Cannabis News The November Coalition
  Jim Webb's Courage
Posted by CN Staff on March 28, 2009 at 16:04:06 PT
By Glenn Greenwald 
Source: Salon 

justice USA -- There are few things rarer than a major politician doing something that is genuinely courageous and principled, but Jim Webb's impassioned commitment to fundamental prison reform is exactly that. Webb's interest in the issue was prompted by his work as a journalist in 1984, when he wrote about an American citizen who was locked away in a Japanese prison for two years under extremely harsh conditions for nothing more than marijuana possession. After decades of mindless "tough-on-crime" hysteria, an increasingly irrational "drug war," and a sprawling, privatized prison state as brutal as it is counter-productive, America has easily surpassed Japan -- and virtually every other country in the world -- to become what Brown University Professor Glenn Loury recently described as a "a nation of jailers" whose "prison system has grown into a leviathan unmatched in human history."

What's most notable about Webb's decision to champion this cause is how honest his advocacy is. He isn't just attempting to chip away at the safe edges of America's oppressive prison state. His critique of what we're doing is fundamental, not incremental. And, most important of all, Webb is addressing head-on one of the principal causes of our insane imprisonment fixation: our aberrational insistence on criminalizing and imprisoning non-violent drug offenders (when we're not doing worse to them). That is an issue most politicians are petrified to get anywhere near, as evidenced just this week by Barack Obama's adolescent, condescending snickering when asked about marijuana legalization, in response to which Obama gave a dismissive answer that Andrew Sullivan accurately deemed "pathetic." Here are just a few excerpts from Webb's Senate floor speech this week (.pdf) on his new bill to create a Commission to study all aspects of prison reform:

URL: http://webb.senate.gov/email/incardocs/FS_CrimJust_3-26-09.pdf

Let's start with a premise that I don't think a lot of Americans are aware of. We have 5% of the world's population; we have 25% of the world's known prison population. We have an incarceration rate in the United States, the world's greatest democracy, that is five times as high as the average incarceration rate of the rest of the world. There are only two possibilities here: either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice. . . .

The elephant in the bedroom in many discussions on the criminal justice system is the sharp increase in drug incarceration over the past three decades. In 1980, we had 41,000 drug offenders in prison; today we have more than 500,000, an increase of 1,200%. The blue disks represent the numbers in 1980; the red disks represent the numbers in 2007 and a significant percentage of those incarcerated are for possession or nonviolent offenses stemming from drug addiction and those sorts of related behavioral issues. . . .

In many cases these issues involve people’s ability to have proper counsel and other issues, but there are stunning statistics with respect to drugs that we all must come to terms with. African-Americans are about 12% of our population; contrary to a lot of thought and rhetoric, their drug use rate in terms of frequent drug use rate is about the same as all other elements of our society, about 14%. But they end up being 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of those sentenced to prison by the numbers that have been provided by us. . . .

Another piece of this issue that I hope we will address with this National Criminal Justice Commission is what happens inside our prisons. . . . We also have a situation in this country with respect to prison violence and sexual victimization that is off the charts and we must get our arms around this problem. We also have many people in our prisons who are among what are called the criminally ill, many suffering from hepatitis and HIV who are not getting the sorts of treatment they deserve.

Importantly, what are we going to do about drug policy - the whole area of drug policy in this country?

And how does that affect sentencing procedures and other alternatives that we might look at?

Webb added that "America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace" and "we are locking up too many people who do not belong in jail."

It's hard to overstate how politically thankless, and risky, is Webb's pursuit of this issue -- both in general and particularly for Webb. Though there has been some evolution of public opinion on some drug policy issues, there is virtually no meaningful organized constituency for prison reform. To the contrary, leaving oneself vulnerable to accusations of being "soft on crime" has, for decades, been one of the most toxic vulnerabilities a politician can suffer (ask Michael Dukakis). Moreover, the privatized Prison State is a booming and highly profitable industry, with an army of lobbyists, donations, and other well-funded weapons for targeting candidates who threaten its interests.

Most notably, Webb is in the Senate not as an invulnerable, multi-term political institution from a safely blue state (he's not Ted Kennedy), but is the opposite: he's a first-term Senator from Virginia, one of the "toughest" "anti-crime" states in the country (it abolished parole in 1995 and is second only to Texas in the number of prisoners it executes), and Webb won election to the Senate by the narrowest of margins, thanks largely to George Allen's macaca-driven implosion. As Ezra Klein wrote, with understatement: "Lots of politicians make their name being anti-crime, which has come to mean pro-punishment. Few make their name being pro-prison reform."

