Bill Clinton "Tough on Crime Bill"

[INdemo]

D E V A S T A T I N G.

"In 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton vowed that he would never permit any Republican to be perceived as tougher on crime than he. True to his word, just weeks before the critical New Hampshire primary, Clinton chose to fly home to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally impaired black man who had so little conception of what was about to happen to him, that he asked for the dessert from his last meal to be saved for him until the morning. After the execution, Clinton remarked, “I can be nicked a lot, but no one can say I’m soft on crime.”
Once elected, Clinton endorsed the idea of a federal “three strikes and you’re out” law, which he advocated in his 1994 State of the Union address, to enthusiastic applause on both sides of the aisle. The $30 billion crime bill sent to President Clinton in August 1994 was hailed as a victory for the Democrats, who “were able to wrest the crime issue from the Republicans and make it their own. “The bill created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and expansion of state and local police forces. Far from resisting the emergence of the new caste system, Clinton escalated the drug war beyond what conservatives had imagined possible a decade earlier. As the Justice Policy Institute has observed, “the Clinton Administration’s ‘tough on crime’ policies resulted in the largest increases in federal and state prison inmates of any president in American history.”
“New Jim Crow” Author Michelle Alexander on Hillary Clinton and Mass Incarceration
Acclaimed “The New Jim Crow” author and Ohio State University professor…
blackwestchester.com|By Damon K Jones

[Thinkingabout]

1. Yes, kill the messenger.

[virtualobserver]

2. playing politics with human life

disgusting

[loyalsister]

3. I keep getting the impression that many people are abstractions to the Clintons

Hillary demeans the people who are angry because they are not benefitting from the economic recovery with, "banker-bashing so popular within both parties was unproductive and indeed foolish."
Bernie sees people and their problems as concrete and valid.

[virtualobserver]

4. They have been in the bubble for so long that all issues are seen through the political lens

Having money shot at them with a fire hose only compounds the problem. Her advisers are just as disconnected.

Bernie never let himself lose focus, and we are lucky to have him.