Originally published on VICE.com

You likely already know how overcrowded and abusive the US prison system is, and you probably are also aware that the US has more people in prison than even China or Russia. In this age of privatization, of course, it’s also not surprising that many of the detention centers are not actually operated by the government, but by for-profit companies. So clearly, some people are making lots and lots of money off the booming business of keeping human beings in cages.

But who are these people?

Using NASDAQ data, I looked through the long list of investors in Corrections Corporation of America andGEO Group, the two biggest corporations that operate detention centers in the US, to find out who was cashing in the most on prisons. When we say “prison-industrial complex,” this is who we’re talking about.

Henri Wedell
The individual who’s invested the most in private prisons is Henri Wedell, who started serving on CCA’s board of directors in 2000, when the company was struggling with scandals related to prisoner abuse and mismanagement. He now owns more than 650,000 shares in the company, which is far more successful these days. Those shares are worth more than $25 million.

I called Wedell to ask him what it was like to make a fortune from the incarceration of others, and whether it bothered him to profit off a system that puts more people in prison than any other country in the world.

“America is the freest country in the world,” he told me. “America allows more freedom than any other country in the world, much more than Russia and a whole lot more than Scandinavia, where they really aren’t free. So offering all this freedom to society, there’ll be a certain number of people, more in this country than elsewhere, who take advantage of that freedom, abuse it, and end up in prison. That happens because we are so free in this country.”

Presumably, when he’s referring to all the freedom Americans have, he’s not including the 80,000 inmates in 60 prisons operated by CCA.

George Zoley
Another prison profiteer who presumably has no moral qualms about the business is George Zoley, the CEO of GEO Group and the second-biggest investor in the incarceration industry. In fact, he’s so proud of his business, which has committed a laundry list of human rights abuses, he tried to get a college football stadium named after it.

Zoley made nearly $6 million last year through salary and bonuses alone, but the real money is in stocks—he owns more than 500,000 shares in GEO, and he has made $23 million in stock trades during one 18-month period. But you can’t accuse him of not earning his pay, exactly. GEO saw a 56 percent spike in profits in the first quarter of 2013, and the company’s executives reassured investors that the incarceration rate wouldn’t be dropping any time soon when announcing its earnings. Zoley will be mega rich for years to come.

Jeremy Mindich and Matt Sirovich
Both Wedell and Zoley are big donors to the Republican party, but that doesn’t mean those from the left side of the aisle can’t play their game. Matt Sirovich and Jeremy Mindich both donate to Democratic politicians and are involved with progressive-leaning organizations like Root Capital, a nonprofit lending company that offers loans to farmers in developing countries to alleviate poverty.

Their day job, however, is running Scopia Capital, a hedge fund that is the one of the largest shareholders of GEO Group. The fund owns about $300 million in shares in that company, which represents 12 percent of its entire portfolio. Like Zoley, they are good at what they do—their fund outperformed the market by 20 percentage points, and the State of New Jersey hired Scopia to manage $150 million worth of pensions.

I called them up to ask their thoughts about being politically liberal but heavily invested in private prisons, but Mindich refused to answer any questions and Sirovich was unavailable.

It should be pointed out that while being far to the left politically might seem incompatible with investing in prisons (or managing a hedge fund in the first place), the Democratic party is totally fine with the incarceration rate. Although Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan are largely responsible for the drug-war policies that caused the prison population to skyrocket, Bill Clinton was a “tough on crime” president who continued their ideas. And Vice President Joe Biden was a principal player in the Clinton era’s crime policies—he wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which, among other things, called for $9.7 billion in increased funding for prisons and stiffer penalties for drug offenders.

Though the US prison population is shrinking slightly, the number of inmates in federal lockup is increasing, and while Obama keeps saying he’s ending the war on drugs, he’s also proposed budgets that call for increasing the amount of money spent on the Bureau of Prisons. So it’s not such a stretch that a Democratic donor would also be in the men-in-cages industry.

Retired People and Probably You
The Vanguard Group and Fidelity Investments are America’s top two 401(k) providers. They are also two of the private prison industry’s biggest investors.

Together, they own about 20 percent of both CCA and GEO. That means if you have a 401(k) plan, there’s a good chance you benefit financially from private prisons. And even if you don’t, there are many more mutual funds, brokerage firms, and banks that invest in private prisons—it being a growth industry and all—so if you have money somewhere other than your wallet or your mattress, it’s a good bet you’re involved in some way with companies that are locking up and probably abusing inmates.

This is especially true for government employees like public school teachers because their retirement funds are some of the biggest investors in private prisons. According to NASDAQ data, the retirement funds for public employees and teachers in New York and California together have about $60 million ($30 million each) invested in CCA and GEO. Teacher retirement funds in Texas and Kentucky have $8.3 million and $4 million invested in prisons respectively, and public employees in Florida ($10.3 million), Ohio ($8.6 million), Texas ($5.6 million), Arizona ($5.3 million), and Colorado ($2.25 million) are also connected to the industry. Except for New York, which has only one privately run detention facility, each of these states has several prisons run by CCA and GEO Group facilities. And it’s not just Americans who have ties to prisons. Foreign investors have money in them as well, including the pension fund for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which recently sold off its $5.1 million worth of GEO Group stock.