For a Senator like Webb to spend his time trumpeting the evils of excessive prison rates, racial disparities in sentencing, the unjust effects of the Drug War, and disgustingly harsh conditions inside prisons is precisely the opposite of what every single political consultant would recommend that he do. There's just no plausible explanation for what Webb's actions other than the fact that he's engaged in the noblest and rarest of conduct: advocating a position and pursuing an outcome because he actually believes in it and believes that, with reasoned argument, he can convince his fellow citizens to see the validity of his cause. And he is doing this despite the fact that it potentially poses substantial risks to his political self-interest and offers almost no prospect for political reward. Webb is far from perfect -- he's cast some truly bad votes since being elected -- but, in this instance, not only his conduct but also his motives are highly commendable.

Webb's actions here underscore a broader point. Our political class has trained so many citizens not only to tolerate, but to endorse, cowardly behavior on the part of their political leaders. When politicians take bad positions, ones that are opposed by large numbers of their supporters, it is not only the politicians, but also huge numbers of their supporters, who step forward to offer excuses and justifications: well, they have to take that position because it's too politically risky not to; they have no choice and it's the smart thing to do. That's the excuse one heard for years as Democrats meekly acquiesced to or actively supported virtually every extremist Bush policy from the attack on Iraq to torture and warrantless eavesdropping; it's the excuse which even progressives offer for why their political leaders won't advocate for marriage equality or defense spending cuts; and it's the same excuse one hears now to justify virtually every Obama "disappointment."

Webb's commitment to this unpopular project demonstrates how false that excuse-making is -- just as it was proven false by Russ Feingold's singular, lonely, October, 2001 vote against the Patriot Act and Feingold's subsequent, early opposition to the then-popular Bush's assault on civil liberties, despite his representing the purple state of Wisconsin. Political leaders have the ability to change public opinion by engaging in leadership and persuasive advocacy. Any cowardly politician can take only those positions that reside safely within the majoritiarian consensus. Actual leaders, by definition, confront majoritarian views when they are misguided and seek to change them, and politicians have far more ability to affect and change public opinion than they want the public to believe they have.

The political class wants people to see them as helpless captives to immutable political realities so that they have a permanent, all-purpose excuse for whatever they do, so that they are always able to justify their position by appealing to so-called "political realities." But that excuse is grounded in a fundamentally false view of what political leaders are actually capable of doing in terms of shifting public opinion, as NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen explained when I interviewed him about his theories of how political consensus is maintained and manipulated:

GG: One of the points you make is that it's not just journalists who define what these spheres [of consensus, legitimate debate and deviance] encompass. You argue that politicians, political actors can change what's included in these spheres based on the positions that they take. And in some sense, you could even say that that's kind of what leadership is -- not just articulating what already is within the realm of consensus, which anyone can do, but taking ideas that are marginalized or within the sphere of deviance and bringing them into the sphere of legitimacy. How does that process work? How do political actors change those spheres?

JR: Well, that's exactly what leadership is. And I think it's crippling sometimes to our own sense of efficacy in politics and media, if we assume that the media has all of the power to frame the debate and decide what consensus is, and consign things to deviant status. That's not really true. That's true under conditions of political immobilization, leadership default, a rage for normalcy, but in ordinary political life, leaders, by talking about things, make them legitimate. Parties, by pushing for things, make them part of the sphere of debate. Important and visible people can question consensus, and all of a sudden expand it. These spheres are malleable; if the conversation of democracy is alive and if you make your leaders talk about things, it becomes valid to talk about them.

And I really do think there's a self-victimization that sometimes goes on, but to go back to the beginning of your question, there's something else going on, which is the ability to infect us with notions of what's realistic is one of the most potent powers press and political elites have. Whenever we make that kind of decision -- "well it's pragmatic, let's be realistic" -- what we're really doing is we're speculating about other Americans, our fellow citizens, and what they're likely to accept or what works on them or what stimuli they respond to. And that way of seeing other Americans, fellow citizens, is in fact something the media has taught us; that is one of the deepest lessons we've learned from the media even if we are skeptics of the MSM.

