Living 21 Years In The Past

The SacBee reports that Tough On Crime types are trotting out the same symbols that Lee Atwater used in 1988 to sink a Democratic Presidential candidate.

Willie Horton's shadow haunts the Capitol as lawmakers wrestle with how to cut $1.2 billion from state prisons without endangering public safety.

More than two decades after Republican presidential candidate George H.W. Bush used televised ads of murderer Horton to paint presidential opponent Michael Dukakis as soft on crime, state GOP lawmakers are slapping Democrats with a similar charge over proposed prison cuts.

The politically explosive issue, coupled with opposition from some law enforcement groups, is making many Democrats jittery – especially those with aspirations for higher office.

I'm hearing that a lot of this nonsense is being pushed by astroturf front groups for the prison guard's union. And considering that Horton was the kind of violent offender who would be exempted from any changes in the law under the plan on offer, it's simply baseless. But this may be more about getting prison guard money and law enforcement support in future elections. But it has the effect of legitimizing the kind of nonsense that has destroyed our prison system, given us the highest recidivism rate in the nation, put the prison health care system in the hands of a federal receiver due to Constitutional violations, and drawn a demand from federal judges to reduce the population by 44,000.

And it's working, of course.

Bass proposes to eliminate a provision in the Senate-passed plan that has attracted the most intense opposition.

Known as "alternative custody," the controversial proposal would allow the release of up to 6,300 low-level, nonviolent inmates who are elderly, medically infirm, or have less than a year remaining on their sentences.

Inmates released under the plan would be subject to electronic monitoring under "house arrest," which could include placement in a residence, local program, hospital or treatment center.

Because blind people with one leg are dangers to society, and we should spend more money warehousing them than we do on the average higher education student. Makes perfect sense. Not to mention the fact that the judges will probably release these same offenders anyway, as part of the federal mandate.

The real fear is that the Assembly will water down the sentencing commission so that lawmakers will have to affirmatively pass their recommendations into law instead of having to pass legislation to prevent those recommendations from being enacted. Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, running for Attorney General, basically says in the piece that he wants such a change. It's a subtle but important difference; essentially the recommendations will be easier to kill under the weakened standard. And so we continue the endless Tough On Crime march that has put us into a ditch.

Meanwhile, as John Myers notes, intransigence on sensible prison reform will simply increase the eventual budget deficit:

Then there's the never-ending state budget blues. The original prison plan, when added to February's budget cuts and gubernatorial plans to reduce prison spending, was a $1.2 billion part of the deficit solution written into law; the original bill, alone, was estimated to save as much as $600 million. But that was with those alternatives to prison cell custody and fewer crimes resulting in felony one-way tickets to the joint. The 'Plan B' version, say staffers, may come up as much as $200 million short (and that's assuming all of the original savings estimated were valid).

In some years, a $200 million gap in the California state budget may not be the end of the world. But this is no ordinary year; cuts a fraction of that size are forcing all kinds of shutdowns of state services. And if this plan becomes the new way to go on prisons, it's going to leave a lot of budget watchers -- and Californians -- wondering what happens next.

Democrats are wrong if they think they can finesse the right into taking the charge that they are "coddling murderers" off the table. Just look at eMeg, claiming that a sentencing commission would reverse three strikes, about as factual a charge as Sarah Palin's "death panels." They'll always be smeared, so they might as well do the right thing for once.

Hortonization

Karl Rove issued a prediction last week that sounded a bit more like a warning:

The “campaign architect,” as he is commonly called, built a case against President Barack Obama’s order to close Guantanamo, an overseas CIA detention center where terrorists and other “enemy combatants” are held. Obama’s order could enable terrorists to be tried in U.S. courts, to be given undeserved rights afforded American citizens and could cause damaging long-term effects, Rove said.

“One year from now, Gitmo won’t be closed,” Rove said. “If it is, there will be an uproar in the U.S. about where to put these people.”

Interrogation tactics used by the CIA during Bush’s term in office were not torturous, Rove said, but he did not deny that the CIA strongly pressed terrorists for vital information.

“You bet we squeeze them for information,” Rove said. “If we hadn’t, those same terrorists could have executed their plans to kill, and [people] would be asking why Bush didn’t protect American soldiers’ lives.”

That's going to be the strategy going forward. If Obama closes Guantanamo, terrorists will be shopping next to you at the Pic 'n' Save. Before long, there will be a TV ad with a revolving door at the gates of a prison, and a closeup on a bearded Muslim face while the voice-over intones "America can't afford that risk."

Actually, I didn't have to wait for the ad.



Note the "There Goes The Neighborhood" caption. And the doofus offering Alcatraz, a MUSEUM, as an alternative.

Of course, terrorists are already housed in federal prisons on US soil. But the above piece doesn't really mention prisons all that much. It asks residents if they want scaaary Mooslims living next to them.

We have, then, the outliines of a political strategy for the next election. President Obama and the librul Congress want terrorists to work in your office while tough daddy Republicans want to keep you safe. Never mind that it's the height of weakness to think that maximum security prisons aren't sufficient, or that our security can only be bought with a loss of liberty.

Another part of this narrative is that nasty libruls want to spend taxpayer money on condoms for your kids while heartland Murcan Republicans are the paragons of virtue and values.

You'll note that the lie quotient since Republicans have lost power has, if anything, been raised. But these kinds of appeals to emotion, to safety and protection and xenophobia, have a resonance in the lizard brain. I wouldn't discount them, nor would I combat them solely with an appeal to reason. There has to be an emotional counterpart.