Tag: penal colony

Serious questions created by a serious bit of... pure, unadulterated lunacy... coming out of the Granholm-Cherry administration.  Yesterday 100 state police troopers lost their jobs on orders from the Governor and her 2010 Gubernatorial candidate.  Last week Lansing Democrats fought to keep alive the administration's dream for a new, inefficient, hundred million dollar state police headquarters that the state police don't want.  Meanwhile, this year alone, 3,500 dangerous convicted felons are being released EARLY from prison and set loose in Michigan neighborhoods.

So what's a state to do with fewer cops walking the beat, more law enforcement dollars swallowed up paying to provide pet projects (and big paydays) to Democratic donors / developers and a sudden spike in the number of dangerous career criminals prowling the streets?

Import more criminals.  From California.  

Import.  Criminals.  From California.

Who came up with this idea, Lex Luthor?  Norman Osborn?  The Joker?  No, no and, well...

According to Booth Newspapers, this one is the brainchild of the Granholm-Cherry team.  

California has too many prisoners and Michigan soon will have too many empty prison cells.

Therein lies the possibility of a "mutually beneficial partnership," Gov. Jennifer Granholm told Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a letter Monday...

In her letter, Granholm referenced earlier conversations with Schwarzenegger in which she said Michigan "could be of help."

Granholm said she was "certain that Michigan can provide a safe and secure environment for prisoners and help prepare them for a return to California and a crime-free lifestyle."

What's worse, this can't even be chocked up as an outside-the-box scheme to generate extra revenue for the state.  According to Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan, "we're not looking to make any money off this."  

Marlan said in regards to the California offer, Michigan would be seeking mainly to recover labor, food and health care costs.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised.  The administration has already crippled our economy, swelled the ranks of the unemployed to record levels, put a nearly unbearable strain on the state's social services and grown the size of the Lansing bureaucracy to astronomical proportions (the budget has grown by nearly $6 billion since Granholm and Cherry took their oaths of office in January 2003).  Suppose it was only a matter of time before they tried turning Michigan into a penal colony.

Plus, look at it this way... importing hardened criminals is ONE way of countering the dramatic outbound population flight we've seen the last six years.  Better yet, unlike hardworking Michigan families who've just plain had enough, Californian prisoners couldn't leave, even if they wanted to.