Schwarzenegger Asks: Why Not Build Prisons in Mexico?
Kevin Yamamura writes on the Sacramento Bee:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday offered yet another way California can save on incarcerating illegal immigrants: pay to build prisons in Mexico.
Schwarzenegger said in a Sacramento Press Club speech that rather than raise taxes, the state could find money by cutting pension costs, allowing offshore oil drilling and lowering prison expenditures.
His budget calls for an $880 million infusion from the federal government to pay for housing illegal immigrant prisoners who have committed crimes in California. The governor also wants to rely more on private prison companies.
Is California’s Governor Broke Too? IRS Files Lien Against Arnold Schwarzenegger
The San Francisco Chronicle reports on this tale befitting the governor of the IOU state:
As if a projected $20.7 billion state budget deficit wasn’t bad enough, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has another financial headache to deal with: clearing up paperwork related to his 2004 and 2005 federal taxes.
The tangle involves a lien of $79,064 placed on Schwarzenegger’s property by the Internal Revenue Service. The lien was filed in May in Los Angeles County, where the governor and his family live, and surfaced Friday morning on a celebrity Web site, tmz.com.
News of the lien brought a quick defense from Schwarzenegger’s staff, with a morning declaration that the governor had paid all his taxes, followed mid-afternoon by a release that ascribed the glitch to sloppy record-keeping…
