American Prisoner Labor to Put More Americans on Unemployment
The title of their new playbook should be: American Gulag by Barry Soetoro and Van Jones
12.10.09
Written by Russ Magarity
Edited by Chris Janelli
Howdy Folks,
I wonder if we can get some opinion of something I heard on the radio this afternoon. When I heard this I went practically insane, but now that I have been researching what this it is all about all afternoon it is not so cut and dried. This relates to a company you probably have never heard of called Federal Prison Industries.
The context which drove me nuts was a news bit whereby a company in NY had to lay off 80 people because their product was now going to be provided by very very cheap labor from the local prison. The hourly wage of the prison inmates is from $0.23 to a dollar something. By law, apparently when bidding on Federal projects, like the unlikely few and far between shovel ready projects, these guys take precedence in the bid.
According to their website; "FPI is an integral component of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (Bureau or BOP), and the Director of the Bureau serves as Chief Executive Officer for FPI. The Assistant Director for the BOP’s Industries, Education and Vocational Training Division serves as Chief Operating Officer and Corporate Secretary of FPI. Federal Prison Industries is governed by a six-member Board of Directors. The members are appointed by the President."
If you have been following Van Jones, the communist and ex inmate who was recently Barry's Green Czar, you saw that he was a strong supporter of letting the crooks out of jail and redistribution of wealth, to say nothing of his revolutionary ideology. While he did not mention this program by name, he had to be familiar with it. Well apparently he left behind a play book because Barry announced today a mini stimulus of a mere $150 million to fund his favorite green projects. It so happens that FPI wants a big piece of this pie, and are gearing up to provide the labor force for such projects. Since I do not believe in coincidence, this sounds fishy to me.
Visit the Federal Prison Industries website: http://www.unicor.gov/about/about_fpi_programs/?navlocation=InmateProgram.
Under normal political circumstances, I would say this is a very laudable endeavor. FPI’s mission statement reads: “FPI is, first and foremost, a correctional program. The whole impetus behind Federal Prison Industries is not about business, but instead, about inmate release preparation.... helping offenders acquire the skills necessary to successfully make that transition from prison to law-abiding, contributing members of society. The production of items and provision of services are merely by-products of those efforts.”
Sounds great doesn't it, now here is where there is a pesky problem. We aren't in normal times and we have a real unemployment rate of 17%; not the 10% the government wants you to believe. Do you think we should be providing preferential treatment to jailed inmates to the extent that we are putting more American workers on the unemployment rolls? We are already feeding them, providing cable TV, gyms, clothes, laundry, healthcare, 3 squares a day, etc.
I also wanted to follow up on Prince Harry's "new deal" where he seems to have gotten a little ahead of himself in indicating that he had a consensus among the elephants in the Senate. I guess he is more into wishful thinking than the 5 Senators he is courting to make this happen. He announced this consensus package as one which eliminates the "public option". Well, not really. As with everything we hear these days, you have to dig deep for the truth. Yes, there appears to be a number of non profit private insurance companies set up, but just because it is a public option that offers private insurance, isn't it still a public option? The oversight will come from the government Office of Personal Management (they have oversight for the Congressional HC plan). Something good would be that it would be available across state lines.
Another bone to consumers makes it sound like we would get the same plan as the Senators and Representatives enjoy. The goal would be to provide a menu of private, nationwide insurance plans, and for the Office of Personnel Management to oversee them, conducting the same type of negotiation over benefits and premium prices that it does for federal workers. This all sounds great except of one pesky little problem. The federal government, as an employer, typically pays 70 to 75 percent of premium costs with employees picking up the balance. According to the Congressional Budget Office, new federal subsidies to help moderate-income Americans buy insurance will cover 35 percent to 96 percent of premiums costs for families, depending on income level, and 13 percent to 94 percent of premium costs for individuals.
So, according to the budget office, a family of four, earning between 350 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level (about $90,100 in 2016, when the legislation is fully in effect) would pay about 65 percent, or nearly $9,200, of a total annual premium of about $14,100. In other words, the legislation as currently written would require people at that income level to pay a higher percentage of premium costs for less coverage than a government worker covered by the federal employees’ plan.
However, the really big problem is the funding cost. They are still talking about a cut of $500 million out of Medicare although there has been an amendment supposedly guaranteeing benefits as currently available. Medicare advantage needs to be reformed so this doesn't help, and there still is talk of "putting everyone on Medicare" by dropping the minimum age for Medicare eligibility to 55 if one cannot get medical coverage elsewhere. This raises problems with adding folks to the Medicare roles, and hoping there are doctors out there who will take a 30-40 % reduction of their normal fees. That’s assuming there are enough docs available to meet the increase in demand for medical services.
From everything I have read, the cadaver Prince does not have all this lined up yet. We are waiting on the CBO scoring so we can see the "details" of the plan that not one Republican has seen even in draft form.
Your humble writer, Russ Magarity
About Russ Magarity
Jackson, Wyoming Distressed Patriot Russell Magarity and Chris Janelli, Chief Distressed Patriot, have been business associates and close friends since working together at Chase Manhattan Asia in Hong Kong. Russ grew up in Cuba and Panama and graduated from High School in Peru. He received a BA in International Relations from the University of Oklahoma (Norman), an M.B.A. from the Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara (Mexico), and a Masters in International Management (with Distinction) from the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird).
Russ spent his career with Chase running countries and managing corporate finance businesses in Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong and throughout SE Asia. Prior to joining Chase, he served in the US Navy for 9 years first as a Midshipman and Naval Aviator. As a carrier pilot, he served 3 tours in Vietnam and flew over 250 missions.
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