by Abigail Leonard and Adam May
SAFFORD, Ariz. — Rylan is a healthy and hungry 5-month-old baby girl
who now lives with her grandmother Jodi and the rest of her family in a
small Arizona farming town.
It's a world away from where she was born: the state prison complex near Phoenix, where her mother, Regan Clarine, is still locked up.
“She's very fun-loving. Very hyper, fun to be around, kind of always
the leader,” Jodi Clarine, Regan’s mother, said about her daughter.
“Regan was the one that I knew would be sneaking out the window by the
time she was 3 years old. I would say, ‘You know, she's going to be our
problem.”
Two years ago, when Regan was 18, she was arrested for having
prescription painkillers illegally and charged with possessing a
narcotic for sale. The court sent her to drug rehab, where she met and
started dating Rylan's father. She found out she was pregnant just two
days before a judge sentenced her to two and a half years behind bars.
“She holds her emotions very well but once she's talking to me alone, it's complete devastation,” Jodi said.
Regan was transferred from county jail to Perryville State Prison, where Jodi said she was denied prenatal care.
Jodi showed a note from Regan, saying she was advised by a doctor to
get an ultrasound to check for any possible problems with her pregnancy.
“She did not get that ultrasound,” Jodi said. “I believe had they
done the ultrasound they would have known they had the wrong date.”
Jodi said she believes the prison medical staff induced Regan early, which might explain why Rylan was born small.
“It just infuriates me,” Jodi said.
After 48 hours in labor, Regan had to have a C-section. Jodi said the
medical staff didn't stitch the wound shut. Instead, they dressed it
with butterfly bandages.
“They sent her back to the prison and for the first two days things
are going OK,” Jodi said. “But by about day three she's noticing it's
oozing. It's not looking right, it's looking infected.”
Jodi said doctors refused to see Regan – and it got worse from there.
“Regan woke up one night and something just told her to get up,” Jodi
said. Her daughter was covered in blood. "Her clothes were soaked. So
she was terrified and she just screamed for you know a guard to come
help her. And they came took her to see a nurse. And you know, the nurse
said, ‘Well, come back at 10.’”
Regan was sent back to her cell instead of going to the hospital.
“She would cry because it scared her so much to be able to look inside her body was just freaking her out,” Jodi said.
After two weeks of living with an open wound, Regan was sent to the prison hospital.
“I truly believe I could have lost my daughter had they not given her antibiotics” before her delivery, Jodi said.
Regan spent five weeks in the hospital and, slowly, the wound healed. But her ordeal was not over.
“They decided she had been there long enough, that she could go back
to her yard,” Jodi said. “But it was still open a little bit. And so
they decided that the best thing to do for this would be to pack it with
kitchen sugar … we're talking sugar that you get from, because they
donate it from McDonald's from Burger King, you know? They're standing
there ripping open these little packs of sugar and filling that wound.
“I called my brother who is a doctor and I said ‘Sean, they're
talking about pouring sugar into Regan and have you ever heard of this?’
And he said no way are they putting sugar in her wound. He said it's
just got to be some medical term like maybe it's medicine with glucose
in it. He said, ‘it's probably just a nickname of something. Nobody
would pour sugar in a wound. So don't worry about it.’”
Sugar was used to treat wounds before the advent of antibiotics in
the early 1900s, but it's no longer accepted medical practice. America
Tonight asked the Arizona Department of Corrections to comment on
Regan’s care, but they declined.
While we were talking to Jodi, Regan called from prison and described
her ordeal living with the fist-sized opening in her abdomen.
“It was the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life,” Regan said.
When she did get care, she described seeing medical staff putting sugar in that wound.
“They were taking the kitchen sugar and pouring it inside and putting wet gauze over it and taping it,” she said.
We asked Regan if she actually saw prison officials opening up
McDonald’s sugar packets and pouring the sugar inside her wound. “Yeah,”
she said, adding that she was worried if it was sanitary.
“I was scared,” she said. “You know, it’s prison, maybe these packets
are old, if there's something spilled on them and it dries, you know.”
The Latest in Progressive Politics with a Healthy Dose of Humor
Showing posts with label No H8. Show all posts
Showing posts with label No H8. Show all posts
Monday, December 9, 2013
Rick Warren: Marriage Is Not ‘Equally Valid’ For Same-Sex Couples
Rick Warren: Marriage Is Not ‘Equally Valid’ For Same-Sex Couples
By Zack Ford
on
December 9, 2013 at 9:24 am
on
December 9, 2013 at 9:24 am
WARREN: Tolerance used to mean we treat each other with mutual respect even if you have major disagreements. Today tolerance has been changed to mean all ideas are equally valid. Well, that’s nonsense. All ideas are not equally valid. [...]Watch it (via The New Civil Rights Movement):
I’m more against the redefinition of the term marriage than anything else. I don’t think other groups get the opportunity to redefine a term. For instance, if a Muslim says this is a term we use and all of the sudden I take that term and mean it for me. Well, that’s not right. [...]
Don’t take a term and and make it something different. Orwell talked about doublespeak, where words mean the exact opposite of what they used to mean.
Rick Warren has long maintained that marriage equality is wrong because God says so. He was a vocal supporter of California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage, though he has since said that speaking out for that measure was a mistake. He has admitted that some churches are responsible for promoting anti-gay hate, and he himself has suggested that having same-sex attractions is no different than wanting to punch someone in the nose — or as “natural” as arsenic.
Friday, December 6, 2013
Unarmed Man Charged With Wounding the Bystanders That Were Shot By Police
Unarmed Man Charged With Wounding the Bystanders That Were Shot By Police
Back in September an emotionally disturbed man walked out
into Times Square traffic causing a disturbance by throwing himself in
front of cars. The police responded by trying to shoot him (because of
course that is what you do when someone is displaying unbalanced
behavior) and instead shot the bystanders on the scene.
Police officers arrived and tried to corral Mr. Broadnax, a 250-pound man. When he reached into his pants pocket, two officers, who, the police said, thought he was pulling a gun, opened fire, missing Mr. Broadnax, but hitting two nearby women. Finally, a police sergeant knocked Mr. Broadnax down with a Taser.(Because of course any movement by anyone is the pulling of a gun). Now he is being charge with charging the man with felony assault for the cops' shooting and injuring innocent bystanders.
This is where police decided to open fire on unarmed man
Initially Mr. Broadnax was arrested on misdemeanor charges of menacing, drug possession and resisting arrest. But the Manhattan district attorney’s office persuaded a grand jury to charge Mr. Broadnax with assault, a felony carrying a maximum sentence of 25 years. Specifically, the nine-count indictment unsealed on Wednesday said Mr. Broadnax “recklessly engaged in conduct which created a grave risk of death.” “The defendant is the one that created the situation that injured innocent bystanders,” said an assistant district attorney, Shannon Lucey.One of the victims of Mr. Broadnax's "assault" has spoken out against the charges.
