Continued from yesterday’s roundup, a few more items from this week:
– New York City officials came under fire recently for putting out a pamphlet promoting safety tips for heroin users. The critics of these types of educational efforts are making the same logical error that proponents of teen sexual abstinence education make. They mistakenly believe in both cases that simply giving people information about a moral taboo encourages more people to explore that taboo. As the statistics on abstinence education vs. comprehensive sex education have shown, it isn’t true. And it’s just as wrong when it comes to illegal drug use. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition put out their own press release criticizing the DEA for attacking the pamphlet.
– A recent report by the Center for American Progress shows that an immigration reform proposal that provides a path to citizenship for currently undocumented immigrants and relaxes immigration restrictions would boost U.S. GDP by at least $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. The worst economic approach possible to dealing with the problem of illegal immigration – by far – is to try to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible.
– I’m sure it surprises no one that I agree with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that Washington’s felon voter ban unfairly discriminates against minorities. The evidence presented at trial is some of the same evidence I’ve occasionally cited here in order to point out the massive racial disparities that exist in drug law enforcement.
The restrictions on felon voting come from the Washington State Constitution itself. The actual wording of the Constitution states:
SECTION 3 WHO DISQUALIFIED. All persons convicted of infamous crime unless restored to their civil rights and all persons while they are judicially declared mentally incompetent are excluded from the elective franchise.
An infamous crime is defined as:
An “infamous crime” is a crime punishable by death in the state penitentiary or imprisonment in a state correctional facility.
The biggest disconnect that I see is that most felons in this state aren’t guilty of “infamous crimes”. They’re often guilty of non-violent crimes. In fact, before King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg started relegating them to District Court in 2008, two-thirds of his felony caseload were cases involving less than three grams of illegal drugs, the exact kinds of crimes for which the evidence introduced at trial shows clear racial disparities in who actually gets arrested, prosecuted, and convicted.
The State Constitution, with that clause, was written in 1889. At that time, not only was drug possession not an “infamous crime”, it wasn’t a crime at all. Opium, heroin, marijuana, and cocaine were all legally available to people. It’s possible that smugglers who were found guilty of trying to avoid paying opium import tariffs were guilty of “infamous crimes”, but certainly not the man on the street who had a small amount of drugs on him.
After the turn of the century, prohibitions on these drugs were slowly enacted. All along the West Coast, anti-Chinese sentiments led to crackdowns on opium. Across the country, racism against blacks fueled attempts to ban cocaine. And animosity towards Mexicans led to the federal bans on marijuana in 1937. No one anywhere should be surprised that the outcome of nearly a century of these laws – born out of racism themselves – would be overtly racist implementations.
I’m not an expert on the Voting Rights Act. I’m making a logical argument here rather than a strictly legal one – and sometimes the two are not the same – but I have trouble understanding the arguments against this decision that pretend that our criminal justice system doesn’t have glaring racial disparities. If Attorney General Rob McKenna makes that the primary argument in his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, he deserves to lose the case. After a century of America trying to enforce various drug prohibitions (even alcohol for a while – which New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia spoke out against because it targeted certain ethnic groups), these laws have ended up doing exactly what they were intended to do, to disproportionately put larger numbers of minorities behind bars.
Just a reminder to everyone here, this is not an open thread. If your off-topic comment leads to intelligent discussion, however, I’ll let it stay up. On the other hand, if your off-topic comment is an attempt to be obnoxious or monumentally dumb, it will be deleted.
I don’t know if this is monumentally dumb but “In fact, before King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg started relegating them to District Court in 2008, two-thirds of his felony caseload were cases involving less than three grams of illegal drugs,”.
Two-third of the cases? I someone higher up can’t see that this is a significant waste of time, money and opportunities then they don’t have the brains to be in the position they are in. The costs are not just to the judicial system but later in life as well.
