How moronic does a society have to be...

[phantom power]

How moronic does a society have to be to agree to pay taxes to keep people in jail who don't need to be there but not to pay taxes for actual firefighters? In California, they are arguing that they can't release prisoners because they need them to put out wildfires.

It's supposed to be cheaper this way.

Out of California’s years-long litigation over reducing the population of prisons deemed unconstitutionally overcrowded by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, another obstacle to addressing the U.S. epidemic of mass incarceration has emerged: The utility of cheap prison labor.
In recent filings, lawyers for the state have resisted court orders that they expand parole programs, reasoning not that releasing inmates early is logistically impossible or would threaten public safety, but instead that prisons won’t have enough minimum security inmates left to perform inmate jobs.

The debate culminated Friday, when a three-judge federal panel ordered California to expand an early parole program. California now has no choice but to broaden a program known as 2-for-1 credits that gives inmates who meet certain milestones the opportunity to have their sentences reduced. But California’s objections raise troubling questions about whether prison labor creates perverse incentives to keep inmates in prison even when they don’t need to be there.

Does anyone seriously think it is cheaper to imprison someone than to pay them to be a firefighter? Anyone?

It only begins to make economic sense when you pay the inmate two dollars a day and you're talking about an inmate who is already sentenced to a ludicrous term, and who will have his sentence reduced as partial compensation for fighting fires. Basically, the savings is in giving the state the excuse to reduce a sentence. But that could be done anyway.

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/11/17/171325/85

[atreides1]

1. Serfdom

The last type of serf was the slave. Slaves had the fewest rights and benefits from the manor. They owned no tenancy in land, worked for the lord exclusively and survived on donations from the landlord. It was always in the interest of the lord to prove that a servile arrangement existed, as this provided him with greater rights to fees and taxes. The status of a man was a primary issue in determining a person's rights and obligations in many of the manorial court-cases of the period. Also, runaway slaves could be beaten if caught.

[antiquie]

2. CCC Firefighting in the Southern California Mountains

In California, we still have high youth unemployment, especially in minority communities. We need our great Governor Brown to reinstate the CCC. The newly released, as well as the unemployed can assist the professional firefighters. We did it before.

The Civilian Conservation Corps companies were assigned to many types of conservation work, for many different government agencies. But whether their focus was soil conservation, forestry, agriculture, or park development, all the camps had one important job in common: firefighting. No matter what work they were doing, the CCC boys had to be ready to drop their tools and rush to the trucks when called to fight a fire. In summer and fall, fighting fires was the main job. It was a rough, dangerous, exhausting, dirty job, too. Poison oak was a constant annoyance in southern California, men were sometimes injured, and the threat of death was real. According to Corps chronicler John A. Salmond, forty-two CCC enrollees nationwide were killed fighting fires.

[RiverLover]

3. Tax Levy failed in small Ohio city-Two city fire stations close, staffing decreases

Two city fire stations close, staffing decreases
November 15, 2014

CHILLICOTHE – Two of the city's three fire stations are closing next week as a result of reduced staffing.

On Friday, the city announced that stations 3 and 4 will close as the department reduces its minimum shift staffing from 10 to eight.

...The prospect of cuts and station closures was announced by the administration in the days leading up to last week's election. Voters were to decide the fate of a 0.4 percentage point income tax hike being asked for by the city, with half the amount raised to go toward maintaining staffing in the fire department and providing a slight staffing boost to the police department.

The levy attempt, however, was unsuccessful, and the city has decided to go ahead with the reductions.

http://www.chillicothegazette.com/story/news/local/2014/11/14/two-city-fire-stations-close-staffing-decreases/19022583/

[packman]

5. Got you one better

Am living in a Florida district that is so anti-tax that a few years ago they did not approve a ballot admendment that would only raise a 3 cent tax on non-residents who stayed in hotels. The ballot, if approved, would raise money for two new firehouses and pay for some full-time professionals in a whole county served by only volunteer firehouses.

[kairos12]

4. To quote Mr. B. Bunny-what a bunch of maroons.

[1StrongBlackMan]

6. Could that be because ...

{1SBM Doing What He Does Alert:}

The people supporting taxes for prisons, but not supporting firefighters are explained here:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/08/07/3468368/study-white-people-support-harsher-criminal-laws-if-they-think-more-black-people-are-arrested/

[Odin2005]

7. This shit is what the historian AJ Toynbee called "social enormities". They ruin civilizations.

[hifiguy]

8. As dumb as this country is.

The prison population is seen as some sort of statement of national greatness - the higher the better.