Watch this video of the prison and the cat.
This is the story of what one cat, one person, one touch, can do. I think the most important comment in this is:
One of the greatest "conspiracies" of all is the denial of the inherent decency in human beings.
Politics tries to divide us, so we will elect people who, as the last few weeks have shown, could do a little more to earn their paycheck. I find it ironic that McCain espouses less government when he, his father, and his grandfather worked for the government. He hasn't had a job on the "outside."
The power of compassion
and the teachings of a stray cat
Many people who are in jail belong there, but when it comes to the United States you have to wonder.
The US has a higher percentage of its population behind bars than any other country in the world: more than China, more than Russia, more than any backwater dictatorship.
In 2002, the prison population in the US topped 2 million for the first time.
That means that roughly 1 out of every 142 US residents is behind bars.
As of 2002, the federal government held 1,355,748 (two thirds of the entire incarcerated population) and growth in the federal population makes up 40% of the growth in inmates.
This gulag system is fantastically profitable for the companies that build and manage prisons...for the companies that supply them...for the prison guard unions...and for the state itself which sells prison labor to private corporations for pennies on the dollar.
Even the phone companies are in the act, charging prisoners and their families phenomenal way-above-market rate to make and receive phone calls from outside.
Why are there so many people in prison in the land of the free?
Excessively long sentences is one factor.
I don't know anything about the Chapman case, but if you're interested, you can find more information about his situation here:
http://www.friendsoftroychapman.blogspot.com