[CARTOON] California Prisons

Via California Political Review

A Difficult 2016 (For California)

2016 is shaping up to be an unpleasant year to be California’s governor. Or a legislator for that matter. Because the state might have to reckon with its bigger problems that year.

The Democrats’ fondness for temporary policies is at the root of the issue. Prop 30, the tax hike ballot initiative that has saved California (if you believe the national press), is actually based on temporary tax increases on sales and income. The sales tax increase expires that year. Without those revenues, the state budget – which remains stuck at austerity levels even with the Prop 30 increases – will look even worse. And things could look worse at the end of 2018, when the income tax increases expire.

Now comes the prison crisis, and the courts’ requirements that the state reduce its prison population to 137.5 percent of capacity. Gov. Brown proposes to do that by increasing bed capacity, but the change is only temporary. The additional bed capacity lasts only through the 2014-15 budget year.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office says that the state would need to find additional solutions by the 2015-16, creating more stress then. The administration says it would then offer a long-term plan in 2015.

It’s peculiar that state leadership is being credited for taking on the state problems and fixing California. Core problems are being kicked down the road.

This is understandable – since the budget and governing systems make it so difficult to do much more than delay. But state leaders should stop pretending that they’ve dealt with the state’s budget and governance problems.

(Joe Mathews is a Connecting California Columnist and Editor, Zócalo Public Square, Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. Originally published on Fox and Hounds.)

Via: California Political Review

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California's Dubious Course on Prison Crowding

In 1976, under the golden dome of the State Capitol in Sacramento, a governor responsive to what he later called the anti-crime "mood" of the day signed legislation significantly increasing the length of prison terms in California.

The new law scrapped indeterminate sentencing, which gave judges and parole boards wide flexibility, and replaced it with a system that imposed fixed prison terms for most crimes. California’s “determinant sentencing” statute was the beginning of a trend. Over the years, ballot initiatives and legislative actions mandated ever lengthier sentences for repeat offenders. By 2011, California housed more than 143,000 inmates in 33 prisons built for 83,000, and the Supreme Court ordered the state to reduce its prison population. Writing for the 5-4 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said California prison overcrowding had exacerbated mental illness and caused “needless suffering and death.”

California’s governor, after fiercely resisting the Supreme Court order with legal and political maneuvers, eventually reduced the prison population by more than 40,000. Mostly, this was accomplished by a process called “re-alignment,” in which those convicted of specified crimes were sent to county jails instead of state prisons. Now, the governor is balking at another federal court requiring him to release another 9,600 prisoners by year’s end.

The governor is Jerry Brown, the man who signed the determinate sentence bill in 1976. He was then the nation’s youngest governor, an eccentric and unfocused politician who earned the sobriquet of “Governor Moonbeam” from columnist Mike Royko. Judging by the debate at the time, neither Brown nor the legislators who approved the bill contemplated the possibility of prison overcrowding.

Brown subsequently mastered the gritty nuts-and-bolts of governance as a no-nonsense mayor of troubled Oakland, and California voters in 2010 gave him another chance as governor. Now 75 years old, Brown has on balance been an effective governor -- some would say an exceptional one -- the second time around. Brown notably persuaded voters to raise taxes while also making cutbacks that restored the state to fiscal solvency. Polls give him strong approval ratings; he is favored to win re-election if he runs again next year.

Even so, Brown has displayed what California journalist Richard Ehisen, who has written on prison issues, calls a “puzzling” reluctance to endorse sentencing reform at a time when states not known for their liberalism are doing just that. In 2003, Texas passed a law that substituted probation for a prison term for persons convicted of possessing less than a gram of drugs. In 2007, under conservative Republican Gov. Rick Perry, Texas allocated $241 million for drug treatment and other prison alternatives. Both inmate populations and violent crime are down in the state. Republicans also control statehouses in Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, among others, which have embraced drug rehabilitation and sentencing reform with positive results.

Via: Real Clear Politics

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Obamacare exempts millions--prisoners, illegals, welfare recipients

In just 14 months, Americans will be required to prove that they have federally "qualified" health insurance or face an Obamacare tax of $695 to $2,085. That is unless you are in prison, below the poverty line, or are an undocumented immigrant, according to the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform.

When added together, those three groups total up to one-sixth of the nation's population of 314 million: 218,929 are in federal prisons, 12 million are illegals and 42 million are below the poverty line and eligible for welfare, though some fit into all three categories, according to federal reports.

ATR highlighted the groups eligible from the mandate to get health insurance in a mock Internal Revenue Service form they developed to show the extra paperwork Americans will be required to fill out once the full Obamacare law kicks in, January 2014. It is based on testimony from the IRS given in September that said, "taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment."

Based on other IRS requirements, ATR said that Americans will have to show that they have health insurance "qualified" by the Department of Health and Human Services. They will also have to disclose if they were covered by a qualifying plan during the year and for how long. And they could be subject to penalties and interest on unpaid Obamacare taxes for periods they were not covered.

Via: Washington Examiner

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