Hot News!
• Tea Party leader gets grilled by NAACP membership
On today's date in The Beacon archives, we published:
•Smitherman still saying the issue is about a “streetcar” (2009)•More on Amy Goodman’s Arrest and the Struggle for a Free Media (2008)
•Journalist Amy Goodman Unlawfully Arrested At RNC (2008)
•Seizing Illegal Guns—Thinking About 2% (2007)
•Information or Advertisements? (2007)
•Nick Lachey: “I have never supported George W. Bush.” (2007)
Contact Us
v mail: (513) 685-0678
e mail: click here
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Blacks 10 to 21 times more likely to get prison for drugs
Posted by Justin Jeffre
You may have missed Bill Sloat’s Bellwether report on this great disparity, but it’s worth taking a look. According to the Justice Policy Institute, drug use among blacks and whites is about the same, but more blacks continue to wind up behind bars. The statistics point to clear racial injustice and bias in our legal system.
• Share This Article! | Listen to this article |
|  |
Register
Anonymous comments are allowed, but you can create an account above to stamp your name and to avoid typing the anti-spam code.
If you are not familiar with our rules for leaving comments, click here! The Cincinnati Beacon is not responsible for the contents of any comments. Comments do not represent the views of the moderators of The Cincinnati Beacon.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
05 Jan 2008 at 08:52 pm | #
Combine the 10 to 12 times ratio with the fact that whites are 10 times more wealthy than blacks and I wonder why blacks don’t organize and go down fighting, and not with each other.
It isn’t only the red necks of our society who the need to be watched. Apparently it goes all the way to the top levels of white society.
06 Jan 2008 at 09:50 am | #
This from page 10 of the JPI report:
“Disparate policing practices that focus attention on
certain communities lead to greater arrest rates for
African Americans. For example, police may focus
their efforts on low-income neighborhoods or racial
or ethnic minority neighborhoods. Police are also
more likely to spot an offense occurring on the street,
but not in a suburban home.41”
As an agenda-driven organization with a vested interest in defining a problem to solve, JPI includes this token, throwaway input variable to drug admission rates it correctly identifies as a resultant variable: that Blacks on average are poorer than Whites; that criminal activity and therefore police attention on average is more focused on poor neighborhoods; and that in these neighborhoods drug activity (sale and use) on average occurs in public and not inside the home.
THIS accounts for disparity in incarceration rates, not “clear racial injustice and bias in our legal system.”
If Black drug sellers and users don’t want to go to prison more than White drug sellers and users, they need to stop practicing their behaviors on the street for the world (and cops) to see. Unless, like Jason, you believe there’s some privacy right in the public right of way?
Also as with Jason, sentiment is not argument.
06 Jan 2008 at 09:51 am | #
Neither is a straw man.
06 Jan 2008 at 01:27 pm | #
You’ve really become comfortable with censoring comments, haven’t you? First it was for supposedly violating your rules for then progressed to simply throwing out any comments that disagree with you.
06 Jan 2008 at 03:21 pm | #
Urbanists II Is Dead says: “If Black drug sellers and users don’t want to go to prison more than White drug sellers and users, they need to stop practicing their behaviors on the street for the world (and cops) to see. “
He is right and blacks should do their dealing at trendy upscale places or do their dealing in their backyard pool areas where it is not so noticeable. What are they thinking?
I have a neighbor who owned a number of these trendy restaurants and he tells me there is actually more dealing than the public would admit to.
Why is it that the poor can’t enjoy their drugs with the freedom that the more affluent do? It is ironic that the poor have more of a need to escape than the wealthier segments of our society.
In any case, it is part of the justice system and you can pick and chose segments of it that favor one part of society more than another. Isn’t that the underlying reason that the NAACP in Cincinnati does not want stop light cameras?
06 Jan 2008 at 03:29 pm | #
cincysuz says:
06 Jan 2008 at 11:27 am | #
You’ve really become comfortable with censoring comments, haven’t you? First it was for supposedly violating your rules for then progressed to simply throwing out any comments that disagree with you.
Jason does not throw out enough as it is.
He should do more but I would prefer that he put them in a temporary file so cincisuz and other can rummage through looking for specific mistake and then there should be a way that they can present Jason’s overzealous deletions, if there are any.
Those that are deleted and not felt to be to the topic should be returned to sender and then there should be a provision for the writer to start a new thread, just like when Jason provided an open forum.
