33,000 inmates ordered released in California. I blame public education.

$578 million. I wonder how many criminals it can fit?

With today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision, I have yet another reason to be thankful for leaving California.  In a 5-4 decision, the Court ordered the release of 33,000 inmates in California, due to continued violations of “inmates’ rights to adequate care for their mental and physical health.”  In other words, the prisons are overcrowded.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to analyze the decision, or give my opinion on whether the Court made the correct ruling.  I’m not going to go into the ideological breakdown of the judges, or the nitty-gritty details of the law at issue.  Finally, I’m not going to respond to the pot-heads who will inevitably argue that there wouldn’t be overcrowding if drugs were legalized.  Instead, I’m going to address this:

California Gov. Jerry Brown said he ‘will take all necessary steps to protect public safety.’

(…Except build a new prison so we aren’t forced to release 33,000 felons).  It goes without saying that “public safety” is certainly a purpose of any government.  In fact, I would imagine everyone would agree that it’s a primary purpose of government.  Unfortunately, this purpose has been diluted in many states because public safety has to increasingly compete with unnecessary human interest projects that are forced down our collective throats by do-gooders and/or liberals.  In other words, California can’t pay to house its criminals because it spends too much friggin’ money on crap.

Gigantic example of the crap: public education.  California is $15.4 billion in debt, and an astonishing one out of every four dollars spent goes to the education system.  Who can forget the $578 million Robert F. Kennedy Community School in Los Angeles?  The Los Angeles Unified School District spends $11,357.00 per pupil!  Keep this cost in your head as you read this statement made by Doug Nielson, a government and economics teacher at Coalinga High School:

‘If we stick to our ideologies, our children are going to suffer. When somebody says well, extending these taxes is a tax increase, you’ve got a mindset there that says the dollars are more important than the kids. And they can’t be. We can’t afford to do that. You can’t have first-class teaching on a Third World budget.’

This is the complete lunacy that we face with the public education system.  “Third World budget?”  The United States spends more per pupil than any other nation in the world.  And for what?  Is there any question that private schools can do a better job, at less cost? While saving money for the government to keep felons off the streets?

It’s in this way that liberals have won.  People no longer seriously question why the government is spending $11,000.00 per student.  Heck, most of the people complaining about the 33,000 inmates being released won’t even remember that $578 million of tax-payer money was used to build a school.

At some point, every community needs to answer a basic question: What is the role of government?  Do you want more cops on the the street and criminals in prison…or do you want your government to spend $11,000.00 per pupil at the public schools?  The government can’t afford to do everything, and if you don’t decide on what our taxes are paying for, somebody else will.  Today in California, the Supreme Court made the decision.

Court strikes down Prop 8 without actually addressing real issue

To marry next?

What is marriage?  That’s the question of utmost importance that was completely ignored by the District Court of Northern California judge when he ruled on whether Proposition 8 was unconstitutional.  Quick recap: Prop 8 was passed in California as an amendment to the California constitution.  The essence of it was to define marriage as being between a man and a woman, thereby not allowing gays to marry.  The California Supreme Court found it to comply with the California constitution because, well, it was a part of the California constitution.  So, some gay people who wanted to get married filed suit in federal court, arguing that the amendment violated the federal Constitution.  Got it?  Good.

In a 132 page opinion, the judge ruled that the amendment violated the federal Constitution because it denied gay people the fundamental right to get married without a good reason.  For many, this was a “no duh” ruling.  It apparently was for the presiding judge as well.  The problem with the judge’s ruling, which ultimately will be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, is that he utterly failed to determine what constitutes “marriage. ” In fact, he didn’t even give it the old college try.

Why does this matter?  Well, everyone agrees that marriage is a fundamental right.  Thus, the proponents of Prop 8 will need to make some factual showing that the government of California has a compelling state interest in keeping gays from getting hitched, which will never happen.  However, what is marriage?  Does any two people wanting to get married constitute marriage?  What if I want to marry my sister?  We’re both consenting adults.  What if I want to have multiple wives?  We’re all consenting adults.  Using the court’s reasoning, the government would need to have a compelling reason to keep me from doing either of the above.  And since the District Court expressly stated procreation doesn’t have any impact on who can marry, the possibility of having a baby that looks like Chunk’s friend in the Goonies shouldn’t stop me from making my sister the ol’ ball n chain.

