MOTHER JONES BY E-MAIL

\| July/August 2008 Who Wrecked the Economy? Will the next president take office against a backdrop of economic improvement? Or has something deeper and more intractable gone wrong? Illustration by Tim Bower
FEATURES THE ECONOMY December Surprise Is the GOP cooking the books to avoid recession till after Election Day? By James K. Galbraith Where Credit Is Due: A Timeline A field guide to the loan sharks and politicos who got us into the predatory lending mess By Nomi Prins Foreclosure Phil Phil Gramm helped create the credit crisis. So why is he John McCain's "economic guru"? By David Corn SLAMMED Inside America's broken—and broke—prison system Welcome to the Age of Incarceration We are locking up 1 in every 100 American adults—and going bankrupt in the process. By Jennifer Gonnerman Worst of the Worst California's convict crisis By James Sterngold Taming of the Screws A guard's change of heart By Sasha Abramsky Texas Hold 'Em The booming immigrant detention industry By Stephanie Mencimer Probation for Profit In Georgia's outsourced justice system, a traffic ticket can land you deep in the hole. By Celia Perry Hard Time Out Kids doing time for tantrums By David Goodman The Shawnee Redemption Prison problems? Not in Kansas anymore. By Justine Sharrock A Bitter Leaf Photographs by Marco Vernaschi Text by Patrick Symmes In Bolivia, Evo Morales has tried to deliver on a populist revolution. But as impoverished peasants increasingly turn to the cocaine trade, will any hope of a better life be blown away? March of the Tourists By Julia Whitty Earth's poles are melting—but the visiting masses are too busy shopping for tea towels and postcards to notice.	As a public service, Mother Jones, which is a nonprofit magazine, will release the full contents of this issue online over the next several weeks. If you'd like your Mother Jones sooner—and you want to support independent investigative journalism—please subscribe now.
	DEPARTMENTS Editors' Note Masthead Contributors Backtalk OUTFRONT Gaming the carbon-offset market; Hillary Clinton, Watergate conspirator; Israel's pro-diplomacy Zionists; Location, Location; can our reporter buy an AK-47?; extreme summer camps; Greenpeace's trash is a spy's treasure; what your tax dollars won't buy; MoJo readers send a kid to college. EXHIBIT Forever Young By Kiera Butler Adventures in aging gracelessly, from diaper fetishists to bikini waxes for tweens. WITNESS Smoke & Mirrors By Jim Morris You're probably unfamiliar with the toxic element that may have sickened thousands of workers—and industry is spending a small fortune to keep it that way. PRACTICAL VALUES This Is Your Brain on Cell Phones By Kiera Butler Is your cell phone making you sick—or just giving you a hang-up? MEDIA JONES Ethan Brown on an Iraq War movie that isn't a bomb; John Cusack says anything; David Sedaris' true lies; plus more book (A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry, This Land is Their Land), film (The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández), and music (Season of Sweets, Diamond Hoo Ha, Exit Strategy of the Soul, Two Men With the Blues) reviews P.S. No wild left behind. Illustration by Jack Unruh