CNN Tonight with Don Lemon on Bill Clinton & BLM

[admin]

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
by Ring Wing Watch
April 15, 2016

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Body Count: Moral Poverty ... And How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs, by William J. Bennett, John J. Dilulio, Jr., John P. Walters

The Manhattan Institute is an increasingly prominent conservative think-tank that promotes limited government and free-market idealism. The organization has attacked minority-focused policies including affirmative action, civil rights initiatives, and immigrant support programs as obstacles to full social integration and to the benefits of the market system. The Institute heavily promotes school vouchers, saying that competition as the best way to improve public schools.

52 Vanderbilt Avenue
New York, NY 10017
212-599-7000
http://www.manhattan-institute.org

Chairman: Dietrich Weismann

President: Lawrence J. Mone

Founded/Place: 1978— New York

Board of Trustees: Byron R. Wien, Roger Hertog, Charles H. Brunie, Robert J. Appel, Eugene D. Brody, Christopher H. Browne, Andrew Cader, Timothy G. Dalton, Jr., Michael J. Fedak, Peter M. Flanigan, Mark Gerson, William B. Ginsberg, Maurice R. Greenberg, Fleur Harlan, H. Dale Hemmerdinger, John W. Holman, Jr., Bruce Kovner, William Kristol, Frank J. Macchiarola, Rodney W. Nichols, Edward J. Nicoll, Peggy Noonan, Joseph H. Reich, Richard Reiss, Jr., Joseph L. Rice, III, Frank E. Richardson, Robert Rosenkranz, Nathan E. Saint-Amand, MD, Andrew M. Saul, Paul E. Singer, Robert Skidelsky, Thomas W. Smith, William K. Tell, Jr., Thomas J. Tisch, Donald G. Tober, Bruce G. Wilcox, Kathryn S. Wylde.

Finances: In 2005; $17,555,461 in assets; $ 13,296,150 in revenue; $ 10,083,160 in expenses

Publications: City Journal

Affiliate Groups: An associated member of the State Policy Network, a national network of state-based right-wing organizations in 37 states as well as prominent nationwide right-wing organizations. Through its network SPN advances the public policy ideas of the expansive right-wing political movement on the state and local level.

Purpose

A think tank focused on promoting free-market principles whose mission is to "develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility."

Activities

• A staff of senior fellows and writers contribute to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal and compose books, reviews, lectures and articles to promote the organization's views. The organization holds several high profile lecture series and policy forums and has hosted policy speeches by Bush administration officials and Republican presidential candidates.

• The Center for Civic Innovation focuses on improving the quality of life in cities by turning away from government policies and giving power to people closest to each specific problem, like parents, police, and ministers. The Center advocates for school vouchers and greater educational accountability.

• The Center for Race and Ethnicity seeks to examine prevalent issues within minority communities and criticizes relevant government policies. The Center argues that many government social programs act as barriers toward fostering a greater sense of individual responsibility and entrepreneurial spirit within minority communities.

• Many of the Center's writers attribute the socio-economic problems of the black community to an overriding sense of victimization, a reliance on government social programs, and a culture adverse to education and individualist social advancement. Accordingly, they contend that government programs such as welfare and affirmative action reinforce the community's sense of dependence and victimization.

• While many of the Center's writers do not hold an anti-immigration position, the Center opposes government programs intended to accommodate immigrant concerns, such as bi-lingual education. They argue that such policies stand in the way of Hispanic integration and deprive immigrant communities from the full benefits of America's market system.

Controversial Fellows

• Charles Murray served as a visiting fellow from 1981-1990. Murray later authored the controversial 1994 work, The Bell Curve, in which he argues that the gap between black IQ scores and white and Asian IQ scores in America cannot be explained by social factors and subsequently forwards the idea of genetic intelligence differences between races.

• Abigail Thernstrom serves as a senior fellow at the Institute. She has advanced controversial opinions about the state of American race relations and serves on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She was one of only two members to dissent from the Commission's eight member panel in finding evidence of racially-based election irregularities regarding the 2000 election in Florida.

Funding

Major contributors include Exxon Mobil, Chase Manhattan, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lilly Endowment, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Roe Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation.

History

The Manhattan Institute originated in the late 1970s as a conservative, free-market think tank with a focus toward addressing urban social problems in New York City. Playing a large role in developing and influencing the policies of Mayor Giuliani, the organization rose to national prominence during New York City's 1990s revival as it advocated the privatization of sanitation services and infrastructure maintenance, deregulation in the area of environmental and consumer protection, school vouchers and cuts in government spending on social welfare programs. The Manhattan Institute subsequently became one of the foremost policy institutions with regard to urban social issues such crime, education, welfare, and race relations. Under the Bush Administration, the Institute has gained increased standing in a wider range of issues and has established itself as one of the preeminent conservative think-tanks, having hosted policy speeches by then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in 2002 and both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney in 2006.

Quotes

• "...I want to thank the Manhattan Institute's support for pro-growth economic policies, policies that really send a clear signal that we are still the land of dreamers and doers and risk-takers." - George W Bush; New York, Jun 27, 2006

• "For twenty-five years, the Manhattan Institute has confronted old problems with fresh thinking. Many of the Institute's emblematic ideas—from the notion that low taxes encourage businesses to the concept that police should be treated with respect—were originally greeted with skepticism but have since been embraced by well-run cities everywhere. Congratulations on a quarter century of making a difference." - Rudolph W. Giuliani

• "This is a place of tremendous creativity, of original thinking, and of intellectual rigor. The scholars of the Manhattan Institute have shown, time and again, the power of good ideas to shape public policy and to have an impact on the lives of people here in New York and across the nation. You have made enormous contributions to the betterment of the city and the policy debate nationwide. The Manhattan Institute is greatly admired in the country, and rightly so. I congratulate you for building such a fine reputation, and for maintaining it over the years." - Dick Cheney; New York, Jan 16, 2006

