Gitmo North Plan Makes No Sense

John Boehner on CNN:

The top Republican in the House and a senior White House adviser on Sunday debated a plan for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay and moving some of the terrorism suspects held there onto American soil.

"They want $500 million from this Congress to rehabilitate this prison in northwest Illinois," John Boehner, R-Ohio, said on CNN's "State of the Union." "I want to see who the members are who are going to vote for this. I wouldn't vote for this if you put a gun to my head."

Thank you. Putting terrorist detainees at Thomson is a terrible idea. There's a perfectly good prison at Gitmo we've already spent hundreds of millions on--why waste it and expose our citizens to collateral damage and heightened threats in our homeland. We're enduring body scans now at O'Hare.

Enough.

Stop further complicating our lives with this stuff.

(Hey Dems, are you willing to have body scans at polling places? I thought not. How about some simple requirement for everyone to show a photo ID, hmm?)

Put Illinois prisoners at Thomson, as some of our other prisons are crowded.

Gee, how come I'm not reading about this in the Chicago papers.

More. Christian Science Monitor:

“Most of the communities that I’ve talked to have been somewhat disappointed after they see what happens,” says Thomas Johnson, an agricultural economist at the University of Missouri in Columbia. “They don’t think it’s a mistake. But they don’t find the economic benefits that were suggested.”

In some circumstances, research suggests, prisons have actually done harm.

“The towns that get prisons, especially the most desperate communities, tend to be worse off,” says Gregory Hooks, a sociology professor at Washington State University and author of two studies of rural prisons. “That was a surprise.”

Mr. Hooks and other researchers have used census data to compare rural counties with and without prisons. These studies show that prisons fail to increase total employment, raise incomes, or reduce poverty. It’s not clear why. One reason may be that local people get relatively few prison jobs because they lack the skills and qualifications needed to work as guards or administrative staff. Researchers also speculate that prisons may displace other economic activity.