Originally Posted by jewels

Sheesh. Now that I've read all of Cyn's responses, I'm not sure why everyone's up in arms. Cyn's never minimized the crime of rape itself. I think his only error was mentioning Tawana way back. I know that raised my back for a while.

But what I believe I'm hearing is this: We're in this financial crisis. People can't buy or sell real estate. Property taxes are a huge factor. US and state governments have been privatizing for years, i.e. USPO, Florida's toll systems. Florida's budget has been cut by millions, thanks to the voters here who chose to back the $200 annual property tax cut, which is forcing the closure of County parks, loss of jobs, transportation and other service cuts (multiply that $200 break by how many homes in the State?). Police and fire departments have been cut as well, at least in South Florida. For a lousy $200.

Every state agency, every county and every city receiving funding sat down for hours and hours to determine what would get cut. I heard some of our (Broward) County Commission meetings, and it wasn't easy. It's great to read the paper and declare what a bunch of assholes they were to cut certain programs, but it's not so easy to weigh them and play fair.

With this economic crunch, we might need to find alternative means to pay for some things so we can maintain the police and fire department. Would we cut staff to buy rape kits or should we keep everyone on payroll in case we need them? These are the decisions we're talking about.

Rape is a horrific crime. Hang 'em high. But the rape kit must be paid for. If a State budget is cut and if we don't want to bill the victim, what should we do? Lay off some cops so we can buy rape kits? What options do we have? Is privatization a viable option?

Originally Posted by Rekna

How about we cut that $40,000 in per diem the govern of Alaska gets every year to stay in her own home that is more than twice what would be required for Wassilla. Or how about all that money they used to fly her family around. Or if we want to make this a local thing how about the millions of dollars Wassila paid for a hockey stadium with heated seats. My point is there is lots of things that should be cut before cutting things like rape kits.
-----Added 23/9/2008 at 07 : 55 : 45-----
Wasilla to get new sports complex | Construction > Construction Overview from AllBusiness.com



There you have it 14.7 million on a hockey stadium for a city with the size of 8,000 people. They could invest this money at a low 3% interest and get $441,000 a year more than 20 times what would be needed to cover the rape kits. The money we are talking about for these rape kits is a non-argument.