Hi all...
Here below are sixteen reasons why I'm supporting Fran Knapp to stay as our county's Dem Elections Commissioner; feel free to call her yourself at home at 452-5107 or on her cell at 797-7181 with any questions you may have...
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
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Recent accomplishments at our county's Board of Elections thanks to Fran:
1. Democratic staff alone scanned backlog of 20,000 documents (other counties contract out with a vendor to do this) it took us 7 years to complete
2. Collaborated with Vassar, Marist, Bard Colleges to obtain a $35,000 grant to recruit and train college students to work as poll workers (2008)
3. Collaborated with Vassar again in 2009/2010 for a two year follow up grant $15,000 to recruit and train college students to work as poll workers
4. In 2006, successfully took control from the towns to administer elections countywide
5. Increased high school voter registrations 7567 students registered since 2003
6. Collaborated with Taconic Resources for Independence – the BOE awarded them a $35,000 grant from HAVA to survey and issue recommendations to us on poll sites and accessibility concerns
7. Created in house a brand new BOE website – Best BOE website in NYS
8. Created a new poll worker training program
9. We will unveil an on line training program on Sept 2nd for poll workers
10. successfully administers a $2.5 million dollar department budget as well as another $3.5 million in HAVA funds
11. Challenged Republicans strong arm tactics against college students – hired Kathleen O’Keefe (pro bono) to appeal Judge Brands ruling – overturned successfully on appeal
12. increased voter registration activities – Democratic enrollment toppled Republican enrollment for the first time in history- we have a 3500 enrollment edge
13. Held public forums around the county to hear voters concerns over DRE vs. Optical scan voting machines (2005)
14. held public demonstrations this year around the county on the new voting machines
15. upgraded the professional standards and educational level of the democratic staff
16. NYS BOE gave us an award for innovative concepts developed in the field of Election Administration and Operation in 2004 and 2008
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[...and here below is the letter Fran recently sent to all county Dem committee members...]
Dear Fellow Committee member,
I am asking for your vote to continue serving you as your Elections Commissioner. My years of community involvement, success as a member of the County Legislature and my tenure at the Board of Elections, uniquely position me as the right person to continue to serve as your Elections Commissioner.
When I became the first female elected to this office, I left my County Legislature position after building a solid record of accomplishments; on issues such as improving child protection services, foster care reform and greater protection for victims of domestic violence, I stood for our Democratic principals. I loved my work as a Legislator but I knew that until we made our Party more effective in the electoral process, the Republicans would continue to thwart Democrats’ efforts on these and many other [i]issues.
When I became Elections Commissioner, I was committed to three central goals:
· make the Democratic Elections Commissioner’s office an advocate and asset for the election of our Democratic candidates.
· improve the operation of the Board of Elections including upgrading staff performance
· insure that the electoral process would be fair especially a more open approach to voter registration.
Despite relentless attacks by the Republicans for the last 7 years as your Election Commissioner, I have made sure that the Board operated in a professional, effective and responsive manner. I take pride in the outstanding Democratic Board team I have assembled. My personal priority to serve our Party, our candidates and the voting public has drawn the wrath of the Republicans, especially Bill Steinhaus. He has attempted to control the Board of Elections but I faced his challenges in court; he was defeated, confirming that the Board is an independent body, something his ego has never gotten over!
Recently, I faced unprecedented scrutiny both from the County Comptroller and the Republican-dominated County Legislature’s Board of Elections Oversight Committee. As I indicated in previous communications, the Board was vindicated by the Comptroller’s report. The Oversight Committee is still trying to trample Election Law but, I am prepared to stand up to any Republican interference. Bill Steinhaus and Republicans can not and do not intimidate me.
This year we are witnessing a historic event - the conversion to a brand new countywide voting technology. You have my continued commitment that our candidates will have an “equal voice” in the Board of Elections. All votes will be counted and accounted for. All voters have a right to cast their ballot and I will continue with my ongoing fight to protect their interests.
I now ask for your support, I look forward to speaking with you in the coming weeks and hearing your ideas and opinions. You have my unwavering, full commitment to assist you, our Party and our candidates.
Democratically yours,
Fran Knapp
“For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die”…….. Senator Ted Kennedy, 1980.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
10/10/10 Here Comes the Sun Rally for Green New Deal in Rhinebeck-- planning mtg. Thurs.-- join us!...
Hi all...
You're all cordially invited to join musicians Finn Shanahan, SalTed Bones (Sal Miccio, Ted Orr, Joe Bones), and Ann Perry-- along with Hudson Valley Clean Energy and EarthKind Solar-- and Roberta Schiff of the Mid-Hudson Vegetarian Society-- Sun. Oct. 10th at 2 pm at Rhinebeck Town Hall (80 E. Market St. there) for our third annual 350.org (Here Comes the Sun) Rally for a Green New Deal!...
Recall-- last Oct. 24th we mobilized 150 folks from all over to come out to join Pete Seeger for our Second Annual 350.org Rally for a Green New Deal as part of the International Day of Action on Climate Change at Holy Light Pentecostal Church in Poughkeepise-- joining Ned Sullivan of Scenic Hudson, William Schlesinger of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, Eban Goodstein of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, and Allison Morrill Chartrychan of Cornell Cooperative Extension's Environmental Program, and many more; we gathered 200 on Mid-Hudson Bridge for this in 2008 too...
[see: http://www.350.org/about/blogs/350-rally-green-new-deal ]
[I had Bill McKibben of http://www.350.org call into my WVKR 91.3 FM show about all this; over the past two years Rhinebeck High School Environmental Club Advisor Amy Christie and Rhinebeck's Jeff, Ethan, Isabel Romano and Raphael Notin have been involved working with me on this as well; need u!]
So far plans 10/10/10 Here Comes the Sun (3rd annual 350.org Rally for a Green New Deal) include:
-- a countywide Here Comes the Sun song contest for kids of all ages
-- a countywide Here Comes the Sun art contest for kids of all ages (including pinwheels/wind turbines)
-- a countywide Here Comes the Sun essay contest for kids of all ages (
-- plenty of live music being performed, vegetarian food, booths/exhibits on green energy solutions
[...and whatever other bright ideas you and others might have for this...]
Feedback, input, ideas, suggestions, all, please!...
[musicians especially-- if you can make it to join us for this 10/10/10 let us know]
And-- important-- can YOUR group co-sponsor this 10/10/10 event in Rhinebeck?...let us know!...
Pass it on...
Joel
876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
p.s. It's still EPA Pollution Prevention Week-- all the more reason for Dutchess to push for http://www.petitiononline.com/pacehere , http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes , http://www.PetitionOnline.com/NoDrill -- all a part of our 10/10/10 celebration as well!...(PACE and zero-waste mean serious cuts in carbon emissions while creating many more green jobs-- making drilling into Marcellus shale unneeded!)...
p.p.s. We're even brainstorming/mulling over plans for a community-wide (county-supported) Here Comes the Sun 10/10/10 parade from Rhinebeck Town Hall to the Rhinebeck Rec Park (where rec bldg. actually already has solar panels)......but we can't do this alone....interested?...let's do this!!!!....
p.p.p.s. On a related note-- just over the last month I've gotten Co. Leg.'s Sandy Goldberg, Dan Kuffner, Barbara Jeter-Jackson, and Jim Doxsey on board to co-sponsor my resolution below (scroll down all the way to bottom) for Dutchess County to follow great example of Red Hook: 10 Percent Challenge!...(our 10/10/10 event could also promote this locally and in county)...
[email all 25 of us at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us for that resolution to be passed in Sept.!]
[recall Aug. 16th Pok. Journal editorial on this; see info here from Sustainable Hudson Valley-- http://www.sustainhv.org/10pct-main (thx, Melissa E.!)...and http://www.10PercentChallenge.org ; thx to efforts from yours truly on this, SHV's Melissa Everett will soon be presenting on this to our County Legislature; sadly, a few weeks ago the current Dutchess Co. Leg. GOP majority killed our efforts to get our resolution on this passed this month]
From http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20100816/OPINION01/8160307/Editorial-3-cheers ...
Editorial: 3 cheers
AUGUST 16, 2010
To the Town of Red Hook's Town Board, voted to be a pilot community in the "10 Percent Challenge" (see http://www.10percentchallenge.org ). The "challenge" will be a community effort over the next year to reduce both personal and business energy use by 10 percent. A new group, Red Hook Together, which includes members from the Red Hook School District, town and village board members, the Chamber of Commerce and Bard College, is working to help make it happen. AmeriCorps volunteers will plan 10 community events. On Oct. 10, (10/10/10), Red Hook will kick off the project and take part in an "international movement for a roll-up-your-sleeves-work-party day"; the town will plant trees, hold a bike swap, have a composting workshop and host a half-marathon.
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From http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/news/oilspilltruth/Global-work-party/ ...
Global work party
Let's get to work to stop global warming
Page - August 4, 2010
We're teaming up with 350.org, 10:10, and a global coalition of folks doing something about climate change to create a global day of action: the 10/10/10 Work Party. Help us make October 10th the biggest single day of action against global warming that the world has ever seen.
1000+ Work Parties already planned. Find one in your area and RSVP today or add an action to the map below:
Add an action to the Global Work Party map!
10 Ideas For 10/10/10:
* 1. Organize a clean energy street party: Organize a street party where you invite experts to teach your community about energy efficiency, composting, growing your own food, and other ways to kick-start the energy revolution in your own home. Be really bold, and power any electronics at your party with solar panels or wind turbines.
* 2. Get your community to switch to clean energy: Research the renewable energy providers in your area and make a leaflet about it. Spread that information around your community, and in the run-up to 10/10, ask people, businesses and your town if they'll pledge to switch to clean energy. If the energy providers in your area don't offer green energy, have an event on October 10th to ask them to do so.
* 3. Veg out: Organize a dinner or picnic with friends and family who are not vegetarian and serve only vegetarian food. Get them to commit to go meat-free for one day a week.
* 4. Mass bike riding: Gather hundreds of your friends for a mass bike ride to show how a car-free community could look. Do even better by starting your ride at a BP gas station to protest offshore oil drilling.
* 5. Deliver a message about dirty fuels to Congress: Gather all your friends and deliver the 10 worst pictures from the Gulf oil spill to Congress saying "Your work's not done until we stop offshore drilling." Or have a few people dress up as oil spill "response" workers and ask "are these the only energy jobs you want to create?"
* 6. Tell our leaders to "get to work" for us, not dirty energy companies: Research how much money your candidates for Congress have received from dirty energy companies. Once you know how much they've taken from companies like BP, you can do things like:
* Deliver giant price tags or checks to politicians that say how much dirty energy money they've received.
* Invite candidates to events to sign on to a commitment not to take any more dirty energy money, or to give back what they've taken.
* Organize a rally, invite your member of Congress and ask him or her: "Do you work for the public or do you work for dirty energy?"
* 7. Organize an "Energy Solutions" rally or photo:
* Gather lots of people and go to a dirty energy facility near your home. Hold artistically created wind turbines or solar panels to show the contrast between clean and dirty energy.
* Stage a solar-powered concert or film screening.
* Set up an exhibit area featuring solar-powered lamps, solar cookers, solar-powered charging stations for laptops and mobile phone.
* Make sure you find out if you'll need a permit to do this legally.
* 8. Put solar on it: Well before 10/10/10, ask your local politician whether they will install solar energy and/or hot water systems on their roof on 10/10/10. If they agree, great! If they don't, you could pool community money to buy them one, and deliver it to the office.
* 9. Plant a tree: Plant a tree in front of a dirty energy facility. Better yet, gather 100 people and plant 100 trees, or a thousand! Do your homework first to make sure you find a spot where you can do this legally.
* 10. Show your politicians what we want: Make pinwheels to represent wind turbines and stand with them in front of your member of Congress's office, or organize a solar rally with people holding mirrors (like this one). Paint a sign or banner asking them to "Get to work for an Energy Revolution Now" sign.
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From http://www.350.org ...
The Invitation - 10/10/10
Dear World,
It's been a tough year: in North America, oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico; in Asia some of the highest temperatures ever recorded; in the Arctic, the fastest melting of sea ice ever seen; in Latin America, record rainfalls washing away whole mountainsides.
So we're having a party.
Circle 10/10/10 on your calendar. That's the date. The place is wherever you live. And the point is to do something that will help deal with global warming in your city or community.
We're calling it a Global Work Party, with emphasis on both 'work' and 'party'. In Auckland, New Zealand, they're having a giant bike fix-up day, to get every bicycle in the city back on the road. In the Maldives, they're putting up solar panels on the President's office. In Kampala, Uganda, they're going to plant thousands of trees, and in Bolivia they're installing solar stoves for a massive carbon neutral picnic.
Since we've already worked hard to call, email, petition, and protest to get politicians to move, and they haven't moved fast enough, now it's time to show that we really do have the tools we need to get serious about the climate crisis.
On 10/10/10 we'll show that we the people can do this--but we need bold energy policies from our political leaders to do it on a scale that truly matters. The goal of the day is not to solve the climate crisis one project at a time, but to send a pointed political message: if we can get to work, you can get to work too--on the legislation and the treaties that will make all our work easier in the long run.
You can sign up to host a local event at www.350.org/oct10
Or search for an event to join at www.350.org/map
And don't worry about being alone at this party: there are already 1077 groups in 109 countries around the world scheduled to do something great that day. We'll knit all these groups together with a powerful mosaic of photos, videos, and stories from around the world. You wouldn't want to miss it.
It's been a tough year-but it can be a beautiful day on the 10th Of October if we work together, and party together. And if we do it right, then we'll take a big step towards the kind of political solutions we desperately need.
Onwards!
Bill McKibben and the 350.org team
P.S.-If you feel a little shy, or wonder if you can really make a party work, check out these pictures from last year's Global Day of Action. There were 5200 demonstrations in 181 countries, which means an awful lot of folks like you figured out how to get it done!
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From http://www.putsolaron.it/ ...
Put Solar On It
FAQ
Why the focus on these leaders?
"Put Solar On It" is focusing on world leaders that are:
* Strategic for international climate negotiations.
* High-profile and symbolic.
* Potentially influenced by this kind of campaign.
That said, we've also setup a way for you to send your message to any world leader. Just visit www.PutSolarOn.It home page.
Why is 10/10/10 the date we're asking leaders to install solar panels?
10/10/10 is the "Global Work Party" - a day when communities all over the world will be installing clean energy and celebrating climate solutions. By keeping the focus on 10/10/10, we can make it clear that communities all over the world are getting to work building the clean energy economy-and we need our political leaders to join us in this effort.
Will this give leaders an easy way out, so they can put solar panels up but not have to take a bold stand on clean energy policy?
No-it will be very difficult for any leader to make this a purely symbolic action that is separate from a major policy initiative for clean energy. We're not just asking that they install solar panels on their roof-we demand that leaders "make it possible for everyone in your country to join you in the clean energy future." The last sentence of our call to action may well be the most important: "We need you to act symbolically-and then we need you to act for real."
What should those government clean energy policies look like?
The visibility of solar panels on government buildings is only the symbolic part of what we're demanding of our governments. After they hammer in solar panels, they need to step down off the roof and hammer out bold and comprehensive energy legislation, too. The best legislation depends on the country, and we rely on the expertise of partners in these countries for the best information, but all energy legislation should make sure it benefits people equitably. New energy legislation should include ways of removing the burden of dirty energy on poorer people and assist in lifting them out of energy poverty, providing cheap and accessible renewable power.
Who's behind this campaign?
PutSolarOn.It is coordinated by the same people behind 350.org-but it's a collaboration between many partner organizations. If you'd like to get your organization involved, just email "solar [at] 350.org"
Aren't there already Solar Panels on the White House?
No. Jimmy Carter first installed solar panels on the White House roof in 1979 only to have them removed by Ronald Reagan a few years later. During the Bush administration, the National Park Service quietly installed three different sets of solar panels near the White House, including a set of 167 PV panels on a maintenance building outside the White House grounds, two solar thermal panels on the same maintenance shed, and a set of solar thermal panels on the President's cabana that helps heat water for the White House pool.
Lighting up the tool shed and heating the pool is good, but it's not the type of bold statement we're looking for. President Obama should put a large array of solar panels back on top of the White House, one of the most iconic buildings in the United States, and send a clear message to the nation that it's time to embrace a clean energy future.
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[text here below of resolution drafted by yours truly that should be on our County Legislature's Environmental Committee meeting agenda Sept. 7th-- co-sponsored by Co. Leg.'s Sandy Goldberg, Dan Kuffner, Barbara Jeter-Jackson, and Jim Doxsey]
WHEREAS, the choices of individuals and communities have powerful leverage, in the marketplace and the political realm; in the United Kingdom and Vermont, an intriguing energy-saving campaign is spreading virally with the support of national media, stars, and many engaged citizens; tt goes by the name 10:10-- a campaign to reduce carbon footprint and energy use 10% in the year 2010, and
WHEREAS, sixty-five thousand people and over 2,000 businesses are part of the campaign, which is endorsed and regularly covered in The Guardian; October 10, 2010 is the global launch of 10:10, and
WHEREAS, in the Hudson Valley, we have the makings of a similar campaign, the Ten Percent Challenge; Sustainable Hudson Valley has put this campaign together with a website, incentives and rewards, tools and support; the solar thermal company EarthKind Energy has generously pledged a free solar hot water system for the first community to achieve its 10% carbon reduction goals, and
WHEREAS, the Red Hook's Town Board recently voted to be a pilot community in the "10 Percent Challenge"; the "challenge" is a community effort over the next year to reduce both personal and business energy use by 10 percent; in Vermont the "10 Percent Challenge" has been embraced by IBM, Seventh Generation, Ben and Jerry's, the City of Burlington, and the Towns of Brattleboro, Charlotte, Middlebury, Underhill, and Williston, and
WHEREAS, a new group, Red Hook Together, which includes members from the Red Hook School District, town and village board members, the Chamber of Commerce and Bard College, is working to help make it happen; AmeriCorps volunteers are planning ten community events, and
WHEREAS, on October 10th Red Hook will kick off the project and take part in an "international movement for a roll-up-your-sleeves-work-party day"; the town will plant trees, hold a bike swap, have a composting workshop and host a half-marathon, and
WHEREAS, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record, and
WHEREAS, according to Sustainable Hudson Valley, American households generate 38% of the country's carbon footprint, which is 8% of the world's footprint and larger than that of any other country except China, and therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the Dutchess County Legislature officially declares October 10, 2010 "Dutchess County Ten Percent Challenge 350.org Work Party Day", and also enters Dutchess County into the Ten Percent Challenge, based on the good example of the Town of Red Hook, and be it further
RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be sent to our County Executive and our county's Departments of Planning and Development, Public Works, and Central Services.
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[kudos to Red Hook CAC's Brenda Cagle on this-- and Micki Strawinski and Harry Colgan up there too!]
