I read somewhere about a state where the sheriffs had to pay for the prisoners food, and got a $3 or $4 daily allowance, if there is extra the sheriff can pocket it. In that state, even though the food allowance has not gone up in years, the Sheriffs all seem to find creative ways to keep the costs down and feed the prisoners while enriching themselves.

It’s where I live – Morgan County, Alabama.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/us/09sheriff.html

The food allowance is $1.75/day/prisoner. AL state law allows the sheriff to keep whatever is leftover after feeding the inmates. Over the last three years (06-08), Sheriff Bartlett kept $212k, including $100k last year (08) alone.

Disgusting.

I read somewhere about a state where the sheriffs had to pay for the prisoners food, and got a $3 or $4 daily allowance, if there is extra the sheriff can pocket it. In that state, even though the food allowance has not gone up in years, the Sheriffs all seem to find creative ways to keep the costs down and feed the prisoners while enriching themselves.

I think that is the answer. Find ways to get our legislators, and senior members in departments to share in the take when costs go down.

Yeah, I’d like to see laws passed that required budget officials to actually rank all expenditures on a simple scale, 1-5, with one being “of little import” and five being “of great import”, then publish those lists for viewing. Provide reasonable avenues for legal challenge in the courts by the public as to the import being applied, with budgetary officials being sacked permanently if too many of their importance figures get overturned.

Then, from that point on, all budget cuts must be allocated, in order, 25% of the budgets of tier-1 stuff, then of any remaining cuts, 25% more from tier-1, and 25% from tier-2, then, if more still must be cut, 25, 25, and 25 from tiers 1,2,3 in that order (i.e., you cut 50% of T1 before you cut anything from T3), and so on, until the necessary budgetary needs have been met.

It unfortunately appears needful that we make this into law, just because it’s quite apparent that government officials just can’t do the job responsibly.

>:-/

.

http://emend.appspot.com/sites/www.coyoteblog.com/edits/0

AS I pointed out earlier about the myths about education, the average person believes that there is some sort of multiplier effect in first sending their money away to Washington DC and then receiving some of it back. In some ways this is a correct view, but the multiplier can only come from the federal government taking on debt or printing money. The true real capital impact is zero.

But this is a myth the voters believe and from my experience they cannot be convinced otherwise.

Likewise, the average employee believes that their health insurance coverage from their employer has some sort of multipling impact. They cannot be convinced that receiving an equivalent after tax income amount would make them better off. Most people believe that health care coverage is VERY expensive. From my experience if you ask a person what they could get a reasonable individual policy for, lets say a $2500 deductible Blue Cross/Blue Shield in my home state of Minnesota, they will estimate that it will cost 3-4 times more than the actual cost. The reason for this is that the information they receive through media is so slanted they simply do not know reality.

The French Revolution comes to mind.

The only ‘product’ of government is bureaucracy,

and it will do everything it can to protect it’s ‘productivity’……