MESSAGE
DATE | 2016-10-07 |
FROM | Rick Moen
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SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] Hey, Ruben! Plastic bag initiatives!
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From hangout-bounces-at-nylxs.com Fri Oct 7 05:34:50 2016 Return-Path: X-Original-To: archive-at-mrbrklyn.com Delivered-To: archive-at-mrbrklyn.com Received: from www.mrbrklyn.com (www.mrbrklyn.com [96.57.23.82]) by mrbrklyn.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 61CF5161469; Fri, 7 Oct 2016 05:34:49 -0400 (EDT) X-Original-To: hangout-at-nylxs.com Delivered-To: hangout-at-nylxs.com Received: from linuxmafia.com (linuxmafia.COM [198.144.195.186]) by mrbrklyn.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8ED61161469 for ; Fri, 7 Oct 2016 05:34:40 -0400 (EDT) Received: from rick by linuxmafia.com with local (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1bsRY7-0007pY-4q for hangout-at-nylxs.com; Fri, 07 Oct 2016 02:34:39 -0700 Date: Fri, 7 Oct 2016 02:34:39 -0700 From: Rick Moen To: hangout-at-nylxs.com Message-ID: <20161007093439.GA29845-at-linuxmafia.com> References: <9eb96b45-1171-a5bd-3408-06dd51945be1-at-mrbrklyn.com> <9faa09cb-1d2b-921a-7fa8-bc75bb3e0923-at-panix.com> <20160907030710.GT900-at-linuxmafia.com> <20160930224043.GA3246-at-linuxmafia.com> <20161005004337.GD4313-at-panix.com> <20161005025609.GK13715-at-linuxmafia.com> <00948582-276b-e037-b502-c72b49468340-at-panix.com> <20161005043319.GN13715-at-linuxmafia.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20161005043319.GN13715-at-linuxmafia.com> Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already. X-Mas: Bah humbug. X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) X-SA-Exim-Connect-IP: X-SA-Exim-Mail-From: rick-at-linuxmafia.com X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No (on linuxmafia.com); SAEximRunCond expanded to false Subject: Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] Hey, Ruben! Plastic bag initiatives! X-BeenThere: hangout-at-nylxs.com X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list Reply-To: NYLXS Discussions List List-Id: NYLXS Discussions List List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Errors-To: hangout-bounces-at-nylxs.com Sender: "hangout"
I wrote:
> > Your understanding of drug pricing is laughable. > > Maybe yes, maybe no -- but I didn't express any view on drug pricing. > > > They will never be able to purchase anything but a small subset of > > drugs at anywhere close what the VA purchases them for in any event > > and the VA suffers from extortion just like anyone else. > > It's an open question what effects Prop. 61 would have, as noted by > outside experts quoted in the linked newspaper stories. I'm undecided > on my personal vote (which is why the note about 'with reservations' > is there). If the state does pass it and adverse results occur, > fortunately the Legislature can annul or modify it with a simple > statute. (I.e., it's not a constitutional amendment, just an > initiative statute.)
After yet more reading and yet more pondering, particularly some ballot analysis by noted elections analyst Pete Stahl, I regretfully concluded that California Proposition 61 doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of working as proponents hope, so I'm not going to vote for something unlikely to work. Accordingly, I edited 'I'm voting yes (with reservations)' to 'I'm voting no (with reservations).
This is actually one of the good bits about writing a ballot analysis up as a Web page, especially when the ballot's as absurdly long and convoluted as this one. (_17_ initiatives? Sheesh.) As you get more information and ponder, you can revise and improve your work.
> > Anyway, build more jails. > > I'm for it. > > However, the real cause of the out-of-control prison population was > three-fold. (1) The idiotic 'three strikes' law. Parts of this were > finally rolled back in 2012, but this left a huge number of people in > the system who hadn't been before, often on trivial third charges. > (2) The War on Some Drugs. (3) Until 2014, excessively low thresholds > for felonies. 2014's Proposition 47 fixed this, raising the threshold > for property crimes to be deemed felonies to $950. (I think it was > $500.) But again, it will take quite a while for the effect of that to > work through the system. > > Peak prison population was 2006, but it simply takes a long time to work > down.
I did some basic research on this matter, too.
To rethink the above, I'd be for it _if_ California had a bunch of money sitting around burning a hole in the state's figurative pocket, but it doesn't.
It turns out, within the last thirty years, California has built 22 prisons. In that same time span, it's built _one_ additional University of California campus. Average annual drain on the state budget for its 34 state penitentiaries has been around $10 billion.
That's ludicrous. That's an absolutely terrible priority -- and why did it happen? It happened because the prison population exploded, from about 25,000 to about 130,000. And _that_, in turn, happened because of ludicrous overcriminalising during the 1980s of minor non-violent offences (like shoplifting and possession of minor amounts of drugs), and because of that moronic Three Strikes Law.
Build more jails/prisons? Fsck you, Ruben. Not unless you're paying for it.
You want me to have a poorer and stupider state. Fsck right off.
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