Bloomberg's prison labor...And a holiday tip for your copy editor
Billionaire media mogul Mike Bloomberg has been exploiting prison labor to make phone calls for his presidential campaign, an arrangement that Bloomberg ended after an inquiry from The Intercept. Full story we published today by John Washington here.
The campaign said that it was not aware that its contractor was exploiting women in an Oklahoma prison to make the calls. The women disclosed over the phone that they were making them on behalf of the Bloomberg for President campaign, but did not disclose they were coming from the Dr. Eddie Warrior Correctional Center, a minimum-security women’s prison with a capacity of more than 900.
After we inquired into the arrangement, the Bloomberg campaign told us that they ended their relationship with the firm after learning about it from us. I’m conflicted on how to feel about this type of prison labor. If I were in prison (as some of my readers tell me I should be) I’d like being able to make these phone calls, to give the day some structure and give me a connection to the outside. But doing this work essentially for no pay is offensive on so many levels. People should be paid for their work, whether it’s done behind bars or not.
Bloomberg firing them isn’t the ideal outcome. He should find out how many hours of calls were made and reimburse the women’s commissary accounts accordingly. And then rehire them at decent wages. We know he can afford it.
Speaking of women in prison, Reality Winner, who took great personal risk to inform the country that the Russian government had attempted to infiltrate our election systems, is still in prison. If you’d like to write to her, or send her a book you’ve liked (she already has mine, which is dedicated to her), you can do so through here.
And if you’re in the holiday spirit, and want to tip this newsletter’s eagle-eyed copy editor, my Great Aunt Mimi Hook, you can do that here. Last year, when I put the tip jar up, much to Aunt Mimi’s embarrassment, I expected people would chip in a few dollars, but you went far above and beyond that. We were moved by the outpouring of support, and so I’m posting it here for her again. (Which means that I didn’t send this newsletter to her to edit, so if there are mistakes, they’re all mine. Also, the page includes a “goal” for the fundraising, but that’s an automated feature of the website, not something I included on purpose, so ignore that part.)
There’s been a lot of debate over the wine cave where Pete Buttigieg held his Napa Valley fundraiser. I think much of that debate has been confused, so I wrote about why. Hope this helps.
Wishing everybody here who celebrates it a Merry Christmas, and everybody else a Happy Holidays and a wonderful new year. Thank you for reading all these years, and here’s to many more, hopefully with some better news.