Jeff Sessions: Reflecting Administration Policies or ‘Reforming’ Them?

We should hope that Jeff Sessions’ recently-instituted changes are not the result of the administration, and rather that he is the sole architect of those abrupt changes in DOJ policy. On the surface, some of them may seem “effective,” however, Sessions’ credibility has been under scrutiny recently for his meetings with the Russian ambassador prior to the President’s election, along with his reluctance to investigate Comey, Mueller, or Hillary Clinton. The first item was supposedly to meet with the Russian ambassador to discuss Ukraine and the separatist conflict in the Donbass.

The remainder? The Russian Uranium deal was made by Bill Clinton in 2005, finalized two years later. Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State under Obama in January 2009, and Kazakhstan was already sending in tens of millions to the Clinton Foundation. Rosatom and Uranium One (a Canadian firm), the GRU (also known as the “Aquarium,” the Russian (formerly USSR’s) version of our CIA, almost 300,000 acres of Wyoming that would be mined for Uranium…

The complexity is staggering, although it is not the scope of this article. Rosatom supplies technicians and equipment to Iran: it is a Russian firm, and as much as Hillary Clinton verbally denounced Putin, she was more than willing (while in her official role as Secretary of State, mind you) to broker a deal giving Putin and Rosatom controlling interest in Uranium One. The Russians would acquire a tremendous amount of American uranium.

The point: all of this is going on, and the Attorney General of the United States, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is much more heavily-engaged in cementing a policy of almost Draconian “reforms” that will help big business, increase statist and oligarchic power in the United States, and tighten the noose a little more around the neck of the American people.

As reported by Rachel Blevins writing for Activist Post, a recent article entitled War on the Poor: Jeff Sessions Rescinds Legal Doc That Ended Debtors’ Prisons, published on 12/30/17. The article covers how Sessions rescinded a policy letter of 2016 that forbids the imprisonment of the poor because they cannot pay court fines and fees. Here is an excerpt from that article quoting Sessions:

“Last month, I ended the longstanding abuse of issuing rules by simply publishing a letter or posting a web page. Congress has provided for a regulatory process in statute, and we are going to follow it. This is good government and prevents confusing the public with improper and wrong advice. Therefore, any guidance that is outdated, used to circumvent the regulatory process, or that improperly goes beyond what is provided for in statutes or regulation should not be given effect. That is why today, we are ending 25 examples of improper or unnecessary guidance documents identified by our Regulatory Reform Task Force led by our Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand.  We will continue to look for other examples to rescind, and we will uphold the rule of law.”

So, Sessions is now the Champion of the Rule of Law (De Facto or De Jure being synonymous apparently). Rather, the champion of the will of the corporate and political hierarchy to continue its slow-sliding repeal of justice for the common citizen while turning a blind eye to those nabobs who should be bedecked in orange this very moment.

The prison industries (another “partner” of the federal government) stand to benefit by such a thing. Read Blevins’ article for some sterling examples of where a few dollars due to happy Mayberry-type municipalities were turned into thousands, along with prolonged incarceration and, of course, a ruined record for the individuals. Sessions’ actions are not confined to the justice system, however: as a “moral guardian” and the head of the Department of Justice, Sessions is now attacking marijuana.

Personally, I am against the consumption of cannabis for what is termed “recreational use.” From a medical perspective, however, marijuana (Cannabis sativa) has many applications: for the treatment of glaucoma, and the treatment of severe cancer pain, among many others. For years the AMA (American Medical Association) as well as the federal government denounced and denied the potential for Cannabis to be used medically.

It may interest you to know that even with this denial through the years, the FDA acquired the patent for Marinol, a synthetic derivative-replacement for Cannabis.

Sessions (on January 3) announced that he would be rescinding policies that advocated a “hands off” policy of feds regarding actions in states that legalized the use of marijuana. Federal law supersedes subsequently-created state laws; however, the problem is more than what it appears on the surface. The reasoning by Sessions was given as a way to combat illegal trafficking in marijuana, but the spillover will occur in the state-approved facilities used for genuine medical reasons. An article from the Daily Beast summarizes the new DOJ position on the Sessions maneuver:

The Justice Department itself had trouble explaining why Sessions was making his move now and what immediate ramifications there would be for the decision. In a morning teleconference with reporters, a senior DOJ official simply said that “U.S. Attorneys’ offices need to determine what cases need to be brought.” As to whether or not this decision would lead to more marijuana prosecutions, there was no definitive answer.

