Financial Appropriation?

May 14, 2009:
"To date, $356 million has been authorized for the new CIC. The original project was designed to provide 1,408 beds which were projected to meet the CDCR’s condemned inmate population needs through 2037, but unless CDCR determines it can double-cell the inmates, the CIC will hit capacity just three years after it opens.
The state deficit is currently projected to be $15 billion. In the event the measures fail on the ballot next Tuesday, the Governor predicts the budget deficit will reach $21 billion. San Quentin is estimated to be worth upwards of $2 billion."

According to the DPIC (Death Penalty Information Center); "Using conservative rough projections, the Commission estimates the annual costs of the present (death penalty) system to be $137 million per year... The cost of a system which imposes a maximum penalty of lifetime incarceration instead of the death penalty would be $11.5 million per year."

Putting those facts together;

The California Budget Administration proposed a $215 million dollar a year budget cut for community colleges last year. Governor Schwarzenegger authorized $356 million for facilities for prisoners condemned to death row, in a system of capital punishment that is already costing the state $137 million a year.
I don't see how it makes sense to force students to drop out of college due to insufficient space, yet spend almost twice as much in a single year on death row.
How can this be allowed to happen? Where executions have taken financial precedence over education?

Homeless man quote of the day

"I'm a faithful child, but how can death be the word of god? It doesn't make sense, but then again, look around us. None of it makes sense."

This homeless man was telling me about a book involving a number of dead women in a church. He followed the description with that quote, as calm as can be, and then left the store.

I thought faith was intended to remove the need of sense? To explain the inexplicable with the simple idea that faith is all one needs for sense. It's unfortunate that faith has lost that touch. Although I don't believe, I imagine its comforting to feel that something can make sense out of nonsense. It's a shame that it doesn't anymore.

Let me begin with my thought of the day, or now, of the morning as it is 3 A.M.

California needs to appropriate more funding for our universities. When accepted students are being driven to the community college system for an education that may be by no means sub-par, is depressing as all shit and feels like an infinite loop, it creates a lack of drive for the students that are stuck there in the first place. Students that didn't get accepted into universities in the first place, or students that may need that extra income and financial aid, which is no longer available to some, to get into said universities. This may create a rift in the ideal community college pursuit – a second chance. I feel that when those who received and honest first chance are being denied; then those who seek the second cannot compete. Students who rightfully made their way into college and had the backing funds to do so are being denied. Those of us who didn't cannot continue living a second rate lifestyle, there are too many of us.
Being unable to receive an education to due the cuts, many are forced to live a 'second-rate' lifestyle. What happens with second rate lifestyles? Crime and sex. It's simple. When one cannot afford pleasantries the only thing to do is to fuck. When money is tight, unprotected sex is abundant. When money is tight, crime, too, is abundant. All of the money taken away from the university system will have to be re-appropriated through pregnancy/health programs and gun control. This attempt to save money by cutting budgets, which is now removing education, can only lead to more expensive problems in the long run. While the 5% savings may help now, in the state's future, it will only be detrimental.
Just a thought.