weekend memes
Saturday 6.
1. How many trick-or-treaters did you have this year? Was that more, less, or the same as last year?
0. It was the same as last year.
2. What kind of halloween candy did you buy?
None.
3. What's the next topic you intend to blog about?
No idea.
4. Take the quiz: What is your beer personality?
I couldn't take it because all the options on all the questions were based on the assumption that you drink beer. That rendered the questions unanswerable for me, as...
a] I do not drink beer from any kind of container.
b] I do not look for anything in a beer, except to make sure that the glass I'm drinking out of doesn't contain any of it.
c] I would not go pub crawling in any city anywhere because drunks piss me off and smoke makes me sick.
d] I've had a lot of personality changes since the last time I was drunk. Also, people are terrible at assessing their own personalities even when sober; the delusions of grandeur that frequently accompany drunkenness can't possibly help.
e] For me, there are no good things about drinking beer. The taste makes me gag and even tiny amounts of alcohol make me sick.
5. Do you like the taste of beer? Have you ever tried this particular one?
I think beer tastes like barf.
As for the second part of the question, I don't even remember which brands of beer I've tried. All I know is that they all tasted awful, I drank them only to be polite, and the whole time I was desperately wishing I had a soda or an iced tea or some moose urine or ANYTHING BUT BEER.
6. Which of the following in your home is more full: your dishwasher, your washing machine, your dryer, your sink or your hamper?
My sink, since I don't have any of those other things, unless a laundry basket counts as a hamper.
Sunday 7.
Name up to seven issues important to you this election day.
Environment, uh...
Who am I kidding? I mean, really. In the end, it doesn't really matter much on the issues, because they're not gonna do anything about them anyway, and when they do, they end up fucking up everything else in the process. The real issue is, there's not enough money to go around to do everything that needs doing. So I'm just gonna vote Green wherever possible because they're the only party that I even remotely agree with. I no longer have any hope of electing anybody that's gonna actually represent me, because I disagree so vehemently with the majority on so many things that nobody that actually represented my views would have a chance in hell of winning.
Here's my breakdown on the issues. [It's long.]
Immigration: Everybody's shitting their pants over immigrants, and I couldn't care less, because most of the people that are hysterical about immigrants can't tell an illegal immigrant from a legal immigrant from somebody whose family has been here for 4 generations and just happens to be brown. Not only that, they're ignoring all the white, American-born lazyasses that are just as much of a drain on the welfare system as immigrants supposedly are--and they're ignoring all the immigrants who ARE getting an education and ARE trying to learn English and ARE collecting a paycheck instead of a government check. Additionally, most of the immigrant-related information that gets people's BVD's in a knot is third and fourth hand information that they got from their drinking buddies, who got it from their dental hygienist, who got it from her half-deaf grandma, who got it from a conversation she overheard in the checkout line at Hy-Vee. If you gave people a quiz on what benefits and perks immigrants actually get, and under what circumstances, I bet 90% of people would flunk. I would too, but at least I don't pretend I'm an expert on it.
I also won't pretend illegal immigration isn't a problem, or that there aren't people who think the US owes them a free monthly check just because we happen to have more money. And I think we do have an obligation to spread around the wealth, but we also have to fix the problems that make our own cost of living so high. But nobody gives a shit about that. They just wanna run around waving their arms and going "OMFG TEH DAM MEXICANS OMFG@!!!!!!@@!$#!!" Fine, you histrionic fuck, if you don't want 'em here, run for office and get them kicked out. Or knock them out, put them in your truck, and drive them home. Or find out which office you're supposed to report illegal immigrants to, and report them. But don't come crying to ME about it, because I do not work for the INS, I do not hold public office, and I can't do Jack W. Shit III about it. And frankly, if I was living in some of those countries, I'd be breaking a leg trying to get here too. And so would you. It's really easy to tell people "go back to your country and deal with your own problems" when you don't live there and will never have to. Just can it.
Abortion: Holy balls, where do I start? Who can you even vote for on this that's actually gonna take a stand? The Republicans don't want women to have abortions, they don't want them to have birth control, they don't want them to have sex ed. They don't want them to have sex, period, unless they're married--and then they better STAY married, because we all know that a loveless cheating hubby who brings home STD's or a violent bastard who flings his kids across the room is better than no daddy at all, right? And the Democrats just lick the majority's boots and offer them bonbons. Why? Well, remember what happened to Paul Wellstone? Yeah. Accident, my ass.
