Home of the Free Ranked Number One For Imprisonment

When the US has more prisoners than billion person plus China, you know somethings wrong. Yet the Pew Center issued a report saying 1 in 100 adult Americans are in jail. Here’s what the AP says:

For the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America’s rank as the world’s No. 1 incarcerator. It urges states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars.

Using state-by-state data, the report says 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008 — one out of every 99.1 adults. Whether per capita or in raw numbers, it’s more than any other nation.

The report also noted severe racial disparities in prison sentencing. 1 in 9 black males between 20 and 34 is in jail. The numbers are still pretty bad for men in that age group, with 1 and 30 of them behind bars.

One reason attributed to large inmate populations is because politicians are afraid to appear soft on crime. The moment a criminal is released on a newly created inmate reduction program and commits a crime, politicians usually face a campaign of fear mongering. The end result is less spending on education, and more men and woman in jail so politicians can keep their seats.

All these numbers are crunching state budgets. Vermont, Michigan, Oregon and Connecticut all spend more money on prison then on higher education. But this budget crunch is accomplishing what common sense can’t. States are relaxing punishments for small probation violations, reviewing three strike laws, and looking at other means of reducing prison population.

What’s really shameful is communist China only jails 1.5 million of it’s citizens, while the Chinese population is over 3 times that of the America. Coming third is the former communist stronghold of Russia where businessmen are still thrown in jail for earning too much money.

The report was written by the Pew Center’s Public Safety Performance Project, who is also working with 13 states to reduce inmate populations.

McCain Accepts Endorsment from Armageddon Wanting Pastor

A pastor who wants a milatary strike on Iran has endorsed McCains bids for presidency. And unlike Obama, McCain said he was “very honored” by the endorsement of the war mongering pastor. The New York Times has more on the endorsement:

Senator John McCain got support on Wednesday from an important corner of evangelical Texas when the pastor of a San Antonio mega-church, Rev. John C. Hagee, endorsed Mr. McCain for president. Mr. Hagee, who argues that the United States must join Israel in a preemptive, biblically prophesized military strike against Iran that will lead to the second coming of Christ, praised Mr. McCain for his pro-Israel views.

The endorsement violates the lines of a non-profit getting involved in politics. Even though he tied in a biblical prophesy in, nowhere in the Bible is John McCains name.

I was willing to dismiss McCain’s bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran song, but he should have forcefully denied this mans war mongering. The last thing we need is a president that deliberately makes prophesies, especially ones like these, come true.

Also, the endorsement of a pastor from a Texas mega-church further dents Mike Huckabee’s creditability.

Barack Obama and Islamophobia

When this election cycle began I expected a fair amount of shovanism, homophobia (because of Giuliani) and racism.

What I didn’t expect was anti-Muslim sentiments against a Christian candidate running for president. Perhaps this has reached a climax with debate moderator Tim Russert asking about Farrakhans endorsement of Obama.

Then Hilary Clinton tried to gain points by saying, “You asked specifically if he [Obama] would reject it [the endorsement] and there’s a difference between denouncing and rejecting.” Obama replied, “If the word ‘reject’ Senator Clinton feels is stronger than the word ‘denounce’, then I’m happy to concede the point and I would reject and denounce [Farrakhan]“

Obama went on to clarify his position on the issue:

I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible. I did not solicit this support. He expressed pride in an African-American who seems to be bringing the country together. I obviously can’t censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we’re not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally with Minister Farrakhan.

This isn’t the first time Islamphobia has creeped into the 2008 election. Previously both the McCain and Clinton campaign have made a big deal of Obama’s middle name, which is Hussein. Then there are the leaked photos that are designed to conjure images of radical Muslims in turbines.

But a major point of Obamas campaign has been about uniting people. He wants to see Democrats and Republicans, black and white, Mid West and East Coast all work together. Perhaps one of the most divisive divides today is none of the above, but Jew versus Muslim.

Obama needs to reach out to both groups if his message of unity is authentic. If he truly denounces Farakhan as a whole he will be alienating black Muslims. What he can do is reject his anti-Semitism which he has done. Besides, in recent years Farrakhan has even denounced his own anti-Semintic comments.

But apparently many in Jewish community realize this was a game to score cheap points. Here’s what Jewish newspaper Haartez says:

Obama, talking about Farrakhan - and about anti-Semitism among African-Americans, which he also denounced in his speech on Martin Luther King Day - touched a sensitive nerve when he was talking about one possibility that’s inherent to his candidacy: he has the chance to restore the alliance between blacks and Jews.

This will not necessarily get Obama the votes of every Jewish liberal in this country. But it is also one promise that no American liberal Jew can simply ignore.

