Crack (sentencing) is Whack

I'm a little behind on this one, but I have not blogged on Crack for a while.  In the 1980's, Congress passed mandatory minimum sentences for Crack that make punishment much, much heavier on crack users, who tend to be poor minorities, than on powder cocaine users, who tend to be rich White people.  Much of this justification for the harsh Crack sentences has turned out to be entirely bogus.  Law Professor Harlan Protass has the details in Slate:

For sentencing purposes, the 1980s federal laws treat as little as 5
grams of crack (roughly the weight of two sugar cubes) the same as 500
grams of powder cocaine (a “half-key” in Miami Vice-speak).
Both slap a defendant with a five-year mandatory minimum prison term,
and longer mandatory minimums ratchet up from there. When this 100-to-1
sentencing ratio was introduced, lawmakers believed that crack was
instantly addicting, with young people especially susceptible. They
feared a generation of “crack babies” would plague the nation's cities
for years to come, and they drew a straight line from crack
distribution to violent crime.

Since that time, the sentencing commission, in a series of reports to Congress, has shown that these ideas about crack are myths. Relying on a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association,
the commission noted that crack and powder cocaine are
pharmacologically identical and produce “the same physiological and
subjective effects.” The harm associated with prenatal exposure to the
drugs is also the same, and both crack and powder are significantly
less damaging in this regard than previously thought. Recent data also
indicate that only 10 percent of crack offenses involve violence, and
that use of the drug never reached the epidemic proportions that were
so often claimed.

What's more, the 1980s laws failed to achieve
the additional aim of locking up major drug traffickers. The sentencing
commission reported recently that only about one-third of crack
offenders are high-level operators. The overwhelming majority are
street dealers, couriers, and lookouts. Meanwhile, harsh crack
penalties disproportionately affect minorities. Of the 25,000 federal
defendants sentenced for crack offenses over the past five years, about
80 percent were black.

The good news is that the Supreme Court recently heard a case which should hopefully remedy this injustice:

Of course crack remains a dangerous drug, and those who deal and use it
should be punished. But those penalties should be fair. As the
sentencing commission has figured out, and the Supreme Court is likely
to, the current sentencing scheme is anything but.

Till then, you best stick with the powder .

Congress for sale

From Kevin Drum:

There are all sorts of arguments in favor of low taxes. Supply
siders say that high marginal income tax rates reduce people's
incentive to work. Liberals complain that payroll taxes are regressive.
Capital gains taxes inhibit investment. Taxes on dividends are double
taxation. Cigarette taxes punish the poor. Etc.

But allowing management fees for hedge funds to be taxed at capital
gains rates (15%) instead of the normal income tax rate (35%)? That's a no-brainer.
All the fast talk in the world can't produce even a colorable argument
in favor of letting this insane loophole continue, and no one but the
hackiest of Grover Norquist's tax jihad hacks should be willing to
defend it.

Alas, no, even Democrats are very much for sale to the ultra-high bidders who manage the hedge funds.  From yesterday's Post:

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.)
has told private-equity firms in recent weeks that a tax-hike proposal
they have spent millions of dollars to defeat will not get through the
Senate this year, according to executives and lobbyists…

In response, private-equity firms — whose multibillion-dollar deals
have created a class of superwealthy investors and taken some of
America's large corporations private — hired dozens of lobbyists,
stepped up campaign contributions and lined up business allies to wage
an unusually conspicuous lobbying blitz. Their argument was that higher
taxes would run counter to accepted tax policy and slow economic growth…

In one meeting with industry representatives last month, Reid said the
private-equity tax plan would not be considered in the Senate this
year, according to a participant. Rather than citing the lobbying push,
Reid implied that the reason had to do with the lack of time on the
jammed Senate schedule.

So, I suppose millions of dollars on an aggressive lobbying campaign is just a coincidence.  The truth is, when it is issues that fly well below the public radar– e.g., outrageous tax benefits for hedge fund managers, your Congress is for sale.