Two stories from Amy Goodman and staff:

Jailing Kids for Cash

As many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been found guilty, and up to 2,000 of them jailed, by two corrupt judges who received kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities that benefited. The two judges pleaded guilty in a stunning case of greed and corruption that is still unfolding. Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan received $2.6 million in kickbacks while imprisoning children who often had no access to a lawyer. The case offers an extraordinary glimpse into the shameful private prison industry that is flourishing in the United States.

Take the story of Jamie Quinn. When she was 14 years old, she was imprisoned for almost a year. Jamie, now 18, described the incident that led to her incarceration:

“I got into an argument with one of my friends. And all that happened was just a basic fight. She slapped me in the face, and I did the same thing back. There [were] no marks, no witnesses, nothing. It was just her word against my word.”

Jamie was placed in one of the two controversial facilities, PA Child Care, then bounced around to several other locations. The 11-month imprisonment had a devastating impact on her. She told me: “People looked at me different when I came out, thought I was a bad person, because I was gone for so long. My family started splitting up … because I was away and got locked up. I’m still struggling in school, because the schooling system in facilities like these places [are] just horrible.”

She began cutting herself, blaming medication that she was forced to take: “I was never depressed, I was never put on meds before. I went there, and they just started putting meds on me, and I didn’t even know what they were. They said if I didn’t take them, I wasn’t following my program.” She was hospitalized three times.

The heavy-handed tactics of the local police during the Republican National Convention are continuing:

RNC Protesters Tried on Terrorism Charges Despite Acknowledgment They Didn’t Commit Alleged Acts

Last September in St. Paul, Ramsey County prosecutors formally charged eight members of the group RNC Welcoming Committee with conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism. The criminal complaints reportedly do not allege that any of the defendants personally engaged in any act of violence or damage to property. Instead, authorities are seeking to hold them responsible for acts committed by other individuals during the RNC’s opening days. We speak to one of the defendants, Luce Guillen-Givins, and RNC 8 Attorney Jordan Kushner.

Or watch here.

I used to joke to my wife that if I lost my job, I’d have to go to Dubai, the nexus of outlandish architectural projects. But even those seem to have evaporated:

Dubai threatens to become an instant ruin, an emblematic hybrid of the worst of both the West and the Middle-East and a dangerous totem for those who would mistakenly interpret this as the de facto product of a secular driven culture.
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As people scramble for the exits in Dubai, there is no ‘key mail’, like in America, where people can often mail back their house keys and walk away from a mortgage without the immediate threat of jail. People are literally fleeing this place, to date leaving 3000 cars stranded at the airport with keys still in the ignition. And the reason for this is that if you default on your Dubai mortgage, you can end up in a debtors prison. Perhaps Dubai will at least create a new Dickens?

Update: Dubai has denied entry to Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer, citing threats of violence towards her and the Dubai Championship tournament, a lucrative stop on the tennis circuit.

“Public sentiment remains high in the Middle East and fans and we have watched live television coverage of the recent attacks in Gaza. We believe that Shahar Peer’s presence would have antagonised our fans,” tournament director Salah Tahlak said in a prepared statement.

Peer’s presence even drew protests against Israel in relatively staid Auckland, New Zealand.

Jon Wertheim of Sports Ill weighs in against “bigotry” and playing for petrodollars, but doesn’t mention the bombing of civilians that was and is the source of protest:

Regardless of how this is spun, this is deeply embarrassing for the Tour. An organization that trades on social progress, that can hardly unveil a new logo without invoking Billie Jean and “a legacy of pioneering,” gave into bigotry. At a bare minimum the WTA needs to make this point unmistakably clear for the future: “We all play; or no one plays. Petrodollars or no petrodollars.”
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This has deep — and unfortunate — financial consequences for tennis. A few months ago, there was a sense that the oil-rich Middle East was tennis’ great hedge against the global financial meltdown. The U.S., Europe and Asia might be flailing, but oil currency remained a monopoly. No longer the case.

Barter Fits the Bill for Strapped Firms

I worked for a fellow that belonged to a barter association back in the 1970s, but have heard little about bartering since. One thing I recall is that governments regard barter transactions as taxable sales. The WSJ Online reports that small businesses are bartering again:

As small businesses find it impossible to borrow money and customers are slower to pay bills, the barter economy is becoming a crucial way for many companies to find the cash they need to keep operating.
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Atlanta Refrigeration Service Co. worked out a deal with a local sandwich shop that was 90 days overdue on a $1,500 bill: The sandwich shop paid $500 and agreed to cater lunch to Atlanta Refrigeration’s office five times over the next six months.
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Typically, a small business sets up an account at a barter company, similar to a checking account at a bank, for a one-time fee. “Trade dollars” earned for services rendered are deposited into the account and can be spent on any product or service in the network. Companies regularly find others willing to barter via the barter site’s online directory of services, email newsletters, referrals or by contacting a firm’s account manager.

On top of the setup fee, both parties pay the barter company a transaction fee of about 5% to 6% on each deal.

In 2008, about 250,000 North American companies conducted barter transactions worth more than $16 billion, according to the International Reciprocal Trade Association, a nonprofit based in Portsmouth, Va., that regulates and provides standards for modern trade and barter-service companies. The amount for small businesses climbed to an estimated $11 billion last year from $10 billion in 2007. David Wallach, the association’s president, says if the trend continues he expects a 15% gain this year to about $12.7 billion.
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“It doesn’t always work,” says Mr. Weiss, who is a member of two barter companies and saved his company $10,000 worth of barter transactions in 2008, including flower purchases and theater tickets. “And even if it does work, you must be willing to invest the time.”

Dmitry Orlov again comes out of retirement to lead us through the mist:

Social Collapse Best Practices

I think I prefer remaining just a tourist, because I have learned from experience - luckily, from other people’s experience - that being a superpower collapse predictor is not a good career choice. I learned that by observing what happened to the people who successfully predicted the collapse of the USSR. Do you know who Andrei Amalrik is? See, my point exactly. He successfully predicted the collapse of the USSR. He was off by just half a decade. That was another valuable lesson for me, which is why I will not give you an exact date when USA will turn into FUSA (“F” is for “Former”). But even if someone could choreograph the whole event, it still wouldn’t make for much of a career, because once it all starts falling apart, people have far more important things to attend to than marveling at the wonderful predictive abilities of some Cassandra-like person.
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By the mid-1990s I started to see Soviet/American Superpowerdom as a sort of disease that strives for world dominance but in effect eviscerates its host country, eventually leaving behind an empty shell: an impoverished population, an economy in ruins, a legacy of social problems, and a tremendous burden of debt. The symmetries between the two global superpowers were then already too numerous to mention, and they have been growing more obvious ever since.

Essentially Orlov offers a few helpful hints about making lemonade of whatever may come our way. Take what the defense gives you I say … hunker down and work your garden.

But meanwhile, the WSJ tells us that Real Luxury Is Back

A new survey from Prince and Associates shows that true luxury — goods that are rare, expertly made and sold to a select few — may be making a comeback. And the truly rich couldn’t be happier.

The survey, which polled 108 private jet owners with a mean net worth $116 million, found that 94% of those surveyed defined luxury as “for oneself,” rather than for the masses (2.8%). That marks a big change from last year, when 37% agreed that luxury should also be for the masses.

What’s more, 92% said they feel no guilt over luxury spending today, since they said the money was hard-earned. (So much for luxury shame among the jet set). And 73% said a true luxury brand is a reward for being elite.

“What you’re seeing is a shift to real elitism,” says Russ Alan Prince, the president of Prince Assoc. “The rich like it better that everybody can’t be part of the luxury boom anymore.”