Transcript of RM118: Just Feed The Inmates Cockroaches and Pop-tarts

Listen to RM118: Just Feed The Inmates Cockroaches and Pop-tarts

Andy 0:00
registry matters as an independent production. The opinions and ideas here are that of the host and do not reflect the opinions of any other organization. If you have a problem with these thoughts fyp recording live from fyp Studios, east and west, transmitted across the internet. This is Episode 118 of registry matters. Larry, Larry, Larry, Larry Larry, it’s Saturday night. What’s up, buddy?

Larry 0:23
118. That’s almost my age.

Andy 0:28
Come on, we got a long way to go. We need to we need to like use the new math to get to your age.

Larry 0:32
Well, 118 is

Andy 0:34
as close it’s close. I mean, it’s closer than 170.

Larry 0:38
I heard that it’s a beautiful sunny day in the eastern on the eastern seaboard.

Andy 0:41
It was gorgeous. Today, actually. I was having an email conversation with someone that lives downstate for me, and he he asked me, can you remind me again, what fyp stands for? And I tried to get Tim to, you know, I prod him with some clues. And here are some of the responses that he gave to me. And he said Find your protocol, fix YouTube pheasants, forget yosa might patents, f the people f the pigs fermentor peanuts, find them pink people was another one that you came up with. And can we go over what fyp stands for again,

Larry 1:18
it stands for if someone knocks at your door with a clipboard and says I’m making a list of making a list of who’s living in this residence, because the public claims when it comes to the sexual offender registry, they have a right to know. And I said we’re really where’s that right derived from? Why don’t you start going around the neighborhood and asking people who’s in who’s in a particular dwelling and find out what their reaction is. And that’s where fyp comes from.

Andy 1:44
Now, obviously, you have to use the the initials fyp. When thinking about your answer, because you could just say no, I’m not telling you that doesn’t fit fyp for sure.

Unknown Speaker 1:55
Charles says free yogurt people

Larry 2:00
So yes, we we’ve just there’s a lot of things that people assert that they have the right. That’s what right that I cannot find that there’s any, any basis to support such a right that you have. There’s no such right now who’s another way?

Andy 2:13
Can you? Can we stretch the definition of something of right? can we can we scale the word back a little bit? Like, do you deserve to know who lives next door? But

Larry 2:27
that would be a more reasonable question.

Shouldn’t we be allowed to know and of course, that the answer this should we be allowed to know would be whether it violates any right if the person or the family who is in the residence and I would say it does, because presumably there is a right to privacy in the US Constitution?

Andy 2:45
That would be the fourth amendment as I recall, correct?

Larry 2:47
I don’t know the numbers.

Andy 2:49
Do you really not know the numbers?

Larry 2:52
No, but I don’t keep track of trivial things like which remember, does what?

Andy 2:56
Okay, well, if the third one is the most important one because that says that though it’s government cannot quarter soldiers in your house without compensation or period, something like that. They can’t force you to hold soldiers, you know. So that’s the most important one.

Larry 3:09
Well, of course.

Andy 3:10
All right. And then did you know that we released a YouTube video? Wednesday morning?

Larry 3:16
I did all that and it has had splendid success, it actually has to tell us think that should tell us that to people much prefer to see that person in that YouTube video versus listening to us babble every week.

Andy 3:27
Well, I don’t know that that’s true. I mean, it was much, much shorter. I just I you know, this is a shameless plug that this is going to be something that I’m that we’re going to try and push forward with in here and do some sort of content every couple weeks.

Larry 3:39
Well, I think it’s that sexy, handsome presenter of the video that makes all the difference.

Andy 3:45
I have no idea what you’re talking about. I thought that was you know, I wouldn’t fit that category. Remember, I’ve go back to civil war times your old crusty you like that. You look Do you remember the TV show the cryptkeeper on HBO, or some star Tales from the Crypt and then that has The character the cryptkeeper

Larry 4:02
I do not.

Andy 4:03
Okay, nevermind, there was I mean old and crusty like coming out of a coffin like anyway, nevermind, nevermind, we should move on. Larry did the Supreme Court rarely steps in and and and delays or even stops an execution from occurring, but they did this in Alabama. They at least delayed it for a period of time. I think we talked about the sky, at least a week, if not two weeks ago that was accused and convicted of being present at some kind of nastiness, and then actually ended up getting convicted of it and then they and he was scheduled for execution. I think I have that right.

Larry 4:40
I don’t believe this is the case we talked about but unfortunately, the as I predicted the executive of Alabama didn’t provide any relief, nor did I expect her to attend the Supreme Court. This these days, just a death penalty is not unconstitutional, and I’ll even go a step further. It’s not unconstitutional. To execute an innocent person either. That’s bizarre. Well, you have the right to life, liberty and property and not to deprive them of those things without due process. If you’ve had due process, they can deprive you of any of those things, including,

Andy 5:13
regardless of if you’re innocent or not. If you had due process, you can take any of the aforementioned things.

Larry 5:19
That is correct. Taking take your property with due process, they can take your life with due process.

Andy 5:24
What about eminent domain, just throwing that out there? just you know, they want to move a highway through your neighborhood and they use eminent domain to move you out. That’s not due process. Sure, it is,

Larry 5:34
is it? There’s a process so they don’t they don’t just come in take a bulldozer I mean, they, they they negotiate with you for your property, and then they go through a process to take your property but you do get compensation. There’s a process to value the compensation to provide some some reasonable value to the property. You may not agree with it because it may have been in the family for hundreds of years and you may not want it to but but They do. They don’t take your property without any due process. But the greater good, Trump’s, if you like one person hold up the entire progress on what kind of society will we have all the things that would not have been built, if one recalcitrant party who didn’t want to sell was able to stand in the way.

Andy 6:17
So this individual had his life taken, though he may have been at least he didn’t commit the actual crime of killing anybody. But he was president and highly involved and ultimately they delayed it for a brief period of time, but then they eventually went forth and executed him. Last night, night night before last I forget which one Thursday night

Larry 6:39
Thursday? Well, he did. He didn’t accept a plea deal that was offered that would have spared him a death penalty because his attorney told him that they could not secure the conviction. They did his attorney misinformed. And that was the case I talked about not sort of copy and Dropbox about, about when when the attorney is wrong, that that should have spared him. But the Supreme Court didn’t didn’t see it that way. And I didn’t follow the nuances close enough why they rejected his petition. But the supreme court for last 25 years has. I mean, as it’s grown more conservative, they used to intervene in death penalty cases a lot more than they do now. But since the death penalty is, in fact constitutional, and we’ve had Justice Scalia explain it time and time again, why it’s constitutional. It’s something we’re going to have to change by policy. We can’t expect the black robes to come in and save us from something. So when Alabama gets tired of executing people, they’ll have to change their law we did Long, long number of years ago, more than a decade ago here, I think it was 2009. So that’s like 11 years ago. And Colorado just joined us, you’re probably supposed to be so much more progressive state, they just joined this year in 2020.

Andy 7:47
And as far as that goes, it would be for us the people to decide that we’re going to vote for people to represent us, that would put forth the policy that says we’re not going to execute Fill in the blank after that, a complete prohibition on it or start going down, you know, people with mental deficiencies or, you know, even people like Nathaniel woods, etc. That would be on us for people to put the people in place so that we don’t continue to perform these practices. Alabama has not done that yet.

Larry 8:19
They have not. And I don’t expect they will anytime soon because that’s not what people of Alabama support people by Alabama believe fervently in the death penalty, they believe and even in Georgia as well. Yeah, if you were take a poll, Georgia would say that the death penalty is overwhelming support and it’s boggling golly, he took a lie. And now the right thing to do is to take his life.

Andy 8:44
I don’t like it, Larry. I do not like it. Should we move over to the appeal?

Larry 8:50
I think so. But this is this is one of those things where Alabama, perhaps will join the family of civilized nations at some point.

Andy 8:59
Alabama will do In civilized nations,

Larry 9:02
that’s a fun way to build a civil, civilized. Well, I mean, the US, hopefully, but see, you can’t have the us join two civilized nations on that because the US federal government can’t set the policy for the states, they can only decide that we’re not gonna have a federal death penalty, which we do have right now. But if we were to abolish the death penalty, the federal level, all the independent sovereigns within this country can still have their own death penalty. So so that’s why I said, the family of nations because we can’t do it at a national level, could states have their right to prescribe their penalty schemes?

Andy 9:36
We would have to do a constitutional amendment to make that something that can’t be done at the states. Is that is that how that would work out?

Larry 9:42
Well, I mean, theoretically, we could amend the US Constitution. Yeah, prescribe a prohibition on the death penalty, but the constitutional member process is so Congress Oh, yeah. I don’t see that happening.

Andy 9:53
No, I don’t either. But is that the only remedy that the nation could decide to do to force Alabama to stop

Larry 10:00
thought would be the only remedy Or else what you could put a bunch of liberal activists, legislating from the bench judgments on who could interpret the constitution to invent something that the framers weren’t thinking about a prohibition or you could put people on the court who believe in it, evolving standards of decency that we’re going to hear from Scalia a little bit. I was

Andy 10:18
just gonna say we have something about that later. We haven’t decided where we’re going to play though. So So I guess we can wait till Oh, well,

Larry 10:26
this, this would be a good place to play his evolving standards of decency.

