“Addicts Deserve Alternatives To Prison”: Misguided War On Drugs Has Left Many Victims With Scars
Earlier this month, five Republican presidential contenders addressed a New Hampshire forum concerned with a crisis swamping certain regions of the country, including New England: heroin addiction. The candidates spoke passionately, some sharing personal experiences, according to news reports.
Jeb Bush spoke of his family’s turmoil as his daughter Noelle, now 38 and in recovery, struggled with an addiction to prescription drugs and cocaine. “What I learned was that the pain that you feel when you have a loved one who has addiction challenges and kind of spirals out of control is something that is shared with a whole lot of people,” he said.
Carly Fiorina also talked about her family’s struggles; her stepdaughter, Lori Ann, died at 34 after years of battling drug and alcohol abuse.
“… As Lori grew progressively sicker, the sparkle, the potential, the possibilities that had once filled her life — disappeared from behind her eyes,” she said.
This new frankness and sympathy concerning the physical, emotional and financial costs of drug addiction comes as white middle-class Americans have found their lives upended by the emergence of heroin as the drug of choice for their children and grandchildren. Nationwide, the number of deaths from heroin rocketed from fewer than 2,000 in 2001 to more than 10,000 in 2014, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. And experts say that nearly 90 percent of those who tried heroin for the first time in the last decade were white.
As a result of their experience, there has been a stark change in public perceptions of drug abuse. You see it not only in the more sympathetic rhetoric on the campaign trail, but also in the less aggressive methods of law enforcement and the softer penalties meted out by legislative bodies. Police chiefs now speak of addiction as a medical and psychological problem that deserves treatment, not incarceration. And parents insist that their children be treated as victims, not as perpetrators.
If this signals an end to the wretched, misguided and punitive war on drugs, I welcome it. Still, I find it heartbreaking that the nation didn’t have the clearheadedness, the courage and the compassion to see addiction as something other than a crime during the 1980s, when crack was the scourge of poor black neighborhoods.
Back then, lawmakers, especially conservatives, competed to see who could impose the harshest measures on poor drug addicts, and police officers routinely rounded up penny-ante dealers to bolster their arrest records. I can recall the wild accusations about crack users, the phony science, the harebrained predictions.
When Congress passed the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, it enacted mandatory minimum sentences for drugs and enshrined into law harsher penalties for the use of crack cocaine than for powdered cocaine, which was more likely to be used by whites. Offering up invalid assertions not backed by any data, lawmakers insisted that crack was more dangerous — as were its users.
Remember the dire warnings about crack babies? According to some so-called experts, the nation would see a wave of children born to crackhead moms, babies whose intelligence would always be stunted and whose physical capacities would always be limited. In fact, those pseudo-facts turned out to be gross exaggerations. Some babies were, in fact, born addicted, but, given appropriate medical care, most have turned out to be no different than their non-addicted peers.
The crack epidemic finally died away, but the after-effects of the misguided war on drugs linger in the lives of countless black men and women. That so-called war has drained the national treasury of billions of dollars, torn apart countless black families and decimated entire black neighborhoods.
It has made permanent second-class citizens, forever marginalized, of tens of thousands of black men and women because felony records have rendered them virtually unemployable. In some states, those with felony convictions are not even permitted to vote.
Now that we seem to have finally figured out that addicts deserve alternatives to prison, perhaps we can find a way to help those who bear the scars of the war on drugs. They are victims, too.
By: Cynthia Tucker Haynes, Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2007; The National Memo, January 9, 2016
“Dipping His Toes Into Ugly Waters”: Christie; Americans Have A President ‘Who We Don’t Know’
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) delivered a widely noticed speech in September 2011, condemning President Obama in a fairly specific way. “We continue to wait and hope that our president will finally stop being a bystander in the Oval Office,” the governor said. “We hope that he will shake off the paralysis that has made it impossible for him to take on the really big things.”
Even at the time, the rhetoric was bizarre, since Obama has spent his entire presidency taking on “really big things,” and more often than not, succeeding. But this week, Christie revised his entire perspective on the president, complaining Obama acts “as if he is a king, as if he is a dictator.”
I’ve long been amazed at the degree to which conservatives have contradictory complaints about the president, and this is emblematic of the pattern. Obama can be a hapless bystander, doing too little, or he can be a tyrannical dictator, doing too much, but he can’t be both.
On Monday, Christie went a little further. The Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe noted this gem from the scandal-plagued governor:
“We have a guy in the Oval Office who we don’t know. He’s been serving us for seven years and we don’t know him.”
