Today: Proson labor is not only being used throughout the country and looks mnore like slavery than you might think. also is Star Ship Troopers fascist? Buy tickets to Miss Me Yet at The Beacon in Seattle for Thursday 02/15/24 and 02/22/24 at 7:30pm Buffalo Nichols- Living in Hell Minus the Bear- We are Not a Football Team Sign up at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult for $5/month and get 2 bonus episodes a week Subscribe to our youtube channel at http://youtube.com/miniondeathcult prison labor article: https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e?taid=65b83f8cde625d00014ac080&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter
The liberals are destroying California and conservative humor gone awry.
Conservative humor gone awry is going to fascist-phonia today.
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It's not beautiful when you go across that border.
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All right, I'm Alexander Edward.
And I'm Tony Boswell.
We are Minion Death Cult.
The world is ending.
People saying the Starship Troopers military is fascist, is responsible, and we're documenting it.
Can you believe that?
People are saying that?
People are saying- What's fascist about killing bugs, man?
I don't know.
Who wants them alive?
They're bugs.
They're explicitly subhuman creatures.
Anyone knows this?
And those guys in the black trench coats and little caps looked so cool.
How could that be evil?
How could that be wrong?
Also, how can people that are so hot be evil?
Insane.
Insane, yeah.
I don't understand that either.
What's up, everybody?
It's your episode of Minion Death Cult for the week.
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It was a lot of fun.
We sold the house out.
I got to yell in front of everybody.
Beautiful.
People like the series, man.
It's deranged and fascinating.
And we're excited to do the second half of that series.
The second term, really, of George W. Bush, this Thursday again at the Beacon Cinema, Seattle, Washington, 7.30 p.m.
You don't have to have seen the first half of the series to go, but you do have to miss Bush.
You have to have missed Bush in order to get in.
Yeah, I can see that.
But also, if they did want to watch the first half, can they, right?
It's on Means TV right now, right?
Yeah.
Go to means.tv, subscribe to Means TV.
They have a sliding scale, pay what you can afford a month, worker-owned streaming service.
The only one, I believe.
Good content on there.
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That's awesome.
It's going to be hard, though, to start watching it and then stop.
At the first half, so I don't know if I can recommend it, but either way... What happens?
As long as you miss Bush, which I think, who doesn't?
Such a charming little boy.
Who wins?
Bush or Kerry?
I need to know.
Well, you'll find out.
Do we find out if he does 9-11?
You'll find out this Thursday.
Wow.
On with the show this week.
I read this story a couple weeks ago.
The story's from the end of January.
And...
Really hard to figure out how to cover this because it's such an insanely bad thing.
I get so excited when you're a bit perplexed on how to approach these things.
I'm like, hell yeah, this is going to be some good stuff.
Yeah, you're going to love this one, Tony.
We have a story that involves prison labor on an industrial scale, not just prisoners like working inside of prisons, stamping license plates or cooking or cleaning or, you know, cleaning up roadsides of debris or fighting fires in California, like we've covered before.
But we're finding prisoners doing labor for some of the world's largest corporations like McDonald's, like Target, like Tyson Foods.
Prisoners being rented out essentially to these companies working alongside normal workers but without the same training materials, without the same safety.
materials, even being rented out to individuals for manual labor.
When you say rented out, I feel like you're not saying that they're paying these prisoners to come work.
They're paying the prison for access to the prisoners.
Is that correct?
Well, it all depends.
These prisoners can be paid for anywhere from nothing to cents, you know, 40 cents an hour is, I think, what seems to be the usual rate for prison labor.
But then if they're on like a work release program, as we'll read here, they might go work at a McDonald's.
For minimum wage, you know, if the company just if it's like up to the company and up to the state regulations, a lot of these companies are paying minimum wage for these prison workers, but then this state or whatever, you know, it would be the state then garnishes their wages like 40.
40% or so takes about half their money and says, oh, that was for keeping you alive for the 10 years.
You know, they're like that dad who's like, all right, you're 18, time to start paying back.
You know what's sick?
They don't talk about it a lot, but that's something that happens after you're released from prison for like a long time.
You don't really know about it yet.
You get released and then you get your check and they're like, oh yeah, some of this is gone for the time you spent renting a room from us when we kept you here, prisoner.
It's such a common thing that regular people just don't know about.
Does that happen to every prisoner?
Does every prisoner have to pay back what they, I've never, I haven't heard of that.
I don't think so, but like it happened like my mom and what they kept doing to my mom is they kept on accidentally, like accidentally filing it again and be like, Oh, sorry, we didn't mean to do that.
We're not giving you back what we took, but we didn't mean to do that.
Wild.
Yeah.
And like, yeah.
And like, this is to the tune of like, Thousands and thousands of dollars over the years.
But it's a very common thing that people have to like... They kind of just hope that... because you can fight it.
But to have the resources to do that and even the knowledge you know that you can do that is rare.
So they just do it.
This story is from the AP and Tony will put the link to this article in the episode's description.
It's well worth reading the whole thing.
We're not going to be able to get to all of it.
I'm just going to read some Some choice excerpts from this very long and seemingly
well researched they were literally following transport vans from prisons to the work sites you know the various work like transfer them to like a fucking taqueria and shit like that dude why and it's just yeah the the paperwork on where the money goes where the prisoners go is all it's like swiss cheese so they had to literally like the AP reporters had to literally follow
A van and document where it was taking employees because you couldn't get the information any other way.
Maybe we can like parlay this into some sort of appeal to conservatives like, hey, you know who's really taking your jobs?
Prisoners.
Maybe we shouldn't have prisoners anymore.
Yeah, I mean that is one... Maybe we should get rid of all the prisoners and they can't take your jobs anymore.
I'm sure they'll agree to that, Tony.
Yeah, no, that is one function that these prisoners serve is to lower wages, essentially.
They're like scabs in a way, but not even for unionized workers, but just when An industry doesn't want to pay people enough to get enough people to work in a place, well that would maybe drive wages up, except when you truck in a bunch of people who are working for cents on the dollar, like these prisoners.
