The True Cost of Incarceration in Baltimore’s Poorest Neighborhoods

Although, it was good to watch this interview that US has started to look into reforming its prison system, I don't have much hope of something actually happening. Reason being that US prison system, similar to its medical system, is becoming profit-driven, as it is also mentioned in the interview.

Some states have contracted out the prison system to private contractors. Those private contractors benefit from prison population's almost-free / "slave" labour & they also get subsidies / tax breaks from the government (similar to several other companies / industries). Of course, if the contractors are profiting from the labour, they need more of that "free" labour. So, of course, they lobby hard & get the judiciary (judges, attorney generals etc.) on their side of the table.

Result is harsh sentencing laws, e.g. minimum mandatory sentence, are then passed. By the way, there was a good crime drama 2013 movie on this issue, "Snitch," starring Dwayne Johnson, & based on a real story. Anyway, so contractors need to keep a certain level of beds fill in their prisons. They may even be getting tax breaks or subsidies based on prison fill-rate (sort of like how hotels operate their business). On top of that, attorneys' successes are measured based on their conviction rate. So the more they put people behind bars, the more they are considered as making the public safe. That perception comes in very handy if those attorneys are dreaming of getting into government one day.

So who suffers in all of this self-serving agendas, fiasco & corruption? The Public.

1. Taxpayers: As the interviewee explains that millions of taxpayer $$$ are spent in housing these prisoners; some counties are spending almost $10 -15 million a year. Those same millions which could have been spent on improving infrastructure, putting food on the poor family's table (by increasing the budget of food stamp program, instead of cutting it), improving schools in poor, urban areas so kids of disadvantaged families also get the same quality of education as the kid from an elite family.

2. People: Those people who get snared in this prison system. Racism is still existent in the American society; African-Americans, who are usually on the disadvantaged spectrum of the general population, face the brunt of these harsh laws. They get locked up for minor offences, assuming they did commit an offence in the first place.

Once they caught up in that cycle, there is no exit out of that maze. Even when they do get out, they have a hard time securing employment and/or housing. Result is they may not have enough money to pay alimony or provide a suitable place to live for their kids or live in a safe & secure place just by themselves.

So, if, due to unemployment, that person, who was not a violent offender in the first place, but has an "ex-con" label now, doesn't pay child support, then he is put into prison. If that person, due to unemployment, can't secure housing, & starts living on the streets, where he/she can easily become a drug addict, & if he gets caught with a drug, he/she visits the prison, again. What happens with all these prison visits? That person is labelled a multiple offender, & has much longer sentences.

Essentially, that person, who was wrongly / perhaps, harshly convicted of a minor offense, becomes a hardened criminal. Who gets the blame then? That person him/herself.

But, at the end of the day, will things really change for the better? I still say, no. Because, the political will is not there. Mr. Trump thinks that the crime is increasing, even though, it isn't, & Republicans are trying to bring in legislation to become much more tough on crime. That "toughness" will always always ensnare poor people of colour, which will continue the vicious cycle of incarceration, drug addiction, unemployment, homelessness, poverty, & death. Big money is involved in this cycle & after all, who wants to let go money?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mHhuE4IxZY

STEPHEN JANIS, TRNN PRODUCER: America’s reputation as a incarceral nation is well-established. The United States accounts for 25% of the world’s entire prison population, while representing just 5% of the world’s total population.

But a new study reveals a different perspective on the country’s penchant for imprisonment–the price tag–and not just for the country as a whole, but for specific neighborhoods in Baltimore. And what the study found is not just how much we’re spending to keep people locked up, but how much [of what] we’re spending is concentrated in poor minority neighborhoods.

The numbers are stunning. Maryland is spending $50 million to incarcerate residents of roughly five neighborhoods.

One of the things that I found interesting about the study is just why you decided to look at these neighborhoods and look at incarceration from an entirely different perspective. Could you talk about that little bit?

MARC SCHINDLER, EXEC. DIRECTOR, JUSTICE POLICY INSTITUTE: Sure. Well, this is a significant issue for the state of Maryland and for the country as a whole, as you talked about. The amounts that we’re spending to lock people up in our cities and states around the country is extraordinary. In Maryland, we spend nearly $1 billion on the corrections agency–and just in Baltimore City, almost $300 million a year to lock people up.

And so one of the things that we talk about from a policy perspective–and I used to run a corrections agency–is: what are we getting for that investment? Are our communities safer? And, unfortunately, the answer largely is no.

And so what we did when there was some data available here in Baltimore, particularly, was look more closely at the data, particularly where people who are incarcerated live prior to their incarceration and what’s going on in those communities. And are there different ways that we might spend scarce public resources that would get us better outcomes?

JANIS: Now, you found specifically there were five communities where the most was spent. And what you looked at were some of characteristics, some of the outcomes in those committees. What did you find there?

SCHINDLER: So what we found across the cities. So there are about half of Baltimore’s communities, so about 25 of the 50-some odd communities, spend more than $5 million a year on incarceration. And as you pointed out, ten of those communities are spending more than $10 million. And one community in particular is actually spending about $17 million to lock up almost 500 people.

What we saw in common across those communities is that those are communities that are facing a variety of challenges. That includes everything from housing to high levels of substance abuse within those communities, to low education and low earnings in those communities. So we found a range of challenges within those communities.

And what the study really draws people and shows what we need to be asking is what is the link between those things and is spending on incarceration the best way we can spend money to address some of those issues.

JANIS: Now, of course, one of the big issues in criminal justice system is race and the involvement of race in criminal justice and where criminal justice resources are targeted. These neighborhoods, what was the racial composition?

SCHINDLER: So, overwhelmingly the neighborhoods that are sending the most people to prisons in Maryland are overwhelmingly communities of color, particularly African-American. And so you’re absolutely right. It’s virtually impossible to have a responsible discussion about criminal justice policy in this country without talking about the impact of race. And so what we see, whether it’s the juvenile justice system, the adult criminal justice system, is a disparate impact on communities of color, including people of color getting locked up for longer periods for similar types of behavior, as is exhibited in the white community.