Andy 10:30
Right, then we will jump into Yes, here we go. Alright, so here is Scalia that I titled The constitution that I play is not a living, but it’s a dead philosophy or something like that. All right. If we

Larry 10:43
played this before, about six months ago,

Andy 10:45
oh, did we Oh, I just I made it. Yeah. Yeah. The constitution that I interpret and apply is not living,

Unknown Speaker 10:53
but dead. close quote. Explain that one.

Unknown Speaker 10:59
Much. of the

Unknown Speaker 11:03
harm that has been done in recent years by activist constitutional interpretation is made possible by a theory which says that unlike an ordinary law, which doesn’t change it means, what it meant when it was enacted, and what always mean that, unlike that, the Constitution changes from decade to decade to comport with, and this is a phrase we use in our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence Wait, the court does, to comport with, quote, the evolving standards of decency that marked the progress of a maturing society. We have a morphing constitution. And of course, it’s up to the court to decide when it morphs and how it works.

Unknown Speaker 12:00
That’s

Unknown Speaker 12:02
generally paraded as the, quote, living constitution. And unfortunately, that philosophy has made enormous headway not only with lawyers and judges, but even with the john q public.

Andy 12:19
Still, I still have to think that there is reasonable thoughts behind both philosophies of of toeing the line and not letting anything move and then also changing the way that our vocabulary is interpreted to, to let things be interpreted the way they would be today under our standards of living.

Larry 12:41
Well, absolutely. That’s why that’s why brilliant legal minds disagree. I mean, I agree with Scalia when we played the clip last week that you know, Dad was dead then and dad is dead. Now. We have no disagree. We have no disagreement about that.

Yeah, there’s not much more Wayne’s World standards that

we would support with we will differ is that I would say that the knowledge that that I would agree with what Briar said about the constitution was an acting of value system of, of what of what decency, would look like. And as we’ve learned over the last 240 years, we didn’t know the the evolution of the brain and how well developed the mental capacity, mental capacity of a particular age group was or what diminished capacity looked like. So at the time that they that they drafted that beautiful document, they didn’t have the understanding what they have to do, but dad is certainly still dead, no doubt about that. But blood, those people having the understanding that they have today, but they have not gone ahead and done that, well, that takes a lot of predicting what they would have done had they known stuff that we know now that we don’t know that that we didn’t know them. But I tend to think that these decent human beings would have not wanted to execute people if they had had the understanding of the development of the human brain at the time they drafted it. document. So therefore I would say that it evolved with our knowledge is our knowledge evolved,

Andy 14:05
then why the standards of decency, other amendments? Whatever the process might there be to say that you can’t execute? You know, a minor you know pick pick pick whatever subject you want felony jaywalking, you can execute people for felony jaywalking. And we don’t make a notional limit to do that.

Larry 14:21
We could, but that’s an exceedingly difficult process with what has to happen to amend the Constitution. It takes a huge supermajority and it’s not an easy process,

Andy 14:31
and then ratify two thirds of the states or three quarters,

Larry 14:34
three fourths, three fourths of the states and it’s hard to get three fourths of our states to agree on things anything.

Andy 14:39
What time the sunrises? I mean, we’re not gonna be able to get them to agree. I don’t think we could get them to agree on anything practically. Ah, all right. Um, I don’t know that I can ask any more intelligent questions about what he’s talking about. All right. And you’ve left me again. I’m right here. Oh, there you go. Okay, you’re back. What are the intelligent ones? He’s going to ask you about, Mr. Scalia.

Larry 15:02
Well, he’s a brilliant man. So there’s there’s a lot to ask about him. Hey, I’ve never I’ve never, these clips are not intended to demean Scully at all. No, I these clips we play these clip clips we play a Scalia is attended for the people who out there who are fans of that type of judicial interpretation, just to let them be more enlightened about what we would have if we had a majority on the court who felt that way which I think now we have close to majority who feels that way. But, but that doesn’t diminish his brilliance. I mean, he makes completely rational arguments for all of his positions.

Andy 15:36
I definitely agree with that. But that doesn’t mean that RBG or anybody else is any less brilliant. We just have tons and tons of clips and he’s very charismatic and entertaining to listen to. He gets kind of snarky and whatnot and gets the audience to laugh and go along with him.

Larry 15:51
He does indeed he pays. He pays always. For the whole time he was on the court. He was one of the one who was most charismatic and Ruth Bader Ginsburg about as Dells, as you can find, and, and so from the progressive side, there’s really, really not anybody that I would that I would feel as as fun to play their clips because what they say just isn’t as charming. What Briar said when we played his quote last week, it made sense, but it was a lot more It was a lot less charismatic the way he presented his, how persuasive he was what his position.

Andy 16:26
So, you know, so we had 13 states, I don’t know if that’s how many it was when all of that stuff was ratified. Ultimately, it wouldn’t be nearly as hard to try and coalesce three fourths of 13 states versus three fourths of 50 states, which I know some people think it’s 52 but whatever we can talk about those another time. It is such an arduous process to try and get it done is there then something to be said on both sides of it should be arduous to get it to be done, versus maybe it’s too cumbersome and that in itself should be adjusted to Make it so that we could adjust it ever so slightly easier than what it is now.

Larry 17:05
I’m not, I’m not convinced that making it easier to be the Constitution is all that wise because the easier you make it, the more you have the potential for mob rule. And for decisions to be made based on motion. We have all the power we need right now. And I agree with Scully on this, if you don’t like the death penalty, do what they have done across the country in the states that have have eliminated you have the power, there’s nothing that requires you to execute it, anybody for any offense. The Constitution doesn’t require capital punishment. It’s your choice whether or not you want capital punishment, simply choose another course of punishment for criminality other than the death penalty. And that means getting out there and evaluating a candidate and possibly directly asking them questions about how they feel about XYZ and making an informed decision not just based on what you see on the television and watching attack ads against the opponent. That’s unfortunately how most decisions are made. We we vote based on the charisma of the candidate, and we vote against people because of the stuff we will I heard that Obama did this. I heard that Trump did that. I heard this and I heard that. And then you start asking about the policy ramifications. So I can’t even explain to you what their policies are much less the ramifications of their policies by the average person that supports the candidate. You have a difficult time getting them to explain what policies really inspire them. When I’ve talked to some close friends of mine that I’ve known for decades, that are that are strong from support. The most common thing is I like the way he talks. I like the way he talks. And I really like the way he talks. That’s it. What about his policies? Well, I don’t I’d rather I’d rather not hear Obama went around the world apologizing for us, and I don’t I didn’t like that. And, and I like to I like Trump says the United States is right. But what about his policies? Do you agree with him? And I can’t either do you go round and round? It is it’s a charisma thing. I mean, they’re attracted to Trump because of whatever, whatever characteristics that they like about him, but very few will get into a deep, deep policy discussion about what policies are appealing because if I try to guide discussion, I say, Well, do you agree with his block of up and maximum? Well, no, I don’t agree with that. Okay. You started on list no one agree with that. Do you agree with relaxing environment? Well, no, I do want to try to keep and I said well, do you agree with cutting the people also? Sure disability, one auto agree with that. And and but but yet they still said, Well, this makes no sense to me.

Andy 19:38
Well, you could equally say, Elizabeth Warren is very charismatic, and Bernie certainly has a shit ton of support behind him. And he’s got a crazy number of people that follow him. Maybe they’re I don’t know, I don’t want to say that they’re more or less involved in the policies, but both of them are very charismatic.

Larry 19:53
Oh, well, I think Bernie, I don’t know what it is but call it charismatic but Bernie Sanders Like he’s angry every time he opens his mouth to me.

Andy 20:03
He does I agree.

Larry 20:06
He sounds like he’s mad continuously. And, and, and he doesn’t have the there’s a killer instinct in politics where you have to worry, you have to pounce and he, he frequently lets his prey off the hook like he did with like you did with Hillary back about the emails and 16 he let her off the hook and, and he, I mean, this is a tough business to be and he’s, he’s, he’s, he’s destined to collapse, I think because he doesn’t he doesn’t have that and he just is not a likable person. Trump said this week and I’ve got a calculation of it because he said that a likable person asked him about Elizabeth and why her campaign collapsed. And of course, one reason she’s she’s a fiver, but so was Trump.

Andy 20:51
Put it politely to say that about Trump.

Larry 20:54
But but but but I have no problem calling out somebody on my side. I’m here. She has just difficult Don’t choose. I mean, I can’t keep track on me. I mean, the native blood and then she got fired for being pregnant I think was another one. But But Trump said that she does. She’s just not likable. And he says contrast to me I I’m very likable. Well, I’m not so sure but but

Andy 21:16
apparently is, Hey, I wonder if you’ve got a burning thing. Do you have some sort of accent bias that you don’t like that he’s doing when he talks about it?

Larry 21:26
No, it’s it’s the anger that he that he just he just oozes that he’s mad continuously.

Andy 21:33
Yes, I know. I’m just picking it up just so fun because he says where it’s kind of funny, you know, with the New England accent. He doesn’t

Larry 21:40
come across. He doesn’t come across as warm at all.

Andy 21:44
Yeah, I agree with it.