The fact is, “marriage” actually has a definition in the history of both this nation and others, and it isn’t just two people who want to get “married.”  I have to imagine the Supreme Court will want to determine what marriage is, before determining whether it’s unconstitutional to keep two homosexuals from walking down the aisle.

Well, what comes next?  The case will be appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which will most certainly affirm the District Court’s ruling.  Why?  Because the Ninth Circuit is without question the most liberal circuit in the country, and it would probably allow me to marry my cat while lighting up a joint next to the church I accidentally lit on fire because my lighter wasn’t sufficiently cat-proof.  After that, it will go the Supreme Court, where I expect it will likely be affirmed again.  Then I will file my lawsuit asking the court to recognize my right to marry a mail order bride from every country in eastern europe.

Looting: How the Bored Respond to Perceived Injustice

Another day, another artificially manufactured racial issue.  Brief replay of facts: Johannes Mehserle, a former transit cop, shot Oscar Grant in the back while trying to subdue him during a confrontation early on New Years Day 2009.   He was charged with murder.  During the trial, Officer Mehserle testified that when he went to grab his taser, he accidentally grabbed his handgun instead, and ended up shooting and killing Grant.  Grant was allegedly resisting arrest at the time.

Present day: the Los Angeles jury convicted Officer Mehserle of involuntary manslaughter, thereby finding that he did not intend to kill Grant.  He was convicted of killing him though, and will spend time in jail because of it.  The real story here, as it is too often, is a community rioting because of perceived injustice due to racism.  See, Officer Mehserle was white and Grant was black.  Therefore, in the eyes of a small minority of people in Oakland, CA, rioting is warranted.  And of course, the race-baiters aren’t far away,

‘We are outraged that the jury did not find guilty of murder in a case that is so egregiously excessive and mishandled,’ said Benjamin Todd Jealous, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Well, thanks for the objective analysis Ben.

‘It’s unbelievable this guy is getting less jail time than someone who wrote a bad check,’ said Barbara Plantiko, a 41-year-old immigration lawyer at the protest. ‘I just don’t buy he got confused. I don’t think that it was an accident.’

Well, you are certainly entitled to your opinion.  I wonder if Mr. Jealous or Ms. Plantiko think destroying one’s own community is a good way to deal with events like this?  What is Officer Mehserle had been found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to death?  What would their response be if I started rioting?

Simply put, this country will never get beyond race if people like Mr. Jealous continue searching for “racism” under every rock.  Of course, the riots themselves are only half about racism.  Many of those people who were looting would be looting anyway.  Why?  I don’t know.  Maybe because they’re bored.  Maybe because they think they’re entitled to the cell phone they just stole.

Oh, and where’s our post-racial president in all of this?  I don’t know…probably golfing.  But his DOJ has announced that it will review the shooting to determine whether it warrants federal prosecution.  Keep in mind, this is coming from the same group that decided to drop its investigation of a black panther group allegedly violating voting laws with intimidation for no particular reason.  I have to ask again: Where the Hell is Kanye?!

Liberals’ Budgetary Boondoggle

Don't forget who else came from Illinois...

Maybe I should amend my home page about why I became a conservative.  See, I was born and raised in Michigan, and its economy has been in the toilet even when the rest of the country was doing well.  Then I moved to California, which is now practically bankrupt.  Now I live in Illinois, which is even worse than California when it comes to fiscal discipline.  All three of these states are democratic hell-holes, and, not coincidentally, entitlement black-holes.  Spending on every human interest story and after-school special that held out its hand was able to be ignored when the economy was good.  Now that the economy continues to lag, the lunacy of the left is revealed.

A New York Times article today provides a revealing look at just how dependent we have apparently become on those government entitlements.  Illinois is currently $5.01 billion in the red.  Comptroller Dan Hynes states,

‘This is not some esoteric budget issue; we are not paying bills for absolutely essential services,’ he says. ‘That is obscene.’