[admin]

Don't believe the fictitious crime trends used to undermine police reform. The ‘Ferguson Effect’ is part of an ugly history of using crime to delegitimize civil rights movements. That’s why we must be especially vigilant against it
by Bernard Harcourt
June 6, 2015

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Body Count: Moral Poverty ... And How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs, by William J. Bennett, John J. Dilulio, Jr., John P. Walters

Claims that crime has shot up because of the Ferguson protests are gaining traction, despite scanty evidence. Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

Pulling a page out of the conservative playbook from the 1960’s, some are arguing that America is seeing a “dramatic crime wave” as a result of the protests against police shootings in cities like Baltimore and Ferguson. But the so-called “Ferguson effect” is just the latest example of conservative crime fiction being used to undermine the recent gains of the country’s newest civil rights movement.

The causal link underlying the “Ferguson effect” is unfounded, as any honest social scientist will tell you. Given the complexity of identifying short-term crime trends and of determining reliable causal antecedents –- even with decades of hindsight and troves of big data, which is certainly not the case here -– the idea that we could observe a “Ferguson effect” on crime today is preposterous. One need only glance at the voluminous scientific controversy surrounding the massive crime drop since the early 1990s in the United States and Canada to understand this perfectly.

The point of the “Ferguson effect,” though, is not to be accurate. It is instead to distract us from the growing evidence about the magnitude and extent of police use of lethal violence in the United States -– as powerfully documented just this week by The Guardian and the Washington Post -– and to besmirch the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

It’s a strategy that Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater inaugurated in his campaign in 1964, almost single-handedly turning crime into a political weapon against the civil rights movement. As Katherine Beckett shows in Making Crime Pay, the strategy coincided with a southern conservative focus on crime as a way to discredit the gains of the civil rights struggle and attract voters to the GOP.

Richard Nixon perfected this tactic during his presidency, repeatedly emphasizing, as he would in his 1968 acceptance speech, that all “we have reaped” from social programs for the urban poor is “an ugly harvest of frustrations, violence and failure.” As his chief of staff, HR Haldeman, would document in his diaries, referring to President Nixon as “P”: “P emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

Linking crime to race as a way to undermine a civil rights movement is an approach that was woven into the fabric of the law-and-order movement from that period til now. Consider arguments about the threat of juvenile “super-predators”, which William Bennett, John DiIulio and John Walters invented and defined in their 1996 book Body Count as: “the youngest, biggest and baddest generation any society has ever known”. They wrote:

Based on all that we have witnessed, researched and heard from people who are close to the action, here is what we believe: America is now home to thickening ranks of juvenile ‘super-predators’ -– radically impulsive, brutally remorseless youngsters, including ever more preteenage boys, who murder, assault, rape, rob, burglarize, deal deadly drugs, join gun-toting gangs and create serious communal disorders.

DiIulio would add, in another article in 1996: “as many as half of these juvenile super-predators could be young black males”.

Still today, those attempting to undo civil rights gains try to link crime to race. J Phillip Thompson shows well that the roots of “broken windows” policing –- often touted as the solution to the so-called “Ferguson effect” -– was precisely the “conservatives’ response to the civil rights movement demand for full employment in the mid-1960s.”

Back in the 60s, the language and references were more explicit. In his 1968 book Varieties of Police Behavior, James Q Wilson could, for instance, describe disorder as, among other things: “a Negro wearing a ‘conk rag’ (a piece of cloth tied around the head to hold flat hair being ‘processed’ -– that is, straightened).”

Today, people don’t use that kind of language in mainstream publications, but it is there in code –- those none-too-subtle references to race, crime and civil rights equality.

In a recent WSJ op-ed that warns of the “Ferguson effect”, we are told: “Almost any police shooting of a black person, no matter how threatening the behavior that provoked the shooting, now provokes angry protests”. The op-ed decries “the belief that any criminal-justice action that has a disparate impact on blacks is racially motivated.” The author suggests that recent attempts to reduce the population of black men in Wisconsin prisons may account for increased crime in Milwaukee. The op-ed quotes a police chief as saying that all this leaves “the criminal element ... feeling empowered”.

With no reliable evidence to go on other than an assortment of anecdotes and hunches, the “Ferguson effect” follows in a long line of conservative efforts to undermine racial equality.

It takes decades to undo these crime fictions. It took years to dispel the fantasy of juvenile super-predators -– with lasting effects on our juvenile justice system and devastating consequences for many youths. It would be decades before John DiIulio would recognize his myth and sign on to an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court trying to undo some of the more draconian measures. And it is only now that the myth of “broken windows” (revived again by NYPD Police Chief Bill Bratton) is starting to be recognized even by former believers as just that: an oversold tale.

Using crime to delegitimize a civil rights movement, sadly, is not new. The “Ferguson effect” has an ugly racial history.

[admin]

"No Regrets"
by Tara Carreon
4/20/16

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Body Count: Moral Poverty ... And How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs, by William J. Bennett, John J. Dilulio, Jr., John P. Walters

"No Regrets," by Tara Carreon

[Hillary Clinton] I didn't mean to say ...

[Bill Clinton] I'm just saying ...

[Media Minstrel Show] Super Predator

[Black Lives Matter Protesters] Is My Son Next?
Justice for Eric Garner -- Black Lives Matter
I Can't Breathe
Black Lives Matter

[admin]

The Democrats’ Uneasy Connection to Private Profit Deportation Jails
by Matthew Kolken
March 4, 2016

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Body Count: Moral Poverty ... And How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs, by William J. Bennett, John J. Dilulio, Jr., John P. Walters

In 1996, President William Jefferson Clinton signed sweeping immigration reform legislation into law: the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act” (IIRAIRA). Two of the law’s central components were the creation of mandatory detention of certain immigrants charged with criminal grounds of removal, and the establishment of a program that permits state and local law enforcement to arrest, detain and interrogate noncitizens believed to be in violation Federal immigration laws.

