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How Much Do Black Lives Matter to the Presidential Campaign? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-presidential-campaign.html crime race Democratic party gop culture demographics
shared by Javier E on 11 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • the public has become more adverse to the use of force by government. The most obvious example, he wrote in response to my email inquiry, is war
  • Pinker cited 13 other examples in support of his position that people have become less tolerant of violence, including “concern over police violence. During the 1960s race riots, police would kill dozens of young black men in a single night, but the public barely noticed”; “Capital punishment is on the way out”; “Domestic violence (e.g., wife-beating) used to be a joke (as in Jackie Gleason’s “One of these days, Alice – Pow! Right in the kisser”), now it is an abomination”; “Corporal punishment (strapping and paddling) are on their way out of American schools”; “Bullying in the playground, once thought to be a normal or even desirable feature of boyhood, has become a national issue”; and “American football may soon be revolutionized by concern about concussions.”
  • Jonathan Haidt, a professor of social psychology at N.Y.U., noted in an email that for liberals, “compassion for those who are suffering is the most crucial virtue.” Conservatives, in contrast, “believe more in ‘just deserts’ and making criminals pay.”
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  • A study of responses from white male liberals and white male conservatives found that some of the biggest differences were in response to certain statements. Liberal men responded favorably to: “I believe offenders should be provided with counseling in aid of their rehabilitation” and “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.” Conservative men agreed with the statements: “I believe ‘an eye for an eye’ is the correct philosophy behind punishing offenders” and “It feels wrong when a person commits a crime and goes unpunished.
  • Historically, the crime issue has been a winner for Republicans and a loser for Democrats. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush all profited from portraying their Democratic adversaries as soft on crime and, at an international level, not sufficiently resolute in fighting terrorism. (Before that, accusations of being “soft on communism” were a winning gambit for Republicans.)
  • Allen Matusow, a professor of history at Rice, is the author of “The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s,” which chronicled the damage suffered by the political left at a time of riots and rising crime rates. He wrote in an email that he worriesabout the ability of the right to make a few videos and turn some portion of the amorphous middle in the direction of the police. I have acquired great respect for the ability of bad men to manipulate the public.
  • The critical factor that will test the viability of the Democratic Party’s liberalized stance on law enforcement and incarceration will be the trends in crime and arrests over the next 12 months leading up to the Election Day.
  • If the crime rate for 2015 and 2016 remains as low as during 2014, it will minimize blowback against Clinton’s stands in favor of minimizing incarceration, and, for that matter, against the Obama administration’s decision to release more than 6000 federal drug nonviolent offenders.
  • If, however, crime rates shoot up and arrest rates drop in response to less vigorous law enforcement, as advocates of the “Ferguson effect” theory suggest, Democrats risk a repetition of events in the mid and late 1960s.
  • This points to one of the paradoxes confronting liberalism: the legislative reform agenda of the left, whether it’s criminal law or reducing unemployment, stands the best chance of passage when the need is small: in good times of high prosperity, lots of jobs, rising pay and declining crime rates. Voters are most generous when they are least threatened and least generous when most threatened.
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Justice Department set to free 6,000 prisoners, largest one-time release - The Washingt... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...5-aa5b-f78a98956699_story.html justice department release prisoners
shared by katyshannon on 07 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The Justice Department is set to release about 6,000 inmates early from prison — the largest one-time release of federal prisoners — in an effort to reduce overcrowding and provide relief to drug offenders who received harsh sentences over the past three decades, according to U.S. officials.
  • inmates from federal prisons nationwide will be set free by the department’s Bureau of Prisons between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2. About two-thirds of them will go to halfway houses and home confinement before being put on supervised release. About one-third are foreign citizens who will be quickly deported, officials said.
  • The commission’s action is separate from an effort by President Obama to grant clemency to certain nonviolent drug offenders, an initiative that has resulted in the early release of 89 inmates.
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  • The panel estimated that its change in sentencing guidelines eventually could result in 46,000 of the nation’s approximately 100,000 drug offenders in federal prison qualifying for early release. The 6,000 figure, which has not been reported previously, is the first tranche in that process.
  • an additional 8,550 inmates would be eligible for release between this Nov. 1 and Nov. 1, 2016.