So yeah, they are used in that way as well.
The article's titled, Prisoners in the U.S.
are part of a hidden workforce linked to hundreds of popular food brands.
This was by Robin McDowell and Margie Mason.
From January 29th of this year, This is Angola, Louisiana.
A hidden path to America's dinner tables begins here at an unlikely source, a former southern slave plantation that is now the country's largest maximum security prison.
Not that unlikely.
I know you're going for the shock factor.
I'm not that surprised.
This picture looks like it's not from today.
The only reason why you know this picture is current is because of the quality of photo and the man on the horse is wearing a t-shirt.
But then you add Plantation onto it too.
It's a line of black men being guided by a man on a horse.
And they have, like, hoes and trowels over their shoulders and they're clearly, like, they got, you know, hats and t-shirts wrapped around their heads and they're clearly about to go put in some hard physical labor.
Yeah.
And it has that tone where this is labor that's being put on you with no choice.
The man on the horse kind of makes that feel apparent.
And it feels like straight up, it feels like a picture straight up from slavery.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of like, from what I was reading in this article, you get sent to a certain prison, that means you're going to do labor.
You're going to have to do labor at this prison.
If you have a problem with that, you get you get punished for it.
You either get put in solitary or you get physically assaulted, you know, according to prisoners testimonies and or you get transferred to a even more fucked up prison.
So yes, this is there's I mean, obviously, just like I mean, if we want to get if I want to get really annoying about it, all labor is coercive when you're when you need to work to eat, right?
I think I don't know.
I think there's something to be said for like certain types of prison labor.
That's just like reproductive labor that needs to happen in any in any community.
And I think under even like an ideal rehabilitative, rehabilitative justice system, working, cleaning, maintaining the facilities that you're in would sure that would be part of it because that's part of life.
That's like what we all have to do and those are like good life skills to have anyway.
When it comes to fucking renting people out or like when it comes to producing something that the That the prison then sells on the market, which is what happens here.
Well, now you're not working to benefit your soul.
Now you're not working to cleanse your soul.
You're not working to feel pride.
You're working to line the fucking pockets of the organization that has you under their thumb, you know, which is like, you know, these various states.
And like in not even like various states, I mean obviously that's part of it, but it's wild the fact that like the reason why there's a disparity in these different types of prisons is because prisons are private prisons.
Prisons are privately owned.
Prisons can operate kind of like on their own little, you know, within the constraints of the state.
They can kind of do what they want, which is why they have like working prisons and non-working prisons and there's like different prisons with different conditions.
It's because they are privately owned.
And it's someone else even making a profit over the state.
Yeah.
The fact that there's a profit being made off of this is all is insane, let alone from like a commercial good.
Yeah, but state prisons from what I was reading are also making a profit off of these workers.
Oh, yeah.
Like this is happening across the board.
It's not even just private prisons.
It's I think this Angola, Louisiana, I think this prison is the state prison.
Now, I don't know if that means That it can still be privately owned if it's the state prison.
I don't know how that works, but it's referred to as the state prison here.
Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all.
After rumbling down a country road to an auction house, the cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by the Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald's, Walmart, and Cargill.
Specific companies that sell prison labor produced goods are Frosted Flake Cereal, Ballpark Hot Dogs, Gold Medal Flour, Coca-Cola, and Riceland Rice.
So yeah, not only were they giant companies.
Yeah, the biggest the biggest companies like I have some ballpark Burger buns in my cupboard right now, and I'm like fuck okay.
I guess I can't guess.
I don't buy those anymore Yeah, I'm gonna get a note and when I'm like a like a Zara article clothing.
There's gonna be a note here, but for help I Yeah, like I said, they followed workers.
They had to actually follow these cattle to find out where they were winding up.
You know that they're winding up somewhere for profit, but you want to be able to document something like that.
We've talked about it before, but it's of course the 13th Amendment, the one that supposedly abolished slavery.
It carved out a huge exemption for it.
Um, in the form of prison labor.
And so that's why you're seeing these images.
That's why these images are striking as well.
This looks like fucking slavery.
These stories that I'm hearing sound like slavery and it's because it is, it's because it is slavery.
Like that's really the only way to describe it.
The effort to dehumanize prisoners was very effective in America.
There's this narrative that even some people who might consider themselves to be fairly liberal or not terrible people would probably agree that, well, if you're in prison, you did something.
You deserve to be punished of some sort.
So whatever happens there is like, you've surrendered your humanity by committing a crime.
Totally.
Yeah, liberals have been sort of like rebranding as the or trying to rebrand as like the law and order party since the 90s, at least, you know, since since Clinton and the crime bill and, you know, welfare reform.
But yeah, I'm reading more here from the AP about the 13th Amendment.
That exemption clause that allows for prison labor provided legal cover to round up thousands of mostly young black men.
This is right after the Civil War.
Many were jailed for petty offenses like loitering and vagrancy.
Then they were leased out by states to plantations like Angola, like the one we're talking about right now, and some of the country's biggest companies, including coal mines and railroads.
They were routinely whipped for not meeting quotas while doing brutal and often deadly work.
And that is what I was reading as well from this, like, there is a way you have to work.
You can't just go out there and work, quote, work at your own pace or work at a safe pace or whatever.
Like, they were like, Doing reps.
They were, like, one of these women was talking about being, doing hoe duty, doing farm line, being on the farm, the produce line, or whatever they call it.
And it's just, you know, one, two, you know, you have to, like, work at this rate or you get fucking punished.
One guy describes saying anybody who refused to work, you know, sometimes people would protest, throw their tools down.
They would send out, like, a car out to the field with four guys to come beat the shit out of you.
Grab you, take you back, or maybe just beat the shit out of you, make you get back to work.
A law passed in the early 1930s made it illegal to knowingly transport or sell goods made by incarcerated workers across state lines, though an exemption was made for agricultural products.
Today, after years of efforts by lawmakers and businesses, corporations are setting up joint ventures with corrections agencies, enabling them to sell almost anything nationwide.
