#freedom of religion

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Greedflation, but for prisoners

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW (Apr 21) in TORINO, then Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Today in "Capitalists Hate Capitalism" news: The Appeal has published the first-ever survey of national prison commissary prices, revealing just how badly the prison profiteer system gouges American's all-time, world-record-beating prison population:

https://theappeal.org/locked-in-priced-out-how-much-prison-commissary-prices/

Like every aspect of the prison contracting system, prison commissaries – the stores where prisoners are able to buy food, sundries, toiletries and other items – are dominated by private equity funds that have bought out all the smaller players. Private equity deals always involve gigantic amounts of debt (typically, the first thing PE companies do after acquiring a company is to borrow heavily against it and then pay themselves a hefty dividend).

The need to service this debt drives PE companies to cut quality, squeeze suppliers, and raise prices. That's why PE loves to buy up the kinds of businesses you must spend your money at: dialysis clinics, long-term care facilities, funeral homes, and prison services.

Prisoners, after all, are a literal captive market. Unlike capitalist ventures, which involve the risk that a customer will take their business elsewhere, prison commissary providers have the most airtight of monopolies over prisoners' shopping.

Not that prisoners have a lot of money to spend. The 13th Amendment specifically allows for the enslavement of convicted criminals, and so even though many prisoners are subject to forced labor, they aren't necessarily paid for it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

Six states ban paying prisoners anything. North Carolina caps prisoners' pay at one dollar per day. Nationally, prisoners earn $0.52/hour, while producing $11b/year in goods and services:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

So there's a double cruelty to prison commissary price-gouging. Prisoners earn far less than any other kind of worker, and they pay vastly inflated prices for the necessities of life. There's also a triple cruelty: prisoners' families – deprived of an incarcerated breadwinner's earnings – are called upon to make up the difference for jacked up commissary prices out of their own strained finances.

So what does prison profiteering look like, in dollars and sense? Here's the first-of-its-kind database tracking the costs of food, hygiene items and religious items in 46 states:

https://theappeal.org/commissary-database/

Prisoners rely heavily on commissaries for food. Prisons serve spoiled, inedible food, and often there isn't enough to go around – prisoners who rely on the food provided by their institutions literally starve. This is worst in prisons where private equity funds have taken over the cafeteria, which is inevitable accompanied by swingeing cuts to food quality and portions:

https://theappeal.org/prison-food-virginia-fluvanna-correctional-center/

So you have one private equity fund starving prisoners, and another that's gouging them on food. Or sometimes it's the same company. Keefe Group, owned by HIG Capital, provides commissaries to prisons whose cafeterias are managed by other HIG Capital portfolio companies like Trinity Services Group. HIG also owns the prison health-care company Wellpath – so if they give you food poisoning, they get paid twice.

Wellpath delivers "grossly inadequate healthcare":

https://theappeal.org/massachusetts-prisons-wellpath-dentures-teeth/

And Trinity serves "meager portions of inedible food":

https://theappeal.org/clayton-county-jail-sheriff-election/

When prison commissaries gouge on food, no part of the inventory is spared, even the cheapest items. In Florida, a packet of ramen costs $1.06, 300% more inside the prison than it does at the Target down the street:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24444312-fl_doc_combined_commissary_lists#document/p6/a2444049

America's prisoners aren't just hungry, they're also hot. The climate emergency is sending temperatures in America's largely un-air-conditioned prisons soaring to dangerous levels. Commissaries capitalize on this, too: an 8" fan costs $40 in Delaware's Sussex Correctional Institution. In Georgia, that fan goes for $32 (but prisoners are not paid for their labor in Georgia pens). And in scorching Texas, the commissary raised the price of water by 50% last summer:

https://www.tpr.org/criminal-justice/2023-07-20/texas-charges-prisoners-50-more-for-water-for-as-heat-wave-continues

Toiletries are also sold at prices that would make an airport gift-shop blush. Need denture adhesive? That's $12.28 in an Idaho pen, triple the retail price. 15% of America's prisoners are over 55. The Keefe Group – sister company to the "grossly inadequate" healthcare company Wellpath – operates that commissary. In Oregon, the commissary charges a 200% markup on hearing-aid batteries. Vermont charges a 500% markup on reading glasses. Imagine spending decades in prison: toothless, blind, and deaf.

Then there's the religious items. Bibles and Christmas cards are surprisingly reasonable, but a Qaran will run you $26 in Vermont, where a Bible is a mere $4.55. Kufi caps – which cost $3 or less in the free world – go for $12 in Indiana prisons. A Virginia prisoner needs to work for 8 hours to earn enough to buy a commissary Ramadan card (you can buy a Christmas card after three hours' labor).

Prison price-gougers are finally facing a comeuppance. California's new BASIC Act caps prison commissary markups at 35% (California commissaries used to charge 63-200% markups):

https://theappeal.org/price-gouging-in-california-prisons-newsom-signature/

Last year, Nevada banned any markup on hygiene items:

https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/NELIS/REL/82nd2023/Bill/10425/Overview

And prison tech monopolist Securus has been driven to the brink of bankruptcy, thanks to the activism of Worth Rises and its coalition partners:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/08/money-talks/

When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time. Prisons show us how businesses would treat us if they could get away with it.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/20/captive-market/#locked-in

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"Your religion does not prohibit me from anything. It prohibits you. Learn the difference."

