"Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters recently to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for "challenging corrections budgets." In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full" This is a bit scary: having to make prisoner quotas.
In their efforts to win a multi-million dollar contract, the corporations—CCA, GEO Group, MTC, and LaSalle—told some real whoppers. Here are our favorites, plus the truth that they are trying to hide.
"While most folks are suffering under the economy, many billions of dollars are being funneled into this sinister conniving alliance of capitalist and statist forces," stated a message on the hacked site. "What they did not figure into their plans was a determined effort to shut them down."
NY Times: A Military Personality Diagnosis Is Challenged
NY Times: A New Study Gives Scope and Costs of Combat Related Conditions Among Veterans "In patients diagnosed with P.T.S.D., the first year of treatment with the P.T.S.D.-specific therapy averaged $4,100, or nearly half of the $8,300 spent in total. In the second, third and fourth years of treatment, the average costs per patient went down, but the P.T.S.D. therapy continued to account for about half. The same pattern prevailed generally for patients with T.B.I. or with both problems – the highest costs come in the first year of treatment, costs generally decline in the next few years (once some technical wrinkles in the data are ironed out) and a significant portion of overall treatment costs are for these two conditions."
NY Times: Guantanamo Conditions Have Fallen, Military Lawyers Say "It also said that some of the changes “appear to coincide with the arrival” last summer of the current prison commander, Rear Adm. David B. Woods. The letter contends that conditions at Camp 7 fall short of the minimum guarantees of humane treatment under the Geneva Conventions. The lawyers asked for the letter to be treated as a report of a possible “violation of the law of war.” Under military policies, that sets off a requirement to investigate and remedy any problems."
NY Times: Settlements Without Admissions Get Scrutiny: "Judge Bumb ordered both the commission and the company to justify why she should approve the proposed $11.5 million settlement when the lack of an admission by the company and the executive of any wrongdoing left her with no facts with which to judge whether the negotiated deal was fair, adequate and in the public interest."
NY Times: Small Companies Create More Jobs? Maybe Not:
The figures cover employment from April 1990 — one month after employment reached a high for that economic cycle — through March 2011, just over a year after employment hit bottom after the 2007-9 recession.Over that entire period, employment at large companies — defined as those having at least 500 employees — rose 29 percent, while employment at smaller companies rose by less than half as much.At small companies, defined as those with fewer than 49 employees, the total number of jobs rose by just 10.5 percent over the period. Had the entire private sector grown at that pace, rather than rising by more than 19 percent, as it actually did, there would have been nearly eight million fewer people with jobs last March, and the unemployment rate would have been around 14 percent.
USA Today: Calif. lawyer sentenced in international baby-selling scam "With her guilty plea, Theresa Erickson acknowledged that she and two other women used numerous surrogate mothers to create an inventory of unborn babies that they would sell for more than $100,000 each, federal prosecutors said."
Book Description:
A chic and humorous visual homage to two of the world's most iconic cities.
When Vahram Muratyan began his online travel journal, Paris versus New York, he had no idea how quickly it would become one of the most buzzed-about sites on the Internet-it garnered more than a million and a half page views in just a few months, and the attention of savvy online critics. Now Muratyan presents his unique observations in this delightful book, featuring visually striking graphics paired with witty, thought-provoking taglines that celebrate the special details of each city. Paris versus New York is a heartfelt gift to denizens of both cities and to those who dream of big-city romance.
