Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "Joe Biden SHUNS 1994 Crime Bill That He Supported" video.

  1. What is Sam listening to? "I can imagine him saying 'It wasn't a mistake; it was other people's fault.'" That's basically what Biden said. He said it was a mistake - but because of what the states did. He carefully omits, of course, that the federal government incentivized mass incarceration on the state level and that IIRC incarceration rates increased at the federal level. He also says that he knew about sentencing disparities. Well, those disparities didn't go away after 94, so why has it taken him all of 26 years to come around on this, as he nears November 3rd? Moreover, toward the end, he tries to make it sound like mandatory minimums were a good thing, even though we know empirically that they aren't, then he trails off as he's wont to do when his ramblings turn problematical.
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  2. He was defending it just last year. This is probably the most he's spoken against it by calling it a mistake. Funny how obviously authoritarian, harmful policy is always a "mistake."
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  3. He supported it as late as 2019. All of a sudden, with an election looming, he changes his mind, after 26 years? Come on.
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  4. He literally just said, after 26 years of defending the CB, that it was the states' fault. Not his. It was a mistake because of what the states did. He doesn't mention that under the CB the federal government incentivized the states to make those draconian changes, eg mandatory minimums. But Biden also seems to think mandatory minimums were a good thing. So what has he actually learned? What has he actually apologized for?
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  5. The federal government incentivized states to make those changes, eg mandatory minimums. He's full of shit.
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  6.  @EdgeO419  Exactly. Add to that the problem with the rate of incarceration. What does it matter, ideally, if a black man and a white man have the same minimum sentence (which just means jailing whites longer, not necessarily reducing sentencing for blacks) when blacks are disproportionately targeted and incarcerated?
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  7.  Emeril Lugosi  Stop copy pasting this lazy bs.
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  8. He's telling so many lies here. The fact that you think he's being honest speaks only to his ability to pass off those lies with confidence.
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  9.  Emeril Lugosi  Also, it bears mentioning, if we're talking about constituents, the CB is often defended on the basis that black leaders and communities asked for the government to do something to reduce crime. Left out of that exculpation is that those communities also asked for jobs programs, social assistance, housing, drug rehab, parks, better schools - in short, the things that should be part of a crime bill but which didn't con ffg orm to the tough-on-crime and "welfare reform" postures of the era assumed by Democrat and Republican alike. These politicians didn't have their arms twisted to pass that bill. It reflected their racial, class, and ideological biases, preferences, assumptions, and goals.
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  10.  Emeril Lugosi  If you seriously can't tell that I'm anti-Trump and anti-conservative you're a total moron and not worth the time it took to write this out.
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  11.  @JPH1138  If you're a child, maybe that's all you can focus on. I would expect most adults to be able to entertain multiple priorities and acknowledge history and context without needing to disregard working class interests in favor of the image of elite politicians or engaging in inane whataboutery which serves only to terminate critical thinking rather than stimulate it.
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  12.  @JPH1138  Trump is worse than Biden, but adults able to vote ought to be aware of the history of their government (at all times, not just when it's politically convenient for their masters). Go play with your blocks.
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  13.  @JPH1138  You want to talk about condescending? Condescending is treating voters like they're so stupid that they can't be trusted to know the truth about systemic oppression and the role their politicians played in it while also being able to make a relative calculation that paints Trump in a bad light. That's true condescension.
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  14.  @JPH1138  Someone's mad. Nice tantrum btw. Totally proved me wrong about you being a child.
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  15. By...? Doing what? More funding for cops, "community policing"? He was defending the bill as late as last year. This isn't sincere compunction but a calculated bit of political rhetoric. He doesn't take the problems of policing seriously. Small wonder that a septuagenarian whose spent his career building the carceral state can only countenance "reforms" that preserve state and market forces of repression - but with friendlier branding.
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  16.  D J  I think it's less of a risk. The notion of police/prison reform is fairly popular, especially among Democrats. One of Hillary's main problems on 2016 was all of the black Obama voters who stayed home. By conveying compunction (which I doubt is all that sincere, except what passes in a politician's consciousness for sincerity) he's ensuring, maybe, that that black vote won't stay home this time. Biden's biggest gains over Trump recently has been among whites.
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  17. It only took...26 years.
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  18.  Emeril Lugosi  Obviously not, and it would be nice to have a mature, informed discussion with people who aren't reflexively binary thinkers - taking criticism of a neoliberal architect of the carceral state as an endorsement of Trump (because that makes sense) - and who genuinely want real justice and liberation.
