As N.P.R. reported in May, services that “were once free, including those that are constitutionally required,” are now frequently billed to offenders: the cost of a public defender, room and board when jailed, probation and parole supervision, electronic monitoring devices, arrest warrants, drug and alcohol testing, and D.N.A. sampling. This can go to extraordinary lengths: in Washington state, N.P.R. found, offenders even “get charged a fee for a jury trial — with a 12-person jury costing $250, twice the fee for a six-person jury.”
– From Tuesday’s New York Times op-ed, The Expanding World of Poverty Capitalism
We’ve all heard about the private prison industry by now. An idea so insane and so rampant with perverse incentives that no civilized society would ever allow such a concept to take hold. Yet taken hold it has in the Banana Republic formally known as America.
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It doesn’t matter who pays Tony Blair, as long as Tony Blair gets paid. When he’s not busy committing war crimes or advising JP Morgan, the former UK Prime Minister (who has amassed 
Just in case you still had any lingering doubt about how members of Congress see themselves, and the lack of any sort of respect they have for taxpayer dollars, you need to look no further than Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.
Ever since I took the plunge and joined Twitter a little over two years ago I’ve had an unbroken love affair with the microblogging site. Prior to Twitter, I had essentially zero presence on, or interaction with, any social media. Although I tried Facebook in the distant past, I found it to be generally useless and uninteresting. As such, I was very hesitant to try something new; however, after consistent badgering by friends I ultimately relented and haven’t looked back since.