Head-Spinning Political Shit!

[AtLast]

Empirical evidence driven political policy would be quite refreshing!

[GoddessJess]

I remember in H.S History something about the seperation of church and state..now I could be wrong because history was after lunch and well I wasn't always 100% after lunch (haha) but as I grew up I kept hearing this phrase...but if America was founded on the seperation of church and state and if America was founded to get the hell away from European dictatorship and religion then why in sam hell are we still pulling laws from the bible?? And wha gets me is the selectivity of it all...we shall pull the Marriage Equlaity from the bible or laws such as te one stated in the previose posts....but when it comes to people that break laws lets just house them and pay their way...screw the fact that the bible says an eye for an eye...
I'm an all or nuthin gal...don't tell me I have to live with Jesus's followers and thei idealistic country based on religiouse beliefes and then tell me I cant shoot someone who killed one of my family members...
On the island where I grew up thats what happens..we don't have jails or overcrowding...if you kill someone we kill you back...if you rob someone you then have to support that family for 10 years.
Polotics is a bunch of shananagans(sp?) and a crap ton of lies...I hate it! and yes I vote!

[betenoire]

Originally Posted by GoddessJess

I'm an all or nuthin gal...don't tell me I have to live with Jesus's followers and thei idealistic country based on religiouse beliefes and then tell me I cant shoot someone who killed one of my family members...
On the island where I grew up thats what happens..we don't have jails or overcrowding...if you kill someone we kill you back...if you rob someone you then have to support that family for 10 years.

Actually, Jesus didn't say "an eye for an eye" that was in the OLD testament. In the New Testament that old law was removed and was replaced with:

""You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also"
Matthew 5:38-29

I have no idea what island you grew up on (I can't tell if that was a metaphor or not?) but it doesn't sound like somewhere that I would want to be, if you really do get to just run around killing people for doing you wrong.

Revenge sucks.

(Also - overcrowding in prisons has NOTHING to do with not getting to just willy-nilly kill all the bad guys. It's got everything to do with a fucked up legal system that locks people up for stupid shit (drugs, really?) and locks some (not white) people up faster and for longer than others.)

[Toughy]

well here's a funny thing........read the whole article just for fun...the article is dated May 23, 2011

http://www.thecalifornian.com/articl...ates-by-33-000


The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that California must drastically reduce its prison population to relieve severe overcrowding that has exposed inmates to increased violence, disease and death.

The decision, however, doesn't mean the prison gates will swing open in an uncontrolled release.

The high court's 5-4 decision calls on the state to cut the population to no more than 110,000 inmates. To get there, state officials have two years to either transfer some 33,000 inmates to other jails or release them. California has already been preparing for the ruling, driven as much by persistent multibillion-dollar budget deficits as by fears for the well-being of prison inmates and employees. The state has sent inmates to other states. It plans to transfer jurisdiction over others to counties, though the state doesn't have the money to do it. <snip>

Ike always said beware the military-industrial complex. It has become the prison/military/industrial complex.

[betenoire]

I also wanted to add that the prison system is a HUGE money maker for some people. So long as there are for-profit privately run/owned prisons there will -always- be overcrowding and people locked up for no good reason.

[Toughy]

Originally Posted by betenoire

I also wanted to add that the prison system is a HUGE money maker for some people. So long as there are for-profit privately run/owned prisons there will -always- be overcrowding and people locked up for no good reason.

There is some huge ass number of folks in CA prisons and jails who have been convicted on non-violent drug offenses (many of them male POC). How about, they ALL get to go free and we end the stupid fucking 'war on drugs'.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Toughy

There is some huge ass number of folks in CA prisons and jails who have been convicted on non-violent drug offenses (many of them male POC). How about, they ALL get to go free and we end the stupid fucking 'war on drugs'.

That would be a good start. You know what drives me to distraction about this ill-conceived policy? We've seen this movie. We *know* it doesn't work. It was called Prohibition. There is absolutely no reason to make narcotics illegal. There is no more logic behind it than there was making booze illegal. But it certainly 'feels' good in that it makes us believe we're doing 'something'.

What's even more disturbing is that this undermines our criminal justice system in a very profound manner. Think about the differential fates of the following people:

1) Young middle-class black woman gets caught with a pipe and a quarter ounce of green bud. She is going to go to jail, possibly prison for a few years.

2) Young, upper-middle class white woman gets caught with an eight-ball of coke. She gets community service and maybe rehab.