The Red Hook Town Board actually unanimously passed this resolution June 23rd:
"Red Hook Town Board Resolution for Participation in and Commitment to 10% Challenge
Whereas the Town of Red Hook has become an Energy Smart Community and engaged in actions to reduce green house gases;
Whereas energy costs show no sign of failing;
Whereas the majority of Americans want swift action on climate change from government, businesses, and communities;
Whereas valuable local resources such as Central Hudson and NYSERDA are underutilized in helping communities reach real reductions in energy use while saving money;
Whereas Sustainable Hudson Valley has brought together resources in the form of the "10% Challenge" to support outreach, education, action, and results;
Whereas the different community interests and businesses stand to profit in products and services through the purchase of energy-efficient appliances and participation in rebate programs;
Whereas community members are looking to take action and get directly involved in combating climate change and building a clean energy economy;
Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Town of Red Hook will commit to the "10% Challenge" working with Sustainable Hudson Valley and identified local partners to:
1) achieve a 10% community-wide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions through energy-efficiency improvements, renewable energy installations, appliance upgrades, and other measurable actions in homes, businesses, and public institutions; and,
2) generate a base of leadership that includes at least 10% of the community to sustain and support reduction steps.
Commitment to the "10% Challenge" does not constitute a financial commitment, but the Town will make volunteer commitments to assist in energy and cost savings for its residents, institutions, and businesses and improve the quality of life for it's community. The Town of Red Hook Conservation Advisory Council will manage the "10% Challenge" and report monthly to the Town Board on the actions taken and progress achieved."
You're all cordially invited to join musicians Finn Shanahan, SalTed Bones (Sal Miccio, Ted Orr, Joe Bones), and Ann Perry-- along with Hudson Valley Clean Energy and EarthKind Solar-- and Roberta Schiff of the Mid-Hudson Vegetarian Society-- Sun. Oct. 10th at 2 pm at Rhinebeck Town Hall (80 E. Market St. there) for our third annual 350.org (Here Comes the Sun) Rally for a Green New Deal!...
Recall-- last Oct. 24th we mobilized 150 folks from all over to come out to join Pete Seeger for our Second Annual 350.org Rally for a Green New Deal as part of the International Day of Action on Climate Change at Holy Light Pentecostal Church in Poughkeepise-- joining Ned Sullivan of Scenic Hudson, William Schlesinger of the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, Eban Goodstein of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy, and Allison Morrill Chartrychan of Cornell Cooperative Extension's Environmental Program, and many more; we gathered 200 on Mid-Hudson Bridge for this in 2008 too...
[see: http://www.350.org/about/blogs/350-rally-green-new-deal ]
[I had Bill McKibben of http://www.350.org call into my WVKR 91.3 FM show about all this; over the past two years Rhinebeck High School Environmental Club Advisor Amy Christie and Rhinebeck's Jeff, Ethan, Isabel Romano and Raphael Notin have been involved working with me on this as well; need u!]
So far plans 10/10/10 Here Comes the Sun (3rd annual 350.org Rally for a Green New Deal) include:
-- a countywide Here Comes the Sun song contest for kids of all ages
-- a countywide Here Comes the Sun art contest for kids of all ages (including pinwheels/wind turbines)
-- a countywide Here Comes the Sun essay contest for kids of all ages (
-- plenty of live music being performed, vegetarian food, booths/exhibits on green energy solutions
[...and whatever other bright ideas you and others might have for this...]
Feedback, input, ideas, suggestions, all, please!...
[musicians especially-- if you can make it to join us for this 10/10/10 let us know]
And-- important-- can YOUR group co-sponsor this 10/10/10 event in Rhinebeck?...let us know!...
Pass it on...
Joel
876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
p.s. It's still EPA Pollution Prevention Week-- all the more reason for Dutchess to push for http://www.petitiononline.com/pacehere , http://www.petitiononline.com/zeroyes , http://www.PetitionOnline.com/NoDrill -- all a part of our 10/10/10 celebration as well!...(PACE and zero-waste mean serious cuts in carbon emissions while creating many more green jobs-- making drilling into Marcellus shale unneeded!)...
p.p.s. We're even brainstorming/mulling over plans for a community-wide (county-supported) Here Comes the Sun 10/10/10 parade from Rhinebeck Town Hall to the Rhinebeck Rec Park (where rec bldg. actually already has solar panels)......but we can't do this alone....interested?...let's do this!!!!....
p.p.p.s. On a related note-- just over the last month I've gotten Co. Leg.'s Sandy Goldberg, Dan Kuffner, Barbara Jeter-Jackson, and Jim Doxsey on board to co-sponsor my resolution below (scroll down all the way to bottom) for Dutchess County to follow great example of Red Hook: 10 Percent Challenge!...(our 10/10/10 event could also promote this locally and in county)...
[email all 25 of us at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us for that resolution to be passed in Sept.!]
[recall Aug. 16th Pok. Journal editorial on this; see info here from Sustainable Hudson Valley-- http://www.sustainhv.org/10pct-main (thx, Melissa E.!)...and http://www.10PercentChallenge.org ; thx to efforts from yours truly on this, SHV's Melissa Everett will soon be presenting on this to our County Legislature; sadly, a few weeks ago the current Dutchess Co. Leg. GOP majority killed our efforts to get our resolution on this passed this month]
From http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20100816/OPINION01/8160307/Editorial-3-cheers ...
Editorial: 3 cheers
AUGUST 16, 2010
To the Town of Red Hook's Town Board, voted to be a pilot community in the "10 Percent Challenge" (see http://www.10percentchallenge.org ). The "challenge" will be a community effort over the next year to reduce both personal and business energy use by 10 percent. A new group, Red Hook Together, which includes members from the Red Hook School District, town and village board members, the Chamber of Commerce and Bard College, is working to help make it happen. AmeriCorps volunteers will plan 10 community events. On Oct. 10, (10/10/10), Red Hook will kick off the project and take part in an "international movement for a roll-up-your-sleeves-work-party day"; the town will plant trees, hold a bike swap, have a composting workshop and host a half-marathon.
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From http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/news/oilspilltruth/Global-work-party/ ...
Global work party
Let's get to work to stop global warming
Page - August 4, 2010
We're teaming up with 350.org, 10:10, and a global coalition of folks doing something about climate change to create a global day of action: the 10/10/10 Work Party. Help us make October 10th the biggest single day of action against global warming that the world has ever seen.
1000+ Work Parties already planned. Find one in your area and RSVP today or add an action to the map below:
Add an action to the Global Work Party map!
10 Ideas For 10/10/10:
* 1. Organize a clean energy street party: Organize a street party where you invite experts to teach your community about energy efficiency, composting, growing your own food, and other ways to kick-start the energy revolution in your own home. Be really bold, and power any electronics at your party with solar panels or wind turbines.
* 2. Get your community to switch to clean energy: Research the renewable energy providers in your area and make a leaflet about it. Spread that information around your community, and in the run-up to 10/10, ask people, businesses and your town if they'll pledge to switch to clean energy. If the energy providers in your area don't offer green energy, have an event on October 10th to ask them to do so.
* 3. Veg out: Organize a dinner or picnic with friends and family who are not vegetarian and serve only vegetarian food. Get them to commit to go meat-free for one day a week.
* 4. Mass bike riding: Gather hundreds of your friends for a mass bike ride to show how a car-free community could look. Do even better by starting your ride at a BP gas station to protest offshore oil drilling.
* 5. Deliver a message about dirty fuels to Congress: Gather all your friends and deliver the 10 worst pictures from the Gulf oil spill to Congress saying "Your work's not done until we stop offshore drilling." Or have a few people dress up as oil spill "response" workers and ask "are these the only energy jobs you want to create?"
* 6. Tell our leaders to "get to work" for us, not dirty energy companies: Research how much money your candidates for Congress have received from dirty energy companies. Once you know how much they've taken from companies like BP, you can do things like:
* Deliver giant price tags or checks to politicians that say how much dirty energy money they've received.
* Invite candidates to events to sign on to a commitment not to take any more dirty energy money, or to give back what they've taken.
* Organize a rally, invite your member of Congress and ask him or her: "Do you work for the public or do you work for dirty energy?"
* 7. Organize an "Energy Solutions" rally or photo:
* Gather lots of people and go to a dirty energy facility near your home. Hold artistically created wind turbines or solar panels to show the contrast between clean and dirty energy.
* Stage a solar-powered concert or film screening.
* Set up an exhibit area featuring solar-powered lamps, solar cookers, solar-powered charging stations for laptops and mobile phone.
* Make sure you find out if you'll need a permit to do this legally.
* 8. Put solar on it: Well before 10/10/10, ask your local politician whether they will install solar energy and/or hot water systems on their roof on 10/10/10. If they agree, great! If they don't, you could pool community money to buy them one, and deliver it to the office.
* 9. Plant a tree: Plant a tree in front of a dirty energy facility. Better yet, gather 100 people and plant 100 trees, or a thousand! Do your homework first to make sure you find a spot where you can do this legally.
* 10. Show your politicians what we want: Make pinwheels to represent wind turbines and stand with them in front of your member of Congress's office, or organize a solar rally with people holding mirrors (like this one). Paint a sign or banner asking them to "Get to work for an Energy Revolution Now" sign.
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From http://www.350.org ...
The Invitation - 10/10/10
Dear World,
It's been a tough year: in North America, oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico; in Asia some of the highest temperatures ever recorded; in the Arctic, the fastest melting of sea ice ever seen; in Latin America, record rainfalls washing away whole mountainsides.
So we're having a party.
Circle 10/10/10 on your calendar. That's the date. The place is wherever you live. And the point is to do something that will help deal with global warming in your city or community.
We're calling it a Global Work Party, with emphasis on both 'work' and 'party'. In Auckland, New Zealand, they're having a giant bike fix-up day, to get every bicycle in the city back on the road. In the Maldives, they're putting up solar panels on the President's office. In Kampala, Uganda, they're going to plant thousands of trees, and in Bolivia they're installing solar stoves for a massive carbon neutral picnic.
Since we've already worked hard to call, email, petition, and protest to get politicians to move, and they haven't moved fast enough, now it's time to show that we really do have the tools we need to get serious about the climate crisis.
On 10/10/10 we'll show that we the people can do this--but we need bold energy policies from our political leaders to do it on a scale that truly matters. The goal of the day is not to solve the climate crisis one project at a time, but to send a pointed political message: if we can get to work, you can get to work too--on the legislation and the treaties that will make all our work easier in the long run.
You can sign up to host a local event at www.350.org/oct10
Or search for an event to join at www.350.org/map
And don't worry about being alone at this party: there are already 1077 groups in 109 countries around the world scheduled to do something great that day. We'll knit all these groups together with a powerful mosaic of photos, videos, and stories from around the world. You wouldn't want to miss it.
It's been a tough year-but it can be a beautiful day on the 10th Of October if we work together, and party together. And if we do it right, then we'll take a big step towards the kind of political solutions we desperately need.
Onwards!
Bill McKibben and the 350.org team
P.S.-If you feel a little shy, or wonder if you can really make a party work, check out these pictures from last year's Global Day of Action. There were 5200 demonstrations in 181 countries, which means an awful lot of folks like you figured out how to get it done!
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From http://www.putsolaron.it/ ...
Put Solar On It
FAQ
Why the focus on these leaders?
"Put Solar On It" is focusing on world leaders that are:
* Strategic for international climate negotiations.
* High-profile and symbolic.
* Potentially influenced by this kind of campaign.
That said, we've also setup a way for you to send your message to any world leader. Just visit www.PutSolarOn.It home page.
Why is 10/10/10 the date we're asking leaders to install solar panels?
10/10/10 is the "Global Work Party" - a day when communities all over the world will be installing clean energy and celebrating climate solutions. By keeping the focus on 10/10/10, we can make it clear that communities all over the world are getting to work building the clean energy economy-and we need our political leaders to join us in this effort.
Will this give leaders an easy way out, so they can put solar panels up but not have to take a bold stand on clean energy policy?
No-it will be very difficult for any leader to make this a purely symbolic action that is separate from a major policy initiative for clean energy. We're not just asking that they install solar panels on their roof-we demand that leaders "make it possible for everyone in your country to join you in the clean energy future." The last sentence of our call to action may well be the most important: "We need you to act symbolically-and then we need you to act for real."
What should those government clean energy policies look like?
The visibility of solar panels on government buildings is only the symbolic part of what we're demanding of our governments. After they hammer in solar panels, they need to step down off the roof and hammer out bold and comprehensive energy legislation, too. The best legislation depends on the country, and we rely on the expertise of partners in these countries for the best information, but all energy legislation should make sure it benefits people equitably. New energy legislation should include ways of removing the burden of dirty energy on poorer people and assist in lifting them out of energy poverty, providing cheap and accessible renewable power.
Who's behind this campaign?
PutSolarOn.It is coordinated by the same people behind 350.org-but it's a collaboration between many partner organizations. If you'd like to get your organization involved, just email "solar [at] 350.org"
Aren't there already Solar Panels on the White House?
No. Jimmy Carter first installed solar panels on the White House roof in 1979 only to have them removed by Ronald Reagan a few years later. During the Bush administration, the National Park Service quietly installed three different sets of solar panels near the White House, including a set of 167 PV panels on a maintenance building outside the White House grounds, two solar thermal panels on the same maintenance shed, and a set of solar thermal panels on the President's cabana that helps heat water for the White House pool.
Lighting up the tool shed and heating the pool is good, but it's not the type of bold statement we're looking for. President Obama should put a large array of solar panels back on top of the White House, one of the most iconic buildings in the United States, and send a clear message to the nation that it's time to embrace a clean energy future.
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[text here below of resolution drafted by yours truly that should be on our County Legislature's Environmental Committee meeting agenda Sept. 7th-- co-sponsored by Co. Leg.'s Sandy Goldberg, Dan Kuffner, Barbara Jeter-Jackson, and Jim Doxsey]
WHEREAS, the choices of individuals and communities have powerful leverage, in the marketplace and the political realm; in the United Kingdom and Vermont, an intriguing energy-saving campaign is spreading virally with the support of national media, stars, and many engaged citizens; tt goes by the name 10:10-- a campaign to reduce carbon footprint and energy use 10% in the year 2010, and
WHEREAS, sixty-five thousand people and over 2,000 businesses are part of the campaign, which is endorsed and regularly covered in The Guardian; October 10, 2010 is the global launch of 10:10, and
WHEREAS, in the Hudson Valley, we have the makings of a similar campaign, the Ten Percent Challenge; Sustainable Hudson Valley has put this campaign together with a website, incentives and rewards, tools and support; the solar thermal company EarthKind Energy has generously pledged a free solar hot water system for the first community to achieve its 10% carbon reduction goals, and
WHEREAS, the Red Hook's Town Board recently voted to be a pilot community in the "10 Percent Challenge"; the "challenge" is a community effort over the next year to reduce both personal and business energy use by 10 percent; in Vermont the "10 Percent Challenge" has been embraced by IBM, Seventh Generation, Ben and Jerry's, the City of Burlington, and the Towns of Brattleboro, Charlotte, Middlebury, Underhill, and Williston, and
WHEREAS, a new group, Red Hook Together, which includes members from the Red Hook School District, town and village board members, the Chamber of Commerce and Bard College, is working to help make it happen; AmeriCorps volunteers are planning ten community events, and
WHEREAS, on October 10th Red Hook will kick off the project and take part in an "international movement for a roll-up-your-sleeves-work-party day"; the town will plant trees, hold a bike swap, have a composting workshop and host a half-marathon, and
WHEREAS, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record, and
WHEREAS, according to Sustainable Hudson Valley, American households generate 38% of the country's carbon footprint, which is 8% of the world's footprint and larger than that of any other country except China, and therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the Dutchess County Legislature officially declares October 10, 2010 "Dutchess County Ten Percent Challenge 350.org Work Party Day", and also enters Dutchess County into the Ten Percent Challenge, based on the good example of the Town of Red Hook, and be it further
RESOLVED, that a copy of this resolution be sent to our County Executive and our county's Departments of Planning and Development, Public Works, and Central Services.
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[kudos to Red Hook CAC's Brenda Cagle on this-- and Micki Strawinski and Harry Colgan up there too!]
The Red Hook Town Board actually unanimously passed this resolution June 23rd:
"Red Hook Town Board Resolution for Participation in and Commitment to 10% Challenge
Whereas the Town of Red Hook has become an Energy Smart Community and engaged in actions to reduce green house gases;
Whereas energy costs show no sign of failing;
Whereas the majority of Americans want swift action on climate change from government, businesses, and communities;
Whereas valuable local resources such as Central Hudson and NYSERDA are underutilized in helping communities reach real reductions in energy use while saving money;
Whereas Sustainable Hudson Valley has brought together resources in the form of the "10% Challenge" to support outreach, education, action, and results;
Whereas the different community interests and businesses stand to profit in products and services through the purchase of energy-efficient appliances and participation in rebate programs;
Whereas community members are looking to take action and get directly involved in combating climate change and building a clean energy economy;
Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Town of Red Hook will commit to the "10% Challenge" working with Sustainable Hudson Valley and identified local partners to:
1) achieve a 10% community-wide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions through energy-efficiency improvements, renewable energy installations, appliance upgrades, and other measurable actions in homes, businesses, and public institutions; and,
2) generate a base of leadership that includes at least 10% of the community to sustain and support reduction steps.
Commitment to the "10% Challenge" does not constitute a financial commitment, but the Town will make volunteer commitments to assist in energy and cost savings for its residents, institutions, and businesses and improve the quality of life for it's community. The Town of Red Hook Conservation Advisory Council will manage the "10% Challenge" and report monthly to the Town Board on the actions taken and progress achieved."
four polls showing most Americans against war in Afghanistan...
Hi all...
Catch Frank Rich's "How Fox Betrayed Petraeus" column in yesterday's Times?...
Aside from Rich's usual brilliance-- in this case devoted to oft-ignored truths re: mosque in NYC (see below)...
Rich also tolds us that "in the latest CNN poll, American opposition is at an all-time high to both the ostensibly concluded war in Iraq (69 percent) and the endless one in Afghanistan (62 percent)."
[see: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22rich.html ; also
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/17/poll-opposition-to-iraq-afghanistan-wars-reach-all-time-high/ ]
[recall June ABC News/Washington Post poll showing 53% say war in Afghanistan "not worth fighting":
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51792 ]
And-- see these AP poll results from Fri.?...from http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/20-8 :
Poll: Nearly 6 in 10 oppose war in Afghanistan
Published on Friday, August 20, 2010 by Associated Press
by Glen Johnson
LAWRENCE, Mass. - A majority of Americans see no end in sight in Afghanistan, and nearly six in 10 oppose the nine-year-old war as President Barack Obama sends tens of thousands more troops to the fight, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.
With just over 10 weeks before nationwide elections that could define the remainder of Obama's first term, only 38 percent say they support his expanded war effort in Afghanistan - a drop from 46 percent in March. Just 19 percent expect the situation to improve during the next year, while 29 percent think it will get worse. Some 49 percent think it will remain the same.
The numbers could be ominous for the president and his Democratic Party, already feeling the heat for high unemployment, a slow economic recovery and a $1.3 trillion federal deficit. Strong dissent - 58 percent oppose the war - could depress Democratic turnout when the party desperately needs to energize its supporters for midterm congressional elections.
...and let's not forget these CBS News poll numbers from just last month...
From http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20010459-503544.html ...
