If anyone ever questioned the disenfranchisement of ex-cons that have paid their dues to society but still can't vote, check out alarming statistics from the government. 1 in 142 people in America currently reside in prison. If you want to make a serious change in the government, fight for the voting rights of people that are often affected the most.

Let me paint you a picture. You were arrested when you were 18 for armed robbery. You did 5 years in prison, 5 years parole ( I am making these figures up I have no idea what the prison sentences for this crime would be) and for the rest of your life you can't have any participation in what goes on in your neighborhood. You can't decide on the kind of education your kids will receive, you can't decide on tax cuts or increases, you can't decide on whether there are more fire departments, police personnel, emergency services and social programs to help your community. You can't decide on whether we go to war, whether abortion is overturned, whether your children are drafted, whether healthcare rates increase, etc. You can't vote for representatives that are going to fix the corruption in our cuurent government's ethics committees and election process. You pay your debt to society, the state says that you are rehabilitated, but not enough for them to trust you with a ballot.

Or maybe this is part of the progressive investment in keeping people of color and the economically disadvantaged of any race caught in a cycle for generations and generations.

We have surpassed China, a communist country, in inmate population. China!!!!!

And now China wants to buy Unical. So we can ask them nicely for oil to run our machines, and they will say fuck no, we have over a billion people here and are going through an industrial revolution. Get your oil somewhere else! But that's a story for another day.

This is something to think about however. You have a 1 in 142 chance of going to jail in your lifetime. Some would say that the direction we are headed in as a country will make it feel like everyone is living in a jail, the only difference will be the steel bars and the orange jump suits.

U.S. Prison Population Tops 2 Million

Since I have been neglecting the blog ( I am almost done with school 5 more weeks and I am officially a graduate, unemployment here I come!!!) I decided to post some of my school work. This is an assignment I wrote for tonight's writing as remembrance class:


Tasting is One Thing, Swallowing is Another
We will stay the course, he repeats. A collection of misplaced words filter through: 9/11, terrorists, Iraqi people standing up, U.S. standing down, coalitions, blah blah blah. To serve in the army is a higher calling, he says and I swear he is getting off on all of this. He thinks he has done a superb job enunciating his words and not mumbling and I know he probably practiced before he sauntered across the stage. I wonder if the podium hides an erection. He ends with God Bless whoever he is talking to and I feel as if he didn’t use a condom, pulled out and splooged all over me.

“The war is noble in an abstract way,” says Tucker Carlson. He wears a bowtie and I am going to trust him to tell me what nobility is? Can nobility be abstract? I look up abstract in the dictionary. There are several definitions.

1. Not relating to concrete objects but expressing something that can only be appreciated intellectually. (This means that if I don’t understand how the war is noble its because I am not smart enough to appreciate it.)
2. Based on general principles or theories rather than on specific instances. (This becomes clearer as I think of the three-card Monty game of hide the reason for preemptive strike that all of us have been playing. Generally we think they were oppressed so we don’t need specifics to invade, therefore, yes the nobleness of this war is abstract).
3. Emotionally detached or distanced from something. Ah, yes. To be noble is to not feel anything for the cause you are fighting for. That makes this war very noble indeed. We don’t know what we’re fighting for so how can we feel a connection to it? How can feel a connection to a culture we know nothing about? How can we care about eradicating terrorists when we can’t even define what a terrorist is?

I look that up in the dictionary too. It reads, “Someone who uses violence or the threat of violence, especially bombing, kidnapping, and assassination to intimidate, often for political purposes.” I think of watching the troops storm Iraq with bombs like fireworks lighting up the sky under the green night vision lens. I think of Muslim men and women rounded up and thrown in prisons to be sexually taunted and tortured; I think of Guantanamo Bay. I think of soccer fields filled with the carrions of Iraqi people and children! Children too traumatized to cry with blood soaked gauze wrapped stumps where their arms or legs used to be. I think of polluted drinking water, hospitals without medicine or electricity. I think of the soldiers that have been sacrificed like lambs to a slaughter. I think of my cousin driving a tank out in the desert and calling everyone in the family when a soldier in his platoon went crazy and killed his lieutenant and other soldiers. I think of him always talking about what he’ll do when he gets home and my mind won’t let itself doubt his words. I feel nauseas and close the dictionary.

Chris Matthews asks some white women how they feel with their husbands “over there” for possibly12 years. They smile sweetly into the camera as if they are posing for their prom photo and respond, “Well if that’s what it takes.” I throw crumpled up tissues at the television and shout at them to get angry. I yell at them to stop thinking in binary oppositions and oversimplifying the variables by categorizing. My husband looks at me like I just fell out of the sky, “binary oppositions?” “Yeah. Good versus evil, sin versus...whatever the opposite of sin is…” I swat my hand in his direction impatiently without removing my eyes from the screen and I realize as the women giggle and bat their eyelashes they are just happy to be on t. v. One woman holds upa picture of her husband for the passing camera and tells Chris Matthews that she will tell her daughter that her father is a hero. “Yes, we all are,” I throw crumpled tissues like darts, aiming for their eyes. Senator Biden talks about the difference in the terrorists – Al Qaeda, jihadists and others. The crowd is a gaggle of confusion, boredom and cynicism. One woman has her head bowed down and my husband suggests a producer stick a mirror under her nose to see if she’s still breathing. They are in Nashville and I bet they have never even seen a Muslim person. I feel righteous about my presumptuousness.

My friend’s brother writes from Baghdad. He is in the Air Force and flew in for the night. “It’s like ‘Nam. There are GI’s sprawled out all over the floor. It looks like Full Metal Jacket here. It’s a wasteland.” I’ve never seen that movie and I have the urge to rent it. I don’t though. Like the people in the studio audience in Nashville I am content with what I don’t know and accepting of the abstracts that I do.

The next time someone tells me that there shouldn't be a government-supported health care system, I will remind them why they are paying so much to go to the doctor.

Meanwhile, our government is spending money on adds to convince people that social security is bad, war, and building nuclear weapons that can go underground (just in case we want to blow up the earth's core so that the planet can shake us off like pesky fleas).


Uninsured add $900 to health premiums-study - Yahoo! News: "Uninsured add $900 to health premiums-study

Wed Jun 8, 9:36 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Health insurance premiums will cost families and employers an extra $922 on average this year to cover the costs of caring for the uninsured, according to a report released on Wednesday.
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With the added cost, the yearly premiums for a family with coverage through an employer will average $10,979 in 2005, said the report from consumer group Families USA.

By 2010, the additional costs for the uninsured will be $1,502, and total premiums will hit $17,273. In 11 states, the costs of the uninsured will exceed $2,000 per family.

For individuals, the extra charge this year is estimated to be $341 on average, rising to $532 in 2010. Total premium charges for individuals will be $4,065 in 2005, and $6,115 in 2010.

'The stakes are high both for businesses and for workers who do have health insurance because they bear the brunt of costs for the uninsured,' said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.

Nearly 48 million Americans will lack health insurance for 2005, the report said.

Uninsured patients pay about one-third of the costs of their care provided by doctors and hospitals, the report said.

The remaining costs -- more $43 billion in 2005 -- are considered 'uncompensated care.' The government picks up part of the tab and most of the rest is added to insurance premiums for people with health coverage, the report said.

'Ironically, this increases the cost of health insurance and results in fewer people who can afford insurance - a vicious circle,' the report said.

The costs for people with insurance vary by state based on a number of variables, including the percentage of uninsured in a state and the amount local, state and federal governments contribute.

The report was based on data from the
Census Bureau, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Center for Health Statistics and other sources."