Easy-Breezy Day.
by Chet
I don’t have any immediate readings that I must accomplish for my Philosphy class this morning. I decided in turn to take some time to update a bit. As I said last week I spent this past weekend in Galveston. The water is still as brownish as I remember, and the sun just as hot, and the sand just as fun! We spent some time down on the strand, going out to dinner, lounging, and just hanging out at the beach for a few hours. It was a great time, and it felt really nice to leave all of my text books and Huntsville and not think about them for the entire trip. Of course this trip wouldn’t have been possible if it had not been for the courtesy of my uncle. He was kind enough to let us impose on him for the weekend. I’m really glad he did. On the way out of town we bought two pounds of salt water taffy. We’re set for life!
That’s basically all that has gone on that is interesting. I got my research methods test back and did well. I got my research methods paper back and did alright. I took a quiz for philosophy today, and sucked it up bad. Hopefully when I take the second quiz I’ll do better.
I don’t particularly like reading my philosophy book. It is an anthology of articles collected by the authors, and all of them are written in a rather pompous sense. it’s as though all of the authors have this look-at-me-I-have-a-Ph.D.-and-you-don’t attitude in their writing. I honestly think their writing is bad and indirect. Information articles should not be prosefully written by philosophical minds. Mostly because these don’t seem to understand what prose is. Instead they right painfully over the top hoity-toity nonsense. In most of them the language is so dense and indirect that even after re-reading the material I still don’t know what is being said. I hate that I can’t retain this information at all.
I’m taking most of next week off to celebrate the 4th of July. It’s always been a silly kind of celebration for me. Oh well I s’pose.
Warped Tour is in less than two weeks… are you prepared?
ChetG
To digress from the intent of your article I have to ask: Can we afford the death penalty?
The TDCJ says that the average time spent on Death Row prior to execution is a little under 10 and a half years and the longest time spent on Death Row prior to execution (so far) was 24 years.
According to state and federal records obtained by The Los Angeles Times, maintaining the California death penalty system costs taxpayers more than $114 million a year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life. This figure does not count the millions more spent on court costs to prosecute capital cases. The Times concluded that Californians and federal taxpayers have paid more than a quarter of a billion dollars for each of the state’s 11 executions, and that it costs $90,000 more a year to house one inmate on death row, where each person has a private cell and extra guards, than in general prison population. This additional cost per prisoner adds up to $57.5 million in annual spending. (“Death Row Often Means a Long Life,” Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2005).
Texas death penalty cases cost more than non-capital cases
That is about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. (“Executions Cost Texas Millions,” Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992)
Excluding Murder in the Eighth Amendment has probably cost billions over the ensuing years. I’m not against the death penalty per se. I am against the inefficient way we go about carrying out the penalty.