You don't get to make me obey your religion for the same reason people of other religions don't get to make you obey theirs.

[sordidamok]

MTG claims that God is telling Americans to do what MTG wants Americans to do. No surprise there.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[agentfascinateur]

Israel has prevented thousands of Christians from the occupied West Bank from accessing Jerusalem to participate in the celebration of Palm Sunday

[m1s3ry-m00n]

I just realized that the KOSA bill is violating the first amendment. Freedom of speech, religion, & assembly

[kittycatlukey]

🤍💗💙🤎🖤❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

[madame-helen]

[belinhagamer999]

Faith neurodivergent flag

[PT: Faith neurodivergent flag /END PT]

This is a flag for neurodivergent or persodivergent people who believe that neurodivergence is linked to religion/spirituality or caused by some religious or spiritual phenomena, or belive more in nonscientific explanations for their neurodivergence.

This flag wasn't made to hurt someone but to represent those people, who'r frequently humiliated in ND/PD communities, because of their different opinions, and views of their nd or conditions.

There's no right or wrong to identify with this term!

[IMAGE ID: The image portrays a flag with a color scheme of black, sky blue, and pastel yellow. The centerpiece of the flag is a white circle. Inside the circle, there is a star with blue borders and yellow color which contains the neurodivergent symbol. /END ID]

[wildfeather5002]

An (un)friendly reminder that being religious doesn't mean you deserve special privileges.

No, I'm not talking about being able to have breaks at work for praying or having certain kinds of foods available for you. What I'm talking about here is your ''right'' to discriminate against others and deem others morally inferior for trivial reasons because of your religious beliefs.

You are not justified when you tell lgbtq people they're morally wrong / perverted / going to hell / whatever because your religion says that about lgbtq.

Same thing goes for literally any other group of people: for example, telling people of color they should apologize for being black / brown every single day or else they are going to hell is not justified, even if your religion says so.

Well, in a way you're allowed to voice your opinions, no matter how discriminatory or hateful they are, but then you better not have the nerve to complain about the backlash you get in response. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequences.

[outletdesired]

I am tired of society accepting and allowing violence against Jews as appropriate. Pathetic! Where is the FBI ? Where is Joe Biden? Where are the democrats?

[typhlonectes]

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Freedom of religion is also freedom from religion.

You're free to believe in disembodied, metaphysical gender thetans that are born into "the wrong body." And I'm free to disbelieve you, notice that it doesn't make sense, is indistinguishable from a Xian "soul," and decline to participate in your "TMAM"/"TWAW" prayers and pronoun rituals. Just like any other religion.

[sordidamok]

Allowing untrained volunteers who have - or claim to have - some kind of affiliation with some kind of church to have access to kids who seek counseling. You don't even have to try to imagine how this could have horrible consequences.

[trancemoment]

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Mike Pence said yesterday on Fox Business that the First Amendment to the Constitution doesn’t provide “freedom from religion,” the idea that people shouldn’t have other people’s religious beliefs forced on them.

Host Larry Kudlow told Pence that “far-left progressives… will not allow God into the conversation, will not allow religion into the conversation. Not just the conversation, the schools, the communities, the workplace… I mean, no one is allowed to talk about the Ten Commandments or the importance of moral values.”

People are allowed to talk about the Ten Commandments and morality in the U.S.

“How can we have a truly great nation? These lefties want to scrap religion, Mike Pence, and I think it’s a terrible mistake,” Kudlow said.

Pence waited a bit – possibly to see if Kudlow was actually going to ask a question – and responded: “Well, the radical left believes that the freedom of religion is the freedom from religion. But it’s nothing the American founders ever thought of or generations of Americans fought to defend.”

“The good news is that after four years of the Trump-Pence administration, I’m confident that we have a pro-religious freedom majority on the Supreme Court of the United States,” he continued.

Despite Pence’s insistence, the First Amendment comes with two parts. He and Kudlow appeared to be familiar with the Free Exercise Clause, which says “Congress shall make no law… prohibiting the free exercise” of religion.

But there’s also the Establishment Clause, which says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

In other words, the First Amendment gives people both freedom of and freedom from religion.

America’s founders were opposed to the government forcing religion on people, especially considering the religious oppression and wars that had plagued Europe in the centuries leading up to the writing of the Constitution.

“No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in the constitution of Virginia, showing that freedom from religion was definitely something that the founders were thinking of.

“The settled opinion here is that religion is essentially distinct from Civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connexion between them is injurious to both; that there are causes in the human breast, which ensure the perpetuity of religion without the aid of the law,” James Madison wrote in a letter in 1819. “A legal establishment of religion without a toleration could not be thought of, and with toleration, is no security for public quiet and harmony, but rather a source itself of discord and animosity.”

Pence’s views on the establishment of a national religion could be of national importance in a few years. He has suggested that he’s considering a 2024 presidential run and, as he noted in the interview with Kudlow, the president can appoint judges who can rule against freedom from religion.