Why We May Love Collecting 'Brown Stamps'

Back in the '60's and 70's many merchants offered green stamps with every purchase, one for every dime on your receipt. Books of stamps could be redeemed for all kinds of cool products from the Sperry & Hutchinson gift catalogue.

I once heard Garrison Keillor describe some people as being afflicted with a unique kind of Alzheimers, one that causes them to "forget everything but their grievances."

Too many of us find ourselves failing to count our blessings and instead collecting what we might call "brown stamps," mental records all of the perceived wrongs we have suffered throughout our unfortunate lives. As convinced victims, we believe I a debt for which we deserve payments that are long overdue. That sense of being owed gives us a feeling of power we may otherwise feel we lack.

By contrast, if we register all of their many gratitudes in our mental bookkeeping we see ourselves as owing the world--and our Creator--a debt we can never fully repay. That represents a kind of power and a motivation of a positive kind.

So much depends not on our circumstances but on our bookkeeping.

I'm not an accountant, and sometimes even have trouble keeping track of my bank balance, but I at least know that the difference between having an overdrawn account and a viable one. It's all about whether I regularly make more deposits than I do withdrawals.

In a similar way, the difference between mental wellness and mental misery is whether our assets are seen as exceeding our liabilities, our credits exceeding our debits.

The good news is that our circumstances don't have to be perfect, nor do all the people in our lives need to behave has they should. Many won't, but we need to have enough positive experiences and life-giving connections with God and with others that more than make up for what is negative in our lives.

Again, a lot of that has to do with our record keeping, and whether we are mostly collecting green stamps or brown stamps.

Are there times when we need to lament, mourn, repent, and/or grieve? Absolutely. We need to set aside times to name and fully experience our pain and our losses in order to experience much needed catharsis and ongoing healing.

There is a time for everything, but the majority of our time needs to be focused on the good stuff. 

**************************************

"In conclusion, my friends, fill your minds with those things that are good and that deserve praise: things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and honorable."

Philippians 4:8 (Good News translation)

https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2025/07/for-quality-relationships-practice-41.html

On Not Taking Our Daily Bread For Granted

Granddog Benson savors the last morsel from his dish.

When our middle son gave me instructions recently about feeding their family's black lab while they were away, he told me about one of his strange behaviors. "When I put food in his dish," he said, "he waits for me to give him verbal permission before wolfing it down."

What a thoughtful dog, I thought, taking a moment to acknowledge his dependence on his master for his meals.

Humans could learn from Benson. In the German language our family spoke when I was growing up, essen meant people eating a meal whereas fressen was typically used for animals devouring their hay, grain or other food, Or we might jokingly use the word to describe a fellow human "eating like a pig."

Taking a moment before a meal to express gratitude to our Creator for the food we're so dependent on seems like an appropriate practice. It could be also be a good time to show some appreciation for the hard labor so many from all over have put into planting, tending, harvesting and making our food available to us.

As someone has observed, every morsel of a plant or animal that gives us life has had to give up its life for our sake, which means every meal could be thought of as a kind of eucharist for the soul as well as nourishment for the body.

In an odd way, maybe even Benson seems to get that.

Countless Trucks Are Bringing Needed Food--But Not Just To Gaza

One of numerous trucks supplying the "food distribution center" at the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community. 

We've all been shocked by photos of hundreds of eighteen wheelers lined up to bring desperately needed food to Gaza. There's something about this that seems unsustainable and unacceptable. Surely the world can't keep up this kind of effort and on such a scale.

But on second thought I reflected on the multitude of trucks on US highways and interstates bringing in exotic foods our more affluent communities feel entitled to. In the past century we've gone from shopping at  modest size family-operated grocery stores to having huge supermarket chains like A & T, Krogers and Safeway appearing in every community, accompanied by the need for ever more trucks to keep them stocked. 

Prior to that, the majority of food items on US tables were either home grown or were harvested, milled and marketed within relatively short distances. Ships and railroads of course brought in more varied fare over time but from the 1920's to the 2020's the US saw huge changes in food production and marketing that have required major expansions in the trucking industry. So both conditions of extreme poverty and of excessive wealth have created an over dependence on planet-polluting systems of truck transportation.

