[MinuteGal]

We're going to have to build so many multi-million dollar prison facilities in this country it'll make building the new World Trade Center look like a two-bit project.

Leni

[AuntB]

We're going to have to build so many multi-million dollar prison facilities in this country it'll make building the new World Trade Center look like a two-bit project.

Not by accident either, Leni.

Private prisons are BIG business and they contribute BIG $ to candidates. The president has benefited from it along with many politicians. When you look at them they are the same politicos who push 'immigration reform'. Illegal aliens are good business for the private prison industry.

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bio/fec/?commid=C00366468&page=campaigns&order=TOTAL&cycle=2003-2004

And then you have Philip Perry, who recently resigned as head council for Homeland Security under a cloud of suspicion, a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin and Corrections Corp, a private prison system.

http://sopr.senate.gov/cgi-win/m_opr_viewer.exe?DoFn=3&LOB=PERRY,%20PHILIP%20J.&LOBQUAL==

Who is Phil Perry?

http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/2007/02/exposing-dept-of-job-security-who-is.html

[AuntB]

More on private prisons and their influence. See previous post also.

http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2004/10/cca_and_cracker.html

[snip]

CCA, the nation’s largest private prison company, has credited the Bush administration’s expansion of federal police for creating new business for the firm.

Three times, the Corrections Corporation of America Political Action Committee made $15,000 donations to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. A number of $5,000 donations went to the Bush-Cheney campaign, the New Republican Majority Fund, and other GOP money groups.

Of the $149,500 doled out by the company’s PAC in the 2004 election cycle, 96 percent went to Republicans around the country.

The $5,000 spent on Democrats went to Tennessee politicians- Reps. Jim Cooper, Lincoln Davis, John Tanner and Harold Ford Jr., according to data from the Federal Election Commission.

Money was also doled out to candidates from states where CCA has deals to run prisons, such as Colorado, Georgia and Florida.

Dick Williams, state chairman for Common Cause of Tennessee, a Nashville-based government watchdog group, said it’s obvious that CCA is trying to buy influence.

CCA wins when politicians from the local to federal level decide to send prisoners to its private jails, he said.