I was reading this and it is pretty cute that at one point we were like...
Okay, prison labor's good, making money off of it's good.
Doing it, like, intercontinentally?
Like, national?
Like, that's, that's a little too far.
We don't need, we don't need that much, you know?
We don't, we don't need the profit that much.
Like, oh, that's, that's a little distasteful, or whatever.
I, I think it's cute that, that, like, we thought that way at, at one point in time.
Um, cause it's just obvious that, like, yeah, under this system, like, that was never gonna last.
This is a profitable enterprise, baby.
Oh, that's cute.
You think it should only stay in Arkansas.
Yeah, right, bitch.
Yeah, it's dumb.
That's dumb.
And then at that point, you are you are you're impeding on state's rights, on the state's right to profit off this more than they already are.
Yeah.
Prisoners are among America's most vulnerable laborers.
If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment, like being sent to solitary confinement.
They are also often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job.
Like there's no OSHA on the Louisiana plantation.
Some prisoners work on the same plantation soil where slaves harvested cotton, tobacco, and sugarcane more than 150 years ago, with some present-day images looking eerily similar to the past.
In Louisiana, which has one of the country's highest incarceration rates, men working on the farm line will stoop over crops stretching far into the distance.
They talked to one prisoner named Willie Ingram who picked everything from cotton to okra during his 51 years in that state penitentiary better known as Angola.
During his time in the fields, he was overseen by armed guards on horseback and recalled seeing men working with little or no water passing out in triple-digit heat.
Some days, he said, workers would throw their tools in the air to protest despite knowing the potential consequences.
They'd come, maybe four in the truck, shields over their face, billy clubs, and they'd beat you right there in the field.
They beat you, handcuff you, and beat you again.
Corrections officials and other proponents note that not all work is forced and that prison jobs save taxpayers money.
For example, in some cases, the food produced is served in prison kitchens or donated to those in need outside.
The saving taxpayers money line is pretty wild, but it's incredible, but it is the quickest.
Well, I don't know.
I think I think the quickest.
Argument for prison labor is like you said, Tony, they deserve it.
The second quickest argument that comes to the average person's mind is, well, it's saving me money.
We get to we get to steal from them so that I don't have to pay taxes.
It's essentially what they're saying.
And there's that thing too where you're not having the full conversation because it does cost a lot to keep one prisoner bed and fed because prisons make so much off of every single one, every bed full type thing, you know?
So that's definitely not the answer that you think it is, you know?
It's just a quick bullshit deception.
Oh, we're saving money by using this.
It's like, no you're not.
Yeah, I mean, like, you know what saves taxpayers even more money?
Not sending half these people to prison in the first place.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's, if you're worried, if you're worried about the financial argument or whatever, that's, like, the obvious one.
Do, like, do half these people need the sort of, the sort of, like, industrial punishment that prison offers?
Because, like, I don't, I don't think a lot of people are under the impression that prison actually rehabilitates anybody.
I hope not anymore.
It's definitely the exception.
It is just like a punishment mindset, I think, that keeps the idea of prisons going.
I guess people are annoyed enough at shoplifters now to where they'll be like, oh yeah, they should be breaking rocks.
And you know, not to like oversimplify it, but there is definitely obviously a racial component going on here.
I do doubt that wherever this picture of this line of from within the frame of the picture, 100% black men, I have a strange feeling that that is not a representation of the population surrounding the prison.
I have a feeling that this is disproportionately punishing black people, and black men specifically, disproportionately in these areas, as we already know.
But it's pretty wild to see this picture.
In California, I don't know if you can get a picture of, what, 15 random inmates and them be 100% black?
Right.
This is pretty wild to see.
And that also obviously aids to how easy it is to dehumanize these prisoners because they're already black on top of it so it's a pretty easy case to make to liberals.
It's wild because the profit motive...
Gets rid of needing to consider all these other externalities for having such an insanely poor system of justice system, essentially.
Yeah.
Like there's so many reasons our current prison system is just counterproductive, not just wasteful or cruel or inhumane.
It is also just counterproductive to the supposed mission statement of preventing crime or lowering crime.
The obvious way to prevent this amount of suffering or to mitigate this amount of suffering would be to, yeah, do things in society that prevent people from committing crimes in the first place.
Or having a, you know, rehabilitative justice model that Prevents people from returning to a life of crime or whatever You'd kind of have to start considering those things Yeah.
If there weren't this profit motive for these private corporations and for these states, really, it allows you to not consider all the other costs involved.
Not just costs to these prisoners individually as people or human beings, but the cost to our society and humanity.
You're able to ignore those because you have enough money to grease the wheels, essentially.
This reply, you know, we're talking about the 13th Amendment carving out an exemption for slavery to prisoners.
Yeah, you see that response to this article about prison labor.
Dr. Asip says, yeah, it's good.
It's also constitutional, so...
So we're good.
Yeah.
You know if the Constitution says it's allowed.
- Right. - We're good to go. - I love the, it's also constitutional, So I like that.
Nice try.
That's how I like to sound when I'm defending slavery.
Yep.
Yeah.
We do hate some of the amendments.
I'm going to be honest.
Some of the amendments are not my favorites.
I like the old stuff.
I like the old hits.
I like the early cuts.
Okay, back to this article.
They also say workers are learning skills that can be used when they're released and given a sense of purpose, which could help ward off repeat offenses.
In some places, it allows prisoners to also shave time off their sentences.
And the jobs provide a way to repay debt to society, they say.
I love that because, like, I don't think there's many people who would argue that subsidizing million and billion dollar food brands Fast food brands, even, is repaying a debt to society.
You get to eat a Big Mac because of these prisoners.
Have you thought about that?
You get to have a Coca-Cola because of these prisoners.
I don't know about you, but what was it called?
Riceville Rice?
Yeah, something like that.
Gotta be one of my favorite rices.
Thank you, prisoners.
Thanks for paying back your debt to society.
I like, I like, I, I look at it as like, to me, yeah, McDonald's has given us so much over the years, you know, Hillary Duff hit clips, uh, heart, heart disease, uh, scalded vaginas.
