After seeing yet another Paula Pennypacker rant on Facebook today, it struck me that the math of Kate’s law, which would place all those who re-enter the U.S. after deportation behind bars for 5 years. must be absurd. One minute into my research, I found this in The Atlantic: The Trouble with Kate’s Law. First, the prison population increase:
In July, a group of legislators introduced the Establishing Mandatory Minimums for Illegal Reentry Act of 2015, popularly known as Kate’s Law. On Wednesday, the U.S. Sentencing Commission estimated that Kate’s Law would expand the federal prison population by over 57,000 prisoners, according to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit organization that supporters sentencing reform.
The cost:
Undocumented immigrants typically serve between 15 to 18 months in prison under the current sentencing laws before deportation, Gill said. O’Reilly’s proposal would boost that average by 300 percent. Housing the Kate’s Law inmates for longer periods of time would cost the U.S. Bureau of Prisons an estimated $2 billion per year, according to FAMM. The bureau’s annual budget request for all of 2015 was $7 billion.
Got that? Two billion a year. Spent differently, that money actually could save lives. Then there”s this:
Despite the public rancor, immigrants are generally less likely to commit crimes than the native population, according to the The Wall Street Journal. Mandatory minimums are generally ineffective at reducing crime or recidivism.
The good news in all this? Apparently, Paula P is so upset at Democrats for not supporting Kate’s law and for supporting Black Lives Matter, she’s left the Democratic Party. Imagine that? I’m no Democratic Party insider these days and I’m way to the party’s left ideologically, but I can’t believe many tears are being shed.
Of course, after coming within a whisker of losing to her in 2014, Republican John Kavanagh was running scared at the prospect of a 2016 rematch, so much so that he was considering a move to a safer district. When I asked him about this earlier in the year, he broke into a cold sweat and had to sit down to collect himself. Well, John, you can breathe easy now.
Unless of course she changes her mind. And her political affiliation. Again.
Paula Pennypacker was NEVER a true Democrat, as she only changed her political party designation, from Republican to Democrat, as a matter of political opportunism. I don’t think she ever really understood what it meant to be a Democrat, as she merely was attracted to the party as being open with a “large tent”. Although she changed parties, she never adopted the moral compass Democrats are guided by. If she had actually become a Democrat in her ideology then she wouldn’t have become so alarmed with the case of Kate Steinle and she would have instead become an advocate for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
Pennypacker has become enamored with candidate Donald Trump, seduced by an image she believes has become popular with the majority of the electorate. Not only is Pennypacker’s support for “Kate’s Law” misguided, so is her support of a candidate on that basis alone, ignoring the rest of Trump’s very obvious displays as a racist blowhard Snake Oil Salesman who really only knows how to tap into the anger of the American People and grab the attention of the media, but who knows nothing about how to govern. In other words, Pennypacker has been seduced and has been using “Kate’s Law” as justification to support a candidate who will never win anything because his popularity has been overblown in the media.
Pennypacker has repeatedly made it known that she is a fiscally conservative yet socially liberal politico. It is obvious that supporting “Kate’s Law” is neither fiscally conservative nor socially liberal.
She claims she aims to re-register her political affiliation as an Independent. With this, it is doubtful she will ever be able to compete in any political race in Arizona ever again. Not only has her recent conduct telegraphed to the Democratic Party her unworthiness as a future candidate as a Democrat, surely if she were to try to switch back to the Republican Party that they (the Republicans) would try to extract a pound of flesh she would never agree to pay. Indeed, Paula Pennypacker, as a confused Democrat who has become an ardent supporter of Donald Trump, has become someone without a political party to which to belong.