Sherry Chandler

After I posted on overcrowding in our state prisons and county jails, I was struck by this front-page article in the January 16 edition of our local weekly, The Bourbon County Citizen:

Tony Horn, jailer, reported to the Fiscal Court that the number of state inmates has increased which helps offset some of the operating costs. State inmates and out of county inmates pay a daily rate to Bourbon County. Horn reported that of the 94 inmates last Thursday, 49 were paying “guests.”

County Judge Donnie Foley said “I think that’s the first time I can remember that the paying inmates outnumber the local inmates. That’s good!”

Horn asked the Fiscal Court to approve 10 new beds that will increase the occupancy of the jail. ..

Brent DeWeese, consultant to the jail, told the Fiscal Court that there was an opportunity to increase dramatically the revenue for housing state prisoners and ultimately cut the cost to the county of jail operations. DeWeese suggested that the county build another facility at a cost of 1.5 million dollars that would house up to 100 inmates. The new facility would be filled with state inmates, low risk Class D felons, and generate up to a million dollars a year in revenue.

…

No action was taken on DeWeese’s suggestion but the court will continue to look at options available to reduce jail cost to the county.

So the county’s in the black, but the state is severely in the red. It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good I suppose but, as a taxpayer, I see this as a net loss.

We’re still cutting higher education, pensions, and everything else we can find. As a matter of full disclosure, these decisions affect me personally, since I work for a state university — in fact, the state’s “flagship” university — and am unlikely to see a raise in pay for a while. I really don’t want another raise in tuition to cover operating costs.

We talk of raising taxes on cigarettes, which I suppose every one sees as morally acceptable. Cigarettes are evil. But it’s still a regressive tax that hits mostly the poor and the working class.

Talking also of the magic fix of casino gambling, which is also, like the lottery, a tax on the poor and, like the lottery, not likely to be the magic fix it’s sold for.

Sort of a Catch-22. Tax the poor to pay for the jails that hold mostly the poor.

So this is trickle-down economics. I don’t think I like it much.

Speaking of which, Obama is now comparing himself to Ronald Reagan. Here’s what Jane Hamsher has to say about that:

No, Ronald Reagan didn’t appeal to people’s optimism, he appealed to their petty, small minded bigotry and selfishness. Jimmy Carter told people to tighten their energy belts and act for the good of the country; Ronald Reagan told them they could guzzle gas with impunity and do whatever the hell they wanted. He kicked off his 1980 campaign talking about “state’s rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi — the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964’s Freedom Summer. He thus put up a welcome sign for “Reagan Democrats,” peeling off white voters who were unhappy with the multi-ethnic coalition within the Democratic Party.

One of his first acts was to fire 11,000 air traffic controllers in 1981 — one of the most devastating union busting moves of the past century. And his vision of deregulation didn’t free the country up for entrepreneurship, it opened it up for the wholesale thievery of the savings & loan crisis. He popularized the notion that all government is bad government and in eight short years put in place the architecture for decades of GOP graft and corruption.

There’s enough hagiography of Reagan on the right, I don’t think Democrats really need to go there.

Update: Read Rick Perlstein.

I keep saying I’m going to quit doing this but then I see a, to me, fascinating bit of social commentary about our Democratic primary.

Here is one from Rachel Maddow, via Digby, on how the three candidates define change:

Hillary believes the thing that needs to be changed is that Bush needs to be out and the Democrats need to be back in there. Edwards believes the thing that needs to be changed is that the moneyed interests and the lobbyists need to be taken out of the political game. Obama believes that what needs to change is that he needs to be the president because he is a personally unifying character…Democrats are being asked whether they believe in party, in which case they should be for Hillary, if they believe in power they should be for Edwards and if they believe in personality, they should vote for Obama.