Years ago all former NOLA public schools became charter schools (after hurricane Katrina, the state took them over and then converted them to charters).
The governor proposed last month to give ~$5k per year to all parents for private schools or home schooling (without limit on income) and said it could be paid for with massive cuts to public schools. So they haven’t ended public schools yet, but they would
eta:
Looks like destroying public schools is too far even for LA republicans. Yesterday afternoon about the time I posted this, they decided to hit the brakes on the plan
What was that old quote about dreaming of a world where schools get all the funding they need, but the air force needs to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber?
Norway is the great examplar of a society with a softer criminal justice system which produces far better results than the Old Testament retribution model pursued in a lot of the US.
Their police must have a bachelor’s degree to even apply for training. They carry guns locked in their patrol cars, rather than on their hips. The prisons would review favourably with budget hotels in many countries.
Yet somehow I feel these factors are a result of factors in Norwegian society, rather than a cause.
I was thinking the same thing. I wonder if he gets to be in a slightly less shitty prison or one closer to family. A life sentence in Louisiana & never having another orgasm is about as bleak as I could imagine in the US prison system.
I meant to say bleak in terms of prison sentences, not in terms of the awful things that happen to people in US prisons. But you’re absolutely right, life sentence + castration probably doesn’t make it onto a list of the Top 100 truly awful experiences people have gone through in US prisons in the last 5 years.
Again, 25 years in solitary seems like a real fucking bleak thing to endure to me. So, while I’m inclined to agree with you about the castration aspect (though this will only happen if and when he leaves prison, apparently, so he’s not been castrated yet), I’m not sure this approaches the bleakness we see through out the entire prison system. Which you seem to agree with, so I guess you just object to the state of Louisiana? Which seems weird to me, because it’s a beautiful place to visit, and has some of the most interesting culture in the country…
I didn’t say it wasn’t… people should certainly look up Angola prison, for example. However, there are so many cruelties happening in many state-run prison systems, that it’s hard to pick one state that is worse than the others, with the exception of red states that have the death penalty being worse over all than other states. But even blue states known for have a general progressive lean aren’t great.
