The State of Connecticut decided to ‘help’ newly released inmates by taking 10% out of their commissary account and putting into a savings account for them. Then the inmate will have money upon release.

Well, sort of. Once the savings account balance hits $1,000 the State, in a flint-hearted move, keeps the 10% to reimburse itself for the incarceration. Thus, the maximum in the account will be $1,000. Which is not enough to get an apartment or do much of anything except get high or get drunk. Considering that the vast bulk of people in prison are there because of alcohol and drugs, it seems likely that many upon release will do just that.

But it gets worse. The State wanted to always keep the 10%. This goofy savings account was a compromise made by a Connecticut legislator who has a son in prison. The real problem here is that the State offers no services upon release, something which virtually guarantees recidivism.

If you give an addict $1,000 cash and no help, don’t except them to act differently. What do you think they’re going to spend the money on?

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From a review by Gordon Coale

Deer Hunting with Jesus looks at the now and trembles for the future. I first ran across Joe Bageant on the internet. Aside from being a hell of a writer, a veritable silver tongued devil, what he was writing about struck a chord. Joe writes about the working class poor, the redneck class. He does it not as an outsider. These are his people. He grew up with them, escaped, went to college, and became a pinko atheist. Then he went back home to Winchester, Virginia. He has a liberal perspective but his heart is with these people. And they are getting screwed. If they only realized it.

The media would like us to think it’s Red State vs. Blue State. It’s a magic trick, folks. An illusion. It’s a false dichotomy. The class war, and don’t delude yourself that it isn’t a war, is not between liberal white collar workers and conservative blue collar workers. It’s not between those that drink Red Hook ESB and those that drink Bud Light. We are both in the same leaky boat that is sinking fast while the wealthy and powerful steam off in the luxury yacht having cast us adrift. The sooner we realize we are in the same boat the better off we will be.

The Left and liberals need to understand that a mobilized redneck class would be a huge and powerful political force and that many rednecks (Hello Steve Earle) already do tilt sharply leftward. Many more might do so, were the Left not at times dismissive, or worse, insulting to them. Or pontificating about gun control.

Like the title of the book says, it’s a class thing. Poor whites get shafted plenty hard too. Only to sometimes then be called “trash” by those who wouldn’t think of referring to a person of color that way.

In class war, one needs to join together with their class allies.

Buy from Amazon

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Putin has created a budding bunch of little stormtroopers, a youth brigade. “The idea was to create an ideology based on a total devotion to the president and his course”and indeed they been warmed up to their new thuggish roles by terrorizing the Estonian ambassador to the point that he fled the country.

Gazprom and Transneft, the major gas and pipeline companies in Russia, were just granted the power by lawmakers to create their own private armies, ostensibly to protect oil installations, but I’m guessing this could get way thuggish way fast and forget about accountability.

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