Meanwhile back at the ranch we have this creep creeping about. I guess holding 25% of the world's jailed population isn't enough, now we need to jail more dope smokers.

 

Quote

 

How Jeff Sessions wants to bring back the war on drugs

When the Obama administration launched a sweeping policy to reduce harsh prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, rave reviews came from across the political spectrum. Civil rights groups and the Koch brothers praised Obama for his efforts, saying he was making the criminal justice system more humane.

But there was one person who watched these developments with some horror. Steven H. Cook, a former street cop who became a federal prosecutor based in Knoxville, Tenn., saw nothing wrong with how the system worked — not the life sentences for drug charges, not the huge growth of the prison population. And he went everywhere — Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News, congressional hearings, public panels — to spread a different gospel.

“The federal criminal justice system simply is not broken. In fact, it’s working exactly as designed,” Cook said at a criminal justice panel at The Washington Post last year.

The Obama administration largely ignored Cook, who was then president of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys. But he won’t be overlooked anymore.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has brought Cook into his inner circle at the Justice Department, appointing him to be one of his top lieutenants to help undo the criminal justice policies of Obama and former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. As Sessions has traveled to different cities to preach his tough-on-crime philosophy, Cook has been at his side.

Sessions has yet to announce specific policy changes, but Cook’s new perch speaks volumes about where the Justice Department is headed.

Law enforcement officials say that Sessions and Cook are preparing a plan to prosecute more drug and gun cases and pursue mandatory minimum sentences. The two men are eager to bring back the national crime strategy of the 1980s and ’90s from the peak of the drug war, an approach that had fallen out of favor in recent years as minority communities grappled with the effects of mass incarceration.

Crime is near historic lows in the United States, but Sessions says that the spike in homicides in several cities, including Chicago, is a harbinger of a “dangerous new trend” in America that requires a tough response.

“Our nation needs to say clearly once again that using drugs is bad,” Sessions said to law enforcement officials in a speech in Richmond last month. “It will destroy your life.”

Advocates of criminal justice reform argue that Sessions and Cook are going in the wrong direction — back to a strategy that tore apart families and sent low-level drug offenders, disproportionately minority citizens, to prison for long sentences.

“They are throwing decades of improved techniques and technologies out the window in favor of a failed approach,” said Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM).

But Cook, whose views are supported by other federal prosecutors, sees himself as a dedicated assistant U.S. attorney who for years has tried to protect neighborhoods ravaged by crime. He has called FAMM and organizations like it “anti-law enforcement groups.”

The records of Cook and Sessions show that while others have grown eager in recent years to rework the criminal justice system, they have repeatedly fought to keep its toughest edges, including winning a battle in Congress last year to defeat a reform bill.

“If hard-line means that my focus is on protecting communities from violent felons and drug traffickers, then I’m guilty,” Cook said in a recent interview with The Post. “I don’t think that’s hard-line. I think that’s exactly what the American people expect of their Department of Justice.”

Tough on crime

When asked for a case that he was proud to work on during his three-decade career as a prosecutor, Cook points to when his office went after a crack ring operating in Chattanooga housing projects between 1989 and 1991.

This was during the height of the crack epidemic and the drug war. After the cocaine overdose of black basketball star Len Bias in 1986, Congress began passing “tough on crime” laws, including mandatory minimum sentences on certain drug and gun offenses. In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed one of the toughest-ever crime bills, which included a “three strikes” provision that gave mandatory life sentences for repeat offenders.

Federal prosecutors such as Cook applauded their “new tools” to get criminals off the street.

Cook said last year: “What we did, beginning in 1985, is put these laws to work. We started filling federal prisons with the worst of the worst. And what happened next is exactly what Congress said they wanted to happen — and that is violent crime began in 1991 to turn around. By 2014, we had cut it in half.”

To bring down the Chattanooga drug ring’s leader, Victor Novene, undercover federal agents purchased crack from Novene’s underlings. Prosecutors then threatened them with long prison sentences to “flip” them to give up information about their superiors.

Cook said in March: “We made buys from individuals who were lower in the organization. We used the mandatory minimums to pressure them to cooperate.”

Cook’s office also added gun charges to make sentences even longer, another popular tool among prosecutors seeking the longest possible punishments.

With the mandatory minimum sentences and firearms “enhancements,” Novene received six life sentences. Many of his lieutenants were sentenced to between 16 and 33 years in federal prison.

But sentencing reform advocates say the tough crime policies went too far. The nation began incarcerating people at a higher rate than any other country — jailing 25 percent of the world’s prisoners at a cost of $80 billion a year. The nation’s prison and jail population more than quadrupled from 500,000 in 1980 to 2.2 million in 2015, filled with mostly black men strapped with lengthy prison sentences — 10 or 20 years, sometimes life without parole for a first drug offense.

Obama, the first sitting president to visit a federal prison, launched an ambitious clemency initiative to release certain drug offenders from prison early. And Holder told his prosecutors, in an effort to make punishments more fairly fit the crime, to stop charging low-level nonviolent drug offenders with offenses that imposed severe mandatory sentences. He called his strategy, outlined in an August 2013 report, “Smart on Crime.”

