.

The prison company declined requests for an interview. In a statement, a spokesman said the Corrections Corporation of America, "unequivocally has not at any time lobbied — nor have we had any outside consultants lobby – on immigration law."

Thirty of the 36 co-sponsors received donations over the next six months, from prison lobbyists or prison companies — Corrections Corporation of America, Management and Training Corporation and The Geo Group.

Brewer has her own connections to private prison companies. State lobbying records show two of her top advisers — her spokesman Paul Senseman and her campaign manager Chuck Coughlin — are former lobbyists for private prison companies. Brewer signed the bill — with the name of the legislation Pearce, the Corrections Corporation of America and the others in the Hyatt conference room came up with — in four days.

In May, The Geo Group had a conference call with investors. When asked about the bill, company executives made light of it, asking, "Did they have some legislation on immigration?"

After company officials laughed, the company's president, Wayne Calabrese, cut in.

"This is Wayne," he said. "I can only believe the opportunities at the federal level are going to continue apace as a result of what's happening. Those people coming across the border and getting caught are going to have to be detained and that for me, at least I think, there's going to be enhanced opportunities for what we do."

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USA tops globe for putting citizens behind bars

There is a reason for this and it has nothing to do with reducing crime. When you turn crime and punishment into a business MONEY IS THE KEY.

TOUGH sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crime rates have contributed to the US having the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to criminal justice experts.

A recent report by the US Justice Department showed that a record 7 million people — or one in every 32 American adults — were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison.

According to the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College in London, more people are behind bars in the US than in any other country. China ranks second with 1.5 million prisoners, followed by Russia with 870,000.

The US incarceration rate of 737 per 100,000 people is the highest, followed by 611 in Russia and 547 for St Kitts and Nevis. In contrast, the incarceration rates in many Western nations range about 100 per 100,000 people. Groups advocating reform of US sentencing laws seized on the latest prison population figures showing admissions of inmates have been rising faster than the numbers of prisoners who have been released.

"The United States has 5 per cent of the world's population and 25 per cent of the world's incarcerated population. We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens," said Ethan Nadelmann, of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports alternatives in the war on drugs.

But Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in California, said that locking up more criminals had contributed to lower crime rates.

WILL THEY EVER LEARN?

President John Kennedy's inauguration promise in 1961 that the US would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty'' turned out to be one of the great swindles of the past century.

Liberty be damned. In the 50 years since, successive presidents have funded and encouraged some of the worst tyrants of our time, for as long as they were professed anti-communists and usefully ''our guys''. Diem of South Vietnam, Marcos in the Philippines, Suharto in Indonesia, Verwoerd in South Africa, Pinochet in Chile, the Shah of Iran and the vile Saudi royal family spring immediately to mind. And Hosni Mubarak, and even Saddam Hussein, for a while. Who could forget the pictures of Ronald Reagan's special envoy, none other than Donald Rumsfeld, embracing Saddam in Baghdad in 1983?

But they do not learn in Washington. As we have seen again now with Egypt, the State Department is ever surprised when it is bitten on the bum by the huddled masses yearning to be free. (Thanks Mike Carlton, SMH)

Thanks to "The Age" Melbourne, Australia

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There are two sides to the coin with billionaires' philanthropy

It may be better if they simply pay taxes and be more generous employers.

Peter Wilby - August, 9, 2010

It is surely admirable - isn't it? - that 40 US billionaires led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have signed the ''giving pledge'' to donate half their fortunes to charity. Far better that they open their wallets to deserving causes than that they spend yet more money on yachts, carbon-emitting private jets or garish mansions.

Well, yes. Salute Gates, whose foundation has already saved perhaps 5 million lives through the development and delivery of vaccines against diseases such as TB. Salute Buffett, who says his children won't inherit ''a significant proportion'' of his wealth. The filthy rich, or some of them, have shown they have a heart.

But let's be clear. Money paid to charity is exempt from tax; the US Treasury already loses at least $US40 billion ($A43.7 billion) a year from tax breaks for donations. So billionaires, not the democratically elected and accountable representatives of the people, get to decide on the good causes.

Those who already wield enormous economic power can determine social priorities, too. Of course, the poor also contribute to charity, but most don't get the tax breaks because they don't pay income tax.