JANIS: So why do you think it is that this subject of cost is so often not discussed within the context of criminal justice? I mean, your study is pretty much unique. I mean, there’ve been other studies that have covered this, but not in detail. Why is cost always sort of left out of the conversation?

SCHINDLER: Well, you know, I think it’s complicated, right? And so when we think about systems in government–and, again, I used to run a government agency. It was a juvenile corrections agency. Oftentimes you’re before the council or the state assembly, and you’re siloed into a committee that focuses on your issue. Right? And so, when I would testify about the juvenile justice budget in Washington, D.C., it was before a different set of council members that were talking about housing. Right? That was in a completely separate committee.

These things are related, right? So we know, for example, at the Baltimore City jail, there’s a percentage of people who are there who largely are there because they don’t have housing, right? And so, should we be locking people up essentially because they’re homeless. Right? And so these are issues that are intertwined.

But, unfortunately, the way government works, and sometimes the way the media works, is we don’t have a conversation that brings these issues together. And it is complicated, right? And so we need to make sure that we’re challenging ourselves to prove and say, okay, how exactly are we spending our resources? Where are we spending them? And what are the outcomes we’re getting?

JANIS: Well, that’s a great point you bring up, the efficacy of the criminal justice system. You’re saying that more incarceration doesn’t make us safer. How is that possible? And what aspects of this process make us less safer in your opinion?

SCHINDLER: Sure. There’s little bit of a tipping point here, right? So some level of incarceration clearly does impact public safety. Right? So there are people who are committing very, very dangerous acts, and if they’re incarcerated, they’re not committing those acts, at least on the streets, for the period that they’re incarcerated. But what the students have shown over time–and most recently a major report issued by the Bernard Center for Justice showed that incarceration has a limited impact on public safety. And, in fact, it has diminishing returns the more you get. Right? So, essentially there’s a tipping point.

And there has been research over the years–and I think if we looked at some of these communities in Baltimore, we would see this, in that in fact a high rate of incarceration actually can have a destabilizing impact on a neighborhood. Right? And you think about that, it’s sort of common sense. Right? So here in Baltimore, for example, in these neighborhoods that we’re talking about, we have a disproportionate number of African-American men going to prison. Right? These are men who have sons, who have daughters, who have spouses, who have families. When you’re removing them, right, you may be removing someone who committed a crime, but you’re also removing someone who can be an asset to that community, who most likely was doing some work of some kind, who was caring for a family member. Right? And so when you take a significant portion of those people out of the community, right, that community is stretched even more thin. Right?

And so this destabilizing effect on communities is something that we need to be aware of and look at: what are the other challenges within that community that we can be addressing and be addressing in a more cost-effective way? It’s essentially cheaper to get somebody trained for a job, right, which you can do–for the $37,000 that we pay to lock up an individual for a year in Maryland, you can have five people in a workforce development program. I would argue that if you’re doing a good job and have the right people in that program, it’s a much better investment and a much better use of your tax dollars that just locking up one person.

JANIS: And so I have to ask you to question, because everything you say makes perfectly common sense to me, and yet, even in Annapolis now there is talk of police reform, right? But it’s not going anywhere at the moment. What is the resistance to looking at this in this way, in ... purely economic context? And I’ve kind of asked this question before. And it’s still the more you say, what is preventing us from having a discussion about this, about our incarceration issue?

SCHINDLER: Yeah. I think there’s a number of things that are making this discussion hard, although there’s also some things that are starting to make it a little bit more possible in today’s times. So you mentioned the disproportionate impact on people of color in the criminal justice system. And so we should just call it for what it is, right? Race is a factor, and there is a reluctancy to have that discussion in public forums to acknowledge what is going on in the justice system.

We’re starting to see that in this country–unfortunately, due to tragedies. Right? But we have everyone from the president to the attorney general to leaders in Congress talking about the fact that we lock up too many people in this country not for good law enforcement reasons. So that’s one reason.

The other piece, though, is, quite frankly, we’re spending so much money on this criminal justice system now that we can no longer afford to ignore this conversation. Right? And so you have now fiscal conservatives coming to the table to talk about these issues, because essentially they’ve taken a hard look at this and they said, you know, we’re locking up two-thirds of the people in this country for nonviolent offenses and we’re spending extraordinarily amounts of money. So they’re starting to ask, can we do something differently? So that’s created some opportunity to have a discussion.

There’s also a part of the conservative movement that is libertarian. Right? And they’re concerned about more intrusive government. Right? And so government, through our corrections system, has gotten extraordinarily big. Right? And so it’s very expensive, it’s intrusive, and it’s not fair.

So I think a combination of those things–combined with unfortunate tragedies, quite frankly–is at least providing some opening for this discussion. Whether that will actually result in real reform is another question.

JANIS: Well, you bring up a good point. It’s an industry, too, right? I mean, what you’re talking about the criminal justice system–I’ve read somewhere it’s around $80 billion a year, employs thousands of people. How much does that factor into keeping that discussion on a limited plain?

SCHINDLER: Oh, there’s no question about it. It is a criminal-industrial complex, right? And so there are literally billions of dollars that are at stake. And there are private for-profit prison companies. There are companies that make the food that are served in prisons, that build prisons. And so this is an extraordinarily profitable industry and one that takes up a piece of our economy. So that does make this in some ways more challenging. And, if you will, there are special interests who have a vested interest in the status quo.

But I think we’re starting to see some pushback on that and some realization that this is not getting the outcomes that we’re looking for.

We also just can’t ignore the fact that we are at an all-time record low for crime in this country. That’s not necessarily because of incarceration. But I think that’s also giving us an opportunity to have a discussion where there’s not as much fear within the general public, because crime is relatively low right now.