Mariann Wang, a lawyer representing Sahar Khoshakhlagh, one of the women who was wounded, said the district attorney should be pursuing charges against the two officers who fired their weapons in a crowd, not against Mr. Broadnax. “It’s an incredibly unfortunate use of prosecutorial discretion to be prosecuting a man who didn’t even injure my client,” she said. “It’s the police who injured my client.”The incident recalled a previous one near the Empire State Building where bystanders were injured:
The incident calls to mind a 2012 case where nine bystanders were injured during a police shooting by police bullets, ricochets and fragments when two officers fired at a man suspected of gunning down a former co-worker outside the Empire State Building, calling in question the police's ability to handle such situations, endangering the lives of bystanders who were in little to no danger before the police showed up. In that incident, officers fired a total of 16 shots outside one of the world's most popular tourist attractions as a large crowd watched. While an investigation later determined the suspect, who was killed in the incident, had 10 bullet holes in him, many nearby were still wounded. The NYPD and Mayor Michael Bloomberg fiercely defended the officers' actions at the time.As Salon notes, more than half the people shot at by police have mental health problems. The NYPD seems to have no training in dealing with and handling these types of incidents reasonably.
As reported here, an investigation last year by the Portland Press Herald and the Maine Sunday Telegram found that over half of people shot by police in the U.S. suffer from mental illness. The Times Square incident is no exception. As the Times reported, “after his arrest, Mr. Broadnax was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center, where he told a detective that ‘he was talking to dead relatives in his head and that he tried throwing himself in front of cars to kill himself.’” Luckily, then, New York’s finest were there to open fire.We know the police in New York already have free rein to shoot people they think might be criminals or might be pulling guns. Now they have free rein not only on so-called suspected criminals, but unfortunate people who happen to make the mistake of being anywhere near their line of fire. This is a new low in justifying their behavior by the judiciary. Especially considering the daily crime taking place about 50 blocks south of Times Square, on a daily basis.
Originally posted to Heavy Mettle on Fri Dec 06, 2013 at 08:21 AM PST.
Also republished by Police Accountability Group.
How the Christian Right Plays Victim While Imposing Its Ideology on America
How the Christian Right Plays Victim While Imposing Its Ideology on America
December 5, 2013
|
So why then are we hearing all these people who live their lives attacking religious freedom complaining all the time that “religious freedom” is under attack from liberals? Why does every religious-right publication and event echo the claim that right-wing Christians are somehow being stripped of the very right to religious freedom the right has worked tirelessly to take from everyone else for decades?
The simple answer is they’re lying. Claiming the mantle of victimhood is so politically potent that religious-right leaders are going to do it, no matter how untrue it is, because, to be blunt, they’re not held back by any moral interest in honesty. Getting Grandma to think she's going to lose her church is a great way to get her to sign her Social Security check over to your organization.
The longer answer is that the religious right has concocted a new strategy to squelch religious freedom: By redefining “religious freedom” to mean its opposite. The hope is that by repeatedly using the term “religious freedom” when they mean “giving the Christian right power to impose their faith on others,” they can eventually drain the phrase of all its meaning and finally, after decades of fighting secularism, make it easier for the religious right to strip away individual protections for religion. In other words, they hope by saying that up is down long enough, the public and the courts will finally believe it.
This attitude—that their “religious freedom” can only be protected if they get to foist their faith on everyone else—is nakedly obvious every year when the whining about the mythical “war on Christmas” begins. Needless to say, there is no war on Christmas. There is no effort whatsoever to prevent anyone from celebrating Christmas, buying Christmas presents, going to mass on Christmas, or playing that Manheim Steamroller record until you want to claw your ears out. Without fail, every example the right comes up with to prove there’s a war on Christmas is, in fact, something else: An attempt to recognize that not everyone is a Christian and respect that there are multiple holidays people may be celebrating in lieu of, or in addition to, Christmas.
This belief that Christians, particularly right-wing Christians, are entitled to be acknowledged at the exclusion of everyone else and entitled to have their holidays held out as more important than everyone else’s cropped up immediately after Thankgiving, right on schedule this year. The National Republican Congressional Committeetweeted out a picture of a T-shirt they’re selling that says, “’Happy Holidays’ is what liberals say,” in Comic Sans font, of course. On the back it reads, “Merry Christmas.” The “joke” doesn’t make sense unless the viewer agrees with the premise that conservative Christians are better than everyone else, and in order to honor how much more important they are, all other holidays and faith traditions need to be hidden away, as if they’re shameful.
Now the belief that
“religious freedom” actually means the religious right gets to impose
its beliefs on you is going to be tested by the Supreme Court. While
many think the case of Hobby Lobby suing to avoid having to offer
insurance benefits that cover contraception is primarily about
reproductive rights, the real question at the center of the case is how
much is your boss allowed to impose his religion on you, just because
you work for him?
The employee/employer relationship should be
simple: You work for a company, and they pay you with a combination of
cash and benefits in compensation. Since you earned it, your cash and
benefits belong to you to use as you see fit. But Hobby Lobby—and many
other companies run by Christian conservatives—isn’t happy with that way
of doing things. They want to claim that your compensation package
still belongs to them after you’ve earned it and should be tailored to
fit their religious beliefs, even if you, the rightful owner of the
compensation package, do not share their beliefs. In their lawsuit, they
claim that they should be able to determine how you use your insurance
plan, and that they should be exempt from the federal government’s
mandatory minimums in how they compensate you because they claim to have
religious objections.If Hobby Lobby wins its case, the precedent will create a massive incentive for corporations to sue to have all sorts of rights to use the fact that you work there as an excuse to force their religious beliefs on you. If your boss can force you to use your earned benefits according to his religious dictates, why not the rest of your compensation? Since he signs your paycheck, will he be able to sue and say that you shouldn’t be able to spend it in ways he believes violate his religion? Being able to claim that their “religious freedom” exempts them from all sorts of labor laws will be a massive boon to the religious right, and they will certainly start looking for ways to expand the ways they can force you to live by their religious rules, beyond how you use your insurance.
Unsurprisingly, Hobby Lobby’s owner is a big fan of ignoring the First Amendment and demanding that the government endorse religion, as well. Not just any religion, but specifically the conservative interpretation of Christianity. The owner of Hobby Lobby has spent a fortune trying to get Bible study into public classrooms. He thinks by making it an “elective” course, that creates enough cover, but the Constitution is clear that the government cannot endorse any religion. Having a Bible study course is a clear endorsement of religion, something conservatives would immediately grasp if a school tried to start a Koran study course. But part of the religious right’s new definition of “religious freedom” is the belief that conservative Christianity is special and that its followers are entitled to foist their religion on people in ways no other religious believers get to do.