In fact, despite the fact that I am replying to a posting in this thread, perhaps this posting meets the criteria of the preceding paragraph.
Ciao!
06 Jan 2008 at 08:10 pm | #
Jason should stick to the topic of the thread.
Dieter: exactly! Whether one believes recreational drug use should be criminalized, it is, and partaking of it publicly may be some subconscious form of civil disobedience, but if one wants to treat causes and not symptoms (of disproportionate incarceration rates) I think the answer is obvious: don’t do it in public!
06 Jan 2008 at 10:43 pm | #
Urbanists, I think you are over simplifying things. You try to discount the reports overall findings by saying it is “an agenda-driven organization with a vested interest in defining a problem to solve”.
Obviously the race and class disparity combined with the massive number of non-violent drug offenders taking up expensive prison space is a problem economically and morally. That is if you believe in limited and efficient governmnet as well as equal justice.
The report also says that “there is little evidence to suggest that high rates of incarceration affect drug use rates or deters drug users.”
In other words, these policies waste a lot of money and dehumanize people who need treatment, not prison. It doesn’t make us safer. Jay walking is against the law and I suppose you could just say the answer is obvious: don’t do it. But that doesn’t address the real problem which is draconian policies that are stupid. You don’t think we should fill our prisons with jay walkers do you? It is also illegal. I found this quote in the report to be noteworthy.
We know that city council’s marijuana ordinance is selective and arbtrary. Leslie Ghiz says right here that they aren’t going after college kids. This in a city that has been known nationally for racial profiling.
You have cherry picked one small variable and chosen to focus on it while ignoring other variables. We know that Vortex units don’t go and shake people down in Hyde Park and Mt. Adams. And we know that sentecing for the crack cocaine that the CIA brought into poor neighborhoods has been much more extreme than sentencing for cocaine.
Counties with higher poverty rates and unemployment rates send people to prison for drug offenses at higher rates than counties with lower poverty rates. People that can afford good lawyers aren’t going to get the same kind of sentences that poor people who have to use a public defender. Race and class issues are intertwined. The cause of this disparity is that we have two criminal justice systems.
07 Jan 2008 at 08:32 am | #
I oversimplified nothing. I don’t discount the entire report; I question its conclusion only because it agrees witht the author’s intent. It might have more credibility had they anywhere stated the null hypothesis, that drug incarceration rates are not disparate, and go from there.
You’re introducing class as a new argument.
I do believe in limited government, and one of the limited operations of government is law creation, enforcement, prosecution and incarceration.
I don’t believe recreational drug use should be criminalized, but it is illegal and unless one wants to go to prison for breaking those laws as some lame form of civil disobedience, one should abstain from those behaviors or work to change the laws.
Incarceration has two purposes: punishment of the offenders and discouragement of new offenders. Recidivism is up to the individual offender: either one learns his lesson or not.
Yes, widely-violated laws lend themselves to selective enforcement because unless you advocate for a police state, limited police resources can only be deployed so far. And, so, those resources are deployed to high-crime areas and areas of visible lawbreaking. Read: low-income neighborhoods, not because that’s where criminals live (I reject any attempt to relate criminal inclination to income level) but because that’s where criminals go, believing the low-income residents to be a victim population (the “don’t snitch” culture doesn’t help).
Most college kids don’t walk down the street hollowing out blunts to fill with pot they then smoke.
Black legislators pushed for stiffer crack sentences because of the impact crack had in Black neighborhoods at the time, and the violent crimes then committed to support crack addicts’ habits; not many reported carjackings with kids in the back seat because someone jonesed for a line of powder coke, ya know?
Obviously more money buys more and possibly better representation.
Finally, I didn’t “cherry pick” a single variable, Justin: the whole point of who ends up in prison goes to who gets arrested! Reducing disparate incarceration rates must start with causes not effects; unfortunately that requires real work not only by those concerned about this issue but those most affected by it. And too many, like LG and apparently the NAACP, thinks it’s “someone else’s problem.”
07 Jan 2008 at 08:36 am | #
Read this: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/summary/crime_factors/index.html
for some of the reasons folks end up arrested. These are causitive factors (input variables) that would need to be addressed if any resultant factors (output variables) are to be impacted.
Each of the input variables could have a strategy developed to positively impact it, and if certain organizations want to limit their attention to only one, that’s fine; one thing about Cincinnati: we have a thriving social service agency industry of folks looking for problems to solve.
07 Jan 2008 at 09:06 am | #
From the report:
The NAACP started doing this with its drive against the new jail.