Cook has called it “Soft on Crime” and said the Chattanooga case would have been much more difficult to make, “if possible at all,” in recent years.

“We were discouraged from using mandatory minimums,” Cook said about Holder’s 2013 charging and sentencing memo to prosecutors. “The charging memo handcuffed prosecutors. And it limited when enhancements can be used to increase penalties, an important leverage when you’re dealing with a career offender in getting them to cooperate.”

Cook has also dismissed the idea that there is such a thing as a nonviolent drug offender.

“Drug trafficking is inherently violent. Drug traffickers are dealing in a heavy cash business,” he said on the “O’Reilly Factor” last year. “They can’t resolve disputes in court. They resolve the disputes on the street, and they resolve them through violence.”

Winning on the Hill

Cook and Sessions have also fought the winds of change on Capitol Hill, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers recently tried but failed to pass the first significant bill on criminal justice reform in decades.

The legislation, which had 37 sponsors in the Senate, including Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), and 79 members of the House, would have reduced some of the long mandatory minimum sentences for gun and drug crimes. It also would have given judges more flexibility in drug sentencing and made retroactive the law that reduced the large disparity between sentencing for crack cocaine and powder cocaine.

The bill, introduced in 2015, had support from outside groups as diverse as the Koch brothers and the NAACP. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) supported it, as well.

But then people such as Sessions and Cook spoke up. The longtime Republican senator from Alabama became a leading opponent, citing the spike in crime in several cities.

“Violent crime and murders have increased across the country at almost alarming rates in some areas. Drug use and overdoses are occurring and dramatically increasing,” said Sessions, one of five members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who voted against the legislation. “It is against this backdrop that we are considering a bill . . . to cut prison sentences for drug traffickers and even other violent criminals, including those currently in federal prison.”

Cook testified that it was the “wrong time to weaken the last tools available to federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents.”

After GOP lawmakers became nervous about passing legislation that might seem soft on crime, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

“Sessions was the main reason that bill didn’t pass,” said Inimai M. Chettiar, the director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “He came in at the last minute and really torpedoed the bipartisan effort.”

Now that he is attorney general, Sessions has signaled a new direction. As his first step, Sessions told his prosecutors in a memo last month to begin using “every tool we have” — language that evoked the strategy from the drug war of loading up charges to lengthen sentences.

And he quickly appointed Cook to be a senior official on the attorney general’s task force on crime reduction and public safety, which was created following a Trump executive order to address what the president has called “American carnage.”

“If there was a flickering candle of hope that remained for sentencing reform, Cook’s appointment was a fire hose,” said Ring, of FAMM. “There simply aren’t enough backhoes to build all the prisons it would take to realize Steve Cook’s vision for America.”

Sessions is also expected to take a harder line on the punishment for using and distributing marijuana, a drug he has long abhorred. His crime task force will review existing marijuana policy, according to a memo he wrote prosecutors last week. Using or distributing marijuana is illegal under federal law, which classifies it as a Schedule 1 drug, the same category as heroin, and considered more dangerous than cocaine and methamphetamine.

In his effort to resurrect the practices of the drug war, it is still unclear what Sessions will do about the wave of states that have legalized marijuana in recent years. Eight states and the District of Columbia now permit the recreational use of marijuana, and 28 states and the District have legalized the use of medical marijuana.

But his rhetoric against weed seems to get stronger with each speech. In Richmond, he cast doubt on the use of medical marijuana and said it “has been hyped, maybe too much.”

Sessions’s aides stress that the attorney general does not want to completely upend every aspect of criminal justice policy.

“We are not just sweeping away everything that has come before us.” said Robyn Thiemann, the deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy, who is working with Cook and has been at the Justice Department for nearly 20 years. “The attorney general recognizes that there is good work out there.”

Still, Sessions’s remarks on the road reveal his continued fascination with an earlier era of crime fighting.

In the speech in Richmond, he said, “Psychologically, politically, morally, we need to say — as Nancy Reagan said — ‘Just say no.’ ”

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-jeff-sessions-wants-to-bring-back-the-war-on-drugs/ar-BBzzGyr

 

 

Sounds like typical gop sop. Gonna take money away from social programs and give it to the storm trooper agencies. Make more criminals and put more people in jail. Fuck the will of the people. 

he's a fucking creep. he's the epitome of dangerous and intrusive. the cock sucker reminds of some weird character conjured up in a quentin tarantino movie. republicans give me the chills. 

Clueless what the people want, or the direction our country is heading. As if doubling down on this 'war on drugs' bs is going to stop anyone from smoking it. 

beedy eyed little creep

thanks trump, and trump voters

and noggin

 

Meanwhile the country is mired in a heroin epidemic and you nitwits think its no big deal.  I doubt Sessions is too worried about the dime bag crowd, particularly in light of all the states who are moving or have already moved to legalization.  Politically that won't fly at all and Trump has already signaled he wants to return alotta power to the states.