These two components paved the way for the expansion of the cottage industry of jailing immigrants in for-profit private prisons.

Once the 1996 law was in place, President Clinton took the advice of then senior advisor Rahm Emanuel, who devised a strategy for the President to “achieve record deportations of criminal aliens.” In just two years after signing the law, the Clinton administration nearly doubled the number of immigrants held in immigration detention, and by 1998 the average number of immigrants held in deportation jails increased from 6,785 to 15,447.

Flash forward to 2009. Hillary Clinton’s “friend and mentor” former Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) added language to the Department of Homeland Security’s annual spending bill that required the Federal government to “maintain a level of not less than 34,000 detention beds” at all times. This is commonly referred to as the “detention bed quota,” and needless to say the Obama administration endeavored to fill every single bed.

As the number of detained immigrants increased, a corresponding increase in the length of time it takes to process an individual through the deportation process also occurred. In many instances, it takes months for a detained immigrant to get their day in court to assert defenses to removal. Furthermore, because of mandatory detention, no immigration judge has the jurisdiction to release a detained immigrant while they are fighting their case. This has led to an annual cost of $2 billion to taxpayers, or approximately $5.5 million per day.

Not to be outdone, and rather than making good on his campaign promise to make immigration reform a top priority of his first term, President Obama appointed Emanuel as his Chief of Staff and proceeded to establish an artificial 400,000 per year deportation quota that resulted in the detention of noncitizens on a scale that has never been seen before, with the President now being labeled “the Deporter-in-Chief.”

By 2012, the private prison industry, one of the main beneficiaries of this detention strategy, had fully wrapped its tentacles around the Democratic Party—blanketing them in a mutually beneficial quid pro quo for Democratic support of policies that increased profitability. For example, Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz notoriously sided with the Corrections Corporation of America over her constituents concerning the construction of a for-profit prison to jail immigrants.

But it doesn’t end there. In 2013, Senate Democrats spearheaded new immigration reform legislation called the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act.” It was sold to the American public as commonsense immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented. In reality, it was designed as a windfall for the private prison industry. Moreover, the pathway to citizenship was little more than a Lucy-held football due to a series of barriers to legalization that would result in a large percentage of the undocumented population failing to achieve lawful permanent resident (green card) status, let alone citizenship, and ultimately once again facing the prospect of incarceration and deportation.



The Congressional Budget Office scored the 2013 law, estimating that it would cost $3.1 billion to detain, prosecute and incarcerate offenders from 2014 to 2023. The federal prison population was also expected to increase by 14,000 inmates annually by 2018 at a cost to taxpayers of $1.6 billion over a decade.

In 2014, the Democrats lost the Senate, and there were whispers that Republicans intended to introduce immigration reform legislation that would cure the onerous 3- and 10-year bars created in President Clinton’s law that trapped the undocumented population inside the United States, preventing legalization and subjecting them to the possibility of detention and removal. If successful, Republicans would have greatly reduced the number of individuals inside the United States unlawfully, sharply cutting into the profitability of the private prison industry, while also being cast as champions of the undocumented community in advance of the 2016 Presidential election.

When the Democrats lost the Senate, despite Republicans pleading with President Obama to wait for Congress to act, he enacted a series of executive actions that had the end result of killing any prospect of immigration reform, and further cementing the public’s perception of Republicans as obstructionists.

Now we are on the eve of the 2016 Presidential election, and the private prison industry has become a central focus of the Democratic primary, with Bernie Sanders vowing to put an end to the “private, for-profit prison racket.” Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, countered Sanders, returning the money her campaign received from the private prison industry and also making a $8,600 donation to a women’s prison charity, or roughly the equivalent of two minutes of a single speech to Wall Street bankers. What she neglected to mention is that despite the token donation, the Clinton campaign still benefits from lobbyists from the for-profit prison industry, and her policy of refusing donations only includes direct donations to her campaign, but not donations to her super PACs or State and Federal Democratic committees.

For example, before the Clinton campaign said it would no longer take money from the private prison lobby, an October 2015 VICE article reported that the campaign had received as much campaign money as Marco Rubio’s campaign from groups affiliated with private prison companies:

It is hard to predict where we will be once we have a new occupant in the White House. But what has become abundantly clear is that until we do, Democrats will continue to keep the focus on Republicans using sleight-of-hand misdirection to prevent us from discovering that when you pull back the covers, you will find a strange bedfellow cozied up next to them in the Lincoln Bedroom, and a private prison industry checkbook on the nightstand.

***

Matthew Kolken is an immigration lawyer and the managing partner of Kolken & Kolken, located in Buffalo, New York. His legal opinions and analysis are regularly solicited by various news sources, including MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, The Washington Post, Forbes Magazine, and The Los Angeles Times, among others. You can follow him @mkolken.

[admin]

Clinton To Cut Ties With Private Prison Industry
by Alice Ollstein
October 23, 2015

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Body Count: Moral Poverty ... And How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs, by William J. Bennett, John J. Dilulio, Jr., John P. Walters

Democratic presidential candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, leaves the Longworth House office building at the conclusion of her testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

On Friday morning, the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton announced they will no longer accept donations from federally registered lobbyists or PACs for private prison companies.

“When we’re dealing with a mass incarceration crisis, we don’t need private industry incentives that may contribute — or have the appearance of contributing — to over-incarceration,” campaign spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa told ThinkProgress, explaining that Clinton will donate the large amount she has already received from these sources to a yet-to-be-named charity.

