A new lawsuit claims that the prison system in Alabama is engaged in a form of modern day slavery by leasing out inmates to private businesses and then taking their wages to keep for themselves. Then, Democrats in both the House and Senate have introduced legislation that would prevent Wall Street from owning single-family homes in this country. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: A new lawsuit claims that the prison system in Alabama has engaged in a form of modern day slavery. The state’s been leasing out inmates to private businesses and then taking their wages to keep for themselves. I’ve got Farron Cousins with me to talk about this. Farron, my thought is, okay, first of all, you got people there that want to get out of the house, right? The idea they want to go do that. They don’t like hanging around their cell all day long. So this gives ’em something to do. But there’s another side to it, isn’t there? Go ahead and pick up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What we’re seeing happen in the state of Alabama, which by the way, is making the state about half a billion dollars a year, is they’re doing what’s called convict leasing. So they take these prisoners who, as you say, they wanna work, they want to not sit in jail where they’re at risk of being assaulted or murdered. So they say, yeah, I’ll go work at McDonald’s for you, because that’s one of the places they have a contract. So then they get their paychecks and realize, wait a minute, there’s only a few dollars on here. Where’s the rest of my money? Oh, the state government took it because they, I guess, just felt entitled to it.
Mike Papantonio: They take 40%.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Guy says, well, this is a chance for me to get, and it is true. I mean, they did a study on this one time, and the prisoners really like to get away from what they’re doing every day, but when they turn it into slavery and there’s a different side to it too. The other side is some of these guys are wondering, are they holding me here when I should be paroled? In other words, am I being held back from being able to get outta here and get a real job so that these folks can make half, half a billion?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. A year.
Mike Papantonio: Half a billion dollars a year on my work. Typically its fast food, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Fast food. They also do some construction work, obviously, and other things where they’re kind of removed from being directly involved with other people. But you brought up a really great point there. The denying of the parole. Even just not even giving these people parole hearings. There was one woman who was supposed to have a parole hearing back in 2020, and they pushed it down the road years so that she could keep going to work sometimes six days a week.
Mike Papantonio: The other part of it is they’re punishing the people that don’t want to do this. They’ve got all kinds of ways to do that. You know, put you over to bad cell or maybe ship you off to a higher security cell, a higher security prison. They can move around all over Alabama. But it’s got two sides to it. Like I said, I did see an article a while back where these guys say, well, this is good. I get to get out. I don’t necessarily wanna give 40% of my money to the state, but it gives me something to do. But then when it becomes punitive and you’re saying, well, we’re gonna hold back parole because we need these workers. We need slaves. So we’re not gonna give you parole. And oh, by the way, if you don’t participate, we’re gonna ship you to a place where you might be killed in a very, very high security prison.
Mike Papantonio: Democrats in both the House and the state have introduced legislation that would prevent Wall Street from owning single family homes in this country. A move that could put home ownership back on the table for millions of Americans. There are so many young people that are coming outta college, taking a first job that can’t afford a house. And there’s no, nothing in sight for them. There’s a reason for it. This is one of the reasons. Wall Street has been buying up all this property. 600,000 single family units. 600,000. Okay. Well, in the past, what they wanna do is rent ’em. They wanna rent ’em. Amazon’s into this big time.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. That’s, we don’t need Jeff Bezos. I mean, he already owns the Washington Post. We don’t need him owning all of our homes too.
Mike Papantonio: All our homes. You said there’s whole neighborhoods, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. We’ve talked about stories, I’ve done ’em with Ring of Fire about how these groups, what is it, the BlackRock? They’ll come in and they’ll buy up. Okay. There’s this little subdivision, 30, 40 homes here. We’ll buy ’em all. So they own their whole little community here. But we’ve seen this epidemic, and I’ve interviewed people on this in the last couple years, and it’s happening more and more frequently that by the year 2030, it’s projected, if it’s not stopped, Wall Street will own 40%, 40% of the single family homes in this country will be owned by these nameless, faceless banks.
Mike Papantonio: And you have a.
Farron Cousins: In seven years.
Mike Papantonio: Congress and Senate that aren’t doing anything to stop it, except Jeff Merkley.
Farron Cousins: Yep, Merkley.
Mike Papantonio: He says, let me call your attention to it. Also, in fairness, Adam Smith from Washington, Washington State saying, we gotta stop this, man. You’re, if you’re moving into the time in your life, when you’re trying to acquire assets, you wanna own a home, you wanna have all this American dream start coming true. They don’t have a possibility now. And this is getting worse.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And another part of it, the other side of it, even when Wall Street doesn’t purchase the home, taking it away from a homeowner, they still drive up the price. Because we have homes all over the country selling for way above asking price. Just so the consumer can outbid the Wall Street bank. So you’re paying 50,000 more.
Mike Papantonio: Than you should.
Farron Cousins: Than the home’s even worth.
Mike Papantonio: Because you are bidding against Wall Street.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And they’ve got endless money.
Mike Papantonio: Wall Street is like a flock of locusts. They’re locusts. We’ve talked about this before, they’re moving into every part of American life. They, it used to be doctor run hospitals, right. 10 doctors would run a hospital until Wall Street said, hey, we can make a lot of money by buying everything up. So they bought up 80% of all those hospitals. They bought up the healthcare industry. And now some cat in New York has to say whether or not you can have your appendix removed or have heart surgery. They’re trying it with a legal, in the legal space. And I’m fighting like hell, having some pretty good success stopping ’em. They’ve done it in, you see these big startup, these optical plants, these optical massive structures. Go get your eyes fixed. They’re buying up all the obstetricians. They’re buying up the dental business. I mean, it’s just, they are like locusts. And we don’t have an FTC that has any courage, and we certainly don’t have Congress or Senate that has any courage to stop it. They can, but they don’t.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And then if they don’t pass this legislation, again, we are six years out from nearly half of the entire home industry in this country, it’s gonna be owned by Wall Street.
Mike Papantonio: Owned by Wall Street. Yeah. That’s amazing. Farron, thanks, man.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week. But all these segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in the coming week. Make sure you’re subscribed. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer where we tell you stories every week that corporate media can’t tell you because their advertisers simply say, you tell that story and I’m gonna pull the advertisement. Or their political connections are so Democrat or so Republican that they can’t tell the story because they’re afraid they’re gonna offend someone, they’re gonna offend somebody in their party. But around here, it doesn’t make any difference. We’re gonna tell you the story, whether you liked it, whether you, whatever side you’re on, and we’re simply gonna report the news as we see it. Hope we see you next time.