Most of these employees are probably unaware that their pensions are tied to prisons—and it’s hard to say that these are “bad” investments from a purely capitalistic perspective, since these prisons are making money hand over fist. The private prison industry is entrenched in our society. And the only way to make sure that we’re not individually and collectively profiting off of it is to close these things.

A strip-club regular in Rialto, California, was so obsessed with a dancer he went to the club for several months specifically to see her. But when she refused to go home with him one night a few weeks ago, he shot her in the face—and then he shot himself in the head.

The stripper survived and is now in stable condition. The man is dead. And this kind of violence isn’t particularly rare. According to local news reports I’ve been combing through, strip clubs in the US have already seen at least 11 shootings this year, which have resulted in nine deaths. And that number doesn’t even include the bouncer at a Tennessee strip club who was shot with an arrow.

Reasons for the shootings vary. Most of the time, it’s the result of a fight between patrons that gets out of hand, or a drunk who’s thrown out of the club and comes back with a gun for revenge. In a few cases, they were robberies gone wrong.

But what causes the violence? Your regular armchair psychologist might say the combination of booze and boobs causes men to revert to a primal state and try to kill each other. Richard McCleary, one of the few criminologists to have studied this subject, claims that violence happens because strip clubs with lax security attract unsavory people who carry weapons and end up causing violent situations.

The truth is probably a combination of the two theories, with a dash of America’s gun-obsessed culture thrown in. At least, that’s how it is in Alabama.

Alabama has the third-highest rate of gun violence in the country, and the strip-club murder rate is comparably out of control. Between 2010 and 2012, there were at least five strip-club shootings that resulted in four deaths; only Florida and California—two states that are much bigger and have way more strip clubs—can claim more strip-club shootings than Alabama over that period of time. The reason for all the shootings might have something to do with the state’s strict zoning laws, combined with its not-so-strict gun laws. Because people in the Bible Belt don’t want strip clubs too close to their churches, if a strip club is allowed to open, they are typically forced to the outskirts of towns and operate in relative obscurity, far from other businesses and far from police protection. Add this with the fact that Alabama’s gun culture is so intense, state lawmakers are fighting for their citizens’ right to keep guns in their cars at work, and you have a recipe for a lot of shootings.

Curious to see the sites of such strange violence, I stopped by a couple of the clubs where shootings had occurred.

Teasers Show Club

With monthly midget wrestling, a stripper who comes by every once in a while to do magic tricks (sure, why not), and a friendly bartender who spends most of the year working as a chicken farmer in the Phillippines, Teasers Show Club in tiny Wicksburg is probably the most creative strip club in the South.

When I visited, it was about 5 PM in the afternoon and the only people inside were a dancer who had just somehow cut her ankle on the stage, a few patrons sitting by themselves, and the bartender, who was trying to convince a regular to move to the Philippines. The décor was upscale-strip-club tacky with red faux-leather club chairs and plain Christmas lights hanging on the walls. It looked like a nice place. You’d never guess that it was the location of a triple murder.

In August of last year, 22-year-old Ryan Clark Petersen was kicked out of Teasers for grabbing one of the dancers. According to several news reports, he later returned to the club carrying a 9mm semiautomatic pistol and shot and killed the bouncer, a dancer, and the club owner’s son.

Petersen fled, but police dogs found him half naked seven hours later in a wooded area less than a mile from the club. He’s now facing multiple counts of capital murder—he’s pled not guilty by reason of mental illness or defect, but he committed the murders in Houston County, which is one of the highest death-penalty-sentencing counties in the country.

If you visit, make sure to go when they have the midget wrestling. “You’ll laugh your ass off for hours,” the bartender told me.

The Toy Box

Walking down the main street of Prichard, located just outside Mobile, I saw nothing but dilapidated storefronts, pieces of what used to be sidewalk benches, and the Toy Box—a strip club with a broken BBQ grill out front where a rapper named Young Icey made a video to promote his new track, “Pregnant Pussy.”

It might not look like much on the outside, but inside it was the most happening spot in Prichard (not much competition, but hey). To get in, I had to pay a guy who stays in an elevated booth by the main entrance. I didn’t see him until he yelled at me to stop and then yelled at one of the bouncers to pat me down. But the discomfort was worth it because inside there was a big booty dancer in rainbow-colored spandex grinding on the stage to Dirty South rap.

The Toy Box’s brush with fame occurred on December 28, 2011, when a man named Aaron Dunning was kicked out for “rude behavior,” according to news reports. He returned with a gun and allegedly shot the manager and the bouncer, both in the leg, before fleeing in a red Cadillac. Neither were seriously injured, but the manager walks around the club these days with a limp. And there are several bouncers in front.

Dunning, who was acquitted on murder charges in 2004, was charged with two counts of second-degree assault and one count of shooting a gun into an occupied building. But according to public records, he was never convicted.

If you go, go late—I arrived at 11 PM and the DJ was sitting on the bus bench in front waiting for the manager to open up.

Originally published 4/11 on VICE.com

The first time I saw a gun was in high school, when a stoned friend of mine decided it would be funny to point one at my head.

