Build Date: Tue Sep 10 22:50:09 2024 UTC
Bad people of the Future don't go to bed, they pass out.
-- Johnny Royale
Time to Put the Governor in Jail
2003-01-13 18:01:52
With an estimated 35 Billion (that's a illion with a "B") budget deficit looming over the state of California, Gov. Gray Davis has been forced to slash just about every conceivable program in existence to meet the state’s constitutionally mandated balanced budget requirement. Every program regardless of merit, from schools, to roads, to agricultural advertising campaigns in Central Africa will share the pain. Every program that is, except the Department of Corrections.
Most states, when faced with a massive deficits, resort to paroling low grade, non-violent felons in order to maintain the most basic level of funding for critical programs, figuring it is better to let out some harmless drug users than let some crippled orphans starve. But not so with Governor Davis, where he actually increased funding in the Department of Corrections in order to build more prisons, while slashing aid everywhere else. That's right, he wants to build more prisons. What kind of leadership is that? The State of California already has the one of the highest incarceration rates in the country with the highest incarceration rate in the "free" world. And one of the worst recidivism rates in all of human history.
So instead of figuring out how to keep people out of prison, which is not only cheaper, but far more humane, Davis is quite happy to just build more prisons.
Which is strange for a liberal. (Not that I think of Davis as a liberal anymore.)
But not so strange if you look at where the money comes to fund his election campaigns. The biggest monetary contributor to Davis is the California Prison Guard Union. So for an investment of some 3 million dollars, the prison guards are the only state employees not worried about a salary cut next year, and they get to staff a new prison.
Which all smacks of corruption and vote buying. As far as I’m concerned, Davis only needs to add enough money to the Department of Corrections to build one new prison cell next year... his.
T O P S T O R I E S
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
Mozart to be inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame
Joining such hard-rocking inductees as Abba, Chet Atkins, Nat King Cole, and Neil Diamond, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is proud to induct Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
The Deep Dark Underbelly of the Star Wars Myth, or Ramayana Remembered
It's a fact: Star Wars is a blatant plagiarism of an ancient Asian legend, and the long lines of devout Star Wars freaks are really unscrupulous Asian copyright busters. From Indonesia to Thailand to Nepal, videos are available for sale or rent before they're even released in the US and UK due to this nerdy camcorder-clutching bunch. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
Johnnie Royale's Guide to Wakes
Wakes can present problems for Bad People of the Future. (If you don't know what a BPotF is, you need to read more of the PDJ.) Sure, your friend is gone and you miss him and that really sucks; it does, I know. But all Bad People of the Future are gonna die, and they have all accepted that fact. They do deserve, however, to have one final kickass party to celebrate all the bad things they've done in the past, present and future. And you, as a friend, have to make sure that their desire for a final send off is well executed (sorry for the pun). That's just the way of BPotFdom. (More...)
Datelined "Historic Mariposa," the fateful press release came in like an angry wind, announcing the release of a self-produced album, "Ordinary Hero," by occasional Pigdog contributor Thom Stark, in the language and tone of a Major Event, setting off a brief firestorm around the pigdog mailing list. (More...)
Skunk School -- Learn Why Not To Keep Skunks As Pets
There is an alarming trend in pet purchasing habits this fall. People inspired by the WWII film, "Life is Beautiful" -- the one with that annoying Italian guy -- are buying descented skunks by the millions. (More...)
Experimenter is a film released in 2015 starring Peter Sarsgaard. It tells the story of Dr. Stanley Milgram's life, including the infamous Milgram electric shock experiment, tests on crowds, and his work developing a theory on the mechanics of social networks. It currently streams on Netflix. (More...)
