On Apr 19, 2007, at 22:00, Lynn Carpenter wrote:
Agnes Boddington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
TO THOSE OF YOU NOT FAMILIAR WITH JOE ARPAIO, HE IS THE MARICOPA
COUNTY
SHERIFF (ARIZONA) AND HE KEEPS GETTING ELECTED OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
http://www.mcso.org/
http://www.snopes.com/crime/deserts/pink.asp
I think I'll refrain from making any other comments. :)
I'll venture to make -- a weenie liberal -- one... :)
Regarding:
* Wednesday he told all the inmates who were complaining of the heat in
the tents: "It's between 120 to 130 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers
are living in tents too, and they have to walk all day in the sun,
wearing full battle gear and get shot at, and they have not committed
any crimes, so shut your damned mouths!"
In 2004 and 2005, the sheriff's "and they haven't committed any crimes"
would have been true.
In 2006, due to the overstretching of the military caused by the ∞
(endless) war in Iraq (higher desertion rates, lower recruitment) with
none of the"regular" counteracting measures (involuntary retention,
extending tours of duty/shortening the "in country" rest periods,
extending the age to 42, waiving the minimum educational standards)
being sufficient... the military has now lowered its standards of
recruitment further.
Certain criminals *can* get -- and are encouraged to get -- a "moral
waiver" and join the army. I'm looking forward (not) to all those
misfits and whackos coming back home, as nutty and ill-inclined as
ever, but now trained in guerilla warfare and armed...
In case you anyone is worried about the moral standards of our army...
"Don't ask/don't tell" is still in full force so that, if you want to
join, you can be a 42yr old highschool dropout with a criminal record.
*But not* a 25yr old, Middle East Studies PhD from Harvard homosexual.
It's OK for a petty thief to lift your wallet with the photos of your
Stateside family in it but, God forbid a gay person sneaks a peek of
you in the shower.
Actually, to some extent, I agree with the sheriff; rather than be a
drag on the locality's budget (funded by the taxpayer's money), the
felons could *contribute* (via work) instead. But there are a couple of
caveats...
1) Those felons are *already* contributing to the locality in several
ways. Having a prison is good for local economy -- you get federal
subsidies (per head) and you create jobs (guards, laundry, cooks, etc).
I know what I'm talking about -- Lexington has a low-security prison.
It's located directly accross the road from the highschool, which gave
birth to a local joke: if you don't graduate here, you'll finish your
education accross the street.
2) Having a prison is also good for skewing electoral rolls. Prisoners
are *counted* as a part of the local population, so, if the prison is
big enough, you're likely to get an extra representative from your area
on the strength of that "population". *But*. They aren't permitted to
vote, so your district isn't likely to get Dem-diluted by having them.
3) I'm sure the good sheriff allows priestly visits, even though
they're not mentioned. Nor is any kind of educational program. WIthout
education, chances are that those guys, once released, will go out and
do the only thing they know how to do -- commit more crimes. They'll
just try to commit them in other jurisdictions.
4) This has to be a minimum security prison. A tent city with nothing
but barbed wire keeping the inmates separate from the rest of the world
worked fine in the wilds of Siberia, where, if you escaped, you froze
to death before you reached a community where you could do damage.
5) The inmates have to be of certain age -- younger than what the army
accepts currently. *One* middle-aged (not to mention elderly) inmate
who drops dead from heat stroke, and the whole house of cards falls
down. The military has a very good cover-up apparatus (vide how long it
took to find out that Pat Tillman died of "friendly fire", not in enemy
action) buit I doubt a smallprison has anything comparable. Especially
now, with so many eyes trained in that direction...
--
Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/
Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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