Marco Rubio - A Prison Profiteer's Best Friend

 Okay, I went back and forth on what I wanted to do todays blog post about. Both topics I was debating between have personal application to my life. After some initial research into the first topic, I wondered about the chances that the second topic would be at ALL related, and low and behold…The two topics end up being quite intermingled and quite related. The prison system in FL and a spanish speaking candidate. 

My sister just flew down to Fla to turn herself in to serve some remaining time in jail. It’s a long story but she was living down there for drug treatment, and had been clean nearly two years when she relapsed and got herself into legal trouble down there. She did rehab time, and 60 days in jail. When my mom passed away in July of last year, they transferred her probation up here, when she stupidly got herself in trouble for drinking and driving up here, she did 5 weeks in Valley St. due to her former legal troubles. Florida listed her as a fugitive of the state during the time she was doing time up here, and wanted to send a private company to come retrieve her. LONG story short, she is so ready to be done with all of her legal troubles that she is now back down there serving time without having even been sentenced to it yet, to get ahead of the issue. This got me interested in what the deal is with Floridas jails and prison systems.

Random fun fact: rock road jail requires inmates to have a cash account for any services they want to use, like a phone call/ paper and pencil, etc.. they then DEDUCT 3$ a day from that cash account, just because. 

The other interest I had is in Marco Rubio for President. I am only allowing myself to watch Spanish channel TV this semester, if any at all, as a submersion technique in learning to speak it. I am taking a Spanish 2 class and have actually decided to continue on to a Spanish 3 non-credited class this summer, because I would like to be fluent someday. I have heard the name Marco Rubio scattered about now for a few days on the news programs of these three channels. Last night, I watched him address the Spanish Speaking American people on Univision. 

My first thought was: BRILLIANT! You will lose all of the Gay Rights voters to Hillary, but the Republicans are going for the larger population of voting potential, first generation spanish-speaking Americans. Hell, I will even listen to what he has to say here. For the record, the Univision journalist asked some tough questions about what in his 44 months in the senate he has done for Latino-American community, etc. I am not as well-versed as I would like to be in the language to give you an opinion on Rubio’s answer, but you can tell how comfortable he feels speaking it. 

I decided to go slightly less political, and more humanitarian in function, and started doing some research on the Florida Department of Corrections. They openly acknowledge that the management of a few of their Prisons, and most of their Jails, are being done by private contracting companies, or in other words, for-profit prisons. I decided to click the link to each one of their private prisons to see what the deal was, and I found that 5 of 7 of them were run by the same company- the GEO Group.

So then I google this group, and low and behold, there are PRwatch reports left and right about this group, the human rights violations taking place in their prisons. I found out some seriously interesting stuff, like:

“According to SEC filings, from 2008-2012 CEO George C. Zoley's compensation was an eye-popping $22,315,704 [4], almost all this garnered from U.S. taxpayers.” 

http://www.prwatch.org/print/12255

Also, I highly suggest reading the cited article to anyone interested in the GEO Group, who run prisons all over much of the Southern US. They must have a phenomenal PR department for the amount of findings against them they have for abuse, and settlements  regarding poor management and  wrongful death suits. I am surprised it hasn't been a country-wide outrage campaign yet, but obviously they keep a bunch of it under the radar. There is also some possible correlation between the increase in imprisoned people where theses private prisons get built. 

BAM! That is when it hit me, there is BIG business is private prisons. You don't need to adequately train or pay staff, and if that leads to human rights violations and abuse, then so be it right? Also, you can contract out Prisoner labor to continue to make more money off of FREE LABOR. Big business, and politics, usually go hand in hand. I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if I went and looked up Marco Rubio and GEO group… CA-CHING!!!!

My interests have been married all along and by their own interests. Private prisons love Marco Rubio, and they would love to have him as President! I found this article by PR watch initially posted published in 2011, and has been revised as of August 2012. The title of the article is: Marco Rubio, GEO Group, and a Legacy of Corruption.

http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/08/11591/marco-rubio-geo-group-and-legacy-corruption

This is a blog post, so I wont go on and report all about the article for you, but some fun facts I found were:

1. GEO Group is the TOP republican party contributor in FL

2.They have two PAC’s that operate in FL: the GEO Group Inc. PAC, and the Florida GEO Group Inc.PAC 

3. “the corporation gave $85,000 to the Republican Party of Florida from 2006 through 2009, along with tens of thousands of dollars in additional contributions to other state Republican Party PACs and campaigns of individual Republican candidates.”

4. “2005 through 2010, Geo, through its PACs, dispensed an additional $15,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, an additional $32,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and an additional $10,000 over 2009 and 2010 directly to the Marco Rubio for U.S. Senate PAC.”

5. “September 13, 2010, several top Geo corporate executives, along with Geo lobbyists and subcontractors, gave a total of $33,500 in individual contributions to the Florida Victory Committee, a PAC created for the benefit of three other PACS: Marco Rubio for U.S. Senate, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican Party of Florida.”

6. The CEO of the GEO Group made a total of $7,400 in personal contributions to the Marco Rubio campaign on a single day.

7. “Geo was the most generous single-interest/corporate donor to contribute to the Florida Victory Committee during this period. It is also worth noting that, of the $33,500 contributed by Geo and its affiliates to this particular PAC, $10,000 came directly from Guy and Neel White, owners and chief executive officers of White Construction Company, the Geo subcontractor awarded the $114 million contract for the construction of Blackwater CF.”

Blackwater CF refers to the Blackwater corrections facility that is run by the GEO Group, and was controversially appropriated which lead to criminal investigations and the resigning of Rubio’s former budget officer. “the most notable individual charged to date is former Rep. Ray Sansom (R-Destin), who, while serving as Rubio's budget chief, inserted language into the state's 2008-2009 budget for what was to become Blackwater CF…while serving as successor to Speaker Rubio, resigned amid criminal and ethics investigations -- chief of which is the allegation that he falsified the 2007-2008 budget by inserting a $6 million appropriation into the state spending bill for the construction of an aircraft hangar for Destin businessman and prominent Florida Republican Party contributor, Jay Odom.”

Here is a document on GEO Groups financing activities from 1999-2014: http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/geo-group/7dfa33488aad4908ac1c75336c20db05

PLEASE CHECK THAT ONE OUT. Marco Rubio is third and George W. Bush is fourth for total campaign contributions by the GEO Groups PAC’s.

My opinion? DOESN’T MATTER. These things happened, and are still happening. We are allowing corporate interest to make slaves of people. It just needs to be known, talked about and looked at. The country should reasonably fear for the future of our Federal Prison System if Mr. Rubio becomes President.