07 Jan 2008 at 05:57 pm | #
I think it’s pretty clear that there is a great disparity in criminal justice enforcement. This report is just one of many that shows it. The author looked at the data they collected and drew a conclusion. The burden is on you to show some evidence to support your claims.
The report talks about how counties with higher poverty rates and unemployment rates send people to jail at higher rates. I didn’t introduce it, it’s just a variable from the report. Race and class are intertwined.
Reducing the disparity in the criminal justice system will require ending the failed War on Drugs (which is really a war on the poor) and stopping unequal enforcement of laws like Cincinnati’s marijuana ordinance. (How do you know where college kids hollow there blunts? Ghiz said they aren’t going after them, so how do you know?) Nixon had a much saner drug policy.
We have social services because we are the 3rd most impoverished city in the nation despite this city’s great wealth and multi-national corporations. If social service agencies are looking for problems to solve they don’t have far to go. They can just look out the window or walk out the door.
09 Jan 2008 at 09:19 am | #
JJ #12: “We have social services because we are the 3rd most impoverished city in the nation”
Should read; we are the 3rd most impoverished city in the nation because we have a glut of social services. The bad news is between, Northern Ky’s policies and CityLink’s plan, we will soon be #1.
Justin, your desire to end the war on drugs, implies the belief that people should be responsible for their lives; and either choose to do, or not do drugs for themselves. How does that element of personal responsibility, fit into your support of social services? Seems like another case of wanting to have it both ways.
09 Jan 2008 at 01:42 pm | #
Urbanists II is Dead: As an agenda-driven organization with a vested interest in defining a problem to solve, JPI…
Okay, U-Dead, I’ll bite. What’s JPI’s “agenda” and “vested interest”?
09 Jan 2008 at 09:18 pm | #
JFD, I got it right the first time and as you know I don’t support CityLink’s plan.
My belief that we should end the War on Drugs is because it is a complete failure. We waste money locking up non-violent people, the government steals their property and the CIA has been bringing in the drugs to poor neighborhoods.
Just like with alcohol, prohibition only creates a huge black market and revnue stream for gangs and organized crime. legalize it and control it like alcohol. You could tax it and give people treatment that want it.
Punishing people who have these diseases won’t make them stop, it will likely make their problems worse. Giving them treatment is the only reasonable way to help.
I’m not one of these personal responsibility smurfs that believes that all poor people are poor because they don’t work hard and rich people are rich because they do. The reason the rich get richer and the poor get poorer is because the rich make the rules and stack the deck in their favor.
You don’t seem to be so outraged when corporations get hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate welfare and special handouts and bail outs. What about their personal responsibility? Seems like another case of you wanting to have it both ways.
11 Jan 2008 at 08:03 pm | #
With the recent local busts of high level black drug dealers posing as businessmen, (150 lbs of cocaine and an estimated million dollars in pot a month coming into the area) it’s time to stop claiming that blacks don’t have the trucks or the planes or the connections to play a big part in the drug industry and the poisoning of entire populations. It’s obvious that blacks are top players in the drug game, and have been for decades, just the same as whites. That blacks are relegated to the dime bag street level part of the industry and thus less culpable, is a ridiculous lie.
11 Jan 2008 at 10:24 pm | #
From http://www.justicepolicy.org:
“Our Mission
The mission of the Justice Policy Institute is to promote effective solutions to social problems and to be dedicated to ending society’s reliance on incarceration.”
and from the press release here: http://www.justicepolicy.org/content.php?hmID=1811&smID=1581&ssmID=69
“’The Vortex’ is the first study to examine the relationships between these sociodemographic structures and the specific annual rate at which people are admitted to prison for drug offenses, and the first to localize the racially disparate impact of drug imprisonment at the county level.” (emphasis added).
Thus, “ending society’s reliance on (sic) incarceration”, whatever that means since a primary role of limited government is the detection, prosecution and punishment of crime, is JPI’s “agenda.”
Its vested interest is in proving its foregone conclusion, that there exists a “racially disparate impact of drug imprisonment at the county level.”
It’s really not that difficult to figure out.
Justin: the evidence is empirical: a vast majority of those packing blunts on the street are non-White. College students of any race smoke pot and/or do other drugs in private: dorm rooms blowing smoke out the window, frat/sorority houses, off-campus housing, etc. It’s really not that complicated. And much more verifiable than Jason’s conspiracy theories about Todd Portune and the Republicans which you choose not to challenge.