That’s what the religious right means by religious freedom: The removal of your right to have your own beliefs, free from interference by people who have power over you. The right dearly wants religious freedom to mean the right of conservative Christians and only conservative Christians to foist their beliefs on you through your job and through the government and squelch any cultural attempts to be inclusive of all the diverse belief systems in America. The only way to fight back is for liberals to reclaim the term “religious freedom” for what it really means: The right to choose for yourself what you believe without having the law or your boss trying to tip the scales.
Rick Santorum: Nelson Mandela Fought 'Great Injustice,' Just Like Republicans Are Battling Obamacare
Rick Santorum: Nelson Mandela Fought 'Great Injustice,' Just Like Republicans Are Battling Obamacare
The Huffington Post | By Paige LavenderPosted: 12/06/2013 9:53 am EST
During an appearance on Fox News Thursday night, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) discussed the death of Nelson Mandela, saying the former South African president fought "great injustice" just like Republicans who are battling Obamacare.
"Nelson Mandela stood up against a great injustice and was willing to pay a huge price for that. That's the reason he's mourned today, because of that struggle that he performed," Santorum said. "But you're right, I mean, what he was advocating for was not necessarily the right answer, but he was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people's lives, and Obamacare is front and center in that."
The statement, pointed out by Slate's Dave Weigel in a tweet Friday morning, came after Fox News host Bill O'Reilly claimed Mandela "was a great man, but he was a communist."
"I would never attack Nelson Mandela," O'Reilly said next.
Watch a clip of Santorum's remarks above.
Post-racist society? In Florida, Confederates try to stop monument to Union soldiers
Eideard
Post-racist society? In Florida, Confederates try to stop monument to Union soldiers
The Civil War might be long over, but a battle about putting a monument honoring Union soldiers at Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park in Florida is still underway.
The proposal to install a monument at the park — the site of the biggest Civil War battle fought in Florida — was met with opposition on Monday night during a public hearing…
Each year, Olustee hosts a reenactment of a four-hour battle in which Union forces were routed by Confederate troops…
A descendant of someone who died at the Battle of Olustee, Mike Farrell, proposed the new memorial because of his experience serving as an historical exhibitor at the park.
“I always have the visiting public approach me and ask me where the Union monument is on the battlefield, and I often tell them, ‘There isn’t any.’…What I’m talking about is a battlefield monument,” Farrell said.
Republican state Rep. Dennis Baxley…proposed halting the monument from within the state house. “I can do a very simple proposal to the Legislature that we protect all monument sites,” he said.Racists have grown more practiced in the semantics-based lies they use to answer questions about bigoted proposals. I guess that in itself is recognition of growing understanding among Americans still dull enough to be suckered into rightwing politics. They don’t care to admit publicly how much of their craptastic chicanery is proposed to satisfy racism, justify slavery.
They’re only kidding themselves. The rest of the nation looks and nods – “Yes, these are the village idiots who continue to think they weren’t defeated by the strength of the Union. They believe the South will rise again and Jim Crow laws will be reinstated.”
Illustrating once again how easy it was for Nixon to decide on the Southern Strategy, just how easy it was for Republicans to lock up the bigot vote.
Irritating Conservatives: Facts and Common Sense Thoughts Republicans Really Won’t Like
Irritating Conservatives: Facts and Common Sense Thoughts Republicans Really Won’t Like
November 30, 2013
By
Every once in a while I like to write an article listing a few facts Republicans really won’t like hearing. For most, debating Republicans is a mind-numbing venture that should only be taken on by those who wish to punish themselves.
For me, I love presenting them with facts to see them try to ramble off whatever talking point they’ve been fed by Fox News and others within the right-wing media.
But it’s not just facts that Republicans seem immune to. Common sense and logic seem to be two other traits conservatives seem completely devoid of.
So, in no particular order, here’s a few facts and common sense thoughts you can share with Republicans to drive them crazy.
Our Constitution and Health Care
In the late-1700′s, we didn’t have an organized military and required armed citizens to defend our outlying borders on a moments notice until help could arrive from the government. The average life expectancy was also around 35 years old and a bad cut to the leg often meant amputation. Could it possibly be that’s why the right to own guns is our Second Amendment but health care is mentioned absolutely no where?
Isn’t it a little asinine to completely base a modern society in 2013 on ideas written hundreds of years ago? And don’t even give me “the Constitutional Amendment process.” We will probably never see another Constitutional Amendment passed in our lifetimes. The process for passing one, with a political environment saturated with big money and lobbyist influence, is simply not conducive to passing any kind of amendment to our Constitution.
Economic Improvement
Moving onto our economy. We’ve gone from a point where we were losing hundreds of thousands of jobs per month to gaining hundreds of thousands. In fact, there are some months where the headline, “Economy Only Adds 175k Jobs” is considered bad news because the numbers didn’t beat estimates.
For those who are mathematically challenged, gaining nearly 200,000 jobs as opposed to losing 200,000 jobs is actually a great way to define economic improvement.
If you really believe our economy hasn’t drastically improved under President Obama, you’re simply living in denial.
Oh, and we can still blame Bush for the areas of our economy that are slower to improve. Cleaning up a mess is always much harder than creating one. When we’re still having to fix problems caused prior to January 2009, those issues didn’t suddenly become President Obama’s fault simply because Bush’s time in office ran out.
And can you people be honest with yourselves for once? If a Republican president came into office in 2009 and created nearly 8 million jobs, presided over record stock levels, killed Osama bin Ladin and reduced our year to year deficits by their largest margins since World War II — you’d be calling him a Republican hero.
Religion
I’m a Christian and I love my faith. If you’re a Christian that’s great too. Faith and religion can be wonderful things in our lives. Well, our personal lives. Keyword being personal.
Religion is something that’s rarely a good topic to be discussed in public because it’s something that millions of people — many within the same faith, mind you — strongly disagree on.
Which is why a strict separation of church and state is vital for government. If you want more religion in your life, go to church more often. Don’t try to force it into our government where it has no place.
The Media
Conservatives are right about one thing: the media is often a joke. But it’s the conservative media that’s by far the worst. At least MSNBC openly admits they lean left. Fox News tries to portray itself as “Fair and Balanced” while being neither. Then some of your biggest “voices of conservative media” are some of the most reprehensible, paranoid and disgusting people in all of the media. People like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter. People with next to no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
I love how facts often suddenly become “liberally biased” simply because they might not support your ideology. Take climate change, for example. It’s amazing how not too long ago climate change was pretty much an accepted fact — until some within your party decided that something supported by the vast majority of the global scientific community wasn’t as credible as the “science” done by right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation.
And at least liberals get their news from a variety of sources. You people only trust Fox News. Why do you think their ratings are often higher than everyone else? It isn’t because they’re better, it’s just because conservatives have been brainwashed not to trust anyone else.
