the idiocy of our system - "tough on crime" and rascism in american criminal "justice"...

now that campaigns are really heating up (as if the constant campaign ever goes cool...professional politicians that campaign more than they govern is not what this nation was supposed to be) we inevitably are hearing, and will hear, about the credentials of these purported leaders when it comes to "fighting" crime (as if you can don some boxing gloves and go ten rounds with behavior society - well, certain parts of society - deems unacceptable). what does this mean? we will learn just how "tough on crime" a candidate can be. and what does "tough on crime" mean? well, of course it means unflinching support for longer sentences and a complete indifference to suffering in american prisons (although if you are a "liberal" candidate, you are expected to be horrified by the actions in american military prisons, never mind that they often mimic those found at your local sing sing). it means never having the cahones to question whether or not longer mandatory sentences really does a damn thing to lessen crime. it means ignoring the dirth of evidence that suggests that longer sentences in overcrowded and increasingly inhumane prisons actually increases crime over time...increases recidivism, increases criminal activity in the neighborhoods decimated by these boneheaded policies (see below), increases the costs on society (read - more of your money goes to preventable bullshit). but god forbid anyone say what it is obvious to anyone paying attention - the current path does not work. crime rates have increased since we went punishment happy. violent crime continues to climb. the amusing part of it is, the folks that scream about "personal" responsibility (thereby ignoring societal responsibility) and bitch and moan to no end about welfare and folks that "live off the taxpayers" are the same ones that have set up a virtual welfare system of prisons that are designed to perpetuate themselves.

being "tough on crime" has nothing to do with being smart about crime. it has nothing to do with supporting policies that are designed to lessen crime in your neighborhood. it has nothing to do with protecting society. it has nothing to do with making your life better. it has everything to do with taking the easy way out in the short-term, only to leave future generations (read me) with the bill...leaving us a society where incarceration rates are triple that of china. thats right...triple that of china. and we are supposed to be a free fucking society? please...drop the charade and say what "tough on crime" really means...a complete fucking coward unable to address the root causes of crime, because that would mean actually taking a stance that might not be popular with the people footing the bill for your campaign. it would mean (gasp) supporting the constitution in the face of morons screaming that you support child molestation and the like. it would mean being a true american. and we all know none of them are capable of that...not during election season.

and all this "tough on crime" bullshit has exacerbated the utterly obvious rascist effect of our criminal justice system. since we went punishment happy and fell in love with mandatory minimums and "uniform" sentencing practices (meaning ignoring the fact that we are individuals and not easily placed on a fucking point grid) the racism in the criminal justice system has really blossomed. nearly a quarter black men will spend time in prison. latinos are quickly catching up. incarceration rates for whites have remained pretty stable...yet the overall incarceration rate has exploded in the last twenty years. coincidence? an amount of crack, for purposes of sentencing, is assumed to be the same as 100 times as much cocaine - nevermind that they are the same drug...one is for suburban white boys, the other is for poor inner-city folks (and wouldn't you know it, they tend to be minority).

and it isn't just there. black arrest rates have gone up since we went to "war" with drugs. white arrest rates have remained pretty damn stable. funny, but drug use rates are virtually identical between races. and yes, I am saying that law enforcement is inherently racist. are there good cops out there? sure. are there asshole cops out there? plenty. is the system set up to fuck with minorities more than freckled suburban assholes like me? most definitely.

we should be ashamed at what we call "justice" in this country. it should horrify us that we spend more on putting people in prison as adults then we do educating them as children. but no "leader" would ever admit that...god forbid some right-wing assfuck calls us "soft" on crime. because who would really want to intelligently approach crime? who would actually want to attack crime in a way that is designed to lessen rates rather than increase them? then who would make money building prisons and over-crowding them?

is something wrong? you're damn right there is...

if tonight belongs to you, tomorrow's mine...

another christmas holiday come and gone. this one was full of family and flakes, lots and lots of snowy ones. there is nothing quite like powder skiing through the trees to make you forget all that is wrong with the world. unfortunately, it never lasts...eventually, the legs grow tired, the clouds part and you inevitably leave the mountain behind.

every trip to the mountains has become a complete mind-fuck for me. it is impossible to imagine anywhere else in the world could be right when you are gazing over the range with that white stuff underfoot...except when it is gone it makes me pine for the city all the more. I am constantly reminded that I just may not quite fit anywhere...mountains, ocean, city, town...fuck it.

the resume has gone to new york...and I hope to soon follow. albuquerque, you've been good to me, but we both knew this would never last.

I miss you...those of you included know who you are. I miss the nights in the basement. I miss the knocks on the window. I miss the drives. I miss the constant amazement. I miss the feeling of home.

if you were a pill I'd take a handful at my will, and I'd knock you back with something sweet and strong...plenty of times you'd wake up in the February make-up, like the moon and morning star - you're gone.

yesterday was theirs to say this is their world and their time...

well if tonight belongs to you...tomorrow's mine...

the irony of those conservative judges and ullr arrives...