July 13, 2010 6:30 PM
Poll: Most Want Afghanistan Withdrawal Timeline
Posted by Stephanie Condon
Most Americans continue to say things are going badly for the U.S. in Afghanistan, and those assessments are more pessimistic now than they were just two months ago, a new CBS News poll shows. Most Americans also want a timetable for withdrawal from the country. Today, the poll finds, 62 percent of Americans say the war is going badly, up from 49 percent in May. Just 31 percent say the war in Afghanistan is going well.
My point?...
This...
That for the good of our country...(and for good of Democratic party)...our troops should come home!...
If you agree, call Schumer, Gillibrand, Murphy, Hall, and Hinchey tomorrow at (866) 338-1015...
[yep-- they're payin' extra-special attention to every single call they get now-- runnin' for re-election!]
Pass it on...(and help out the good folks of DutchessPeace.org!)...
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
http://www.PoJoWatch.blogspot.com
p.s. This all, of course, is one more reason to join Rich Carlson (and often Pete Seeger) and I (along with Pat Lamanna, Doris Kelly, many more) Saturdays noon to 2 pm at our peace vigil in Pok./Wappinger at Rt. 9/9D corner and to join Fred Nagel et. al. Weds.'s 5-6 pm in heart of Rhinebeck!...
p.p.s. Check out http://www.NationalPriorities.org if you haven't yet, folks-- as it is now already Dutchess County taxpayers alone have spent well over $1.7 billion on war in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001...
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From yesterday's Times-- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22rich.html ...
OP-ED COLUMNIST
How Fox Betrayed Petraeus
By FRANK RICH
Published: August 21, 2010
THE "ground zero mosque," as you may well know by now, is not at ground zero. It's not a mosque but an Islamic cultural center containing a prayer room. It's not going to determine President Obama's political future or the elections of 2010 or 2012. Still, the battle that has broken out over this project in Lower Manhattan - on the "hallowed ground" of a shuttered Burlington Coat Factory store one block from the New York Dolls Gentlemen's Club - will prove eventful all the same. And the consequences will be far more profound than any midterm election results or any of the grand debates now raging 24/7 over the parameters of tolerance, religious freedom, and the real estate gospel of location, location, location.
Here's what's been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the "ground zero mosque" just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America's nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they're wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America's already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.
So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right - abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats - that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus's last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?
You'd think that American hawks invested in the Afghanistan "surge" would not act against their own professed interests. But they couldn't stop themselves from placing cynical domestic politics over country. The ginned-up rage over the "ground zero mosque" was not motivated by a serious desire to protect America from the real threat of terrorists lurking at home and abroad - a threat this furor has in all likelihood exacerbated - but by the potential short-term rewards of winning votes by pandering to fear during an election season.
We owe thanks to Justin Elliott of Salon for the single most revealing account of this controversy's evolution. He reports that there was zero reaction to the "ground zero mosque" from the front-line right or anyone else except marginal bloggers when The Times first reported on the Park51 plans in a lengthy front-page article on Dec. 9, 2009. The sole exception came some two weeks later at Fox News, where Laura Ingraham, filling in on "The O'Reilly Factor," interviewed Daisy Khan, the wife of the project's organizer, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Ingraham gave the plans her blessing. "I can't find many people who really have a problem with it," she said. "I like what you're trying to do."
As well Ingraham might. Rauf is no terrorist. He has been repeatedly sent on speaking tours by the Bush and Obama State Departments alike to promote tolerance in Arab and Muslim nations. As Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic reported last week, Rauf gave a moving eulogy at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan, at the Manhattan synagogue B'nai Jeshurun. Pearl's father was in attendance. The Park51 board is chock-full of Christians and Jews. Perhaps the most threatening thing about this fledgling multi-use community center, an unabashed imitator of the venerable (and Jewish) 92nd Street Y uptown, is its potential to spawn yet another coveted, impossible-to-get-into Manhattan private preschool.
In the five months after The Times's initial account there were no newspaper articles on the project at all. It was only in May of this year that the Rupert Murdoch axis of demagoguery revved up, jettisoning Ingraham's benign take for a New York Post jihad. The paper's inspiration was a rabidly anti-Islam blogger best known for claiming that Obama was Malcolm X's illegitimate son. Soon the rest of the Murdoch empire and its political allies piled on, promoting the incendiary libel that the "radical Islamists" behind the "ground zero mosque" were tantamount either to neo-Nazis in Skokie (according to a Wall Street Journal columnist) or actual Nazis (per Newt Gingrich).
These patriots have never attacked the routine Muslim worship services at another site of the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon. Their sudden concern for ground zero is suspect to those of us who actually live in New York. All but 12 Republicans in the House voted against health benefits for 9/11 responders just last month. Though many of these ground-zero watchdogs partied at the 2004 G.O.P. convention in New York exploiting 9/11, none of them protested that a fellow Republican, the former New York governor George Pataki, so bollixed up the management of the World Trade Center site that nine years on it still lacks any finished buildings, let alone a permanent memorial.
The Fox patron saint Sarah Palin calls Park51 a "stab in the heart" of Americans who "still have that lingering pain from 9/11." But her only previous engagement with the 9/11 site was when she used it as a political backdrop for taking her first questions from reporters nearly a month after being named to the G.O.P. ticket. (She was so eager to grab her ground zero photo op that she defied John McCain's just-announced "suspension" of their campaign.) Her disingenuous piety has been topped only by Bernie Kerik, who smuggled a Twitter message out of prison to register his rage at the ground zero desecration. As my colleague Clyde Haberman reminded us, such was Kerik's previous reverence for the burial ground of 9/11 that he appropriated an apartment overlooking the site (and designated for recovery workers) for an extramarital affair.
At the Islamophobia command center, Murdoch's News Corporation, the hypocrisy is, if anything, thicker. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial darkly cited unspecified "reports" that Park51 has "money coming from Saudi charities or Gulf princes that also fund Wahabi madrassas." As Jon Stewart observed, this brand of innuendo could also be applied to News Corp., whose second largest shareholder after the Murdoch family is a member of the Saudi royal family. Perhaps last week's revelation that News Corp. has poured $1 million into G.O.P. campaign coffers was a fiendishly clever smokescreen to deflect anyone from following the far greater sum of Saudi money (a $3 billion stake) that has flowed into Murdoch enterprises, or the News Corp. money (at least $70 million) recently invested in a Saudi media company.
Were McCain in the White House, Fox and friends would have kept ignoring Park51. But it's an irresistible target in our current election year because it revives the most insidious anti-Obama narrative of the many Fox promoted in the previous election year: Obama the closet Muslim and secret madrassa alumnus. In the much discussed latest Pew poll, a record number of Americans (nearing 20 percent) said that our Christian president practices Islam. And they do not see that as a good thing. Existing or proposed American mosques hundreds and even thousands of miles from ground zero, from Tennessee to Wisconsin to California, are now under siege.
After 9/11, President Bush praised Islam as a religion of peace and asked for tolerance for Muslims not necessarily because he was a humanitarian or knew much about Islam but because national security demanded it. An America at war with Islam plays right into Al Qaeda's recruitment spiel. This month's incessant and indiscriminate orgy of Muslim-bashing is a national security disaster for that reason - Osama bin Laden's "next video script has just written itself," as the former F.B.I. terrorist interrogator Ali Soufan put it - but not just for that reason. America's Muslim partners, those our troops are fighting and dying for, are collateral damage. If the cleric behind Park51 - a man who has participated in events with Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes, for heaven's sake - is labeled a closet terrorist sympathizer and a Nazi by some of the loudest and most powerful conservative voices in America, which Muslims are not?
In the latest CNN poll, American opposition is at an all-time high to both the ostensibly concluded war in Iraq (69 percent) and the endless one in Afghanistan (62 percent). Now, when the very same politicians and pundits who urge infinite patience for Afghanistan slime Muslims as Nazis, they will have to explain that they are not talking about Hamid Karzai or his corrupt narco-thug government or the questionably loyal Afghan armed forces our own forces are asked to entrust with their lives. The hawks will have to make the case that American troops should make the ultimate sacrifice to build a Nazi - Afghan, I mean - nation and that economically depressed taxpayers should keep paying for it. Good luck with that.
Poor General Petraeus. Over the last week he has been ubiquitous in the major newspapers and on television as he pursues a publicity tour to pitch the war he's inherited. But have you heard any buzz about what he had to say? Any debate? Any anything? No one was listening and no one cared. Everyone was too busy yelling about the mosque.
It's poignant, really. Even as America's most venerable soldier returned from the front to valiantly assume the role of Willy Loman, the product he was selling was being discredited and discontinued by his own self-proclaimed allies at home.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/20-8 ...
Poll: Nearly 6 in 10 oppose war in Afghanistan
Published on Friday, August 20, 2010 by Associated Press
by Glen Johnson
LAWRENCE, Mass. - A majority of Americans see no end in sight in Afghanistan, and nearly six in 10 oppose the nine-year-old war as President Barack Obama sends tens of thousands more troops to the fight, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.
With just over 10 weeks before nationwide elections that could define the remainder of Obama's first term, only 38 percent say they support his expanded war effort in Afghanistan - a drop from 46 percent in March. Just 19 percent expect the situation to improve during the next year, while 29 percent think it will get worse. Some 49 percent think it will remain the same.
The numbers could be ominous for the president and his Democratic Party, already feeling the heat for high unemployment, a slow economic recovery and a $1.3 trillion federal deficit. Strong dissent - 58 percent oppose the war - could depress Democratic turnout when the party desperately needs to energize its supporters for midterm congressional elections.
A majority of Americans do welcome Obama's decision to end combat operations in Iraq. Some 68 percent approve, a number unchanged from earlier this year. The last American combat brigade began leaving Iraq on Thursday, ahead of Obama's Aug. 31 deadline for ending the U.S. combat role there.
Seven years after that conflict began, 65 percent oppose the war in Iraq and just 31 percent favor it.
The growing frustration with the Afghanistan war was evident in Massachusetts' 5th Congressional District, not far from Concord where Minutemen fought for a new nation in 1775. In Lawrence, whose textile mills once relied on the roaring Merrimack River, exasperation with the war in Afghanistan is evident.
"If they could resolve the issue, stabilize the government, that would be good. But we can't do this forever and lose more lives," said Terry Landers, 53, an electrician from North Andover.
U.S. troops have suffered more than 1,100 deaths in Afghanistan since fighting began in October 2001, including a monthly record of 66 in July. Last fall, Obama authorized an increase in the force in Afghanistan by 30,000 to 100,000 troops - triple the level from 2008. Many in Congress are increasingly doubtful that the military effort can succeed without a tough campaign against bribery and graft that have eroded the Afghan people's trust in their government.
Opinions in the poll - and among those interviewed - were more positive about Iraq as Obama's deadline for the exit of U.S. combat forces approached.
"I think we really need to give them an opportunity to economically, socially grow," said Mary Campbell, 56, a Lawrence city worker. "I think it's more helpful if we're not in their face all the time, so the deadline is, I think, a good thing, to see how stable they are."
The congressional seat is held by Rep. Niki Tsongas, a Democrat who is the widow of a former senator and one of the party's 1992 presidential contenders, Paul Tsongas. Four Republicans and one independent are seeking to oust her in November, with the primary next month.
Lawrence has lost two sons in Iraq of the more than 4,400 Americans killed since fighting began in March 2003. Obama ran for president in part on a pledge to pull out of Iraq and divert U.S. resources to Afghanistan, and that shift has been accompanied by a changing death toll in each country.
The war views expressed in a Lawrence diner, in a park across from City Hall and at an Essex Street hot dog cart, were echoed by poll participants across the country.
Bea Boynton, 57, of Marysville, Pa., said she is less supportive of the wars than when Obama took office.
"I just think it's not going well. Too many of our men and women are being killed," she said of Afghanistan in particular.
Boynton, a registered Democrat who voted for Republican John McCain in 2008, added: "I don't think what we initially set out to do has been done. I mean, we still don't have (Osama) bin Laden."
Erika Hickert, 68, a retired school teacher in Maricopa, Ariz., said she is an independent who voted for Obama in 2008 and would do so again if given the chance. She felt the same about the wars.
"I'm just tired of taking care of the world," Hickert said. "They need to learn to take care of themselves, and war isn't the way to teach them."
She also doesn't distinguish between Iraq and Afghanistan, even with the conflict winding down in one while ramping up in the other.
"I think of them as one big conflict," said Hickert. "We're militarily supporting both of them."
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August 17, 2010
Poll: Opposition to Iraq, Afghanistan wars reach all time high
Posted: August 17th, 2010 10:18 AM ET
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/17/poll-opposition-to-iraq-afghanistan-wars-reach-all-time-high/ ]
(CNN) - Two-thirds of Americans favor President Obama's plan to remove combat troops from Iraq by the end of the month as opposition to the war in that country, as well as the one in Afghanistan, has climbed to new highs.
According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, Obama's withdrawal plan wins support not because Americans think the U.S. has achieved its goals in Iraq - only three in 10 feel that way - but because a majority believe that the U.S. will never achieve its goals in that country no matter how long troops remain there.
That's one reason why 69 percent oppose the war in Iraq - the highest amount of opposition in any CNN poll.
Meanwhile, 65 percent favor Obama's plan to remove most combat troops but keep 50,000 there for non-combat duties. Another 19 percent want the U.S. to remove all troops immediately; only 16 percent oppose Obama's plan because they would like to see U.S. troops remain in Iraq indefinitely.
Americans are also pessimistic about what will happen next in Iraq after combat troops are removed but don't feel the same way about what might occur in the U.S. Six in 10 say they are not confident in the Iraqi government's ability to handle the situation in that country. But only 28 percent say that removing U.S. troops from the country increases the chances of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Unpopularity with the war in Afghanistan also reached an all-time high in CNN polling with 62 percent saying they oppose it. Moreover, confidence in the Afghan government is even lower than it is for the Iraqi government. Seven in 10 Americans are not confident that Hamid Karzai's government can handle the situation there.
In an interview with NBC on Sunday, Gen. David Petraeus, the top general in Afghanistan, made clear that it will take a lot of time and commitment to achieve the overall goal of preventing Afghanistan from again becoming a haven for international terrorism.
"I didn't come out here to carry out a graceful exit or something like that," Petraeus said of taking command in Afghanistan this summer to replace ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
Petraeus also repeated the administration line on plans to begin withdrawing some troops from Afghanistan in August 2011, saying the "transition" will be based on conditions on the ground.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll surveyed 1,009 Americans between August 6 and 10 and carries a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Catch Frank Rich's "How Fox Betrayed Petraeus" column in yesterday's Times?...
Aside from Rich's usual brilliance-- in this case devoted to oft-ignored truths re: mosque in NYC (see below)...
Rich also tolds us that "in the latest CNN poll, American opposition is at an all-time high to both the ostensibly concluded war in Iraq (69 percent) and the endless one in Afghanistan (62 percent)."
[see: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22rich.html ; also
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/17/poll-opposition-to-iraq-afghanistan-wars-reach-all-time-high/ ]
[recall June ABC News/Washington Post poll showing 53% say war in Afghanistan "not worth fighting":
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51792 ]
And-- see these AP poll results from Fri.?...from http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/20-8 :
Poll: Nearly 6 in 10 oppose war in Afghanistan
Published on Friday, August 20, 2010 by Associated Press
by Glen Johnson
LAWRENCE, Mass. - A majority of Americans see no end in sight in Afghanistan, and nearly six in 10 oppose the nine-year-old war as President Barack Obama sends tens of thousands more troops to the fight, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.
With just over 10 weeks before nationwide elections that could define the remainder of Obama's first term, only 38 percent say they support his expanded war effort in Afghanistan - a drop from 46 percent in March. Just 19 percent expect the situation to improve during the next year, while 29 percent think it will get worse. Some 49 percent think it will remain the same.
The numbers could be ominous for the president and his Democratic Party, already feeling the heat for high unemployment, a slow economic recovery and a $1.3 trillion federal deficit. Strong dissent - 58 percent oppose the war - could depress Democratic turnout when the party desperately needs to energize its supporters for midterm congressional elections.
...and let's not forget these CBS News poll numbers from just last month...
From http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20010459-503544.html ...
July 13, 2010 6:30 PM
Poll: Most Want Afghanistan Withdrawal Timeline
Posted by Stephanie Condon
Most Americans continue to say things are going badly for the U.S. in Afghanistan, and those assessments are more pessimistic now than they were just two months ago, a new CBS News poll shows. Most Americans also want a timetable for withdrawal from the country. Today, the poll finds, 62 percent of Americans say the war is going badly, up from 49 percent in May. Just 31 percent say the war in Afghanistan is going well.
My point?...
This...
That for the good of our country...(and for good of Democratic party)...our troops should come home!...
If you agree, call Schumer, Gillibrand, Murphy, Hall, and Hinchey tomorrow at (866) 338-1015...
[yep-- they're payin' extra-special attention to every single call they get now-- runnin' for re-election!]
Pass it on...(and help out the good folks of DutchessPeace.org!)...
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
http://www.PoJoWatch.blogspot.com
p.s. This all, of course, is one more reason to join Rich Carlson (and often Pete Seeger) and I (along with Pat Lamanna, Doris Kelly, many more) Saturdays noon to 2 pm at our peace vigil in Pok./Wappinger at Rt. 9/9D corner and to join Fred Nagel et. al. Weds.'s 5-6 pm in heart of Rhinebeck!...
p.p.s. Check out http://www.NationalPriorities.org if you haven't yet, folks-- as it is now already Dutchess County taxpayers alone have spent well over $1.7 billion on war in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001...
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From yesterday's Times-- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/opinion/22rich.html ...
OP-ED COLUMNIST
How Fox Betrayed Petraeus
By FRANK RICH
Published: August 21, 2010
THE "ground zero mosque," as you may well know by now, is not at ground zero. It's not a mosque but an Islamic cultural center containing a prayer room. It's not going to determine President Obama's political future or the elections of 2010 or 2012. Still, the battle that has broken out over this project in Lower Manhattan - on the "hallowed ground" of a shuttered Burlington Coat Factory store one block from the New York Dolls Gentlemen's Club - will prove eventful all the same. And the consequences will be far more profound than any midterm election results or any of the grand debates now raging 24/7 over the parameters of tolerance, religious freedom, and the real estate gospel of location, location, location.
Here's what's been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the "ground zero mosque" just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America's nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they're wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America's already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.
So virulent is the Islamophobic hysteria of the neocon and Fox News right - abetted by the useful idiocy of the Anti-Defamation League, Harry Reid and other cowed Democrats - that it has also rendered Gen. David Petraeus's last-ditch counterinsurgency strategy for fighting the war inoperative. How do you win Muslim hearts and minds in Kandahar when you are calling Muslims every filthy name in the book in New York?
You'd think that American hawks invested in the Afghanistan "surge" would not act against their own professed interests. But they couldn't stop themselves from placing cynical domestic politics over country. The ginned-up rage over the "ground zero mosque" was not motivated by a serious desire to protect America from the real threat of terrorists lurking at home and abroad - a threat this furor has in all likelihood exacerbated - but by the potential short-term rewards of winning votes by pandering to fear during an election season.
