Posts Made By: David Cotterell

$750 a day is the well-documented cost-per-person for the incarceration of these people.

Where does this (taxpayer) money go if not towards soap and toothpaste?

It goes to a private, for-profit company called Comprehensive Health Services (a subsidiary of Caliburn International). CHS operates the largest child migrant detention center, which is in FL and was already getting horrible press — especially from local FL papers — last year. But that didn’t matter, because CHS recently opened up a few more child prisons in TX, as it snagged a new government contract, despite many documented concerns about conditions....

 CHS, via Caliburn, is controlled by the private equity firm DC Capital Partners.

The  advisory board of DCCP, which approves everything in the portfolio includes the following people.

Trump’s former Chief of Staff, John Kelly. (prior to joining Trump in the WH, he was also a paid lobbyist for DCCP).  


Richard L. Armitage, former U.S. deputy secretary of state; Michael Corbin; former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates; Michael V. Hayden, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and of the National Security Agency; Donald M. Kerr Jr., former deputy director of science and technology at the CIA; Anthony C. Zinni, former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command and former U.S. Envoy to the Middle East; and Stephen F. Loftus, former director of the Office of the Budget for the United States Navy.

Multiple sources for all the above:
https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/CLBR:US
https://www.miamiherald.com/…/immigra…/article229744049.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/…/john-kelly-joins-board-of-calibu…/
https://news.littlesis.org/…/wall-street-banks-former-def…/…
https://thehill.com/…/392727-hayden-sees-commonality-betwee…
https://www.npr.org/…/florida-shelter-is-scrutinized-for-th…
https://www.nytimes.com/…/migrant-shelters-border-crossing.…
https://heavy.com/news/2019/05/caliburn-international/…
https://www.thedailybeast.com/doj-is-investigating-whether-…
https://thebaffler.com/…/retirement-brought-to-you-by-priso…
https://www.floridatoday.com/…/cape-canaveral-de…/717375002/
https://www.chsmedical.com/compliance


The above research was not done by me.  Doesn't matter.  If you think keeping these people in such horrible conditions is ok then you should feel shame.  Murderers and Rapists on death row get daily showers, exercise, clean sheets, beds, pillows, clean laundry etc. etc.  But not these asylum seekers.  Sleep on the concrete floor with nothing but a mylar blanket, inadequate sanitation etc.... 

And it is all done for the profit of shareholders of  CHS and approved by a board chock full of Trump minions (who make a very substantial honorarium as board members as well).

Richard and Greg, even if you feel the correct thing to do is to put asylum seekers in detention (a separate debate, for sure) you cannot possibly believe that while they are detained they should be treated worse than convicted violent criminals in maximum security prisons.

Or do you?

Dave

The arguments about whether or not the asylum seekers should or should not be incarcerated or who did it first is for another day.    

Right now I'm specifically pointing at the conditions the people are being held under in the here and now.  They are inhumane, disturbing, horrid and shameful.  And the reason is to maximize profit for shareholders and directors of the private companies by spending as little as is possible of the $750 a day they get from the taxpayers on actually providing the inmates with the bare necessities.   Taxpayer money going directly into the pockets of the well-to-do.....

Do you think the conditions they are experiencing right now are satisfactory?  Do you think something should be done about it?  Or not?

Dave  

Zees sportscaster, 'e, 'ow you say, 'as a name, tres, tres  interessant, non?

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/french-english/b%C3%A2tard

Dave

Originally Posted by James Lacey

The distinction you are trying to draw is pointless. The study clearly shows that good guys with a gun are a fantasy. I seriously doubt that good guys with a gun have had any better track record in mass shootings; in fact, it's probably worse.

 

In Dayton, good guys with guns killed the perp after only 30 seconds!  Yay! chalk one up for Rich!

During those 30 seconds he shot 9 people dead and another 26 were wounded... a rate of fire faster than 1 per second..

What if the best rifle he could by was a rifle like my uncle's old hunting rifle where you pulled back a bolt, stuck a single bullet in, shoved the bolt forward then pulled the trigger......4 or 5 seconds between shots at least......maybe someone could have tackled him after the first or second shot, brained him with a chair or whatever...less carnage.... (my uncle was a good hunter with that - he got his deer every year....)  

I do not wish to get into labelling guns as assault weapons or military style or whatever some folks call them - the debate devolves into a 'tastes great, less filling' labelling argument instead of hitting the main point.  It's high rates of fire and huge clips/magazines holding 20-30 or more rounds that are one of the main  problems no matter what you call the guns...Rifles that can get off a round a second need banning 100%.  Clips holding more than 3 bullets need 100% banning. Or no clips at all for rifles...  Make licensing for firearms at least as difficult and time consuming as licensing for an amateur radio license....make meaningful background checks and long waiting periods part of the process... (the Dayton perp  had a history in high school of making lists of people he wanted to kill and girls he wanted to assault...this should be part of his permanent record - should have been no guns for this guy, there was a police record of these offences....here - https://news.yahoo.com/classmate-says-dayton-shooter-targeted-180053657.html;_ylt=AwrCxnWod0hdY0YA.AIXFwx.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMjB0aG5zBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--   )

But he got a high-rate-of-fire rifle, big clips and ammo because IF he had a background check at all, it was not nearly thorough enough...

Dave

It is sad to see that many Americans, whose positions on this issue are clearly stated by Richard, Mel and Greg, for example,  seem quite happy to do absolutely nothing to reduce the carnage from guns in the USA .

You're  agreeing to a rather large number of casualties as an 'acceptable' trade-off for freedom and the continued sanctity of the Second Amendment.  