Hinojosa explained that the move is part of Clinton’s promise to “end the era of mass incarceration,” especially private prisons and private immigrant detention centers.

“She believes that we should not contract out this core responsibility of the federal government,” Hinojosa said. “This is only one of many ways that she believes we need to re-balance our criminal justice and immigration systems.”

Yet the decision came after months of pressure from civil rights and immigrant justice groups, who launched online petitions and interrupted Clinton’s public events, demanding she cut ties with the private prison industry.

“Our message was, ‘You can’t be pro-immigrant and still have this blemish on your record,'” said Zenén Jaimes Pérez with United We Dream, one of many organizations that teamed up to press Clinton. “She had [campaign donation] bundlers who worked for the Corrections Corporation of America and Geo Group, which run most of the immigrant detention centers in this country. For me, it was a big deal, because my dad was detained in a Geo facility. She was taking money from a group profiting from my family’s suffering.”

She was taking money from a group profiting from my family’s suffering.

Activists are still concerned however, that Clinton has not yet released a criminal justice reform plan, though she has said one is currently in the works. Pérez told ThinkProgress he hopes the plan specifically addresses mandatory incarceration minimums for immigration-related civil violations, such as crossing the border without authorization. Black Lives Matter has also met multiple times with the Clinton campaign to demand reforms that address mass incarceration and police violence.

In September, Clinton’s 2016 rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a bill to ban the federal government from awarding contracts to private prisons, saying, “Private prisons are not cheaper, they are not safer, and they do not provide better outcomes for either the prisoners or the state.” Sanders cited studies showing that private prisons, because of their profit motive, have an incentive to spend as little as possible on inmate care and rehabilitation. These companies also routinely pressure lawmakers to pass bills that will guarantee them more inmates by criminalizing low-level offenses.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who is challenging Sanders and Clinton for the party’s nomination, has also called for the end of federal private prison contracts.

Following Clinton’s announcement, activists are turning their attention to other 2016 candidates.

“Now it’s time for the presidential candidates who still accept private prison money to follow suit and commit to a future where no one is imprisoned for profit,” said Matt Nelson with the Latino civil rights group Presente.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is perhaps the industry’s favorite, as many of the largest for-profit prison companies are headquartered in his home state. Rubio has received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from private prison companies, going back to his time in the Florida legislature, and has hired consultants and staffers who used to work for these companies. During that time, he also steered a $110 million state contract to Geo Group.

As his prospects in the race for the GOP nomination improve, Rubio has been distancing himself from his own past proposals for immigration reform.

[admin]

Private Prison Lobbyists Are Raising Cash for Hillary Clinton
by Lee Fang
July 23, 2015

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Body Count: Moral Poverty ... And How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs, by William J. Bennett, John J. Dilulio, Jr., John P. Walters

As immigration and incarceration issues become central to the 2016 presidential campaign, lobbyists for two major prison companies are serving as top fundraisers for Hillary Clinton.

Corrections Corporation of America and the Geo Group could both see their fortunes turning if there are fewer people to lock up in the future.

Last week, Clinton and other candidates revealed a number of lobbyists who are serving as “bundlers” for their campaigns. Bundlers collect contributions on behalf of a campaign, and are often rewarded with special favors, such as access to the candidate.

Richard Sullivan, of the lobbying firm Capitol Counsel, is a bundler for the Clinton campaign, bringing in $44,859 in contributions in a few short months. Sullivan is also a registered lobbyist for the Geo Group, a company that operates a number of jails, including immigrant detention centers, for profit.

As we reported yesterday, fully five Clinton bundlers work for the lobbying and law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison company in America, paid Akin Gump $240,000 in lobbying fees last year. The firm also serves as a law firm for the prison giant, representing the company in court.

Akin Gump lobbyist and Clinton bundler Brian Popper disclosed that he previously helped CCA defeat efforts to compel private prisons to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests.

Hillary Clinton has a complicated history with incarceration. As first lady, she championed efforts to get tough on crime.“We need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders,” Clinton said in 1994. “The ‘three strikes and you’re out’ for violent offenders has to be part of the plan. We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets,” she added.

Just desert advocates promoted the use of punitive laws, policies, and practices in the juvenile justice system, including three-strike laws, determinate sentences, longer sentences, sentencing to boot camps, electronic monitoring, drug testing, shock incarceration, and other punitive measures (Howell, 2003b). Such policies and practices, which deemphasize prevention of juvenile crime and rehabilitation of juvenile offenders, became common in the juvenile justice system through new state legislation. Together, DiIulio’s superpredator concept and just desert principles spawned a major myth that the juvenile justice system could not be effective with the new breed of juvenile offenders and was no longer relevant in modern-day crime control (Box 1.2).

-- Chapter 1: Superpredators and other Myths about Juvenile Delinquency, by James C. Howell

In recent months, Clinton has tacked left in some ways, and now calls for alternatives to incarceration and for greater police accountability. And while Clinton has backed a path to citizenship for undocumented people in America, she recently signaled a willingness to crack down on so-called “sanctuary cities,” a move that could lead to more immigrant detentions.

The future of both criminal justice reform and immigration are critical for private prison firms. The Geo Group, in a disclosure statement for its investors, notes that its business could be “adversely affected by changes in existing criminal or immigration laws, crime rates in jurisdictions in which we operate, the relaxation of criminal or immigration enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction, sentencing or deportation practices, and the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal laws or the loosening of immigration laws.”