I have always struggled with uber-conservative candidates for the US Supreme Court. on one hand, their overall stance can be horrifying and a complete perversion of the constitution. unfortunately, they also happen to have proved themselves to be some of the only ones that get it right when it comes to criminal law...hence my conundrum. once again a court that many expect to throw civil liberties and constitutional rights out the window has proved that when it comes to protecting the criminal process, frightening right wing nutjobs in robes can get it right.

for years the federal sentencing guidelines have been destroying the criminal process. by binding the hands of judges the sentencing guidelines have ensured that we continue to move closer and closer to an all-out police state, adding longer and longer sentences unnecessarily to ensure that a ridiculous percentage of our population (and a frighteningly large percentage of certain minority populations) sits behind bars - despite our supposed "free" society. the most blatant wrong over the years has been the extreme disparity between sentences the guidelines support for cocaine versus crack. perhaps because the wealthy white men that wrote the guidelines and voted them into law are much more likely to do cocaine and poor minorities in the inner city are much more likely to use crack, the guidelines consider crack to be approximately 100 times worse than cocaine. finally, the supreme court has recognized that this is complete bullshit and sentencing judges can look at this pathetic racism when fashioning a sentence for someone caught with crack that is closer to that suggested if they happened to be caught with the same substance in a different form.

the supremes took another big, yet obvious step, with the guidelines. a few years ago the court declared that the guidelines violated the right to a jury trial (something that was rather intuitive to anyone who bothered to examine the basic meaning of the bill of rights)...today they took that to its logical conclusion. since the supremes struck down the mandatory nature of the guidelines, some of the circuit courts (appeals) tried to get around the clear decision of the supremes by declaring that a sentence that departed from the guidelines was per se unreasonable, and thus unconstitutional. unfortunately, every sentence overturned as "unreasonable" was below the guideline range...if you happened to be sentenced above the guideline range, the courts would uphold it in a heartbeat. today the supremes slapped those fools around (including the 10th...not that I am bitter towards those two-faced space queens on their high horses) and told us all what we already knew...if the guidelines aren't mandatory that means they aren't mandatory. when the statute says 5 to 40...the judge can go 5 to 40. imagine that...the law means what it says...who would've thunk it.

in another case, we learned again that mandatory sentences have gone too far and will be chipped away when possible. in a case involving a mandatory sentence for "using a firearm in connection with a drug offense" the supreme court went further than even I imagined. take a gun in exchange for drugs...that ain't use. for years the courts have been screwing people involved in small-time drug deals because a gun was somewhere near the scene. now that is all into coming into question. now the supremes have said that "use" means "use." again...it seems rather fucking obvious, but the courts have been fucking it up for years...and it took some uber-conservative justices to set the record straight.

so yea...I'm torn with these folks - in just about every area but what I spend my life doing they get it wrong. in my field...they get it right more than not. if only we could have one court for criminal appeals and one for everything else...

along with this good news...ullr has arrived. the mountains are getting hammered with more storms on the way, opening day is less than four days away, and the steeps will be open. the cat is lying before the furnace toasting herself. I spent the night with some of my favorite people listening to good music. the skies are grey with no blue in sight. the holidays are approaching. I'm eagerly awaiting news from new york. all in all, things are going well...and despite their best attempts to destroy everything that is great about this world, I have hope...or maybe its just the beer.

we will live like our ghosts will live...

learning from torture tapes, more hating on NAFTA, energy vs. education...

the CIA is in some trouble...the illegal, apparently immune from the constitution organization that continually violates everything that democracy is about and is funded by an unknown budget for unknown projects (nothing says democracy like government secrecy about how tax dollars are spent) apparently taped its torture techniques (punishable by death under federal law). then they had to destroy those same tapes because they got scared that their agents might actually be forced to submit to the laws of the united states (imagine that...what a novel idea...agents of the united states government being held to the same "high" standards that every american citizen and person living in american territory is held to). destroying evidence, especially evidence that may potentially be useful to a defendant, is troublesome if you get caught...the law allows for the case to be dismissed - and any federal judge worth the bench would toss the case against "the mastermind" after this (in which case...good job georgey, you did it...you figured out a way to ensure that the united states can never prosecute). so what is the lesson to be learned? well, the FBI learned it a long time ago...never tape interrogations or interviews of suspects...never. (the recent tapes of useful interrogation that comes no where near torture and actually provides useful information done by the FBI and US Attorney was apparently "accidentally" made by the Marshal's Service). see, if you don't make a record beyond your report you can say whatever the fuck you want about what happened and what was said. afterall, very few judges have the balls to believe a defendant over a high and mighty agent of the government (because we all know that you become superhuman and incapable of dishonesty when you become an agent of the government). lesson learned spymen...chalk it up to experience, and leave the tape recorders at home.

