No Casinos in New Hampshire

The New Hampshire House of Representatives just recently voted down the approved Senate Bill 113, "relative to video lottery and table gaming". With 156 yeas to the 208 nays, the vote failed by a fairly wide margin of 56 votes, but certainly not a landslide. Personally, I had been on the fence about the whole casino issue, because there are very compelling arguments for and against casinos. For one, New Hampshire is certainly in need of added revenues, however gambling was being touted as a cure all to all of our fiduciary woes. Social costs, were also another main concern amongst many Democrats and Republicans alike. Although I have no moral qualms about gambling, NH and the northeast has been undergoing a significant heroin epidemic and although gaming revenue could be used to address that, I was hesitant to vote for something that may have the potential to increase or centralize criminal activity near the casinos. Additional fears of the gaming lobby coming to dominate NH's political landscape, also surfaced during debate, especially considering the fact that the proposed casinos would ultimately be the largest taxpaying bloc in NH. During the dawn of the 20th century, the railroad industry in NH effectively owned the Statehouse, so fears of returning to a similar era certainly led a few legislators to vote against gaming. No doubt, images of "Casino" and "The Godfather" conjured up some worries about organized crime, but this argument was repeatedly shot down and probably wouldn't have been a major concern. Ultimately, I voted against organized gaming because I disagree with the premise of gambling providing most of our States revenue. Although I would be in the minority, I would certainly rather see a modest income tax on top revenue earners, before we establish a more regressive revenue source that tends to draw revenue from the poor and elderly. Also, I reasoned that if NH established gambling as a major revenue source, Republicans would fight tooth and nail to prevent any future fees, taxes or revenues being raised for any additional state agencies or needs of the State. Simply put, I didn't want to see the State that's always been my home establish gambling as its main source of revenue, when a much less environmentally and socially questionable alternative could (and should) be implemented, namely a moderate income tax.

FYI: Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act is up for debate

Why should everyone mark the date of June 1st, 2015 on their calendars? The provisions of Sections 206, 215, and 6001, of the USA PATRIOT Act are set to expire on June 1st. That also means that the Senate and House of Representatives will be voting on its renewal which would last until 2020. The most controversial of the three that the American people should definitely inform themselves of before June 1st, is Section 215. The big debate with Section 215, is that it authorizes the National Security Agency to carry out unwarranted government surveillance on those suspected of conspiring against the American people. It is also known as the "library records" provision because it allows a wide range of personal material to be investigated. 

But how can we be assured that the government is properly determining whether a person is involved in conducting actions against the United States and its civilians? Recent scandals such as the Edward Snowden case in 2013, revealed that the NSA has abused its capabilities under Section 215 in order to gain intelligence. 

In reality, the policy was drafted and then implemented in less than 2 months. It was meant to address the issue of the September 11th terrorist attacks in 2001. But how long do we need to be combatting terrorism in the United States on such an extreme level? Many argue that the issues present over 10 years ago, are not at the same level of relevance in today's American society. 

The questions we must ask ourselves before June 1st are:

1. What elements of Section 215 are truly necessary to protect the American people? 
2. Has its implementation carried out more positive or negative change? 
3. What kind of outcome does Section 215 hold in future American politics?

http://www.olcu.org/PDFs/USPatriotAct_Summary.pdf

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/04/22/gop-pushes-patriot-act-renewal-critics-demand-end-mass-surveillance-provision

http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/patriot/

Baltimore Riot

This riot happened today, the same day as Gray's funeral. Gray was the 25 years old African American who was arrested on April 12, then died a weak later from a spinal cord injury. Most of the protesters were young people of color from middle school and high school, that were seeking for a fair justice. For now we know that the police officers who did this (beat Gray to his death) they are on probation until further investigation. But the protesters see this as injustice progress, and claim that the Gray's family does not deserve this result. Billy Murphy a family attorney said "I am sure that the family is concerned, and I am positive that they are against what is beginning to develop here in town". Do you think this situation need a further investigation or it is a clear case?

Will the next President please stand up?

Time now, of course, for presidential politics in New Hampshire! Hilary Clinton was just in the State, as well as all the other Republican candidates. 2016 is going to involve quite the show, all the campaign ads a side. But this is certainly no game! Certain candidates would love to see the nuclear negotiations with Iran fail, Obamacare stripped down or reversed, and student grants eliminated and refinancing more difficult. Scandals are already starting to appear also with revelations about the Clinton foundation accepting millions of dollars from parties interested in the transfer of one of the largest uranium producers in the U.S. from a Canadian to a Russian company. No doubt will the Republican primary be contentious with the long list of candidates already in the mix, but with only one declared Democratic frontrunner, it's quite difficult to predict how the field will be in one month, much less the primary results. Much will boil down to the primary and candidate debates, leading up to the election, along with the usual campaign gaffs and controversies that spring up out of the wellspring of human error. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html

New Attorney General Means New Changes?

