to alleviate overcrowding. Arnie says “fuck no”, everybody else waits for the measuring contest to be over.
Good. Release the nonviolent drug offenders.
If it’s drug possessions and white collar stuff: good.
California can’t really afford to house them, anyway.
The immovable object of Californian low taxes meets the irresistable force of Californian love of prisons. Who will win?
Maybe let’s repeal Prop 13, so less people end up in prisons, guys. Totally a politically popular move.
I was surprised to read the article and not see a quote from a representative of the prison guard union saying that this was a clear indication that they should be building more prisons.
36 000 prisoners at one time will of course overcrowd the services available for released prisoners and lead to a higher rate of recidivism, thus proving the “more prisons” crowd right.
The end of the sentence of the title would be so much cooler if it was.
California judges tentatively rule to release 36k+ prisoners upon Oakland.
Not to mention that now is the worst time for anyone to find a job. Let alone fresh out of prison convicted felons.
California has low taxes?
Yeah, this was news to me. California has the highest taxes in the country, pretty much.
It doesn’t necessarily matter if you are an employee, since the employer has to pay for everyone’s increased cost of living, but someone like me gets straight up screwed.
I am not sure where all the money goes. Certainly not into anything that benefits me or anyone I know.
btw, according to this article, the average cost of housing a prisoner in California is $34,000 a year:
http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2006/11/prisoners_in_ca.html
So releasing these guys is an extra $1.2 billion per year.
At $34k per person you could just pay people to not be criminals and things would work out pretty well.
Not even close. Sorry for the PDF link, but it was the easiest single source of data I could find for the multiple taxes in California:
http://www.ccsce.com/pdf/Numbers-oct07-HighTaxState.pdf
Long story short: total tax burden is slightly above the national average, but far from “high tax.” Our sales tax is the highest in the country. Thanks to Prop 13 in 1978, there are only 5 other states (plus D.C.) with higher effective property taxes than California - 45 other states have higher effective property tax!
The income tax in California are both high and low, depending on your income bracket. The low tax brackets are lower than most, the highest tax brackets are higher.
California tax problem is that it’s wildly uneven, and that we’ll never be able to get people to vote for an increase in property tax. A much greater percentage of CA’s residents have income from investment and capital gains. Which means we rake in the income tax when the stock market booms, and we go totally broke when it dives. When it goes as bad as it has in the last 6 months, well…you have the current CA budget crisis.
The problem is you can’t enforce that they spend the $34k without doing crimes. Most hardcore criminals would probably go out and spend it all on hookers and blow, and then start beating and robbing each other to get each others’ payouts.
Releasing the nonviolent drug offenders FTW, but I doubt that’s all it’ll be. Funny they didn’t mention exactly who they’d consider in that list.
It’s less CA’s tax level - average, as pointed out - as the amazingly crazy Proposition 13, which makes it virtually impossible for the state to increase taxes. You need a 2/3rds margin for anything that’s not a direct fee-for-service thing like car licensing.
Kevin Drum bangs on about this - CA is in total denial about paying for their government, and have been running from trick to trick (issue long run bonds to pay recurring bills! Eviscerate the school system!) trying to avoid dealing with the problem. It’d be one thing if they were willing to cut spending, but really, they’re not, so they’re constantly flirting with disaster. The “cut our taxes but not our spending” Reagan tax revolt started there and still hasn’t died out.
Howard Jarvis was a disgusting, vile criminal with a sincere hatred of California and a volatile advocate for ageism.
I usually pick sides on the propositions by doing the opposite of what his cult says.
This is also why the school system in California is so totally fucked. Yet another reason I’m glad we moved out of the state. Not to mention the drought that’s so severe that one town, Bolinas, is threatening people with cutting off their water service altogether if they violate water use limits twice this year. Yeah, that’s someplace I want to live alright.
Of course, we did move to Seattle, a place with local politics that are just about as bad… but at least there’s a lot more water and no Prop 13.
Wasn’t California already in significant financial trouble before the crisis?
California also isn’t exactly making the most efficient use of their tax dollars. A lot of this is a direct result of the Proposition system, which ensures that the money allocated for each service MUST go to that service, and cannot be reallocated.
I don’t think we’d even notice.
On one hand, I’d like to see anything that helps get CA out of the miserable hole we’ve dug. I want my state tax return, and the state’s too broke to give it to me. This blows my mind a little.
On the other, I can’t imagine 36,000 more people looking for jobs in CA right now. I have some friends who are all college graduates who can’t even get a job in a coffee shop in the Bay Area at the moment. This certainly won’t help the job market any.