Sheriff Arrested For LEGAL Jail Food Scam

This will make you want to bite a chair:

A northern Alabama sheriff was in federal custody Thursday after a judge ruled he purposely fed inmates skimpy meals so he could make money from an unusual system that lets sheriffs turn a profit on their jail kitchens.

Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett testified at a Wednesday court hearing that he made $212,000 over three years by cheaply feeding prisoners — every cent of it legal under a Depression-era state law and reported on his tax forms as income.

But U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon ordered federal marshals to arrest Bartlett after hearing a string of skinny prisoners testify they were served paper-thin bologna, bloody chicken and cold grits in the north Alabama county's jail.

More here.

More Americans need to understand that this is an illustration of the Modern Republican dream. They want everything - Social Security, the military, prisons, schools, they'll even go after the Post Office - privatized, because they can cheat the system like this sheriff does - legally - and make a ton of money. This is all they mean by "small government." It's the entire story. They are all Boss Hogg wannabes.

Fallen Troops on Forklifts

This (via) is what a "CEO president" - and a really bad one at that - gets you.

In an about-face by the U.S. government four years into the war in Iraq, America's fallen troops are being brought back to their families aboard charter jets instead of ordinary commercial flights, and the caskets are being met by honor guards in white gloves instead of baggage handlers with forklifts.

...

"I said, 'That's not going to happen with my son. That's not how my son is coming home,"' said Holley, an Army veteran from San Diego whose son, Spc. Matthew Holley, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2005. "If it was 'expeditious' to deliver them in garbage trucks, would you do that?"

Damn. More:

Last year, the U.S. military spent about $1.2 million to bring home the dead on commercial flights. Switching to charter flights will cost far more: The six-month Kalitta contract is worth up to $11 million.

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"You just don't do that," he [Holley] said. "And doing that with a family watching it, they don't want to see their son's casket being unloaded with a forklift or a belt loader, and this is what Congress saw."

"Congress saw," or looked the other way, for nearly four years. Four years, it should be said, of a Republican-controlled White House and Congress.

Kalitta Charters - the airline that got the new $11 million contract - is owned by drag racer Doug Kalitta. Is he a major donor to the Republican Party? Keeps it all in the family, if so.

More here from last August. And even more. And from even earlier, January, 2006.

Looks like it was Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter who wrote up the bill that changed the policy, and with a lot of help - quickly and personally to the family - from Barbara Boxer.

The Casualty Assistance Officer contacted the office of California Senator Barbara Boxer. The Senator made a few phone calls of her own, and suddenly all reluctance and red tape vanished. The Holleys were allowed to meet their son on the runway at Lindbergh Field. A small honor guard joined them in welcoming their fallen warrior home to American soil.