Chris Dodd to Endorse Obama

Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut ) isn’t done on the presidential campaign trail just yet, sources close to him say he will endorse Barack Obama this morning:

Obama and rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had been vying for Dodd’s support since he exited the presidential race after a poor showing in the Iowa caucus last month. Dodd, who won his Senate seat in 1980 and chaired the Democratic National Committee from 1995-1996, has long-standing ties to the Clintons.

Dodd is a “superdelegate,” one of nearly 800 Democratic officeholders and party officials who automatically attend the national convention and can vote for whomever they choose. They have become an important force in the close race between Clinton and Obama, and both candidates are lobbying hard for their support.

Chris Dodd has long foreign policy experience, worked for families on a medical leave law, and has five terms of experience in the senate. Dodd is also expected to campaign for Obama in the New England states of Vermont and Rhode Island which hold primaries on March 4th.

Chris Dodd has previously said he wasn’t going to endorse anyone, but as Obama looks more and more likely to win the Democratic nomination maybe he decided to throw in his endorsement for a possible vice president nomination. Chris Dodd is also a superdelagate.

What Change Means

Barack Obama believes change would be electing him President of the United States. Hillary Clinton believes change is making improvements in people’s lives for the better. For Obama, the election has been about himself. Clinton wants the election to be about the people she wants to help.

“I have a proven record of making change as a change maker,” she told a crowd in the gymnasium of Wayne High School in Huber Heights, Ohio. [The Swamp]

I believe this is a fundamental difference between these two candidates. It tells us who they are, and what they want to do. It shows that, for Obama, this election has been about a personal political ambition. And at the same time, for Clinton, this election is much more important than her own legacy. It’s really about the people who need help, not hope.

Almost every Obama supporter has an almost inappropriate fascination with the man. With stories of six people fainting at rallies, and supporters talking about how they “came” to Obama, or at a recent rally where Obama blew his nose, the crowd erupted in cheers. In fact, Obama supporters resemble sheep, more than they do supporters.

With revelations of plagiarism arising this past week, Obama supporters were unable to concede an inch. In their eyes, Obama can do no wrong. He can make no mistakes, or receive any criticism. A president unwilling to receive criticism will not learn from mistakes, will never discover that there is room for improvement, and will only become more out of tune with people who elected him.

I think Deval Patrick summed up the Obama campaign well:

“He has a broader range of life experience, which is, I think, enormously important because we don’t want just a chief policy wonk,” Patrick said. [Time.com]

We elect people in our democracy to do work for us. Since when did being a “policy wonk” turn into a bad thing? This is exactly how the Obama campaign managed to turn “experience” into a dirty word. The Obama campaign is only out to inspire us or fancy us with speeches and rhetoric. In this election, it’s clear we’ve strayed off of the course of finding real “change” and we’ve instead replaced it with a popularity contest, and letting our emotions get the best of us.

I don’t want this election to be about one person. And I know Obama supporters try to fool themselves by calling it a “movement.” But for Obama, the campaign is less about the movement of a people, it’s a movement about one person, and his self-righteousness. Obama needs more time to learn how to become a better president, one day. A more knowledgeable president can only help America. But the time for knowledge, experience, competence, and real policies, is now.

McCain Skirting Campaign Finance Laws

John McCain took a $6 million loan when his campaign was bleeding cash, and for collateral he told the bank he would opt into the public financing system. But after his cash situation improved he opted out of public financing. Then after he saw that the Clinton’s would make large loans and Obama could raise record breaking amounts of cash he flip flopped for public financing again. Read more

Ralph Nader is the man, contrary to popular belief.

Since Ralph Nader announced that he will once again run for President this morning, the blogosphere has been abuzz with negativity and outright hostility. Glade at Cobalt 6 is quite blunt in stating:

Ralph, you cost Al Gore Florida and the election. You sentenced us to 8 long years of lost rights, environmental damage, misguided war, and the list goes on and on. Ralph you can blast the “liberal intelligentsia” and say Gore should have won Tennessee or that the Supreme Court stopped the vote count. It all sounds hollow. I, for one, will never sign a petition to put Nader on the Virginia ballot.

I couldn’t help but think (respectfully, of course) that the wording of this statement is entirely ambiguous, as it acknowledges the two biggest factors in Al Gore’s 2000 defeat - political thievery and poor showings in states that could easily have gone blue - yet still paints Ralph Nader as the sole culprit. Another major factor not taken into account by Glade is the 250,000 Florida Democrats who jumped party lines to vote for George W. Bush.

I have never subscribed to the theory that Ralph Nader cost anybody anything in 2000. On Meet The Press, Mr. Nader mentioned a GMU professor (Solon Simmons) by name who argues that, by moving Mr. Gore to the left in 2000 with his aggressive, resolutely left-of-center rhetoric, Nader may have actually delivered more votes to the Democrats than he took away.

