Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, July 19, 2013

Do We Spend More To Feed Americans Or Lock Them Up?

Budgets are about priorities and moral choices: What does a society value most? The growth of the country's food stamps rolls recently prompted Republicans in Congress to try to reduce spending on the program. But some of the same lawmakers who want to cut the food stamp program remain steadfast in their conviction that the country should not reduce spending on the country's prison system -- which costs about as much as making sure that the country's poorest people can eat.

Republicans like Rand Paul have led a bipartisan effort to reform the country's sentencing laws, partly in an attempt to cut down on government spending. Others, however, have led the charge in the opposite direction. Lamar Smith of Texas, for example, opposed a 2010 law that aimed to reduce the sentencing disparities between black and white drug offenders.

In 2010, the latest year for which data is available for corrections spending, taxpayers spent about 80 billion dollars on prisons, parole and probation -- about 12 billion more than they spent on food stamps that year and a billion more than they spent on food stamps in 2012.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com
Author: --

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