Cracker Barrel Shooting: Gunman Opens Fire At Ohio Restaurant; 3 Dead

[Occulus]

63. If the CCW laws are being put forward by investors in privatized prisons (Wells-Fargo),

then those laws could well be an attempt to reverse that declining trend.

Sick, I know, but it's not all that implausible, either; this isn't even conspiracy theory material. What do you think would happen when you give a person, group of people, or corporation a vested financial interest in locking people up:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/12/1082753/-STUNNING-Wells-Fargo-launders-Mexican-drug-cartel-money-then-invests-in-for-profit-prisons?detail=hide

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 shares valued at more than $72 million. By March 2012, its stake had grown to more than 4.4 million shares worth $86.7 million.

SHOCKER (not), ALEC is involved:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/08/23/elite-privilege-and-the-prison-industrial-complex/

The number two corporation in Warren Buffet’s stock portfolio is Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo is a major beneficiary of corporate welfare. For instance, they received $43.7 billion in federal taxpayer bailout money. But far more destructive is Wells Fargo’s investment in prison profiteers. Wells Fargo owns 4 million shares in the Geo Group, the second largest private prison corporation in America, and 50,000 shares in the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison corporation in the country. These shares combined are valued at more than $120 million (Source: http://www.cjjc.org/en/news/50-immigrant-rights/215-wells-fargo-divest-from-prisons ).

Companies such as the Geo Group and CCA do not earn their money by providing goods or services to customers. Rather, they make their money solely from the government, and solely for locking human beings in cages, mostly for non-violent offenses. Further, these companies actively lobby for unjust laws, largely using the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporatist conservative political group.