Gun violence in Philadelphia will not subside with more police. Ed Rendell knows this. More police have only made it worse up till now and will only make it worse going forward. Police only take the weaker gangsers off the street leaving the city’s $ 7 hundred million annual black market for drugs more open for the real predators to succeed and grow. With that unregulated growth comes the economic and political destabilization of poor urban communities.
This is about the political economics of drug prohibition.
Ed Rendell needs the gun violence in Philadelphia.
Ed Rendell needs his ever escalating Jim Crow drug war.
Without the drug war and its violence Rendell would have to campaign for the interests of poverty oppressed urban Pennsylvanians. So too would Bob Casey. But with urban poor communities destabilized and electorally dis-empowered with the violence, crime and the political effects of mass criminal disenfranchisement Rendell and Casey only need to campaign to ‘middle class’ interests. ‘Middle class’, the modern political euphemism for rural Jim Crow interests.
You could make a good argument for, based on the question in your poll. With the disporportionate number of blacks convicted for drug offense and laws rigged to punish offenders of “inner city drugs” such as crack, carrying heavier penalties than powder cocaine. But I think it’s a stretch to say it was designed as such. It’s more of an unintended result capitalized on by scuzbag politicos.
Hi BobX:
I too rationalized it as unintended for most of my life, but I lived through the 1960-70’s and the time since, this is no unintended consequence.
In 1970 the Jim Crow right wing and the pro-war Nixon right wing, in both parties, were looking for ways to, as Nixon put it: “[President Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.” H.R. Haldeman’s diary.
The drug war was that “system”.
Anti-war nonconformists and civil rights firebrands were all associated with, in the paranoid compartmentalizing world the American right wing, youth and drugs. The Voting Rights Act, as well as the 26st Amendment in 1970, politically and electorally empowered these two dissident groups of young America. The drug war was the way to re-impose Jim Crow on minorities and a way to marginalize the more aggressively assertive youth counter-culture in America.
The Democrats in 1970 were split between those who support civil rights and/or opposition to the war versus the Wallace wing that supported the war and opposed civil rights. The Wallace wing was also the assistant district attorney Ed Rendell and his mentor Frank Rizzo’s wing of the Democrats.
This right wing of the Democrats has undermined the progressive and minority rights wings of the Party thinking that they can instead poach the moderates in the GOP by looking tough on core Democratic constituencies of the disaffected.
More Americans today, mostly minority and mostly for drugs, are criminally disenfranchised than made the difference in the 2004 presidential election. The right wing Democrats have screwed themselves. Democratic core constituencies are in too much a state of disarray while Republican right wingers will never vote for Jim Crow Democrats in large enough numbers to get a decisive win.
Sasha Abramsky‘s new book “Conned: How Millions of Americans Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House“, observed this mechanism achieve critical mass in the 2004 presidential election.
“Because so many people have been driven out of the political system by disenfranchisement laws, the broader culture of voting has been damaged to an extraordinary degree. At least in part, America’s low voter turnout in recent decades can be attributed to felon disenfranchisement contributing to a culture of political disengagement. For a generation now, only slightly more than half of the adult citizens in America have voted in most presidential elections and far fewer have cast ballots in less high-profile contests. In 2004, when a higher percentage of Americans came out to vote than had been the case in decades -approximately 6o percent of those eligible- pundits initially predicted that this would aid the Democrats. When the votes were tallied, it turned out it had actually helped the Republicans. Quite possibly, in contrast to the Republicans, who were able to mobilize the Christian Right and other core voter blocks in record numbers, Democrats had hit their natural limits. At least in part, those limits may have been reached because many millions of economically impoverished Americans -traditionally crucial Democratic voters- had literally lost their right to vote.”
You really have supported your viewpoint with one statement The Wallace wing was also the assistant district attorney Ed Rendell. I would also like to add that some states return voter rights upon completion of sentence(Mass)and some do not(FL). I personally would like to see rights returned to ALL after completion in some form of a federal law, not state by state. Thanks for your reply, “the more you know”.
bob:
I like to think that Rendell’s career long support of the drug war supports the association of him with the negative impacts of the drug war.
“I personally would like to see rights returned to ALL after completion in some form of a federal law, not state by state.”
Absolutely!
During the recent Voting Rights Act debate in congress I came to that same conclusion and wrote this.
Voting Rights Act not enough
We need to take our democracy out of the hands of our politicians.