cannabisnews.com: Clinton Urges Extension Of Civil Rights Policies





Clinton Urges Extension Of Civil Rights Policies
Posted by FoM on January 14, 2001 at 21:33:03 PT
By John F. Harris, Washington Post Staff Writer
Source: Washington Post 
With just five full days left in office, President Clinton today will send to Congress an official statement pleading for a continuation of his policies on racial reconciliation, an issue that this son of the New South has been identified with throughout his career.Clinton's message is in part a rhetorical challenge, and in part an audacious attempt to pressure Congress and the incoming Bush administration to endorse Clinton's agenda on criminal justice, poverty and civil rights even after he leaves the presidency.
For example, White House aides said yesterday, Clinton is announcing the creation of a new presidential commission to examine disparities in the way schools are funded in minority communities -- even though he will be long gone by the time the panel can study the problem or make proposals.In a list of other recommendations, Clinton is calling for a national ban on "racial profiling" in criminal cases and for voting reforms that include making Election Day a national holiday to increase turnout, as well as returning the vote to convicted felons who have served their punishment. He said policymakers should study whether mandatory minimum sentences are too severe, particularly for nonviolent crimes, and that the disparity between sentences for powder cocaine and its crack derivative, more commonly used in black neighborhoods, should be reduced.His message, previewed in an article he wrote for yesterday's New York Times op-ed page, also includes a plea to President-elect Bush to keep the White House Office on One America, which Clinton created early in his second term when he began what he pledged would be a major examination of the race problem in America. However, neither that office nor the year-long program of speeches and group discussions was considered a particular success.Even so, there have been few people who have doubted that the race issue is one that lies close -- perhaps closer than any other -- to this president's heart. He grew up as segregation was coming to an end in Arkansas, and his executive and judicial appointments were far more diverse than any predecessor.Clinton opens his congressional message with a recollection of how the struggle for racial equality became "a driving commitment of my life" -- when he observed his home state riven by the showdown over integration at Little Rock's Central High School in 1957. "I was only 11 years old at the time," he said. "Like most southerners then, I never attended school with a person of another race until I went to college."Clinton argued that in the decades since, America's racial diversity has evolved from becoming an obstacle to national unity to a competitive advantage as "the world grows more interdependent.""Of course racial tension still exists in America," he said. "But, if we ever are going to overcome them, we must focus more on the things that unite us than on those that divide us."Still, most of Clinton's statement addresses problems of continued discrimination, not the promise created by receding prejudice. Bruce Reed, White House domestic policy adviser, said Clinton "wanted to leave behind some challenges to the next administration, the Congress and the country on an issue close to his heart."The statement divides its recommendations into several areas:• On civil rights, Clinton urges passage of a national bill providing special penalties against "hate crimes," motivated by prejudice against racial or other minorities.• On health issues, he calls for increased research and investment in diseases that heavily afflict minority communities, such as HIV and diabetes.• On poverty, he calls for an expansion of his "new markets" agenda, aimed at encouraging economic investment in impoverished rural and inner-city areas.• On electoral reform, Clinton appeals for creation of a nonpartisan commission that would examine disparities in voter turnout along racial, ethnic and class lines, and recommend reforms to encourage turnout. He said the commission also should study voter suppression and intimidation -- which some civil rights activists say took place on Election Day in Florida, a charge that remains in dispute.• On crime, he called for a host of reforms aimed at alleviating the widespread mistrust of the justice system that surveys show minorities harbor.In sum, Clinton's recommendations endorse many of the top priorities of civil rights activists. Minorities have been some of Clinton's most loyal supporters. He generally has endorsed the aims of civil rights groups, though sometimes cautiously. In 1995, he ordered a review of affirmative action and ended with a "mend it, don't end it," recommendation that called for some changes to address criticism that some minorities were getting unfair help. In 1997, he said he wanted to write a book making a major statement on race, but a draft composed by aides was not to his liking, and he never finished the project.Source: Washington Post (DC) Author: John F. Harris, Washington Post Staff WriterPublished: Monday, January 15, 2001 Address: 1150 15th Street NorthwestWashington, DC 20071Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company Contact: letterstoed washpost.comWebsite: http://www.washingtonpost.com/Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm Related Articles:Erasing America's Color Lineshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread8319.shtmlClinton: Pot Smoking Should Not Be Prison Offensehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/7/thread7920.shtml 
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Comment #7 posted by kaptinemo on January 15, 2001 at 07:11:50 PT:
Not 'aliens, JRBD, but the 'stupid ray'.
