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.
Does no one think about the implications of these ‘parties’???
The mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater, now Xe, funded by right wing evangelicals, is accused of taking WEAPONS from the US Military and Afghan Police forces,
Eric Prince, who runs Xe, has a security division, a fleet of private planes, he’s got Bush’s former head of Counter Terrorism, the man who was charged with finding Bin Laden and failed to do so and is now running a private CIA Total Intelligence Solutions for Xe. Blackwater is implicated in the murders of Iraqi citizens, (they LOST THEIR LICENSE to operate in Iraq), in gun running, has been paid billions for its private army around the world and is considered ‘armed and dangerous’, supposedly outside the legal protection of the US military. 2/3 of their contracts with the US Government are ‘no-bid’.
According to an RNC fundraising document uncovered on Wednesday, RNC “Young Eagles” — party major donors under 40 — will meet at the facility in the spring.
Its dangerous to national security when one political party parties with the assistance of a troubled private mercenary army.
The first is that things are actually much worse than anyone ever talks about. The pivot points of our financial system — the infrastructure that lets free markets produce real wealth — have become profoundly corrupted. Balance sheets are “fictions,” as Professor Frank Partnoy put it. Trillions of dollars in liability hide behind these fictions. And as expert after expert demonstrated, practically every one of the design flaws that led to the collapse of the past few years remains essentially unchanged within our financial system still. That bubble burst, but we can already see the soaring profits of the same firms that sucked billions in taxpayer funds. The cycle has started again.
You know all about the billion dollar bonuses, but have you forgotten about the billion dollar bailout?
But the second point was even worse. Expert after expert spoke as if the problems we faced were simple math errors. As if regulators had just miscalculated, like a pilot who accidentally overshoots the run way, or an engineer who mis-estimates the weight of cargo on a plane. And so, because these were mere errors, people spoke as if these errors could be corrected by a bunch of good ideas….
But we aren’t in our current double dip recession because of math errors, that’s blind. We are here because our governmental system is beholden to political interests and guess who has the most money to throw at Congress? The same unregulated corporations who put a gun to the global economy’s head, took obscene profits, got bailed out (remember that you’re not getting bailed out via credit card reform or mortgage reform or healthcare reform) paid themselves bonuses and are now experiencing a bump in their business (WHY? because they’ve again BET AGAINST AMERICA).
Lessig has a solution:
We need to admit our (democracy’s) problem. We need to get beyond this stage of denial. We need to recognize that until we release our leaders from a system that forces them to ignore good sense when there is an opportunity for large campaign cash, we won’t have policy that makes sense. Wall Street continues unchanged because the Congress that would change it is already shuttling to Wall Street fundraisers. Both parties are already pandering to this power, so they can find the fix to fund the next cycle of campaigns.
…privately funded public elections tend inevitably towards this kind of corruption. And until we solve that (eminently solvable) problem, we won’t make any progress in making America’s finances safe again. FixCongressFirst. Only then will sensible policy be possible.
With Billionaires running for office and committing $100 million of their own money IN CASH to their campaigns, with Wall Street and lobbyists funneling billions to keep the current governmental/corporate back-scratching going on and to ensure that NO REFORM HAPPENS, American workers will be bankrupted again and again. This Congress is incapable of the change we need, because they are so happy to jump on planes and go to vacation spots, on corporate dimes, while you and I think they are working for us.
I tweeted all day yesterday (www.twitter.com/marywallace) during the Healthcare Summit at the White House. A great website, www.sunlightfoundation.com live streamed all day, updating charts next to each speaker with a list of their top career donors! Not surprisingly, many of the Republicans who oppose healthcare reform are fully funded by insurers, banks and lobbyists.
It was shocking to hear man after man after man say, let’s get out a clean piece of paper and start over again. REALLY? After they had done so much work on their own bills? DID THEY BRING CLEAN PIECES OF PAPER TO START WORKING ON THE SPOT? No.
I noticed that the overwhelming majority of Republicans were old white men (I’m talking to you Boehner, even though you’ve got that fake tan going on). In the pockets of the insurance industry and their lobbyists.
But I woke up today to this guy’s face, it looks so shocking in its aged meanness.
Its Jim Bunning, from Kentucky, who single-handedly blocked the Senate from extending unemployment benefits for 1.2 million Americans, while complaining
‘I have missed the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9:00,” he said,
“and it’s the only redeeming chance we had to beat South Carolina since they’re the only team that has beat Kentucky this year.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in Kentucky is 10.7 percent. With a population of 4,200,000, that’s over 420,000 unemployed. NOT GOOD.
