Day 30 #TeslaRoadtripUSA Season finale.
Grand Canyon to Laguna Beach. 500 miles
The Index of all 30 posts from day 1 of our #TeslaRoadTripUSA is HERE.
Left Grand Canyon Village at 6.15am. Only 280 miles of charge because the Tesla Supercharger now only allows up to 80% charge. First time we’ve seen that. Not very happy. Clear road though so made up good time passing all kinds of traffic.
Road signs populate this entire trip. Mostly they advertise prosperity Jesus, Cannabis retail, or law firms. This is the first time we saw any reference to the American genocide. Not sure who paid for the poster, but is is an extremely valid point in this economically disadvantaged community.
First stop for recharge was in Kingman Arizona. Once home of The Hualapai, now, a federally recognized Native American tribe in Arizona with about 2,300 enrolled members. The name, meaning "people of the tall pines". Their traditional territory is a 108-mile stretch along the pine-clad southern side of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River with the tribal capital at Peach Springs. Other communities on the reservation include Valentine and Grand Canyon West. The Hualapai tribe is a sovereign nation and governed by an executive and judicial branch and a tribal council. The tribe provides a variety of social, cultural, educational and economic services to its members. The Hualapai have an afterlife belief. The souls of the dead go northwestward to a beautiful land where plentiful harvest grow. This land is believed to be seen only by Hualapai spirits.
Kingman is named after Lewis Kingman, an engineer for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. It has a long Railroad history. The Kingman Explosion, also known as the Doxol Disaster, was a catastrophic boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion (BLEVE) that occurred on July 5, 1973, during a propane transfer from a Doxol railroad car to a storage tank on the Getz rail siding near Andy Devine Avenue/Route 66. Firefighters Memorial Park in Kingman is dedicated to the 11 firefighters who died in the blaze.
At the 2000 census, there were 20,069 people. The racial make-up of the city was 88.0% White, <0.1% Black 1.0% Native American. 0.1% Asian. 0.1% Pacific Islander. 3.4% from other races.
Next to the supercharge station is an old giant steam train with a perfectly preserved caboose, that reminded me of Bob Dylan. “The poor white remains. On the Caboose of the Train. He’s only a pawn. In their game.” We enjoyed a traditional American diner breakfast at a splendid 50’s diner, complete with the music from that time. I imagine its a form of purgatory for the staff working there listening to that same old 50’s play list day after day, week after week, month after month.
Driving down the Joshua Tree road brings up many picture opportunities. None more so that the astonishing sight of the enormous Ivanpah Solar Power facility. The Ivanpah system consists of three enormous 130 feet high solar thermal power plants on 3,500 acres. On October 27, 2010, Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger and other dignitaries gathered in the Mojave Desert to break the ground for the construction
Fields of heliostat mirrors focus sunlight on receivers located on centralized solar power towers. The receivers generate steam to drive specially adapted steam turbines. The facility uses three Rentech Type-D water tube boilers and three night time preservation boilers, each a stack "130 feet (40 m) high and 60 inches (1.5 m) in diameter" and consumption of 242,500 cu ft/h (6,870 m3/h) of natural gas fuel, to get it started. Ivanpah burns an extremely large amount of natural gas to achieve its target output. Overall it seems to be working more efficiently than a coal fires plant.
We stopped for lunch in Baker, at the Mad Greek. A chicken gyro for some $10. Aside from the Mad Greek restaurant, Baker is famous for being the site of a vacant, 223-bed for-profit prison formerly operated by Cornell Corrections which experienced a major riot on December 2, 2003, four weeks before it was temporarily closed. The prison was permanently closed on December 25, 2009.
Prisons for profit is a big subject. Why they even exists is another big subject. How the human-rights-concerned court system prosecutes them and then sees a hard-right dishonest judiciary populated with right-wing christian-Nazi-ideologues strike down judgments to defend them is another big subject.
GEO Group purchased Cornell Companies, the Baker prison-for-profit, on August 12, 2010. GEO had some history with prisons.
The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO) is a publicly traded C corporation that invests in private prisons and mental health facilities in the United States, Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, the company's facilities include illegal immigration detention centers, minimum security detention centers, and mental-health and residential-treatment facilities. It also operates government-owned facilities pursuant to management contracts. As of December 31, 2021, the company managed and/or owned 86,000 beds at 106 facilities. In 2019, agencies of the federal government of the United States generated 53% of the company's revenues. Up until 2021 the company was designated as a real estate investment trust, at which time the board of directors elected to reclassify as a C corporation under the stated goal of reducing the company's debt.
In November 2010, plaintiffs represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU National Prison Project filed a federal class-action lawsuit against GEO and the state agencies that contracted for the facility, saying that the prison authorities allowed abuses and negligence to occur at the facility.
The lawsuit stated that prison guards engaged in sexual intercourse with the prisoners, tolerated and encouraged violence, smuggled illegal drugs into the facilities, and that prison authorities denied required education and sufficient medical care. As of that month the prison had about 1,200 prisoners ages 13–22; the lawsuit said that half of the prisoners were incarcerated for nonviolent offenses.
