Just an example of how screwed up the priorities are in California.   While California is slashing spending for their public Universities, they are dramatically increasing the spending on prisons.    Keep spending on prisons, because a lot more people will be heading there if they cannot get an education and support themselves.

University of California Budget News

In the past 20 years, the amount of money allotted to the University through the state budget has fallen dramatically: General Fund support for a UC student stood at $15,860 in 1990. If current budget projections hold, it will drop this year to $7,680.

In the same time frame, by the way, funding for state prisons has more than doubled, from $5 to $11 billion. It’s been reported that, based on current spending trends, California’s prison budget soon will overtake that of the state’s universities and community colleges.

Exactly how screwed up does a society have to get to privilege prisons over education?  Republicans love spending money on prisons because they are always afraid.  When they get afraid they want to put more people in jail.  It doesn’t matter if the crimes are nonviolent.  It doesn’t matter is 70% of the prisoners have simple drug possessions.   Lock them up — lock them all up — so that the coward Republicans can feel safer.  They are not actually safer because as more and more people lose jobs and can’t get them, there will need to be more prisons.

America is doomed.