Forced Labor Is The Life-Blood of Arizona, According to the Prison Guy

(Permanent Musical

Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favorite Living Canadian)

There is saying the quiet part out loud, and then there is hiring a sound truck and shouting the quiet part out loud as you drive through the town square.

Let us consider, then, the case of David Shinn, the director of Arizona’s Department of Corrections. In Arizona, most inmates have to work 40 hours a week for a pittance. Shinn explained the system this way:

“Yes. The department does more than just incarcerate folks,” Shinn replied. “There are services that this department provides to city, county, local jurisdictions, that simply can’t be quantified at a rate that most jurisdictions could ever afford. If you were to remove these folks from that equation, things would collapse in many of your counties, for your constituents.”

I don’t think I’ve read a more open argument for forced labor as an economic driver since the death of Jefferson Davis. But Shinn was undaunted.

Defending the choice to keep state and private prisons open despite dwindling populations, Shinn told the legislators “while it doesn’t necessarily serve the department in the best interest to have these places open, we have to do it to support Arizona.” “Without the ability to have these folks at far flung places like Apache, like Globe, like Fort Grant, even like Florence West, communities wouldn’t have access to these resources or services, and literally would have to spend more to be able to provide that to their constituents,” Shinn said.

Hello, I’m 1859. Have we met?

There are a lot of reasons why private prisons are a terrible idea, but I never considered the possibility that someone would defend them on the grounds that, without the prisons and the inmates therein, towns would have to pay for their own streets and sewer systems.

Of course, I was born too late for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. I always regretted that.

The president, with the Hurrah-Me-Boys-For-Freedom moment in East Jerusalem on Friday:

“…the background of my family is Irish American. And we have a long history not fundamentally unlike the Palestinian people, with Great Britain and their attitude toward Irish Catholics over the years for 400 years.”

Any reminder to Irish Americans that most of us are the children of revolutionary aspirations is a good one; but I guarantee you, the president’s statement will be parsed to a fine pulp until eventually you’d think he’d sung a cover version of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save The Queen.”

I applaud Olivia Nuzzi for scoring the big sit-down with El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago for New York this week. But I still think his public musing about when to announce his next ‘Tantrums Over America’ Tour is a dare aimed at Merrick Garland: Bet you won’t indict a presidential candidate.

The man’s predator’s instinct for weakness remains somewhat intact.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Mama Don’t Allow” (George Lewis) — Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here, from 1960, some citizens of Puerto Rico object to meddling by the island’s Catholic bishops in the upcoming gubernatorial election. The bishops issued a pastoral letter forbidding the island’s Catholics from voting to re-elect the Popular Democratic Party of incumbent Luis Munoz Martin.

William Dorvillier, the editor of the San Juan Star, wrote a string of editorials critical of the what the bishops had done and won himself a 1961 Pulitzer Prize. Dorvillier wrote:

The bishops have sinned against their country by making Puerto Rico the helpless pawn for bigots to use for their political ends, and to injure the Catholic Church in the national campaign. They have sinned against the Church by making it a temporary synonym for bitterness and hatred, instead of love, among a people who know how to keep their worship and their politics separated. The bishops have all the rights of citizens to express political opinions and to urge support for their chosen candidates. But they have no right to use their religion and the weight of spiritual sanctions to intimidate faithful Catholics in the exercise of their franchise at the polls. This pastoral letter is more than an indiscretion. It is an action devoid of any virtue because it so obviously is a result of long and thoughtful premeditation.

Dorvillier, a proper son of western Massachusetts, died almost 20 years too soon to deal with our current Supreme Court. Pity. History is so cool.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Australian ABC? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!!!

New research on 17 curved teeth that were unearthed at a dig site near Winton in 2019 has shed light on sauropod Diamantinasaurus matildae’s role in its prehistoric ecosystem… “They are between 98 and 95 million years old, we haven’t got an exact date on them yet, but that’s the boundary that we’re working with at the moment.” He said the teeth showed the dinosaur was probably feeding at least one metre above the ground, not really ingesting much soil or grit, and probably up to 10m above the ground. “Imagine a three-story building,” he said.

One simply does not ingest much soil and grit. It simply is…not…done. Not if one wished to live then to make us happy now.

Steve Bannon goes on trial next week, so there’s entertainment a’plenty on the horizon.

Be well and play nice, ya bastions. Stay above the snake-line, wear the damn mask, take the damn shots (especially the damn boosters), light a candle for all the women whom the Supreme Court has wounded, and spare a thought for the people of Ukraine.

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