Obama's 2015 budget continues arbitrary quota for private prison beds filled by immigrants.

[woo me with science]

19. The Third Way propaganda swarm in response to this OP is expected,

but it is deliberately and dishonestly myopic in painting the actions of this administration.*

Yes, Obama's budget for 2015 proposes a very small decrease in the number of quota beds. Very small. To make a statement about democratic values, the unconscionable quotas should not be in the budget of a Democratic President in the first place. The request for this token decrease has been made before, with no serious effort, ever, to ensure that even that smallness actually makes it into the budget. It is a bit like the repeated promises to "draw down" troops here or there, while the MIC budget keeps skyrocketing.

But this game should be familiar by now. There are always pretty words and empty gestures that lead to nowhere. The MIC budget is forever and always to be cut, yet somehow it never happens. The president has repeatedly promised to rein in for-profit colleges, too, but the promises disappear as soon as the election is over. To determine the administration's real priorities, you have to look at the overall pattern of behavior.

The overall thrust of this administration has been to increase private prisons. I encourage anyone interested in this issue to reread the links provided in the posts above. This administration has been a great friend to the private prison industry, even taking the major step of appointing a private prison representative as the Director of the US Marshal's service. Under this new leader, federal contracts for private prisons have skyrocketed.

I would like to see a public, strong rejection of private prisons by this administration, instead of empty gestures with one hand, while the other hand is enabling the attachment of a profit motive to the imprisonment of human beings.

*Just for the record, the word "Obama" is still in the subject line, too.