Make it legal

My home state of Arizona recently passed a law which in effect lets police catch illegal immigrants and put them in jail. On the surface it seems like the typical xenophobic law from a conservative state where whites are scared that foreigners might take over. I was mostly annoyed by this law until I came across this story on NPR. Traditionally immigration violations are handled by the INS and illegal immigrants are housed in INS prisons to be eventually deported. These prisons are run by the government. However, the state prisons in Arizona, where the criminals caught by state police are incarcerated, are run by private companies. In exchange for managing these prisons, they get to use the prisoners as a low cost labor force. According the npr story, guess who helped write the law that now allows state police not the federal INS agents, catch illegal immigrants and put them in the privately run jails - the prison companies.

As a legal immigrant who went through the right channels, waited for years, paid the fees, and underwent all manner of scrutiny, I do not condone illegal immigration. Just because you happened to pop-over in this country without getting caught and now have been here many years, you shouldn't automatically get citizenship. But try as I may, I cannot get the the diabolical implications of this law out of my head. Arizona prison companies are about to get a huge labor force, consisting of illegal immigrants who have absolutely no rights in this country and hence no access to any due process. They don't vote so the politicians do not care, and in any case given the strong anti-immigration view of most Arizonans, no politician from this state will ever stand up for the rights of illegal immigrants. We now have indentured labor, some would even call slavery, in this state, something that would be frowned upon in any other country. In the US however, prison companies made sure that they first made this legal. They might be doing something despicable but they are not breaking any laws, right?

Herein lies the simple way all illegal acts are committed in the US - if you have enough clout you make sure you get a law passed that makes your despicable act legal, and the then do it. Dylan Ratigan, a TV host, helped create this video to explain how Wall Street perpetrated the crime of the century, brought the entire world economy to its knees but can still claim that they didn't do anything illegal. They made sure they had the laws changed first. But really, this applies to everything. Bribing politicians is illegal and is frowned upon all over the world. However it is completely legal in the US, and is carried on under the guise of lobbying and campaign financing. Indentured labor has been legalized in Arizona and the prison companies are working on doing the same in many other states.

Do you know of any other examples?

Seeingly harmless words

I am swearing-impaired and and cannot mouth anything worse than an occasional "damn". I am not a so-called "prude" but I dislike swearing. As a lover of words and and the power of language, I find swearing to be simply lazy and feel we can express ourselves so much better if we stay off swear words. Add to this the fact that I can't help but think about meaning of a word and conjure images of it, every time I use it and being around swear-words is just not a pleasant experience for me whether I or somebody else around me uses these words.

Even people who are not as hardcore word-fanatics as I am, have limits as to what words they will use in front of children. The notorious f-word and all its derivatives come to mind. And yet I am aghast that people will use words such as "bummer" and "sucks" not only in the presence of but in conversations with little children, and eventually end up teaching children to use them. Do people really not know what those words are implying? I guess not, otherwise I just don't see how they do not land in the same category as the f-word.