If Jails are Overcrowded, Maybe We Have the Wrong People Locked Up

Facebook is supposed to be a "social network" but they don't give you much space for social awareness. I felt compelled to deliver this message to my friends who spend a good bit of time sharing their feelings, peaks and valleys with all of us. This is a valley I want to share. Indulge, if you will, the original subject that motivated me.

Children don't belong in prison for life... After all... even if they WERE guilty (and that's with jaded justice at best) compare the number of lives they affected vs. the number of lives and families these perverted bastards that adjudicated them have ruined... Or the politicians that appoint them (and we all know their high moral standards...) and a system that not only allows them to remain out of prison but rewards, promotes, covers for and hides them.

These are Senators who reach under a St Louis airport bathroom for a hand job... or a juvenile justice system that sends a young Missouri girl to prison for life for shooting her father on her 18th birthday after being repeatedly molested and sexually abused from an early age...Or Prosecutors' running a drug ring in South Carolina while sweeping an innocent and charming 16 yr old girl into prison for 30 years without parole for being in the company of adults who committed a heinous robbery, unbeknownst to her.

(Note: Krista McDaniel, now at age 24, is one of the most talented poets I've ever read. I've even put some of her poetry to music. I know I want to record some of these songs and I will... but I would sure like to play them for her, in person, first!) You can read about Krista's case on Knight's original children's rights activist site Whoop Ass for Justice.

If these juvenile crimes are worthy of life in prison without the chance for parole, then what do we do with NY state Attorney Generals with hookers on the state payroll? We give them their own freakin' syndicated talk show!

Or NJ Governors who expect taxpayers to fund fu*k dates in Argentina? Or NC Senators that decide, in the middle of a serious Presidential run, it's a good idea to plant a seed in some bimbo while his wife was dying of cancer. Or any of the CEO's cashing $60 million bonus checks after bankrupting their companies, the country, our retirement, while boldly lying to Congress and driving the global economy into the sh*tter? They don't get prison terms... They get re-elected!

What's the penalty for an ex-Blackwater criminal....eeerrrr...thug... eeerrr...Founder, who turns up in Somalia involved in a mercenary program financed by several Arab countries to mobilize some 2,000 Somali troops against its government?

The "penalty" is a new mega-million dollar federal contract to supply arms to insurgents and sponsor African mercenaries in Tunisia amid civil uprisings! Maybe a little like the Iran Contra arms deal with diverted, shadow bank accounts by a certain other President? The "penalty"? Though he personally isn't re-elected, he manages to get his hair-brained son elected President... then rigging his son's re-election with the help of his old CIA buddies and the Supreme Court! Yes, the same a-holes that took over $2 billion dollars from "We the People"'s treasury for non-invoiced services in Iraq and Afghanistan for his Vice President's former company.

No one went to prison. Not even for one F-ing day. Hell, none of them even went up on charges. Just little fall guys... like John Dean and Scooter Libby (later pardoned as lobbyist favors by another corrupt President). Or little guys like Devontae Sanford, or Krista McDaniel, Stacey Linnert, Kurt Danysh, or any of the hundreds more systemic failures of our juvenile justice system on Knight's Justice Winds Blog.

I guess the difference between serving time and getting to write your memoirs, do book tours, or host your own talk show is whether you were born with a silver spoon up your ass or the connections to buy one.

I need to stop reading about these cases ONLY on Facebook, My Space or any of the other websites sponsored by special angels...undoubtedly some of the most caring, compassionate, giving people I have ever met. I was fortunate to have connected with one such angel from Alabama named Knightgale who brought these miscarriages of justice against our children to my attention some 7 years ago.

She raises funds for these kids to be able to read, write and communicate with the outside world. To many of these terminally-incarcerated children, she is the only touch they have with the outside world... a world they will never get to experience as adults. Some of their families have erased the memory of their existence. Fewer stand at Knightgale's side and fight for their child's freedom as ill-equipped as they are to stand against an unjust system. I got involved because I felt compelled to add a couple decibels to the volume of their collective voices.