I suppose the obvious question for Christie is, “What do you mean ‘we’?” After all of these years, some of us have gotten to know and understand this president quite well. After a two-year national campaign in 2007 and 2008, an autobiography, and seven years of intense scrutiny in the White House in which his every move was analyzed from every direction, it’s hard to imagine the public knowing a stranger better than we know Barack Obama. There is no mystery about who this “guy” is.
But that’s probably not where the governor is going with this.
The New Republic’s Jeet Heer noted the other day that Christie isn’t being literal, so much as he’s “pandering to GOP mythology.”
[Christie’s comments] partially echo long-held Republican complaints that Obama hasn’t been properly vetted. But they also play into the large set of tropes about Obama being alien, mysterious, un-American. As is his wont, Donald Trump proclaimed these themes more loudly when he suggested that Obama might have an ulterior motive (cough, cough, secret Muslim) for the deal he negotiated with Iran. “It’s almost like there has to be something else going on,” Trump said in a speech on Saturday night.
Like many of the other Republican candidates, Christie is trying to play the role of the thinking man’s Trump, and making a fool of himself in the process.
Agreed. When Christie tells Republican audience Americans don’t “know” the president, he’s dipping his toes into ugly waters. The governor must know better, and it’s a shame he appears to see this as necessary for his presidential ambitions.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 8, 2016
“Down The GOP Rabbit Hole”: The Republican Race Is Becoming ‘Curiouser And Curiouser’ In All The Worst Ways
I too often feel as if I have fallen down the rabbit hole in “Alice in Wonderland” when I view the dysfunction that is the Republican primary contest. Maybe you remember the quote from Lewis Carroll’s wonderful book:
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here, I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Well, those of us political junkies, and even those who can’t avoid the daily news bursts, are fast wondering if we are embroiled in the Alice in Wonderland of politics.
Ted Cruz reads “Green Eggs and Ham” on the Senate floor – anything to shut down the government. Donald Trump says very little that is actually true and doubles down when questioned. (He’s been awarded PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year”; 60 of his 79 statements were labeled mostly false, false or pants on fire.)
The other candidates are trying desperately to keep up with the self-proclaimed outsiders Trump and Cruz, bashing immigrants, eviscerating President Barack Obama for “taking away our guns,” each trying to out-macho the other: Ben Carson says a Muslim shouldn’t be president, contrary to our Constitution; Marco Rubio helps write immigration reform legislation and then rejects it; Chris Christie called opponents of an assault weapons ban “dangerous”, “crazy” and “radical” in 1995, yet he now totally agrees with them; Carly Fiorina won’t even meet with President Vladimir Putin.
The madder you are, the louder your voice, the more outrageous your statements, the greater the likelihood that your poll numbers will rise in the Republican primaries.
Trump does take the cake: attacking John McCain for being a war hero, calling to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., suggesting building a fence and making Mexico pay for it, wanting to carpet bomb our enemies and target their families. Even hard-core conservatives wonder whether he has become the candidate most likely to tear up our Constitution, violate international law and shred the rules of the Geneva Conventions.
Maybe Trump deserves the title Mad Hatter in this race, but most of the others aren’t far behind. The Republican Party has truly become the Mad Tea Party – maybe a more appropriate description than any reference to the Boston Tea Party.
And throughout it all, this race is becoming, as in Alice in Wonderland, “Curiouser and curiouser!” Like Alice, maybe we could all wake up from this dream?
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, January 7, 2016
“Out In The Fever Swamps”:The One Thing To Know About Obama’s Philosophy On Executive Actions
There he goes again: President Barack Obama is issuing an executive order to tighten regulations of gun sales to make background checks modestly more effective. And in doing so, Obama is thumbing his nose at Republicans who claim his habit of end-running the legislative branch to act on his own reveals a dictatorial temperament and perhaps even a threat to the Constitution. Out in the fever swamps, the conspiracy theory holding that Obama is going to cancel the presidential elections and rule by decree will gain new adherents. And here and there (and from “centrist” pundits as well as Republicans) you will hear angry talk about the president once again betraying the bipartisanship he promised to bring to Washington back in 2008. You’ll even hear some progressive and Democratic validation of this treatment in the form of claims that Obama is pursuing extremism in the defense of this or that urgent policy goal.
Obama himself laid the political groundwork for this action not by insisting on his as opposed to Republicans’ ideas about gun safety, but by noting repeatedly that the Republican-led Congress has refused to act even in the wake of catastrophes like those at Sandy Hook and San Bernardino. Here’s the relevant statement from the White House:
The president has made clear the most impactful way to address the crisis of gun violence in our country is for Congress to pass some common sense gun safety measures. But the president has also said he’s fully aware of the unfortunate political realities in this Congress. That is why he has asked his team to scrub existing legal authorities to see if there’s any additional action we can take administratively.
