I am finally seeing cracks in the facade.
Black democrat congress rep APOLOGIZES for voting on Clinton crime bill, says it made things worse for the black community.
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/276143-black-lawmaker-ashamed-of-vote-for-clinton-crime-bill
Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) said Wednesday he was “ashamed" of his vote for the 1994 crime bill.
The lawmaker said he wanted to apologize to his constituents for supporting the bill, signed into law by President Clinton, which has become a point of contention in the current White House race.
"That was the worst vote, as I've looked over the years, that I've taken since I've been in the Congress," stated Rush.
The law resulted in a national wave of incarceration that disproportionately hit black men. Rush, who is black, said the law focused too much on "locking them up" and included no resources on "love and compassion."
"As a result, we have devastated our communities, devastated our families, devastated our futures,” said Rush, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.
He called crack cocaine and the crime law the “the two worst issues, problems, catastrophes that the black community has suffered from in the last 15 years.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/15/bill-clinton-crime-bill-hillary-black-lives-thomas-frank
The reason the 1994 crime bill upsets people is not because they stupidly believe Bill Clinton invented these things; it is because they know he encouraged them. Because the Democrats’ capitulation to the rightwing incarceration agenda was a turning point in its own right.
Another interesting fact. Two weeks after Clinton signed the big crime bill in September 1994, he enacted the Riegle-Neal interstate banking bill, the first in a series of moves deregulating the financial industry. The juxtaposition between the two is kind of shocking, when you think about it: low-level drug users felt the full weight of state power at the same moment that bankers saw the shackles that bound them removed. The newspaper headline announcing the discovery of this amazing historical finding will have to come from my imagination – Back-to-Back 1994 Laws Freed Bankers And Imprisoned Poor, perhaps – but the historical pattern is worth noting nevertheless, since it persisted all throughout Clinton’s administration.
For one class of Americans, Clinton brought emancipation, a prayed-for deliverance from out of Glass–Steagall’s house of bondage. For another class of Americans, Clinton brought discipline: long prison stretches for drug users; perpetual insecurity for welfare mothers; and intimidation for blue-collar workers whose bosses Clinton thoughtfully armed with the North American Free Trade Agreement.
WORTH a read.