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Imagine you are responsible for providing legal representation for indigent people in your state (the public defender's office). Seven years ago, a request for additional funding to meet increased case load was vetoed. Your budget was cut in 2015 and now the governor's office is recommending further cuts. Making things worse is the fact that the number of cases has increased 12%. What would you do?
The Director of the Missouri Public Defender System came up with a novel approach to help meet the increased caseload burden and sent a letter to the Governor (PDF) compelling him to work cases.
Additional reporting here, here, and here.
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Missouri Governor Fails to Fund Public Defender's Office so They Compel him to Work Cases
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Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Friday August 05 2016, @01:53PM
Sounds like a great idea, except for a pair of pesky facts:
1) KBR, the Halliburton division that provides battlefield services got spun off prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF, also called Gulf War II elsewhere in this thread); it was fully independent and had nothing to do with either Cheney or Halliburton when the war started (and still doesn't, in case that wasn't clear)
2) Halliburton (stock symbol HES) is not an oil production company, they are a service company. Little of the money made producing Iraqi wells made it into Halliburton's balance books; in fact, if you check their quarterly reports you'll find that trying to extort that money from HES would be like squeezing blood from a turnip.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday August 05 2016, @10:57PM
1) Ok, then tax KBR for profiteering off the war instead of Halliburton.
2) Somebody made money producing from Iraq's oil wells. That somebody needs to pay. Well, more precisely, somebody did before ISIS got control of many of them, and now ISIS profits from it.
The larger point is clear: If the US government spent ridiculous gobs of money on invading Iraq and Afghanistan. That money went somewhere, and it wasn't to the guys who were over there taking bullets. They should be taxed extra to offset their windfall.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @11:28PM
translation:
"The point is I was totally wrong, but I'm really angry and indignant and looking for convenient scapegoats to blame! THEM! It was all those guy's fault."
(Score: 2) by Spook brat on Saturday August 06 2016, @08:17PM
Cut Thexalon some slack, it was isostatic who thought HES was the place to claw war profits back from.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]