The prison population would decline dramatically. Well done NH!

companies the personnel they could make money by rehabilitating drug users instead of wharehousing them.

And just hire twice as many social workers and therapists and associated personnel.

We don't need to be devoting public funding to private industry. that simple. We can accomplish virtually anything we need to in this area without adding a margin to pay out a dividend or a CEO bonus.

as a decent paying lower level job.

There are a lot of social services we skip over. Helping people cook healthier meals. Growing community gardens. intramural sports in communities. Even cleaning trash off streets makes a difference in how people feel about themselves and their community, I think. Even just spending one on one or small group time with kids, elders, and even just regular people in a social setting. Often overlooked.

There are a lot of things that I think fall under social work that could be done to benefit everyone, not just to deal with "problems" after the fact. And create jobs in the mean time. There's just not enough work to go around to all the people. So we either need to pay immensely more and reduce the 40 hour work week, or create jobs that will benefit our society. Even if you bring back manufacturing, we would still have a problem, I think.

or link to the community if it's done for shit wages in an insecure job tenancy.

It's a middle-class fantasy.

there is *plenty* of work to go around to all the people.

social workers' jobs largely involve trying to manage the dysfunction created by insecure shitty jobs or lack of jobs, including the sense of powerlessness and search for respect and power that is created by such conditions of living.

and they mostly do a piss-poor job of it, which is not so much their fault, because they aren't given the tools which would actually enable them to do a better job -- like being able to put people on a real path to relatively secure conditions of life. They are there only to give work to a segment of the middle class and enable the state to say, "See, we care! Look at all the help we are giving you!"

And there are people who do social work. Often these overlap. Many times they do not. We are talking about different things.

That said, I don't think you know much about either, except maybe a very limited segment of a small portion of one group. Most of the social workers Ive worked with, of either type, are trying to help people who have lost mental function do to age/trauma in war/mental illness. And most of them care a lot about the people they are entrusted to help. People who have been abandoned by everyone else in society.


That said, I don't think things like street cleaning should be done for shit wages. I think that physical jobs should be far more highly paid than they are. Jobs should be paid based on a combination of the physical and mental difficulty of the job, the long term harmful consequences of working the job balanced with its necessity, and the production/positive results of the job done. But that is a fantasy.

There is not "plenty of work". American workers are far more productive than ever before. In a world of self checkouts, machines that are capable of making hamburgers, and car plants that have more robots than people, many jobs that people do are only done by people because they are cheaper than a robot. If every American of working age worked 40 hours a week, we would have an unbelievable surplus of anything we made. We have more available man-hours of labor than we need to produce the things we need/want as individuals or as a nation.

We need to raise wages and lower the hours in a work week so that people have more free time while still making a living wage, or we need to create make work to keep people busy. Or we will continue to have tons of unemployment.

my own eyes.

There's just 'no money' to pay for it.

familial hiring for state employees, and increase the hiring of both positions you mentioned.

If you ever read the roll of state employee's in New England in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, it is a better genealogy resource then any web site purporting to track relatives.

bet the Manchester Union Leader right wing news paper is up in arms about this .

The concord monitor is a rehash of 2 month old AP stories, and 2 week old union leader local stories, which is a shame, the monitor at least reported news in the '80's.

Well done, former neighbors!

The major paper is the Manchester Union Leader and they treated Clinton like a space alien Nazi commie drug-addict public-farting child-rapist Jesus-hating flag desecrating fried chicken eating evil-doer who stomped on kittens while wearing 5" spike heel pumps while listening to rap music and screaming obscenities directed at our founding fathers and who likes okra raw.

Note: I like raw okra and grew it in NH. I also grew tomatilos and the bushes got HUGE! I had a few hundred fruits out of four plants.

rec

Aren't they also trying to overturn Citizens United?

The senate remains a problem.

An active duty NH Corrections guy is a speaker for LEAP Law Enforcement Against Prohibition...maybe his voice got heard, too:
Richard Van Wickler – Corrections Superintendent of Cheshire County, NH

Richard Van Wickler has managed a jail as superintendent of the Cheshire County, NH Department of Corrections for the past 15 years of his 20-year criminal justice career. He also teaches at two New Hampshire colleges and served in the military for 26 years.

“If prison-building were our goal, it would be a good reason to leave our drug laws as they are. But as a taxpayer and a professional, it’s certainly not a goal of mine.” – Richard Van Wickler

http://www.leap.cc/for-the-media/leap-speakers-available-for-interview/

It screams to violate all human rights for money.

A second better step would be to have the Constitution amended to state that private prisons are absolutely forbidden in the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

K&R

Hope this spreads

That happens in a lot of states unfortunately. It's good that the House rejected the move to privatize the entire prison system within the state- that's what was proposed last year. I'll be curious to see if this will pass in the NH Senate

not that they would do what the petition says, but forcing them to acknowledge that privatization leads to corruption and economic incentives to incarcerate MORE people could shift the debate a bit.

Isn't that enraging, that we all know this up front, that the Obama administration would not act, and that they are actively growing this despicable industry? Every single one of us should be demanding:

"I know, but let the bastard deny it."

May this spread like wildfire to other states.

I hope so!