And one of the things I see on the left that really bothers me is the ease with which people skeptical of the media will talk about what the masses believe and how the masses will be led and moved in this way that shows me that the mass media tutors them on how to see their fellow citizens. And here the Internet again has at least some potential, because we don't have to guess what those other Americans think. We can encounter them ourselves, and thereby reshape our sense of what they think. I think every time people make that judgment about what's realistic, what they're really doing is they're imagining what the rest of the country would accept, and how other people think, and they get those ideas from the media.

We've been trained how we talk about our political leaders primarily by a media that worships political cynicism and can only understand the world through political game-playing. Thus, so many Americans have been taught to believe not only that politicians shouldn't have the obligation of leadership imposed on them -- i.e., to persuade the public of what is right -- but that it's actually smart and wise of them to avoid positions they believe in when doing so is political risky.

People love now to assume the role of super-sophisticated political consultant rather than a citizen demanding actions from their representatives. Due to the prism of gamesmanship through which political pundits understand and discuss politics, many citizens have learned to talk about their political leaders as though they're political strategists advising their clients as to the politically shrewd steps that should be taken ("this law is awful and unjust and he was being craven by voting for it, but he was absolutely right to vote for it because the public wouldn't understand if he opposed it"), rather than as citizens demanding that their public servants do the right thing ("this law is awful and unjust and, for that reason alone, he should oppose it and show leadership by making the case to the public as to why it's awful and unjust").

It may be unrealistic to expect most politicians in most circumstances to do what Jim Webb is doing here (or what Russ Feingold did during Bush's first term). My guess is that Webb, having succeeded in numerous other endeavors outside of politics, is not desperate to cling to his political office, and he has thus calculated that he'd rather have six years in the Senate doing things he thinks are meaningful than stay there forever on the condition that he cowardly renounce any actual beliefs. It's probably true that most career politicians, possessed of few other talents or interests, are highly unlikely to think that way.

But the fact that cowardly actions from political leaders are inevitable is no reason to excuse or, worse, justify and even advocate that cowardice. In fact, the more citizens are willing to excuse and even urge political cowardice in the name of "realism" or "pragmatism" ("he was smart to take this bad, unjust position because Americans are too stupid or primitive for him to do otherwise and he needs to be re-elected"), the more common that behavior will be. Politicians and their various advisers, consultants and enablers will make all the excuses they can for why politicians do what they do and insist that public opinion constrains them to do otherwise. That excuse-making is their role, not the role of citizens. What ought to be demanded of political officials by citizens is precisely the type of leadership Webb is exhibiting here.

Source: Salon (US Web)
Author: Glenn Greenwald
Published: Saturday, March 28, 2009
Copyright: 2009 Salon
Website: http://www.salon.com/
Contact: readermail@salon.com
URL: http://drugsense.org/url/BBSPHl79

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Comment #30 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 12:12:30 PT
Jim Webb
I really like him. He's gruff and keeps on track. He doesn't care what people think about him I believe. You have to be that way to get anything serious done in life.

Sometimes we all have to draw the line in the sand.

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Comment #29 posted by Hope on March 29, 2009 at 12:05:00 PT
You've got your humility in the right place.
I still struggle with it more than I want to have to.

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Comment #28 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 11:59:30 PT
Hope
I liked being called a dingy blond when I was young because it helped me get out of things and helped me get things I wanted. LOL!

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Comment #27 posted by Hope on March 29, 2009 at 11:55:43 PT
You're very kind, FoM.
I'll get over my embarrassment. I'll laugh someday... smiling a bit already... that we're going to make Peace and Industry out of this so called "War"... sooner rather than later, now.

This is all saying something about Ghandi's theory of changing a violent, destructive, bad thing into peace and something good.

Jim Webb. I'm so thankful for him. We have many true and good "Mighty Men"... as in King David's famous "Mighty Men", slaying a multitude of the "Enemy" with the "Jawbone of an Ass."

:0)



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Comment #26 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 11:27:39 PT
Hope
I only see a heart of gold when I think of you.

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Comment #25 posted by Hope on March 29, 2009 at 11:17:45 PT
"short comings"
Yeah, you're one of those "Dynamite comes in small packages" women. I'm one of those towering Amazons with my embarrassed face glowing like a beacon in plain sight!

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Comment #24 posted by Hope on March 29, 2009 at 11:15:35 PT
Comment 21 That's right of course...
When the black market collapses the outrageously big bucks in the illegality, and the violence over those big bucks will end.

