posted
There were a whole lot of worst parts about that for me and I don't think the fiscal costs of it are even in the top 3.
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
it's the worst part to me because, legitimately, that's hundreds of millions of dollars sometimes per ****ing person just for the sake of petty medieval bloodthirst, because it is certainly not for the sake of the public good (it does none) or reducing crime (it does not) or improving our credibility as a moral authority in a world that is rapidly eclipsing us in decency
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
It's just that if the federal government proposed a program that would create more safeguards against an innocent person being executed to prevent a story like the one in the New Yorker, and if the state absolutely had to execute someone, the program would ensure it was done as humanely as possible and nothing like the story in The Atlantic would happen again and said program would cost the taxpayer a few hundred million dollars, I would support it and willingly pay my share as a taxpayer. That's why I don't think the cost is the worst part of that story.
Also, I don't think petty medieval bloodthirst is the reason why some people support the death penalty. I don't think most people are aware that it's proven to be ineffective as a deterrant against crime or the costs associated with executing someone. I think if you asked an average person why they support the death penalty, it would be exactly those reasons, they support it as a deterrant against capital crimes and that taxpayers shouldn't have to pay to keep a murderer alive in jail for the rest of his life. Education on the topic, one I admittedly didn't have until I read the New Yorker story, would go a long way.
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yeah, I was actually thinking that while reading many of the comments on Tsarnaev's sentencing.
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
"[E]veryone agrees that our rail system is frail and accident-prone: one tragedy can end the service up and down the entire path from Boston to Washington, and beyond, for days on end. And everyone knows that American infrastructure—what used to be called our public works, or just our bridges and railways, once the envy of the world—has now been stripped bare, and is being stripped ever barer.
What is less apparent, perhaps, is that the will to abandon the public way is not some failure of understanding, or some nearsighted omission by shortsighted politicians. It is part of a coherent ideological project. As I wrote a few years ago, in a piece on the literature of American declinism, “The reason we don’t have beautiful new airports and efficient bullet trains is not that we have inadvertently stumbled upon stumbling blocks; it’s that there are considerable numbers of Americans for whom these things are simply symbols of a feared central government, and who would, when they travel, rather sweat in squalor than surrender the money to build a better terminal.” The ideological rigor of this idea, as absolute in its way as the ancient Soviet conviction that any entering wedge of free enterprise would lead to the destruction of the Soviet state, is as instructive as it is astonishing. And it is part of the folly of American “centrism” not to recognize that the failure to run trains where we need them is made from conviction, not from ignorance."
guh
a yorker subscription is good for my general state of awareness but it is a bitter pill to swallow week in and out
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote: But writing today in the Omaha World-Herald, Ricketts said:
"Even without executions in recent years, the death penalty in Nebraska has continued to play an important role in prosecuting criminals, protecting our families and ensuring that criminals remain locked behind bars. The death penalty allows prosecutors to get stronger sentences which keep dangerous criminals off our streets. "In Nebraska, there are only 10 inmates on death row. Unlike California or Texas, which have hundreds on death row, we use the death penalty judiciously and prudently. "Retaining the death penalty is not only important to the integrity of criminal prosecutions but also vitally important to good prison management and protecting our prison officers."
posted
Saying "The death penalty allows prosecutors to get stronger sentences" as if a stronger sentence is inherently a good thing is what rubs me the wrong way the most.
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, sentencing in the last 30 years has worked like the opposite of taxes. It's a ratchet effect: politically you can gain capital by making sentences harsher, but you never stand to gain anything by making them lighter (or any other policy reform with that same effect). So for 30 years, American politicians have been conditioned to understand that prosecutorial freedom and harsher and harsher sentencing is always good, and lower and lower taxes are always good.
That this creates a situation in which we spend (and waste) drastically more and tax drastically less seems is an irony reserved for those who have their mammalian brains intact.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
He's smuggling in drugs illegally from India to execute the prisoners before the law changes take effect (which would spare their lives) because he's super petulant that he is having this authority to kill people stripped from him
this is a thing that is actually happening
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I have an in-law who asked me shortly after the Tsarnaev sentencing whether I thought we should torture him a little before executing him. I pointed out that there's no reason for any sort of interrogation since there isn't any reason to believe he is withholding information that is endangering lives. His response: so?
His tongue was probably halfway in his cheek because we've discussed the death penalty before and he knows I'm against it and he likes to push people's buttons, but just him thinking of that disturbed me a bit.
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