Hynes is right–it is obscene.  But not because we aren’t paying for “essential services.”  The amount of money this state has committed to paying for practically everything is what’s obscene.  A goal of government has never been to become a major part of the economy.  Many complain about companies being “too big to fail,” but few complain about the government being too big to fail.  In addition to its own budgetary boondoggle, Illinois is also a microcosm of the federal government spending too much on too many so-called “essential services.”  Make no mistake, there are legitimate governmental functions out there that should be receiving tax dollars…but we’ve moved far past them.

Someone needs to run for office and actually take a stand against run-away government spending, instead of just saying it.  Someone needs to say no to the human interest stories.  Someone needs to remind this country of what it is, not what it has become.  Essential services don’t include public education.  They don’t include endless unemployment benefits.  They don’t include corporate subsidies.  They don’t include housing subsidies.  They don’t include this:

The Community Counseling Centers of Chicago is another of those workaday groups that are like the stitches on a baseball, holding together poor and working-class neighborhoods. With an annual budget of $16 million, the agency tends to families torn by crime and violence as well as people who are psychologically stressed and abusing drugs.

‘Two weeks ago, I had days to meet my $420,000 payroll and all I was looking at was a $200,000 line of credit from a bank,’ recalled [Chief Administrative Officer John] Troy.

$16 million a year?  For community center?  You don’t think that’s being mismanaged at all?  There are entire cities that run on that budget.  $420,000 in payroll?  Again, for a community center?  Now I know why our president was a community organizer.  Instead of implementing some sort of fiscal restraint years ago on programs like this, Illinois citizens in towns like Carbondale, many of whom have never even been to Chicago, are now having money taken out of their pockets for this $16 million per year monstrosity.  Why?  Because no one has the guts to  stand up to those who spit out the “these people need help” meme.

Legislators this year raised the retirement age and slashed benefits. Though changes apply only to future employees, the legislature claimed immediate savings.

“Savings upfront and reforms down the road,” said Mr. Hynes, the state comptroller. “It’s just bad habits and bad practices.”

I’m not exactly sure what Hynes is trying to say here, but Illinois’ problems go well beyond “bad habits and bad practices.”  Illinois, like California and Michigan, has placed an overwhelmingly heavy burden on the majority of the population for the benefit of the “those in need of help” minority.  Of course, since no one actually attempts to define who those people are, and what constitutes “need,” the government just throws more and more money at them.  Illinois’ budget disaster is largely the result of arbitrary determinations of need, made by those running for office.  That’s the exact opposite of good government.

More broadly, Illinois is caught between blue state convictions about social safety nets and a red state aversion to taxes. For years, the Democratic-controlled legislature has passed budgets that are, in effect, in deficit. Lawmakers routinely skip around the state’s balanced-budget law, with few consequences. (Republicans are near monolithic in voting against any tax increases and borrowings. When one broke ranks to try to keep the pension solvent, he was stripped of a committee position, reducing his pay and pension.)

This is where the New York Times goes from reporting the news to offering its opinions.  Illinois isn’t “caught between blue state convictions about safety social safety nets and a red state aversion to taxes.”  It’s caught between the corrupt political machine in Chicago, which is driven entirely by a small group of liberals, and the rest of the state.  And those monolithic Republicans?  The article fails to mention that they are in the perpetual minority in the Illinois legislature.  The implication that Republicans have some hand in the budget crisis is laughable.

Of course, the response of Mr. Hynes, as it is with all liberals, isn’t to cut spending…it’s to raise taxes.

‘Only the most delusional people think you can solve this without raising taxes,’ he said.

Well Mr. Hynes, and by extension, Mr. Obama, you’re delusional to think that raising taxes will improve anything.  We would still have government full of corrupt politicians who vote themselves raises and refuse to cut spending because it might cost them votes.  How much in governmental salary are you making Mr. Hynes?  How about Mayor Daley? Governor Quinn?   Before government employees, who are paid with my taxes, stick their hands in my pockets again, why don’t they do their part?

On this Fourth of July, remember that we don’t depend on the government, but it does depend on us.   Even better, remember it in November.  In the meantime, I will continue to pressure my wife into a new move…to South Dakota.