'To Bail or Not To Bail...that is the question' ...

When my young son was arrested and prosecuted (like hundreds of thousands of young men and women in this country’s failed War on Drugs)for selling marijuana, he was denied bail. He sat in the tiny cell of the county jail for the duration of the year it took to prosecute him. Nor was he ever granted release from prison pending either of the appeals he fought hard for. My son is a first-time, non violent offender.

Today when I read the following article I was still somehow stunned and angered by its content. I would think by now, having been on this prison journey supporting my son for the past 7 ½ years of a 12 ½ year sentence, I would be immune to the startling disparities in our “justice” system. Seems not. I still saw red.

Read below of how EX PROSECUTOR (Bangor, Maine) James Cameron, found guilty of child pornography, and sentenced to 16 years in prison (the minimum and mandatory Sentencing Guidelines recommended 22 to 27 years) has now been released from prison pending his appeal. Clearly, contributing to and inflicting violence on children, and having been himself in a position of power and authority, no doubt prosecuting such cases himself, is not considered as dangerous to our communities as releasing on bail, a young man convicted of selling marijuana to consenting adults. I am not arguing so much the fact this man was freed pending bail, as it seems “security measures” are in place to protect the community from him, but I am spotlighting the severe disparity issues in our system. Freed on bail…why this man and why not my son? Is there anyone out there who can see why this man deserves to be free pending his appeals and the countless thousands of non-violent young drug (marijuana) offenders would never be.

“Fiddle dee dee…I can’t think of this right now. If I do I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about it tomorrow“. (Scarlet O’Hara, Gone with The Wind)


Ex-prosecutor in prison for child porn offenses released pending appealhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
By Judy Harrison, BDN Staff
Posted Aug. 12, 2011, at 8:31 a.m.

BANGOR, Maine — The former state prosecutor incarcerated at a federal prison in Colorado on child pornography charges has been released, according to information on the U.S. Bureau of Prisons inmate locator website.

James Cameron, 49, of Hallowell was released from federal prison in Colorado late Thursday or early Friday after the judge who sentenced him set bail conditions Thursday.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston on Tuesday ruled that Cameron could be freed on bail while his appeal is pending. The case was remanded to U.S. District Judge John Woodcock in Bangor to set bail conditions.

The appellate court’s ruling reversed Woodcock’s denial of Cameron’s request for post-conviction bail in May.

Cameron, who was the state’s top drug prosecutor in the Maine Attorney General’s Office, was incarcerated at Federal Correctional Institute Englewood in Littleton, Colo., according to the inmate locator website. The minimum-security facility is located about 15 miles southwest of Denver.

Woodcock’s post-conviction bail order, issued about 12:30 p.m. Thursday, allowed Cameron to be released on $75,000 unsecured bail, wear a GPS monitor and register as a sex offender

US SLAVE LABOR FORCE - HIDDEN BEHIND THE WALLS

This article is part of a Nation series exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), in collaboration with the Center For Media and Democracy. John Nichols introduced the series.

The breaded chicken patty your child bites into at school may have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour, not in a faraway country, but by a member of an invisible American workforce: prisoners. At the Union Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Florida, inmates from a nearby lower-security prison manufacture tons of processed beef, chicken and pork for Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE), a privately held non-profit corporation that operates the state’s forty-one work programs. In addition to processed food, PRIDE’s website reveals an array of products for sale through contracts with private companies, from eyeglasses to office furniture, to be shipped from a distribution center in Florida to businesses across the US. PRIDE boasts that its work programs are “designed to provide vocational training, to improve prison security, to reduce the cost of state government, and to promote the rehabilitation of the state inmates.”

Alex Friedmann, associate editor of Prison Legal News, says prison labor is part of a “confluence of similar interests” among politicians and corporations, long referred to as the “prison industrial complex.” As decades of model legislation reveals, ALEC has been at the center of this confluence. “This has been ongoing for decades, with prison privatization contributing to the escalation of incarceration rates in the US,” Friedmann says. Just as mass incarceration has burdened American taxpayers in major prison states, so is the use of inmate labor contributing to lost jobs, unemployment and decreased wages among workers—while corporate profits soar.

You can read the article in its entirety at The Real Cost of Prisons Web Blog, go to http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2011/08/the_hidden_hist.html#more

SUMMERS BOUNTY



After a slow start, due to the cooler and wetter spring we had this year (SO unlike Southern Central California!)my vegetable garden managed to sprout forth and produce! I like to grow my tomatos in containers, they seem to do fairly well there, and this year I tried a few varieties of Heirloom tomato species. What you see here are Green Stripey, followed by your ordinary Early Girl. It WAS nice to have the "Girls" as they ripened early and we've been enjoying them for the past full month nonstop. They didn't get overly large, maybe 3 inches in diameter on average, but sweet and juicy nontheless.










