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Private prison companies like CCA and The Geo Group approach cash-strapped states and offer to save them money by buying their prisons. However, evidence that private prisons save money is mixed at best. States pay a daily fee for each prisoner housed in a private prisons, and corporations set a number of beds (usually no less than 1,000) and an occupancy rate (usually around 90 percent) that states must meet or pay a fine for each empty bed. It is unbelievable that such deals are legal since they give states an incentive, other than crime, to keep people in prison.
*The Geo Group spent $2.5 million on lobbying in the last 8 years and $2.9 million in political contributions between 2003 and 2012. They help to write laws that create more prisoners.
November 23, 2002 - "First Native American Travels to Space"
John Herrington, a registered member of the Chickasaw Nation, was the first Native American to travel into space as the mission specialist for STS-113, the 16th mission to the International Space Station. During his mission, Herrington performed three spacewalks that totaled 19 hours and 55 minutes. The length of his mission was 13 days, 18 hours and 47 minutes. Herrington was inducted to the Chickasaw Hall of Fame the same year he went into space. William Pogue, a crewman aboard Skylab 4 in 1973-1974, had Choctaw ancestry, but was not an enrolled member of the Choctaw.