We owe thanks to Justin Elliott of Salon for the single most revealing account of this controversy's evolution. He reports that there was zero reaction to the "ground zero mosque" from the front-line right or anyone else except marginal bloggers when The Times first reported on the Park51 plans in a lengthy front-page article on Dec. 9, 2009. The sole exception came some two weeks later at Fox News, where Laura Ingraham, filling in on "The O'Reilly Factor," interviewed Daisy Khan, the wife of the project's organizer, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Ingraham gave the plans her blessing. "I can't find many people who really have a problem with it," she said. "I like what you're trying to do."
As well Ingraham might. Rauf is no terrorist. He has been repeatedly sent on speaking tours by the Bush and Obama State Departments alike to promote tolerance in Arab and Muslim nations. As Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic reported last week, Rauf gave a moving eulogy at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan, at the Manhattan synagogue B'nai Jeshurun. Pearl's father was in attendance. The Park51 board is chock-full of Christians and Jews. Perhaps the most threatening thing about this fledgling multi-use community center, an unabashed imitator of the venerable (and Jewish) 92nd Street Y uptown, is its potential to spawn yet another coveted, impossible-to-get-into Manhattan private preschool.
In the five months after The Times's initial account there were no newspaper articles on the project at all. It was only in May of this year that the Rupert Murdoch axis of demagoguery revved up, jettisoning Ingraham's benign take for a New York Post jihad. The paper's inspiration was a rabidly anti-Islam blogger best known for claiming that Obama was Malcolm X's illegitimate son. Soon the rest of the Murdoch empire and its political allies piled on, promoting the incendiary libel that the "radical Islamists" behind the "ground zero mosque" were tantamount either to neo-Nazis in Skokie (according to a Wall Street Journal columnist) or actual Nazis (per Newt Gingrich).
These patriots have never attacked the routine Muslim worship services at another site of the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon. Their sudden concern for ground zero is suspect to those of us who actually live in New York. All but 12 Republicans in the House voted against health benefits for 9/11 responders just last month. Though many of these ground-zero watchdogs partied at the 2004 G.O.P. convention in New York exploiting 9/11, none of them protested that a fellow Republican, the former New York governor George Pataki, so bollixed up the management of the World Trade Center site that nine years on it still lacks any finished buildings, let alone a permanent memorial.
The Fox patron saint Sarah Palin calls Park51 a "stab in the heart" of Americans who "still have that lingering pain from 9/11." But her only previous engagement with the 9/11 site was when she used it as a political backdrop for taking her first questions from reporters nearly a month after being named to the G.O.P. ticket. (She was so eager to grab her ground zero photo op that she defied John McCain's just-announced "suspension" of their campaign.) Her disingenuous piety has been topped only by Bernie Kerik, who smuggled a Twitter message out of prison to register his rage at the ground zero desecration. As my colleague Clyde Haberman reminded us, such was Kerik's previous reverence for the burial ground of 9/11 that he appropriated an apartment overlooking the site (and designated for recovery workers) for an extramarital affair.
At the Islamophobia command center, Murdoch's News Corporation, the hypocrisy is, if anything, thicker. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial darkly cited unspecified "reports" that Park51 has "money coming from Saudi charities or Gulf princes that also fund Wahabi madrassas." As Jon Stewart observed, this brand of innuendo could also be applied to News Corp., whose second largest shareholder after the Murdoch family is a member of the Saudi royal family. Perhaps last week's revelation that News Corp. has poured $1 million into G.O.P. campaign coffers was a fiendishly clever smokescreen to deflect anyone from following the far greater sum of Saudi money (a $3 billion stake) that has flowed into Murdoch enterprises, or the News Corp. money (at least $70 million) recently invested in a Saudi media company.
Were McCain in the White House, Fox and friends would have kept ignoring Park51. But it's an irresistible target in our current election year because it revives the most insidious anti-Obama narrative of the many Fox promoted in the previous election year: Obama the closet Muslim and secret madrassa alumnus. In the much discussed latest Pew poll, a record number of Americans (nearing 20 percent) said that our Christian president practices Islam. And they do not see that as a good thing. Existing or proposed American mosques hundreds and even thousands of miles from ground zero, from Tennessee to Wisconsin to California, are now under siege.
After 9/11, President Bush praised Islam as a religion of peace and asked for tolerance for Muslims not necessarily because he was a humanitarian or knew much about Islam but because national security demanded it. An America at war with Islam plays right into Al Qaeda's recruitment spiel. This month's incessant and indiscriminate orgy of Muslim-bashing is a national security disaster for that reason - Osama bin Laden's "next video script has just written itself," as the former F.B.I. terrorist interrogator Ali Soufan put it - but not just for that reason. America's Muslim partners, those our troops are fighting and dying for, are collateral damage. If the cleric behind Park51 - a man who has participated in events with Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes, for heaven's sake - is labeled a closet terrorist sympathizer and a Nazi by some of the loudest and most powerful conservative voices in America, which Muslims are not?
In the latest CNN poll, American opposition is at an all-time high to both the ostensibly concluded war in Iraq (69 percent) and the endless one in Afghanistan (62 percent). Now, when the very same politicians and pundits who urge infinite patience for Afghanistan slime Muslims as Nazis, they will have to explain that they are not talking about Hamid Karzai or his corrupt narco-thug government or the questionably loyal Afghan armed forces our own forces are asked to entrust with their lives. The hawks will have to make the case that American troops should make the ultimate sacrifice to build a Nazi - Afghan, I mean - nation and that economically depressed taxpayers should keep paying for it. Good luck with that.
Poor General Petraeus. Over the last week he has been ubiquitous in the major newspapers and on television as he pursues a publicity tour to pitch the war he's inherited. But have you heard any buzz about what he had to say? Any debate? Any anything? No one was listening and no one cared. Everyone was too busy yelling about the mosque.
It's poignant, really. Even as America's most venerable soldier returned from the front to valiantly assume the role of Willy Loman, the product he was selling was being discredited and discontinued by his own self-proclaimed allies at home.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/20-8 ...
Poll: Nearly 6 in 10 oppose war in Afghanistan
Published on Friday, August 20, 2010 by Associated Press
by Glen Johnson
LAWRENCE, Mass. - A majority of Americans see no end in sight in Afghanistan, and nearly six in 10 oppose the nine-year-old war as President Barack Obama sends tens of thousands more troops to the fight, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.
With just over 10 weeks before nationwide elections that could define the remainder of Obama's first term, only 38 percent say they support his expanded war effort in Afghanistan - a drop from 46 percent in March. Just 19 percent expect the situation to improve during the next year, while 29 percent think it will get worse. Some 49 percent think it will remain the same.
The numbers could be ominous for the president and his Democratic Party, already feeling the heat for high unemployment, a slow economic recovery and a $1.3 trillion federal deficit. Strong dissent - 58 percent oppose the war - could depress Democratic turnout when the party desperately needs to energize its supporters for midterm congressional elections.
A majority of Americans do welcome Obama's decision to end combat operations in Iraq. Some 68 percent approve, a number unchanged from earlier this year. The last American combat brigade began leaving Iraq on Thursday, ahead of Obama's Aug. 31 deadline for ending the U.S. combat role there.
Seven years after that conflict began, 65 percent oppose the war in Iraq and just 31 percent favor it.
The growing frustration with the Afghanistan war was evident in Massachusetts' 5th Congressional District, not far from Concord where Minutemen fought for a new nation in 1775. In Lawrence, whose textile mills once relied on the roaring Merrimack River, exasperation with the war in Afghanistan is evident.
"If they could resolve the issue, stabilize the government, that would be good. But we can't do this forever and lose more lives," said Terry Landers, 53, an electrician from North Andover.
U.S. troops have suffered more than 1,100 deaths in Afghanistan since fighting began in October 2001, including a monthly record of 66 in July. Last fall, Obama authorized an increase in the force in Afghanistan by 30,000 to 100,000 troops - triple the level from 2008. Many in Congress are increasingly doubtful that the military effort can succeed without a tough campaign against bribery and graft that have eroded the Afghan people's trust in their government.
Opinions in the poll - and among those interviewed - were more positive about Iraq as Obama's deadline for the exit of U.S. combat forces approached.
"I think we really need to give them an opportunity to economically, socially grow," said Mary Campbell, 56, a Lawrence city worker. "I think it's more helpful if we're not in their face all the time, so the deadline is, I think, a good thing, to see how stable they are."
The congressional seat is held by Rep. Niki Tsongas, a Democrat who is the widow of a former senator and one of the party's 1992 presidential contenders, Paul Tsongas. Four Republicans and one independent are seeking to oust her in November, with the primary next month.
Lawrence has lost two sons in Iraq of the more than 4,400 Americans killed since fighting began in March 2003. Obama ran for president in part on a pledge to pull out of Iraq and divert U.S. resources to Afghanistan, and that shift has been accompanied by a changing death toll in each country.
The war views expressed in a Lawrence diner, in a park across from City Hall and at an Essex Street hot dog cart, were echoed by poll participants across the country.
Bea Boynton, 57, of Marysville, Pa., said she is less supportive of the wars than when Obama took office.
"I just think it's not going well. Too many of our men and women are being killed," she said of Afghanistan in particular.
Boynton, a registered Democrat who voted for Republican John McCain in 2008, added: "I don't think what we initially set out to do has been done. I mean, we still don't have (Osama) bin Laden."
Erika Hickert, 68, a retired school teacher in Maricopa, Ariz., said she is an independent who voted for Obama in 2008 and would do so again if given the chance. She felt the same about the wars.
"I'm just tired of taking care of the world," Hickert said. "They need to learn to take care of themselves, and war isn't the way to teach them."
She also doesn't distinguish between Iraq and Afghanistan, even with the conflict winding down in one while ramping up in the other.
"I think of them as one big conflict," said Hickert. "We're militarily supporting both of them."
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August 17, 2010
Poll: Opposition to Iraq, Afghanistan wars reach all time high
Posted: August 17th, 2010 10:18 AM ET
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/17/poll-opposition-to-iraq-afghanistan-wars-reach-all-time-high/ ]
(CNN) - Two-thirds of Americans favor President Obama's plan to remove combat troops from Iraq by the end of the month as opposition to the war in that country, as well as the one in Afghanistan, has climbed to new highs.
According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, Obama's withdrawal plan wins support not because Americans think the U.S. has achieved its goals in Iraq - only three in 10 feel that way - but because a majority believe that the U.S. will never achieve its goals in that country no matter how long troops remain there.
That's one reason why 69 percent oppose the war in Iraq - the highest amount of opposition in any CNN poll.
Meanwhile, 65 percent favor Obama's plan to remove most combat troops but keep 50,000 there for non-combat duties. Another 19 percent want the U.S. to remove all troops immediately; only 16 percent oppose Obama's plan because they would like to see U.S. troops remain in Iraq indefinitely.
Americans are also pessimistic about what will happen next in Iraq after combat troops are removed but don't feel the same way about what might occur in the U.S. Six in 10 say they are not confident in the Iraqi government's ability to handle the situation in that country. But only 28 percent say that removing U.S. troops from the country increases the chances of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
Unpopularity with the war in Afghanistan also reached an all-time high in CNN polling with 62 percent saying they oppose it. Moreover, confidence in the Afghan government is even lower than it is for the Iraqi government. Seven in 10 Americans are not confident that Hamid Karzai's government can handle the situation there.
In an interview with NBC on Sunday, Gen. David Petraeus, the top general in Afghanistan, made clear that it will take a lot of time and commitment to achieve the overall goal of preventing Afghanistan from again becoming a haven for international terrorism.
"I didn't come out here to carry out a graceful exit or something like that," Petraeus said of taking command in Afghanistan this summer to replace ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
Petraeus also repeated the administration line on plans to begin withdrawing some troops from Afghanistan in August 2011, saying the "transition" will be based on conditions on the ground.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll surveyed 1,009 Americans between August 6 and 10 and carries a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
took tour Thurs. of county jail; Dutchess needs to start thinking outside box...
Hi all...
Thursday I was lucky enough to once again take a tour through our county Jail with the rest of our County Legislature's Democratic Caucus (I had taken a similar tour once before several years ago)...
Thanks much to Jail Administrator George Krom and his assistant Todd Gdula for guiding us through; here's some of what they shared with us yesterday morning from the 292-bed facility (with 10-bed staging area and 8 medical beds):
"We asked for $3.2 million in housing-out costs for Dutchess County jail inmates for 2010-- we spent $350,000 just last month on housing out inmates to jails in other counties."
[recall, too Daily Freeman Aug. 7-- DC Jail looking for $3.5 million for "upgrades":
http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2010/08/07/news/doc4c5ce767b4a2f705919629.txt !]
"We have about 450 inmates-- with about 180 of those housed out-- at cost, on average, of about $80 a day, for each inmate housed out to another county's jail. Half are one-timers; the other half have multiple incarcerations; instead of just 5 or 6 new inmates being admitted daily now we get about 14 new inmates a day."
"'Use of force" reports have quadrupled recently; attacks on officers have become more frequent."
Even speaking to us from the much more humane Transitional Unit 23, they let us know that:
"Services aren't coming in here the way they're supposed to; toothaches turn into teeth being extracted because dentists don't have enough time paid for/allotted to see inmates because of the overcrowding-- and seemingly mentally ill inmates go without medications because psychiatrists don't have enough time paid for to see them as well."
One of the most telling comments I noted yesterday from Krom/Gdula was this-- in response to another county legislator's suggesting that perhaps the ongoing recession linked to jail overcrowding:
"It's for reasons you don't expect-- neighbors spatting, someone's out of work-- indirect result of economy-- it's even affecting the Town of Poughkeepsie."
And we also heard yesterday that-- in contrast to vast majority of inmates who used to be admitted of a nonviolent nature-- that "it used to be that they were just cold-- they'd come in for the winter"-- meaning that (as I've been saying for years, based on my sources in Poughkeepsie, including the homeless themselves)-- that homeless purposely have been arrested in past for "three hots and a cot"...more reason why Du. Co. should have housing-first-- http://www.PetitionOnline.com/House1st !...
[recall a few years ago-- when I got http://www.PathwaystoHousing.org to come to FPC for forum on this]
And then this morning I heard on WAMC Victoria Bruce being interviewed on her new book-- "Hostage Nation: Colombia's Guerrilla Arm and the Failed War on Drugs"...
[see: http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/subjects.pperl?cat=77 ]
[also see "Who Is Behind the 25,000 Deaths in Mexico?" by Charles Bowden and Molly Malloy 7/23/10:
http://www.thenation.com/article/37916/who-behind-25000-deaths-mexico
Something has to give folks-- we simply can afford no longer to not think outside the box on all this...
I am very much reminded of cover article for The Nation July 5th (shared with me by Larry Freedman):
"Is This the End of the War on Crime?" by Sasha Abramsky
http://www.thenation.com/article/end-war-crime?page=full [see just below-- this one's a must-read!]
My point?...
This-- that tackling this issue is nothing new for me...
[since '95 in particular I've been advocating for ATI's; see http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ATIs ; several years ago I brought Father Peter Young to FPC re: re-entry issue; see http://www.PYHIT.com ]
[...and earlier this year I convinced my caucus to support a resolution in our Co. Leg. to push Albany to fully fund preventive services for kids to address causes of crime-- http://www.FightCrime.org -- but, in spite of massive statewide coalition for this of sheriffs, police chiefs, DA's-- GOP killed it here, natch...]
[and of course there was no media coverage on GOP killing it-- http://www.PoJoWatch.blogspot.com ]
But we really and truly do need here in Dutchess County a ramped-up, public look at all this asap!...
Just looking at the issue of truly effective re-entry programs alone, they've been proven to save $$$:
http://www.vera.org/project/cost-benefit-analysis-ceo ;
http://www.mdrc.org/publications/529/overview.html ;
http://www.vera.org/news/vera-announces-creation-cost-benefit-knowledge-bank-new-national-resource-cost-effective-crimin .
Thanks to these local folks already working on this-- we need to make sure they have the resources!...
Dutchess Collaborative Re-Entry Project (Bonnie Allen and Family Services)
http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podcasts/14529
Coalition for Rehabilitation and Re-Entry (Amy and George Oliveras et. al.)
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/co_rr/signatures?page=1
Osbourne Association (kudos to Fred and Alice Bunnell for helping bring Osbourne to Poughkeepsie)
http://www.OsbourneNY.org
And why are we reading about this in North Carolina-- instead of here in NYS?...(re: FCIK Coalition)...
"N.C. Lawmakers Address Root Causes of Crime" by Kamika Dunlap [4/29/10]
http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2010/04/lawmakers-addresses-root-causes-of-crime-to-cut-costs.html
Of course there's also 800-pound gorilla in the room we can no longer afford to ignore: "war on drugs"...
On that note-- recall this from CBS News May 13th-- "War on Drugs Unsuccessful, Drug Czar Says"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/13/politics/main6480889.shtml ...
Check out http://www.LEAP.cc/ -- Law Enforcement Against Prohibition(!)...
...and folks at Common Sense Drug Policy too-- http://www.CSDP.org ; http://www.DrugWarFacts.org ...
Communities across the U.S. organizing against wasteful, ridiculous War on Drugs:
http://www.csdp.org/news/news/communities.htm ...
But check out this from http://www.LEAP.cc ...
LEAP Statement of Principles
1. LEAP does not promote the use of drugs and is deeply concerned about the extent of drug abuse worldwide. LEAP is also deeply concerned with the destructive impact of violent drug gangs and cartels everywhere in the world. Neither problem is remedied by the current policy of drug prohibition. Indeed, drug abuse and gang violence flourish in a drug prohibition environment, just as they did during alcohol prohibition.
In any case-- much food for thought-- including article just below from Sasha Abramsky on cost-saving successes in Hawaii, North Carolina, Oregon, etc....time for NYS!...(and-- Dutchess County)...
Several years ago Dutchess Justice was on top of all this; energetic group of young folks of all races...
...but Dutchess Justice hasn't met locally for several years now...
Let us know if you'd like to help re-build a newly revitalized Dutchess Justice group to take a whole new look from top to bottom of our county's criminal justice system-- for our taxpayers-- for kids-- for us all!...
[pass it on]
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
http://www.PoJoWatch.blogspot.com
p.s. If you don't want to wait 'til 2525 for action-- email countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us today!...
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From http://www.thenation.com/article/end-war-crime?page=full ...
Is This the End of the War on Crime?
June 16, 2010 | This article appeared in the July 5, 2010 edition of The Nation.
by Sasha Abramsky
For decades, progressive policy analysts and criminal justice reformers such as Jones have argued that state and federal antidrug and, more generally, "tough on crime" incarceration strategies were counterproductive: that they were dramatically reshaping American society, at a staggering fiscal and moral cost, and they weren't succeeding. Drug use remained commonplace, and high recidivism numbers for paroled prisoners suggested that prisons weren't remolding criminals into model citizens. Far better, they argued, to keep prisons as a last resort for the truly hardened, violent criminals and to invest more resources in less expensive, and more effective, alternatives to incarceration.
True, crime rates have fallen dramatically since the early 1990s, in part because of those higher incarceration rates. But most experts believe they fell in larger part because of demographic shifts, changes in policing practices and an easing of the crack epidemic. The drop-off in crime has, in turn, finally allowed a public slightly less scared of crime to be slightly more willing to look for nuance rather than sound bites when it comes to policy. It has created what Bart Lubow, a juvenile justice advocate with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, terms an "ideological space" for discussions of reform. "The overall context regarding crime policy," he says, "is much less hysterical than it was through most of the 1990s."