According to one Israeli source, an average of 73 food and aid trucks were brought into the Gaza Strip daily before the war for its two million people, many of them already having lived in refugees camps for decades. As a result of the unimaginable devastation inflicted by Israel's military, UN agencies estimate that 500-600 trucks are now needed daily to meet even the most basic needs of Gaza's population. Fewer than half that many are currently being allowed in, however, according to the Los Angeles Times and other sources.

Let's urge individuals and nations everywhere to renounce war and engage in just, sustainable and compassionate ways of seeing that everyone on earth has enough to eat.

This is a view of Gaza today, looking much like the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing.

Trillions For “Defense” Will Not Save Us

 

The combined military spending of the world's
nations is staggering--and immoral. 

"The regenerated do not go to war, or engage in strife. They are the children of peace, who have beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they know no war. Since we are conformed to the image of Christ, how then can we kill our enemies with the sword? Spears and swords made of iron we leave to those, alas, who consider human blood and swine’s blood as having well nigh equal value."    

- sixteenth-century reformer Menno Simons

According to The Visual Capitalist, combined spending worldwide for military purposes reached $2.7 trillion in 2024. The U.S., with less than 5% of the world’s population, increased its spending by 5.7% last year, to a staggering total of $997 billion. Much of that spending is money borrowed from future generations.

By comparison, China, with a population of over four times our own, spent $314 billion, and Russia $149 billion. 

While estimates vary, the cost of eradicating world hunger, homelessness and preventable deaths from lack of medical care would be far less than we are currently spending on ever more deadly means of destruction. We can only dream of what such investments could do to help bring about world peace and stability.

I find it disheartening that even some of my Christian-minded friends support acts of massive destruction and human butchery by nations they favor, seeing it as a kind of necessary evil committed by a more innocent party. Thus "lesser evil-ism” becomes a justification for actions that are morally unjustifiable no matter who engages in them or for whatever reason, just as we would no longer defend torture, cannibalism, or slavery.

Yet we continue to see desirable ends as justifying whatever regrettable means necessary to achieve them. Maiming and murdering men, women and even innocent children, along with destroying their homes and means of livelihood are seen as forms of “self defense” or as necessary for eliminating an evil enemy. Citizens on both sides firmly believe their cause is just, and that whatever barbaric acts they engage in are therefore justifiable, right and divinely approved.

But if the vision and teaching of Jesus and the prophets were to be taken seriously, we would urge every nation in the world to beat their military swords into plowshares, and to study war no more. If humanity is to survive we must all stop rationalizing irrational and genocidal behavior. 

Unsurprisingly, no application of so called "just war" principles has ever been known to actually prevent a war. Not a single one. Not ever . And when it comes to "war crimes," it's high time that we rule out war itself as the most heinous crime imaginable.

Jesus consistently taught and demonstrated what it means to defeat evil by doing good rather than inflicting harm. When his disciples asked him to call down fire from heaven to destroy their Samaritan enemies, Jesus rebuked them in no uncertain terms. And when one of them drew his sword in Jesus's defense his response was swift and clear: “Put your sword away. Those who wield the sword will perish by it.”

Even if we set religious and moral reasons aside, a total rejection of war as evil is not some utopian fantasy, but absolutely necessary for human survival.

2024/https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2023/03/will-more-war-help-bring-about-more.html

https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-sword-in-romans-13-is-for.html

Seven Retirement Blessings I'm Grateful For

I hope to keep on growing in the remaining chapter of my
life here in Park Village at the Virginia Mennonite
Retirement Community.

The following are just a few of the many blessings I enjoy these days:

1. The pleasure of leisure time for working the soil, nurturing plants, pulling weeds and harvesting produce from our smallish 10' x 60' vegetable garden.

2. Having more time to read books, take a leisurely nap, write a blog, and/or engage in community work on criminal justice and other issues I care about.

3. Enjoying more quality time with Alma Jean, my spouse and soulmate of 61 years.

4. Occasional morning coffee and conversation with friends at the Main Street Cafe on our VMRC campus.

5. Sharing kitchen times for baking bread and for making vegetable stews, oatmeal pancakes and caramel puddings.

6. Doing crossword puzzles and other fun things with my wife and with some of our beloved grandchildren.

7. Still being able to meet some clients as needed one day a week at the Hometown Pastoral Counseling Group in Dayton.

God is good. All the time.