Taxes
Whenever I talk about trickle-down economics I rarely get the sense that conservatives actually believe in it. They do, however, seem to support the popular Republican economic theory because the “dirty America-hating liberals” oppose it.
I think it’s funny how basically every credible economic statistic since trickle-down economics was put into place in this country shows income inequality has never been greater or wider. The rich are richer than ever before while the poor and middle class continue to fall further and further behind.
The promise of trickle-down economics is that the more the rich have, the better it will be for the rest of us. Well, over 30 years since trickle-down economics was chosen as the
Honestly, how much richer do the top 2% need to get before we say, “You know what? This is a load of crap.”
Then again, Fox News will never say that, so conservative voters will never believe it.
–
I’ll go ahead and cut if off there. I think I might just make this a
series because there are many more areas I would love to have covered,
but the article would end up being thousands of words long.So, maybe a “Part 2″ in the future? I guess you’ll just have to keep an eye out and see.
Rumored closeted celebrity: Bill O'Reilly
Rumored closeted celebrity: Bill O'Reilly
December 2, 2012
This column will count down the top five celebrities rumored to
be in the closet. We will start out with Fox News Anchor and Tea Party
favorite, Bill O'Reilly.
Bill O'Reilly has compared
gay people to Al Qaida and has spoken out against gay rights several
times on his show. But there are people who think Bill, himself, has
danced with Dorothy. For one thing, Mr. O'Reilly wasn't married until
his late forties. His marriage, however, is anything but typical.In 2004, Bill O'Reilly settled
with a co-worker after tapes allegedly revealed that he uses a dildo
and vibrator on himself. Not that we are judging, but do straight men
really use vibrators and dildos on themselves? Besides, Bill O'Reilly
fits the perfect stereotype of a closeted gay man—he is angry,
conservative, and hates homosexuals. We can easily picture Bill O'Reilly
hanging out at a gay club looking for a trick
Eric Cantor Calls the Police on Children Who Were Singing In His Office
Eric Cantor Calls the Police on Children Who Were Singing In His Office
You can see in the video above that Capitol Hill police were very nice and pleasant to the children and their adult chaperones. Cantor’s staff came up with the lame excuse that they had to call the cops, because the kids didn’t have an appointment and wouldn’t leave.
John Boehner loves to call the House, “the People’s House,” but apparently children singing in support of immigration reform are not the kind of people that the Republicans want to spend time with. The only “people” who seem to matter to House Republicans are billionaires and corporations who show up at the office with checks in their hands.
There are so many things wrong with the visual of the police being called on children that even the dumbest politician can see what a horrible idea this was. Eric Cantor and his staff demonstrated how little they care about the plight of immigrants whose families are being torn apart due to the House Republican refusal to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
I understand that the peaceful protestors want to stay and wait for Rep. Cantor, but there were other more diplomatic options for getting the protestors to leave the office. Cantor’s staff could have offered to allow them to make an appointment. They could have asked them to wait for Cantor outside.
If their boss cared, which he doesn’t, they could have tried to give the protestors 5 minutes with him. There are dozens of things that they could have done that all would have been better than calling the police on singing children.
The message sent was that House Republicans do not care. They aren’t interested in doing anything for the people. Calling the police on children reveals a level of contempt for regular people that is hard to fathom, but it has been demonstrated in their agenda since Republicans took back control of the House.
The kids who were singing their hearts out in protest are braver than Eric Cantor, and his cowardly police calling staff could ever dream of being.
Rep. Cantor and his staff aren’t afraid of the children. They are afraid of the message in the song they sang.
The lesson here is that Republicans can call the police a million times, but they can’t kill the song of justice that sings out from even the smallest hearts.
Eric Cantor Calls the Police on Children Who Were Singing In His Office was written by Jason Easley for PoliticusUSA.
© PoliticusUSA, Thu, Dec 5th, 2013 — All Rights Reserved
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Glenn Beck: Liberal Catholics brainwashed my daughter into thinking I was anti-LGBT
Glenn Beck: Liberal Catholics brainwashed my daughter into thinking I was anti-LGBT (via Raw Story )
Conservative radio host Glenn Beck revealed this week that his own daughter accused him of being “intolerant” about same sex marriage after she left home and attended a Catholic university. In an interview on Wednesday, Pastor Mark Driscoll explained…
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
“The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World”
“The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World”
December 2, 2013 By
In the West, Islam is popularly depicted as a religion rooted in hate and violence, as a belief system inherently antagonistic towards other religions — particularly Christianity — and as synonymous with terrorism and totalitarian theocratic rule.
But there is another face of Islam, a face that garners little attention on the evening news and is virtually ignored by those who traffic in — and profit from — divisive fear mongering. This is an Islam practiced by millions around the world, an Islam defined not by violence but by respect, an Islam that remains true to its founder’s revelation.
In The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World (Angelico Press), John Andrew Morrow sets out to offer concrete textual reasons, from the Prophet Mohammed himself, for an understanding of Islam that moves beyond stereotypes and reasserts the truly inclusive foundations of Islamic belief.
Morrow presents six covenants written by Muhammad to Christian communities and argues that these letters and treaties, which proclaim and define peaceful and mutually respectful relationships with Christians, have the potential to serve as a foundational source of Islamic belief and practice, on equal footing with the Koran and the hadiths.
Bringing modern historical scholarship and textual criticism to bear in his study of these rare and largely forgotten documents, Morrow refutes the notion that Muslims and Christians necessarily stand at odds with one another, instead offering “a compelling case that the original intent of Muhammad was not to create a strictly Muslim state, but rather a confederation of the People of the Book,” (xii) and presents persuasive reasons for believing that “tolerance of Christians who are at peace with Muslims forms an intrinsic part of the Islamic tradition.” (108)
Morrow opens his book with a detailed but accessible biography of Muhammad, focusing in particular on the Prophet’s formative interactions with Jews and Christians, interactions that were characterized by mutual respect. This respect didn’t stem from watered-down syncretism, but rather from a robust adherence to core beliefs and an honest acknowledgement of the similarities and the differences between the Abrahamic faiths. This tolerance was “… undoubtedly founded on the recognition that theological matters that went beyond the most fundamental tenets of monotheism … were best discussed among scholars, theologians and esoterics, in line with the wise and balanced Islamic separation between the Outer and the Inner, between that which must be accepted by all Muslims and that which will necessarily be understood only by the few.” (59)
It is against this historical backdrop that Morrow presents the six covenants, devoting a chapter to each and offering commentary and critical evaluation of these “controversial and highly disputed document[s].” (65) His discussion is even-handed, though at times overly sympathetic. Morrow interacts with textual difficulties adroitly, but invariably casts his lots in favor of authenticity, even when at times evidence supporting such a conclusion is entirely lacking. For Morrow, the spirit of Islamic belief is able to bridge such evidential gaps. Fortunately, Morrow doesn’t allow this tendency to trump the evidence itself, and he readily acknowledges shortcomings in the textual traditions.
