Hillary Clinton’s Criminal Justice Plan Would Free Thousands Serving Illegally Long Sentences

On Friday, five years after the Fair Sentencing Act drastically reduced the sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powder cocaine users, Hillary Clinton will propose a more radical reform: eliminating the sentencing discrepancies altogether. The reform is one tenet of her new criminal justice platform, part of which will be unveiled during a campaign speech in Atlanta.

Before the Fair Sentencing Act was passed, theratio of time served for crack cocaine and power cocaine was 100:1, even though the two arechemically identical. When the law was signed in 2010, the ratio was reduced to 18:1. The change was considered monumental, as lengthy crack cocaine sentences disproportionately affected African Americans who were not more likely than their white or Hispanic counterparts to use crack.

The law was not retroactive. In 2012 the Supreme Court ruled that the law could be applied to people who were convicted before its passage but sentenced afterwards. The monumental, bipartisan criminal justice bill introduced in the Senate Judiciary Committee this month would apply the Fair Sentencing Act to all prisoners who were convicted and serving time prior to the law’s enactment.

Under Clinton’s plan, there would no longer be sentencing disparities between the two types of cocaine. The reform would also be applied retroactively, likely impacting more than 15,000 people behind bars.

In addition to the removing the distinction between types of cocaine, Clinton’s criminal justice platform would end racial profiling by police. Law enforcement officers at every level would be prevented from “relying on a person’s race when conducting routine or spontaneous investigatory activities.”

Link: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/10/30/3717767/hillary-clintons-criminal-justice-plan-would-free-thousands-serving-illegally-long-sentences/

Bernie Sanders may not be sexist, but those implying HRC supporters only care about gender might be.

So you can drop the sexist screed and assumptions that we only care about gender. 

Hillary has policy proposals, union endorsements, party endorsements, endorsements from civil rights hero's, and experience putting her foot deep inside Republican assholes. She has stood face to face with foreign governments and excoriated them for human rights abuses and stood up for diplomacy around the globe. She is supremely qualified to be president and lead our country forward.

Bernie Sanders is running one of the most thin-skinned campaigns in history, anything less than lavish praise for for him is met with chants of "conspiracy theory!"

I want a fighter, not a whiner.

What kind of jobs will Bernie Sanders create?

Manufacturing jobs? Not sure manufacturers are feeling much higher taxes as an incentive. Entrepreneurs/Start ups? Nah, they usually get their capital injection from Wall Street. Much needed infrastructure? Possibly. These are good paying jobs but they are also temporary jobs. Import/export? Might be hard with limited markets due to lack of free trade deals. Govt jobs? Possibly. These are good paying jobs as well, but might remain a net negative in terms of job gains due to slashing the defense budget which is necessary but may lead to layoffs. Green jobs? Possibly. Good paying jobs as well. This is actually a good case point, being, laid off oil energy sector workers may be able to transition into new jobs in this sector, making it a net neutral to positive gain. But where do other workers transition, like the workers mentioned above? So...where does Bernie's job growth come from? It would be great if he ever actually gets around to releasing some policy proposals so number-crunchers like myself can make informed decisions.

Bonus: Higher wages is also very much needed, but Bernie has also stated people will need to pay higher taxes. Again, it would be great if he could release some concrete policy proposals.

Hillary Clinton does not take private prison $$ contributes all private prison donations to charity.

SANDERS OR BUST 2! Purity Pledge Edition!

As some of you may be aware, the next president may have the honor of choosing 2-4 SCOTUS justices. Here at DU we are collectively hoping that it will be either Hillary, Bernie, or Martin to have that honor. But wait!....Apparently it seems some only care about important issues that face our Nation ONLY if it has Bernie's face leading the charge!

I imagine it must be nice to have the luxury and privilege of not fully caring about who picks the next SCOTUS justices that will be appointed lifetime gigs for at least a generation, but alas, I am a women (hear me roar!). See, as a woman, my very being is under constant assault from the rightwing nut jobs who sit on the highest court of the land, not to mention the all-out 24/7 constant assault by lawmakers in the Republican party.