The drug laws of this country are just as harmful as the Jim Crow laws and perhaps even more so because they go after a broader demographic of people. Then once those people are caught up in the system it becomes more difficult for them to get out. Once you have a mark on your record you may not be able to get a loan for education, find a decent job, be eligible for certain occupational licenses and on and on. Then of course the conservative bitch about people on welfare and other social problems.
However have a few too many martinis at the club and make an ass of yourself some night and you can pick up and recover without much of a problem.
Unfortunately, the debate will be only about whether or not jailed felons should be able to vote, not about the institutional racism that led to the ruling.
In a KZOK interview the other morning, AG McKenna denied the racial bias. In his view, as it seems to be with all privileged white Republicans, white people simply commit fewer crimes. Fair is fair. Nothing to see or fix here.
Meanwhile he’ll wring every gram of political payoff out of this case, probably taking it to the Supreme Court, probably winning, and framing the debate such that Dems have to either applaud him, or defend voting from prison.
McKenna needs to be challenged to either do something about the discrimination, or defend his claim that it doesn’t exist.
@3
In a KZOK interview the other morning, AG McKenna denied the racial bias. In his view, as it seems to be with all privileged white Republicans, white people simply commit fewer crimes. Fair is fair. Nothing to see or fix here.
If you see anything online with him saying this, I’d love to see it. That’s a completely indefensible statement that can easily be debunked. And McKenna is just dumb enough to think he can get away with peddling it.
@2
I don’t know if this is monumentally dumb
It’s certainly not, thanks for the comment.
My comment at #1 was geared towards several folks who have very bizarre obsessions with me. I meet some fairly whacked out people in the drug law reform universe, but none of them come close to the unhinged insanity I often see in these threads.
@4 Lee: Here’s a direct quote from the interview:
You can listen to the whole thing at KZOK.com, Jan. 6 Bob Rivers show.
Of course the court didn’t find that disproportionality itself was an indication of racial discrimination, it found that the disproportionality in questions could only be explained by racial bias.
I take McKenna’s statement to be a flat denial that there is a problem, and certainly an indication that he is only interested in appealing the ruling, not looking seriously at the institutional racism that “infects” our criminal justice system.
Hey Lee–
How about something like today’s Rasmussen Poll? Rasmussen is the most accurate poll the past 5 years because they poll LIKELY VOTERS.
Seems like the Progressive Movement is outta gear, huh?
Obama was at +32 post-inauguration THE SAME POLL!
Now he has dropped 50 points!!
Read & weep–
Sunday, January 10, 2010
@7
Still way more popular than any Republican.
@6
Thanks, I’ll definitely be following up on that in a later post.
“They mistakenly believe in both cases that simply giving people information about a moral taboo encourages more people to explore that taboo.”
I doubt it. I think they just prefer to see teenagers pregnant and drug addicts dead.
“After the turn of the century, prohibitions on these drugs were slowly enacted.”
And Coca-Cola hasn’t been the same ever since.
obviously if george bush and barac obama did coke
and can be president
our whole drug law system is monumentally unfair and immoral
how many readers if they saw their 20 y.o. kid sniff some coke would be on the phone to have him arrested and serve a 3 year term?
not one.
c’mon right wingers. step up and confess….you believe our drug laws are fair and nondiscriminatory and if you saw your teenager with a hal a gram of coke, you’d call up the police and make sure he served his 2-4 for that felony, right?
oh, you wouldn’t?
but it’s okay if black people rot in jail for the same crime?
the ones who deny the racism
are racists. you might as well put on the white hood an light up a cross if you deny the racism in our drug laws.
I think the legal argument is tenuous. Southern states used various strategems to dilute or block black voting — poll taxes, literacy tests, racial gerrymandering — and these were all struck down by the courts, but they were specifically designed and intended to keep blacks from voting. It’s much harder to get courts to invalidate state laws (and even harder with state constitutional provisions) where de facto racial discrimination is an unintended byproduct and the law has a legitimate purpose. Felon disenfranchisement, per se, was upheld long ago and won’t be overturned. I’m not sure McKenna even has to try to disprove the existence of de facto discrimination.