Faced with a growing body of evidence that carefully tailored rehabilitation models can reduce recidivism or drug use better than jails and prisons, and with a burgeoning crisis in local and state government finances, politicians and voters alike are turning their backs on basic tough-on-crime staples. Instead, they are looking for inspiration to programs such as the HOPE Project in Hawaii, the High Point project in North Carolina and an experiment in Multnomah County (home to Portland, Oregon) to divert low-end probation and parole violators to nonincarcerative settings. All these model programs view jail and prison sentences as a last option rather than a default, and swift responses to violations are considered more important than harsh ones. For reformers, it is a rare breath of fresh air.
"I think the criminal justice system is more under the microscope because of the fiscal situation," explains Mike Thompson, director of the New York-based Council of State Government's Justice Center. "Every state's facing fiscal problems, with the exception of North Dakota, and when you look at items where expenditures have risen in the last twenty years, corrections jumps out at you."
Around the country, legislators are essentially asking how they can get more bang for the bucks they spend fighting crime, drug use, mental illness and so on. And they're willing to consult reformers they would have shunned in the recent past as irredeemably "soft" on crime. "Nobody can sit here and say things are fine," argues Jones. "Something has to give. Now we can sit at the table with people we couldn't previously work with and say, 'What are you willing to give?' We are literally writing this narrative as we go."
In Texas a $600 million prison-expansion plan was shelved in 2007 in favor of a $241 million plan expanding community-based drug and alcohol treatment services, after researchers convinced legislators that the latter would lower crime rates more than expanding the state's penal infrastructure. As a result, the notoriously prison-tough Lone Star State, whose leaders used to boast about its extraordinarily high incarceration rate, is implementing some of the country's most innovative reforms, creating a network of in-prison and post-prison residential drug treatment and DWI centers, mental health facilities, halfway houses for inmates being released onto parole, and nonjail residential settings for low-end parole violators. In 2009 the state's prison population declined, perhaps signaling the start of a reversal of nearly four decades of expansion, which saw the Lone Star State's prison numbers grow from just shy of 16,000 in 1972 to more than 170,000 in 2008. Texas joined twenty-five other states that saw reductions in the size of their inmate population last year.
In Kansas legislators approved a large investment in drug treatment programs and services for parolees designed to stop so many offenders from simply cycling back into prison after their release. The result was a drop in Kansas's prison population significant enough to allow the state to close several facilities.
Michigan recently reformed its prisoner-release process to allow for shorter sentences, winning accolades from the ACLU in the process. The state closed eight prisons as a result and invested some of the $250 million savings expected to be generated over a five-year period in an expanded network of mental health and job training services, as well as drug treatment programs.
All told, ten states have embraced "justice reinvestment" strategies such as this, reducing prison spending, investing a portion of the savings in more effective anticrime infrastructure and using the remainder of the savings to plug gaps elsewhere in their budgets. As this model spreads, says Thompson optimistically, we'll get more results-oriented policy-making than we've had in the past. "These are bipartisan, data-driven approaches: figure out what's driving the [prison population] growth and what can be done differently."
Even states that haven't formally adopted such a reinvestment strategy are, of necessity, being pushed in this direction. In California, home to the country's largest state prison population as well as the country's most dysfunctional state budget process, the combination of federal injunctions against overcrowding and the worst fiscal crunch since the Great Depression has brought the race to incarcerate of the past quarter-century to an end. Over the next several years, to the dismay of politicians who have built careers on being tough on crime, the prison population, which stands at around 170,000, will be reduced by several tens of thousands, with more emphasis on parole, probation and local drug treatment.
New Mexico recently enacted a law banning employers from asking job applicants if they have a felony record. An increasing number of states, including conservative bastions like Alabama and Louisiana, are restructuring their juvenile justice systems to move away from incarceration. Drug and mental health courts are channeling more offenders into structured treatment. And many states are rolling back their most restrictive truth-in-sentencing provisions, allowing low-level offenders to return to their communities after serving only a small percentage of their sentences behind bars.
Some states and localities are also starting to invest in restorative justice models, putting offenders to work to repair the damage they caused the community rather than simply warehousing them in prisons.
Father George Horan, co-director of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles's Office of Restorative Justice, has spent a lifetime watching youngsters do stupid things and, as a result, ruin their lives. He has seen generations of kids graduate from being troubled children to hardened prisoners. And he has grown increasingly cynical about the ability of penal institutions to solve ingrained social problems. Far better, he has come to believe, to sit nonviolent offenders down with their families, teachers, peers, even victims, and force them to come to terms with the consequences of their actions.
Horan, 64, has a ruddy complexion and dresses casually. From his small office in the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lincoln Heights, a bleak industrial area of Los Angeles just north of downtown, he works to help delinquent teens, many of them gang members, establish more productive bonds with their communities. When three teens broke into their school a few years back and trashed it, the Office of Restorative Justice persuaded the trial judge to consider a restorative justice solution. The kids had to face their principal and fellow students; they had to pay for the damage; and they had to spend their weekends doing community service at the school-cleaning classrooms, doing basic maintenance work, sweeping autumn leaves. The principal, recalls Horan, took the kids out to lunch, got to know them and encouraged them to attend to their studies. "She said the next year they were the three best kids in the school. What a better result than sending the kids to juvenile hall. They turned their lives around."
Horan is aware of the limitations of this strategy-he tried the same approach when three boys set fire to his church door, but this time the prosecutor insisted on seeking prison terms. Politically, he says, it would be next to impossible for prosecutors to embrace restorative justice for violent criminals. But Horan believes restorative justice models have to play a part in any revamping of America's criminal justice system. "Always, the first step is, the person has to take responsibility for what they did. That's the cornerstone," he explains. "What can a person do to heal the victim and heal the community?"
Meanwhile, extending the first-do-no-harm principles of the restorative justice movement, a growing number of politicians have started to identify sky-high African-American incarceration rates as a civil rights issue that, in tandem with high crime rates in poor communities, serves up a double whammy to already devastated neighborhoods. As a result, they have begun pushing legislation that characterizes the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans as a problem. Connecticut recently passed a "racial impact statement" law mandating all major legislative proposals for the criminal justice system be studied for their racial impact. Other states, looking for ways to preserve public safety without inflicting the kind of collateral damage on communities that mass incarceration unleashes, will likely follow suit.
No part of the criminal justice system has had more of a racially skewed impact than America's antidrug strategy. Over the decades, millions of young Americans, mainly poor and disproportionately black and brown, have been arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to jail or prison for their involvement with the drug trade. It has been a staggering exercise in futility.
Yet these days, the "war on drugs," which Barack Obama denounced as an utter failure during his presidential campaign, is showing the fragility of old age. At the urging of the Obama administration and top Justice Department officials, Congress is working to eliminate the infamous crack and powder-cocaine sentencing disparities. And over the next few years, the Justice Department's Task Force on Sentencing Reform will likely recommend more proportionate sentencing for many drug offenses.
The era of "Lock 'em up and throw away the key" seems, slowly, to be drawing to a close. And over the next few decades, that will likely have the effect of gradually drawing down the size of the bloated prison population. Even seasoned conservative voices are cognizant of the winds of change.
"My attitude has always been, speed and certainty are crucial aspects of running a criminal justice system, not length of sentence," argues James Q. Wilson, at one time the country's most influential conservative criminologist. "Many sentences could be shortened without endangering public safety."
Wilson, who rose to intellectual fame as President Nixon's favorite sociologist and later became known as the philosophical father of the Broken Windows policing theory, doesn't regret his role in developing ideas that helped contribute to America's mass incarceration experiment. But he also doesn't think that mass incarceration is, or should be, an end in itself. If there are alternatives that have at least as powerful an effect on reducing the crime rate, Wilson, an empiricist, believes they should be tried.
Parole and probation systems should be reformed, he argues, so that violators are dealt with quickly and minor violators, such as those who fail a urine drug test, receive "a swift but very short penalty-a weekend in jail, a week in jail. It need not be returning people to serve a full prison term."
Changes in drug policy don't stop with shortening sentences, however. The administration recently lifted the ban on federal funding for needle-exchange programs-long a bugbear of drug-treatment and public health professionals. And for the first time since the 1970s, marijuana legalization movements are gaining traction at the state level. Californians will vote in November on a ballot measure to legalize pot, and preliminary polling indicates it could well pass. The initiative is buttressed by a number of politicians, like Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and State Senator Mark Leno, who have argued that legalizing marijuana would allow California to tax the lucrative market. Other states could follow in California's wake.
"People are now making a lawful income from cannabis here in California and other states," argues 57-year-old Chris Conrad, of the marijuana-advocacy newspaper West Coast Leaf, at a hummus-and-wine soiree to celebrate the opening of the Drug Policy Alliance's swank new downtown San Francisco offices. Conrad is talking about how the medical marijuana industry is increasingly using its clout to push for broader, across-the-board rollbacks of pot prohibition. "They can put that money back to invest in change. The idea is, it should be brought under control and tax revenue brought in. The whole financial argument is only going to get better. I think the drug war is fatally flawed, and it's doomed. It's just a matter of time; it could be five years, it could be twenty years. But prohibition doesn't work. It creates crime; it doesn't solve crime."
A few years ago Conrad would have been a countercultural refugee on the hippie fringe; these days, he and his ideas are increasingly mainstream. In fact, the attendees at the party oozed their radical-chic credentials; they were lawyers, doctors, politicians, consultants, businessmen. "The trend is for people to regulate rather than prohibit," asserted Doug Linney, the well-coiffed, sharp-dressed campaign consultant for the legalization initiative. "They see the current drug wars aren't working, especially regarding marijuana. There's an interest in changing it, especially because of the state's finances."
Cumulatively, all of these changes are bearing significant fruit. For the first time since the Nixon era, America's prison population is shrinking. In 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the prison population fell in twenty states; in 2009 it fell in twenty-six states; and that trend is likely to continue in 2010. Moreover, as the number of drug-related sentences has declined slightly, so too has the appallingly high African-American incarceration rate edged slightly downward, off 9 percent from its peak a few years back. The gears of what journalist Joel Dyer, in the 1990s, tellingly labeled a "perpetual prisoner machine"-a self-sustaining interaction of conservative criminal justice lobbies, political opportunism, popular tough-on-crime sentiments, the economic needs of depressed prison towns and media sensationalism-seem finally to have gotten gummed up. Ironically, the federal government, which did so much to shift the country in a more conservative criminal justice direction for nearly fifty years, seems quite content to let the gears stay locked.
Most decisions about the criminal justice system are made at the state level. Despite the near-tenfold growth in the population of federal prison inmates since 1980, less than 10 percent of all inmates are serving federal sentences. But the federal government does perform some vital roles: it allocates resources directly (by, for example, patrolling the border and exporting the "war on drugs") and indirectly (by granting money to localities and states to set up antidrug task forces, funding drug and mental health treatment services, and putting more police on the streets). It creates overarching legal parameters within which states must operate (federal drug laws supersede state ones, which means that if California legalizes marijuana, for example, theoretically it would be setting up a conflict with DC). Perhaps most important, the federal government sets the tone for national conversations on crime and delinquency.
When it comes to tone-setting, sometimes what isn't said by federal officials is as important as what is. Over the past couple of years, President Obama's drug czar, ex-Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske, has chosen not to follow his predecessors with regard to medical marijuana. Whereas John Walters, Bush's drug czar, testified across the country against state medical marijuana laws, Kerlikowske has stayed silent. The effect, says Drug Policy Alliance executive director Ethan Nadelmann, has been to send a "green light to the states that they could have the freedom to go their own way on this."
Kerlikowske, Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama himself steer clear of talking about the "war on drugs," and they generally don't use sound bites to trumpet their "tough" credentials when it comes to tackling the complex problem of crime.
But what is being said is also fascinating. "Too many of our citizens have come to have doubts about our criminal justice system," Holder told a Congressional Black Caucus symposium on June 24, 2009. "We must be honest with each other and have the courage to ask difficult questions of ourselves and our system. We must break out of the old and tired partisan stances that have stood in the way of needed progress and reform. We have a moment in time that must be seized in order to ensure that all of our citizens are treated in a way that is consistent with the ideals embodied in our founding documents. This Department of Justice is prepared to act."
Indeed, in a series of key speeches over the past year, Holder has delivered a commitment, unprecedented in recent decades, to use the might of the Justice Department to ensure a fairer, less coercive criminal justice system. Addressing the NAACP in July 2009, the attorney general talked of the devastating harm that harsh drug sentences have caused in poor communities. "It is not justice," he declared, "to continue our adherence to a sentencing scheme that disproportionately affects some Americans, and some communities, more severely than others."
The previous week, he told an audience at the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based think tank, that "getting smart on crime requires talking honestly about which policies have worked and which have not, without fear of being labeled as too hard or, more likely, too soft on crime. Getting smart on crime means moving beyond useless labels and instead embracing science and data, and relying on them to shape policy. And it means thinking about crime in context-not just reacting to the criminal act but developing the government's ability to enhance public safety before the crime is committed and after the former offender is returned to society." Taking their cue from Holder, a slew of top officials have begun revamping the language they use to discuss crime and punishment.
As Kerlikowske explained to The Nation in March, shortly after he returned from a UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna, the country should not continue to think of drugs merely as a public safety problem but should start to see them as a public health problem. "My colleagues, I never heard them talk of a war on drugs," he said. "I've heard elected officials talk about it, but not police chiefs, sheriffs or prosecutors. They talk about it with the complexity the problem deserves."
In reshaping the national discourse on drugs, Kerlikowske touts his law enforcement credentials. He's a tough guy, a strong policeman with thirty-seven years on the job, and he knows he commands respect. "For me, it's a little bit like Nixon going to China," he explains. Kerlikowske has "very little concern about being labeled soft on drugs." And so he wants to talk about being "smart on drugs," instead of merely "tough." In fact, when he explains his mandate, the country's drug czar is more comfortable using the language of public health professionals than political posturers. "The 'war on drugs' was a simplistic answer to this really complex problem," he says. "We have to look at talking about addiction as a disease rather than a moral failure or saying people should just stop using drugs."
For the first time in more than forty years, criminal justice trends are starting to move in a sensible direction. At the local and state levels, fiscal necessity is forcing a rethink when it comes to incarceration strategies. And at the federal level, the politics that allowed George H.W. Bush to batter Michael Dukakis with images of Willie Horton, Bill Clinton to sign an execution warrant on the brain-damaged Ricky Ray Rector and George W. Bush to push glibly for more teens to be tried and sentenced as adults is taking a back seat to smart, holistic thinking.
"Everyone I talk to around the country has been affected by drugs," Kerlikowske says. "But it's not talked about the same way as if you had a member of your family having cancer-or even alcoholism. When I look at the drug problem, what it costs in healthcare costs, police-community relations, the Southwest border, foreign relations-every one of those things, drugs are a part. If we could recognize how inextricably linked to all of these issues drug consumption and addiction is, if we could work to address it with the complexity it deserves, that would make more sense than holding a press conference and showing a ton of cocaine or five people led out in handcuffs."
Of all the changes in tone brought about by Obama's election, in the long run few will be more significant to the country's well-being than those around criminal justice and drugs. Without a whole lot of fanfare, the administration is laying the foundations for a new criminal justice system model that might, conceivably, end America's morally disastrous, fiscally ruinous, four-decade-long experimentation with mass incarceration.
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[why aren't we reading about this in NYS?......(instead of in NC)]
http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2010/04/lawmakers-addresses-root-causes-of-crime-to-cut-costs.html
N.C. Lawmakers Address Root Causes of Crime
By Kamika Dunlap on April 29, 2010 12:50 PM | No TrackBacks
By participating in the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, North Carolina lawmakers are trying to address the root causes of crime in order to cut costs and keep the public safe.
Lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties agree that the state must get smart on crime and begin to implement more data-driven solutions through the new Justice Reinvestment program, according to the News & Observer.
The state will work with the U.S. Justice Department, the national Council of State Governments Justice Center and the nonprofit Pew Center on the States to look at the root causes of crime, ways to lower recidivism rates and manage the offender population.
Similar programs have been rolled out in states such as Texas and Michigan. North Carolina is hoping to benefit from the research expertise gained in those states.
According to the latest data, North Carolina's state prison population grew by one quarter between 2000 and 2008, while spending on corrections nearly doubled.
North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue said that the state cannot afford spend money on prisons and corrections at that rate over the next decade. Instead, the state should spend the money on education and jobs.
The Justice Reinvestment Initiative uses mapping technology, which helps to provide geographic analyses to pinpoint which neighborhoods receive people released from prison and how state spending on programs often converges on the same families and communities.
The project could take one to three years to roll out in North Carolina. Justice Reinvestment program staff and other experts will review prison, probation and court data from North Carolina and then provide options to elected leaders on how to better treat and track offenders and build fewer prisons.
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From http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/13/politics/main6480889.shtml ...
MEXICO CITY, May 13, 2010
War on Drugs Unsuccessful, Drug Czar Says
Violent, Four-Decade-Long Campaign Against Drug Cartels, Drug Use Hasn't Stopped Country's Addiction
(AP) Four decades after President Nixon declared war on drugs, more Americans use them and drug-related violence has gotten worse. This is the first in an occasional series of reports by The Associated Press examining why the drug war failed and why the U.S. and Mexico continue to fight a losing battle.
After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.
Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked.
"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."
This week President Obama promised to "reduce drug use and the great damage it causes" with a new national policy that he said treats drug use more as a public health issue and focuses on prevention and treatment.
Nevertheless, his administration has increased spending on interdiction and law enforcement to record levels both in dollars and in percentage terms; this year, they account for $10 billion of his $15.5 billion drug-control budget.
Kerlikowske, who coordinates all federal anti-drug policies, says it will take time for the spending to match the rhetoric.
"Nothing happens overnight," he said. "We've never worked the drug problem holistically. We'll arrest the drug dealer, but we leave the addiction."
His predecessor, John P. Walters, takes issue with that.
Walters insists society would be far worse today if there had been no War on Drugs. Drug abuse peaked nationally in 1979 and, despite fluctuations, remains below those levels, he says. Judging the drug war is complicated: Records indicate marijuana and prescription drug abuse are climbing, while cocaine use is way down. Seizures are up, but so is availability.
"To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven't made any difference is ridiculous," Walters said. "It destroys everything we've done. It's saying all the people involved in law enforcment, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. It's saying all these people's work is misguided."
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In 1970, hippies were smoking pot and dropping acid. Soldiers were coming home from Vietnam hooked on heroin. Embattled President Nixon seized on a new war he thought he could win.
"This nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people," Mr. Nixon said as he signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. The following year, he said: "Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive."
His first drug-fighting budget was $100 million. Now it's $15.1 billion, 31 times Mr. Nixon's amount even when adjusted for inflation.
Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where that money went, and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. In 40 years, taxpayers spent more than:
* $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico - and the violence along with it.
* $33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America's youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily" since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.
* $49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.
* $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.
* $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses.
At the same time, drug abuse is costing the nation in other ways. The Justice Department estimates the consequences of drug abuse - "an overburdened justice system, a strained health care system, lost productivity, and environmental destruction" - cost the United States $215 billion a year.
Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing taxpayers get for more spending on police and soldiers is more homicides.
"Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use," Miron said, "but it's costing the public a fortune."
From the beginning, lawmakers debated fiercely whether law enforcement - no matter how well funded and well trained - could ever defeat the drug problem.
Then-Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, who had his doubts, has since watched his worst fears come to pass.
"Look what happened. It's an ongoing tragedy that has cost us a trillion dollars. It has loaded our jails and it has destabilized countries like Mexico and Colombia," he said.
In 1970, proponents said beefed-up law enforcement could effectively seal the southern U.S. border and stop drugs from coming in. Since then, the U.S. used patrols, checkpoints, sniffer dogs, cameras, motion detectors, heat sensors, drone aircraft - and even put up more than 1,000 miles of steel beam, concrete walls and heavy mesh stretching from California to Texas.
None of that has stopped the drugs. The Office of National Drug Control Policy says about 330 tons of cocaine, 20 tons of heroin and 110 tons of methamphetamine are sold in the United States every year - almost all of it brought in across the borders. Even more marijuana is sold, but it's hard to know how much of that is grown domestically, including vast fields run by Mexican drug cartels in U.S. national parks.
The dealers who are caught have overwhelmed justice systems in the United States and elsewhere. U.S. prosecutors declined to file charges in 7,482 drug cases last year, most because they simply didn't have the time. That's about one out of every four drug cases.
The United States has in recent years rounded up thousands of suspected associates of Mexican drug gangs, then turned some of the cases over to local prosecutors who can't make the charges stick for lack of evidence. The suspects are then sometimes released, deported or acquitted. The U.S. Justice Department doesn't even keep track of what happens to all of them.
In Mexico, traffickers exploit a broken justice system. Investigators often fail to collect convincing evidence - and are sometimes assassinated when they do. Confessions are beaten out of suspects by frustrated, underpaid police. Judges who no longer turn a blind eye to such abuse release the suspects in exasperation.
In prison, in the U.S. or Mexico, traffickers continue to operate, ordering assassinations and arranging distribution of their product even from solitary confinement in Texas and California. In Mexico, prisoners can sometimes even buy their way out.
The violence spans Mexico. In Ciudad Juarez, the epicenter of drug violence in Mexico, 2,600 people were killed last year in cartel-related violence, making the city of 1 million across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, one of the world's deadliest. Not a single person was prosecuted for homicide related to organized crime.
And then there's the money.
The $320 billion annual global drug industry now accounts for 1 percent of all commerce on the planet.
A full 10 percent of Mexico's economy is built on drug proceeds - $25 billion smuggled in from the United States every year, of which 25 cents of each $100 smuggled is seized at the border. Thus there's no incentive for the kind of financial reform that could tame the cartels.
"For every drug dealer you put in jail or kill, there's a line up to replace him because the money is just so good," says Walter McCay, who heads the nonprofit Center for Professional Police Certification in Mexico City.
McCay is one of the 13,000 members of Medford, Mass.-based Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of cops, judges, prosecutors, prison wardens and others who want to legalize and regulate all drugs.
A decade ago, no politician who wanted to keep his job would breathe a word about legalization, but a consensus is growing across the country that at least marijuana will someday be regulated and sold like tobacco and alcohol.
California voters decide in November whether to legalize marijuana, and South Dakota will vote this fall on whether to allow medical uses of marijuana, already permitted in California and 13 other states. The Obama administration says it won't target marijuana dispensaries if they comply with state laws.
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Mexican President Felipe Calderon says if America wants to fix the drug problem, it needs to do something about Americans' unquenching thirst for illegal drugs.
Kerlikowske agrees, and Mr. Obama has committed to doing just that.
And yet both countries continue to spend the bulk of their drug budgets on law enforcement rather than treatment and prevention.
"President Obama's newly released drug war budget is essentially the same as Bush's, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal justice system as to treatment and prevention," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. "This despite Obama's statements on the campaign trail that drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue."
Mr. Obama is requesting a record $15.5 billion for the drug war for 2011, about two thirds of it for law enforcement at the front lines of the battle: police, military and border patrol agents struggling to seize drugs and arrest traffickers and users.
About $5.6 billion would be spent on prevention and treatment.
"For the first time ever, the nation has before it an administration that views the drug issue first and foremost through the lens of the public health mandate," said economist and drug policy expert John Carnevale, who served three administrations and four drug czars. "Yet ... it appears that this historic policy stride has some problems with its supporting budget."
Carnevale said the administration continues to substantially over-allocate funds to areas that research shows are least effective - interdiction and source-country programs - while under-allocating funds for treatment and prevention.
Kerlikowske, who wishes people would stop calling it a "war" on drugs, frequently talks about one of the most valuable tools they've found, in which doctors screen for drug abuse during routine medical examinations. That program would get a mere $7.2 million under Mr. Obama's budget.
"People will say that's not enough. They'll say the drug budget hasn't shifted as much as it should have, and granted I don't disagree with that," Kerlikowske said. "We would like to do more in that direction."
Fifteen years ago, when the government began telling doctors to ask their patients about their drug use during routine medical exams, it described the program as one of the most proven ways to intervene early with would-be addicts.
"Nothing happens overnight," Kerlikowske said.
Until 100 years ago, drugs were simply a commodity. Then Western cultural shifts made them immoral and deviant, according to London School of Economics professor Fernanda Mena.
Religious movements led the crusades against drugs: In 1904, an Episcopal bishop returning from a mission in the Far East argued for banning opium after observing "the natives' moral degeneration." In 1914, The New York Times reported that cocaine caused blacks to commit "violent crimes," and that it made them resistant to police bullets. In the decades that followed, Mena said, drugs became synonymous with evil.
Mr. Nixon drew on those emotions when he pressed for his War on Drugs.
"Narcotics addiction is a problem which afflicts both the body and the soul of America," he said in a special 1971 message to Congress. "It comes quietly into homes and destroys children, it moves into neighborhoods and breaks the fiber of community which makes neighbors. We must try to better understand the confusion and disillusion and despair that bring people, particularly young people, to the use of narcotics and dangerous drugs."
Just a few years later, a young Barack Obama was one of those young users, a teenager smoking pot and trying "a little blow when you could afford it," as he wrote in "Dreams From My Father." When asked during his campaign if he had inhaled the pot, he replied: "That was the point."
So why persist with costly programs that don't work?
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, sitting down with the AP at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, paused for a moment at the question.
"Look," she says, starting slowly. "This is something that is worth fighting for because drug addiction is about fighting for somebody's life, a young child's life, a teenager's life, their ability to be a successful and productive adult.
"If you think about it in those terms, that they are fighting for lives - and in Mexico they are literally fighting for lives as well from the violence standpoint - you realize the stakes are too high to let go."
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From http://www.mdrc.org/publications/529/overview.html ...
August 2009
Transitional Jobs for Ex-Prisoners
Implementation, Two-Year Impacts, and Costs of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) Prisoner Reentry Program
Cindy Redcross, Dan Bloom, Gilda Azurdia, Janine Zweig, and Nancy Pindus
Related Publications
The Joyce Foundation's Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration: Testing Strategies to Help Former Prisoners Find and Keep Jobs and Stay Out of Prison
Transitional Jobs for Ex-Prisoners: Early Impacts from a Random Assignment Evaluation of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) Prisoner Reentry Program
The Power of Work: The Center for Employment Opportunities
Comprehensive Prisoner Reentry Program
Almost 700,000 people are released from state prisons each year. Ex-prisoners face daunting obstacles to successful reentry into society, and rates of recidivism are high. Most experts believe that stable employment is critical to a successful transition, but ex-prisoners have great difficulty finding steady work.
This report presents interim results from a rigorous evaluation of the New York City-based Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), a highly regarded employment program for ex-prisoners. CEO participants are placed in paid transitional jobs shortly after enrollment; they are supervised by CEO staff and receive a range of supports. Once they show good performance in the transitional job, participants get help finding a permanent job and additional support after placement.
CEO is one of four sites in the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project, which is sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families and the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with additional funding from the U.S. Department of Labor. The project is being conducted under contract to HHS by MDRC, a nonprofit research organization, along with the Urban Institute and other partners.
The impacts of CEO's program are being assessed using a rigorous research design. In 2004-2005, a total of 977 ex-prisoners who reported to CEO were assigned, at random, to a program group that was eligible for all of CEO's services or to a control group that received basic job search assistance. So far, the two groups have been followed for two years after study entry.
Key Findings
* CEO's program operated smoothly during the study period, and most program group members received the core services. More than 70 percent of the program group worked in a transitional job; the average length of that employment was about eight weeks.
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* CEO generated a large but short-lived increase in employment; the increase was driven by CEO's transitional jobs. By the end of the first year of the study period, the program and control groups were equally likely to be employed, and their earnings were similar.
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* CEO reduced recidivism during both the first and the second year of the study period. The program group was significantly less likely than the control group to be convicted of a crime, to be admitted to prison for a new conviction, or to be incarcerated for any reason in prison or jail during the first two years of the study period. In Year 1, CEO reduced recidivism only for those who came to the program within three months after their release from prison; in Year 2, however, the program reduced recidivism both for recently released study participants and for those who were not recently released at study entry.
The study will follow the two groups for a third year, but the results so far show that CEO's program reduced recidivism, even after the employment gains faded. Decreases in recidivism have rarely been found in rigorous evaluations. Further research is needed to identify approaches that can produce more sustained increases in employment and earnings for ex-prisoners.
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From http://www.vera.org/project/cost-benefit-analysis-ceo ...
Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Center for Employment Opportunities
Vera's Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit is working with MDRC to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the Center for Employment Opportunities, an independent program launched by the Vera Institute that provides employment services to people with criminal records.
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* Tina Chiu
* Director of Technical Assistance
* Informing justice policy through cost-benefit analysis: Interview with Steve Aos (Part 1)
* Interview with Steve Aos, associate director of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy. In this segment, Aos discusses informing justice policy through cost-benefit analysis. This is part 1 of 6 in the series. Length: 4:16 minutes
The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) is one of the largest and best-known employment programs for the formerly incarcerated. It is one of four sites in the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Labor. MDRC conducted a random assignment evaluation of the program and found that it achieves a significant reduction in recidivism rates and a small improvement in several employment outcomes. The Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit is drawing on these evaluation results to determine if savings from lower recidivism rates and higher employment rates outweigh the costs of CEO.
Why This Project Matters
At a time when two-thirds of people released from prison are re-arrested and half are re-incarcerated within three years, investing in proven reentry programs can enhance public safety and cut costs. Yet there are few studies to help policymakers identify and support cost-effective reentry programs. Vera's analysis will help fill this gap, providing information about the relative costs and benefits of an employment program for formerly incarcerated individuals.
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From http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive//crimwage.htm ...
HIGHER CRIME RATE LINKED TO LOW WAGES AND UNEMPLOYMENT, STUDY FINDS
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new study provides some of the best evidence to date that low wages and unemployment make less-educated men more likely to turn to crime.
Researchers examined national crime rates between 1979 and 1997 and found much of the increase in crime during that period can be explained by falling wages and rising unemployment among men without college educations.
"Clearly, the long-term trend in wages was the dominant factor on crime during this period," Weinberg said.
While politicians have focused on crime-fighting initiatives as central to controlling crime, this study shows that the impact of labor markets should not be overlooked, said Bruce Weinberg, co-author of the study and associate professor of economics at Ohio State University.
"Public officials can put more cops on the beat, pass tougher sentencing laws, and take other steps to reduce crime, but there are limits to how much these can do," he said. "We found that a bad labor market has a profound impact on the crime rates."
Weinberg conducted the study with Eric Gould of Hebrew University and David Mustard of the University of Georgia. Their results appear in the current issue of The Review of Economics and Statistics.
From 1979 to 1997, federal statistics show the inflation-adjusted wages of men without a college education fell by 20 percent. Despite declines after 1993, the property and violent crime rates (adjusted for changes in the country's demographics) increased by 21 percent and 35 percent respectively during that period.
Weinberg said the strongest finding in this new study is a link between falling wages and property crimes such as burglary. However, the study also found a link between wages and some violent crimes - such as assault and robbery - in which money is often a motive.
The weakest relationship occurred with murder and rape - two crimes in which monetary gain is not usually a motive.
"The fact that murder and rape didn't have much of a connection with wages and unemployment provides good evidence that many criminals are motivated by poor economic conditions to turn to crime," Weinberg said.
The theory behind why crime increases in the wake of falling wages is simple, he said. "A decline in wages increases the relative payoff of criminal activity. It seems obvious that economic conditions should have an impact on crime, but few studies have systematically studied the issue."
National crime rates rose from 1979 to 1992, when wages for less skilled men were falling. Crime declined from 1993 to 1997. This decline in crime corresponded to a leveling off and slight increase in the wages of unskilled workers across the nation in that period, Weinberg said.
Weinberg and his colleagues did several analyses to examine the connection between wages, unemployment and crime between 1979 and 1997 for men without college educations. In one analysis, they looked at crime rates in 705 counties across the country - all counties with populations greater than 25,000 - and compared them with state wages and unemployment rates. The second analysis focused on statistics from 198 metropolitan areas as defined by the U.S. Census. The researchers took into account factors such as arrest rates and number of police that may have also influenced crime rates.
In the first analysis, the researchers calculated that the 20 percent fall in the wages of non-college-educated men over the entire period can account for a 10.8 percent increase in property crime and a 21.6 percent increase in violent crime. "Wage declines are responsible for more than half of the long term increase in both property and violent crime," Weinberg said
Overall, wages had a larger effect on crime than did the unemployment rate, according to Weinberg. That's because the unemployment rate is cyclical and there is no strong long-term trend. Wages, however, fell steadily during most of the period studied.
"Clearly, the long-term trend in wages was the dominant factor on crime during this period," he said.
In a third analysis, the researchers examined data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to see if the criminal behavior of the young men who participated in the survey could be linked to economic conditions where they lived. This survey asked participants if they had taken part in crimes such as shoplifting and robbery in the previous year.
As expected, economic conditions had no effect on the criminal activity for the more highly educated workers in the sample.
However, among less educated men, lower wages and higher unemployment rates in the states where they lived made it more likely that they had participated in crimes. This was true even after the researchers took into account factors such as cognitive ability and family background.
"Low-skilled workers are clearly the most affected by the changes in labor opportunities, and these results remain after controlling for a wealth of personal and family characteristics," he said.
#
Contact: Bruce Weinberg, (614) 292-5642; Weinberg.27@osu.edu
Written by Jeff Grabmeier, (614) 292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
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From http://www.leap.cc/ ...(Law Enforcement Against Prohibition)...
ONE DRUG ARREST EVERY 18 SECONDS IN THE U.S.
NEW FBI NUMBERS SHOW FAILURE OF "WAR ON DRUGS"
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A group of police and judges who want to legalize drugs pointed to new FBI numbers released today as evidence that the "war on drugs" is a failure that can never be won. The data, from the FBI's "Crime in the United States" report, shows that in 2008 there were 1,702,537 arrests for drug law violations, or one drug arrest every 18 seconds.
"In our current economic climate, we simply cannot afford to keep arresting more than three people every minute in the failed 'war on drugs,'" said Jack Cole, a retired undercover narcotics detective who now heads the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). "Plus, if we legalized and taxed drug sales, we could actually create new revenue in addition to the money we'd save from ending the cruel policy of arresting users."
Thursday I was lucky enough to once again take a tour through our county Jail with the rest of our County Legislature's Democratic Caucus (I had taken a similar tour once before several years ago)...
Thanks much to Jail Administrator George Krom and his assistant Todd Gdula for guiding us through; here's some of what they shared with us yesterday morning from the 292-bed facility (with 10-bed staging area and 8 medical beds):
"We asked for $3.2 million in housing-out costs for Dutchess County jail inmates for 2010-- we spent $350,000 just last month on housing out inmates to jails in other counties."
[recall, too Daily Freeman Aug. 7-- DC Jail looking for $3.5 million for "upgrades":
http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2010/08/07/news/doc4c5ce767b4a2f705919629.txt !]
"We have about 450 inmates-- with about 180 of those housed out-- at cost, on average, of about $80 a day, for each inmate housed out to another county's jail. Half are one-timers; the other half have multiple incarcerations; instead of just 5 or 6 new inmates being admitted daily now we get about 14 new inmates a day."
"'Use of force" reports have quadrupled recently; attacks on officers have become more frequent."
Even speaking to us from the much more humane Transitional Unit 23, they let us know that:
"Services aren't coming in here the way they're supposed to; toothaches turn into teeth being extracted because dentists don't have enough time paid for/allotted to see inmates because of the overcrowding-- and seemingly mentally ill inmates go without medications because psychiatrists don't have enough time paid for to see them as well."
One of the most telling comments I noted yesterday from Krom/Gdula was this-- in response to another county legislator's suggesting that perhaps the ongoing recession linked to jail overcrowding:
"It's for reasons you don't expect-- neighbors spatting, someone's out of work-- indirect result of economy-- it's even affecting the Town of Poughkeepsie."
And we also heard yesterday that-- in contrast to vast majority of inmates who used to be admitted of a nonviolent nature-- that "it used to be that they were just cold-- they'd come in for the winter"-- meaning that (as I've been saying for years, based on my sources in Poughkeepsie, including the homeless themselves)-- that homeless purposely have been arrested in past for "three hots and a cot"...more reason why Du. Co. should have housing-first-- http://www.PetitionOnline.com/House1st !...
[recall a few years ago-- when I got http://www.PathwaystoHousing.org to come to FPC for forum on this]
And then this morning I heard on WAMC Victoria Bruce being interviewed on her new book-- "Hostage Nation: Colombia's Guerrilla Arm and the Failed War on Drugs"...
[see: http://www.randomhouse.com/acmart/subjects.pperl?cat=77 ]
[also see "Who Is Behind the 25,000 Deaths in Mexico?" by Charles Bowden and Molly Malloy 7/23/10:
http://www.thenation.com/article/37916/who-behind-25000-deaths-mexico
Something has to give folks-- we simply can afford no longer to not think outside the box on all this...
I am very much reminded of cover article for The Nation July 5th (shared with me by Larry Freedman):
"Is This the End of the War on Crime?" by Sasha Abramsky
http://www.thenation.com/article/end-war-crime?page=full [see just below-- this one's a must-read!]
My point?...
This-- that tackling this issue is nothing new for me...
[since '95 in particular I've been advocating for ATI's; see http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ATIs ; several years ago I brought Father Peter Young to FPC re: re-entry issue; see http://www.PYHIT.com ]
[...and earlier this year I convinced my caucus to support a resolution in our Co. Leg. to push Albany to fully fund preventive services for kids to address causes of crime-- http://www.FightCrime.org -- but, in spite of massive statewide coalition for this of sheriffs, police chiefs, DA's-- GOP killed it here, natch...]
[and of course there was no media coverage on GOP killing it-- http://www.PoJoWatch.blogspot.com ]
But we really and truly do need here in Dutchess County a ramped-up, public look at all this asap!...
