News & Commentary from the liberterrain...
The squanderous Lone Star state must bite off 18 billion bucks from its budget for the forthcoming biennium said the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram over the weekend.
Their primary target is the Department of Criminal Justice, which could lose as many as 7,200 jobs including correctional officers (prison guards) and parole officers.
Locally, the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth could lose four staff attorneys.
Cue the customary fear-mongering:
Massive layoffs of correctional officers "would jeopardize public safety" warned a department spokesperson.
Cutting parole staff "could have a withering impact on their public mission," we are admonished.
And court cuts could cause the court's disposition of cases to drop we're cautioned.
But libertarians have a simple, eloquent solution to all of this, an idea whose time has clearly come.
The incarceration rate for victimless crimes nationwide is about one third of the total incarceration rate according to one source.
If this holds true in Texas, one third of the state's prison population has been thrown into cages for harming no one.
A victimless crime inmate is a person who has broken a rule but has neither physically harmed nor threatened to harm any living breathing person nor any person's property and has not committed any swindle, scam, rip-off, or similar fraudulent white collar ponzi confidence scheme against anyone.
So declare a general amnesty for all inmates in Texas' 112 correctional facilities currently incarcerated for victimless crimes and release them immediately.
Then collect the remaining real criminals in two thirds of the prisons and shut down the other third.
The first thing this accomplishes is libertarian-style "social justice;" it frees those who never should have been caged in the first place.
It also takes all those inmates off the government dole, and one third of all unneeded prison guards, parole officers and criminal courts employees off the government payroll (meaning the taxpayer's backs) and turns them all into productive private sector workers and consumers.
This is far more than the 10% cuts the state says it's looking for from a wide range of agencies and departments.
If neither the sitting Republican Governor Rick Perry nor the Democrat wannabe Bill White wants to take this eminently intelligent and honorable action someone should put in a call to the Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate Kathy Glass.
Here's betting she'll go for it.
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Comments
Good start. Then they can shut down all the government schools, sell the facilities to the highest bidders, and the teachers who can actually qualify might just get hired to teach in them as private schools are set up. But they'll have to do without the massive perks and fancy paychecks.
Next week we could talk about privatizing the rest of the assorted "services" the state has been mangling for so long.
Your articles are an inspiration. I am so glad you find the time to write them, I will always find the time to read them.
My personal opinion on the victimless crime thing is- since people have pledged their body and lifetime of production as collateral to secure the debt of the corporate US, (via social security applications), the corporate US has a legitimate interest in maintaining the value of its collateral. Therefore, using drugs can be said to impair the value of the corporate US's property, therfore, there IS a victim.
Mr. Ringer- That's absurd. I'm hoping you intended it that way. I have not pledged my body or products thereof as collateral for anyone, especially not a group of thieves who believe they have a monopoly of force for any geographic area. Anyone who claims otherwise is attempting to enslave me and I don't take too kindly toward that.
Just so everyone knows, I did not write that comment with my name on it telling myself that I'm an inspiration. Examiner has been doing some goofy stuff lately. So thanks to whoever wrote that, I will keep writing. - This comment really was written by Garry Reed
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