People have gotten a little too excited over this "Tax" business, from the very beginning, I thought... but the tax talk and the greed factor... or the running out of money factor, opened up more avenues of discussion and people have stampeded that "doorway" without giving much consideration to the truth of the inflated costs of illegality.



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Comment #23 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 11:08:44 PT
Hope
Humor and laughing has always been easy. Heck I get my news from Jon Stewart. LOL! I think we need to be able to laugh at our own short comings. I have many to laugh about personally.

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Comment #22 posted by Hope on March 29, 2009 at 11:04:37 PT
Why?
I guess I'm too sensitive. I've been told I am. I felt ridiculed. If I weren't as "Sensitive" as I am, I probably wouldn't be lending my voice to this effort in the first place.

But, ultimately... we're rolling again. It's all good.

I do believe that incident, which to me is the big "Snicker" incident, combined with what's going on in Mexico, is that "Tipping Point" we've been watching for.

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Comment #21 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 11:00:47 PT
Hope
I posted this excerpt on another thread. It makes total sense to me.

Excerpt: There are, however, a few problems with these numbers. First, it is always tough to estimate what total sales are for any illegal substance. Good data just doesn’t exist in this area. Second, even if $14 billion is accurate, that’s the California sales total when pot is illegal.

When a pothead scores a dimebag in Los Angeles, the high price is mostly a function of the illegality. He’s paying for the risks taken by the grower, the importers, and the dealers at each step of the marijuana process.

Currently, dealers risk not only jail, confiscation of property, and the burden of a criminal record, but they also face violence from other rival dealers. That’s why the markup on pot is so extreme.

Legalize pot, and perhaps 80% of its price vanishes. And since marijuana requires very little processing, unlike cocaine or heroin, the supply of pot could skyrocket if it were legalized, further driving the price down. Why pay for it when you can grow your own, tax-free?

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20576_Page2.html

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Comment #20 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 10:55:52 PT
One More Thought
If a Bill worked it's way thru Congress and passed I think he would sign it. That's from the bottom up.

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Comment #19 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 10:54:21 PT
Hope
Why? He doesn't think it would help our economy. That's all he said. The price would drop so low it wouldn't help the economy unless hemp is part of making it work. I don't know if he knows about the uses of hemp.

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Comment #18 posted by Hope on March 29, 2009 at 10:48:59 PT
You laughed?
I'm devastated!

Sort of.

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Comment #17 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 10:44:52 PT
Hope
I laughed during his comment on the economy and so did all the people there. I don't think Obama is opposed to ultimately changing the laws surrounding marijuana but it will have to go thru Congress since he can't do it anyway or he would be more like a Dictator and he's just our President.

A weed isn't expensive. They grow easily mostly.

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Comment #16 posted by Hope on March 29, 2009 at 10:38:55 PT
Face it.
As sort of an artist, I'm told, I'd like to make a collage of snapshots of all the smiles and tittering, including the President's, and the audience that heard him that day, and all the news presenters and commentators and call it, "Is America really afraid of Cannabis Legalization?"



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Comment #15 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 08:40:07 PT
George
I really wish I knew more about 1984 but it isn't on DVD as far as I know. I did a search to try to learn more and this part was interesting to me. I think I might have seen a small portion of 1984 if it's the movie where a drug called Soma was mentioned.

Popular misconceptions:

The book has often been misinterpreted as an attack on socialism; Orwell himself had occasion to refute such claims, both privately and in public. In a letter to Francis A. Henson of the United Automobile Workers, dated 16 June 1949 (seven months before he died), excerpts from which were reproduced in Life (25 July 1949) and the New York Times Book Review (31 July 1949), Orwell stated the following:

"My recent novel [1984] is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions ... which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism. ...The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere."[8] In his 1946 essay, "Why I Write", Orwell described himself as a Democratic Socialist.[9]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Popular_misconceptions

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Comment #14 posted by George Servantes on March 29, 2009 at 08:05:24 PT
Orwell was right with his "1984"
It all started in the eighties and we are now rapidly approaching the ultimate police state that controls every aspects of our personal life.

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Comment #13 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 07:30:52 PT
Senator Webb's Taking On The Prison System
Made me think of this song I absolutely love and thought maybe some might like to listen to it too.