Just looking at the issue of truly effective re-entry programs alone, they've been proven to save $$$:
http://www.vera.org/project/cost-benefit-analysis-ceo ;
http://www.mdrc.org/publications/529/overview.html ;
http://www.vera.org/news/vera-announces-creation-cost-benefit-knowledge-bank-new-national-resource-cost-effective-crimin .
Thanks to these local folks already working on this-- we need to make sure they have the resources!...
Dutchess Collaborative Re-Entry Project (Bonnie Allen and Family Services)
http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podcasts/14529
Coalition for Rehabilitation and Re-Entry (Amy and George Oliveras et. al.)
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/co_rr/signatures?page=1
Osbourne Association (kudos to Fred and Alice Bunnell for helping bring Osbourne to Poughkeepsie)
http://www.OsbourneNY.org
And why are we reading about this in North Carolina-- instead of here in NYS?...(re: FCIK Coalition)...
"N.C. Lawmakers Address Root Causes of Crime" by Kamika Dunlap [4/29/10]
http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2010/04/lawmakers-addresses-root-causes-of-crime-to-cut-costs.html
Of course there's also 800-pound gorilla in the room we can no longer afford to ignore: "war on drugs"...
On that note-- recall this from CBS News May 13th-- "War on Drugs Unsuccessful, Drug Czar Says"
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/13/politics/main6480889.shtml ...
Check out http://www.LEAP.cc/ -- Law Enforcement Against Prohibition(!)...
...and folks at Common Sense Drug Policy too-- http://www.CSDP.org ; http://www.DrugWarFacts.org ...
Communities across the U.S. organizing against wasteful, ridiculous War on Drugs:
http://www.csdp.org/news/news/communities.htm ...
But check out this from http://www.LEAP.cc ...
LEAP Statement of Principles
1. LEAP does not promote the use of drugs and is deeply concerned about the extent of drug abuse worldwide. LEAP is also deeply concerned with the destructive impact of violent drug gangs and cartels everywhere in the world. Neither problem is remedied by the current policy of drug prohibition. Indeed, drug abuse and gang violence flourish in a drug prohibition environment, just as they did during alcohol prohibition.
In any case-- much food for thought-- including article just below from Sasha Abramsky on cost-saving successes in Hawaii, North Carolina, Oregon, etc....time for NYS!...(and-- Dutchess County)...
Several years ago Dutchess Justice was on top of all this; energetic group of young folks of all races...
...but Dutchess Justice hasn't met locally for several years now...
Let us know if you'd like to help re-build a newly revitalized Dutchess Justice group to take a whole new look from top to bottom of our county's criminal justice system-- for our taxpayers-- for kids-- for us all!...
[pass it on]
Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net
http://www.PoJoWatch.blogspot.com
p.s. If you don't want to wait 'til 2525 for action-- email countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us today!...
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From http://www.thenation.com/article/end-war-crime?page=full ...
Is This the End of the War on Crime?
June 16, 2010 | This article appeared in the July 5, 2010 edition of The Nation.
by Sasha Abramsky
For decades, progressive policy analysts and criminal justice reformers such as Jones have argued that state and federal antidrug and, more generally, "tough on crime" incarceration strategies were counterproductive: that they were dramatically reshaping American society, at a staggering fiscal and moral cost, and they weren't succeeding. Drug use remained commonplace, and high recidivism numbers for paroled prisoners suggested that prisons weren't remolding criminals into model citizens. Far better, they argued, to keep prisons as a last resort for the truly hardened, violent criminals and to invest more resources in less expensive, and more effective, alternatives to incarceration.
True, crime rates have fallen dramatically since the early 1990s, in part because of those higher incarceration rates. But most experts believe they fell in larger part because of demographic shifts, changes in policing practices and an easing of the crack epidemic. The drop-off in crime has, in turn, finally allowed a public slightly less scared of crime to be slightly more willing to look for nuance rather than sound bites when it comes to policy. It has created what Bart Lubow, a juvenile justice advocate with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, terms an "ideological space" for discussions of reform. "The overall context regarding crime policy," he says, "is much less hysterical than it was through most of the 1990s."
Faced with a growing body of evidence that carefully tailored rehabilitation models can reduce recidivism or drug use better than jails and prisons, and with a burgeoning crisis in local and state government finances, politicians and voters alike are turning their backs on basic tough-on-crime staples. Instead, they are looking for inspiration to programs such as the HOPE Project in Hawaii, the High Point project in North Carolina and an experiment in Multnomah County (home to Portland, Oregon) to divert low-end probation and parole violators to nonincarcerative settings. All these model programs view jail and prison sentences as a last option rather than a default, and swift responses to violations are considered more important than harsh ones. For reformers, it is a rare breath of fresh air.
"I think the criminal justice system is more under the microscope because of the fiscal situation," explains Mike Thompson, director of the New York-based Council of State Government's Justice Center. "Every state's facing fiscal problems, with the exception of North Dakota, and when you look at items where expenditures have risen in the last twenty years, corrections jumps out at you."
Around the country, legislators are essentially asking how they can get more bang for the bucks they spend fighting crime, drug use, mental illness and so on. And they're willing to consult reformers they would have shunned in the recent past as irredeemably "soft" on crime. "Nobody can sit here and say things are fine," argues Jones. "Something has to give. Now we can sit at the table with people we couldn't previously work with and say, 'What are you willing to give?' We are literally writing this narrative as we go."
In Texas a $600 million prison-expansion plan was shelved in 2007 in favor of a $241 million plan expanding community-based drug and alcohol treatment services, after researchers convinced legislators that the latter would lower crime rates more than expanding the state's penal infrastructure. As a result, the notoriously prison-tough Lone Star State, whose leaders used to boast about its extraordinarily high incarceration rate, is implementing some of the country's most innovative reforms, creating a network of in-prison and post-prison residential drug treatment and DWI centers, mental health facilities, halfway houses for inmates being released onto parole, and nonjail residential settings for low-end parole violators. In 2009 the state's prison population declined, perhaps signaling the start of a reversal of nearly four decades of expansion, which saw the Lone Star State's prison numbers grow from just shy of 16,000 in 1972 to more than 170,000 in 2008. Texas joined twenty-five other states that saw reductions in the size of their inmate population last year.
In Kansas legislators approved a large investment in drug treatment programs and services for parolees designed to stop so many offenders from simply cycling back into prison after their release. The result was a drop in Kansas's prison population significant enough to allow the state to close several facilities.
Michigan recently reformed its prisoner-release process to allow for shorter sentences, winning accolades from the ACLU in the process. The state closed eight prisons as a result and invested some of the $250 million savings expected to be generated over a five-year period in an expanded network of mental health and job training services, as well as drug treatment programs.
All told, ten states have embraced "justice reinvestment" strategies such as this, reducing prison spending, investing a portion of the savings in more effective anticrime infrastructure and using the remainder of the savings to plug gaps elsewhere in their budgets. As this model spreads, says Thompson optimistically, we'll get more results-oriented policy-making than we've had in the past. "These are bipartisan, data-driven approaches: figure out what's driving the [prison population] growth and what can be done differently."
Even states that haven't formally adopted such a reinvestment strategy are, of necessity, being pushed in this direction. In California, home to the country's largest state prison population as well as the country's most dysfunctional state budget process, the combination of federal injunctions against overcrowding and the worst fiscal crunch since the Great Depression has brought the race to incarcerate of the past quarter-century to an end. Over the next several years, to the dismay of politicians who have built careers on being tough on crime, the prison population, which stands at around 170,000, will be reduced by several tens of thousands, with more emphasis on parole, probation and local drug treatment.
New Mexico recently enacted a law banning employers from asking job applicants if they have a felony record. An increasing number of states, including conservative bastions like Alabama and Louisiana, are restructuring their juvenile justice systems to move away from incarceration. Drug and mental health courts are channeling more offenders into structured treatment. And many states are rolling back their most restrictive truth-in-sentencing provisions, allowing low-level offenders to return to their communities after serving only a small percentage of their sentences behind bars.
Some states and localities are also starting to invest in restorative justice models, putting offenders to work to repair the damage they caused the community rather than simply warehousing them in prisons.
Father George Horan, co-director of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles's Office of Restorative Justice, has spent a lifetime watching youngsters do stupid things and, as a result, ruin their lives. He has seen generations of kids graduate from being troubled children to hardened prisoners. And he has grown increasingly cynical about the ability of penal institutions to solve ingrained social problems. Far better, he has come to believe, to sit nonviolent offenders down with their families, teachers, peers, even victims, and force them to come to terms with the consequences of their actions.
Horan, 64, has a ruddy complexion and dresses casually. From his small office in the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lincoln Heights, a bleak industrial area of Los Angeles just north of downtown, he works to help delinquent teens, many of them gang members, establish more productive bonds with their communities. When three teens broke into their school a few years back and trashed it, the Office of Restorative Justice persuaded the trial judge to consider a restorative justice solution. The kids had to face their principal and fellow students; they had to pay for the damage; and they had to spend their weekends doing community service at the school-cleaning classrooms, doing basic maintenance work, sweeping autumn leaves. The principal, recalls Horan, took the kids out to lunch, got to know them and encouraged them to attend to their studies. "She said the next year they were the three best kids in the school. What a better result than sending the kids to juvenile hall. They turned their lives around."
Horan is aware of the limitations of this strategy-he tried the same approach when three boys set fire to his church door, but this time the prosecutor insisted on seeking prison terms. Politically, he says, it would be next to impossible for prosecutors to embrace restorative justice for violent criminals. But Horan believes restorative justice models have to play a part in any revamping of America's criminal justice system. "Always, the first step is, the person has to take responsibility for what they did. That's the cornerstone," he explains. "What can a person do to heal the victim and heal the community?"
Meanwhile, extending the first-do-no-harm principles of the restorative justice movement, a growing number of politicians have started to identify sky-high African-American incarceration rates as a civil rights issue that, in tandem with high crime rates in poor communities, serves up a double whammy to already devastated neighborhoods. As a result, they have begun pushing legislation that characterizes the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans as a problem. Connecticut recently passed a "racial impact statement" law mandating all major legislative proposals for the criminal justice system be studied for their racial impact. Other states, looking for ways to preserve public safety without inflicting the kind of collateral damage on communities that mass incarceration unleashes, will likely follow suit.
No part of the criminal justice system has had more of a racially skewed impact than America's antidrug strategy. Over the decades, millions of young Americans, mainly poor and disproportionately black and brown, have been arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to jail or prison for their involvement with the drug trade. It has been a staggering exercise in futility.
Yet these days, the "war on drugs," which Barack Obama denounced as an utter failure during his presidential campaign, is showing the fragility of old age. At the urging of the Obama administration and top Justice Department officials, Congress is working to eliminate the infamous crack and powder-cocaine sentencing disparities. And over the next few years, the Justice Department's Task Force on Sentencing Reform will likely recommend more proportionate sentencing for many drug offenses.
The era of "Lock 'em up and throw away the key" seems, slowly, to be drawing to a close. And over the next few decades, that will likely have the effect of gradually drawing down the size of the bloated prison population. Even seasoned conservative voices are cognizant of the winds of change.
"My attitude has always been, speed and certainty are crucial aspects of running a criminal justice system, not length of sentence," argues James Q. Wilson, at one time the country's most influential conservative criminologist. "Many sentences could be shortened without endangering public safety."
Wilson, who rose to intellectual fame as President Nixon's favorite sociologist and later became known as the philosophical father of the Broken Windows policing theory, doesn't regret his role in developing ideas that helped contribute to America's mass incarceration experiment. But he also doesn't think that mass incarceration is, or should be, an end in itself. If there are alternatives that have at least as powerful an effect on reducing the crime rate, Wilson, an empiricist, believes they should be tried.
Parole and probation systems should be reformed, he argues, so that violators are dealt with quickly and minor violators, such as those who fail a urine drug test, receive "a swift but very short penalty-a weekend in jail, a week in jail. It need not be returning people to serve a full prison term."
Changes in drug policy don't stop with shortening sentences, however. The administration recently lifted the ban on federal funding for needle-exchange programs-long a bugbear of drug-treatment and public health professionals. And for the first time since the 1970s, marijuana legalization movements are gaining traction at the state level. Californians will vote in November on a ballot measure to legalize pot, and preliminary polling indicates it could well pass. The initiative is buttressed by a number of politicians, like Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and State Senator Mark Leno, who have argued that legalizing marijuana would allow California to tax the lucrative market. Other states could follow in California's wake.
"People are now making a lawful income from cannabis here in California and other states," argues 57-year-old Chris Conrad, of the marijuana-advocacy newspaper West Coast Leaf, at a hummus-and-wine soiree to celebrate the opening of the Drug Policy Alliance's swank new downtown San Francisco offices. Conrad is talking about how the medical marijuana industry is increasingly using its clout to push for broader, across-the-board rollbacks of pot prohibition. "They can put that money back to invest in change. The idea is, it should be brought under control and tax revenue brought in. The whole financial argument is only going to get better. I think the drug war is fatally flawed, and it's doomed. It's just a matter of time; it could be five years, it could be twenty years. But prohibition doesn't work. It creates crime; it doesn't solve crime."
A few years ago Conrad would have been a countercultural refugee on the hippie fringe; these days, he and his ideas are increasingly mainstream. In fact, the attendees at the party oozed their radical-chic credentials; they were lawyers, doctors, politicians, consultants, businessmen. "The trend is for people to regulate rather than prohibit," asserted Doug Linney, the well-coiffed, sharp-dressed campaign consultant for the legalization initiative. "They see the current drug wars aren't working, especially regarding marijuana. There's an interest in changing it, especially because of the state's finances."
Cumulatively, all of these changes are bearing significant fruit. For the first time since the Nixon era, America's prison population is shrinking. In 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the prison population fell in twenty states; in 2009 it fell in twenty-six states; and that trend is likely to continue in 2010. Moreover, as the number of drug-related sentences has declined slightly, so too has the appallingly high African-American incarceration rate edged slightly downward, off 9 percent from its peak a few years back. The gears of what journalist Joel Dyer, in the 1990s, tellingly labeled a "perpetual prisoner machine"-a self-sustaining interaction of conservative criminal justice lobbies, political opportunism, popular tough-on-crime sentiments, the economic needs of depressed prison towns and media sensationalism-seem finally to have gotten gummed up. Ironically, the federal government, which did so much to shift the country in a more conservative criminal justice direction for nearly fifty years, seems quite content to let the gears stay locked.
Most decisions about the criminal justice system are made at the state level. Despite the near-tenfold growth in the population of federal prison inmates since 1980, less than 10 percent of all inmates are serving federal sentences. But the federal government does perform some vital roles: it allocates resources directly (by, for example, patrolling the border and exporting the "war on drugs") and indirectly (by granting money to localities and states to set up antidrug task forces, funding drug and mental health treatment services, and putting more police on the streets). It creates overarching legal parameters within which states must operate (federal drug laws supersede state ones, which means that if California legalizes marijuana, for example, theoretically it would be setting up a conflict with DC). Perhaps most important, the federal government sets the tone for national conversations on crime and delinquency.
When it comes to tone-setting, sometimes what isn't said by federal officials is as important as what is. Over the past couple of years, President Obama's drug czar, ex-Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske, has chosen not to follow his predecessors with regard to medical marijuana. Whereas John Walters, Bush's drug czar, testified across the country against state medical marijuana laws, Kerlikowske has stayed silent. The effect, says Drug Policy Alliance executive director Ethan Nadelmann, has been to send a "green light to the states that they could have the freedom to go their own way on this."
Kerlikowske, Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama himself steer clear of talking about the "war on drugs," and they generally don't use sound bites to trumpet their "tough" credentials when it comes to tackling the complex problem of crime.
But what is being said is also fascinating. "Too many of our citizens have come to have doubts about our criminal justice system," Holder told a Congressional Black Caucus symposium on June 24, 2009. "We must be honest with each other and have the courage to ask difficult questions of ourselves and our system. We must break out of the old and tired partisan stances that have stood in the way of needed progress and reform. We have a moment in time that must be seized in order to ensure that all of our citizens are treated in a way that is consistent with the ideals embodied in our founding documents. This Department of Justice is prepared to act."
Indeed, in a series of key speeches over the past year, Holder has delivered a commitment, unprecedented in recent decades, to use the might of the Justice Department to ensure a fairer, less coercive criminal justice system. Addressing the NAACP in July 2009, the attorney general talked of the devastating harm that harsh drug sentences have caused in poor communities. "It is not justice," he declared, "to continue our adherence to a sentencing scheme that disproportionately affects some Americans, and some communities, more severely than others."
The previous week, he told an audience at the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based think tank, that "getting smart on crime requires talking honestly about which policies have worked and which have not, without fear of being labeled as too hard or, more likely, too soft on crime. Getting smart on crime means moving beyond useless labels and instead embracing science and data, and relying on them to shape policy. And it means thinking about crime in context-not just reacting to the criminal act but developing the government's ability to enhance public safety before the crime is committed and after the former offender is returned to society." Taking their cue from Holder, a slew of top officials have begun revamping the language they use to discuss crime and punishment.
As Kerlikowske explained to The Nation in March, shortly after he returned from a UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna, the country should not continue to think of drugs merely as a public safety problem but should start to see them as a public health problem. "My colleagues, I never heard them talk of a war on drugs," he said. "I've heard elected officials talk about it, but not police chiefs, sheriffs or prosecutors. They talk about it with the complexity the problem deserves."
In reshaping the national discourse on drugs, Kerlikowske touts his law enforcement credentials. He's a tough guy, a strong policeman with thirty-seven years on the job, and he knows he commands respect. "For me, it's a little bit like Nixon going to China," he explains. Kerlikowske has "very little concern about being labeled soft on drugs." And so he wants to talk about being "smart on drugs," instead of merely "tough." In fact, when he explains his mandate, the country's drug czar is more comfortable using the language of public health professionals than political posturers. "The 'war on drugs' was a simplistic answer to this really complex problem," he says. "We have to look at talking about addiction as a disease rather than a moral failure or saying people should just stop using drugs."
For the first time in more than forty years, criminal justice trends are starting to move in a sensible direction. At the local and state levels, fiscal necessity is forcing a rethink when it comes to incarceration strategies. And at the federal level, the politics that allowed George H.W. Bush to batter Michael Dukakis with images of Willie Horton, Bill Clinton to sign an execution warrant on the brain-damaged Ricky Ray Rector and George W. Bush to push glibly for more teens to be tried and sentenced as adults is taking a back seat to smart, holistic thinking.
"Everyone I talk to around the country has been affected by drugs," Kerlikowske says. "But it's not talked about the same way as if you had a member of your family having cancer-or even alcoholism. When I look at the drug problem, what it costs in healthcare costs, police-community relations, the Southwest border, foreign relations-every one of those things, drugs are a part. If we could recognize how inextricably linked to all of these issues drug consumption and addiction is, if we could work to address it with the complexity it deserves, that would make more sense than holding a press conference and showing a ton of cocaine or five people led out in handcuffs."
Of all the changes in tone brought about by Obama's election, in the long run few will be more significant to the country's well-being than those around criminal justice and drugs. Without a whole lot of fanfare, the administration is laying the foundations for a new criminal justice system model that might, conceivably, end America's morally disastrous, fiscally ruinous, four-decade-long experimentation with mass incarceration.