In 1492, Columbus Landed On Ayita (now Haiti)

I found this book by Pulitzer prize
winning author especially revealing 
regarding US policy toward Haiti.

I was intrigued by a reference in Garry Wills book about Thomas Jefferson's refusal, as a citizen of a southern slaveholding state, to recognize the revolutionary new black government of Haiti during his presidency. This added to my curiosity about how that long standing policy, unchanged until 1862, may have affected Haiti's ill-fated history. 

As background, the island on which Haiti is located is where Christopher Columbus planted the first European flag and lay claim to land long inhabited by a native Taino and Arawakan people.The French later built a large settlement there in the 18th century and established huge plantations employing slave labor. As a result the French profited from enormous amounts of indigo, cotton and raw sugar exports, according to Wikipedia, and by the end of the century were involved in a third of the entire Atlantic slave trade.

Then in 1791, not long after the US colonies successfully gained independence from the English crown, slaves staged the successful Haitian Revolution. In its aftermath as many as 5000 French occupiers, men, women and children, were brutally massacred.

Meanwhile, Jefferson endorsed the formal recognition of the new French Republic after the 1792 revolution that overthrew the monarchy of Louis XVI. This resulted in the massacres of well over three times as many French as died in the aftermath of the Haitian uprising.

According to Wills, Timothy Pickering, a former Secretary of War and later a senator from Massachusetts, decried the double standard Jefferson applied to the two nations, one led by white Europeans and the other by black former slaves, as follows:

Dessalines is pronounced by some to be a ferocious tyrant; but whatever atrocities may have been committed under his authority have been surpassed, have they equalled in their nature (for in their extent they are comparatively nothing), those of the French Revolution, when "infuriated men were seeking," as you once said,. through blood and slaughter" their long lost liberty? ...If Frenchmen, who were more free than the subjects of any monarchs in Europe, the English excepted, could find in you the apologist for cruel excesses of of which the world has furnished no example, are the hapless, the wretched Haitians ("guilty indeed of skin not colored like our own), emancipated by a great national act and declared free--are they, after enjoying freedom for many years, having maintained it in arms, resolved to live free or die; are these men not merely to be abandoned to their own efforts but to be deprived of those necessary supplies which for a series of years, they have been accustomed to receive from the United States and without which they cannot subsist? (Wills, p.44)

To be clear, as a follower of Jesus I do not support armed violence of any kind by any individual or any nation, but this does raise the question of how a more just US foreign policy may have led to a different Haiti than the unimaginably dysfunctional and impoverished one we see today. 

And to what extent might ethnicity or skin color still affect our relationships with other nations?

DN-R Justice Matters Column: 'Restorative Justice Benefits Both Victims and Offenders'

Paulson Kurtz, who lives near Broadway,
is a retired teacher and former director of
a VORP program in Keyser, WV.

Three boys lazily passing through a graveled lot in their West Virginia town found that by throwing stones high into the air they would make a fun “clink” when landing on a nearby car. 

The boys moved on but police tracked them down, filled out juvenile petitions for the damage done and sent a report to the prosecuting attorney (PA).

This PA, allied with a victim-offender reconciliation program (VORP), had granted the program’s director full access to view incoming petitions. Upon reading these, the director recommended VORP’s restorative justice approach.

To begin, VORP contacted the offenders’ parents and explained that the boys would meet with the car owner to work out an acceptable way to “make things as right as possible.” If mediation was successful and the resulting agreement kept, their cases would be dismissed. 

All parties agreed. The car owner was invited to meet with the boys, and the mediation process was explained. He appreciated that he would have a hand in deciding suitable restitution and that he would not be kept in the dark concerning the case, as is typical when a case is tried in court.

The owner lived 70 miles away, and his daughter had been using the car to attend the local college. On the designated day, he drove the distance to meet with the boys and their parents. No police, attorney, or judge were involved.

A trained VORP volunteer conducted the meeting, during which the boys told what happened and the man related how the vandalism affected him and his daughter. The boys had the opportunity to apologize, and both sides agreed restitution would involve each family contributing $150 in three monthly payments to cover the amount not paid by insurance. In addition, the boys would write weekly notes to the car owner, telling how they were doing in school and what was happening in their lives. The written agreement, signed by all participants, was later presented to the prosecutor for validation.

