Death Penalty Isn't Always Justice

Texas Democrats came out strongly for justice when the 2012 state convention added repeal of the death penalty and replacing it with life without parole to the party platform. Exonerated death row inmate Anthony Graves, who was nearly executed twice, spoke to a large audience explaining how our dysfunctional justice system continues to wrongfully execute innocent people.

Graves spoke from the heart and reminded attendees that you can’t undo an execution. He also told us that while outsiders think life without parole is getting off easy those in prison with such sentences don’t see it that way and many would rather face execution or in his words “take the needle”.

While people of color are disproportionately represented among those executed don’t think it can’t happen to middle aged white guys. Gov. Perry allowed Cameron Todd Willingham to be executed even after being presented with evidence that no crime had been committed at all.

We should also recognize that it costs four times as much to try a death penalty case and execute the convict as it does to jail someone for 40 years. That means we spend an awful lot of our criminal justice resources on killing someone when we could be protecting our families from violent crime by having more cops on the beat.

If you’re a small government, low tax conservative who believes our criminal justice system should be tough on crime wouldn’t it be more cost effective to stop this big government boondoggle?

End the big government boondoggle

Republicans constantly make the dubious claim that fewer regulations on businesses would increase profits and encourage them to hire more people. There is something we could cut regulations on that would reduce costs to our local, state and federal governments, increase employment, reduce both violent crime and official corruption and increase tax collections without raising tax rates. That something is legalizing marijuana then regulating and taxing it like alcohol and tobacco. On Saturday June 9, 2012 the Texas Democratic Party took a giant step forward by adding a platform plank calling for decriminalization of marijuana.

Every year the police in this country arrest more people of marijuana possession than they do for murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault and other violent crimes combined. After over 40 years of the “War on Drugs” marijuana use is more prevalent and the marijuana is more readily available than it was when President Nixon declared the war.

By any measure the prohibition of marijuana possession and personal use is exactly the big government boondoggle that conservatives so often complain about. It’s way past time that all our political leaders recognize that prohibition today is just as counter productive as it was in the 1920’s and 1930’s and repeal it. As one who doesn’t drink alcohol and doesn’t smoke tobacco or marijuana I have nothing personal to gain, I just want to see sensible public policy.

I’m proud to have led the effort to add decriminalization of marijuana to the Texas Democratic Party platform.

Desperate people do desperate things

While the TEA Party continues to play into the hands of Wall Street bankers and billionaires with delusions of grandeur the U.S. economy is once again swirling around the drain. If House Speaker John Boehner is successful in his oft stated goal of making President Obama a one term president we can all look forward to further austerity measures which will put the economy into a tailspin the likes of which haven’t been seen since Herbert Hoover was President.

Many Americans were in desperate shape even prior to the Great Depression and once it struck their ranks only grew. Our parents and grandparents often went hungry sometimes for days on end. What is usually glossed over in history classes in this country is that there was quite a bit of civil unrest in this country in the early part of the 20^th century with labor strikes and government troops used by the corporate bosses to break those strikes often using deadly violence.

We’ve already seen pre-cursors to such heavy handed tactics in places like New York and the University of California at Davis where police pepper sprayed peaceful protestors who were sitting on the ground. What the Koch brothers and the Walton family seem to have forgotten is that in this age of improvised explosive devices when people have nothing left to lose they are willing to take measures that they would never have risked with just a little food on their tables and a roof over their heads.

Texas A&M SA revels in egg on its face

After the crosses were taken down from the building on the Texas A&M San Antonio campus a few months ago it seemed that the episode was over. Sadly that has never been the case as Sissy Bradford, the professor who made the request to have them taken down,  was ostracized by the administration, harassed by staff and students alike, had her car vandalized and received death threats from parties unknown. When she reported the death threats to the university police she was told she’d have to prove who threatened her.

Professor Bradford continued to teach and was assigned four classes in the fall for which a number of students registered. After getting no help from anyone on campus she talked to the press and within hours of the latest story being published her fall classes were canceled. Does anyone really think that’s a coincidence?

When a student with a Presidential scholarship went to talk to the university president on Prof. Bradford’s behalf she was told “I don’t like you anymore” and lost her scholarship.

Sissy Bradford’s story has now been covered by Rick Casey on KLRN television and gone international with the Guardian in the United Kingdom publishing the story as well. The Texas Tribune, the New York Times and other media outlets are preparing stories on the situation. Texas A&M San Antonio now has egg on its face once again and it’s all the administration’s fault for not taking Prof. Bradford’s safety seriously.

War on Drugs - epitome of big government waste

In “Say ‘no’ to pot” Wednesday, Bobby Traeger writes about the potential harmful effects of marijuana as though that alone is reason to keep it illegal. Well then why aren’t alcohol and tobacco illegal, after all they’re both harmful to health and addictive?

Alcohol was illegal in the 1919 to 1933 and look at what a debacle that was. Not only was there a dramatic rise in organized crime, violence and government corruption but Americans lost respect for law enforcement as well. We’re repeating the same process and losing once again.

The “War on Drugs” is nothing more than a big government money waster. Last month the Federal Bureau of Prisons reported that nearly half of all its prisoners were being held for drug convictions. If you believe in small government eliminating the “War on Drugs” should be one of your biggest priorities due to the obscene cost in time and resources for police, prosecution and prisons.

If you’re interested in keeping teens healthy and safe take a lesson from how alcohol and tobacco are regulated and the success of education about the dangers of tobacco. We have successful models to use; let’s stop the insanity of repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

American Taliban Strikes Again

Once again the American Taliban has struck a blow against our Constitution’s protection of religious freedom by promoting the National Day of Prayer on Thursday.

The right frequently makes the claim that if something isn’t specifically stated in the Constitution our federal government shouldn’t be involved in it, yet when it comes to religion and prayer they say just the opposite. The Constitution of the United States makes only two references to religion and both are in the negative. In Article VI it says “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” In the First Amendment it says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…”

No where in our Constitution does it say that this is a “Christian” nation as theocratic extremists repeatedly assert. No where in our Constitution or its history is there any evidence that it is based on any of the several versions of the Christian bible.

As Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State reminds us “Americans don’t need to be told when or whether to pray”. Sadly Mayor Castro refused to sign a proclamation urging citizens of San Antonio to celebrate the First Amendment. It is time our elected officials stop pandering to those who would impose an unconstitutional theocracy on the citizens of this great nation and do away with the “National Day of Prayer”.

End to big government boondoggle known as the "war on drugs"

Senator Wentworth’s April 19 Viewpoint goes into some detail on the damage that drug cartels are doing to Texas. He fails to mention the even greater damage the overall “war on drugs” is doing to our society and that of our neighbors in Mexico where there were over 3,000 murders in Juarez alone in 2010.

At last weeks Summit of the Americas in Cartegena, Latin American leaders discussed reform and regulation to replace prohibition, even Canadian Prime Minister Harper conceded at a press conference that the drug war is “not working”.

A wider variety of more powerful drugs is more widely available at lower prices to younger people than they were prior to the “war on drugs”. Any criminologist will tell you that the point of outlawing something is to make it so expensive and so difficult to obtain that people just don’t do it. Based on that criteria; the “war on drugs” is a failure.

The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population while nearly one third of them are there over drug offenses. The cost to arrest, prosecute, incarcerate and probate these “crimes” is staggering.

It is time we recognized that the “war on drugs” is the same kind of counter-productive failure as Prohibition was in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Televangelist Pat Robertson and Congressman Ron Paul both believe that this big government boondoggle should end and so should anyone who believes their tax dollars should be wisely spent.