California Ordered to Release thousands of prisoners due to over Budgets! WTF

According to CNN, A federal judicial panel heard closing arguments Tuesday in a long-running legal battle over crowding in California prisons, a case that will have far-reaching consequences for the state's corrections system, its budget and public safety.
At issue are cases stretching back more than two decades that claim overcrowding is the cause of poor medical and mental health treatment. Courts already have found the care so poor that it violates inmates' constitutional rights. Inmates' attorneys argued Tuesday that releasing tens of thousands of prisoners is the answer. "The entire system is collapsing because of the overcrowding," Don Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office, told the three-judge panel in U.S. District Court.
If the panel agrees, it could order the population cut by one-third in California's 33 adult prisons.

That would lead to the early release of some 52,000 inmates.
Closing arguments are expected to last through Wednesday. Afterward, the judicial panel must decide whether overcrowding is indeed the cause of the poor medical and mental health care. If that is the finding, the judges then must determine whether to release inmates early and how such a release order would be implemented. Public safety also will factor into their decision.

Wild Fires Consume Australia, 108 killed

According to the Associated Press, Entire towns have been seared off the map by wildfires raging through southeastern Australia, burning people in their homes and cars in the deadliest blaze in the country's history. The number of dead Monday stood at 108, a grim toll that rose almost by the hour as officials reached further into the fire zone.

Searing temperatures and wind blasts created a firestorm that swept across a swath of the country's Victoria state, where at least 700 homes were destroyed and all of the victims died. More victims were expected to be found, officials said.


"Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said. "It's an appalling tragedy for the nation."
The skies rained ash and trees exploded in the inferno, witnesses said, as temperatures of up 117 F (47 C) combined with blasting winds to create furnace-like conditions.

The town of Marysville and several hamlets in the Kinglake district, both about 50 miles (100 kilometers) north of Melbourne, were utterly devastated.
At Marysville, a winter tourism town that was home to about 800 people, up to 90 percent of buildings were in ruins, witnesses said. Police said two people died there.

The Education Hole

The era of George Bush has ended and after making him responsible for everything that went wrong or will go wrong, the State of California has a small problem. Some may be surprised (I am wondering who) and some may not, but there is a hole in the pocket where actually should be money.

To close that hole California needs to cut costs. And the first thought that doesn’t come to our minds is: Education. But guess what, our politicians consider it as one of the best sources to reduce expenditures, as most of us know and painfully have experienced already. Degree programs are shut down, classes are canceled and teachers are laid off (didn’t we also have a problem with our unemployment rate? But oh well…).

So, what we are observing here is that another hole is cut actually into the same pocket- the education hole. Education is the investment in our future and will finally bring the money back into California’s money pocket. Leaving it behind only means that to catch up later will be more difficult and costs more money than it is saved now. The only thing that we can do is look at the teachers in L.A. who already have understood what education really brings and do what they are doing: energizing their life by being active and protest. (It seems there is nothing else left.)