It's time.
The occasional McFlurry when the machine's working.
Exactly.
Uh, it's time, it's time we returned the favor to them by giving them slaves.
Yep, there you go.
Thank you, McDonald's.
Are you picturing Grimace on the horse?
No?
I am.
What does the Hamburglar do?
Oh, the Hamburglar's locked up, dude.
He's got a hoe over his shoulder.
Yep, he's got exactly.
- Yep, he's got exactly.
Damn. - This exchange I saw gets into the, Chooch Skookum said, don't commit crime if you don't want to do the time.
I think this should be expanded.
No sitting on ass in prisons, leeching off taxpayers.
Put them to work.
And it's like, again, it's just, You want you want to punish these people so bad as like a modern like middle of the road liberal American liberal conservative or whatever.
You want to punish these people so bad, but it's so goddamn expensive.
You know, like what are we going to do?
I can't stop brutalizing these people.
I can't stop like psychologically damaging these people for the rest of their lives.
But how are we going to afford it?
Oh, I know, something even worse.
It's like a really fucked up version of like, this hurts me more than it hurts you.
It's like, listen, I don't want to spend these tax dollars on you, but you're making me do this and I have to do this.
So if I have to do this, you're going to have to make it worthwhile.
Listen, no leeching off of us this thing that we're forcing you to do.
Right.
No leeching off of us.
It's like you spanking your kid and saying, this hurts me more than it hurts you, which is why I'm taking a heroic dose of ketamine before I spank you next time.
Yeah, I don't want to feel the fact that I'm doing it.
Yeah, I don't want to be here while I'm doing it.
Yeah, I want to completely dissociate while I'm doing it.
Some incarcerated workers with just a few months or years left on their sentences have been employed everywhere from popular restaurant chains like Burger King to major retail stores and meat processing plants.
The AP met women in Mississippi locked up at restitution centers, the equivalent of debtors' prisons, to pay off court-mandated expenses.
Damn, restitution centers.
What a victory for the PR people at debtors' prisons.
Yeah, and what crimes are these?
Because sometimes what happens is if you embezzle money or something like that, sometimes the state will pay back the money that you stole if they are sued properly.
So you have to pay them back with crazy interest.
Yeah.
That's the only way I can really think of.
Like, are they like, oh, you gotta pay for the bailiff's time while you were in prison?
You gotta pay for the judge's time while you were in prison?
The stenographer?
That's what they're talking about, huh?
No, what they're talking about is whenever a judge orders you to pay.
Because that's a common part of, you know, the punishment.
Court-mandated expenses, yeah.
Either having to pay for your own defense or, yeah, having to just pay a fine or something like that.
Why would you need to be in a fucking debtor's prison if the only reason you're there is to pay a fine?
Like, okay, you're garnishing my wages either fucking way.
Why do I have to be here?
Yeah, at least let me go make more money that you can take from me somewhere else.
They worked at Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen and other fast food chains and also have been hired out to individuals for work like lawn mowing or home repairs.
That's nuts.
Yeah.
Imagine, like, instead of getting a handyman, you just, like, call your prison.
Or being, like, really racist and being like, oh, no, the landscaping team, I don't like the look of them.
I'm going to get a prisoner instead.
Yeah, that's better.
I don't want them stealing American jobs.
I don't like them either, but at least they speak English.
Yeah, it's like what, like fucking boomers tired of posting memes about how no children are going around the neighborhood shoveling walks anymore.
So I guess I'm gonna have to hire a slave.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks a lot, millennials.
Sorry about that.
I'm gonna have to rent out a human.
I didn't read any more details.
As far as I saw, no more details about prisoners being hired out to individuals.
Elsewhere, several former prisoners spoke positively about their work experiences, even if they sometimes felt exploited.
Quote, I didn't really think about it until I got out, and I was like, wow, you know, I actually took something from there and applied it out here, said William Buck Saunders, according or adding he got certified to operate a forklift at his job stacking animal feed at Cargill while incarcerated.
In Arizona.
Okay, cut this part.
Cut this part.
We can't let it get out that you can get forklift certified through a prison work program that will kill the prison abolition movement.
Yeah, that's going to totally ruin it.
Because that kind of makes people go, well, if you can get forklift certified, then maybe, you know, a cot and a forklift license, that's a good exchange for some petty crime.
I'm going to go swing on a cop tonight and get forklift certified, baby.
Hey listen man, I don't want to do this, but I gotta get Forkless certified.
Is there something on him?
He's so confused, what the fuck are you talking about?
Uh, okay, but onto like worker safety...
Issues about these programs.
In addition to tapping a cheap, reliable workforce, companies sometimes get tax credits and other financial incentives.
Incarcerated workers also typically aren't covered by the most basic protections, including workers' compensation and federal safety standards.
In many cases, they cannot file official complaints about poor working conditions.
Uh, insane set of incentives we have here.
If we're talking about economic terms, Jesus Christ, the incentives, uh, to exploit this type of labor are through the roof.
Wow.
So I, I only have to pay them like 40 cents an hour and I can sexually assault them all the time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Listen, if you think five is a good deal, let me tell you about prison labor.
They can't complain.
You can just do what you want.
They're not allowed to complain.
These prisoners often work in industries with severe labor shortages doing some of the country's dirtiest and most dangerous jobs.
And again, like, the danger and the apparent fact that so many people don't want to do these jobs would theoretically, you know, under the free market, raise the wage on that job.
Those companies, those industries would have to raise wages in order to get enough people to work for them.
Unless you got slave labor, baby, you got prison labor, you know?
And these are like basically the same jobs that they're now letting children do in different states for the same reason.
Because they want to suppress workers' wages.
Because, uh, they just, they, they need us to do this shit, you know?
Yeah, absolutely.
And if they, if they can't get a full grown adult to do it, they'll hire a stupid kid to do it, you know?
It's wild that we can add like prison labor to the list of jobs that's more dangerous than being a cop.
Oh, sure.
Absolutely.