I also imagine the thought of having another generation of rightwing nut jobs on SCOTUS must also be doubly unnerving for minorities looking to restore the Voting Rights Act, or Black Lives Matter activists hoping for criminal justice reforms, or immigrants terrified their families may be ripped apart, or families who finally have security of healthcare, or gay couples who were finally granted the dignity of marriage, etc etc etc. You get the point. Not caring about anyone else but your own personal issues is a luxury and a privilege that is only afforded to those who aren't in the constant bullseye of today's terroristic rightwing.

So...if you say SANDERS OR BUST! what you're really saying is EVERYONE ELSE UNDER THE BUS! And tossing everyone under the bus is the antithesis of liberalism.

So sign your name below to the purity pledge:

I, __________, solemnly swear to only support SANDERS OR BUST! And to all others who will be negatively impacted by an oppressive rightwing presidency, regime, and judicial branch, enjoy the view from the underside of a high occupancy transportation vehicle.

Gloria Steinem: Why the White House needs Hillary Clinton

I know Hillary Clinton mostly in the way we all do, as a public figure in good times and bad, one who became part of our lives and even our dreams. I once introduced her to a thousand women in a hotel ballroom. Standing behind her as she spoke, I could see the binder on the lectern with her speech carefully laid out – and also that she wasn’t reading from it. Instead, she was responding to people who had spoken before her, addressing activists and leaders she saw in the audience, and putting their work in a national and global context – all in such clear and graceful sentences that no one would have guessed she hadn’t written them in advance. It was an on-the-spot tour de force, perhaps the best I’ve ever heard.

But what clinched it for me was listening to her speak after a performance of Eve Ensler’s play Necessary Targets, based on interviews with women in one of the camps set up to treat women who had endured unspeakable suffering, humiliation, and torture in the ethnic wars within the former Yugoslavia. To speak to an audience that had just heard these heartbreaking horrors seemed impossible for anyone, and Hillary had the added burden of representing the Clinton administration, which had been criticised for slowness in stopping this genocide. Nonetheless, she rose in the silence, with no possibility of preparing, and began to speak quietly – about suffering, about the importance of serving as witnesses to suffering. Most crucial of all, she admitted this country’s slowness in intervening. By the time she sat down, she had brought the audience together and given us all a shared meeting place: the simple truth.

-looooong snip-

As my own part of her senate campaign, I began to invite Hillary Haters to the living room events where Hillary herself was fundraising. To my surprise, all but a few turned around once they had spent time in her presence. This woman they had imagined as smart, cold, and calculating turned out to be smart, warm, and responsive. Instead of someone who excused a husband’s behaviour, she was potentially, as one said, “a great girlfriend” who had their backs.

They also saw her expertise. For instance, George Soros, the Hungarian-born financier and philanthropist, introduced her in his Manhattan living room by saying, “Hillary knows more about eastern Europe than any other American.”

Long, GOOD READ. Enjoy: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/gloria-steinem-hillary-clinton-white-house?CMP=share_btn_tw

Some of this I never knew about Hillary Clinton.

Ok. So lets call the debate a tie...

Even though it clearly was not, you gotta at least admit that Hillary's debate performance kinda destroyed the DU narrative that "HILLARY BETTER GET HER BERN CREAM READY!" and that "HILLARY WILL DROP LIKE A ROCK AFTER DEBATE!".

Admitting you were wrong is a first step towards retaining credibility.

Bernie Sanders truthers, step down: There’s no conspiracy to hide that he “won” the debate

Tuesday night’s Democratic debate had hardly been over 24 hours before an alarming conspiracy theory began to form: That the media is in cahoots with the Clinton campaign to cover up the “fact” that Bernie Sanders won the debate.

Things really kicked off with this short piece by Adam Johnson of Alternet that argues that, “by all objective measures”, Sanders won the debate. “[T]he very idea of ‘winning’ a debate is silly to me,” Johnson sniffs (causing me to wonder if he also feels morally superior to those of us who are invested in the process of “winning” an election), but despite this, he’s extremely angry that the “the echo chamber musings of establishment liberal pundits” pointed to a Clinton win instead. Johnson pulls back from outright accusing the pundits of conspiracy, but already Sanders supporters are taking it to the next level, starting a Change.org petition accusing CNN, Time Warner, and “SuperPACs” of somehow conspiring to silence the truth.