Leonard Cohen "Democracy"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5g8CA5ltR8



[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #12 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 06:50:12 PT
Inflation
My first brand new home in 71 costs $19,500 in a brand new development. Those houses now cost over $150,000. Inflation is the reason why buying a home and sticking with it will help a person in the long run. Inflation will help people that own a home not be constantly going in the hole as we see more and more inflation that will always be with us because we don't have gold as a standard anymore. Just my 2 cents. Stocks are a lot more risky then investing in a home.

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Comment #11 posted by runruff on March 29, 2009 at 06:11:54 PT
"Our schools have become more like.........."
Practice for prison!

As any inmate will tell you you have to learn how to "do time".

It is true, one does learn how to do time and learning to do time can make incarceration survivable.

I lern't to do time!

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #10 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 05:41:40 PT
Webb Takes on Politics’ Third Rail: Prison Reform
Excerpt:

America’s prisons — both federal and state — are overflowing with prisoners. The United States has about 5 percent of the world’s population; we have about 25 percent of the world’s known prison population, Webb estimates.

Something, somewhere is seriously wrong.

In his speech Thursday introducing the legislation, Webb pointed out some stark and startling statistics.

In 1980, the U.S. had about 41,000 drug offenders behind bars. Today, that number is up to more than half a million, an increase of 1,200 percent. Black Americans (12 percent of the population, 14 percent of drug users) account for 37 percent of those arrested on drug charges, 59 percent of those convicted and 74 percent of those sent to prison.

URL: http://www.newsadvance.com/lna/news/opinion/editorials/article/webb_takes_on_politics_third_rail_prison_reform/14713/

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Comment #9 posted by FoM on March 29, 2009 at 05:37:02 PT
National Criminal Justice Act of 2009
Posted by Nora Callahan - March 26, 2009

There is little need to add much commentary today, as the honorable Senator James Webb says it all with the introduction of this legislation. Senator Webb's website has a wealth of resources and commentary, too. From the website:

URL: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/nora-callahan/2009/03/national-criminal-justice-act-2009

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Comment #8 posted by Hope on March 28, 2009 at 23:19:07 PT
Now
if some heroes and heroines would come along and try to clean up and straighten out the mess our school system is, so that children want to and can stay in school, get a decent and useful education and more of them will want to, and actually will, graduate.

We have an unbelievably high rate, nationwide, of high school students quitting school before they graduate.

Our schools have become more like practice for prison. I can't believe the system has to be that way. I can't believe there's not a way to make it better.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #7 posted by Hope on March 28, 2009 at 23:06:55 PT
Jim Webb
Yesterday, I put that great picture of him walking near the Capitol building up as my desktop to remind me to keep him and what he's trying to do for this country and it's people in mind.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #6 posted by yoshi on March 28, 2009 at 22:51:33 PT:

Hyperinflation/Sam
Hard to see where things re going economically but it's hard to see the dollar holding value. With 800 or so U.S bases abroad, and no promise of bringing troops home from the mid-east, and massive new spending, it's neverneverland. And the boogeyman is much scarier than michael jackson. Gold, silver, oil and cannabis much safer than US dollars

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #5 posted by The GCW on March 28, 2009 at 21:35:17 PT
ASTOUNDING.
What else can We say?

The news continues to be positive.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #4 posted by FoM on March 28, 2009 at 20:03:04 PT
Senator Webb
I like him. He has true grit. I think he is a man that doesn't care very much about what people think about him but a man they cares about his vision. He's Scots Irish and that could be one of the reasons he is the way he is. I'm half Scots Irish and that part of my family is strong willed and gritty.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #3 posted by Hope on March 28, 2009 at 19:46:41 PT
This is important.
So very important.

I appreciate and admire Jim Webb and what he's doing so much.

Glenn Greenwald, thank you.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #2 posted by Sam Adams on March 28, 2009 at 16:35:30 PT
harsh times
the fact that this bill isn't plastered all over the news tells you how far gone our system is.

We're in the middle of a budget crisis that could end in hyperflation and mass poverty and one of the single most glaring, easiest-to-solve problems barely even gets mentioned in the corporate media.

ask yourself, how can it be possible for government to keep expanding year after year, more military & troops in the mideast even now as tax revenues are tanking. Major prison reform is only a fringe issue. Something has to give.



[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #1 posted by George Servantes on March 28, 2009 at 16:34:29 PT
"world's greatest democracy" is pure deceptio
There are many other countries with more freedom and democracy then in U.S.A

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