Keep Their Heads Ringing

"This election is not about issues," said Davis. "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."[1]

So once again this election won’t be about the issues from the Republican standpoint. I’m shocked! I can’t understand why they wouldn’t want to run on the issues. We haven’t had a campaign debate about the issues in the last 20 years. The Republicans have gradually moved the electorate away from the issues and have made each election a referendum on some social issue beginning with the Nixon southern strategy. At that point it was a referendum on law and order and the civil rights movement. At which time the American voting public voted resoundingly against progress.

In each subsequent election since then they have sought to divide our nation. You see the only way the Republicans can win is if they are able to divide us because there aren’t a sufficient number of fringe elements to sustain their policies or issues. You see when you only cater to the top 5% of the population it is hard to get elected; a conundrum to say the least. So how can a Party that caters to the wealthiest of Americans get elected and sometimes even maintain a majority? They have done it through deception and the age old strategy that the wealthy have always relied upon divide the masses. Throughout the years the Republicans have developed ingenious methods to carry out their strategy.

The most successful and nefarious plan has been the false “American Dream” scenario, where anyone in America can become rich and thus be in need of the Republicans policies that protect the wealthy. They have managed to convince a significant number of Americans that they too can someday be in the top 5% if they continue to support the Republican “trickle down” and supply side economic policies. So you have Americans earning 30,000 dollars a year voting with those making millions as if their interests were identical. What do I have in common with Bill Gates? How are our interests compatible?

The second strategy has been the race card or “white privilege”. In this scenario the scheme is to convince a majority of white voters that no matter what a black or minority has the white will always be better. Not only will they always be better, but the Republicans will be the ones to protect the tribe. They will be the ones to keep the other tribes in their places and thus protect the centuries old doctrine of white male dominance. This plan is supported by false studies that link all of the white societies problems to blacks and immigrant populations. Affirmative action, loose immigration, and social programs are all viewed as attacks against whites. While the race card has lost some of its appeal make no mistake there are still many proponents and believers in this strategy.

The third strategy is the red state/blue state, rural versus city, north versus south, pro-life versus pro-choice, etc. What the Republicans have been successful at is turning elections into cultural wars. So instead of having a discussion about universal healthcare we get gay marriage. Instead of a discussion of how the Republicans have turned one of the largest surpluses into one of the largest deficits, we get hockey moms and pit bulls. Instead of debating why we have not made any progress towards energy independence in the last 30 years, we get the most liberal Senator ever.

According to McCain and the Republicans Barack and Michelle Obama are not “our kind of people”, they don’t represent our America values. They are elitist and represent “the selfish” Washington interest. The Republican strategy has become if you say something enough times on enough TV programs then it’s true. John McCain and Sarah Palin are reformers because we say so, they’re records are immaterial. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are supporters of terrorism and are unpatriotic because we say so, regardless of their records of service to their country. Publically they are calling them elitist, but behind closed doors and Republicans in the south are referring to them as uppity. Calling a black person uppity is tantamount to a racial slur because usually following it comes the N word. Again we must keep them ni__ers in their place and that doesn’t include the White House.

I am coming to the belief that for whatever reason people in America no longer care about the truth. It seems that the more of the truth about Governor Palin surfaces the more her appeal rises. It’s almost as if we are living in some bizarro world where everything works in reverse. Lies become truth and truth becomes lies. The more this woman is exposed as being a fraud the more popular she becomes. The more she repeats her spiel of five convention lines, the more McCain’s numbers rise. Why should the Republicans change now these same tactics have worked and been honed for the past 20 years, culminating in the rise of George W.

The frustration with this process is seen in the faces of many Americans, but I am not sure there are enough people to reverse this trend. We have entered into a very dangerous area in a democracy. We are being mocked by leaders and citizens of other countries for the soap opera that our elections have become. Many foreign journalists have discussed how instead of focusing on issues our candidates and campaigns are debating cosmetics and farm animals. We have allowed our campaigns to become a cacophony of sound bite politics. The difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is that the Republicans have figured out that the majority of the electorate are not political junkies who research platforms and white papers of the issues. The Democrats still believe that the majority of voters actually follow the details of campaigns. The Republicans know that the majority of voters rely on sound bites and pundits. Because of this knowledge they craft their campaigns to capitalize on the short attention span of these voters. They develop false catch phrases and repeat them incessantly relying on the electorate’s laziness to pull it off. If you hear something enough it has to be true; remember if they say it on TV it has to be true. And they have every politician, pundit, and Party official repeating the lines over and over. This repetition of falsehoods is enough to “keep their heads ringing”.