As I said yesterday on twitter, Americans forced their government to pull out of the Vietnam war when TV images and newspaper images of dying and dead American soldiers inundated American households. We had believed the rhetoric from Washington, but when our own young men and women came home in wheelchairs and body bags, it was the power of the images that turned the tide in the US government’s ability to continue the war.
We are inundated these days with image after image of Congressmen who deny health insurance reform to working Americans (while covered under government plans themselves), who deny childcare to the working poor (while having it available themselves), who send other people’s kids to war while their own drink excessively underage in bars (I’m talking to you, George W. Bush). The images from the bargaining table yesterday were predominantly old, white men. Sure, old white men run the insurance companies and the banks and the lobbying firms. But if you walk around any city in America, you’ll see all different ages and colors and sexes. How did we whittle down our vision of who should represent us in Congress to one color, one age AND one sex? How did that one type of person end up in charge of everything?
Its time for new employment rules: in order to serve in Congress, you have to agree to take 1/2 the $170,000 salary until your state’s poor and homeless and lower class and middle class are stable. The other half? It goes into a fund to counter the lobbying of your beloved insurers and banks. You get no health insurance until all your state’s citizens are covered. Can’t make that work? Then you don’t deserve cadillac coverage yourself. And if you have a daughter or son of military recruitment age? They go to war until no citizen from your state is overseas. That would stop the illegal multiple re-ups that the military is getting away with.
Mischa Barton smoking dope at an intersection in LA? Caught by paparazzi in broad daylight?
pacificcoastnewsonline.com
When I say some Americans are above the law, you think I’m talking about this famous & rich white chick who is ending 3 years probation after a DUI for driving all over the road in 2007. She seems to still be getting away with her blatant, in public, in-your-face breaking the law.
Nope, I’m talking about this guy who broke the War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal statute that makes it a federal crime for any American to violate the Geneva Convention by engaging in murder, torture or inhuman treatment. Anyone who knew about, ordered or failed to take steps to stop torture is guilty under the statute.
And if someone dies while being tortured? Then those who tortured, knew about, ordered or failed to take steps to stop torture are subject to life imprisonment and/or the death penalty…
Why isn’t he in jail? By his own words, he broke this law. He admitted telling the Justice Department to write arguments that waterboarding is legal. (Just as an FYI, remember that the Executive Branch is supposed to be SEPARATE from the Justice Branch, and the Legistlative Branch? That’s supposed to be the basis of the American governmental system, isn’t it?) Telling Justice to cover his ass means that he ordered others to commit illegality, which makes him a war criminal. AND, on TV last week, he defended CIA Operatives and Justice Department stooges who did waterboard, saying they shouldn’t be punished for doing what they were told…
I’m sorry, but the chain-of-command is always responsible for the illegalities they force their underlings to do… That was the point of the Nuremberg Trials. Cheney admits breaking the law, admits he made underlings follow his lead and yet is doing the equivalent of smoking a joint on a public street in front of tons of paparrazi; Cheney just did it on nationwide TV.
18 U.S.C. § 2441 has no statute of limitations, which means that a war crimes complaint can be filed at any time.
The penalty may be life imprisonment or — if a single prisoner dies due to torture — death. Given that there are numerous, documented cases of prisoners being tortured to death by U.S. soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan (see for example this report), that means that the death penalty would be appropriate for anyone found guilty of carrying out, ordering, or sanctioning such conduct.
That means that Cheney could be rounded up as a fugitive as long as he is alive, just like those old Nazis you see on the news.
There really should be ‘justice for all’, not just justice for the 2,300,000 Americans who aren’t either rich, famous or powerful enough to game the system…
Is it just me, or does ANYone else notice that the bosses of our Representative Leadership are all old white guys, and that they look just like the guys who got us into this recession, the old white guy bankers?
And are they hard at work, both sides of the aisle working together to pull American taxpayers out of this recession? Are they spanking the bankers? Are they creating jobs?
No, they’re involved in a political death match. WITH EACH OTHER.
First, Sen. Richard Shelby put a blanket hold on all executive branch nominees to extort the executive branch into rigging procurement to guarantee that the company he favored won a bid on a defense contract. Oh, and he wanted the FBI to build a crime lab in his state, too.
And now, Sen. Lindsey Graham is copycatting, placing a hold on the closing of Gitmo hostage to extort the Department of Justice into not having a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
What are they doing? Holding up the smooth working of the Government of the United States of America? For their own political good? We have 3 branches of Government and all three are being held up by partisan politics in Congress.
They have NO IDEA what regular Americans are going thru right now. Because they can head off to Hawaii to caucus, or dine with lobbyists at expensive restaurants. They don’t have to listen to regular Americans.
They get to play their little power trips, while utterly ignoring the people who elected them.
