Comment on a colleague's work

Lilian Ordonez wrote an informative commentary on her blog “Long Live Texas” about the Tulia Texas video showed in our Texas Government class. I think she did a really nice job. Lilian started of by expressing her feeling in regard to the video and then gave a brief summary of the video. Her concise summery was an essential part of her commentary. It provided the necessary information for readers, even those who might not have seen the video.

I felt the same way when watched the video. How can any human being accuse somebody else of a crime that he did not commit? What Coleman did could have destroyed many lives, not only the incarcerated many, but their family and children were affected by his accusation. The scariest thing is that those forty people arrested by Coleman could have been still in prison if not for the commentary and the public interest. 

I agree with Lilian’s statement that the undercover policeman actions were clearly racism. The proof was actually presented in the BBC video. How come out of the 43 arrest, 42 were minorities? The lack of evidence was another proof to revisit the whole case and the Coleman’s statement and background.

Original

Can a 70 year old diabetic with recently amputated limb harm anybody? That is the question that came to my mind when I thought about all the state money Texas spends caring for the elderly and sick inmates. Out of 160,000 offender prison population 8,526 are “geriatric” inmates, 55 and older. These inmates have average annual hospitalization cost of $4,700, compare to $765 for inmates under 55. When we add these numbers, the Texas correctional health care system face nearly half a billion dollar a year cost. Like many other governmental institute, this health care system is facing a budget shortfall, even after hundreds of employee layoffs. Knowing all these facts, makes me wonder why can’t there be more inmate release on medical parole?

There is a routine process where the prison doctors recommend the oldest and the sickest of the inmates for a medical parole to the State Parole Board. Over the past decade 4,000 have been offered up, but only a quarter of those inmates were released on medical parole. The rest of those terminally ill or old inmates who only have a couple of month to live die in prison on the taxpayer dime. Why can’t they go back to society, spend their last couple of month of their lives with their loved ones?

The state could actually benefit from this! I am not suggesting releasing anybody who got flu, but I’m talking about those who are “too incapacitated to be a public threat.” It is true that the Texas total prison population is not growing fast, on the other hand that population is aging quickly. With the rising health care cost, the 6 percent rise of geriatric inmates looks frightening.

It might not be the only answer, but increasing the number of release on medical parole can me a logical answer. 

Comment on a colleague's work

Samantha Johnson is the author of the Blog “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” Her recent post, legalizing guns on university campuses, is a very interesting criticism of the "guns on campus" bill. She provided the facts that she wanted to criticize in her work right at the beginning which made it a lot easier to follow her writing .

She took a clear position on the subject and backed her opinion with plenty of evidence. The author herself is a college student. I believe this makes her opinion valuable. She expressed her concern that the stress of student life plus a licensed concealed handgun is a recipe for more violence. I agree with her, I don’t like the idea of sitting by a classmate who is carrying a gun. Allowing gun on campuses not only would not provide greater safety, it would cause greater security issues.

This current Bill did not get passed, but at a great cost. It is unfortunate that Senator Wentworth desperate attempt to pass this bill in the Texas Legislature killed a potentially prosperous bill . This clearly is not what neither students nor instructors want.

Original

With the budget deficit Texas is facing the Government is willing to cut spendings everywhere. There is a debate over how the state can lower the spendings on prison facilities.  There is more than one way to achieve this goal. One approach is to lower the cost by closing down some of the older prison facilities in the rural areas that are more expensive to maintain. This may be the most reasonable approach. However, there is another way to save some money. The states can free the prisoners two or three month earlier, before they fully have served their time. Some might argue that this is a great idea because cumulatively we are gaining significant saving by letting inmates go a couple of month earlier. I on the other hand, believe releasing criminals earlier is like rewarding them it send a wrong message to them. It is as if we are praising them for their poor judgment and horrific actions. A more reasonable way to save money and not send out wrong signals is to eliminate mandatory death penalty appeals. I know it sounds cruel, but if Texas executes everyone on the death row, who pleaded guilty tomorrow that would free up 314 private leased beds. The state pays a-per-inmate per day rate for those private leased beds. One last solution is to send the international and out of state inmates back to their home. Let them serve the time in their homeland prisons where their Government has to think of deficits. Why does Texas taxpayer money has to go toward the maintenance of foreigner  criminals.

