Image of the Day: On Unemployment, “Red” States Outperform More Pro-Lockdown “Blue” States
As they say in the legal field, “res ipsa loquitur” – the fact speaks for itself. From our friend and economist Stephen Moore’s blog:
As they say in the legal field, “res ipsa loquitur” – the fact speaks for itself. From our friend and economist Stephen Moore’s blog:
People should experience before they judge.
I say that in reference to the escalating national debate about private prisons, fueled even more by President Biden’s ill-considered executive action today ordering the Department of Justice not to renew its contracts with private facilities.
I would know, because I took the time to actually visit two private facilities – and could not have been more impressed. As I explained in an op-ed in March, I toured two re-entry facilities and was able to freely interact with staff and residents.
Everyone was filled with mutual respect, with the staff displaying genuine pride in helping residents succeed and providing them with the opportunities and tools to lead successful lives on the outside. Residents spoke with a newfound optimism and hope that they could finally break the cycle of incarceration.
In other words, the supportive atmosphere is the exact opposite of what many might expect, based on the media narrative and extreme rhetoric surrounding this issue.
As such, federal officials should take the time to tour privately managed detention facilities before hastily deciding to ban them. Unless and until that happens, President Biden should reconsider – and reverse – the executive action he signed today.
Any impartial examination of the facts and evidence show that companies such as the GEO Group, which manages private prisons and detention centers, are doing good work. GEO is so focused on providing services and promoting rehabilitation that it actually has a division for it: the Continuum of Care. The company invests $10 million a year into this forward-thinking division, and evidence of its effectiveness is growing.
A GEO study using Illinois Department of Corrections data, for example, shows that prisoners who graduated from a GEO Reentry Service Center re-offended at half the rate of other inmates.
Another critical misconception surrounds mass incarceration, for which many blame private prisons. Yet evidence shows that is simply wrong: only about eight percent of prisoners in the U.S. are held at privately run facilities.
In a recent law review article, Fordham University law professor John F. Pfaff put it plainly. “Mass incarceration is a public sector affair in the United States,” he wrote.
And as it turns out, it’s further unfair to hold private prisons accountable for mass incarceration because the overwhelming majority, if not all, of those housed in federal private prisons are criminal aliens, non-U.S. citizens convicted of federal crimes by courts of law.
They do not house U.S. citizens.
Those who oversee state-run prisons could learn a thing or two from privately contracted facilities and the sound, smart and humane management they offer. President Biden and those around him should take the time, as I did, to learn the facts.
Today, continuing our longstanding opposition to the ruination of American healthcare by importing foreign price controls and socialized medicine, CFIF proudly joins a 75-group coalition letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services opposing the interim final rule to implement the “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) model under Section 1115A of the Social Security Act, which forces physicians, patients and providers into a mandatory demonstration under the ObamaCare Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), and which ties prices paid for medicines in Medicare Part B to the prices paid in socialized healthcare systems of foreign nations.
Specifically, the letter explains in detail how the rule will do nothing to stop foreign freeloading off of American pharmaceutical innovation, it will reduce access to new cures (just as it has in those foreign nations), it threatens millions of high-paying American jobs, it moves America one step closer to government-run healthcare and it utilizes ObamaCare to circumvent Article I of the U.S. Constitution.
As demonstrated once again by U.S. pharmaceutical leadership in quickly developing coronavirus vaccines, we’re the envy of the world in this regard. The last thing we need at a moment like this is to undermine our status with a potentially catastrophic unforced error like this.
Here’s something that ought to terrify the self-appointed gatekeepers of our national discourse in the mainstream media. Amid their widespread campaign of censorship, especially conservative and libertarian voices, trust in media overall has plummeted to a new low, falling below 50% for the first time ever:
Although the year 2020 was a trying one in so many ways, one bright spot that we at CFIF repeatedly highlighted is the wondrous way in which America’s pharmaceutical sector came to the rescue, achieving in one year what typically takes a decade or more: devising and perfecting not one, but multiple lifesaving vaccines. It’s therefore no surprise, but welcome nonetheless, that Americans’ approval of our healthcare sector and its workers skyrocketed. Their remarkable achievements have not gone unnoticed:
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