Wisconsin Gulag revisited

This is one of those subjects that can't help but annoy. What's so particularly frustrating about Wisconsin's exceedingly racist, punitive policies? First of all... it doesn't need to be this way! Any number of possible solutions are being... ignored! Amazingly enough, during the Doyle administration, a few promising reforms were proposed. The tone employed within statistically limited but important governing (Dem) sectors was a good sign: "We can't keep on acting as if we're going to lock up the whole state... can we?" That was just a minor evolution from the bad old days of Republican Tommy Thompson and his 1998 "Truth in Sentencing" Craze. It was gratifying to perceive growing recognition among thoughtful individuals that our draconian law enforcement priorities must be altered. Interesting and persistent fact: When our Gulag is discussed at all, one quickly encounters a widely shared belief that this odious "discrepancy" is ONE nation-wide distiction we should seek immediately to change. Change needs to happen where it most matters, at the county level. Simply stop locking people up for victimless crimes, for economic crimes. It's true we need restructuring at a more fundamental socio-economic level; that argument is for another day. For now, just incarcerate fewer people! Culmination? A lot of words were spoken and a lot of meetings held. Certain measures were passed around that time enabling the release of (far too few) non-violent inmates. Doing so would have made sense from the point of view of proportionality, of comon sense. Some of us even believed it was actually gonna happen! Then... in 2011 we got saddled with the de facto racist Scott Walker Regime. A regime that from the very beginning insisted the corrupt and vile Status Quo must not yield. No early release, no mercy, no sanity. Only the peculiar prospect, not easily confronted, of further years inhabiting that most imprisoned society... Ours! Whether inside the Walls or out, no getting away from that disturbing reality. Above all, no Human Decency - least of all from the sick and twisted GOP majority in both Houses. Republicans - with some significant Dem complicity - go on implementing policies that insure the public will continue to subsidize an exorbitant Wisconsin Gulag, at the expense of the Wisconsin Idea. http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/04/24/178817911/wisconsin-locks-up-