Five very long seconds later, he put the gun down, laughed his ass off, and I didn’t end up on the local news that night. But with the state of the debate over guns the way it is, I can’t help but think that if I had been killed like that, gun rights advocates would use the case to prove their point that we need more guns, not fewer. They would have said that my death just proves that crazy people on drugs need to be put in jail so they don’t shoot people. Or they’d say that somebody else with a gun should have been around to shoot my friend before he shot me.

I’ve been having trouble understanding these lines of reasoning, so I called up Don Kates—one of the men responsible for the progun rhetoric of today.

Kates is a Yale-educated lawyer who started his legal career fighting for civil rights in the South during the 1960s. A few years later, however, he ended up at the NRA, crafting legal arguments and publishing academic papers that defended the Second Amendment and inspiring many of the gun rights mantras people use today. His work has been used over the years by lawyers on behalf of gun rights and was an important factor in Justice Antonin Scalia’s decision in DC v. Heller, the Supreme Court case that ruled individuals, as opposed to militias, have a constitutional right to own and use a gun.

That case is a big reason you hear a lot of people these days saying, “What part of ‘shall not be infringed’ don’t you understand?” And Kates is a big reason gun rights proponents are so confident they are right.

VICE: You describe yourself as a long-time liberal Democrat. So how did you become a gun rights scholar who worked for the NRA?
Don Kates: From my teenage years, I had always had an affection for guns. And when I was a law student, I became a civil rights worker with the Law Students Civil Rights Defense Council, an organization that’s probably been defunct for decades.

As a civil rights worker in the South, I carried various guns—as did many other whites in the movement—for protection. And Southern black civil rights activists were almost all armed, since they were largely rural Southerners. I recall one night when I sat watch outside the home of a black teacher who had been threatened along with five or six blacks. I was underarmed since what I had was the ineffectual M1 carbine. I didn’t know any better. The blacks with whom I was sitting watch all had shotguns or battle rifles.

The image of gun-toting civil rights activists is one that’s rarely depicted, especially given their reputation of nonviolence. But there were guns around. Even Martin Luther King, Jr. allegedly had an “arsenal” in his home. Why do you think it’s not talked about very often?
I assume that is because it would contradict the pacifist image of civil rights activists. The publicity we received came from journalists who were themselves quasi pacifist and antigun, so self-defense and gun ownership were not things they were attuned to, much less what they wanted to portray.

You’ve said that you don’t support openly carrying weapons, but your arguments have been used by those who do, like the guys who walk around organic coffee shops in Portland with loaded assault rifles. Do you have any regrets about supporting these kinds of people?
There are people who seem to use their gun as a statement. They walk around with it like a declaration of their views. I’ve never done that sort of thing and it does seem to me to be extreme, although I wouldn’t condemn it—I just think it’s foolish. I agree with their statement, I don’t think they need to express it that way.

What about militias who want to make more than a statement?
The militia movement seems to me to be a misunderstanding of the Second Amendment. A militia is something that’s authorized and chartered by the government, which they are not. Look, I’m not opposed to them having guns or operating collectively with guns. But they’re not what George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would have called a militia.

But as a general proposition, I don’t regret what I’ve said and my conclusions in various scholarly articles. I believe, as the Founding Fathers did, that law-abiding people owning and carrying guns is a positive and useful thing.

The US has a lot of gun crime. But gun rights groups tend to say that the only way to stop it is with more guns. Please explain this to me.
If we want to stop gun crime tomorrow, all we need to do is build a bunch of federal prisons and declare if you were found with a gun and you had a felony, you go to jail for 15 years. But that doesn’t happen now because we don’t have the prisons—our prisons are full of other criminals. And we’re not willing to spend the money to build the prisons and hire people to run the criminal-justice system until the people who commit these crimes are all in prison.

There are less than a million violent criminals—they’re a tiny minority. And if we wanted to, we could put them all away. But it costs too much money, so we don’t.

But the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. So do you think we’re just putting the wrong people in prison?
No, we’re not putting in anywhere near enough! It’s not a failure of the law, it’s a failure of the law-enforcement people. And a failure of the entire society in not being willing to build more jails and staff those jails.

Should there be any limits to what kinds of guns or ammo people should be able to have?
No. But there are some people who shouldn’t be able to get them, like people who have felony convictions. There should be a lot more enforcement of those laws.

But a person isn’t a criminal until he commits a crime. And if he buys an assault rifle and uses it to commit his first crime, isn’t it too late?
It would be if it was a widespread phenomenon. But virtually every murderer has a long criminal record. Sometimes their crimes have only been misdemeanors, but that is deceptive. Patrick Purdy used an AK-47 to attack a schoolyard in Stockton, California, in 1989 and he killed a teacher, five children, and himself. He legally bought those guns in California. Why? Because his previous robberies and other felonies had all been charged as misdemeanors by lazy prosecutors who didn’t want to take the effort to convict him of a felony.

What are your thoughts on the recent compromise on background checks for gun purchases reached in the Senate this week?
As a constitutional matter, I see no objection to background checks. As a prudential matter, they cost far more than they accomplish. Criminals do not buy guns at retail nor in any manner that background checks would deal with. But, given the vast amounts of waste in federal spending, the addition of one more wasteful program does not disturb me that much.