The middle section of the book consists of the texts themselves: Arabic transcriptions, photographic reproductions of extant manuscripts and a variety of corresponding English translations. I appreciate the inclusion of actual source documents, but as a lay-person, they meant little to me — I assume that scholars will find them useful.
In the final section of the book, Morrow discusses the specific challenges facing our understanding of these texts, including the records of witnesses associated with the various covenants, the transmission of the documents themselves and the broader contextual implication of the covenants. He concludes with suggestions for areas of further study in this nascent field. The book closes with an extensive appendix, detailed bibliography, maps, photos and a detailed index.
Thoughtful, accessible and scholarly, The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World offers important evidence for understanding Islam as a religion founded on ideals of respect and tolerance, ideals that, if evinced today in the way that Muhammad originally intended, have the potential to redefine modern religious and cultural interactions.
More information about the covenants themselves can be found online at The Covenants Initiative , which also features an online petition for Muslims to sign declaring the binding nature of the covenants. More details about the book can be found on the Patheos Book Club page.
“And dispute ye not with the People of the Book, except with a means better (than mere disputation), unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong (and injury); but say, “We believe in the Revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you; and our God and your God is One, and it is to Him we bow (in Islam).” Qur’an 29:46
Dan WilkinsonDan is a writer, graphic designer and IT specialist. He lives in Montana, is married and has two cats. He blogs at CoolingTwilight.com.
10 POLITICAL Things You Can't Do While Following Jesus
by Mark Sandlin
In response to my last article, “10 Things You Can't Do While Following Jesus,” I was accused multiple times of being political. All I was trying to do was follow Jesus. So, I thought it'd be interesting (and generate tons more hate mail) to show what a list would actually look like if I were being political intentionally. Like the first list, this is not a complete list but it's a pretty good place to start.
There will be those who comment and send me messages berating me for “making Jesus political.” It's okay. Fire away. Jesus didn't worry much about stepping on political toes and the Bible insists that governments be just toward the least of these (the books of the prophets alone make this point very clear). Frequently, people who are the most vocal about not making Jesus political are the same people who want prayer in school and laws based on their own religious perspectives. By a happy little circumstance that brings us to my list:
10) Force your religious beliefs and practices on others.
One of the strengths of the faith Jesus taught was in its meekness. The faith he taught valued free will over compulsion – because that's how love works. Compelling people to follow any religion, more or less your personal religion, stands over and against the way Jesus practiced his faith. If you are using the government to compel people to practice your spiritual beliefs, you might be the reason baby Jesus is crying. This does get tricky. There is a difference in letting your beliefs inform your political choices and letting your politics enforce your religion. This article is about the first part.
9) Advocate for war.
There's a reason why he was called the Prince of Peace. Sure, you can quote, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword,” and even two or three other verses but they don't hold a candle to the more than fifty-some verses where Jesus speaks about peace and peacemaking. It's funny how things keep coming back to love but it needs to be said, it is way far away from loving a person to kill them. I guess there's a reason why we say, “God is love.” In the end, love wins.
8) Favor the rich over the poor.
This is actually related to #4. Favoring the rich over the poor is a slap in the face of Jesus, his life and his teachings. In terms of the teachings of Jesus, it is bad enough when we allow the rich to take advantage of the poor, but when we create laws which not only encourage the behavior but also protect it? Well, let's just say it becomes crystal clear how ironic it is that we print, “In God We Trust,” on our money.
In response to my last article, “10 Things You Can't Do While Following Jesus,” I was accused multiple times of being political. All I was trying to do was follow Jesus. So, I thought it'd be interesting (and generate tons more hate mail) to show what a list would actually look like if I were being political intentionally. Like the first list, this is not a complete list but it's a pretty good place to start.
There will be those who comment and send me messages berating me for “making Jesus political.” It's okay. Fire away. Jesus didn't worry much about stepping on political toes and the Bible insists that governments be just toward the least of these (the books of the prophets alone make this point very clear). Frequently, people who are the most vocal about not making Jesus political are the same people who want prayer in school and laws based on their own religious perspectives. By a happy little circumstance that brings us to my list:
10) Force your religious beliefs and practices on others.
One of the strengths of the faith Jesus taught was in its meekness. The faith he taught valued free will over compulsion – because that's how love works. Compelling people to follow any religion, more or less your personal religion, stands over and against the way Jesus practiced his faith. If you are using the government to compel people to practice your spiritual beliefs, you might be the reason baby Jesus is crying. This does get tricky. There is a difference in letting your beliefs inform your political choices and letting your politics enforce your religion. This article is about the first part.
9) Advocate for war.
There's a reason why he was called the Prince of Peace. Sure, you can quote, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword,” and even two or three other verses but they don't hold a candle to the more than fifty-some verses where Jesus speaks about peace and peacemaking. It's funny how things keep coming back to love but it needs to be said, it is way far away from loving a person to kill them. I guess there's a reason why we say, “God is love.” In the end, love wins.
8) Favor the rich over the poor.
This is actually related to #4. Favoring the rich over the poor is a slap in the face of Jesus, his life and his teachings. In terms of the teachings of Jesus, it is bad enough when we allow the rich to take advantage of the poor, but when we create laws which not only encourage the behavior but also protect it? Well, let's just say it becomes crystal clear how ironic it is that we print, “In God We Trust,” on our money.
To some degree, this is the inverse of #8. Favoring the rich is despicable. We Jesus minions should avoid it. Hurting the poor? Well, that's just.. just... um, something a whole lot worse than despicable. Despicabler? Über-dispicable? When Jesus said, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do it to me,” he meant it. When you cut funding and it hurts people, according to Jesus, you are hurting him.
6) Let people go hungry.
Well, well, well. What have we here? Is this an item from the original top ten list which I claimed was not politically motivated? Looks like I've stepped into my own clever trap! Muh wah ha ha! Seriously though, of course it's on both lists. It is a spiritual issue and it is a political issue. Spiritually, Gandhi said, “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” Politically, hunger causes problems with education, production and civil behavior which are all necessary for a successful nation. More importantly for Christians, Jesus said when we feed the hungry, we are feeding him. So, yes, this item is on both lists – and I'm going to do it again.
5) Withhold healthcare from people.
This time I'm not only repeating an item, I'm repeating a lot of what I said. Did you ever play the game “Follow the Leader"? If you don't do what the leader does, you are out. Following means you should imitate as closely as possible. When people who were sick needed care, Jesus gave it to them. If we are following Jesus, we will imitate him as closely as possible. No, the government can't repeat the miracles he did but I've seen modern medicine do things that are about as close to a miracle as I expect to get. While the government can't do miracles, it can supply modern medicine. Every year, 45,000 people die in the U.S. because of the lack of healthcare. We Christians like to talk about “saving” people. Well, I know of about 45,000 people who'd love for us to do it and we should – because that's how love works.