Weeks prior to the filing of the lawsuit, United States Department of Justice officials informed Governor of Mississippi Haley Barbour that the department had started an investigation concerning the prison. In addition to learning about prisoner abuses, investigators found that prison officials were being paid bonuses from federal funds for "administering" education in the prison. That was reviewed separately by the Office of the Inspector General at the US Department of Education.
One lawsuit against GEO was decided. ‘Unjust enrichment for paying inmates, usually detained illegal immigrants, $1 a day’. GEO was fined over $17 million. GEO the appealed a $17.3 million jury verdict for hundreds of detainees who were paid $1 a day to clean, do laundry, wash dishes and staff a barber shop and library at the detention center, and a separate $6 million verdict awarded to the state, which had sued GEO for unjust enrichment; for not paying detainees the minimum wage.
For-profit-prisons in small town America with large Government contracts exploiting people in slave labor conditions. Often these exploited people are young and black and pot smokers. The cannabis law has worked out nicely to incarcerate many black people, thereby removing them from both the electoral roll as well as the opportunity to get jobs that can now go to white men with no prison record. Others are immigrants, many of whom cannot speak English.
Private prisons in the U.S provides a splendid reminder of our long association with slave labor. Now its the immigrants who get to work as slaves. “Immigrant detainees at a facility in New Mexico run by CoreCivic Inc were not the private prison operator's employees and were not owed the minimum wage for their participation in a work program” a U.S. appeals court ruled in May, 2021.
CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), is a company that owns and manages private prisons and detention centers and operates others on a concession basis. Co-founded in 1983 during the hard right Reagan years, in Nashville, Tennessee by Republican Lawyer Thomas W. Beasley, Robert Crants, (Another hard right character.) and T. Don Hutto, it received investments from the Tennessee Valley Authority, Vanderbilt University, and Jack C. Massey, the founder of Hospital Corporation of America.
For some background into the prisons system, read this article. “The trusty system, whereby inmates themselves ran the prisons. Trusties were men you supposedly could trust, and to save money, politicians let inmates decide how the racially segregated barracks were run and how best to manage the crops growing on some of the nation’s best farm land. Prisoners worked as guards, checked in new inmates, issued mail, cooked food, raised livestock and provided medical care. Under the blazing Delta sun, long-line riders armed with pistols, rifles and shotguns patrolled the grounds on horseback while rank men worked fields full of cotton, rice, soybeans and cucumbers. Men who didn’t work hard were punished like slaves. Should a rider shoot a man trying to escape, he was given a free pass out of the prison. A long leather strap was another instrument of terror. Because men were housed in barracks, rather than cells, they had little protection at night against roaming thieves and sexual predators.” Reforming the trusty system was in part how the prison for profit commercial model began, allowing investors to profit from prison labor, essentially paid $1 a day then charged out at a much higher rate.
As of 2017 CoreCivic's shares are mainly held by institutional holdings (The Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Fidelity Investments and others). In the early 21st century, CCA had become the largest private prison management company in the United States. By 2016, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) along with Geo Group were running "more than 170 prisons and detention centres". CCA's revenues in 2015 were $1.79 billion.
In the 2021 ruling for minimum wage breach, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the minimum wage set by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act was designed to ensure that workers can maintain a minimal standard of living, but detainees have their basic needs provided for them and do not participate in the "free labor market."
CoreCivic were free to continue profiteering from slave labor for their investors benefit. Another right wing racist judgement by American judges in a judiciary loaded with right wing religious conservatives unable to distance their personal prejudice from objective facts in the law.
In August 2016, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh C. Johnson announced that they would be reviewing the use of private detention facilities for housing illegal immigrants. This followed the announcement by the Department of Justice that the Bureau of Prisons would phase out its private contracts. As of 2015, federal revenues made up 51% of CCA's total income. CCA operates 22 federal facilities with a capacity of 25,851 prisoners.
In 2017, however, after the Putin/Trump win in 2016, the Trump administration reinstated the Prison for Profit market, declaring that both the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security would continue to use private prisons. According to USASpending.org, the federal government, primarily the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, has had a total of 1,501 contracts with CoreCivic since 2008. The most recent contract was processed on Jan. 17, 2020.
Staff at CoreCivic were much as you would expect from an organization based on a business model of racist slave exploitation from the Nazi school of good labor practise. In 2019 an anonymous leak of data from the Neo-Nazi website Iron March provided analysts with user data including usernames, private messages, email addresses, and IP addresses that enabled identification of some of the site's users. Meet CoreCivic star employee Travis Frey, 31, a former Marine who worked at the Nevada Southern Detention Center in Pahrump, near the California border. Frey had a longstanding employment history with CoreCivic.
Frey had first worked at the Georgia Department of Corrections, eventually getting hired by CoreCivic in August 2010, per his deleted LinkedIn page. He steadily rose through the ranks to become the chief of security. He had been working at the Nevada facility since 2018.