As one of those apparently establishment liberal pundits who felt Clinton won the debate—though Sanders also did a great job!—I can assure you that the Clinton campaign in no way brainwashed me or bought me off. No one told me what to say or how to feel about this. It is a sincerely held opinion.

Johnson’s article, while being wielded like a weapon in said social media debates, is unfortunately poorly argued. For one thing, his entire argument is built on a straw man, which is that pundits aren’t being “objective” in their assessments. The problem is that no one ever said they were. Pundits, by their nature, are there to share their opinion.

Johnson, unlike the pundits he decries, actually does hold himself out as an “objective” observer. To bolster his claim that Sanders objectively won the debate—not that he trucks with such nonsense as “winning” debates!—he cites the focus groups and online polls that showed Sanders as a winner. He admits that they are “obviously not scientific”, but then still rests his entire argument on them as the “only relatively objective metric we have.”

The rest: http://www.salon.com/2015/10/15/bernie_sanders_truthers_step_down_theres_no_conspiracy_to_hide_that_he_won_the_debate/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

Here's how you know Hillary won the debate.

For months we heard from Bernie supporters that "HILLARY BETTER GET HER BERN CREAM READY!" and "I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE BERNIE ANNIHILATE HILLARY!" and "HILLARY WILL DROP LIKE A ROCK AFTER THE DEBATE!" and "HILLARY WILL BE EXPOSED! BERNIE IS A SUPERIOR DEBATER!". Etc. Etc. Etc.

Yet, here we are, debating who won the debate.

So what does "winning" look like? Lets see.

Did Bernie win the gun segment? No. Even O'Malley trounced him. He was called out and resorted to the urban/rural canard, one week after a mass shooting in rural Oregon. And then he uses NRA talking point of blaming mental illness, instead of gun industry and easy access to guns.

Did Bernie win the foreign policy segment? Not even close. He came off woefully unprepared. Anderson even laughed at his Putin comments. In a moment of desperation Bernie announced "I'm not a pacifist! I'm prepared to take this country to war if I have to!". LOL. OK.

Immigration segment? Hillary and O'Malley has a plan, and once again O'Malley torched Bernie on his past anti-immigration votes. Bernie flailing.

College segment? Bernie was vague and once again unprepared. After getting called out for paying for rich kids tuition Bernie announces "the rich will pay a lot more in taxes!". Vague, flailing again.

On socialism? It seemed he never really recovered from this opening bit from Anderson as Bernie couldn't adequately explain why people should embrace a socialist. Again, Anderson notes Denmark has only 5 million people. Perhaps he can and should expand further at next debate.

On his most rehearsed segment Wall Street, he seemed underwhelming and again unprepared, muddled, and it showed. The other candidates released plans and were able to point to actual plans and solutions while Bernie again made vague promises about "Wall Street paying". This is why releasing policy proposals is important, Bernie could only point to problems, other candidates could point to plans and solutions.

Climate segment? They all did pretty good.

Paid leave? Again, they all did pretty good but Hillary knocked it out by owning Dana Bash about California being worlds 7th biggest economy and California being bigger than most countries. Big applause.

Women's rights? Hillary was not only the only candidate to defend Planned Parenthood, she was the only candidate who actually mentioned Planned Parenthood. Big applause.

on capitalism? Hillary stuck with mainstream views: capitalism is good but needs constant regulation while Bernie once again came off as not someone who likes capitalism and no alternative except to drastically break up banks, that point he kept making well. But it left viewers with deeper questions about how that would effect jobs and the economy, both nationally and internationally. I'm sure he will expand further on this during more debates.

On race issues? (which should have gotten more time) Bernie and Hillary did pretty good. Bernie addressed criminal justice reform while Hillary proclaimed "we need a new New Deal for communities of color!". Solid.

In the end, Bernie came off looking like an A+ Senator, while Hillary came off looking like an A+ President with vast knowledge on a wide range of domestic and international policy.

No Bern Cream needed. He bragged about not preparing and it was obvious he didn't. But I can guarantee you he prepares for the next one.

Yet, Hillary is still standing. In first place.