Build Date: Thu Dec 26 09:50:16 2024 UTC
Last night I had a bottle of sake, a pint of Guinness, a martini, and a glass of wine. And this morning I feel fine! Sometimes the hangover gods just give you a free pass.
-- Siduri
Time to Put the Governor in Jail
2003-01-13 18:01:52
With an estimated 35 Billion (that's a illion with a "B") budget deficit looming over the state of California, Gov. Gray Davis has been forced to slash just about every conceivable program in existence to meet the state’s constitutionally mandated balanced budget requirement. Every program regardless of merit, from schools, to roads, to agricultural advertising campaigns in Central Africa will share the pain. Every program that is, except the Department of Corrections.
Most states, when faced with a massive deficits, resort to paroling low grade, non-violent felons in order to maintain the most basic level of funding for critical programs, figuring it is better to let out some harmless drug users than let some crippled orphans starve. But not so with Governor Davis, where he actually increased funding in the Department of Corrections in order to build more prisons, while slashing aid everywhere else. That's right, he wants to build more prisons. What kind of leadership is that? The State of California already has the one of the highest incarceration rates in the country with the highest incarceration rate in the "free" world. And one of the worst recidivism rates in all of human history.
So instead of figuring out how to keep people out of prison, which is not only cheaper, but far more humane, Davis is quite happy to just build more prisons.
Which is strange for a liberal. (Not that I think of Davis as a liberal anymore.)
But not so strange if you look at where the money comes to fund his election campaigns. The biggest monetary contributor to Davis is the California Prison Guard Union. So for an investment of some 3 million dollars, the prison guards are the only state employees not worried about a salary cut next year, and they get to staff a new prison.
Which all smacks of corruption and vote buying. As far as I’m concerned, Davis only needs to add enough money to the Department of Corrections to build one new prison cell next year... his.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
Australian Troops Set for Days of Debauchery to the Tunes of Kylie Minogue
This weekend Australian troops in East Timor will be able to put their feet up and push all the images of mass graves and charred remains from their minds as they relax to the giddy melodies of Kylie Minogue - including exclusive unplugged performances in the militia-ravaged and blood-spattered border towns of Balibo and Suai. (More...)
First there was the Bloody Mary: Vodka, Tomato Juice, Worcestershire sauce, some spices, and celery. We drank it, and it was good. Then any drink with tomato juice got a prefix of "bloody" attached to it. We drank them, and they were mostly bad. Now Pigdog gets back to basics and introduces The Bloody Dog, a drink with REAL BLOOD in it. HUMAN BLOOD. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
Vacationing from Somnambulant Narrow Realities
So about six months ago, I was chilling in Chang Mai, Thailand with ICBINJ, perursing the Bangkok Times over my banana pancake and Big Chang breakfast when I spotted this article reprinted from the LA Times. It was about some kooks from California (where else?) who were claiming to have been to the front lines in Afgahnistan in mid-December and had recorded the whole feat on their website. "Holy Fuck!" I thought, "Now That's web journalism. Who are these guys!?" (More...)
I just came across this coolio essay by Pigdog Journal Science Editor binky wedged between two staves in the back corner of the submissions barrel. It's on the origin of the cyberbilly and is definitely de rigeur for any serious student of this fascinating sociological movement. (More...)
Spock Went, Spock Wrote, Spock Kicked Ass
Every Labor Day weekend a large portion of the PDJ staff joins 30,000 other freaks at one of the biggest and strangest art festivals in the world - Burning Man - somewhere on the edge of the Black Rock Desert. Our base of operations is always the ultra swank Spock Mountain Research Labs - the World Leaders in Beverage Science and Leisure Technology. This year, we hauled up our computers, printers and a massive digital duplicator, determined to become Black Rock City's third daily newspaper. Even Spock was surprised by our success - news will never be viewed the same on the playa. Read all seven issues of the 2002 Spock Science Monitor for yourself and see why. (More...)
