So all we need to do is find a way to put people in prison!
Win-win!
To play devil’s advocate, and out of blind ignorancr, what’s the alternative? Do nothing? Conscript the public?
Fund the bloody fire brigade
Did you see how much they had to increase the police budget? Sadly there simply is no way we can afford to pay firefighters.
Fluctuating demand makes the use of Volunteer firefighters more desirable
But reducing pollution and better environment management (controlled burns, removing dead brush, letting natural floods occur) will go further than any fire brigade
By the time they find volunteers it’s probably too late but a proper fire brigade can get driving very soon after a call
Volunteer firefighters are gained ahead of time, they are just called upon as needed
Who’s going to wake the volunteers up and drag them to the fire truck?
Are you ignorant to the existence of volunteer firefighters?
They have a beeper and meet the fire engine at the call
Will their landlord volunteer the housing they hoard? Let this shit burn.
Not relevant to the conversation but the volunteers I’ve met have been good people so no
No no no no, that’s too sensible
The country has plenty of able bodied and willing firefighters, just not enough willing to do it for poverty wages with a seasonal employment schedule. I used to work with a bunch of these crazy bastards in the off season when I was a line cook.
Have a corps of properly trained reservists, with laws requiring private companies and public institutions to make these firefighters available in case of critical emergency
No, pay the prisoners for fucks sake. Also, a lot of people would want that money but its extremely hard to get a job if youre, for example, homeless.
Take all the subsidy tax dollars that go to big oil and spend them on firefighter salary.
Nah take it and put it in renewable energy to prevent fires in the first place. Stop imprisoning people for useless shit, wasting our money in that area. Invest more in education and reduce tuition costs and pay educators better.
You’re out there, man. Far out; like fkn Pluto, man. You’re gone!
Land value taxes to fund well-paid firefighters. Regulations on water usage, land use, and construction. Repeal Prop 13.
Ah yes, California’s penal legion of
slaves“indentured servants” that we uh… voted to keep around in the last election.Man, CA politics are fucking bizarre. Sometimes the slam dunk no-brainer propositions fail and there never seems to be a really good reason why.
Money, and liberals.
California is liberal. Not left. Every once in a while some leftist proposition comes up that threatens money, and money always wins.
When they say liberals are wolves in sheep’s clothing, this is kinda what they’re talking about. They care, they really care about their fellow man, as far as their comfortable standard of living allows.
😌✊✊ Liberals 😫✊💦✊💦
Liberals huh? So where are the leftists in all this? Destitute in the streets?
Edit: oh yeah downvote me harder marx cucks 😫💦
Fighting the fires.
Oh, so only leftists fight fires huh?
For $6.80/hr before taxes.
Yeah for sure all of those prisoners are leftists. Yeah youre starting to sound about as smart as a leftist keep going
Oh, you’re serious. I thought we were doing one of those fun bits.
Indentured servants would be college graduates and the loans they bear.
I think one of the absolute stupidest things about this when it comes up is that when these same people get let out of prison they can’t even get the job of fire fighter because of their criminal record.
While no legal system is perfect, I much prefer the way some countries prevent the public from hearing the actual names of criminals or someone’s criminal history. Not everyone needs to be branded for life with a scarlet letter. It would reduce recidivism as well.
I don’t think we have chain gang type prison programs in Canada. It’s so archaic. Making license plates to have an occupation might be reasonable, but this chain gang shit is inhumane.
Slavery live and alive
Grandmaster: Revolution? How did this happen?
Topaz: Don’t know. But the Arena’s mainframe for the Obedience Disks have been deactivated and the slaves have armed themselves.
Grandmaster: Ohhh! I don’t like that word!
Topaz: Mainframe?
Grandmaster: No. Why would I not like “mainframe?” No, the “S” word!
Topaz: Sorry, the “prisoners with jobs” have armed themselves.
Grandmaster: Okay, that’s better.
Thor Ragnarok is the only MCU movie I care to rewatch once in a while, along with Infinity War
I actually purchased Thor: Ragnarok so that I could watch it repeatedly. I love it so much. I’m pretty sure about 90% of that movie was ad-libbed by Taika just giving them a vague outline of what the scene is supposed to be about and then just setting the actors loose to improv to their heart’s content.
Edit: Also, watching Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) absolutely kill it as the most exasperated evil queen is one of my favorite things in a movie ever.
Definitely using this during my dnd session. The prison warden wardening prisoners with a job solely for their own benefit.
That’s why homelessness is being criminalized.
The explicit goal is to recreate Victorian workhouses for the benefit of the new generation of robber barons.
Hey now, they won’t be called Workhouses. They’ll be called AI training data centers and Gig Opportunity Recruitment Points.
And if you don’t support these amazing engines of economic development and industrial growth, you are clearly just throwing your support behind the concentration camps that the Bad Team wants to build.
Hell, I how do I even know you’re not a Russian bot or a Chinese Wumao, trying to sow dissent in our glorious country, anyway?
I’m sure Elon will give the camps some dip shit meme name.
bachta tanks
Cyber-camps? Giga-gulags?
“Marginal Demographic, Mandatory Assistance” camps?
“Wage-Exempt Extradition & Deportation” camps?
“Temporary Unpaid Assistant Housing”?Nah, he’ll make it some dumbass acronym.
Like “MDMA”, “WEED”, or “TUAH”?
Yeah…
Same with immigrants
Any billionaire is free to step in and properly compensate these heroes, but they won’t
Why didnt the leftists stop this measure?