4) Limit the rights of a select group of people.
Jesus loves everybody – but he loves me best. Kind of sits the wrong way with you, doesn't it? Well, it should and with good reason. If you spend any time reading the Bible you know that we all were made in God's image. Exactly which part of us is in God's image is less clear but what is clear is that we were equally made in the image of God. Any law that doesn't treat people equally is as good as thumbing your nose at God. Even worse? Doing it in the name of God or based on religious beliefs (see #10).
3) Turn away immigrants.
Christian heritage runs through Judaism. We are an immigrant people. Even our religion began somewhere else. Our spiritual ancestors, Abraham and Sarah were told by God to pick up what they had and start traveling. Moses, Miriam and Aaron led a nation out of Egypt, into the desert and ultimately to new lands. Even Jesus spent part of his childhood as a foreigner in a foreign land. As Exodus says, we know how it feels to be foreigners in a foreign land. If you don't think being foreigners in a foreign land is still our story, ask the Native Americans. At best, turning away immigrants makes us hypocrites; at worst, it makes us betrayers of our ancestors and our God.
2) Devalue education.
We learn in Proverbs that wisdom is something in which God delights daily. As a matter of fact, according to Proverbs, wisdom is better than gold. When you look at the percentage of our budget which goes to education and at what Congress is trying to do to student loans, it's pretty clear that delighting in wisdom is something our government no longer does.
1) Support capital punishment -- execution.
Jesus died by execution. He was an innocent man. Every year, innocent people die by execution in our nation. It's time to be a shining city on a hill. It's time to express the fullness of love, to express the value of life. It's time to stop the government-sanctioned killing.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Republicans’ self-hatred swells: The GOP vs. its own base
Republicans’ self-hatred swells: The GOP vs. its own base
Rick Santorum is unhappy that older people, who tend to vote Republican, are getting insurance via the ACA
Monday, Dec 2, 2013 03:00 PM -0700
Rick Santorum, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney
(Credit: AP/Jae C. Hong/Reuters/Yuri Gripas/AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
When Mitt Romney insulted “the 47 percent” of Americans who pay no federal income taxes, he failed to notice that the vast majority of them are white, most of them white seniors, the most reliably Republican voters in the country. A large portion of the people Paul Ryan describes as “takers” – vs. productive “makers” – are likewise older whites. And although Ryan and his party want to turn Medicare into a voucher program – run by exchanges, much like the Affordable Care Act – they tried to hide that fact during the 2012 race because it was hugely unpopular with their base.
The latest insult came from former senator and 2012 presidential runner-up Rick Santorum. On CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday Santorum complained that the Affordable Care Act has meant that “sicker, older” people are getting health insurance (h/t Crooks and Liars.) Santorum told Candy Crowley and former Gov. Howard Dean:
Well, let me just add that one of the solutions that President Obama tried to accomplish was to let people keep their own insurance. It turns out that a lot of insurance companies are actually allowing that to happen, and that could cause even more problems for Obamacare, because that means fewer and fewer people getting into the exchanges. And the ones who, at least to date, it’s just facts Gov. Dean, the ones in the system are much older.
I talked to one insurance company today, a third of their enrollees are over sixty years of age. That is not how an insurance system would work, but those are the people signing up and the folks who can keep their plans because they’re more customized and lower cost, will now. And the folks who are going to get into these exchanges are going to be probably sicker, older, and as a result, premiums are even going to go higher.
Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large and the author of "What's the Matter With White People: Finding Our Way in the Next America."
More Joan Walsh.
Tea party activist says U.S. may be conquered for allowing atheists, Wiccans and abortion
Tea party activist says U.S. may be conquered for allowing atheists, Wiccans and abortion (via Raw Story )
A tea party activist suggested the United States may be conquered by foreign armies because abortion and Islam were permitted. Brooke McGowan, who was introduced as a representative of the Tea Party News Network, told the Reclaim America rally on Nov…
Arizona's privatized prison health care under fire after deaths
Arizona's privatized prison health care under fire after deaths
Spending less on health care
Regan is not the only inmate alleging mistreatment. The ACLU filed a lawsuit
against the Arizona Department of Corrections in March 2012, alleging
that prisoners are at serious risk of "pain, amputation, disfigurement
and death."
It cites examples of prisoners being told to pray to be cured or drink energy shakes to treat cancer symptoms.
The ACLU says the treatment amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and that it violates prisoners' constitutional rights.
“People are often sent to prison for two-year, three-year sentences that have turned into death sentences because of the absence of the basic minimal care,” said Dan Pochoda, legal director for the ACLU in Arizona. He says in his forty year career, he’s never seen a worse prison healthcare system.
A year and a half ago, the state handed over prison healthcare to a private, for-profit company. Legislators who supported the privatization promised that it would save taxpayers money, while maintaining adequate levels of care for inmates. At least 27 other states have also privatized prison health care, rewarding private companies for keeping costs down.
But there are studies showing prisoners could be suffering as a result. An October report from the American Friends Services Committee in Arizona found that since the state privatized its prison health care, medical spending in prisons dropped by $30 million and staffing levels plummeted. It also found a sharp spike in the number of inmate deaths. In the first eight months of 2013, 50 people died in Arizona Department of Corrections custody, compared with 37 deaths in the previous two years combined.
It cites examples of prisoners being told to pray to be cured or drink energy shakes to treat cancer symptoms.
The ACLU says the treatment amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and that it violates prisoners' constitutional rights.
“People are often sent to prison for two-year, three-year sentences that have turned into death sentences because of the absence of the basic minimal care,” said Dan Pochoda, legal director for the ACLU in Arizona. He says in his forty year career, he’s never seen a worse prison healthcare system.
A year and a half ago, the state handed over prison healthcare to a private, for-profit company. Legislators who supported the privatization promised that it would save taxpayers money, while maintaining adequate levels of care for inmates. At least 27 other states have also privatized prison health care, rewarding private companies for keeping costs down.
But there are studies showing prisoners could be suffering as a result. An October report from the American Friends Services Committee in Arizona found that since the state privatized its prison health care, medical spending in prisons dropped by $30 million and staffing levels plummeted. It also found a sharp spike in the number of inmate deaths. In the first eight months of 2013, 50 people died in Arizona Department of Corrections custody, compared with 37 deaths in the previous two years combined.
Tony's story
One of the inmates who died since the state
privatized care was Tony Brown, who was serving a 10-year sentence for
aggravated assault and was due to be released in September.
“They were supposed to come down for Thanksgiving this year,” his daughter Jenna Jumper said. “He never got to meet my husband and he wasn't there when I got married, so they were going to come visit.”
