H.R. 1528, "The Safe Access to Drug Treatment & Child Protection Act of 2005"

Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-WI) who sponsored Real ID, the really bad idea ID, is pushing for reasons for more prisons with his new drug bill (TalkLeft via Crooks and Liars).

A five year mandatory minimum sentence for passing a joint to a person who has been through a drug treatment program?

Two year jail sentence if you observe or come across info about drug distribution near colleges and don’t report within 24 hours and “provide full assistance investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting those involved”?

A 3 year mandatory minimum prison sentence for parents who witness or learn about drug trafficking activities, targeting or even near their children, “if they do not report it to law enforcement authorities within 24 hours and do not provide full assistance investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting the offender”?

So if little John or Jen comes home smelling of pot and parent doesn’t turn him or her and his friends over to the police, then you could to jail for a mandatory three years for not narcing on your child.

This piece of legislation is truly insane. Congressman Sensenbrenner, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, also on the Homeland Security Committee, is insane! What is wrong with this man?

Here is his voting record on crime:

Voted NO on funding for alternative sentencing instead of more prisons. (Jun 2000)
Voted YES on more prosecution and sentencing for juvenile crime. (Jun 1999)
Voted NO on maintaining right of habeus corpus in Death Penalty Appeals. (Mar 1996)
Voted YES on making federal death penalty appeals harder. (Feb 1995)
Voted NO on replacing death penalty with life imprisonment. (Apr 1994)
Rated 30% by CURE, indicating anti-rehabilitation crime votes. (Dec 2000)
More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty. (Sep 1994)

Sensenbrenner’s voting record on drugs:

Voted YES on military border patrols to battle drugs & terrorism. (Sep 2001)
Voted YES on prohibiting needle exchange & medical marijuana in DC. (Oct 1999)
Voted NO on subjecting federal employees to random drug tests. (Sep 1998)

Sensenbrenner’s voting record on Homeland Security:

Voted YES on federalizing rules for driver licenses to hinder terrorists. (Feb 2005)
Voted YES on continuing military recruitment on college campuses. (Feb 2005)
Voted NO on supporting new position of Director of National Intelligence. (Dec 2004)
Voted YES on adopting the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. (Oct 2004)
Voted YES on emergency $78B for war in Iraq & Afghanistan. (Apr 2003)
Voted YES on permitting commercial airline pilots to carry guns. (Jul 2002)
Voted NO on $266 billion Defense Appropriations bill. (Jul 1999)
Voted YES on deploying SDI. (Mar 1999)
Rated 44% by SANE, indicating a mixed record on military issues. (Dec 2003)
No US troops under UN command; more defense spending. (Sep 1994) *

More on his voting record at Votesmart.

At the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary website, there is a Statement of Ronald Brooks, preisdent of the National Narcotic Officers’ Associations’ Coalition, before the Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security , United States House of Representatives. It reads, in part,

On September 11, 2001, America was attacked by terrorists based in foreign lands. This attack resulted in the murder of almost 3,000 Americans. Because of the intensity and magnitude of that single attack, it is easy to lose sight of the chemical attack that occurs daily in cities and towns in every state in the nation. Illegal drugs and their effects kill more than 19,000 Americans annually and the impact on our economy is estimated to be more than $160 billion each year.

This continuous and unrelenting attack by international drug cartels, American street gangs, meth cookers, and neighborhood drug traffickers is equivalent to a September 11th tragedy every two months. We must continue our commitment to fighting these criminals as aggressively as we fight terrorists who have political motives. Tough drug laws such as those proposed in the “Safe Access to Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005” are essential weapons in our arsenal.

Vigorous enforcement of drug laws helps to keep families and neighborhoods safe from violent criminals and serves as a deterrent to first-time drug use for most young people. It also helps many addicts reach the road to recovery through drug courts and other corrections-based treatment programs.

What?

Pete Guither at Drug War Rant has a lot more info plus a post on Narcs scramble for loose change from terrorist victims.

And if they need to maybe they’ll tack it onto the back of some other “Must do!” legislation like they did with Real ID. Hell, maybe they’ll just pull a “we didn’t but we’ll say we did.”

