Law Students

More Than a Little Disturbing

By Pete

This doesn’t sound like good policy to me:

While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.

Of course, the cheap political move is to blame Palin for this. Certainly if this were going on while she was mayor, she’d share some of the blame, but regardless of whether it was her decision or just something that she allowed to continue while she was in office, it’s not a good thing.

The other side of this coin is, of course, that if this were the policy before she was elected, changing it would require increasing the police budget. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not something you can “just do”.

Sometimes you wonder, though, if people are just thoughtless. I’m not sure how much Palin made a year as governor, but think of how good she’d look right now if, instead of allowing the policy to go on, she took a $12k a year pay cut and put that money into the police department to pay for the rape kits.

What’s amazing is that doing the right thing is often a good political move, yet so few politicians do it.

Reason #182,918 why elections in the U.S. are typically “lesser evil” decisions.

Full post as published by PeteHoliday.com on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).