Brown had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer, but his medical records show it was in remission. He had been prescribed morphine for the pain. But in October 2012, the prison ran out of morphine. The medical staff switched him to Lortab, a weaker painkiller.
In a video taken by prison guards and obtained by America Tonight, Brown is seen just after he was put on the new medication writhing in pain while handcuffed to a gurney. His medical records show that guards told nurses his condition was worsening and that he "needed to be checked out." But there is no record of medical staff visiting his cell. In another video, a prison chaplain checks on Brown at his wife Jami Brown’s request.
“Inmate Brown, I spoke with your wife earlier today,” the chaplain is heard saying. “Can you communicate with me please? I’d like to speak with your wife later on. Is there something I can tell her?”
Brown, face down on a bunk, barely moves and doesn’t respond. A guard can be heard saying, “Is it me or does this just not feel right to anybody else?”
Two days after Brown first started complaining of pain, medical staff had still not visited him, so the guards intervened and started CPR. Nurses came to assist, but 40 minutes passed before they realized no one had called an ambulance.
Eventually, an ambulance came and took Brown to a hospital. A day later, he died. Two days after his death, his widow Jami said she finally received a call back from the private prison health care company, Wexford.
“My husband passed away on Monday and I got a call from Wexford Medical on Wednesday wanting more information so that they can make sure he's seen,” she said. “I was pretty upset because I was like, ‘What are you talking about? He's dead.’”
“He may have been a prison inmate, but my dad was no different than the governor or the guy that you interviewed or you or me,” his daughter said. “My biggest thing is that if people would stop to realize that he did have family and that he did have a child and he did have a wife and he had plans.”
The official cause of death was listed as complications from cancer. But Brown's family is suing Wexford, claiming he died from lack of adequate medical care. An attorney for Wexford issued a statement to America Tonight on the matter.
"Due to federal health care privacy laws and the pending legal claim, we are very limited in what we can say about the circumstances surrounding this inmate’s tragic death," Ed Hochuli said in the statement. "Based on the limited information we have at this time, though, I am very confident Wexford Health and its employees acted appropriately, and further investigation of this claim will demonstrate and prove the lack of any wrongdoing or negligence by Wexford Health.”
“They were supposed to come down for Thanksgiving this year,” his daughter Jenna Jumper said. “He never got to meet my husband and he wasn't there when I got married, so they were going to come visit.”
Brown had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer, but his medical records show it was in remission. He had been prescribed morphine for the pain. But in October 2012, the prison ran out of morphine. The medical staff switched him to Lortab, a weaker painkiller.
In a video taken by prison guards and obtained by America Tonight, Brown is seen just after he was put on the new medication writhing in pain while handcuffed to a gurney. His medical records show that guards told nurses his condition was worsening and that he "needed to be checked out." But there is no record of medical staff visiting his cell. In another video, a prison chaplain checks on Brown at his wife Jami Brown’s request.
“Inmate Brown, I spoke with your wife earlier today,” the chaplain is heard saying. “Can you communicate with me please? I’d like to speak with your wife later on. Is there something I can tell her?”
Brown, face down on a bunk, barely moves and doesn’t respond. A guard can be heard saying, “Is it me or does this just not feel right to anybody else?”
Two days after Brown first started complaining of pain, medical staff had still not visited him, so the guards intervened and started CPR. Nurses came to assist, but 40 minutes passed before they realized no one had called an ambulance.
Eventually, an ambulance came and took Brown to a hospital. A day later, he died. Two days after his death, his widow Jami said she finally received a call back from the private prison health care company, Wexford.
“My husband passed away on Monday and I got a call from Wexford Medical on Wednesday wanting more information so that they can make sure he's seen,” she said. “I was pretty upset because I was like, ‘What are you talking about? He's dead.’”
“He may have been a prison inmate, but my dad was no different than the governor or the guy that you interviewed or you or me,” his daughter said. “My biggest thing is that if people would stop to realize that he did have family and that he did have a child and he did have a wife and he had plans.”
The official cause of death was listed as complications from cancer. But Brown's family is suing Wexford, claiming he died from lack of adequate medical care. An attorney for Wexford issued a statement to America Tonight on the matter.
"Due to federal health care privacy laws and the pending legal claim, we are very limited in what we can say about the circumstances surrounding this inmate’s tragic death," Ed Hochuli said in the statement. "Based on the limited information we have at this time, though, I am very confident Wexford Health and its employees acted appropriately, and further investigation of this claim will demonstrate and prove the lack of any wrongdoing or negligence by Wexford Health.”
Privatization proponent
State Rep. John Kavanagh
wrote the legislation that privatized Arizona's prison health care. We
asked him whether he thought it had put inmates in danger.
“I mean, people die in prisons,” he said. “I receive a lot of handwritten notes from prisoners. I receive emails from prison families with all sorts of allegations of crazy behavior. And then, you call the prison people up and they usually have a reasonable explanation for it.”
Kavanagh said Regan’s story didn’t sound like a “true allegation,” adding that it “sounds ridiculous.”
“You know prisoners have 24/7 to think up allegations and write letters,” he said. “I'm not saying that some of them can't have a basis in fact. But you got to take them with a grain of salt or in the case of the hospital, with maybe a grain of sugar.”
We asked Kavanagh who would listen to prisoners’ concerns over their medical care.
“There's no shortage of prison advocacy groups and ACLU attorneys who at the drop of a dime will file a lawsuit,” he said. “I think most people who get into [class-action lawsuits] wind up with nothing and the lawyers walk away in limousines with their trunks full of cash.”
There are signs though, that Wexford, the private health company that was providing care at the time of Brown's death, was aware of the problems. America Tonight obtained a copy of a PowerPoint presentation written by top Wexford executives for a meeting with the Arizona governor's office in November 2012 – four months after the company started providing care in the state. It warned that the care it and the Department of Corrections were providing was "not compliant with … constitutional requirements" and that "the current class action lawsuits are accurate." It recommended an overall operational cleanup, staffing reassessment and the appointment of a governor’s office liaison.
The PowerPoint presentation also says that the department's "transparency" policy with the media could "encourage negative press."
“I mean, people die in prisons,” he said. “I receive a lot of handwritten notes from prisoners. I receive emails from prison families with all sorts of allegations of crazy behavior. And then, you call the prison people up and they usually have a reasonable explanation for it.”
Kavanagh said Regan’s story didn’t sound like a “true allegation,” adding that it “sounds ridiculous.”
“You know prisoners have 24/7 to think up allegations and write letters,” he said. “I'm not saying that some of them can't have a basis in fact. But you got to take them with a grain of salt or in the case of the hospital, with maybe a grain of sugar.”
We asked Kavanagh who would listen to prisoners’ concerns over their medical care.