I have no trouble believing that such was the case, and I expect it to be the case again this year (to what extent, I could not guess). Indeed, that’s the kind of effect that should be welcome by Liberal commentators such as Glade, who has written on Cobalt 6 in support of things like impeachment and single-payer healthcare, but who, on factually unstable grounds, passionately castigates the only candidate for president who supports both impeachment and single-payer healthcare.

I suppose that I’m just too much of a populist to believe that any candidate for any office who raises legitimate issues and makes fair points is anything but an asset to a democratic nation at the end of the day. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to anyone that I also don’t believe that a vote for such a candidate (regardless of their chances of winning) is a wasted one, as long as whomever is casting that vote does so on the grounds that they genuinely believe they are voting for the best candidate.

Lowell at Raising Kaine, with whom I usually agree, says:

In 2000, Nader helped give us George W. Bush as president. Will he help give us Bush Part Deux this year? Check out Meet the Press for the thrilling scintillating news this morning.

He expounds on his position in a subsequent comment:

[I think it’s pretty much an objective fact] that Ralph Nader’s candidacy contributed to Al Gore’s defeat in 2000. Now, whether it contributed 1%, 10%, or whatever, I don’t know, but still, I think we can all agree that it was a factor. By the way, I say this as someone who greatly admires the work Ralph Nader’s done in his life.

Lowell at least words his criticism of Nader’s candidacy in a way that acknowledges the existence of more than one variable in the negative outcome of the 2000 election. Of course, if you subscribe to the theories of scholars like Solon Simmons, then you don’t believe (like Lowell does) that Nader was a negative factor to even the slightest degree. In fact, you believe that he helped the Democratic party. If you do believe that Nader was a negative factor, I hope you’ll take a look at the big picture and also concede that his impact was so truly minimal when compared to some of the other factors in play, that blaming him for the misery of the last 8 years is complete nonsense.

A blogger who I greatly respect, Anonymous Is A Woman, commented earlier on Vivian Paige’s Nader-themed post:

I remember when Ralph Nader was a serious and extremely respected crusader who took on the auto issue on life saving issues. It’s sad that he is destined to end his legacy as a spoiler and the punch line of late night jokes.

I disagree with a couple of AIAW’s points. The first point is her characterization of Nader as a spoiler. I’ve already discussed in detail why I do not consider this to be an entirely accurate assessment of his past presidential bids. Another portion of AIAW’s comment that I didn’t agree with was her characterization of Ralph Nader as a crusader on life saving issues in the past tense. Criticisms of Nader almost always come attached to praise of his early days as an activist; the halcyon days of Nader, if you will. Days fondly remembered, but existing only in the past.

What seems to be ignored, however, is that fact that the days of Nader’s activism and crusading on behalf of average Americans are certainly not gone, nor has he, in my opinion, devolved into the electoral nuisance and laughingstock that he has been accused by many of being.

Most political scientists would probably agree that that the manner in which America was formed - and the manner in which it has evolved - make a two-party system, not only inevitable, but also necessary. Democracy in America depends upon compromise, and that compromise comes from having two major parties that, essentially, hug the middle of the road on every major issue. The Democrats stay slightly to the left of center, while Republicans stay slightly to the right. This creates enough difference between the two parties to allow for contrasts, but leaves a number of similarities between them sufficient to make compromise possible.

Independents and third parties like Ralph Nader have historically played a very important role in this dynamic. That role, of course, is changing the direction of the overall discussion; pressing major party candidates to talk about controversial “third rail” issues, and presenting ideas, some of which might create so much excitement and support that the two major parties have no choice but to react to them, either by adopting the idea as their own or taking a firm stance in opposition to it.

The fact is, I’m a Democrat; a proud one, and one of the duties that I believe comes with applying that label to myself is making sure that everyone’s voice is heard and everyone’s vote counted. From the party platform:

Voting is the foundation of democracy, a central act of civic engagement, and an expression of equal citizenship. Voting rights are important precisely because they are protective of all other rights. We will call for legislative action that will fully protect and enforce the fundamental Constitutional right of every American to vote — to ensure that the Constitution’s promise is fully realized and that, in disputed elections, every vote is counted fully and fairly.

How it is even remotely in step with the Democratic Party platform to tell 2,882,995 people that they wasted their vote, when the fact is that they overwhelmingly voted for him because they believed he was the best candidate? How is it Democratic to say that Ralph Nader - a candidate capable of receiving nearly 3 million American votes - shouldn’t have even run because he was destined to fail? Quite simply, I don’t believe that it is.

Why not Gravel or Nader or both?

