Elms Progressive Media

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime." So goes the old saying. Yet conditions in some American facilities are so obscene that they amount to a form of extrajudicial punishment. Doing time is not supposed to include being raped by fellow prisoners or staff, beaten by guards for the slightest provocation, driven mad by long-term solitary confinement, or killed off by medical neglect. These, however, are the fates of thousands of prisoners every year—men, women, and children housed in lockups that give Gitmo and Abu Ghraib a run for their money. The United States boasts the world's highest incarceration rate, with close to 2.3 million people locked away in some 1,800 prisons and 3,000 jails. Most are nasty places by design, aimed at punishment and exclusion rather than rehabilitation; while reliable numbers are hard to come by, at  last count  81,622 prisoners were being held in some form of isolation in state and federal prisons. Thousands more are being held...

We all need to go down and join the occupation -- and not just by "liking" it on Facebook, signing a petition or retweeting protest photos. September 27, 2011 | Photo Credit: Sarah Jaffe LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign up to stay up to date on the...

Stock markets around the world are tumbling on fears that the global economy is falling precipitously and that U.S. and European lawmakers are unable to stop the bleeding. The market is at risk of the biggest weekly drop since the depths of the global financial crisis in 2008. As of 10:40 a.m. PST, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 425.22 points, or 3.8%, to 10,699.62. That followed a 2.5% drop on Wednesday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index is off 39.09 points, or 3.4%, to 1,127.67. The U.S. declines followed sharp drops overnight in European and Asian markets, most of which fell about 5%. The worldwide sell-off followed the Federal Reserve's announcement Wednesday that it is rejiggering its holdings of Treasury bonds in its latest bid to spur the economy by lowering interest rates on everything from home mortgages to car loans. Many analysts doubt the Fed action will have any measurable effect, and investors were spooked by the Fed's bluntly worded a...

And if all others accepted the lie which the party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became the truth. – George Orwell, 1984 (published in 1949) House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was in town yesterday (specifically, at Stanford’s Hoover Institute where he could surround himself with sympathetic Republicans) to tell this whopper: “Cutting the federal deficit will create jobs.” It’s not true. Cutting the deficit will create fewer jobs. Less government spending reduces overall demand. This is particularly worrisome when, as now, consumers and businesses are still holding back. Fewer government workers have paychecks to buy stuff from other Americans, some of whom in turn will lose their jobs without enough customers. Republicans lie about everything

PERMALINK Republican governors back Walker By: CNN's Gabriella Schwarz (CNN) - The Republican Governors Association is showing its support for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker with a new website amid extensive protests in the state. The website, StandWithScott.com that launched Tuesday provides a forum for individuals to watch the governor's televised chat Tuesday and offer their support through links to his Facebook page and twitter account. In a statement, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, the association's vice chairman, thanked Walker for his leadership. "Governor Scott Walker is taking the tough, but necessary, steps to balance the books in Wisconsin and get the state's fiscal house in order, and I applaud him for it," McDonnell said. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, the group's policy chairman, said "It's good to know Governor Walker is watching out for the whole state, especially the people stuc...

FreedomWorks, a right-wing group bankrolling the Tea Party , has a new advertisement it is planning to run in Ohio supporting Gov. John Kasich’s union-busting efforts. The advertisement tries to paint union protesters in Ohio as violent thugs. One problem: the ad uses footage from an old union protest in California. How do we know? This is the same footage from California, which features palm trees, that was used by Bill O’Reilly just days ago. He used it to argue that the protesters in Wisconsin were violent thugs. Here’s the video evidence produced by TP’s Jeff Spross: Freedom Works Doen't Have Their Facts Rights