The most recent SCOTUS ruling on the subject strongly indicates Washington’s constitutional provision will be upheld. In Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985), the Court held that a state’s felony disenfranchisement provision must be shown to both be racially motivated and to result in actual racial discrimination. As it is unlikely the Court will alter that test, all McKenna has to do is play defense against allegations that Washington’s constitutional provision, when written, was intended to single out ethnic groups for discrimination.
Felony disenfranchisement is a hoary throwback to the Middle Ages which was imported into America by the early settlers. Arguably the entire concept should get tossed. But that’s a philosophical, not a legal, argument and one that would require legislative, not judicial, action. So far only 2 states, Maine and Vermont, have scrapped felony disenfranchisement altogether, while only 1 state, Virginia, continues to maintain a lifetime bar to voting; all the other states have policies that are somewhere in-between. In Washington, opponents of felony disenfranchisement — faced with the difficulty of amending the state constitution — chose the judicial path; but it may, in fact, be easier to amend the state constitution than to get it overturned by SCOTUS. In my opinion, a much more fruitful approach is to work around the edges for statutory reform that doesn’t necessarily abolish felony disenfranchisement but would make it less onerous, and make reenfranchisement more accessible.
I suspect that the real issue with drug arrests is more classism than racism.
We penalize drug offenders big time. Finacial chicanery unless it is massive, goes unpunished or rewarded with short vacations paid for by the state,
Anybody who wants to fill the prisons can go to the Ballard Locks ona busy Sunday and arrests all the alcoholics driving yachts!
@14 Steal a loaf of bread and you go to jail in a prison van; steal millions and you go to a Caribbean hideaway in a private jet. The lesson here seems to be THINK BIG.
Arizona just won the playoff game with a crazy overtime interception. The ball was knocked out of the Green Bay quarterback’s hand on the forward motion of the pass, kicked into the air, caught by an Arizona defenseman with no one in front of him, and carried about 20 yards into the end zone without difficulty. Green Bay’s entire season collapsed in 5 seconds. You should’ve seen the looks of bewilderment and chagrin on those guys’ faces. Breathtaking.
Some 20 years ago a cop told me that once someone, especially a juvenile, was in the judicial system is was easy to keep them there. He was suggesting that as a society when possible we should try to avoid putting people in the system in the first place but he made a good point.
An African-American friend of mine who is a coach has plenty of stories of the kids he coaches being stopped by cops for no reason than being in the wrong part of town.
Another African-American friend from work used to leave home at three in the a.m. to get to work, at a job he had held for about 15 years, had a cop parked up the street from him and repeatedly stopped stop him in the morning wanting to know where he was going at 3 a.m.
Took a while for this new cop on the patrol got the message that the man really had a job that started at 4 a.m.
An “infamous crime” is a crime:
1) punishable by death in the state penitentiary
or
2) imprisonment in a State correctional facility.
The first category is a no brainer, these people should never see daylight again. The second category are criminals with felony convictions. So dope smokers and DUI’s doing time at the county lockup aren’t the subject of this clause.
Felons should have their rights stripped, including voting. They want it back, they need to go petition the courts.
If you get popped for drugs and you’re so stupid, you can’t get it pled down to a misdemeanor or you are so bad they nail you for the felony, tough shit.
The blanket assumption of racism in the justice system is par for the liberal course. 9th CCA: “There’s black people in jail in excess of their representation in the population QED the system is racist.”
Because apparently we must be having black people rounded up, loaded in cattle cars and shipped to Walla Walla.