“I can’t sit here and say whether it will or won’t lead to more marijuana prosecutions,” one of the officials told reporters.

So, the “official’s” nebulous response is only too apparent: those with influence and those who pay more taxes into the system will (as par for the course) not be prosecuted. As for those others? Who knows what is in store for them.

“U.S. Attorneys’ offices need to determine what cases need to be brought.”

Is this not selective interpretation of the law? Deciding which ones will be brought to trial, and which ones will be ignored?

With liberty and justice for all, right?

So, Sessions is on a crusade that apparently leaves the “prominents” such as those mentioned earlier out of the loop.  The last question is how much the administration either knows about or approves of such maneuvers.  As can clearly be seen from the Uranium One example provided earlier, Hillary Clinton abused her position…and the “big” fish…Obama…squirmed out of the net completely. Interestingly enough, Clinton resigned after Benghazi…where a U.S. consular outpost and CIA annex were attacked and destroyed, and a U.S. ambassador and four of his staff were killed. Obama’s Teflon allowed those rotten eggs to slide right off the surface and onto Clinton’s head…and she resigned before any formal charges could be brought up while she was in office.

How much does this President know? Sessions did try to resign earlier, and the President did not accept his resignation. Surely that could be a ruse to show disagreement between the two, and distance the President from Sessions while the latter came under scrutiny for his meetings with the Russian ambassador. Yet Sessions is still in the DOJ’s top slot, isn’t he? It is unknown whether his changes are his own “reforms,” or rather, a reflection of administration policy.

Follow the money, and there will surely be a trail of some sort in Sessions’ direction. Follow any increases in his bank account, especially any contributions from GlaxoSmithKline, or the other pharmaceutical companies with a vested interest in keeping the public addicted to crippling opium-based painkillers such as morphine or oxycontin. Insys Therapeutics is a company that paid $500,000 in 2016 to quell cannabis-favorable initiatives in Arizona by contributing to the opposition groups. The company peddles Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid analgesic 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, and very addictive.

The final item to mention: Sessions owns investments in two mutual funds that hold stock in private prisons. In a financial disclosure to Congress in December of 2016, Sessions revealed that he owned Vanguard fund accounts…and Vanguard is the investment management company that owns the most stock in private prisons than in any other in the U.S. You can read more about it here.

Here’s a little more to interest you. This report  from Nonprofit Quarterly explains how former aides to Sessions are in deep with the private prison industry. Here’s an excerpt from that report:

…NPQ wrote about the new memo from Attorney General Jeff Sessions that brought private prisons back into play on the federal level. We pointed out that stocks for private prisons plummeted when then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates ordered they be phased out last year. We reminded you that the day after Trump’s election, those stocks soared. Now, we read in The Nation that in October, just before the election, two of Sessions’ former Senate aides, David Stewart and Ryan Robichaux, became lobbyists for GEO Group, one of the two largest private prison companies, and that the two were specifically engaged to lobby on government contracting. The private prison industry has a big investment in the future of mass incarceration. Even more infuriating, much of that in the short term may be tied to immigration enforcement policies. “With respect to detention services,” said GEO Group CEO George Zoley on a recent call with investors, “we would continue to be the largest provider of detention services to the three largest government agencies—that is, ICE, the Bureau of Prisons, and the U.S. Marshals Service.

No “handwashing” or favoritism there, right? Wrong. Sessions’ rescinding of protection for citizens unable to pay fines from debtors’ prisons and his new crusade on marijuana will surely help to swell the ranks of new “serfs” within the private prison system. If he can do this and skate out of any conflict of interest? Then next he will be receiving something from the pharmaceutical companies to pursue an “attack dog” policy and shut down competition from Cannabis against their opioid analgesics. Sometimes there is no money trail initially, but it always surfaces with time. Business as usual in what used to be the United States of America.

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Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne).  Mr. Johnson is also a Gunsmith, a Certified Master Herbalist, a Montana Master Food Preserver, and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape).  He lives in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with his wife and three cats. You can follow Jeremiah’s regular writings at SHTFplan.com or contact him here.

This article may be republished or excerpted with proper attribution to the author and a link to www.SHTFplan.com.