3) Young, poor black man gets caught with three or four rocks of crack cocaine. He's going to prison for a decade.

4) Young, upper-class white man does a sophisticated three-card monty game on the stock market, brings three or four companies to their knees, causing a couple of thousand people to be thrown out of work, ten percent of those folks lose their homes. He winds up a hero with his face on the cover of Business Week and a billion dollar bonus in his pocket.

Do those fates--and it is very difficult to argue that this sketch isn't realistic--seem reasonable to anyone here given the magnitude of effects these actions have in the real world?

I would argue that, in fact, the severity of punishment should be almost precisely the *opposite* of what you see above. The stock market con artist should be looking at spending most of the rest of his natural days behind bars, the middle two drug offenders should be given the option of rehab if they have a problem and otherwise let go and the first person should never even find her day disturbed by the police at all.

Cheers
Aj

[JustJo]

Originally Posted by Toughy

There is some huge ass number of folks in CA prisons and jails who have been convicted on non-violent drug offenses (many of them male POC). How about, they ALL get to go free and we end the stupid fucking 'war on drugs'.

Thank you. The number of non-violent offenders in prison nationwide who are there purely for drug offenses is insane.

As a society it would be far cheaper (not to mention more humane and sensible) to provide rehab services.

Prisons are big business...big, profitable business. That's scary.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by betenoire

I have no idea what island you grew up on (I can't tell if that was a metaphor or not?) but it doesn't sound like somewhere that I would want to be, if you really do get to just run around killing people for doing you wrong.

Revenge sucks.

Whenever I hear someone talking about how much better it would be if we just shucked the messy legal system (with its rights of the accused, etc.) in favor of a more ad hoc and informal system (read vendetta) I am always brought back to a familial story on my mom's side of the family. One of her brothers had up close and personal experience of this kind of 'justice'. To put it bluntly my uncle was lynched for bumping into a white woman in small town Alabama in the 1920s. From the point of view of the people in the town at the time, my uncle had 'done something' to this white woman and he had to pay for his life. There was no trial, he was not 'charged', he ran home and later on some people came to my grandfather's farm, surrounded it and threatened to put the house to the torch if he did not give up his son. Here was 'justice' as done by people who get to determine when a crime had been committed and what punishment there should be for that crime.

Now, some might argue that this isn't what they mean when they talk about frontier 'justice' but it is rarely said what is actually meant. Since the whole idea behind the ethic of taking an eye for an eye is that there are no *laws* to be obeyed there is nothing to prevent some family from deciding that, for instance, the Hispanic family next door *must* be criminals and therefore burning them out of their home. Another objection might be raised that my family could have taken revenge on the people who lynched my uncle. However, that would only have meant the absolute obliteration of my mother's family. So a world of ad hoc 'justice' is a world that favors the powerful over the powerless and defines powerful as whoever can have the most guns still held by people with breath at the end of the day. Justice, then, becomes 'whoever won the gunfight'. It reminds me, a bit, of the story of Kaiser Soze in 'The Usual Supects'. After his family is murdered, Soze kills the perpetrators and then goes after the families of the perpetrators, people who live in the same neighborhood as the perpetrators, people who owe the perpetrators money, etc. This leaves no one to take revenge against Soze.

(Also - overcrowding in prisons has NOTHING to do with not getting to just willy-nilly kill all the bad guys. It's got everything to do with a fucked up legal system that locks people up for stupid shit (drugs, really?) and locks some (not white) people up faster and for longer than others.)

You make a great point. So why on Earth would I, a black woman, defend the criminal justice system over a system of vendetta-based 'justice'? Because legal systems have rules--I understand that we're supposed to find those rules distasteful because it gets in the way of engaging in emotionally cathartic but cruel behavior--we can't torture people and we can't just shoot people without trial--but *at least* those rules offer up the prospect of fairness and redemption. For all its flaws, if reasonable doubt can be established in my trial then I go free. Even if I was mistakenly convicted, if new evidence comes to light then I will be exonerated. I won't get my years of incarceration back but if I'm dead I can't even be exonerated. It is also demonstrably the case that the *sole* reason for prison overcrowding is the inconsistent application of drug laws in our absolutely insanely stupid 'war on drugs'. When the only other countries that are in the same neighborhood as you when it comes to locking up prisoners (and I don't mean absolute numbers, I'm talking about percentages) are nations that are either totalitarian dictatorships (China) or theocratic dictatorships (Iran) you *know* you are doing something seriously wrong.

Cheers
Aj