Larry 21:46
And I again, you shouldn’t vote because someone is warm and fuzzy. That shouldn’t be the only characteristic of the only standard. But if all else is equal to tell people when I was in the hiring business, if I had to make a decision Between candidates, and they were roughly equally qualified. And I liked one because they had a warmer, more, more bubbly personality. I’m certainly not going to hire the one that I don’t like if everything is roughly equal, same thing with voting, if someone is warmer, likeable, and I agree with their with with more of their policies, I’m going to vote for that when I was a person that sounds like they’re angry and mad continuously.

Andy 22:23
So all right, well, then let’s let’s move on over to the appeal that I tried to do a minute ago before we got hijacked to go over Scalia. For many serving harsh sentences, the governor becomes a last hope. These are people that get sentenced to crazy long sentences and they have no relief except for to get the governor involved. And I know that it doesn’t happen that often at least from my understanding, and they profile a woman who got a crazy amount of time it looks like I think she was just like an accomplice like almost like forced to not quite do drug deals but almost be like the driver and got a massive amount of time. For for Being involved in a in a big crime and to try and get some sort of relief trying to go to the governor to get that all get out of prison.

Larry 23:08
Well, that’s the flaw with the with the with the system they have majority of the states, your your state actually has a better system than most where they were they don’t appeal to the governor, you your appeal to the Georgia Board of pardons and parole, but just largely insulated from from the mob rule. But when you when you have the executive being the last resort, where you’ve put these mandatory sentences in place, that they that if they have a prior record of whatever the generates the mandatory if you have where a person has to has to be sentenced to a harsh period of time imposed upon them by the court without any discretion, then the only last resort would be cruel and unusual punishment. We covered that last week in terms of what cruel unusual punishment is if the electric chair is not cruel and unusual. Yeah. long sentences, probably not either. And we end up with people appealing for executive clemency. Well, that’s a political office, people that run for governor. I can’t think of any state that where they don’t like their governors. And and if you start turning too many people loose, you end up with a massive amount of blowback and that’s by Governor Blagojevich didn’t turn anyone loose. He just let them stack up on his desk or his entire term of Governor

Andy 24:27
or they do like we had presidents do it in the lame duck session.

Larry 24:31
Well, it does tend to be when when there are a plethora of them granted, it tends to be like a governor on the way out it doesn’t have liquidations, you’ll see on the rail. Governor Ryan in Illinois did quite a few he did that. He committed I think he cleared off death row in Illinois when he left office and you had Governor Haley Barbour down in Mississippi. He did a lot of people I mean, that’s that’s kind of the test when you have the greatest freedom to do something. I mean, it’s when you’re when you know running again. But if you’re going to run again, for something you may Huckabee in Arkansas governor Huckabee did that, that that hurt him in his presidential campaign? Because that was an issue made about how, how lavishly his born again Christian values, which he practiced and when he cut pay cut sentences a lot, a lot of people out of prison.

Oh, yes, he did.

Andy 25:23
And so which side would attack him? He was running under the Republican ticket. So who would attack him for espousing those views?

Unknown Speaker 25:31
The Republicans?

Andy 25:33
That doesn’t make sense to me typically, I’m not saying by any, you know, they are generally on Team Read. The Christians are so they would espouse those views. That makes no sense to me.

Larry 25:43
They didn’t attack him for beta Christian. They attacked him for letting people that had not done their time out. Yes, but it wasn’t because of his Christian, but he actually my point was not to get Christianity he actually practice his Christian values of looking at a person Seeing that they had redeemed themselves. Christians frequently espouse that but they don’t actually practice it Huckabee actually did.

Andy 26:08
Yeah, that’s what I’m getting at.

Larry 26:10
Well, but but but the conservatives talk out of both sides of their mouth.

Andy 26:14
That’s what I’m trying to like. reconcile that. That’s what doesn’t make sense to me.

Unknown Speaker 26:18
But but they do it all the time.

Andy 26:20
I understand that too. Who

Larry 26:21
do you say Who do you okay? Who do you fake try to derail the first step back? Was it the liberals from Cory Booker, or was it the conservatives led by Senator Tom Cotton in Arkansas, that that watered down who who watered down the first step back

Andy 26:37
according to somebody else? I had an email thread with recently had no idea that that’s how that went down. But yes, I totally know that the conservatives had had, you know, watered it down, like he said,

Larry 26:46
okay, but that’s who typically that’s who attacked mike huckabee. When he was running for president. That’s who attacked governor of massachusetts that ran for president Michael Dukakis when he was running again. Bush, the way he got willie horton all through that campaign in 88 because Massachusetts had a furlough program and Willie was out on furlough and did some crime I don’t know what it was but but he got really hardened it’s not the liberals that attacked for this stuff. It’s the conservatives who attack

Unknown Speaker 27:20
stuff. Yes, I do understand liberals.

Larry 27:22
I do believe the liberals will attack while attacking other things but not not for not for you. I tell people what you say a liberal this attacking a conservative for for being soft on crime. Please send that to us. So we can get that on the air, because it doesn’t happen very well.

Andy 27:38
Let’s move over to another article from the appeal. And this is about a podcast and actually there’s a transcript listed but it says justice in America Episode Number 22 probation and parole. Hey, kick ass episode. I only made it about halfway through there. But can you remind me what the stats were between like the national average and then a particular state in what their probation rate was,

Larry 28:02
well, the national average score and this was 1300 per hundred thousand people under supervision controlled it said Georgia is at 5300.

Andy 28:11
So that’s like five times four and a half times more people. And this is on probation and parole on average is 1300 per hundred thousand people. But Georgia it’s 53. That is a lot of folks under the Department of Community supervision as they renamed it here these days.

Larry 28:31
Wow. And and it would make sense if Georgia had a very low incarceration rate, but Georgia has a very high incarceration rate.

Andy 28:39
They must be a super criminal here in this state they just there’s just constant criminality all around and you know, the, the the governor that we’ve got now he is all about making an enhanced some sort of build dealing with gangs and whatnot, they’re gonna they’re almost going to make gang activity get registered as sex offenders. If And I don’t think I’m exaggerating too far in that in that description.

Larry 29:04
I don’t see a problem with more registered betters coordinate, but some people say,

Andy 29:08
well the more of us that are registered, then the less of us that are actually like registered kinda. I don’t actually see there being something wrong with that logic other than obviously everybody registered.

Larry 29:21
Well, depends on what the requirements of the registration are if the requirements impede your liberty after you paid your debt to society. It’s wrong no matter no matter what

Andy 29:30
did you did you listen to the episode?

Larry 29:32
I did not I just I just did a skim read through it because it’s such a long article that PL always goes on and on and this is a podcast but but anything they publish goes goes on and on.

Andy 29:42
Especially in this case since they have the transcription. I am going to take a quick breath. I am getting reports of the popping hopefully that fixed it I haven’t had popping in quite some time. So anyway, I would encourage you to go over and listen to it because and actually if people are new listening to New to being involved in the criminal justice system. It seems like this podcast might be a really good source just this one they up they brought up a key term. They had like a word of the week, whatever. And they were talking about the word community. And they use the word community to describe all kinds of things like the Department of Community supervision or community policing. And they use that as I guess kind of like you use the expression kid gloves. It almost seems like they they use this term to make Oh hey, the police community policing This is a good thing, right? Yeah, but it’s not quite what you think the way the term is used? It is it is. But they go through that first and then they start talking about how poopy the system is in general with the people’s. But I would recommend you go listen to it, possibly subscribe to that podcast, just the same as you should subscribe to this one. And hint wink wink nod nod. Let’s move over to an article from CNN politics. Six former wrestlers say representative Jim Jordan knew about abusive OSU. So that’s it. Ohio State University. Dr. Tell us what your problem is with this article there?

Larry 31:06
Well, my my problem is that we’ll never know what representative Jordan knew when he was a coach there and what what he was brought to his attention. But I’m wondering if there is possibly a double standard in terms of, of the reaction to these allegations. If I read the article correctly, the doctor is now dead. But these these young men are when they were young men, it’s time they’re now. Some of them are well served in the middle age, but they’re coming forward with what appears to be credible accounts of what the doctor was doing to them when they went to seek help from the team doctor from Team position. Wrestling’s kind of a competitive sport and there tends to be the potential for a lot of injuries and a lot of a lot of sprains and stretching and things of that goes that goes with the sport and the doctor was notorious for examining the genitals of the young man who went for any reason whatsoever. And supposedly, according to the wrestlers that have come forward, it said that it was well known all over campus that it was kind of a hazing ritual for the, for the incoming freshmen. And representative Jordan, who was the coach was, this was reported to the representative to the coach at the time without representative. And there was nothing doubt about it. And I’m just wondering if it’s gonna be very difficult to bring the person back from death to try him in a criminal setting. So we won’t get the outcome we got with Dr. Nasser with a gymnast. But if what is being reported by the wrestlers is the reaction of the people in authority. Well, if he did this to me, I would just punch him out, I would snap his neck I would do this and that. That’s not a proper reaction. When you send your kids off to a university environment, I don’t have any kids but I’m guessing that when you send them off particularly They’ve been recruited by the university and this is a university where people are just delighted to sign up to play sports, whatever the sport is on scholarship. I’m assuming that one of the things that you are concerned about as a parent is how well that university is going to try to protect your your, your offspring, your kids, and certainly thinks Yes. That you would say, uh, well, I don’t it’s kind of a hazing ritual around here are they did that to me on punches lights out. That just doesn’t seem like the right response to a person who’s having their crotch grabbed because they are reporting a sprained ankle or or, or thumb or whatever that they’re going in there for this

Andy 33:44
is a former wrestler I forget the name. I don’t want to say the name. It says he immediately complained to Jordan when the doctor attempted to remove his shorts during an exam for a thumb injury. I’m I mean, maybe you know not I’m not a medical professional of any sort. But You know, the knee bones connected to the ankle bone, like all that that whole thing that we learned back when we were kids. I don’t really see what the relationship would be having a short term, we’ve done a thumb injury.