Over the next few months, VORP collected the payments and notes and forwarded them to the car owner. After all obligations had been met, the owner of the car, in an expression of support and concern for the boys, drove back to the town and treated them to lunch at a restaurant.

Over a period of about a year, this West Virginia program mediated many such cases. In one example some students  driving home from their high school chose to circumvent a long line of cars by driving across the side lawn of a restaurant. After police sent petitions to the PA office, VORP mediated a meeting between the students, their parents, and the restaurant owner. For restitution, the students regraded and reseeded the area and built a rail fence to prevent others from driving through the lawn.

Another time, juveniles vandalized a USPS deposit box on a street corner. The postmaster met with the offenders and for restitution the boys scrubbed graffiti off several deposit boxes around town.

In yet another case, three adults stole an air conditioner from the apartment one of them was vacating—a felony due to the value of the appliance. At a mediated meeting, apologies were made and the offenders repaid the landlord.

Was justice served?

In a restorative justice process, offenders see the material and emotional effects of their actions and assume responsibility for them. Victims learn backstories and participate in deciding restitution. This constitutes justice.

During its year of operation, VORP successfully monitored every restitution agreement to completion. The PA never hindered the process and never refused a case selected for mediation. Patience, good communication, and persistence were vital to the program’s success.

Sadly, with the director, mediators, and board members all being volunteers, the program ended for lack of sufficient support.

A similar local program of this kind, the Fairfield Center, is already in place, and can reduce caseloads for prosecutors, judges, and probation officers while providing just outcomes for offenders and victims alike.

Interestingly, the “grandfather of restorative justice,” Howard Zehr, resides in Rockingham County, and his groundbreaking book, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice (Herald Press, 1995) has impacted criminal justice around the world. 

Let's support the Fairfield Center as it carries on Zehr's legacy in our community.

- Paulson Kratz is a retired teacher and an advocate for restorative justice.

Summer Issue of HARDTIME VIRGINIA

HARDTIME VIRGINIA Summer 2025 Vol 10 No 2

an occasional newsletter for incarcerated persons

Good Man Denied Parole

    “Let me tell you about my friend David Sowers, a 68-year-old man who exudes calm. He is well educated and well connected. He speaks of fairness, equality and acts in a manner that is becoming of those ideals. He exhibits a level of patience that I envy, a compassion I share. He is a good man. Knowing this, you might be surprised that he has now served 44 years in the Virginia DOC. He was arrested in 1981. There are no crimes I am able to name that justify more than four decades in prison. Every other civilized country in the world agrees with that sentiment.  Many of the 50 states have come to that same conclusion. On June 2, 2025 David was denied parole for the 30th time. I am not only saddened for my friend David, who is the exact example of who should be granted parole, but I am totally offended by so blind a decision. David simply takes it in stride.

    “As the Virginia Parole Board knows, they violated David’s due process, as per Virginia Code section 53-1-136. There was no public hearing and he never met with any member of the board itself. I am going to write numerous articles and essays about the VA parole board, and my friend David will write a well thought out essay about justice and probably several haikus which he really enjoys and is quite good at. I am going to exhibit fighter levels of ire and openly accuse the parole board of a number of provable legal and human rights violations. David will continue to be, in every way, a perfect candidate for parole as he prepares for his next review, patiently doing everything expected of him regardless of the fact that the board cannot see anything beyond a single event in 1981, 44 years ago.

    “I have no idea what David’s crime was. I don’t ask. It was 44 years ago. He was in his early 20’s and I was six years old, and I am certain I did some stupid things, too. Knowing what he did would not change my opinion of who he is, a good man who helps me navigate the nightmare that is Virginia’s prisons. and who has become a very human being spite of more than four decades of inhumane captivity. He finished paying his debt 20 years ago, and every civilized country would agree. Continuing to hold this man in prison only proves that Virginia is an inhumane failed state.”

 - David Annarelli, Lawrenceville Correctional Center

Good Work But Poorly Paid

    “I am now on the paint crew. We mostly work in the evenings or weekends but sometimes during the day Monday through Thursday. I like it because the time seems to pass more quickly, It is also a 45¢ an hour job for 30 hours a week, and we are encouraged to work extra hours. It helps me make ends meet and my TV Guide is up for renewal at $49.99 a year or two years for $89.00.  My boss told me that DOC’s budget was cut, so now I cannot be issued new boots. Mine are medical boots and I am denied new ones.With my heel separating on my right boot this makes no sense to me. Food portions are also getting smaller.”

