{"id":15,"date":"2005-11-30T23:19:25","date_gmt":"2005-12-01T03:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lucas-photo.com\/wordpress\/?p=15"},"modified":"2009-07-24T13:04:19","modified_gmt":"2009-07-24T17:04:19","slug":"maybe-orwell-maybe-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/2005\/11\/30\/maybe-orwell-maybe-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe&#8230; Orwell, maybe not"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Get this&#8230; apparently there is legislation before Congress to create a national Department of Peace, which will be tasked with mediating local issues of violence, rehabilitating prisoners, eliminating gangs, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, it&#8217;s another scheme designed to separate hard-working taxpayers from their money, in order to support highly speculative, extremely costly pet projects of people who are having visions&#8230; er, sorry, people <strong>with<\/strong> vision.<\/p>\n<p>Jumpin&#8217; Jehosaphat, have these people never <strong>heard<\/strong> of George Orwell?<\/p>\n<p>Tonight we&#8217;re gonna party like it&#8217;s 1984.<\/p>\n<p>You want to deal with the rising prison population?  There&#8217;s an easy way.  No, really.  And in my mind, it&#8217;s a far more humane solution than locking people up:<\/p>\n<p><em>Deportation. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>As bartenders are wont to quip at closing time, &#8220;You don&#8217;t have to go home, but you can&#8217;t stay here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Start with the three-strikes laws (though any mandatory restrictions that handcuff our judges constitute a blatant violation of due process, but that&#8217;s another post).  <\/p>\n<p>There have been valid complaints drawn that someone with two strikes, who has been making an earnest effort to walk the straight-and-narrow, gets hauled in on some piddling traffic offense or minor parole violation and has to be sentenced to some unGodly multi-decade prison sentence.  Insane.<\/p>\n<p>Within the judge&#8217;s discretion, any offense lesser than strike one and\/or two should <strong>not <\/strong>count towards the third strike&#8211; <strong>especially<\/strong> if it&#8217;s a reformed felon who bounces a check or some such.<\/p>\n<p>But if someone <strong>does<\/strong> pull that third strike, there&#8217;s no reason the taxpayers should support them for the next few decades.  <\/p>\n<p>Revoke their citizenship.  (The felon, not the taxpayers.)<\/p>\n<p>Hand them a check for, say, $50,000.  That&#8217;s about the cost of keeping them in prison for a year, and it&#8217;s more than enough to make a new start in lots of other countries.<\/p>\n<p>Hand them a voucher for, say, another $50,000.  That goes to whatever country they decide to relocate to, to soften the blow of accepting a known troublemaker.<\/p>\n<p>Escort them onto the plane.  Problem solved, at twenty percent of the cost.<\/p>\n<p>If there was ever any possibility that the felon could rehabilitate, they have one final chance.<\/p>\n<p>After the duration of whatever their prison sentence was, they can <strong>apply<\/strong> for citizenship like any other immigrant.  <\/p>\n<p>Our American citizenship is a precious gift, and for too long we&#8217;ve been taking it for granted.  Those who demonstrate repeatedly that they are unable or unwilling to work within our society&#8217;s laws should not be allowed to remain.  But the taxpayers shouldn&#8217;t have to subsidize their keep for years on end, either.<\/p>\n<p>This seems a far more workable, far more concrete solution, than just creating another big Federal agency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Get this&#8230; apparently there is legislation before Congress to create a national Department of Peace, which will be tasked with mediating local issues of violence, rehabilitating prisoners, eliminating gangs, and so on. In other words, it&#8217;s another scheme designed to separate hard-working taxpayers from their money, in order to support highly speculative, extremely costly pet [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lucas-photo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}