1. Destroying vulnerable families is a specialty of the Trump administration. I will point out that @AjitPaiFCC at the FCC made a below-the-radar policy to do this to the families of prisoners.
2. One of the more evil policies in America is to fund prisons by withholding contact between prisoners and the families of prisoners unless those families can come up with a bunch of cash. This is how a lot of prison services work, including phone calls.
3. Prison phone services are not delivered by companies like AT&T or Verizon, but specialty contractors. These contractors offer to pay prisons for the right to offer phone services to prisoners at insanely inflated prices. It's a bidding war for the right to gouge the poor.
4. Single phone calls could cost upwards of $12 apiece. Families sometimes paid $1000 a month or more. This was often just to keep a parent in touch with a child. And families of prisoners are among the poorest people in America, and have already lost a bread winner to prison.
5. It's such a profit center for prisons that some of them are now preventing in-person visitation and forcing visitation over video conference, just so they can reap fees from families. It's horrible.
6. In 2016, @CoryBooker and @MignonClyburn worked together to cap these phone rates. It would have been the first use of price caps on any service by the FCC in decades. @AjitPaiFCC opposed. And of course he's conflicted. arstechnica.com/information-te…
7. The inability of prisoners to talk to their children is bad for the kids and bad for the prisoner. It is just cruel. @CoryBooker and @MignonClyburn really were on the verge of helping a lot of people.
8. But the FCC lost a round in court, and then @AjitPaiFCC killed the proposal when he became the chair of the FCC. It really is family separation, intentional family separation, and it is done in service of private equity firms, who organize this racket. wsj.com/articles/plati…
9. The point here is that what ICE is doing is cruel, what distinguishes ICE from @AjitPaiFCC is that it is noticeable. The prison phone racket is done quietly, in hallways of regulators and quiet #BigLaw firms doing boring administrative appeals. But it is the same cruelty.
10. Don't be deceived by coiffed suits and placid fake civility. Moral monsters go to Ivy League schools and work in elite professions and have deep expertise, just as the leaders of the Confederacy were often deeply cultured lawyers with a fine appreciation for art.
11. Don't be paralyzed into inaction. @MignonClyburn and @CoryBooker in this case showed that political leaders, individual political leaders, CAN wield power to help people. We can stop this. It may take time. But we can do it if we open our eyes.