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  19. That is part of it. There's still debate on why the "crime" wave happened. Lead poisoning is one culprit, and the reality is it was probably a confluence of factors which we'll never fully understand, and I think the neoliberal policies of the 70s and 80s, of which discriminatory housing practices driving lead poisoning were compatible, must be a factor. But one thing your contextualization takes for granted is the conservative view that crime existed as some entity independent of policy that had to be dealt with. It misses that the crime wave and the reactions it spawned were related to the decades-long war on drugs and neo-imperialism in South America which drove massive quantities of cocaine into urban areas. Cocaine use was then bisected along racial lines, with blacks getting the punitive treatment. To make matters worse, the crack epidemic (which was heavily criminalized, unlike powder cocaine or our present day opioid epidemic) generated the myth of the super predator, which became one of the basal arguments for the crime bill, cited by Biden himself on the floor of the Senate "Super predators" was a concept conceived by conservative criminologist John Dilulio. According to Dilulio, as a result of their parents' crack addiction, so-called "crack babies" wouldn't properly develop intellectually, emotionally, and socially , becoming violent, crazed criminals without empathy. He predicted a fourfold increase in crime over the next decade or so. But this wasn't a case of sound science getting it wrong. His findings were extreme outliers. That didn't stop them from getting picked up by a press eager for sensational and scary stories and then by politicians, like Biden, who used them as a justification for expanding mass incarceration. At the time, other researchers knew his findings were flawed; unfortunately, it was too late. His theory had already become common sense. In reality, crack babies weren't monsters. Some had productive, noncriminal lives. Rather than a fourfold increase in crime, we saw crime cut in half. The very thing the crime bill was meant to prevent never would have happened anyway. I add this bit of context because I think it's important to remember that these politicians weren't forced to accept draconian prison reform as a necessary evil. They had other options which better reflected reality, but their actual choices reflected pre-existing class and racial biases.
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  20.  Vote for Trump Vote for Treason  It's always time to talk about history and justice.
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  21. This is the first time Biden has talked to a black person about crime since 1994.
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  22.  @JPH1138  Wow. You need therapy.
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  23. Blue MAGA mad.
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  24. His whole spiel about how more police reduce crime and how we need for funding and "community policing" is complete neoliberal bs that police/prison abolitionists have been debunking for years.
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  25.  @tjnucnuc  Criticizing Biden =/= wanting Trump, dummy.
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  26.  @tjnucnuc  That's not how it works. You're always aware of and trying to raise class consciousness and hold politicians accountable (and that includes Trump and the Republicans - even more so), or you're carrying water for elites and adopting their propaganda, like the notion that the CB was a "mistake." It wasn't, just like the Iraq War or any instance of state violence isn't a "mistake." I also don't understand your argument. It's okay for you to criticize Biden, but not for me to?
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  27.  @adquidorator3374  What gish galloping, dummy? I made one or two points. The crime bill is embedded in a longer project of the war on drugs and neo-imperialism, and concerns over rising crime were not just objective, data-driven fears but the product of racialized mass hysteria about the aforementioned drug war. How do two interlocking points amount to gish galloping?
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  28. Blue MAGA mad.
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  29.  @matthewschwartz6607  You might be thinking of their earlier bill, the Comprehensive Crime Controle Act or the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, both of which I believe Biden and Thurmond worked together on.
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  30.  @matthewschwartz6607  He wasn't forced. By that time, he'd made a career out of advocating for tough on crime policies—cutting parole, longer sentences, seizing assets. He was the one who urged the government to apply RICO to petty criminals and drug users. He's the one who wanted a drug czar. He routinely criticized Reagan for being soft on crime and drugs and for cutting spending to the FBI. "Forced." No one forced him to do any of that.
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  31.  Emeril Lugosi  He said he thinks mandatory minimums were a good thing.
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  32.  @bjones8470  She's also not only got the approval of the Clinton's but she's brought on a lot of their people as well.
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  33.  @lukasbason1317  But not about the reasons why. He blames the states but omits that the federal government incentivized states to adopt policies that ramped up mass incarceration.
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  34.  Emeril Lugosi  Are you only capable of thinking in narrow binaries? Do you have an authenticate thought in your head that isn't reducible to "but Republicans bad"?
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  35.  Emeril Lugosi  Are you functionally illiterate?
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  36. I would just find a different alternative. Jimmy's gone way off the deep end into become a vacuous contrarian. His channel looks more and more like Tim Pool lite.
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  37.  Emeril Lugosi  He doesn't represent those who want genuine change. He's proposing ideas that had some cache decades ago but which we now have hoid reasons to suspect are wholly inadequate - increasing police funding and so-called community policing, which is not policing by and for the community, but the attempt to identify the community with its own oppressors.
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  38. Uh...that's not what he's doing.
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  39. Nah. The VAWA was in there to get crime dove Democrats on board with the crime bill.
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