Ever wonder about why our pols do stupid things? Make incredibly inane statements, and get angry when people laugh at their ridiculousness? The DrugWar is the stupidest example of this kind of activity; it was lost from the git-go, some 86 years ago. It was acknowledged by people even then. But the pols keep whipping that dead horse...and not just because they know it 'sells' politically, but because some of these twits actually *believe* in it. Sounds stupid, yes?Maybe here's why:From a DAVE BARRY column, 6 years ago:RELEASE: 04/17/94Subject: Solid progress by the Clinton administrationI see by the newspapers that solid progress is being madeby the failed Clinton administration, which has finally moved beyond the Bumbling Around Cluelessly Phase and is now deep into the Big Incomprehensible Scandal Phase.    This is good. Under our system of government (called,technically, "The Goober System"), the primary function of the executive branch, aside from frowning sincerely down from helicopters at natural disasters, is to get involved in vast, festering legal messes that affect the legislative process in a manner very similar to what happens when you attempt to flush a dead moose down a commode: Everything gets stopped up. Which is exactly what we want. As thegreat statesperson John or Samuel Adams once said, "A government engaged in the legislative process is a government that can, at any moment, without warning, decide that it needs to spend $14.3 million on a Bureau of CatfishSafety."    So we need big executive-branch scandals. That's why there's a top-secret, high-tech, self-activating device in the White House attic called the Stupid Ray. I'm sure you have long suspected that there was such a device. You have noticed that we keep sending all these brilliant people to the White House -- dynamic leaders with their 14-point programs and their Bold Visions for America and their dozens of whip-smart National-Honor-Society Phi-Beta-Kappa Rhodes-Scholar aides and lawyers, and the instant they grab hold of the controls of the Ship of State, theybecome Jerry Lewis starring in "The Nutty Administration."Take Richard M. "Dick" Nixon. Here is a man with an IQof 384, a man who every six weeks produces a hard-cover bookexplaining how we can solve every single problem in the entire world, and look what happened when he got into the White House:NIXON (to his aides): ... and our first priority must bethe implementation of the New Federalism, with the concomitant amalgamation of the structural parameters of the ..STUPID RAY: HummmmmmmNIXON: ... I know! Let's install a tape recorder in here,then discuss a criminal conspiracy!AIDES: Great idea, sir!HENRY KISSINGER: Then let's screw in a light bulb!    And it wasn't just Nixon. Jimmy Carter was a nuclearengineer. Do you think a nuclear engineer with an unimpaired brain is going to tell reporters that he was chased by a GIANT SWIMMING RABBIT? No, that was the Stupid Ray, which also caused the massive incomprehensible Iran-Contra scandal that paralyzed both the Bush and Reagan administrations (although for some reason the ray appeared to have no effect whatsoever on President Reagan himself).And now we have the Clinton administration, loaded withbrains, flailing around like a blindfolded mud wrestler, getting itself deeper and deeper into this Whitewater Development scandal, the scope of which has now been expanded to the point where, any day now, there is going to be a Texas School Book Depository angle. We here in the print medium are working overtime to keep you abreast of this scandal by cranking out long, fact-filledstories. Each of these is carefully reviewed prior to publication by a team of brilliant theoretical physicists headed by Stephen Hawking; if these people have even the faintest clue as to what the story says, we rewrite it to make it more incomprehensible for you, the average citizen.    This is easy for us, because even WE don't understand thisscandal. Some days, when we're running a little short, we stick chunks of old Watergate articles in our Whitewater stories to bulk them out. All we know for sure about Whitewater is, it has something to do with -- surprise! -- a failed savings-and-loan. EVERYTHING has to do with a failed savings-and-loan. Hundreds ofyears from now, historians will look back on the ravaged remains of our society and wonder how come we never used nuclear weapons on the savings-and-loan industry when we had the chance.Here's what I want to know: Did YOU, personally, ever haveany money in a failed savings-and-loan? No, right? Neither did I. Neither did anybody I know. I bet neither did anybody you know. So where the hell are all these failed savings-and-loans coming from? Who put all these billions of dollars into them that we taxpayers are always paying back? Space aliens? Are we bailing out Martians here?    This is only one of the many Whitewater questions nowunder investigation. And although of course it would be wrong to pass any judgment before all the facts are known, we can safely assume that everybody involved is guilty. The Republicans cannot BELIEVE their good luck, but they are trying to be cool about it. As Senate Minority Leader "Bob" Dole (R-Mister MeanyPants) put it in a recent speech, "We cannot allow work on critical national issues to be halted by a shortsighted partisan obsession with Whitewater Whitewater Whitewater Whitewater Whitewater neener neener neener ha ha ha."Speaking of issues: There are some other ones, such as the budget deficit, and the fact that you apparently can write "RUSSIAN AGENT" on your Central Intelligence Agency employment application and still get a high-level job, and as concerned citizens we SHOULD be thinking about these things, and demanding better from our leaders, but every time we try to... Hummmmmmmm
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Comment #6 posted by J.R. Bob Dobbs on January 15, 2001 at 06:31:04 PT
Sneaky
>>This kind of move is so obvious it is sophomoric.  Maybe you're right. Matter of fact, it's obvious, once I think about it. Maybe it's because I'm reading this first thing in the morning and my sarcastic distrust of authority hit the snooze button, but I didn't think that when I read the article. Sure, I wondered why Bill waited so long, but it all fits in with my theory of space aliens taking over our leaders' brains on election day (and staying there ever since!)...  But you're right, he's obviously got some hindsight into his failed policies. At least he's mentioning the obvious fix to the people who will be in charge next. Why he ignored it this long, who can say, but when it costs the Dems the white house, he can't keep spewing the same tripe during the last two months of his orifice.  But all of his remarks are so common sense that most people won't be cynical enough to see through them like that. It's like the call for "research" in medical marijuana cases. Nobody can complain about "research" - it's the hidden delays, the fact that they'll keep arresting sick people while doing their "research" that's the subtext which needs to be mentioned in conjunction with the party line. Because they phrase it so it's hard to object to. It's like the "pro-life" people... by inference, if you're not "pro-life", you're anti-life or pro-death. It has little to do with their actual stance (anti-abortion and pro-death-penalty) but it's a semantic label which has been carefully crafted to make them look good and the opposition questionable. 
