by Robert M. Traxler
President Joe Biden is racing to stop programs that in many cases are just plain dumb.
Is it out of a concern for safety of the American people or a concern about the extreme cost? No, they want to be able to say they stopped the ineffective, high-cost programs that they started or vastly expanded, not President Donald Trump. Programs like the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s “Alternative to Detention “program and the “Wraparound Stabilization Service (WSS),” mental and social services for illegals or migrants.
The fact that they canceled the programs with only 20 days to go in the Biden administration and setting a date for the actual stop after they are out of office will not matter in four years when they take credit for things done to fix the problem they started.
An interesting test of the new media versus the old legacy media will be its ability to sell the progressive story line. Time will tell.
President Biden has increased deportation of “criminal” illegal aliens, one more effort to say the deportations increased before President Trump assumed the office and was in progress and expanding under a progressive regime.
President Biden commuting the death penalty of dozens of federal prisoners on death row has reignited the debate over the death penalty once again. The anti-death penalty folks use two (in my opinion) truly dumb arguments.
One, and the most ignorant, is that prisoners would prefer death to life in a 6 by 8-foot cell. Sounds good, but if you take a minute and think it over, the question jumps to mind that if that is true, why do 97% of all death row prisoners appeal their convictions for as long as they can? Granted, appeals of the death penalty are automatic in most cases, but if the convictions and sentences are not appealed beyond them, a person could be executed in three to five years, not the 20-plus years most spend on death row during the expanded appeal process.
Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Muro Federal building bomber, was executed in a few years, as he refused appeals.
The second argument is made that it is cheaper to hold a convict on death row than to execute them. Well, the cost data comes from the decades-long legal battles over the death penalty, not the cost of a few drugs and an injection. The cost of guards 24/7/365, food, medical and health and comfort items for up to 30 years along with legal expenses mount up. Cost is an argument that only makes sense if you want it to. Swift justice, as in the McVeigh case, was cost effective.
Safety of guards and other prisoners, cost of housing and feeding, medical care and the possibility of escape are forgotten. It is all about an anti-death penalty movement that is concerned with the murders’ welfare and not as concerned with the victims’ rights. My opinion.
