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Yes, Mitt, We Have Mass Incarceration in America

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Quoth Mitt Romney on Fox and Friends: “We don’t have mass incarcerations in America. Individuals are brought before tribunals, and they have counsel. They’re given certain rights. Are we not going to lock people up who commit crimes?”

Finding hard statistics on how many Americans are caught up in the nation’s “justice” system is difficult. Here are a few, culled from various sources, which ring true:

One in every three Americans has a “criminal record.”

One in every thirty or so Americans is, at any given time, under some sort of “correctional supervision” — prison, jail, house arrest, probation or parole.

Double those numbers to get some idea of the “justice” system’s impact on African-Americans. Triple them and you’re starting to get into the ballpark when it comes to African-American males.

Two million Americans, give or take, are at any moment actually behind bars. Some polemicists highlight this figure as “the biggest per capita prison population in the world.” I don’t know if they’re right (official figures from, say, North Korea are naturally suspect), but they’ve definitely got a case.

92% of Americans accused of crimes accept “plea bargains,” admit to lesser charges, and forgo their right to trial in return for lighter sentences. 6% go to trial and are convicted. 2% go to trial and are acquitted.

The Mitt Romneys — and, not so long ago, the Bill Clintons — of the world refer euphemistically to this system as “rule of law.”

The rest of us refer to it as “government gone wild.”

How wild?

Wild enough that the most calculatedly centrist, mainstream politician on the American hustings, Hillary Clinton, thought it necessary to take a poke at the problem in reference to the riots in Baltimore following Freddie Gray’s abduction by police and death en route to jail, for the perfectly understandable “crime” of not wanting to hang around an area when the police showed up.

But apparently not too wild for Mitt Romney.  Following two failed presidential campaigns, Romney has re-branded himself as the talk circuit’s new Alfred E. Neuman — “what, me worry?”

Hillary has a point. Or, rather, she’s catching on late instead of never to an existential threat.

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, America cannot endure one third criminal and two thirds awaiting arrest. It will cease to be divided. It will re-embrace freedom or it will continue to devolve into totalitarian police statism.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Hysteria” or Not, the Iran Deal Will Happen

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“There’s a lot of hysteria about this deal [with Iran over nuclear research],” US Secretary of State John Kerry told Israeli TV’s Channel 10 on May 3. “People really need to look at the facts, look at the science of what is behind those facts.”

So let’s look at three key facts and one key question.

Fact #1: There is not now, nor has there in more than a decade, been so much as a crumb of evidence that the Iranian regime is attempting to develop nuclear weapons. If you don’t believe me, ask the US Central Intelligence Agency or Israel’s Mossad — they say so too.

Fact #2: It follows from Fact #1 that the purpose of negotiations is not to prevent Iran from doing something it isn’t doing.

Fact #3: It follows from Fact #1 and Fact #2 that there must, then, be some other reason for these negotiations and the proposed deal.

These three facts bring up the big question: Why do the politicians of P5+1 (the US, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany) and Iran want a deal so badly?

Working backward, Iran’ s politicians are willing to negotiate because they want US and UN sanctions lifted.

Politicos from Russia, China, France, the UK and Germany want a deal for perfectly obvious reasons: Their countries sell things that Iranians want to buy (including but not limited to arms and nuclear reactor technology) and Iranians sell things that people from those other countries want to buy (including but not limited to oil).

US politicians are, on the other hand, divided on the matter.

Congressional Republicans (and some Democrats) don’t want a deal because for the last 40 years or so “we stand with Israel” has always been a winning political bet. Even more so recently, since casino mogul Sheldon Adelson started dangling large sums of money over the heads of Republican presidential aspirants who evince a willingness to obey the commands, no matter how cockamamie, of Benjamin Netanyahu.

US president Barack Obama and his administration want a deal for two reasons.

One is that thawing relations with Iran would make great “legacy material” for a president whose real accomplishments over 1 1/2 terms in office seem rather sparse.

The other is, really, the nut of the matter. Obama and Kerry know that if the US bucks out of these negotiations on some pretext, at least four of the other five countries (the possible exception being the UK, and that’s only a possibility) will negotiate their own deals with Iran, leaving the US odd man out and bringing “The American Century” to an ignominious end.

What’s at stake here is America’s claimed post-WWII “leadership of the free world.”

As a libertarian, this looks to me like a win-win situation. If Obama gets his way, peace breaks out (sort of, anyway). If the hawks get theirs, they will have painted themselves (and their constant proposals for military American misadventures) into a corner from which escape seems unlikely.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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For Religious Freedom, Separate Marriage and State

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U.S. Supreme Court building.
U.S. Supreme Court building. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

As the Supreme Court takes up the matter of marriage apartheid — an institution of forcible segregation and exclusion aimed at same-sex couples and codified in state laws which defy both the Constitution’s “full faith and credit” clause and its 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” clause —  its supporters once again rally to the banners of family and marriage, feigning support for the very institutions they assail.

“We will not obey!” thunder headlines covering their latest barrage, an open letter signed by numerous American religious leaders. But those headlines lie. The actual content of the letter consists not of a refusal to obey others, but of a demand that others be made to obey them. They want their own religious beliefs to remain codified in law at the expense of all whose beliefs differ.

They call for this establishment of (their) religion, naturally, in the name of “religious freedom.” It seems there’s no concept the anti-marriage, anti-family bigots aren’t willing to turn on its head.

There’s certainly a religious freedom issue at stake here, but the opponents of same-sex marriage are opponents, not supporters, of religious freedom.  For example, until it was struck down, Missouri’s anti-marriage law (passed in 2004 with strong support from this same crowd) provided for a jail sentence of 10 days and a $500 fine against clergy who officiated at unapproved religious ceremonies — “unlicensed” same-sex weddings.

Are the opponents of marriage and family sinned against as well as sinning? Certainly. They don’t believe they should be enslaved to bake cakes (or pizzas) and so forth for couples and families of whom they religiously disapprove. I agree. They shouldn’t. But then, the anti-marriage bigots and the pro-slavery bigots are peas in a pod. They’re both fighting for control of others, not for the freedom of all.

The solution to this whole set of problems is simple: Just as we’ve tried to separate church and state, let’s separate marriage and state! If that’s not feasible in its entirety, then let’s do so to the greatest degree possible.

Instead of government-approved, “licensed” marriages, let the civil form of marriage be by contract. The terms of those contracts can be whatever the parties negotiate. Although I suspect most of them would tend toward the current norms, there’s no call to require that. Different strokes for different folks. The only necessary state involvement, then, would be adjudication of contractual disputes (if even that — the contracts could specify private arbitration).

As for those of particular religious persuasions, let them and their churches celebrate whatever weddings and recognize whatever marriages they choose, and not others (including in their commercial relations). This is the only right which they might reasonably demand others respect.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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