• - John Livesay, Baskerville CorrectionalCenter

Note: No one was granted parole in June, and prison ‘wages’ in Virginia haven’t been raised in decades. 

Families Bear The Burden Of Excessive Charges And Fees

We are led to believe that public funds cover all the costs of incarceration and the operation of our jails and prisons. However, many of these costs are passed on to inmates and their families through excessive fees and through inflated private contracts with private vendors for food, communications, hygiene products, clothing, etc. This creates a hardship on families trying to assist loved ones with basic material and other needs while incarcerated.

     Examples of other proliferating fees, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, are “charges for police transport, case filing, felony surcharges, electronic monitoring, drug testing, and sex offender registration.”

     Among the more egregious of these are jail keep fees, the daily rent charged inmates across the country while incarcerated. In Virginia, these run from $1 per day at our local jail to $3 at Middle River Regional Jail, the maximum allowed in the Commonwealth. Such fees disproportionately harm low-income families as the median annual income of a person incarcerated hovers around $19,000. Thus, the multiple jail fees charged could be seen as a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s constitutional protection against excessive fines.

     In a 9-0 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Justice Clarence Thomas noted that excessive fines were used after the Civil War to re-enslave freed men. In 2019, the New York Times published an article titled “Slavery gave America a fear of black people and a taste for violent punishment- Both still define our criminal-justice system,” in which the author notes that we cannot understand the excessive punishment that permeates the U.S. mass incarceration system without understanding its roots in the legacy of slavery. The article further states, “Laws governing slavery were replaced with Black Codes governing free black people, making the criminal-justice system central to new strategies of racial control.”

     It was in the early 1990s that a Chicago law clerk wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune suggesting that inmates with financial assets should earn their room and board through prison labor and pay rent to cover the increased costs of operating jail and prison facilities due to overcrowding.

     One of the results of this fee system is that when someone is released from jail or prison, they are often deeply in debt and have very few financial resources. This only perpetuates the cycle of incarceration by burdening former inmates and their families and by creating hurdles that prevent them from successfully reintegrating into society.

     Brittany Friedman, a sociologist at the University of Southern California, has done extensive research that shows that jail debt increases the cost of incarceration and that the devastating effects of jail debt can be far-reaching. Dr. Friedman states, “If pay-to-stay is really meant to offset the costs of incarcerating people, then why are we sticking them with a bill that then further tethers them to the system?”

    Keep fees may also contribute to inmates on meager jail fares going hungry while incarcerated since any attempt by friends or family to add money to their commissary account to supplement their diet is partially seized by the jail to offset the keep fee debt. This exacerbates hunger and mental distress and is clearly wrong.

     - Kevin Drexel is the founder of Stand 4 Count, working to support the needs of individuals, families, and marginalized groups impacted by incarceration, and is a part of the local Valley Justice Coalition, a local citizen voice for criminal justice reform since 2014.

*****************************************

Harvey Yoder, editor, Valley Justice Coalition, P.O. Box 434, Harrisonburg, VA 22803

The Amish Both Reflect and Reject 'Worldliness'

I've just reviewed this helpful book by a clinical
psychologist who has worked with members of
 an Amish communityfor over 30 years.

The Amish, like the rest of us, have seen unimaginable cultural and technological changes in the world in the past century. The means of communication and modes of transportation available when my parents were born (in 1904 and 1905) were more like that of Abraham and Sarah in the Bible than that of our own children and grandchildren.

I love the way “plain” communities like the Amish and Old Order Mennonites represent a kind of monastic alternative to our fast-paced and individualistic society. They remind us that not everything new is better, and that some innovations often come at the cost of untold negative consequences.

But are so-called plain people totally unlike their worldly neighbors? As someone who grew up Amish and has many Amish and Old Order Mennonite friends, I see both similarities and differences. 

In other words, to paraphrase Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the line separating worldliness from a truly Christ-based non-conformity “passes through the heart of each of us,” and through the heart of each of our congregations. In other words, not all of the challenges either we or the Amish are dealing with are the result of external influences alone.