[admin]

Hillary Clinton and the Tragic Politics of Crime: The criminal-justice policies she now denounces once helped her husband capture the White House.
by Peter Beinart
The Atlantic
May 1, 2015

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Body Count: Moral Poverty ... And How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs, by William J. Bennett, John J. Dilulio, Jr., John P. Walters

With the exception of gay rights, no public-policy debate has shifted more dramatically in my adult lifetime than the debate over crime. In 1992, when Bill Clinton flew back to Arkansas to oversee the execution of a mentally retarded African American murderer, the move helped him in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary. In 1994, Clinton’s crime bill—which among other things, expanded the death penalty, encouraged states to lengthen prison sentences and eliminated federal funding for inmate education—garnered the votes of every Democratic Senator except one.

Today, by contrast, Hillary Clinton is loudly repudiating the “tough on crime” policies that she and her husband once championed. Even more remarkably, prominent Republicans are nodding along.

To those who see Hillary’s new crime agenda as a flip-flop, her campaign has a rejoinder: Different policies make sense at different times. As Clinton spokesperson Jesse Ferguson tweeted, “HRC policy on internet might also be different than WJC policy in 1994. Not b/c he was wrong but b/c times change.”

The problem with this argument is that many of the crime policies the Clintons supported in the 1990s were probably wrong even back then. Yes, the crime bill did some good: It put more cops on the street and increased penalties for sex crimes. But it also helped spawn the very “era of mass incarceration” that Hillary now denounces. It’s not just that the bill allocated almost $10 billion in federal-prison construction money. It only allocated it to states that adopted “truth-in-sentencing” laws that dramatically increased the amount of time criminals served. As NYU Law School’s Brennan Center has noted, the number of states with such laws rose from five when the bill was signed to 29 by Clinton’s last year in office. Over the course of Clinton’s presidency, the number of Americans in prison rose almost 60 percent.

All this might—I underscore, might—be justified if such prison expansion produced dramatic declines in crime. But while crime has indeed dropped dramatically—it’s about half what it was at its peak in 1991—the best evidence suggests that locking people up is not the primary reason. After spending close to two years testing 14 different potential causes of the reduction in crime, the Brennan Center this year concluded that “incarceration was responsible for approximately five percent of the drop in crime in the 1990s,” and an even lower percentage since then. A report last year by the National Academies’ National Research Council found that “the growth in incarceration rates reduced crime, but the magnitude of the crime reduction remains highly uncertain and the evidence suggests it was unlikely to have been large.” Even a 2004 investigation by University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt, who considers increased imprisonment more effective, only found that it accounted for roughly one-third of the crime drop.

Some might still argue that, as public policy, Clinton’s tough-on-crime policies were necessary. Listening to Hillary’s impassioned speech yesterday at Columbia, however, where she talked about seeing “how families could be and were torn apart by excessive incarceration,” it’s hard to believe she agrees.

But there’s a different, and more perplexing, defense of the Clinton record on crime. It’s that even if Clinton’s policies can’t be justified substantively, they were necessary politically. If he hadn’t embraced a “tough on crime agenda,” Clinton might never have become—or remained—president.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when crime rates hit their peak, the issue enjoyed a salience in American politics that is hard to comprehend today. And for Democrats, the consequences of appearing soft were devastating. In 1988, the George H.W. Bush campaign’s most effective (and notorious) ad slammed Michael Dukakis for furloughing murderers in Massachusetts. (A separate ad, by a pro-Bush PAC, made African American furloughed murderer Willie Horton a household name). The most important moment in that year’s debates came when Dukakis, after being asked how he would react if his wife was raped and murdered, gave a bloodless, and politically catastrophic, answer. In January 1994, 37 percent of Americans said crime was the most important issue facing the country. And that fall, Mario Cuomo lost the governorship of New York State to a little-known Republican, George Pataki, who had made Cuomo’s opposition to the death penalty central to his campaign.

JJS Myth 2: The public no longer supports rehabilitation of juvenile offenders.

Others say that the efforts of “child savers” are all for naught anyway because of a lack of public support for rehabilitation of juvenile offenders (Box 1.4). These observers assume that the impact of the just desert movement on the adult criminal justice system—in greatly diminishing the use of treatment programs—has filtered down to the juvenile justice system. Is this a matter of fact? Decidedly not. “The notion that the American public is opposed to the treatment of juvenile offenders is a myth” (Cullen, 2006, p. 665). Cullen notes that a 2001 national survey found that 80% of the sample of adults thought that rehabilitation should be the goal of juvenile correctional facilities and that more than 9 in 10 favored a variety of early intervention programs, including parent training, Head Start, and after-school programs. “The legitimacy of the rehabilitative ideal—especially as applied to youthful offenders—appears to be deeply woven into the fabric of American culture” (p. 666). Therefore, it is not surprising that state and local juvenile justice officials have taken steps to soften the impact of punitive reforms (Bishop, 2006; Mears, 2002)....

The unifying theme in these four myths is the notion that punishment is now predominant in juvenile justice policies and practices, driven by shifting public opinion. However, Bishop (2006) astutely observes that “to the public, the idea of punishment versus rehabilitation is a false dichotomy” (p. 656) and that “we have sold the public short for a long time regarding the degree to which it supports the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders” (p. 656). The reality, she says, is that the public endorses both strategies simultaneously. Indeed, Bishop sees that the public embraces a balanced approach of punishment for offenses while also providing the necessary treatment to help offending youth move on into adulthood with their life chances intact. This is the essence of effective juvenile justice system philosophy, a concept that politicians and legislators appear to have difficulty grasping.

-- Chapter 1: Superpredators and other Myths about Juvenile Delinquency, by James C. Howell

In 1992, Bill Clinton faced a far tougher electorate than Hillary will this time around. African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians, who constituted almost 25 percent of the voters in 2012, and Millennials, who also lean disproportionately left on cultural issues, were either in school or in diapers. There’s a reason Clinton reminded voters that year that his nickname was “Bubba.” It’s because in 1992, far more than today, a Democrat who didn’t appeal to Bubbas couldn’t win. And in 1992, being “tough on crime” was critical to getting most Bubbas to give a Democrat a second look.

