Back when Governor Ridge was doing everything in his power to buy favor with George W. "Baby Doc" Bush in order to become vice president, Pennsylvania shipped money to Texas by the train-load. Republican politics is based on the value of money, not the value of people. One of the easiest ways to give Bush's Texas a financial subsidy was to have departments of the Pennsylvania state government buy from Texas firms. There were many such lucrative deals, but most of the state departments are a bit too honest to be easily manipulated for Republican political goals. Not so the Department of Corrections ("DOC"). The DOC is a political pawn of the Republican extreme who control state government. In an effort to curry favor, the DOC dreamed up an expensive satellite television scheme to give to a Texas outfit as a Republican political welfare dole. Correctional Cable TV, Inc. Palaxy Road Building A Tyler, TX 75703 with another office at 2217 West Winchester Street, Springfield, MO 65807, was given a juicy multi-million dollar, 15 year contract to provide limited and censored television service to the 25 state prisons and also to the guards' "Elizabethtown Training Academy and (1) Central Office site." All this enormously expensive contract is paid for by the prisoners themselves in what is called "a statewide subscriber-funded television network." The prisoners pay for themselves and in addition, they pay for the guards' Training Academy and the Central Office executives. They even pay for college tuitions for the guards to receive "[c]ollege training for PA-DOC staff at all levels and all facilities[.] Associate Degree, Criminal Justice with emphasis on corrections [is] now available to all PA-DOC facilities through" the prisoner financed television system. By contrast, prisoners are not allowed to receive any government assistance or even loans for education, self improvement or rehabilitation. Prisoners who subscribe to a package of channels for themselves, are charged $14.25 a month to start (about twice what a satellite subscriber would pay for comparable fare). The fee will escalate on a regular basis at 5% per year so that after ten years the fee will be $20.05. With about 19,000 captive subscribers that's $280,000.00 per month of prisoners' slave wages funneled to Texas, $3,360,000.00 per year! In addition, the prisoners collectively through their Inmates General Welfare Fund, ("IGWF") pay $2.20 per month for each of the 35,763 prisoners to buy the "educational" services. That means that each month the prisoners' IGWF will pay $78,678 ($.94 million per year for the "education" services. The guards and DOC will pay "No Charge." No part of the Inmate General Welfare Fund is tax or public money. It is entirely derived from prisoners and prisoners' families mostly through the enormous kickbacks from gross overcharges in telephone fees, profits from the prison commissary, visiting room vending machines, photocopying of legal papers, gouging of inmate organizations, and so forth. For their individual monthly fees, prisoners will occasionally be entitled to receive certain channels. The television sets on which the programs will be viewed must be bought from the DOC and the DOC will make a tidy profit. Nothing in the state constitution sanctions a state agency to operate like a business for a profit or to compete with private enterprise. No constitutional provision permits the financial exploitation of prisoners by the Commonwealth. The channels occasionally available to prisoners at the whim of the prison include: ABC* - History Channel American Movie Classics - Knowledge Television Arts And Entertainment - Learning Channel Black Entertainment Television - NBC* CBS* - PBS (an Internet feed) CNN - Recovery Network Comcast - Sci-Fi Channel Comedy Central - Superstation TBS Discovery Channel - The Nashville Network E! Entertainment - Turner Classic Movies ESPN - Turner Network Television (TNT) ESPN2 - Univision Fox* - USA Network Fox Sports - VH1 Headline News Nothing like Disney for children visiting in the visiting room, nothing financial like CNBC for men trying to improve themselves, nothing governmental like PCN or C-SPAN, nothing erotic like Playboy for the lonely isolated thousands, nothing religious for spiritual fortification, nothing progressive like Internet access. Prisoners also pay for two channels for the use of the prison and for a high-security satellite communication system for the called "Confidential secured communications ... protected by five levels of constantly changing security." One of the most bizarre, if not most repugnant, features of scheme is the DOC's "company store." This is a kind of Home Shopping Channel just for prisoners to spend their pennies with the DOC. Because this sounds like a parody, here is the quote from the contract: "Shopping Commissary (Inmate Shopping network-eliminates space and staff)[.] The equipment provided will allow a centralized 'Shopping Commissary' to be located at a DOC location chosen by headquarters. The unique approach to inmate access to a video shopping commissary will eliminate DOC facility space and staffing requirements while consolidating inmate-by-inmate tracking of purchases. This can be integrated to a prison industry employing more than 20 full time inmates as well as a profitable entity for the DOC." There is no explanation of how men without subscribing to the expensive television system will be able to buy necessities. Slavery, isolationism and the company store are some of the worst things about the 1800s. We've now progressed into the 2000s, but not the extremists at the DOC. To them, prison is an industry to make jobs and incomes for guards, administrators and now Bush cronies. Is that why the society has prisons, as make work projects of guards? Where is the social benefit? The money to finance this socialism will come mostly from prisoners' families, among the poorest people in the state.

*The network channels are all Philadelphia affiliates. No local news or weather is allowed.