“I think the job of the Democratic Party is to be so compelling that a few percentage [points] of the vote going to another candidate is not going to make any difference.”
-Barack Obama

http://gravel08.us

McCain Denies Affair

The New York Times reported earlier that McCain had a “romantic relationship” with a lobbyist he worked with. As usual he hasn’t admitted to anything yet. But the usually hot tempered man calmly told reporters, conservatives, and Americans that he didn’t have an affair. Here’s the story from the New York Times:

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

This news is sure to alienate the conservative wing of the Republican party, maybe even sparking a conservative third party campaign. Even if there was not an actual affair, but a close relationship with a lobbyist paints a bad picture for a man that claims to want to reform Washington.

Feb. 21st Democratic Debate Open Thread

Tonight is the Democratic debate on CNN live from Austin, Texas on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin.

I will update this thread with videos from the debate. We can leave comments as to what we though about the debate as well.

Barack Obama Echoes Deval Patrick…Again

Following the false accusations from The Politico today that the Clinton campaign will “target” delegates pledged to Obama, they did manage to uncover one undeniably relevant story.

Here is Deval Patrick on June 3, 2006, according to an 11-second YouTube video posted Tuesday afternoon:

“I am not asking anybody to take a chance on me. I’m asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations.”

Here is Barack Obama on Nov. 2 in Manning, S.C., according to an 11-second YouTube video posted nine minutes later:

“I’m not just asking you to take a chance on me. I’m also asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations.” [The Politico]

I’m beginning to think Obama is just an empty suit. Maybe his supporters should be preaching Deval Patrick for president?

Hillary goes after PLEDGED delegates?!?

This is pathetic… Read more

Is It Over Already?

If Hillary Clinton does not win Wisconsin today, I strongly believe the race is over. There is absolutely no way to recover from so many losses, especially when the opposition has by far run a better campaign. Sure she can win in Texas, but one or two wins won’t be able to slow down the momentum Obama has on his side.

How did Hillary Clinton get here in the first place? Her campaign thought she was gonna be the nominee by February 5th. I think that was the problem. They took many states for granted, they thought this was going to be easy. Nobody knew Obama was going to be as tough an opponent as he turned out to be. But a large amount of blame lies solely on the Clinton campaign itself.

On Monday, allegations of plagiarism were brought up by a blog, claiming Obama reused a segment of a speech originally made by Massachusetts Governor Patrick Deval in 2006. Deval and Obama each have had the same campaign manager, now the Obama for America campaign manager, David Axelrod. Now, instead of letting the media find this on their own, the Clinton campaign made the dire mistake of passing this onto the media themselves. So instead, the story was spun as “Clinton Camp Accuses Obama of Plagiarism” instead of “Obama Accused of Plagiarism” (the latter obviously leaving no blame to the Clinton campaign.) Not only did this make the Clinton campaign look bad, because now the story was passed over as another Clinton attack, another story took it’s place. Bill Clinton’s red faced finger wagging at an Obama supporter ended up getting more or equal time as the serious plagiarism accusation. It turned out to be a bad day for both campaigns, when it should have only been a bad day for the Obama campaign.

Hillary Clinton should have run her campaign a whole lot better. Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaign websites are just a small example of this. Obama’s website seems so active and helpful, and you can feel the inspiration coming from supporters. Each state has their own page, their own blog, their own groups, their store has a wide variety of merchandise, they are motivated and ready to go. And when each state has an upcoming caucus or primary, they set up a page called “Wisconsin & Hawai’i: Your Moment is Now” complete with easy to find directions to caucus times and locations. It’s easy, it’s motivational, it’s exciting.

Now, when we look at the Hillary Clinton campaign, there’s not much to be said. They do have a blog, and it’s barely updated, maybe one or two posts a day, only by Clinton approved staff. And believe it or not, there are supporter blogs. But in order to view those blogs, you must be signed up and logged in, not to mention the fact that they are extremely hard to find and navigate. When we look at the state pages, instead of being an active online headquarters like the Obama campaign has set up, instead we find static, unenthusiastic pages, with no supporter created content, no fun blogs. When wanting to find your caucus or primary location, instead of finding enthusiastic supporter created directions in a blog post, there is “To find your primary location, please visit the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board website.” It doesn’t get anymore dull than that. Just a link, and maybe a telephone number.

Can the Clinton campaign still pull off a win? Sure they can. Is Obama in a better position to win? For right now, he is.

Letter to Senator Clinton

Dear Senator Clinton

My name is William. Unlike most of your supporters, I was once a supporter of Senator Barack Obama. Like most people, I was captured by the senator’s many endorsements, the glamorous Oprah support, and the motivational speeches about changes in America. However, somewhere along the way, I have had a change of heart, and have decided to put my support in you.
Read more

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