White Senators negotiate ‘in the Gym’, make crack vs powder cocaine law 1/5 as racist, then pat themselves on the back
Honey, I couldn’t make this stuff up.
Under current federal law, a first time simple possession of five grams of crack cocaine requires the same five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence as a person in possession of 500 grams of powder cocaine.
Dick Durbin and Jeff Sessions think they did a FANTASTIC job, equalizing the criminal justice playing field 4/5 more, by changing the sentencing disparity, instead of eliminating the unconstitutional disparity between crack and powder cocaine.
“If you ever wonder if anything good ever happens there (in the Congressional Gym? the weights room or the shower?? ed. comment), it appears something good might have happened there,” Durbin said, which may or may not have been an oblique reference to former Congressman Eric Massa’s tale about being lobbied by Rahm Emanuel in the House gym. “Senator [Orrin] Hatch was there to witness it.”
Dick thinks quid pro quo is more important than doing the right thing:
The compromise was that Durbin would accept Sessions’ amendment to change the disparity from 100 to 1 to 20 to 1. In return, Sessions offered to withdraw his amendments that would have narrowed the circumstances under which a judge could reduce penalties for offenders who acted with “fear, impulse or affection,” and would have imposed a 10-year mandatory maximum for simple possession rather than eliminating the five-year mandatory minimum for simple possession entirely.
“My position is for one to one, equity and equality in sentencing, but in order to get things done you have to be prepared to make mutual concessions,” Durbin said. “That’s what we have done.”
Tell that to the poor person with 1/100th the amount of one type of cocaine in their possession, who serves as much time as the wealthier person with the 100x of a different type of cocaine in theirs. Changing that sentencing law to ‘a poor person with 1/20th the amount of one type of cocaine in their possession serves as much time as the wealthier person with 20x of a different type of cocaine in their possession’ doesn’t seem to be doing much more than moving chess pieces on a board.
And since when is legislation decided between TWO MEN, instead of the entire Senate? These guys act as though they single-handedly solved the racial crisis in our prison systems, by bartering. The sad thing is, for those caught in the wrong social strata, these two men create the rules.
We need a rule about qualifying to work for the U.S. Government. You should have to work in a day-care, deliver food to the elderly, sit with kids in school, and visit the incarcerated AND their families. You should not be able to legislate in such an impotent way when it harms one racial group more than your own, period.
Then we would have some protection against this kind of ‘wasted time’ legislation.
No comments yet.