Trump Admin Scraps Plan to Abandon For-Profit Prisons — Stocks Hit Record High

The Trump Administration’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a one paragraph memo to the Federal Bureau of Prisons Thursday, reversed an Obama administration directive to phase out and ultimately end private prison corporations’ partnership with the federal government. The Federal Bureau of Prisons contracts with the private prisons to house inmates largely convicted of immigration violations. “The 14 private prisons currently contracted by the federal government almost exclusively incarcerate low-risk inmates who were convicted of immigration offenses. The prisons house around 22,000 people at an annual cost of $600m,” writes The Guardian.

The move by Sessions came less than a year after the Justice Department concluded, as a result of an extensive investigation, the private prisons were unsafe, understaffed, overpopulated, and often placed prisoners in punitive solitary confinement, simply because the prison was overpopulated.

Their use is not without controversy and justifiable objections. The Orlando Sentinal explains the conflict of interests inherent in using private companies to punish prisoners convicted in the public’s judicial system. “Many public agencies use for-profit vendors, and rightly so,” meaning it’s one thing to use a wholesale food supplier to supply the prison’s cafeteria. “But incarcerating and rehabilitating a human being is not the same as delivering office paper,” writes the Sentinal. “In the case of criminal justice, the profit motive creates incentives,” to jail more prisoners by lobbying legislators to pass tougher penalties for laws, thereby bringing in more prisoners and keeping them in prison for longer jail sentences.

Those “values,” writes the Sentinal, “conflict with the public interest” and lead to the industry known as the Prison Industrial Complex, an industry which exists only if it has inmates to house. “The States should follow the lead of the Department of Justice and phase out private prisons,” concludes Orlando’s most influential newspaper.

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In August, the Obama administration notified the private prisons their services would no longer be needed going forward. As a result, the nation’s largest prison corporations suffered financial losses when their stocks sank and were devalued, with one company losing over fifty percent of it’s share value. All that changed after Trump was elected, writes Forbes.

As would be expected, once the Trump administration cleared the way for the prisons to continue operations unimpeded, stocks of the private prison corporations soared. “In August 2016, less than an hour after the news broke, shares of Geo Group, Inc. ($GEO) and Corecivic (formerly known as, Corrections Corp. Of America) ($CXW) imploded over -35%, and -25% respectively. CoreCivic Inc. and Geo Group Inc., are some of the largest for-profit prison operators in the country. Since the election, both stocks have surged on renewed hopes the order would be rescinded. Geo Group hit a new record high and shareholders of both stocks are very happy the long term contracts are still in place.

Not only do the private corporations receive public funds with very little oversight in return but they now say they’ll only provide incarceration services if the prisons can run at near capacity. In other words, the prison corporations demand a steady stream of inmates to keep the prisons running at peak capacity. Keeping up with the failed war on drugs is one way to feed the industry the commodity of prisoners. One source describes the issues;

All the big private prison companies—CCA, GEO Group, and the Management and Training Corporation—try to include occupancy requirements in their contracts, according to the report. States with the highest occupancy requirements include Arizona (three prison contracts with 100 percent occupancy guarantees), Oklahoma (three contracts with 98 percent occupancy guarantees), and Virginia (one contract with a 95 percent occupancy guarantee). At the same time, private prison companies have supported and helped write “three-strike” and “truth-in-sentencing” laws that drive up prison populations. Their livelihoods depend on towns, cities, and states sending more people to prison and keeping them there.

It is much easier to walk out on the street corner and shakedown a teenager who may have an illegal plant in his pocket than it is to examine the evidence in a rape or murder case. The so-called “Private” Prisons know this and have subsequently found their niche in this immoral war on drugs.

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The term Private Prison is a farce from the get-go.

A truly Private prison would not be solely funded by taxpayer dollars. These Private prisons are nothing more than a fascist mixture of state and corporate, completely dependent upon the extortion factor of the state, i.e., taxation, as a means of their corporate sustenance.

A truly Private prison would have a negative incentive to boost its population for the simple fact that it is particularly expensive to house inmates. On the contrary, these fascist, or more aptly, corporatist prisons contractually require people to break the law!

It’s unclear, given the fact all the private prisons affected incarcerate illegal immigrants if the policy change is any indicator the Trump administration is preparing for mass deportations as some critics charge. Trump promised, during his campaign for presidency, to deport illegals, even those with family ties in the states, and force them to apply for readmission to the country.

