by Jack
President Obama made a historic visit to the El Reno prison in Oklahoma two days ago. He used this visit as the backdrop for calling on reforms to the criminal justice system. He noted how appalling it was that America has just 5% of the world’s population yet we account for 25% of all the people in prison! He went on to draw a comparison between us and China. He said we arrest three times more of our citizens (per capita) than they do!
Obama noted that our drug laws often result harsh sentences because of our mandatory sentencing guidelines and further, that we’re spending over $80B a year to incarcerate far too many people, especially an alarming percentage of blacks. These (non-violent offenders) are people who deserve a second chance, they are people that could benefit more by the drug court concept and be diverted from costly prison, Obama said.
Six drug offenders at El Reno prison had a chance to speak personally with the president for 45 minutes and this is what Obama had to say, “….these are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different than the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made, the difference is they did not have the kinds of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes.”
And here is my rebuttal:
First off, the list where one inmate was sent to prison for a 1’st time non-violent crime is so infinitesimally small as to be virtually non-existent. Study after study has shown that a person in prison has committed at least 10-12 felonies before they were caught by police. Next, just because they were caught doesn’t mean they will go to court, much less prison. About half the police arrests wind up either being dismissed, plea bargained or reduced to a citation that sends the offender directly to probation.
In order to get to prison a person really has to make an effort! Usually he/she has at least 3 court convictions involving serious offense. Keep in mind, even then, this does not include the number of plea bargains and diversions they have had, we’re talking 3 major stand alone convictions before they get sent to prison. That involves a lot of breaks and dozens of felony crimes! But, before they are considered for prison time, an evaluation by the probation department must generally recommend it.
So, you see this is not a reckless, haphazard system where some sad case gets railroaded into prison system the very first time he commits a felony. Obama wants you to think it is, but that would be a blatant lie. Truth is, the inmate has been down the crime road many times and had many, many chances.
President Obama points to the surge in incarcerations starting in the 80’s, but it was precisely in the 70’s that liberals pressed for criminal justice reforms and reduced prison sentences. Crime surged and that’s why the 80s saw the huge jump in the prison population.
What Obama is proposing is a train wreck for victims, and its been tried and proven to be a failure. Now we are being told by Obama that we must re-evaluate our judicial system once again to reduce the disproportionate number of black arrests. He implies that since blacks are being incarcerated at much higher rate than other races, obviously the system is broke.
The question Obama ought to be asking is, why are blacks committing crimes at a rate 5 times or more higher than any other races? Nobody wants to address this, but we should. The answers would be good for America, we can learn a lot from looking in the mirror.
The justice system is only a measure of criminal conduct and that is like trying to treat the symptom, not the cause
.
President Obama’s comment about China’s incarceration rate is stupid because if we compare the incarcerations of Chinese-Americans, it completely reverses itself. Our incarceration for Chinese-Americans are much lower than their citizens. If everyone was as law abiding as the average Chinese-American we would have virtually no crime compared to what we have now. However, Obama spins this truth into a lie that makes China look more progressive than America. What an outrageous distortion.
Even if you compare Europe’s incarceration rate to ours its still unfair because they don’t have the same demographics we do, nor do they have the same border/deportation issues. However, what’s worth noting is the rate of blacks in European prisons. It is significantly higher than all other races, but Obama doesn’t mention that. For example, a 2010 British study showed the proportion of black people in prison in England and Wales is even higher than in the United States (Equality and Human Rights Commission).
The United States is a cultural melting pot and we have seen an invasion of illegal immigrants, including ruthless gangs and drug cartel members that are coming mostly from Mexico through a porous border where the situation is made worse by weak deportation laws. Because of this sudden influx of illegals, Hispanic incarcerations are significantly higher than other races, except for blacks. This fact has helped swell our prison population, but Obama doesn’t address this uncomfortable truth.
The President wants us to put on our progressive blinders and place more emphasis on giving drug dealers and so-called non-violent offenders a second chance, but they’re often already on their 20th chance… or more!
You can’t rehabilitate someone who doesn’t want it. You can’t rehab someone who has a lifestyle of choice, not chance. They really have to want it! This is why we are seeing very mixed results with drug court and other drug diversions and this calls into question their effectiveness. Diversions are expensive too; let’s not lose sight of that.
Obama seems to think drug abuse is set completely apart from all other kinds of crime. They are not, drugs and crime go hand in hand, does crime or drug abuse come first? Often its a mix, a chicken and egg kind of thing. But what is very clear is, many a killer has been brought to justice using drug offenses and the same could be said for many other types of violence offenses. Obama would like us to lose that leverage. What a fool- what a preposterous blithering fool.
