Begin forwarded message:

Trump and the GOP claim to be going after fraud and abuse when they cut funds for families. The real abuse is to be found in Pentagon contracts and for-profit detention centers

Daniel , In Trump’s America, private prisons and the Pentagon are set to cash in on family separation and cutting food assistance and healthcare. We need budget priorities that fund communities, not private prisons. The budget already passed by the house slashes funding for food assistance, healthcare, and education, while funneling an additional $175 billion into ICE and $150 billion more into the Pentagon. And who benefits? Not families. Not communities. The winners are private prison corporations and Pentagon contractors raking in billions in taxpayer dollars. In the words of rap star and music producer Ty Dolla $ign, ”It's simple: put the money into schools and not prisons.” Instead of investing in affordable housing, public health, or hunger relief, Republicans are handing billions to the private prison industry, which profits off mass deportations and family separations. The same corporations running these detention centers -- where immigrants face abuse, neglect, and solitary confinement--are boasting record profits. The CEO of GEO Group, a major private prison company, boasts they’re seeing "unprecedented interest" in new contracts, saying “we’ve never seen anything like this before.” Their $2 million in donations to Republican PACs is paying off for them nicely. Meanwhile, private detention centers hold people in horrifying conditions, as a report from the National Immigrant Justice Center exposed practices such as punitive solitary confinement, lack of due process, and discrimination against LGBTQ+ detainees. This is a humanitarian crisis fueled by corporate greed. Families are being torn apart, while executives and politicians cash in. If Congress is looking for ways to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, they should start by looking at private prisons and the Pentagon. Send a direct message to Congress to reject extra funding for ICE and the Pentagon, and urge them to invest in our communities instead. SIGN AND SEND Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, tracks private prison profits, and he sees an increasing degree of collusion with governments: “Private prison builders and prison service companies have spent millions of dollars to persuade state and local governments to keep more people locked up so that they can earn more profits. Private profit has corrupted incentives to improve public safety.” Meanwhile, the Pentagon -- which has never passed a full audit -- continues to waste trillions. Defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon rake in half of the nearly $900 billion defense budget every year. Their overcharges can be as much as 40%. It’s unconscionable that at the same time, Congress is pushing through draconian cuts to programs that actually help families survive, such as food assistance for needy families (SNAP), healthcare for low income families who cannot access it in other ways, and education programs that help lift families out of poverty.   We cannot allow corporate greed to take precedence over human lives. We must tell Congress to stop funding family separation and war profiteers -- invest in our communities! The real waste, fraud, and abuse, is to be found in the Pentagon and private prisons -- not with families struggling to survive. Sign and send your message now: No more billions for ICE and defense contractors. Fund food, healthcare, and education instead! Thank you for standing up against this injustice. - HollywoodDemocrats.com Team Paid for by HollywoodDemocrats.com, www.hollywooddemocrats.com, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.