For example, in the everyday world of economics, plain people are subject to the same temptations to “lay up treasure on earth,” “fare sumptuously every day” and to engage in the unmitigated pursuit of convenience, comfort and wealth as their neighbors. While I have no studies to cite, it is likely that the capital worth and consumer wealth of plain people in the U.S. well exceeds that of most Americans, and places them within the top 1-2% of the wealthiest households in the world. So apart from external markers such as personal appearance, modes of transportation, worship practices, etc., how “plain” (as in radically “non-conformed”) are these people of Anabaptist descent?

In the area of sexual and gender identity, I find it disturbing but understandable that most plain people have conformed to long held and deeply rooted patriarchal beliefs and practices in the larger culture, and have failed to fully recognize and affirm the Spirit-given gifts of half their members. And like all human communities, they are no less likely to have children with the same kinds of sexual variations that occur in all populations, including a similar percentage of offspring born with sex attraction.

And it should come as no surprise that within any human community, plain or otherwise, there will be some members who on some issues will strongly advocate for preserving an existing “old order” while on other issues they may advocate for change. Some will lean toward becoming MAGA supporters, for example, as some Amish have done, and others will hold opposite views, as is the case with the rest of Americans.

We can all learn from the way Amish communities exercise great caution in dealing with change, and reflect on how all of us can be as salt and light to the larger society without losing our identity as members of the worldwide and heaven-governed reign of of a loving and just Creator.

For Quality Relationships--Practice The 4:1 Rule

Alma Jean and I celebrating our 50th anniversary, now over ten
years ago. 

A text  I used for my parenting classes some years ago recommended a simple rule of thumb: For every negative interaction or statement with a child we should make sure we are offering four positive ones.

Too often we parents, mostly by habit, are guilty of creating the opposite ratio, with a majority of words like, "Stop that!" "No!" "You know better than that!" "You should be ashamed!" or with put down questions the child knows there are no acceptable answers to, like "Why do you always have to...?" or "Why can't you ever...?"

Since children are pretty much like the rest of us, only shorter and less experienced, I see the 4:1 rule being equally important in all of our relationships.

Positive expressions and actions have the effect of adding valued deposits to our relationship savings accounts, whereas negative ones are like withdrawals. With a disproportionate number of the latter our relationships accounts become overdrawn and we begin operating in the red. 

Examples of positive expressions are anything informative, interesting, fun, gratifying, praiseworthy, encouraging and/or affirming.

Some acceptable negative ones are expressing our honest feelings about our pain, discouragement, stress, worry or otherwise undesirable experiences.

Unacceptable negative expressions include blaming, shaming, attacking, judging, berating or accusing.

Some negative expressions are necessary and OK if offered in the form of information rather than accusation, and always in the interest of making things better, and never for the sake of causing hurt or harm.

The 4:1 rule, like the Golden Rule, means making sure the majority of our relationship interactions are as we would like them, in some really positive territory.

Daily News-Record "Justice Matters" Column

By KEVIN DREXEL Jun 28, 2025  

'Keep fees' from inmates shift costs to impoverished communities

One practice in Virginia jails that perpetuates the cycle of incarceration is the practice of “Keep Fees” or charging inmates daily rent.

We are led to believe that public funds cover all the costs of incarceration and the operation of our jails. However, jails shift many of these costs onto inmates and their families through excessive fees charged to inmates and through inflated private contracts with private vendors. Vendors commonly offer kickbacks (“bribery”) for signing them up.

A significant percentage of costs for rent, food, communications, hygiene products, and clothing are ultimately passed on to families trying to assist loved ones with basic material and other needs while incarcerated.

Hadar Aviram, a professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, comments, “Public prisons are public only by name. These days, you pay for everything in prison.”

According to the Brennan Center, the result is “an estimated 10 million people who owe more than $50 billion resulting from their involvement in the criminal justice system.”

As a 2021 Vera Institute report clarifies, “Fees are not the same as fines. Fines are intended to serve as punishment, whereas fees and surcharges are explicitly designed to raise revenue for the government.

But both fines and fees bring governments revenue as if they were taxes, and this method of funding government inflicts considerable harm on already impoverished communities.”