If idiotic liberals want to try a risky and costly social experiment, they shouldn’t revisit what we know doesn’t work, like Obama suggests. But, if they must do something earthshaking, then I suggest they legalize all drugs on a remote island, where it can be mostly contained and see how it works out.
If the local population functions well, families stay together, productivity is ok, children are not abused, education remains about normal, accidents resulting in serious injury or death stay close to normal, violent crime remains about the same…ok, then we ought to talk about making street drugs legal in all our states. That’s also the perfect time when we should have a dialog about reforming our criminal justice system and not demand accountability from our Black and Hispanic populations that contribute to the overwhelming majority of costly prison incarcerations.
What we ought to look at is how we can reduce recidivism: “An estimated two-thirds (68 percent) of 405,000 prisoners released in 30 states in 2005 were arrested for a new crime within three years of release from prison, and three-quarters (77 percent) were arrested within five years, per the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).” Would you believe that shorter, but harsher confinement works best? Hong Kong proved that decades ago, but we just won’t accept it.
Thank you Jack for the exposition of reality.
Pie it was my profound pleasure to expose the Divider-in-Chief for this would-be anti-Christ character that he is. I didn’t do it for meanness and I certainly didn’t do it very eloquently or even very completely, but at least I did it. And I am glad. In the years to come I have every expectation that our opinions of Mr. Barrack Hussein Obama will be 100% validated.
Worst president ever…
This hot air expenditure from da prez comes on the heels of his pardoning 40+ drug dealers ostensibly because that’s a “non-violent” crime.
Phooey! You do the crime – you do the time. Period.
Next, we’ll hear that Obumble has issued an executive order allowing all convicted felons to vote – Demwit, of course . . . . .
Comparing the US to China is a hoot! They shoot people don’t they?
In China you can get thrown in jail just for having a Bible or speaking the wrong politics. The people have been so oppressed for so long that survival is more important than criminal activity…besides you might disappear or get shot. This is an aging population, with duty and respect for elders having been ingrained, that must rely heavily on it’s sons. Crime? who has the time!
I think it’s time we had an honest discussion about how stupid it was for the Boomers to introduce this temptation/addiction to main street America. Its been a very destructive and costly social experiment. It’s destroyed lives and families and touched thousands of innocent bystanders like the woman that was murdered recently in SF.
Sure we can try another experiment and legalize street drugs; it might even make things better…for a time. But if I know radical progressives and easily tempted human beings, soon all drugs would be legal and our society would start slouching toward an extremely decadent Amsterdam. No thank you! Wrong direction.
Human beings aren’t born knowing how to make good choices; they have to be taught. We have
not done our sons and daughters any good by taking a cavalier attitude toward drug use.
How about we try something that has the potential to work long term to restore lives and promote healthy choices? How about we act like adults and stop making drug use, even so-called recreational drug use, something to titter about, glamorize, and promote. How about we start sending our kids better messages through entertainment? How about we reject the notion that it’s just a lifestyle choice? Well if it is fine…but keep it to your own castle, don’t infect other people, especially kids, don’t rely on crime to feed your habit, and don’t depend on others to pick your sorry ass out of the gutter or tend to your health needs, including the cost!
Imagine what a boon Obamacare is to the addicted!
Drug use fuels terrorism, gangs, murders, theft and rape…it certainly doesn’t create or inspire a healthy, productive life and a decent society for the rest of us!
Mr. President, being the leader of the nation requires more grit. You may feel sorry for these people because they remind you of your own past drug use. But they need a better message than a get out of jail card from you! A strong man, a strong father, a strong leader would take a much higher road. Be truthful and let those people finish their sentences.
But wait…let’s get real. You really just want the votes you hope this action will generate for the Democrat Party. Shame…you have had an incredible opportunity to uplift young people as the leader of our nation and you have blown it spectacularly.
Another uncomfortable and very obvious truth is Obama broke the law too. Only difference is he didn’t get caught and ended up in the Oval Office instead of prison.
His luck and our misfortune.
LOl and that’s another way of looking at it! Good comment Peggy!
Jack: “would-be anti-Christ character”
This is not helpful for you.
“Barrack Hussein Obama”
Neither is this. (First of all, learn how to spell the president’s first name. Second, everyone knows why you use his middle name so often, and it’s a really stupid reason.)
Chris you are right, I need to spell his name right. Sorry, my bad. It’s Barack Hussein Obama, no more Bar-rack Hussein Obama. It’s these foreign names that mess me up. Why couldn’t he have been given a traditional name like Elwood, Jehoshaphat, Chris, Jack, Dewey, Harold, Joe, Dilbert, etc.? These are good ol Merican names!