Was electing Bill Clinton worth it? It’s the kind of question that separates reformist, “pragmatic” progressives from their more revolutionary, anti-establishment brethren. It can’t be answered empirically. It depends on your worldview.

Hillary Clinton needs to persuade voters that 2016 is no different than any other election in the past 40 years since the Supreme Court legalized political corruption by decreeing, in Buckley v. Valeo (1976), that money is speech. Therefore, she argues, Sanders is dreaming by thinking he can overcome plutocracy as he admits is necessary to deliver the policies that a majority wants. "Not gonna happen," says Clinton. "So hire me to get the crumbs the plutocrats will let us collect if they don't get angry. That is a job I know better."

-- "Hillary the Pragmatist vs. Bernie the Dreamer" Is "Big Lie" Propaganda, by Rob Hager

Every relatively progressive American president has made these brutal, tragic tradeoffs.

But it’s worth noting that every (relatively) progressive American president has made these brutal, tragic tradeoffs. In 1947, amidst the growing hysteria of the Red Scare, Harry Truman created review boards to investigate the loyalty of federal employees. Upon learning that the Soviets were installing nuclear missiles in Cuba, John F. Kennedy privately mused, “What difference does it make? They’ve got enough to blow us up now anyway.” But politically, he was sure that unless he risked war to get them removed, “[Republican Senator] Ken Keating will probably be the next president.” Upon becoming president, Barack Obama expanded America’s drone attacks, sent more troops to Afghanistan and backed away from closing Guantanamo Bay. For many progressives, myself included, these policies were difficult to swallow. But without them, Mitt Romney might be president.

Should progressives wish, in retrospect, that Bill and Hillary Clinton had never supported the mass-incarceration policies that candidate Hillary is now denouncing? Sure. But to stay honest, they should also admit that without those policies, Hillary probably wouldn’t be a presidential candidate today at all.

[admin]

Bill Clinton's Crime Bill Destroyed Lives, and There's No Point Denying It
by Thomas Frank
Guardian UK
16 April 16

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Body Count: Moral Poverty ... And How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs, by William J. Bennett, John J. Dilulio, Jr., John P. Walters

The former president made sure low-level drug users felt the full weight of state power at the same moment bankers saw the shackles that bound them removed

Here is an actual headline that appeared in the New York Times this week: Prison Rate Was Rising Years Before 1994 Law.

It is an unusual departure for a newspaper, since what is being reported here is not news but history -– or, rather, a particular interpretation of history. The “1994 Law” to which the headline refers is the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act; the statement about the “prison rate” refers to the fact that America was already imprisoning a large portion of its population before that 1994 law was approved by Congress.

As historical interpretations go, this one is pretty non-controversial. Everyone who has heard about the “War on Drugs” knows that what we now call “mass incarceration”, the de facto national policy of locking up millions of low-level offenders, began long before 1994. And yet similar stories reporting that non-startling fact are now being published all across the American media landscape. That mass incarceration commenced before 1994 is apparently Big News.

Why report a historical fact that everyone already knows? The answer is because former president Bill Clinton, the man who called for and signed the 1994 crime bill, is also the husband of the current frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Democratic voters are having trouble squaring his draconian crime bill with his wife’s liberal image.

That might be the reason so many of these stories seem to unfold with the same goal in mind: to minimize Clinton’s moral culpability for what went on back in the 1990s. Mass incarceration was already happening, these stories agree. And besides, not everything in the crime bill was bad. As for its lamentable effects, well, they weren’t intentional. What’s more, Bill Clinton has apologized for it. He’s sorry for all those thousands of people who have had decades of their lives ruined by zealous prosecutors and local politicians using the tools Clinton accidentally gave them. He sure didn’t mean for that to happen.

When I was researching the 1994 crime bill for Listen, Liberal, my new book documenting the sins of liberalism, I remember being warned by a scholar who has studied mass incarceration for years that it was fruitless to ask Americans to care about the thousands of lives destroyed by the prison system. Today, however, the situation has reversed itself: now people do care about mass incarceration, largely thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement and the intense scrutiny it has focused on police killings.

All of a sudden, the punitive frenzies of the 1980s and 1990s seem like something from a cruel foreign country. All of a sudden, Bill Clinton looks like a monster rather than a hero, and he now finds himself dogged by protesters as he campaigns for his wife, Hillary. And so the media has stepped up to do what it always does: reassure Americans that the nightmare isn’t real, that this honorable man did the best he could as president.

Allow me to offer a slightly different take on the 1990s. I think today (as I thought at the time) that there is indeed something worth criticizing when a Democratic president signs on to a national frenzy for punishment and endorses things like “three strikes”, “mandatory minimums”, and “truth in sentencing”, the latter being a cute euphemism for “no more parole”. The reason the 1994 crime bill upsets people is not because they stupidly believe Bill Clinton invented these things; it is because they know he encouraged them. Because the Democrats’ capitulation to the rightwing incarceration agenda was a turning point in its own right.

Another interesting fact. Two weeks after Clinton signed the big crime bill in September 1994, he enacted the Riegle-Neal interstate banking bill, the first in a series of moves deregulating the financial industry. The juxtaposition between the two is kind of shocking, when you think about it: low-level drug users felt the full weight of state power at the same moment that bankers saw the shackles that bound them removed. The newspaper headline announcing the discovery of this amazing historical finding will have to come from my imagination – Back-to-Back 1994 Laws Freed Bankers And Imprisoned Poor, perhaps -– but the historical pattern is worth noting nevertheless, since it persisted all throughout Clinton’s administration.

