[Marxism] Two Empty Bottles with Different Labels

[Duane Roberts <duaneroberts92804@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.counterpunch.com/wright10022004.html

October 2 / 3, 2004

Two Empty Bottles with Different Labels
John Kerry on Criminal Justice Issues
By PAUL WRIGHT

"Americans on the frontlines - our first responders,
military forces, sheriffs, policemen, firefighters,
and civil defense volunteers - must have the very best
equipment, training and support possible. Our safety
and freedom are the envy of the world and John Kerry
and John Edwards will ensure this does not change. A
Kerry-Edwards administration will recruit more law
enforcement and emergency professionals, combat Meth
labs and drug abuse, and build a stronger judicial and
prison system in rural areas."

John Kerry for President Website, www.Johnkerry.com

The issue of felon disenfranchisement, where millions
of Americans convicted of crimes that may or may not
have resulted in imprisonment cannot vote in
government elections, is one of growing importance.
Around the country various lawsuits are challenging
such laws under various theories, so far with mixed
results. Some political pressure, especially by the
black community is raising awareness about how this
results in dilution of the black vote and undermines
any notion of equality and democracy. In a system that
claims to be a democracy the right to vote should be a
fundamental right. But the flip side of the same coin
is that people who wish to vote should have candidates
who either represent their interests or their views on
given issues. That a majority of the electorate that
can vote chooses not to may reflect recognition of Jim
Hightower's comment that "If the gods wanted us to
vote, they would send us candidates."

One reason for close national and statewide races for
federal offices is the lack of any discernable
differences among the candidates. For people who are
concerned about criminal justice issues the lack of
any substantial policy differences among national
candidates is most easily seen by the fact that today
no national political figure is publicly opposed to
the death penalty. For prisoners or families who have
loved ones in prison, people who do not support a
police state, the death penalty and the evisceration
of human and civil rights the electoral choices
between John Kerry and George Bush amount to choosing
to be beat to death with a stick or a two by four.

In 1992 I wrote an article in Prison Legal News about
Bill Clinton interrupting his presidential campaign to
fly back to Arkansas to preside over the execution of
Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally ill black prisoner who
had blown most of his brains out in a botched suicide
attempt after killing a police man. While George Bush
I was certainly a supporter of the death penalty, he
had not had the opportunity to oversee one to prove
his support of it to the electorate. Clinton could and
did. I predicted that based on his campaign promises
and track record as governor of Arkansas, Clinton
would be a disaster for prisoners and he was. However,
I didn't think he would be as bad as he turned out to
be.

President George Bush II's record on criminal justice
issues needs little elaboration. As governor of Texas
he oversaw over 150 executions, his predecessor Ann
Richards began the massive expansion of the Texas
prison system, which Bush completed, and much more. As
president Bush has presided over the concentration
camp at Guantanamo Bay, the rape and torture chambers
of Abu Gharaib, signed the PATRIOT Act into law and
otherwise done what American presidents historically
do. But presidents do not act alone, they need
legislative approval for these things and John Kerry
has been in the U.S. senate for almost 20 years.
Plenty of time to amass a track record on criminal
justice issues. Moreover, it is not as if Kerry has
questioned or condemned Bush on these human rights
issues.

The Bush campaign has attempted to label Kerry as
being "soft on crime", just as Bush's last opponent
for Texas governor, Texas attorney general Dan Morales
(who has since been imprisoned himself on fraud
charges), claimed Bush was "soft on crime." However, a
review of Kerry's actual voting record and personal
history reveals a consistent track record of
supporting the death penalty, mass imprisonment,
harsher sentences, limited civil rights and more
importantly, the commitment and ability to both pull
the trigger and prosecute the cases himself.

In researching this article I called a prisoner rights
lawyer in Boston to ask about Kerry's record on
prisoner rights issues. He sighed and said "I don't
know the specifics, but I'm sure it's abysmal."

In 1986 Kerry voted for H.R. 5484 which enacted the
federal mandatory minimums for drug crimes, this
included the infamous 100-1 crack cocaine disparity
where defendants with five grams of crack received a
mandatory minimum of five years in federal prison
while possession of five hundred grams of powdered
cocaine resulted in the same five year mandatory
minimum sentence. It would have been surprising if
Kerry had voted against this draconian law since it
had been introduced in the House of Representatives by
then Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil, Kerry's fellow
Democrat from Boston.

Some people in the anti death penalty movement appear
to believe that Kerry is opposed to the death penalty.
If he is, it does not prevent him for voting for its
expansion every opportunity he gets. The same 1986 law
mentioned above reinstated the federal death penalty
for so called "drug kingpins." In 1994 Kerry voted for
the massive 1994 crime bill that Clinton had called
for. As I wrote at the time [PLN, Dec. 1994], this
bill expanded the federal death penalty to dozens of
new offenses, including the killing of federal poultry
inspectors, created new crimes, funded 100,000 police,
enacted the federal "three strikes" law, gave the
states billions of dollars to build new prisons,
limited the power of federal courts to rule on
prisoner crowding suits, eliminated Pell grants for
prisoners to receive an education and significantly
changed the rules of evidence against criminal
defendants and resulted in a massive expansion of
police power. Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, has
also been a strong supporter of the death penalty.