As of today, April 23, the Senate confirmed that Loretta E. Lynch will our new Attorney General. Lynch is the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York and was confirmed with a 56-43 vote. She is the first African-American woman to hold the position of Attorney General. While her confirmation took longer than probably some would hope it shows some hope for the future in the Justice Department. One issue that she wants to take on is that of the police. One of her advisers stated:

She really thinks the communities and the police officers have more in common than they realize.

Lynch has a strong relationship with many police groups who feel that they have unfairly criticized in high-profile cases that involve the death of African-Americans at their hands.

Ms. Lynch is concerned that morale in police departments has declined and that officers are being unfairly tarnished by episodes that do not reflect all of policing, several aides and friends said.

It sounds as if there will be rapid and highly public changes but that is not Lynch's goal. While she wants there to be changes she will make them on a "subtle but significant internal changes." She would like to make changes inside the Justice Department office, especially in terms of cyber-security cases, very much like the office restructuring done after Sept. 11 attacks.

In the immediate future she might be called on to support another task, the renewing of a section Patriot Act which expires in June of this year which she is a supporter of. This particular section allows the National Security Agency to acquire phone records from American citizens without a warrant or any evidence of law breaking.

While Lynch has not made any promises to what she will do has Attorney General, she did promise to do one thing... to strengthen the relationship between Congress and the Department of Justice.

Ms. Lynch told aides that she wanted a better relationship with Congress and planned to meet with lawmakers regularly. Just as with police groups, Ms. Lynch told aides, a lot can be accomplished with a simple change in tone.

Hopefully with a new Attorney General there will be a better justice system in America and less violence and crime in our streets.

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/as-attorney-general-loretta-lynch-plans-to-shift-tone-for-justice-dept.html?ref=politics

For information about her Senate Confirmation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/politics/loretta-lynch-attorney-general-vote.html?ref=politics

Chris Christie 2016 Presidential Bid

          Chris Christie has hit the ground running on his 2016 election campagin, With a long history of intrest in New Hampshire Christie shows that he understands how much power winning the first primary in the nation has over his political campaign After having been part of a few scandals, such as bridgegate (the closure of the George Washington Bridge) as well as another investigation involving Christie's role in firing Hunterdon County Assistant Prosecutor Bennett Barlyn, Christie has remained silent untill recently when he announced his candidacy for president in the 2016 election.
          In a speech he made in Washington DC Christie criticized Obama's and House Democrat's foregin poilcy decissions regarding both the Keystone Pipeline (a oil pipeline that would connect the Gulf of Mexico to Canada) and normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba. The pipeline he said was being handled in an "insulting" manner, and that the US was not acting in a diplomatically friendly manner towards Canada. He said of Cuba that relations shouldn't be normalized because Cuba is a nation "that denies civil rights and freedoms to their people". It seems unwise to me for him to openly take such harsh stances on partisan issues such as these, the reason being that he shouldn't want to look like such a hardline republican and cause moderates and undeclared voters to back away from his campaign, expecially after leaving a period of political weakness brought on by his involvement in scandalous events.
          Another issue facing Christie's future in the 2016 election is his approval rating. Currently only about 38% of NJ voters approve of Christie's Job performance, as well as 65% of his constituents saying that he would not make a good president. If Christie has such a poor rapport with his constituency it seems like his chances at making a successful run for president are extreemly low. Though that may be why he has spent so much time in New Hampshire
         Because we maintain the first in the nation primary Christie has spent a considerable amount of time and money here in the state campagining for other republican representatives such as Walt Haverstein in his bid for Governor in 2014. And in short no other candidate has spent nearly as much time trying to convince the NH voter of their legitimacy as Governor Chrisie has. Though I personally believe that Governor Christie has a very slim chance of becoming the Republican candidate 2016 only time will tell if he can compete with the other Republican hopefuls.


sources
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4188582096001/power-play-can-christie-bounce-back/?#sp=show-clips
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jersey-gov-chris-christie-criminal-investigation/story?id=28753740
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/02/17/in-new-hampshire-speech-christie-takes-aim-at-dem-gov-hassan/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Lee_lane_closure_scandal#Possible_motives
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/christie-takes-aim-us-policy-toward-cuba-keystone
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/christie-faces-worst-ever-approval-ratings-new-jersey-article-1.2191366

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.