Knight rides around the country on her Trike, visits them, raises legal fees for them, creates Christmas funds for each of them for supplies, and encourages them that there are still people out here who give a damn about them and are in their corner. She encourages them to remain optimistic about their eventual freedom. She gives hope that Obama only dreams he could deliver.

She continues to fight for and support these kids even when her phone is silent... her mailbox is empty, her website has no hits, and her personal funds exhausted. And still she writes each and every one. She has had multiple surgeries to her aging hands... but refuses to cancel any Biker road trips to visit them... becasue they count on her to be there for them.

I realize that I got a bit far off my main point. My friends and readers expect that. It's why it's called "The Daily Rant". But I wanted my FB friends to know of all of this. If they have the time to Facebook every day, how about breaking off a letter or card to one of these kids and take pride in the fact that you handed a bouquet of flowers to someone who may never be allowed to watch them grow again if someone doesn't intervene on their behalf? I did and their warmth and insight hooked me. I’ve been writing ever since.

Speaking of Facebook, if nothing else you owe it to yourself to have the pleasure to make the acquaintance with a true kindred spirit. Click on my friend, Knightgale’s Facebook, tell her you give a damn, and, as Don Henley writes, “Do Something”.

YEAH, New Daily Rant, but same old by-line...

YOU GET INVOLVED or WE ALL GET SCREWED!

Message for Pepsi Refresh Participants from Kevin Bacon

Covenant House

A Different Christmas Poem (Revised)

I owe a debt of gratitude to my childhood friend, Mary Allen Hammer, for bringing this remix of this great holiday poem to my attention. I want all my fellow ranters to take a moment of watch this video. I mean REALLY watch it... then think about the men and women who have served from your own families and say a prayer for them this holiday season. Regardless of your political persuasion, if you are not choked up and welling up by the end, then as, Craig Ferguson would say, "You should go join the Al Queda." I thank you, Mary, as does the spirit of the favorite cousin I lost in Vietnam and my proud father, who after two purple hearts in WW2 finally lost the fight for his life at age 90.

Love Around The World | Jason Farnham | international world peace song |...

Guitar Watches for Christmas?

My very good friends at WristRock have some great deals on Christmas gifts... perfect for musicians and music fans alike. Check 'em out!

I said I was done with all of this...

I said in the teasers, I am more interested in making a difference than a point. But elections are but every two years. They directly impact the amount of stress most of us (about 98%?) feel in our daily lives. Never before have Washington’s decisions hit so close to home.

Whether you are among the growing masses dependent on fixed income or are soon-to-be… 

Your retirement and investment accounts have tanked or you never had them in the first place…

You are one of the 8-15% unemployed or one of the growing number of Baby Boomers finding they are unemployable…

You are suffering poor health with even poorer health coverage or none at all…

Your home has lost half its value or, if you haven't already,  you're about to lose the other half...

Then you, too, need to care about what happened last night! 

    

I kept my mouth shut for two years to the day and look what happens! I euthanized the Daily Rant the day after the November, 2008, purging of a constipated right-dominant Congress. I supported, blogged and fund-raised for 43 candidates. 39 of them won and, along with us, were supposed to be the people we had been waiting for.

A Black President and control of a self-proclaimed progressive-minded Congress... What could possibly go wrong? Nothing was going to stop us now! True, a couple of cowboys blew a $127 billion surplus and dropped a trillion dollar tab on us on their way out the door. But we’ve worked our way out of Bush holes before. Didn't Bubba Clinton parlay Papa George's $290 billion deficit into a profit? We could do it again. All we needed was control.

So it is, just two years later, progressives are crying in their beer yet again. It is not because we’re stupid, lazy, or complacent that we find ourselves “stuck in Lodi again” with Credence Clearwater Revival. Could we have imagined that our archaic Congressional procedures, primarily unchanged since the Revolutionary War, could result in total systemic paralysis?

There were two agendas all along but we didn't find out until this morning just how sick the Filibusters agenda really was. Our celebratory chest-thumping in 2008 was never meant to be more than what Christine O'Donnell would call masturbation.

Looks like Christie would have fit in with a constipated Senate