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Posted on 09/16/2015 8:45:32 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
When Sen. Rand Paul launched his presidential campaign, he promised to be a Republican who wouldn't just support criminal-justice reform as a policy platform (as some other presidential candidates, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Sen. Ted Cruz, have) but talk openly about mass incarceration and the war on drugs as racial issues. He was supposed to be running to reach out to non-traditional Republican constituencies: young voters and African Americans.
During most of the campaign, that Paul hasn't been much in evidence. Over the summer, when he has talked about race, he's sounded more like a typical Republican: calling on the Black Lives Matter movement to change its name, for example. But during Wednesday's CNN debate, the old Paul came back with a vengeance. Asked a question about whether the federal government should be cracking down on states with legalized marijuana, he brought up race as part of the answer to the question:
(VIDEO-AT-LINK)
He also called out Jeb Bush as a hypocrite for smoking pot in his youth but opposing legalization now. And when Bush admitted that he smoked pot 40 years ago, Paul literally accused Bush of showing his privilege:
"In the current circumstances, kids who had privilege like you do don't go to jail, but the poor kids in our inner cities go to jail. I don't think that's fair. And I think we need to acknowledge it."
Paul is entirely right: black and white Americans use drugs at comparable rates, but black Americans are disproportionately punished for it.
Paul can’t end his drug obsession.
Probably because blacks are far more likely to get caught with drugs while committing other crimes, from traffic violations to felonies. Whites are more likely to just use drugs at home and not otherwise be criminals.
Might have been Paul’s finest moment. Other than that, he was pretty weak, even bad.
Overall no one scored a knockout, but Paul, Bush and Kasich were in my opinion, the biggest losers.
Christy, Huckelby and Rubio actually did pretty well.
My top four stayed the same, though I was a little disappointed the Cruz was not as assertive as I would have liked.
Fiorina probably had the best night with Carson second.
Trump was Trump and will probably remain out front with Carson nipping at his heals.
Biggest loser of the night in my mind was FOX NEW. Tapper, Bash and Hewett made the Fox crew look like partisan hacks.
Leaving aside my personal feeling about the drug war, those statistics are not fine grained enough.
They should show percentages by offense. Ie what are the pot smoking percentages, then what are the incarceration rates for possession without intent to distribute?
What are the rates of admitted distributors, and what are the rates of incarceration for distributing?
Say good night Gracie
FURP!!
Don’t do the stuff and there are two benefits.
#1. You help stop destabilizing Mexico and empowering drug cartels.
#2. There is a more stabil and employable population of people without the drugs.
Welcome to the Whitehouse Hillary ... Grrrrr
“Welcome to the Whitehouse Hillary ... Grrrrr”
That’s ridiculous; she’s going to lose her butt in this election.
Addicts are like that.
I agree. Sanders will wipe the floor with her. His folksy BS can be cutting. And she doesn’t like to be cut.
And who is going to call the socialist a mysogenist. (Sp?)
The war on drugs is fake.
Jeb could have disproved Rand's statement by pointing out his own privileged daughter did jail time for drugs, but he didn't.
It may have slipped Jeb's mind.
Is paul saying we should jail white kids at the same rate as black kids? Yeah, that'll really win over his beheadable millenial followers.
The likelihood of that event is so low as to be negligible.
Stable
Stable
FORP!
>> kids who had privilege like you do don’t go to jail
To mean White kids... which aren’t perpetrating the disproportionate volume of crime.
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