Uh, reporters found people who were hurt or maimed on the job and also interviewed women who were sexually harassed or abused, sometimes by their civilian supervisors or the correctional officers overseeing them.
Fuckin' shocked.
Why would you get into being a correctional officer if you wanted to, like, wield power over people?
That's weird.
Isn't that like a job that you think you want people to be compassionate in?
I saw Orange is the New Black.
There's some nice ones in there.
Some of them start full-on relationships with these women.
While it's often nearly impossible for those involved in workplace accidents to sue, the AP examined dozens of cases that managed to make their way into the court system.
Reporters also spoke to family members of prisoners who were killed.
One of those was Frank Dwayne Ellington, who was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after stealing a man's wallet at gunpoint.
A result of Alabama's Habitual Offenders Act.
In 2017, Ellington, 33, was cleaning a machine near the Chicken Kill Line in Ashland at Coke Foods, one of the country's biggest poultry processing companies, when its whirling teeth caught his arm and sucked him inside, crushing his skull.
He died instantly.
I mean, when it comes to this stuff happening in prisons, the silver lining of this one is at least the family got to find out he died.
Sure.
They didn't bury him in the back of the prison with a couple hundred other prisoners hoping the family never asks.
That's terrifying.
Yeah, it sucks.
During a years-long legal battle, Coke Foods at first argued Ellington wasn't technically an employee.
Listen, I think you'll find a fatal flaw in your case against us.
He wasn't even a human being.
How can you be sued for killing a non-human?
Are you going to charge me for animal abuse?
How can you charge me for killing something that never really existed?
Yeah, so they tried to argue that he wasn't actually an employee.
He was a private contractor.
I love the idea of a man with shackles around his wrists and legs being called a private contractor.
Oh, well, he's an independent contractor, actually.
He kind of sets his own thing.
He has an LLC where he pays himself whatever.
Our exchange is something different other than an employee-employer relationship.
The company also later said his family should be barred from filing a wrongful death because the company had paid his funeral expenses.
What?
Yeah.
Like, to say no, no, the value of his life is literally the funeral expenses.
At least, I actually am shocked that they did that.
I am shocked they pay the funeral expenses, but to be like, no, that means we're good.
Listen, we didn't charge you for fucking cleaning out the vat.
You know how much that cost us?
Yeah, yeah.
The guard's like, do you know, you're not even considering the emotional labor it took for me to witness that.
Have you thought about that?
The case eventually was settled under undisclosed terms.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, fined the company $19,000.
Oh, excuse me, $19,500, saying workers had not been given proper training and that its machines had inadequate safety guards.
$19,000 for Coke poultry plants.
Yeah, that's the cost of that man's life.
Thank you, Osha.
Angola is imposing, so the prison is imposing in its sheer scale.
The so-called Alcatraz of the South is tucked far away, surrounded by alligator-infested swamps.
In a bend of the Mississippi River.
Shoot out of a movie.
Yeah.
It spans 18,000 acres, an area bigger than the island of Manhattan, and has its own zip code.
The former 19th century antebellum plantation was once owned by one of the largest slave traders in the U.S.
Today, it houses some 3,800 men behind its razor wire walls, about 65% of them black.
Within days of arrival, they typically head to the fields, sometimes using hoes and shovels or picking crops by hand.
They initially work for free, but then can earn between 2 cents and 40 cents an hour.
Two cents and 40 cents an hour.
An hour.
Yeah.
Like we commonly joke about like, like the joke is, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm constantly spending four to $7 every five minutes on accident.
You know, like that's like the, that's the joke.
Cause I didn't realize, Oh, I have, I, I, there's $3 charges.
I don't know where they're coming from all the time.
Like, That it takes it will take a day for that it takes a day for them to get that yeah Forty cents since imagine being told you're gonna get paid cents on out an hour Yeah, I mean like I don't I don't know.
I don't think any prison labor should really be coerced unless it's like doing chores or something like that for your particular area or whatever.
And even I don't believe in these modern prison systems anyway, so fuck whatever is going on in there.
Yeah, you should be fairly compensated.
You should be paid the going rate for that activity, for that job.
Because A, you're doing the labor and devaluing the labor for prisoners just devalues that labor for everybody else.
Because yeah, it creates an incentive to incarcerate more people.
It creates an incentive to send people to prison.
Which you don't want.
You don't really want that incentive there.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Yeah, Aaron King responds to Chooch Skookum saying, why should corporations benefit monetarily from putting more people in prison?
Then Chooch Skookum says, so then have the government do it.
I don't really care, but they should have to work.
And it's very funny because if you go to Chooch Skookum's profile, he describes himself as like an ultra conservative.
You know, ultra-right wing, ultra-conservative, who hates prisoners so much, he's just like, yeah, the government should lock people up and profit off of them.
Yeah, that's their whole thing, is like, make them contribute to society somehow.
It's like, wow, at what cost?
How is that contributing to society?
Right, but what I'm talking about here, Conservatism, modern conservatism is like knee-jerk opposition to government, to big government.
Yeah, or at least it should be.
And he's willing to throw that out the window because of how much he hates prisoners.
It's like, no, the government should be able to lock people up and profit off them.
I don't see any conflict of interest there.
Awesome.
Yeah, somebody asked him why and Hobbes the Vulgar reply who's verified says, ain't no rest for the wicked, money don't come for free, cage the elephant.
Holy shit.
Quoting cage the elephant for to support prison labor.
What the fuck?
It's also very funny because that's not even the line.
It's Ain't No Rest for the Wicked, Money Don't Grow on Trees, like the oldest fucking saying in the book, which is of course why Cage the Elephant used it.
Yeah.
And you just, yeah, money don't come for free.
Everybody knows that saying, money don't come for free, Cage the Elephant.
God, what an awful band, too.
I don't know.
I think their pro-prison stance is admirable.
Oh, I didn't realize.
Yeah, that's what they were doing.
I think that's cool.
They just want people to be functioning members of society is all.
Cage the Elephant.
They wanted that elephant in prison.