Drug use/addiction IS NOT a disease- it’s a character flaw manifesting in a behavior.
Finally: “poor people are poor” because poor people keep reproducing, ensuring the endless cycle of poverty by birthright. I don’t advocate mandatory sterilization, but I do support taxpayer-funded sterilization as a lower-cost substitute for taxpayer-subsidized reproduction, and favor incentivizing women to NOT have unwed kids vs. having them (AFDC and/or welfare). The idea that taxpayers should give money to women who have out of wedlock kids with no father in residence is horrifying and a vestige of slavery. A concept only a “Progressive” Liberal could/would love.
12 Jan 2008 at 12:27 am | #
cincysuz says:
11 Jan 2008 at 06:03 pm | #
With the recent local busts of high level black drug dealers posing as businessmen, (150 lbs of cocaine and an estimated million dollars in pot a month coming into the area) it’s time to stop claiming that blacks don’t have the trucks or the planes or the connections to play a big part in the drug industry
Cincysuz!
Have you ever take a course in Logic?
I have never seen such illogical reasoning for a long time. Go buy and read a basic book on argument logic, then read it a few more times.
Geese!
12 Jan 2008 at 01:34 am | #
Dieter - what’s illogical? We’ve all heard the argument time and again. What I’m saying is clear. It’s logical and factual. If you can’t understand it, you need more than a course in logic. It’s time to admit that high level drug dealing, once exclusively a white man’s game (I’m told) is certainly no longer. To think that is a head-in-the-sand argument that does no one any good. Anyone that is poisoning a community needs to be condemned—even if they’re, dare I say, African American.
12 Jan 2008 at 03:32 pm | #
Urbanists, how do you know where and how college students of all races smoke their pot or do other drugs? I would like to see some evidence that proves this.
(Jason said there was a deal where Portune would run unopposed by the GOP and there obviously was. We have inside sources and it was really quite obvious. It really isn’t that hard to figure out. I hear Portune has a history of deal making.)
Do you think if college kids knew Leslie Ghiz said they “aren’t going after college kids” they would hollow their blunts out on the street to?
Drug use is a nonviolent offense, a victimless crime and people should get treatment, not jail. It’s clear that there is a racial disparity in the criminal justice system. Just look at the numbers. It’s also clear that the US has a lot more people locked up than any other nation, mostly because of our drug policy. This isn’t something we should be proud of or encourage.
Poor people are poor because they reproduce? Really? I thought they were poor because they lacked money. The American worker works longer hours and makes less money than they did 30 years ago. They work longer hours and make less money than workers in any other industrialized nation. I thought they needed a living wage and health care, but all they needed to do was stop reproducing.
Do you have a problem with all subsidies or just the ones that makes sure children have food and health care?
13 Jan 2008 at 10:41 am | #
Justin: I’ve repeatedly written I don’t believe in criminalizing recreational drug use, so I’m not sure why you keep banging that drum.
If you’ve been to college or taught at the college level you’d better understand the college environment. Just as The Nihilist “understands” Greater Cincinnati from having lived here (but not now), I understand what happens in college. I appreciate you setting the standard for that one.
Poor people don’t have money because they have more expenses than income, the expense of child bearing and rearing among them. Duh.
A Living Wage is Socialist bullshit. “living wages” are the wages you earn by having marketable skills and an employable work ethic, that you are willing to live on.
Health Care is available to all; “affordable” health insurance is a function of employability. It is not a birthright.
If you want people to earn a Living Wage then start a company and pay them that.
Depends upon the subsidy. Name one or two and I’ll let you know.
13 Jan 2008 at 11:23 am | #
Health care is affordable to all?
Where is the affordable cancer clinic? The free chemo?
13 Jan 2008 at 05:37 pm | #
Urbanists, I’ve been to college and I know lots of current students. I do understand the college environment. Again, Leslie Ghiz said they’re not going after college students. They’re obviously targeting other demographics.
If the minimum wage from 1968 were adjusted for inflation it would be a living wage. As in a wage that people could work 40 hours a week and afford to pay their bills with. Do you believe we should have a minimum wage at all?
Are you against a 40 hour work week and paid holidays too? The labor movement ended child labor in this country and improved working conditions for workers. Wasn’t that socialist bullshit too?
Health Care isn’t available to all, if it were we wouldn’t have 18,000 people dying every year because they don’t have health insurance. About 47 million Americans don’t have any health care and millions more are under-insured. Every other industrialized nation on the planet gives their citizens free health care from craddle to grave.