JANIS: Moving forward, what do you think needs to happen, and what do you think will come with this report? Are you planning on doing any more research? Or moving forward, what will happen?

SCHINDLER: Sure. You know, our hope–and I think we’re starting to see this happen–is that people will start asking tougher questions in terms of how we are spending our scarce public dollars.

One of the things that we point to in the report–and I think there’s some discussion going on here in Maryland and in other places–is let’s really have a cost-benefit analysis when we’re talking about public policy.

So a place that is actually doing this quite well is in Washington state. Some years ago they created the Washington State Institute for Public Policy. And they are charged with actually doing a cost-benefit analysis in terms of looking at the likely outcomes for different changes in law and policy. There’s no reason that Maryland and other states shouldn’t be doing the same thing. So responsible elected officials should be asking, if we pass this law, or if we leave this long sentencing law in effect, what are we getting from that, from a cost-benefit analysis as it relates to public safety?

And so our hope is that people start to ask those questions, ’cause I think when those questions start to get asked and they start to see the answers, that’s a way to shift this discussion and move it forward more effectively.

Baltimore Residents & Workers voice outrage over plans to privatize public housing

I liked this piece from The Real News Network about the rising homelessness, & decreasing numbers of affordable public housing, in US. Here, they are discussing homelessness in one of the American cities, Baltimore, Maryland.

As Mr. Singer explains in the piece that American government has been privatizing public housing since 1974 & now, under the Obama administration, "60,000 public housing units around the country are being sold to private developers, most of them for-profit developers, & we the taxpayers are subsidizing their profits." All this is happening when "homelessness is at the highest peak it's been since the Great Depression of the '30s." Is this democracy when the public taxes are subsidizing the rich, & those same poor public are becoming homeless?

Some 40,000 people are homeless in Baltimore. That's just 1 American city & it's not even considered a large American city by any measure. Homelessness has increased multiple folds in large American cities; New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta etc. & this is all happened within the last decade.

Poverty among Baltimore kids are almost 35%; that's almost 1 poor child in 3 children. Poverty is constantly increasing in US. The young generation is moving down south to have some sense of accumulation of wealth through cheaper real estate & taxes. But, the taxes are going up, & wages are going down, overall, & those taxes are not helping the poor public, but the rich keeps getting richer through tax cuts, subsidized public assets being turned private assets, & hence, the inequality keeps increasing.

Where's the democracy in the largest self-anointed "democratic" country in the world where poor can't even get a decent place to call it a home, & keeps becoming poor everyday, while the rich elites become rich at the expense of the poor public?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTL3T0qT6MA

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN PRODUCER: In part one of this story, we looked at Baltimore's plans to sell about 40% of its public housing stock to private developers & why some residents, workers, & advocates oppose these plans. But due to declining federal contributions to public housing, many cities face a shortfall in funding. The Department of Housing & Urban Development, HUD, puts the shortfall at $27 billion USD.

Baltimore says it can raise $300 million USD of the $800 million USD it needs by selling some of its properties to private developers.

To understand how America's public housing crisis got so bad in the first place, we spoke to Jeff Singer. He's an instructor at the University of Maryland & a longtime Baltimore public housing advocate.

NOOR: So there's a public housing crisis around the country. How did it get to that point? And start under Bill Clinton to give people a little background in how things got so bad.

JEFF SINGER, CITY ADVOCATES IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE HOMELESS: Well, we can go back even a little farther to 1974, when Richard Nixon created the first privatization of public housing, what we call the Section 8 certificates. And the more money that went to Section 8 certificates, the less money that went to public housing. Section 8 was a way to give private landlords money to house people who were poor. So from 74 until now, we've seen a decline in the amount of federal funds directed toward public housing & an increase in--a small increase in the amount that's directed toward profits.

The program we're talking about here tonight is the efflorescence of that. It's actually privatizing the housing that we built for ourselves & making sure that people can make profits from it. And they don't mix well together. Affordable housing & profits are antithetical.

NOOR: And so what happened starting under the Clinton administration?

SINGER: What happened out of the Clinton administration was a couple of programs & policy changes that are very important. One policy change was that it is now illegal to build additional public housing with federal funds. Can you imagine that? In 1949, Congress declared that it is the goal of the US to make sure that every resident here has safe, decent, affordable housing. But under Bill Clinton, that language was stricken from the law & the number of public housing units was capped by law. So that was one very important issue. Another was that he continued the defunding of public housing. There was a law that required that whenever a public housing unit was demolished, a new unit had to be created. He eliminated that as well. So this has accelerated the demise of public housing.

NOOR: RAD program is happening under the Obama administration, a Democratic administration.

SINGER: Yes. Well, as Huey Long said, they may be Democratic waiters or they may be Republican waiters, but they're serving food from the same Wall Street kitchen. This RAD program was created actually in 2003 by the Bush administration, but they couldn't get it implemented. So now the Obama administration is implementing it with a vengeance, & 60,000 public housing units around the country are being sold to private developers, most of them for-profit developers, & we the taxpayers are subsidizing their profits. At the same time, homelessness is at the highest peak it's been since the Great Depression of the '30s, & the secretary of the federal Department of Housing & Urban Development himself says we're in the worst rental housing crisis in our history.

NOOR: How bad is it here in Baltimore?

SINGER: Well, we don't know how many people experience homelessness every night in Baltimore, but we counted over 4,000 people two years ago per night. Over the course of a year, that's probably 40,000 people. So we know it's pretty bad. There are encampments all around the city, the shelters are full every night, & people have nowhere to go.

NOOR: And there's a lot of people in risk of losing their housing as well.

SINGER: Well, they are. And one of the aspects of this new RAD program is that it's going to use federal tax credits to create profits for these developers in public housing. But that means that those federal tax credits will no longer be available to build new affordable housing. ...