Edited April 14, 20179 yr by DriftBusta

6 minutes ago, DriftBusta said:

Meanwhile the country is mired in a heroin epidemic and you nitwits think its no big deal.  I doubt Sessions is too worried about the dime bag crowd, particularly in light of all the states who are moving or have already moved to legalization.  Politically that won't fly at all and Trump has already signaled he wants to return alotta power to the states.

just shut the fuck up you clueless moron .....you're pathetic deflecting for the absolute worst policies being crafted by this failure of an admin is nothing short of snowrider class idiocy

Between sessions and pompeo there is nothing that can be done to make this admin anything but a failure

2 hours ago, DriftBusta said:

Meanwhile the country is mired in a heroin epidemic and you nitwits think its no big deal.  I doubt Sessions is too worried about the dime bag crowd, particularly in light of all the states who are moving or have already moved to legalization.  Politically that won't fly at all and Trump has already signaled he wants to return alotta power to the states.

heroin epidemic? lol

When I was a kid if you messed with heroin you could die a quick death. Today its OK cause you can be saved with Narcan....over and over and over and over

1 hour ago, f7ben said:

just shut the fuck up you clueless moron .....you're pathetic deflecting for the absolute worst policies being crafted by this failure of an admin is nothing short of snowrider class idiocy

Between sessions and pompeo there is nothing that can be done to make this admin anything but a failure

He is one of those blue hairs that just needs to die already... 

1 minute ago, Anler said:

He is one of those blue hairs that just needs to die already... 

sure seems that way

Just now, f7ben said:

sure seems that way

This country could be righted pretty quick if everybody over 50 died tomorrow!

2 hours ago, Anler said:

Sounds like typical gop sop. Gonna take money away from social programs and give it to the storm trooper agencies. Make more criminals and put more people in jail. Fuck the will of the people. 

yup Sessions was a terrible choice to start

1 minute ago, Angry ginger said:

yup Sessions was a terrible choice to start

Arent conservatives "SUPPOSED" to be about LESS government and MORE personal liberties? I guess when they say conservatives they really mean Neocons. 

3 minutes ago, Angry ginger said:

yup Sessions was a terrible choice to start

I said as much before he accepted the nom ....just the most pathetic choice possible 

1 hour ago, DriftBusta said:

Meanwhile the country is mired in a heroin epidemic and you nitwits think its no big deal.  I doubt Sessions is too worried about the dime bag crowd, particularly in light of all the states who are moving or have already moved to legalization.  Politically that won't fly at all and Trump has already signaled he wants to return alotta power to the states.

well fuck lets just throw all the heroin users in jail now because they got the leniency in the Obama years not heroin dealers.  Sessions comes out and says we are going after the pill pushers (like was starting to happen under obama) then bravo to him because they hook more people than the dealers do. 

Trump says he wants to return power to the state but we know he means little of what he says.  Trump has  the opportunity to be clear that his admin will not interfere in the state rules over marijuana but he has yet to do so and has been wish washy.  He should put Sessions in his place over pot as the will of the people is clear and guys like sessions think reefer madness was real.  

1 minute ago, Anler said:

Arent conservatives "SUPPOSED" to be about LESS government and MORE personal liberties? I guess when they say conservatives they really mean Neocons. 

there was once a time that was somewhat true,  then the religious right took over and corrupted the party.  

example #139 of trump being worse than Hillary....

but, but, but pizzagate!   BENGAZI!   e-mails!!!!!!!!!

Edited April 14, 20179 yr by Snoslinger

Just now, Snoslinger said:

example #139 of trump being worse than Hillary....

but, but, but pizzagate!   BENGAZI!   e-mails!!!!!!!!!

yes we all know everything would be perfect right now if hillary was elected  

Just now, Angry ginger said:

yes we all know everything would be perfect right now if hillary was elected  

nope, just as not as fucked up as where we are now, and headed.

2 minutes ago, Angry ginger said:

there was once a time that was somewhat true,  then the religious right took over and corrupted the party.  

Governments have been using religion to control people since the beginning of government. 

1 minute ago, Snoslinger said:

nope, just as not as fucked up as where we are now, and headed.

sorry but she's no better and has just as many fucked up thoughts as Trump did

Just now, Angry ginger said:

sorry but she's no better and has just as many fucked up thoughts as Trump did

 yeah you go with that. like I said, this topic is one of many solid examples.

Just now, Snoslinger said:

 yeah you go with that. like I said, this topic is one of many solid examples.

yes we know you think she's so great, but shes not shes a completely piece of shit which is why she lost to a guy who is also a complete piece of shit and they both wanted the job of another piece of shit.  Your party fucked the one chance we had for something different and now cries like little bitches because the "russians" used their actions against them.  

 

.  

1 hour ago, DriftBusta said:

Meanwhile the country is mired in a heroin epidemic and you nitwits think its no big deal.  I doubt Sessions is too worried about the dime bag crowd, particularly in light of all the states who are moving or have already moved to legalization.  Politically that won't fly at all and Trump has already signaled he wants to return alotta power to the states.

...,heroin epidemic? really? is that why the cocksuckers wanted to do away with the mandatory substance abuse treatment coverage in insurance?