How much ends up in politicians' pockets? That's my question!
Seventy years ago when politicians' were slightly less brazen about their graft, the Department (then called a bureau) of Corrections invented a slush fund. They gave it the innocent sounding label of the "Inmate General Welfare Fund." In those days, you, the public, were much more concerned about what your government was doing with money. You kept a close eye on how much of the public's money you allowed to get into the politicians' grasping fists.
In those days you would never have allowed the government or any of its tentacles to get a hold of a penny without you getting an accounting of what the scoundrels were doing with the money. You insisted that the government not take a cent without the legislators going on record with a vote to say where the money was coming from and where it was going.
That was then. This is now! Sucker!
Since the government couldn't engage in business or tax or simply take money without a law empowering it to do so, the "Inmate General Welfare Fund" (it's usually just called the "IGWF") was invented. The inmates in the state's prisons needed to buy supplies, treats and cosmetics. It used to be that they sent out to their families or to local merchants. That was expensive for the prisoners and a lot of work as well as a security risk for the prisons.
To solve these concerns (and to justify the slush fund) commissaries were opened in the prisons. Prisoners were allowed to buy directly from the state operated store, but what was to be done with the money? That's where the IGWF came in. Money was spent from the fund to buy stock for the commissary and the income from the sales went into the fund. By law, the profit allowed to the fund was limited to 5%.
Originally, the profits from the fund were supposed to be spent only in very limited ways to directly benefit prisoners; stuff like "emergency" tobacco for newly arrived inmates, writing supplies or combs or razors for the poor; stuff like that, things not supplied by the state as sustenance. Over the years the IGWF became more and more a "golden egg" that Corrections realized it could siphon off to do things like build a lounge for the staff, or billy clubs for the guards, or for capital improvements that should have come from the state budget. Stuff like a floor for a gym, a roof for a cellblock or a shed in which prisoners lift weights all came from IGWF.
Also over the years, Corrections found lots of ways to pump more and more money into the fund. The first source was contraband currency found in the possession of prisoners. Later, the pittance paid by guards for services which prisoners are forced to perform as slave-labor of the staff; auto repairing, haircutting, upholstering, ceramics, custom made furniture, custom grown flowers, and so forth went into the kitty. Later still, the income from prisoner-used vending machines as in the visiting room, went into the fund. But, the real gold mine was the telephone system!
In the 60's prisoners were given the "privilege" of making a limited number of telephone calls. The Bureau of Corrections made contracts which allowed inmates to make collect calls from a few phones placed on a cellblock. But along came the break-up of AT and T. Now Corrections arranged not just for a contract for the prisoners to get phone service, but also for Corrections to get a kickback from the phone company. A certain part (small at first) of every phone charge flowed back into the IGWF.
By the 90's Corrections was collecting well over a million dollars a year just from inmate's collect phone calls. Today it is a hell of a lot more! Those who are least able to pay, the poor families of prisoners, get hit with enormous phone bills. Most of the gravy fattens the corporate purses of the greedy phone company, but a goodly chunk flows into the IGWF slush fund.
Pause a moment and consider what the grateful telephone company does with the millions of dollars of extra profits they make from their captive customers. You don't suppose that the phone company might make generous contributions to politicians, do you?
Just for myself, I wonder where Ridge got all the extra thousands in his campaign coffers. We all realize what kind of man Ridge is and how he loves to exploit the poor and the minorities. Just for myself, I wonder how much of the hard-earned money paid out by prisoners' families in grossly inflated phone bills ends up in one of Ridge's greedy pockets.
Okay, you have the picture. Without any law to empower the Department of Corrections to do it, it's in the phone business. It gives a large special interest benefit to the phone company and it inflates the slush fund which is used to make the bureaucrats look good.
You're not convinced. You figure that politicians are decent, honorable people who care about the public good. You figure that the amount of money involved is insignificant. Yeah, and I'm the tooth fairy!
Make a call from your hone phone and it costs you a lot, lets say 80 or 85 cents. From a prison the same call might cost four or five dollars, three bucks simply to get connected! That is an "excess" profit of, say, $3.50 for every call the prisoners' families get. Where do you suppose it goes?
Just try to get some kind of accounting. The phone company says the contract is secret. The Department of Corrections says it's a secret. Why?
And why is the state government in the business of taxing speech? Isn't speech supposed to be "free?"
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