NOOR: Baltimore is a pilot city for the RAD program. Why will it be important for people to be engaged here? What kind of impact will what happens here have on the rest of the country, especially when it comes to tenants & the union workers that are being affected by this being mobilized & getting their voices out?

SINGER: I think we have an opportunity here to do something very important, & that is to combine the forces & the interests of the tenants with the forces & interests of the workers. It is outrageous that the federal government has approved a plan that's going to fire 200 workers, workers who had decent wages, job protections, & benefits. The middle class that--the president is talking about growing the middle class; well, now we're destroying part of the middle class. So by combining the interests of the tenants & the workers & the advocates & the neighborhood folks, we can create a really important force, & that force is devoted toward affordable & fair development policies.

NOOR: And so part of the drive for this you can kind of say comes from the perception that public housing is failing. And so why is it important to talk about the mismanagement & the underfunding of public housing to contextualize that?

SINGER: ... The federal budget for the Department of Housing & Urban Development was the equivalent of $90 billion in 1980, & it is now $42 billion. It's less than half of what it was. So they have purposefully for 40 years underfunded public housing, both the capital costs ... & the operating costs. Now the City of Baltimore gets only about 75% of what they need to run public housing, & they get a hundredth of what they need to maintain it.

NOOR: What else is important for people to know about the future of public housing in America, in Baltimore today?

SINGER: Well, public housing is the sector of housing that keeps housing permanently affordable for the very large number of folks whose income is low. And we have a poverty rate in the US of about 15%. In the City of Baltimore, it's over 20%. Among children in Baltimore it's 35%. None of those folks can afford housing through the market. Public housing is the best way to keep them safe and secure.

In other civilized countries, public housing is a very large part of their housing sector. In most European countries, it's 20% of all the housing. In the city of Vienna it's 60% of all the housing is public housing, meaning it's owned by all the people & it's available to people who need it. In the US, it's 1% of our housing, & that's diminishing.

The losing game of publicly financed sports venues

Another great article on how taxes taken from hard-working public are used for something from which most of the general public will never get any meaningful benefit, & it reduces the money a municipal / provincial / state / federal government has to put it towards a better cause. Governments of all levels in the Western world are crying for more money & are putting in more austerity measures to cut expenditures & increasing taxes.

All the while, these same governments are spending the few money they have on things that are completely useless. These monies could be used for building more affordable housing for homeless & hence, reduce homelessness, or improving infrastructure (water pipelines, public transit, roads, cheaper & sustainable energy), which can also create jobs, which in turn, creates more tax revenue for the government, or simply providing or increasing funding for any number of social causes & NGOs.

But nooooo. The taxes from hard-working public, who itself, is trying to scrimp & save every nickel & dime by buying unorganic, cheap & unhealthy food, for instance, are being used to built expensive stadiums, which ultimately benefit the wealthy owners of sports franchises. They themselves pay much less in taxes but take full benefit of other people's taxes.

But then again, as the article asks that are governments merely stupid to bend to the demands of these wealthy individuals & then answers right away that sports subsidies are a political winner. So who is to blame here? Government or the public. The same public who will give their hard-earned money to a wealthy individual & wealthy players, & gets a paltry return for its own investment. Ironically, while the owners & players are swimming in cash & laughing how they have duped the public, the public is also not only cheering "their team" (who will leave the city as soon as it bleeds the city dry) but also buying expensive merchandise with their own money & still giving their taxes. I blame the public who claims to have open eyes & ears & have common sense, but then take such a stupid step.

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-losing-game-of-publicly-financed-sports-venues/article25563294/

The people of Quebec City & Edmonton are falling prey to one of the oldest con games – the notion that spending public money on pro sports venues is a sound investment.

Facts don’t seem to matter in this game. And your city could be fleeced next.

Stacks of independent research over many decades have shown that building a stadium or luring a new franchise does little for a city’s economy. They typically don’t generate significant new tax dollars, jobs or growth. In most cases, the money would be more wisely spent on badly needed public infrastructure, such as roads, transit or schools.

And yet, governments serially ignore the evidence & continue to shower subsidies on team owners & their media partners.

In Quebec City & Edmonton, governments are currently sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into new arenas. In Quebec City’s case, the aim is to attract an NHL franchise. The rationale in Edmonton is to keep its team, the Oilers, from leaving.

Gobs of taxpayer cash will similarly be needed if Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre gets his wish of bringing professional baseball back to the city. The price tag for buying a franchise & building a new baseball stadium – presumably, a domed one – will top $1-billion. And it won’t happen unless taxpayers pick up a big chunk of the tab.

So why are governments so gullible?

The simple answer is that sport subsidies are a political winner.

They’re sold as investments in the economy. But it’s really about civic pride, the thrill of the game & cheering for the home team.

Montrealers, for example, overwhelmingly support the idea of bringing baseball back to their city more than decade after the Expos left for Washington, D.C., according to a recent Abacus Data poll. Nearly 90% of 500 residents surveyed expressed varying levels of support, ranging from lukewarm to strong. Just 12% are against it. Roughly 8 out of 10 respondents said Major League Baseball would be good for the economy & generate more taxes for the city.

The reality is quite the opposite, according to numerous independent economic studies conducted over several decades in North America.

“The weight of economic evidence … shows that taxpayers spend a lot of money and ultimately don’t get much back,” according to a 2001 study, “Should Cities Pay for Sports Facilities?” for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “And when this paltry return is compared with other potential uses of the funds, the investment, almost always, seems unwise.”

The subsidies rarely stop once the venues are up & running. Billions of dollars a year in hidden subsidies flow to existing sport venues, according to a 2012 book by Judith Grant Long, now an associate professor of sports management at the University of Michigan. In her book, Public-Private Partnerships for Major League Sports Facilities, Ms. Grant Long found that taxpayers are subsidizing 78%of the average professional sports facility in Canada & the US.

