The SacBee reports that Tough On Crime types are trotting out the same symbols that Lee Atwater used in 1988 to sink a Democratic Presidential candidate.

Willie Horton’s shadow haunts the Capitol as lawmakers wrestle with how to cut $1.2 billion from state prisons without endangering public safety.

More than two decades after Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush used televised ads of murderer Horton to paint presidential opponent Michael Dukakis as soft on crime, state GOP lawmakers are slapping Democrats with a similar charge over proposed prison cuts.

The politically explosive issue, coupled with opposition from some law enforcement groups, is making many Democrats jittery – especially those with aspirations for higher office.

I’m hearing that a lot of this nonsense is being pushed by astroturf front groups for the prison guard’s union.  And considering that Horton was the kind of violent offender who would be exempted from any changes in the law under the plan on offer, it’s simply baseless.  But this may be more about getting prison guard money and law enforcement support in future elections.  But it has the effect of legitimizing the kind of nonsense that has destroyed our prison system, given us the highest recidivism rate in the nation, put the prison health care system in the hands of a federal receiver due to Constitutional violations, and drawn a demand from federal judges to reduce the population by 44,000.

And it’s working, of course.

Bass proposes to eliminate a provision in the Senate-passed plan that has attracted the most intense opposition.

Known as “alternative custody,” the controversial proposal would allow the release of up to 6,300 low-level, nonviolent inmates who are elderly, medically infirm, or have less than a year remaining on their sentences.

Inmates released under the plan would be subject to electronic monitoring under “house arrest,” which could include placement in a residence, local program, hospital or treatment center.

Because blind people with one leg are dangers to society, and we should spend more money warehousing them than we do on the average higher education student.  Makes perfect sense.  Not to mention the fact that the judges will probably release these same offenders anyway, as part of the federal mandate.

The real fear is that the Assembly will water down the sentencing commission so that lawmakers will have to affirmatively pass their recommendations into law instead of having to pass legislation to prevent those recommendations from being enacted.  Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, running for Attorney General, basically says in the piece that he wants such a change.  It’s a subtle but important difference; essentially the recommendations will be easier to kill under the weakened standard.  And so we continue the endless Tough On Crime march that has put us into a ditch.

Meanwhile, as John Myers notes, intransigence on sensible prison reform will simply increase the eventual budget deficit:

Then there’s the never-ending state budget blues. The original prison plan, when added to February’s budget cuts and gubernatorial plans to reduce prison spending, was a $1.2 billion part of the deficit solution written into law; the original bill, alone, was estimated to save as much as $600 million. But that was with those alternatives to prison cell custody and fewer crimes resulting in felony one-way tickets to the joint. The ‘Plan B’ version, say staffers, may come up as much as $200 million short (and that’s assuming all of the original savings estimated were valid).

In some years, a $200 million gap in the California state budget may not be the end of the world. But this is no ordinary year; cuts a fraction of that size are forcing all kinds of shutdowns of state services. And if this plan becomes the new way to go on prisons, it’s going to leave a lot of budget watchers — and Californians — wondering what happens next.

Democrats are wrong if they think they can finesse the right into taking the charge that they are “coddling murderers” off the table.  Just look at eMeg, claiming that a sentencing commission would reverse three strikes, about as factual a charge as Sarah Palin’s “death panels.”  They’ll always be smeared, so they might as well do the right thing for once.

If the Capitol Weekly is going to have a right-wing corporate shill on their editorial pages, the least they could do is get a good one.  Because I don’t know where anyone, even John Kabateck of the National Federation of Independent Business, gets the cajones, after the legislature just passed a cuts-only budget completely on the backs of poor people, to fret about the plight of possible taxes for the business community.

“Get the monkey off your back and relocate to Las Vegas”, barks a new ad trying to lure hard-working small businesses away from California. If legislators don’t listen, small businesses that have already been hit hard by the effects of a fragile economy and the billions in taxes that were passed earlier this year will go under.

Um, right, this “rich people and businesses are leaving California” Galt-ism is not true and has never been true.  But do go on.

The Legislature is back and up to its old tricks. The budget that was passed in February and revised in July will need to be “fixed” again this fall. If history is our guide, we all know that it will be an uphill battle and an unpleasant environment for small businesses. There are currently $2 billion in tax hikes being proposed, including taxes on everything from gas, internet purchases and vehicle license fees.

