Sanders incarceration campaign promise: Delusional
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/02/11/bernie_sanders_can_t_fulfill_the_debate_promise_he_just_made_on_mass_incarceration.html
Report excerpt:
On this last point, Sanders trotted out an absurd promise he has used several times before: that by the end of his first term, the United States will no longer be the world leader in incarceration.
What Sanders means by this is that under just four years of his magical leadership, the U.S. will bring down its jail and prison population by about 600,000 people. Where does that figure come from? Consider that the No. 2 spot on the list of countries with the most prisoners in the world right now is China, and it has about 1.66 million people behind bars. The U.S., by comparison, has about 2.3 million.
Sanders did not mention during his remarks how he plans to make the leap from 2.3 million to fewer than 1.66 million. But regardless of what he has in mind, it’s pure fantasy for several reasons. Chief among them is that the president of the United States has no direct control over most of the nation’s correctional facilities. This is because jails, which currently hold fewer than 745,000 people, are under local control, and state prisons, which hold about 1.35 million, are under state control. That leaves the federal prison system—the only one that the federal government is actually in charge of—with 210,000 people, or about 10 percent of the pie.
It’s true that the president has a “bully pulpit” from which he can say inspiring things that set the tone for officials working at all levels of government. It’s also true that in theory, the federal government could try to bribe state governments to rely less on incarceration. But the bottom line is that the feds can only set policy for their own prison system and that means there’s a very low ceiling on the amount of progress that a president, no matter how ambitious he or she is, can do to reduce the prison population. The truth of the matter is that even if Sanders were to free every single person currently sitting in a federal prison, the U.S. would still be ahead of China in the incarceration Olympics by more than 400,000 people.
End of excerpt.
Sometimes I feel bad for Hillary. It's hard to run against Santa Claus, and very gullible voters.
= new reply since forum marked as read
a ridiculous number of americans?
That's 'unrealistic'.
Just in case
JFK - Sept. 12, 1962
Within a decade...
July 20, 1969
we finally have a candidate willing to go on record about decriminalizing mj......which is huyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye
hc is invested in continuing this "war" in which US citizens are the enemy
You really don't?
Then you have a little reading to do.
Or are you baiting me to indicate how malicious and dumb some people are for refusing to acknowledge that if my health and education costs go down...and my taxes go up by an amount less than that...I'm doing a bit better.
No. You know that. No one that dumb or malicious on DU. 
Oh I forget, Bernie is still trying to appeal to teabaggers and they would be up in arms if he said that.
Great leadership there Bernie.
What a joke. Is there anything Bernie wont promise to get the nomination?
Hillary gives us the best chance to hold the Whitehouse for 3 straight terms. The Supreme Court alone over the next 4 years is worth it for people to be smart with their vote.
This is the map of Nixon/McGovern in 1972. No it won't be this bad. But getting Bernie Sanders to 270 electoral votes is a very difficult task.
