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Thursday, October 25, 2007
Corn Pone Jail Tax: Vote NO on Issue 27!
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Photo courtesy of here.
A vague outline which plans eventually to tell us what will happen with nearly a billion dollars to build a new jail is not good enough. It is just not good enough. For a billion dollars, I expect something comprehensive, and not a booklet that uses the word “comprehensive” without any real substance. The Democrats have failed their progressive base, evident in the history of how they have handled this Super-Sized Tax. That’s why The Cincinnati Beacon formally endorses a “NO” vote for Issue 27.
Right after Todd Portune called a regressive tax one of the worst kind, he voted to support Phil Heimlich’s jail tax—which failed miserably at the polls. Why did he do that? For all his talk against the Heimlich tax, why did Portune vote to support a regressive tax after blasting it for its injustice? I am sure he has an answer of gobbledegook legalese, but the vote really shows how Portune has locked onto the new jail since before he became Commission President.
That’s why the first thing the Democratic majority tried to do is slide a jail tax under the radar—constantly talking about special elections where experts told them low voter turn out would increase the likelihood of passage. These actions show that they have never cared about educating voters, and developing a real plan. They have always been about a new jail, and a new tax. And they have tried to use their position in the party to get progressives to join lock-step on the iteration of their corn pone opinion.
Whenever critics try to discuss the problems with the local justice system, Pepper and Portune play the finger-pointing switch-a-roo game, doing anything to hack up sound bites of campaign rhetoric designed to deflect public discussion to the real issue. So instead of talking, seriously, about who is in jail, and who needs to be there, they just try to scare us into the voting booth.
Their double-pronged campaign technique has been designed to appease everyone on the political spectrum, but in reality they have failed everybody. Conservatives may hesitate at the thought of funding social programs, and liberals my not feel right about building bigger jails—but at the end of the day both sides realize the plan is incomplete. It just doesn’t make the cut.
So right to the very end, what have they done? Have they presented us with a plan that deserves the phrase “comprehensive.” No. Instead, they are playing publicity stunts with the likes of Simon Leis, trying to help him springboard into his final re-election campaign. I know my own critics will accuse me of rhetoric and playing politics—but when I do it there isn’t a billion dollar price-tag associated with it.
We need to get this right, and that is always better than getting it done in a hurry.
Vote NO on Issue 27.
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25 Oct 2007 at 08:47 pm | #
Republicans have their heads up their asses and Democrats don’t know where their asses are.
And it gets worse the farther you go up the political ladder.
In addition to voting NO on 27, vote NO on Republicans and vote NO on Democrats.
Time to throw the bums out!
Don’t follow leaders
Watch the parkin’ meters
25 Oct 2007 at 10:23 pm | #
Dean, with all due respect for the hard work of so many gathering signatures, and the valid concerns of the few of you worried about more than your wallets and concerned about the welfare of the black community and the problems we all know exist, this Comprehensive Safety Plan is the biggest, most progressive move for our community because of the focus on justice for everyone, because of the focus on mental health and addiction issues, and because of the focus on the reforms enumerated by the National NAACP.
Yes, Leis is an idiot - we all know that.
Many believe that Hamilton County Progressives have bought into the Leis vision, but the truth is, Leis has acquiesed to the Progressives - realizing that the community will not ever support a “jail tax” without needed reforms.
A vote for the safety plan is a vote for change that the majority of the anti-safety (anti- treatment, anti-justice, anti-fairness, anti-compassion, anti-tax)groups just don’t want to happen.
This whole deal is the biggest, most successful social compromise engineered in our lifetime - a melding of objectives from both sides of the political and ideological spectrum.
I urge support of issue 27
26 Oct 2007 at 05:27 am | #
Anon is right. And yes, being on the same side of an issue with Simon Leis is a tad uncomfortable. But the real progressive community is, of course, in favor of the safety plan. All you have to do is look at the opposition to know that. Tom Brinkman, COAST, the FOP, the new slanderous NAACP, the right wing radio station: the BuzZ, leading right wing Republican family, the Loves and various outside anti-tax Republican groups and of course the Republican Beacon and Republican shills Jeffre, My Main Man and Patton. It’s clear what this is about.