Oh noes!  Oil companies might have to pay for the natural resources they take out of California’s ground for the first time in a century of drilling!  Get the smelling salts!  The vehicle license fee might return to still-well-below-the-average-percentage relative to every state in the nation!  This is terrible!

You’ll notice that Kabateck fails to mention the $2.5 billion annually in corporate tax cuts passed in the previous two budget agreements, which miraculously exceed the tax hikes – beaten back by the Yacht Party and the Governor in July – about which he is fretting so.  These massive corporate tax cuts do nothing to keep the largest corporations in America doing business in California – they would hardly abandon a market of 38 million people.  It’s nothing more than a kickback for services rendered.  And if that’s a transaction of prostitution, then John Kabateck is the guy who cleans up the courtesan’s antechamber afterward, eager to grab a buck for himself for the privilege of working for whores.

It’s amazing how little the California office of the National Federation of Independent Business speaks for independent business.  He could have written a nice little article about how corporate behemoths are screwing small businesses when it comes to state purchasing, which currently favors out-of-state multinationals.  Instead, he offers the party line that the structural revenue gap is fine and leaving citizens out on the street to die is a small price to pay for protecting oil and cigarette companies.  Kabateck doesn’t seem to understand that this mentality is destroying the California economy, and with it all of those small businesses he claims to represent.

Hacktackular job, CapWeekly!  With any luck, you’ll get Jon Coupal or Joel Fox to offer a rebuttal.

Whether it’s the continued foreclosure crisis, the impact of state budget cuts or the cumulative effect of depressed consumer spending, it’s now extremely clear that the state’s employment picture shows no sign of bottoming out, reaching an all-time high in the post-war period.

California’s unemployment rate took an unexpected leap in July, reaching a post-Word War II high of 11.9%. The increase contrasts with the national rate, which declined slightly over the same period, and reflects ongoing weakness in the state’s battered construction and financial services industries.

The state lost a net 35,800 jobs last month, more than any other state, the U.S. Labor Department said today. It has lost 760,200 jobs over the last year.

Every category of nonfarm jobs in the state except education and health services experienced year-over-year losses. The construction sector was the hardest hit, shedding 18.6% of its jobs. Manufacturing jobs fell 8.7% from the same time last year.

Job loss did slow relative to the previous two months.  But I don’t think anybody believes that 11.9% is a floor.  Los Angeles, where the jobless rate jumped 0.7% in just a month, is one of the worst big cities to find a job in America.  The city has 15,000 homeless veterans.  And areas of the Central Valley and the Inland Empire are in far worse shape.  It’s basically a depression in those parts.

And we are just starting to add a round of painful state budget cuts to increase the economic shortfall.  Whether it’s closing parks that provide economic benefits, or dropping or cutting aid to 100,000 IHSS recipients, or wiping out the entire domestic violence budget, the cuts will not only force the poor and infirm to slip through the cracks and cause mass suffering and even death, but the economic impact will be profound.  Caregivers will lose their jobs.  Relatives will shift their schedules to care for their families.  Productivity will reduce.  It’s just a plain fact that lowering public spending during a deep recession will negatively impact the economy.  Consumers aren’t spending, companies aren’t trading and businesses aren’t investing.  Government is the spender of last resort.  And that spending has been slashed.

I honestly don’t know where the bottom is.

So the modest prison reform deal between legislative leaders and the Governor stalled out in the Assembly last night, and the chamber adjourned for the weekend.  Not enough Democrats could be convinced to support the deal, particularly the ones with designs on statewide office or in perceived swing districts.

Let’s explain right away what this says about the broken legislative process in Sacramento.  It’s infuriating that the bill was rushed to the floor without the votes on the Assembly side and without any kind of education campaign to explain the stakes to the public.  Federal judges will release 44,000 prisoners.  We can either do it smartly or stupidly.  There is no other choice.

We knew that $1.2 billion in prison budget cuts had to be allocated for a month.  This plan was, in fact, pretty much in place for a month.  Did anyone in leadership say a word about it?  Did they whip their caucus?  Did they explain that without this, a federal judge will use a potentially haphazard process to release prisoners without any reforms, and even if the legislature tries to shift the blame, THEY WILL BE BLAMED ANYWAY because citizens habitually view the legislature as the source of most of the state’s troubles?