11 984 people were killed by guns in the USA in 2018.  'Mass' shootings or one-by-one. It doesn't matter..   They're dead.    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/there-have-been-47220-gun-incidents-in-the-us-in-2018-and-here-they-all-are-on-one-map-2018-10-27 

What if the death toll could be reduced to 8 984 by more thorough background checks, longer waiting periods, banning large magazines, heavier sentences for gun-law violations etc. etc..  That would be 3000  Americans not being killed.  3000.  Human beings. Alive thanks to better gun regulations..  (Of course I made up the 3000 figure out of thin air - maybe it would only be 1000, or 500 or 50.  But they would be lives that would continue on and still be fewer than the status quo.)   

What are your 'freedoms' worth to you in terms of the lives of those who will, for a certainty, die by gunfire in 2020?  50 people?  500?   Because by gun-regulation inaction 50 or 500 or X people are going to die who wouldn't die under tougher laws.

Dave

Originally Posted by Richard Davis

Don't hold your breath for those guys.  

I'll answer though.  I'm on the fence w/respect to this one.  

I have a great admiration for the Kurds mostly for their warrior mentality, and their willingness to fight for their survival.  I also feel as though we owe them a great deal as a nation, because I recognize that they fought side by side with us to help defeat ISIS.  

There is a good deal to be said for loyalty, especially when warriors have become brothers in arms.  

I certainly understand the thoughts of the Special Forces GIs who have become close to many Kurds w/whom they fought.  

I'm just an observer, always have been, and always will be since I never wore the Uniform.  

I think we should not have made a deal w/Erdogon, as I think he is now and always has been a fiend. 

IMO, I think Trump needs to look at the massive force that Erdogon immediately employed against the Kurds when he was in a sense, given the green light.  

We cannot let a slaughter happen.  The Kurds strike me as a good people who have been fighting for their very existence for hundreds of years.

It is a tough call IMO.  

I'm with you all the way on this, Richard.  Actually, what you wrote, above, shows clearly that  you are not on the fence at all.  You (and I) think abandoning the Kurds to what will be a slaughter is a huge error in US foreign policy.  The optics of this decision will cause any other 'group' of fighters to think twice about supporting the US side in a dispute/war/skirmish or whatever somewhere in the future..... 

The decision to pull out favours Russia and Assad's side almost exclusively.  We would be hard pressed to spin this as something that is good for the USA....

Dave

So Trump went from "The Kurds are our allies, don't mess with them" to "I don't even know these people" and negotiated up to "why don't we help them get off your land, Mr. Erdogan?"

120 hours for the Kurds to GTFO.   And there has already been Turkish shelling today, only 24 hours into the so-called "Cease-fire".

Didn't anyone in the Trump inner circle know that Turkey is absolutely fine with ethnic cleansing and/or genocide? (see: Armenian Genocide for details...)  The Kurds in this area will be killed by the thousands.

Well of course they knew.  They just don't care because pleasing Putin/Assad/Erdogan is more important. 

Good thing Pence went in there and threw his weight around. That'll show 'em!

Dave 

To all my American buds here - Have a great Thanksgiving Holiday with family and friends.  

We Canadians forgive you for having the holiday a month late......

Dave

https://intelligence.house.gov/report/

"I had fully intended to ignore President Trump’s latest round of racially charged taunts against an African American elected official, and an African American activist, and an African American journalist and a whole city with a lot of African Americans in it. I had every intention of walking past Trump’s latest outrages and writing about the self-destructive squabbling of the Democratic presidential field, which has chosen to shame former vice president Joe Biden for the sin of being an electable, moderate liberal.

But I made the mistake of pulling James Cone’s 'The Cross and the Lynching Tree' off my shelf — a book designed to shatter convenient complacency. Cone recounts the case of a white mob in Valdosta, Ga., in 1918 that lynched an innocent man named Haynes Turner. Turner’s enraged wife, Mary, promised justice for the killers. The sheriff responded by arresting her and then turning her over to the mob, which included women and children. According to one source, Mary was 'stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground and was stomped to death.'

God help us. It is hard to write the words. This evil — the evil of white supremacy, resulting in dehumanization, inhumanity and murder — is the worst stain, the greatest crime, of U.S. history. It is the thing that nearly broke the nation. It is the thing that proved generations of Christians to be vicious hypocrites. It is the thing that turned normal people into moral monsters, capable of burning a grieving widow to death and killing her child.

When the president of the United States plays with that fire or takes that beast out for a walk, it is not just another political event, not just a normal day in campaign 2020. It is a cause for shame. It is the violation of martyrs’ graves. It is obscene graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial. It is, in the eyes of history, the betrayal — the re-betrayal — of Haynes and Mary Turner and their child. And all of this is being done by an ignorant and arrogant narcissist reviving racist tropes for political gain, indifferent to the wreckage he is leaving, the wounds he is ripping open.

Like, I suspect, many others, I am finding it hard to look at resurgent racism as just one in a series of presidential offenses or another in a series of Republican errors. Racism is not just another wrong. The Antietam battlefield is not just another plot of ground. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is not just another bridge. The balcony outside Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel is not just another balcony. As U.S. history hallows some causes, it magnifies some crimes.

What does all this mean politically? It means that Trump’s divisiveness is getting worse, not better. He makes racist comments, appeals to racist sentiments and inflames racist passions. The rationalization that he is not, deep down in his heart, really a racist is meaningless. Trump’s continued offenses mean that a large portion of his political base is energized by racist tropes and the language of white grievance. And it means — whatever their intent — that those who play down, or excuse, or try to walk past these offenses are enablers.

Some political choices are not just stupid or crude. They represent the return of our country’s cruelest, most dangerous passion. Such racism indicts Trump. Treating racism as a typical or minor matter indicts us."
— Michael Gerson