A lengthy Vice investigation discovered Frey had joined the white supremacy online forum Iron March in 2013, while employed with CoreCivic. Under the username “In Hoc Signo Vinces,” a phrase used on the insignia of the Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 533. Frey espoused about 132 posts featuring racist, anti-Semitic and nationalist rhetoric. It is no less than grand irony that today, almost certainly, Frey supports the antisemitic genocide of the Palestinians by the Zionists. “Jews will not replace us” very quickly became “I stand by Israels right to genocide.” (Ironclad.)
In January 2020, full blown Nazi antisemite Trumper Frey was placed on administrative leave and later fired by CoreCivic.
Despite the Trump endorsement and the Nazi links, CoreCivic keeps getting away with Judgements by Judges who have close links to Nazi Conservative ideologies.
In 2021 CoreCivic agreed to pay $56 million to settle a lawsuit from shareholders accusing the company of inflating stock prices. One shareholder, Amalgamated Bank, claims a $1.2 million loss from 2016. The lawsuit also alleges CoreCivic "ran unsafe, low quality prisons that caused multiple deaths and did not save money." U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger declined to dismiss the case due to evidence from CoreCivic internal communications.
Aleta Trauger is a fine example of the extent of prejudicial right wing religious personalities appointed into the American legal system, overweighting the judiciary with a specific type of right wing racist religious republican type.
In the case of State of Tennessee v. Robert Glen Coe, Trauger heard evidence from Coe’s attorneys detailing how he was not mentally competent. Coe had a long history of drug abuse, mental illness, and indecent exposure. He had an epically horrible upbringing that would have ingrained lifelong mental illness on anyone. His horrible crime, raping and murdering an eight year old, he claimed was a rage he felt when the child told him "Jesus loves you".
After hearing the evidence of Coe’s mental capacity, that is at first glance by anyone, clearly a severely mentally ill person, Trauger decided he was mentally competent and ordered his death. The Tennessee Supreme Court then issued a decree setting Coe's execution date for April 5, 2000; Tennessee had not executed an inmate since 1960 when the case came before Trauger.
After our brief but informative stop in Baker, we stopped for our second supercharge near the home of the original Del Taco. An isolated spot near Toomey, California, Population 3. One Taco restaurant, MissPinchis. One Shell gas station selling gas at $6.48. It’s just off the I 15 South, Minneola exit. Right now it’s 87 f. Dry. Windy. Bugs galore. Tesla supercharge has about fifty stations here. There is a Monastery not far away. We walked the local desert for twenty minutes while the car charged. I photographed some old rubbish nearby. A lost ID card and a faded pack of cigarettes.
As usual on this drive we see many representations of the Jesus. As usual, a Christian Truck guy advertising his faith represents the scourge of this driving experience. This white-truck Christian billboard guy. Undertaking at high speed. I timed him. When this picture was taken he is doing 90mph. Weaving in and out of lanes. These Truck guys all seem to have attended the same driving school. There is a clear commonality in their approach to sharing the road.
We passed through Laughlin, 90 miles south of Las Vegas, in the far southern tip of Nevada. Another small town with a long history. Once populated by Indians. Now, the racial makeup of the CDP is 89.06% White, 2.81% African American, 2.29% Asian, 0.18% Pacific Islander, and 0.62% Native American.
Near the end of our journey we passed near Barstow. Home of Marine Corps Logistics Base Barstow. We saw trains loaded with long lines of military vehicles. And on one side is this second hand Humvee store. Miles and miles of old Humvees, many still in desert camo.
A reminder of how often we see military presence deep in the heartland. Military camps, prisons and churches compete for space with countless thousands of small hamlets, many of which look desperately poor. Probably housing those employed by the Prisons, Military camps, churches and cannabis stores.
We did not see many Trump posters in the heartland. An encouraging sign. Quite why so many people who live in such abject poverty self harm their prospects of a better life by imagining Trump and all his right wing conservative racist gluttony policies represent will help uplift them from their generational poverty, is beyond me. A bit like Turkeys voting for Christmas. Or Cows voting for the abattoir.
From the window of a passing car its clear; there’s a link between their Trumpist delusion and the products being most advertised to them. The Jesus, the many Cannabis stores, and the endless adverts for personal injury lawyers. One cheerful fellow I chatted with at a Tesla stop paraphrased his life as “Get stoned. Go to church and hope you get hit by a car so you can make fortune.”
An hour later we saw the signs for Beach Cities, and soon after that, home. Thirty days in an EV. Not one problem with finding a charge point. No range anxiety. And best of all for our costs, the supercharging was free, thanks to our purchase arrangement with Tesla.
We both feel that this road trip was like no other we have enjoyed through the years because it was in a Tesla. That defined the experience in a way that deserves a page all of its own.
If you followed this blog from the start, I hope you enjoyed reading about the trip as much as I enjoyed writing about it.
The Index of all 30 posts from day 1 of our #TeslaRoadTripUSA is HERE.