For one class of Americans, Clinton brought emancipation, a prayed-for deliverance from out of Glass–Steagall’s house of bondage. For another class of Americans, Clinton brought discipline: long prison stretches for drug users; perpetual insecurity for welfare mothers; and intimidation for blue-collar workers whose bosses Clinton thoughtfully armed with the North American Free Trade Agreement. As I have written elsewhere, some got the carrot, others got the stick.

But what is most shocking in our current journo-historical understanding of the Clinton years is the idea that the mass imprisonment of people of color was an “unintended consequence” of the 1994 crime bill, to quote the New York Daily News’s paraphrase of Hillary Clinton. This is flatly, glaringly false, as the final, ugly chapter of the crime bill story confirms.

Back in the early 1990s, and although they were chemically almost identical, crack and powder cocaine were regarded very differently by the law. The drug identified with black users (crack) was treated as though it were 100 times as villainous as the same amount of cocaine, a drug popular with affluent professionals. This “now-notorious 100-to-one” sentencing disparity, as the New York Times put it, had been enacted back in 1986, and the 1994 crime law instructed the US Sentencing Commission to study the subject and adjust federal sentencing guidelines as it saw fit.

The Sentencing Commission duly recommended that the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity be abolished, largely because (as their lengthy report on the subject put it) “The 100-to-1 crack cocaine to powder cocaine quantity ratio is a primary cause of the growing disparity between sentences for black and white federal defendants.” By the time their report was released, however, Republicans had gained control of Congress, and they passed a bill explicitly overturning the decision of the Sentencing Commission. (Bernie Sanders, for the record, voted against that bill.)

The bill then went to President Clinton for approval. Shortly before it came to his desk he gave an inspiring speech deploring the mass incarceration of black Americans. “Blacks are right to think something is terribly wrong,” he said on that occasion, “… when there are more African American men in our correction system than in our colleges; when almost one in three African American men, in their twenties, are either in jail, on parole, or otherwise under the supervision of the criminal system. Nearly one in three.”

Two weeks after that speech, however, Clinton blandly affixed his signature to the bill retaining the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity, a disparity that had brought about the lopsided incarceration of black people. Clinton could have vetoed it, but he didn’t. He signed it.

CIA: CONTRAS/CRACK

Today we are told that mass incarceration was an “unintended consequence” of Clinton’s deeds.

For that to be true, however, Clinton would have not only had to ignore the Sentencing Commission’s findings but also to ignore the newspaper stories appearing all around him, which can be found easily on the internet to this day. Here’s one that appeared in the Baltimore Sun on 31 October 1995, in which it is noted that:

Civil rights organizations had led a telephone campaign to pressure the president to veto the bill. At a rally last week in Chicago, the Rev Jesse L Jackson said that Mr Clinton had the chance, ‘with one stroke of your veto pen, to correct the most grievous racial injustice built into our legal system.’

It is impossible to imagine that Bill Clinton, the brilliant Rhodes Scholar, didn’t understand what everyone was saying. How could he sign such a thing right after giving a big speech deploring its effects? How can he and his wife now claim it was all an accident, when the consequences were being discussed everywhere at the time? When everyone was warning and even begging him not to do it? Maybe it didn’t really happen. Maybe it was all a bad dream.

The secret society of Cecil Rhodes is mentioned in the first five of his seven wills. In the fifth it was supplemented by the idea of an educational institution with scholarships, whose alumni would be bound together by common ideals — Rhodes's ideals. In the sixth and seventh wills the secret society was not mentioned, and the scholarships monopolized the estate. But Rhodes still had the same ideals and still believed that they could be carried out best by a secret society of men devoted to a common cause. The scholarships were merely a facade to conceal the secret society, or, more accurately, they were to be one of the instruments by which the members of the secret society could carry out his purpose. This purpose, as expressed in the first will (1877), was:

"The extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and of colonization by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise, . . . the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of a British Empire, the consolidation of the whole Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial Representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, and finally the foundation of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity."

-- The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden, by Carroll Quigley

But it did happen. There it is, Bill Clinton’s signing statement on the website of the American Presidency Project. Yes, the 100-to-1 disparity was finally reduced in 2010, but we liberals still can’t ignore what Clinton did back in 1995. Every historian who writes about his administration will eventually have to deal with it.

Until then, we have our orders from the mainstream media: Clinton didn’t mean it. Clinton has apologized. Things were bad even before Clinton got started.

It is a hell of a way to do history. Millions of proudly open-minded people are being asked to twist themselves into propaganda pretzels to avoid acknowledging the obvious: that the leaders of our putatively left party aren’t who we think they are.

[admin]

Statement on Signing Legislation Rejecting U.S. Sentencing Commission Recommendations
by William J. Clinton
XLII President of the United States: 1993-2001
October 30, 1995

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Body Count: Moral Poverty ... And How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs, by William J. Bennett, John J. Dilulio, Jr., John P. Walters

Today I reject United States Sentencing Commission proposals that would equalize penalties for crack and powder cocaine distribution by dramatically reducing the penalties for crack. The Sentencing Commission would also reduce the penalties for money laundering by combining the guidelines on money laundering with those on transactions in unlawfully acquired property. I am opposed to both of these changes.

Since I took office, my Administration has fought to stop drug abuse and to stamp out the crime and violence that are its constant companions. We are battling drug traffickers at every level of their networks—from the very top to the very bottom.

The Cali Cartel, which pumped drugs into America with seeming impunity, is now on the run. We have intensified our efforts to work with drug producing countries to stop drugs from coming into the United States and to capture major drug traffickers. We told criminals convicted time and again for serious violent crimes or drug trafficking that from now on, it's three strikes and you're out. And we established the death penalty for drug kingpins, because they should reap what they sow.

