RSN: Spending on Jails Outpaced Spending on Schools by Three Times Over the Last 30 Years, Secret UK Government Memos Expose Link Between Oil Firms and Invasion of Iraq, I Dread What's Coming. Truly, I Do.

08 July 16

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Charles Pierce | I Dread What's Coming. Truly, I Do.

Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes: "To those of us who are of a certain age, the psychic signposts of Thursday night in Dallas marked a vaguely remembered route to hell."
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Pundits Didn't Waste Any Time Attacking Black Lives Matter as Dallas Tragedy Unfolded
Aviva Shen and Carimah Townes, ThinkProgress
Excerpt: "Right-wing commentators and media organizations are seizing on the tragedy in Dallas to revive a baseless narrative that the racial justice movement is promoting a 'war on cops.'"
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Black Man Found Hanging in Atlanta Park, Claims of KKK Lynching
teleSUR
Excerpt: "A young Black man was found hanging by a rope in an Atlanta park Thursday in a case officials claim was a suicide, but social media has questioned police accounts, saying the KKK was present in the area earlier that day."
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Spending on Jails Outpaced Spending on Schools by Three Times Over the Last 30 Years
Teresa Welsh, McClatchy DC
Welsh writes: "Over the last 30 years, local and state governments increased how much they spend on putting people in jail three times more than how much they spend on educating students, according to a new analysis by the Department of Education."
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The U.S. has the highest percentage of people in jail of any country. (photo: Bebeto Matthews/AP)

ver the last 30 years, local and state governments increased how much they spend on putting people in jail three times more than how much they spend on educating students, according to a new analysis by the Department of Education.

The department examined corrections spending and education spending data from 1979-1980 to 2012-2013 and found that over that time, governments increased spending on incarceration by 324 percent (from $17 to $71 billion). This is more than three times the spending increase on education, which only grew 107 percent (from $258 to $534 billion) over the same time period.

All of the 50 states had lower expenditure growth rates for PK-12 education than for corrections. Seven states increased corrections budgets more than five times as quickly than they did K-12 education budgets:  Idaho, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and West Virginia . Texas had the largest percentage increase over 30 years, hiking incarceration spending by 850 percent.

“These aren’t just statistics. When I think about the lives of those who are incarcerated, I can’t help but feel disheartened,” Education Secretary John King wrote on Medium. “I can’t help but think about their families, spouses, sons, daughters, and parents — or about the art not created; the entrepreneurial ideas that may never reach the drawing board; the classrooms these Americans will never lead; and the discoveries they’ll never make.”

According to King, more than two-thirds of state prison inmates dropped out of high school. Young black men between ages 20 and 24 without a high school diploma or GED are more likely to be in jail than to have a job.

King also cited research showing a relationship between education rates and incarceration rates: A 10-percent increase in high school graduation rates leads to a 9-percent decrease in the rates of criminal arrest, and reduces murder and assault rates by 20 percent. The department said that increasing the amount of money state and local governments spend on educating students could help decrease the jail population.

“Reducing incarceration rates and redirecting some of the funds currently spent on corrections in order to make investments in education that we know work,” the Department of Education report said, “could provide a more positive and potentially more effective approach to both reducing crime and increasing opportunity among at-risk youth, particularly if in the PK–12 context the redirected funds are focused on high-poverty schools.”

Some of those education investments include increasing teacher salaries for those willing to work in “hard-to-staff” schools and increasing access to high-quality preschool. According to the report, “all too often” children who grow up in poor communities do poorly in school and are disproportionately arrested and incarcerated as teens and young adults.

The U.S. has the highest rates of incarceration in the world, with more than 2 million people jailed across the country. The U.S. is only 5 percent of the world’s population, but has 20 percent of its incarcerated population.

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/37897-spending-on-jails-outpaced-spending-on-schools-by-three-times-over-the-last-30-years

Some Delegates May Carry Guns Around Cleveland During Republican Convention 

Dave Davies and M.L. Schultz, NPR 

Davies and Schultz write: "The list of items banned from downtown Cleveland during this month's upcoming Republican National Convention includes tennis balls, grappling hooks and canned goods. But not guns." 