Instead, the debate gets ruled by Yacht Party misinformation:

Sen. John Benoit, R-Palm Desert, spoke in favor of shutting down some juvenile jails instead of freeing inmates since the population of younger offenders has dropped. “It’s a shame we’re doing this in such a hurry,” he said.

And Sen. Mimi Walters, R-Laguna Niguel, spoke out for cutting rehabilitation money rather than letting prisoners out. “The immediate safety of the public must take precedence,” she said.

Not only does it do that (overcrowding has led to the lack of space for rehabilitation and treatment programs and the nation’s highest recidivism rate, which leads to additional needless crime), but the package put together by the legislature WOULD do that.  Schwarzenegger’s line-item reductions as part of this deal would cut $180 million in rehab and treatment programs, which is completely insane.  That said, the sentencing commission that would come to fruition in this bill is quite important, and those Democrats in the Assembly holding it up are rank cowards who don’t have no belief in the value of their own ideas.  Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod does:

Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod said, “Do you all live in a parallel world?” She said federal authorities that have found California prisons too overcrowded are going to use their power to release prisoners and that it would be preferable for the state to have control over that process.

“I trump each and everyone of you with children and grandchildren. And you know what? I’m not scared,” she said, referring to several GOP senators’ references to how they feared for their children’s safety.

Still, in the end this is a process problem.  The backroom dealmaking made by legislative leaders who have no sway over their caucuses leads to embarrassing results like this.  The power of special interests leads to calculations that changes must be made in the dead of night, and the power of money in politics means that fear can rule over hope.  Individual cowardly lawmakers in thrall to Tough On Crime thinking led us down this road, but a broken government certainly keeps us there.  And it’s not, as this shows, just about 2/3.

…I’m hearing that “Crime Victims United,” a front group for the prison guard’s union which has never received one donation from anyone else, claimed sex offenders would get early release despite being exempted specifically in the bill.  They out and out lied, and would have done so in ads in lawmakers’ districts.  Crime Victims United should be investigated by the FPPC and disbanded.  They’re an astroturf group using fear and falsehoods to shield a protected class from having to give back their largesse from the state treasury.  Ultimately, this is about cowardice on the part of lawmakers, but the influence of money plays a big role.

Among the sketchiest of budget solutions passed last month was the plan to sell the State Compensation Insurance Fund for $1 billion dollars.  This would be a perfect plan, if anybody actually wanted to buy it.  But they don’t, and so later this year, there will be this $1 billion dollar hole in the budget, and oh-so-sincere Yacht Party types will assume that it’s just the cause of overspending, or something.

“This isn’t going to happen any time in the next three to four years because there would be one court case, if not many,” said Frank Neuhauser, a University of California, Berkeley, researcher and expert on workers’ compensation. “There’s no money coming from this in the short term that would resolve a budget problem. I think it’s no better than smoke and mirrors.”

The list of problems with the proposed sale is long.

The authorizing bill requires that State Fund’s board of directors agree that assets identified by the state are appropriate to sell. Whether that gives the board veto power is already under dispute, a key point since the board opposes any sale.

The board’s right, by the way, since the only way you could sell off any of the assets of the worker’s compensation insurer of last resort is by selling off low-risk policies to private interests, essentially saddling the SCIF with the worst policies and driving premiums up.  This from the Governor who supposedly “slashed” worker’s comp.

Meanwhile, there’s this inconvenient set of facts:

A major question is whether the state even owns State Fund assets. Policyholders likely would argue that the assets belong to them, not the state.

When Colorado lawmakers this year attempted to take $500 million from its workers’ compensation fund, Colorado’s attorney general concluded the money was not the state’s to take and would incur extensive litigation. A Utah judge in 2005 ruled that Utah likewise had no ownership in its workers’ compensation fund “other than as a policyholder.”

“I don’t see where that money is the state’s to take,” said Neuhauser, the UC Berkeley workers’ compensation expert. “When the reserves are more than necessary, they are given back as dividends. I’ve always thought of that as the employers’ money and never understood how it’s possible the state could sell it.”