The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics tallied lobbying income data from tens of thousands of disclosure filings, and the data show that special interests of all stripes spent $3.47 billion lobbying the federal government in 2009, up from $3.3 billion the previous year.
How did the influence industry manage such a banner year despite a battered economy? The simple answer is that the Obama administration’s aggressive change agenda has prompted businesses to open their wallets to an unprecedented degree in the hope of preventing reform.
Washington is paralyzed by snow and partisanship. Nothing is getting done — even as the Great Recession pulls more Americans into its maw.
In the midst of this paralysis, the President was asked about the giant pay packages of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase & Co. ($17 mullion for 2009) and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs ($9 million). “First of all, I know both those guys,” Obama said. “They’re very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system.”
Free market system? As I remember it, American taxpayers forked out hundreds of billions to keep JPMorgan, Goldman, and other big Wall Street banks afloat through most of 2009. Had we not done so, Dimon, Blankfein, and most other top executives on Wall Street would not have earned a dime last year. In fact, some would be out on the street, reather than sitting pretty on the Street. The free market system has been unleashed instead on average Americans.
Why do 92% of Americans want to kick their Members of Congress to the curb?
Nearly 900,000 people in Arizona sought emergency food from charities within the past year, according to a national study released Tuesday by Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization.
The study shows more than 37 million Americans — one in eight — receive emergency food each year through the nation’s network of food banks and the agencies they serve.
The findings by the Chicago-based group represent a staggering 46 percent increase since its previous study, conducted in 2006.
“Clearly, the economic recession, resulting in dramatically increasing unemployment nationwide, has driven unprecedented sharp increases in the need for emergency food assistance and enrollment in federal nutrition programs,” said Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America.
The study shows St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance served more than 477,000 of those needing help, providing the bulk of charitable emergency food service in the Valley and throughout Arizona.
St. Mary’s helped gather local information in support of Hunger in America 2010. Among its findings:
• More than 40 percent of the households receiving emergency food assistance include at least one person who is working.
• More than 50 percent reported having to choose between buying food and paying their rent or mortgage.
• More than one-quarter reported having to choose between buying food and paying for medicine or medical care.
• More than 80 percent are U.S. citizens.
• Nearly a quarter are college-educated.
• Nearly 80 percent did not receive any form of government cash assistance, or welfare.
“This survey truly puts a human face on the issue of hunger in our community,” said Terry Shannon, president and CEO of St. Mary’s Food Bank. “We have always said that our work can only be done when neighbors help their neighbors. This shows how true that is. Hunger is an issue in every area, every city, every neighborhood the state.”
The 2010 study includes data collected from February through June 2009. Through participating food banks across the nation, Feeding America collected quantitative and qualitative feedback via 61,000 face-to-face interviews with people seeking emergency food assistance and more than 37,000 agency surveys, making this study the largest, most comprehensive ever conducted on domestic hunger.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in November that an estimated 49 million people, including 17 million children, are at risk of hunger in this country.
More than 50% had to choose between FOOD and HOUSING COSTS?
Something is fundamentally wrong with the corporate running of America… We’ve been sold the myth of ‘you can create wealth here’, but the wealth is going to the banking industry while Americans are hungry.
The U.S. Supreme Court just lifted restrictions on election donations from CORPORATIONS, labor unions, etc. Corporations? They already own the House and the Senate. When was the last time you saw something positive for the American Taxpayer actually pass out of those halls?
We still have high Unemployment? Check
There are still massive Foreclosures nationwide? Check
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs Profits hit $4.8 BILLION,
Bank of America (capitalist when it comes to profits, socialist when it comes to not taking its lumps) lowered his credit to close to his outstanding balance and raised his interest rate, right when he asked for an increase in his credit.
His argument?
Bank of America has taken billions in taxpayer money, is still paying itself and its people billions in bonuses, AND in turn is screwing its customers with increased interest rates and lowered credit limits.
Here’s a thought:
Banks have destroyed the economy,
Banks have further harmed the economy by taking billions of bailout dollars
taxpayers suffer from the resulting economic slowdown,
banks re-offend by harming customers, jacking up interest rates and fees
If we were talking about a physically violent bully, we’d throw the bum in jail and lock him up for a very long time, ensuring no return to society and no recidivism.
Instead, banks make money coming and going and no one (but the occasional brave person like Pavone) dares to stop it.
The good thing is he’s willing to brawl with Goliath. The bad thing is it takes a special background like a law degree, to be able to fight off Goliath’s abuses. Most customers suffer deep loss in their credit scores, higher interest rates and no borrowability to get them thru the bad economic times.
Hope he takes B of A to court and prevails. The mighty can fall, you know… The tobacco industry used to be protected from lawsuits and now they are fair game. Lets hope banks become vulnerable to self-defense attacks by their customers.