California is not the Socialist state Fox News would have you believe it is.
Its what like 40% republican, %30 neoliberal(also republican)? Not a bastion for liberals or leftists
Other way around, 46 percent Democrat to 24 percent Republican. And no. We’re not doing the whole, “all liberals are automatically actually neoliberal” thing. That’s ridiculous.
Yup and Trump will do this to illegals… Welcome to the concentration camps
Lol, he absolutely won’t.
Isn’t there an amendment about this? We had that whole interval railway war over capitalism under the guise of fighting for that amendment?
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”
Oh I see, so Southern plantation owners just have to run individual prisons with open air detention centers for incarcerated individuals of color that happen to be lined with cotton plants and coincidentally they can sell that cotton for profit.
You joke, but … well, it is not a joke.
They did exactly that. Right up until the 1940’s when FDR’s Department of Justice went after them.
They’re still doing it, like there are still prison plantations in Louisiana where they send black people for having half a joint on them.
The thing about peonage is they kept people forever. That was the big problem. Putting a definitive end date on a sentence made it magically better. I agree that forced labor is slavery, I’m just referencing the dying gasp of the actual plantation system. While we should eliminate prison slave labor, it’s also nowhere near what the peonage system was.
Things being worse previously does not make what is now any better. Raise your standards.
That’s not the point there.
The 13th amendment
Important to add, once freed they will be ineligible to take a job as a firefighter in California.
Umm
The website for this program states the exact opposite
https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/facility-locator/conservation-camps/faq-conservation-fire-camp-program/
Yes. A felony conviction does not disqualify employment with CAL FIRE. Many former camp firefighters go on to gain employment with CAL FIRE, the United States Forest Service and interagency hotshot crews.
CAL FIRE, California Conservation Corps (CCC), and CDCR, in partnership with the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), developed an 18-month enhanced firefighter training and certification program at the Ventura Training Center (VTC), located in Ventura County.
The VTC trains formerly-incarcerated people on parole who have recently been part of a trained firefighting workforce housed in fire camps or institutional firehouses operated by CAL FIRE and CDCR. Members of the CCC are also eligible to participate. VTC cadets receive additional rehabilitation and job training skills to help them be more successful after completion of the program. Cadets who complete the program are qualified to apply for entry-level firefighting jobs with local, state, and federal firefighting agencies.
For more information, visit the Ventura Training Center (VTC) webpage.
To my knowledge, this was only implemented recently and due to state budget cuts to firefighting services, fire departments in California are understaffed. Ex convicts can work as firefighters now, but it’s unlikely they’ll be able to do so. And as I said, this was only implemented recently so for many years they couldn’t. And hiring culture takes time to change.
That’s the first sensible advocacy point I’ve seen sense I started reading these threads. It really doesn’t make sense to assign prisoners to jobs they’re legally barred from.
From what I’ve heard this is actually an excellent job for many of them. It’s good pay (for prison labor) doing valuable work with a lot of dignity. And it’s work for their community that’s valuable on the outside. It should always be truly voluntary else it be horrifying, but if they can’t do it once they get out it’s not job training and it’s not reducing recidivism. These prisoners are doing heroic work, let them be heroic once freed.
Fine by me - I’ve hired ex-cons to do work on my house and would hire them again. But there’s a lot of vindictiveness about people’s past deeds. An excellent computer programmer I worked with got fired when her background check turned up a prostitution arrest from when she had been a homeless 18-year-old. Then at age 32, after turning her life around, she found herself being abruptly escorted from the building by two security guards. The problem was that we worked in a school district headquarters - nowhere near away students, but rules are rules and bureaucrats gonna crat, right? I would have had her give talks in front of high school kids. But it isn’t just misdirected authority - ordinary people social media will equally crucify somebody for Liking the wrong tweet. Maybe flinging shit is just a primate instinct, I dunno.
All prison jobs should pay actual wages and be voluntary though. While the firefighting job is voluntary, many prison jobs are not. Including jobs making products for private companies.
They absolutely should not be allowed to work for private companies for less than a normal employee. That’s infuriating. Those companies should be burned to the ground. Disgusting
My thought was that they shouldn’t be allowed to do jobs that benefit the outside society at all. They can grow and cook their own food, clean their own living spaces, sew and launder their own clothes etc and maybe hold an outside job as part of a finite period for reintegration but I don’t like the idea of them being allowed to work outside the confines of their incarceration because I worry about a society being able to benefit in any way from incarceration. I think it should always cost way more to lock people up than to let them be free. If you think it’s worth it to keep this person out of society put your money where your mouth is. But yes at the very least they should be paid as much as a normal employee would have to be.
maybe hold an outside job as part of a finite period for reintegration
That’s not a bad idea. Like a student co-op to help get some job experience before leaving school. (and should be normal wages)
It could be worse: they could be insured by UHC :)
They’ll probably need specialty pulmonology care later in life and a lot of public insurance plans either don’t cover it, or the waiting lists for Medicaid patients are obscene. At least UHC would get you onto the shorter waiting list.
So no more “Delay, Deny, Defend”?
Oh, they’ll absolutely still pull that shit, but there are a ton of medical practices that have a separate waiting list for Medicaid patients because they only accept a certain percentage of their patients being on Medicaid. UHC will still leave you with the bill, but having Medicaid can make it difficult to even see the specialist in the first place regardless of how much it will cost.
The suicide squad 2025: No, you’re not going to stop a criminal mastermind. You’ll be risking your lives putting out the fires that we caused.