I still wonder how the NAACP reconciles their partnership with the FOP? Defenders of the killers of black men and inserting themselves in the drug turf war between the sherifffs and the CPD. Explain that one. And I thought Smitherman and Brinkman was a match made in hell. But Smitherman and the FOP? Wake up.
26 Oct 2007 at 05:58 am | #
How about those in support of the jails try and lobby judges like Winkelman (the son) and keep him and others from upholding straight bonds that are unpayable? That move alone would open up 80% of the jail space. If any of you were locked up in jail unneccesarily for months at a time you would lose your job, house and have your family fall apart. I guarantee you that YOU would need services like job training (since the system caused you to lose the one you had) to keep your sanity too if you were in that situation. Unfortunately, it doesnt make sense to say that just because the judicial system caused a person to be unemployed, the system is now responsible for retraining that individual. How about just not causing them to lose their jobs in the first place? Since working Caucasians are valued more highly than working Blacks, they are treated better and are given passes to go back to their lives until court dates so most cant relate. The so-called comprehensive jail plan is nothing more than garbage.
VOTE NO ISSUE 27!!
26 Oct 2007 at 07:42 am | #
The Jail Tax is a sham! If violent criminals are being released early due to jail over-crowding (as they claim) then we need a new Sherriff, not a new jail.
How many people are in jail for non-violent (and frequently B.S.) offenses? People who got caught with pot, or deadbeat dads (how are they expected to pay their back child support if they’re in jail?) or people with DUIs? Couldn’t we alleviate jail over-crowding by purchasing ankle bracelets and putting these non-violent offenders on house arrest?
Todd Portune and David Pepper should enjoy Democratic control of the County Commission while it lasts. They’re doing their best to justify the Republican label of “tax and spend.”
I’m tired of the bullcrap! Are all politicians retarded? Would it be so difficult to openly and honestly address the issues? Why must everything be filtered through partisan lenses? Whatever happened to putting the needs of the people above everything else?
I think it’s time to storm the Bastille through the ballot box. Throw the bums out!
26 Oct 2007 at 08:09 am | #
No Justice: you’re absolutely right, the courts think nothing of a black man sitting in jail and losing their job - it is reprehensible. but the reason they can get away with it, and will continue to do so, is because noone holds them accountable - this plan has the mechanisms to weigh and measure the dispensing of justice and all its ugliness, bias and preferences.
truthfully, alot of people are denied bonds or given outrageously high ones because they have a history of skipping out on (other) court dates. I believe this is due to the fact that for decades we were throwing people in jail because they couldn’t pay fines - a practice now stymied by the great works of great attorneys like bob newman who have held the court’s feet to the fire.
the criminal justice commission’s objectives are to root out and expose the practices and prejudice of our system and bring them from the darkness into the light.
support reform, progress and an historical move forward
support the safety plan or continue to sit in jail waiting for hearings
26 Oct 2007 at 08:11 am | #
I’m voting for the tax for one reason. I want Sheriff’s Deputies all over Cincinnati. We need them and we want them. Oh yeah, and we’re entitled to them.
26 Oct 2007 at 08:18 am | #
It’s the republicans. No wait, it’s the Greens. No, it’s the FOP or Coast, the NAACP or the Progressive Alliance. Everybody is to blame except those that have failed. Failed the people of Cincinnati and Hamilton County by not doing what they said before they were elected. Where is the transparency that Pepper made such a big deal about when he attacked Heimlich? David Pepper lied to us and now has gone on to try to convince us what he thinks is in our best interest really is. Fear is his tool as he trolls the blogs attempting to discredit anyone awake enough to ask questions about his failed leadership. The asshole hasn’t figured out that leaders don’t need to use polls to lead. They need them if they don’t have a clue and want to determine which way the crowd is going so they can take that position and appear in front of the herd.
This hole deal is a bigger joke than the streetcar and more wastefulness from the spoiled brats and their hacking friends in the corporate party.
The lines have been drawn, not along D&R boundaries the way it has traditionally been drawn, but along the interest boundary. The question to ask: Are politicians representing the interests the Community or the Corporation. They lie and tell us that the toy streetcar is in the interest of the city, as is the jail. This is a way to steal millions today and be safely out of office before the check has to be paid. A billion here and a billion there and soon it begins to add up.
All I can say is if this plan is the best they can do we have no leadership in the city, county and especially in the Democratic Party.