[1] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2008/09/mccain_manager_this_election_i.html

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Cocaine Sentencing Is Cracked

It is unfortunate that it took the Supreme Court to do what the Congress should have done a long time ago and that is to allow Federal judges to consider the disparity between powder cocaine and crack when sentencing offenders. Rather than showing leadership and courage, the Congress even with a Democratic majority refused to act on the huge disparity in sentencing for crack versus powder cocaine for fear of appearing soft on crime. Once again political expediency outweighed moral conviction and the Congress failed to act. I don’t know about you but the Democratic majority was long on promises and has been short on delivery.

It took the US Sentencing Commission to right a wrong that has sent thousands of blacks to prison for possessing crack for sentences that would require someone with powder to have 100 times as much to receive the same sentence. Needless to say the majority of crack users are black and the majority of powder users are white. Everyone in Washington knew the system was broke and even after years of protests by the ACLU and other civil rights organization, no one in the Congress would show any backbone and right the wrong. What we have in Washington are professional politicians who are more concerned about getting re-elected than they are about doing what is right for the country. I’m sorry but I am having a hard time believing that the answer is electing more of the same, to me having experience in how things are done in Washington is not a real selling point.

In their decision to allow the judge’s discretion in sentencing, the Supreme Court began the process of removing more racial barriers in the criminal justice system. In what has become an almost comical situation, Judge Thomas, the only black on the Court was one of the dissenting votes. And he wonders why he gets no love from other blacks. Maybe because he doesn’t represent the black people he was selected to represent. Mr. Thomas you do not have the luxury of saying I am a Supreme Court Justice that just happens to be black, no sir you filled a spot vacated by a man who represented those who did not have a voice in this country. Now for you to come along with that black conservative crap of I want to be just another Justice who happens to be black is ludicrous. Black people need you on the Court to represent their interests, I believe that the whites you want to represent have enough representation, look around you sir when you are in the chambers and count the number of blacks there with you. I can understand his not wanting to be limited to being a color, but until we have equal protection under the law sir, you are representing not just a color but a people, a people who have long been denied and continue to be denied equal protection. The fact that this case even came before the Court should be evidence enough of that fact. Your denying this fact does not make it go away.

Now the Commission has the opportunity to complete the process they have begun when they vote whether to make the sentence reductions retroactive, this would affect some 19,000 inmates who could see their sentences shortened. The commission in the past has made similar reductions in penalties for drugs primarily used by whites and have made those reductions retroactive. It would only be fair to do likewise in this case.

In previous years, the sentencing commission reduced penalties for crimes involving marijuana, LSD and OxyContin, which are primarily committed by whites, and made those decisions retroactive.[1]

True to their script, the Bush administration is opposing making the sentences retroactive, the thought of blacks being released from prison early is obviously scaring the hell out of the wing-nuts. Citing that there would be a rise in violent crime with the early releases, they are once again using the justice system to promote their racial animosity towards blacks. The problem with their logic is that these are not inmates who have committed violent crimes, these are primarily crack users and low-level dealers. Make no mistake if they were violent criminals their original sentence would have been enhanced to reflect that. This was the same logic used when the original sentencing disparity was first passed, because crack users were more violent than powder users they require stiffer penalties. It was false then and it continues to be false today. It isn’t that they are more violent, it is that their skins are darker.

Making the guidelines retroactive is opposed by the Bush administration. A senior Justice Department official warned Tuesday that retroactive guidelines could have a disastrous effect on crime-riddled communities that are not ready to receive crack offenders who could be released early from prison as a result.

"Areas that already are seeing an increase in violent crime -- this is going to affect those areas dramatically," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the commission had not formally acted.[2]

While I applaud the recent movement on this issue, it is still up to Congress to permanently fix this problem, by removing the current sentencing guidelines that provide harsher penalties for one form of a drug versus another form. There is no scientific or rational basis for the disparity, it is racist at its core and must be removed. Senator Joe Biden has introduced legislation to do just that and must be applauded and supported, even though it was his bill that created the Drug Czar.