But speculation already exists and is taking place in the stock market already as a result of Trump’s election as president. According to CBS News, “Mr. Trump’s directive to crack down on illegal immigration has led analysts to predict big profits in 2017 for major private prisons companies such as CoreCivic and Geo, due to increased demand for facilities. In fact, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey analyst Tobey Sommer picked CoreCivic among one of his best investment picks for the year.”

Cops and Lawmakers Exposed in Massive $800m Private Prison Bribery Conspiracy

JACKSON, Miss. (CN) — Mississippi sued 10 people and 15 corporations this week to recoup more than $800 million in state money lost in a seven-year prison bribery scandal.

Defendants in the 11 lawsuits included former Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps, and former Republican state House Member Cecil McCrory, the key figures in the conspiracy. They and four other people pleaded guilty to their involvement in the conspiracy.

Attorney General Jim Hood says in the lawsuits that multiple corporations, including prominent private prison contractors, paid millions of dollars in bogus “consulting fees” to people who used the money to pay bribes and kickbacks to Epps.

Epps then steered approximately $800 million in public contracts to those private prison contractors.

“The state of Mississippi has been defrauded through a pattern of bribery, kickbacks, misrepresentations, fraud, concealment, money laundering and other wrongful conduct,” Hood said in a statement. “These individuals and corporations that benefited by stealing from taxpayers must not only pay the state’s losses, but state law requires that they must also forfeit and return the entire amount of the contracts paid by the state.”

The state seeks forfeiture of all the money received by the people and corporations, and punitive damages “to punish these conspirators,” the attorney general said.

Hood, a Democrat, said the 25 defendants violated Mississippi’s public ethics, racketeering and antitrust laws.

The lawsuits called the prison bribery scandal “one of the largest and longest-running criminal and civil conspiracies in Mississippi government history.”

Defendant corporations include The GEO Group; Mississippi Correctional Management; Global Tel*Link Corporation; Health Assurance LLC; and Keefe Commissary Network LLC.

Champion of the Police State — Prison and Defense Stocks Soar After Trump Victory

(RT) — It’s impossible to say what a Donald Trump presidency will entail, but if the stock market is any indication, investing in private prisons will be great again. Pharmaceuticals and defense stocks also both saw an increase.

Investors are adapting their choices after Trump was declared the winner of the US presidential election. Corrections Corp.’s stock surged 60 percent before paring to 34 percent Wednesday morning, Bloomberg reported. GEO Group, another private detention facility firm, saw their stocks rise by 18 percent.

The Departments of Justice (DOJ) and Homeland Security (DHS) had both announced plans to move away from the private prison system. The DOJ cited safety concerns in an August press release that explained their plans to transition away from private prisons, while DHS announced they would review use of correctional facilities for detained undocumented immigrants.

However, analysts believe Trump’s presidency could halt efforts to phase the use of private contractors for federal corrections facilities.

“Private prisons would likely be a clear winner under Trump, as his administration will likely rescind the DOJ’s contract phase-out and ICE capacity to house detainees will come under further stress” analysts at Height Securities LLC told Bloomberg.

Big pharma also saw a boost from Trump’s election. Stocks for insulin manufacturer Novo Nordisk rose 6 percent, according to Fortune. Eli Lily, another insulin maker, came under fire recently for drastically increasing the prices of their life saving drugs and also saw a stock price increase of 3.1 percent.

EpiPen manufacturer Mylan also had a good Tuesday night. After months of negative press for the price hike on their medication, along with investigations for possibly defrauding Medicaid, Mylan’s stock prices had been low prior to Trump’s election. On Wednesday, they opened with an 8 percent increase in Tel Aviv.

Defense and arms suppliers are also having a good day following the presidential election. UK arms supplier BAE Systems and defense-electronics firm Thales increased by 3 percent, the Wall Street Journal reported. Trump’s plans for increased military spending could play into the increase, along with Trump’s skepticism towards the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

In a surprising turn of events, gun stocks suffered from the Republican election. Smith & Wesson shares fell 16 percent, while Sturm Ruger saw their latest drop since February 2014, according to Business Insider. The plunge in weapons stocks could be related to Trump’s support for the Second Amendment.

During the election, Sturm Ruger saw the demand for guns increase while Clinton was campaigning on expanding gun control laws. However, Trump’s opposition to increasing gun control could signal the end of increased demands for guns if there is a decrease in concerns over having them taken away.