Happy Wednesday! This picture was one of my first and it is one of my favorites.  It is also the most distributed image I own, with at least four copies out in the world! But enough about my picture, today I wanted to take a minute to share with you some alarming statistics I came across recently, they just go to show you how messed up our government is. 

Most prisons these days are run and maintained by private contractors.  Between 1990-2010 the number of private prisons increased by 1600%, with 2 companies owning 75% of them.  These companies, Corrections Corporations of America and Geo Corp run about 180 prisons total. 
These companies made about 3.3 billion dollars in revenue last year.  They are given lucrative contracts with Lockup Quotas guaranteeing that prison occupancy  will stay above 90%, if they are not filled the Government PAYS FOR THE EMPTY BEDS.  If that isn't bad enough the prisons then contract out the prisoners as cheap labor to companies like McDonalds, Victoria Secret, Boeing and Starbucks, the prisoners get paid as between 94 cents and 4 dollars a day.  In exchange those companies get very cheap labor.
One last tidbit that really blew my mind and puts a whole lot of questions about of immigration laws and how we deal with them.  Half of these private prisons are detention facilities are DETENTION CENTERS FOR ILLEGAL IMMAGRANTS.  That means that these private prison companies (who I am positive have lobbyists and deep pockets influencing policy in Washington) made 1.7 BILLION dollars on detaining illegals alone.  If these facts don't disturb you at all then you have truly succumb to the corruption and Corpocracy that surrounds us daily.  Think of this, is we relaxed our immigration laws and stopped detaining them those corporations and their stockholders (many of them politicians) would lose up to 1.7 billion dollars a day.  As long as there is money to be made in locking people up, we are in big trouble....................................PEACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!