We see here, once again, the practice of breaking the law to balance the budget.  Because the Yacht Party refuses to properly fund government, and because the current rules allow them a minority veto, the only avenues left are raiding special funds and illegal or unworkable gimmicks.  It’s a budget built of straw.

(By the way, John Chiang, attributing the problem to “irresponsible spending” doesn’t really help matters)

More details have emerged about the prison reform legislation both houses of the Legislature will take up tomorrow, and according to multiple sources, it will include a sentencing commission, a major victory for reformers if it passes.

Legislative Democrats will push a commission to create a new system for prison sentences as part of Democrats’ prison overhaul plan, which will be voted on the floor of both houses Thursday.

The commission, which has been pushed for by liberal Democrats for years, has been a major rift between Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in recent years. But changes made this week over who controls the commission seem to have the governor’s OK […]

Under a draft proposal circulating in the Capitol Wednesday, the new commission would be called the California Public Safety Commission. The panel would consist of 13 members, including the corrections secretary, chief justice of the state Supreme Court and the state public defender. The governor would make eight appointments to the board. The chief justice would make the other two appointments, both of whom must be retired judges.

The bill calls for the commission to present a new set of parole and sentencing rules to the Legislature by June 1, 2012.

I don’t really like the Governor controlling 8 of the 13 appointments, just for balance-of-power reasons.  But if that’s the price of support, and if it truly will make recommendations based on the law and the data, I can live with it.  And remember, the commission wouldn’t produce findings until June 2012.  In the interim we will have a new Governor who could make alternative commission recommendations.  

Most important, having an independent commission whose rules would have the force of law unless repealed by the legislature (a much more lasting solution than if they have to positively endorse them with a vote) does really change the game around sentencing in California.  It may not work perfectly, but it could really make a difference, and the alternative is the legislature adding one sentencing increase after another as they have done for the last 30 years, and a prison system collapsing under its own weight, as the Governor said today.

Now, I don’t agree with all the aspects of prison reform as laid out by the Governor and the Legislature (here’s the bill).  I think reducing funding for rehabilitation, educational and vocational training programs by $175 million, as called for in the part of the legislation the Governor will enact by line-item appropriation, is insane and completely counter-productive.  And I don’t see how lowering reimbursement rates for doctors and nurses operating in the prisons, at a time when prison health care is in the hands of a federal receiver, is even legal.  But the sentencing commission is crucial enough, and some of the other reforms similarly salutary (like ending blanket parole supervision and concentrating on those with the most serious offenses, or increasing early release credits for those who meet rehabilitation milestones), that I have to accept at least what the Legislature is doing, if not the Governor (most of the bad stuff are in his line items).

The Legislature and Governor are splitting the work here to make the $524 million in cuts more palatable to potential “tough on crime” lawmakers wary of the vote.  Greg Lucas thinks that Democrats may not have the votes in the Assembly.

There are 50 Democrats in the lower house. A bill reducing prison spending requires 41 votes. That allows Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, a Los Angeles Democrat, to give “passes” to nine of her members.

Certainly four Democrats Bass would allow not to vote on the bill are those targeted for defeat in 2010 by Republicans – the incumbents of Assembly Districts, 10, 15, 78 and 80.

They are, respectively: Alyson Huber of El Dorado Hills, Joan Buchanan of Alamo, Marty Block of San Diego and Mannie Perez of Coachella.

Certainly the three Assembly members running for Attorney General would want to be spared from having to vote for the bill. The Attorney General is commonly perceived as being California’s “Top Cop.”

They are: Ted Lieu of Torrance, Pedro Nava of Santa Barbara and Alberto Torrico of Fremont.

In June, Fresno Assemblyman Juan Arambula, a moderate Democrat, re-registered as an independent. In July, he voted with his former Democratic colleagues to close an estimated $24 billion hole in the budget. But whether that willingness extends to prison cuts that will release more parolees into his Central Valley district is uncertain.

Among other Democrats, casting a perceived “anti-public safety” vote would not be a popular in the districts of Cathleen Galgiani of Tracy and Anna Caballero of Salinas.

The governor holds little or no sway with Assembly Republicans so the odds are against him convincing any GOP lawmakers to vote for the bill. That leaves Speaker Bass with a math problem.

