The Republicans have advanced us all the way to horses! One thing is for sure; the Conservatives of the Ridge Reich are immaturely adolescent. Not only are they obsessed with sex and being macho, their whole perspective on reality is frighteningly distorted.
In most civilized places, society progresses. Not in Pennsylvania. Conservatives can't cope with progress. Like cultural dwarfs, they flee backwards. Reality frightens them. The conservatives have a hard time distinguishing where their delusions end and reality begins.
The rabid Republicans of the Pennsylvania prison system have leapt back to 1952 and the era of McCarthyism and terror. That was the year of the hero and the western, a West that existed only in the demented minds of adolescents and guys like Reagan. Sucked into that vortex of fiction, the Ridge Reich now brings us horses!
Yep, partner, horses! The Governor's chief jailer, an item by the name of Martin "Hop-Along" Horn, has ordered horse patrols for all the prisons. This is so inane that we can only figure that one of Ridge's political cronies has horses for sale.
Pennsylvania is saddled (no pun intended) with the worst legislature in the country, but even those yoyos wouldn't go for Horn's cowboy scheme. No money was appropriated for the innovation. That wasn't a problem to Hop-Along Horn. He just ordered that the money be stolen from other items. Either he lied in the first place about what the prisons needed, or, now he's going to short-change such trivialities as food.
Hoppy's brilliant 1950's scheme is to station four horses (not motorcycles or bikes) at every prison. The prisons already have dozens of cars which parole around outside the walls. But, would Tom Mix or the Duke ride a car?
Besides the horses, there will, of course, have to be barns and feed and grooms and poop-scoopers (ideal jobs for those disgusting black prisoners from Philadelphia). Then, there will also have to be the heroes, the cowboys, the symbols of the American way of life. Each prison will have to get at least a dozen of those champions of the ridiculous. For 25 prisons, that's 300 riders of the Purple Sage. Say at least $30,000 a head, that's only $9,000,000 worth of cowboys.
But, it's a fortune well spent. Them wranglers on horseback will sure keep the Indians in line. Never mind that a con shooting a paper clip with a rubber band could send the bronco bolting for the trees. They look like the 1950's movies!
Our point is two fold. The scheme reflects the immature and backward-looking thinking of the Conservative mind. It also reflects the obsession which the prison mania has become to these people. They'll do anything no matter how silly. It's insane.
While writing this item, it occurred to me how much Governor Ridge is like the evil Prince John, the usurper of Robin Hood fame. That would make Hop-Along Horn the Sheriff of Nottingham, crushing the outlaws. I better not suggest it to the Conservative crazies. They'll have prisoners living in the forest!
So, the crop is harvested. It amounted to a few thousand pounds of potatos. The prison can buy potatos for about 13¢ a pound. With the bounty from its island Eden, the potatos have cost us taxpayers about $5.00 each! over 100 times as expensive as they cost on the open market!
The Department Of Corrections is run by blockheads! The guys who dream up schemes like this one get promoted.
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