I love growing in a raised bed I must say. Much easier to control weeds, to water, to control pests (slugs in particular). And my back is especially grateful! (If you click on the bottom picture you'll get a much better view into the garden, the tomatoes mostly in containers, the raised beds - there is another you can't see here - both filled with a lovely assortment, including a new strawberry patch)

~ "In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death". ~Sam Llewelyn

S&P Downgrades USA's Credit Rating from AAA to AA+.


Friday night Standard & Poor’s took the unprecedented step and downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time ever. The rating dropped from AAA to AA+ after the debt ceiling deal failed to satisfy worries about the state of the economy and the ability of the US to raise enough revenue to match spending obligations.

Treasury officials looked at the numbers and found that S&P had miscalculated future deficit projections by nearly $2 trillion, does, will, this make a difference? Will we see the S&P return America's AAA rating? Somehow I think not. The news, which seemed inevitable should surprise no one, including me, after the insanity we all watched play out in Congress over raising the national debt ceiling. It seems most all our members of Congress have been drinking the coolaid! Even Obama, to have caved and not fought till the bitter end, had to have snuck a sip or two.

I have found it hard to post blogs for some time now in these past months, the mess the country is in frightens and depresses me. Often I find it hard to enjoy the frivolous side of every day life, when so much drama is constantly unfolding. There were days I wanted to turn to my blog and just rant on and on about the ongoing political theatre, but to what end? Too many it seems really dont want to hear it, discuss it...even acknowledge it. Many have chosen to ignore it, I suppose indulging themselves in the fantasy everything will work out just fine in the end, just like in the movies. And still, too many haven't a clue really, are totally and happily oblivious to the drama unfolding around them, and the impact it will have on their and their childrens lives. The impact all of it will have on our nation.

The impact of a credit downgrade could mean higher borrowing costs for consumers and businesses and it becomes more expensive for the U.S. to borrow money. State and local governments will feel an impact in funding, especially schools and parks. The first indication of a wider reach will happen Sunday night with the open of the Asian markets.

In the announcement S&P laid out blame squarely on the dysfunction in Washington, paying specific attention to the use of the debt ceiling as a partisan bargaining chip.

The U.S. long-term credit forecast was also negative, but with one bright spot. Let the Bush tax cuts lapse, the report said, and the debt dynamics should change enough to stabilize the long-term rate at AA+.

I read Michael Moores comments today, written after the news of the credit downgrading (in the aftermath of Congress passing what is being touted as The Worst Bill EVER, in order to raise the debt ceiling and address the nations debt, the heavy burden it will have on the middle class). He asks " Have we all just given up? What are we waiting for? Forget about the 20% who support the Tea Party -- we are the other 80%! This decline will only end when we demand it. And not through an online petition or a tweet. We are going to have to turn the TV and the computer and the video games off and get out in the streets (like they've done in Wisconsin). Some of you need to run for local office next year. We need to demand that the Democrats either get a spine and stop taking corporate money -- or step aside."

Well show me the way to the rally and I'll be there! Citizens in every city and every town in America should be taking to the streets. We've watched from afar, the brave make their voices heard in Greece, in Egypt, in Libya, in Tunisia, now the battle has come to our own back yards...yet why are we so quiet, so still?

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced". ~James Baldwin

SUMMER JAMS

A large branch from the next door neighbors huge fig tree cracked under its burden of figs and fell over our side of the fence. Lucky me! We have our own smaller version fig tree on our side of the fence, a seedling that we allowed to grow and is now about 12 ft tall and about 10 ft wide. They do grow quickly! But our tree is only maybe 2 summers old now and the fruit it bore this year was brown and bitter,with a pale center of seeds. We learned this particular fig species puts out two crops, the first, small and bitter fruit, followed by a second crop of bigger, light lemon lime green fruit with a deep pink center of seeds...very sweet and yummy...skin and all!
So we harvested a big bowl of the figs and after deciding on a basic recipe I whipped up a batch of about 12 half pint jars. It is delicious!

The following day, my husband, took advantage of my jam-making mood and brought home fresh strawberries and a big bunch of jalepenos. I spent that day making first Strawberry Jalepeno Jam, and then plain Jalepeno Jam. Again, we were delighted at the results. The jalepeno jam is especially good on warm cornbread, served with homemade chili. I also used some of it to glaze grilled chicken breasts, what a treat! I'm sure I'll find all kinds of ways to serve up these delicious jams.