What about closing the gun-show loophole? Wouldn’t that help prevent criminals from getting guns?
In theory, it might help in a few cases, but I am unaware of any data showing that criminals get guns from gun shows. They rely on relatives, friends, or the black market. Expanding background checks, though not irrational, is unlikely to help much.

Originally published 4/8/13 on Raycom News Network

(RNN) – While the federal government grapples over national gun control, several states are entering the debate by raising or lowering taxes on guns and ammunition. The results reflect the stark philosophical divide over gun rights in America.

“There’s a real war going on between the two sides over what kind of culture we’re going to have around guns,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and author of Gun Fight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.

“Some states are doing everything they can to make it easier to get guns; some states are doing everything they can to make it a little harder, including ammunition,” he added.

States attempting to tighten gun control say they want to reduce gun violence. The states wanting to loosen gun restrictions think lower taxes will lead to an economic boon.

States that have passed or are considering taxes on ammunition include California, Maryland, Massachusetts and Nevada. The proposals range from as low as 2 cents per round in Nevada to a 50 percent sales tax in Maryland.

Connecticut lawmakers also proposed a 50 percent tax on ammunition, but it did not make the final cut of a far-reaching gun control bill that passed the state house last Wednesday and Gov. Dannel Malloy signed into law a day later. The bill includes ammunition magazine restrictions, tougher background checks and more restrictions on assault weapons.

Lawmakers who favor the higher taxes say the increased revenues will help fund mental health services and programs helping to curb and cope with gun violence.

“This legislation is meant to offer treatment to those who need it in the pursuit of both decreasing gun violence and creating a healthier society overall,” Maryland Delegate Jon S. Cardin told the Cumberland Times-News. Cardin’s outlook is shared by several other state politicians who favor higher taxes on ammunition.

At the other end of the spectrum are several states that are considering legislation to weaken gun restrictions. Among them are Kentucky, where State Rep. Bob Damron, a Democrat, has proposed a controversial bill that would “not recognize federal statutes and regulations that deny or abridge the right to keep and bear arms,” according to openstates.org.

In stark contrast to the states hoping to raise taxes on guns, Alabama State Rep. Wes Long, a Republican, wants to eliminate the state tax on ammunition. He says this will result in increased revenue from out-of-state hunters coming to Alabama to buy their gear.

An economic opportunity for ‘gun-friendly’ states?

Long’s proposal is mathematically risky in Alabama, which is among the poorest states in the country and hungry for revenue. He estimates that the state would lose $5 million in tax revenue, which he hopes will be made up by increased revenue in other areas, mainly hunting.

But for that to happen, the total tax revenue from all hunting activities would have to increase by more than 20 percent just to make up for the lost $5 million, according to hunting revenue statistics by the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.

But increased revenue is not the only reason Long hopes to eliminate ammunition tax.

Several gun manufacturers in states advocating tighter gun laws have warned that they might pack their bags if those laws get too strict.

“It’s hard enough to do business in Connecticut in general,” said the CEO of Stag Arms, according to WFSB. “It’s going to be even harder to if such laws get passed.”

If they do leave, Long wants them to come to Alabama.

“I think [the bill] says to the company that ‘I don’t have to worry about the government putting me out of business and condemning what I do,’” Long said, adding that Alabama’s anti-union laws are also attractive to manufacturers.

“It tells them that ‘these guys support us and I don’t have to worry about politics getting in the way of my business model,’” he added.

Long says prices have become too high and restrict people’s rights to bear arms.

“I think the Second Amendment doesn’t offer much protection if you don’t have ammunition,” Long said.

He has even nicknamed his bill the “Second Amendment tax cut.”

Long’s attempt to create legislation that attracts gun manufacturers is part of a trend among “gun-friendly” states to woo gun manufacturers away from states with heavy gun restrictions.

After Colorado passed a new set of gun laws, Texas Gov. Rick Perry sent a letter to Magpul Industries, the largest gun manufacturer in the Rocky Mountain state, urging the company to relocate to the Lone Star state.

In Alaska, a Facebook page urged Magpul to move north.

Conservatives in New Hampshire also sent invitations to Beretta, a gun manufacturer with a factory in Maryland, inviting the company to move its operations, as well.

A newspaper in New Hampshire harshly criticized the move in an editorial.

“The slaughter of innocents in Newtown is seen by a group of conservative legislators not as grounds for increased gun restrictions but as a potential economic development tool,” said an editorial in the Valley News, a New Hampshire newspaper.

Philosophical disagreement leaves unfinished problems

The “war” that Winkler describes as happening in the current gun debate is seen in the varying law proposals, but its roots are in the different philosophies behind the right to bear arms. For many anti-gun control advocates, the belief is that not only is any gun restriction a degree of infringement on the Second Amendment, but that restrictions or taxes will never have positive effects on safety.

Don Kates, a former law professor who has been hugely influential in shaping pro-gun ideology says extra taxes on ammunition would be unlikely to affect on gun violence.

“If somebody really wanted to kill somebody, do you think an extra $1.50 for a bullet is going to stop him?” Kates asked rhetorically.