Earlier this year, US President Barack Obama moved in his budget to close down one financial vehicle that has encouraged subsidies by barring the use of tax-exempt bonds to finance professional sports facilities. In Canada, governments often fund the projects directly from their own coffers, tapping into lower government borrowing costs.

The real story, however, may be that the main beneficiaries of government largesse are team owners.

Quebec City’s $400-million Centre Vidéotron was built with a combination of municipal & provincial government money. It's ... a lure for an eventual NHL franchise sought by Videotron owner Quebecor Inc., controlled by Parti Québécois Leader Pierre Karl Péladeau.

The cost of Edmonton’s $480-million Rogers Place arena, due to open in time for the 2016-17 NHL season, is being split between the city & wealthy team owner Daryl Katz, who had earlier threatened to move the Oilers to Seattle.

Mr. Katz, who also owns the Rexall pharmacy chain, is now poised to cash in with a massive mixed-used residential, office & entertainment development he’s planning for the surrounding area, dubbed “The Ice District.” The $2-billion project will include 1,000 residential units, 1.3 million square feet of office space in skyscrapers that will rank among the tallest buildings in Western Canada, a luxury hotel & a public plaza with an outdoor skating rink, casino, restaurants & stores.

The private development wouldn’t make much sense without the subsidized Rogers Place as its anchor. And businesses elsewhere will lose as customers inevitably migrate to the new entertainment area, making the deal a wash on the city’s tax ledger.

This losing scenario will play out in your city too unless someone stands up and says, enough.

When it comes to war in space, US has the edge

This article gives us a little taste of how the world's major powers, financially & militarily, are in a race to spend trillions upon trillions to conquer their global rivals in space & show to the world how they "won" the race. Ironically, those trillions are coming from people taxes; the same taxes people of a country pay, voluntarily or involuntarily, to receive basic necessities to fulfill their basic human needs.

Trillions of those taxes are being spent on something which most of the world's population will never use. All these space military hardware is not helping anyone improve billions of lives right here on Earth.

We humans want to take a giant leap towards Moon settlement & Mars colonization, but we forget very easily that billions of humans are living a miserable & wretched life right in our backyard, right here on this very planet.

Our fellow humans are dying of thirst because water is becoming a shortage, but trillions are not being spent to come up with cheap technologies to solve this impending crisis.

Our fellow humans are dying of hunger or suffering from eating unhealthy foods because feeding everyone in the world a healthy diet would require billions in funding, but billions are not being spent on research to improve agriculture & food accessibility for billions of poor.

Our fellow humans are living without a roof over their heads & homelessness is only increasing. But billions are not being spent on building affordable housing to provide a decent living space to our own fellow human beings.

Similarly, there are thousands more issues where trillions can be spent easily to improve human & animal lives; fatal diseases, climate change, animal welfare, sustainable energy etc. & make our little planet a living utopia for all. But, instead of improving lives for billions on this little planet of ours, trillions are being spent, of people's own money, on advancing technologies to destroy more lives & wreck more havoc on this little planet.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS224889314220150810

Quietly & without most people noticing, the world’s leading space powers — the US, China & Russia — have been deploying new & more sophisticated weaponry in space.

Earth’s orbit is looking more & more like the planet’s surface — heavily armed & primed for war. A growing number of “inspection” satellites lurk in orbit, possibly awaiting commands to sneak up on & disable or destroy other satellites. Down on the surface, more & more warships & ground installations pack powerful rockets that, with accurate guidance, could reach into orbit to destroy enemy spacecraft.

A war in orbit could wreck the delicate satellite constellations that the world relies on for navigation, communication, scientific research & military surveillance. Widespread orbital destruction could send humanity through a technological time warp. “You go back to World War Two,” Air Force General John Hyten, in charge of US Space Command, told 60 Minutes. “You go back to the Industrial Age.”

It’s hard to say exactly how many weapons are in orbit. That’s because many spacecraft are “dual use.” They have peaceful functions & potential military applications. With the proverbial flip of a switch, an inspection satellite, ostensibly configured for orbital repair work, could become a robotic assassin capable of taking out other satellites with lasers, explosives or mechanical claws. Until the moment it attacks, however, the assassin spacecraft might appear to be harmless. And its dual use gives its operators political cover. The US possesses more space weaponry than any other country, yet denies that any of its satellites warrant the term.

When 60 Minutes asked the Air Force secretary whether the United States has weapons in space, Secretary Deborah Lee James answered simply: “No, we do not.”

Still, it’s possible to count at least some of the systems that could disable or destroy other satellites. Some of the surface-based weaponry is far less ambiguous & so easier to tally. Even taking into account the difficulty of accurately counting space weaponry, one thing is clear: The US is, by far, the world’s most heavily armed space power.

But not for a lack of trying on the part of other countries.

New Cold War in space

Earth’s orbit wasn’t always such a dangerous place. The Soviet Union destroyed a satellite for the last time in an experiment in 1982. The US tested its last Cold War anti-satellite missile, launched by a vertically flying F-15 fighter, in 1985.

For the next 3 decades, both countries refrained from deploying weapons in space. The “unofficial moratorium,” as Laura Grego, a space expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, described it, put the brakes on the militarization of space.

Then in 2002, President George W. Bush withdrew the US from a treaty with Russia prohibiting the development of antiballistic-missile weapons. The move cleared the way for Bush to deploy interceptor missiles that administration officials claimed would protect the US from nuclear attack by “rogue” states such as North Korea. But withdrawing from the treaty also undermined the consensus on the strictly peaceful use of space.

5 years later, in January 2007, China struck one of its own old satellites with a ground-launched rocket as part of a test of a rudimentary anti-satellite system. This scattered thousands of potentially dangerous pieces of debris across low orbit. Beijing’s anti-satellite test accelerated the militarization of space. The US, in particular, seized the opportunity to greatly expand its orbital arsenal.