UPDATE: The Sentencing Commission voted to make the sentencing recommendations retroactive.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/11/cocaine.sentencing.ap/index.html
[2] Ibid.

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“Sprinkle A Little Crack On Em”

The sentences for crack cocaine are some of the harshest in our criminal justice system. Crack cocaine is the crystallized, highly-addictive form of cocaine used primarily by blacks and other poor people. The disparity between the sentences given out to crack users and low-level dealers and the same given to powder cocaine users is 100 to 1. Which means a powder cocaine user would have to possess 100 times the amount of powder as a crack user to receive the same amount of jail time. Now both users would possess the same drug, just in different forms. It would be like me getting 20 years for having ice cubes and you getting 5 years for having water, we both would have the same thing. So why is there a discrepancy in sentencing?

When crack cocaine was introduced, America was in the midst of another one of its “get tough” on crime initiatives. Crack was being depicted as the scourge of all that was bad in the ghetto and so required harsher sentences according to the logic. The sad part about it is that many of the black legislators at the time signed off on these harsher sentences. Because crack is used primarily in the black community, it soon became apparent that the black community was hit disproportionately by these new sentencing guidelines.

According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC), a division of the judicial branch that monitors and advises Congress on sentencing policy, in 2006, more than four-fifths of crack cocaine offenders in federal courts were black.

The 1986 drug laws have had a devastating effect on the U.S. criminal justice system. Drug offenders in prisons and jails have increased 1100 percent since 1980, from 41,000 people to nearly 500,000.

Nearly 6 out of 10 people in state prison for a drug offense have no history of violence or high-level drug-selling activity but are often receiving harsher sentences than people who do. People caught with the drug in 2004, the last year for which data is available, served an average of ten years in federal penitentiaries, while the average convict served 2.9 years for manslaughter, 3.1 years for assault and 5.4 years for sexual abuse.[1]

We are sentencing people for crack cocaine related offenses more harshly than those convicted of manslaughter. Is that crazy or what, you get more time for crack than you do for killing someone. There is something dreadfully wrong when this occurs. Because of the mandatory minimums associated with crack, the federal judges are powerless to alter the sentences. Judges are no longer allowed any discretion in their sentencing of crack defendants, they must impose the harsher sentences even if they feel they are not warranted.

There is currently a case before the Supreme Court where a federal judge decided not to impose the harsher sentence and was overruled by the appellate court because he did not have the authority to change the sentence. The federal judge felt it was wrong to impose harsher sentences for crack versus powder cocaine and so he imposed the lower sentencing for powder. It is important to see if the Supreme Court will rule the disparity in sentencing unconstitutional, because the only difference in the two drugs is who uses them and where they use it.

I know firsthand the devastation that crack cocaine can do to a family and a community, so I would never try to minimize its effects. I also know that crack like all drugs is a social health issue and not a criminal issue. To say that one drug is more immoral to take than another is illogical and bias. There are millions of Americans who are receiving legal prescriptions for all types of mood enhancers and suppressants, are we to believe that because they are prescribed by doctors and made by pharmaceutical companies that they are any less addictive and safe. So, the housewife in Brentwood gets her valium, while the poor person in Watts gets 20 years for crack. I personally side with the same approach we took with alcohol and tobacco; we educate and try to minimize the adverse effects to our society from its misuse.

People are going to take some form of drug or attempt to escape life in some form. You have people who drive too fast, you have people who skydive, and there are millions of Americans who participate in risky behavior that we do not outlaw. The Draconian drug laws we try to enforce have had a devastating effect on the black community and there needs to be changes. I believe that the current bills in Congress go toward alleviating some of those effects. I find the bill sponsored by Senator Joe Biden to be especially enlightened and support it whole-heartedly.

It is time we remove the inherent unfairness and possible racism from our drug policies. As Black Americans we need to begin to ask our candidates and political leaders to begin to take these issues to the frontline of the political debate. We need to know where the candidates stand on the issues that affect our communities in a disproportionate fashion. The time for blind loyalty is over, if candidates want our votes they must address our issues. The devastation of crack is a major issue in our communities and must be addressed. So let’s sprinkle a little crack on Hillary, Obama, and John.

[1]http://www.alternet.org/rights/65406/

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