Kates, whose work was cited by Justice Antonin Scalia in District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark Supreme Court case that strengthened the individual’s right to bear arms, also opposes using gun and ammo taxes to fund mental health or anti-violence campaigns.

“It would be perfectly viable to fund those programs through a general fund, but there’s no reason to burden gun owners specifically,” he said.

However, the total financial cost of deaths by firearms was $37 billion in 2005, the last year for which numbers are available, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The total includes the medical and work-loss costs for all deaths by firearms, including accidents, suicides, and homicides.

And each year, more than 31,000 people are killed by guns in the U.S., including 19,000 due to suicide and 11,000 deaths due to gun homicide, according to the CDC.

How to deal with those costs appears to remain a political battle.

Copyright 2013 Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.

A former prostitute turned loudmouth rap groupie seems like an unlikely poster child for the immigration movement in the US. But not only has Kat Stacks become a symbol for DREAMers—undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children and are fighting to stay—her story is so American, it should be printed on the flag…

Read the rest on VICE.

Originally published on Vice.com 3/28

When most Westerners think of Buddhism, they think of smiling men with potbellies and inspirational quotes from Phil Jackson. “Buddhist neo-Nazi” sounds like a contradiction in terms.

But in Burma, vicious anti-Muslim sentiment has been on the rise, and Buddhist extremists are responsible for attacking Muslims and burning down their houses and mosques, a state of affairs that was largely ignored until Anonymous launched a Twitter campaign to teach the world about the genocide against the Rohingya people, the officially stateless Muslims who many believe will be massacred if the world does not respond.

According to Dr. Muang Zarni, a Burmese human rights activist and research fellow at the London School of Economics, much of the blame for the current situation in Burma can be laid at the feet of the 969 group, which he describes as an neo-Nazi organization of hatemongers who are using Hitlerian tactics to “purify” the country by getting rid of the Muslims—it’s also, he says, one of the fastest-growing movements in the country.

I spoke to Dr. Zarni to find out more about what’s going on in Burma and how a Buddhist can be a “Nazi.”

Read the rest on Vice…

Originally published 3/12/13 on Raycom News Network

(RNN) – Most conversations about food don’t take the form of a political discussion. But with fewer companies in charge of the food we eat, rising costs, and chemicals and additives that only trained scientists can recognize, the word “crisis” is being used more and more to describe the state of the American food industry.

Wenonah Hauter, the author or Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America, aims to give readers insight into why she believes this is a critical time for the nation and its food supply. She explains how anti-trust laws put more power in fewer hands and spawned mega food producers and how farming and water subsidies created a form of corporate welfare that millions of people pay into but don’t get anything back.

We spoke to Hauter to ask about some of the topics her book explores.

Food is something that affects everybody in the U.S., no matter who they are. Why do you think food politics is not talked about as often as some other “hot-button” political issues?

I think that most people don’t realize the impact that public policy is having on the food that they eat. They don’t realize that there are 20 large food processing companies that control most of the brands in the grocery store and that these companies wield a lot of power that they dictate the policies around what chemicals people are exposed to, how their food is produced, and the price.

When a consumer goes into the grocery store, it looks like there are thousands of brands. But there are really just a handful of companies that own most of those brands. And then we also have four large grocery chains, with Walmart at the top, that control the retail sales of food. And since these companies have so much political power, I think that it has disguised the importance of food policy and the impact these companies are having – on not just the price people are paying for food, but the health impacts as well.

Are people paying more or less for their food as a result of mass consolidation in the food industry?

We’re told America has a cheap food supply. But when you look at the numbers, it turns out over the last 10 years, each year the price of food has increased by 3 percent. And we are told by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that Americans spend about 9 percent of their disposable income on food.

But when you look at the details, what they consider disposable income is, they average everybody’s salary or wealth of the U.S. and then they count pension benefits, food stamps, health benefits, women and children programs – things most of us don’t consider disposable income. The Bureau of Labor Statistics – another federal agency – actually has a statistic that’s much more informative. It says that the bottom 40 percent of Americans spend over 36 percent of their income on food. So yes, there are some cheap food items people can buy – mostly just junk food – but to get a really decent diet, it does take a substantial amount of many Americans’ income.

In your book, you point out that four companies control 66 percent of all pork, 58 percent of boiler chickens, and 80 percent of all beef. Why is this a negative thing and what should people know when they purchase factory-farmed meat?

First of all, they should know how these animals are being raised in these confined feeding operations because the animals are being raised in such tight quarters. For instance, poultry in a giant warehouse, 300,000 to 400,000 chickens have less than a square foot of space to turn around and are living in one another’s feces. These animals are vulnerable to disease, so they are fed antibiotics. This is spurring antibiotic resistance and we’re basically wasting important properties of antibiotics to feed them to these factory-farmed animals. And people should be concerned about that.

Also, they should be concerned with how these animals are being processed once they reach the slaughter facilities. To be profitable, these companies have raised the speed of which animals are slaughtered. And in the poultry industry, they are actually trying to make it legal to slaughter chickens at 200 birds per minute. Yes, that’s per minute, if you can imagine the lightning speed slaughtering birds that quickly. That means the fecal matter splashes on the carcass. And because the USDA meat inspectors can’t really see what’s going on because the carcass is moved so quickly, the companies are using chemical washes, things like trisodium phosphate and chlorine to kill the bacteria.

