American banks launder dirty drug cartel money as Wells Fargo and others invests in for-profit prisons

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 By Michael Webster, Syndicated Investigative reporter

 

Recently, Wells Fargo paid a small fine which they could easily afford shortly after they had purchased Wachovia bank, Wachovia a bank that got busted laundering $110 Million dollars of drug money for some of the worlds most dangerous drug cartels. While here at home if you get busted smoking a joint you go to jail, but if you get busted laundering millions of dollars in drug cartel money you get a slap on the wrist. Now, here's how, if an American is arrested for drug passion it is likely you go to jail, banks like Wells Fargo will make millions of profit from the new growing for-profit prison system.

As Wells Fargo has grown over the years, using its bailout funds to gobble up rival Wachovia and expand to the East Coast, so has the U.S. prison population. By 2008, one in 100 American adults were either in jail or in prison – and one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34, many simply for non-violent offenses, justice not so much blind as bigoted. Overall, more than 2.3 million people are currently behind bars, up 50 percent in the last 15 years, the land of the free now accounting for a full quarter of the world’s prisoners.

These developments are not unrelated.

A driving force behind the push for ever-tougher sentences is the for-profit prison industry, in which Wells Fargo is a major investor. Flush with billions in bailout money and an economic system designed to siphon wealth from the working class to the idle rich, Wells Fargo has been busy expanding its stake in the GEO Group, the second largest private jailer in America. At the end of 2011, Wells Fargo was the company’s second-largest investor, holding 4.3 million sharesvalued at more than $72 million. By March 2012, its stake had grown to more than 4.4 million shares worth $86.7 million.

All prisons are awful,” says Melanie Pinkert, an activist based in Washington, DC, who along with other members of Occupy DC’s “Criminal Injustice Committee” is helping lead a boycott of Wells Fargo, which just expanded to the nation’s capital. “But private prisons take it to the next level.” Indeed, a recent report from the U.S. Justice Department found that at one GEO-run juvenile facility in Mississippi, sexual abuse was endemic, “among the worst that we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation.” According to the report, GEO staff demonstrated:

- Deliberate indifference to staff sexual misconduct and inappropriate behavior with youth;
- Use of excessive use of force by [prison] staff on youth;
- Inadequate protection of youth from youth-on-youth violence;
- Deliberate indifference to youth at risk of self-injurious and suicidal behaviors; and
- Deliberate indifference to the medical needs of youth.--

It's "Heads, Wells Fargo wins; Tails, I go to jail, Wells Fargo wins"

Now, I've said before that I don't know what the difference is between a slave plantation and a for-profit prison, but when they build a for-profit prison on the site of an old North Carolina slave plantation, well, that says it all there, doesn't it?

If you needed any other proof that the War On Drugs is a racket, you don't need to go much farther than this story. So here is Wells Fargo, a Too Big To Fail bank that puchased another bank who launders drug money for foreign Drug Cartels, cartels who flood America with illegal narcotics, providing a profit to Wells Fargo. If you use the drugs sold by the cartels that was made possible thanks to bankster money laundering you go to jail, but the banks only pays a fine, but that's okay because Wells Fargo has invested in the for-profit prison you will be detained in, providing another profit to Wells Fargo, and then Wells Fargo will use those profits to lobby politicians via ALEC for longer prison sentences and stricter criminal laws for everybody who isn't committing foreclosure fraud, which will result in more profit for Wells Fargo. They've got you coming and going. It's a racket. If you are a Too Big To Fail bank and you get caught with $300 Billion plus in drug money you get a slap on the wrist, but if you aren't Too Big To Fail and you get busted smoking a joint you go to jail, lose your freedom, and Wells Fargo makes a profit. Welcome to the new slavery.

Just for the record the number two stock in Warnen Buffett's portfolio is Wells Fargo.

So how do we fix this travesty? Salon's column ends on a somber note with obvious advice . . .

The political class having failed the public it purports to serve, choosing to imprison much of it for private profit, it’s left to the powerless – that would be us – to confront systemic injustice. One way to start: Quit giving your cash to those like Wells Fargo who make money by imprisoning your neighbors. And quit enabling the politicians from both major parties who make that possible.

I would go beyond that and suggest three easy remedies to end this cycle of insanity. Break up the Too Big To Fail banks, legalize marijuana and re-examine our long failed war on drugs. If anybody deserves to go to jail it is not the drug user who needs rehabilitation instead of incarceration, it is the executives at Wells Fargo who figured out how to illegally foreclose on America and avoid prison by laundering drug money, financing for profit prisons and then fighting for tougher drug laws. What a racket!

So, let me ask you again, what is the difference between for-profit prisons and a slave plantation, especially when the for-profit prisons are built on the same exact spot where the slave plantations used to be?

Tips for calling it what it is, corporate slavery

When banks own the prisons, write the laws and profit off of your lack of liberty you are not free at all.

Many of these private contracts

require the state keep the prisons 90% full which means the state is encouraged to go for longer sentences and reduce the chance for parole. It is a racket and one in which the for profit prisons win big time.

Wells Fargo isn't the only financial backer of the private prison system, they also include a slew of corporate sponsors: Nordstrom's, Microsoft, IBM, Revlon, Target, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and even AT&T, a smorgasbord of some of your favorite brands.

Sources:

Salon.com

MinistryOfTruthFollow

State of California

L.A. County

U.S. Prison system

Michael Webster’s Syndicated Investigative Reports have been read worldwide, in 100 or more U.S. outlets and in at least 136 countries and territories. He publishes articles in association with global news agencies and media information services with more than 350 news affiliates in 136 countries. Many of Mr. Webster’s articles are printed in six working languages: English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish. With ten more languages planed in the near future.

Mr. Webster is America's leading authority on Venture Capital/Equity Funding. He served as a trustee on some of the nation’s largest trade Union funds. A noted Author, Lecturer, Educator, Emergency Manager, Counter-Terrorist, War on Drugs and War on Terrorist Specialist, Business Consultant, Newspaper Publisher. Radio News caster. Labor Law generalist, Teamster Union Business Agent, General Organizer, Union Rank and File Member Grievances Representative, NLRB Union Representative, Union Contract Negotiator, Workers Compensation Appeals Board Hearing Representative. Mr. Webster represented management on that side of the table as the former Director of Federated of Nevada. Mr. Webster publishes on-line newspapers atwww.lagunajournal.com andwww.usborderfirereport.com and does investigative reports for print, electronic and on-line News Agencies. All of Mr. Webster's articles, books/CD's can be read or downloaded free at:http://www.lagunajournal.com/michael_webster.htm or MICHAEL WEBSTER'S OTHER WRITINGS Contact e-mail: wibcom@aol.com

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