Larry 34:09
Well, thank you. It’s sort of I want to start with a thumb first, I’m guessing maybe you’d have a doctor on here and find out if you would, well, you would examine outflow from there depending on the symptoms, but but I, I just this reminds me of what was going on at Penn State University with Sandusky and and the what should have been a credible coach who said he walked in and found Sandusky on a young man, and that was a high school or not out of college but found him on a young man. I reported that to Joe Paterno, who was his supervisor, who should have reported to Graham Spanier who was the president of Penn State and nothing was done. Is there a gender inequality here do we do? We don’t take these things serious because it’s boys. You probably I was actually having a conference Today that seemed to

Andy 35:03
please don’t send me any hate mail. But when we were talking about like being in the military and guys will be all rough and tough, and you know, they make crude jokes about things. And this is sort of related to the Michael Bloomberg and the NDA is about maybe off color jokes or whatever. But as soon as a woman got put into the unit, and this is nothing disparaging about women, then the culture change the character change. So I’m, I’m thinking that in the case of the male wrestlers, that what you would have is like, Oh, you should toughen up. Or don’t be such a fill in the blank for whatever words you want to use there. You could take it and just suck it up your man do it. And maybe that would be the response. Like, here’s just the, you know, here’s what you have to do to make ends meet.

Larry 35:47
So well, Ross hellicksen. I was longtime wrestling coach there and five former Ohio State assistant coaches who worked with Jordan previously issued a joint statement saying none of us saw or heard of a years of LSU wrestlers, the well being of our student athlete athletes was was all of our concern. If we had heard of any abuse, we would have spoken up. And of course,

Andy 36:12
it still goes to we have allegations. There’s even like files that the Boy Scouts have had, where, you know, like, just just report after report, but they’re they’re held like under lock and key and unsafe or something like that. We have the report coming out from the priests in Pennsylvania, you have tons and tons of evidence coming out that different organizations almost have institutionalized almost like gay mob activity, of protecting this activity that if just the lowly student makes an accusation, it is impossible for it to go anywhere. But at the same time, I absolutely want and I think everybody would want if somebody does something that is not appropriate is breaking the law for sure that they should be heard. And the criminal justice system should get involved. I really conflicted on how to square those two ends. It seems like you have such power on on either side that the me to movement may have gone too far that you just say, Oh, he made me feel squishy, and you go to prison, but then you also have these institutions that are protecting serial offenders?

Larry 37:21
Well, you know, we’ll never we’ll never know, we’ve got we’ve got the, the allegations, and I always presumed that, that that an allegation is just that until it’s proven, it’s going to be very difficult to play this out in in a legal setting because of the season but one wrestler Mike L and LSU wrestler from 88 to 92 previously tolsey and and they’re still way Jordan would have known about this and not intervene. And his his point was that, that that the doctor never came on to him that way. Well, I mean, that in and of itself, is not any conclusion because doctors are basically are humans and they find certain body types more attractive it could be. If you looked at the profile of the accused of the restaurants who are accused, it may be that he preferred smooth bodies over hairy bodies that may be a pint sized guys over large guys. We just don’t know. But we can’t say because it never happened to you does that somehow invalidates the allegation? The fact that he might have been professional and proper, it may mean he just did not find you attractive.

Andy 38:26
very bizarre, very bizarre. Ready to be a part of registry matters. Get links at registry matters.co. If you need to be all discreet about it, contact them by email registry matters. cast@gmail.com you can call or text a ransom message 27472274477 want to support registry matters on a monthly basis. Head to patreon.com slash registry matters. Not ready to become a patron. Give us five star review at Apple podcasts or Stitcher or tell your buddies at your treatment class about the podcast. We want to send out a big heartfelt support for those on the registry. Keep fighting without you, we can’t succeed. You make it possible. We got Larry this this article is absolutely amazing. This is from the hill. And it says ridiculous laws are symptom of America’s over criminalization problem. I had to subscribe to this Twitter feed, you’ll find a link in the show notes for this. And some of these laws are the funniest things I can ever imagine that we have. And I’ve heard I guess is the term blue LA. Is that is that a term you’re familiar with?

Larry 39:43
I am indeed that that would be something from from your part of the country.

Andy 39:46
Okay, so specifically to the southeast.

Larry 39:50
Well, not specifically but more.

Andy 39:52
Okay, my understanding what a blue LA is something that was put on the books when you were a child, and it’s just left there You shall not have Chicken on Wednesday nights or some stupid thing like that, and then it just never goes away, which would bring up an argument that we should have laws that automatically sunset if not renewed. But here’s a whole twitter feed that releases like daily releases stupid laws. Some of them are funny, and I have one in mind. I don’t know that I should should repeat it, but it says, I’ll do this one. It says I don’t even like us codes. 7414 it says make it a federal crime for an employee of the national honey board to reveal how a honey handler voted in a honey referendum. I don’t know how somebody came up with the word honey in that sentence that many times that on its own, it’s pretty impressive. But how do we make a law that’s like that? And how are you supposed to then as a citizen navigate your way around? All of these laws? You have to navigate this like it’s a minefield, it’s crazy.

Larry 40:53
Well, you know, fortunately, these days laws are never enforced, seldom enforced. I shouldn’t say never But it’s an example of we don’t go back in and repeal stuff where are ours? If you look at the walls that are compelled in most of our states, you’d find stuff that’s so outdated, but it’s never been repealed. No one thinks about enforcing it. But the blue walls as I recall them had to do with Sunday sales and Sunday things that what got him from being Donald Sunday. And, and the South was very common about that. But I just did a quick Google search and there are other states outside the South. But growing growing up as a youngster, and Georgia, and the small towns that I lived in, nothing was opened on Sunday back in I mean, you could get it you could, you could purchase a meal. But most things were closed on Sunday. And as as time got more liberalized more and more things are, are the laws themselves are not prohibiting businesses from opening. But you still have town pressure, like if you went to a small town that believed that of the sanctity of science. They wouldn’t, there wouldn’t be a law enforcement ramification. But if you open this, if you opened your pool hall on Sunday, you would get pressure from the town officials, you’d probably find your pool while being inspected for a code violation for any number of code violations. Because we would prefer you don’t open this pool hall on Sunday. This is not the type of business that we expect to see operating Sunday. But I remember that in the back in the day, that’d be one pharmacy in my hometown, they would alternate being open on Sunday for emergencies. All the pharmacies were closed. It’s just such a list of things that were close, you couldn’t buy a car and you couldn’t, couldn’t do much of anything on Sunday. You could you could rent a hotel room if your town had a hotel, but but practically every merchant was closed.

Andy 42:49
So you being like the policy expert that you are is there. Have you ever heard the idea presented that laws should have some sort of Sunset on them? For them to then be renewed and reinstated, you know, five years, 10 years, 20 years, whatever that whatever that Have you ever heard of that idea being presented?

Larry 43:08
I have and and that is done from time to time, particularly like the the tax cuts. Okay. Another example of that the, the the tax cuts were good for 10 years because theoretically we’re going to watch the revenue and see that that’s exactly what’s expected to happen. It was going to go through the sky, which it didn’t. But but there’s, there’s, there’s ample times where there’s a sunset on things where they have to be reauthorized, or they die. But I’m not a big believer that that that is the magic cure all. Because you could be forced at a particular time to reenact a bad law because of the political whims at the time, and you get stuck with 10 more years of something, or maybe making your permanent and the wiser public policy would have done to a tour to let it die.

Andy 43:56
Yeah. I was also I was almost thinking that you were going to go to down the path of saying, Oh my god, I’m having like an old person moment. I’ve lost my thought. Crap. Where did it go? Shit? I lost my thought, where would you do with it?

Larry 44:12
You’ve got old, you’ve got old timers.

Andy 44:14
Oh my god, I had a you were gonna bring up the specific point of you were going to say it. Damn it I Oh, I know what it was. We should so if it’s on the books, then the prosecutor could say, oh screw it you can’t eat with chicken with a fork on Wednesdays and you ate chicken with a fork, so I have to prosecute you. You have to take away the tool from the prosecutor to not have the you know, oh, they would never do it. But they could.

Larry 44:40
Well, that is that is something I believe that the potential for prosecution is there. That is a threat that you would like to remove it if that’s the law that society no longer supports. Because prosecutors are not always purists and went bears winter and snow. And if you’re looking for a reason to prosecute somebody you could actually sell them books you can put your hand on the Bible and say I’m doing what Tom was. Sorta I would do.

Andy 45:04
Yeah, I mean, you could use a scenario like a, an Al Capone kind of thing where they had to get him on tax evasion kind of things instead of the actual crimes that he was committing the, you know, not saying that they bought up bullshit charges, but they had to go a very different way. So maybe you could get Al Capone for eating chicken with a fork on Wednesday and prosecute him to felony charges and send him to clean for his chicken eating habits.