26 Oct 2007 at 08:28 am | #
Lock ‘em up
The American Right has long held a casual view toward the police power, viewing it as the thin blue line that stands between freedom and chaos. And while it is true that law itself is critical to freedom, and police can defend rights of life and property, it does not follow that any tax-paid fellow bearing official arms and sporting jackboots is on the side of the good. Every government regulation and tax is ultimately backed by the police power, so free-market advocates have every reason to be as suspicious of socialist-style police power as anyone on the Left.
Uncritical attitudes toward the police lead, in the end, to the support of the police state. And to those who doubt that, I would invite a look at the US-backed regime in Iraq, which has been enforcing martial law since the invasion, even while most conservatives have been glad to believe that these methods constitute steps toward freedom.
The problem of police power is hitting Americans very close to home. It is the police, much militarized and federalized, that are charged with enforcing the on-again-off-again states of emergency that characterize American civilian life. It is the police that confiscated guns from New Orleans residents during the flood, kept residents away from their homes, refused to let the kids go home in the Alabama tornado last March, and will be the enforcers of the curfews, checkpoints, and speech controls that the politicians want during the next national emergency. If we want to see the way the police power could treat US citizens, look carefully at how the US troops in Iraq are treating the civilians there, or how prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are treated.
A related problem with the conservative view toward law and justice concerns the issue of prisons. The United States now incarcerates 730 people per 100,000, which means that the US leads the world in the number of people it keeps in jails. We have vaulted ahead of Russia in this regard. Building and maintaining jails is a leading expense by government at all levels. We lock up citizens at rates as high as eight times the rest of the industrialized world. Is it because we have more crime? No. You are more likely to be burglarized in London and Sydney than in New York or Los Angeles. Is this precisely because we jail so many people? Apparently not. Crime explains about 12% of the prison rise, while changes in sentencing practices, mostly for drug-related offenses, account for 88%.
Overall, spending on prisons, police, and other items related to justice is completely out of control. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in the twenty years ending in 2003, prison spending has soared 423%, judicial spending is up 321%, and police spending shot up 241%. When current data become available, I think we will all be in for a shock, with total spending around a quarter of a trillion dollars per year. And what do we get for it? More justice, more safety, better protection? No, we are buying the chains of our own slavery.
We might think of prisons as miniature socialist societies, where government is in full control. For that reason, they are a complete failure for everyone but those who get the contracts to build the jails and those who work in them. Many inmates are there for drug offenses, supposedly being punished for their behavior, but meanwhile drug markets thrive in prison. If that isn’t the very definition of failure, I don’t know what is. In prison, nothing takes place outside the government’s purview. The people therein are wholly and completely controlled by state managers, which means that they have no value. And yet it is a place of monstrous chaos, abuse, and corruption. Is it any wonder that people coming out of prison are no better off than before they went in, and are often worse, and scarred for life?
In the US prison and justice system, there is no emphasis at all on the idea of restitution, which is not only an important part of the idea of justice but, truly, its very essence. What justice is achieved by robbing the victim again to pay for the victimizer’s total dehumanization? As Rothbard writes: “The victim not only loses his money, but pays more money besides for the dubious thrill of catching, convicting, and then supporting the criminal; and the criminal is still enslaved, but not to the good purpose of recompensing his victim.”
Free-market advocates have long put up with jails on grounds that the state needs to maintain a monopoly on justice. But where in the world is the justice here? And how many jails are too many? How many prisoners must there be before the government has overreached? We hear virtually nothing about this problem from conservatives. Far from it, we hear only the celebration of the expansion of prison socialism, as if the application of ever more force were capable of solving any social problem.
VOTE NO 27
26 Oct 2007 at 08:44 am | #
With all due respect, I encourage Anon #2 to form a gang and commit crimes with a view to getting caught. The more people in jail, especially folks who would not otherwise have jobs, the better off the economy. Today, building and managing jails is one of the hot “growth” industries, to say nothing of the security business, Anon#2 recuiting all the unemployed into gangs, that, when caught, end up in jail, has the result of increasing G.N.P.
26 Oct 2007 at 11:17 am | #
cincycuz, you aren’t fooling anybody!
When we talk to AMOS and the NAACP about the regressive jail tax, they get it. They are the real progressives. You know the ones that actually work for social justice.