US companies & government agencies have at least 500 satellites — roughly as many as the rest of the world combined. At least 100 of them are primarily military in nature. Most are for communication or surveillance. In other words, they’re oriented downward, toward Earth.

But a few patrol space itself. The US military’s Advanced Technology Risk Reduction spacecraft, launched into an 800-mile-high orbit in 2009, is basically a sensitive infrared camera that can detect the heat plumes from rocket launches &, presumably, maneuvering spacecraft. It then can beam detailed tracking data to human operators on the ground.

The risk-reduction satellite works in conjunction with other spacecraft & Earth-based sensors to keep track of Earth’s approximately 1,000 active satellites. The telescope-like Space-Based Space Surveillance satellite, launched in 2010, “has a clear and unobstructed view,” according to an Air Force fact sheet, “of resident space objects orbiting Earth from its 390-mile-altitude orbit.”

“Resident space object” is military speak for satellites.

A network of around 30 ground radars & telescopes complements the orbital sensors. Together, these systems make “380,000 to 420,000 observations each day,” Space Command explains on its Website.

Observing & tracking other countries’ satellites is a passive & essentially peaceful affair. But the US military also possesses at least 6 spacecraft that can maneuver close to enemy satellites & inspect or even damage them.

In 2010, the Air Force launched its first X-37B space plane. A quarter-size, robotic version of the old Space Shuttle, the X-37B boosts into low orbit — around 250 miles high — atop a rocket but lands back on Earth like an airplane.

The two X-37Bs take turns spending a year or more in orbit. Officially, the Air Force describes the maneuverable mini-shuttles as being part of “an experimental test program to demonstrate technologies for a reliable, reusable, unmanned space test platform.” But they could also attack other spacecraft.

The X-37Bs “could be used to rendezvous and inspect satellites, either friendly or adversarial, and potentially grab and de-orbit satellites,” the Secure World Foundation, a space advocacy group, pointed out. The group stressed that the feasibility of the X-37Bs as weapons is low because the mini-shuttles are limited to low orbits & because the US operates at least 4 other maneuverable satellites that are probably far better at stalking & tearing up enemy spacecraft.

These include 2 Microsatellite Technology Experiment satellites that the military boosted into low orbit in 2006. The MiTEx satellites are small, weighing just 500 pounds each. This makes them harder for enemy sensors to detect — giving them the advantage of surprise in wartime.

The two Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program satellites are much bigger & higher up. From their stationary positions 22,000 miles above Earth, these spacecraft — in orbit since July 2014 — monitor other satellites & can, according to the Air Force, “maneuver near a resident space object of interest, enabling characterization for anomaly resolution and enhanced surveillance.”

Maneuverable space planes & satellites are one way of attacking enemy spacecraft. But there’s an older, less subtle method — blasting them out of space with a rocket.

In late 2006, an US spy satellite malfunctioned shortly after reaching low orbit. In early February 2008, the Pentagon announced it would shoot down the dead spacecraft. Officially, Washington insisted that the anti-satellite operation was a safety measure, to prevent the defunct craft’s toxic fuel from harming someone when the satellite’s orbit decayed & it tumbled to Earth.

But it appeared to more than one observer that China’s 2007 anti-satellite test motivated Washington’s own satellite shoot-down. A new Cold War was underway, this time in space.

On Feb. 20, 2008, the Navy cruiser Lake Erie, equipped with a high-tech Aegis radar, launched a specially modified SM-3 antiballistic-missile interceptor. The rocket struck the malfunctioning satellite at an estimated speed of 22,000 miles an hour, destroying it.

Today, the US has dozens of Aegis-equipped warships carrying hundreds of SM-3 missiles, more than enough to quickly wipe out the approximately 50 satellites apiece that Russia & China keep in low orbit.

“Aegis ships could be positioned optimally,” Grego of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote in a 2011 paper, “ to stage a ‘sweep’ attack on a set of satellites nearly at once.”

As an anti-satellite backup, the US Army & the Missile Defense Agency also operate 2 types of ground-launched missile interceptors that have the power to reach low orbit — & the accuracy to strike spacecraft.

Against this huge arsenal, Russia & China possess few counterweights. China’s 2007 anti-satellite test, & a similar trial in early 2013, proved that Beijing can hit a low satellite with a rocket. In 2010, the Chinese space agency launched a cluster of small space vehicles, including 2 named SJ-6F & SJ-12, that slammed into each other in orbit, seemingly on purpose. In July 2013, China deployed a small inspection spacecraft, designated SY-7, in low orbit.

Like the US fleet of maneuverable inspection spacecraft, the tiny SY-7 with its remote-controlled claw could be orbital repair or inspection vehicle — or it could be a weapon.

“One could dream up,” Brian Weeden, a technical & space adviser at the Secure World Foundation, told the War Is Boring Website in 2013, “a whole bunch of dastardly things that could be done with a robotic arm in close proximity.”

But China lacks the space- & ground-based sensors to accurately steer these weapons toward their targets. Compared to the US space-awareness system, with its scores of radars & telescopes, China possesses a relatively paltry system — one consequence of Beijing’s diplomatic isolation.

Where the US can count on allies to host parts of a global sensor network, China has few formal allies & can only deploy space-awareness systems inside its own borders, on ships at sea or in space. The Chinese military can watch the skies over East Asia, but is mostly blind elsewhere.

By contrast, Russia inherited an impressive space-awareness network from the Soviet Union. Russia’s allies in Europe — in particular, the former Soviet & Eastern Bloc states — extend the network’s field of view. As a result, Moscow possesses “a relatively complete catalog of space objects,” the Secure World Foundation concluded.

But Russia is still far behind the US & China as far as space weaponry is concerned. There was a 31-year gap between the Soviet Union’s last anti-satellite test & Russia’s first post-Soviet orbital-weapon experiment. On Christmas Day in 2013, Russia quietly launched a small, maneuverable inspection spacecraft into low orbit, hiding the tiny spacecraft among a cluster of communications satellites.