You know, it's better if they would have been... Cage the Elephant I can work with.
If they would have been called Cage the many other animal names, I would have had a problem with it.
But elephants are pretty cool.
So at least they're calling prisoners elephants.
Oh, that's... okay.
That's how you say it.
I see it as them just hating one of the more intelligent and majestic creatures in the world so much they want them caged.
That too.
That too, I'm sure.
Couple more things from this article that were just wild.
In March 2020, though all other outside company jobs were halted, the Arizona Corrections Department announced about 140 women were being abruptly moved from their prison to a metal hangar-like warehouse on a property owned by Hickman's Family Farms, which pitches itself as the Southwest's largest egg producer.
Hickman's has employed prisoners for nearly 30 years and supplies many grocery stores, including Costco and Kroger, marketing brands such as Eglin's Best, which I have bought before, so... I mean, I know there's like, how many companies can you boycott, but like, prison slave labor, having like prisoners fucking in barracks on a private corporation's farm?
That's like, I'll boycott that shit.
Pretty easy one.
I'm going to be all bum later on when they're all like, uh, like Gardein is the biggest provider, like the biggest user of prison labor.
I'm like, no, you know, avocados in general, just period all prison labor.
I thought you were going to be like, Oh, well those women trapped in a small area on a farm.
Oh, good.
Maybe they know how chickens feel now.
Yeah, maybe we'll think twice before eating chicken periods.
Just kidding, of course.
It is the State Corrections Department's largest labor contractor, bringing in nearly $35 million in revenue over the past six fiscal years.
Yeah, just phenomenal.
Wild stuff.
You know, we know that corporations and the state are entwined, but just to this degree where they're literally passing human bodies between the two entities for profit motive is disgusting.
Sorry, did I miss it?
Did they get around to what those women were doing in that hangar?
They were there to work.
They were there to work the fields.
Just, okay, work the fields?
That's just so bizarre.
One pulled into the... Okay, yeah, this is when they're following the vans carrying prisoners, prisoner workers.
One van pulled into the manicured grounds of former slave plantation that has been transformed into a popular tourist site and hotel in St.
Francisville, Louisiana, where visitors pose for wedding photos under old live oaks draped with Spanish moss.
As a reporter watched, a West Feliciana Parish van emblazoned with Sheriff Transitional Work Program pulled up.
Two black men hopped out and quickly walked through the restaurant's back doors.
One said he was there to wash dishes before his boss called him back inside.
Uh, so, prisoners being forced into labor.
at a actual slave plantation, at a historic tourist slave plantation where you can visit.
And I think these people don't even know how lucky they were because, man, they knew they were going there to the Basque and the Antebellum Glow or whatever.
But man, imagine if they'd known they would have been like served by actual slaves.
I think maybe the authentic experience, maybe you let this art print this article, put it on, put it on your wall, you know, let, let them know what kind of service you're getting.
Send this article out with your wedding invites that you're when you, for when you have your wedding on the plantation.
Yeah, you can't really paint a more vivid picture of prison labor than black prisoners being forced to work at a tourist slave plantation.
Insane.
And just in case you're listening to this in the future, we are recording this year 2024.
That is when this is being recorded.
We've had a black president since the whole thing and this is this is we're still we're still covering exactly this is still happening In mass, so yeah, that's cool.
Good job America.
We'll go out with this argument from Gayus Musius Scaevola on Twitter who says the alternatives to compulsory convict labor one convicts eat non-convicts work That is, say, enslavement of non-convicts for the benefit of convicts.
He's talking about taxes.
He's talking about paying taxes is slavery, which is a totally good argument.
Say no more.
Totally get it.
Or two, just kill the convicts.
Most of us would not find that a suitable punishment for, say, shoplifting.
I don't know, you have a Roman, a white Roman statue profile pic.
I think you might be okay with killing shoplifters.
Yeah, I think you're at least okay with taking a hand.
Yeah, no, that's the argument.
We have to throw these people into the misery machine.
But that's slavery when we do it!
Think about how fucked over I get when I throw someone in the misery machine.
Yeah.
Alright, money don't come for free.
Sure, don't come for free.
Cage the elephant.
And why would we let the wicked rest?
We must force them into labor.
They're wicked.
Yeah, okay.
Let's move on.
Let's move on.
Let's move on.
I never relax, I get too paranoid I lost count of the people that I'm trying to avoid And I still go to church, but it ain't to save myself
Just like to hear the stories about how you won't burn in hell.
Burn in hell.
So now I ask the question, but I know full well.
Will I die and go to heaven or keep living in hell?
Live in hell.
Live in hell.
Die and go to heaven.
I didn't know this, Tony.
Did you know Starship Troopers, um, did you know it's all, it's cool?
Do you know the guys in it are really cool?
I've always thought it was pretty cool.
Yeah.
I always liked how they killed bugs, man.
If you were watching Starship Troopers as sort of a commentary on fascism or a satire of what the kind of movie a fascist society might make about itself, well, you were wrong.
You were watching it incorrectly.
You missed it.
Because, yeah, we have an amazing thread from Isaac Young on Twitter, verified on Twitter, who says, why the first Starship Troopers movie failed as a parody.
A thread.
I'm sorry, if you're already clarifying the first Starship Troopers as to not get confused with the sequels, how am I supposed to take you seriously at all?
That's a really good point.
Yeah, you shouldn't even know about the sequels.
Yeah, we don't acknowledge those.
We're not like Star Wars people.
We really do deny the sequels.
Watching the movie, it was clear the director was aiming for a campy, over-the-top depiction of the Terran Federation.
I don't know if this dude knows what Camp is.
I don't know if he knows what Parody is either.
It's not really a campy movie.
It's a pretty straight-faced movie.
Yeah, camp is not the word I would use for this.
Perhaps not an outright mockery, but certainly a drastic departure from the serious novel.
These included, yeah, the cover of the movie here.
I love Starship Troopers because it meant that as like an 11 year old on my birthday, I got to see tits in the theater.
Absolutely.
That was an incredible moment.
Good old fashioned shower boobies.
