| • Last week the LAT reported on the rise of private prisons as an answer to crises like the overcrowding situation in California. Of course, the last private prison in the state I can remember, the city lockup in Seal Beach, had to be closed down because it WASN'T MAKING ENOUGH MONEY.
• Meanwhile, Robert Sillen, who's overseeing the prison health care system after a federal judge threw it into receivership, got a somewhat favorable writeup in the New York Times. Sillen is going a little outside the boundaries of his mandate to improve the facilities for prisoners, including going outside state budget requirements. He also spoke a little truth:
Mr. Sillen says California politicians are reaping what they have sown. He attributed the state's prison problems to tough-on-crime lawmakers who made political hay out of sentencing laws that filled the state prisons without expanding either the facilities or their services.
He has a standard diatribe concerning the criminal justice system that includes issues like the neglect of poor neighborhoods and the lack of alcohol treatment programs.
"I wouldn't even be here if it weren't for the politics," Mr. Sillen said. "No one gets elected in Sacramento without a platform that says, 'Let's get rid of rapists, pedophiles and murderers.' "
• Which is why it's doubtful that two bills soon to be on the Governor's desk that would create independent sentencing commissions with the ability to modify sentencing laws will be signed. Schwarzenegger is as wedded to the tough-on-crime myth as his Republican pals, and he thinks that privatization, along with building on credit, is the answer. None of those measures attacks the problem at the root, however, which is why we'll be back here in five years.
• I attended the press event where the Speaker announced legislation aimed at stopping oil industry market manipulation on a variety of fronts. Turns out those bills have been denuded, and I can't help but wonder if it has anything to do with all that oil money pouring in to the CDP and various legislators, including the Speaker himself.
• Another bill that appears unlikely to be signed by the Governor is Sen. Perata's bill that would put the occupation of Iraq to a vote in Feburary 2008. Backers of this bill think they have squeezed Schwarzenegger, and if they jump on the result then maybe they'll get something out of it, but reasonable people agree that this is a meaningless feel-good measure that would have no impact on actual policy, and the Governor can merely say that those interested in ending the war already have a voice in Washington, call your representatives, etc.
• There is supposedly something in the works on health care reform, another closed-door deal mandated by a forced-bottleneck process that results in a Big 5, Little 116 state government. I wonder if the 30 million-plus citizens NOT represented by Sens. Perata or Yacht Boy Ackerman, or Asms. Nuñez or Villines, feel valued by such a process. As for the actual bill, it's apparently a mix of approving the plan now with the funding (including fee hikes) in a ballot initiative later.
• There's also a redistricting ballot initiative in the works. Hey I've got an idea, how about we have an election a week and "let the people decide" everything! Wouldn't it be so democratic, to run a nation-state based on 30-second television ads?? (also, people redistrict themselves, this measure will end up being FAR less spectacular than everyone believes, and also the political map has changed in 8 years, and the gerrymandering itself is not a good enough reason not to contest everywhere, it's just a convenient cop-out that allows the CDP to unilaterally disarm.)
I'd better stop writing before I get myself in more trouble... |