Not to change the subject, but just for fun I found this list of names on the net that are very Nuevo-ethnic, but I think some may not be appropriate, what do you think? I like #18 and #22…very creative.
60) Latifah
59) Shaniqua
58) Latoya
57) Laquisha
56) La’Kisha
55) La’Tanya
54) Rohandra
53) Bon’Quisha
52) Sha’Tanya
51) Toprameneesha
50) La’Quishria
49) Bonifa
48) Shataniana
47) Levondia
46) Bufanaquishria
45) La’Quishraniqua
44) Barbeesha
43) Mo’Nique
42) Abduiniana
41) Fo’Landra
40) Kisha
39) Bon’Qui Qui
38) V’Lanta’la’mana’ma’nisha
37) Sha’Nay Nay
36) Tay Tay
35) Da’Quonde
34) La’Trice
33) Deedra
32) Tramicia
31) De’Lanice
30) Ka’Likatifrianiqua
29) Sha’Londria
28) Sha’Quonda
27) Elephantisha
26) La’Quaysha
25) Guuuuuurrrrrrllllll
24) Qua’Lifriaqui’Sha’Niquia
23) Cornbreesha
22) Congratulashayla
21) Barackisha
20) Obamaniqua
19) Koolaidria
18) Spongebobeeshia
17) Anthraxia
16) Fa’Nay Nay
15) Comptonia
14) Harlemisha
13) Beetovenice
12) Britania
11) Cellularphoniqua
10) Unidastazovamerikaaliqua
9) Alejandrisha
8) Sqeeshalaquisha
7) Gangstalondia
6) Belladonna
5) Grapedrankisha
4) Africanishaniqua
3) Que’Shayda
2) La’Vanashrianiqualiquanice
1) Courtney
PS I guess I just never had the motivation to get Bar
rack’s name right because I cared so little about the guy. However, I actually like his middle name. Just be glad that at least it is not Muhammad. ; )I like #19 for all liberal progressives.
More SJW “justice” (or just us) on the way.
http://nypost.com/2015/07/18/obama-has-been-collecting-personal-data-for-a-secret-race-database/
Excerpt:
“Civil-rights groups will have access to the agency’s sophisticated mapping software, and will participate in city plans to re-engineer neighborhoods under new community outreach requirements.
“By opening this data to everybody, everyone in a community can weigh in,” Obama said. “If you want affordable housing nearby, now you’ll have the data you need to make your case.””
Re: RHT447 at #10
In case our readers don’t understand the lefty euphemism, “city plans to re-engineer neighborhoods under new community outreach requirements,” they should know this is the next step to force “fairness” no matter the unintended consequence.
The law that Bill Clinton expanded to lower lending standards for the poor so they could buy houses and played a major role in bringing us the housing bubble and crash in 2008 is about to be expanded again through HUD, rather than Fannie Mae.
It’s anybodies guess just how far local cities will take this but anything is possible when liberals are involved. The crazy thinking behind this bright idea is to force integration into every neighborhood.
Minorities who can afford to buy in a neighborhood and who want to live in that neighborhood should be able to and are free to as our law now stands!
So there is no reason for this new approach except to have the federal government make that decision for individuals/families and empower leftists cities to do it.
This is a grossly oppressive/intrusive regulation that will lead to local animosity and strife…insane!
#10 RHT, I’ll bet a billion dollars Obama will give wavers to communities like Martha Vineyard, Malibu, and his new multi-million dollar place in Hawaii.
The data collection is already in place with ObamaCare and Common Core.
“The law that Bill Clinton expanded to lower lending standards for the poor so they could buy houses and played a major role in bringing us the housing bubble and crash in 2008”
No, it did not. The vast majority of subprime loans made prior to the crash had nothing to do with the CRA.
“force integration”
Oh man, I literally cannot imagine a poorer choice of words.
“No, it did not. The vast majority of subprime loans made prior to the crash had nothing to do with the CRA.”
Ever heard of the domino effect?
You are such an apologist for the corrupt, power hungry, manipulative radical leadership of your party of choice.
I have posted information that connects the dots, to no avail with you, so many times before it is certainly not worth my time to do it again.
