Schools? Nah, Prisons.

From Erika Yancy at Alternet:

"The good news: in the past 20 years spending for higher education has increased 21%. The bad news: in that same 20 years, spending for prisons increased 127%.

"We're creating criminals, not citizens."

Of course that federal spending is your tax dollars, in the form of per capita/per diem payments for every prisoner. And it's now going to the owners of and investors in privatized prisons. These investors, by the way, include VP Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Now that's what I call great job! You ge to throw favors at legislators who "woik witch ya," and you get to enforce the laws that put people in prison and money in your pocket. Cool!

By now, you should be tracking over to mandatory sentencing and to the recent war on undocumented workers, whom the Bush administration has classified as felons, or whom dozens of new privatized facilities have been constructed or are in the works, and of whom thousands are being rounded up and "detained" at Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and other privately owned prisons like this one, in something like 16 states. See Project Endgame. (I kid you not.) Can you say, "Hmmm, this is not a coincidence!"

About the California City facility, the website for California City Real Estate says this: "The Federal Bureau of Prisons announced Friday it would contract with Corrections Corporation of America to house criminal aliens in its 2,304-bed facility near here.

"The federal contract with CCA to house the inmates at the California City Correctional Center is worth $529 million at the end of 10 years. It begins with a base period of three years, with seven one-year options and ensures that the prison, completed last year at a cost of over $110 million, will be filled."

Not a bad return on investment, eh?

The stench from Blogojevich is as nothing compared with the stench of the Bush administration. Just keep it in perspective--and ask your legislators why the Bushies aren't doing time.