  • The releases are part of a shift in the nation’s approach to criminal justice and drug sentencing that has been driven by a bipartisan consensus that mass incarceration has failed and should be reversed.
  • Along with the commission’s action, the Justice Department has instructed its prosecutors not to charge low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no connection to gangs or large-scale drug organizations with offenses that carry severe mandatory sentences.
  • The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously for the reduction last year after holding two public hearings in which members heard testimony from then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., federal judges, federal public defenders, state and local law enforcement officials, and sentencing advocates. The panel also received more than 80,000 public comment letters, with the overwhelming majority favoring the change.
  • The policy change is referred to as “Drugs Minus Two.” Federal sentencing guidelines rely on a numeric system based on different factors, including the defendant’s criminal history, the type of crime, whether a gun was involved and whether the defendant was a leader in a drug group.
  • An average of about two years is being shaved off eligible prisoners’ sentences under the change. Although some of the inmates who will be released have served decades, on average they will have served 8  1/2 years instead of 10  1/2 , according to a Justice Department official.
  • “Even with the Sentencing Commission’s reductions, drug offenders will have served substantial prison sentences,” Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said. “Moreover, these reductions are not automatic. Under the commission’s directive, federal judges are required to carefully consider public safety in deciding whether to reduce an inmate’s sentence.”
  • katyshannon on 07 Oct 15
     
    Justice Department is set to free 6,000 prisoners this year.
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Venezuela raises petrol price for first time in 20 years - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...business-35600921 venezuela petrol price raise first time time 6000% bbc news politics crisis
shared by katyshannon on 19 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Venezuela is raising petrol prices for the first time in 20 years, although the president claims it will still be the cheapest in the world.
  • President Nicolas Maduro said pump prices of premium fuel would rise from the equivalent of $0.01 a litre to about $0.60 (£0.40).The cost of lower grade petrol would rise to about $0.10 a litre.
  • He unveiled a series measures to help ease Venezuela's economic crisis, including devaluing the currency.The rise in the heavily-subsidised fuel price will save $800m a year.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • However, other countries, including Saudi Arabia also have extremely cheap, subsidised petrol prices.
  • Food and petrol price increases in 1989 sparked nationwide protests that resulted in scores of deaths, unrest that is considered to have paved the way for the late President Hugo Chavez's rise to power.
  • Venezuela's economy has been pushed to the brink by the collapse in the oil price, which accounts for about 95% of the country's export revenues.
  • The economy shrank 10% last year, amid rampant inflation and shortages of some basic products,
  • According to the Bloomberg news agency, the state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela incurred $15.2bn in costs in 2013 to maintain Venezuela's fuel subsidy.
  • Investors have become increasingly concerned about Venezuela's potential default on its huge debts.
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Opinion | The Era of Small Government Is Over - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...navirus-bailouts-stimulus.html government state intervention activism socialism New Deal crisis
shared by Javier E on 18 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • To stop the spread of the coronavirus, state and local governments have shut down as much of communal life as possible. People are also social distancing, staying out of public spaces to slow transmission of the disease. But this has destroyed demand for goods and services, putting the United States on the path to a recession that could easily become an outright depression.
  • policymakers have to go beyond stimulus or bailouts for select industries. They have to take responsibility for economic life on a scale not seen since the New Deal.
  • Bailouts are more controversial, but they could be worthwhile if the government offers cash with strings attached. To receive assistance, in Senator Elizabeth Warren’s view, companies would be forced to maintain their payrolls, provide a $15 minimum wage, bring worker representatives onto corporate boards and end share buybacks, among other requirements.
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  • Most restaurants, for example, can probably survive a week or two of social distancing. Some can survive a month. But if self-quarantine lasts for months, then hundreds of thousands of businesses, including suppliers and distributors, will fail
  • The outbreak threatens entire industries with destruction
  • It’s even worse for travel and tourism.
  • If lawmakers are going to save the economy from destruction, they need to think along the lines of the economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California, Berkley, who, in a brief paper, call for the government to act as a “payer of last result” to “stanch the flow of mass layoffs and business destruction.”
  • In the program they envision, workers would remain formally employed but receive unemployment benefits. Businesses would report their costs to the government and receive payment in return. If businesses report too much, or get too much in return, then the payments could be “transformed into an interest-free loan that the government could recoup over several years.”
