August 05, 2000

It Doesn't Take A Rocket Scientist

Brigham City, Utah: August 5, 2000

Ron campaigned today in Brigham City, Utah, near the site of railroad's Golden Spike. A spike made possible by slave and prison labor. He blasting the modern corporate prison industry as well as the Clinton Administration and George W. Bush for encouraging its growth. International corporation Alcoa operates a 3,000-inmate facility in Brigham City known as the Thiokol Propulsion Headquarters.

Speaking at Jimmy Osmond Hall this afternoon, Ron called the prison industry, and Thiokol itself, "one of the most ill-conceived ventures corporations have ever entered into."

"The goal of the criminal justice system should be to increase public safety and to keep nasty butt-pirates indoors," Ron said today. "For-profit prisons make a mockery of this goal. By treating inmates as profitable commodities and using them as porn actors, corporate prisons obscure a public policy that should be aimed at reducing the incarceration rate through treatment and rehabilitation."

Ron also questioned the safety of private prisons and the economic rationale behind them. "So-called cost saving techniques have resulted in reductions in human rights and health care quality for inmates. Studies have shown that private prisons are just as expensive to the taxpayer as public ones." The growth of the corporate prison industry also brings with it the specter of increased use of prison labor in the coming century. While Ron loves the movie "Cool Hand Luke", he does not want to see men working on the chain gang in his lifetime.

"It doesn't take rocket science to figure out what drives this industry," Ron told a subdued group of Thiokol's prisoners. "Politicians pander to fears of crime, the prison population booms, and corporations view what should be considered a national crisis as a profit-making opportunity."

Ron noted that communities like Brigham City, with its moronic family values, are especially vulnerable to corporate prisons moving in. "Alcoa originally marketed this prison as a valid form of economic development, received tax breaks and free utilities from gullible public officials, and is now underpaying its own workers." Ron cited figures showing some Alcoa-Thiokol salaries at $25,200, barely a living wage.

Mrs. Anita Bath said that the salary her husband brings home from Alcoa-Thiokol is hardly enough to allow her and his 3 other wives to amply clothe and feed their 13 children.

The corporate-prison industry has boomed under the eight years of the Clinton Administration, particularly in George W. Bush's Texas, where overcrowding and increasing incarceration rates have led to corporations building prisons and adding beds on speculation.

"This is hogwash!" Ron declared. Ron ended his day saying, "Let me lead you into the prison community of the 21st century!"

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