Larry 45:28
But you might not send him to clean which what you might do is get get more cooperation on what you’re really trying to find out the threat of prosecution. What would induce people to if I’ve got I might have the the authority to send you to jail for 90 days a maximum penalty for something silly is that it’s probably not a felony. But I may say well, you know, if you want to come in, let’s have a conversation about something. I think I’ll hold off on these charges But otherwise,

Unknown Speaker 45:55
it can be used as leverage.

Andy 45:57
Yep. And then moving on. We have a collection Gonna have articles talking about firing public defenders for various reasons. And the first article that we have up is from a man named Rory Fleming. And we had him as a guest. I don’t know if you remember having him on as a guest, Larry, do you remember? Like, Episode 20?

Larry 46:13
I know it’s bad fact. I don’t recall that. How about that?

Andy 46:16
Well, you put this in there probably not even intentionally grabbing the article from him. But it appears as though these individuals were fired for being in support of and please remind me what they were writing an abacus brief in support of I don’t remember reading what it was.

Larry 46:35
It was for this and that.

Andy 46:36
Oh, isn’t that sweet? Finally, an amicus brief challenging the constitutionality of cash bail is considered above and beyond the acceptable level of advocacy. So they were fired for this. And should they be treated something like teachers that get tenure or that you know, other professions that end up with some kind of tenure so that they can be outspoken? They certainly have law degrees. They certainly have some level of expertise in working on the defense side. Maybe they should be protected from just being fired.

Larry 47:10
Therein lies the question. In this particular case, but as our public defense systems have evolved in different directions around the country, we have a statewide system where there’s a unified command structure and they work for either the executive branch of the governor or they work for a commission. We’ve got a county by county system, which is the way Georgia does it. And so my understanding right now each county is responsible for this. So if they have if they hire an integer, the county doesn’t necessarily have to have a public defender’s office, they can just appropriate money for contract attorneys which made available to the court to appoint people to represent folks but if they hire a public defender, you do work for someone. And in this case, it appears that the montgomery county Pennsylvania commission decided that it was no longer their pleasure to

have Chief Dean beer and public defender Keisha Hudson, on their staff, so they terminate.

And so what what do we do to preserve the independence of the public defender’s office, but yet have an employee employer relationship? I mean, would you want a public defender that answers to know what,

Andy 48:22
but shouldn’t they be? I mean, you use the word independent a minute ago, but shouldn’t they be allow military people can’t do any kind of, you know, they have to be very, very selective about being in parades or things of that nature supporting XYZ cause should public defenders being public employees be restricted from what kind of advocacy work they are in or not in support of?

Larry 48:46
Well, I mean, they have every right to have their opinion about the monetary bail system. But the county commission said that that’s inconsistent with our bail reform that we’ve done here and our pretrial release program. So therefore we find ourselves at odds with you. And therefore, you’re not you’re not our chief public defender anymore. The worst worst ally. I don’t know that that I’m struggling with this also.

Andy 49:14
And I just want to say so we had an article from filter mag and then there’s another one from the Philadelphia Inquirer. And then it looks like also from WP RC prison reform package backed by IV premises. I don’t think No, that’s a different article. Nevermind, nevermind. Ever. There’s a Washington Post article that I that we needed to mention a Pennsylvania County Fire. It’s two public defenders for doing their jobs. So those are the three articles that cover that subject. I don’t know, man. I’m trying to try to figure out which way to square that.

Larry 49:43
Well, that I say it raises an interesting question. Yeah, up until just a few years ago, four or five years ago, we, the public defender, our statewide system was under the executive branch, and each each chief executive each governor appoints The chief public defender. Therefore, if you got yourself crossways with the chief executive, you’d find yourself on the outlook outside looking in. Well, we realized that wasn’t such a great system. So now they work for a public defender commission. But the commission also has its biases. And since we’ve had to commission, the first public defender they had hired, has has gone on to do other things. And so you have accountability in every job. I mean, so what what we’re struggling with here is where does free speech and where is it? Where’s your personal belief? How much of your personal beliefs Can you put into a court pleading and expect it to have no ramifications on your job? I don’t know the answer to that.

Andy 50:48
What about the notion it was just hinted in here? What about the idea of having public defenders elected? Do you think that possibly having someone actually standing up there in front of the public saying I Support the full impact of due process and trying to vociferously defend people from accusations. does that even happen in the United States as it is?

Larry 51:09
Well, it says elections for the Office of rare according to law professor Ron All right, just for places like public defender San Francisco, California Lancaster, which is Lincoln, Nebraska, Davidson County in Nashville, Tennessee. And and and it says Florida. So I didn’t know that Florida did that if it’s talking about the statewide but can you imagine going out to a relatively ill Informed Electorate and saying I’ll tell you what to do. If you like me public defender, I am going to raise your taxes so I can have more better lawyers, more lawyers, more investigators, more more budget for for expert resources, so we can so we can fight the battle forensics, and we’re gonna do everything we can to keep people from going to jail in this county. How many votes Do you think that would pick up down in a county you live in if you if a person had to run for that office,

Andy 52:04
but but the person that’s running against him would then be going, I’m going to try and throw them under the bus as hard as I can, like. So now we almost have like a double duty prosecution team. I’m just trying to come up with any idea on how to balance the scales because the prosecution has all the money in the world. The defense side has not all the money in the world and the people that are trying to defend have no idea what’s going on. They have no idea how the process works, and they’re getting public defenders because they don’t have any money. Like I lost it, how we we balanced the system out to make it more more fair.

Larry 52:44
Well, wait, we’re all struggling with that sense of Gideon versus Wainwright was decided decades ago where we’re trying to figure out how to how to make that ruling, significant and meaningful. Public Defender systems struggle for lack of funding, but I can’t Imagine many jurisdictions where you would go out and campaign to to be a better public defender or that would be very popular because the public sees the criminal as being the problem. Yes. So therefore, they would not likely vote for a person who says I’m going to do a better job defending people.

Andy 53:16
But we talk about it all the time of the number of people that get exonerated, commuted, blah, blah, blah, for DNA for the the snitch thing that we talked about where it was like a sixth of the people, maybe a quarter of the convictions were from snitch testimony that were released from DNA evidence. Like there appears to be a very large number of people that are at least not as guilty as they were convicted, if not all are completely innocent.

Larry 53:46
Oh, I’m expressing society’s view. Personally, I think that we we should do a lot more in edge indigent defense across the land, but it’s a tough sell because the public doesn’t want us Then money with all the other things that that are competing for public resources. That’s not how the average person’s probably watched a clipboard go out and make a mall. There’s anybody left to make them all these days and ask around who wants to put more money into public defender tell me which will report that back in a couple podcasts? How many people say yes,

Andy 54:19
I will do it. Actually that neighborhood might not be that might not return so bad because it’s a it’s not the affluent neighborhood so to speak.

Larry 54:28
I think it’s very much a ghost a ghost town over there make a mall nowadays

Andy 54:31
it is it is because they they made another mall up the road from it that uh, that scavenged all the patrons there. Well, alright then. So what I had said before was prison reform package backed by IV promises better rehabilitation and oversight. And this is coming from Alabama news kind of sources. Governor Kay Ivey has endorsed a package of criminal justice reform bills as a way to respond to the systemic problems within Alabama’s prison systems. And this is part two What was that? That was Alabama, Mississippi, I’m

Larry 55:02
guessing the Mississippi. Okay. Alabama was Holman okay? But now we similar, not so bad, it’s more similar. Similar. There’s been a number of deaths in Alabama prison system over the last year or so that have been a result of inadequate resources for the prisons. And again, I don’t condone prisoners killing one another and I’m not saying that they’re blameless. So people listening say, well, Larry, if you do just understand that that’s the convicts, but it’s our job when we cage you and we take your ability away to defend yourself. It’s our responsibility to see to it that we make the environment as safe as we can possibly do. Knowing that people are in there are some not very nice. That’s our job to do that. If we’re going to make you defensive, defenseless we have to defend you.

Andy 55:58
So here’s A situation that I encountered that I, I think is just a tip of the iceberg, but just exemplifies what happens when someone is released. If someone does some very short, and I’m not trying to say that, you know, hey, Wes, you didn’t serve enough time, but if you serve any length of time, your driver’s license is going to expire. And in my particular case, I was just past the window, where my record was expunged, and I had to take the driver’s test. Again, I had to actually like get in the car and do the turn signals and parallel park and all that garbage. So if you serve any length of time where that may happen, and they open the door and go, Adios, good luck. Well, what kind of documentation Do you have, your family may have abandoned you along the way or passed away, whatever you may be in a different state and you have no documentation to support and prove who you are to get the ball rolling to do the next thing. Go get a job, get a driver’s license, etc. So in the year, the proposed package would do things like Give people a non help people get a social security card, a birth certificate and a non driving photo ID prior to release. I mean, that is a super low barrier. But I mean that low barrier, a very high barrier, something pretty easy to do. But if you don’t have anything, you need one of the forms of documents to get the other one. And you end up in this whole circle jerk of trying to get your social security card or birth certificate. You know, if you’re 50 years old, how do you get your birth certificate again?