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Comment #5 posted by kaptinemo on January 15, 2001 at 06:20:56 PT:
BTW, 4D, it's not "Shiesters"
It's "scheissekopfen". But they've earned every epithet, in every language I know, so almost anything said with all due heat and anger would fit.Query: if "shyster' is Yiddish for 'lawyer', and the word is derived from the word "scheisse" meaning s**t, and Billy Boy is (for the nonce; he's about to be disbarred in his home State) a lawyer... well, make of it what you will.
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Comment #4 posted by kaptinemo on January 15, 2001 at 06:10:43 PT:
Folks, take another look, please.
Am I the only one who sees something, here? Take a gander at this:"In a list of other recommendations, Clinton is calling for a national ban on "racial profiling" in criminal cases and...returning the vote to convicted felons who have served their punishment. He said policymakers should study whether mandatory minimum sentences are too severe, particularly for nonviolent crimes, and that the disparity between sentences for powder cocaine and its crack derivative, more commonly used in black neighborhoods, should be reduced".Here is an astonishing (or perhaps, not so astonishing, given his record for being a two-faced SOB) bit of Klintonia: he wants to maintain the DrugWar, but lessen the effects of it upon the 'natural' constituency of the Democratic Party - namely, the minorities who would have gotten Al Bore elected were it not for having been disenfranchised courtesy of that pesky little DrugWar of his.This kind of move is so obvious it is sophomoric. There used to be a time when Dems accused Reps intent on cutting any social programs and couching the rationale behind doing so with cost/benefit analysis as being 'code' for racism. Well, Klinton has just engaged in a little 'code' himself: he has admitted with this statement that the minorites he so assiduously courted in his earlier days have not been well served by his idiotic one-upmanship in the ' I'm tough*er* on drugs than you!' game. In fact, he has as good as admitted, without being so overt about it, that it cost the Dems the election.In short, Klinton wants to have the cake *and* pie, but not pay for either. He doesn't have the intestinal fortitude or the intellectual honesty to admit the DrugWar is a total clusterf**k...but he wants the worst aspects of it ameliorated for those most affected by it. So that they can vote for Dems, next time.That is, after they've spent some time in the Big House for having a couple joints on them and being prosecuted for being 'king pins' engaged in 'trafficking'.Got to maintain a sense of political balance, don't you know?
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Comment #3 posted by dddd on January 15, 2001 at 01:49:31 PT
sixties
i_rule..Being that I am a dinosaur from the 60s,and a music guy,,I like the lyrics you posted,and they seem distantly familiar.....Now,let's hope someone out there can identify the artist...Or perhaps you can give us some clues.....The answer is kinda on the tip of my mind.can someone help?...dddd
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Comment #2 posted by i_rule_ on January 15, 2001 at 01:19:00 PT
Nostalgia
I was sitting here, and this old song from the sixties popped into my head. It seems we are still fighting for our basic rights now as we were then. I remember this song because I related to it heavily back then. So please allow me to post it here. Maybe it was a song someone else remembers and will understand. I don't remember the artist, maybe someone can help me with that.The schoolboard says he can't come to school no more.Until he wears his hair like he wore it before.He's not like them, and they can't ignore it.So they all hate him for it.Home of the brave, land of the free,Why won't you let him be what he wants to be?It really burns me up when they put him down.He's the only one saying something in this whole town.The PTA and all of the mother's, Say he ought to look like the others.Home of the brave, land of the free,Why won't you let him be what he wants to be?He's just a little bit different.Why won't you let him be what he wants to be?He never hurt no body.Why won't you let him be what he wants to be?Just try and understand him.Thank you. This is all I remember, so I may have left out something. But, I feel better now. lol.Peace. 
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Comment #1 posted by dddd on January 15, 2001 at 01:06:12 PT
The Great Reformers
 Yup,,Bill and Barry are definitly on the same track.... They are both pretending to be real at the eleventh hour.They're both saying,in essence,,,that reform is needed..They speak as if somehow they had no choice to change things,,,or that they all of a sudden realized that there were problems in the past ???What a couple of world class SHIESTERS!..(sp.?..german for "shitheads")disgusting...........................ddddisgusted
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