Posted on 11/29/2005 12:47:32 PM PST by SmithL
SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge's attempt to force action on California's prison health care crisis took a new turn Monday as the judge threw the problem into the governor's lap and a legislator said she'll use confirmation hearings for corrections department brass "as a heavy hammer."
State defendants in a federal lawsuit, who include Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, have no choice but to pay for emergency reforms "the same way you find the money to build a tent to smoke cigars," said Senior U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson in a court hearing.
Henderson said he was "taking the gloves off," expressing mounting frustration over what he called "the no-can-do bureaucratic mind-set that's plagued defendants all along."
He warned state lawyers that he'll convene a hearing on a contempt motion in a few weeks unless the governor personally delegates the power to someone to cut through bureaucratic red tape.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
providing free health care to felons at a cost in the BILLIONS is certainly equivalent to building a tent.
Well, the number should decrease by one come Dec. 13th, no?
Unfortunately, too little too late.
Shows a lot of respect for taxpayers.
...and this poor prisoner needs his sex change operation now.
Trials of a trailblazer; Mill Valley festival screens film tracing path of S.F. judge
Harriet Chiang
The San Francisco Chronicle
October 7, 2005The footage is old and grainy but the black-and-white images are distinct enough. A young man in a suit is walking through a makeshift jail in Mississippi, inspecting conditions for hundreds of demonstrators arrested during the civil rights movement.
Thelton Henderson was the Justice Department's only black civil rights lawyer, serving as the eyes and ears for the Kennedy Administration during the 1960s uprising against segregation in the South. His job was to monitor local law enforcement for any civil rights abuses, a role that included investigating the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in which four girls were killed.
Still in his 20s, he got to know Martin Luther King Jr. and Andrew Young and wept at the funeral of Medgar Evers. Despite his government credentials, he was threatened, beaten and arrested.
(snip)
He admits that parts of the film were difficult to relive. The criticism he received after he struck down Prop. 209, in which he was accused by some conservatives of flouting the law, was especially hard.
"It's the most garbage decision I've ever seen," Ward Connerly, author of the measure, said after Henderson blocked enforcement of the law. A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal subsequently overturned his decision.
But that didn't stop Tom DeLay, then Republican House leader, from calling for Henderson's impeachment. "We've had judges impeached for public drunkenness," he said in the film. "Why can't we impeach judges that are drunk with power?"
Double whammy from uncontrolled immigration--first we go broke providing health care, then we go broke housing Fox's pets in prisons. While there is a lot of discussion about the costs of ER health care ($300M per year in LA county alone--just ER care)...the other burgeoning cost is warehousing criminal immigrants. A gift that just keeps on giving.
Don't be so quick. Think about it. If a Clinton or a Kennedy becomes president in next the decade or so, some of us may end up in those prisons for no other reason than being a conservative.
In which case, do you want those prisons to be complete hell holes, or do you want a chance at survival...
You cannot force people to be healthy. The kind of person you find in prison is not the kind of people who would be healthy inside or outside of prison walls. They are irresponsibile about everything and hardly models of hygene.
Joke: "What has four arms, four legs and four teeth?" Answer: "Two San Quinton inmates."
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
I don't know the details about the current "crisis" but the law has been clear for a long time that prisoners are entitled to free health care.
Whether "health care" should include exotic and costly crap like sex-change operations is a matter which cries out for prudent judgment however.
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