If you look back at Obama’s record on big executive actions — on guns, climate change, and immigration — you see the same situation. It’s not that he’s fought for “liberal” as opposed to “conservative” policies in these areas. It’s that congressional Republicans, pressured by conservative opinion-leaders and interest groups, have refused to do anything at all. They are in denial about climate change and in paralyzing internal disagreement on immigration, and refuse to consider any new gun regulations. So there’s literally no one to hold bipartisan negotiations with on these issues, and no way to reach common ground. In all these cases, the absence of action creates its own dreadful policies, most notably on immigration where a refusal to set enforcement priorities and to fund them forces arbitrary actions no one supports.
So taking executive actions is hardly a betrayal of bipartisanship, but rather a forlorn plea for it. And it’s significant that Obama is usually acting on issues in which the Republican rank-and-file are far more supportive of action than their purported representatives in Congress.
Back during his announcement of candidacy in 2007, Obama made it reasonably clear that he didn’t just want to cut deals between the two parties in Washington, but also intended to force action on them when gridlock prevailed. After discussing several national challenges, he said:
What’s stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans. What’s stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics — the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.
Knowing that a Republican president could and probably would roll back all his executive actions, Obama is not taking a preferred course of action. If, of course, a Democratic succeeds him, his policies will take root and probably endure. Eventually, the two parties may come to agree on the challenges the country faces, and then have actual discussions — and disagreements and competition — over how to address them. That’s bipartisanship. And counterintuitive as it may seem, Obama’s executive actions may be necessary to produce bipartisanship down the road.
By: Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, January 5, 2016
“Making America More Bigoted And More Racist Again”: Trump Takes His Racially Charged Message To The Airwaves
Ordinarily, a presidential candidate releasing a new television commercial wouldn’t be especially newsworthy, but the new ad from Donald Trump is a little different than most – both in circumstances and in content.
Consider the message itself, first reported by the Washington Post. Viewers hear a voice-over say:
“The politicians can pretend it’s something else, but Donald Trump calls it ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ That’s why he’s calling for a temporary shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until we can figure out what’s going on. He’ll quickly cut the head off ISIS and take their oil. And he’ll stop illegal immigration by building a wall on our Southern border that Mexico will pay for.”
The ad then cuts to Trump himself speaking at a campaign rally, vowing, “We will make America great again.”
The imagery, of course, matters. When the commercial references terrorism, the ad shows the San Bernardino shooters. When it touts Trump’s proposed Muslim ban, viewers are shown masked terrorists. And when the spot references immigration, there’s grainy video of people running at a border.
So, why is this important? For one thing, it’s Trump’s first television ad of the entire election cycle. While some of his rivals have already invested millions – Jeb Bush and his allies spent about $38 million on campaign commercials in 2015 – Trump has spent just $217,000 on some radio advertising. Now, however, his campaign is spending $1.1 million to air this spot in Iowa and nearly $1 million for airtime in New Hampshire.
The New York developer is the first modern presidential candidate to excel by relying exclusively on free media and campaign rallies, and it’s hard to say with confidence whether his first foray into television advertising will help, hurt, or make no difference.
But let’s not brush past the nature of Trump’s pitch too quickly.
In recent months, as Trump has maintained a sizable lead over the rest of the GOP field, there’s been ample discussion about what’s driving his success. One of the more common explanations is the economic anxieties felt by working-class white voters, with whom Trump’s version of conservative populism resonates.
Putting aside whether or not the thesis has merit, what this ad helps demonstrate is something far simpler and more straightforward: the Republican frontrunner recognizes the power of his racially charged appeals; he understands the degree to which his support is dependent on racially divisive rhetoric; and so his campaign ads are sticking with what works.
How do we “make America great again”? It’s not by weakening the influence of special interests, or creating more jobs, or even applying lessons from Trump’s successes in the private sector.
No, according to the GOP frontrunner, to make America great we simply need to elect a president who’ll focus on Muslims and Mexicans.
The Post’s report added, “The first ad, titled ‘Great Again,’ makes clear that Trump’s closing pitch to voters will be as visceral and arresting as the one he delivers at raucous rallies. It is a full embrace of the most incendiary of his proposals, as opposed to the more biographical spots that some other candidates favor.”
Anyone who’s heard Trump’s stump speech knows this isn’t exactly new rhetorical territory for the candidate, but it matters that when putting together the campaign’s first television ad, Team Trump came to an important conclusion: bigotry works.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, January 4, 2016
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 