Why should Americans pay more and get less? In the richest most powerful nation in the history of the world health care really should be a birth right, especially for children.
Why don’t you name some subsidies that you think are good? The city gave millions of dollars in subsidies to Krogers and Convergys and those corporations fought against giving their employees fair wages and decent benefits. Would those subsidies be good or bad?
14 Jan 2008 at 11:08 pm | #
Dean: where did I write that “Health care is affordable to all”? Talk about your straw men. You need an editor.
Justin: “college students” really isn’t a demographic. College Students also tend not to walk down the street smoking pot. It’s not that difficult.
Actually, today’s Minimum Wage is greater than an inflation-adjusted minimum wage from its inception.
From here: http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/inflation/result.php
we see the annual inflation rate. Adjusting the initial 1938 Minimum Wage of 25 cents/hour accordingly, through 2006 the inflation-adjusted MiniWage would be only $3.58, not the $5.85 currently legislated. But, as most should know, the minimum wage is just that; the minimum starting wage payable (not including tippable occupations). It’s intended for entry level work for an individual and should not be confused or confounded with the Living Wage.
Did you do the math on this before you posted the inflation-adjusted MiniWage = Living Wage statement? I’m guessing not (or had MEP do it which is, shall we say, troublesome at best given his BOE struggles).
Yes, I believe in a mimum wage; I just don’t think it should be calculated to support a family of four (usually the argument behind establishing a Living Wage value).
Health care is available to all; enter the Emergency Room at any publicly-subsidized hospital and you cannot be denied care.
Pray, what is “underinsured”? I work 40 hours per week and have employer-subsidized health insurance. If it’s gappy (made up word) it’s MY responsibility to cover the gap.
No nation “gives” anybody anything. Any Socialist program is a wealth transfer scheme taking from those who believe in a Work Ethic and giving to those who Do Not. Why CincyZus thinks you Conservative/Republican is beyond me.
Kroger’s & Convergys’s labor postures are irrelevant; the benefit to the city derives from the payback. In the instances you cite I believe the subsidies not warranted.
15 Jan 2008 at 12:50 am | #
Urbanists, college students really are a demographic. And how do know what all college students do and where they do it? I’ve seen college students smoking pot walking down the street and in all kinds of places. Then again I live near a college, do you?
And Leslie Ghiz went on record saying they aren’t going after them. Is that the equal justice we are supposed to get? Doesn’t that support the conclusion these studies support etc?
I said the minimum wage from 1968, not 1938. Can’t you read? Talk about your straw men. You need an editor. (And MEP was given bad info from the BOE and if you make another off topic petty attack I’ll delete all of your drivel from now on.)
What do you think should be the criteria for setting the minimum wage? What’s the point if you can’t live on it? Increasingly big corporations are just turning over people so they can pay the smallest amount possible. Most of these big corporations are subsidized and governments shouldn’t subsidize poverty wages.
If you have to wait until it’s an emergency then it is often too late. That’s why 18,000 people die every year in this country. (That’s six 9/11’s every year and that doesn’t happen in other industrialized nation.)
And besides waiting till it’s an emergency makes treatment more expensive and it must clog up the emergency rooms which is bad for everybody who has an emergency situation. (Talk about long lines.)
We pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and the government hands them the technology for free in the first place on top of that. Why should Americans get ripped off by these companies?
There is no wealth transfer scheme that compares to the corrupt wealth care system for the HMO’s and big insurance companies that are allowed to make 25 to 30 cents off of every health care dollar. That goes to corporate profits and bureaucracy. These greedy corporations are making a killing off of the basic health needs of the American people in a system that says pay or die. The US is also last to halt preventable diseases.
Health care is seen as a right of the people in virtually every industrialized nation on the planet. Millions of working people don’t have health care so what are you talking about? Are the socialized police and fire departments we have wealth transfer schemes too?
The underinsured are people that have some coverage, but not enough to cover their health care needs. You know, having insufficient insurance coverage.
15 Jan 2008 at 10:27 am | #
Since you cherry-picked 1968 for some reason:
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html
so as of “today” the minimum wage does approximate the value of a dollar.
Not sure what HMOs have to do with Black drug incarceration rates, but since you allow yourself to go off-topic not sure it matters.
Who says you should be able to live off a minimum wage job? Again, it’s intended to be entry-level work, not something to retire off of. That requires an individual to increase his or her marketable job skills that are worth more.