As Michael Edwards, a former World Bank adviser, asked in a study for the think-tank Demos: ''Why should the rich and famous decide how schools are going to be reformed, or what drugs will be supplied at prices affordable to the poor, or which civil society groups get funded for their work?''

And even if they give away half their money (or 99 per cent in Buffett's case), billionaires will still be rich. Their generosity, however, helps to legitimise inequality and head off political protest. Some of them may become even richer, because charitable giving is good marketing and, sometimes, can be used to tie recipients into buying the donors' products and services.

You may think, if we're talking about mosquito nets to stop children dying from malaria or drugs for HIV, that it doesn't matter where the money comes from. In the short term, it probably doesn't. But rich business people tend to bring their own values to charitable giving, and there is a danger they will undermine the voluntary sector.

Wealthy benefactors usually want efficiency, clear targets, measurable outcomes and quick results. They tend to select charities as they would select suppliers of goods and services to their companies. Some bodies provide data that help donors decide which charities to support: in the US , for instance, GiveWell records effectiveness according to ''the most lives saved for the least money''.

These things aren't necessarily wrong - many charities would benefit from more rigour - but they don't always translate easily to the voluntary sector. They are not readily applicable to the more diffuse, long-term aims of civil society organisations, nor to their more transparent, less top-down decision-making processes.

Just as market approaches carry dangers when applied to public services, so they do when applied to charities. The emphasis on ''rates of return'' and ''value for money'' may exclude people in great need who happen to be difficult to reach or, even if made fit and healthy, would be of marginal economic utility.

''Philanthrocapitalism'', as it has been called, veers towards tackling symptoms of poverty and distress rather than underlying causes. Gates and his wife, Melinda, have started to talk about clean water supplies, inadequate housing, public health infrastructure and agricultural productivity.

They are undoubtedly among the most sophisticated of the new philanthropists. But it seems doubtful they will move into considering issues of, say, land ownership and distribution. The Gates Foundation wants to ''give where we can effect the greatest change''. But the greatest change is likely to come from transforming the economic system and the pattern of property ownership.

There is another danger: that the poor are written out of their own story, that business tycoons, accustomed to getting their own way, do things to the poor, rather than with them. As Edwards points out, great social causes are not mobilised by the market or led by billionaires. ''The civil rights movement, the women's movement, the environmental movement, the New Deal, the Great Society - all these were pushed ahead by civil society and anchored in the power of government as a force for the public good. Business and markets play a vital role in taking these advances forward, but they are followers, not leaders.''

Generous, public-spirited billionaires are preferable to mean ones. But remember that two-thirds of US corporations contrive to pay no federal income tax at all and that transfer pricing alone deprives the US Treasury of $US60 billion annually. Such sums, which pile more taxes on the poor and reduce funds for government projects that advance the public good, dwarf what the 40 billionaires propose to give away.

If the rich really wish to create a better world, they can sign another pledge: to pay their taxes on time and in full; to stop lobbying against taxation and regulation; to avoid creating monopolies; to give their employees better wages, pensions, job protection and working conditions; to make goods and use production methods that don't kill or maim or damage the environment or make people ill. When they put their names to that, there will be occasion not just for applause, but for street parties.

Peter Wilby is a former editor of the Independent on Sunday and of New Statesman.

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THIS IS WHAT THE LIBERALS HAVE IN STORE FOR AUSTRALIANS

• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1 percent of all Americans.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation's wealth.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.

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The Liberal Party of Australia call themselves LIBERALS but are more CONSERVATIVE than UK Conservatives and the US Republicans.

"Tax cuts criticised as pay-off for the rich" trumpets "The Age" headline.

Well, well, well, I am surprised. ALL TAX CUTS ADVANTAGE THE RICH.

The rich have created this economic mess and now governments world wide are rewarding them in many different ways.

The rich have stolen so much money over the years through tax havens, their special company structures and trusts as well as the recent madness in the USA where greedy and criminal Wall street bankers essentially robbed people of their savings.

Governments all over the world are borrowing and or printing money to save the banks and other corporations from bankruptcy. The question arises as to who is going to pay for these debts? Oh, I know; the "wage slaves" who have no option but to pay their taxes.

