Wednesday, 16 April 2008

Budget Take 2

One of the worst aspects of the budget is the provision to release felons early from jail. The decision obviously has some prosecutors a bit concerned.

Some Kentucky prosecutors are concerned about a potential "mass exodus" of felons leaving jails and prisons in coming months because of a provision in the budget allowing nonviolent inmates to serve the last six months and possibly more of their sentences on home incarceration. Advertisement

Chris Cohron, commonwealth's attorney for Warren County and president-elect of the Kentucky Commonwealth's Attorney Association, said the proposal, part of the state's effort to save money and reduce jail crowding, is shortsighted, lacking in specifics and dangerous.

"If you open up the floodgates to these people and put them on home incarceration, it's not going to prevent them from committing new offenses," he said. "I think in the financial interest of the state, we are going to severely jeopardize public safety."

While I am very sympathetic to the concerns of the prosecutors, I also have a larger more general question. How have we gotten to the point that we can't even fulfill one of the most vital roles of government? Government only has a few roles that it must perform to maintain an orderly society. Enforcing and upholding the laws of the state are first most among them. We are a state of laws. We must enforce them and punish those who chose to break the law. We shouldn't be letting people out of jail early because we are short on money.

Taxpayer's money should go first to make sure we can uphold the law. All of the other legislator's pet projects (public education, health care, parks, etc) that government doesn't have to perform should take second stage to the full funding of our judicial system. Anything less is a gross dereliction of duty and waste of taxpayer funds.

Posted by brians at 5:16 PM in Kentucky Politics

Responses (0)

Democratic Primary for US Senate

I think it is safe to assume at this point that Lunsford will be facing Sen McConnel this weekend. The only obstacle in Lunsford's way is a blunder of colossal proportions. Take a look at the latest numbers and then I'll explain why.

Lunsford	47%
Fischer	9%
Williams	8%
Cassaro	5%
Rice	5%
Wylie	3%
Stepp	1%

Lunsford's only real rival, Fischer, is in deep trouble. I am not talking about the fact that he is statistically even with non-candidate David Williams. He has the money and resources to move his numbers significantly. Fischer's main problem is the fact that Lunsford is doing well.

I suspect that David Williams is going to finish around 10% of the vote. I imagine that the other 4 candidates are going to garner between 1-3% of the vote each. That means that 15% of the vote total will go to 5 candidates without a shot. Leaving only 85% of the vote for Fischer and Lunsford to divide. The problem for Fischer is Lunsford already enjoys a majority of the remaining votes. Therefore Fischer has to accomplish two things in the next 6 weeks. He needs to get his numbers up over 40% AND drive down Lunsford's numbers to somewhere around 40%.

There is where the paradox lies. For him to drive down Lunsford's numbers, he is going to have to go negative. The problem is it is hard to build your own numbers while going negative on an opponent. He has very little time to accomplish both tasks. All Lunsford has to do is continue to run positive adds and ignore the rest of the field. It should be easy for him to run the clock out.

Posted by brians at 4:04 PM in Kentucky Politics

Responses (0)