Larry 57:28
Very, very carefully. This is this is this is a quite a package of different proposals, some sponsored by Republicans sub sponsored by Democrats. And the only thing that troubles me is that they want to I mean, I like things I see in the package, but they’re going to build new prisons now. Is this going to be to retire the old, obsolete prisons? Or is this going to be to augment overcrowding because Alabama has one of the most overcrowded systems that we have. I’m not as supportive of all we’re going to do is continue to warehouse the same number. People building new prisons, because if you’re 170% of capacity, you build three new ones, and you bring yourself down to 110% of design capacity. That hasn’t accomplished what a man has accomplished something. It’s made the extreme conditions less extreme. But I would like to see a proposal to actually divert people from prison, which toward the end of the proposal, there’s, there’s looks like that there’s a few hundred it might get out early, under one of the proposals sponsored by one of the liberals.

Andy 58:27
Very strange, man, very strange that other countries have figured these things out. But we could use their examples, but it seems to always be a race to the bottom of how shitty we can treat people.

Larry 58:38
Yeah, the there’s, there’s about five to 700 sentences could be reevaluated and shortened under under one of the bills 500 to 707, and could have there could have been 700. And he said it won’t have a huge impact on wages for the population, but it’s about creating fairness in Alabama sentencing structure. Yeah.

Andy 59:01
All right, we’re back at the AP to sheriff’s sync voter okay to use inmate food money elsewhere. As I recall, 18 months ago, somewhere relatively early in our podcast history, Larry, we covered an article about a sheriff that was that had bought himself like a beach home from shaving dollars and pennies off of the food from the inmates of his county jail.

Larry 59:24
And this is very same state dispersing like we I told

Andy 59:27
ya, they just they highlight like they just touch on that particular one. And he says that he bought a beach house although auditors and ethics ethics officials have found nothing illegal about what he did. So you you feed the inmates, cockroaches and pop tarts and then you get to buy a beach house.

Larry 59:47
And that’s a problem because I

Andy 59:50
so I’m just trying to think that if you feed them halfway well you would have less chance of riots. This is the same state with no this is Alabama now. Mind, I’m thinking of Mississippi again. They’re to me, they’re interchangeable almost. But you would have people uprising because they’re pissed off because the food sucks. And you’re feeding them low amounts tonight, you’ve got people robbing the people that are able to make store because their families do support them. It seems like this causes all kinds of problems. I’m not saying they need to be fed steak dinners and lobster and all that crap. I’m just saying like, there’s probably some basic standard that they should be met. And they’re going to use this money to do other things.

Larry 1:00:30
Well, it begs the question from a policy perspective, though, when, when you look at a budget, people never understand budgeting because very few people have actually looked at a city or a county or a state, much less a federal budget. I’m one of those I can’t say that I’ve not looked at a federal budget. But if you look at if you look at even a relatively modest sized county that does a lot of line items in the budget. And what happens to the funds at the end of the budget cycle is always an interesting concoction of Whether there’s a reversion to the general fund, or whether it gets spent because of, of zero based budgeting, if you don’t, if you don’t spend it, we’re gonna cut your budget by that about next year. And so the question becomes for the sheriff who, who does provide nutritious meals, who does keep the costs low? Who does end up with money leftover in the budget? What would happen? What’s the incentive? We claim we want people in public service to treat it like a business and be efficient and run it like it would be a business. Okay, so we’ve got a sheriff who manages the department doesn’t buy brand new patrol cars every year, tries to hire deputies that don’t hot right, tries to keep the line items from going over budget and keep them under. So the food service for the county lockup is one of the items in the budget. What do we do with them? Well, that money is left over if we want to have that incentive to stay within budget or coming under budget but what would happen with the funds that are left off

Unknown Speaker 1:01:55
by better food Next go around. Maybe

Larry 1:02:00
So you if you prefer they spent the entire allocation

Andy 1:02:05
does the opposite of that seems to be that then they would intentionally shave, try and shave the cost off the food to then create extra funding to move that money elsewhere intentionally instead of it just being well, we we had more money than we you know, we fed them to the standards that we had set. And then with that money leftover, we’re intending to shave the money to buy new police cars. Well,

Larry 1:02:32
it’s backwards, though this is this is this is a request to divert it to school resource officers and this particular article, but what what would we do with the money that’s left over, if you want, and I’m just playing to our conservative audience if you want public officials to run their agencies, with intent of being frugal and not going over budget but timing within a budget or under budget. What would we do with the money that’s left over each year? If a person has done exactly what we say we would like them to do of our public servants what were those funds go their leftover? I

Andy 1:03:14
they shouldn’t buy beach houses.

Larry 1:03:16
Well, we’ll pay on them. They should but beach houses Yes,

Andy 1:03:18
but but they did they found that there was nothing wrong with what that person did. So I’m just wondering, does that money then is it allowed to be left in their bank account to handle any ups and downs? You know, we have gas prices that are fluctuating based on coronavirus based on all these different factors that would change the distribution cost of food so that they would have a buffer to handle the price variances. So while if,

Larry 1:03:45
if there’s a surplus state law permits 25% of it to go toward other law enforcement expenses, according to this article, if it’s accurate, yeah, so there there’s already the provision since they changed, correct the the abuses The flagrant abuses we talked about a year and a half ago or however long it was, they’ve now they’ve now given them the prerogative to divert 20% of money but but this this one this this amendment, but allow not 25% but 100%

Andy 1:04:14
together, correct? Yep. Well, what counted us not just 25% we could use 100%, the sheriff said. So, again, that incentive to me is incentivizes him to, you know, scrape the bottom of the barrel and and add cockroaches into the food for extra protein, etc.

Larry 1:04:32
Well, you notice Marshall Canyon or Marshall county sheriff said county has extra monies

that can’t be spent under the current state law. And he tells wh Mt. TV that he’s hired a dietitian to make sure he makes good nutritious food, and he wouldn’t pinch food costs to raise money for other purposes. Their inmates I understand, but you have to take care of them. Now if that’s the serious if that’s his true feelings. I mean, that is I made a video He put the quote goes on, say they’re still humans, and you still have to take care of them. And that, but I’m just I’m just struggling with, with the balancing of what happens to well managed public officials because some public officials are very frugal managers. I see that in my work with, with mail that comes in with, for example, an extra ounce of postage when you go for the standard one ounce first class, it’s only 15 cents, not, not 55 cents, right now put 10 you cap on it. And there’s a lot of people who have no idea they’ll put two stamps so they pay 10 cents about what something that would cost 50 plus five plus 15. And you can you can you can see that with the with the agencies where they actually use the correct amount, be it by meter or by putting the right amount assembly or the right amount of stamps because each additional house after the first house, it’s only 15 cents. So what do we do to encourage them to not blow through their entire budget and what do we do with leftovers if they are frugal without without dehumanizing the inmates, what would they do with those leftover funds? I don’t know. You’re way smarter than me on the subject. I don’t know how to balance all of those different sides of that like hexagon. Well, often cases that it’s a state level here both things revert back to the general fund if it’s unused. And agencies try their best not to have the money revert back to the general fund, but it does happen. It does happen work plasmid funds revert revert back and I don’t know what I don’t know what what happened. I’m guessing that the county appropriators the commissioners would probably appropriate less money for that line item. If it wasn’t needed to feed the preserves this what would happen and most people don’t want their budgets to shrink by line item.

Andy 1:06:42
Well to move over to the pandemic of the day, which isn’t. It’s not a pandemic yet. I’m not trying to create fake news and people throw stuff at me but so we have one from forbes.com it says handling coronavirus in federal prison. We have two articles back to back another one from the PA Post talking about from Pennsylvania that the coronavirus could be a big problem in Pennsylvania jails and prisons that you got people in close proximity you have varying degrees of people’s own sanitation. Also the resources available like some places don’t let you take showers every day. Obviously, people are in super close proximity. I like this is a nightmare. This is a nightmare for the for the prison system. If it does end up infecting a prison.

Larry 1:07:30
It would potentially be and you’ve covered that so well about prisons, they they are totally again at the mercy of factors and forces beyond your control. You don’t determine how fast and how hot the water runs. You don’t determine just I mean, very little, say some over the stainless steel and what type of sanitizers they gave you to keep the keep the living area and the common things clean. You Don’t control what the other inmates do in terms of their own personal sanitation practices if they practice anything at all. And they the so there are so many things beyond your control. And the nation of Iran just turned, they gave furloughs to a whole lot of people in prison.

Andy 1:08:16
Thousands of them really interesting. It was 50,000. If they were going to be released in the near future, they just said, Well, good luck, and they could make parole or bond or something like that.

Larry 1:08:26
Yes.

But, but they wanted to try to minimize the impact if there were to be a spread of it and happier people, in fact itself. rather than letting everybody loose I figured if they diminish the overcrowding and make clearly if you have a less crowded facility, you can do more containment. overcrowding as an enemy for so many things because of the lack of the ability the systems even if they’re working perfectly, when you’re when you’re running a prison 175% of design capacity. It’s that’s not optimal, because everything is stress that’s running. They didn’t design, the laundry system, the ventilation system, the sanitation system, the plumbing, the food service, all that is not designed to handle that, that that type of stress. Me and that many people.