You know, I don’t think most Americans want to eat fecal matter, even if the bacteria is rendered harmless and I think most Americans would be shocked to know how the animals that they eat are being raised and processed.

Your book also talks about how food industry giants influence government policy to allow for more deregulation. How did this come about?

Well, what happened is, over the last three or four decades, the laws that prevented companies from merging and acquiring one another were erased, anti-trust cops were taken off the beat, and that has allowed companies to get so large and to have so much political and economic power that they’re basically buying public policy.

A good example is the merger that’s going on in the beer industry right now. Most people don’t know that the beer industry has become increasingly consolidated and we basically have two companies that are foreign-owned that sell most of the beer in the United States. Only 6 percent of breweries are craft or independent breweries. And now there’s a merger that the Department of Justice is looking at that will mean the favorite beverage brands from Budweiser and Beck’s to Stella and Michelob will basically be controlled by one company. And with these companies having a price war, it means the price of beer will go way up.

So these are the things that matter when companies get bigger and when the companies actually drive public policy. You know, we hear a lot in our country about our economic system being based on competition, but these companies are using their political power to stop competition and I don’t think that’s the American way.

What are some things people can do to improve the food industry?

Our nation has a really long history of social movements coming together to bring change. And I think the time has come for people to not only vote with their forks, but to vote with their vote and to hold the politicians accountable. And that means we have to politicize food activists to actually engage in changing the federal policies that have resulted in this dysfunctional food system. And you know, I’m given a lot of hope by the activism that I see all over the country because we need to organize across the country. So much focus has been put on the east coast and west coast where people are more engaged in these issues. It’s time for us to really do a lot of work in other parts of the country, in the south and in the Midwest. In fact, we need to organize in every congressional district in this country. And the way to politicize people is to engage them in the issues that affect their own lives. And then people are drawn into the bigger issues, the bigger policy issues at a state or federal level.

Copyright 2013 Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.

Originally published 3/8/13 on Raycom News Network.

MONTGOMERY, AL (RNN) – From Chick-fil-A to chicken wings, the average American eats more than 50 pounds of chicken each year.

But according to a new report, the workers who process chicken for the largest poultry companies in the country are exposed to harmful conditions. And if new USDA rules go into effect, they will get worse and could put the health of consumers at risk.

The report, “Unsafe at These Speeds,” was conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice. It is based on interviews with more than 300 current and former poultry workers.

One of the interviewees described the average chicken processing plant as a “house of pain,” where workers are under pressure to work at breakneck speeds, making them susceptible to an array of injuries and exposing them to harmful chemicals.

Higher than normal incidents of carpal tunnel, back pains

Part of the problem is the nature of the job. Work at a chicken processing plant involves a great deal of repetitive motion in cold temperatures, making workers highly vulnerable to carpal tunnel syndrome and gnarled fingers. And because there are no set ergonomic standards in these workplaces, poultry processors do little to prevent the dangerous conditions, the report says.

“Poultry workers are two and a half times more likely to have carpal tunnel than non-poultry workers,” Dr. Susan Quandt, who has studied the health issues of poultry workers in North Carolina.

Quandt added that there are higher than normal reports of musculo-skeletal injuries, shoulder injuries, and lower back injuries among poultry workers caused by the repetitive work, awkward postures, and lack of ergonomic standards.

There have also been cases of poultry workers developing pachydermodactyly, a rare condition also known as “elephant fingers,” that causes chronically swollen knuckles and burning joint pains. Quandt believes the condition is caused by repeated minor trauma to the fingers, which is necessary for poultry hangers, the workers responsible for hanging chicken carcasses on conveyor belt hooks.

Lung diseases reported

When workers try to seek medical treatment, they are threatened with termination and, for the many undocumented workers in the poultry industry, deportation, the report claims.

“[Workers] are discouraged from reporting work-related injuries and forced to endure constant pain,” said Tom Fritzsche, author of the report. “They are also discouraged from slowing down the processing line – even when they’re hurt.”

Respiratory illnesses among poultry workers have also been reported. Natashia Ford worked at a Wayne Farms chicken processing plant in Northern Alabama for six years. During that time, she developed histoplasmosis, a lung disease similar to tuberculosis that’s caused by breathing airborne spores at the plant, the SPLC report said.

The company initially refused to pay Ford’s medical bills. But after she sued, they agreed to pay a portion of her medical expenses.

Ford also said that because the plant did not provide adequate protective gear, “chicken juices” – the liquid and chemical runoff from chicken carcasses – would seep into her eyes, ears and mouth. That was a common complain among poultry workers in the report.

New USDA rules could affect consumers’ health, says advocacy groups

The SPLC report warns that poultry processing conditions will worsen if the USDA implements new rules that would allow poultry producers to increase their chicken processing line speeds from the current maximum of 140 birds per minute to 175 per minute.

In addition, the new rules will decrease the number of health inspectors from four per line to only one.

