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Comment by jvm | Hacker News Reader

How does that fact make parent's point untrue? He never said the workers stood to benefit 'more' than Wackenhut; it's not clear what that would even mean. Clearly both the unions and the contractors both are in favor of increased incarceration, that's not very surprising.

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It makes his point irrelevant; those workers' interests pale in comparison to that of the owning interests of those corporations. He presents unions as the sole cause of the problem, which is not only intellectually deceitful, but quite incorrect. More importantly, it reveals an underlying agenda that needs to be challenged as strongly as possible in civic discourse.

In fact, private prisons and unionized guards aren't even on the same side, due to the former hiring largely non-union labor. And the private prison industry has been growing and lobbying faster than ever:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/09/26/328486/us-privat...

" He presents unions as the sole cause of the problem" - When did he do that?

When he posted a comment in which he said essentially that, and in which he referenced a one-sided article that goes to extreme lengths to attack blue collar workers' retirement plans and their own collective efforts at bettering their economic self-interest.

The point should be clear as day by now; if you can't extract the basic message and argument from his comment then you have no basis for inserting yourself into the debate. Please don't waste any more of my time.

This was not my basic message at all.

I'm here telling you this right now.

They are a special interest group that promotes incarceration. There are others, as well.

People are far more aware of private prisons than they are prison guard unions. I've known nasty things about private prisons for 10+ years. I found out about CCOPA and other similar entities in the past 1-2.

As stated earlier, I was simply presenting something that I figured people here likely hadn't seen.

You're too emotional to reason with, I'm afraid.

I'm done.

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