US prisons make prisoners pay for food, medical care, even toilet paper. If relatives want to give prisoners money for this, they have to go thru companies that take almost half the money.

The other way prisoners can pay for this is by working, for a pittance, for private companies, thus undermining the standard of living for Americans not in prison.

It should be forbidden for the government to contract parts of its operations to companies in this way. They should all be done by people with civil service jobs. But prison should not make prisoners or their poor relatives pay for what they need either to live, to be healthy, or to be rehabilitated.

And when prisoners work for companies, they must be paid the prevailing wage for the work they do.

The Russian proxy invasion of Ukraine is trying to capture Donetsk airport with tanks.

Judge Kessler ordered the US government to publish videos of force-feeding in Guantanamo.

Nowadays, being self-employed mostly means doing an unglamorous job with no job security and does not get a living wage.

Being an entrepreneur (not counting funded startups) means taking a risk with your money — gambling on your success. There's a small chance you will make a lot, and a big chance you will lose all.

You shouldn't gamble what you can't afford to lose, and nowadays most Americans (and Britons) are so close to the edge that they can't afford to lose anything. Therefore, it is foolish for them to be "entrepreneurial". When politicians say they want most people to be "entrepreneurial," it means they intend to make most people's lives risky.

Margaret Thatcher was planning to call striking miners, and the whole Labour Party, "the enemy within", more or less traitors. Only an opportune terrorist bombing led her to change her rhetoric. But her systematic state violence and frame-ups made her the real "enemy within".

Millions of Britons had good reason to celebrate Thatcher's death, but her successors today are pushing far beyond Thatcher to push them into penury. Today's Tories don't speak with venom about the non-rich but kick them harder.

Companies with Links to Tories "Have Won £1.5bn Worth of NHS Contracts."

If the NHS contracts work out to companies, the companies will get their profits by squeezing either the patients or the employees. Such contracts should not be allowed at all.