Invest in Steel
Big Business
for release 09-08-05
Washington D.C.
by Lightning Rod
I can talk about O.P. behind his back now. He's dead.
I had met OP in Denton through other friends and knew him but not well. Our first real encounter was when I was working with a bunch of smugglers in Austin. They fronted OP a hundred pounds of pot because he said he had a customer in Denton who would buy the load. This was back in the day when you could get a hundred pounds of pot for $10,000.
OP was to drive the load from Austin to Denton and I was appointed to drive the follow car. We arrived safely in Denton and OP went to do the deal. I was supposed to meet up with him that evening to get the money. He didn't show up. OP didn't have the best reputation in the world. That's why I had been assigned to monitor the situation.
The next morning I'm driving down Eagle St. next to the cemetery when I see OP walking down the side of the road. I stopped and with a distressed look on his face he got in the car. He said, "I just got out of jail."
It turned out that his customers were Texas Rangers and they busted him for the sale of 100 pounds of marijuana. He was out on bond the next morning.
Flashback two years before. My friend Wayne ran a headshop in Denton. He sold beads and posters and cigarette papers and leather goods to the students at the college. He got busted for two joints and was sentenced to 35 years in the penitentiary. This was Texas in the late sixties. He appealed and for two years he fought the case and it cost him his house and his business and his car and money he had to borrow and still he went to prison.
But OP had hired a bright young attorney and within a few months he cut a deal with the DA's office and OP ended up with probation. Thirty-five years for possession of two joints, and probation for the sale of a hundred pounds. Go figure. You can see why the Texas justice system enjoys so much respect. Consistency. If your daddy has money, you walk. If he doesn't, you can get on the chain bus. A major league thief like Ken Lay can get probation for stealing a billion dollars while a poor black from Houston can catch hard time for swiping a pack of Salems. This is a literal fact. I was locked up with a guy who was doing four years for stealing a pack of Salems when fifteen people testified in court that he was clear across town when the terrible crime occurred. His crime? Being poor and black.
It's the same crime that was committed by most of those who were stranded in New Orleans. They were poor and black. They had nowhere to go and no way to get there. Now Texas has a quarter of a million new residents and most of them are poor and black. Ha! Ha!
The wise investor would buy stock in a private prison company like Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). It's already a growth industry and with a quarter of a million displaced people in Texas alone there are bound to be plenty of new customers for the Texas Prison Complex. Human bodies are the raw materials for the prison industry. They have to keep the cots full in order to show a profit.
Texas has the largest prison system in the world. There are over 150,000 people housed in the predatory bowels of it. It's a for profit operation. It's an industry. Warm bodies are the raw material. Preferably warm black bodies. Strong backed black bucks who can work in the fields and factories. Slave labor is big business.
I worked for The State of Texas for four years in jobs that would have paid 50-100 thousand a year in the free world. I printed license plate stickers in a print shop that made the state a couple of million a year, I did computer work and materials management for a multi-million dollar construction industry that the prison ran. I even played veterinarian by artificially inseminating the cows in their dairy industry. I figure that they made about thirty or forty thousand per year off of me while I was a guest there. Multiply that by 150,000. This is big business.
Like anything else, when there is profit in an industry, it will proliferate. The industry of locking people up is very profitable. And it spawns other industries. There are cops and lawyers and bail bondsmen and probation officers and judges and clerks involved. Everybody gets fat from locking somebody up behind a swiped pack of Salems. It's a bonanza. I'm surprised Halliburton is not involved.
The Poet's Eye wouldn't be surprised to see the Texas Legislature making it a crime to be a Cajun in Texas. It would be good for the prison business.
No Reggae In Texas
Don"t play no reggae in Texas
Just got the rhythm and blues
don't play no reggae
don't play no reggae in Texas
In Texas all the reggae
he get colored up by the blues
Don't smoke no ganja in Texas
For that you get 20 years
don't smoke no ganja
don't smoke no ganja in Texas
We go a hotel down in Huntsville
for all you dopers and commies and queers
We got more prisons in Texas
Than all the dictators do
we got more prisons
we got more prisons and we're building more too
So don't mess with Texas
cuz Texas'll sho nuff mess with you
We so damn smart down in Texas
We build more prisons than schools
we build more prisons
we build more prisons and we make more rules
Every year we graduate a billion dollar
class of convict fools .
---Lrod
to hear the tune go here