Unions represent the workers in context with the industry they are the workers for. Prison guard unions have as much of an interests in keeping prisons full as does Prison Corp of America or any prison industry pandering bottom feeding Jim Crow politician like Obama. Unions always want more workers in the union. that means growing the industry they work for.

Here are my recent blog essays on Obama.

Sen. Obama's solution for post-Katrina poverty; police oppression

The prison guard unions have become so politically powerful in America that candidates for office risk losing elections if they don't back the corrections guards and their unions. These people, as a group, make up some of the largest campaign donors in state elections.

Big money is involved. In California, prison guards' starting wages are about $60K per year, which is more than the prison staff psychologists with their PhDs make. On top of that, the guards pull in a lot of overtime pay. For corrections personnel who marry each other, their combined incomes are in the six-figures. If you ever find yourself in California near a corrections center, check out the parking lot. There you will see acres of Mercedes, BMWs, Lexus, and honkin' huge pickup trucks and sport-utes, all owned by the people who work in the prison system.

Both the guards and the guards' union know the number of prison jobs, and thus the union's own income, relies on party politics in state capitols and in Washington, D.C. They also know how to flex their muscle. If a state politician fails to perform the way they want, arranged prison riots can break out all over the state, along with demands that the prison system needs more money to better control the situation. Even California Governor Arnold "the Terminator" Schwarzenegger has been unable to correct the corrections situation, even though he has made some valiant efforts to do so.

The union, the California Correctional Peace Officers' Association (CCPOA), is not shy about imposing its political survival onto society at large, and at everyone else's expense. When California's Proposition 36, which mandated treatment instead of jail for first time drug offenders, was up for voter approval, the CCPOA lobbied and campaigned against it. Prior to that, the CCPOA spent $101,000 to get Prop. 184, California's infamous `three strikes initiative,' on the ballot. That's the kind of people they are.

Perhaps someday someone will be elected with the guts to drive a stake through the CCPOA's vampire heart, but I don't see anyone with that kind of guts who is running for president in 2008.
Giordano