[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
@ pwrlifter198
It’s your brand of brain dead pseudo compassionate ivory tower snobbery that has been financing the downfall of this nation since the 60’s.
You think you are so morally exalted with your unfettered willingness to spend other people’s money on other’s people’s lack of responsibility when all you ever accomplish is an endless whirlpool of dehumanizing spirit crushing dependence with all the horrors of crime and abuse that accompanies it.
Go whack yourself off to your 7th grade text book some more. It probably has a g-string centerfold of LBJ in it.[/quote]
Well done. Good use of hyperbole. The problem is that your theories were debunked in the 40’s with game theory and the fall of laissez faire economics. History is on my side, especially recent history. I would be willing to concede you points if you were willing to assign the same level of accountability to corporate bad actors as you are to individuals. I would also be willing to concede you points if you agreed that we should quit spending more than all other industrialized nations combined on military spending; especially when huge portions of the defense budget are spent on equipment designed to fight countries in conventional warfare. Before you go down the â??youâ??re unpatrioticâ?? route, know that I spent 10 years in service and loved every moment of it. That doesnâ??t mean I think spending 2 billion on a Stealth fighter will little current world application is a good idea.
Also, you still haven’t answered any of my criticisms of your theories. Calling me names, while entertaining and damn near poetic, doesn’t answer the question of how do we stop spending money on other people’s irresponsibility. Your ideas will only manage to squeeze air from one end of the balloon to another. You cannot give me one example of how to eliminate current public programs without creating another crisis. There are plenty of examples of knee-jerk legislation with mountains of unintended consequences. Take the State of Coloradoâ??s legislation in 2006 that was designed to be tough on illegal aliens. The law required anyone applying for public assistance to show proof of citizenship, which included birth certificates or passports. Besides creating a market for forgery, it also caught a large number of mentally ill people in its net who simply did not know how to go about getting such documents. Another example is Californiaâ??s three strikes law. This law, designed to be tough on repeat violent offenders resulted in the state spending $30K a year warehousing petty repeat offenders that were a threat to nobody but themselves, e.g. possessory offenders.
Here are some examples of good programs that work. One comes from that bastion of liberal thought, the great State of Texas. See Texas was spending 8 cents of every State dollar on incarceration, which most people would agree is not a great way to spend money. The State created a system of 50 “diversion courts” in which Judges had great flexibility and latitude on sentencing. Also, individuals were required to appear before these judges on a weekly basis, informally, and give an account of their activities. A study done shortly after the program’s inception demonstrated that for every dollar the State spent on this program, it was getting nine dollars back in reduced recidivism and decreased bed space in the penal system.
Another example, a DA in Colorado that I know, created a heavy equipment training program in a few of his jails. Rates of recidivism without the program were 50 percent at 3 years, and 75 percent in 5 years. Recidivism in the program was 25 percent.
I apologize to the thread for my hubris yesterday. I donâ??t post much in this forum, but I do notice that neo-cons rule, so I wanted to have a little fun and get some people riled up. I am not a defender of the status quo and I think good ideas come from all sides. What I donâ??t subscribe to is simplistic solutions to complicated problems that simply donâ??t work in a society that values personal freedom and compassion.
OK, discuss.