We MUST get enough of these Assemblymembers to vote for any bill with a sentencing commission.  Gloria Romero’s sentencing commission bill in 2007, which was better, died in the Assembly, with help from many of these people.  If Karen Bass can knuckle down on her caucus to vote for disastrous cuts to the social safety net, she can find enough to pass the widest-reaching reform package in prisons in 30 years.  If you’re in the districts of any of these lawmakers, contact them NOW and tell them to vote Yes on ABX3 14.

Alyson Huber (AD-10) (Calitics raised a fair bit of money for her)

Joan Buchanan (AD-15) (Does she want to win a liberal primary for Congress?)

Marty Block (AD-78)

Manuel Perez (AD-80) (Calitics raised a fair bit of money for him)

Ted Lieu (AD-53)

Pedro Nava (AD-35)

Alberto Torrico (AD-20)

Cathleen Galgiani (AD-17)

Anna Caballero (AD-28)

They don’t have to give in to the Tough on Crime mentality which has destroyed our prison system.  They can look toward a better future, with sensible policy that saves money and makes Californians safer.

(Disclaimer: I have been hired as a blog fellow for Brave New Films and their Sick For Profit campaign, exposing billionaire health insurance CEOs and their profiting off of denying care.  Join the campaign on Facebook)

It’s a little shocking that the story of health insurance CEO largesse hasn’t been told, by and large, by the Congress in the debate over health care reform.  The debate has covered public options and “death panels” and Nazi comparisons and cost curves without addressing the fact that for-profit health insurance companies add almost nothing of value to access or quality of care and exist only to skim off the top and keep as much of their premiums as possible.  And they rake in giant profits at the same time.  Now Henry Waxman, no stranger to Congressional investigations, wants to put a dollar sign on those profits, specifically what money goes where.

Two powerful House Democrats have sent a letter to insurance companies asking them to provide detailed information about their conferences and retreats, executive pay, and other business practices […]

The Waxman-Stupak letter asks companies to provide, by mid-September, the compensation packages of any employee or officer who made more than $500,000 in any year from 2003 to 2008. It also asks the companies to list all their board members and their compensation.

The congressmen also want information “listing all conferences, retreats or other events held outside company facilities from January 1, 2007, to the present.”

In addition, the letter demands more basic information, such as the companies’ total revenues, net income, and total dividend payments, as well as premium revenue, sales expenses and profits.

It seems like, especially considering the prominence of the subject of health care over the past few months, this should be public information.  Here’s the full letter.

We already have a pretty good understanding of the profits of the insurance companies, as well as the rewards of their CEOs, in salary, options, and additional perks.  That was the subject of Sick For Profit, which in the first installment exposed Steven Helmsley, the CEO of United Health Group, and his $13.2 million in compensation in 2007, his $6 million dollar home in Minnesota, and his $744 million in unexercised stock options ($127 million of which he exercised in 2009).  But Waxman asking for this information puts it into an investigation.  And that gives it a different feel.  He can use subpoena power.  He can haul the CEOs before the committee.  He is in the best position to contrast the 47 million people without health insurance, and the 40 million who are underinsured, with these obscene profits.

This could get interesting.

Via Joe Mathews, here’s yet another powerful piece of evidence that the Yacht Party scaremongering over how high taxes force people to leave California is a load of fertilizer.

TALLAHASSEE — For the first time since the end of World War II, the growth state of Florida lost population, researchers say, in a sign that the economic recession is even worse than many had feared.

In all, the state lost about 58,000 people from April 2008 to April 2009, according to a new estimate from the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research.

“It’s such a dramatic shift from what we’ve seen in the past,” said Stan Smith, the bureau’s director.

“Florida’s economy is, in a lot of ways, driven by population growth,” he said. “Perhaps more importantly, population growth is a reflection of how the economy is doing both in Florida and in the nation.”

It goes without saying here that Florida has no state income tax.

Attributing population shifts to taxes is about as rational as attributing student test scores to rain.  If you want to correlate populations and the economy, the Occam’s razor explanation would be that people go where the jobs are.  And I would add that people who cannot find a job probably won’t stay around a place long if the social safety net is vaporized.