You don’t have to have an emergency to be admitted to an emergency room, and CFD stats show most of their calls are for health not fire reasons, and they transpo people to hospitals courtesy of the taxpayers.
“Health care is seen as a right of the people in virtually every industrialized nation on the planet.”
And once upon a time, so was the ownership of human slaves.
15 Jan 2008 at 02:09 pm | #
I picked 1968 because that’s when the American workers wages started to decline and it seemed much more relevant than the date you cherry picked for some reason. (1938)
Most civilized nations that do a much better job of looking after their own people do. The US has the most child and adult poverty in the western world. We should really think about what it means to be a super power. It’s not much of a perk unless you’re in the arms business.
What’s the point of having a minimum wage if it doesn’t allow people to live on it. I’m not talking about retiring on it, I’m talking about living and paying your bills on it. You should read “Nickel and Dimed” on not getting by in America, by Barbara Enrich.
With the rising cost of education and the outsourcing of millions of good paying jobs it has become more than that. Increasingly for many people college is off of the table and even those with college degrees end up with huge debts and they still can’t find a good job because those jobs have been shipped to places like India where people are educated and can work for a fraction of what Americans can.
Did you know that in the Netherlands and many European countries education is free also? A real super power or democracy for that matter would put health and education before war and corporate profits.
I can’t believe you equate health care with slavery while you argue that corporations should be able to pay slave wages. That is really about the worst argument I’ve ever heard. It is the profiteering of health care and education that dehumanizes people. And corrupt governments that let corporations race to the bottom of worker, environmental and consumer rights.
You sound like one of the people that doesn’t support public education, yet expects people to be able to pull themselves up by their boot straps.
15 Jan 2008 at 08:26 pm | #
I don’t equate slavery with health care; you argue that because something is popular it’s the right thing to do.
I support public K-12 education with my tax dollars.
I didn’t “cherry pick” 1938; that’s when the MiniWage came into existence.
The point of having a MiniWage, a floor for earnings, is to give people a place to start, not end.
College education is not a birthright. There’s no such thing as “free education.”
Those European countries fund their “free education” with tax rates higher than ours; why not use your cash after taxes, the difference between US and European rates, to award scholarships to help provide “free” education? Because you want it done with other peoples’ money.
And, at the risk of proferring off-topic drivel, it’s the “Straits” of Hormuz. Speaking of editors. You actually typed “straights of Hormuz” and thought it correct?
15 Jan 2008 at 10:42 pm | #
No, I argue because something is just and moral it is the right thing to do.
Just as people used to be able to live on the minimum wage, they also could get a decent job with a high school education. A college education is now the equivalent of what a high school education used to be back in the 60’s and 70’s.
Why would you go all the way back to the 30s? I didn’t say anything about when a minimum wage came into existence. I was talking about how 30 years ago it was a living wage.
Why can’t the world’s most powerful nation in the history of the world meets it’s people’s most basic needs like health and education? Because it’s priorities are war and shifting public wealth to corporate profits.
We have hidden taxes and lower quality of life standards. They pay a little more in taxes and all of their basic needs are met. We still pay a lot in taxes and have the most adult and child poverty, the most expensive health care and education and again pay hidden costs, like shorter life expectancy rates etc. We have the biggest gap between rich and poor and the fastest growing gap as well.
I pay taxes too and would rather they go to meet the American people’s health care needs than to Halliburton, Black Water and Exxon’s greed. I would rather my tax dollars go to providing all Americans with the opportunity for higher education than bombing several Middle Eastern nations.
It’s a question of priorities. You and I don’t share the same ones.
16 Jan 2008 at 08:07 pm | #
America also used to have a thriving carriage and buggywhip industry: it’s called progress.
If you support an idea on its merits please do so; you used the “popularity” argument which doesn’t work (and now revise).
I start with 1938 because you claimed inflation adjustment. But rather than go back to 1968 to claim 40 years of inequity, why not state that it’s now equitable to real dollars? Because then you couldn’t complain about 40 years of inequity.
Health care best starts with prevention: don’t overeat, don’t overdrink, don’t overdrug, don’t overwork, don’t have children too early/late, don’t engage in other high-risk behaviors. Taxpayer subsidized health care beyond its current provisions would be more palatable if the presumed recipients were a little more personally responsible.
Don’t presume to know my “priorities.” Does Wal*Mart get subsidies or breaks?