I seem to be the only one that is not shocked and disappointed that democrats are beginning to notice that NAFTA is a fucking joke. the pundits are all screaming "but jobs increased, investment was made, economic growth!" of course the jobs are lower paying and less skilled. investment has left the poor in all countries involved well behind. and the "growth" has been more of a shift up the ladder, the one thing we did not need to hasten. my hatred of NAFTA is not exactly a secret...but the theory of NAFTA really isn't that bad, clinton and his cronies just fucked it up so bad when pressured by Big Business and the richest of the rich that it has screwed everyone. it did not have to be this way. we don't have to be talking about putting up walls on the border, if they want capital to move freely across the border, they should accept that people will move freely across the border as well. and whatever happened to those environmenal protections that al gore promised us (yes, al gore, mr. environment, abandoned his green streak at the one moment in history when we really, really needed it)? labor protections, progressive taxation, unified currency, environmental protections...all needed for a program like NAFTA to work for the benefit of all people. but then clinton was never about the benefit of all people...and the democratic party followed him down that undemocratic path.

the house passed an energy bill that among other things would require 35 miles per gallon by 2020 (which is a pretty damn sad goal if you ask me...we built the a-bomb in a couple years, put a man on the moon in a couple years, we can't add a little efficiency in less then a decade?). the republican party leaders aren't very happy with it...they don't want congress to declare industry standards without providing the means to get there. funny...when it comes to education, the brilliant plan was to declare school standards without providing any means to get there, even taking away means if those standards weren't met (and yes, I recognize that the standards are royally fucked and backwards). so once again the elephants are showing us what really matters to them...money, money and more money for those that already have money, money and more money. if we want to cut down on insane profits of oil and gas companies and make american industry catch up to the rest of the world (which would likely increase good factory jobs in the american motor industry again - assuming they haven't all left by then) they tell us we are nuts. if we want money for our schools they tell us we only get it for the schools that don't need it. the republican party - crushing future leaders so they won't question the idiocy of their policies in the future.

there are things that drift away like our endless numbered days...

everything must come and go...

my faith in obama is returning...he is beginning to hint that he has the guts to tell democrats what they have been denying for far too long - the clinton years were not good. the economy was roaring for the same people it is roaring for now...and that doesn't include you and me. the manufacturing sector continued to be gutted. we could have had health care, we got NAFTA. we were officially introduced to the "war on terror." all in all, the man was a very effective republican president.

turns out Iran isn't much of a threat militarily. go figure...a nation that spent a decade in war with a second rate military power isn't a big threat to the united states militarily.

but that is the beauty of the new standard...if saddam was a threat, Iran is the new kremlin.

is it just me, or is huckabee not as completely insane as one would think a serious elephant might be?

the CIA destroyed tapes showing their agents "interrogating"...why you ask? they were worried it might expose them to legal action. that's the funny thing about torture...as much as the boy king wants it to be otherwise, it's still punishable by death under the United States Code.

the boy king sent a letter to north korea's own don king. here's an exclusive excerpt..."Dear Mr. Il - I'm in a bit of a pickle with this whole invade two landlocked countries in the middle east thing. I can't do shit about you and your crazy ways...so please stop. You're making me look bad, and I'm a tough east coast cowboy, I don't take kindly to that." I don't know about you, but I feel much better knowing that the boy king is reaching out with crayons.

I want access to a doctor. and I don't give two shits if you roll a joint after work. so let's compromise. you get your legal marijuana...and we tax the fuck out of it (it'll still be cheaper than it is on the street now). the extra money will give me, you and everyone we know access to top notch health care.

speaking of marijuana...a guy drives a truck with marijuana in the back and gets 5 to 40. same guy drives a truck loaded with booze and gets to be in a commercial with titties in his face. how does this make sense?

bill richardson is the most useless governor in the history of mankind. he is asking civil servants in new mexico to leave their jobs to campaign for him in iowa. because nothing says good administrating like closing down government to make yourself feel more adequate.

its time to give ex-felons the vote again. its nothing but a scam to disenfranchise american citizens. they've done their time, they've paid their debt. most of them are felons because of substance addiction...we don't keep drunks from the polls. and really, could they fuck it up anymore than us non-felons have been?

the supremes are taking another look at gitmo. am I the only one that noticed that the constitution says "any person" and "the accused"? somehow "any" became "american person that doesn't talk funny or look brown."

how amusing that it took a conservative mormon to tell the country that separating your politics from your church is a good idea.

don't look now, but another former death row inmate was exonerated...but sleep easy, because I'm sure we caught all of them. none of the ones that actually got killed were innocent.

the republicans in the senate want you to get a bit of a tax "break" by temporarily "fixing" the alternative minimum tax. of course that "average" $2000 that each family will save will immediately be drained on services that were otherwise provided through tax dollars.

you're about to lose your house...no fret, boy king to the rescue. oh, sorry, I meant you are trying to foreclose on someone else's house after fucking them thanks to deregulation...no fret, boy king to the rescue.

I start to miss you, baby, sometimes...I've been staying up and drinking in a late night establishment telling strangers personal things...I've been hallucinating you babe, at the backs of other women, and I tap on their shoulder and they turn around smiling, but there's no recognition in their eyes...don't get me wrong, dear, in general I'm doing quite fine...it's just that it's summer in the city and you're so long gone from the city...I start to miss you, baby, sometimes...