Crime and Punishment

Our nation's prisons are full. We're building more, and some states are sending inmates to private, commercial jail houses. This is a major expenditure of taxpayers' funds.

Don't we overdo the incarceration solution to crime? In most cases, it's no solution.

Why imprison a criminal who's not dangerous? If Don, The Swindler, never hurt anyone, then let him stay free, but make him pay hefty fines for his crimes. An inmate is not productive, except for the old making of license plates, and will only deteriorate behind bars.

Many ex-cons say that prison is a school for crime. Let allow all, except those criminals who are hazardous to our health and safety, skip that school. Such a plan would reduce the facilities and the necessary personnel by some huge amount, representing permanent and perennial savings for taxpayers.

Judges can determine who are the dangerous convicts and sentence them to prison. The other criminals can pay back their victims and society by working and relinquishing portions of their earnings as fines.

Crime requires punishment, but not always behind bars.


Thoughts While Jaywalking

* Smog hovers and covers St. George this morning. Tell the world and slow the growth.

* Florida Governor Jeb Bush is receiving attention as a potential candidate for living in the White House. We'd better do a preemptive strike to prevent any more of this. How about a law against southern governors running for president? Carter, Clinton and Bush - enough!

* President Bush said it again yesterday: "We haven't been attacked on American soil since 9/11." He might as well say: "Bring 'em on."

* The birth rate is falling in the United States, so how will fewer workers afford to pay for future Social Security recipients? They can't. Better invite the illegals in.

* Divine Strake might be strake but it won't be so divine if the wind is blowing this way.

* The U.S. Senate voted to give "us" a tax cut of $70 billion, which means a higher national debt, as you well know. There ought to be a rule: Every tax cut has to include a spending cut, and each new expenditure has to be with a raise in taxes.

* General Michael Hayden, the man President Bush nominated to head the CIA snoop & spook shop, does have the experience. He ran the controversial eavesdropping operation, which paid phone companies for customers' records. Only Qwest refused the government. The biggies - Bell South and AT&T - cooperated fully (and took the payments.) Three cheers for Qwest.

* Bring the liberators home.

* We, the people, started under a monarchy, set up a republic, drifted into democracy, then an empire, now almost an oligarchy, and a dictatorship will follow.


IT'S ALL SO SIMPLE.