An open letter to Jimmy Carter from Michael Moore.

[betsuni]

54. Agree, more than one shot.

Bringing up the 1994 Crime Bill used in the last two presidential elections to imply Democrats are racists, to discourage voting for them. As if Biden used to be a huge racist masterminding a Democratic plot to throw everybody in prison and keep them there forever, but he's changed, probably. What does that have to do with Carter?

Moore knows the bill was bipartisan and the excessive incarceration additions were Republican. The assault rifle ban, more funding for crime prevention, more funding for police (Vermont received $43 million) and so on were Democratic and why Bernie Sanders voted for it. He gave the same reasons as most at the time, that communities demanded government action because crime was so bad, they had to do something, the bill was "a major step forward in controlling and preventing crime" even though of course it had problems, "I think there is no disagreement among all of us that we need strong law enforcement ... clearly there are people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply violent and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars to protect society from them."

But then Republicans took over Congress, as Rep. Clyburn explains, "We operated on the theory that we were not going to lose in '94. We put stuff in there we thought we would build on. But then we lost in 1994 and all the punitive stuff, the Republicans kept all that and got rid of some of the good stuff." And of course the assault rifle ban couldn't be renewed during the Bush administration. But everything is Democrats' fault!

Misinformation about the crime bill is still used against Democrats.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archives/2019/09/joe-biden-crime-bill-and-americans-short-memory/597547/