This is why your halo is such a phony. (See comments on the Chattanooga thread)
“Claims about low failures in CRA loans are not based on reliable information and the Federal Reserve said so itself. In November 2000 the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland posted a report about the effects of the CRA through 1999. Find it at clevelandfed.org; it includes (emphasis mine):
Although the CRA’s effects on lending to lower-income populations and neighborhoods are difficult to assess, such lending has increased substantially over the past decade or so. For example, home- purchase lending to lower-income households has increased 86 percent since 1993 (compared to about 50 percent for higher-income households). Lending to borrowers in lower-income neighborhoods also has risen sharply (nearly 80 percent) since 1993.
However, despite all this experience, little systematic information has been publicly available about performance and profitability, either for CRA-related lending activities as a whole or for the loans extended under CRA special lending programs.
Initial investigations found there were no statistics available regarding defaults and losses. The government had only tracked the increase in number of loans made. Congress asked for an investigation and specifics. Only 28.6% of banks queried answered the request for information and of those that did respond results were somewhat inconclusive since banks responded to questions using different methods of calculation. Other factors also made discovery difficult, for instance, there was no definitive way to report on loans made exclusively because of the CRA. Information as gathered produced the following result:
On a dollar-weighted basis, about 85 percent of survey respondents said that their CRA-related lending as a whole was at least marginally profitable. However, CRA-related home purchase and refinance lending was reported to be less profitable and to have similar or higher delinquency rates than other home purchase and refinance lending. Concerning this product, about 63 percent of respondents said that their CRA-related lending was less profitable than their overall lending.
The words “marginally profitable” do not signal success of the program to me. They do suggest that banks were making the best of the situation. The report goes on to say that large banks were less likely to report profitability. If memory serves these were the type of banks that were pressured by ACORN and the President…targeted for protests and lawsuits. The report concluded:
The survey data are primarily reflections of the experiences of larger banking institutions in a particularly healthy economic environment. Experiences may differ for small institutions or under different economic conditions.
that was the Clinton era. Today, April 27, 2014, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) reports the following (emphasis mine):
The housing bubble expanded in the early 2000s as numerous new investments in housing seemed like sure bets. So sure in fact that regulators in charge of compliance for the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) issued awards to financial institutions that were making risky home loans.
Originally passed in 1977, CRA was intended to prevent redlining and other racially motivated lending practices. In the years since, CRA rules have become a way to encourage loans to low-earners. In fact, CRA awarded firms that had “innovative” ways to reach new markets.
In 2003, Washington Mutual (WaMu) won the favor of the CRA and Fair Lending Colloquium, an annual conference sponsored by the Community Reinvestment Act, which has been co-sponsored at various times by the government-sponsored enterprises and attended by a slew of federal regulators.
WaMu won the award for its Community Access program. In 2002 alone, the program gave almost 5,000 loans for more than $795 million, mostly to borrowers whose loans fell “outside typical credit, income, or debt constraints.”
Ironically, many of those loans came back to devastate WaMu’s balance sheet, leading to the largest bank failure in U.S. history. When WaMu failed, JP Morgan Chase bought the entire firm for just over twice the value of the original size of just Community Access alone. This $1.9 billion purchase was made possible only by writing down $31 billion in value.
That’s not small change; it represents defualt on CRA loans. The article continues:
Nor has WaMu been the last mistake that the CRAs annual awards have made. In 2004, CRA honored Unizan Bank for its Individual Development Account Asset Management program. CRA wasn’t alone in welcoming Unizan, a year prior the bank was called the number one SBA 7(a) bank in Ohio after expanding its loan volume in the state by more than 20 percent.
Much like WaMu, Unizan stumbled as housing collapsed. In 2006, Unizan, a small Ohio bank, was acquired by Huntington bank after Unizan saw profits dip by 7.5 percent.
Not all the banks that CRA has lauded have failed but almost all of them have been hit by the housing crisis. Wells Fargo, which won the CRA award in 2002 for a housing development it funded in Portland, has been hampered by the toxic assets it acquired in its $15.1 billion purchase of Wachovia. The 2005 winner, Key Bank, has been posting losses since early 2008.
Clearly there have been numerous toxic loans that can be attributed to the CRA since 1999, although banks were loath to account for them specifically (Fear of government regulator reprisal I imagine). But they can be measured by the bank failures that were a direct result of loans made “outside typical credit, income, or debt constraints” and pressure from regulators.
Radical leftists have been hard at work finding ways to paint over the effects of the CRA. But the pattern of activists intervention and pressure on banks both from organizations like ACORN and from activist regulators associated with the CRA and Fair Lending Colloquium.
More information about this years “Fair Lending Colloquium” here. Agenda here.
Forbes had a good article about the power and control of government in banking and lending:
Government has long exercised massive control over the housing and financial markets–including its creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which have now amassed $5 trillion in liabilities)–leading to many of the problems being blamed on the free market today.
Consider the low lending standards that were a significant component of the mortgage crisis. Lenders made millions of loans to borrowers who, under normal market conditions, weren’t able to pay them off. These decisions have cost lenders, especially leading financial institutions, tens of billions of dollars.
It is popular to take low lending standards as proof that the free market has failed, that the system that is supposed to reward productive behavior and punish unproductive behavior has failed to do so. Yet this claim ignores that for years irrational lending standards have been forced on lenders by the federal Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and rewarded (at taxpayers’ expense) by multiple government bodies.
The CRA forces banks to make loans in poor communities, loans that banks may otherwise reject as financially unsound. Under the CRA, banks must convince a set of bureaucracies that they are not engaging in discrimination, a charge that the act encourages any CRA-recognized community group to bring forward. Otherwise, any merger or expansion the banks attempt will likely be denied. But what counts as discrimination?
According to one enforcement agency, “discrimination exists when a lender’s underwriting policies contain arbitrary or outdated criteria that effectively disqualify many urban or lower-income minority applicants.” Note that these “arbitrary or outdated criteria” include most of the essentials of responsible lending: income level, income verification, credit history and savings history–the very factors lenders are now being criticized for ignoring.
The government has promoted bad loans not just through the stick of the CRA but through the carrot of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which purchase, securitize and guarantee loans made by lenders and whose debt is itself implicitly guaranteed by the federal government. This setup created an easy, artificial profit opportunity for lenders to wrap up bundles of subprime loans and sell them to a government-backed buyer whose primary mandate was to “promote homeownership,” not to apply sound lending standards.
Of course, lenders not only sold billions of dollars in suspect loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, contributing to their present debacle, they also retained some subprime loans themselves and sold others to Wall Street–leading to the huge banking losses we have been witnessing for months. Is this, then, a free market failure? Again, no.
In a free market, lending large amounts of money to low-income, low-credit borrowers with no down payment would quickly prove disastrous. But the Federal Reserve Board’s inflationary policy of artificially low interest rates made investing in subprime loans extraordinarily profitable. Subprime borrowers who would normally not be able to pay off their expensive houses could do so, thanks to payments that plummeted along with Fed rates. And the inflationary housing boom meant homeowners rarely defaulted; so long as housing prices went up, even the worst-credit borrowers could always sell or refinance.
Thus, Fed policy turned dubious investments into fabulous successes. Bankers who made the deals lured investors and were showered with bonuses. Concerns about the possibility of mass defaults and foreclosures were assuaged by an administration whose president declared: “We want everybody in America to own their own home.”
Further promoting a sense of security, every major financial institution in America–both commercial banks and investment banks–was implicitly protected by the quasi-official policy of “too big to fail.” The “too big to fail” doctrine holds that, when they risk insolvency, large financial institutions (like Countrywide or Bear Stearns) must be bailed out through a network of government bodies including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Home Loan Banks and the Federal Reserve.
All of these government factors contributed to creating a situation in which millions of people were buying homes they could not afford, in which the participants experienced the illusion of prosperity, in which billions upon billions of dollars were going into bad investments. Eventually the bubble burst; the rest is history.
Given that our government was behind the wheel, influencing every aspect of the mortgage crisis, it is absurd to call today’s situation the result of insufficient regulation.
We do not need more regulation or economic “steering”–laws or bureaucrats dictating to financiers and investors the kind of innovation they may or may not engage in. If that were the solution to economic problems, then Hugo Chavez would preside over the world’s healthiest economy in Venezuela. What we need to do is remove the government’s power to coerce, bribe, reward and bail out irrational decisions. The unfree market has failed. It’s time for a truly free market.
We do what people to become successful and to be able to own their own homes. as we have experience that cannot be coerced through ridiculous government imposed low standards and regulations, or through threats and intimidation by activist organizations.
CRA loans were made through government intimidation against all notions of sensibility. the lowered standards were irresponsible; forcing banks to adopt and use lower standards was unconscionable. The impact and result harmed all Americans and did great damage to our economy.” Tina
RHT447 that Post article expand beyond housing, which is the main reason for collecting our personal data, to describe this community organizers activist plan for us to be “…ruled by the black man, cracker!” (Quote courtesy of Samir Shabazz
The Post article explains the possibilities and they are right out of the activist organizers playbook:
This man is the great divider. He hates white people and America. Sadly the dupes just don’t get it.
Tina: “He hates white people and America.”
I hope some day you are embarassed by saying things like this. I really do.
The future holds huge embarrassment for you Chris, you just don’t know it yet.
Thank you Jack.