And I did like the killing the bugs thing.
Totally.
You know, when you're a kid, you're like, yeah, mean old bugs, get them.
Yeah, slime everywhere.
This is effective.
This is good.
And then like, you know, the stepping on the, getting the kids to step on the bugs.
I thought that was funny, but I did understand that that's like ridiculous.
I didn't understand that that was like ridiculous.
Over-the-top patriotism, you know?
That was like... I clocked that as a joke, right?
There are... I don't know, like... I guess I probably didn't think about it much politically until I got much older.
And then, yeah, it becomes very... fairly clear that they are a militaristic death cult of a society.
Yes.
On the verge of, like, probably destroying themselves.
Yeah.
Let's go through this guy's argument.
First, let's tackle a writing pitfall that irks leftists to this day.
Leftists like, corny leftists like Paul Verhoeven.
They're just irked by it.
Yeah, again, misusing words.
Let's tackle a writing pitfall that irks leftists.
It's a writing pitfall that annoys leftists.
I thought the leftists are doing the pitfall.
Why would it be annoying?
You know, it doesn't make sense.
Are the leftists mad about the pitfall?
Or are you saying it's a pitfall and the leftists are annoyed by it without realizing it's a pitfall?
This is not good.
He means, like, it challenges leftists.
Like, it's a pitfall that... What's the word?
Yeah.
That challenges leftists.
If you make your characters naturally handsome, fit, and well-groomed, then it becomes increasingly difficult to properly mock them.
Beauty is self-evident, and all the characters in this movie are good-looking.
If you can't make fun of handsome people and beautiful people, then that's on you.
You need to step it up.
They're some of the best people to make fun of.
I love making fun of beautiful people.
It's so funny to be like, you know, leftists don't consider this, but good-looking people are just good.
They failed to reckon with the fact that I like pretty things.
It's a higher level of thought that might not occur to your average leftist.
Listen, I know they might be depicting, like, fascist foot shoulders, but, like, have you seen that jawline?
And, like, you were talking about, like, the tits, but, like, those abs.
That's fitness.
That's someone who cares about themselves.
They can't be bad people.
They're clearly taking care of themselves.
They're healthy, glowing, beautiful people.
So it's so funny.
But that's that's a writing pitfall.
They wrote that into like like super attractive soldier is like they wrote the end of the script.
You know, it's like calm down.
Classic mistake.
I'm never going to think this guy is evil.
That's that's why I love American Psycho.
That's yeah, he's too handsome.
Too handsome.
He's actually a good guy almost.
Listen, I appreciate Star Wars trying to give a moral allegory or whatever, but it kind of fails when you give the villain my favorite color to wear, black.
You know what I'm saying?
I get it, like, oh Darth Vader, you don't like him or whatever, but he looks so freaking cool.
He looks sick.
He looks so cool.
And that's why they had to rehabilitate him in Jedi.
They had to bring him back from the dark side because otherwise it would have scrambled too many brains.
Yeah, that's what happened, right?
Yeah.
Next tweet.
This extends to the overall Terran Federation as well.
We see clean, beautiful streets.
Life seems good for Rico in his polite high school.
This is a far cry from the crime-ridden and drug-addicted cities we know today.
Where are the homeless encampments?
The ghettos?
Wow.
You're complaining about this Mussolini guy, but I noticed the trains are running on time.
Yeah, have you thought about that?
Yeah.
Also, most of this movie takes place off planet.
So, yeah, why would they see that?
Why would we see that?
Well, I think, doesn't it zoom out from these various cities and their enclaves?
I'm trying to remember.
It's been a little while since I've seen it.
Yeah, I'm sure whatever city they live in, you know, Buenos Aires or whatever is, Buenos Aires, by the way, fucking Argentina is where it's... Wink wink.
Yeah, where it takes place, are heavily policed.
And yeah, don't worry, all those vile things that you think symbolize a negative society, like homeless encampments, or Litter or whatever have been eradicated.
They've been eradicated by this beautiful, glorious government.
Wow.
Seems kind of good actually.
And that's definitely would be the phrasing because they, it would be eradicated.
It wouldn't be like, Oh no, they've all been housed.
They've all been all the, there's no encampments because everyone has a home now.
Right.
They probably solved that a different way.
Yeah.
They probably shipped them off to go kill bugs.
Uh, can we nail the Terran Federation for being cruel?
I guess.
But when you play off cruelty as a joke, you are undermining your own message.
And he has a screenshot of when Jake Busey gets a knife through the hand by the drill instructor at, you know, basic training or whatever.
Yeah.
Cause he was sassing back.
Uh, one of the, one of the best scenes in the movie, he says, uh, why are we learning how to throw a knife when I could just push a button?
Uh, and then the guy makes him put his hand up against the wall and then throws a knife through it.
And this is an important scene for their argument because, I don't know if you noticed this, but the man whose hand is knifed to the wall looks pretty Aryan to me.
And why would you stab one of your own in the hand if you're a fascist?
This clearly shows that what we're trying to project is off.
No, I think they have like, you know, a back to tank.
They can, he can dip his hand in and it just like reconstitutes itself or something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah, but when you play off the cruelty as a joke, you are undermining your own message.
This isn't a dialogue about the brutal conditions for training soldiers in a futuristic setting.
This is a gag and it's hilarious.
It's hilarious.
And again, the gag is, I mean, it's well done.
What's his name from Carnival?
The guy who played the apocalyptic preacher villain guy in Carnival?
Yeah.
Really good actor.
Yeah, it's him viciously maiming one of his cadets in a somewhat shocking way.
And then giving a speech about how important it is for your hand to work in order to push a button or whatever.
It's like, I guess, it's funny to an audience, to like a movie theater audience, it might be funny.
But I think if you were like actually there, it wouldn't be very funny.
No, I don't remember anybody smirking in the background of this, snickering in the background of this scene.
This would be pretty shitty, I think, to have your superior throw a knife through your hand, yeah.
This is someone making an example of somebody, which is always meant to be intimidating and scary.