We are putting 100,000 police officers on America's streets. We banned assault weapons because America doesn't want drug dealers to be better armed than police officers. We are helping schools to rid themselves of guns, and we are also helping schools to prevent teenage drug use by teaching children about the dangers of drugs and gangs. And we support schools who test student athletes for drugs.

All of this is beginning to work. For the first time in a very long time, crime has decreased around the country. But we cannot stop now.

We have to send a constant message to our children that drugs are illegal, drugs are dangerous, drugs may cost you your life—and the penalties for dealing drugs are severe. I am not going to let anyone who peddles drugs get the idea that the cost of doing business is going down.

Trafficking in crack, and the violence it fosters, has a devastating impact on communities across America, especially inner-city communities. Tough penalties for crack trafficking are required because of the effect on individuals and families, related gang activity, turf battles, and other violence.

Current law does require a substantial disparity between sentences for crack as compared to equal amounts of powder cocaine. Some adjustment is warranted, and the bill I am signing today, S. 1254, directs the Sentencing Commission to undertake additional review of these issues and to report back with new recommendations.

Furthermore, the sentencing structure should reflect the fact that all crack starts as powder. When large-scale cocaine traffickers sell powder with the knowledge that it will be converted into crack, they should be punished as severely as those who distribute the crack itself. I have asked the Attorney General to immediately develop enforcement strategies to bring about this result. As I said before, we are going after drug traffickers at every level of their networks.

WILLIAM J. CLINTON
The White House, October 30, 1995.

NOTE: S. 1254, approved October 30, was assigned Public Law No. 104-38.
Citation: William J. Clinton: "Statement on Signing Legislation Rejecting U.S. Sentencing Commission Recommendations," October 30, 1995. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolle

[admin]

New law puts heat on crack dealers Clinton signs measure to fight cocaine use: Blacks decry disparity
by Lyle Denniston
Sun National Staff
Washington
October 31, 1995

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

-- Body Count: Moral Poverty ... And How to Win America's War Against Crime and Drugs, by William J. Bennett, John J. Dilulio, Jr., John P. Walters

President Clinton signed into law yesterday a bill to continue punishing crack-cocaine crimes far more severely than powder-cocaine crimes -- a difference that civil rights activists say is racist.

"I am not going to let anyone who peddles drugs get the idea that the cost of doing business is going down," Mr. Clinton said in nullifying a plan by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to make punishments the same for crack cocaine and powdered cocaine.

As a result, those convicted of crack crimes -- mainly blacks -- will receive the same punishments as those who deal in much greater amounts of powder cocaine. The president, defending hTC the difference, said inner-city communities are hit much harder by crack-related violence.

The president acted within hours after the Supreme Court, at the Justice Department's request, agreed to consider giving federal prosecutors wide discretion to pursue crack cases, even if that means convicting a disproportionate number of blacks.

Yesterday's developments appeared certain to intensify the debate over allegations of racism in the prosecution of dealers and users of crack cocaine, a cheap alternative to powder cocaine.

Blacks account for more than 80 percent of those convicted of crack crimes; whites account for less than 5 percent. By contrast, whites are involved in 32 percent of powder-cocaine convictions; blacks, 27 percent, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

But blacks tend to receive longer sentences for crack cocaine crimes than whites do for powder-cocaine crimes; federal law for years has provided much heavier sentences for crimes that involve crack cocaine, and Mr. Clinton's signature yesterday maintained that difference.

The punishment difference of 100 to 1 works this way: Crimes involving 1 gram of crack get mandatory sentences equal to crimes involving 100 grams of powder.

Civil rights leaders have protested that this approach results in a serious racial disparity in cocaine prosecutions. That disparity was one of the grievances cited by inmates in a recent series of federal prison uprisings.

Last spring, after a study of the sentencing differences and their effect on blacks, the federal Sentencing Commission decided to make sentencing equal for crack and powder cocaine crimes. Congress passed a bill to block the commission's plan from going into effect tomorrow, and Mr. Clinton's signature made the bill a law.

"Trafficking in crack, and the violence it fosters," the president said, "has a devastating impact on communities across America, especially inner-city communities. Tough penalties for crack trafficking are required because of the effect on individuals and families, related gang activity, turf battles and other violence."

Mr. Clinton took note of the "substantial disparity" in sentencing for crack crimes and said "some adjustment is warranted." He said the Sentencing Commission would study the issue further.

Civil rights organizations had led a telephone campaign to pressure the president to veto the bill. At a rally last week in Chicago, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson said that Mr. Clinton had the chance, "with one stroke of your veto pen, to correct the most grievous racial injustice built into our legal system."

Crack cocaine is made from powder in a process that requires baking soda, water and a stove or a microwave oven. The Sentencing Commission has argued that powder and crack cocaine are merely different forms of the same drug. The Justice Department, however, argues that crack should be punished more severely because crack crimes contribute more heavily to violence in the poor communities targeted by narcotics dealers.

Several constitutional challenges to the cocaine-sentencing differences are in the federal courts. The Supreme Court two years ago turned down the first such challenge to reach it, thus leaving the dispute to unfold in lower courts.

Yesterday, however, the justices agreed to take on a related facet of the racism claim. The case involves five black Los Angeles men who were indicted on charges of crack distribution. They were prosecuted in a case growing out of a federal-state task force.

Claiming that their prosecution was based on race, and citing statistics showing the high rate of crack cases against blacks, the five men contended that the charges had to be thrown out as biased.

Federal prosecutors denied the claim of racism, but they balked at demands by the judge for information about how they decided to prosecute cocaine cases.

As a result, the judge threw out the charges. The federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld that decision in March, saying that judges must be "vigilant in ensuring that impermissible prosecutorial biases do not remain hidden in files kept from public view."

A Supreme Court ruling is expected by next summer.