California Cannot Afford to House Prisoners, Yet Continues to Spend Wastefully

Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown is in hot water because California does not have the money to house all the criminals that liberal policies have drawn to the erstwhile golden state:

Escalating a dispute with the courts over California’s troubled prison system, Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday fired back at federal judges who threatened to hold him in contempt, vowing to “litigate until the Supreme Court tells us that we’re not on the right track.”

The governor, the target of a scathing ruling Thursday that gave him three weeks to file a plan for meeting a court-ordered cap on the prison population, said he cannot remove thousands more convicts from California lockups without a spike in crime. …

In January, Brown declared the prison crisis over and requested an end to court oversight of inmate healthcare, which costs the state roughly $1 billion each year. The judges, who have ruled that overcrowding caused unconstitutionally poor healthcare for prisoners, said no Thursday and wielded contempt threat.

Does this mean maybe Governor Moonbeam will be stuffed into one of his own overcrowded prisons? Unfortunately, no.

If the judges do hold Brown in contempt, that will most likely mean substantial fines against the state for every day it fails to comply with court orders, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at UC Irvine.

That is, the taxpayers will take it in the neck yet again.

Meanwhile,

A new study by the libertarian Reason Foundation finds that the California High-Speed Rail System will saddle taxpayers with losses between $124 million to $373 million a year.

Exaggerated ridership estimates and slower-than-promised trip speeds make the California bullet train project a big financial loser for taxpayers, says the study.

Here’s an idea: why not kill the politically trendy but fiscally moronic rail boondoggle and use the money to build more prisons? But you may as well ask Governor Moonbeam to stop deliberately luring into California the illegal immigrants who constitute a reported 30% of the state’s prison population. California voted to go over the cliff by electing Brown, and over the cliff it will go.

Jerry-Brown
Political lunacy incarnate.

On tips from Henry. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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