Andy 1:09:16
Yeah, let me throw this at you. You end up with people you know supporting an underground economy in prison where Hey, I want to get my laundry cleaned. You know, I pay for someone to do my laundry separately. Well, that diminishes the resources for them to wash clothes for the general population, which I’m not saying coronavirus is spread through the laundry system. But now Your clothes are getting less soap and things cleaning materials put in on them. Perhaps now you end up with someone with something that can be transmitted through washing clothes, whatever, and it’s just not clean anymore. Or Same thing with food. Same thing with medicines. people sell medicines and stuff like Good grief. I mean, this is whatever it store but problems

Larry 1:09:58
well everything breaks down and overcrowding. I mean, the the health care you have or if you design a system, they take care of 800 prisoners and you’ve got a 1300 you can’t sprint unless you unless you bring in more healthcare workers you’ve got, you’ve got the nursing staff, the medical staff, the every every segment of a prison is under under immense stress when they go substantially above what they’re designed. And in fact, most corrections experts will tell you that you don’t want to run a system any anywhere near the design capacity. Because again, everything stresses at that level. When you’re running a prison 100% capacity ideally you want you don’t want to be running a prisoner capacity. But that’s hard to do with our lack of up mentality in this country. So we potentially going to have a problem. And that was all important putting this in here because these people are more vulnerable than the rest of us are and they are the they have nothing they can really do to help themselves very little they can do

Andy 1:10:53
to then expand on that you would also end up with the guards. You know they’re not super well paid. Maybe they only have a limited number of days of vacation and if they get sick, and they call in sick, that puts more stress on the ones that are still coming in putting them potentially at higher risk of catching whatever it is or burning out, and then the prison being understaffed, and then you end up with parchment.

Larry 1:11:16
That is correct.

All sorts of problems potential with this, and I don’t know what the Centers for Disease Control and what the what are coronavirus. I don’t know what what plans are being made for presence, but hope. Hopefully they figure out some containment measures.

Andy 1:11:34
You know, I have the ultimate solution to this problem. Would that be the solution to this problem is they should have thought about that before they did their crime.

Larry 1:11:44
I don’t know how you would think about that. No one had ever heard of this. So

Andy 1:11:48
I’m laughing just because it’s so outrageous and just so ridiculous. It’s just over the top that we like. Anyway. All right, we should move on. We should move on to an article from Crescent. News, Ohio Sex Offender Registry needs to stay. This article can’t be legit and real. Ohio Sex Offender Registry currently has 18,000, almost 1900 offenders who have been convicted of various levels of sex crimes. And this individual this author thinks that it should stay.

Larry 1:12:19
Well, I guess this author has their opinion.

Andy 1:12:22
I imagined that this almost like on the heels of the Michigan decision that this is gonna be in response to that.

Larry 1:12:29
I’ll take it that you don’t fully agree with this article.

Andy 1:12:32
I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with it. Yeah, right off right on the face just from the title. I can come up with all kinds of problems for various degrees of who’s on the registry for what, but even 19,000, that’s fewer than Georgia has. I don’t know what the average is. But that’s still a pretty big number of people that you would try to manage to then figure out who the actual, potentially who the people are, that would need to be monitored.

Larry 1:12:59
Well narsil had a reaction to that, to that article that that went out as well. And it was published as I understand

Andy 1:13:05
it. And I assumed our souls position was this is garbage and registers need to go.

Larry 1:13:11
That would be correct. That was actually the title of the article while registers need to go.

Andy 1:13:16
I didn’t see the article, where was it published?

Larry 1:13:19
I’ll leave it would be on our website. I

Andy 1:13:21
see where it is. It was published in the Portsmouth daily. I didn’t, I will add that to the show notes now.

Larry 1:13:28
So Sandy, our communications director wrote that,

Andy 1:13:32
okay. And obviously, she was of the opinion that they need to go.

Larry 1:13:37
I thought it was a I thought it was a well written reasoned response.

Andy 1:13:41
Of course, of course, of course. Hey, there’s also a response down there from one of our patrons named will. I didn’t get a chance to read that though. It’s a pretty his his response is pretty lengthy. It just starts out says the author has chosen to willingly ignore the evidence that proves several facts and then it goes on from there.

Larry 1:13:59
So that’s well for you My computer has frozen. Set good. Say that again. I said my computer has frozen. Is that a good thing?

Andy 1:14:06
No, that’s definitely not a good thing. I mean, you’ve dropped out sometimes tonight, so I would possibly call that par for the course.

Larry 1:14:16
So well, I guess. So you’ll have to read all the information if we do at the end. But once we once we hear from Scalia,

Andy 1:14:23
I can do that. Yeah, so we can do the second Scalia clip now. And

Larry 1:14:29
here we go. This is a this is really, I probably ought to set up this that this is because people are gonna say why didn’t we talk about defensive Marriage Act DOMA? And the reason why we did that is because oftentimes, the Supreme Court is vilified, and accused of doing something they didn’t do. And this is an example of what doba what the decision was that 15 or 16, whatever year that was, of what actually the court struck down, but they did create this all this fear. Is that what that was instilled into Paul, what’s gonna happen? And Scalia explains that best so that’s why I prefer to hear from him versus me.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:09
Very good. Well, here’s Scalia.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:12
How’s the recent Supreme Court ruling on DOMA going to impact the church visa v mandatory performance of weddings? Oh, I technically that

Unknown Speaker 1:15:21
ruling has nothing to do with with the issue of whether the states or the churches have to honor single sex marriages. It has nothing to do with that. It just, it just deals with the what? When federal statutes refer to marriage, what does that refer to DOMA simply said that in federal statute, it refers only to marriage between a man and a woman. And DOMA said no, that’s wrong. It now refers it refers to whatever unions were lost. Under the state that concluded, it has nothing to do with whether the states must recognize same sex marriage, although, as I said in my dissent in the case, that’s the shoe that will next drop. I mean, I think it’s, it’s coming, but dama dama doesn’t do it.

Andy 1:16:22
So what he’s describing is that me and my boyfriend want to get married, and I go to my local church and say, I demand that you marry me and my boyfriend, and the federal law for DOMA now says that they have to marry us.

Larry 1:16:35
No, that’s not what not what. That’s not the case that for the issue of was the Defense of Marriage Act came about, because the president at the time was, was more liberal than what society was ready for. We had the we had a president who thought that gays should be able to serve in the military and they instituted the don’t ask, don’t tell policy and if States has started allowing same sex marriage. So the conservatives in Congress at the time said, well, by golly, we can’t have that close first thing, you know, marriages and institutions can’t be destroyed. So these states that are choosing to marry same sex people, we need to intervene with federal law. And they, they passed the Defense of Marriage Act don’t work, which is what Scott was talking about. And they said that for federal purposes of marriage is defined as a union between a man and a woman, which meant that states like New York and whatever is a list of states were at that time that had said that same sex marriage were okay. They met the people that had those very valid marriage licenses issued by those states could not go into the Social Security office that collect your spousal benefits because those marriages for federal purposes weren’t recognized. So anything that had a federal component, you couldn’t get it because your marriage was not legitimate, thanks to DOMA. So all this did was said, marriage belongs in the proper domain of the states. They get to regulate And decide who gets buried within a state and its way back to the States, which is what conservatives claim they believe in all along. So that’s what always puzzled me. Why did they want to usurp the state’s power? to prohibit a state that wanted to allow same sex marriage? Why did they want so desperately? And of course I know what the answer is. But Larry, you have to understand that sacred sanctimony of marriage is so important that if you go down that road, that two peoples the same sex can get married next thing you know, it’ll be multiple partners and what are we going to marry next? I mean, it’s just a slippery slope to the moral decay of society. That’s their answer, but I thought that that was up to the locals at the stage to decide that that’s what they professed I believe so strongly and as local control

Andy 1:18:48
is that at all move over to the masterpiece cake shop? Is that the right set even remotely related?

Larry 1:18:55
You talk about having to prepare the cake, correct. Yes. Well, I suppose in a way, the the the, you get into public accommodations. And the question on that case was whether or not going to have a cake made four years of public accommodation somewhere to a hotel room or to housing if there’s if there’s a if there’s a protection, right that you have under under law to be protected. And that’s a whole whole whole program components that I don’t know if we want to get into tonight about the cake. I don’t know why you’d want to have a cake Bake for four years. If somebody didn’t want to your money. I kind of like spend my money with people who want it completed, I can understand. I can understand the logic if you go in and say they say we don’t serve your kind here. And you think that if something’s open to the public, if you would find that very disheartening would be like if you call the taxicab company and they said, You sound like you have an accent. We don’t like your car. We don’t we will not dispatch to you. You would you would not find it. And I asked people when they said that they wanted people who were Against how the courts are coming down on this cake thing, when when they say it’s interfering their religious freedom, I asked him if you’re gonna be okay with this, make sure you understand what you’re what you’re promoting. Are you going to be okay? When someone from a fundamentalist mental Middle Eastern religion who believes that a female has to be escorted by a male or be married when they show up at a hotel in the United States of America, who happens to be operated by a Middle Eastern or who has that core belief? And they say no, but we do not put it to you here because you are not accompanied? Are you going to be okay with that as the protection of their religious views? And most people say no. When I said, Well, I don’t understand it. You say that? Do we have to protect the Christianity that that if it goes against their Christian beliefs, they still have to bake the cake for the same sex couples, but yet you’re willing to do a flip flop just just right on the dime. When it comes to a religious belief that you don’t agree with them? You don’t you don’t want protect everybody, just please. Why is it that you’re beliefs are so much more important to be protected. And I have not gotten an answer of that one either.

