Stephan: My position on the immorality of for-profit-prisons is well-known to any regular reader of SR. But here is an aspect I had not considered. The American Gulag is devouring our young. It is a system of surreal legal corruption.
A by a UC-Berkeley graduate student has surprised a number of experts in the criminology field. Its main finding: Private prisons are packed with young people of color.
The concept of racial disparities behind bars is not exactly a new one. Study after report after working group has found a version of the same conclusion. The Sentencing Project estimates , compared with 1 in 6 Latino men and 1 in 17 white men. are four times as high for black Americans as for white. Black in federal prisons than their white peers for the same crimes.
These reports and thousands of others have the cumulative effect of portraying a criminal justice system that disproportionately incarcerates black Americans and people of color in general.
An inmate walks through the yard at the North Central Correctional Institution in Marion, Ohio, which recently switched to private management.
An inmate walks through the yard at the North Central Correctional Institution in Marion, Ohio, which recently switched to private management.
Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Sociology Ph.D. student Christopher Petrella’s finding in “The Color of Corporate Corrections,” however, tackles a different beast.
Beyond the historical overrepresentation of people of color in county jails and federal and state prisons, Petrella found, […]
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BRANDON BAKER |, - EcoBusiness
Stephan: This is very cool news. Very positive showing the transition away from carbon can be done by communities.
Many people don’t know of a state with more than one community using 100-percent renewable electricity, but one state has nearly 100 of them.
Illinois has 91 communities that have achieved 100-percent renewable energy, according to ‘Leading from the Middle: How Illinois Communities Unleashed Renewable Energy,” a report released Friday by the Environmental Law & Policy Center, Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, LEAN Energy US, the Illinois Solar Energy Association and George Washington University Solar Institute. Each of the communities used group buying power to purchase electricity with renewable energy credits.
Illinois is one of six states in the country that allows community choice aggregation (CCA), a system where residents can use their bulk purchasing to solicit bids from energy providers.
‘We look at community aggregation as a way to get our city a great price on electricity, and we see it as a way to advance our sustainability goals,” said Chris Koos, mayor of Normal, Ill. ‘We are proud that Normal and almost 100 other Illinois cities and towns are model for the nation in having those two goals go hand-in-hand.”
Graphic credit: “Leading from the Middle: How Illinois Communities Unleashed Renewable Energy.”
Graphic credit: ‘Leading from the Middle: How Illinois Communities Unleashed […]
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LINDSAY ABRAMS, Assistant Editor - Salon
Stephan: Here is the latest wretched report on America's Animal Husbandry Industry. This story ought to be on everyone's lips. It's not of course. It is barely mentioned in the corporate media, print or video. For SR readers this story will be all too familiar; the "Meat Racket" is an unacknowledged national shame. And the capitulation of the regulatory agencies should be a matter of public outcry. It is, after all, directly affecting the health of each of us.
The dark secrets behind America’s meat industry are enough to make us sick – and according to journalist Christopher Leonard, that’s only the start of it. Our health, the well-being of animals and large swaths of rural America are all under threat by America’s monopolized meat industry, Leonard says, and the full extent to which it’s taken over should be making us a lot angrier than it is.
‘It’s been very telling to me how bothered consumers are when they learn how this industry really operates,” Leonard told Salon.
‘The Meat Racket,” Leonard’s new exposé, lays it all out on the chopping board: how virtually all of our meat is produced by the same four companies, led by Tyson, how those companies manage to keep the farmers who raise their chickens under crippling debt while ensuring that poultry prices stay high, and how the only real choice left for the consumer is to either partake or opt out of meat altogether.
Leonard spoke with Salon about how he brought these heavily guarded secrets to light, and explained why those who would defend the industry are apologists for a system gone wildly awry. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
First, could you […]
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EMILY JANE FOX, - WPLG (Miami)
Stephan: Further evidence of the growing inequality which is now baked into the system. The few prosper extravagantly while the many sink into poverty. Here on our small island the community food program for children, for which Ronlyn bakes 4 dozen organic treats every other week, needs more bakers. Whidbey Island Nourishes (WIN) is now making 2,000 meals a month with volunteers, for the low income children of South Island. This need is mirrored in small towns and communities across the country. Meanwhile Koch Industries gets $88 in what amounts to corporate welfare.
The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more, excluding primary residence, rose to 9.63 million in 2013, according to a new report from Spectrem Group, a consulting and research firm.
That’s more than a 600,000 leap up from 2012, and the highest number on record.
This is the first year that the number has surpassed the pre-recession high of 9.2 million in 2007. Once the global financial meltdown hit and the bottom fell out of the market, the number tanked to 6.7 million in 2008.
“The last few years, we’ve seen the number continually increase, but this was the first year that we’re finally beyond the economic crisis,” said George Walper, Jr., president of Spectrem Group.
He said that the market reaching all-time highs last year, coupled with an improving real estate market, drove the rich to get even richer.
The ultra-wealthy weren’t lagging behind. Walper said both the number of households with a net worth of $5 million and above and $25 million or more reached the highest numbers since Spectrem started tracking the figures.
There were 1.24 million households with a net worth of $5 million or more last year, up from 840,000 in 2008. Those with $25 […]
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DEAN KUIPERS, - Los Angeles Times
Stephan: This is the new generational version of a book written by two friends: Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Soil, written more than 30 years ago. Here is a fact based reality that offers us an effective way to remediate our negative effects on the biosphere. It is a way out of the worst. It is a happy story, that each of us should support in whatever way we can.
The book referred to is this:
The Soil Will Save Us
How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet
Kristin Ohlson
Rodale: 256 pp., $23.99
I hope this book becomes a serious best seller.
We generally think of climate change as a story of sky – of emitted gases, of atmospheric carbon levels, of storms. Author Kristin Ohlson would like to direct our gaze earthward, to take a long, hard look at the dirt beneath our feet. We may have overlooked a solution there.
In her sometimes breathless but important new book, “The Soil Will Save Us,” Ohlson lays out a thesis that farmers and climate researchers have been talking about for decades: that a change in farming and forestry techniques could sequester enough carbon in the ground to not only mitigate but reverse global warming.
Yes, it’s a long shot. But this is one of those accessible and well-written science books that walks the lay reader through the development of an idea as it begins to take on relevancy and impact, in scenes describing breakthroughs as they happen on farms and soil labs all over the world.
Ohlson is not a soil scientist, but she is no stranger to journalistic explorations of deep, dark mystery: Her book “Stalking the Divine” hushed us into the world of cloistered nuns in Cleveland and, as co-author of “Kabul Beauty School,” she went “behind the veil” in a unique cosmetology […]
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