  • Representatives Ro Khanna of California and Tim Ryan of Ohio have introduced legislation to establish an emergency Earned-income tax credit that would provide a check between $1,000 and $6,000 to every American who earned less than $65,000 last year, which is more than three-quarters of the work force
  • The important point is that right now there’s nothing on the table that is too big for the crisis at hand.
  • In forcing people to stay away from each other, the outbreak has made our mutual interdependence clear. This, in turn, has made it a powerful, real-life argument for the broadest forms of social insurance.
  • it’s an opportunity to once again embrace direct state action as a powerful tool for preserving and promoting prosperity. If the era of small government is over, and it is, then it’s well past time for Democrats to seize a moment that belongs to them.
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Kamala Harris' team tries to distance her from fraught situation at the border - CNNPol... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html Kamala Harris immigration
shared by hannahcarter11 on 01 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • In the weeks since the President asked her to take charge of immigration from Central America, Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff have sought to make one thing clear: She does not manage the southern border.
  • Two White House officials familiar with the dynamic said Harris and her aides have emphasized internally that they want to focus on conditions in Central America that push migrants to the US southern border, as President Joe Biden tasked her to do. A record number of unaccompanied children crossed into the US this spring, and the throngs of desperate minors present a heart-rending problem as well as a political one.
  • After the announcement, Harris' aides appeared to "panic," according to one of the officials, out of concern that her assignment was being mischaracterized and could be politically damaging if she were linked to the border, which at the time was facing a growing number of arrivals.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • One of the officials said Harris appears eager for a portfolio that will allow her to achieve political victories, especially in foreign policy, an area where she is far less experienced than Biden.
  • Harris' performance is critical to her future political career, which could well include a run for president. It's also of special concern right now as she prepares to depart for a trip to Guatemala and Mexico next week as part of this project. It will be her first official foray into in-person, in-country talks about the troubles that push Central American migrants toward the US.
  • Harris and her staff have made it clear that they want to focus narrowly on diplomatic efforts in Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where they believe they are more likely to achieve tangible results in addressing the root causes of migration, like economic despair, said the officials.
  • "Everything you're doing in Central America is always towards an eye on the border and what's happening in the United States," said Cris Ramon, an immigration consultant. "With the current dynamics in migration, what's happening at the US-Mexico border has implications in the Northern Triangle and vice versa."
  • Tens of thousands migrants from Central America arrive at the US-Mexico border monthly. In April, of the 178,622 migrants encountered by US Customs and Border Protection, 79,190, or roughly 44%, were from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, according to the agency's data, the very countries where Harris is supposed to be addressing migration to the US.
  • The pandemic has taken a dramatic toll on Latin America, where Covid-19 cases and deaths soared and economies once projected to grow have been decimated. The region was also hit with two devastating hurricanes last year.
  • The decline in economic growth in 2020, according to the Congressional Research Service, is expected to worsen income inequality and poverty in the region. That, combined with pent-up demands and the perception of the Biden administration being more lenient, has fueled people trying to cross the US-Mexico border.
  • Harris' role -- which mimics that of Biden under President Barack Obama -- is intended to target what's driving people to the US.
  • But following Biden's announcement, both the President and vice president's staff clarified repeatedly that Harris would be focused solely on diplomatic efforts to stem the current flow of migrants and develop a larger strategic partnership with Central America.
  • Harris has stressed that her role is to address the "root causes" of migration beginning in the Northern Triangle countries and Mexico, rather than the "symptoms" of it manifesting at the border, which are being addressed by the Homeland Security secretary. Without a diplomatic push in those countries, "we are just in a perpetual system of only dealing with the symptoms," she said in April.
  • Immigration advocates and regional experts who have participated in roundtables with the vice president describe Harris asking detailed questions on a variety of issues, like agricultural science and water irrigation strategies to tackle food insecurity and infrastructure needs.
  • Internally, Harris has been intimately involved in the crafting of a regional strategy, communicating regularly with National Security Council officials. Cabinet members, along with other administration officials, are also putting together proposals on the administration's root-causes strategy, which Harris is expected to discuss while in Mexico and Guatemala in June, a senior administration official previously told CNN.
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