Right, and then you laugh at the person who's been shamed to prove you're one of the in crowd.
Yes, to prove that you're tough.
Um... Next slide.
Alright, what about a critique of comparison?
Perhaps the enemies of the Terran Federation have a better system.
Oh wait, no, they're bugs.
I've seen people genuinely argue that the bugs are supposed to be sympathetic, but they're still bugs.
Fuck bugs.
I hate bugs.
Have you ever seen a bug?
They're icky.
The only good bug is a dead bug.
Now a giant one?
There's no way.
The only good bug is a dead bug, exactly.
People here are saying we're supposed to be sympathetic to our enemies, but they're literal subhumans.
Yeah.
How is this fascist?
I don't understand.
All we're doing is getting rid of the bugs.
We're not getting rid of actual humans, we're getting rid of bugs.
It's not even like a war, it's more like a cleansing.
It's more like a social cleansing.
Yeah.
Uh, the last, or no, yeah, the last one in this series shows just a picture of the brain bug from the end of the movie and man, I love the art on this.
Like, even though it's computer graphics, in this still, it looks so good.
It looks really cool.
They did a great job, actually.
I've watched some other movies recently with some CGI aliens that look pretty bad, including Aliens 3.
And they did a good job on this movie with the CGI.
It was fitting.
And like you said, this looks cool right here.
This looks like a cool illustration.
Uh, this is not a face I can relate to.
So the brain bug.
Isaac Young can't relate to the... These motherfucking liberals are trying to make me relate to the brain bug.
Verhoeven wanted me to hate this bug.
That's why he made it so ugly.
What don't you understand?
Ugliness is bad.
Beauty is good.
The end.
Yeah.
You can only empathize with those you can relate to.
Very important.
This is another thing that I've been seeing lately as we descend into our, you know, navel-gazing decline of empire is the idea that leftist or degenerate or in other, you know, in other terms Jewish, degenerate art is about ugliness.
It's about promoting ugliness and promoting otherness.
And I saw someone use like the Rugrats as an example of that because the characters are all kind of weird looking.
That's so funny.
They were like, yeah, this is this is typical of, you know, third wave Hollywood, third wave animators, yada, yada, yada.
They're they're obsessed with making degenerate cartoons look like degenerate cartoons, more family friendly or something like that.
Yeah.
And yeah, that is that is like one of these arguments that you see is that The left is destroying beauty.
That's something like Jordan Peterson would say.
Is that the left is destroying beauty, they're creating ugly things, and they're making you look at the ugly thing and say it's beautiful.
I don't care how many brain bugs you put in front of me.
Not beautiful.
I will not bow down to the woke brain bug mind virus.
I will not call it beautiful.
Yeah, it's like, what's next?
You want me to like, respect the characters of Ren and Stimpy?
You know?
Oh, all real monsters?
You want me to empathize with actual monsters?
It's so wild that we have to like, theoretically I guess, re-teach adults in this country like basic Childhood metrics of learning and existing in the world of things like don't judge a book by its cover.
Like some of the oldest fables in humankind's existence have to be re-taught to people in order to not devolve into fascism.
Wild.
Yeah, so wild.
But I want to kill the ugly thing, you know?
This screams at me to kill it with fire.
Even if I didn't want to kill this thing, I want to be in orbit far away from this creature.
It's horrific and only a contrarian can argue against that.
Again, did you miss the part where like they're going to the aliens?
The aliens aren't coming to them.
The brain bug isn't hopping in a spaceship and coming to Buenos Aires.
They're going to the aliens.
I love, like, because again, this movie is specifically made as, like, a fascist propaganda movie for fascists by a fascist society.
Like, the lies they would tell themselves, the way that they would cast their enemies, the way that they would describe the world around them.
You, as a real human being, watched that and got, like, tricked by it.
Got tricked by a fake fascist propaganda movie.
You're like, no, their opponents are literally subhuman degenerate monsters who deserve to be squashed underfoot.
What part are you not getting?
They said that in the reel when they were talking about hiring the troopers.
It was stated very plainly in the advertisement to join the troopers.
Why are you even... it's not a mystery.
I'm not reading into this.
I'm just saying what they said.
And then, yeah, the scene with the brain bug ends with Neil Patrick Harris coming out as like a fucking SS death commander in a black trench coat and a black little Nazi cap and touching the bug and saying, it's afraid of us, because he has like telepathic powers, saying it's afraid of us.
And then the whole crowd cheering, the whole crowd erupting at the idea that another being was afraid.
See, and that's another point.
If this movie was really about fascists, would they have hired a gay man to do that part?
That's a good point.
Well, I mean, fascists didn't actually make... I don't know if Neil Patrick Harris is gay in Starship Troopers.
I don't even know if he was gay yet.
Like, I don't even know if we knew he was gay yet.
That's a good point.
He might have still been Doogie.
I think he was just Doogie at this point.
I don't think he'd met any mothers yet.
Yeah, so another way to think about Starship Troopers.
I can't wait to watch this and realize I've been doing it all wrong.
We do need to eradicate things that are different from us.
Yeah, I don't get why you think Starship Troopers is fascist.
It was so enticing to me personally.
Yeah, exactly.
It's funny too because I think that people think that because of what it is, you're not allowed to enjoy it.
Sure.
But that's not the case at all.
Like we said, I enjoy this movie.
I'm looking forward to watching it again now.
You can enjoy it and understand what it is.
It is made to satirize fascism.
Exactly.
And you can, I think, theoretically, you could theoretically enjoy a movie that's not made with your politics, that's just enjoyable on a purely aesthetic or experiential movie going level or whatever.
And I think, yeah, maybe he's like, He got embarrassed because of how cool he thinks Rico and Rico's Roughnecks are.
Yeah, totally.
Would I really have spent my life wanting to join the Roughnecks if they were fascist?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
No way.
Not me.
I would never do that.
If I wanted to join the fascists, I would just become a regular Nazi.
I wouldn't fantasize about this space thing.
Yeah.
Well, I think we're going to leave it here, folks.
Thanks so much for listening.
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