2 more space inspectors followed, one in May 2014 & another in March 2015. Moscow hasn’t said much about them, but amateur satellite spotters have tracked the vehicles performing the kinds of maneuvers consistent with orbital attack craft. “You can probably equip them with lasers,” Anatoly Zak, the author of Russia in Space: Past Explained, Future Explored, said of the Russian craft. “Maybe put some explosives on them.”

They join a growing number of space weapons guided by expanding networks of Earth-based & orbital sensors on a new, distant battlefront of a so far bloodless neo-Cold War.

America's wars drag on no matter what officials say

A great opinion piece on how American troops once enter a country never actually leave; be it Germany & Japan (after WWII), South Korea (after Korean War), Vietnam (after Vietnam war), & now, Afghanistan & Iraq. Other than these well-publicized conflicts, American troops entered, & wrecked havoc, in several other countries around the world; in Africa & Latin America.

Regardless of how much American leadership says to their naïve, & ignorant, American public that American troops will be out of a country at some point in the future; in reality, they never do. Those troops become the expense, financial & social, of the host country. The military operations continue on for decades on end. Heck, nowadays, American military hand the military operations to "military contractors" (former military personnel) to offload operational costs to a third party & reduce its own liability in case something goes awry.

Furthermore, America needs a war(s) to keep its own populace in fear, which in turn, helps the government to keep control of the public. These wars are / will always be started & fought over false pretenses & the military-industrial complex needs wars like an addict need its addiction. After all, all those billion-dollar budgets won't be passed by the Congress for the military in absence of a war(s).

One more point the opinion piece makes is that these wars, & their continuation, are done without any input whatsoever from the general public. Isn't that against the basic concept of "democracy"? So, can the American public please enlighten me then what's the difference between a Saudi prince waging a war against a poor country, Yemen, without any input from its general public (since, it's an authoritarian regime) & an American government starting wars against poor countries like Afghanistan, Libya, & Iraq, without any input from its general public (especially since, it's a "democratic" country)?

One last point the opinion piece makes, & which hit home, is that billions are spent, & essentially, are being wasted, in these wars. American troops suffer heavy losses in terms of death (almost 10,000 troops have died in Afghanistan & Iraq in the past decade) & life-long physical & mental disabilities. These recent wars against Afghanistan & Iraq have also pretty much bankrupted one of the richest countries in the world. Its general public work hard & still, millions are merely surviving on meagre incomes. Homelessness has substantially increased in the past decade. Poverty keep increasing & shows no signs of abating in the foreseeable future. But billions are wasted on "foreign fighters" who have no allegiance to America, its ideals, & its people.

But, then, America needs wars like a drug addict needs its drugs.
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/22/america-war-iraq-libya-afghanistan-endless

In all three of the countries where the Obama administration declared US wars “over” in the past few years - Afghanistan, Iraq & Libya - the US military is expanding its presence or dropping bombs at an ever-increasing rate. And the government seems to be keeping the American public in the dark on the matter more than ever.

Pentagon leaders suggested ... that the US military wants to keep remaining 9,800 troops in Afghanistan from withdrawing in 2016, despite the fact that the Obama administration declared combat operations in the country “over” ... months ago. The gradual extension of the Afghanistan War hasn’t been a secret to anyone who’s been paying close attention, but sadly it has happened far away from the pomp & circumstance of Obama’s now embarrassingly false State of the Union announcement that the Afghanistan War had ended.

Shortly after his January speech, the president signed a secret order that would keep the military fighting & killing in the region through 2015, then delayed any troop pull-out through 2016. ...

As the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko remarked: “First it was al Qaeda, then the Taliban, now ISIS will be reason US military remains in Afghanistan.” There’s always going to be someone. What unnamed group will be holding our attention in 2020 when we still have troops fighting & dying there for nebulous reasons?

Away from the headlines, Libya continues to deteriorate since the US & NATO allies bombed the region & deposed dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. ...

As a result, the US military to desperately look to build another drone base near Libya that they can start launching regular drone strikes from - targeting both Libya & “elsewhere in North Africa.” This news comes around the same time as yet another retired US general, former director of the Pentagon’s intelligence unit Michael Flynn, indicated ... that drone strikes are actually creating more terrorists than they’re killing. Flynn’s comments echo the same point that has been made over & over by former generals & many other smart people recently, yet has evoked no change in policy or even public debate.

This potential expansion of the Isis war to a third country has all happened without congressional approval. Hardly anyone seems to care that we’re engaged in a generational war spanning multiple continents that we haven’t legally declared, almost a year after it was started.

Meanwhile in Syria, after months of delay, the first US-trained rebels finally entered the Isis-controlled regions and the process is already being accused of “mission creep” by defense experts, given its further entrenching US into the war there (again, without so much as a formal announcement by the government).

The rebels also come at an astronomical price-tag for the US of $4 million for each rebel, & there is no indication that it will have any effect on the chaos that now engulfs Syria, besides potentially causing more of it. Zenko called the program “one of the more poorly conceived and implausible foreign policy schemes in modern history.”

The Obama administration & CIA knew full well that funding rebel armies in foreign countries almost always ends in disaster, yet did it anyways - & hid the conclusions of a CIA study saying as much from Congress along the way.

What’s troubling about all of this is that it is happening with little debate in Congress & almost no input from public. The US is ramping up its war efforts across the Middle East & now North Africa. They want to increase drone strikes, continue to spend billions to train Afghanistan & Iraqi troops, despite the fact that the last decade of “training” has been a disaster where whole armies have deserted & billions of dollars in US weapons are now in the hands of Isis. And of course, the specter of adding more US ground troops always lurks in the background.

There is growing realization from experts that we’re not going to be able to bomb our way out of this. Is there no one in charge in Washington who is willing to admit that doubling down yet again on military force is only going to keep making matters worse?