Sensenbrenner: Bill passed!
Public: No, it didn’t!
Sensenbreener: Did so. I say it did.

Talkleft on April 15th quoted the Marijuana Policy Project report on HR 1258 and what gives it that extra special something:

This bill has traction because it also contains a section that serves as the House Republican leadership’s response to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made the Federal Sentencing Guidelines advisory, rather than mandatory. The Republican leadership is highly motivated to pass this bill — and with it, the harsh new penalties related to marijuana.

Well, there you go.

Sensenbrenner with Dave Weldon (R-FA) sponsored the Terri Schiavo legislation H.R. 1332, the “Protection of Incapacitated Persons Act of 2005”.

On April 5th, TalkLeft noted that Sensenbrenner wanted to criminalize TV indecency:

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner III, R-Wis., told cable industry executives attending the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. conference here on Monday that criminal prosecution would be a more efficient way to enforce the indecency regulations. “I’d prefer using the criminal process rather than the regulatory process,” Sensenbrenner told the executives.

People who are in flagrant disregard should face a criminal process rather than a regulator process,” Sensenbrenner said. “That is the way to go. Aim the cannon specifically at the people committing the offenses, rather than the blunderbuss approach that gets the good actors. “

Anyway, Sensenbrenner’s idea of governance seems to be putting America in prison. He’s just carrying out process like I’ve expected since 9/11 and the Patriot Act. Soon there will be one or several laws for jailing anyone in the US for a mandatory two years or so. I’m a paranoid sort, some will say, but I figure that’s how you get around jailing people for political dissent. Mr. or Ms. Ordinary American says something you don’t like, set up his or her kid with some pot in just the right way so they’ll know about it but you figure they won’t tell and then you bust them for it for three years. Mr. or Ms. College Student says something you don’t like and they get two years for not reporting themselves for buying cannibis or for being around it at a party. What a windfall!

The following is from a 2002 article by John Stanton and Wayne Madsen posted at Newsinsider, UN Intervention is Necessary:

With the collapse of the American justice system, the United States stands on the precipice of the totalitarian state. Indeed, the evidence is there to show that the US is in the initial stages of some form of mutated capitalist totalitarianism. And in one of the most stunning bits of irony, the very system of justice that steered the country away from dalliances in State totalitarianism, is leading America there.

The War on Drugs – based on ill-conceived presidential directives, legislation passed by a deaf, dumb and blind Congress, and public paranoia and panic fueled by self-serving interests – increased the U.S. prison population by approximately 3 million people between 1990 and 2000; the collateral damage being innocents behind bars, ruined reputations, federal interagency squabbles and further erosion of the Bill of Rights. The War on Terrorism, designed with equal simple-mindedness and expediency, seems destined to perform in similar fashion and will undoubtedly produce fresh crops of productive inmates for the American justice system…

The Bush-Cheney “regime,” that being the only descriptor that comes to mind for it, is playing fast and loose with the U.S. Constitution, demonstrating that they are not upholding the oath of office they took on January 20, 2001. America must come out of its catatonic state. It is time to recall the words of Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his famous book, The Gulag Archipelago:

“And how we burned in the camps latter, thinking: What would things have been like if . during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those blue caps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur—what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst; the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more. We had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! .We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

The United Nations must recognize that one of its founding members is drifting dangerously towards totalitarianism – a prospect that endangers the peace and freedom of the entire world. Perhaps it’s time they intervene.

Saving kids, my ass. Has nothing to do with saving kids. “The Safe Access to Drug Treatment & Child Protection Act of 2005” has nothing to do with protecting kids and nothing to do with safe access to drug treatment. It has to do with totalitarianism. It has to do with more ways to put more people in jail. A two year mandataory jail sentence if you observe or come across info about drug distribution near colleges and don’t report within 24 hours and “provide full assistance investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting those involved is not about protecting you or anyone else from Reefer Madness (Arvin Hill blog). A three year mandatory minimum prison sentence for parents who witness or learn about drug rafficking activities, trargeting or even near their children, “if they do not report it to law enforcement authorities within 24 hours and do not provide full assistance investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting the offender” is not about protecting your child. It’s an excuse and nothing more. A set-up. A way for putting more people in jail.

