Progressives (Liberals)

I’ve made up my mind about Clinton.It’s a non-issue if they just stfu.

...the Crime Bill and three strikes law and the de-humanizing rhetoric about black people in this country has effectively made it open season on black Americans.

(...)

"It is fair to say that the trajectory of increased incarceration had already begun before the 1994 crime bill," Kara Gotsch, director of strategic initiatives at the Sentencing Project, told CNN Tuesday before noting that the way Congress and the President "influence state policy is through money."

The 1994 crime bill tried to do just that in offering grants for new prisons to states who imposed truth-in-sentencing (TIS) policies, which impose mandatory minimums for time served.

Initially, the crime bill required states to pass laws mandating violent offenders serve at least 85% of their sentence before those states could receive TIS grant funds.

Even still, the influence of these federal funds shouldn't be overstated. The data is murky on how much the federal grants influenced how states make decisions on sentencing policy.

For example, a study from the Urban Institute found that out of the 16 states that changed their TIS laws following the 1994 crime bill and that qualified for federal TIS funding, "the changes were often influenced more by ongoing state reform processes rather than the federal incentive grant program."

The study says that states were already imposing their own minimum sentencing laws before the 1994 crime bill, and at most the bill "may have contributed to modest changes in sentencing structure" for a small number of states.

"The impact was as much rhetorical," said Bertram "as it was a bill that increased the number of people in prison."

I think I do what I think most people do—take in info, seek to verify, check bias. I don’t trust anybody outright.

Racism has long been part of white culture and blaming it on the '94 crime bill — and Biden no doubt — is lazy, ignorant, and duplicitous. Are you going to blame racism at European soccer games on Biden as well? Was the '94 crime the inspiration of the racism of Gobineau?Are you going to blame Biden for the institution of slavery? Was the '94 crime bill responsible for apartheid in South Africa? Did Biden inspire the South to import slaves from the West Indies? Racism has a long history — and you know it. It's been open season on non-whites for a long, long time.

Joe Biden, in cahoots with the DNC and the Deep State funded and organized

He did much more than any one person alive today in the public sphere with the possible exception of Clinton. Don’t take my word for it. Michelle Alexander researched The New Jim Crow and she knows more about it than you—though I doubt you’d agree.

Clearly, Trump and his allies know that their best chance of winning is to suppress turnout. That is what the Attorney General, William Barr, believes based on his gross exaggeration of the risk of voter fraud. So, too, many Republican governors and state legislators who are making it increasingly difficult for Americans to vote. And—let’s not forget—Trump himself. In the 2016 election, one arm of the Trump campaign was dedicated to convincing people—black folks and young people particularly—not to bother voting. This was in tandem with the efforts of Republican secretaries of state and other elected officials to enact draconian voter-registration requirements and redraw electoral maps, making it more difficult for people to vote. Or, if they did manage to cast ballots, to insure that their voices would be drowned out. These efforts persist, and, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, they have escalated, as the Attorney General floats a phony argument that foreign governments might manipulate mailed ballots, and the Republican National Committee, following the lead of the President, is working to limit voting by mail because it believes mail ballots would extend the franchise to the “wrong” people. Add to this Trump’s attacks on the U.S. Postal Service, which recently saw the installation of one of his ideologues as its head; as the President knows, a working postal service is necessary to facilitate mailed ballots.