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1. • CommentAuthorArgos
   • CommentTimeApr 26th 2012

    (10603.1)
   Lately they've been staying profitable by using them to detain immigrants for offenses as small as having a busted rear light on their car. In any case, I was discussing the article with my partner and he totally doesn't buy that specific story, and I can see his point. There's too much about it that doesn't really line up too well. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if it had turned out to be true that someone, somewhere, was using the power of advertising as a means to keep private prisons filled for profit. The private prison system is just so messed up, given that it's profit driven.
2. • CommentAuthorKosmopolit
   • CommentTimeApr 26th 2012 edited

    (10603.2)
   What's really screwed up is that actually repairing existing prisons and abolishing overcrowding by transferring people to new facilities would also be a profitable business - but it'd be attacked as being soft on criminals.
3. •  
     CommentAuthorcelan
   • CommentTimeApr 26th 2012

    (10603.3)
   @dorkmuffin
   Haha. "We got married in a fucking bouncy castle."
4. •  
     CommentAuthorVornaskotti
   • CommentTimeApr 26th 2012

    (10603.4)
   Cold War Surveillance Photography by Czechoslovakian Secret Police
   
   
5. •  
     CommentAuthorEd Jackson
   • CommentTimeApr 27th 2012

    (10603.5)
   Bloody hipster surveillance operatives and their dutch angles. Looks like they put it through instagram too...
6. •  
     CommentAuthortexture
   • CommentTimeApr 27th 2012

    (10603.6)
   @dorkmuffin: GENIUS! I know som many manic pixie dream girls who must see this.
7. • CommentAuthorSoviet Rocket No. 9
   • CommentTimeApr 27th 2012

    (10603.7)
   
8. • CommentAuthorgovernment spy
   • CommentTimeApr 27th 2012 edited

    (10603.8)
   @Argos

   Lately they've been staying profitable by using them to detain immigrants for offenses as small as having a busted rear light on their car.

   While that may be true, I find the bigger picture is most definitely affected by things like this:
   
   No Sanctuary Cities for Illegal Immigration Act written for a Senator of Arizona by an ALEC "Task Force" which inluded The Corrections Corporation of America and the American Bail Association, two groups that would directly benefit from legislation that could increase the state's inmate population.
   
   Specifically, since CCA is one of the main sources of inmate housing for ICE, any legislation increasing illegal immigrant detention would boost CCA's stock dramatically.
   
   This is one of my biggest complaints, when issues of "Big Government is the problem."
   
   Yes, the Government has corruption issues (understatement), but privatizing public services, especially anything law enforcement related, raises even MORE corruption issues. When you make prisons for-profit, and reduce the pay and benefits of all the staff involved, reduce health services and food standards for inmates, the quality of life behind those walls is going to be terrible.
   
   From the Wikipedia article on Private Prisons
   

   Evidence suggests that lower staff levels and training at private facilities may lead to increases in incidences of violence and escapes. A nationwide study found that assaults on guards by inmates were 49 percent more frequent in private prisons than in government-run prisons. The same study revealed that assaults on fellow inmates were 65 percent more frequent in private prisons.

   The idea is that, up front, private prisons cost much less, causing states with budget issues to fire state employees, and contract out their inmate population to CCA, GEO and others. But at the end of the year, after the numbers are run for the cost of inmate vs. inmate and inmate vs. staff assaults, inmate death due to sub par medical care, and all the lawsuits from the victims' families, private prisons cost more in the long run.
   
   That's why places like Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility are getting rid of companies like GEO, and in fact, the entire state of Missisippi is dumping the prison contractor because a Federal Judge says 'the youth prison "has allowed a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions to germinate, the sum of which places the offenders at substantial ongoing risk",' and an investigator says "To have a prison that's chaotic, poorly run, dangerous, didn't provide services, highly sexualized and highly violent really limits the ability of the state to turn those folks around, and to ensure public safety upon their release from prison," Smith said.
   
   So hopefully, after a couple decades of private prisons having their monopoly over the surplus of incarcerated adults and children, states are figuring out that prevention and rehabilitation are going to be cheaper, and actually more cost effective than giving a corporation ownership of these men, women & children. Because that's what a lot of private prisons do; they incarcerate people, give them a job paying from $.05-0.25/hr manufacturing goods, and selling them with the tag MADE IN AMERICA, and claiming that's rehab. It's not, and if it isn't slavery, it's at least indentured servitude.
   
   OK, off my soap box for the moment.
9. • CommentAuthorArgos
   • CommentTimeApr 27th 2012

    (10603.9)
   arrrrgh. I thank you for your soap box, it's always good to get the point of view of someone who actually works with the prison system. Fuck I hate privatization.
10. • CommentAuthoricelandbob
    • CommentTimeApr 27th 2012

     (10603.10)
    Meanwhile - Time & Eric DID NOT make the ad apparently...
    
    
11. • CommentAuthorArgos
    • CommentTimeApr 27th 2012 edited

     (10603.11)
    The new IKEA cardboard camera. It's a pretty funny video. The zoom function is ingenious.
    
12. •  
      CommentAuthorGreasemonkey
    • CommentTimeApr 27th 2012

     (10603.12)
13. •  
      CommentAuthorGreasemonkey
    • CommentTimeApr 27th 2012 edited

     (10603.13)
    Man dies from ball-squeezing during fight over parking space
14. •  
      CommentAuthortwentythoughts
    • CommentTimeApr 27th 2012

     (10603.14)
    Have an apparently-banned Tiny Toons cartoon that does a "dangers of drinking" Very Special Episode while simultaneously spoofing Very Special Episodes. Um. Yeah.
    
    
15. • CommentAuthorSoviet Rocket No. 9
    • CommentTimeApr 27th 2012

     (10603.15)
    
    
    Yesssss? Okay.
16. • CommentAuthorStefanJ
    • CommentTimeApr 27th 2012

     (10603.16)
    @twentyonethoughts:
    
    I saw that one at least twice during the show's run.
    
    I remember it because at one point (3:58) it looks like Plucky may have peed himself . . . on the rewatch, I realized that it might also be a pool of spilled beer.
17. •  
      CommentAuthorVornaskotti
    • CommentTimeApr 28th 2012

     (10603.17)
    
18. • CommentAuthorWood
    • CommentTimeApr 28th 2012

     (10603.18)
    
19. •  
      CommentAuthortaphead
    • CommentTimeApr 28th 2012

     (10603.19)
    @Vornaskotti - While the idea is rather cute, it's always nice to see there's never been anything broadcast from outside the US. (I guess WWII counts as an international production.)
20. • CommentAuthorgovernment spy
    • CommentTimeApr 28th 2012

     (10603.20)
    I remember waiting a long time to get BBC too.