Save Money, Here and There

“Debating, praising Marc Mauer: On reducing state spending through prisoner reductions” is a commentary piece written by Scott Henson, a former journalist, for his personal blog Grits for Breakfast. Henson has worked at different magazines and newspapers including The Daily Texan for years. He also has performed many works public education. The commentary explores an interview with Marc Mauer, the head of the national Sentencing Project. Henson mostly concurs with Mauer’s ideas on how to cut prison populations and spend less money. He strongly agrees with Mauer that a reasonable approach to save money is to close down some of the older prison facilities in rural areas that are more expensive to maintain. After listening to the original interview and reading Henson’s argument, where he also explains his own reasons supporting the claim, I was convinced that closing the older facilities could save tremendous amounts of money.

Henson does not agree with all Mauer’s thoughts, for instance he disagrees with Mauer’s claim that letting only one person out of the prison is not going to save that much money. Mauer’s reason for this claim is that the fixed costs of running a prison is not going to be altered by one less inmate. Henson on the other hand, argues that the fallacy in this argument is ignoring the 11 percent of leased private beds “for which the state pays a per-inmate-per-day rate.” I agree with him on this point. A significant saving can be achieved by cutting the number of leased contract beds. This is certainly a more viable option than letting prisoners out before fully serving their time. I believe the sentence reduction is not a logical approach. This sends a wrong signal to criminals that we are rewarding poor decisions and actions. No matter how much the state will save, it is not a logical answer. This small reduction can help state to save money in short term but it certainly is not a long term solution.

"Fantasy Dressed up as Historical Facts"

The editorial board of the statesman site published an article about distortion of history by The Texas Board of Education. The Board has revised the history curriculum in spite of the warnings by numerous academics. The author condemns this act saying that quality of the Texas education is not great right now and these actions will only lower the state’s educational standards. The main concern about this dramatic change is that the world pictured in the new history textbooks will not represent the truth. I believe the fact that the board ignores the experts view is a good indication of their agenda to distort history to fit their own point of view.

One of the major historical events that are going to be eliminated from the history curriculum is the Enlightenment era. The Board of Education’s reason for such exclusion is that not to burden the Texas students. There is no reference to Thomas Jefferson or any other philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, which I find rather disturbing because the work done by those thinkers was a major contribution to the independence of United States. If we want to improve Texas education, there should be an expert quality control of the context and the structure of the documents available as textbook. We can’t ignore the historical facts that are not consistent with our viewpoint and glorify those that we approve, history is sequence of events happened in the past.    

Hunting for tax money

I have selected an article from Texas Tribune about the dispute between giant online retailer Amazon and Texas State. It all comes down to money! The Comptroller, Susan Combs says “Amazon owes $269 million in sales taxes.” The State backs its claim by pointing to the Amazon’s warehouse in Irving with 120 employees. However, the company rejects the argument that they conduct any business in the state and they emphasize that their physical presence is not the same as having a store front in Texas.

Governor Perry reads the law differently and is not on the same side as the Comptroller. His spokeswoman says that Perry’s main “concern is over losing jobs in Texas.” Nonetheless, there are jobs at stake on the other side too. Texas retailers who charge sale taxes are at disadvantage to their “out-of-state rivals.”

The rest of the article is about the different approaches to solve this problem nationwide. One of the methods to deal with this issue is to have a “click-through” law to capture a portion of online sales taxes as it is in place in New York. To have an idea why there is so much fight over this and why it is important to Texas to be able to tax out-of-state sellers the same as the in-state-sellers, the Comptroller estimates the state looses $600 million annually in online sales of tax. This would make a big difference in Texas budget gap.

This article is worth reading because it addresses issues concerning many Texas citizens, those who purchase items online. Before reading this article I was not aware of the ‘use tax’. When you buy something taxable in Texas, you owe Texas government taxes whether the seller collect them or not.