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Secret UK Government Memos Expose Link Between Oil Firms and Invasion of Iraq
Paul Bignell, The Independent
Bignell writes: "Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show."
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British soldier in Iraq. (photo: EPA)

lans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.

The documents were not offered as evidence in the ongoing Chilcot Inquiry into the UK's involvement in the Iraq war. In March 2003, just before Britain went to war, Shell denounced reports that it had held talks with Downing Street about Iraqi oil as "highly inaccurate". BP denied that it had any "strategic interest" in Iraq, while Tony Blair described "the oil conspiracy theory" as "the most absurd".

But documents from October and November the previous year paint a very different picture.

Five months before the March 2003 invasion, Baroness Symons, then the Trade Minister, told BP that the Government believed British energy firms should be given a share of Iraq's enormous oil and gas reserves as a reward for Tony Blair's military commitment to US plans for regime change.

The papers show that Lady Symons agreed to lobby the Bush administration on BP's behalf because the oil giant feared it was being "locked out" of deals that Washington was quietly striking with US, French and Russian governments and their energy firms.

Minutes of a meeting with BP, Shell and BG (formerly British Gas) on 31 October 2002 read: "Baroness Symons agreed that it would be difficult to justify British companies losing out in Iraq in that way if the UK had itself been a conspicuous supporter of the US government throughout the crisis."

The minister then promised to "report back to the companies before Christmas" on her lobbying efforts.

The Foreign Office invited BP in on 6 November 2002 to talk about opportunities in Iraq "post regime change". Its minutes state: "Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP is desperate to get in there and anxious that political deals should not deny them the opportunity."

After another meeting, this one in October 2002, the Foreign Office's Middle East director at the time, Edward Chaplin, noted: "Shell and BP could not afford not to have a stake in [Iraq] for the sake of their long-term future... We were determined to get a fair slice of the action for UK companies in a post-Saddam Iraq."

Whereas BP was insisting in public that it had "no strategic interest" in Iraq, in private it told the Foreign Office that Iraq was "more important than anything we've seen for a long time".

BP was concerned that if Washington allowed TotalFinaElf's existing contact with Saddam Hussein to stand after the invasion it would make the French conglomerate the world's leading oil company. BP told the Government it was willing to take "big risks" to get a share of the Iraqi reserves, the second largest in the world.

Over 1,000 documents were obtained under Freedom of Information over five years by the oil campaigner Greg Muttitt. They reveal that at least five meetings were held between civil servants, ministers and BP and Shell in late 2002.

The 20-year contracts signed in the wake of the invasion were the largest in the history of the oil industry. They covered half of Iraq's reserves – 60 billion barrels of oil, bought up by companies such as BP and CNPC (China National Petroleum Company), whose joint consortium alone stands to make £403m ($658m) profit per year from the Rumaila field in southern Iraq.

Last week, Iraq raised its oil output to the highest level for almost decade, 2.7 million barrels a day – seen as especially important at the moment given the regional volatility and loss of Libyan output. Many opponents of the war suspected that one of Washington's main ambitions in invading Iraq was to secure a cheap and plentiful source of oil.

Mr Muttitt, whose book Fuel on the Fire is published next week, said: "Before the war, the Government went to great lengths to insist it had no interest in Iraq's oil. These documents provide the evidence that give the lie to those claims.

"We see that oil was in fact one of the Government's most important strategic considerations, and it secretly colluded with oil companies to give them access to that huge prize."

Lady Symons, 59, later took up an advisory post with a UK merchant bank that cashed in on post-war Iraq reconstruction contracts. Last month she severed links as an unpaid adviser to Libya's National Economic Development Board after Colonel Gaddafi started firing on protesters. Last night, BP and Shell declined to comment.

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/37895-secret-uk-government-memos-expose-link-between-oil-firms-and-invasion-of-iraq

Chemical Exposure Through Consumer Products Linked to Billions in Health Care Costs 

Elizabeth Grossman, National Geographic 

Grossman writes: "Exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals is likely leading to an increased risk of serious health problems costing at least $175 billion per year in Europe alone, according to a study published Thursday." 

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