March 1, 2010

Hey Thom - My name is Michael Scaccia. I am currently retired, having worked many years as a college painting and drawing instructor and later, after Prop 13 in California demolished my teaching positions, I worked in construction management and in the movie business. I have been an activist in the trenches for the greater part of my life as an artist and teacher fighting for the downtrodden, for civil rights, for Martin Luther King, for Native (First) Americans, and against war. We, my wife and I, are now activists in the public sense by necessity against the corporate for-profit prison industry that is foisting its dangerous and economy-ruining way into the midst of our beautiful rural desert community of Pahrump, NV, to which we have retired. We have been up against this prison and the special interests that support it for about two years now and with a number of others representing the majority of Pahrump - we are certain by meeting attendee numbers and by general canvassing- we are still at it, having delayed its completion but not having been able to stop its illegal methods of construction slated to finish in late 2010. In all our research we have come to realize that because of the record of unleashed dangerous brutal and heinous acts, lack of transparency, torturous cruelty, neglect, and slavery-promulgating, in the name of greed, the private for-profit prison industry is as much to be feared as and is on a par with or posing a greater threat to the world right now than the world problems viewed even on the news on free speech TV. Yes I know that you and others on Free Speech TV have spoken against the for-profit prisons and we appreciate your efforts. We thank the Great Mystery that we have found you and your show giving us fresh air and new hope. Perhaps it is because we are so close to the fight that we can see how these giant corporations in the prison industrial complex are a significant motivation and indeed an integral reason for some to profit from war. Thompson, IL may just be the precedent, the proverbial tip of the iceberg for future interment camps for war prisoner slaves. Why keep slaves way overseas to do your slave work when you can have them work right here in America; and you won’t have to pay all those shipping charges? Some may think that I am exaggerating but we have found that “the more these Machiavellians get away with, the more they get away with.”

Also of note is the collective private-for-profits’ purported main reason for building all of these prisons in the US: “immigration emergencies.” How hard is it to create an immigration emergency? Reagan brought the undocumented workers; they came and worked and raised their families. Now the workforce is overseas. According to the powers that be great numbers of immigrants are no longer needed in the US, so corporations and special interests now, for profit, want to deport these embedded folks with very limited rights after a long red-tape detention and a host of court dates of course. And what is happening to their children is yet another long sad story.

Please, if you can, tell us more about what is being done to stop this for-profit, prison system menace which is entrenching all over America, putting us in harm’s way, taking and ruining our desert water supplies, promoting the use of gas, and the horrible contamination of gas mining by fracking. And why would they not supply for their detainees, for-more-profit, GMO meat and vegetables engineered to look and taste like real prison food?

In our fight we have met local, state and federal corruption it seems at every turn. There are folks in town who have sued the County Commission, only to be shot down by local state and federal judges who by the way have been involved with the USMS (United States Marshals Service) regarding beginning scoping stages and also the monitoring of progress of the prison, clearly to find out when they can begin sending their detainees to the Pahrump Prison.

Also Pahrump citizens have a case against the OFDT (Office of the Federal Detention Trustee) for not noticing the public per due process; and a change of venue for this case is pending. We can, however, use all the help we can get.

Legendary Frank Smith, of PCI, (www.privateci.org) eloquent and fighting and winning against these for-profits for many years would gladly speak on your program.

The details of our fight are incorporated throughout www.pahrumplife.org

Thanks for being.