“There's no shortage of prison advocacy groups and ACLU attorneys who at the drop of a dime will file a lawsuit,” he said. “I think most people who get into [class-action lawsuits] wind up with nothing and the lawyers walk away in limousines with their trunks full of cash.”
There are signs though, that Wexford, the private health company that was providing care at the time of Brown's death, was aware of the problems. America Tonight obtained a copy of a PowerPoint presentation written by top Wexford executives for a meeting with the Arizona governor's office in November 2012 – four months after the company started providing care in the state. It warned that the care it and the Department of Corrections were providing was "not compliant with … constitutional requirements" and that "the current class action lawsuits are accurate." It recommended an overall operational cleanup, staffing reassessment and the appointment of a governor’s office liaison.
The PowerPoint presentation also says that the department's "transparency" policy with the media could "encourage negative press."
Wexford was already in the spotlight for another incident just two
months earlier. At a prison west of Phoenix, more than 100 inmates may have been exposed to hepatitis C.
According to the Department of Corrections, a contractor nurse used
dirty needles to deliver medication. Four months later, Arizona severed
ties with Wexford and awarded the three-year, $369 million contract to
another private healthcare company: Corizon,
the largest prison healthcare company in the country. Corizon has
similar contracts in 29 states, but it has faced problems in many of
them. In fact, in the last five years, Corizon has been sued for malpractice 660 times.
Corizon’s no-bid contract
Arizona Democratic House minority Leader Chad Campbell said the Legislature didn't properly vet Corizon before signing the contract.
“I think the most concerning to us was the previous company when they started to lose that contract, the current company that got the contract didn't even have to go through a public process of any kind to get this contract,” he said. “No bid. Nothing. It was deemed an emergency situation by Department of Corrections so they didn't have to go through the normal process. But more interesting than that was this company that got the contract had just hired the former head of the Department of Corrections who was the mentor of the current head of Department of Corrections.”
Campbell said that is not the only tie that members of Arizona’s state government have to private prisons. Charles Coughlin, the former campaign strategist for Ariz. Gov. Jan Brewer, runs a lobbying firm called HighGround Public Affairs Consultants, which represented one of the country’s largest private prison companies. HighGround donated $5,000 to Jan PAC, Brewer's super PAC.
The governor's office declined America Tonight’s request for an interview and referred us to Kavanagh, who said the allegations that Brewer accepted bids because of personal relationships were “baseless.”
“I think they're propaganda,” he said. “I mean, people say to me I've gotten campaign contributions from private-prison people. Well, yeah. I got from a lobbyist who represents them but that lobbyist also represents 40 other clients in different industries. It's smoke and mirrors. It's a façade.”
Campbell said that multiple people and corporations are profiting from the privatization of prison health care.
“They're profiting on taxpayer dollars and to me, if I'm going to hand out money to a private entity, I want to make sure it's being spent wisely,” he said. Campbell is now calling for an investigation.
Corizon defended its level of care. "These patients receive care that meets their health care needs and satisfies constitutional requirements," it said in a statement to America Tonight, adding that it has a rigorous quality control program to make sure its health care meets federal and Arizona Department of Corrections guidelines. "In addition, the ADC maintains a dedicated internal audit team of over 30 health care professionals whose sole purpose is to monitor Corizon’s delivery of care," the company added. (Read Corizon's full statement here.)
In the meantime, allegations of wrongdoing continue to mount. According to the American Friends Service Committee report, an inmate at the Whetstone Unit of the Arizona State Prison Complex tested positive for tuberculosis in August. But Corizon did not test other prisoners, even those who were doing community service outside the complex.
“I think the most concerning to us was the previous company when they started to lose that contract, the current company that got the contract didn't even have to go through a public process of any kind to get this contract,” he said. “No bid. Nothing. It was deemed an emergency situation by Department of Corrections so they didn't have to go through the normal process. But more interesting than that was this company that got the contract had just hired the former head of the Department of Corrections who was the mentor of the current head of Department of Corrections.”
Campbell said that is not the only tie that members of Arizona’s state government have to private prisons. Charles Coughlin, the former campaign strategist for Ariz. Gov. Jan Brewer, runs a lobbying firm called HighGround Public Affairs Consultants, which represented one of the country’s largest private prison companies. HighGround donated $5,000 to Jan PAC, Brewer's super PAC.
The governor's office declined America Tonight’s request for an interview and referred us to Kavanagh, who said the allegations that Brewer accepted bids because of personal relationships were “baseless.”
“I think they're propaganda,” he said. “I mean, people say to me I've gotten campaign contributions from private-prison people. Well, yeah. I got from a lobbyist who represents them but that lobbyist also represents 40 other clients in different industries. It's smoke and mirrors. It's a façade.”
Campbell said that multiple people and corporations are profiting from the privatization of prison health care.
“They're profiting on taxpayer dollars and to me, if I'm going to hand out money to a private entity, I want to make sure it's being spent wisely,” he said. Campbell is now calling for an investigation.
Corizon defended its level of care. "These patients receive care that meets their health care needs and satisfies constitutional requirements," it said in a statement to America Tonight, adding that it has a rigorous quality control program to make sure its health care meets federal and Arizona Department of Corrections guidelines. "In addition, the ADC maintains a dedicated internal audit team of over 30 health care professionals whose sole purpose is to monitor Corizon’s delivery of care," the company added. (Read Corizon's full statement here.)
In the meantime, allegations of wrongdoing continue to mount. According to the American Friends Service Committee report, an inmate at the Whetstone Unit of the Arizona State Prison Complex tested positive for tuberculosis in August. But Corizon did not test other prisoners, even those who were doing community service outside the complex.
Hoping to survive prison
As for Regan, she still has six months left on
her sentence. The separation has been tough on the family, but what's
worse is their fear that prison health care could be a death sentence.
As their allotted time for a phone call wound down, Regan asked her mother if she would be making the four-hour drive that weekend.
“I'm gonna lose you. I love you honey,” Jodi said. “I'm coming on Saturday with Rylan. And you don't…”
An automated message cut her off when their time limit was up.
“Oh, that's so frustrating when you can't finish talking,” Jodi said. “It's even tougher leaving. Her first visit with [her baby], my husband held Rylan up and she could just see Rylan's big blue eyes and she just started running and grabbed her and held her as tight as she could. It's very been hard. We all miss her very much.”
As their allotted time for a phone call wound down, Regan asked her mother if she would be making the four-hour drive that weekend.
“I'm gonna lose you. I love you honey,” Jodi said. “I'm coming on Saturday with Rylan. And you don't…”
An automated message cut her off when their time limit was up.
“Oh, that's so frustrating when you can't finish talking,” Jodi said. “It's even tougher leaving. Her first visit with [her baby], my husband held Rylan up and she could just see Rylan's big blue eyes and she just started running and grabbed her and held her as tight as she could. It's very been hard. We all miss her very much.”
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