If you’re Bush or anyone with money and/or a smidgen of neocon influence then you don’t have to worry about it. Laws like these aren’t made for such.

Laws like these are made to lock up only certain target populations. Anyone who doesn’t realize that probably has a friend they think they can call who will help them to get a little special treatment because, y’know, they’re not one of “those” prison fodder type persons, they don’t belong in prison like those others do.

Believe me, when Barbara or Jennie Bush go to a party near a college campus (define near?) and come home smelling of this or that or acting a tad funny, neither of them, nor pop nor mom, are going to end up with a mandatory two years.

(*Note: I got the voting info from the Activote website. I don’t know why but my Firefox and IE both flip out now at their site so am not giving a link. My computer screen turns black whenever I move my mouse when I’m at Activote. Didn’t start immediately, just as I was looking through the Sensenbrenner page. I managed to get over to the back button finally and back out of the website and things returned to normal. Tried going back in another browser, same problem. I don’t know what is up with that. This is only happening at Activote so maybe something in their coding they need to clean up and maybe already have but I’m not going to try to check it out yet.)


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8 responses to “H.R. 1528, "The Safe Access to Drug Treatment & Child Protection Act of 2005"”

  1. Jim McCulloch Avatar

    Dick Nixon first realized the possibilities of a permanent war, one with little or no down side for Republicans, when he invented the War on Drugs in 1968. Unlike Vietnam, no body bags, or at least most of the body bags would be in Colombia or Mexico, not to worry. Permanent hysteria, good for the perpetual-growth Republican service industry, prisons. The War on Terror has yet to prove such staying power, but, unfortunately, I am afraid it has similar potential.
    Our last best hope may lie in Republican meanness, in its old sense of small-minded and stingy. Thus, here in Texas, lock-em-all-up Republicanism has crashed head on into no-more-taxes Republicanism, and our legislators are running around in little tight circles squealing like frustrated lab rats, unable to bear the idea of lenient sentences for drug offenders, and unable to bear the idea of paying for the new prisons. What to do? Stay tuned.

  2. site admin Avatar

    Well, that’s one of the things I’m hoping will happen. That lack of funds to handle Real ID, more prisons, and whatever else is in the wings will hit the states and send most eventually screaming no, can’t do.

  3. Arvin Hill Avatar

    Republicanism is now defined exclusively by psychopathology and cultism.

    “Conservatives” will always find money to build more prisons because theofascist dogma is completely illogical. Play the press like a kazoo until everyone is worked up about the latest drug craze (this year it’s meth) and then dissemble Medicaid and every other social safety net until they can swipe enough public funds to finance the incarceration of every non-Koolaid drinker in the land.

    The culture warriors have a free hand to take their dark vision for this country to the extreme, and there is no one – no one – willing to stop them. Their hatred for the likes of you and me literally knows no bounds, and they are eager to incarcerate us, break us and/or drive us out of the country.

    For this and a few other reasons, I firmly believe America – in a mere ten or twenty years – will be contending with serious guerilla warfare within its own borders — the citizenry versus government/corporations (as if there’s a difference). Sure, my prognostication sounds as crazy as bats in the belfry, but just a few short years ago, few could have foreseen the eerily efficient theofascist machine’s rise to prominence. Which leads me to wonder: What are we not anticipating? What are we underestimating? What is completely off our radar?

    The job of today’s press is to legitimize our corrupt government and the corporations which feed it, period. This will not be changing anytime soon – but until it does, we will remain clamped in the tightening jaws of the beast.

    The United States is fast becoming divided into two distinct groups of adversaries which share not a single value between them. Like a raging fever, America’s infatuation with fascism will have to play itself out – all the way out – because we’re well past the point of no return.

    It’s really quite remarkable – and intensely tragic – to witness the speed with which the widening chasm is devouring every aspect of American life. I’m not sure how long I can take it before I say to hell with it and pull up stakes – something I find myself thinking about with some frequency.