Where have the Democrats worked for social justice?
26 Oct 2007 at 11:25 am | #
Now all Beacon headlines come with hype exclamation marks!!!
26 Oct 2007 at 07:47 pm | #
If anyone would know about being locked up, it would be Dapper. Pay your taxes Stephen.
27 Oct 2007 at 02:35 pm | #
I think the comments from Stephen Dapper hit the nail on the head. If only we could get this type of insight in our local government. Those looking for a police state need to wake up. Fear NOTHING and DEMAND CHANGE. I encourage everyone to vote NO on 27.
28 Oct 2007 at 12:16 am | #
While Hamilton County is struggling with the issue of jail overcrowding, the effects of the city’s marijuana ordinance, housing inmates in Butler County and the drain on community resources ---
Our state legislature is attempting to implement an Ohio version of 3-strikes, wherein judges can automatically impose the maximum sentence for a second felony without an entry on the record as to why, and doubling the mandatory sentence for a third felony - again, without a finding in the record.
To me, this is a carte blanche insurance of discrimination.
NOW, NOW, NOW - more than ever before,we MUST support Issue 27, the safety plan!!!! Without funding the Criminal Justice Commission we will have no gatekeepers monitoring the judges / courts as to how this new law will be implemented and who, as if we don’t know, will be paying the price for the “lock ‘em up” mentality of the majority holding office as state reps and senators in Ohio.
Despite the condemnation across the country by progressives about 3-strikes programs and the Ted Kopple report on Discovery Channel about the impact on society and jail systems - Ohio lawmakers are intent upon imposing more time on offenders without services, treatment and education.
We MUST support our disadvantaged populations by supporting the Safety Plan (which includes the jail, the services and the Criminal Justice Commission) or we will be condemning them to longer, more stringent sentences without any oversight and accountability to the public.
(If we have more “local” beds available, we are able to keep offenders HERE to do their time “local” and participate in the programming being promoted. If they go “up state”, we lose all control over cause for earlier out dates)
28 Oct 2007 at 08:37 am | #
I’d like to hear some discussion, well really condemnation, of the nasty, no-good, low-down, name calling, inflammatory campaign by the anti-Safety Plan group, while the other side has stayed respectful and on the issue. Public “lynching” of distinguished past presidents of the NAACP, politicians that have served the community well for years (not one-term rejected council members trying to find a platform to get back in the limelight) and ministers that work tirelessly in the community. They’ve been called thiefs, uncle toms, sell-outs and have been assaulted with numerous accusations of actually being “paid.” Threats that people’s careers would be ruined and congregations would leave if these ministers gave support of 27 from the pulpit. (The same group demanded that ministers pass out petitions at their church). And as I said in another post, the former NAACP presidents have every right to speak in their capacity as former presidents just as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George Bush speak on issues, Former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders lectures on health issues, former military officers and politicians do the same. In fact, all of these people actually do “get paid” on the lecture circuit for their wisdom and experience. And what do they get here in Cincinnati? Chastised and disrespected. Some of the anti-jail group sound so emotional and unstable that they might snap at any minute and do something violent.
The anti-jail people have no alternate plan but to just keep the status quo. Don’t try anything new. No legislation, no legal actions, no boycotts. The plan is no new building. Now that’s smart.
I’ve tried to catch Smitherman on the radio. As much as I can stomach. He let one real caller through in between the regulars reading the same script they read every week. And Smitherman crumbled of course. He didn’t know how to debate his position. And he wanted it to look as if he was entertaining other opinions. So in his retort he asked the caller if he wasn’t concerned about the funding and said other means should be considered, like property taxes. Smitherman never makes sense, and what he’s suggesting is another burden on the property owners. At least those that aren’t rich and don’t get those multi-decade tax abatements. Anyone with half a brain knows that the sales tax is more fair and would be funded even by those that live outside Hamilton County. People come to Rookwood and other shopping areas, downtown, the zoo, the museums, the Taft, the Aronoff, and other shopping and entertainment from surrounding counties and even states. I ask: “Who’s paying him and the rest of the anti-safety plan group to put this burden on the property owner?”
I said that Brinkman must be sitting back laughing his ass off at the hyenas tearing at the flesh of their very own elders. But the FOP? They must be rolling on the floor! It’s their dream come true. Who’s really getting paid????????????