Are There No Workhouses??

Last year Republican legislators in Tennessee wanted to tie benefits for food, clothing and shelter to a child's grades in school. Now there's another execrable idea targeting needy children again. At least this chucklehead is from Georgia.

The idea: make poor kids sweep up the lunchroom in order to be fed. 

He also opines kids lack work ethics at schools and they do nothing yet earn respect and benefits. He joins the Mythmakers who think schools are the hard scrabble exclusive proving grounds teaching that it's a dog-eat-dog world.

Go into any school and I'll promise you you'll find students working on many assigned jobs, from cleaning to oversight of classrooms, grounds, and more. All students are involved, regardless of their parents' income.

And yeah, you will change the world if you demonize hungry children. Just not for the better.

Court Porn and Prisons For Profit

The seemingly inexhaustible Organs for Outrage gobbles up one life after another, a ravenous appetite worthy of the monster of some ancient myth.

A recent feast arrives via the Texas court case of a 16 year old boy from a wealthy family who is guilty of killing 4 and paralyzingly another. The judge accepted the notion his fabulously well to do life excused him from jail time and instead ordered the boy spend time in a rehab center and stay on probation for 10 years. Cue the Outrage.

Does America have a slathering hunger for tales of crime and punishment? The huge numbers of "court/judge tv shows" or the insatiable court porn via shows like that of Nancy Grace point to a real hunger. 

However it could just be that so many Americans have experienced long and short encounters with the judicial system that the attraction is made more of shared experiences than gallows addiction.

I'm leaning towards that idea, given that jails today are the fertile lands of for profit companies which demand states sign decades-long contracts with guarantees that states keep the jails at 90% or higher occupancy rates.

While society benefits most from a prison/judicial system which re-educates and rehabilitates offenders, private corporations benefit most from endless inmates, harsher sentencing, and un-rehabilitated offenders. 

SEE ALSO: "A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 showed that a record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail." (Via)