At the beginning of this year I discussed the state of North Carolina’s plan to pay the victims of its forced sterilization program $50,000 each. Although I found the story disgusting before it has managed to get worse:
Victims of forced sterilisation in the US state of North Carolina will not get compensation, after a payout plan failed in the state Senate.
A plan to give $50,000 (£31,800) to each victim passed the House but was rejected in the Senate. Republicans said the state did not have the funds.
[…]
“The state has no money anyway and the teachers would like to have a pay raise, and state employees would like to have a pay raise and you’re dealing with a $250 million shortfall in Medicaid,” Senator Austin Allran said.
It must be nice being the state. First you get to forcefully sterilize those you don’t approve of, then you get to control the court that determines how evil your actions were, and then you get to throw that court decision out the window because you need to buy votes in the upcoming election.
How are they buying votes with this action? Easy, they openly mentioned that there are state employees who would like to have raises. In any private business if a court decision lead to a payout that hampered employee raises it would me the employees would simply have to go without raises that year. The state doesn’t have to worry about such minor details because they can choose to ignore court rulings and give their employees pay raises so those same employees don’t vote the current crooks out of office.
This is how the system works, what’s politically convenient is allowed to happen and what’s politically inconvenient is stopped from happening.