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"Bill Clinton’s Apology: Not Accepted!" [View all]
Bill Clinton’s Apology: Not Accepted!
by Herbert Dyer, Jr.
July 21, 2015
....big SNIP....
It was just this past week at the NAACP’s annual confab when Bill Clinton made a naked play for Black votes for his wife Hillary in next year’s presidential sweepstakes. Bill’s ploy followed a similar effort by President Obama himself. Now in his sixth year in office, Obama has had an epiphany of sorts. He has suddenly realized that there may be too many black people locked up and for no good reason. Thus, the President has issued a supremely belated call for an overhaul of the criminal justice system. He has even commuted the sentences of some 40-plus federal prisoners (out of 7,000-plus applicants and 30,000 overall) convicted under draconian drug laws. (Seems more like a commutation lottery than a compassionate or committed effort to right an obvious wrong).
Bill Clinton not only agreed with Obama but went so far as to say that the 1994 anti-crime law he enacted was a major reason so many Black men and women are now languishing in county jails, state and federal prisons, and are otherwise under some form of “supervision” by this nation-state’s “criminal justice system.” And both Obama’s and Bill’s belated “initiatives” follow Hillary’s own call for an end to the “incarceration generation.”
These political theatrics are so chock-full of hypocrisy and cynicism that it is just impossible to ignore: Bill and Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and Democrats and Republicans across the board have all considered Clinton’s 1994 anti-crime law as one of Clinton’s crowning achievements as President. Politicians of all stripes have consistently credited that law with lowering crime rates nationwide by essentially unleashing police forces onto Black communities to rid them of dangerous open-air, street corner drug dealers, uncontrollable drug addicts, shoplifters and other petty thieves of all description, unlicensed/unregistered drivers, illegal U-turners and lane changers, jaywalkers, and, of course, those dastardly public urinaters.
....SNIP....The devastating effects of Clinton’s law are now being felt by millions upon millions of people – mostly Black and Brown people. The numbers are well known by now: 2.2 million-plus people are now behind bars, double the number locked up when Clinton came to power. The US holds a full 25 percent of the entire world’s prisoners, while it constitutes only five percent of its population. Almost half of that percent are Black and Brown people.
The Clintons are counting on the forgiving nature of Black people....
Read in entirety~
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/21/bill-clintons-apology-not-accepted/
by Herbert Dyer, Jr.
July 21, 2015
....big SNIP....
It was just this past week at the NAACP’s annual confab when Bill Clinton made a naked play for Black votes for his wife Hillary in next year’s presidential sweepstakes. Bill’s ploy followed a similar effort by President Obama himself. Now in his sixth year in office, Obama has had an epiphany of sorts. He has suddenly realized that there may be too many black people locked up and for no good reason. Thus, the President has issued a supremely belated call for an overhaul of the criminal justice system. He has even commuted the sentences of some 40-plus federal prisoners (out of 7,000-plus applicants and 30,000 overall) convicted under draconian drug laws. (Seems more like a commutation lottery than a compassionate or committed effort to right an obvious wrong).
Bill Clinton not only agreed with Obama but went so far as to say that the 1994 anti-crime law he enacted was a major reason so many Black men and women are now languishing in county jails, state and federal prisons, and are otherwise under some form of “supervision” by this nation-state’s “criminal justice system.” And both Obama’s and Bill’s belated “initiatives” follow Hillary’s own call for an end to the “incarceration generation.”
These political theatrics are so chock-full of hypocrisy and cynicism that it is just impossible to ignore: Bill and Hillary Clinton, President Obama, and Democrats and Republicans across the board have all considered Clinton’s 1994 anti-crime law as one of Clinton’s crowning achievements as President. Politicians of all stripes have consistently credited that law with lowering crime rates nationwide by essentially unleashing police forces onto Black communities to rid them of dangerous open-air, street corner drug dealers, uncontrollable drug addicts, shoplifters and other petty thieves of all description, unlicensed/unregistered drivers, illegal U-turners and lane changers, jaywalkers, and, of course, those dastardly public urinaters.
....SNIP....The devastating effects of Clinton’s law are now being felt by millions upon millions of people – mostly Black and Brown people. The numbers are well known by now: 2.2 million-plus people are now behind bars, double the number locked up when Clinton came to power. The US holds a full 25 percent of the entire world’s prisoners, while it constitutes only five percent of its population. Almost half of that percent are Black and Brown people.
The Clintons are counting on the forgiving nature of Black people....
Read in entirety~
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/21/bill-clintons-apology-not-accepted/
114 replies
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