  4. site admin Avatar

    The last several years the situation has degenerated wildly but it’s been coming on for 30 years. There are days when I think of the previous generation, those who set all this up, toddling along after Reagan and Bush, their minds on the Republican mantra of saving the middle class when they were devouring it, and I just want to scream. But then what happened to the Baby Boomers. How did they fall into the pit? And I tell myself, but Bush didn’t win, he stole it. So he doesn’t have the majority behind him. But it hardly seems to matter when elected Dems go along with Republican deconstruction. I would write more in response, and I have, several paragraphs, and have deleted them all, because the despair over the folly and tragedy of it all is just too big and I can’t plunge in and take that swim right now.

  5. Tish G Avatar

    Geeze, if you can’t freely smoke pot in college, what’s the point in going???

  6. site admin Avatar

    I think it’s interesting Sensenbrenner is so gung-ho to clean things up out here and toss everyone in prison but voted no on subjecting federal employees to random drug tests.

  7. Arvin Hill Avatar

    I know what you mean about taking that plunge into the void. Some days I can do it and others I can’t.

    Today, I can.

    It’s certainly true the theofascist ascendency didn’t happen overnight. I was in the USAF in the early 80s and remember being absolutely freaked out at the blind nationalism which infused every aspect of American culture. At the time, I wanted to think of it as an anomaly, but I never could convince myself. In the years since, I can’t count the number of times I’ve been called delusional, paranoid, etc. – often by my fellow liberals – for simply pointing out the trends and hypothetically predicting a bleak future based on those trends.

    By the time the crack cocaine cloud rolled in and law enforcement became militarized, I knew then and there we were fucked. “First, they came for the crackheads, but I was not a crackhead…” Americans need fear and hysteria like my brother needs beer, and that is something I have a hard time grasping.

    Ahhh, the Boomers. So much hope and potential squandered away like coupons at a county fair. For one extremely brief period in American history, we had a chance to be something truly great – a chance to actually live up to our ideals. It’s hard to know what the major corrupting factor was – or is – but I always find myself returning to the truism that human beings prefer comfortable lies to uncomfortable truths. And sooner or later, lies catch up with us… most of us, anyway.

    While I’ve long known this time would come, I hadn’t foreseen the speed with which it would arrive. I thought I’d be in my sixties or seventies – not my early forties.

    Part of my current malaise with blogging lies in my belief there’s simply no stopping the tidal wave of self-destruction washing over the United States – just as there would be no mitigation of the Third Reich in pre-WWIII Germany. So much of the poli-blogosphere is about chronicling the present, which is all well and good – hell, somebody’s gotta do it – but I see precious little preparation for what is to come. Maybe it’s not possible. Or maybe it is and we just don’t have the fortitude. I’m convinced many of us simply lack the courage to acknowledge the depth of the hole we’re in and what it’s going to take to climb out — it will not be pretty — assuming we are to climb out at all. Our ancestors – for better and worse – were willing to fight and die on principle. We are not, and tyranny is always the end result when people absolve themselves of the responsibility to assure freedom – real freedom – for themselves and their progeny. Self-sacrifice? Forget it. It’s much simpler to await a political hero to bail us out of this mess. And I think you and I both know that isn’t going to happen.

    I look at The Left and see a huge segment of society clinging to the anachronistic belief we’re still operating in the same sociopolitical context as we were in, say, 1978 – or, for that matter, the 1990’s. Those days are long gone (as the Fascist Right well knows) and the sooner we collectively realize this, the sooner we can begin to examine new ways of thinking and engaging each other and our adversaries. Instead, we stubbornly pin our hopes entirely on defeating the next Congressional bill or winning the next election or fantasies about reforming corporate media. Mental health professionals refer to this as “magical thinking”. It is painfully apparent to me now we will have to lose everything before we begin to fight in earnest.

  8. VeMan Avatar
    VeMan

    Its true that the majority is not in support of what’s happening. But Fascism is never about what the people want anyway. I think there is a difference this time in that our society is fully armed. That’s a scary prospect for any government.
    The danger with this bill becoming law is that everyone will become as afraid of each other as much they are the government and the police. That’s the worst of Sensenbrenner’s bill is that no one will be safe from anybody- regardless of whether one is using drugs or not.
    Pretty much everybody living a normal American life will likely know someone who is using something. And of course the REAL criminals are completely unaffected.

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