There’s a reason the 9th is the most overturned Court in the land.
hey right winger idiot:
we have two presidents who admit prior coke use.
we have many blacks in prison for coke, whites, not so much.
mmmm wonder why?
we have drug laws that make crack more of a crime than blow, mmmm wonder why?
we have cops pulling over blacks in racist manner, every study shows it, mmmmm wonder why?
we have class intersecting with race in america — really, slassism in america IS racism in america…so the poor, by whom I refer to blacks, are not so likely to have lawyers, to get good pleas, etc. etc.
and here’s the real point.
every fucking one of you right wingers knows someone who’s kid smoked pot or bought pot …or did some blow….and YOU DIDN’T CALL UP THE COPS did you.
nope, you let that felon go BECAUSE HE’S WHITE.
meanwhile, you’re all for keeping the blacks in prison for possession or distribution of so called illegal drugs.
your position is racist and you’re too cowardly to admit it.
as to roger’s legal analysis, well, thank you for being informative. but the point isn’t whther the 1889 state constitutional provision is of racist intent, it’s whether the whole welterwork of laws and practices in the last 20 years that have CREATED the great disparity in outcomes had racist intent.
when you see the GOP constantly gloating about how “felons must be stripped of rights, this includes anyone dumb enough to get caught with drugs who can’t afford $10,000 like a white person can to get a good plea deal down to a misdemenaor the way I would make sure my own kid would do” then these right winger GOP morons are just being racists. They KNOW damn well 25% of AA males lost the right to vote via the harsh drug laws and they don’t give a shit. They know their own kids or they themselves did pot or blow or that George Bush did and Obama did and they don’t care we have this great immoral hypocrisy where if you’re white or rich or connected you can do cocaine and BE PRESIDENT yet if you are poor and black you ROT IN JAIL.
The reason they don’t care is they, the right wingers, including @18 above , are mean cruel and racist.
Just like they were all thru history. They have the gall to say to our faces that DUI misdemanor endangering life — a tyupical white crime — is just fine but possessing half a gram of cocaine and being high on the corner (typical black crime) makes you a dirty felon who should lose all rights.
Buncha racists. don’t pretend you don’t know this is your game to get that extra 3% electoral advantage and win the close ones….in Ohio…Florida…..and anywhere …..
we have a really really long history in this nation of creating crimes like “loitering” and “DWB” and “aha, you’re guilty of taking the drugs that minorities like to take” and jailing blacks and putting them to work in plantation prisons and then disenfranchising them and it still goes on, just in a more modern form.
Racists. The average black dude doing a bit of pot or a bit of blow is far less worse than the average guy driving while intoxicated….
why isn’t that a felony?
because too many white people do it.
@18:
Of course that isn’t at all what they said. They specifically ruled that
In other words, racial bias inherent in the system. They didn’t conclude that racial disparity alone is evidence of racial bias. Rather than refute their finding, you prefer to quote them in a manner opposite to what they actually said in the opinion.
This is typical right wing “analysis”. Ignore the objective science and misrepresent the argument in order to deny a problem.
@17
Good comments, thanks.
Lee-
The problem for Progressives is an arrogance…thinking the Democrat Party belongs to them. The true Progressives are the crazy people of America…like you!
Here is evidence of the continued slide of American Atheist Progressivism in America–
Monday, January 11, 2010
You KLOWNS have to remember that anything passed by Congress can be repealed. You are setting up the Democrats for a huge fall. Perhaps that’s your plan??
Hey Roger Racist–
An African-American disagrees with you and you call him a “Flying Monkey”???
You and Harry Reid are birds of a feather!!
@19
Accusations of being racist flow so freely nowadays, it really has lost its sting. Seattle public schools told me I’m racist because I’m white. Nothing I can do about that.
It’s a class distinction, poor people go to jail more frequently than rich ones. See OJ Simpson.
Dumb people go to jail more frequently than smart people. If your sub-culture devalues learning as a negative, you have earned your dysfunction.
delbert–
The self-proclaimed politically correct Leftist Pinhead, Racist Roger Rabbit, calls Puddy a “flying monkey”??
Seems racist to me.
Why should Racist Rabbit escape the net he has cast??