Dortell Williams' Radio Broadcasts
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Dortell Williams is an inmate at the Los Angeles County California State Prison in Lancaster, California. Dortell has been published in a number of community newspapers, including the San Francisco Bay View, The Final Call and The Los Angeles Sentinel. He mentors at-risk kids through San Francisco's The Beat Within and is an inside correspondent for Families to Amend Three Strikes. You can email Dortell at: dortellwilliams@yahoo.com. For more information about the Honor Yard Program, visit: www.prisonhonorprogram.org
Who's Doing the Math?
Commentary by Dortell Williams, recorded 8/30/07
1) 3:23 MP3 Radio Essay
Who’s Doing the Math?
Copyright 2007/ Dortell Williams
After a near two-month stalemate, the people at the top have passed a $145 billion state budget; and once again, it’s the people at the bottom who are fated to suffer.
Lawmakers say they need to trim the edges of exiting funds by about $700 million in social services. In other words, the poor are about to take one heckava hit.
Cuts – deep cuts – could be made curtailing critical services like transportation -- $200 million there. Bus fares could rise, crippling the poor. Cost of living allowances for already low-income seniors; the blind and disabled – even kids – could all be victims of the state’s calloused crosshairs. Without question, California’s most vulnerable are under attack; asked to make big sacrifices… for what?
It seems the legislature wants to give $500 million in tax breaks to the motion picture industry. Why? Or at least why now? Business incentives are all good, but off the backs of the poor? Please!
Are they so out of touch they don’t see the weekly box office earnings? They’re off the charts! Personally, I don’t foresee Tinsel Town going hungry, or without medicine critical for life anytime soon. The people who rely on social services aren’t living; they’re subsisting, struggling, surviving.
In an epitome of shortsightedness, the legislature also wants to eliminate Proposition 36, the successful drug-court program that gives the poor and ordinary citizen the second chance that we so often see celebrities get.
For the prison industry, this type of backward logic makes for celebration. Without drug diversion to counter the booming illicit drug demand, prisons are guaranteed to swell. Right in time for A.B. 900, you know, the $745 billion bill that was quietly passed, in April, behind closed doors and without public comment.
Under A.B. 900, Californians will pay $283,000 per cell. We’d do better to buy all the homeless a one-time condo and be done with it. Friends committee on Legislation (orFCL) says the 53,000 new beds will cost taxpayers $15 billion with interest by the end of the day. Leaves a sour taste in your mouth, huh? Wait till it’s time for your wallet to try and digest that.
One the other hand, there’s Prop. 36, for which Californian’s happily pay $120 million annually. I say happily because the measure passed in 2000 by an impressive 61 percent of the vote. In return the drug courts save taxpayers $245 million a year, according to FCL. And the legislature wants to eliminate it!
Who’s doing the math here?
But it doesn’t end there: Due largely to mismanagement in hiring, training and sick-time abuse, prison guards snatched up $453 million in overtime last year, according to the Associated Press. And the San Jose Mercury News (February 15, 2000) says prison guards use 72 hours of sick leave a year, more than twice the 31 hours of sick leave Officers of the California Highway Patrol average.
Rather than the poor and vulnerable, it seems there’s some others that could really stand to make some sacrifices, huh?
Update:
Senate Bill 299 sailed unscathed through the Senate Public Safety Committee, the Senate Public Safety Commission, Senate Appropriations and the full Senate. The bill is scheduled to go before the Assembly Public Safety Committee, August 31st, where it is expected to hit turbulence. Old fashioned, traditional letters are requested of the public for legislative supporters of the bill to offset expected opposition.
Dortell Williams is an inmate at the Los Angeles County California State Prison in Lancaster, California. Dortell has been published in a number of community newspapers, including the San Francisco Bay View, The Final Call and The Los Angeles Sentinel. He mentors at-risk kids through San Francisco's The Beat Within and is an inside correspondent for Families to Amend Three Strikes. You can email Dortell at: dortellwilliams@yahoo.com. For more information about the Honor Yard Program, visit: www.prisonhonorprogram.org
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