After California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fought Republicans for months over their pesky demands that we cut spending to prevent a disastrous budget deficit, it turns out that gee, we’re facing a disastrous budget deficit after all! The conservatives were right.
So how does the Governor want to go about saving some money that we can’t afford to spend? He’s weighing the early release of 22,000 of the state’s 172,000 prison inmates in order to save a few hundred million dollars we would spend keeping society safer.
Says the San Francisco Chronicle:
The idea is one of many that have been presented to the governor by his departmental budget directors, and he has not decided if he likes it or not, Schwarzenegger spokesman Bill Maile said Thursday. But if the plan were to be put into action, it would constitute one of the biggest early releases of prisoners in U.S. history.
“The governor asked his department heads to work with their budget managers to find ways to cut the budget by 10 percent because of the budget crisis we are facing, and this idea was one of many that was floated in reaction to that request,” Maile said. “It’s not a proposal yet, just an idea.”
Recidivism rates in California run upwards of 70% according to criminology professor Erick Hickey at CSU Fresno, says the Chronicle. So now, we have evidence that the free-spending ways of Governor Schwarzenegger and his left-wing Democratic buddies are not only bad for our economy, but they’re also bad for our safety and security.
Next time, Governor, listen to the Republicans in the Assembly and the Senate, not the Democrats. It takes three to tango in our state’s budget process. If you team up with the conservatives, you can force concessions from the Democrats. You ran for our nomination last time, and we gave it to you. So why won’t you work with our other nominees who won office in Sacramento?
It’d beat being the biggest girly-man on crime in the state, wouldn’t it?