I completely agree with you on the drugs point you make.
Anyone busted with the cheaper Crack Cocaine Vs. Powder faced drastically different sentences. Crack was cheaper primarily an inner city drug. Powder was seen the white collar, professionals drug of choice.
people even went to prison for pot
I remember black political leaders pushing for tougher sentencing for crack cocaine than for regular powder cocaine. I can’t find strong references to verify that this morning but here are some…
https://www.city-journal.org/article/when-black-lives-mattered
“At the time, many black lawmakers and activists saw in crack cocaine a unique threat. The drug was considered more accessible, more addictive, and more closely associated with violent behavior than its powder form. P
roponents of the “crackdown on crack” believed that lawful inner-city residents would be better off if crack offenders were locked up for longer periods of time. In other words, the motivating factor was safety, and the resulting racial disparities were incidental. Yet today’s critics of the 1986 law
ignore or play down the role of black leaders in its passage and pretend that racial animus drove the effort.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics...94-crime-bill-championed-by-the-clintons.html
“Many black leaders saw the notoriously harsh law as an imperfect solution to unbearable levels of urban crime.”
“In a pair of essays published this week,
law professor Michelle Alexander and
historian Donna Murch examined Hillary Clinton’s role in making the American criminal justice into the hyperpunitive monster that it is today. Both essays focused in part on the 1994 crime bill that Clinton championed during the first term of her husband’s presidency—a bill that expanded the use of the death penalty, created new three-strikes rules, and offered funding for states that made it harder for people to get parole. In Murch’s words,
“Bill Clinton and his allies embarked on a draconian punishment campaign to outflank the Republicans,” while Hillary supported the effort and “stood resolutely at her husband’s side.” Alexander, the author of the influential book
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, argued that Clinton’s past embrace of tough-on-crime policies is one of several reasons black voters shouldn’t support her. “
Further, what is called the American Prison Industrial Complex likely doesn’t help those in prison,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison–industrial_complex
Certainly our liberal leaning members can debate the origins of sentencing disparities of crack vs. cocaine, or the prison industrial complex, or if the sky is blue on a sunny day, but as Elmer Keith said long ago, “Hell, I was there”.
Concerning poverty, race, inner-city crime, single motherhood of multiple children from an equal number of fathers, and gosh knows how many other associated societal problems, truly smart people such as Thomas Sowell are not given enough relevance. Babbling politicians on the other hand are followed like the lead sheep in a heard jumping off a cliff.
have zero money, sweep dirt floors, raise kids and get along. Not as a tourist either!! Both, along with some of our Scandinavian friends here need a dose of reality!