Andy 1:21:04
Hmm. All right. So there is Scalia and what was your What was your ultimate intent on that particular

Larry 1:21:11
clip? The sensationalism of what people people scare folks about that. They were the whole the hype about the clergy, we’re going to be forced, you’re not forced to marry a soul that you don’t want to marry. That rose really didn’t have anything to do with who has to marry anybody.

Andy 1:21:28
Okay. And then by extension, I can’t remember which state it was Kentucky, Tennessee, there was a woman that worked at the county clerk, and she refused to do marriage certificates for same sex. That was all correct.

Larry 1:21:42
Well, according to Scalia didn’t but but okay. And she, she, yeah, she she she was a duly elected county clerk, which is supposed to issue marriage licenses. And she refused to issue the license and then she got held in contempt and she actually got jailed for a few days. Presidential Candidate Michael Huckabee ran down to parade around him and tell her release when she was released. But that was a ceremonial thing you don’t have to agree with. There are things that you do in government that that’s a terrible requirement you have to do. And sorry, that’s the particle and with the office with with when people are legally entitled to get married, whether you appreciate their marriage or prove it or not, that’s your job to issue the license.

Andy 1:22:26
Brenda in chat says Rowan County Kentucky about that. Yep. And she just she had sold out as if it was like magic.

Larry 1:22:34
That was her own town probably

Andy 1:22:37
wasn’t I wasn’t gonna call her out for that one. We received a comment from a listener regarding Episode 117, which was one step back and this is from will, but not that well. It’s a different will. says Hey, hello, thank you for your work. I wish I could listen to more but there’s only so much time. Totally. I understand. That is the biggest problem fighting the registries. Let’s do a better job. Are the podcasts I’d like to thank you narsil and everyone else fighting, especially when no one has to do it. I know other shares in Georgia are doing exactly what Cobb County is doing that’s referencing to what we talked about with them harassing people at all hours of the night. Basically, they are operate, operating outside of the law, for example, the laws clear about what information people are forced to give to them at the point of a gun, of course, but these shares are too incompetent, arrogant, or simply to just simply follow that, excuse me, all of them request more and suggested is required. That is just not messing around that is operating outside of the law. The person on the podcast named Larry sounds great and obviously well informed. Go you Larry. I would like to suggest to him that others Excuse me, I would like to suggest to him and others that though he calls them Do not call them registrants. registrants offenders, I think you in our salon, everyone else should call them registered a person forced to register PFR much more accurate. I totally just went To get your opinion on, on how we term our people.

Larry 1:24:05
And I wish we wish we could come up with that magic, though. I hear that all the time. I mean, you’re trying to try to figure out a way to describe a person because no one chooses to register that I’m aware of that. So it’s not like a voluntary act that you’re that you’re engaging in. But it’s kind of like a prisoner. When you’re when you’re in prison. You are an inmate or a prisoner. And when you’re forced to register, and

Andy 1:24:33
you’re, you’re, you’re a registrant but I wish I wish I had the answer to to magic description. I know I know people struggle with that all the time. And then he continues, he says also psrs need to get over trying to hide. The podcast suggested that pf RS did not allow law enforcement to come onto their property and then sign their papers that they visit might visit their neighbors. People need to get over that and encourage it Personally, I’d be completely happy if law enforcement never came near me and they can harass my neighbors about me as much as they like. I’ve got no concern or issue with simply ignoring anyone. That is a problem. The registry is long ago changed me into a person who couldn’t care less what other people think. Personally, I encouraged PFS to never allow law enforcement to get near them put fencing or walls around your property and keep them out. They are a danger. Not necessarily sure I disagree with that final sentiment. They’re not sure how practical it is, though.

Larry 1:25:30
Well, putting fencing around is not an option for people who live in multifamily housing and it’s not an option for people who are economic have economic challenges, but I get I get, I get where he’s coming from. But saying you don’t care about them talking to your neighbors is is a scary thing. Because if they only spoke the truth to your neighbors, that would be one thing, but the way they cast the when they go talk to your neighbors because you’ve been insubordinate whatever. They don’t go talk to the neighbors In a neutral tone, they go talk to the neighbors and say, Have you heard from this guy? You see this picture here? We haven’t been able to get touch with him. We’re kind of concerned about it. Oh, yeah. Well, what did he do that makes you want? He’s you know, he’s on the sex offender registry, right? Well, what did he do? Well, he abused a 13 year old. Oh, really? Well, of course, that person has a house full of kids. And then there’s a house full of Kids Next Door. And and then they go on and on about giving the animal a special card and say you call us if you see this person because we hadn’t been able to make contact with them. And we’re kind of concerned, well, what is your neighbor go, how they’re going to react to that when they see you next time. They didn’t know that you were on the sex offender registry necessarily. They didn’t know that the crime involved a 13 year old necessarily. And they’ve just been suggested, it’s been suggested them that you’re trying to avoid and evade law enforcement. And the average person doesn’t understand it. Your obligations only come in once a year, generally, and in Georgia, for example, they don’t understand Know that it’s all of a sudden your neighbor has a paranoia that’s been created by law enforcement go into your dog go into the neighbor’s door. That’s what I was trying to convey to people. But if you have absolutely no fear that the law enforcement can do anything that will harm you, then more power to you, but I have great fear for what law enforcement can do. And then what they can do in terms of how the neighbors perceive you and how the neighbors react to you.

Andy 1:27:25
You know what, I think now I can actually play this clip. I wasn’t sure how I was gonna be able to use this tonight, but I’m gonna like, I think this will highlight exactly what you’re saying.

They could do whatever they want, and they got their rights.

Larry 1:27:43
So but but I really appreciate where he’s coming from on on terms. I wish people push back a little bit more, but I’m really leery of, of suggesting how much and where, because of the consequences that I can cascade that I’m not able to To help with and that that’s what that’s why I’m very hesitant to tell people don’t do this or do that. I tell them that I can only speak for myself in terms of what I would try to do under the circumstances and you don’t even know that you would be able to do that. You don’t know how, when they show up, what type of mood what what your mental state is going to be, and how you’re going to react when the Gestapo when you open the door and there’s guns. I mean, you just truly don’t know how you’re going to react. It’s it’s a situation where you wish you would be able to react, but you don’t know.

Andy 1:28:30
Let me tell you something that is super exciting. Larry’s when we get a new patron, and we have a new patron named steamy minty. And I have a special special sound for that one. How about that and then one of our patrons increase their level of support a nice, super friendly Thank you back for for doing that increase. Thank you, patrons and all of our listeners.

Unknown Speaker 1:28:54
Thank you Mack and steamy.

Andy 1:28:56
Yep. Larry. That’s all I got. Man. Is there anything you want? To cover before we get out here,

Larry 1:29:01
now, I appreciate everybody so much. It’s it’s, it’s so I want to get an email when we get an email like what someone said that so that’s very touching because we actually do put work into trying to be helpful and provide people information. And we didn’t have a lot of really, really solid stuff tonight that would relate to the earth shattering litigation. But hopefully these little tidbits are helpful all across the board in terms of understanding the courts and understanding politics and understand systems. And, and even though we didn’t have any, any any great case of importance to talk about.

Andy 1:29:37
Very good humblebrag there.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:39
Well, that’s what we hope

Larry 1:29:41
that people that people do. But when when they when they hear these things, what you mean, very few people think about budgets and leftovers.

Andy 1:29:49
I don’t think people think about budgeting their personal money, let alone with the government does with budgeting. Yeah. So So

Larry 1:29:55
understanding understanding that that that a publication is going to have somebody to report to, and that there’s gonna be accountability and that someone’s gonna ultimately be able to hire and fire a chief public defender. I mean, the average person wouldn’t think about that.

Andy 1:30:11
Never, never, never never. There. What’s the website where people can find this wonderful podcast?

Larry 1:30:16
Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s patreon.com.

Andy 1:30:19
Oh, yes.

Larry 1:30:21
Man See? The dots.co not call. registry matters.co. Yeah, no, Patreon I’m getting to the part of the budget. I know register matters. Yeah. I want I want the money all about the money. All the Federal Register matters does SEO. That’s what it is.

Andy 1:30:40
And of course, you’re going to remember the phone number because you had to announce it 45 times during the normal column Monday night.

Larry 1:30:44
Oh, you talked about the 747 that’s the one that was two to 74477

Andy 1:30:49
that’s 747-227-4477 and then our email is registry matters cast@gmail.com And lastly, Larry, how do people support us?

Larry 1:31:03
Well, they go to registry matters and they, they look at what their bank balance is and they just clean it out completely.

Andy 1:31:09
Perfect, perfect a Patreon comm slash registry matters with that yet, nobody’s done

Larry 1:31:15
that yet.

Andy 1:31:16
I think someone did do their net because they were unemployed and it was like or whatever.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:22
Gross net. I always get those things backwards. Anything else, Larry, before we go, that’s it, Andy. Thanks, everyone. All right. Take care.

Unknown Speaker 1:31:29
Good night. Good night.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai