{"id":13024,"date":"2011-01-11T23:29:11","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T23:29:11","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-01-11T23:29:11","modified_gmt":"2011-01-11T23:29:11","slug":"time-to-repeal-the-death-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2011\/01\/11\/time-to-repeal-the-death-penalty\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to Repeal the Death Penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, Governor Brown announced that he would be taking 48,000 cell phones away from state employees, in order to reduce costs. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?f=\/c\/a\/2011\/01\/11\/BA661H7E1T.DTL\">Chron<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;In the face of a multi-billion dollar budget deficit, a cell phone may not seem like a big expense. But spending $20 million, and perhaps far more than that, on cell phones can&#8217;t be justified,&#8221; he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You know what would save even more money? &nbsp;Repealing the death penalty.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s exactly what the Illinois legislature did today. &nbsp;And what did they cite as the reason, beyond just innocent people being sentenced to death? &nbsp;The cost of killing people for their crimes. <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/WN\/illinois-house-votes-end-death-penalty-states-abolish\/story?id=12563165\">ABC News<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Illinois has spent over $100 million in 10 years and hasn&#8217;t put anyone to death,&#8221; said a sponsor of the Illinois bill, State Rep. Karen Yarbrough, a Democrat. &#8220;It&#8217;s time to put this barbaric practice to rest.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As states struggle to cope with major budget shortfalls and even the prospect of bankruptcy, they&#8217;re confronting the fact that sentencing someone to death is extremely expensive.<\/p>\n<p>In California, for example, a 2008 report showed that the $137 million annual cost of maintaining the criminal justice system would drop to just $11.5 million annually if the death sentence were abolished.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>$125.5 million dollars is a whole heck of a lot more than $20 million from taking away cell phones from state workers and likely reducing their effectiveness.<\/p>\n<p>What I want to know is how many kids will go without health care because the state wants to keep killing people?<\/p>\n<p>Talk about fiscal irresponsibility&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, Governor Brown announced that he would be taking 48,000 cell phones away from state employees, in order to reduce costs. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?f=\/c\/a\/2011\/01\/11\/BA661H7E1T.DTL\">Chron<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;In the face of a multi-billion dollar budget deficit, a cell phone may not seem like a big expense. But spending $20 million, and perhaps far more than that, on cell phones can&#8217;t be justified,&#8221; he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You know what would save even more money? &nbsp;Repealing the death penalty.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s exactly what the Illinois legislature did today. &nbsp;And what did they cite as the reason, beyond just innocent people being sentenced to death? &nbsp;The cost of killing people for their crimes. <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/WN\/illinois-house-votes-end-death-penalty-states-abolish\/story?id=12563165\">ABC News<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Illinois has spent over $100 million in 10 years and hasn&#8217;t put anyone to death,&#8221; said a sponsor of the Illinois bill, State Rep. Karen Yarbrough, a Democrat. &#8220;It&#8217;s time to put this barbaric practice to rest.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As states struggle to cope with major budget shortfalls and even the prospect of bankruptcy, they&#8217;re confronting the fact that sentencing someone to death is extremely expensive.<\/p>\n<p>In California, for example, a 2008 report showed that the $137 million annual cost of maintaining the criminal justice system would drop to just $11.5 million annually if the death sentence were abolished.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>$125.5 million dollars is a whole heck of a lot more than $20 million from taking away cell phones from state workers and likely reducing their effectiveness.<\/p>\n<p>What I want to know is how many kids will go without health care because the state wants to keep killing people?<\/p>\n<p>Talk about fiscal irresponsibility&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[204],"tags":[68,3573],"class_list":["post-13024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-204","tag-68","tag-3573"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3o4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}