Weekly tax cuts from July 1, 2009*

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NOT Abby Sunderland (Californian 16 year-old who wanted to sail around the world to become rich & famous and had to be rescued from her sinking vessel in the icy south seas by the Australian Navy) OR Jessica Watson (Australian 16 year-old who sailed around the world to become rich & famous).

They are certainly not heroes, they are just lazy girls who can't be bothered going to school to get an education to establish themselves and contribute to society. They want to bet their life on a crazy stunt in order to become rich. NO, NO, NOT HEROES.

Here is a group of teenagers from Boort in country Victoria, Australia who have studied hard and have succeeded in their goals for a career. Many are at university or some form of tertiary education while others are in a job and establishing a life for themselves and at the same time making their parents proud. THESE ARE MY HEROES.

If you want to celebrate these young people send a message of support to their school here. This is a small school in a small town called BOORT 255 k North West of Melbourne, Australia. This school does a fantastic job with all their students and could use all the encouragement and support they can get. Send them an email, PLEASE.

ANOTHER AUSTRALIAN HERO, (NO NOT Jessica Watson, school dropout) BUT DR. CLAIRE MARTIN. Celebrate this hero, who worked hard at school and contributes to society.

A young doctor at a Melbourne hospital has followed a hunch that may unlock the secrets of swine flu and lead to new treatments for those most at risk from the disease.

Claire Martin, a 28-year-old trainee infectious disease specialist from the Austin Hospital, was working in the intensive care unit last year as a 22-year-old pregnant woman fought for her life there. ''She was so sick - we were so concerned she would not get through the illness,'' Dr Martin said.
''And there was a young baby involved as well. We were doing our best to try to pull her through, asking ourselves if there was something else we were missing.''

After consulting colleagues, she ordered an expensive and rarely used test of the patient's immunoglobulin sub-types. These are ''spotter'' proteins that tag invaders for the immune system to hunt and destroy. To her surprise, the patient had extremely low levels of one particular sub-class, called IgG2.
Dr Martin realised she might have stumbled on to the key to a mystery that had baffled experts since the swine flu epidemic began: why it was serious, even fatal, to some people but barely gave the sniffles to others. She ordered tests for other hospital patients with swine flu and the pattern was confirmed: the sicker they were, the lower their IgG2 levels.

When injected with the protein, the patients began to get better almost immediately - including the young mother. ''It was very exciting - this is the first time [IgG2] has been associated with swine flu. ''It gave us something else to work on and think about, an exciting clue to the puzzle,'' Dr Martin said.
The hospital's head of infectious diseases, Professor Lindsay Grayson, said it was early days and it was hard to be sure about precise cause and effect but Dr Martin's was a fascinating discovery that had attracted international attention.
It was published yesterday in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. ''For the first time, we may be able to explain why pregnant women are more likely to get swine flu, why some healthy people get severe swine flu and others don't,'' Professor Grayson said.

''It could also answer why vaccines don't work for a small number of people.''
A fraction of the population - fewer than one in five - naturally has low IgG2 levels, making them more likely to get recurrent ear and chest infections. Pregnant women also have temporarily low IgG2 levels.
The discovery made it especially important that such people got the flu vaccine this year before swine flu returned, Professor Grayson said.
The team's next step is to determine if an IgG2 injection is a genuine ''cure'' for swine flu. Several other Melbourne hospitals have been recruited into the trial, and results will be published later in the year.
They will also examine whether there is a particular relationship between swine flu and the IgG2 protein - or whether it has wider implications for treating other influenza types.

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Friday July 31, 2009 11am, I sat down at one of my favorite coffee shops, I opened The Melbourne Age and as I got to page 9, I read the headline and could not believe my eyes:

Imagine that. Some of us have been saying this for such a long time. It is about time this was turned into policy. The Howard (extreme right wing) regime that ran Australia and got us into two wars supporting his buddy G W Bush kept giving tax cuts to the rich and constantly shafting the poor. G W Bush did the same thing and after all of that the greedy rich wanted more. Don't be fooled the greedy rich caused the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). They caused it by stealing massive amounts of money and moving it to tax havens such as Liechtenstein.

There will be more about this soon. I wish there were more than 24 hours in the day, I wouldn't sleep a minute of the way.