Washblog

They asked if I had a can of food to donate to the Salvation Army. I said I'd just gotten a good deal on olives and got them a can.

They said they were Christians, and was I willing to talk about my faith; I declined.

Then they asked if there was anything they could pray for for me. I thought about that for a few seconds, quite seriously. "Well, I'm in the Democratic Party. I'm a PCO. I really think our legislators and leaders mean well. Could you pray that they don't screw the economy up worse trying to make it better?"

The dropped jaws were priceless! Then the gal in front regained her composure. "Well. Bless you!" she said.

"Bless you, too", I said.

And off they went.

Up to the late 60's, for most people and for almost any high school or college degree,

IF you had a degree THEN you could get a decent job. That has been erroding for 35 years, since the advent of the rust belt with the first oil crises.

Jobs which can support a household with some degree of security (living in a neighborhood with decent school and NO junkies / killings, some retirement, some health access) have been going bye bye, however, as women have entered the work force the explosion of shit jobs has allowed households to kind of keep abreast a bit ...

oh, did I mention 3 economic credit bubbles since RayGun the fascist?

anyhoo - there is a huge % of jobs which require a college degree so that there are fewer applicants - PERIOD. Any NOT complete moron, who shows up regularily, and doesn't drool on themselves, could do the job.

Oh, and, by the way - WHERE are, relatively, a lot of decent paying jobs requiring tons of credentials AND few REAL hard skills? IN EDUCATION! ha ha ha. Of course these people keep pushing the get-a-college-degree fantasy!

Oh - and, let's look at something else which isn't discussed in Polite Salons - the Harvard / MIT split.

On the Harvard side, for the last few centuries of the Brit-American empire, certain college experiences were a rite of passage for the ruling classes as their young were prepared to take their rightful position RULING. it didn't matter what degree cabotsalstonstallbush the 15th got.

On the MIT side ... ummmmmmmmm ... can you speel instirial revolution? guns? money? science? technology? by accident more than design, lots and lots and lots of mechanicks and low lifes and tinkerers have turned into the ruling classes, even though a lot of them, like bill gates, came from the ruling classes.

So, fred, you idea about LEGALLY opening jobs up to competitive skills instead of bullshit gentlemen's degrees is a good idea.  IF this current recession is truely game changing, AND, we're not able to duct tape and bungee cord our way back into another economic binge of 'growth' based upon buying even MORE shit we'll never need or use, IF this recession is a true game changer,

I don't think your idea will be needed. Since the 70's a poli sci degree has been a fast track to:

1. being a cook with a degree and shitload of debt, depending on family re$ource$,
   
2. going to law school and shitload of debt, depending on family re$ource$,
   
3. getting hooked up with a good job cuz of family / connections,
   
4. getting a good paying / interesting job cuz of DUMB luck.

but, finally, I've been expecting Mad Max / Blade Runner / Robo Cop since that f'ing fascist RayGun was elected in 1980 - WTF do I know?

rmm.

http://www.liemail.com/BambooGrassroots.html

If you try to take any $ away from it, you get a message that you're reducing $ for re-entry, inmate programs, public safety, etc.

Our population now in the state prisons is about 18,000.  In the early 1990s it was about 6,000 people.  Crime had begun dropping several years before the prison population started rising.  In fact, studies show that over-incarceration leads to more, not less crime.

This explosion of our prison population was due to more than 200 amendments to the Sentencing Reform Act -- most of them making our sentencing tougher.  You can read about it here: Conversation with Chase Riveland, Head of Washington Corrections when the tough-on-crime wave hit.

Washington State Institute for Public Policy estimates that direct taxpayer costs per inmate per year in WA are $32,000.  It estimates a total of direct and indirect costs at $64,000.  We should be saving money by reducing our prison population -- not by reducing the money for rehabilitative programs, which are shown to work -- to reduce crime.

Another way we're frittering away vast sums of $ is by increasing the use of supermax isolation in Washington.  Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in recent years to build these 8' x 10' foot cells in which human beings are kept 23-34 hours a day, sometimes for years.  I've done a public disclosure request, and there are people who have been in continuous Supermax in Washington for 2, 3, 5, 10 years.  There is no empirical evidence, according to the research I've read, that shows that the use of intensive isolation increases safety in the prisons.  There's voluminous research showing that it harms people irreparably.  It appears that our use of supermax has about doubled recently.  Why?

Another waste is community supervision.  I went to a meeting of the Sentencing Guidelines Commission a few months ago where an expert reported that community supervision -- as it is usually administered -- is shown to have zero impact on crime.  Luckily, we're cutting down on the use of this tool in this state.  But not enough.  

Finally, there are myriad ways in corrections where we do not make the short-term investments that would reap long-term significant savings.  With HB 2010 in 1995, the legislature prohibited the state from paying for higher education for inmates.  Higher education for people in prison has been shown to be just about the most effective way to cut down on recidivism.  That's just one of many examples.  The sponsor of this bill, Ida Ballasiotes, was reported in the PI as saying that she wanted to make prison more uncomfortable for the prisoners.