Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Cruel and Inhuman? (Just the Chipped Beef on Texas Toast)





Don't do crime in Texas (or Ohio, Arizona, or Georgia)


Every state in this country with the possible exception of Wyoming, is in a state a fiscal crisis. Budgets have been cut from just about every service and social program possible while trying to keep the Postal System afloat. Soon, Saturday deliveries may be out...yet another reason to decry the way this country is taking away the best 14% of our lives: eliminating good things on Saturday. Now the state of Texas has leaped into the budgetary reduction fray with both hands...hands that used to hold trays of food.
Texas recently joined Ohio, Arizona and Georgia in deciding to pare the state budget by eliminating one meal on weekends for those people in prison. That means on Saturday, prisoners get fed about 6 a.m. and then have to wait almost 12 hours before the next meal, only to follow the same routine on Sundays. Georgia goes one step further in eliminating one meal on Friday as well!
Texas hopes to slice 2.8 million dollars from its food budget by serving "no-cal" non-lunches on the weekend, but they have extended the punishment even further: no more milk in cartons...only powdered milk will be served. AND THERE'S MORE (OR LESS)! hot dogs and burgers will now be served on sliced bread instead of on buns! Imagine that! Just feel the bread get soggy from the condiments, rip slowly apart, and force the inmates to use more napkins to clean up (in effect, wasting money!).
Bold cost-cutting moves, indeed, and organizations that lobby for prisoners' rights have raised a hue and cry about such outlandish treatment. I suppose in a way, the prisoners have a beef: I mean, what else is there to look forward to? After all, carving minute pieces of materials into shivs or spending years tunneling a way out behind a Farrah Fawcett poster is hard work, and a guy gets powerful hungry! Chewing fingernails will take on a whole new meaning soon!
But, as State Senator John Whitmore, Chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee opines, " If they don't like the menu, don't come here in the first place."
Exactly. Do time in Wyoming. That state has lots of dough.

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