Friday, August 21, 2009

Crazy Facts from GovernmentLand

Here are some facts (from the New York Times no less) which show why government is all fail, all the time:

The United States incarcerates people at nearly five times the world average. Of those sentenced to state prisons, 82 percent were convicted of nonviolent crimes, according to one study.

California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system. In contrast, it spends only $8,000 on each child attending the troubled Oakland public school system, according to the Urban Strategies Council.

For most of American history, we had incarceration rates similar to those in other countries. Then with the “war on drugs” and the focus on law and order in the 1970s, incarceration rates soared.

One in 10 black men ages 25 to 29 were imprisoned last year, partly because possession of crack cocaine (disproportionately used in black communities) draws sentences equivalent to having 100 times as much powder cocaine. Black men in the United States have a 32 percent chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives, according to the Sentencing Project.

“There are only two possibilities here,” Mr. Webb said in introducing his bill, noting that America imprisons so many more people than other countries. “Either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States, or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice.”


The next logical question is this: If government sucks so bad at all these things, as the NYT admits, then why the hell does the NYT want government to be involved in healthcare at all? It's like saying that JimBob is the worst manager ever, therefore we should give JimBob a new set of managerial responsibilities.

No! The answer is to fire JimBob and never do business with his organization again, ever!

1 comment:

Mike Gogulski said...

why the hell does the NYT want government to be involved in healthcare at all?

Because the NYT is a corporate tool of our reptilian overlords?

Just a guess...