Not only that, some of the procedures they're so hot to ban are commonly used to save women's lives or to remove dead fetuses. Carry a dead baby around in your uterus for a month or two and then get back to me on partial-birth abortion. Or, if your hormones are making you severely depressed, just deal with it. Pray, maybe. Take some antidepressants for it. Oh, wait, those cause birth defects. Well, I guess you're just not supposed to get depressed. What, your birth control failed and you can't afford a kid? Too bad, so sad. Better that you [and any other kids you may have] starve, rather than murder an innocent...uh, bundle of cells with no functioning nervous system. [Oh, it has a soul? Really? I'm sorry, I didn't get the "America is a Christian theocracy" memo. Because that's, like, the only religion that believes the soul-at-conception thing.]
It's your own fault for not being celibate and refraining from sin. Unless you were married. Then if you don't spread for your husband you're inflicting emotional distress on him [because YOU should be able to be celibate, but that's just too much to ask of him]. Then children are a blessing, right, because everybody in America makes enough money to cover the $10K a year it takes to raise a child. And everybody wants a kid and has the patience and the emotional resources to raise one without damaging it. Everybody that's worth anything, anyway. Because, you know, if you're poor, it's because you're a worthless lazy bum. It can't possibly be because you get paid so little that you can't get ahead [either by working more hours or by continuing your education while you work] without driving yourself into the ground and ending up seriously ill, which will ruin you financially for the rest of your life. Nope. That never happens. And if you're mentally ill or have health problems, you're somehow supposed to magically rise above it like those people in the Reader's Digest articles that lost a leg and got lupus and still managed to raise four kids and take them to Sunday school every week or whatever.
Again, nobody gives a crap, least of all the politicians, who if they're really interested in preserving choice, will introduce legislation that will be shouted down as enabling welfare queens and baby-killers.
Education: I REALLY don't know where to start here. All I know is, I'm happy to pay taxes for schools, because education is obviously very important and the kids sitting in social studies class now are going to be the same people who take care of me when I'm in the nursing home. So I only have two issues with that:
1] If I and everybody else are paying taxes to fund schools, why is everybody leaving school so stupid? I feel like my money's being wasted. Should we be spending more? Should we be spending it differently? I really don't see how cutting music classes and diverting it to football helps any of these kids get smarter.
2] If I'm paying taxes to fund schools and state-run child assistance programs, and to pick up the budget slack caused by family tax credits, stop trying to smack me down every time I express a child-related opinion, just because I don't have kids. I'm sick of being treated like I'm a total retard in the kid department. Pushing a baby out your hoo-ha doesn't make you Jean Piaget. True, raising kids is an excellent way to learn about kids--probably the best. But BEING a kid also teaches you about them. READING about children teaches you about them. [I can hear it now: "Books aren't a substitute for experience." So Dr. Spock was basically just pissing in the wind when he wrote all those landmark child-development books. Shut up.] I WAS a kid. I went to school for 13 years with kids. I played with kids the whole time I was growing up. I continue to read about education and child development so I can understand them and understand people in general. What's more, I pay in full the taxes that YOU get credits on, I helped pay for the schools they go to and the teachers that teach them, I am helping fund your goddamn kids, so don't you DARE tell me I can't so much as have an opinion about them. And I don't have to be a parent myself to call somebody a shitty parent, any more than I have to be a pro football player to know the Vikes suck, so you can cram that too.
Gay marriage: Why does anybody care? I mean, really. What is it to you if gays get married? So maybe you think it's a sin to be gay. Since when does your religion dictate policy? And I have yet to hear a coherent, rational explanation for how exactly gay marriage destroys the institution of marriage. And even if it did, I'm supposed to care...why, exactly? If the institution of marriage is so fragile that letting Joe and Brad go down the aisle together is gonna destroy it, how much was it really worth in the first place? No, this isn't about preserving anybody's marriage. It's about the fact that allowing gay marriage takes us one step farther away from America becoming a Christian theocracy.
The economy: I don't even have an answer to that. I don't know what would work or whose policies would be better. All I know is, rich people don't need any more goddamn breaks. If they would actually invest it in ways that would help everybody--if trickle-down economics worked--I'd feel differently. But they don't spend a lot of it helping the rest of us, do they? Oh, some do; some care quite a bit. But not many care enough to forgo their giant house and expensive car for a normal house and car, and invest or give away the excess. I'd love there to be a cap on how much you can own. But as long as rich people run the government, it's never gonna happen.
Gun control: I don't own a gun, so it's not a personal issue for me. If somebody told me I could never have a gun, I wouldn't lose a lot of sleep. I think letting the assault weapons ban lapse was a huge mistake, but as for allowing people to have handguns, I agree with the idea that responsible people should be allowed to have them for self-defense. The issue comes in deciding who's responsible enough, and that's where you get arguments over whether mentally ill people, minor drug offenders, or other groups should have handguns. I don't know enough about it to know. If it was something I felt strongly about, I'd make more of an effort to keep informed, but I don't, so.
Crime: This is something I do know more about, and something I probably rant about too much. It's also something about which I am in vehement disagreement with a lot of the legislature and other citizens. Without getting into a big thing about the rights of the accused or of convicts [thus sidestepping the common "They gave up their rights when they committed a crime, what bout the victims' rights?" issue]--the simple fact is, putting people in prison doesn't deter crime any better than putting them on probation. The recidivism rate is the same. Longer sentences and harsher prison conditions leave prisoners less psychologically equipped to lead a straight life once they get out. And if you're going to piss and moan about having to pay for their room and board, you better be expecting to let them out.
And that's the problem. To the American people, I have to ask: What do you want to do, shoot everybody who commits a crime? If you give them short sentences or parole and they reoffend, you bitch that they should've been locked up longer. If you give them longer sentences, then you bitch that they're getting a free ride at the taxpayer's expense. If the prisons are nice and clean and humane, you bitch that they have too many privileges that law-abiding citizens don't have. If the prisons are brutal, the inmates come out more brutal than when they went in, are more likely to reoffend, and then you bitch that they weren't rehabilitated. If they're sentenced to life without parole, you bitch that they should be executed so you don't have to pay for them. If they're sentenced to death, you bitch about how long and expensive the appeals process is. You fuckers are never happy, are you? Is there some other option that you see besides just executing everybody that's convicted, without appeal? Because that's the only other option I see. And if you do that, very few crimes will be punished at all, because nobody will want to sentence somebody to death for getting too many speeding tickets, so the cops will just look the other way.
No. What it comes down to is, you don't care what actually works. You're more interested in getting your little punishment-gasm than you are in actually reducing crime. Longer sentences don't reduce crime. The death penalty doesn't reduce crime. Greater police presence--when it DOES reduce crime in one area--just causes it to shift to other areas. You keep voting people into office who claim they're gonna be tough on crime. But the laws they pass that are supposedly tough on crime DON'T FUCKING WORK. Never mind whether it's fair to the prisoner, or whether they're getting too many privileges or not enough, or any of that. THE SHIT DOESN'T WORK. Why do you keep electing people who get up there and say, "I'm gonna pass a law that does X" when there are decades of criminology research and case studies that prove X doesn't fucking work???
You wanna reduce crime? The first thing you need to do is get over your macho idea that being tougher on criminals is the way to reduce it, and that things like probation and restorative justice are for sissies. The next thing you need to do is what you should have been doing since the first day you, as an adult voter, started bitching about the criminal justice system: educate yourself on what actually reduces crime, and only elect those officials who are willing to do what works. You want it changed, you make it happen. You know that warm fuzzy feeling you get when somebody gets punished for doing something awful? Admit it. Allow yourself to have it. It's human. But DO NOT ask your elected leaders to make justice policy based on your emotions. Your emotions are important, but they're not a substitute for reason; and no matter how much you want to see so&so go to the chair, sending him there doesn't help anybody. In fact, a capital trial + execution costs several times more than a non-capital trial + life imprisonment, so you just cost yourself and the other taxpayers a shitload of unnecessary money, all so you could say "good riddance." I hope you're happy.
You're so goddamn worried where your tax dollars go in terms of crime prevention, remember this: The recidivism rates for prison and probation are similar--probation's is actually a bit lower. Prison costs SIX TO TEN TIMES what probation costs. People do sometimes commit crimes while on probation, but they do it while in prison too--not just crimes against other prisoners and guards, but against society. There are many instances of people running drug rings or other criminal enterprises from behind bars. All you need is somebody on the outside to be your liaison and preferably a guard or two who's willing to look the other way for a small fee. And probation with electronic monitoring provides almost as much surveillance as prison, without the room and board cost, and while it's more expensive than traditional probation, it's still several times cheaper than prison.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Which reminds me...
Smoking bans: Totally in favour of them. There are days when I have some sympathy for smokers, and I really would like them to have decent, well-ventilated places to smoke where they're not going to be bothering anybody. Then I smell somebody's smoke, and after one or two whiffs of it I can feel the tissues inside my head swelling up with an oncoming migraine. I know if I hang around it long enough, I will end up with a sinus infection and possibly an ear infection as well, from the mucous membrane irritation. That really puts a damper on my sympathy, and by the time I make it home and take an Imitrex [there are migraine-prevention meds, but the side effects are too much for me, and they still don't prevent the sinus infections], I hate every last puffing one of them. Which makes me feel bad, because I have friends who smoke. They know I don't mean it personally [I hope]. But man, I gotta live too. Sorry.
Environment: Again, I'm no expert on the environment, but I just gotta ask: Of all the above issues I mentioned, do you really think any of them are gonna matter if we don't have a decent planet to live on? What good is it gonna do to argue about school funding if the kids all have cancer and developmental disorders from environmental chemicals? What good is it gonna do to argue about jobs if nobody can work because they're all sick? What good is it gonna do to debate subsidies for farmers and fishermen if none of the damn land is arable anymore and there are no more fish left? Answer that and then get back to me on how important the environment is.
Man. Ask me about politics, see what ya get, right? This got a lot longer and a lot bitchier than I expected. But I stand by it because it's how I think and feel.
So.
sbt/sbc
1. How many trick-or-treaters did you have this year? Was that more, less, or the same as last year?
0. It was the same as last year.
2. What kind of halloween candy did you buy?
None.
3. What's the next topic you intend to blog about?
No idea.
4. Take the quiz: What is your beer personality?
I couldn't take it because all the options on all the questions were based on the assumption that you drink beer. That rendered the questions unanswerable for me, as...
a] I do not drink beer from any kind of container.
b] I do not look for anything in a beer, except to make sure that the glass I'm drinking out of doesn't contain any of it.
c] I would not go pub crawling in any city anywhere because drunks piss me off and smoke makes me sick.
d] I've had a lot of personality changes since the last time I was drunk. Also, people are terrible at assessing their own personalities even when sober; the delusions of grandeur that frequently accompany drunkenness can't possibly help.
e] For me, there are no good things about drinking beer. The taste makes me gag and even tiny amounts of alcohol make me sick.
5. Do you like the taste of beer? Have you ever tried this particular one?
I think beer tastes like barf.
As for the second part of the question, I don't even remember which brands of beer I've tried. All I know is that they all tasted awful, I drank them only to be polite, and the whole time I was desperately wishing I had a soda or an iced tea or some moose urine or ANYTHING BUT BEER.
6. Which of the following in your home is more full: your dishwasher, your washing machine, your dryer, your sink or your hamper?
My sink, since I don't have any of those other things, unless a laundry basket counts as a hamper.
Sunday 7.
Name up to seven issues important to you this election day.
Environment, uh...
Who am I kidding? I mean, really. In the end, it doesn't really matter much on the issues, because they're not gonna do anything about them anyway, and when they do, they end up fucking up everything else in the process. The real issue is, there's not enough money to go around to do everything that needs doing. So I'm just gonna vote Green wherever possible because they're the only party that I even remotely agree with. I no longer have any hope of electing anybody that's gonna actually represent me, because I disagree so vehemently with the majority on so many things that nobody that actually represented my views would have a chance in hell of winning.
Here's my breakdown on the issues. [It's long.]
Immigration: Everybody's shitting their pants over immigrants, and I couldn't care less, because most of the people that are hysterical about immigrants can't tell an illegal immigrant from a legal immigrant from somebody whose family has been here for 4 generations and just happens to be brown. Not only that, they're ignoring all the white, American-born lazyasses that are just as much of a drain on the welfare system as immigrants supposedly are--and they're ignoring all the immigrants who ARE getting an education and ARE trying to learn English and ARE collecting a paycheck instead of a government check. Additionally, most of the immigrant-related information that gets people's BVD's in a knot is third and fourth hand information that they got from their drinking buddies, who got it from their dental hygienist, who got it from her half-deaf grandma, who got it from a conversation she overheard in the checkout line at Hy-Vee. If you gave people a quiz on what benefits and perks immigrants actually get, and under what circumstances, I bet 90% of people would flunk. I would too, but at least I don't pretend I'm an expert on it.
I also won't pretend illegal immigration isn't a problem, or that there aren't people who think the US owes them a free monthly check just because we happen to have more money. And I think we do have an obligation to spread around the wealth, but we also have to fix the problems that make our own cost of living so high. But nobody gives a shit about that. They just wanna run around waving their arms and going "OMFG TEH DAM MEXICANS OMFG@!!!!!!@@!$#!!" Fine, you histrionic fuck, if you don't want 'em here, run for office and get them kicked out. Or knock them out, put them in your truck, and drive them home. Or find out which office you're supposed to report illegal immigrants to, and report them. But don't come crying to ME about it, because I do not work for the INS, I do not hold public office, and I can't do Jack W. Shit III about it. And frankly, if I was living in some of those countries, I'd be breaking a leg trying to get here too. And so would you. It's really easy to tell people "go back to your country and deal with your own problems" when you don't live there and will never have to. Just can it.
Abortion: Holy balls, where do I start? Who can you even vote for on this that's actually gonna take a stand? The Republicans don't want women to have abortions, they don't want them to have birth control, they don't want them to have sex ed. They don't want them to have sex, period, unless they're married--and then they better STAY married, because we all know that a loveless cheating hubby who brings home STD's or a violent bastard who flings his kids across the room is better than no daddy at all, right? And the Democrats just lick the majority's boots and offer them bonbons. Why? Well, remember what happened to Paul Wellstone? Yeah. Accident, my ass.
Not only that, some of the procedures they're so hot to ban are commonly used to save women's lives or to remove dead fetuses. Carry a dead baby around in your uterus for a month or two and then get back to me on partial-birth abortion. Or, if your hormones are making you severely depressed, just deal with it. Pray, maybe. Take some antidepressants for it. Oh, wait, those cause birth defects. Well, I guess you're just not supposed to get depressed. What, your birth control failed and you can't afford a kid? Too bad, so sad. Better that you [and any other kids you may have] starve, rather than murder an innocent...uh, bundle of cells with no functioning nervous system. [Oh, it has a soul? Really? I'm sorry, I didn't get the "America is a Christian theocracy" memo. Because that's, like, the only religion that believes the soul-at-conception thing.]
It's your own fault for not being celibate and refraining from sin. Unless you were married. Then if you don't spread for your husband you're inflicting emotional distress on him [because YOU should be able to be celibate, but that's just too much to ask of him]. Then children are a blessing, right, because everybody in America makes enough money to cover the $10K a year it takes to raise a child. And everybody wants a kid and has the patience and the emotional resources to raise one without damaging it. Everybody that's worth anything, anyway. Because, you know, if you're poor, it's because you're a worthless lazy bum. It can't possibly be because you get paid so little that you can't get ahead [either by working more hours or by continuing your education while you work] without driving yourself into the ground and ending up seriously ill, which will ruin you financially for the rest of your life. Nope. That never happens. And if you're mentally ill or have health problems, you're somehow supposed to magically rise above it like those people in the Reader's Digest articles that lost a leg and got lupus and still managed to raise four kids and take them to Sunday school every week or whatever.
Again, nobody gives a crap, least of all the politicians, who if they're really interested in preserving choice, will introduce legislation that will be shouted down as enabling welfare queens and baby-killers.
Education: I REALLY don't know where to start here. All I know is, I'm happy to pay taxes for schools, because education is obviously very important and the kids sitting in social studies class now are going to be the same people who take care of me when I'm in the nursing home. So I only have two issues with that:
1] If I and everybody else are paying taxes to fund schools, why is everybody leaving school so stupid? I feel like my money's being wasted. Should we be spending more? Should we be spending it differently? I really don't see how cutting music classes and diverting it to football helps any of these kids get smarter.
2] If I'm paying taxes to fund schools and state-run child assistance programs, and to pick up the budget slack caused by family tax credits, stop trying to smack me down every time I express a child-related opinion, just because I don't have kids. I'm sick of being treated like I'm a total retard in the kid department. Pushing a baby out your hoo-ha doesn't make you Jean Piaget. True, raising kids is an excellent way to learn about kids--probably the best. But BEING a kid also teaches you about them. READING about children teaches you about them. [I can hear it now: "Books aren't a substitute for experience." So Dr. Spock was basically just pissing in the wind when he wrote all those landmark child-development books. Shut up.] I WAS a kid. I went to school for 13 years with kids. I played with kids the whole time I was growing up. I continue to read about education and child development so I can understand them and understand people in general. What's more, I pay in full the taxes that YOU get credits on, I helped pay for the schools they go to and the teachers that teach them, I am helping fund your goddamn kids, so don't you DARE tell me I can't so much as have an opinion about them. And I don't have to be a parent myself to call somebody a shitty parent, any more than I have to be a pro football player to know the Vikes suck, so you can cram that too.
Gay marriage: Why does anybody care? I mean, really. What is it to you if gays get married? So maybe you think it's a sin to be gay. Since when does your religion dictate policy? And I have yet to hear a coherent, rational explanation for how exactly gay marriage destroys the institution of marriage. And even if it did, I'm supposed to care...why, exactly? If the institution of marriage is so fragile that letting Joe and Brad go down the aisle together is gonna destroy it, how much was it really worth in the first place? No, this isn't about preserving anybody's marriage. It's about the fact that allowing gay marriage takes us one step farther away from America becoming a Christian theocracy.
The economy: I don't even have an answer to that. I don't know what would work or whose policies would be better. All I know is, rich people don't need any more goddamn breaks. If they would actually invest it in ways that would help everybody--if trickle-down economics worked--I'd feel differently. But they don't spend a lot of it helping the rest of us, do they? Oh, some do; some care quite a bit. But not many care enough to forgo their giant house and expensive car for a normal house and car, and invest or give away the excess. I'd love there to be a cap on how much you can own. But as long as rich people run the government, it's never gonna happen.
Gun control: I don't own a gun, so it's not a personal issue for me. If somebody told me I could never have a gun, I wouldn't lose a lot of sleep. I think letting the assault weapons ban lapse was a huge mistake, but as for allowing people to have handguns, I agree with the idea that responsible people should be allowed to have them for self-defense. The issue comes in deciding who's responsible enough, and that's where you get arguments over whether mentally ill people, minor drug offenders, or other groups should have handguns. I don't know enough about it to know. If it was something I felt strongly about, I'd make more of an effort to keep informed, but I don't, so.
Crime: This is something I do know more about, and something I probably rant about too much. It's also something about which I am in vehement disagreement with a lot of the legislature and other citizens. Without getting into a big thing about the rights of the accused or of convicts [thus sidestepping the common "They gave up their rights when they committed a crime, what bout the victims' rights?" issue]--the simple fact is, putting people in prison doesn't deter crime any better than putting them on probation. The recidivism rate is the same. Longer sentences and harsher prison conditions leave prisoners less psychologically equipped to lead a straight life once they get out. And if you're going to piss and moan about having to pay for their room and board, you better be expecting to let them out.
And that's the problem. To the American people, I have to ask: What do you want to do, shoot everybody who commits a crime? If you give them short sentences or parole and they reoffend, you bitch that they should've been locked up longer. If you give them longer sentences, then you bitch that they're getting a free ride at the taxpayer's expense. If the prisons are nice and clean and humane, you bitch that they have too many privileges that law-abiding citizens don't have. If the prisons are brutal, the inmates come out more brutal than when they went in, are more likely to reoffend, and then you bitch that they weren't rehabilitated. If they're sentenced to life without parole, you bitch that they should be executed so you don't have to pay for them. If they're sentenced to death, you bitch about how long and expensive the appeals process is. You fuckers are never happy, are you? Is there some other option that you see besides just executing everybody that's convicted, without appeal? Because that's the only other option I see. And if you do that, very few crimes will be punished at all, because nobody will want to sentence somebody to death for getting too many speeding tickets, so the cops will just look the other way.
No. What it comes down to is, you don't care what actually works. You're more interested in getting your little punishment-gasm than you are in actually reducing crime. Longer sentences don't reduce crime. The death penalty doesn't reduce crime. Greater police presence--when it DOES reduce crime in one area--just causes it to shift to other areas. You keep voting people into office who claim they're gonna be tough on crime. But the laws they pass that are supposedly tough on crime DON'T FUCKING WORK. Never mind whether it's fair to the prisoner, or whether they're getting too many privileges or not enough, or any of that. THE SHIT DOESN'T WORK. Why do you keep electing people who get up there and say, "I'm gonna pass a law that does X" when there are decades of criminology research and case studies that prove X doesn't fucking work???
You wanna reduce crime? The first thing you need to do is get over your macho idea that being tougher on criminals is the way to reduce it, and that things like probation and restorative justice are for sissies. The next thing you need to do is what you should have been doing since the first day you, as an adult voter, started bitching about the criminal justice system: educate yourself on what actually reduces crime, and only elect those officials who are willing to do what works. You want it changed, you make it happen. You know that warm fuzzy feeling you get when somebody gets punished for doing something awful? Admit it. Allow yourself to have it. It's human. But DO NOT ask your elected leaders to make justice policy based on your emotions. Your emotions are important, but they're not a substitute for reason; and no matter how much you want to see so&so go to the chair, sending him there doesn't help anybody. In fact, a capital trial + execution costs several times more than a non-capital trial + life imprisonment, so you just cost yourself and the other taxpayers a shitload of unnecessary money, all so you could say "good riddance." I hope you're happy.
You're so goddamn worried where your tax dollars go in terms of crime prevention, remember this: The recidivism rates for prison and probation are similar--probation's is actually a bit lower. Prison costs SIX TO TEN TIMES what probation costs. People do sometimes commit crimes while on probation, but they do it while in prison too--not just crimes against other prisoners and guards, but against society. There are many instances of people running drug rings or other criminal enterprises from behind bars. All you need is somebody on the outside to be your liaison and preferably a guard or two who's willing to look the other way for a small fee. And probation with electronic monitoring provides almost as much surveillance as prison, without the room and board cost, and while it's more expensive than traditional probation, it's still several times cheaper than prison.
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Which reminds me...
Smoking bans: Totally in favour of them. There are days when I have some sympathy for smokers, and I really would like them to have decent, well-ventilated places to smoke where they're not going to be bothering anybody. Then I smell somebody's smoke, and after one or two whiffs of it I can feel the tissues inside my head swelling up with an oncoming migraine. I know if I hang around it long enough, I will end up with a sinus infection and possibly an ear infection as well, from the mucous membrane irritation. That really puts a damper on my sympathy, and by the time I make it home and take an Imitrex [there are migraine-prevention meds, but the side effects are too much for me, and they still don't prevent the sinus infections], I hate every last puffing one of them. Which makes me feel bad, because I have friends who smoke. They know I don't mean it personally [I hope]. But man, I gotta live too. Sorry.
Environment: Again, I'm no expert on the environment, but I just gotta ask: Of all the above issues I mentioned, do you really think any of them are gonna matter if we don't have a decent planet to live on? What good is it gonna do to argue about school funding if the kids all have cancer and developmental disorders from environmental chemicals? What good is it gonna do to argue about jobs if nobody can work because they're all sick? What good is it gonna do to debate subsidies for farmers and fishermen if none of the damn land is arable anymore and there are no more fish left? Answer that and then get back to me on how important the environment is.
Man. Ask me about politics, see what ya get, right? This got a lot longer and a lot bitchier than I expected. But I stand by it because it's how I think and feel.
So.
sbt/sbc
posted by Frida | 6:45 AM
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