The lack of political media in the state allows urban legends like this to take hold through the only outlets left, right-wing radio and persistent rumor.  You get the falsehoods you pay for listening to such garbage.  If we had 100 Peter Schrags in the media and twice that in the Democratic Party leadership forcefully rebutting such misinformation and making the value-based case for the kind of progressive government they’d like to see, at least there would be a counterweight.  But it’s hard to argue something with nothing.

(I’m putting some of Schrag’s article below the fold, because it’s brilliant and a great resource for arguing with friends and neighbors.  Read the whole thing.)

But the truth is far more complicated. California’s tax burden – total state and local taxes as a percentage of personal income –is just slightly higher than the U.S. average and ranks 17th among the states. In personal income and corporate taxes we’re high among the states. In property and sales taxes we’re low.

The same goes for spending. According to a recent analysis by the California Budget Project, California’s expenditures as a percentage of personal income ranked 22nd among the states in 2007-8 — they’ll probably rank far lower in the current fiscal year. Our school spending per-pupil is well below the national average and our spending on highways is near the bottom. National experts rate California’s highways, once the national model, as among the most congested and in the worst condition of any state in the nation.

We are among the biggest spenders on corrections, thanks to three-strikes and other rigid mandatory sentencing laws and the power of the prison guards’ union. But even so, the state now faces a federal court order to reduce its prison population by some 40,000 inmates – roughly 25 percent of the total — because its overcrowded correctional institutions lack the resources to give them even minimally adequate medical care. Our spending on pensions for cops and firefighter is past obscene.

But while mythology says – as it probably does everywhere — that the state staggers under a bloated workforce of bureaucrats and other public employees, California has the second lowest ratio of public employees per capita in the nation. And of course there is the persistent mythology, discussed several times before in this space – that high taxes are driving affluent individuals and job-producing businesses to Arizona, Nevada, Texas and other states. That, too, according to studies by the Public Policy Institute of California, is mostly myth.

The short-term fights are starting to be VERY short-term.  Following up on an earlier item, Democrats in the legislature plan to hold a vote on prison reform as early as Thursday, that would clarify $1.2 billion dollars in cuts.  And they don’t need any Republican votes to do it.

Over objections from Republican lawmakers, the Legislature plans to take up a majority-vote prison package Thursday that is designed to reduce the state’s inmate population by 27,300 and is backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The overall package would save $1.2 billion in part by reducing certain property crimes to misdemeanors, placing low-level parolees on global positioning system monitoring and sending older, infirm prisoners to house arrest or medical facilities to serve the final 12 months of their sentences.

The initial plan included an independent sentencing commission that could report back on changes to the runaway sentencing laws at the heart of the prison crisis.  I don’t see that mentioned in this article, or anywhere else.  Hopefully that remains part of the solution.  And like the rest, lawmakers can enact it on a majority-vote basis (which means that the solutions wouldn’t take effect for 90 days).  Darrell Steinberg reiterated his support today.

“I’m confident we’ll have the votes,” said Steinberg, who will caucus with Democrats tomorrow

Steinberg said the Senate would vote on the governor’s plan, but with slight modifications to clarify which elderly and infirm inmates could be eligible for alternative custody and release.

“The intent has never been to carte blanche release any inmates, elderly, infirm inmates,” he said. “It never has been, but there has been some concern expressed, so we want to make sure that there are very tight criteria that would even allow for the possibility of allowing elderly and infirm inmates to be released.”

I prefer the People’s Budget Fix, which would stop putting nonviolent drug offenders in overcrowded prisons, focus on reducing recidivism through rehabilitation and treatment, institute risk-based parole supervision rather than blanket supervision that inevitably raises the rates of recidivism (often on technical violations of parole), and address the most ineffective areas of the criminal justice system – the burdensome, brutal three strikes law, and the death penalty.  The People’s Budget Fix coalition held a rally today.  You can hear Leland Yee speaking about it here and here.

And I hope they keep fighting.  I hope we have a sane criminal justice policy caucus in the legislature as a counterweight to the tough on crime troglodytes.  But while the Democratic/Schwarzenegger package isn’t perfect, but it’s the first step in the right direction in 30 years.  Particularly if the sentencing commission is included in the package, it will be historic and very important.  We will finally end the long march of building more prisons and warehousing inmates without giving them the tools to actually rehabilitate themselves and become productive members of society, and toward a future where we spend less, create more productive citizens and actually make our state safer.