The Daily Grand and Sundry

ARNOLD STANG, the real Governor of California.

“I know most people don’t know who Arnold Stang was. I know him mostly from old 50’s and 60’s TV shows and cartoons. He was on shows like I Love Lucy, Milton Berle Show and various TV shows. He was the voice of Nurtle the Turtle in Pinocchio in Outter Space.”

This blog has long maintained that one of the solutions to over crowding in California prisons, is the building of prisons in Mexico to house California prisoners who are illegal immigrants.
 
http://gerrymaxeyworkshop.com/blogging/?p=3201
 
In its February 11, 2010 issue, my all time favorite magazine, THE ECONOMIST, did an article about overcrowding in California prisons,the following is a quote from that article:
 
” The governor’s wildest thought experiment has California paying Mexico to build prisons and house California’s inmates in them. This is “totally silly” and probably unconstitutional, says Joan Petersilia of Stanford Law School”

So here we have an idea, an innovation, a concept and the Law Professor, excuse me, the  Law Professor at Stanford (The Harvard of the West)  thinks it is silly.
 
It may well be unconstitutional,but then  so was the Income Tax, the Louisiana Purchase, Women’s Right to Vote, and Black folks’ right to stay free from slave catchers(see Dred Scott vs. Sandford) .  The purpose of law professors, at Stanford, is to make the innovative CONSTITUTIONAL
 
The criticism comes from Stanford, producer of Herbert Hoover, a good,and brilliant man who NEVER had one innovative idea to get us out of a crisis, in his case, The Great Depression.
 
Stanford’s concept of BIG IDEAS, and innovation  ends with their student band.
 
As for silly….I would rather seek advice from Jane Austen than a Law Professor.

 
““Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way”, JANE AUSTEN
 
The Governor is a sensible man, who has been bold and impudent in his actions,….silly ceases to be silly when that occurs.
 
On a more practical, pragmatic basis….is the idea really silly?
 
“The economist Lant Pritchett has a shorthand by which he describes the evolving patterns of social acceptance of so-called “big ideas”: Silly, controversial, progressive, then obvious.”
 
There has been many BIG IDEAS deemed silly;
 
“David John of the Heritage Foundation … says Obama’s proposed banking reforms are ’silly’”.
 
“….Men treated women as inferior, they treated women as not intelligent, weak, frail and ’silly’…”
 
As we celebrate Abe Lincoln’s birthday, let us all, including the Governor and the Law Professor remember what the Chicago Times said about the Gettysburg Address, the day after it was given, 
“Chicago newspaper, The Times, called it “silly, flat and dishwatery.”
 
Attack the idea as unworkable, ill advised, too expensive,  but spare the people of California, desperately seeking new ideas, and innovations to surmount our seemingly intractable problems,  the weak criticism of a mediocre mentality, ….”The idea is totally silly”.