“The lines are so fast, one-third of a second per bird,” said Phyllis McKelvey, a USDA inspector who retired in 2010, according to the report. “You tell me you can thoroughly inspect that bird for disease and contaminants in one-third of a second?”

The SPLC report and food advocates contend that rule change will increase the possibility that disease-ridden chickens will end up on Americans’ plates. Line speeds are already too fast to adequately inspect the chickens, they say, and increasing the speed while decreasing inspectors is a recipe for disaster.

The USDA contends that their new methods will involve washing chicken carcasses in a chemical solution, making elimination of food-borne illnesses easier and more accurate.

It will also mean fewer inspectors needed, saving the federal government $90 million over three years. But the big winner will be the poultry industry, which will save $256 million annually in production costs.

Food and Water Watch, a consumer advocacy group, has criticized the supposed safety of the new process. According to documents provided by the USDA, the group found several plants where the new methods are being used missed birds with defects, including bruises, tumors and fecal matter. Among the plants were several processors for Pilgrim’s Pride, which provides chicken for several fast food giants, including KFC, Taco Bell and Chick-fil-A.

Improved workers rights urged

Among its many recommendations to improve standards, the SPLC report urges the USDA to decrease line speeds and for OSHA to reinstate a federal ergonomic standard with a slower work pace to prevent carpal tunnel and other musculo-skeletal injuries.

The report also urges the state of Alabama – the third-largest poultry producing state in the country and where the poultry industry makes up 10 percent of the state economy – to enact a Meatpacking Workers Bill of Rights, similar to what Nebraska has. The goal is to improve employees’ working standards and rights to workers’ compensation.

The job safety and health standards of Alabama, Georgia and Arkansas – the three leading poultry producing states – are not among the 27 states approved by OSHA as being at least as effective as federal standards.

The National Chicken Council, a trade group for poultry processors, did not comment on the claims made by employees in the SPLC report. However, the group said there is no evidence to prove increasing line speeds will result in more injuries, and the industry will continue to improve worker safety.

“While the past 25 years has seen a dramatic decrease in the numbers and rates of injury and illnesses occurring in the industry, [we] will continue to seek new and innovative ways to protect our workforce,” said Tom Super, vice president of communications for the NCC.

Copyright 2013 Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.

Originally published March 1, 2013 on Raycom News Network.

(RNN) – The federal sequester that will cut military spending has spawned concern that hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost and the country will be less safe. But is that an exaggeration or a sign that the military is an indispensable part of the economy?

One of the major sources of the frightening job loss numbers is a study published by George Mason University and paid for by the Aerospace Industries Association, a lobbying group for several large defense companies, including Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The study says the sequester’s defense cuts will cause more than a million jobs to disappear.

Many studies dispute the report, arguing that the job loss claims are exaggerated. However, those are the numbers that are the most cited, and therefore, most believed.

Stephen Fuller, an economics professor at George Mason University, is the author of the 2012 study, and he explains that a major reason so many jobs could be lost is because less defense spending will cause an overall decrease of spending in areas where defense contractors and military bases are important to the local community.

“There are probably a few economies that are too dependent [on military spending],” he said. “You find that around a military base. An economy that grows around a military base has no option when that military base closes down or gets smaller. It takes a lot of other businesses with them.”

But Fuller stops short of saying that the overall economy is too dependent. He also says that the question of whether the U.S. spends too much on defense is difficult to answer because of the need for security in what he calls a dangerous world that America needs to police.

“This is the general operating budget that keeps the Chinese from taking over Taiwan and keeps North Koreans north of the border,” Fuller said. “It keeps peace in the world and we’ve taken on that role now for 70 years since World War II. And it’s sort of hard not to do that because the world is a mess – and if there isn’t a strong military authority in the world then it’s going to be much less civilized.”

Is the military being used as a jobs program?

Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a veteran of the U.S. Navy, says Fuller’s findings are grossly exaggerated because it concentrates solely on the loss of government spending while ignoring the gains.

“Everything in the economy that is extracted by the government, whether it’s by taxes or by debt, is in lieu of other activity in the economy. And that’s the problem with these studies,” he said. “They only look at the effects the spending has and not what removing that money from the economy in the first place has.”

As an example, Preble says that when the government doesn’t spend $1 billion on defense, that is theoretically $1 billion less in taxation or $1 billion that can be paid towards the deficit to prevent future taxation.

Preble also explained that even though job losses are difficult for those who experience them, many defense workers will be equipped to transfer their skills to other markets. As an example, he points to Boeing, which was once highly dependent on military spending, but over time, it diversified enough to become more of a commercial aircraft manufacturer. That means workers once employed to create military aircraft were later able to create commercial airliners.

But not everyone will be able to transfer their skills that easily. However, Preble says that retraining for a changing economy is something that many people have to deal with, and defense workers should not be an exception.

“We accept that in a dynamic economy people will lose their jobs – it’s just the nature of a dynamic economy,” he said, adding that the military should only spend what it needs to keep the country safe rather than acting as a Great Depression-style jobs program.

“What really should drive how much we spend on the military is how much we need to defend ourselves. And if we don’t need those things to defend ourselves, then we should stop making them.”

He added: “Why would we [invest more money in the military] if it’s not actually needed to defend us? I don’t trust the federal government to hire people just to keep them employed by digging holes and filling them in again.”

Preble also warns that safety is not necessarily measured by how much money is spent on defense – and spending too much can have severe consequences.

“The Soviet Union invested roughly 25 percent of their economy on their military and it was a disaster. It was a disaster for their people and it didn’t ultimately deliver security because their military still wasn’t that good,” he said.

Not the first time defense cuts have been made

Fuller doesn’t have an answer to whether the military should cut back on spending.

“That’s for Congress and generals to decide,” he said.

But he warns against doing so too quickly, both to lessen the economic impact and to prepare the military for the changes a smaller budget would require.

“They’re saying they don’t have another half a trillion to give up without threatening the military to be able to perform its required duties,” Fuller said.

He added that some cuts have already been implemented with the Budget Control Act of 2011, which required the Department of Defense to reduce spending by $500 billion.

Despite the seemingly inevitable reductions in defense spending on the horizon, Fuller said that big cuts in defense spending have happened before and despite the possible shock, the economy will adjust.

“We’ve gone through this before,” he said. “We cut back the military in 86 under the Reagan administration and after the Berlin Wall fell. And businesses adjust to it.”

Copyright 2013 Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.

Originally published Feb. 27, 2013 on Raycom News Network.

(RNN) -The defense industry and the military are the two groups complaining the loudest about job losses that will be caused by sequestration, but they also happen to be the two that profit most from defense spending remaining high. Some sources claim their numbers are skewed.

A 2012 study by George Mason University funded by a lobby group for several defense contractors is one of the most commonly cited sources predicting sequestration’s impacts on the defense industry.

The study, paid for by Aerospace Industries Association,  claims that more than 1 million defense jobs will be lost. That estimate includes direct job losses, such as those in shipbuilding factories, as well as indirect job losses, which come as a result of less money spent in communities where defense is an important industry.

For example, fewer defense workers going to lunch in Newport News, VA, as a result of sequestration cuts could mean a restaurant would have to lay off workers.

“For every $1 in DOD spending reductions for military equipment, an additional $2.64 in sales losses will be experienced by other businesses with 71 percent of these lost sales occurring as a result of decreased consumer spending by workers directly and indirectly affected these DOD spending reductions,” the study claims.

The AIA study claims indirect job losses will be nearly twice as much as direct job losses: 654,315 vs. 352,000.

The U.S. Army’s study also attempts to demonstrate the impact of job losses, but concentrates mainly on direct job losses, including civilian DOD employees and contractors.

However, their defense job loss numbers are similar to the AIA’s, predicting 302,626 more people in the unemployment line creating a total economic impact of about $15 billion.

The numbers sound dire and have been widely repeated by pundits and politicians from both parties as well as the president.

On Feb. 26, President Barack Obama gave a speech at a shipbuilding factory in Virginia, one of the states whose economy relies most on defense spending.

“The sequester will weaken America’s economic recovery,” Obama told thousands of workers, adding that the sequester would mean choosing between “This Navy shipyard or some other one.”

And while many of Obama’s Republican foes might agree with that statement, some experts say the numbers are just wrong.

AIA’s numbers an ‘extreme projection’

Deloitte, a financial and consulting firm, released a study in 2012 on the defense and aerospace industry and found that there are approximately 3.53 million jobs – direct, indirect, and induced – attached to the defense industry.

But the AIA’s claims of more than a million jobs lost because of sequestration sounds too high to Peter W. Singer, Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institute.

“If 1.09 million direct, indirect, and induced jobs were lost from the 10 percent cut of sequestration, that would mean nearly a third of the overall jobs sustained by the industry would evaporate – an extreme projection to say the least,” he wrote.

Singer compared the AIA numbers to congressional testimony by Bob Stevens, the CEO of Lockheed, which is the largest defense contractor in the world. Stevens said sequester cuts would force his firm to lay off up to 10,000 workers.

And according to Singer, that’s a better estimate of how many jobs will be lost to sequestration.

“Stevens’ estimate was a far more sensible projection, as that is approximately 8.3 percent of his workforce, not a third, far more in line with the scale of the potential cuts,” Singer wrote.

As for the ripple effects of indirect job losses as a result of sequestration, Singer pointed out that the AIA’s estimates vary wildly from defense companies and the government.

For every $1 million the government cuts on defense spending, 24 jobs are lost, the AIA claims.

The projection doesn’t jibe with similar presentations showing jobs created per $1 million spent submitted by companies attempting to win defense contracts.

But in a 2011 competition to win a $35 billion contract from the DOD, Boeing and Northrop Grumman/EADS each claimed they would create about 48,000 jobs, which comes out to 1.37 jobs for every $1 million spent.

And the Department of Commerce’s numbers were even lower, claiming the contract would have created 25,000 jobs, less than one job for every $1 million spent.

Of course, these are just projections that do not take into account several other necessary factors to get accurate estimates. But going by what two major defense companies and the Department of Commerce went by, defense job losses caused by sequestration total fewer than 50,000.

That’s a big number and the impact would be devastating to those who are personally affected, but far fewer than the 1 million job losses projected by the defense industry and the military.

Copyright 2013 Raycom News Network. All rights reserved