Speaker Pelosi celebrates the passage (by voice vote) of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010:
Key Provisions:
Reduces the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1, with a 5-year mandatory minimum for 28 grams of crack cocaine and a 5-year mandatory minimum for 500 grams of powder cocaine.
Eliminates the mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack cocaine (the only mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of a drug).
Significantly increases fines for convicted major drug traffickers.
Significantly increases sentences for drug offenders involved in aggravating factors, including bribing law enforcement; maintaining an establishment for drug manufacturing or distribution; involving minors, seniors, or vulnerable victims in the offense; importing drugs; intimidating witnesses; tampering with evidence; or obstructing justice.
This is the first time in forty years that the government has repealed a mandatory minimum sentence. It even had Republican co-sponsors: Sens. Coburn, Cornyn, Graham, Grassley, Hatch, and Sessions. It’s refreshing to see a piece of blatantly racist legislation rectified like this, and without a bunch of whining about how supporters are soft on crime. Majority Whip Dick Durbin was the point man on this in the Senate, and he deserves special praise.
This was a big win, even if it didn’t eliminate the disparity entirely. Obama’s achievements for the urban community are starting to pile up. The Consumer Financial Protection Agency will crack down on usury in payday loans, the Credit CARD Act eliminated fee-heavy subprime credit cards and other predatory practices, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act was focused almost exclusively at improving low income communities, and the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act (part of the Dodd-Frank bill) is a major piece of pro-urban progressive legislation, too. Then there were the following provisions in the Stimulus bill:
To broaden access to affordable housing, the Act provides for $1 billion in increased funding for the Community Development Block Grant; $4 billion in increased public housing capital funds; $2 billion in payments to owners of project based rental assistance properties to keep them affordable; $2 billion in Neighborhood Stabilization Funds to purchase and rehabilitate forclosed homes; and $1.5 billion in Homelessness Prevention Funds to keep people in their homes;
To expand educational opportunity for low-income students, the Act provides for $13 billion in Title I funds to go to K-12 education in disadvantaged school systems;
To strengthen workforce development, the Act provides $3.95 billion in increased workforce investment training dollars to keep our workers skilled and to employ young people during the summer;
To improve energy efficiency, the Act increases the Weatherization Assistance Program by $5 billion, helping low income consumers save on their energy bills while simultaneously training more workers for a growing field;
To bolster our nation’s transportation infrastructure, the Act provides $1.5 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Transportation to fund projects of regional or national significance as well as $8 billion to jumpstart high speed rail and connect regions to one another; and,
The Act also provides $4.7 billion to provide broadband access to underserved areas.
The Department of Urban Affairs has a weekly newsletter where you can keep up with the latest.
Significant progress all around, and a useful roundup of what the administration has been doing for the people and places most in need of some help. Will anybody hear about it though? I suggest that all of us living in the cities print up a ream of summaries like this one and distribute the fliers in the neighborhood. And get some recipients to make more copies on their own.
As to the Sentencing Act itself, I wonder if the sentence for soliciting and accepting bribes is also significantly increased. If so, it would pretty much wipe out the “vice squads” and leave America a better place.
And, of course, I forgot to even mention the biggest accomplishment of all…massive subsidies for health insurance.
As I tried to point out yesterday, as well, this is progressive achievement of the moving toward “equal opportunity” sort. As usual, it is a step — not perfect, but important for it’s direction. There will be lots of moaning (already present on Huffington) that this isn’t real parity between crack and powder, etc. These are the idealists who would rather have no bill than one that moves a segment of our community — one whose community has been so harshly discriminated against by a law — toward a greater fairness.
This was true with health care, too. Better no loaf than 3/4’s of a loaf. Sure, who wouldn’t want everyone covered for everything? But if 90% of those without healthcare could get it, some would argue it wasn’t worth doing because it wasn’t “perfect.” That’s pretty idealistic and not PROGRESSive.
Thanks, Booman, for continuing to call attention to this part of the “silent progressives” movement. Your experience in the inner-city, I’m sure, informs your views.
In my time working with urban black communities, I never heard anyone complain about paying money to health insurance corporations or the rules of Wall Street.
I heard people talk about:
That list is not in any particular order, but that’s the progressive agenda I care about.
I should add, lest someone pick up on the right wing meme that Obama is taking from White to give to Blacks, that these are really issues of haves and have-nots, regardless of color.
Absolutely. I happen to have a special affection for the communities I’ve worked in, but many of the same issues apply with equal force to Appalachia or to Latino communities or to poor white neighborhoods in our cities.
I might add, though, that urban black neighborhoods do not normally get this kind of love regardless of who is president. And that’s not a mark against Obama. That’s a mark against our society.
They’ve legalized usury for use against the black community, and now Obama is starting to unwind it.
He just successfully filed suit in Arizona, helping every Latino in the state avoid harassment and second-class citizenship.
You know, you have to count your blessings because everything isn’t going our way.
Steve Bennen notes that the sentencing thing was accomplished without conservatives setting their hair on fire about drug-loving criminal pitying Dems which is a major accomplishment. Wonder what would have happened if they had?
It’s still a racist regime but it’s better than it was!
I think this is an example of how, unnoticed, Obama has moved the bar. I remember a West Wing episode in the first series which was all about mandatory minimums and how racist they were and the effort to overturn them. It was just after the whole “Let Bartlett be Bartlett” thing which people are using to say “Let Obama be Obama” – i.e. the revelation that that you have to fight and stand for some thing. When mandatory minimums were brought up, even in the LBBB mode that was considered too far to run.
So, what’s been done is something that was a liberal priority for many years, something which was considered just too difficult to get done and yet it is passed with barely a fanfare or acknowledgement. It’s just taken for granted. I think that is in large part to Obama moving the bar so that what was once considered radical reform is now considered not much better than the status quo. It’s the same with healthcare (who would be talking about the public option or single payer without Obama’s push for universal healthcare?), financial reform (ditto for Glass-Stegal, nationalising the banks etc.), stimulus (those who say that the stimulus should have been bigger seem to forget that the option on the table before the $800 bn bill was a bill that cost about $400 bn). My point is, who is enabling these arguments that bring liberal policy into play (even if they may not be enacted just yet)? It’s Obama and his fellow democrats in Congress. That is something, imho, that should not be taken for granted.