Found in the President’s Budget: $270 MILLION TO THOMSON PRISON IN ILLINOIS. This is one hell of an earmark. This is the story of your tax dollar working hard to supermax retrofit another American center of incarceration for Gitmo prisoners for life. What it really is: an earmark from one buddy (Obama) to another (Durbin) but let’s face it, that’s what it is. Yes, that’s right, Sen. Dick Durbin has won the biggest earmark of this fiscal year and it’s called Thomson Correctional Facility. The prison just opened nine years ago in 2001 at a cost of $140 million. Here we have the taxpayers giving up an additional $270 million and the total comes to $410 million for this one facility.
Only about 200 of the 1,600 beds are currently filled. Does anyone question how that happen? Did someone miscalculate the need of yet another correctional facility in the United States? Every social program you can name is nickel and dimed and gone over with a fine tooth comb while $410 million goes into this one jail. Yet another jail. Not a school. Not a hospital. A jail. What we continue to put money into says a lot about what our priorities are. If this were happening during the surplus years in the last years of the Clinton presidency and the first few years of George W no one would have noticed or cared. But $270 million dollars? At a time when local school boards are meeting to figure out how to cut teachers and programs? Two hundred and seventy million at a time like this can not go unnoticed.
I didn’t have to click many times in one of the papers I read online to find evidence of how foolish handing $270 million over to Thomson Correctional is in relative terms. Let’s take The Daily Press, a paper I read daily that is based in Newport News, Va. It says something that the paper has a section called Our Schools and Budget Cuts READ. And let’s look at the numbers in just this one area of the country, Hampton Roads, Virginia. The first story was written yesterday:
••• The Newport News School school district is considering from $10 million to $20 million in budget cuts – read entire – “…Closing a school, eliminating 160 jobs and cutting expenses by $13 million usually are not the elements of a hopeful budget scenario…” and “…The district slashed $17 million from the budget last year, eliminating about 120 jobs…”
••• The $20 million reduction budget digs deeper, piling more cuts on top of those in the two other budgets. It would reduce the district budget by 6 percent, dropping it to $279 million. The district would consider closing two elementary schools, saving $2.5 million.
••• Hampton’s Lee and Mallory Schools May Close – read entire - “The School Board voted 5-1 on Wednesday to close the two schools in 2010-11 for a combined savings of about $2.3 million…”
••• Poquoson’s current schools budget is $21.6 million, after a cut of $1.2 million, or 5%, last year. – read entire – “…Poquoson will lose $572,220 in state funding, as well as $318,141 in federal funds, mostly because of grants ending. She factored in level funding from the city of Poquoson, which is $8,334,090…
And this is just one local newspaper in Southern Virginia. Imagine what numbers I could find in a newspaper in Ohio or Michigan where the unemployment rate is at 15%.
$410 million went in to this?, Sen Durbin
Sadly, what is worst of all may have nothing to do with the money. What’s worse is the argument Sen. Dick Durbin, who should know better, and Illinois Governor Pat Quinn made as a rationale for Thomson Prison getting $270 million dollars of the taxpayers money. The argument was for the jobs the jail would bring to the region. Apparently, Durbin and Quinn are so desperate for this “opportunity of a lifetime,” and to inform their constituents of job opportunities that it occurred to no one that a prison was a dubious place to look for a boon to the local economy. According to Illinois State Rep. Jim Sacia the prison is to produce about 3,000 jobs, about 300 to 500 of which would be for local residents.
Back in November when this foolishness was born, Durbin said,”We have an opportunity to bring thousands of good-paying jobs to Illinois when we need them the most,” and, “We have an opportunity to bring them to a part of our state that has been struggling and that’s an opportunity we are not going to miss.”
That Durbin and Quinn made these arguments out loud and with no shame with cameras rolling shows you how far we have come in embracing the prison industrial complex and incarceration as a profit driving economic solution. Would you ever hear such talk in favor of the construction of a public school? Since Illinois leads their region in dropout factories one could guess that Thomson will be populated quickly. The connection between high school dropouts and incarceration is deep. One hopes Dick Durbin will work as hard on his crack cocaine sentencing disparity legislation as he has pushed for this federal prison. Because in the end, isn’t the point to try and keep people from going to Thompson in the first place?
Why list “gitmo detainees” and “guantanamo detainees” in the tags for the post if you aren’t going to discuss that the reason for the earmark is to fix up the prison to prepare it to receive the detainees currently held at GTMO?
Do you suggest that GTMO stay open, and the earmark rescinded (for funds to be used elsewhere)?