Examples of proliferating fees, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, are “charges for police transport, case filing, felony surcharges, electronic monitoring, drug testing, and sex offender registration.”

Among the more egregious of these are keep fees, the daily rent jails across the country charge inmates while incarcerated. In Virginia, these run from $1 per day at our local jail to $3 at Middle River Regional Jail, the maximum allowed in the Commonwealth. Such fees disproportionately harm low-income families as the median annual income of a person incarcerated hovers around $19,000. Thus, the multiple jail fees charged could be seen as a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s constitutional protection against excessive fines.

In a 9-0 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Justice Clarence Thomas noted that excessive fines were used after the Civil War to re-enslave freed men. In 2019, the New York Times published an article titled “Slavery gave America a fear of black people and a taste for violent punishment- Both still define our criminal-justice system,” in which the author notes that we cannot understand the excessive punishment that permeates the U.S. mass incarceration system without understanding its roots in the legacy of slavery. The article further states, “Laws governing slavery were replaced with Black Codes governing free black people, making the criminal-justice system central to new strategies of racial control.”

It was in the early 1990s that a Chicago law clerk wrote an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune suggesting that inmates with financial assets should earn their room and board through prison labor and pay rent to cover the increased costs of operating jail and prison facilities due to overcrowding.

One of the results of this fee system is that when someone is released from jail or prison, they are often deeply in debt and have very few financial resources. This only perpetuates the cycle of incarceration by burdening former inmates and their families and by creating hurdles that prevent them from successfully reintegrating into society.

Brittany Friedman, a sociologist at the University of Southern California, has done extensive research that shows that jail debt increases the cost of incarceration and that the devastating effects of jail debt can be far-reaching. Dr. Friedman states, “If pay-to-stay is really meant to offset the costs of incarcerating people, then why are we sticking them with a bill that then further tethers them to the system?”

Keep fees may also contribute to inmates on meager jail fares going hungry while incarcerated since any attempt by friends or family to add money to their commissary account to supplement their diet is partially seized by the jail to offset the keep fee debt. This exacerbates hunger and mental distress and is clearly wrong.

Fortunately, some state and national groups are working to address some of the injustices of excessive fees in jails and prisons, but regrettably, this has not been true of jails in the Valley.

Kevin Drexel is the founder of Stand 4 Count, working to support the needs of individuals, families, and marginalized groups impacted by incarceration, and is a part of the local Valley Justice Coalition, a local citizen voice for criminal justice reform in our community and in the Commonwealth since 2014.

Kevin Drexel is the founder of Stand 4 Count, working to support the needs of individuals, families, and marginalized groups impacted by incarceration, and is a part of the local Valley Justice Coalition, a local citizen voice for criminal justice reform in our community and in the Commonwealth 

Some Amendments To The Ten Commandments

I keep hearing politicians promoting having the Ten Commandments posted in public buildings and in school classrooms. But in the interest of having these Ten Words align with the values of most politicians promoting them, the following amendments may be necessary:

I. Exceptions to this first rule are such gods as Mars, Mammon, and MAGA America.

II. Images and statues glorifying war and warriors are always permissible.

III. God may be named and the Bible used to advance a political agenda.

IV. A weekly Sabbath for religious observances is a good thing if it doesn't interfere with profit-taking  or war making.

V. Government programs may provide some aid to our aging and ill parents and others if they really need it, but on the other hand, such programs may need to be the first to cut in favor of other budget priorities.

VI. Killing people and destroying things can be laudable if done systematically, on a mass scale and by government order.

VII. Adultery, sexual harassment and multiple divorces are generally a bad thing, but can be overlooked if they are a part of our favorite politicians' life stories.

VIII. Forcibly stealing land and livelihoods from native Americans or others for the sake of US expansion has proven legitimate and necessary.

IX. Bearing false witness, denying facts or telling outright lies are all OK if done to advance a political cause or candidate.

X. Thou shalt not covet doesn't apply to wanting to annex whole countries like Canada or Greenland.

Local Citizens Gather To Prevent Food Waste

Multiple grocery cart loads of frozen foods behind the Harmony Square Food Lion drew dozens of people stopping by to help themselves yesterday. 

Turns out one of their main freezers malfunctioned overnight and the management had no choice but to discard thousands of dollars worth of items which were at various stages of thawing, but were still cold and partially frozen. Somehow the word got around in the community and people descended in droves to salvage what they could and get it into their own freezers and refrigerators. 