In 1996 Kerry voted in favor of the Anti Terrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) which gutted what
remained of federal habeas corpus law as well as
expanding the deportation of aliens who had been
convicted of a crime. The Prison Litigation Reform Act
was passed that same year but it was enacted as a
rider to the budget and thus no separate voting record
is available.

Kerry voted in favor of the PATRIOT Act in 2001 which
was a Department of Justice wish list that had been
around for a number of years, essentially a
continuation of the 1994 crime bill and AEDPA.

As noted above, on his website Kerry is calling for
more rural prisons, which America needs as much as it
needs a typhoid epidemic. When Kerry says that
America's freedom is the envy of the world I don't
recall hearing people in other countries wish that
they had over two million prisoners. While Kerry may
be proud of the fact that with 5 % of the world's
population, the US has 25% of the world's prisoners,
few countries seem envious enough to lock up that
portion of their citizenry.

Kerry served as a prosecutor for several years in
Massachusetts before running for elected office.
Recently his four months of service in Viet Nam as a
commander of a Swift patrol boat has come under attack
over whether or not he exaggerated his combat
experience, and that he was wounded four times in
incidents that never required hospitalization or
medical treatment. The more significant aspects of his
undisputed actions in Viet Nam have been glossed over.
Namely that many of the Special Forces and CIA
commandos Kerry's boat transported along Vietnamese
rivers were carrying out assorted war crimes,
including the torture and murder of captured civilians
and POWs, some of which occurred on Kerry's boat or in
his presence. Then Kerry boasts of killing a wounded
National Liberation Front guerrilla who was
retreating. These exploits were laid out in detail in
the December, 2003, issue of the Atlantic Monthly in
an article by Douglas Brinkley, Tour of Duty, a
sympathetic hagiography excerpted from the book of the
same title. Rather than running for president a case
can be made that Kerry should be indicted for war
crimes.

Both Kerry and Bush II are from wealthy families and
have similar educations and even memberships in the
same Skull and Bones secret society at Yale. I guess
that is why it is called a ruling class. On any
substantial policy issue it is difficult to find any
difference between the two candidates. Asked by the
New York Times how his policies would differ from the
current regime's, Kerry replied they would differ in
style but not substance. On criminal justice issues
neither candidate for the Democratic or Republican
parties offers voters any significant choice beyond
being beaten to death with the stick or the two by
four. Both have reprehensible records on this topic.
However, unlike Bush II whose personal organizational
capabilities seem to max out at organizing a keg
party, Kerry has shown an ability and willingness to
kill and prosecute people himself.

If Kerry has any principles or actually believes in
anything beyond political expediency his supporters
have yet to point out what those may be. In his two
decades in the Senate he has consistently voted
against the interests of prisoners and criminal
defendants and in support of state power and
repression. It is unreasonable to expect that if
elected president he would be any different. No one in
Kerry's campaign office would return my calls seeking
comment on his positions on these issues.

Both vice president Dick Cheney and president Bush
have been convicted of drunk driving, twice each. They
employ at least one convicted felon, Elliot Abrams, in
the white house, and won't tell reporters how many
other felons they employ. President Bush won't answer
any questions about his drug use in the past,
apparently believing the electorate has no business
knowing if he violated the nation's felony laws
against drug use and possession. Of course, if he has
not violated such laws, one would think a simple
denial would suffice. Yet they condemn Kerry as being
soft on crime when he is anything but.

Bush's policies engender opposition and there is some
awareness that he is little more than a bag man for
corporate interests. Under Clinton not only were the
rights of prisoners set back decades, there was no
resistance to it. When Reagan and Bush I attempted to
gut habeas corpus, there was opposition and the
attempts failed. When Clinton tried, there was no
opposition and it succeeded. The same thing occurred
with regards to "welfare reform." It is likely that a
Kerry presidency would see a similar phenomenon.

Some members of the "anybody but Bush" camp argue that
Kerry should be supported at any cost but that lowers
the bar for all candidates. The most common argument
is that at least Kerry supports abortion rights for
women. However, Kerry states he is personally opposed
to abortion and would not impose an abortion litmus
test on any judicial appointments he makes. This
argument also implicitly assumes that the more than 2
million victims of mass incarceration in this country,
almost all of whom are poor and who are
disproportionately black and Hispanic and mostly men,
are expendable and of no consequence, politically or
morally. That their liberty, human rights and families
mean nothing and are political fodder to be trashed
for political gain. Poor, disenfranchised and with no
voice anyone in power seems compelled to listen to,
prisoners and criminal justice reformers have little
choice in the presidential race of 2004. Two empty
bottles with different labels indeed. Take your pick.

Paul Wright is a human rights advocate and the founder
and editor of Prison Legal News, an independent
monthly magazine which reports on criminal justice
issues. www.prisonlegalnews.org. He is also co-author
of The Celling of America: AN Inside Look at the US
Prison Industry (Common Courage, 1998) and Prison
Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor (Routledge,
2003).




        
                
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