How Does Charlie Manson Keep Getting Cellphones?

Famed mass murderer Charles Manson has twice recently been caught with a cellphone, something that is illegal in prison.  How's he getting them?  Probably from prison guards:

Reporting from Sacramento — Lawmakers struggling to keep cellphones away from California's most dangerous inmates say a main obstacle is the politically powerful prison guards union, whose members would have to be paid millions of dollars extra to be searched on their way into work.

Prison employees, roughly half of whom are unionized guards, are the main source of smuggled phones that inmates use to run drugs and other crimes, according to legislative analysts who examined the problem last year. Unlike visitors, staff can enter the facilities without passing through metal detectors.

The prison guard contracts are part of the reason California is in such a fiscal mess. It's a terrible job, but it's become very lucrative for those that choose to do it - perhaps way too lucrative. And the union is calling too many shots with state legislators, and that's going to make the contracts and underlying problems difficult to fix.