All of which brings up the question of what could be done to avoid having all of this go into the landfill, and in ways that would be both safe and a blessing to people in need--and to the environment.

As it is, the management of supermarkets like Food Lion feel prevented from offering food like this at a reduced price or even free to worthy recipients. I spoke with one of their managers yesterday about whether a non-profit facility like Gemeinschaft Home could be given opportunity to receive some of this windfall, and the only answer she could give, quite understandably, was that they could not risk any liability should their food cause an illness.

Question: Shouldn't there be some organization that could inspect food of this kind and be a channel through which it could be safely shared?

What do you think?

Will Another Stone Age Follow The Age Of AI?

“After WWIII, the next war will be fought with sticks and
stones.”    - Albert Einstein

It's hard to imagine how we would survive if our current economic system were to collapse. A World War III or a successful cyber attack on our transportation, energy and other technological-dependent infrastructure, would render most of us helpless. 

In 1930, at the beginning of the Great Depression, around 25% of the population of the US were farmers, and the percentage of people with substantial gardens was significantly higher. Many children grew up learning how to grow, harvest and preserve food, sew clothing and provide for other needs.

So should we be raising concerns about our loss of basic survival skills as we become an ever more modernized, industrialized and urbanized society?  

Less that 2% of our population earn their living on farms and ranches today, and many of these are "factory farms" rather than family farms that produce not only commodities for world markets but much of what the family needs for their own food and other needs.  While 43% of the population today still grow some of their own vegetables, the average garden size is about 600 square feet, according to one source, and provides only a fraction of what is needed to feed a household.

We need more conversations about how we and our children and grandchildren can learn basic survivor skills.

And maybe spend some time learning from our Amish and Old Order Mennonite neighbors.

A Parade Of Death Along Constitution Avenue

Two of the sixty-ton M1 Abrams tanks and one of the M109A7 Paladin Self-propelled howitzers that were among the hundreds of killing machines displayed in the June 14 parade.

I found it heartening that on the day of the nation's $45 million military parade in D.C. that some 30,000 attended a ceremony in Chicago's White Sox stadium Friday to hear Pope Leo XIV speak via video. According to the Catholic Diocese of Chicago, the first 10,000 tickets for that event, at $5 each, were sold in the first 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, the highly publicized event celebrating the Army's 250th anniversary drew a crowd of an estimated 20,000, and the No Kings Day gatherings across the nation Saturday attracted some 5 million participants in over 2000 cities.

I don't want to read too much into those numbers, and I intend no disrespect for the well over a million men and women who are a part of the Army's active duty and reserve forces  They, along with members of the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard and other military units, are all fellow citizens I respect and love, but are under the command of a gigantic Defense Department with a budget equal to that of the combined spending of the next nine most heavily armed nations in the world, including Russia and China.

What saddened me Saturday was the realization that our massive Department of Defense is intended to protect us by threatening the use of every means possible to destroy as many of our enemies' lives and means of livelihood as efficiently as possible. Not one of the multimillion dollar death dealing machines in Saturday's parade was designed to feed the world's hungry, heal its sick, house its homeless, preserve its environment, or educate its young. 

Yet some will say that kind of investment is necessary to protect us and to make the world a more peaceful and habitable place. But how has the world benefited from our prolonged wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, to cite some recent examples of how the world's greatest military might has been incapable of bringing peace and human wellbeing through military means.

As Lawrence Korb, assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article, "To go marching down Constitution Avenue looks like you've won something, Unfortunately, the way things have been going, it's been pretty tough for our military to achieve its objectives lately." 

But what about World War II, you ask, which resulted in the loss of some 50 million lives and at a cost of trillions of dollars worth of destruction?

A far better way to have prevented that holocaust would have been having the citizens of pre-war Germany, then one of the most Christianized countries in the world, simply refuse to support the rise of an authoritarian and hyper-nationalistic regime bent on promoting "Deutschland Uber Alles." And a far better way to defend against enemies is to win their friendship through cooperative efforts at improving the lives and fortunes of our neighboring nations around the world.

The direction we are going now, a hundred years later, will almost inevitably lead us to World War III, the effects of which could destroy us all.