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[why aren't we reading about this in NYS?......(instead of in NC)]
http://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2010/04/lawmakers-addresses-root-causes-of-crime-to-cut-costs.html
N.C. Lawmakers Address Root Causes of Crime
By Kamika Dunlap on April 29, 2010 12:50 PM | No TrackBacks
By participating in the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, North Carolina lawmakers are trying to address the root causes of crime in order to cut costs and keep the public safe.
Lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties agree that the state must get smart on crime and begin to implement more data-driven solutions through the new Justice Reinvestment program, according to the News & Observer.
The state will work with the U.S. Justice Department, the national Council of State Governments Justice Center and the nonprofit Pew Center on the States to look at the root causes of crime, ways to lower recidivism rates and manage the offender population.
Similar programs have been rolled out in states such as Texas and Michigan. North Carolina is hoping to benefit from the research expertise gained in those states.
According to the latest data, North Carolina's state prison population grew by one quarter between 2000 and 2008, while spending on corrections nearly doubled.
North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue said that the state cannot afford spend money on prisons and corrections at that rate over the next decade. Instead, the state should spend the money on education and jobs.
The Justice Reinvestment Initiative uses mapping technology, which helps to provide geographic analyses to pinpoint which neighborhoods receive people released from prison and how state spending on programs often converges on the same families and communities.
The project could take one to three years to roll out in North Carolina. Justice Reinvestment program staff and other experts will review prison, probation and court data from North Carolina and then provide options to elected leaders on how to better treat and track offenders and build fewer prisons.
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From http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/13/politics/main6480889.shtml ...
MEXICO CITY, May 13, 2010
War on Drugs Unsuccessful, Drug Czar Says
Violent, Four-Decade-Long Campaign Against Drug Cartels, Drug Use Hasn't Stopped Country's Addiction
(AP) Four decades after President Nixon declared war on drugs, more Americans use them and drug-related violence has gotten worse. This is the first in an occasional series of reports by The Associated Press examining why the drug war failed and why the U.S. and Mexico continue to fight a losing battle.
After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.
Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked.
"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."
This week President Obama promised to "reduce drug use and the great damage it causes" with a new national policy that he said treats drug use more as a public health issue and focuses on prevention and treatment.
Nevertheless, his administration has increased spending on interdiction and law enforcement to record levels both in dollars and in percentage terms; this year, they account for $10 billion of his $15.5 billion drug-control budget.
Kerlikowske, who coordinates all federal anti-drug policies, says it will take time for the spending to match the rhetoric.
"Nothing happens overnight," he said. "We've never worked the drug problem holistically. We'll arrest the drug dealer, but we leave the addiction."
His predecessor, John P. Walters, takes issue with that.
Walters insists society would be far worse today if there had been no War on Drugs. Drug abuse peaked nationally in 1979 and, despite fluctuations, remains below those levels, he says. Judging the drug war is complicated: Records indicate marijuana and prescription drug abuse are climbing, while cocaine use is way down. Seizures are up, but so is availability.
"To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven't made any difference is ridiculous," Walters said. "It destroys everything we've done. It's saying all the people involved in law enforcment, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. It's saying all these people's work is misguided."
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In 1970, hippies were smoking pot and dropping acid. Soldiers were coming home from Vietnam hooked on heroin. Embattled President Nixon seized on a new war he thought he could win.
"This nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people," Mr. Nixon said as he signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. The following year, he said: "Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive."
His first drug-fighting budget was $100 million. Now it's $15.1 billion, 31 times Mr. Nixon's amount even when adjusted for inflation.
Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where that money went, and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. In 40 years, taxpayers spent more than:
* $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico - and the violence along with it.
* $33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America's youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily" since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.
* $49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.
* $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.
* $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses.
At the same time, drug abuse is costing the nation in other ways. The Justice Department estimates the consequences of drug abuse - "an overburdened justice system, a strained health care system, lost productivity, and environmental destruction" - cost the United States $215 billion a year.
Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing taxpayers get for more spending on police and soldiers is more homicides.
"Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use," Miron said, "but it's costing the public a fortune."
From the beginning, lawmakers debated fiercely whether law enforcement - no matter how well funded and well trained - could ever defeat the drug problem.
Then-Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, who had his doubts, has since watched his worst fears come to pass.
"Look what happened. It's an ongoing tragedy that has cost us a trillion dollars. It has loaded our jails and it has destabilized countries like Mexico and Colombia," he said.
In 1970, proponents said beefed-up law enforcement could effectively seal the southern U.S. border and stop drugs from coming in. Since then, the U.S. used patrols, checkpoints, sniffer dogs, cameras, motion detectors, heat sensors, drone aircraft - and even put up more than 1,000 miles of steel beam, concrete walls and heavy mesh stretching from California to Texas.
None of that has stopped the drugs. The Office of National Drug Control Policy says about 330 tons of cocaine, 20 tons of heroin and 110 tons of methamphetamine are sold in the United States every year - almost all of it brought in across the borders. Even more marijuana is sold, but it's hard to know how much of that is grown domestically, including vast fields run by Mexican drug cartels in U.S. national parks.
The dealers who are caught have overwhelmed justice systems in the United States and elsewhere. U.S. prosecutors declined to file charges in 7,482 drug cases last year, most because they simply didn't have the time. That's about one out of every four drug cases.
The United States has in recent years rounded up thousands of suspected associates of Mexican drug gangs, then turned some of the cases over to local prosecutors who can't make the charges stick for lack of evidence. The suspects are then sometimes released, deported or acquitted. The U.S. Justice Department doesn't even keep track of what happens to all of them.
In Mexico, traffickers exploit a broken justice system. Investigators often fail to collect convincing evidence - and are sometimes assassinated when they do. Confessions are beaten out of suspects by frustrated, underpaid police. Judges who no longer turn a blind eye to such abuse release the suspects in exasperation.
In prison, in the U.S. or Mexico, traffickers continue to operate, ordering assassinations and arranging distribution of their product even from solitary confinement in Texas and California. In Mexico, prisoners can sometimes even buy their way out.
The violence spans Mexico. In Ciudad Juarez, the epicenter of drug violence in Mexico, 2,600 people were killed last year in cartel-related violence, making the city of 1 million across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, one of the world's deadliest. Not a single person was prosecuted for homicide related to organized crime.
And then there's the money.
The $320 billion annual global drug industry now accounts for 1 percent of all commerce on the planet.
A full 10 percent of Mexico's economy is built on drug proceeds - $25 billion smuggled in from the United States every year, of which 25 cents of each $100 smuggled is seized at the border. Thus there's no incentive for the kind of financial reform that could tame the cartels.
"For every drug dealer you put in jail or kill, there's a line up to replace him because the money is just so good," says Walter McCay, who heads the nonprofit Center for Professional Police Certification in Mexico City.
McCay is one of the 13,000 members of Medford, Mass.-based Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of cops, judges, prosecutors, prison wardens and others who want to legalize and regulate all drugs.
A decade ago, no politician who wanted to keep his job would breathe a word about legalization, but a consensus is growing across the country that at least marijuana will someday be regulated and sold like tobacco and alcohol.
California voters decide in November whether to legalize marijuana, and South Dakota will vote this fall on whether to allow medical uses of marijuana, already permitted in California and 13 other states. The Obama administration says it won't target marijuana dispensaries if they comply with state laws.
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Mexican President Felipe Calderon says if America wants to fix the drug problem, it needs to do something about Americans' unquenching thirst for illegal drugs.
Kerlikowske agrees, and Mr. Obama has committed to doing just that.
And yet both countries continue to spend the bulk of their drug budgets on law enforcement rather than treatment and prevention.
"President Obama's newly released drug war budget is essentially the same as Bush's, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal justice system as to treatment and prevention," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. "This despite Obama's statements on the campaign trail that drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue."
Mr. Obama is requesting a record $15.5 billion for the drug war for 2011, about two thirds of it for law enforcement at the front lines of the battle: police, military and border patrol agents struggling to seize drugs and arrest traffickers and users.
About $5.6 billion would be spent on prevention and treatment.
"For the first time ever, the nation has before it an administration that views the drug issue first and foremost through the lens of the public health mandate," said economist and drug policy expert John Carnevale, who served three administrations and four drug czars. "Yet ... it appears that this historic policy stride has some problems with its supporting budget."
Carnevale said the administration continues to substantially over-allocate funds to areas that research shows are least effective - interdiction and source-country programs - while under-allocating funds for treatment and prevention.
Kerlikowske, who wishes people would stop calling it a "war" on drugs, frequently talks about one of the most valuable tools they've found, in which doctors screen for drug abuse during routine medical examinations. That program would get a mere $7.2 million under Mr. Obama's budget.
"People will say that's not enough. They'll say the drug budget hasn't shifted as much as it should have, and granted I don't disagree with that," Kerlikowske said. "We would like to do more in that direction."
Fifteen years ago, when the government began telling doctors to ask their patients about their drug use during routine medical exams, it described the program as one of the most proven ways to intervene early with would-be addicts.
"Nothing happens overnight," Kerlikowske said.
Until 100 years ago, drugs were simply a commodity. Then Western cultural shifts made them immoral and deviant, according to London School of Economics professor Fernanda Mena.
Religious movements led the crusades against drugs: In 1904, an Episcopal bishop returning from a mission in the Far East argued for banning opium after observing "the natives' moral degeneration." In 1914, The New York Times reported that cocaine caused blacks to commit "violent crimes," and that it made them resistant to police bullets. In the decades that followed, Mena said, drugs became synonymous with evil.
Mr. Nixon drew on those emotions when he pressed for his War on Drugs.
"Narcotics addiction is a problem which afflicts both the body and the soul of America," he said in a special 1971 message to Congress. "It comes quietly into homes and destroys children, it moves into neighborhoods and breaks the fiber of community which makes neighbors. We must try to better understand the confusion and disillusion and despair that bring people, particularly young people, to the use of narcotics and dangerous drugs."
Just a few years later, a young Barack Obama was one of those young users, a teenager smoking pot and trying "a little blow when you could afford it," as he wrote in "Dreams From My Father." When asked during his campaign if he had inhaled the pot, he replied: "That was the point."
So why persist with costly programs that don't work?
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, sitting down with the AP at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, paused for a moment at the question.
"Look," she says, starting slowly. "This is something that is worth fighting for because drug addiction is about fighting for somebody's life, a young child's life, a teenager's life, their ability to be a successful and productive adult.
"If you think about it in those terms, that they are fighting for lives - and in Mexico they are literally fighting for lives as well from the violence standpoint - you realize the stakes are too high to let go."
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From http://www.mdrc.org/publications/529/overview.html ...
August 2009
Transitional Jobs for Ex-Prisoners
Implementation, Two-Year Impacts, and Costs of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) Prisoner Reentry Program
Cindy Redcross, Dan Bloom, Gilda Azurdia, Janine Zweig, and Nancy Pindus
Related Publications
The Joyce Foundation's Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration: Testing Strategies to Help Former Prisoners Find and Keep Jobs and Stay Out of Prison
Transitional Jobs for Ex-Prisoners: Early Impacts from a Random Assignment Evaluation of the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) Prisoner Reentry Program
The Power of Work: The Center for Employment Opportunities
Comprehensive Prisoner Reentry Program
Almost 700,000 people are released from state prisons each year. Ex-prisoners face daunting obstacles to successful reentry into society, and rates of recidivism are high. Most experts believe that stable employment is critical to a successful transition, but ex-prisoners have great difficulty finding steady work.
This report presents interim results from a rigorous evaluation of the New York City-based Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), a highly regarded employment program for ex-prisoners. CEO participants are placed in paid transitional jobs shortly after enrollment; they are supervised by CEO staff and receive a range of supports. Once they show good performance in the transitional job, participants get help finding a permanent job and additional support after placement.
CEO is one of four sites in the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project, which is sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families and the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), with additional funding from the U.S. Department of Labor. The project is being conducted under contract to HHS by MDRC, a nonprofit research organization, along with the Urban Institute and other partners.
The impacts of CEO's program are being assessed using a rigorous research design. In 2004-2005, a total of 977 ex-prisoners who reported to CEO were assigned, at random, to a program group that was eligible for all of CEO's services or to a control group that received basic job search assistance. So far, the two groups have been followed for two years after study entry.
Key Findings
* CEO's program operated smoothly during the study period, and most program group members received the core services. More than 70 percent of the program group worked in a transitional job; the average length of that employment was about eight weeks.
*
*
* CEO generated a large but short-lived increase in employment; the increase was driven by CEO's transitional jobs. By the end of the first year of the study period, the program and control groups were equally likely to be employed, and their earnings were similar.
*
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* CEO reduced recidivism during both the first and the second year of the study period. The program group was significantly less likely than the control group to be convicted of a crime, to be admitted to prison for a new conviction, or to be incarcerated for any reason in prison or jail during the first two years of the study period. In Year 1, CEO reduced recidivism only for those who came to the program within three months after their release from prison; in Year 2, however, the program reduced recidivism both for recently released study participants and for those who were not recently released at study entry.
The study will follow the two groups for a third year, but the results so far show that CEO's program reduced recidivism, even after the employment gains faded. Decreases in recidivism have rarely been found in rigorous evaluations. Further research is needed to identify approaches that can produce more sustained increases in employment and earnings for ex-prisoners.
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From http://www.vera.org/project/cost-benefit-analysis-ceo ...
Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Center for Employment Opportunities
Vera's Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit is working with MDRC to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the Center for Employment Opportunities, an independent program launched by the Vera Institute that provides employment services to people with criminal records.
*
* Tina Chiu
* Director of Technical Assistance
* Informing justice policy through cost-benefit analysis: Interview with Steve Aos (Part 1)
* Interview with Steve Aos, associate director of the Washington State Institute for Public Policy. In this segment, Aos discusses informing justice policy through cost-benefit analysis. This is part 1 of 6 in the series. Length: 4:16 minutes
The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) is one of the largest and best-known employment programs for the formerly incarcerated. It is one of four sites in the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Labor. MDRC conducted a random assignment evaluation of the program and found that it achieves a significant reduction in recidivism rates and a small improvement in several employment outcomes. The Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit is drawing on these evaluation results to determine if savings from lower recidivism rates and higher employment rates outweigh the costs of CEO.
Why This Project Matters
At a time when two-thirds of people released from prison are re-arrested and half are re-incarcerated within three years, investing in proven reentry programs can enhance public safety and cut costs. Yet there are few studies to help policymakers identify and support cost-effective reentry programs. Vera's analysis will help fill this gap, providing information about the relative costs and benefits of an employment program for formerly incarcerated individuals.
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From http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive//crimwage.htm ...
HIGHER CRIME RATE LINKED TO LOW WAGES AND UNEMPLOYMENT, STUDY FINDS
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new study provides some of the best evidence to date that low wages and unemployment make less-educated men more likely to turn to crime.
Researchers examined national crime rates between 1979 and 1997 and found much of the increase in crime during that period can be explained by falling wages and rising unemployment among men without college educations.
"Clearly, the long-term trend in wages was the dominant factor on crime during this period," Weinberg said.
While politicians have focused on crime-fighting initiatives as central to controlling crime, this study shows that the impact of labor markets should not be overlooked, said Bruce Weinberg, co-author of the study and associate professor of economics at Ohio State University.
"Public officials can put more cops on the beat, pass tougher sentencing laws, and take other steps to reduce crime, but there are limits to how much these can do," he said. "We found that a bad labor market has a profound impact on the crime rates."
Weinberg conducted the study with Eric Gould of Hebrew University and David Mustard of the University of Georgia. Their results appear in the current issue of The Review of Economics and Statistics.
From 1979 to 1997, federal statistics show the inflation-adjusted wages of men without a college education fell by 20 percent. Despite declines after 1993, the property and violent crime rates (adjusted for changes in the country's demographics) increased by 21 percent and 35 percent respectively during that period.
Weinberg said the strongest finding in this new study is a link between falling wages and property crimes such as burglary. However, the study also found a link between wages and some violent crimes - such as assault and robbery - in which money is often a motive.
The weakest relationship occurred with murder and rape - two crimes in which monetary gain is not usually a motive.
"The fact that murder and rape didn't have much of a connection with wages and unemployment provides good evidence that many criminals are motivated by poor economic conditions to turn to crime," Weinberg said.
The theory behind why crime increases in the wake of falling wages is simple, he said. "A decline in wages increases the relative payoff of criminal activity. It seems obvious that economic conditions should have an impact on crime, but few studies have systematically studied the issue."
National crime rates rose from 1979 to 1992, when wages for less skilled men were falling. Crime declined from 1993 to 1997. This decline in crime corresponded to a leveling off and slight increase in the wages of unskilled workers across the nation in that period, Weinberg said.
Weinberg and his colleagues did several analyses to examine the connection between wages, unemployment and crime between 1979 and 1997 for men without college educations. In one analysis, they looked at crime rates in 705 counties across the country - all counties with populations greater than 25,000 - and compared them with state wages and unemployment rates. The second analysis focused on statistics from 198 metropolitan areas as defined by the U.S. Census. The researchers took into account factors such as arrest rates and number of police that may have also influenced crime rates.
In the first analysis, the researchers calculated that the 20 percent fall in the wages of non-college-educated men over the entire period can account for a 10.8 percent increase in property crime and a 21.6 percent increase in violent crime. "Wage declines are responsible for more than half of the long term increase in both property and violent crime," Weinberg said
Overall, wages had a larger effect on crime than did the unemployment rate, according to Weinberg. That's because the unemployment rate is cyclical and there is no strong long-term trend. Wages, however, fell steadily during most of the period studied.
"Clearly, the long-term trend in wages was the dominant factor on crime during this period," he said.
In a third analysis, the researchers examined data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to see if the criminal behavior of the young men who participated in the survey could be linked to economic conditions where they lived. This survey asked participants if they had taken part in crimes such as shoplifting and robbery in the previous year.
As expected, economic conditions had no effect on the criminal activity for the more highly educated workers in the sample.
However, among less educated men, lower wages and higher unemployment rates in the states where they lived made it more likely that they had participated in crimes. This was true even after the researchers took into account factors such as cognitive ability and family background.
"Low-skilled workers are clearly the most affected by the changes in labor opportunities, and these results remain after controlling for a wealth of personal and family characteristics," he said.
#
Contact: Bruce Weinberg, (614) 292-5642; Weinberg.27@osu.edu
Written by Jeff Grabmeier, (614) 292-8457; Grabmeier.1@osu.edu
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From http://www.leap.cc/ ...(Law Enforcement Against Prohibition)...
ONE DRUG ARREST EVERY 18 SECONDS IN THE U.S.
NEW FBI NUMBERS SHOW FAILURE OF "WAR ON DRUGS"
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A group of police and judges who want to legalize drugs pointed to new FBI numbers released today as evidence that the "war on drugs" is a failure that can never be won. The data, from the FBI's "Crime in the United States" report, shows that in 2008 there were 1,702,537 arrests for drug law violations, or one drug arrest every 18 seconds.
"In our current economic climate, we simply cannot afford to keep arresting more than three people every minute in the failed 'war on drugs,'" said Jack Cole, a retired undercover narcotics detective who now heads the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). "Plus, if we legalized and taxed drug sales, we could actually create new revenue in addition to the money we'd save from ending the cruel policy of arresting users."
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