Training Boss Hawg

Wot we have he-ah is a fail-ure to communicate.   What we failed to communicate to our young people is history.  We teach some pabulum called social studies rather than the real deal.  We now have several generations who didn’t learn history and who don’t know we are repeating it.  I count myself among those generations although I’m on a flat out run to remedy that because we are going through a silent revolution and we’re making a “Great Leap Backward”. 

The reference to Great Leap refers to Mao Zedong’s program of rapid industrialization and collectivization.  When the history of this time is written it will be known as the period of rapid deindustrialization and collectivization.  The icon was Ronald Reagan but the real Commie in the woodpile was George H.W. Bush. 

One of Bush’s programs was Job Training 2000.  It called for the creation of a training system with “one-stop shop centers for training coordinated by private industry councils”.   In 1998, it was described as a “National Human Resource Management System”.  In fact, it is a system of polytechnical education and government management of the labor force.  It guarantees that our schools will produce “workers” and not educated citizens capable of managing a Republic. 

Last night at a political event, one suggestion that is destined to become a campaign issue is that the county buy a work farm so that prisoners could be put to work rather than lounging in the comfort of the county jail.  It could generate income for law enforcement and cheap food for the locals.  

In these tough economic times, ideas like that sound enticing however, I would caution the voting public to remember history.  Work farms have a shameful history not only in China and Russia, but in this country too. One of the unintended consequences of work farms is that while you “train” prisoners to work, you train the Sheriff and his men to be Boss Hawgs.  I don’t think we need a Sheriff that seeks profits and is conditioned to look at the public as sources of labor and revenue for his work farm. 

Vicky Davis

P.S.   The first line is a quote from a 1967 movie titled, Cool Hand Luke.  Check it out.

Also check this out and think if you really want prisons to be a growth industry:

The Stealing of America: The Incestuous Relationship Between Government and Corporate America