Tenant evictions reach six-year high amid rising rents & benefit cuts in UK

This is what's happening with English residents & citizens in their own country, in UK, that not only government has cut down on the social benefit payments the public used to receive, but they are also now evicting tenants who can't pay rents, due to a hardship has fallen upon them.

Developing countries don't have the social safety net which can help residents & citizens when they fall upon hard circumstances, but it seems like that developed countries are going the same way.

If you are thinking it's just the story of one country, UK, then you are sorely mistaken. Although, you should realize that London is considered one of the financial hubs of the world, right beside New York. The cruel irony is that the number of homeless people in New York City has also doubled in the past decade (2004 - 2014).

I believe it's safe to assume that a homeless Briton looks no different from a homeless American or a homeless Pakistani or a homeless Syrian or a homeless Nigerian or a homeless Iraqi or a homeless Somali. I think you get the picture.

Who do we blame for this rising inequality in this "modern" world of 21st century? Governments, economy, financial systems, businesses, elites, corruption, immigrants, terrorism etc.?
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http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/may/14/tenant-evictions-reach-six-year-high-rising-rents-benefit-cuts

The number of tenants evicted from their homes is at a six-year high, according to new figures, as rising rents & cuts to benefits make tenancies increasingly unaffordable.

County court bailiffs in England & Wales evicted more than 11,000 families in the first 3 months of 2015, an increase of 8% on the same period last year & 51% higher than 5 years ago.

The increase in the number of tenants losing their homes means 2015 is on course to break last year’s record levels. Nearly 42,000 families were evicted from rental accommodation in 2014, the highest number since records began in 2000.

Rental prices have soared in many UK cities but wages failing to keep pace with rising costs & caps to benefits have left many poorer tenants unable to make payments.

Separate figures also ... showed almost 59,000 households have had their benefits capped in the past 2 years. Nearly half of those families were in London, where the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom home is £2,216.

Housing charities said the figures were a glaring reminder that many tenants were struggling to maintain a roof over their heads, & they called on the ... government to do more to tackle a housing crisis in the UK.

The latest repossession statistics, published by the Ministry of Justice, reveal the highest number of evictions in a single quarter since 2009, when comparable records began, with nearly 126 families forced out every day.

Between January & March, 11,307 tenants & their families were evicted by bailiffs, compared with a figure of 10,380 between October & December last year, & 10,482 in the first quarter of 2014.

The record figure comes as the number of landlord repossession claims ... also rose. Claims were up 10% on the last quarter, but at 42,226 they remained below a six-year high of 47,208 in the first quarter of 2014.

Claims by both private & social landlords were up, the figures showed, although most of the rise was explained by claims by the latter. Social landlords were behind nearly 5 times as many attempts to recover properties than private landlords, the figures showed. These landlords are typically housing associations providing homes at lower rents than the market rate, often to tenants who receive housing benefit.

In the first 3 months of the year, 64% of possession claims were made by social landlords. These 27,204 court actions came alongside 5,551 made by private landlords & 9,741 accelerated claims, which could have been by either social or private landlords.

In May 2014, when the threat of evictions reached its highest level for a decade, the National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations across England, told the Guardian the bedroom tax was causing problems for social landlords. The policy cuts the amount of housing benefit paid to social housing tenants whose homes are deemed too large for their requirements. Benefit sanctions were also thought to be causing problems.

But many housing associations, particularly in London & the south-east, have turned out tenants as they have sought to redevelop generations-old estates to take advantage of the big rise in property values. This has in turn led to an increase in the number of grassroots campaigns to oppose evictions, such as the Focus E15 mothers.

The MoJ figures came on the same day as the Department for Work & Pensions revealed that 58,690 households across the UK had their benefits capped to a maximum of £26,000 a year since April 2013. Londoners were the worst affected, with 26,636 families facing a cut in benefits over the period to February 2015, followed by 5,953 in the rest of the south-east.

DWP proposals to meet the Conservatives’ pledge to cut £12bn from the welfare budget, in documents leaked to the Guardian last week, included barring under-25s from claiming housing benefit, increasing the bedroom tax on certain categories of tenants, limiting welfare payments by family size & freezing welfare benefits at current levels.

Responding to the eviction statistics, Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said: “Today’s figures are a glaring reminder that sky-high housing costs & welfare cuts are leaving thousands of people battling to keep a roof over their heads.

“Every day at Shelter we see the devastating impact of a housing market at boiling point, with the cost of renting so high that many families are living in fear that just one thing like losing their job or becoming ill could leave them with the bailiffs knocking at the door.

“The new government must make sure people aren’t left to fall through the cracks & hurtling towards homelessness by preserving, if not strengthening, the frayed housing safety net to protect ordinary families desperately struggling to make ends meet.”

Betsy Dillner, director of the campaign group Generation Rent, said: “These record eviction figures & signs that they are accelerating are a stark reminder of the housing crisis that the government must urgently start taking seriously now they’re back in power.

“Whether it’s an inability to pay expensive rents or a landlord’s desire to take back their property, the fact that more than 40,000 families were forced out of their homes last year is a symptom of the government’s failure to create a sustainable housing market.”

The housing minister, Brandon Lewis, defended the government’s performance, pointing out that mortgage repossessions had fallen drastically, keeping owner-occupiers in their “hard-earned homes”.

He said: “Mortgage repossessions continue to fall at 56% lower than this time last year, & the lowest annual figure since the series began in 1987. Meanwhile, numbers of county court mortgage possession claims continue to fall to the lowest quarterly number since records began. This is thanks to our work to tackle the deficit & keep interest rates low, helping more families to stay in their hard earned homes.

“There are strong protections in place to guard families against the threat of homelessness. We increased spending to prevent homelessness, with over £500m made available to help the most vulnerable in society & ensure we don’t return to the bad old days when homelessness in England was nearly double what it is today.”