Hating that people are tossed into jails at an absurdly high rate for longer than is reasonable so that the economy of a shrinking rural area can be propped up by prison jobs isn't "hating small towns". With some common sense, compassion and sweeping prison reform changes, we could find new industries to base in these areas that don't throw a portion of our citizens away like garbage.TDub wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 9:43 pmseahawk wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 1:20 pmYou are a seriously sick puppy if you believe that people should be deprived of their liberty, have ridiculously long sentences, burden the taxpayers with the high costs of imprisonment so that some folks who live in dying small towns can keep their made up jobs. No, I think that many of those prisons should be closed and their jobs should go away. And I'm guessing that after this crisis, there will be some serious reassessment of the why's of keep someone past age 60 in prison because some Republican legislator pegged his re-election on making drastically long sentences and now we have this geriatric prison population. I mean, really, does even such as you imagine all those 55+ diabetic, COPD sufferers as armed robbers running down the street?TDub wrote: ↑Thu Apr 09, 2020 10:25 pm
If prisons are full are they being overbuilt?
Every school district in the county has passed bonds to provide upgrades and new facilities in the last 5 years. No one is choosing.
So you hate providing jobs for these people but you would gladly provide them with welfare checks?
As for schools, I realize that you can only conceive of what benefits you personally and directly, so you talk about school construction, but there are other costs to schools. When I was working on how to reduce prison populations back in the 1980s, the experts predicted that states would have to make choices between schools and prisons and we've seen the choice as states have withdrawn support for universities and millennials have been hit with huge loans as a consequence. This crisis has shown us why we should continue to fund the scientific research in our universities and not the architects of prisons or the concrete contractors.
As for jobs, instead of prison jobs, I see no problem with providing subsidies to all kinds of infrastructure projects. We need infrastructure spending far more than more prison beds or money going into the pockets of the vile private prison contractors. As I recall from listening to economists, infrastructure spending is the quickest way to funnel funds out to job seekers.
Im sorry you dont like the current laws.l Im sorry that you hate small towns. Its quite clear that we have different life experiences in every aspect. Sorry you hate all of us dumbo bubbas in rural areas. We should probably just all try to be more like you.
Empty out some of those prisons and replace them with giant 3D printing shops so we don't have to rely on China for so many miscellaneous goods. Give more grants and scholarships to rural kids who want to reinvigorate their rural communities.
I love small town America; my Dad is from a town of less than a thousand in Eastern Kansas and our ancestral home he grew up in is still in our family. I want to see money spent to help those communities that doesn't require the excessive punishment of US citizens in order to generate that money.