Guns, video games, and recreational drugs

[montana500]

What are three things that Democrats shouldn't waste time on during an important election year?



ding ding ding ding

[AndyTiedye]

1. How Do We Avoid Getting Sucked Down Whatever Rathole The Repubs Want?

If we ignore them, we're not fighting back.
If we answer them, we're getting distracted by their talking points.

We do not get to decide what get covered on the evening news.
Karl Rove does.

So how do we avoid wasting time on issues that only benefit the Rethugs?

[montana500]

5. you have to go on the offensive

Call out Rove and his flock. Call them cowards and lazy (which they are).

Repeatedly bring up Republican failures.

[Jed Dilligan]

2. I think drugs could be a wedge issue,

especially in meth areas. We could smear the R-congressperson as being associated with shifting DEA focus from meth to medical marijuana. Ads showing people pouring chemicals next to crying babies and bald wasted chemo patients toking up. "Who do YOU want to see busted?"

[Asgaya Dihi]

3. Depends on how we go about drugs

If we jump in and say drugs are ok that would be incredibly stupid. If we point out a few truths about our drug laws I think it might be a winner. There's a massive group of potential voters out there who aren't voting for anyone these days because they don't think anyone really stands for them. Here's a few details we could point out to good effect.

Select quotes from the following web page... http://www.idpi.us/resources/factsheets/mm_factsheet.htm

Mandatory sentencing laws disproportionately affect people of color. African-Americans make up 15% of the country’s drug users, yet they make up 37% of those arrested for drug violations, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense.

Since the enactment of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenders, the Federal Bureau of Prisons budget increased by more than 1,350%. The U.S. is now the world’s leading incarcerator in both number of prisoners and in percentage of population incarcerated. Over two million people are incarcerated in the United States. In fact, 60% of federal prisoners are drug offenders.

A 1998 RAND study found that mandatory sentences are the least cost-effective means of reducing drug use and drug sales. The average cost of incarcerating an individual for a year is $22,000.

The least culpable offenders often get sentences originally intended for the most serious drug traffickers because they have no valuable information to trade for a lower sentence. Conspiracy laws make those at the top of the drug trade and low-level offenders equally culpable. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, only 11% of those incarcerated in federal prisons on drug charges fit the definition of high-level drug traffickers. 30% of all drug defendants received a ten-year mandatory minimum sentence in 2001.

With that as a basis let's explore this one. Read the page yourself, these are just select parts. http://www.prisonsucks.com/

U.S. incarceration rates by race, June 30, 2004:

* Whites: 393 per 100,000
* Latinos: 957 per 100,000
* Blacks: 2,531 per 100,000

If you look at males aged 25-29 and by race, you can see what is going on even clearer, June 30, 2004:

* For White males ages 25-29: 1,666 per 100,000.
* For Latino males ages 25-29: 3,606 per 100,000.
* For Black males ages 25-29: 12,603 per 100,000. (That's 12.6% of Black men in their late 20s.)

Or you can make some international comparisons:
South Africa under Apartheid was internationally condemned as a racist society.

* South Africa under apartheid (1993), Black males: 851 per 100,000
* U.S. under George Bush (2004), Black males: 4,919 per 100,000

What does it mean that the leader of the "free world" locks up its Black males at a rate 5.8 times higher than the most openly racist country in the world?

Now let's take a glance at our "success" story with this. Death rates for cocaine and heroin, what's happened to them over the years?

http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/death/cdc/opiates-yr.htm
http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/death/cdc/cocaine-yr.htm

Do either of those look like anything short of astounding failure to you?

The way things stand now, no, drugs aren't a winning issue. It is about time someone started telling the public the truth about where we stand though, it's past time to look for better options and just because the damage is mostly against the poor and minority non-voting public that doesn't mean it's ok to ignore it.

[montana500]

4. I'm not saying ignore it.

I'm saying do something about it when we actually have power again, *especially* the meth issue.

As for gun control that needs to be made a local issue.

Vide games? well.... not much I can say about that.

[bryant69]

6. Recreational drugs?

Are Democrats supposed to be for or against those?

At any rate, those are the sorts of issues that most people don't care much about, but those few who do care about them care about them a lot.

Bryant
Check it out -> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com